It has been agreed that, should any of the Questions for Short Debate not run their allocated hour this afternoon, the Committee will adjourn during pleasure until the end of the hour. Therefore, each of the Questions for Short Debate will start on the hour.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the impact on rural communities in the United Kingdom of the withdrawal of public and private services.

The debate which I am fortunate enough to introduce today is about the withdrawal of public and private services from rural areas. I owe Members an apology, because this debate should have taken place before Easter. Unfortunately, the husband of our Lord Lieutenant, Bill Legge Bourke, died, and I was unable to come to the debate on that date because of his memorial service. I happen to be a deputy lieutenant in the county of Powys.

The market town of Talgarth, where I was brought up, was a busy place. Its population in the days of the Second World War and later was around 2,000. Apart from the livestock market, many worked in one of its two hospitals. Others worked on the railway; an artery which joined north with south Wales, mid-Wales with Hereford and Oswestry and beyond, to say nothing of lines to Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea. Indeed, you could travel to London and back in a day from my home town. Situated in the then county of Breconshire in the heart of the Black Mountains on the Welsh borders, it was very well connected, transport-wise.

There were 45 retail and business premises, mainly shops, including three banks, two garages, a bus and haulage company, two branches of farmers’ co-ops, and a police station with three policemen. When I returned after working for ICI and other businesses for 25 years, I found the following in comparison: there were 16 retail premises, no railway after the Beeching cuts, one slimmed-down hospital, one bank, no bus company, one garage, no farmers’ co-ops, no police station and no policemen. There was one councillor, instead of the previous two. The town seemed to have been partly abandoned, with a massive loss of services. This sort of demise has hit rural communities all over the UK, and that is why I feel so strongly about it and want to see the Government provide the means and the technical know-how, along with the business entrepreneurs in the private sector, to stem the tide of depopulation and outward migration of young people.

At this point, I must declare interests. First, I am vice-president of the Brecknock Federation of Young Farmers Clubs, at the younger end of the local community. Secondly, I am an adviser to the board of the Prince of Wales outfit called Prime Cymru, a Prince’s Charity that enables over-50 year-olds into business start-ups in Wales. We have started 1,500 new businesses as a result of that over the past five years. Thirdly, I am a member of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales. I will later demonstrate how some of these bodies help to regenerate rural communities.

At the start, I am duty-bound to describe and identify the degree of devastation that has hit many of our rural areas through the withdrawal of both public and private services. Rural areas have often suffered most from the closure of local shops, services and facilities, which also act as the hub of a community. These services also create local jobs for the communities that they serve and are a vital part of vibrant, sustainable communities. Local communities are suffering from the following: the closure of local independent shops; the closure of local post offices; the closure of local bank branches; the decline of local street markets; the closure of local pubs; the closure of local services, such as health centres; green spaces being built on; more traffic, and fewer people walking on the streets; and fewer public transport services.

The impact of all that can be quantified as follows: 70 per cent of rural parishes have no general store; 75 per cent have no daily bus service; 83 per cent have no general practitioner; and 43 per cent have no post office. That information has been supplied by the Countryside Agency. Some 3,700 post offices have closed—a 21 per cent decline; 8,000 independent grocery stores have closed—a 25 per cent decline; 3,757 bank branches have closed—a 23 per cent decline; and 13,000 independent newsagents have closed.

I realise that I am already running against the clock, but my colleague Tim Farron MP, in his role as Liberal Democrat spokesman on this subject in the House of Commons, has quantified the following. Under the Conservative Government, rural post offices shut at a rate of up to 200 a year. Since Labour came to power, the relentless pace of closures has continued, with 1,200 axed since the millennium. There is a crisis in affordable rural housing and, indeed, there is unfair competition in relation to food prices, with a continuing decline in the agricultural industry and in the number of rural shops. Fuel poverty is twice as bad in rural areas as in urban areas. When one starts to compare all those facts with the situation in metropolitan areas, one can see a huge imbalance between the two. Less than half of the residents in villages and hamlets live within 13 minutes of their nearest bus stop, for example, and there are other statistics of that kind that one can pray in aid in setting out the impact of the reduction of services on rural areas.

I have far too much material here, so I am motoring through it. There are a number of factors which I should like to underline regarding how we might be able to tackle some of these issues, but I know from personal experience that it is very hard going. One of the latest things to have happened is that HMRC has decided to close a large number of tax offices. That is causing a lot of hardship for small businesses in rural areas and is quite a problem.

What do we have to do to try to tackle these problems? I can tell noble Lords what we have done in my local community. For the past 20 years, we have had to lobby for a relief road because the lorries were literally knocking down the shops, and we have finally got it. We have had to restore retail shops, as there is no provision for this, and we have managed to scrape together £2,500 to paint them and make them more attractive. We had to make video films of traffic congestion and lorries to convince the powers that be that we needed a relief road—not a bypass, just a relief road. We have had to create a regeneration group, of which I can claim to be the first chairman. We have also had to acquire business starter units, some of which have been successful. However, we have very few funds, although we now have a project to convert a mill for electricity generation from the river that runs through the town, and somehow or other we have managed to find £60,000 for that from various grant-making sources.

The problem is that the situation is very uneven. Some rural communities seem to get support, while others are in the doldrums. In our area, I have been involved in the start-up of the Hay Festival, which is coming up soon and in past years has been very successful. I have been chairman of the Brecon jazz festival, which also has been very successful.

However, my poor old hometown does not seem to have the sparkle because there is a lack of active people who can fill in forms in a professional way and lobby. We have had to do a number of extraordinary things in the area. We were threatened with a bank branch closure in Llanwrtyd Wells and the only way we saved it was to take a busload of residents down to Cardiff to the regional board meeting and hammer home the fact that it was the only bank branch within 14 miles and we saved it. We had to take 200 people to the regional health authority 50 miles away to save eight community hospitals. Recently we have had to come to HMRC in London to try to save 140 jobs in our tax office. As we have an almost non-existent bus service, we have set up a dial-a-ride service and it does 100,000 miles a year with five buses. We have managed to do all those things in our community, but the latest thing to hit us is that they want to close our local voluntary centre for want of £1,000 to promote tourism, for example.

How will the Minister join up government and ensure that sufficient money and panache, particularly entrepreneurial panache, are put into local areas to increase employment? The Home Office has come down on us like a ton of bricks because it wants to close as many of the magistrates' courts as possible. Six have already been closed in the past seven years and it wants to close the one in Llandrindod. We have had a seven-year campaign, including debates in the House of Commons and lobbying of the Minister to save one magistrates’ court. The next one is 40 miles away and witnesses cannot travel there because there is no proper public transport.

I have explained the impact which we face in rural areas. We need an enormous amount of help in such areas, where the GDP per head is only three-quarters of the UK average. The need for young people, and indeed older people who are the majority of the population, is immense. A little money would go a long way.

I am privileged to follow my noble friend Lord Livsey. Much the same story will emerge. We are both from Wales and so this could be considered the upper House of the Welsh Senedd; perhaps they should form one. As we are the House of Lords for the whole of the UK we can, at least, venture into Welsh territory.

This problem relates to the background of the past century and a half. I have been looking at the census records. We have an increasing concentration of population in urban areas. In 1851, just over half the population, 50.2 per cent, lived in urban areas; in 1951, 80.7 per cent of the population lived in urban areas. We have seen a decline from nearly half the population living in rural areas to just one in five today. Urbanisation continues and it is against that background that we have the problems which we face.

My noble friend Lord Livsey has mentioned Talgarth in mid-Wales and adjoining towns. I want to take you to a valley in north Wales which is composed of two little villages, one larger than the other. Over the past 50 years, something has happened there: there were two quarries and both have closed; there was a woollen mill and that has gone; and we are chapel-going people in Wales and there were six chapels and now there is only one, which is not particularly well attended. Both the churches have gone and the Church in Wales premises have gone. One was the most historic in Wales because it was near there that the Bible was translated into Welsh in 1588. One of the two schools has gone and the present school is threatened: it has only 20 pupils. Forty years ago, 120 people attended the Sunday school, but that has gone completely. This is a spiral of decline.

One of the two pubs has gone. One remains, but that is run by volunteers and we are not sure how much longer that can continue. These villages are at the end of the valley. It is a cul-de-sac so there is no passing trade and there are probably more attractive premises in the renowned tourist villages in that locality. The fish and chip shop has gone. It was run by one of my family, so I feel very sad about that. Both post offices have gone and now 39 shops have gone. In those villages where there were 39 shops 30 years ago, today there is no post office and no shop at all. There is no minister or vicar. There is no doctor's surgery. There is no policeman. There is no football team or band or choir. The hills are no longer alive with the sound of music.

This spiral of decline affects us in so many ways. We cannot reclaim yesterday, but with the emphasis on a need for vibrant communities, it is vital that we support and maintain the villages that we do have. In the cities now we hear about dreadful crimes such as knife crimes and so forth in parts of London and we say that what we need are good communities. In the villages in the valleys and rural areas of the UK we have those communities. They need more support than they are getting at the present time.

I was looking at the police statistics in Wales. The most law-abiding places are the most rural places, where there is a sense of community. We now need to look at a way of stopping that decline. First of all, communities need people who are active members of their local community. We welcome visitors who come and stay for a weekend or even a couple of months in the summer, but we need locally based people to run the community councils. We need people to be in charge of the parochial councils. Communities need people with a wide range of ages and interests.

People need affordable housing. That is one of the main problems. I was speaking only half an hour ago to the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Welsh Assembly, Kirsty Williams. She was telling me that they were still trying to get—we might see it happening here before very long—the right for the Welsh Assembly Government not to sell housing if they see that areas are in special need. I am sure that when the measure comes before the House, we will be able to support that particular measure to keep people within their villages. Housing is crucial. With housing comes families, and with families come children, and with children come schools. The circle does not have to be a downward spiral: it can be an upward spiral.

Even though we would like to, we cannot justify the retention of all village schools. There is a limit when there are only half a dozen children and you cannot justify it. But with the proposed growth in the number of housing schemes for local families we might see changes in the population of young people in the near future. I suggest a halt in many places on the closure of village schools to see how the future develops. That might mean extra money from somewhere—as education is a devolved matter I have an idea that that will be from Cardiff—to maintain those schools through their education authorities for the foreseeable future.

We also need to experiment with different proposals to keep the commercial life of the community going. The Prince of Wales started a scheme to “make the pub a hub”. As a teetotaller, I was not sure how to support it, but I do support it, because if we can use one building for postal services, as a village shop and for use by the community, we will restore facilities in places where they have been in decline for many years.

Let us encourage pilot schemes and request local communities and parish councils to bring forward schemes of their own that can be embraced by the larger council and even in some way by ourselves. We need new vision. We need to be people with a bit of venture in our souls to bring new life to many of our rural communities.

I refer noble Lords to my declaration of interests on the register. My law firm has a large planning practice that serves rural areas in the West Country, particularly in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Livsey for securing this debate; it is high time that we had a chance to debate the problems of rural England.

There is a frequently held misconception that all rural areas are affluent. It is apparent that the Government hold that view in the way that they allocate central government spending. However, the Government can see for themselves in the statistics that they gather that there is considerable poverty in rural areas and that has increased over recent years.

In my former constituency of Torridge and West Devon, there were areas in north-west Devon in and around Bideford that contained some of the poorest wards in the country. The official indices of deprivation for those wards showed greater poverty than in the major cities in the north-east and north-west of England. It is, unfortunately, unlikely that this Government, in probably their last year of office, will do anything to change that.

The briefing for this debate by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England refers to the specific protection given to post offices in urban deprived areas. The briefing goes on to say that the Government have neglected to introduce similar provisions for rural deprived areas. Will the Minister, when responding to the debate, justify that appalling discrimination? The Government should understand that for many in rural areas, as my noble friend Lord Livsey eloquently stated, the post office is a lifeline. Many people in villages and country parishes do not have cars and need a post office to access their pensions and other services. In addition, post offices are a focal point for rural villages and parishes and often provide an essential retail function for both convenience and comparison goods.

I should like to dwell in this debate, and seize this opportunity to concentrate on, affordable rural housing. The problems have been eloquently described by both my noble friends Lord Livsey and Lord Roberts. David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, has stated that waiting lists for affordable housing in rural areas have risen by 40 per cent in the past five years. The waiting lists now comprise 700,000 people. That is a colossal number of individuals and the figure disguises considerable sadness and unhappiness. The National Housing Federation predicts that 103,000 people aged between 24 and 35 are now expected to migrate from the rural areas to towns and cities over the next three years. Without young people and young families, the heart will be removed from country villages and parishes. Schools will close, much parish activity will diminish and there will not be a pool of workers for all the necessary rural jobs, including agriculture and horticulture.

This exodus should be reversed, and it requires urgent action. It would be helpful if the Minister, in winding up, would provide details of national house-building starts for 2006, 2007 and 2008, together with a breakdown of how many of these starts were in rural areas. It would also be interesting to have a similar breakdown for the first quarters of 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. The first quarter of 2009 should now be available. I believe that these figures will throw up a huge contraction in house-building—and house-building in rural areas—in recent months and over this past year.

It is no good the Minister saying that this is all a matter for local planning authorities. The Government give guidance to those authorities and create considerable and needless further bureaucracy and administration in planning matters. I make one suggestion in an endeavour to alleviate the problem of the shortage of affordable housing in rural areas. There used to be, and probably still is, an exceptions policy. It was possible to promote a site for affordable rural residential property on the outskirts of villages. It was the sort of site that would in no other circumstances get planning permission for any open market residential development. The Government could give planning guidance to local authorities to the effect that there was a presumption to grant planning permission in certain circumstances, and these could be as follows.

First, it would be only for affordable housing, conditioned under Section 106 of the Planning Act to that effect. Secondly, it must be over an area of land as near as possible to the centre of a village, or even a hamlet. A sequential test would be relatively easy to devise. Thirdly, the amount of housing consented should reasonably accord with an affordable housing needs survey, conducted on behalf of the promoter and agreed with the local authority. There may, of course, be other conditions relating to topography, highways, and so on. Nevertheless, the Government could make these ambitions clear to local authorities and, effectively, give them the green light to start to reverse this decline in rural affordable housing. The Government should not just sit back and wait for something to happen. The Government should take the lead and empower local authorities to regenerate their villages and parishes. There is much work to be done.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, for securing this debate and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, who, along with his namesake, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, guarantees that the Welsh voice is rarely silent in our House. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for his contribution. In talking about rural housing, he hits on one of the major issues that any policy on rural communities needs to address. I am delighted to have by my side the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and I am sorry that her engagements meant that she could not participate in this debate. All noble Lords will know that she is a champion of this issue.

I declare an interest; I am a farmer and grower. I come from a place called Holbeach, where I was born, and I live in the house that I was brought up in, so I have a sense of place. When we talk about changes in rural communities, I know of what I speak because it is my life experience. My wife has been a county councillor for Holbeach for the past 20 years, although she is not seeking re-election; I think she wants to enjoy life in London while I am here during the week. It certainly means that I am reasonably informed about the politics of local communities.

I have been involved in a project. When Holbeach Hospital closed, 20 years ago, a group of friends and colleagues formed a charitable trust. I was chairman of that hospital for 18 years, running it as a community hospital with a contract with the National Health Service. There are practical ways in which communities can still cover deficiencies which occur simply because of government policies.

I will not pretend that this problem has arisen just because there is a Labour Government now, or that there were no problems under Conservative Governments. That is not the tenor of this debate. The phenomenon of which we talk is a process of change that has been fairly relentless. We need to find a consensus on how we can address it. We who live in rural areas do so in very changed communities. Not all the changes are negative; we must remember that. We are all better off, but the differentials remain, and those between urban facilities and affluence, and rural facilities and affluence, are growing rather than diminishing. I come from the district of South Holland. With its neighbour, the Fenland District Council, it is pretty low down any measure of general education attainment, healthcare standards and all the rest of it; it is always low on those indices.

Of course, the biggest change has perhaps been one of the reasons that has accelerated the decline: the increased number of car owners in rural areas. Car- owning is a mixed blessing. One in three households in rural areas have two cars—it is only one in 12 in an urban area—but that is not surprising. If both husband and wife are working, they both need a car to get to work. In fact, a car has become essential in rural areas. There was a local garage that specialised in buying cars from hire car companies and selling them, because they were so heavily discounted, to people in my part of the world. They were not old bangers, but they were on the way to becoming old bangers. They are essential: you need a pair of wheels to keep your job, to go shopping and to access services.

As soon as that happens, you create the mobility that can lead to the decline of services because people are capable of moving. We have the peculiar contrast that petrol stations in rural areas are in decline and yet there are more cars in rural areas than ever before. Why is that? It is because people are going to the supermarket pump in the out-of-town shopping centre rather than shopping and buying their petrol at the garage where it is that much more expensive. It may not be that much more expensive, but it is sufficient for people to go elsewhere.

I will talk later about those who are left behind. A lot of the problems with rural communities stem not from the people with the cars, but those without them. However, it has proved to be the death knell of the village shop, post office and many other rural services now that people commute from villages to towns and, indeed, from market towns to the cities for their shopping and services.

There is a changed pattern of employment in rural areas. The number of people employed in agriculture in the field has declined enormously. Most people engaged in rural employment and occupations now work in pack houses. The crops are harvested mechanically—their processing and marketing actually provide the new employment.

There are changed demographics. We all know about the rise of commuting, the gentrification of rural villages and the second holiday home. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, in talking about rural housing gave the impression that we could perhaps have a whole debate on rural housing itself, which is a complex issue. The whole business of finding rural housing at a reasonable price and securing it for indigenous people is complex and not easy.

In addition, of course, affluence has meant that people have different ways of spending their leisure time. The decline of the rural pub is perhaps only partially due to Chancellors taxing beer; it is more likely due to the fact that people have other things to do with their leisure time. They do not necessarily want to spend their evenings in the village pub; there may be other things on which they wish to spend their time.

I hesitate to mention this point because it might sound party political—I hope noble Lords appreciate that I am not approaching this debate from a party political point of view—but one of the difficulties the Government have had in their relationship with rural areas is that the new Labour project failed to engage with rural England. It is one of the items on the agenda that was never fulfilled and it has been damaging to rural England and agriculture.

In particular, in rural communities the Labour Party effectively has no locus; there are very few Labour Party activists and the NUAW—which, when I was young, was a power in the land, along with the NFU—has more or less disappeared, subsumed by the Transport and General Workers Union, now part of Unite. There is no longer that sense whereby the Labour Party feels that it has a political locus in the countryside. That has given the impression on occasions that rural communities perhaps do not matter as much as they might do. I hesitate to make that point because I do not want to destroy the consensus I might be building, but it is a valid observation on one of the difficulties that we have had recently.

All parties need to make a conscious effort to listen to and act on the concerns of the rural population. I think we would all agree with that. The appointment of Dr Stuart Burgess has been a positive development and, as rural advocate, he has used the commission’s resources to evidence the challenges that the Government face in these areas and has utilised his contacts with local authorities to maintain critical services and access to them. The current crisis is hitting rural communities particularly hard. What assessment have the Government made of the impact that the recession might have on rural communities?

The Commission for Rural Communities report into the state of the countryside noted how access to services such as banks, job centres and petrol stations, which I have mentioned before, is becoming increasingly difficult. We can all think of post offices, village shops, schools and healthcare facilities which are, in many cases, directly affected by government policies. What assessment do the Government make of the impact of policy decisions on rural services?

Finally, the InterConnect system in Lincolnshire, which I know Stuart Burgess has looked at, is being funded by the Government. It is a successful system which works in partnership with Lincolnshire County Council, and I have made clear my interest. This system ensures that there is now a transport system for people who do not have cars. Even people with cars sometimes cannot drive them when they get older, and they need an alternative method of getting to services. That is never going to come cheap—we have to appreciate that it is bound to be a cost on the community as a whole—but it is essential if we are not to see a proportion of our rural population with no access to the vital services they need. It is beholden on all parties and political activists to look, listen and act with rural communities in mind.

I, too, welcome the opportunity to debate rural affairs and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, for initiating the debate and for the breadth of his opening speech, which was very helpful. It gave a very interesting insight into the challenges and changes in rural Wales which he has experienced over the years.

I was also impressed by the work that he and his colleagues have done in his local community. He seems to have been very active and very successful. If one were to draw conclusions on what could be done to help rural communities to develop in the future, they could do very much worse than to follow his example. I found some of the initiatives which he spoke about extremely interesting.

As someone who lives in Birmingham and works in London, it might be thought that I am not the best person to comment on issues concerning rurality, particularly when all other noble Lords in the Grand Committee today clearly have a great deal of experience. Birmingham is very close to Warwickshire, which is an outstanding county and one with which we enjoy very good relationships. Like many Brummies, we always spend our holidays in mid-Wales. The noble Lord talked about the lack of access to services, but it is quite remarkable that at any time of the year in Aberdyfi one can always get a copy of the Birmingham Post, which says something.

I am responding to the debate because Defra has the lead responsibility within the Government for rural issues and monitoring rural affairs, and that situation also applies to England. I know that the noble Lords, Lord Livsey and Lord Roberts, made the point that although they were mainly talking about the situation in Wales, their points are applicable to the rest of the UK. My department has very good contacts with the devolved Administrations and on a number of occasions during the year we discuss rural issues. I shall ensure that the contents of this debate are shared with colleagues, particularly those in the Welsh Assembly, so that they have an understanding of the points that we have discussed.

Clearly, because of food and farming issues, Defra has a major area of work within rural affairs, but its other area of work is to monitor and co-ordinate the work of other government departments. If I take a message from the debate, it is that noble Lords are saying that the department needs to ensure that it is making the most of that co-ordinating role. I fully accept that it is important that we take it seriously, and we cannot be complacent. Of course, we have to monitor progress on rural issues across government in order to meet one of our most important departmental strategic objectives.

When looking at the outcomes, it is interesting to see that, in general, fewer people live in poverty in rural areas; there are fewer victims of crime in rural areas; and proportionately more people in rural areas are employed than in urban areas. Quite remarkable statistics which I have been given show—I assume this is from polling—that of people living in the countryside, 89 per cent would prefer to continue to do so, whereas 21 per cent of those living in inner cities would prefer to continue living there. Although we have heard some very apposite comments about some of the challenges and problems of maintaining rural communities, none the less, many people see living in rural areas as an asset and very much to be desired.

The problem that we face is the dispersed nature of rural communities and the greater distances between settlements and services. I suppose that is the root cause of why service-deliverers in rural areas have considerable challenges. Each of the public services that noble Lords have mentioned faces that particular problem. I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, had to say about the closure of rural services, including post offices, pubs, shops and petrol stations. I do not think that he mentioned jobcentres, but that is obviously an example of where there has been some consolidation. Then there are doctors’ surgeries and even tax offices—although I suspect that not everyone is as concerned about that as they are about the loss of other services.

I do not seek to ignore those issues or to deny them. There is no doubt that there is a tension between the drive to make public service provision more efficient, which is with us and ever present, and the issue of how you do that—by forcing collocation of services and increasing the distances that people have to travel, which has been a feature of many of our public services. Magistrates’ courts are another example. In my previous role as Minister responsible for legal aid, it was a concern raised by some groups concerned about legal aid services that it was more difficult for rural solicitors to win legal aid contracts, resulting in it being difficult sometimes for people in rural areas to gain access to legal aid services.

There are many examples of particular problems being faced, but it is not a totally bleak picture. Although the number of banks and building societies in rural areas has decreased by 2.6 per cent in 2007-08, the number of rural people living within four kilometres of a cashpoint is increasing and now stands at 90 per cent. The number of job centres in rural areas has fallen by nearly 20 per cent, but the number of rural supermarkets, dentists and pubs—interestingly enough, in view of what the noble Lord said—has increased over that period. Those are statistics from the State of the Countryside report from the Commission for Rural Communities, so I think they are pretty authoritative.

To come on to post offices, the number of rural post offices declined in that year by a smaller percentage than the number of urban ones. The number of rural people within four kilometres of GP surgeries and secondary schools has stayed roughly the same, as has the number of rural people living within two kilometres of primary schools. The percentage of rural households within 30 minutes of an hourly or better bus service has increased significantly since 1997. There are some positive signs amid the general problem that we are discussing.

The Post Office is an important issue. We are seeing investment of considerable sums of money to support restructuring and modernisation of the network. In the proposals that have nearly left your Lordships' House, or will soon be going, we are guaranteeing the integrity of the network as a whole, which is a very important component of post office services. On the point raised about access criteria and the potential discrimination against rural issues, my understanding is that the criteria that the Government designed were to allow Post Office Limited the necessary freedom to modernise service delivery. Ninety-five per cent of the total rural population throughout the UK must be within three miles of the nearest post office outlet and, to protect the population in isolated and sparsely populated areas, 95 per cent of the population of every postcode district must be within six miles of the nearest post office outlet. In drawing up implementation plans, Post Office Ltd was required to take into account any obvious geographical constraints that could prevent the spirit of the access criteria being applied. I do not think that there is evidence of discrimination against rural areas.

On transport, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, made the point that for many people, if they live in the countryside, having a car is essential. That has reduced the viability of public transport services.

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. Is he, in his point on post offices, contradicting the brief, from which I am now reading and to which I refer, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England? It states:

“The Government criteria have given specific protection to post offices in urban deprived areas, but they neglected to introduce a similar provision for rural deprived areas”.

Is that correct or incorrect?

I do not have the information that has been published by the CPRE. I will certainly look into it and respond. My point is that, from the access criteria that the Government have laid down for Post Office Ltd, the requirements that I have read out make it clear that, in general policy, the Government have sought to protect the rural network of post offices. I am very happy to respond to the noble Lord in detail on the specific point that he raises.

Regarding rural post offices, say that your village is in the Conwy Valley and the post office is open for two hours a week. A neighbouring village might be three miles away, but your village only has a facility for two hours’ post office services every week. Does the Minister really think that that is a satisfactory criterion?

Obviously, given the tremendous pressure on it, the Post Office is seeking to have an outlet that is at least open for a limited time. It is better for it to be open for a limited time than not at all. One has to be realistic. I readily acknowledge that there will be concerns about access to public services in rural areas. Equally, it has to be accepted that any solution must be imaginative. We must make the best use of our resources.

I make another point, coming back to the question of legal aid. One of the matters that we were discussing at the Ministry of Justice was the question of using video facilities so that people can have communication and probably set it up in the pub. I agree with the noble Lord about the use of the pub and other community areas. With some imagination, it is perfectly easy to set up video conferencing facilities, which can then enable people in rural areas to communicate with different public services. I do not know the details of the two-hour post office, but if it is a sign of flexibility and imagination, I am all for it. There is a balance here. It is clear that no Government could afford to provide an all-singing, all-dancing network of public services, open at all times, in each part of the rural economy. Equally, we need to make sure that, as far as possible, people have appropriate access. We need to be imaginative, just as we need to be about transport.

Of course, we have put more money into rural transport. It is fair to say that local transport authorities are responsible for ensuring that there is a network of rural transport services. It is the same with health, which is something that I know a little more about than rural areas. There is a tension in health, where the trend over 20 or 30 years has been towards a greater concentration of services. The reason for that is very clear. The evidence from health professionals is that health outcomes and clinical effectiveness are better where there is greater co-ordination and centralisation of health services. Again, the test here is being imaginative in solutions.

I think that my time is coming to an end, but I want to turn to the issue of housing. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Burnett and Lord Roberts, about the importance of housing and social housing in rural areas. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said about an “upward cycle”, which was a very good way of putting it. If young people have access to housing in rural areas, that inevitably leads to babies and children and a demand for schools.

We have a target of 10,300 affordable homes being provided in settlements of less than 3,000 inhabitants between 2008 and 2011. In our response to the Taylor review of the rural economy and affordable housing, we made it clear that we understood that the long-term gap between supply and demand had led to an affordability problem. We referred to the need to increase the supply housing, and we also said:

“The downturn does not fundamentally affect our analysis of why the demand for housing will continue to rise”.

I am very happy to pass the noble Lord’s interesting suggestions on planning consent to the relevant government department. It is worth noting that new proposals for a planning policy statement were issued for consultation last week. I do not know whether the noble Lord has seen it but I should welcome his input into that. As I said, I should be very happy to ensure that the point that he raised is considered.

Obviously I cannot commit my noble friend Lady Andrews, but I shall certainly talk to her about the idea of a debate on rural housing because it seems that there would be a great deal of interest in it. I am sure she will be ever-anxious to come to your Lordships’ House to debate those matters.

I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and others to comment on rural poverty. I shall be happy to write to noble Lords with the information that I have but, in the one minute that I have left, I can say that our understanding is that the impacts of the current recession on rural areas are very similar to those in urban areas.

In conclusion, this has been a very interesting debate and a lot of very good ideas have been put forward. The Government are not complacent on this matter; we have put more resources into our support for rural areas. However, because this issue embraces many government departments, I shall ensure that the points raised are put to the relevant Ministers. I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, for instituting the debate and for the excellence of his contribution.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they propose to reappoint a director of the National Probation Service.

My Question is a probing one because in asking Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to reappoint a director of the National Probation Service, I am actually seeking information on how Her Majesty's Government think that any operational service can be operationally led except by a professional head. In doing so, I declare my interest in the subject as a former Chief Inspector of Prisons. During my time in office, I worked closely with Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Probation conducting two joint thematic reviews, one on life sentence prisoners and one on resettlement, as well as our being members of an unofficial criminal justice system group of inspectors, who took part in joint inspections of particular aspects on a mix and match basis.

In early 2000, the then Home Secretary, now the Secretary of State for Justice, informed us both that he was thinking of merging our two inspectorates in line with a study that was being conducted in the Home Office on the possible merger of the prison and probation services. Fortunately, the study found that that was not appropriate, which was not to deny that close working between them was essential. In November of that year the Secretary of State announced to us and to the House of Commons that he was not going to merge the inspectorates either.

Both of us had urged very strongly that merger between such different organisations with such different operational purposes was inappropriate for a whole variety of reasons. In particular, the Prison Service was responsible for the treatment and conditions of approaching 50,000 people in custody, of whom about 10,000 would come into the hands of the probation service on release for the community part of their sentences. The probation service on the other hand, which for almost 100 years had had rehabilitation at the heart of its purpose and ethos, had to care for some 250,000 offenders in the community and work very closely with that community, the courts and the police on a day-to-day basis.

Furthermore, it was at that time not a national but a county service working within specific geographic boundaries—something that changed very soon after I retired from the post when the National Probation Service was created with a reduced number of chief officers of probation remaining responsible for the management of realigned geographic areas. However, the Government’s intentions were made clear when at the same time the prison and probation services were brought together under a commissioner of corrections, while retaining their own director-general and national director respectively. Furthermore, under the first national director of probation, the ethos of the service was changed by putting punishment as its first task and relegating rehabilitation to subordinate status—to the horror and alarm of all those who knew what was required of it if offenders were to be helped to live useful and law-abiding lives in the community.

However, this situation, too, was short lived because in January 2004, following acceptance of recommendations by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, the two were joined together into the National Offender Management Service. But, from the outset, confusion reigned; no one in either service knew whether they had been merged, were to be merged or what was to happen, because there was no consultation, even with their own directors, before the formation of NOMS was announced. I mention this because it highlights the concern which is at the heart of my question: namely, whether those responsible for the introduction of NOMS fully appreciated that those serving in operational services need to be professionally led and cannot be managed like commodities.

NOMS has had a chequered career since then, which I do not intend to rehearse. Suffice to say that it got off to a shaky start because it was designed to create an offender management system but persisted in pretending that it was one service when in fact it was an association of two with entirely different operational purposes. Now that, too, has metamorphosed into the National Offender Management Service agency, into which the prison and probation services have been subsumed. No longer is there a director-general of Her Majesty’s Prison Service or a director of the National Probation Service, but a chief executive of the agency, which has become a vast bureaucracy numbering 4,270 staff, although I must admit to being confused today when the chief executive of “NOMSA” was described as the director-general of the Prison Service in relation to a dispute with the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Worryingly—and I venture to say disgracefully—there appear to be no senior probation staff in any of the executive posts at the head of the various departments of the agency. Without their presence, I wonder who is providing professional probation advice to the Secretary of State and his Ministers; to the agency chief executive, who comes from the Prison Service, as does his deputy; and to the hordes of civil servants who have no experience at all of the management of offenders on the ground. The old probation organisations, in which boards were responsible for assisting chief officers, are being superseded by trusts responsible for purchasing probation services, which is an entirely impersonal way of conducting an intensely personal requirement, because probation is all about people—staff, offenders and the public.

All this has been brought about by the Government despite strong opposition during the consultancies that first the Home Office and then the Ministry of Justice conducted. Unfortunately, no notice appears to have been taken during these consultancies of any dissenting view, in favour of pressing ahead with ministerial intention. But the fact that so many announced intentions have either failed or come to nothing should surely alert the Government to the folly of this approach.

It reminds me of the attempt by the Canadians to merge their navy, army and air force into one service during the 1960s, despite pleading and advice from many people who warned that it would weaken individual operational performance if the inevitable compromises were enforced. Within a year, common sense prevailed and the three returned to their separate tasks. Canada, too, has tried to merge its prison and probation services into one correctional service. Inevitably, as practitioners warned would happen, the position of probation has been subordinated to that of prisons, despite their totally different operational purposes, because of their higher profile.

During a lifetime in an operational service—the Army—I was conscious of the importance and value of having a professional head representing the service at the heart of government, who was able to ensure that its needs and best interests received constant attention. I would not feel the same way if I was a member of the probation service today. It has an operational purpose, as the Army does, but it does not have a professional head or even senior and experienced staff ensuring that their experience and expertise are represented at the heart of government. In proceeding like this, the Government give the impression that probation provision is regarded as being solely about the purchase of services. It is not. It is also about the people who deliver those services, who need to be selected, trained, motivated and led. If they are not, the service will die, because operational people who are not properly led become a confused and disorganised rabble.

My first question to the Minister is, therefore, whether the Government intend to show the same good sense that they have done in abandoning Titan prisons by abandoning the idea that the probation service can do without a professional head. That begs a second question. Will the Minister explain who is regarded as the professional head today? Who is the professional adviser to Ministers and within “NOMSA”? How does he or she exercise that leadership throughout the probation service, which I presume is still an operational entity that people can join?

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for this short debate. This is not simply about whether the Government propose to reappoint a director of the National Probation Service, but my arguments focus on why they should. The noble Lord’s argument for the reappointment of a national post of director of probation is a powerful one, for several reasons. Let me spell them out. First, there is a relative lack of probation service experience at senior levels in the National Offender Management Service. I am not surprised; we have tried so many permutations of the probation organisation in the past that it gives an impression of a lack of strategic thinking about the probation service as a whole.

I draw attention to that lack of experience to contrast the situation with that of the strong Prison Service experience amid senior staff at NOMS, its headquarters. Most of the regional directors of NOMS have a Prison Service background. Yet the number of offenders under supervision by the probation service at any one time is much higher than the number of offenders in prison, and all offenders who have served prison sentences of 12 months or more are supervised by the probation service. That shows, in view of the service’s crucial importance to the reduction of reoffending, that there is a strong case for a senior specialist role at national level with a remit to promote high standards in national probation practices.

Secondly, inspections by the probation inspectorate have found variable standards from one probation area to another. Following the move towards probation trusts, similar inconsistency in standards of delivery could persist from one trust area to another. A director of probation post at a senior level in NOMS could provide clear specialist direction and promote consistency and high quality across the country’s probation areas.

Thirdly, the probation service, like other public services, is faced with the need to make spending cuts, and its resources are severely stretched. This makes it even more important to ensure that the service gives priority to the most important areas of work. This will be more likely if a national director of probation sets clear national priorities which directors of offender management can then incorporate into their contracts with probation trusts.

Fourthly, there is considerable variation in probation areas’ readiness to enter into partnerships with other organisations, particularly in voluntary agencies. These organisations provide key services in areas such as accommodation, education, employment, addictions, mental health and mentoring, which can make a key difference to the likelihood of reoffending. A national director of probation could set strong national expectations that probation trusts in every area of the country should make maximum use of such partnerships to improve the prospects of successful rehabilitation of offenders.

Fifthly, the probation service has had considerable success in ensuring that planning by local authorities’ Supporting People commissioning forums takes into account the need for supported accommodation places for offenders. The Government are proposing to remove the ring-fence around Supporting People funding, which means that in future funding for supported housing will have to compete with other priorities for funding in local authority areas. A national director of probation could press the need for offender accommodation in discussions with other government departments and reduce the risk that they will be sidelined or marginalised when the Supporting People ring-fence is removed.

Finally, a director of offender management could be a powerful advocate for the probation service in policy discussions at national level. He or she could represent the service by speaking and arguing on its behalf in discussions with the heads of other national criminal justice agencies, with Ministers and with senior officials in other government departments. In short, a director of probation could both help to ensure high standards in service delivery by probation areas and also ensure that the interests of the service are not overlooked in policy-making at national level.

The Government could continue to justify the resource allocation to the probation service, but the fact remains that the service is stretched beyond its limits in some areas of the country. Those of us who have been involved in the criminal justice system—I declare my interest as the president of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, Nacro—have seen the decline of the probation service over the past two decades. Staff morale is poor. Napo and the probation service organisations have repeatedly complained about the lack of a clear strategic approach to probation work.

I make a plea to the Minister. The probation service stands between an individual’s path to criminality or a way away from crime. It offers ways and means to deal with offending behaviour. Over the years, irrespective of what the policy-makers tell us, there has been a serious concern that the service itself has been undermined. We need a champion at the highest level to buck this trend. Let us hope that there is no delay in appointing a director of the National Probation Service.

We, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for the opportunity to discuss this very topical issue. The noble Lord has given us such a comprehensive sweep of the issues that there remains little to be said, as we agree with his analysis wholeheartedly. We look forward to the Minister’s response.

My noble friend Lord Dholakia, whose long and distinguished record in the criminal justice system is justly recognised in his current role as president of Nacro, is entirely right in saying that the probation service stands between an individual’s path to criminality in the case of offenders or a way away from crime. He has clearly and succinctly identified why we need a national champion for the probation service, and I hope that the Minister will reflect on the strategic considerations in his intervention when he has time to reflect on this Question beyond his immediate answer in Grand Committee today.

Underlying the debate is the overall question of what happens to ex-offenders as they near the end of their sentence and attempt to re-enter the community. This has two elements: the first is in a way more mundane—the inability of the men and women in the probation system to carry out their responsibilities when the system is so starved of resources so as to come under strain. We know that prison numbers have gone up over the time of this Government’s tenure in office, but we also know that they are projected to go up considerably more, by 96,000 by 2012.

I do not want to distract from the specific issue in hand today, but I just want to point out that, at the same time, cuts are being imposed which have serious implications for the management of ex-offenders. Napo, the trade union and professional association for family court and probation staff, told my colleague in the other place, the Member for Cambridge, that of the 400 trainee probation officers who will have qualified by this autumn, at least 50 per cent would be unable to take up posts or were likely only to be offered temporary placements. This is due to the probation service’s budget cuts for the period 2009-12. We know that it costs some £100,000 to train a probation officer, so on these figures it could result in a cost to the taxpayer in unutilised resources of some £20 million at a time when the need is overwhelming. Napo has provided a detailed list by region of staff numbers where the cuts will fall, and I am extremely happy to provide it to the Minister, should he not have seen it.

I now turn to the bigger picture of bringing down the number of offenders who end up in prison in the first place. We know that the rate has been more or less stable over the past decade—stable at an extremely high rate. We recognise that the amalgamation of the different interfaces into NOMS—the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, covered that ground beautifully today—has been less successful than was envisaged at its establishment. For the specifics of flawed IT systems, the lack of strategic leadership and inconsistency of standards, the big unanswered question for society remains: how can we ensure that fewer people go to prison in the first place?

I hope that noble Lords will allow me to move away from the specific topic of this debate briefly to address that wider question. I want to focus on what works in terms of restorative justice—both in rehabilitating offenders and benefiting victims. The Ministry of Justice’s research, in Professor Joanna Shapland’s fourth and final report, concluded that:

“Offenders who participated in restorative justice committed statistically significantly fewer offences (in terms of reconvictions) in the subsequent two years than offenders in the control group ... All groups (summed together) showed a lower cost of convictions versus a control group. Costs of convictions included the costs to potential future victims and criminal justice costs”.

It also showed:

“Very high levels of satisfaction with restorative justice … from almost all victims and offenders throughout all three schemes”.

Although the Government have focused on this issue from the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, we on these Benches are disappointed that their approach has been either piecemeal or inconsistent. We know that record numbers of young people are locked up—nearly 11,000 under-21s at the moment—and it is in this group more than any other that restorative justice works best. I wonder whether the Minister will be able to tell us when the Government will roll out restorative justice schemes across the board in England and Wales.

In concluding, I want to highlight that, even where there is an optimal environment and even where funds are plentiful, the trends are moving in the right direction and reoffending can be prioritised, there will nevertheless be a need for a strategic overview, a need for an operational senior leadership team and a need for a visible figure with the clout to deliver the outcomes that are so badly needed. We hope that the Minister will be able to satisfy the Grand Committee today that he is moving towards that end.

As ever, I offer my thanks and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on introducing this debate. The Committee will be grateful to him on three counts. First, we have a former Chief Inspector of Prisons before us—one who more than anyone knows the difference between the Prison Service and the probation service. They are two completely different animals and they do two completely different things. Secondly, we have before us a former, very senior Army officer who knows just a thing or two about leadership. The lack of leadership that we now see in the probation service formed a major part of his remarks.

Thirdly, I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for reminding us yet again of the failure of the Government to take much notice of any of their so-called consultations. It might be useful for the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to come back here after the end of this debate to attend the fourth debate today, in the name of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, to ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that public consultations by government departments follow best practice. We have become cynical over the past 11 years and have a sneaking feeling that an awful lot of consultations do not follow best practice and, even if they do, the Government do not take much notice of what comes out of them. I offer that advice to the noble Lord if he has any spare time in his diary. The debate begins at 5 o’clock, so he will have time for a sandwich or tea between the end of this debate and the next, and he can then listen to his colleague respond to the debate.

My Lords, can I look forward to seeing the noble Lord in his place during that debate too?

My Lords, I will not need to attend because it is a question to Her Majesty’s Government. We might be the Government in the future. We were always good at consultation and we intend to continue being good when we return to government. Having offered that little tease to the noble Lord—no doubt he will have other things to do—perhaps I may move to my substantive remarks.

We in this party, both here and, particularly, in another place, have frequently highlighted the failure of management in the NOMS scheme. This failure could have been undone with a separation of authority and accountability in the prison and probation sectors and by the appointment of a new, independent-of-NOMS director of the National Probation Service. There is no clear accountability for the rehabilitation of prisoners and these issues, in particular, have shown the problems caused by reshuffling power in the prison and probation sectors. We have seen three reorganisations of the Prison Service, greatly increased bureaucracy—an issue to which I shall return when I put some questions to the Minister—a lack of strategic leadership and a lack of prison capacity. I was able to put this issue to the noble Lord only yesterday; the prisons are bursting at the seams and the Government do not know what to do. However, we are grateful that they have at least abandoned the Titan prisons, even if they are to be replaced by something not much different, what I refer to as the mini-Titans. We have also seen severe overstretch in the probation service.

In March this year, my honourable friend the shadow Minister for Justice in another place, Edward Garnier, made clear that, in his view:

“Not only has the Government re-organised the Probation Service three times in the last eight years to no obvious public benefit, they have created a cash-eating monster”

I shall come back to that when I ask my questions. He continued:

“The National Offender Management Service has done nothing but increase unnecessary bureaucracy in Whitehall at vast expense”.

I hope the noble Lord is aware of, and familiar with, our policy paper, Prisons with a Purpose. If he is not, I shall make sure that he has a copy of it and he can study it in due course. There we have set out our plans for a rehabilitation revolution. We plan to make the people who run the prisons directly responsible for reducing their prisoners’ reoffending, bringing two stages—prisons and probation—together and opening up the market in offender management to the volunteer and private sectors. Prisons with a Purpose states that, instead of drawing together prisons and probation, the Government created in NOMS an inflated bureaucratic monster that sat above the Prison and Probation Services and did little to facilitate co-ordination. It sucked resources to the order of £1.5 billion a year—more than the entire budget of the National Probation Service—from those available for offender management.

I come now to the three specific questions that I want to put to the noble Lord. I hope that he will take some care in replying and I hope that he will reply today, rather than in writing. First, would the noble Lord agree that the introduction of NOMS, at the cost of the independence of the National Probation Service, has been flawed; that the bureaucratic drawing together of the prison and probation services has sucked in resources and cost something over £1.5 billion a year; and that there has been no discernible lowering of crime as a result? I would be very grateful for some acknowledgement of that £1.5 billion a year from the Government.

Secondly, would the Minister accept that depriving the National Probation Service of a director to act as a figurehead of accountability, implement changes and be responsible for advising the Secretary of State based on first-hand experience of the probation service, has severely reduced this country’s capability to deal with the rehabilitation of offenders? Thirdly, I would also be grateful for a direct reply, specifically, to this question. The headquarters of NOMS alone cost, we are advised, something like £1.5 billion. That could be enough to fund another 7,000 prison places. It is more than 50 times the amount spent, for example, on drug rehabilitation in prison each year. Not only is that cost £1 billion, but we have now seen that some £900 million is being cut from the Ministry of Justice budget. Does the noble Lord believe that that money could have been better spent, especially under a system of individual accountability for the National Probation Service and the prison system?

I hope that the noble Lord will be able to provide answers to those questions and I very much hope that he can provide them today. If he cannot, no doubt he will tell me that he will write to me, but they are questions that deserve a public response, rather than a response by letter.

In my turn, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham for giving us the opportunity to debate the new management structure of the National Offender Management Service. Given the impact that these changes will have on both prisons and probation, it is absolutely right that the House should be kept fully informed of their purpose and nature. I will set out some of the backdrop to this debate. Frankly, there has been major investment in the probation service. Since 1997 the probation resource budget has increased by nearly 70 per cent. In real terms, that means 7,000 more probation staff than in 1997. The probation service now receives £900 million of taxpayers’ money each year. Of course, it is essential that that money is put to good use.

There is significant scope for savings in the probation service, particularly by reducing unnecessary management layers, streamlining changes and cutting bureaucracy. That potential for saving has been verified externally. Too much of a probation officer’s time is spent in front of a computer. It is not acceptable that probation officers should spend only a quarter of their time working with offenders. We need to be sure that the taxpayers’ money that we spend on the probation service is spent on managing offenders; and that resources are targeted on the highest-risk offenders and those offenders who are most likely to reoffend. Of course, we have set challenging targets for probation areas that want to become trusts.

I was asked about finances. In 2009-10, probation is required to make savings of £20 million out of a budget of £914 million, which is 2.2 per cent. Current provisional figures show that probation areas under-spent by at least £17 million in 2008-09. That may demonstrate that the savings, which we need to make because of the overall cut in the budget of the Ministry of Justice, are completely realistic. I remind the Committee that there was a one-off payment by the Government of £40 million to the probation service in the last financial year. I set that on the record because, although we have heard some very expert speeches today in this important debate, none of those facts has been put forward until now.

In April 2008, the Government created the new delivery agency, NOMS, bringing together the probation and prison services. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, as early as February 2008 was asking questions of my predecessor, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. The noble Lord’s typically direct question was,

“what is the National Offender Management Service—what does it do and what is it there to do?”

My noble friend’s answer was that NOMS,

“is there to assist and ensure operational integration”.—[Official Report, 5/2/09; cols. 951-52.]

Today our discussion can go slightly wider than just that definition.

NOMS is not a merger of the probation and prison services. Both will remain as individual delivery services, with their own different governance and employment structures. Prison staff are civil servants and probation staff are employed by boards and trusts. NOMS restructuring is not a prison take-over of the probation service. The new regional structures, which we will introduce this summer, will see real responsibility and accountability flow through regional directors of offender management down to the front line. NOMS restructuring is not a move towards central control. The prison and probation services are, and will remain, services rooted in local decision-making and accountability.

I want to be clear about what NOMS is. The creation of the agency is about co-ordinating offender management at a regional level for offenders in custody, or in the community, or in between. With the prison and probation services under the oversight of the same agency we can ensure that no more offenders fall between the cracks between prison and probation. Both services, as well as other organisations, must work together seamlessly if we expect to manage offenders effectively. It is about end-to-end offender management. If we do not do that, the excellent work done by front-line staff in prisons and on probation will easily be thrown away. There cannot be a simple handover of responsibility from one organisation to the other at the prison gate. Offender management must be both continuous and coherent if it is to be constructive.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the restructuring is the appointment of 10 directors of offender management—DOMs, as they are called. After an extensive recruitment process, a DOM has been appointed for each of the nine regions in England and one in Wales from 1 April this year. Operating at director level, these individuals are responsible for performance in their areas, tying together the offender management work of all delivery agencies, probation, public and private sector prisons, and the voluntary sector. They are also accountable for integrating service provision locally across these providers and with others such as local authorities. By integrating previous regional structures and devolving responsibility from the centre, the new director of offender management structure will allow NOMS to save £10 million this year.

The DOMs will each answer to the NOMS chief operating officer, a role to which I shall return shortly, and ultimately to Ministers. Collectively, all 10 DOMs will become the key body influencing operational strategy. With real power in terms of spending decisions and operational management, they will also be expected to build effective partnerships with local and regional stakeholders in public and other bodies. There is no question of a prison service take-over in the implementation of this model. The DOMs are from a wide range of backgrounds with extensive experience in all aspects of offender management. Probation will of course be at the heart of this delivery model. Roger Hill, a name known to noble Lords here, previously director of probation, was the logical choice for the first DOM post in the south-east, the largest region in the country.

The decision to devolve significant powers in offender management to a regional level has inevitably required a review of management functions at a national level. There are no longer distinct prisons and probation headquarters functions. This work is now performed by staff directly employed by the NOMS agency. Although, in many cases, the same people will be doing the same work, albeit under a different employer, this restructuring has enabled significant efficiency savings to be made at the centre. While probation areas are required to make savings of 2.2 per cent in 2009-10 and prisons, excluding funding for building capacity, of 3 per cent, the NOMS headquarters function is expected to make a saving of 13 per cent in 2009-10. Many of these savings are possible because of the NOMS restructuring, as headquarters staff seek to avoid duplication and reduce bureaucracy.

At the most senior level, these changes are exemplified by the creation of a new post with operational responsibility for both prisons and probation: the NOMS chief operating officer. From 1 April this year, the chief operating officer has taken responsibility for the previous functions of prisons director of operations and director of the National Probation Service. I remind the Committee that this position was filled following a full external competition, supervised by the Civil Service commissioner, to ensure that the most suitable candidate was selected. The post of chief operating officer is much more than a simple amalgamation of senior posts in order to achieve efficiencies. His function is to ensure that the DOMs are delivering and to hold them accountable if they are not. As I have tried to make clear, the DOMS will now undertake much of the work at a regional level that was previously conducted nationally by either the director of the National Probation Service or the director of operations for the Prison Service.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that—as I think he knows full well—there is no intention to reappoint another director of the National Probation Service, precisely as there is no intention to reappoint another director of operations for the Prison Service. However, I assure him that oversight of the operational management of these two services has in no way been diminished. Rather, the additional oversight and scrutiny that the DOMs will provide constitutes a significant improvement in this respect. By contrast, the chief operating officer is responsible for representing operational management on the NOMS management board.

There can be no suggestion that the excellent work performed by staff in prisons, probation and headquarters is undervalued by us. We are under a duty always to seek improvements where they can be made. In these difficult times, the duty of public bodies to ensure that the taxpayer is receiving the best possible value for money assumes even greater importance. This requirement goes hand in hand with the need to focus resources on where they are most needed—that is, on the everyday management of offenders, whether they are in custody, in the community or in that world in between. Only by prioritising our efforts in this area can we hope to achieve our ultimate aim which is, of course, that of protecting the public.

The changes that I have outlined will have a dramatic impact on the front-line delivery of offender management, making it both more effective and efficient. There will be more co-operation between organisations and less bureaucracy; more regional direction and fewer national directives; and better ways of working, rather than a perpetuation of some of the mistakes of the past. While change is difficult and always controversial, we will not shy away from implementing this restructuring, given the potential benefits it will bring to the management of offenders across England and Wales.

Noble Lords made some very interesting speeches and I am grateful to them for their contributions. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, talked about restorative justice. We agree that it can be a particularly useful way for victims to receive reparation from offenders and we are committed to encouraging its use. She will know that its role is emphasised in the recently published Green Paper on Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice. The Government have already issued guidance on restorative justice for local areas and we are in the process of developing a victim-focused strategy to highlight best practice in victim engagement. I know that that is a topic that we will come back to on future occasions.

I was asked to deal with three questions from the noble Lord, Lord Henley. I can only say that I am delighted that the Official Opposition have a policy on this topic. It is certainly the exception that proves the rule. We look forward to seeing policy initiatives telling us what they might do if they are lucky enough ever to be back in government in other areas in this field. But I think that everyone will want to know exactly what they intend to do about the structure that we are creating here if and when they were to return to office. I do not ask the noble Lord to tell us now, but it is something for him to think about and tell us in due course.

He asked three questions. I cannot answer one today. I will have to write to him on his figure of £1.5 billion for the setting up of the new system. I know that that is not what he wanted me to do, but I will have to do that. As far as the headquarters costs of £1 billion, the figure of £1.012 billion for NOMS administration costs in 2006-07—I think that that was what he was referring to—in the NOMS business plan does not relate simply to funding the NOMS headquarters staff. Indeed, the vast majority of the figure relates to funding for major front-line programmes, which include private-sector prisons, electronic monitoring, prisoner escort contracts, the administration of the Parole Board, the prison and probation ombudsmen, Her Majesty's inspectorates of prisons and probation, dedicated funding for capacity building, administration of the shared service centre, providing human resources and financed support to prisons and central payments of IT costs for the entire organisation.

I am afraid that his middle question is one that has escaped me. If he would like to put it to me again, I may be able to answer it before I have to sit down. Otherwise, I will see what it was in Hansard and write to him. Before I sit down, I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for starting this debate. It is one that we will continue. While there are differences of opinion, I hope that all noble Lords accept that the Government as well as all others—

I thank the Minister very much for all that detail, but frankly, if I may say so with respect, he has not actually answered my question about who is the professional head of the probation service. Who is responsible for the leadership and professional development of the staff of the probation service? It is all very well having an operational director responsible for DOMs, responsible for the oversight of all this happening and the money and so forth. The Minister has given me that, but he has not concentrated on the staff of the probation service. He told us that they remain as a separate entity but also that they no longer have a director. To whom do they look as their professional leader and to whom do Ministers look for advice about what is going on in the service as a whole? The Minister mentioned the 10 DOMs, who all have these wonderful characteristics. How many of those DOMs come from within either the prison or the probation service?

I am sorry that I did not answer the noble Lord's question before, but the professional head is Michael Spurr, who is the chief operating officer I was talking about. He was recently appointed and supported by the DOMs themselves. As I already said, he was appointed following full independent competition. The senior operational probation staff work directly to Michael Spurr. Under each of the DOMs, there is a senior probation officer alongside a senior Prison Service officer. I have already said that the DOMs themselves have a lot of experience in a number of different fields. I am not sure that it is not a bit over-simple to look at the background of each individual DOM and say, “He’s a prison person or a probation person”. These are people of great experience, who will play a vital role in the new system. I have already pointed out how much extra resource this Government have put into the probation service as proof of how important we see it as part of this end-to-end management structure.

The Minister mentions their great experience—but great experience at what? Have they got experience of managing offenders?

Whether they come from the Prison Service or the probation service, I would argue that they all have management experience of offenders because management of offenders is not just about probation—it is what happens in custody, too. There is a linkage, not a separation, between the two services, which is at the heart of our argument about the NOMS structure.

I have troubled the House for rather longer than I should—

The noble Lord, Lord Henley, raised the important issue of consultation. Was the matter of organisation to which the Minister referred discussed with NAPO and other professional probation organisations? What was the outcome of those consultations?

I am advised that consultation has continued over the years with NAPO and all relevant organisations. So the argument that we have not consulted in this field is not a valid one.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential benefits of the Segway Personal Transporter; and whether they will support a full road trial in the United Kingdom.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to raise this matter this afternoon. I am particularly grateful to all noble Lords who have put their names down to participate, and to several others who were keen to participate but have not been able to do so at short notice.

Today’s discussion is probably extremely timely; I have a sense that we have reached a stage at which personal transporters have come of age. This was brought home to me in 10 minutes of the BBC’s “Children in Need” appeal this year. There, appearing to watch a performance of “The Office: The Opera”, was Ricky Gervais, coming in on a personal transporter. You could see, with the facility, grace and elegance with which he did this, that it was now part of the national psyche.

I am also well aware that as long ago as 2005 my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham, responding to discussions in your Lordships’ House on personal transporters during the passage of the Road Safety Act, said that,

“the machines can be extremely useful for law enforcement”.—[Official Report, 26/10/05; col. 1275.]

That was certainly the perspective with which I have initially approached this issue. I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Policing.

Certainly, there is now considerable evidence around the world of substantial use by the police service of personal transporters. The documented benefits include helping to cut response times, assistance in community engagement, vehicles serving as an ice-breaker and so on. Numerous UK police forces have indicated that they would be interested in using the personal transporter, and there have been letters of support from a number of parts of the country.

I am told that Segway personal transporters are used by more than 1,000 police, law enforcement and security agencies worldwide, and the benefits to officer and community safety are universally perceived. In the United States, the Segway personal transporter is classified as a special purpose vehicle on the approved equipment list in the homeland security grant Act. Anyone who has followed attempts by organisations to get their product on that list will know that it requires a high degree of testing and of satisfying people of the safety involved.

I have seen correspondence from the commander of Sutton borough police in London, part of the Metropolitan Police, who examined in considerable detail the possible use that the police might make of personal transporters in their regular work. There was a case study to look at the matter and the police were keen to use the transporter in their own context. They quoted a community police officer in Albuquerque—you may say that there is not a great similarity between Albuquerque and Sutton, but they nevertheless felt that what was said by him was pertinent to what they saw as an important use in their area—about how the use of personal transporters could be easily integrated in the daily patrols of officers. Sutton police could see how it would cut down response times in a particular patrol area, and it was clear that it would facilitate community engagement because the police officer would be very visible and, as he was not in a car and perhaps not moving quickly, people could converse with him. Also, the novelty of the personal transporter might act as an ice-breaker for conversations. Sutton police saw it as an opportunity to improve relations between the public and the police, while delivering a better service more efficiently.

That is why I initially became interested and involved in the issue. It is clear that there could be other specialist uses of the personal transporter that would greatly assist the public service. I have also seen correspondence from the then director of environmental services at the London Borough of Bromley, who was also keen to examine the use of Segway personal transporters as part of the local council’s sustainable transport strategy. It used one for about a year—I do not know whether it still does—and it could see huge advantages in the way in which it could raise awareness for local council policies. There are many practical applications of the machine that it would like to pursue. It commented that the Segway personal transporter had been used successfully by police forces, airport staff and postal workers elsewhere. The London Borough of Bromley made the case to take this further by testing its use, initially, with park rangers within the council service and street service engineers. Both services typically involve numerous trips over short distances which are currently undertaken by car or van. The council’s aim would be to undertake the majority of those trips by personal transporter, thereby reducing the impact of those services on the environment and the community.

If the trials were successful, Bromley then wanted to extend use of the Segway to other council services and to include it in a potential project focusing on mobility management in the town centre. Council officers from a variety of departments have seen the viability of using such personal transporters for existing transportation needs, and all the concerns that might have been expressed internally about practicality and safety were overcome as they examined this in some detail. That is an example of the possible use that might exist.

I noticed recently that the London Borough of Westminster—which, as many noble Lords will be aware, has some of the most assertive and aggressive parking attendants in the country—has put its parking attendants on mopeds, and they are zipping up and down to make sure whether people have paid the necessary fees. Here, again, the use of a personal transporter would be more environmentally suitable and provide them with the facilities they need.

The British Airports Authority at Heathrow provides another example of specialist use. Its five-man team of facilities inspectors use personal transporters in their daily inspection patrols around the building. It reports benefits in covering greater distance in less time and being able to respond to call-outs more swiftly. It also allows for more frequent inspections of passenger-sensitive equipment that is known to be unreliable. As far as it is concerned, the trial, which was entirely on its own private premises, was very successful and it did not want to give it up at the end of the trial period.

The British Airports Authority saw a number of strengths: quick response times to incidents and faults; virtually zero maintenance; simple to use, only 10-minutes training; large distances covered quickly; highly manoeuvrable; zero emissions and so on. It could see huge possibilities for it. BAA summarised the business benefits—which would apply not only to Heathrow but to many local authority services—as being the ability to patrol greater distances in less time, thus reducing response times and increasing the frequency with which it was able to respond.

There are clearly a number of specialist uses to which this could be put. It is quite clear that a much wider use of personal transporters is possible and I hope my noble friend the Minister will respond to those points in the course of his reply. Obviously this would facilitate a degree of modal shift. It would meet environmental concerns in that it would reduce emissions, and there would be huge benefits in terms of mobility for many people. So there is a case for wider use.

No doubt my noble friend has been briefed by his department on the possible problems and objections that there might be, but I hope that he will consider, as a result of the discussions that we have here today, the possibility of facilitating a number of trials. He has the legal authority to do so. Section 44 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 makes quite clear that:

“The Secretary of State may by order authorise, subject to such restrictions and conditions as may be specified by or under the order, the use on roads … of special motor vehicles or trailers, or special types of motor vehicles or trailers, which are constructed either for special purposes or for tests”—

and, indeed, vehicles and trailers which are used overseas. So the legal powers are there.

Further, this would enable the Government to demonstrate their commitment to these issues. A Canadian study in 2006 reported a substantial modal shift. This was not about cyclists converting to personal transporters or pedestrians moving towards them; this was about people giving up their cars for short journeys to travel by personal transporter. So, in delivering the Government’s objectives on modal shift, there is a very strong case.

I hope my noble friend, in responding to the debate, will take the opportunity to tell your Lordships that it will be possible to engage in some wide-ranging trials, either specifically in respect of the emergency services or local government, or, ideally, by designating an area where Segway personal transporters are available for general use.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, for securing this opportunity to debate the merits of the Segway human transporter. His comprehensive and informative contribution has set the scene for this debate. I look forward to hearing the answers to the questions which he has posed to the Minister and I shall put a few of my own.

I am a firm supporter of Segways and have owned a machine for three years. They are a fun and eco-friendly way to get around but they are not toys. They need to be taken seriously and I hope to explain why. They have been around for at least seven years and are now street-legal in more than 10 European countries as well as in a number of states in America and Canada. They have a truly global reach with 350 Segway authorised retail points in 66 countries and they are used with enthusiasm, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has told us, by around 1,000 police departments and security agencies around the world.

About three years ago when I was in America, I spoke to a member of the Kentucky police who patrols on one. He told me how good they were in street-market situations as well as for normal patrolling because it was possible to move around discreetly and silently and to see over the heads of the crowds without appearing to be too threatening or intimidating. He even told me that he had been able to make an arrest when thieves had tried to get away in a car, something which he said would certainly not have been possible if he had been on foot, although I am not sure that I can visualise that happening. I was even told that the chief of police was so impressed with them that he was doubling the number of machines in Kentucky.

In this country, despite having the support of the Metropolitan Police, the forces of Sutton and Brent and the O2 Arena police force among others, they have still not received formal approval from the DfT. So it seems that, because of this deafening silence, we in this country are falling seriously behind the curve. I hope that everything that the Minister hears today will convince him that these machines will not go away. This country is beginning to look increasingly isolated and out of touch. Despite widespread support for these machines, it is my understanding that ACPO is saying that it is reluctant to carry out an official trial until they are made street legal. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong but, if I am right, then we are in the midst of the most ridiculous Catch-22 situation which we have to resolve.

As I have already said, I am the owner of a Segway. I use it on private land around my home in Gloucestershire and I can assure the Committee that when I am out exercising our dog, it puts a wide smile on both our faces. I have reached the age when arthritic knees can take the fun out of a round of golf and so I also use it on golf courses. It always creates interest and even some amusement. Almost invariably I am asked by other golfers to let them have a go.

Some eight months ago, on 9 September last year, I was part of the parliamentary delegation led by Lembit Opik when about 12 of us set off from this House on Segways to deliver a petition to the Ministry of Transport in Marsham Street. Shortly after that, and because I still had the loan of the machine I had used for that purpose, I decided to carry out some practical research of my own. I wanted to see whether a Segway is really a viable commuting vehicle which did everything it said on the tin. We have a flat near Shepherd’s Bush, so I decided to put it to the test on a journey to and from your Lordships' House. I donned a high-visibility jacket, wore a helmet and even had a flashing red light on my head, and set off. It was one of the easiest and most enjoyable journeys I have ever undertaken. I certainly had a novel view of London as I went through the parks en route, using the cycle ways. I received no antagonism whatever, only interest in what it could do. I completed the journey in a little under the time it takes me to drive. I have done this journey only once but the experience was enough to convince me that the Segway is entirely fit for purpose.

These machines tick many boxes for the urban environment. They are electric, with a range of about 24 miles from one charge; they are pollution-free at the point of use; they are practically silent in operation; and they can efficiently transport one person at a speed of 12.5 miles per hour while taking up a footprint hardly bigger than the person riding it. Therefore, if we are serious about reducing our carbon emissions—a point alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Harris—and we all know what a long way we have to go if we are to meet our 2020 target, never mind the 80 per cent reduction by 2050—then these machines should be approved immediately. At the very least, let us start conducting official trials.

There are now some very powerful electric bicycles on the market. They are perfectly legal and, as far as I know, the Department for Transport has no complaints about them. So I ask the Minister: why cannot Segways be grouped together with them, provided that some initial rider training is given? Would that not provide a quick and simple solution?

There are people out there who are desperate to start up businesses selling or hiring these machines. In these difficult times, surely new business start-ups should be wholly encouraged. About six weeks ago, I was written to by a Mr Chris Hough from Liverpool. He asked me whether there had been any further developments to legalise Segways. He went on to say that he wants to set up a Segway tours company in Liverpool and make it a top tourist attraction. I have looked at his website and this is what he has to say:

“I think it’ll be awesome. Not only have I been on two Segway tours myself (Paris and San Francisco), but the City of Liverpool is crying out for such an attraction. With historic buildings, a beautiful waterfront, plans for a new canal and the Beatles experience (of course) there is nowhere more suited to the Segway”.

I entirely agree with that statement. Is that not a great idea and very appropriate for our latest city of culture, as well as being a fine example of private enterprise at work? When he replies, I ask—in fact, I plead with—the Minister to give me some encouraging news so that I can write back positively to Mr Hough.

I will make a couple of brief comments in the gap. I did not expect to be here in time. The only interest that I have to declare in this matter is that I have ridden a Segway. I thought that it was absolutely brilliant and terribly easy to master. To echo a point that has just been made, when I was in Holland the other day to speak at the Black Hat computer hacking conference, about 50 yards from the hotel was a shop selling Segways, including a cross-country one. That was the one that I really wanted because I am married to a farmer.

The problem is the application of the precautionary principle. I think it is the fear of the unknown, which stifles and is the enemy of progress, that we are facing here. To me, the Segway is just an electric bicycle but with the wheels side by side instead of in tandem. Therefore, what, generically, is the difference? I am not sure why it does not qualify as a bicycle. Perhaps a bicycle has to be constructed with the wheels in tandem, but I have no idea. The great advantage of the Segway is that it has a smaller footprint when parked. Due to the handlebars and length of a bicycle, you could park several Segways—probably four—in the space taken up by two bicycles. There is therefore great potential there.

My feeling about Segways is that we should not over-regulate. We have plenty of laws concerning safety and dangerous behaviour, so we should prosecute people if they ride them dangerously without going overboard about it, as would be the case with any other vehicle, such as a bicycle—or, for that matter, a horse.

My final point is that the Segway ticks all the boxes on the green agenda, as mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool. Mass transport can get you to the hub. You can travel at high speed from London to Edinburgh or wherever, but it is the last mile that is the problem, and perhaps the Segway could be the answer to that. You could travel with it if there was nowhere to hire one cheaply at your destination. The Segway could be the answer to integrating transport so that the public do not always have to use their cars. You will never remove from people who have cars the desire to be independent, but perhaps the Segway could be integrated into the rest of our public transport network. I shall now leave noble Lords to segue into the personal transport of the future.

We are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, and congratulate him on introducing the debate. It is many years—I think the noble Earl said seven—since those of us in this place with an interest were made aware of the Segway. All of us who tried it, as has been expressed this afternoon, were impressed. However, we were quickly made aware that the wider interest, crucially depending upon the Department for Transport, was becoming a slow business. One is tempted to think that this issue was so troubling to the department that it decided to keep its head down and hope that it went away.

Well, of course, it is not going away. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, said that this was a timely debate. Well, of course it is, because electrical vehicles for personal use are growing in popularity. Indeed, in the middle spread of the Evening Standard today, two vehicles are praised and reviewed, the first by the art correspondent, Mr Brian Sewell, who has an electrically powered smart car. He praises it handsomely, which is quite unusual for Brian Sewell in his own field.

Then the well known actress Imogen Stubbs tells us that—having for many years propelled herself around with the freedom that I enjoy on two wheels, on a scooter—she has now discovered a machine called the “power bike”, which interests me a great deal. Its use as a bicycle can be supplemented by the new technology of a lithium battery which enables leg power to be supplemented by electric power. She therefore has all the advantages that I do not have due to Westminster Council. Every time I mention Westminster Council I get angry, so I will not do it again, but I have to pay to park my motorcycle in spaces and I cannot find any. The whole thing is becoming absolutely ludicrous. There, again, the Department for Transport should have dealt with the anti-motorbike business many years ago and seen that the cycle lobby against motorcycles is completely pointless with absolutely no substance to it at all, as will shortly be proved. When the mayor comes to review his giving of the bus lanes to motorcycles, he will find that there is no problem at all. That may jog the memory of the Department for Transport, which has been so slow to recognise it.

Most of the advantages of the Segway have already been mentioned. I notice that it is pronounced somewhat differently by the two Earls who have spoken. I await to hear how the third Earl will pronounce it; we are very heavy on Earls this afternoon. Personally, I will go for the first syllable rhyming with “leg”. The noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, who has great knowledge of this machine, prefers the first syllable to rhyme with “hedge”. I do not know which is correct, but I will go for the first.

The Segway is an amazing machine. I do not know anybody, apart from the golf professional at my golf club, who has had any difficulty with it at all. It takes about 30 seconds to get used to it. You relax after that and realise that you really think the thing along, rather than grip it with white knuckles while frightened of it. The last President of the United States is the only person who had difficulty with it, but that could be heartening to people.

The noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, has used a Segway for some time both on firm surfaces and on golf courses, where you need a different kind of traction—you need different tyres to deal with the uneven ground. He has found it entirely satisfactory in both those applications. I tried to persuade my golf club to use it and said that I was coming up with the Segway salesman, who would be pleased to do a demonstration. Immediately, my wife got very alarmed messages from members of the committee, saying in frightened tones that personal golf transport was not allowed on this golf course. Luckily, golf courses do not all share that view. At the Royal and Ancient at St Andrews and at the Belfry—two of the leading golf clubs—it is now in increasing use. There are difficulties in changing the routines of speed of play, and so on; nevertheless, the machine has proved to be safe, capable of carrying equipment such as clubs when adapted and it is proving widely popular.

In most other countries in Europe and certainly in the United States, I would not have to be saying all this because it is already known. After all, this machine has been around for seven years, and in most countries it is now applied widely. A thousand police forces or enforcement agencies of some kind have used it, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said. I asked a policeman at the gates what he thought about Segway and he said, “What’s Segway?” I told him what it was and said that if he went round the corner he might find a man willing to demonstrate it. I am glad that he did not because the man was not there because the machine did not arrive, as was intended. He asked me if the police would not look rather ridiculous in inner-city centres and I said, “To the contrary”. I have spoken to police forces in which it has been tried and they said that in inner-city centres the police have been delighted with it, not only because it gives them ease of movement with economy but because it has encouraged the interest of people with whom they normally have little contact—that is, those who may cause trouble that they may have to deal with later on. That has increased the community spirit in those areas, so it has a benefit in that area, on the evidence that we have.

That is my anecdote, but I should not have to give these anecdotes; the Department for Transport should a long time ago have set up an inquiry into this vehicle, as it should with every new vehicle that could be used on the roads and elsewhere, to see whether it was suitable and how the law would accommodate it. As I understand it, if I go out on a Segway—certainly in the Metropolitan Police area—I shall not be stopped by a policeman because they have been told by the Crown Prosecution Service that they have no chance of getting a conviction, so just to leave them alone. They would have great difficulty in proving that it is any different in its effect on the population from an electric cycle.

The applications of the Segway are wide and various and have been mentioned by noble Lords who have spoken. It can be used for postal delivery, for example. I cannot think of a better way for people to deliver post. It is quiet, efficient and cheap and has every possibility of adaptation for carrying parcels and letters. As for police work, I do not know what the cost of fuel is or the cost of pollution in this country from police vehicles going around and performing their normal duties, but if police forces took a fraction of their members and put them on this machine, the cost to the taxpayer would be considerably reduced.

As noble Lords were talking about applications, I thought, what about the Olympic Games? There is a lot of talk about bicycles going to the Olympic Games. Time goes more quickly than one expects and they will be upon us before we know it. I do not see any possibility of people coming to this country to see the Olympic Games finding a cycle-friendly city, despite a policy announced by the Government, which is a total mess. I cycle as well as motorcycle and it is ludicrous. On Sundays you cannot cycle at all in London, because all the cycle paths are blocked with parked cars and vans. People who come and expect a cycle-friendly city will have a sad experience. But if we used the Segway and found it to be operative in that area, it would go a long way to solving many of the problems that are likely to occur.

I wrote down “gardens, garden centres and parks”. There are all kinds of applications for this thing, but we will never know until the Department for Transport actually gets itself together and institutes a proper examination of the product and its application. When will the department do that? Why does it not do that?

I thought that my golf club was negative. It is a British thing: if something new arrives that does not tick all the boxes, people go to ground and hope that nobody will bother them too much about it. That certainly happened at my golf club and probably the Department for Transport is more conservative and nervous about this than my golf club. I hope that the Minister can give us some cheer on this subject, because it is here, it is good, it is high quality and cheap to run. It is likely to get cheaper in unit costs as people buy more of them. Its accident profile is negligible in so far as one can tell. If the Minister will institute trials, we will find out exactly what the risks are. We cannot just sit back, while the rest of the world uses a wonderful machine like this, and do nothing. For that reason, I emphasise my support for the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, for raising this matter for the Committee by means of a Question for Short Debate. We have debated it before, but experience shows that it is rarely enough to raise the matter but once. I have also noted that we have a predominance of noble Earls in this debate. Perhaps we could have a word with Her Majesty and ask her to elevate the noble Viscount, and maybe also think about the noble Lord, Lord Harris.

I have a Jacobite earldom, but it is illegal.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, made several extremely good points and I do not take issue with any of them, nor indeed those raised by any other noble Lord. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, talked about police using Segways in a public place. Will the Minister tell us how far from the kerb a footpath extends? A pedestrianised precinct is a long way from the kerb, but is it still a pavement or a footpath? Do the restrictions of the Highways Act still apply in the middle of a pedestrianised precinct?

My noble friend Lord Liverpool made much of the benefits of a Segway and how it is used in the United States. My noble friend gave us a good indication of the potential for these machines. Indeed, we have used them together at various events. As explained by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, the Segway is legal neither on the road nor on the pavement or footpath. The only vehicle allowed on the footpath is an invalid carriage. That is an out-of-date term, because it gives the impression of some ugly black contraption rather than the modern snazzy machines that several noble Lords use in your Lordships' House and elsewhere.

One cannot help wondering whether the department finds this legislative hurdle convenient, because it means that the Government need do nothing. Several noble Lords made more or less the same observation. Will the Minister tell the House the view of disability groups regarding the use of Segways on the pavement or footpath? Has his department received any representation from them?

It is easy to think that the Segway is some peculiar toy that requires considerable skill to ride. It is not, as observed by my noble friend Lord Liverpool. The Segway uses extremely clever technology, but it is only by riding one that it is possible to understand just how clever it is. I first tried one at the Ministry of Defence DVD show many years ago, but at the time I was amazed. Some time ago, I arranged an opportunity for Peers to ride a Segway in your Lordships’ car park. Many did and were surprised at how easy it was. Has the Minister himself or, more importantly, his colleague Mr Jim Fitzpatrick, who has ministerial responsibility for these matters, actually ridden a Segway?

The essence of the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was to discover whether the Government were initiating a UK trial of some sort. The problem is that I suspect that it would be necessary to amend primary legislation, as the Highways Act makes it quite clear that only invalid carriages can be used on the footpath or pavement. Not even bicycles can be ridden on the footpath or pavement. Is there any way round this? We know that the Segway does not meet legal requirements for a road vehicle and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, touched on Section 44 of the Road Traffic Act which allows the Minister to relax the construction and use regulations. I have had a lot of involvement with Section 44, because that deals primarily with abnormal loads.

There is also a similar provision in respect of the type approval regulations that allows the Minister to relax those, so the construction and use and type approval regulations are not a problem for the Minister, but he might not be able to relax vehicle registration requirements if they are a problem. The real crunch question for the Minister is, if he is minded to authorise a trial, does he have the necessary order-making powers or would some primary legislation be required?

We are now entering the closing stages of this Parliament where only a limited range of new primary legislation will be introduced and passed that has not already been announced. The Minister will be able to use his existing powers to exercise ministerial control of our railway system and many noble Lords in this Committee and the wider House admire his work in that area. However, I think that we will have to wait until the start of the new Parliament before we see anything new happening with this or any other technology.

Amidst this galaxy of Earls, Jacobite Earls and Viscounts, I feel distinctly inferior in replying to this debate. Only the proletarian Labour Party is represented here by mere life Barons. I am honoured to be in the distinguished company of my noble friend Lord Harris, who is a superior form of life Baron. I congratulate him on initiating this short debate and inviting the Committee to consider the potential benefits of the Segway Personal Transporter. This debate follows a debate in another place initiated by Mr Lembit Opik who, with my noble friend and other noble Lords, is an enthusiastic advocate of the Segway.

The noble Earl asks whether I have ever used a Segway and I have to confess that I have not. Indeed, my noble friend mentioned to me before the debate that he had not either. As a result of this debate, we must both jointly undertake to repair that omission forthwith. I thought that I took the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, to be offering a trial. If he is indeed offering another trial, we will be glad to participate.

I am sure that that can easily be arranged.

I take the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, to be keen to join us as well. I would be glad to experience the Segway at first hand and gain some personal appreciation of its benefits.

My noble friend asked, first, what assessments we have made of the potential benefits of the Segway and, secondly, whether we will support a full road trial. Perhaps I may take the two issues in turn. On the assessments made by the Department for Transport, noble Lords may be aware that this debate follows a meeting with representatives of the All-Party Intelligent Transport Group at the Department for Transport in November last year, and further meetings between officials, Segway promoters and interested Members from another place in January and March this year. The meetings continue a dialogue over some years between Segway promoters and the Department for Transport.

As the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, said, Segways are permitted on the road and/or dedicated pedestrian cycle paths and tracks in some other countries. However, the way in which they are treated in law elsewhere and used—for example, off-road, on the road, on pedestrian footways or in cycle facilities—varies significantly from place to place.

The meeting on 26 March was helpful in clarifying that Segway promoters are now seeking permission in this country to use the machines on cycle facilities and on the road. Previously, they had also wished to include use on pedestrian facilities such as the pedestrian footway beside the road. There is an insuperable legal barrier to that in that no powered vehicles are permitted on footways under the Highways Act 1835, a regulation that goes back almost as far as the premiership of the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, and is still valid as protection for pedestrians.

The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, raised the use of footpaths in pedestrian areas. Regulation depends on the relevant traffic regulation order for the particular road in question. However, there would be no problem in private pedestrian precincts for the use of the Segway.

At the 26 March meeting, Segway promoters gave a presentation on Segway use and benefits to officials from my department, who undertook to respond to it. I repeat that commitment today: my officials are analysing the issues and the further information made available to us and seeking further clarification as necessary, and we shall respond soon.

The Government recognise the potential benefits of electric vehicles as a whole—which have been set out by the noble Viscount—in terms of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Electric vehicles which comply with our road traffic law requirements benefit from advantageous treatment within the UK taxation system. They are, for example, exempt from annual vehicle excise duty, and electricity is exempt from fuel duty. In addition, the Government announced recently that it would make £250 million available from 2011 for a system of incentives to build the market for electric and plug-in hybrid cars by helping to reduce the purchase price and supporting the deployment of recharging infrastructure.

However, we are of the opinion that Segways, as powered vehicles, do not comply with our road traffic law requirements and may not therefore be used on the public road or on cycle or pedestrian facilities. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, asked whether Segways could simply be treated as bicycles. Promoters have suggested that they might qualify as electrically assisted pedal cycles, which are not treated in law as powered vehicles. Electrically assisted pedal cycles may use the public road and cycle facilities without registration and insurance. Riders can be as young as 14 and do not require a licence. However, Segways meet neither the UK nor EU definitions of an electrically assisted pedal cycle. The most fundamental point is that both UK and EU law require pedals by means of which the vehicle can be propelled manually, which clearly is not the case with a Segway. British electrically assisted pedal cycle regulations are under review with the aim of closer alignment with those of Europe, but removing the pedal constraint is not, I am afraid, being proposed because the view is taken that the requirements ensure that electric vehicles used on cycle facilities are similar in performance and behaviour to other cycles using the same space.

Limiting the performance to the same level is not difficult without having to have a manual pedal there to ensure that you do it. There are other ways of installing a limiter.

I was more interested in the Minister’s earlier statement about using cycle facilities or footpaths. Although we have said that it is totally impossible under an old law for powered vehicles to use the same facility, we still have what he termed “invalid carriages”—electric buggies—shooting up and down them. Presumably, that is illegal—in which case, why are they not being prosecuted? Alternatively, there is an exemption, which could therefore be extended.

If I may have a little pop at the Minister while he is consulting his officials, he referred to the performance of a purely pedal-propelled bicycle compared with an electrically assisted bicycle and a Segway, but surely a conventional pedal cycle would have a much higher performance than a Segway.

I was simply explaining what our view of the law was at the moment. Of course it would be possible to change the law, but the Committee needs to know what the law is so that we know what obstacles would need to be overcome if the Segway were to be used.

On the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, about invalid carriages, there are specific legal provisions that enable invalid carriages and specific cleaning vehicles to be used on pedestrian facilities.

It is therefore possible to change the law; it is not inviolable, as the Minister was suggesting earlier.

Parliament is, of course, supreme. As a distinguished legal jurist said, Parliament may do everything except make a man a woman or a woman a man, and even that is not certain. Noble Lords’ collective capacity to change the law is not in question. If we are to move in this area, though, we need to be clear what laws need to be changed.

Consequently, it is the department’s view that the Segway may be used in this country only on private land with landowner permission. We are aware that Segways are being used in this manner to some extent; my noble friend Lord Harris, the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, noted various different contexts in which that was true, ranging from golf courses to airports, from show grounds to warehouses. That offers a considerable range of usage and marketing opportunities.

Segway promoters were invited some time ago to share with my department any information that they had on Segway trials and usage in other countries. We also suggested that they engage with a wide range of other stakeholders, such as Cycling England, Sustrans and Living Streets, and share the results of such discussions. They kindly made available German, Canadian and American reports on Segway trials and usage and a report on a private land trial at Heathrow airport, together with other material—for example, on CO₂ emissions. As has been noted in the debate, they have also offered trials to noble Lords and Members of another place.

On the CO₂ aspects, the material supplied has been considered by officials. The report set out comparisons in CO₂ emissions on a per-passenger-kilometre basis between a wide variety of vehicles. However, it did not consider the whole-life carbon impact of the vehicle, which would include its manufacture and disposal. The Government would therefore welcome further views on the carbon issue, taking account of the whole-life CO₂ cost of Segways and not simply the per-kilometre usage.

Taking stock, significant changes in the law would be required to enable Segways to be used in the way suggested by promoters. We have yet to be convinced that it would be right to change the law so that this could take place, but we will continue to analyse and consider representations and further evidence, including the evidence made available from international experience. As I have said, we will respond, as we promised to do at the meeting on 26 March, to the latest information that has been made available to us.

I turn to the issue of a trial. A Segway trial on the public highway, proposed by a member of the Sutton police force, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Harris, was discussed at a 22 January meeting between Segway promoters, interested Members of another place, a Sutton Police representative and Department for Transport officials. Initially it was thought, as my noble friend observed, that a trial might be authorised simply by an order under Section 44 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. I regret to tell the Committee that our legal advisers found that, although Section 44 could suspend certain requirements of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986, it could not disapply the other vital parts of the law that would be required for a trial, including requirements relating to registration and insurance, the use of cycle tracks and use in pedestrian areas.

Another concern was that while some individual police officers were keen, for reasons that have been lucidly set out by Members of the Committee, the Association of Chief Police Officers has formally stated,

“we are opposed to deregulation of these vehicles”.

On this basis, the meeting on 22 January decided against pursuing the suggestion of a trial. We will consider further the issue of a trial or trials but, as I have said, even for a trial on the public highway and cycle tracks, we would need to undertake significant legal work and make changes to the law. This is not something that we could undertake either lightly or soon. Many factors would need to be considered before we could undertake to change the law. They are all part of the wider evaluation that I have referred to, but the additional factor would be finding appropriate legal vehicles. We would need to consider that, too.

I should add that we recently approached ACPO about the specific issue of a Segway trial. ACPO advised us that:

“If the Government is minded … to introduce any trial, that is a matter for them but we would urge caution on safety grounds and potential for misuse if use is deregulated”.

ACPO added:

“There is no drive from ACPO for Segways to be made available for policing purposes”.

I would encourage noble Lords who wish to take this further to engage not only with my department, but with ACPO and the police to see whether they are able to persuade the police, corporately, that there are not significant safety issues at stake in allowing Segways on the public highway and cycle tracks. Taking up my noble friend’s point about the potential benefits for the police, it appears to the department that while some police officers are seized of those potential benefits, the police, corporately, are not so seized.

In conclusion, we remain aware that Segways may legally be used on roads in some other countries, and that they are sometimes employed for policing purposes, as at the Beijing Olympic Games. Nonetheless, because something is permitted in another country does not necessarily mean that it should be permitted here. We would not wish to enter into the exacting processes of introducing legislation unless we felt confident that the benefits would outweigh the disbenefits. We need to balance our aims in respect of mobility, road safety, active travel and protecting the environment, directing our resources to the areas where we can achieve the greatest benefits. We will therefore continue to evaluate information on Segway use. We will respond to the representations made to us at the 26 March meeting. I will, of course, draw the attention of my honourable friend Jim Fitzpatrick, the Minister responsible, to the Hansard report of this debate. I know that he would be happy to speak further to my noble friend Lord Harris and other noble Lords if they would like to make further representations to him.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that public consultations by government departments follow best practice.

I very much welcome the opportunity to put this question this afternoon. I am delighted that my noble friends Lord Attlee and Lord Eccles are taking part.

The way in which government consultations are conducted may seem a technical issue but it is actually important to the health of our political system. I have variously written and spoken about the importance of the relationship between Parliament and the public. This afternoon, I am concerned with the relationship between government and the public. How can interested members of the public have an input into policy deliberations by government? Equally importantly, how can members of the public see what is done with that input? To what extent does it inform government policy-making?

My starting point is that it is common ground that these are important questions, and that government recognise the need for consultation with interested parties when policy is being contemplated and the need for that consultation process to be as fair and transparent as possible. To that end, government provide guidance to departments and other public bodies on how to conduct consultations. The latest Code of Practice on Consultation came into effect in November last year. All government departments have signed up to the code, and guidance on running consultations is available from the Better Regulation Executive.

My concern is not with the content of the code or the guidance provided by the Better Regulation Executive but with enforcement and co-ordination. The code of guidance is exactly what it says it is: it provides guidance. Departments are not required to comply with the guidance and, as far as I can see, there is no mechanism in place to monitor, across government, compliance with the code.

There is a public perception of central government as some highly centralised and homogenised institution, with the work of departments being directed from the centre. There is one approach to government that sees it in terms of presidential government. However, another is the baronial model of government, conceptualising government as a range of departments headed by Ministers who, in many respects, resemble medieval barons, with their own courts and little empires. I think this approach is more applicable in this case. Ministers, if they choose, can elect not to conduct a consultation or, if they do, to conduct it other than in accordance with the code.

Let me identify what I see as the problems with the current arrangements. One is the fact that there is no whole-of-government view of consultation. When I put down a Question asking what steps were taken to ensure that departments complied with the code, I was told,

“There are several systems in place to aid compliance with the code of practice on consultation”.—[Official Report, 24/11/08; col. WA 241.]

There is a difference between ensuring compliance and aiding compliance, and the several systems appeared to number two. One was consultation co-ordinators in departments working with policy officials as well as with officials in the Better Regulation Executive. The other was transparency, in that consultation documents cite the criteria of the code and give the contact details of the departmental consultation co-ordinator, and departments are required in the better regulation chapter of their annual reports to describe their consultation activity over the year and compliance of their consultation activities with the code. In other words, it is transparent but a form of self-assessment.

My concern about the utility of such transparency is that it does not have much effect on government. It appears there is no one at the centre, be it in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform or in the Cabinet Office, who reads the reports and co-ordinates the data on consultation. In another Question last year, I asked how many consultation exercises had been undertaken by government departments since October 2007 and how many of them lasted, or were due to last, for the recommended period of at least 12 weeks. The Answer began:

“The Government no longer collate data on this”.—[Official Report, 24/11/08; col. WA 242.]

It then went on to point out that the information is put in the public domain through the departmental annual reports. The material may be put in the public domain, but I am querying what is then done with that material. As far as the Government go, it appears to be the end of a process rather than part of a central process to monitor compliance and ensure that the code is being followed.

By leaving it to individual departments to follow the code, there is the danger of some departments not following it as rigorously as others. Some are innovative, others are not. The guidance provided by the Better Regulation Executive includes a section headed “Reaching beyond the ‘usual suspects’”. That is extremely important in conducting consultations. However, not all departments are energetic in seeking to consult beyond the usual suspects. When the Judicial Appointments Order 2008 was being considered by the House last October, I noticed that the Ministry of Justice had been assiduous in consulting the bodies that one would expect to be consulted regularly on matters affecting the judiciary. However, the Explanatory Notes recorded:

“The level of public interest in the policy has been minimal”.

As I pointed out, this could be because the order had been placed on the departmental website, and that appeared to be the extent of it. There was no attempt to be pro-active in going beyond the usual suspects.

Contrast this with the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, which lives up to its name by making consultation papers available to third parties in machine-readable form, thus enabling different bodies to identify when a consultation is taking place and then disseminate that fact to interested parties.

It is extremely important for the popular legitimacy of government that departments comply with the code. I would stress the need in particular for widespread dissemination of the fact that a consultation is taking place, following the practice of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills; for the 12-week consultation period to be met, other than in the most exceptional of circumstances; and for departments to be rigorous in collating and making available the results of the consultation, and explaining how those results have fed into the policy deliberations. At the moment, I fear, there is some concern that consultations constitute going through the motions and that the Government have already decided the issues in advance. It is essential that there is monitoring and co-ordination within government in order to ensure that departments comply with the code. I therefore ask the Minister what is being done to ensure compliance—not aid compliance but ensure compliance—with the code of practice and, as part of this, what is being done to monitor performance. As the Answer to one of my Questions suggested, the Government appear to have moved backwards, not forwards, on this.

A starting point to monitoring consultations is to draw together a list of consultations being undertaken. The Cabinet Office used to have a webpage listing all open consultations being conducted by departments. I was told, in answer to another Question, that it had removed the webpage because the service was not picking up all consultations, the cost of the service had increased and the site was receiving a low number of hits. It would be interesting to know why the system was not picking up all consultations; presumably it was because departments were not supplying the relevant information. However, the Answer to my PQ on the subject went on:

“However, the recent review of government consultation practices and policy, which led to a new code of practice on consultation coming into force on 1 November 2008, found that a comprehensive service of live consultations would be welcomed by stakeholders. The Better Regulation Executive in BERR is working with the Directgov team of the Central Office of Information to deliver such a service in the future. This would automatically pick up all consultation exercises published by central government”.—[Official Report, 24/11/08; col. WA 232.]

That would certainly be a major step in the right direction. The Info4local.gov.uk website, run by the Department for Communities and Local Government, is very valuable in identifying consultations, but I am not sure how comprehensive that is. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what progress has been made in creating a comprehensive service of live consultations. If he is the bearer of good news, I shall be delighted, and if the Government are able to move in that direction, it will be a significant step forward. It will not be the end of the process but it will facilitate BERR or the Cabinet Office monitoring compliance with the code and ensuring that consultations take the form they should. That can only be to the benefit of our political system. Poor consultation, or no consultation, can undermine confidence in the process of government. As I say, this is much more than a technical matter; it is extremely important to the legitimacy of the political system.

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Norton for introducing this debate. I come at it as a member of the Merits Committee and therefore as a recipient of the outcome of a great many consultations. We regularly look at 30 instruments a week, and one of the very first things that we do is to look at the paragraphs on consultation.

I should like to take as a theme the Cabinet Office paper of 2007, which concerns a consultation about consultation. It is called Effective Consultation and on the front of the paper are the words:

“Asking the right questions, asking the right people, listening to the answers”.

As is very common with government documents, they do not help you to decide how to ask the right questions and they do not help with a definition of who might be the right people to ask. As to listening to the answers, I shall come back to that later, but I suppose it is a question of what weight you give the answers.

Therefore, when members of the Merits Committee look at the results of consultations, they are caught up in a series of judgments. They know that it is not enough to be assured that guidelines are being followed—indeed, I think that there has been plenty of evidence in recent days that just following the rules will not do—but that you also have to exercise some judgment. That is the difficulty, because in the Civil Service—the servants of the Government of the day—the process is often more important than the outcome in the sense that, if you can say that you have followed the process, then what happens is not necessarily the most important matter.

I suppose that in a democracy we are talking about the people, but in Effective Consultation we come across something called a “stakeholder”, and I know that my noble friend comes across that term too. Does that mean someone who has an assessable interest, and is that a financial interest? What is the assessable interest? We are looking for people’s opinions—perhaps people within institutions or people who are grouped together in free association—but why do we have to call them people who hold a stake? That does not seem to be a very good way of starting if you are looking to make a judgment, and in particular a judgment in relation to the level of consultation that is taking place. If there is consultation on assisted suicide or 42 days’ detention, that is at a different level. The ways and means of trying to find out what people think are many and various, and indeed they are employed in many and various ways. Votes may depend on that consultation.

However, it is not like that in the Merits Committee. The committee is in the area of secondary legislation, where the policy is set out in an Explanatory Memorandum and is, in a sense, a given. The questions asked in the consultation concern the implementation of that policy and do not necessarily question the policy itself. Indeed, it is not part of the Merits Committee’s terms of reference to question the policy but only to try to arrive at a recommendation for the House as to whether the instrument will carry out the policy. Then of course there are some technical, low-level consultations, such as about the closure of a street.

Our present system of guidelines and of commenting on consultations does not attempt to give any feel of how significant the consultation was. How likely was it that there would be controversy? How much did the department in question know that there was indeed controversy on the subject? It is carried out in a way which does not give the feel of the questions to which the department would like to have answers; it is carried out in a way in which the questions are set to cover the ground but not to look for trouble. There is some reason to think—I shall give one example—that we should look for why we did not get an answer to a question, or why a question was not raised by anyone in whatever was put forward.

The weight of evidence is often presented in the outcome in a very bland way—70 per cent said this, 30 per cent said that—and little guidance is given about what to think about the 70 per cent and the 30 per cent. This brings me to the example I wish to give. We recently had an order bringing seven designated types of psychologists under statutory control. Before the consultation started on the implementation of the order, the Government had persuaded the British Psychological Society that it should agree to statutory control. That was a big judgmental move on the part of the British Psychological Society. It would have come under considerable pressure to make that move because the state system, again as mentioned by my noble friend, is very large, powerful and centralised. It would be a brave council of the British Psychological Society that stood out for self-regulation and common law if the Government wanted it to come under statutory control and the NHS was responsible for giving its members much of their work.

The regulatory impact assessment states that the order was brought in as a matter of modernisation of the regulation of healthcare, to ensure patient safety, to set standards of competence and to maintain and improve public confidence. In the consultation, no questions were asked about modernisation; it was a given. That is to say, statutory control equalled modernisation, in effect. No questions were asked of the people practising about their experience of patient safety, nor about what they thought about public confidence. All the questions they were asked were tailored around the given that this statutory regulation was going to be brought in—after all, the society had agreed to it—and therefore there was no need, I suppose, to seek evidence as to whether what was said in the regulatory impact assessment as the reason for the order was in fact an issue. We all agree that patient safety is an issue, but we need to tie the issue of lesser or greater patient safety to the question of whether it would be achieved by statutory control, or whether it is being achieved perfectly satisfactorily without statutory control.

I sum up by saying that I do not think that making a consultation into a well worked out process is sufficient; there needs to be judgment at every stage.

I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Norton for introducing this Question for Short Debate. I do not often get involved in these issues, but I have a simple question for the Minister. The advantage of Grand Committee is that the Minister has ready access to his officials, who, I am sure, can easily provide inspiration for the Minister’s answer.

A while ago, a Member of another place was asked by the Prime Minister of the time to undertake an inquiry into a matter of public policy of which I had a little experience. The honourable Member wrote to me, asking for my views. I replied in detail, a couple of sides, but it may not quite have been what the honourable Member expected. Some might think that it was unhelpful. It was, indeed, carefully drafted.

The honourable Member misunderstood me and, in a letter to me, suggested that I did not want to make a contribution. I replied, and this is the important bit: “Nevertheless, my letter of”—the date—

“is my contribution this important study, and I look forward to seeing it alongside any others which are published”.

I heard nothing more from the honourable Member.

The question is: am I a consultee to that inquiry or not? In other words, should my name have been included in the list of consultees?

I also wish to express my grateful appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for introducing this important debate. However, I also extend my appreciation to the work that he has done prior to this debate to seek to elicit the facts. For he has, through most persistent questioning, raised a number of issues that I hope the Minister will have time to address. I also register my appreciation of how he has himself engaged in consultation on this subject on his blog. I have read with interest some of the letters that he received, which are available, from, among others, M J Ray, James Clark, Dave Briggs and a number of others, all of which express the public interest in what we are talking about.

Although it may appear to be an arcane subject, it seems to be of great importance to the public; not only to those who are specifically targeted by departments for consultation but, more generally, those who are affected, even if not centrally but peripherally. Many are anxious to access the policy-making process and, by participating and indicating their interests, to help to shape our democratic response to policy making.

At a time when Parliament is under something of a cloud for reasons unconnected to the subject that we are debating today, it behoves us all to think carefully about how we can strengthen the sense of public involvement in our processes. I very much welcome the debate on that account.

However, it is not only a matter of importance to the public. It is also a matter of high importance to Parliament, in its legislative process, to know what is happening and why, and how those affected, even indirectly, might feel. With the best will in the world, it is not possible, even for specialists, to rake up all the implications of legislation pouring forth from Whitehall, as it does, at an ever-increasing rate.

I have also noticed with great interest the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, about the work of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee. I observed in particular one review, which the committee had conducted, of an order that seemed to speak eloquently of its wider experience and to underline the importance to Parliament of consultation. I refer to the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Amendment (No. 2). Order 2008; the review summarised with the concluding sentence:

“We note with concern the very short consultation period on this proposal and the fact that a significant degree of disagreement with the policy remains”.

It is interesting that that particular report follows the committee’s report on the Draft Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009, in which it drew attention to the shortness of time that the Government had allowed it to consider why the order was necessary, what its policy objective was, and what the explanation was for the exceptional hurry that had limited the normal scrutiny process. That order related to the publication of expenses claimed by or paid to Members of either House. The well known rubric, “Legislate in haste and repent at leisure”, is underlined very clearly by these two examples. The Government must take extremely seriously the issue of consultation.

I add my inquiry to the Minister about the overarching arrangements for ensuring that the code published in November 2008 and which became operative then are available to the public and understood, and that the public are told where to go. It is not at all clear to members of the public where to look for subjects in which they may be very interested; with the constant changing of names of departments, who remembers the particular department responsible for this at the moment is BERR? Many people still think of it as the DTI and would be astonished to discover that there was responsibility within that department.

The reference in the cover notes that had been put out to going to the Department for Communities and Local Government is also somewhat confusing. Why should that particular department be the source of information across government? In fact, it is not entirely clear, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, pointed out, that that department is in possession of all the information that is relevant and ought to be available.

In conclusion, I raise an issue that may be very easily answered by the Minister, on the extent to which these rules of the code are enforceable. The document itself—that is, the introduction to the code of practice, setting out the status—expresses the view that the code does not have legal force. Of course, in one obvious sense, that is clear. However, I read with some interest the text of the broadcast by a Mr Paul Greening, who is described as a public participation expert, in an interview that he gave with Radio Free Europe as long ago as 4 March 2003. The interest of this is that apparently he was the member of the Cabinet Office who was invited in 1998, as deputy head of consultation, to be responsible for drawing up the original code in 2000. At the end of his very interesting statement about how the different interests had been weighed up within government, he said:

“There is a public expectation that ministries will follow the Code of Practice. If they do not, according to UK law … consultations can be subject to judicial review, which means the ministry could be taken to court”.

I wonder if that is the case. Someone dissatisfied might be tempted to try it out, but I should like to hear the Minister’s view on that possibility.

I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth for drawing our attention to this important area of the legislative process. Consultation is vital to public confidence in our legislative system; indeed, it is a word that we hear often in your Lordships’ House. We on these Benches frequently call for more public consultation in order, as my noble friend said, to increase transparency, to enhance scrutiny and, above all, to allow for legislation to be developed with the confidence that the nation will concur with it because its citizens have been thoroughly involved in its preparation. Therefore, I am sure that your Lordships will applaud the work that has gone into many of these consultations, and that you will approve of the amount of interaction that this allows and the opportunity it theoretically provides for fine-tuning legislation. Indeed, we welcome such improvements as the Government have brought to the process of consultation.

In 2000, the Code of Practice on Consultation was introduced and, since then, I think that there have been no less than three updated versions. The code seeks to improve the,

“transparency, responsiveness and accessibility of consultations”.

Given that there are, I believe, currently more than 30 consultations running in different government departments, it is clearly vital that the process should be under constant scrutiny and subject to continuing improvement.

A number of important matters have been raised in today’s debate but, in view of the hour, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I do not refer to all of them. I propose to pick up on three main areas of concern. The first is the over-arching one of the flexibility allowed to government departments under the code. There is no mechanism that I can detect—my noble friend Lord Norton dwelt on this—for ensuring compliance, and no mechanism for checking and co-ordinating what government departments are doing. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, said that my noble friend Lord Norton had been assiduous in raising questions on this subject. Indeed, in one such Written Question my noble friend asked:

“How many consultation exercises have been undertaken by government departments since October 2007; and how many of them lasted or are due to last for the recommended period of at least 12 weeks”.

The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Barnes, said in response—indeed, my noble friend has referred to this—that:

“The Government no longer collate data on this. However, the information is put into the public domain each year, as departments are required, in the better regulation chapter of their annual reports, to describe their consultation activity over the year and the compliance of their consultation activities with the code”.—[Official Report, 24/11/08; col. WA 242.]

They no longer collate the data. So there we have it. There is no mechanism for checking and co-ordinating and for comparing performance between departments. It is all very well departments describing their own consultation activity once a year but, as my noble friend asked, what independent verification of their claims is made? Perhaps the Minister will be able to address that.

My noble friend’s Written Question also asked how many consultation exercises lasted or were due to last for the recommended period of at least 12 weeks. The response from the noble Lord, Lord Carter, did not directly answer that query. It is that lack of an answer which suggests that a considerable number of consultations might not last for the recommended period. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, referred to having first-hand experience of direct complaints about this. I, too have had such an experience and so this might be a further example of there being too much flexibility in the system.

My second area of concern is the appearance that the Government are merely going through the motions; that they undertake consultation half-heartedly because they have already decided what they will do; and that consultation is often, effectively, less than genuine. My noble friend Lord Attlee’s experience sounds like a graphic example of this. I strongly suspect that his is not the only example. As a general point, I suggest that the emphasis should be towards consultation on the issue rather than on the legislation. By definition, this happens earlier in the process and can genuinely influence the development of legislation before firm positions are taken by the government department on the exact direction that it should take. The Australians have taken some interesting steps in this direction which are worth looking at.

My third area of concern is the complaint that I hear increasingly from the people on the front line, who really have something to contribute to a consultation but are not being made aware that such a process is even taking place. Again, my noble friend Lord Norton spoke of this, as did my noble friend Lord Eccles, who, among other things, took issue—as do I—with the vagueness of the term “stakeholder”. It is true that some good use is being made of technology and details of consultations are indeed being put on official websites. However, this assumes that all people with something important to say in the consultation will know which website to look at and when to do so. Given the huge amount of bureaucracy in which we are all now engulfed, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, referred, it is unsurprising that key people miss such consultations. For example, when the consultation on the future of tobacco control was held, not enough was done to increase retailer awareness of it. Retailers were left to find it online, or to request a hard copy from the Department of Health, despite the fact that the provisions were to affect them directly.

That consultation is a very recent example of a pre-legislative inquiry by the Government. It does not meet best practice. We must not allow ourselves to become complacent. The word “consultation” is often bandied about, but we must ensure that we always remember that the word itself is not enough. It is vital that there is substance behind it. Consultation done poorly can do more damage than none at all. The results can, at best, be inappropriate and, at worst, misleading, providing a false sense of security that the legislation has been both widely approved and, indeed, improved. It would be very helpful if the Minister could reassure your Lordships that all future consultations will be conducted with more care and with reference to the Government’s own code of practice on consultation. That code states that,

“effective consultation allows the Government to make informed decisions on matters of policy”.

That is the theory of consultation, but it can only be achieved if the highest standards are maintained. Your Lordships have clearly shown today that you are concerned that those standards are not being maintained. The code of practice also states:

“we will continue to monitor how we consult and appreciate feedback on how we can improve”.

I hope the Minister will take all our comments today in the constructive way in which they are intended and will explain to us how he hopes to improve matters.

This has been an excellent debate, which has been greatly enriched by the knowledge and expertise that your Lordships have in this area. In preparation, I read the bio of the noble Lord, Lord Norton; I was obviously aware that he was a subject matter expert. I apologise that I have not read his blog. I thank him for tabling the Question for debate. Let me be clear: the Government are committed to effective public consultation that is targeted at and easily accessible to those with a clear interest in the policy in question. This is fundamental to a working democracy. I believe that, later, I will be able to give the noble Lord some good news.

I am delighted to report that our consultation code places the UK in a very small group of countries that are instituting rigorous requirements of this kind. In fact, the OECD praises us on our approach to consultation. We hope that the results—to be published soon—will show that the UK continues to be ranked as one of the best-performing OECD member countries on better regulation.

Your Lordships’ House plays a vital role in influencing and determining legislation as it proceeds in this House and in the other place, and through our Committee work. However, it is also essential that the Government provide their stakeholders with the opportunity to comment both on the direction and the implementation of new policies. We listen carefully to stakeholder views.

What is a stakeholder? It is anyone with a stake in the policy and could include businesses and citizens. On a personal basis, I would define it as those with an interest in the subject matter. We listen to stakeholder views on policy proposals and have a commitment to respond to consultation findings. That, after all, is an essential part of government. We have to be open to the views of stakeholders and be prepared to be held to account by others. Providing citizens, businesses and others with the opportunity to influence policy before it is enshrined in law is more than an academic exercise; it helps us design and deliver better policy outcomes.

In 2007, the Government actually used a stakeholder consultation process to review the code of practice on consultation itself and considered various interest groups and stakeholder views from those who regularly respond to government. We refined and updated the process, publishing this new code of practice last July, but there has to be a sense of continuous improvement. This document needs to be alive and changing. It needs to continuously improve.

There are important principles of the code are that all public consultations should adhere to. It must be timely, clear, accessible and well publicised. Consultations must be introduced early in the policy development process and last at least 12 weeks. Our best practice also includes providing a summary of responses received before or alongside any further action. The code does not, and should not, dictate that Ministers should conduct full, formal public consultations in absolutely every case. It is important to exercise judgment in deciding whether a formal consultation will add value to the policy development.

I assure your Lordships, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that the Government have strong processes in place to make sure that consultations are carried out in accordance with the code of practice. Each department has a consultation co-ordinator to ensure that consultations are run in line with the code, and officials from the Better Regulation Executive in my department monitor and challenge other departments on their compliance with the code as policies develop. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Norton. I agree with the noble Lord that consistency on disclosure is required. The BRE engages where necessary during that whole exercise through the Cabinet clearance process to make sure that there is challenge. BERR is responsible for cross-Whitehall better regulation.

The Government are also committed to make the consultation process transparent to public scrutiny. Consultations are published on departmental websites and publicised to all interested stakeholders. I am glad to say that I am the bearer of good news: by the end of this year, it will be possible to search for all central government consultations. The Cabinet Office central index did not pick up all new consultations because it relied on all departments marking up their electronic documents in the same way. The BRE, with the Directgov team, is now simplifying the process. The Government are confident that by the end of 2009, all consultations will be available and searchable on Directgov. I am still coming to terms with Directgov.

Government responses must be published before or alongside the next significant step in policy development. Consultations must cite the seven criteria of good consultation. They must include contact details for the departmental consultation co-ordinator. Departments must describe their consultation activity over the year and the compliance of their consultation activities with the code in the better-regulation chapter of their annual reports. Good consultation is embedded within my own department where we look very carefully at how policy choices, at all stages of their development, will affect business and the economy. I am proud to say that BERR’s 2007-08 annual report showed that 44 out of 45 consultations held by the department were fully compliant with best practise.

There is strong evidence across government that we are following best practice in consultation. I can give two examples. Earlier this year, the Government were setting out proposals making it compulsory for farmers to keep set-aside land, a former EU requirement. Working with key stakeholders, even prior to the publication of the consultation document, the Government recognised that a voluntary approach to the regulation would achieve the same outcome. The National Farmers’ Union preferred a voluntary solution, as a more regulatory option would impose policy costs of between £61 million and £135 million. The NFU predicted that the voluntary solution it proposed would cost farming businesses only £250,000. The Government therefore modified their approach in response to the NFU’s view.

In the interests of time, I shall not mention the other examples, but we believe that the Government have effectively consulted and listened to our stakeholders on a wide range of issues.

The department to which he referred, Defra, was one of those with the least good record of compliance. There were no fewer than 13 cases out of a total of 81 in which they did not allow the minimum amount of time of 12 weeks. In one case it allowed two weeks, in several it allowed four weeks and in others eight weeks. I do not think that is a particularly strong example of the Government’s success in promoting the code.

I do not have time to consult, so I shall reply in writing. In any consultation it is important—there have been a couple of questions on this—to reflect on the weight of the evidence. Should we list all the individuals? It is not possible to provide departments with guidance on the weighting of responses. How does one compare a response from a citizen with a response from the CBI, from a huge lobby group or indeed from Greenpeace?

Consultations are not votes; they are exercises in gathering evidence on which to base decisions. The new code does not require departments to list consultees, but it is important that all of them, including the letter of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, are considered. That is absolutely part of the code.

The British Psychological Society was mentioned and the specific consultation. We shall need to respond to that later in writing. I hope that everyone is reassured that the Government take consultation very seriously. I hope that I have covered most of the points made during this interesting debate. Due to the limited time available, I shall reply in writing to any issues or comments which I have not covered.

Mine was a very simple question. I hope that the Minister will find time to answer it.

If the simple question is whether we would list every name, the answer is no: we would not. Clearly, all the evidence that we receive has to be considered and analysed and it has to be put forward as part of the consultation. As I said, we do not list everyone who has written in or responded, as that could be many hundreds of thousands of people.

I was talking about the specific circumstances where an MP wrote directly to me—“Dear John, I have been tasked by the Prime Minister to look into this matter”—and the circumstances were exactly as I have described. Should I or should I not have been on the list of consultees?

I will look at this particular case and write to the noble Viscount.

Earl.

Noble Earl. The Room is full of Viscounts and Earls, as my predecessor in the previous debate said.

It is important that we take account of all consultations and of everyone who has written in. I have no idea what happened in the noble Earl’s case and I shall respond in writing to him.

Finally, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for bringing forward this matter for discussion.