Commons Chamber

  House of Commons

Monday 6 July 2009

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Home Department

The Secretary of State was asked—

Kingsnorth Climate Camp (Policing)

Greg Mulholland (Leeds, North-West) (LD)
1. What recent representations he has received on the policing of the Kingsnorth climate camp in August 2008.

The Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism (Mr. David Hanson)
The Home Office has received a number of items of parliamentary and public correspondence relating to the policing tactics employed at Kingsnorth climate camp in August 2008.

Greg Mulholland
My constituents, James Chan, Stephen Halpin and Sunil Bhopal, attended the Kingsnorth camp and report that the police played music between 5 and 6 am, and prevented water and food from getting into the camp. Does the Minister think that that is acceptable policing, and will he tell the House what lessons have been learned from that as we look forward to the climate change camps this summer?

Mr. Hanson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising those points. He will know that the National Policing Improvement Agency, Kent police and the inspectorate of constabulary have looked at these issues. I am shortly expecting some reports on how policing was undertaken at the camps. It is important to recognise that the Government and the police are committed to allowing peaceful protest, and that we take the concerns that have been raised about some issues at the climate camp extremely seriously. I will receive shortly, and will publish for the House, reports on those issues, and I will look at what lessons can be learned.

Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) (Lab)
Has the Minister had the opportunity to read the Home Affairs Committee’s report on the Kingsnorth camp and the G20 protests, in which we made specific recommendations about the tactic of kettling? Do the Government have a position on the use of kettling as a tactic by the police in policing protests? If not, when will the Government be in a position to give us their views?

Mr. Hanson
I thank my right hon. Friend for his report, which will be a good contribution to the debate on policing tactics. He will know that as early as tomorrow we are expecting a general report from the inspectorate of constabulary and Denis O’Connor on the protests at the G20 and some general issues. I want to reflect on that report and to respond in due course about the tactics that were used. I will consider those issues and respond to my right hon. Friend and the Committee’s report in short order.

Chris Huhne (Eastleigh) (LD)
There appears to be a repeating pattern at protests, including the Kingsnorth climate camp, of some police officers failing to wear their identifying numerals. We saw that at the Countryside Alliance protests in 2004, again at the G20 protests—despite the assurances of senior officers beforehand—and, astonishingly, again at the Tamil protest in Parliament square just a day after the Metropolitan Police Commissioner had made it clear that that practice was unacceptable. What are Ministers doing to ensure that some police officers do not tar the reputation of the vast majority who are disciplined, public-spirited and unashamed to be identified as citizens in uniform?

Mr. Hanson
I regard it as a matter of course that police officers should be able to be identified in whatever activity they undertake, and that will be one of the issues that we consider in relation to the policing of this protest and others. We are expecting a report shortly, as I have said, and I raised in a letter to Kent police of 24 June the need for me to see their report of the incidents at Kingsnorth. I have had an assurance from the chief constable, Michael Fuller, in a letter dated 3 July that he intends to publish the report on the incidents. I want to obtain the facts, look at the issues and ensure that the lessons are learned.

National Identity Scheme

Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
2. What recent representations he has received on the introduction of the national identity scheme.

Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
3. What recent representations he has received on the introduction of the national identity scheme.

Mr. David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
9. What recent representations he has received on the introduction of the national identity scheme.

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
12. What recent representations he has received on the introduction of the national identity scheme.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Alan Johnson)
Our research shows a consistent level of public support for the national identity service and, in the past six months, we have received more than 1,000 letters from the public about identity cards. More than 60 per cent. of these were in support, including many asking how to apply for an identity card.

Stephen Hammond
The Secretary of State will note that his colleague made it clear in a Delegated Legislation Committee last week that this scheme, now revised, is not for the prevention of terrorism, the reduction of  crime or the stopping of legal immigration, but it is claimed that it will derive £6 billion net benefit for our country. What is the purpose of the scheme, and how can that figure be justified?

Alan Johnson
When we stood at the last election on a manifesto that promised to introduce identity cards, there was no mention of tackling terrorism. Identity cards will have some benefit in that area, but that is not why they are being introduced. The reason, supported by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and the Opposition before the last election, was that it would be madness to introduce biometric passports, with all the information, and not use that opportunity to provide people with a convenient, safe and secure way to prove their identity in a world where the need to prove identity is a constant daily occurrence.

Philip Davies
The Prime Minister claimed that he had scrapped the plans for the last general election, when he was going to call it, because he was going to win. It seems that the Home Secretary said that he is going to scrap compulsory identity cards because they are popular with the public. Does he not accept that all the arguments in the past by his predecessors that identity cards are essential to combat terrorism and to tackle crime have all been totally spurious?

Alan Johnson
No. The reasons that we set out to the British people—in an election that we won—on why we would introduce ID cards are exactly the reasons for introducing them now. We have not scrapped cards; we are accelerating their introduction—[Laughter.] It is absolutely true. We planned to sign a medium-term contract next year; we are now going to sign it in the autumn. We planned to trial the scheme just in Manchester this year; we are now going to trial it across the whole of the north-west. We planned to trial it airside at London City airport; we are now going to trial it throughout London. It will be welcomed by the population. We already have applications for cards and we have not even begun the process of distributing them.

Mr. Evennett
I would like to press the Secretary of State on the issue of compulsion. The Government have always stated that ID cards can work properly only if they are compulsory. Does he still believe that?

Alan Johnson
I do not know when the Government stated that. The Government certainly did not state it in our election manifesto of 2005, when the British people supported us and elected us to government. There was no mention of compulsion in that manifesto. The Identity Cards Act 2006, which went through both Houses of this Parliament, had no mention of compulsion. This is a voluntary scheme. I happen to think that, in terms of airside workers, we will make much more progress and have many more people carrying cards if we remove the element of compulsion, explain the benefits and ensure that people sign up to them voluntarily.

Mr. Stewart Jackson
The Prime Minister is having some difficulty in being clear, to put it charitably, about the level of public expenditure over the next few years. Will the Home Secretary do his bit by pledging to scrap the huge cost of ID cards in order to get the public debt and finances into a more stable condition?

Alan Johnson
We will have more time to debate this issue at 7 o’clock this evening, but I have to tell hon. Members, including Opposition Members—at my press conference I used the term diddly-squat, which is probably not recognised by Hansard writers, let alone by British journalists—that the idea that the national debt could be halved by the abolition of ID cards is simply ludicrous. The amount of money that has to be spent on a scheme where the recipients and beneficiaries of identity cards will pay for them is very small. Scrapping the scheme now will gain very little and waste an awful lot.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab)
I opposed identity cards when some Tories wanted them before 1997, and I am pleased that they will not be compulsory. Will there not be a certain amount of suspicion on the part of various officials and authorities with a voluntary scheme if UK citizens do not have an identity card? Is not the whole idea of British citizens’ having such a card simply distasteful?

Alan Johnson
I recognise my hon. Friend’s long-held and consistent view on this issue. As he says, he held that view when the whole Conservative party was in a different place. I respect his position, although I do not agree with him on this point. There has been a voluntary ID card in France for many years. My French friends would look askance at any suggestion that that somehow breached their civil rights—

Mr. Winnick
That’s the continent.

Alan Johnson
I know that that might not convince a lot of people on this side of the House.

I believe that a voluntary scheme can work. We had an identity card in this country at a time when we were fighting for our civil liberties—

Chris Huhne (Eastleigh) (LD)
We got rid of it.

Alan Johnson
The hon. Gentleman says that we got rid of it. Now is the time to bring it back.

Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) (Lab)
A lot of people will sympathise with the Home Secretary, because he is having to cope with the denouement of a failed policy. This business goes to the credibility of Parliament. Why does he not face up to it, get up to the Dispatch Box and say, “Look, we really thought this. It was a silly idea, and we are going to start again to examine how we can promote security and individual identity?” That would be the sensible way forward. I realise that he cannot do that today, but I urge him to take the subject back to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister and to say, “Look, let’s get real, grand old Duke of York.”

Alan Johnson
My hon. Friend is already reverting to the French way in his questions. I fundamentally disagree with him. We are committed to a biometric passport. The Prime Minister said when he came to office in 2007 that that passport could be used as an identity card. People will have the choice of whether to get an identity card as well. I believe that my hon. Friend agrees that we need to have compulsory ID cards for foreign national workers. In today’s world, it is absolutely rational and sane to offer people a single system of proving their identity, which locks in their identity, using all the technology that we need to put in place for the biometric passport anyway.

Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, welcome the confirmation from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that the scheme will be a voluntary one, but what does he say to those people who suggest that, in some respects, the scheme will not really be voluntary? It is said, for example, that people will need an ID card to get a passport if they want to leave the country. Can he clarify the position as regards passports and ID cards?

Alan Johnson
The scheme is of greater use: if people want to use ID cards, instead of their passports, to travel around Europe, for instance, they can. Many people will find that attractive, particularly people who would rather pay the lower amount and only ever want to travel around Europe. Many other people will find it extremely convenient to take out an ID card, perhaps as proof of age, rather than taking their passports, which are more valuable documents, thousands of which get lost on Friday and Saturday nights in cities all over the country. This is a matter of pragmatic convenience, and I really do believe that, in terms of Labour party policy, my right hon. and hon. Friends are on the right side of the public argument.

Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
Let us explore the voluntary nature of the card. Later today, we will debate a statutory instrument that sets penalties for failing to inform the authorities about changes in personal information on ID cards. If it is a voluntary card, why are penalties attached to failing to provide that information? What does voluntary mean in this context? Specifically, if someone volunteers for an ID card and has one for a period, can they then say, “I don’t want one anymore.”? If they can, those penalties are pointless; if they cannot, the Home Secretary should come clean and tell people that, if they volunteer once, the scheme is then compulsory for the rest of their lives.

Alan Johnson
That is a nonsensical position by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman. The simple fact is that the Opposition support the introduction of a biometric passport. The introduction of such a passport means that there will be a national identity register, which will contain people’s addresses. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head—so he would have a biometric passport, but no means of linking it back to the individual who took it out. That argument is absolute nonsense. Exactly as now, if someone changes address, they should inform the passport office, and if they do not, there will be a fine, because we want to ensure that the people who receive passports are the people who say that they want them. The nonsense of the Opposition suddenly turning into civil libertarians, which was news to many of us, and the nonsense that identity cards are somehow an Orwellian concept from “Nineteen Eighty-Four” would be a complete mystery to 24 of the 27 European Union member states that have them.

Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Can I have one, please? I should like the same rights as the majority of other European citizens. I should like to travel around Europe on an ID card. I am ready to be photographed now, before I get much older. I am ready to give my details; I have to give them to everyone in the House of Commons and in the newspapers. So can we have a privilege for MPs: an accelerated path for those who would like ID cards before the rest of the population gets them? I think that we would have a very good take-up.

Alan Johnson
I will consult the authorities to see whether a platinum identity card can be posted to my right hon. Friend straight away.

Counter-terrorism Strategy

Mr. Shailesh Vara (North-West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
4. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s counter-terrorism strategy.

Mr. Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
5. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s counter-terrorism strategy.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Alan Johnson)
The Government’s strategy for countering international terrorism is assessed formally on a regular basis. Our revised strategy, which was presented to Parliament earlier this year, is one of most comprehensive and wide-ranging approaches to tackling terrorism in the world. It sets out how we are, first, tackling the immediate threat through the relentless pursuit of terrorists and disruption of terrorist plots; secondly, building up our defences against attacks and our resilience to deal with them; and, thirdly, addressing the longer-term causes, so that we can stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism or violent extremism in the first place.

Mr. Vara
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for that answer. However, in the past, Britain has allowed extremists to come to this country. In the case of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, there was an enormous amount of dithering on the part of the Government. What does the new Home Secretary propose to do to ensure both toughness and consistency when it comes to dealing with extremists who wish to come here?

Alan Johnson
I do not think that our record on that is as the hon. Gentleman suggests. I think that we have been very firm. Certainly, a points-based immigration system and the new visa system—incidentally, we have already found 4,000 people trying to come into the country using false identities—will help us. All of that, together with one of the best, if not the best, counter-terrorism resource in the world, which has many thousands of dedicated people working day in and day out, will protect us and ensure that our intelligence and security systems work properly for the people of this country.

Mr. Crabb
One very important component of counter-terrorism strategy is protecting critical energy infrastructure. How does the Secretary of State propose to assist police forces such as Dyfed-Powys, which covers my constituency, where there is now a major concentration of oil, gas and power station facilities? A significant additional burden has been created for the local force. What is the Secretary of State’s view on how the costs should fall?

Alan Johnson
I agree with the hon. Gentleman: that issue is one of the most important parts of our anti-terrorism strategy. It is, of course, the subject of a separate and dedicated police presence, both in the regions and nationally. On how the costs fall, we are putting £2.5 billion into counter-terrorism in 2008-09. That will go up to £3.5 billion by 2010-11. I am sure that the issue of the right proportion to spend nationally and locally can be decided in a rational discussion with the regional security forces.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op)
I was very sorry to hear, in response to the previous question, that the Home Secretary believes that the identity card system will be a significant plank in counter-terrorism. How can that be when a good proportion of terrorists in this country are home grown? Those people will not be subject to the constraints of a voluntary ID card system in any case.

Alan Johnson
I hope that my hon. Friend heard correctly. I am saying that the identity card can be a tool; it is not the whole toolbox. Anybody who is dealing with counter-terrorism—I have talked to some of them already—will say, “Well, it certainly won’t do any harm, and it can be of some help,” but if anyone believed that it was the fundamental approach to tackling terrorism, that would be wrong.

My hon. Friend asks how the system could work. We know that the al-Qaeda training manual suggests that every agent should have a number of different identities. The fact is that locking in a person’s identity through their fingerprints and their biometrics ensures that no one else can pick up that identity. That will be an extremely useful tool in the fight against terrorism.

Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
Why has the Home Office made no attempt to co-ordinate the security response across the country when a tanker containing inflammable fuels is stolen?

Alan Johnson
I am not exactly au fait with what the hon. Gentleman is talking about; I do not know whether anyone else in the House is, but it certainly sounds a very important issue, and I will look into whatever point he wants to raise. I imagine that the security forces would ensure that there was a co-operative approach on that, but if he knows different, perhaps he could let me know.

Chris Grayling
Indeed, I do know different. Of course, last week, 12 people died when a rail tanker containing liquefied petroleum gas exploded in Italy. Last year in the UK, nearly 2,000 lorries were stolen. That includes examples of theft of similarly flammable materials. The US Department of Homeland Security has warned about the use of such trucks in terror attacks, so will the Home Secretary please go back to his office, put in place an urgent review of the situation, and make a written statement to the House later this week about what he can do to address the situation.

Alan Johnson
I can do all of that, but let us not play games at the Dispatch Box. If the hon. Gentleman, who is in an important position, had a concern about security in this country, he should have been on the phone to me last week, not saving it up for a clever, smart question at Home Office questions.

Overseas Students (Visas)

Mr. Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
6. What recent representations he has received on the system for issuing visas to students from overseas countries.

The Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism (Mr. David Hanson)
Since the implementation of tier 4 of the points-based system on 31 March 2009, Ministers have received a number of representations on the system for issuing visas to students from overseas countries.

Mr. Holloway
One of your own Ministers has described student visas as a major loophole in Britain’s border control. What winds people up in towns such as Gravesend and Northfleet and across the country is the perception and the reality that you have mismanaged and not controlled—

Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows the correct parliamentary language, and I am sure he will now use it.

Mr. Holloway
What will the Government do to retake control of immigration?

Mr. Hanson
The hon. Gentleman knows that the Government introduced the points-based system for the very reasons that he mentioned—to ensure that it is simple, transparent and robust, and that it does the job. Through student visa applications, it monitors who is coming in and it is making a difference by tightening up the loophole to which the hon. Gentleman referred. That is why we are doing it.

James Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con)
One of the key concerns surrounding student visas is ensuring that appropriate checks against fraud are made. The Minister for Borders and Immigration has suggested that for visa applications from Pakistan and Afghanistan, officers based in Islamabad have more than 11 minutes to carry out initial fraud and forgery checks. Can the Minister tell the House precisely how much more?

Mr. Hanson
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary informs me that the hon. Gentleman’s figures are wrong, and that that is not the situation. We have more than 200 individuals dealing with visa applications in Islamabad, and that is important. My hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration would be present today, were he not in Calais announcing £15 million worth of new technology to stop people coming into the country via Calais. We will look at those issues, but I advise the hon. Gentleman that his perception is not our perception on the matter.

Susan Kramer (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Minister will be aware that because of the system, a significant number of foreign students, particularly from countries such as the United States, have thrown in the towel in their attempts to come and join courses at UK universities. A number of public universities in the UK will be in financial difficulty because their students will not be turning up from overseas in September, and the future looks exceedingly bleak. Will he please look into the matter and, for once, co-ordinate with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills?

Mr. Hanson
Again, from our perspective the points system is meant to be simple, transparent, objective and robust. There is an online calculator where people can examine this. A phased introduction of the scheme is taking place. We have had a number of applications to date and the number of failures has been very small. I will certainly consider the points that the hon. Lady raises and pass them on to my hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration, but the purpose of the system is to make sure that we know who is coming in, that it is secure and that it provides robust and transparent operations.

Policing Priorities (Public Participation)

Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West) (Con)
7. What plans he has to increase public participation in the determination of policing priorities.

The Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism (Mr. David Hanson)
The single confidence target puts the public at the heart of local policing. The policing pledge guarantees regular public meetings that will help determine local priorities. We are strengthening police authorities’ responsibility to consider the views of the public. All this is backed up by a strengthened inspectorate acting in the public’s interest.

Mr. Swayne
Would it not be a much better idea simply to elect people capable of making those decisions? If the Minister thinks that is a good idea—it seems to work elsewhere in the English-speaking world—it is our policy, so the best way of implementing it would be to have a general election very soon.

Mr. Hanson
I could happily fight an election in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency on the basis of crime. He knows that over the past five years, domestic burglary in Hampshire has fallen by 22 per cent. and vehicle crime in Hampshire by 26 per cent. Police numbers in Hampshire are up and Hampshire funding is up by £109 million over the 11 years of this Government to date. If he wants to fight on those figures showing crime down, investment up and more police officers, I will happily take him on.

Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
A moment ago we discovered that the Home Secretary pays no attention to the information that he gives in written answers to me, so let us try another written answer. Why has the amount of time that police officers spend on incident-related paperwork risen so sharply in the past year? How is that consistent with the stated aim of the policing pledge for officers to spend 80 per cent. of their time on patrol?

Mr. Hanson
The hon. Gentleman will know that that is old information. It dates back to a period before the policing pledge was implemented, and since the pledge has been implemented, the situation has improved dramatically. If he looks, as he will do later this year, at the figures on front-line services and reductions in bureaucracy, and at the action that we have taken since the pledge was implemented 12 months ago, he will see a great improvement. He will know also that my colleague Jan Berry, who has produced an independent report, will produce shortly further recommendations for Ministers to improve still further on reducing front-line bureaucracy. That is what the issue is about. Again, I say to the hon. Gentleman: crime down, police numbers up. That is a record on which I am very happy to argue the toss with him.

Control Orders

Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD)
8. What his most recent assessment is of the efficacy of control orders; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism (Mr. David Hanson)
The Government keep all counter-terrorism legislation under regular review. That includes control orders, where we are currently considering the impact of the recent House of Lords judgment.

Simon Hughes
While many people will be grateful on a one-off basis that the Home Office has given the relevant papers for Abu Rideh to leave the country and join his family abroad safely, will not Ministers now accept that the case made from the Liberal Democrat Benches consistently and by former Law Lords regularly, and now upheld by the senior court of the land, is that control orders should go and go now and be replaced by alternatives that uphold civil liberties rather than take them away?

Mr. Hanson
The hon. Gentleman will know that I am not able to comment on individual cases, but the House of Lords judgment obviously raises a number of key issues. We are reflecting on those issues, and I assure him that, as before, the various House of Lords judgments will ensure that we remain fully compliant with human rights legislation. We need to look at and reflect on the question of disclosure in some control order cases, and I shall report on behalf of myself and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to the House on the outcomes very shortly. We have written to the High Court to outline the Government’s approach; it is content with that; and we will respond very shortly.

Illegal Drugs

John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
11. What estimate he has made of the number of people addicted to illegal drugs.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Alan Campbell)
Illegal drug use is a hidden activity and the actual number of people addicted to any drug is unknown. However, it is estimated that 329,000 people in England were problematic drug users in 2006-07—that is, people using either opiates, crack cocaine or both.

John Mann
The estimate is 329,000, so, ever since I gave detailed recommendations to the previous Home Secretary, and the one before that, and the one before that, the numbers have gone up. Yet, the numbers in my constituency have gone down, as they have for overdoses, deaths, hospital admissions from overdoses, and burglaries. When will the Minister’s Department look at those recommendations and see why the system that is used in my constituency, and in Australia, Sweden and many other countries, is working and dealing with drug addiction, unlike the Government’s own policy?

Mr. Campbell
I am delighted to talk at any time with my hon. Friend about what works in his constituency, but he knows that we can report success in a number of areas. For example, this summer the millionth person is  likely to go through the drug intervention programme, and overall drug use is down. We are not complacent in any way, but I do believe that we are making progress.

Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con)
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) raises a very important point. Does the Minister agree that how successful his Department and the Prison Service are at dealing with drugs in prison matters very much, first, because of the difficulties in prison and, secondly, because of the difficulties when people leave prison? Is he satisfied that the Prison Service is appropriating enough funds for the treatment of drug addicts and to deal with the problem?

Mr. Campbell
Funding has gone up significantly to achieve the results that the hon. Gentleman looks for in prisons. Of course, we want action to rid people of their drug habits and to end the link with acquisitive crime before they enter prison, but he is absolutely right: we need a seamless system. This means that when someone is in prison they receive the treatment that they need, that it continues when they leave and that, hopefully, they can break the habit and return to a normal life.

Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East) (Lab)
Has my hon. Friend had an opportunity to assess Portugal’s great success over the past eight years in reducing drug misuse? Will he transfer some of that best practice to the UK?

Mr. Campbell
I saw the report from Portugal and I was left with the impression that it is too early to say what the effect of its change in policy has been, and we have to be careful in the message we send out about the harm that drugs do. We look at what happens in a number of countries around the world to make sure that we can learn lessons.

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
Is it not the case that many who resort to illegal drug use end up in prison because they commit crime to feed their addictions? The best and most cost-effective way to deal with the problem is to ensure that the treatment that such people need is given before they have to resort to crime. The fact is that not enough places are available. Would not ensuring that more places were made available now be a cost-effective and smart move by the Government?

Mr. Campbell
It is expensive, but for every £1 invested we save £9.50 across the life of a drug user. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need early intervention, and we also need to make sure that there are resources for treatment. We are seeking to achieve, and are providing, those things.

Incidence of Crime (Nottingham)

Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab)
13. What estimate he has made of the effects on police force expenditure of changes in the incidence of crime in Nottingham in the last three years; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism (Mr. David Hanson)
Nottinghamshire received general grants of £132.5 million in 2007-08, £136.9 million in 2008-09 and £141.4 million in 2009-10—an overall increase of £9 million, or 7 per cent. As a result, chief constables have flexibility in using the resources and Nottingham’s police-recorded crime fell by 14 per cent. between 2005 and 2008.

Mr. Allen
Does my right hon. Friend accept that crime has fallen not only because of the excellent work of the police and the crime and drugs partnership, but because of the pre-emptive and early-intervention work of children’s, health and employment services? Will he consider the possibility of redistributing discretely some of the money saved within the police service, so that more effort can go into intervening on children effectively and early, and so that those children do not become offenders?

Mr. Hanson
My hon. Friend makes an important point. All that investment in early prevention, children and support to families has a good downstream consequence in reducing reoffending and stopping people entering the criminal justice system in the first place. The results will undoubtedly mean that policing resources are saved downstream. He makes an interesting suggestion; justice system reinvestment into other areas is key. I want Nottingham police to use up front the resources saved from the 14 per cent. reduction in crime, to help crime prevention methods such as those that he has mentioned.

National Identity Scheme

Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells) (Con)
15. What recent representations from members of the public he has received on the introduction of the national identity scheme.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Alan Johnson)
I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago—before he arrived.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
I thank the Secretary of State for that helpful answer. Is he aware that disquiet about ID cards extends well beyond Home Office matters to data held about health and many other aspects that involve many other Departments? The Government are clearly having great difficulty in keeping such electronic data secure. Will the Secretary of State ask his colleagues throughout Whitehall whether they, too, will contemplate a climbdown and decide to leave such data in private hands?

Alan Johnson
There has not been any climbdown. However, we need to be absolutely clear. When the House enacted the Identity Cards Bill, it put in place safeguards, checks and balances to ensure that the use of the information was restricted to the public interest, according to the terms of the Bill. The information on the identity card will not include people’s health records, criminal records or other information that various people raise from time to time. It will include basic information such as gender, age, address and the necessary status of the individual. It will not include any other information.

Antisocial Behaviour

Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con)
16. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s measures to combat antisocial behaviour.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Alan Campbell)
Three independent reports confirm that our approach to tackling antisocial behaviour is working. The National Audit Office reported that two thirds of people stop committing antisocial behaviour after one intervention; the proportion rises to nine out of 10 after three interventions.

Angela Watkinson
I thank the Minister for his reply. As he will know, in serious cases of antisocial behaviour, the victim, the police and the local authority have to work together to compile sufficient evidence to get the case to court. The period taken is far too long. What else can the Minister do to shorten that period and lessen the suffering of the victims of antisocial behaviour?

Mr. Campbell
It is important that swift progress is made. It is also important that victims feel as if they are at the centre of the process. That is why we are looking not only at the time taken to bring cases to court, but at appointing people such as the victims’ champion to ensure that victims are at the heart of everything we do.

Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
A form of antisocial behaviour that can affect a whole community is kerb crawling and prostitution. The residents of Chalvey in my constituency have taken to standing on the streets themselves to collect the car registration numbers of kerb crawlers. What comfort can the Minister give them that we will be more effective in tackling this kind of antisocial behaviour?

Mr. Campbell
As my hon. Friend knows, we are bringing forward proposals in the Policing and Crime Bill to tackle the issues that she refers to in response to the concerns of local communities.

Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York) (Con)
Could the Minister respond to a scenario whereby the local council is asked under the safety partnership scheme to provide funds to root out antisocial behaviour but has no money to do so? Who should then step in to make amends to the households that are being disturbed by such behaviour?

Mr. Campbell
Local partnerships, of which local authorities are a key part, have a key role to play in tackling the problems in their local areas. Local councils have had increased budgets over the past few years in order to bring that to the table, and that is precisely what they should be doing. Residents have every right to look to the local authority, as well as to the police and other agencies, to step up to the mark with regard to antisocial behaviour.

Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab)
What representations has my hon. Friend had from social landlords, local authorities and others about the effectiveness of means by which they can act as witnesses on behalf of those who are victims of antisocial behaviour? In so many instances, victims of such behaviour are too frightened to give evidence in their own right and instead look to others to act on their behalf, but in my experience there is a long way to go before we find that that is working effectively.

Mr. Campbell
This is about building people’s confidence so that they feel confident in bringing forward their concerns about tackling antisocial behaviour. It is also about building confidence across the criminal justice system to ensure that in these circumstances people are seen as the victims, not as perpetrators. We talk to local authorities, the police and social landlords about a range of issues, and I am happy to talk further to my hon. Friend about this matter.

Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
In relation to young people and antisocial behaviour, can the Minister say what discussions take place across Government Departments and with local authorities to provide facilities for young people? We want joined-up government that is tough on the causes of problems as well on those who create them.

Mr. Campbell
That is an important part of what we do. Of course, we have to send out a strong enforcement message saying that if people get involved in antisocial behaviour and break the law, they should fear the consequences. Across Departments, we look to produce what are referred to as diversionary activities, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights when the problems are worst in local communities. We also work through organisations such as Positive Futures.

National Identity Scheme

Mr. Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
20. What recent representations he has received on the introduction of the national identity scheme.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Alan Johnson)
Again, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Goodwill
When I was a member of the Select Committee on Transport, we visited Atocha station in Spain, the scene of the terrorist atrocity that took place there. Is he aware that every single member of the terrorist group involved carried Spanish identity cards?

Alan Johnson
I was aware of that, actually. I do not know what point the hon. Gentleman would make about it, but I would say this: as I made absolutely clear earlier, we are not saying that identity cards are being introduced because they will free us of a terrorist threat; they are being introduced for several reasons. I note from that specific case in Madrid that one of the perpetrators was traced through his identity card.

Chorley Forensic Science Service Laboratory

Mr. Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley) (Lab)
22. What his plans are for the future of Chorley Forensic Science Service laboratory; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Alan Campbell)
The future of the Forensic Science Service laboratory in Chorley will be considered as part of the consultation process being undertaken by the FSS. No decision has yet been taken about the future of Chorley or any other laboratory site.

Mr. Hoyle
I take it from that that the Minister is going to work overtime to ensure that the Chorley laboratory remains. As he knows, this Government were elected on being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Will he ensure that they continue to put criminals behind bars? The north-west region has the second biggest rate of crime being committed, and it would be absolute nonsense if this Government were to consider closure. I look to my hon. Friend to state now that he will do all he can to ensure that Chorley remains open.

Mr. Campbell
I work overtime most of the time, but I am quite focused on this issue. We need to ensure that we have a Forensic Science Service that is capable of continuing to perform a critical role in bringing people to justice, but it needs a viable and sustainable future. That is what the transformation programme is all about, and I am quite sure that my hon. Friend will continue to make his strong case.

Topical Questions

Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
T1.  If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Alan Johnson)
The Home Office puts public protection at the heart of its work to counter terrorism, cut crime, provide effective policing, secure our borders and protect personal identity.

Mr. Hollobone
For the time that he occupies the important and high office of Home Secretary, will the right hon. Gentleman rule out an amnesty for illegal immigrants?

Alan Johnson
We have no plans for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. That is not part of the work that I have taken over as Home Secretary, and I do not believe that it will be part of the work that I do, however long I am in this position.

Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
T8.  Through the excellent work of the police in Halton and the local partnership, we have seen a significant reduction in crime rates. However, one thing that continues to frustrate local people is that when action is recommended and taken to the courts, it is not always supported by the courts. A good example recently was that a shopping centre wanted to ban a shoplifter who had been convicted on a number of occasions, but the court did not support that. What discussions is my right hon. Friend having with the Ministry of Justice about that issue?

Alan Johnson
This has been a constant theme of my discussions with the police, and I expect it to be a theme of the Association of Chief Police Officers conference this week. We need to get the balance right, and of course no one is suggesting that there should be any interference with the ability of the courts to judge each case on its merits. However, many police believe that there should be a debate about sentencing law so that those brought to justice are carried through the courts process. That is a matter for discussion between myself and the Secretary of State for Justice. We talk about these issues all the time, and that is a very important part of our ongoing dialogue.

Mr. Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
T2.  In Crewe and Nantwich, the breach rate of antisocial behaviour orders among those aged between 10 and 17 stands at a staggering 69 per cent. Last week the Home Secretary admitted that the Government had become complacent in tackling louts, but what is he doing for my constituents in Cheshire to ensure that the orders are strictly enforced? Simply handing out more orders faster is not enough.

Alan Johnson
There are two points to be made in response to the hon. Gentleman’s very important point. First, his experience in Crewe is not reflected in statistics nationally. Generally, 65 per cent. will comply on the first occasion, with something like 78 per cent. doing so on the second occasion and 95 per cent. on the third. That is in the context of antisocial behaviour that is sometimes going on 365 days a year.

I do not think that there is a need for rafts of new legislation. All the powers are there; they just need to be used. So my second point is that if there is one aspect that we need to look at again—we will do so in legislation in the fifth Session—it is the fact that parenting orders are discretionary, not mandatory, when youngsters come before the courts again for a breach of an antisocial behaviour order. That is one element on which we can usefully fill the gap in legislation.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op)
T9.  Animal welfare is a key priority for a civilised society, yet in the United Kingdom, 2007 saw the sixth consecutive increase in the number of animals used in scientific experiments. For the first time in a generation, the figure exceeded 3 million. The 2008 figure will be out soon. Will the Minister ensure that the Government respond formally to the Uncaged campaign’s historic petition, which cross-party colleagues and I presented at No. 10 last Thursday and which was signed by 1.5 million people, calling for the use of animals in the laboratory to be prohibited?

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Alan Campbell)
To some extent, the problem is demand-led, but my hon. Friend is right to suggest that we need a robust framework to ensure that when those practices need to take place, they are carefully monitored. The Government are also keen to find alternatives to animal testing. We are committing to that not only our political will, but increased resources.

Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD)
T3.  Will the Home Secretary act now to deal with growing anger in my constituency and around the country about the plans to extradite Mr. Gary McKinnon to the United States? Mr. McKinnon has no previous convictions and suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. Given that there is power to try him in this country, where the offence was committed, will the Government intervene to ensure that that happens and that he is not sent to languish in an American supermax jail indefinitely?

Alan Johnson
First, the case is the subject of a judicial review and I do not think that I can say anything helpful about that. However, there were reports this morning that the hon. Gentleman’s colleague in another place had written to me to ask me, as Secretary of State, to use my “undoubted discretion” about the case. I have no discretion over prosecutions. The High Court confirmed that in January, when it said:

“The decision to prosecute is exclusively one for the Director”—

of Public Prosecutions—

“and not in any way for the Secretary of State.”

Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen, South) (Lab)
It is now some months since the points-based system came into effect. I am sure that I am not the only hon. Member who has experienced an increase in immigration casework, not because of the principle of the points-based system, but because the guidance is sometimes not as clear as it might be, simply because the system is new. The Department has probably received a lot of correspondence on the matter. When will the Government review the points-based system to examine the sort of cases that hon. Members are bringing to light?

Alan Johnson
Even as we speak, the Migration Advisory Committee is considering the matter. The system has worked well; no system is perfect and this one is comparatively new, so I have no doubt that we must ensure that the guidance is clear. We must consider whether people are applying through the wrong tier. There are sometimes problems when people try to come in under tier 1, and they would be much more successful if they applied under tier 5. We can undertake and then publish the results of that useful exercise very soon.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
T4.  Earlier this afternoon, the Home Secretary said that if one has a biometric passport and changes one’s address, one has a duty to inform the passport office of that change. During the course of questions, inquiries have been made of the passport office, which says that that is not the case. What is the situation? Is it not somewhat daft to be under an obligation to report a change of address when one has a supposedly voluntary ID card, but not if one has a passport? Is not it time the Home Secretary talked to the passport office and sorted out exactly what is—or is not—happening?

Alan Johnson
I do not think that we are breaching Magna Carta. One has to have one’s address on a driving licence and inform the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency of any change. The point that I was making about passports is that we are introducing a new biometric system to ensure that people cannot forge the identity of the passport holder. We have a huge problem with that, and it is sensible, sane and rational to ensure that people keep the details of their addresses up to date. Relax: it does not mean the end of thousands of years of British democracy.

Gwyn Prosser (Dover) (Lab)
The Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing told the House this afternoon that the Department is putting another £15 million into further clamping down on illegal immigration between Calais and Dover. On what is the money being spent? What is being done to encourage the French to deal appropriately with the encampments in Calais?

Alan Johnson
The news is hot off the press: my hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration has just reached that understanding. We have agreed to invest a further £15 million in strengthening our controls in Calais and other juxtaposed locations in France. Investment will be made on the understanding that the French will effect significant returns of illegal migrants from northern French regions. It is therefore aimed at, first, making the route from France to England secure, and secondly ensuring that France sends back more immigrants from northern France. That looks like a balanced agreement.

David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
T6.  The Home Secretary will be well aware of the huge concerns over proposals to close down a number of laboratories belonging to the Forensic Science Service. As Home Secretary, he presumably has the power to step in and prevent that from happening. Will he do so?

Mr. Alan Campbell
This is about the Forensic Science Service bringing forward a consultation on the future of its business. We will of course work closely with the Forensic Science Service, but it is for the service itself to engage with the work force, stakeholders, MPs and anyone else with a view on such matters, to ensure a viable and sustainable service for the future.

Natascha Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab)
As my right hon. Friend knows, many teenagers feel unfairly punished and humiliated by devices such as the Mosquito and, now, acne lights. Will he look into banning them?

Alan Johnson
As soon as I find out what they are, I will look into banning them.

Sir Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife) (LD)
But there is an area where the Secretary of State has discretion, and that is in relation to the Government’s policy towards extradition. Why are we still sending people to the United States under a one-sided extradition treaty? Is it not now time to renegotiate that treaty so as to provide for extradition between our two countries that is firmly based on the principle of reciprocity?

Alan Johnson
I disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we have a one-sided extradition treaty. I have looked at it carefully over the past few weeks. An awful lot of hyperbole is spoken about this issue—it is almost as if the US were an enemy of this country. The current extradition treaty with the US ensures equal co-operation between the UK and the Department for Trade and Industry US. This issue comes up periodically; I remember that it came up in relation to the Natwest three when I was at the Department for Trade and Industry. Perhaps hon. Members will remember the marching through the streets in relation to that case, but it all went very quiet—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) says from beyond the Bar that he was one of the people marching, but we did not hear much after the Natwest three pleaded guilty and were prosecuted. I do not believe that we have an unbalanced treaty; I think that it is a fair treaty between the US and the UK, and one that serves both countries well.

Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that there is now a big backlog of applications for residency cards from spouses of European Union citizens. What will he be able to do to tackle that backlog?

Alan Johnson
We are seeking to address the legacy of cases involving families and dependents, and involving asylum seekers, as well as those inherited cases involving nationality. We are making progress—I believe that we have a date, around 2012, by which we would have that backlog completed—at the same time as dealing with current cases effectively. Some 60 per cent. of asylum seekers are now dealt with within six months, and that figure will be up to 90 per cent. very soon.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
On the question of unnecessary police paperwork, is the Secretary of State aware that years and years ago, when the Select Committee on Home Affairs was looking into the issue and the Chairman was the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who is now the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Ministers came before the Committee and gave exactly the same answer that the Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism has given this afternoon, namely that there might have been problems in the past, but the Government have just taken measures to put everything right? When the Home Secretary comes before the Home Affairs Committee, will he be prepared to quantify the figures that his right hon. Friend has given this afternoon and also explain what the Government—

Mr. Speaker
Order. I think that we have got the drift.

The Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism (Mr. David Hanson)
I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that 2007-08 saw the fourth successive annual improvement on the percentage of time spent on front-line policing. If he looks at some of the measures that we have taken, such as scrapping the police time sheet, which has freed up an estimated 260,000 police hours, axing the stop-and-account form and introducing 18,500 extra handheld devices, he will see that the measures that we have taken have resulted in the improvements seen over that period.

Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) (Lab)
What discussions has the Home Secretary had with the Foreign Office in respect of the arbitrary decision by the Premier of Bermuda to allow people from Guantanamo Bay to settle in Bermuda, when that is a matter for the competence of the United Kingdom Government in London and, I believe, the responsibility of the Home Secretary? We need to be told what is happening.

Alan Johnson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the discussions have been robust, and we are absolutely at one on the basis of what happened. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is raising the matter with the American authorities.

Mr. Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
Does the Home Secretary understand the concern of the people of Berkshire about the large number of out-of-court disposals that are taking place, even for serious crimes such as grievous bodily harm? Is not this a worrying diversion from established local justice?

Mr. Hanson
It is sometimes important to use out-of-court disposals to ensure that there is swift and effective justice, and that we reduce police bureaucracy, exactly as the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) has requested. That is why those out-of-court disposals are taking place. They have a positive benefit for the victims. They also have the positive benefit of not criminalising very young people who would otherwise go on to become involved in much more serious crime downstream.

Christopher Fraser (South-West Norfolk) (Con)
Despite what the Government might say, police officers are spending more time on paperwork. Do the Government disagree with the chairman of the Police Federation, who has said:

“Government red tape is the…obstacle standing in the way”

of increased front-line policing?

Mr. Hanson
I have just given the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) the figures that show that front-line policing has seen its fourth successive annual improvement since 2003-04. The hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Christopher Fraser) will know that Jan Berry and the Police Federation have both been very supportive of the measures that we have taken to date. I am expecting a report from Jan Berry on bureaucracy shortly. The hon. Gentleman will see from the improvement measures that we have taken that there is a real difference on the ground, and that we are putting the police where they should be: on the beat in front of local people.

 MG Rover

15:31:00

Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills if he will make a statement on MG Rover.

I would like to ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills—or his representative on earth—to make a statement on the Companies Act inquiry into the collapse of MG Rover, including an explanation of why the results of the Government’s investigation cannot now be made public in whole or in part.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Ian Lucas)
I am very pleased to be here to respond to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s question. On 31 May 2005, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry appointed Guy Newey QC and Gervase MacGregor, a forensic accountant at BDO Stoy Hayward, to examine the issues raised by the Financial Reporting Review Panel and the events leading up to the appointment of administrators on 8 April 2005.

After the collapse of MG Rover, a number of factors concerning the affairs of the company—including issues raised by the Financial Reporting Review Panel, which examined the published accounts of the Rover Group—resulted in the Secretary of State deciding to appoint Companies Act inspectors to carry out a thorough investigation. The inspectors were appointed under section 432 of the Companies Act 1985 and had wide powers to require documents and the attendance of witnesses, including directors, officers and agents of the company. They investigated the affairs of the MG Rover Group, its parent company Phoenix Venture Holdings, and MGR Capital Ltd, between the purchase of MG Rover Group from BMW in May 2000 and the date of its entering administration. The inspectors are independent of the Department.

The inspectors carried out a thorough review, and delivered their report to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on 11 June 2009. The Secretary of State has studied the report in full and taken legal advice on the next steps. After considering the report in its entirety, he has asked the Serious Fraud Office to review the report and consider whether there are any grounds for a criminal investigation. Following legal advice, this report will not be published at this time, in order to ensure that any criminal investigation or prosecution that the SFO might decide to take is not prejudiced. Publication now could also prejudice the possibility of a fair trial. The discretion of the Secretary of State to publish a Companies Act report when inspectors are appointed under section 432 is only to publish the whole report. The legislation does not provide for the report to be published in part.

Mr. Clarke
Does not that reply show that the Government’s consistent approach to difficult questions about the car industry has always been to put them into the long grass? Does the Minister recall that, on 31 May 2005, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, while declining to answer questions about the Government’s role in the affair, set up the inquiry, saying:

“I have asked them to report to me as quickly as possible and in a form which will enable the report to be made public.”

Does the Minister not accept that four years later, after £16 million-worth of taxpayers’ money has been spent on this inquiry, it is quite inadequate now to decide to refer the issue again—this time to the Serious Fraud Office, which could have been brought in long ago? Is it not obvious that the whole point is to continue to avoid publication and to avoid answering questions about the Government’s own role in this embarrassing affair?

Will the Minister try to answer today, if he is able, the question of why that particular consortium was selected by the Government to buy MG Rover from BMW in the first place, which was never clear? Will he also explain why, before the 2005 election, another Secretary of State spent £6.5 million-worth of taxpayers’ money on a loan to keep the company alive through the general election campaign—a decision later described by the National Audit Office as a waste of public money?

Most particularly and finally, is the Minister not aware that the former MG Rover workers are hoping to benefit from the MG Rover trust fund, which holds £16 million from asset sales, but that none of that money can be disbursed until this report is published? The workers are innocent victims of the Secretary of State’s ingenious discovery of another reason to avoid publication. Will he not reconsider the decision and just reflect on the fact that the Government’s policy towards the car industry today shows the same combination of indecision and inactivity that it has shown on the inquiry into the affairs of the late MG Rover, which we are considering today?

Ian Lucas
I made it clear in my statement that the investigation under the Companies Act 1985 was an independent investigation carried out by individuals who are entirely independent of Government. The length of time taken by the investigation has been the result of the work carried out by the inspectors, and it would have been quite inappropriate for the Government to intervene in that investigation. It is surely the correct decision—as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), as a learned member of the Bar, will be aware—to consider the report and the evidence as a whole before making any decision to refer any investigation to a criminal authority such as the Serious Fraud Office. That is precisely the approach that the Secretary of State has undertaken. The report was delivered as recently as 11 June. The Secretary of State has acted quickly and has made a decision based on consideration of the evidence to refer this matter to the Serious Fraud Office. That decision has not been taken lightly; it is a serious matter and the Secretary of State has taken the entirely correct approach.

It would not be appropriate for me to comment on any allegations concerning the specifics of the history of MG Rover, because any comment I make, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman is well aware, could itself be prejudicial to any future criminal inquiry. I am very well aware of the position of those former employees of the MG Rover group, and of the trust fund, because of the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). I am afraid that it is quite appropriate to refer these matters to the Serious Fraud Office, and until that inquiry and investigation is resolved, I regret that no further steps can be taken with regard to the trust fund.

John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The decision to make a referral in this way raises extremely serious questions—not least, as has already been mentioned, concerning the manner in which the original investment decisions were taken, and what due diligence may or may not have been undertaken with regard both to the deal itself and to those involved in it. It also raises some fairly serious questions about what PricewaterhouseCoopers was doing for four years, and how the process has reached this particular point. In reaching the decision to make a referral to the Serious Fraud Office, what regard did the investigators have to the report of PWC, the administrators, which dealt with whether there was improper conduct? Can we now conclude that prima facie evidence of improper conduct has indeed been found?

May I pursue a point that has already been made? Notwithstanding the Minister’s answer about the employees, it seems remarkably unfair that four years on they should still be waiting for payments. What can the Department do to expedite the payments that may be due to those employees?

Ian Lucas
With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, it would be inappropriate to draw any conclusions at this stage from the Secretary of State’s decision to refer the matter to the Serious Fraud Office. Any specific allegations that have been made will be considered in the context of the report as a whole, and the Serious Fraud Office will report in due course. I think that it is in the interests of all parties for its report to be delivered as expeditiously as possible, but the decisions to be made are in its hands, and we shall simply have to wait until those decisions are made.

Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
May I pass on the apologies of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who would be here if he were not stuck in traffic on his way to the House? May I also point out that Whips, who usually have to remain silent, are none the less present? For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Steve McCabe) is present, but is unable to speak on behalf of his constituents.

I hope that none of the parties will use the MG Rover affair as a political football. Having referred it to the Serious Fraud Office, Ministers have less influence on the timing of the final report than they had before. Once the Minister has been given an indication of how much longer it might be delayed, will he engage in serious discussions on whether the trust fund can be released before its publication? I think that after four years, the most important aspect of the affair must be the position of the workers. They have been most affected by it, and they have a right to look to us to resolve it as quickly as possible.

Ian Lucas
My hon. Friend has made an important point. The position of the former employees of the MG Rover group must now be at the forefront of our minds, and I will do all I can to deal with it as fast as is humanly possible.

Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove) (Con)
As someone who represents a great many former Rover workers, may I tell the Minister that they are simply outraged at the time that it has taken for the report to be completed, and at the £16 million price tag that has been put on it? They now want answers. They want to know why they lost their jobs, and why, on the demise of MG Rover in April 2005, none of the company’s assets still belonged to it. Bearing in mind that there may be an investigation, can the Minister at least put a finite time limit on when the report will be put in the public domain, thereby ensuring that the people who have been most affected by this whole tragic case can have access to the £16 million trust fund that is their desert and right?

Ian Lucas
I have, of course, a great deal of sympathy for the former workers at MG Rover. I well understand their frustration over the time that the investigation has taken. However, as I said earlier, the investigation conducted under the Companies Act was an independent investigation, and it would not have been appropriate for the Government to curtail it. It has been a complex investigation involving a great deal of work over a longer time than any of us would have wished, and for that reason I hope that the further step of referring the matter to the Serious Fraud Office can be dealt with as soon as possible. However, as I have said, the Serious Fraud Office is an independent body, and the matter is now in its hands.

Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I support what my Birmingham colleagues have said about the Rover work force. It is important for the trust issue to be resolved as quickly as possible. If my hon. Friend were to agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), would he ensure that precedents were addressed? I was not able to get reports on, for example, H. H. Robertson—which collapsed in the Tory days—into the public domain. There must be consistency across the piece.

Ian Lucas
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. His parliamentary memory is rather longer than mine, although it is probably not as long as that of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe.

Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con)
Fairly or unfairly, at a time of deep political cynicism among the public, the general feeling will be that this is an attempt to delay an embarrassing admission of guilt until after the general election. Will the Minister therefore say whether it is likely that any parts of this report that are not sub judice will contain criticisms of the Government? Are there any such criticisms of the Government in the report?

Ian Lucas
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, but I regret that it would not be appropriate for me to make specific comments on the content of the report because, as I have already pointed out, these issues are now in the hands of the Serious Fraud Office and any statements that I might make concerning the detail of the report could prejudice further criminal proceedings.

John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I have to make a rather unusual declaration of interest because, along with Mike Whitby and Carl Chinn, I was one of the people who opened negotiations with BMW and then got kicked out as a community representative from the bid, and although we may have residual legal rights, we would not wish to exercise them other than in the interests of the wider community. It is the wider community, of which I too am a representative, that needs to be thought of. A cost of £16 million for a report, plus £16 million in the trust fund, is a lot of money. I therefore ask the Minister to consider whether it might be possible to negotiate a further contribution towards that from the Phoenix directors, to ensure that we can bring this to a conclusion that will benefit those who have suffered the most: the work force.

Ian Lucas
I have already made it clear that I have great concerns for the work force and that I will discuss their position with colleagues in the Department. I am very concerned about the trust fund, and we clearly need to facilitate access to that as soon as possible. At this moment, however, I am afraid that the investigation and the referral to the SFO must take precedence.

Mr. Andrew Mackay (Bracknell) (Con)
During the Minister’s disappointing statement, should he not have apologised for the fact that the Government traduced the previous owners, BMW, whose headquarters are in my constituency, and which did the right thing by the work force by selling for nothing to the new owners? Should he not also apologise for the Government’s failure to accept the bid from Alchemy, which was clearly seen by everybody who knew anything about the industry as the only way to save jobs?

Ian Lucas
I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman was disappointed by my statement, but I do not think it appropriate for the Government to comment on the detail of the report, because the matter has been referred to the SFO.

Mr. Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Everyone shares the desire, which the Minister has pointed to, for a expeditious report, but will he try to ensure that the SFO’s report is comprehensive enough to take into account the actions of the Government in their negotiations before May 2000 when the bid took place? Both my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) have alluded to this concern. There is a feeling that the fraud did not start recently, but may have taken place as much as eight years ago.

Ian Lucas
What comments and statements the SFO will make on the report are entirely a matter for the SFO.

Mr. Rob Wilson (Reading, East) (Con)
Were Ministers or officials at the Department made aware of any concerns about illegal activity taking place at MG Rover at any time over the past four years? Is it really only since receiving the final report that Ministers became aware of a serious fraud?

Ian Lucas
As I have already made very clear, it is appropriate to consider all the evidence in this case. That is the step that was taken by the Secretary of State at the conclusion of the presentation of the report on 11 June, and it is on the basis of the consideration of all the evidence that the matter has now been referred to the SFO.

Speaker’s Statement

15:49:00

Mr. Speaker
I wish to make a brief statement. Last Thursday, at the end of the statement on swine flu, by which time I was no longer in the Chair, the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) raised a point of order about the apparent leaking earlier that day of the contents of my own statement announcing that the deputy speakership posts would be subject to election in the autumn. The Chairman of Ways and Means gave a holding reply to that point of order, and I now wish to respond substantively to it.

I share the dismay of the hon. Member for West Chelmsford that this leak occurred after I had, as I pointed out in my original statement on the deputy speakerships, consulted Government and Opposition Whips, as a matter of courtesy. I am confident that this leak did not come from my staff, and I know that it did not come from me. I wish in future to feel able, in advance of any comparable statement, to consult others before making it. However, I give notice today that if such a leak occurs on any future occasion, I shall no longer feel under any obligation to hold such consultations in advance. I am sorry that I have to be so blunt so early in my speakership, but this sort of behaviour is precisely what harms the reputation of this House, and I do not intend to tolerate it.

 Building our Common Future

15:50:00

The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Douglas Alexander)
With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the White Paper on international development that I am publishing today. Copies of both the White Paper and this statement have been placed in the Vote Office.

We stand at a critical juncture for international development. Although millions have been lifted out of poverty over the past decade thanks to sustained economic growth, reforming Governments, debt relief and increases in aid, much of that progress that we have seen is now imperilled. The global recession, the climate crisis and ongoing conflict and fragility in many countries threaten now to turn back the clock on the development gains made since the beginning of this century. The White Paper therefore sets out how the Government will pursue the fight against global poverty, and places new emphasis on four key areas: supporting growth; tackling climate change; tackling conflict and fragility; and improving the international system. I will say more about each of those areas in turn, but I will first set out the context for the White Paper.

The past decade has, of course, seen real achievements in the fight against global poverty: aid increases and debt cancellation have helped to get 40 million more children into schools around the world; the number of people with access to AIDS treatment has increased from just 100,000 to more than 3 million today; and the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty has fallen from a third to a quarter. Yet it is clear that with 9 million children dying each year, 70 million denied the opportunity to go to school, and a billion people around the world still without enough to eat, the world remains far from meeting the millennium development goals set in 2000.

Now the global recession threatens to trap as many as 90 million more people in poverty, which would push back progress towards the first MDG—the goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger—by as much as three years. The likely impact of the economic crisis is a stark reminder that the gains made in moving towards the MDGs can indeed be fragile. Those gains are also threatened by the advance of climate change—if temperatures continue to rise at current levels, an extra 600 million people will be affected by malnutrition by the end of the century—and by the effects of conflict and poor governance. Each year, at least 740,000 people are killed as a result of armed violence, with many more injured or disabled. So unless all three of those global challenges—the recession, climate change and conflict—are tackled, the MDGs will be pushed further out of reach.

Now is therefore not the time to turn away from the mission to tackle global poverty. I am proud to say that the Government are keeping the promises that we made to dedicate 0.7 per cent. of national income to development assistance by 2013. By next year our assistance will be equivalent to 0.56 per cent. of national income, in line with the European Union’s collective commitment, and by next year we will have nearly trebled our bilateral and multilateral aid to Africa since 2004. Half our global bilateral aid will be invested in public services, helping to get 8 million children into school across Africa, and delivering not only our promised 20 million anti-malaria bed nets by next year, but an additional 30 million treated bed nets by 2013. We will work with others to help developing countries provide free health care to their citizens, and we will press the international community for more support to save 6 million mothers and babies by 2015.

We will continue to tackle sickness, hunger and illiteracy across the developing world. We will also support developing countries to pursue economic growth, to protect their citizens from the impact of climate change, to help resolve conflicts and to build capable, accountable and responsive states.

Let me take each of those challenges in turn. I am sure that we would all accept that growth is the exit route out of poverty and aid dependence. Fifty years ago, income rates in east Asia were equivalent to those in Africa; today, incomes in east Asia are five times higher. In the midst of this recession, we will help to protect 50 million poor people in more than 20 countries from the worst effects of the present downturn. We will press for the rapid delivery of the commitments made by the G20 at the London summit to provide further financial support to the poorest countries. We will work towards concluding a successful and equitable Doha development round that would boost the global economy by more than $150 billion a year.

We will help developing countries to build fairer and more sustainable economic growth, double our agricultural research funding, and provide investment for infrastructure and reforms that will help African countries to trade with each other and the world. The Fairtrade label now certifies more than £1 billion-worth of goods, helping more than 7 million producers and their families around the world. We will continue to support that success story, and indeed quadruple our support for Fairtrade and ethical trading.

We will advance our work with law enforcement agencies to clamp down on bribery and corruption, which have a parasitic effect on many economies. DFID support to the Metropolitan police has already led to the recovery of £20 million of assets and the freezing of £131 million of assets. We will now triple our investment in these efforts, supporting the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service, and helping the Met to pursue more investigations across more countries.

The scale of the economic crisis and its impact on the developing world is now clear, but climate change presents, if anything, an even greater long-term threat to the prospects of alleviating poverty in the developing world. Two weeks ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change launched the UK’s Copenhagen manifesto, setting out our detailed proposals for an ambitious deal in Copenhagen at the end of the year.

This White Paper will ensure that new and additional finance is made available, over and above our aid commitment to reach 0.7 per cent. of gross national income. We will also increase our investment in helping developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change, but set a limit of up to 10 per cent. of official development assistance.

We will also give countries practical support to help in that process of adaptation, including by supporting the world-renowned Hadley Centre to model the effects of climate change in developing countries. We will also encourage low carbon development by investing in clean technology and tackling avoidable deforestation.

Alongside the climate and financial crises, the third great threat to continued progress in reducing global poverty is the continuing and enduring level of conflict and state fragility. One third of the world’s poorest people live in conflict-affected or fragile countries. Half of all children who die before their fifth birthday live in such places. If we are to make further progress towards meeting the millennium development goals, we must work differently in those countries and directly address the causes of war and weak government. Half of all our new bilateral aid will go to fragile and conflict-affected countries. We will place security and justice alongside other basic services—tripling spending on those areas and addressing violence against women in particular as a priority. We will also create jobs, benefiting 7.5 million people in five fragile countries by 2013. In all fragile countries, we will help to develop joint strategies with our colleagues in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. Internationally, we will press for the United Nations, the World Bank and the European Union to provide rapid assistance in the aftermath of conflict.

It is increasingly clear that global challenges demand global solutions. If we want to make real progress in solving the economic crisis, the climate crisis and the persistence of ongoing conflict, we will need to work more, not less, through the international system. But if international institutions are to live up to these new responsibilities, they must become more accountable, more responsive to and more able to address current challenges, and more representative of all their constituents.

The White Paper sets out our strategy for improving the effectiveness of international institutions in tackling global poverty in the years ahead. We will invest a higher proportion of our new aid resources through the international system in return for securing key reforms. Our funding for the United Nations will be subject to performance and will be increasingly channelled in ways that encourage UN agencies to deliver as one in developing countries. We will push for the creation of a single, powerful UN agency for women by merging existing structures and will at least double our core funding for work on gender equality to the UN.

In Europe, we will press for the EU to create a single development commissioner, to re-prioritise resources towards fragile countries in Asia and the middle east and to make poverty reduction a primary aim of all EU external policies such as those on climate and security. We will continue to press for improved governance and performance of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the regional development banks so that they can do more to support poor countries during the downturn. To meet growing humanitarian demands, we will lobby internationally for a stronger humanitarian system and humanitarian access, including through increasing the UN’s central emergency response fund.

In turn, we will maintain our own rigorous focus on aid effectiveness and the effectiveness of DFID as an organisation to deliver on its mission of poverty reduction. At this time of economic challenge, we will work harder than ever to ensure that every pound of UK aid contributes to direct and tangible results. We will prioritise our efforts and work in fewer countries. We will deliver an additional £155 million of efficiency savings by next year by making value for money improvements in our research budget and other areas.

As well as meeting our commitments on aid effectiveness made in the Paris declaration and in the Accra agenda for action last September, we will further improve the transparency of the projects we fund through a new searchable database on our website. We will set aside at least 5 per cent. of budget support funds to help developing countries’ Governments to improve accountability to their citizens. We will establish deeper and broader partnerships with civil society organisations and the private sector, doubling our central support to civil society to £300 million a year and launching a new innovation fund to help community groups and individuals in the UK to support small but innovative development projects.

Finally, as the Select Committee on International Development noted in its recent report, signs that the downturn is beginning to undermine previously strong support in the United Kingdom cause concern for all of us who are concerned about development. The White Paper sets out our plans to do more to help show the UK public how Government assistance is helping to fight poverty, including through the use of the new UKaid logo to increase the visibility of our work.

In conclusion, the mission of the Department for International Development, as clearly set out by the White Paper, will remain reducing poverty and supporting sustainable development. A world in which too many countries lack not only the basics of life but the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations diminishes us all. For the Government—and for many people across the United Kingdom—this is a profoundly moral cause, but in the 21st century development is not merely a moral cause: it is also a common cause.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Speaker
Order. I am extremely grateful, and I am sure that the House will be. However, the Secretary of State modestly exceeded his allotted time. I hope that the House will take it in the proper spirit when I say that in future, in accordance with Standing Orders, I am keen to enforce those time limits, principally in the interests of Back Benchers.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. There is much in the White Paper that we welcome, not least since it adopts a number of themes and specific ideas that the Opposition have been championing now for more than four years. We welcome his commitment to do more on agriculture and to focus on women, who bear the brunt of conflict and poverty. We look forward to hearing how he will breathe new life into the very important Doha process.

This time of economic crisis, which particularly affects the world’s poor, is a time not to withdraw our support but to redouble our international development efforts. Poverty breeds extremism, incubates disease and drives migration and conflict. Tackling poverty and deprivation is not merely a moral duty that we must discharge with passion and rigour—it is also in our best national interest.

It is also a matter of relief to many of our fellow citizens that this is no longer a Labour or Conservative agenda but a British agenda that commands widespread support. The Government are clearly listening to Conservative arguments on international development, particularly on the need to improve our performance in fragile states.

Over the past few years, I have seen for myself the impressive work done by DFID staff in a number of conflict-affected countries—the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Burma, the Somalia border, Iraq, Afghanistan and the west bank—and I pay tribute to DFID’s brave staff, who put themselves in harm’s way in those places. One thing that has emerged from those visits is the intense difficulty of operating effectively in such environments. Security costs are often astronomic. The capacity of the Governments with whom we work is frequently, by definition, very low or non-existent. Insecurity makes monitoring and evaluation difficult. The risk of corruption is high. Local politics is often opaque and complex, and there is a real risk of aid exacerbating tensions.

As the recent highly critical evaluation of DFID’s performance in Afghanistan has shown, we need a dramatic improvement in the effectiveness of our aid in conflict and war zones. What estimate has the Secretary of State made of the increased security cost to his Department of working more in fragile states? He will be well aware of the National Audit Office report that found that only half of DFID projects in the most insecure countries achieve their aims and that almost a quarter suffer from fraud or financial problems. Does he accept that, if we are to get value for money from our spending in those countries, we need radically to improve the quality of our aid effort and demonstrate that through independent assessment and validation, so that any lessons can be learned?

The Secretary of State is rightly keen to raise the profile and visibility of British aid, but he will be aware that, in this age of austerity, spending on rebranding will be very carefully scrutinised. How much does he estimate that the rebranding exercise will cost? What value-for-money inquiries and cost-benefit analysis did he undertake before announcing this policy? Does he recognise the risk that UKaid could be confused with USAID. Does he agree that the most effective way to raise awareness and public support for British aid is to focus on the outcomes and achievements that it generates, rather than on the inputs so beloved of the Government?

The White Paper has been launched during the dying days of this Labour Government. The country and Britain’s international development effort need a renewed sense of direction. There are some good points and sensible suggestions in the White Paper that we strongly support, because many of them originated on this side of the House. I hope that we will all have the opportunity to debate them at more length over the coming months, for the prize of a more effective British international development effort is clear: a better life for millions of people and a safer world for Britain.

Mr. Alexander
I thank the hon. Gentleman both for his welcome of the White Paper and his warm words of congratulations to the staff of the Department. It has been a great privilege for me over the past couple of years to work with an extremely expert, experienced and dedicated staff, and I think that there is a consensus on both sides of the House that they are among the best of British and that they deserve our congratulations.

Although the challenge of climate change is a key theme of the White Paper and we all recognise that recycling is a necessary part of responding to climate change, the hon. Gentleman will notice that we did not accept all the Conservatives’ proposals—for example, the recycled assisted places scheme, under which British aid money would be spent on promoting private education in developing countries. By contrast, the key theme of the White Paper is extending access across the developing world to public education that is available to all. It has not been because of ideological dogma that DFID has come to be recognised as a global leader over the past decade; it is because we have undertaken the hard yards of investing in new schools, new classrooms and new teachers and worked closely with Governments and a range of other organisations, including non-governmental organisations, to deliver those changes.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his brass neck in suggesting that there is widespread support for the DFID budget, as his statement comes only a week after it was exclusively revealed on the Conservative homepage that only 4 per cent. of endorsed Conservative candidates support the protection of DFID’s budget—less than one in 20 does not seem to me to be a commendation of the proposals advanced by Opposition Front Benchers. However, I am confident that, if we take the right steps, there will be a broad consensus in favour of the proposals set out in the White Paper.

The rebranding—the use of the UKaid logo—is a necessary step in response to concerns that the public have expressed not just to the Department but to the International Development Committee about the profile of UK development expenditure. Frankly, perhaps in the past, DFID has been the best-kept secret in the British Government, and I make no apology for the expenditure that has been incurred in making sure that we have branding that will, I believe, resonate with the British public in time, as a reflection of their long-standing commitment to the concerns of international development.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the quality of international aid. Perhaps the most obvious example, given the question that he posed, is Afghanistan. He asked what the independent assessments were. I reflect on the recent Oxfam report on Afghanistan, in which the Department for International Development was highly commended for working, albeit in challenging circumstances, with the Government of Afghanistan. We will continue to pursue that course, with all the necessary caveats relating to corruption and the protection of British taxpayers’ money, because we believe that it offers a better, more sustainable way to deliver aid. Finally, I genuinely believe that there is potential for public consensus on development in the future. I believe that the White Paper takes a significant step towards answering the questions that the British public have had in their minds.

Mr. Michael Moore (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (LD)
May I, too, thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the statement and the White Paper? However, I echo the shadow International Development Secretary’s plea for a full debate on this substantive issue as soon as possible. In a world of enormous disparities of wealth and life experience, we clearly have huge moral responsibilities to provide official development assistance, as the White Paper recognises. However, in a world that is increasingly globalised and interdependent, and where the consequences of poverty, conflict and climate change affect all of us, there is also a clear national interest in supporting developing countries as they tackle challenges of an unprecedented nature and scale.

We on the Liberal Democrat Benches will study the White Paper carefully, but we certainly support the identification of conflict and climate change as key priorities, alongside the still-important focus on poverty, hunger and disease. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the White Paper does not signal a departure from the primary pro-poor focus of his Department? The resources required to deliver on the priorities are underscored by the welcome continued commitment to the 0.7 per cent. target, but we still have no indication of how that spending level will be reached.

In the absence of a comprehensive spending review, will the Secretary of State publish his Department’s detailed planning assumptions, showing how it wants the resources to be allocated in the run-up to 2013? In the absence of a strategic defence review, will he tell us how other Departments will be reconfigured to make effective use of the welcome extra resources planned for conflict issues? On interdepartmental working, will he confirm that as he allocates funding to deal with climate change and conflict to other Departments, his Department’s increased resources will not simply be laundered to the Ministry of Defence and others to bail them out of the Government’s overall Budget crisis?

The Secretary of State’s ambitious agenda is being set out at a time when his Department continues to reduce its staffing complement. Surely that means that ever-larger cheques will be written to international organisations, so how will he ensure that he achieves his avowed intent to improve accountability and transparency in the provision of development assistance? Finally, he pledges the rapid delivery of the recent G20 commitments, but how can anyone take that seriously when a key part of it, the G8 countries, have failed miserably to deliver on the Gleneagles promises of four years ago?

Mr. Alexander
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome endorsement of the themes of conflict and climate change in the White Paper, and indeed for his broad agreement, if that is not to prejudge the debate that I hope we can have in the months ahead on the themes that the White Paper sets out. I am happy to give the confirmation that he seeks that the focus of the Department will remain poverty reduction—the pro-poor focus, as he describes it. The themes that emerged in the White Paper reflected the insights that we have garnered in recent years, which showed us that to deliver fully on the millennium development goals and that pro-poor agenda, we needed better to incorporate climate change, and the challenge of working in fragile and conflict-affected states—and indeed with the whole multilateral system—than we have perhaps done in the past.

As for the Government’s position on forward public expenditure, it is of course the Government’s long-standing position that we will meet the target of 0.7 per cent. by 2013. The credibility of that claim rests not simply on its recent reiteration by our Prime Minister, but on the fact that as recently as the previous spending review, we were clearly on track to meet that commitment, and that continues to be the case.

On the hon. Gentleman’s rather inelegant but challenging phrase about interdepartmental working and the laundering of the DFID budget, I simply ask him to reflect on the fact that it is not a former Prime Minister of the Labour party and a former Foreign Secretary of the Labour party who have, in recent days, argued for the reincorporation of the Department for International Development into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; that proposal came from Members on the Conservative Benches. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are sincere in our commitment that DFID should remain a separate and distinctive Cabinet-rank Department that is determined to work effectively with our colleagues in the Foreign Office and in the Ministry of Defence.

In relation to the issue of accountability and transparency that the hon. Gentleman raises, we have listened carefully to recommendations from the International Development Committee on how we could improve our website to make sure that there is a searchable facility whereby we will be able to provide better and more accessible information, not just here in the United Kingdom, but internationally.

On the hon. Gentleman’s final point, I can assure him that, in the days between now and L’Aquila and in the preceding weeks, the British Government will be and have been arguing with our G8 colleagues that now is the time to publish what could be called a Gleneagles framework whereby the whole world will be able to judge by the time of the L’Aquila summit which countries have met their Gleneagles commitments and which countries have fallen behind. I welcome the fact that as recently as last month one stated categorically that the British Government were meeting their Gleneagles commitments. I hope that in the days between now and L’Aquila, other countries will reflect on their responsibilities and set out credible recovery paths.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Speaker
Order. Eighteen Members are seeking to catch my eye. I am naturally keen to accommodate as many of them as possible. I therefore look to each Member to ask one brief supplementary question and, of course, to the Secretary of State to offer us a characteristically succinct reply.

Hilary Armstrong (North-West Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on this important White Paper. Will he and his fellow Ministers back up the very welcome commitment to seek a single UN agency for women by working with other countries to make sure that they give that commitment and the financial support to such an agency? That will make a tremendous difference in developing countries, where women do most of the work.

Mr. Alexander
Let me begin by succinctly paying tribute to my right hon. Friend’s long-standing concern and campaigning on development issues. I am able to give her the assurance that she seeks. As recently as last week, when Helen Clark, the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, was in the Department, I was able to discuss with her the importance of the coherence of the UN’s effort, and nowhere is that effort more needed than in relation to a single agency dealing with the gender question.

Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for the White Paper, and for taking account of many of the recommendations of the International Development Committee. He is right to say that in the present climate aid, is needed more, not less, and we need public understanding and backing for that. On the conflict country support, will he clarify how many fewer countries the Department will operate in? If 50 per cent. of the bilateral money is going into conflict, what will that mean in a situation where multilateral donations are rising? Can he put a figure on the sum we are talking about?

Mr. Alexander
I fear that I will have the opportunity to answer the right hon. Gentleman’s questions in a great deal more detail shortly, when I appear before his Committee. Let me record my gratitude for the work of the Committee; it has been invaluable in framing our analysis and our prescription in the latest White Paper.

On the specific point that the right hon. Gentleman raises, this is not a sudden handbrake turn for the Department. He is as aware as I am that over recent years we have reduced the number of countries in which we have been working—my recollection is that we have done so by about 10 in recent years. We plan to continue that progress on the basis of the best principles of aid effectiveness, rather than a sudden move towards working in conflict and fragile affected states. However, we also want to see an improvement in the effectiveness of the multilateral system so that some countries can take more of the burden than they have done in recent years.

Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab)
When donor countries pool their resources in multilateral institutions, they raise substantially more people out of poverty per pound spent than when countries go it alone with their own bilateral programmes. I am pleased to see the Government’s commitment to multilateral aid in the White Paper, but what will they do to persuade other countries to do the same?

Mr. Alexander
As in so many areas, I hope the Department has the opportunity to lead by example. I do not see a choice between increasing the resources to the multilateral system and improving our policy influence over those multilateral institutions. I believe we can demonstrate to other donors a continuing—indeed, increasing—commitment to those institutions, at the same time as convincing them that they can have real influence to ensure a progressive outcome to the policy agenda.

Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s emphasis on growth as the only sustainable route out of poverty, and I am delighted that he has decided to reverse the mistaken and long-standing decline in the share of aid going to agriculture and infrastructure, but does he agree that the countries that have been most successful in growing out of poverty are those that have traded out of poverty? Will he therefore put more emphasis on extending duty-free, quota-free access to all low-income countries, not just less-developed countries, and on making more generous and simple the rules of origin, which at present inhibit many countries in taking advantage of duty-free access?

Mr. Alexander
I know that the right hon. Gentleman has prior knowledge of many of those issues from the globalisation report that he published some time ago, but, as the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) suggests from the Front Bench, in relation to economic partnership agreements, some progress has been made on one of the issues that the right hon. Gentleman addressed.

On duty-free and quota-free access, however, there is a judgment to be made about whether we should push the development part of a multilateral deal, or whether we best serve the interests of developing countries by going for a comprehensive conclusion to the Doha round. It would be a great risk at this stage, with the election of a new Congress party Government in India and a more realistic prospect than there has been recently of a breakthrough on Doha in the months ahead, if we averted our gaze from the prize of a Doha deal and looked at what would, none the less, be an important part of a deal for developing countries.

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that no Government have been stronger in their resolve to try to conclude the Doha round than the British Government. Our Prime Minister continues to take a very active role, discussing with Pascal Lamy and others what progress can be made, and, as I have said, on the basis of certain changes among key players, I feel a cautious optimism that we may see real progress in the months ahead.

Mr. Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that the US Government tie US aid very tightly, in some respects, to US foreign policy objectives. Can he confirm that he has no plans to do the same in the UK when it comes to UK aid by, for example, reintegrating DFID with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?

Mr. Alexander
Yes, I am very happy to give my hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks. Distinguished members of the Labour party do not propose that approach; it is, however, the approach of the former Prime Minister and the former Foreign Secretary from the Conservative party.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell
But not that of Conservative Front Benchers.

Mr. Alexander
I hear that it is not the position of Conservative Front Benchers. They do not seem to command the support of the former Prime Minister, the former Foreign Secretary or the prospective candidates of the Conservative party: quite whom they speak for is really for them to answer.

Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury) (Con)
The Minister has made a big virtue of spending an increasing proportion of our aid through international bodies, but does he consider it wise to spend ever-increasing amounts of money through the European Union? It is widely regarded as being pretty poor when it comes to spending money efficiently, and it has been widely criticised for spending money on populations that cannot be described as among the world’s poorest.

Mr. Alexander
Once again, Conservative Back Benchers seem to be rather at odds with Conservative Front Benchers, because, if I recollect properly, the leader of the Conservative party recently made a speech in which he said that the European Union had a key role to play in climate change and in tackling global poverty. However, I do not want to intrude on private grief.

On the hon. Gentleman’s substantive point, I agree that the European Union has a central role to play in tackling global poverty, and I welcome the real strides that have been made in reforming the EU’s development budget in recent years. The case that we will make towards the end of the year for a powerful single EU development commissioner will strengthen the arm of those who want further reform in the EU. However, this issue exposes a fundamental difference between the parties: some on the Opposition Front Bench argue for multilateralism but do not command the support of all their party; on the Government Benches, there is a universal consensus that there should be excellence in our bilateral programme and that we should work multilaterally to tackle global poverty.

Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
In congratulating my right hon. Friend on the extremely effective and compassionate work carried out by his Department, whose role before its existence was one responsibility of a junior Minister in the Tory Foreign Office, may I ask what success he is having in getting aid into Gaza, which I know he has visited, but off which in international waters last week the Israeli navy committed an act of piracy against an aid ship and kidnapped its crew?

Mr. Alexander
I am grateful for the words offered by my right hon. Friend, who has a long-standing commitment not just to the concerns and suffering of the people of Gaza, but to people throughout the developing world. He knows, as I do, that the Government have been pressing hard on the Israeli Government to allow not simply access for the aid we have provided, but for aid workers from a range of British NGOs to undertake their vital humanitarian work. We have not seen the progress that all of us, from all parts of the House, would have liked from the Israeli Government, but we continue to press the case for humanitarian supplies to be allowed free and unfettered access to Gaza. Ships should not need to travel to the coast of Gaza, because there should be free and unfettered access in Rafah and at the other land-based crossings, and I assure my right hon. Friend that we will continue to press that case to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Ministers.

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
I have learned from my discussions with Commonwealth Members of Parliament that the thing that upsets them more than almost anything else about international aid is how much of it is spent on consultants’ reports, which are fairly widespread when aid is given, not only by the UK but by countries throughout the world. Will the Secretary of State assure us that he will look critically at how much of his departmental money goes on consultants’ reports? Will he ensure that the money spent on them is minimised as much as possible so that more money gets through to the front line?

Mr. Alexander
I shall be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman on that matter. I shall set out the details in the letter, but my recollection is that there has been such a reduction recently. However, I come back to the latest independent review of DFID’s work; it said that DFID was a world leader in aid effectiveness. That did not happen by chance, but by choice. We are continually looking at how we can deliver aid most effectively. Obviously, that varies from country to country, but I am glad to say that we have made progress that has established DFID as a global leader in recent years. However, we are never complacent.

Barry Gardiner (Brent, North) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that poverty reduction requires us to focus on climate change; that was a welcome part of his statement. Will he go slightly further and recognise that in tackling climate change as part of the anti-poverty strategy, we must focus on land-use change and ecosystem services, which are a part of the parcel?

Mr. Alexander
I recognise the centrality of both those issues to the challenges described in the White Paper and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the service and work that he has undertaken, particularly on forestry.

In 2005, I was privileged in taking seven busloads of my constituents to the streets of Edinburgh in our shared plea to make poverty history. Unless we now engage in the policy consequences and challenges of climate change, poverty will become the future for billions of our fellow citizens. That insight underpins the policy prescriptions of the White Paper.

Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC)
What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the non-governmental aid organisations about prioritising some of the budgets on security and justice? Given their aims and campaigns, does he enjoy their full and unqualified support for that prioritisation?

Mr. Alexander
Anybody with even a fleeting acquaintance with development NGOs in the United Kingdom knows that they never agree with each other, never mind with every paragraph of a White Paper—even one from the Department for International Development. In recent weeks, we have been unstinting in our efforts to try to ensure a genuine consultation and dialogue with the NGOs; if I remember rightly, we have had eight or nine regional consultation events around the country to make sure that not only London-based NGOs, but those right across the United Kingdom, can contribute.

We have received about 2,500 responses to the White Paper from a range of institutions, individuals and organisations. Some of the concerns that they might have had about our full commitment to NGOs have been answered by the doubling of our funding to civil society organisations. Whatever issues they might have about the focus on conflict in fragile affected states, they are issues on which we can work with NGOs in the years ahead.

Tom Levitt (High Peak) (Lab)
In eight weeks’ time, I shall be in Tanzania—at my own expense—looking at what is being done by British university students working in Tanzanian schools for the summer. They are there under the auspices of READ International, a charity of which I am patron. Does my right hon. Friend agree that however good the relationships between voluntary organisations in this country and services in developing countries, and between our Government and Governments such as Tanzania’s, our aim has to be to ensure that the capacity of Governments in developing countries is sufficient for them to make their own decisions about how they manage services such as education? That is preferable to a paternalist or dogmatic approach to the sort of education that should be delivered, which appears to be the message coming from some on the Conservative Benches.

Mr. Alexander
I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of capacity-building and the continuing country-led development that runs like a golden thread through the White Paper. I pay tribute to the organisation he describes and to the thousands of others across the United Kingdom that undertake vital contributions to the task of development. Their work inspired us to announce a new innovation fund in the White Paper. It will allow small organisations in constituencies across the country to apply for often small sums that could facilitate exactly the kind of visit that my hon. Friend is making.

Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con)
I applaud the renewed emphasis on agriculture and infrastructure. What are the two biggest research projects that the Secretary of State’s Department is undertaking, and from which other projects does he intend to save £155 million?

Mr. Alexander
We are undertaking a significant programme of agricultural research; we committed £1 billion towards research only last year. I will set out the figures for the hon. Gentleman in correspondence later. We have looked carefully at finding ways better to align that spend in what is a significant envelope to ensure that we get the most effective return. Our particular focus on agricultural research, which has moved up the agenda relative to the traditional health research that we have performed for several years, stems from our belief that it is the most effective way of engaging effectively within agriculture. Under a previous Government, there were a large number of agronomists within DFID, as well as many field-based workers. That is no longer the most effective contribution that we can make, which is instead to contribute to the raising of agricultural productivity, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, in a manner that was achieved on the Indian sub-continent 20 to 30 years ago.

Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I very much welcome the new emphasis on fragile and conflict countries and my right hon. Friend’s intention to develop joint strategies with the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office. Should the statutory definition of poverty reduction be found to be a hindrance in that development of joint strategies, either here or in working with other countries, will he have an open mind in reconsidering some of those parameters?

Mr. Alexander
I read with some interest a recent report indicating that statutory change was necessary, but that has not been my experience as Secretary of State for International Development; indeed, I struggle to think of a single instance where I have felt constrained in the choices put before me under landmark legislation passed by this Labour Government. It is vital that we continue to be trusted as an organisation that sees poverty reduction as its core task, while at the same time working in an effective and collaborative manner with our colleagues in the Foreign Office and the MOD.

Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Kettering-based charity, Casa Alianza, is a world leader in providing effective aid to street children, particularly in central America, many of whom suffer abuse at the hands of state authorities and local and national police forces. What emphasis does the White Paper place on helping the growing number of street children across the world?

Mr. Alexander
The White Paper contains language on the challenge of urbanisation, which is directly related to the issue of street children. There is a strong and continuing focus on the need to provide basic health services, which are essential to the needs of street children. At the same time, we are considering the challenge of providing education, because many street children find themselves in circumstances where they are denied formal education. We are also seeking to increase our investment in social protection, because in many households it is the absence of income that has driven children on to the streets. I applaud the efforts of the charity in question, which are reflected in several other charities working on this important issue across the United Kingdom. If the hon. Gentleman sends me further details of the charity, I shall certainly be interested to have a look at them.

Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend will be aware of the growing concern in Parliament and beyond about the scandal of vulture funds. How will the White Paper allow the Government to further their work in tackling this issue?

Mr. Alexander
The formal answer to my hon. Friend is that my colleagues in the Treasury lead on these issues. I would simply reflect on the fact that, as in other areas of policy, the challenge is to build a consensus on how we can move forward. I recognise that there is strong pressure growing as regards vulture funds. I take heart from the fact that in an equivalent campaign in relation to tax havens, we have seen, as a result of the leadership of our own Prime Minister at the G20, decisive action that I hope will be taken forward in Pittsburgh in September.

Mr. Shailesh Vara (North-West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The House is aware that many of the countries to which funds go have high levels of corruption and the leadership probably have overseas bank accounts. In the interests of proper accountability, is the Secretary of State able to give us a percentage of the amount of money given by his Department that reaches the people for whom it is intended rather than a Swiss bank account?

Mr. Alexander
It is a sad fact that corruption is both a cause and a consequence of poverty, and it is almost inevitable that if we have a Department focused on global poverty reduction, it will be working in environments where there is a real challenge in relation to bribery and corruption. It is for exactly that reason that we put such emphasis on building the capacity and public financial management of those countries. However, we have a zero-tolerance policy in relation to the misuse of British aid, and if the hon. Gentleman is aware of any examples of aid being misused anywhere across our global network, I will be grateful to take receipt of them.

David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I also welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. He will be aware of a recent meeting that I had with him and an agency called Christian Blind Mission, which works in the field of preventive procedures against blindness and child poverty right across the developing world. Does he agree that organisations such as CBM and others in the UK deliver the value for money that he mentioned in his statement?

Mr. Alexander
As I shared with the hon. Gentleman when I met him and a representative of CBM, I think my ancestors would cry out if I did not pay tribute to such organisations, given that both my grandfather and grandmother were medical missionaries. We are fully aware of the contribution that organisations such as CBM have made over many years to tackling the scourge of blindness in the developing world.

I also shared with the hon. Gentleman the recent experience that I had on the Thai-Burma border, where a Scottish surgeon, using his holidays from work as an NHS surgeon in Aberdeen, had flown out and people had walked across the border from Burma to receive free treatment at a hospital on the border. I hugely admire the work of not just CBM but many other committed people of conscience and good will in this field. I would certainly welcome the opportunity to take forward our dialogue with that organisation.

Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind)
I warmly welcome the White Paper, with one caveat, which perhaps the Secretary of State’s grandparents would agree with. Malaria is killing millions of people, particularly children under five, in sub-Saharan Africa, yet it is not one of the key priorities such as climate change and conflict. Will he look again at that and ensure that we do nothing to threaten the funding for malaria research and prevention, and indeed consider increasing it? That is one of the key ways in which we can help the world.

Mr. Alexander
I should correct the hon. Gentleman. I emphasised in my remarks the fact that we are taking forward our spending on malaria. I am glad to say that we will be increasing the number of treated bed nets that we were committed to prior to the White Paper, because I have seen for myself in developing countries, and our experts have seen, case after case in which insecticide-treated malarial bed nets can make a huge difference to the rate of infection and reinfection. That is why I made a judgment that we should not end our commitment at 2010 but take it forward thereafter, and I am proud to reiterate that today.

 Opposition Day

[15th Allotted Day]

Young People in the Recession

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord)
I have to tell the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

16:37:00

Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I beg to move,

That this House deeply regrets that young people are amongst the principal victims of the recession; is profoundly concerned that limits on entry to higher education mean tens of thousands of suitably qualified young people will be left without a university or college place in autumn 2009; is concerned by reports that graduates face the worst job prospects for decades; regrets that the number of young people starting an apprenticeship is falling and that the number of young people not in any kind of education, employment or training has risen to nearly one million; regrets that Ministers did not support proposals to fund 25,000 new Masters degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects in this year’s Budget; and calls on Ministers to refocus Train to Gain provision to provide 100,000 extra training places and support the thousands of apprentices who risk losing their training places during this recession.

Youth is bound to hope. Benjamin Disraeli wrote that

“the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.”

As the recession bites, young Britons are being bitten hard; their hopes torn apart, their futures damaged. I move this motion, in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, in sorrow. We are sorrowful for the school leavers who hoped to go to university but will not; sorrowful for the graduates who hoped to find good jobs but cannot; sorrowful for the forgotten army of 1 million youths not in education, employment or training, who once dared to dream but now do not. Every Member of the House should share my sorrow that Britain in 2009 has come to this, and share my anger at a Government who could have done more and should do better.

As the economy shrinks, unemployment grows. The number of NEETs went up even in the good times. As the economy grew, we failed to give opportunities to young people, so what hope for them now? I hope that the Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property, who I know is a man of good faith and cares about these things, will apologise for the fact that we failed to provide opportunity for so many young Britons in constituencies such as his and mine. He knows that, as the economy grew and jobs were created, three out of four went to people coming into Britain rather than to people already here. As the demand for skills grows, the number of learners in further education plummets, advanced apprenticeship places fall and adult learning has all but disappeared from communities throughout the country.

As Britain’s chance to compete becomes ever more dependent on a highly skilled, educated work force, the number of people with level 3 skills and above remains less than that in France and in Germany. According to the OECD, Britain is ranked 17th out of 30 nations for the number of people with above low skills. The UK suffers from a burning skills shortage; throughout industry, companies are firefighting that disaster and need a swift and effective response to the crisis. Almost two thirds of companies need skilled workers to satisfy demand, with shortages particularly keenly felt in the energy, water, engineering and construction sectors, according to the training provider, Empower Training Services Ltd.

I want to put it on record that I value the work of trade union learning representatives—I know that that applies to those on the Treasury Bench and hon. Members of all parties. They will therefore be as interested as I am to consider the TUC’s most recent report on Britain’s skills gap. It states that throughout Europe, between 40 and 45 per cent. of young people between the ages of 20 and 24 are in education or training—nearly double the UK rate. It states that 40 per cent. of adults aged 25 to 59 in work in the UK have no education beyond the age of 16, compared with 32 per cent. in France and only 13 per cent. in Germany. It also states that in France and Germany, between 60 and 65 per cent. of the population have qualifications equivalent to NVQ level 2 or above compared with only 40 per cent. in the UK.

I hope that Ministers will not go into denial today. I hope for a refreshing bout of honesty when they speak in the debate. If that happens, it will be clear that the number of those not in education, employment or training has grown by approximately 50,000 under Labour. The Government themselves class one in six 18-year-olds as NEETs, the highest figure since records kept under the current method began in 1994. We are failing those youngsters—failing to give them hope, opportunity and a chance to be the best they can. Failing them means failing us all; it is not right that Britain’s hopes should be dashed in that way. The Government know that it is not right, and we know that they are not right for Britain.

Let us consider details that some on the Treasury Bench will find difficult. I do not want to be unnecessarily unkind; none the less, the House and the people we represent have a right to explore those details. First, let us consider university entrants. University clearing places are expected to fall by two thirds—that is why we highlighted university entrants in the motion. An estimated 16,000 new course places will be available on A-level results day, compared with some 43,000 in 2008. Despite that staggering fall, research suggests that demand for degree courses increased by almost 65,000. The Government have effectively put a hold on the number of university places in September, due to growing pressure on public finances. There are expected to be around 650,000 undergraduate courses this year. Any chance that the Government ever had of reaching their 50 per cent. target now looks remote.

The Million Plus group of universities says that that cap will leave thousands of bright teenagers on benefits. It states:

“Young people who might have gone to university face the real prospect of being relegated to the ranks of the long-term unemployed, with all the personal, family and health… consequences which this brings.”

Interestingly, unlike in earlier recessions, a wide range of social groups will be affected. The group argues that everyone will be affected, from working-class school leavers to middle-class students. Some research suggests that students from the least advantaged backgrounds who, typically, tend to apply later for university, may be worst hit. That is certainly the view of the National Union of Students. Indeed, NUS president Wes Streeting has said:

“I have no doubt that those worst affected will be from the very backgrounds this government has sought to attract.”

So much for widening participation.

It has been reported in The Times that

“when the Government cut 5,000 places for this autumn, just as the recession was prompting record numbers of applications, a serious squeeze became inevitable.”

The Higher Education Funding Council has warned universities that they will suffer a cut in funding if they try to increase numbers. What does that mean in practice? The Minister knows the answer, so I hope that he will endorse, if not every word I say, then much of the sentiment. As a result of the changes,

“popular universities will stick rigidly to their offers so as not to exceed their quotas, rather than allowing some flexibility for promising candidates who don’t quite make their grades. And there will be far fewer places in clearing”.

That is what all the reports from the universities and elsewhere are telling us.

The Minister for Further Education, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs (Kevin Brennan)
I am sure that the House would like to learn what the hon. Gentleman’s pledges for this year would be if he were in government, so would he care to tell us how many additional university places he would pledge to fund this year and whether he would match the Government’s September guarantee for each 16 and 17-year-old to have a place in education or training this year?

Mr. Hayes
The hon. Gentleman anticipates the exciting part of my speech, which comes later—[Interruption.] I should have said “the even more exciting part of my speech, which comes later,” when I shall regale the House with Conservative proposals and set out just how much better things could be and what a brighter future the Conservatives could bring in. However, I do not want to be rushed into that. I want to build the excitement among those on the Treasury Bench before satiating their demands for Conservative policy announcements.

The Minister, whom I welcome to his new role, will know that last year some 44,000 students won their places through clearing, but that figure could be halved this autumn. I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate he will indicate his projections for the number of students who will gain a place through clearing.

What about those who leave university? What are the prospects for graduates? The think-thank Centre for Cities says that between now and 2011, long-term youth unemployment will almost treble. Figures for short-term unemployment show that 900,000 young people are currently unemployed, but youth unemployment is expected to exceed 1 million in 2010. Some 16,835 graduates—roughly 8 per cent.—were unemployed six months after finishing their degrees, which compares with around 6 per cent. in the previous year. Five per cent. of graduates who were working were working in “elementary occupations”, which is an increase of about 1 per cent. on the previous year. The number of students finding a place on “the milk round” has dropped by a third, as companies are forced to cut back.

Only 13 per cent. of university students received a job offer by March of their final years. Graduates in medicine and dentistry are the most likely to be in work, but there are many other disciplines where the prospects for employment—particularly employment relating directly to the degree studied, thereby matching graduates’ hopes, aspirations, talents and ambitions—are limited. Indeed, more than one in 10 students with architecture, building or planning degrees are jobless, a figure that is of course linked with the decline in the housing market.

David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
I am listening to my hon. Friend with great interest. Does he agree that when people leave university with degrees in surf studies, as they do from Plymouth university, it is hardly surprising that they are unable to find jobs that match their expectations?

Mr. Hayes
I would never want to say anything disparaging about Plymouth—or indeed any other part of this kingdom—and I would particularly not want to disparage our higher education system. However, it is absolutely right that, knowing the figures, people who consider their futures at school and beyond will increasingly look to those courses that are most likely to reward them with employment. That is a natural consequence of the process.

I am not utilitarian: I believe in study for its own sake. I believe in the power of learning, because it elevates people and builds a better nation. I believe in education for democratic citizenship. One of the reasons why I so resent the attack launched by Ministers on adult and community learning is not that adult and community learning typically takes people into further study and then into employment, although it often does, but that it has a worth beyond all that: it has a value for its own sake.

Christopher Fraser (South-West Norfolk) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Hayes
I will happily give way to my hon. Friend, who is a great authority on this matter, and who regularly defends adult and community learning in his constituency.

Christopher Fraser
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that endorsement. Does he accept that not every child is academic, and that vocational skills are equally important if young people are to play a role in getting us out of this recession and in creating the prosperity that this nation deserves?

Mr. Hayes
My hon. Friend is right. That is why the Conservatives have championed practical learning and made a strong case for the kind of vocational education and training that he rightly advocates. I will say a little more about that in a few moments.

In the Government’s new guide, “Life after graduation”, they have advised graduates to seek work in call centres. Professor Alan Smithers, the director of education and employment research at Buckingham university has said:

“This is a pretty gloomy analysis of graduate prospects”,

and so it is. Graduates face difficult times, and aspirant university and college students face a bleak future.

What of vocational learning of the kind that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Christopher Fraser) has identified as so critical? It is critical for our economy because of the skills gaps that I mentioned earlier. It is also critical for the lives of many people who, through the acquisition of a skill or a craft, gain meaningful purpose as well as work. They gain a sense of pride and worth through real accomplishment.

Sadly, however, new statistics show a significant drop in the number of teenagers starting apprenticeships this year. In the academic year 2008-09, there was an 8.3 per cent. fall in the number of 16 to 18-year-olds taking up apprenticeships. There was a 2 per cent. fall in the number of 19 to 24-year-olds starting apprenticeships. There were 196,600 apprenticeship starts in the first nine months of 2008-09, and 80,200 apprenticeship framework achievements. There is a real problem with completion, though I acknowledge that the Government have made some improvements in that area. The Minister will say that, and it is important for me to say it, too. However, in return for that act of straightforwardness and—dare I say it?—generosity, will he for the first time acknowledge the plain truth that the number of level 3 apprenticeships represents a significant problem and that it has fallen on his watch? Level 3 was once the level at which all apprenticeships were fixed, and it still is among most of our competitors. Given the decline in level 3 apprenticeships, is it any wonder that many commentators believe that Britain will fail to compete as we acquire the skills that we desperately need? I hope that we will have a refreshing bout of honesty from the Minister about apprenticeships when he makes his speech.

Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Even though the Government have provided some assistance, 2,000 apprentices in the building industry have lost their apprenticeships as a result of losing their jobs in recent months, and only 36 per cent. of them have subsequently found another job. That means that more than 1,000 youngsters who were training for a skill now have no opportunity to continue to do so. If 1,000 university children had been unable to continue their courses because their university had closed, my goodness, there would have been a rumpus. Middle-class people would have marched in the streets. Is it not time that we did something for those apprentices?

Mr. Hayes
It is certainly time that we rejuvenated the apprenticeship system, valued practical learning and invested in vocation training in the way in which my hon. Friend for South-West Norfolk has identified. He is right, frankly—for too long, we have assumed that the only form of accomplishment is academic. That is not good enough; it is failing Britain and many Britons.

The Minister for Employment (Jim Knight)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way with his usual courtesy. I was interested in the intervention we heard from the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald). As I recall, the only game in town at the moment for the construction industry is the investment put into school buildings and other public buildings—financed by the accelerated capital programme and the fiscal stimulus that this Government support. Does the hon. Gentleman support that?

Mr. Hayes
The Minister is not entirely right, because level 3 apprenticeship numbers in the construction industry did not grow when the economy grew in anything like the measure they should. The Minister will know, although I do not want to parody Polish plumbers, builders, carpenters and so forth, that rather than take advantage of the growth in building over the past 10 years to give the kind of start that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) wants to give so many young people, we typically under-invested in training and under-supplied our key industries with our own people as a result and imported a great deal of labour. This is an open secret, is it not? Everyone in my constituency is aware of that, and I suspect that everyone in the House is too, so it is time that members of the Treasury Bench faced up and admitted it.

Lynda Waltho (Stourbridge) (Lab)
I want to go back to an earlier point. I was impressed when the hon. Gentleman gave the Government credit for increasing apprenticeships vastly. I am desperately looking through my notes—I cannot find the figures—but I know that we are up to about 250,000. We need to compare that with 1997, when I was teaching young people about to leave school in the run-up to 1997. I was teaching them how to fill in UB40 forms at that time, but the opportunities have vastly increased under this Government. On Friday, I am going to visit a construction industry project in Wolverhampton, which is aimed at bringing homes up to a decent standard. About 30 young people have already been taken on and another 25 will soon join them. It is clear that the system is working very well in some places.

Mr. Hayes
It is important that we in the House give credit where it is due, try to debate these matters dispassionately and do not resort to party political knockabout. Let me say that I have no doubt that many Labour Members, who I have heard frequently articulating their case, believe in apprenticeships as passionately as I do. I do not believe that the issue divides us along party lines, but it is a simple fact that for a very long time we have underestimated the force, the significance and the value of vocational learning and training. This may indeed go back further than 1997, but it has certainly not got much better since. I hope that when I come to announce our exciting policies—I know that enthusiasm is mounting—the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho) will greet them in the right spirit with the even-handed, open-minded, non-partisan enthusiasm that she personifies.

Natascha Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I apologise for it in advance, but I want to make a political gibe. When I worked in the union movement, I was involved with workplace learning, so I know how difficult it was after 1997 to rebuild the apprenticeship system that had been completely destroyed before 1997. Where we have got to now is an absolute miracle, given where we started from—as I say, after the complete destruction of apprenticeships and all kinds of workplace learning.

Mr. Hayes
The hon. Lady is straying into the kind of denial in which I suggested Government Members should not indulge. She will know that further education college numbers have fallen. She will know that level 3 apprenticeships have not grown at the rate Ministers occasionally claim they have—although not with too much conviction, as they know the figures as well as we do. She will know, I am sure, about the collapse in adult learning that I described. She will also know about the growing number of NEETs. I think it ill behoves her to make exaggerated claims for the Government’s achievements in this regard when the facts tell an entirely different story.

Christopher Fraser
rose—

Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD)
rose—

Mr. Hayes
I will give way to the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), but then I must make a little progress.

Simon Hughes
I am glad that there appears to be general consensus that apprenticeships are a fantastically good and useful thing. As I said during Prime Minister’s questions on Wednesday, I commend the Government for the announcement that they made last week. However, it appears—I hope that Ministers will respond to this point—that the new package for those under 25 who have not been employed for a year may not pay them for long enough to enable them to do the work that would allow them to gain the proper qualification that an apprenticeship confers. Those who advise me, including my local authority chief executive, believe that the payment is for only 32, 33 or 34 weeks, which will not allow them to obtain the work plus the opportunity to gain the qualification that they must have in order to take the next step.

Mr. Hayes
The hon. Gentleman tempts me to go off at a tangent and speak about apprenticeships in more detail than I intended, but although I know that the House wishes me to speak at inordinate length, I will resist that temptation in order to give others a chance to speak. I will simply say that, for an apprenticeship to be meaningful, it must do three things. First, it must confer real competences. Secondly, it must be workplace-based and mentored so that people are given a real taste of the world of work. Thirdly and fundamentally, it must increase the individual’s employability. That is partly about placement, partly about frameworks and partly, as the hon. Gentleman has said, about the way in which apprenticeships are managed and funded.

According to a recent report from the Skills Commission, which Ministers will have at their fingertips:

“Too few teenagers… are starting apprenticeships, partly because of poor careers guidance… expansion of the apprenticeship programme must not come at the expense of quality.”

I think that that was the point made by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey.

We need to ensure that those who advise young people understand the importance and value of apprenticeships. One survey revealed that teachers who gave advice and guidance knew so little about apprenticeships that the only subject about which they knew less was the Welsh baccalaureate. While the Welsh baccalaureate may be a fine thing in itself, it is not as relevant to people across Britain as I hope apprenticeships should be.

The Skills Commission says that although the number of apprenticeships is rising, only 130,000 businesses out of 1.3 million take apprentices on. That is what I meant when I told the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) that we should be modest in what we say. The commission also says that the Government should

“fully fund apprenticeships for everyone up to the age of 25—raising the age from 19.”

At present, there is a disparity between post-19 and pre-19 funding.

Let me now tell the House what we will do. Our motion complains about the Government’s failure in respect of university places, graduates, young people who are disengaged, and training, but Members will want to know what the exciting alternative is.

We do not merely propose new policies. We propose a whole new approach: a new way of thinking about education, and a new way of preparing children and young adults for the skills that they need. We will tackle the NEETs problem head-on with a £100 million-a-year package building on best practice, which is often in the charitable, voluntary and community sectors. We will provide bite-sized chunks of learning so that people can engage in the education that they need in the way that is most suitable for them.

People who were failed by the system first time around need to be handled carefully and skilfully, and we know how that can be done because there is evidence of its being done to best effect. We will provide an independent advice and guidance service with a presence in every school and college, and a high-street presence as well, to give young people the best possible advice. We will make apprenticeships easier by encouraging companies to run them, cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, instituting direct payments to employers, creating financial incentives for them to take on apprentices, and making more Government funding available upfront.

We will inject £775 million in support through lifelong learning accounts to provide a careers service of the kind that I mentioned and an apprenticeship programme of which we can be proud. We will also put an additional fund in place: a further £100 million a year so that we can rebuild the infrastructure of adult and community learning, which has been so eroded under this Government. [Interruption.] Well, as the Minister knows, the way we will fund that is by—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. We cannot have these sedentary interventions. It is much more helpful if any hon. Member who wishes to say something rises and does so in the usual way.

Mr. Hayes
The Minister knows very well that we intend to fund that through dismantling the Government’s Train to Gain scheme. Although it does some good work, it is cost-ineffective, has an immensely inefficient brokerage service, and has a dead-weight cost—which, other than the Government, almost everyone I have spoken to in industry, colleges and everywhere else acknowledges. It also often accredits existing skills rather than adds new ones. Apprenticeships are a much more effective way of training people. They are predictable and time-limited; we know what they cost and the value of the skills they confer. Adult learning is also critical, as it provides a bridge into learning for those who may have been out of learning, such as women returning to the workplace or previously disengaged young people.

Lynda Waltho
rose—

Mr. Hayes
I shall make some progress, as I want to pose the following questions to the Minister before I conclude, but I hope that I might have a chance to give way once more before I sit down.

Does the Minister expect the number of NEETs to continue to rise in the coming 12 months, and if so, by how much? Can the Minister explain why there was already a growing number of NEETs before the recession took hold? Will the Minister say why in May it was revealed that only 30 of the 1,395 apprentices on public sector training schemes were new employees, and why 98 per cent. of those on the Government skills national apprenticeship pathfinder schemes are already in the civil service? Will the Minister tell us his plan for the anticipated nightmare scenario when thousands of bright students may not be able to get the university or college place that they need? Will he also say a word about why there are so few apprenticeships at the Olympics site?

It is time for Ministers to forget the rhetoric and face the facts. Just a month ago, the independent think-tank Centre for Cities estimated that, under current Government policies, youth unemployment was set to triple. While we fail to act, we fail to help a generation of young people reach their potential. The House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs concluded two years ago that many who “could and should benefit” from apprenticeships have not done so. The economists David Bell and David Blanchflower said in a Bank of England paper that applications from people from non-professional backgrounds have not risen for the past four years and there is talk of short-term sticking plasters.

This is the choice that we face: short-term sticking plasters or long-term reform. That is why we have taken the tough choices that I have described, with real investment in apprenticeship places. That is why we believe that the Government should make economies to pay for 25,000 extra masters degrees in STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—to help graduates in the coming months and years who cannot find the jobs that they need. I believe that a generation who have so much to offer should not be deprived of the education and training that they need. We offer hope for the future and a vision of a highly skilled Britain—a vision in which craft is elevated.

We have heard so much about Government failure; is this the best that the Government can do? Do Ministers seriously expect those whom they represent to stand for this? Is this really all that Britain can be?

I say that Britain is entitled to expect more. Government can do more, and Britain can be more, greater and better, but it will not be so unless we change direction. Until we head towards hope—new hope, a new Britain, a new Conservative Government.

17:09:00

The Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property (Mr. David Lammy)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“recognises this Government’s commitment to not repeating the mistakes of past recessions, and to ensuring young people are not trapped in long-term unemployment; notes since 1997 there are 300,000 extra students in higher education and public funding has increased by over 25 per cent. in real terms; praises this Government’s commitment to helping graduates through the downturn, including an ambition for 5,000 extra internships this autumn; notes investment in apprenticeships is over £1 billion this year and that in 1997 there were only 65,000 starts compared to 225,000 in 2007-08; further notes the success of Train to Gain in supporting over 1.2 million course starts; further notes the September Guarantee offering all 16 to 17 year olds an apprenticeship, school, college or training place; and commends this year’s Budget for investing £1 billion in the Future Jobs Fund to guarantee a job, training or work experience for every young person unemployed for 12 months, part of a £5 billion investment in tackling unemployment.’.

I welcome this debate. We all know that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) cares passionately about apprenticeships and formal adult learning, and he expresses that with a great amount of humour, usually in Committee or in this Chamber. This afternoon, not only have we seen that humour on display again, but he has shown a great deal of audacity by calling this debate in order to slash Train to Gain numbers to fund his half-proposals.

We have heard nothing from the hon. Gentleman about the central issues that are important to young people in this recession. I thought that the Conservatives might finally be up front about the £610 million of cuts to our universities and skills budgets announced by the Leader of the Opposition in a flurry on 5 January—those cuts would have a particularly catastrophic impact on young people—but of course we heard nothing about them. I thought that we might hear whether the Conservatives now support our ambition to enable 50 per cent. of young people to go to university, but of course we heard nothing about that. I thought that we might hear whether the Conservatives now support our policy to raise the participation age in education and training to 18, but we heard nothing about that. I thought that we might hear whether the Conservative party will match our September guarantee of a paid-for place in education or training for every 16 and 17-year-old, but we heard nothing about that from the hon. Gentleman.

Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con)
The 50 per cent. target was an ambition of the former Prime Minister for some a considerable time—I believe for 10 years. Given that we have never reached more than 42 per cent., does the Minister agree that it is time to stop looking at numbers and targets and, instead, to concentrate efforts on children and teenagers who need more practical help, such as that provided by the apprenticeship schemes? We should not be focusing on that ambiguous target of 50 per cent. which neither this Government nor the next one are likely to reach.

Mr. Lammy
I am surprised then that the hon. Lady and her party do not support the September guarantee for 16 and 17-year-olds. She will be surprised to learn that the Leader of the Opposition proposes to cut £610 million from the Department’s budget, and I hope that she has written to him about that. I am surprised that she also disagrees with the concerns that her Front-Bench team have expressed in the motion about young people’s chance of attendance at university.

However, let us first concentrate on what we all agree on. All hon. Members could cite many examples from their constituencies of the local effects of this global recession, whether on an 18-year-old struggling to find their first job or on a 55-year-old facing up to redundancy for the first time. So let me restate my conviction, and that of all my Labour colleagues, that those suffering from the downturn have a right to expect the support of the state, because the cost of failure is high. Those of us who grew up in the 1980s in inner-city communities such as the one that I represent or in other parts of our country, particularly former coal mining areas, recognise what it was like at that time to be cast aside and cut adrift with the failed youth training scheme. We know, only too acutely, how important it is that the Government are on the side of our young people, investing in them, not cutting budgets—that is what I hope to set out.

We should invest when the times are good, as we did when others opposed us. This Government increased the number of young people going to university. Last year, 330,000 people from England were accepted to a university, compared with 250,000 in 1997, with the percentage of young people from the poorest backgrounds up 80 per cent. last year.

Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
This Government have also taken economic recession to a new level. We now know that this is the worst economic slump since the 1930s, but in my constituency, unemployment is now 82 per cent. higher than it was in 1997, entirely on this Government’s watch.

Mr. Lammy
The hon. Gentleman has not seen the latest from the OECD, which says that unemployment in Britain is the lowest in the G7. I remind him of a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer who said that unemployment was a price worth paying, as it went over 3 million.

Nadine Dorries
I thank the Minister for providing the figures for teenagers starting university last year. Can he also tell us how many dropped out within the first 12 months?

Mr. Lammy
The hon. Lady raises an important issue, which goes back to something that goes to the heart of the Conservative motion, and I will come on to that. We should ensure that we manage growth and do not cut the funding. My Department, through its widening participation budget for the Higher Education Funding Council, will ensure that the funds are there so that universities can invest in retention. Therefore, across the HE sector, it is right to say that retention has improved, compared with some of the problems that we faced in 1997.

Mr. Hayes
The Minister knows that, notwithstanding the immense amount of money that the Government put in to widening participation, social mobility in Britain has declined. People from the sort of disadvantaged backgrounds that he mentioned a few moments ago are less likely to prosper now than they were in the year of my birth, 1958. It is indefensible that so many people from the community that he represents and others like it are being failed by the system.

Mr. Lammy
We recently had a very good debate initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) in relation to his work on the panel considering access to the professions. The issue of social mobility is complex, and that is why the Prime Minister asked my right hon. Friend to look into those matters. Compared to the cohort in 1958—the hon. Gentleman’s cohort—the 1972 cohort, to which I belong, entered higher education in 1990, under the Conservative Administration. If we compare their approach to participation, unemployment—such as the YTS—and apprenticeships with our approach to unemployment, which includes investment, the new deal and now the September guarantee, we can start to explain what social mobility is about and why we must invest in those areas.

Mr. Hayes
In that connection, will the Minister say something about those young people not in education, employment or training—the so-called NEETs? Figures from the labour force survey suggest that in 2001 there were 671,000 NEETs and in 2008 there were well over 800,000. That growth was during a period of economic success, not failure—what will it be like after this recession? Will the Minister be as straightforward about that as he has been about the other subjects?

Mr. Lammy
I will come on to the subject of young people who are not in education or employment, but the hon. Gentleman knows that if he is right on this issue, he should support the September guarantee, and he has not been able to do that. He also knows that there are more 16 to 18-year-olds in education, employment or training than ever before in our history.

Of course, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that any downturn will affect the young. That is the nature of this debate and that is why all the things that we are doing to invest and support them are so essential. However, he will not help those young people if he cuts adrift the skills on which their parents depend through Train to Gain. He has repeated again to the House, to my great surprise, that he would abolish the Train to Gain budget and he has done so against a backdrop in which the CBI and the Institute of Directors have said that they depend on Train to Gain. He would abolish it—how would that help? How would it help the young people who are dependent on those apprenticeships? How would it help the 61 per cent. of companies that say that it helps their productivity or the 66 per cent. of companies that say that it helps their competitiveness? How would it help them to come forward and offer apprenticeships?

Mr. Hayes
Of course, we acknowledge that some good work is done under Train to Gain. However, I said that it is cost-ineffective. Perhaps I can ask the Minister to comment on a statistic. There were 666,800 Train to Gain starts in the first nine months of 2008-09 and 290,000 Train to Gain achievements. With that rate of success, it is hard to defend a policy that the Government are putting all their emphasis on. They have all their eggs in this basket. Would they not be better backing apprenticeships, adult community learning and the kind of policies that I have laid out?

Mr. Lammy
We are backing apprenticeships. That is why we rescued them and they are now up to 250,000 starts. We are backing adult learning. That is why we have a transformation fund of £20 million and why we put £210 million into informal adult learning every year. The hon. Gentleman’s party has set its face against the deputy director of the CBI, who said that he was “concerned” by the plans of the official Opposition as Train to Gain is a programme that is designed to ensure public funds are invested in training and that it delivers improved business and work force performance. Miles Templeman of the Institute of Directors has said that

“the principle of the initiative has great merit and the focus of policy should be on improving the service rather than diverting funds away.”

That is what he has said, and that is why we have invested that £1 billion.

Surely it is axiomatic that we cannot impoverish the parents of our apprentices, many of whom rely on the skills for life programmes, the literacy programmes and the numeracy programmes. Many of them do not have GCSEs and have taken the opportunity to get those level 2 skills. How can anyone take that away from them and away from companies and then say that they would divert the money to apprenticeships having already said that they will cut £610 million from the budget? The House deserves better. The hon. Gentleman knows that, and I am frankly surprised by the nature of the debate that he has set out this afternoon, given its importance.

That is why we have invested in programmes such as Aimhigher for our new graduates—again, the Opposition were opposed to that—and funded universities to reach out to those from disadvantaged backgrounds, through summer schools, university taster lessons and mentoring schemes. Every university in the country now has links with local and regional schools. We have increased student support with 40 per cent. of students now expected to receive a full grant on top of a very generous loan. Again, we have been opposed when we have attempted to increase the budget that we give to our universities. Since 1997, we have increased investment in higher education by 25 per cent.

The hon. Gentleman will also remember when he talks about the base of employment that our young people need to go into and when he talks not just about the skills but the sectors of the economy that we will need to rely on in the future—I suspect that that is why he made the recommendation in relation to masters programmes in science, technology, engineering or mathematics—that essential to that will be our science budget. Again he will remember that, in the 1990s, leading academics campaigned to save British science. We came to power; the campaign wound up. We have doubled the science budget and safeguarded it with a ring fence. I would love to hear whether the official Opposition will match that and keep the ring fence. The research councils are now receiving £2.4 billion more than they did in 1997. The Universities Funding Council—from what I heard this morning, I understand that it is one of the non-departmental public bodies that might be abolished, although it safeguards the autonomy of our universities—has also seen its budget rise exponentially.

Mr. Heald
As the Minister will know, I have a great concern that a lot of young people leave school unable to read, write and add up properly and that a rising number of young people are not in education, employment or training. The number was going up during the good years; its looks as though it will probably go up even more in the bad years. If everything is going as well as he says and it is all absolutely fantastic, with every Government scheme pumping in money and helping people in all the ways that he mentions, can he explain why on earth such large numbers of people—40,000 a year—leave school unable to read, write and add up properly? Why is the number of NEETs going up?

Mr. Lammy
Well, we have discussed this before in the House, and the hon. Gentleman will know that the overall cohort of young people has increased in the country anyway, because of the demographics and habits of the baby boomers—[Interruption.] That is not my generation. He will know that we have increased or seen a continued rise in the GCSE and A-level attainment of our young people. As I said before, there are more 16 to 18-year-olds in education, employment or training than ever before, and that is good news. But he will also know—I think that we discussed this previously in the Education and Skills Committee—that one of the reasons why we wanted to take the participation age to 18 was, indeed, to ensure that we did more, and that is why we have also proposed the September guarantee, neither of which is supported by the Conservative party, and I struggle to understand that. So investment in the good times is important, and in these more difficult times, it is important that we continue to invest.

Student numbers will continue to rise with 18,000 more applicants from England last year and 23,000 more this academic year. The cash available to students has increased by 4 per cent. since last year. In cash terms, we are planning to spend more than £5 billion on student support this year, and we will continue to invest even more next year. I hope that hon. Members will recognise that that is one of the most generous packages in the developed world.

We recognise that the downturn has a huge impact, not just on universities but on communities. That is why we set up the economic challenge investment fund, worth £58 million. It helps young people to find internships, working with universities and spin-outs, including on knowledge transfer. It also supports businesses, whether local, regional or proximate to our universities, at this difficult time. As I have said, we should also invest in our research budget. The science budget has risen by £160 million this year, and now totals £3.7 billion.

Mr. Hayes
I do not want to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman’s flow, but he must acknowledge that he cannot have it both ways. In answer to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) about NEETs, the Minister said that it was not the number, but the percentage, that counted, because of changing demographics. He seamlessly went on to discuss the number of students, and moved from percentages to numbers. If the issue is about percentages, let him explain why the Government have stalled in their ambitions to move towards a 50 per cent. target. If it is about numbers, let him answer my hon. Friend’s question more directly.

Mr. Lammy
I think that Hansard will demonstrate that I did no such thing, and I will not be bullied into thinking that I did. I should just say that I am incredibly proud that this Government have taken the participation rate up to about 43 per cent. That is a huge achievement. What really impresses me, and should really impress the whole House, is that when one looks behind those figures at constituencies such as mine, Tottenham, or at Camberwell, Peckham, Brixton, Moss Side in Manchester, or inner-city Sheffield, one sees that in all those areas, there has been a rise of more than 100 per cent. in the number of young people from the poorest communities going to university. I applaud that. It is a noble ambition, and one that we should retain by investing. I have to remind the hon. Gentleman that that is in marked contrast to the position of his party when it was in office.

The Conservative party tried to expand higher education, but it did it on the cheap. Public funding per university student fell by 36 per cent. The learning experience of students and the financial viability of universities paid the price for that. Lord Patten of Barnes, a Minister in that Government, has admitted publicly that that Government doubled the number of students by halving the investment in each of them. As he said, that meant

“poorer pay, degraded facilities, less money to support the teaching of each student.”

That is his record in government, and we can never go back there again.

The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings doth protest too much. If the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) is to be believed, the Opposition’s proposed cuts in education would mean cutting 32,000 university places. Who has got it wrong: the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire or the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings? We need an answer.

We should not forget that getting a place at university has always been, and should be, a competitive process. This is a nervous time for students and parents, as they wait for A-level results, but this year, as always, every student who has an offer from a university and meets the grades will get a place. Against a backdrop of expansion, with 300,000 more students in the higher education system than in 1997, we should remember that we are talking about a competitive process. In any year, the proportion of applicants who gain a place is around 80 per cent. Britain’s world-class university system, which produces a record number of universities in the highest positions in the league tables, deserves the very best applicants. But those who are unsuccessful on their first attempt often reapply, and 80 per cent. are successful second time round.

We also recognise that this year’s graduates face a more challenging labour market than has been the case for many years. We are not alone in that. This is a global downturn and its effects are being felt everywhere. In China, 1.5 million graduates failed to find jobs last year, a 500,000 increase from 2007. In the USA, over a million graduates lost their jobs in 2008. But, as Carl Gilleard of the Association of Graduate Recruiters said today,

“though things will be harder, their degree is a valuable asset and . . . there are still opportunities out there for those who do their research”.

The statistics bear this out. The unemployment rate for those with graduate-level qualifications today is three times lower than those qualified to level 3 or below. The report from the Association of Graduate Recruiters also showed that graduate jobs are still out there. Nearly 40 per cent. of the top graduate recruiters are increasing their graduate programmes, or holding recruitment steady.

For graduates who are unable to secure a job, we are taking action. We launched graduate talent pool, a new website that brings together a graduate matching service, information and guidance and an employer response line. Employers can now upload details of their internship vacancies, and graduates can register their contact details ready for the full service that will go live later in the summer. Microsoft, Network Rail, Marks and Spencer and the police service are just some of the companies up and down the country that are offering internship places.

I am pleased that we have secured over 4,000 confirmed internships so far, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will do all he can to ensure that companies, businesses and organisations increase their number of internships. My Department is pledged to increase the number of internships. I am not sure what he has been able to do in that regard.

We are funding 29,000 graduate-level volunteering places through the organisation v. We are funding 3,000 extra places for graduate entrepreneurship training and help with business start-ups. In his contribution the hon. Gentleman spoke about an additional 25,000 masters places, but the truth is that postgraduates have been a great success under this Government. We currently have 450,000 postgraduate students and 300,000 of those are in STEM—science, technology, engineering or mathematics—subjects. Over the past 10 years, STEM masters have risen 90 per cent. The record there is good, as our international success demonstrates. We are ahead of the United States and Germany, according to the OECD. Indeed, we come fourth in the OECD in terms of producing science and engineering doctorates.

Mr. Hayes
The Minister spoke about people studying a second time. Was it a mistake to cut the funding from ELQ, given that many people now need to retrain? Does the right hon. Gentleman regret that and will he reverse it? Would not equivalent or lower professional qualifications give people a chance to find a new direction during the recession?

Mr. Lammy
We have had the debate across the Chamber before. The question in relation to equivalent level qualifications is whether—should I choose to do a third degree, or if the hon. Gentleman chose to do a second degree, should the people of South Holland and The Deepings cast him aside at the next general election— the state should fund our studies. My view, and our view, is that the state probably should not fund it: the hon. Gentleman should pick up the tab himself. However, there are strategically important subjects, and, if he decides that his several years in politics have not been worth while and he wants to take up engineering and make a serious contribution to the future of this country, perhaps we ought to consider funding that second degree. We have been strategic with the money, because we have rightly said that we should prioritise and fund those who do not have a degree at all in preference to those who are taking a second degree. That is a noble position, and it is the right one.

Stephen Williams (Bristol, West) (LD)
The Minister referred to ELQ as equivalent level qualifications and then talked about second degrees, but of course ELQ stands for equivalent or lower qualifications. What about the detrimental effect that that £100 million a year cut has had, therefore, on university-delivered community education programmes, which not only give people a taste of learning but encourage others who have a degree but want to take a second, non-degree qualification—for instance, teachers who want to be trained in counselling to support a pupil? We talk a lot about equivalent degrees, but what about lower qualifications?

Mr. Lammy
We are bringing forward an increased number of postgraduate loans for people to take up, and the hon. Gentleman will recognise that we have increased the budget for higher education by 25 per cent. precisely to ensure that the increase in provision that he wants is in place. I was at Birkbeck, university of London, last week and it has benefited from the expansion, notwithstanding the ELQ policy, as has the Open university. We will continue to support people, and the question is: what are the priorities in an economic downturn and are we getting them right? I say that we are. We cannot fund everything, and we have to be cognisant and conscious of what people are happy to fund themselves with the right support and signposting from the Government.

Let me end by referring to another issue on which the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings spent some time—apprenticeships. I simply repeat very proudly that this Government rescued apprenticeships from near-collapse 12 years ago. We should never forget that the Conservative party tried to abolish apprenticeships, but now it has the brass neck to call for more apprenticeship places to be funded. I remember 18 months ago reminding the hon. Gentleman, across this Chamber, of the completion rates when the Conservatives were last in office, and let me remind him again: in 1997, just one quarter of apprentices completed their courses.

The Conservatives really pulled off a trick: not only did they run the programme into the ground, with the lowest number of apprenticeships that this country has ever seen, but they managed to establish a situation in which three quarters of apprentices did not complete their courses. We have got the completion rate up this year to 65 per cent. That is a real achievement, and it is a tribute to the examiners, employers and the young people themselves. We have also increased the number of apprenticeships. We have also discussed level 3 apprenticeships across this Chamber, and there are not only more level 3 apprenticeships this year than there were when the hon. Gentleman’s party left office, but more level 2 apprenticeships, so we will take no lessons from him on apprenticeships.

The hon. Gentleman said nothing about the guarantees that we have put in place for young people facing six or 12 months of unemployment. We have established a huge fund of £1 billion for future jobs, to prevent young people—particularly those from the most deprived areas—from going into unemployment. Instead of that, the hon. Gentleman has taken the money away from union learning reps, from those who lack the basic skills of literacy and numeracy and from those who did not get GCSEs in the first place. He has set his party against the CBI and the Institute of Directors—that is the sort of contribution that the Conservative party would make to young people and this country. That is why young people are safe in the hands of this Labour Government.

17:45:00

Stephen Williams (Bristol, West) (LD)
We are having this debate against the background of a deep and deepening recession. However, the 2009 recession does not necessarily have the characteristics of previous recessions. It is not necessarily characterised by large lay-offs in particular trades, such as shipping and steel. Furthermore, it will not necessarily be geographically concentrated and it is not the result of an external inflationary oil price shock. This recession is primarily the result of a heart attack in the banking sector. Just like natural heart attacks, it resulted partly from ignoring all the warning signs and partly from a failure to take preventive measures. The Government are culpable on both fronts.

The recession leads us into uncharted waters. It will hit all sectors of the economy, including financial services—obviously—and retail. Familiar names will disappear, and have disappeared, from our high streets. The construction industry is having a particularly painful time and, as the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) said, graduates face an uncertain future. They are also leaving university with a large burden of debt.

The Government themselves have said that they do not know how the recession will pan out; that, at least, was their excuse for not providing us with a comprehensive spending review that would have enabled us to know the context of the tough choices that all three parties will face at the next general election. Perhaps the Government are not providing it because they can predict the political future of the next six to nine months and do not want clarity about the tough choices that they will face.

In this recession, unemployment will affect every community around the country. Before I came to this debate, I looked at the House of Commons Library synopsis of unemployment figures by constituency. My own constituency of Bristol, West is often characterised as a reasonably prosperous part of the country, and it certainly has a diverse economy. In May 2008 unemployment there stood at 1,079 adults; by May 2009—the latest month for which we have figures—unemployment there had soared to 2,042 adults. That represents an increase of 123 per cent. over those 12 months. That unemployment figure is still lower than that of 1997, but it is heading rapidly back towards it. In the neighbouring seat of Bristol, North-West, unemployment is already higher than it was 12 years ago.

The recession will hit every age group—but particularly young people, the subject of this debate. Young people have been the main victims of the recession so far. The Government’s own statistics show that 40 per cent. of those currently unemployed are under 25, despite the fact that that age group represents only 14 per cent. of the labour force. In 1997 one third of the unemployed came from that age group. In the past 12 years, the employment prospects of young people have worsened.

When he became Prime Minister, Tony Blair talked of his ambition to build a “young Britain”; I think he even got someone else to write a book of that title for him. In fact, after 12 years of a Labour Government we have worsening unemployment prospects for young people, despite the billions that the Government have spent over that period.

Mr. Hayes
The picture is even worse than the hon. Gentleman paints it, because we have not only that situation but a Government who are reconstructing the funding and management of skills, creating a byzantine structure that is a mixture of Jackson Pollock and Heath Robinson. Is it not time that there was an end to reorganisation and a start to greater clarity about the Government’s intentions for young people, to tackle the problems that he describes?

Mr. Williams
rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. Before the hon. Gentleman responds, may I say to the House that although we started this debate with quite a lot of time to spare, that time is now rapidly running out and several Members are still seeking to catch my eye? I would be grateful if all those concerned would bear that in mind.

Mr. Williams
I think that the record will show that over the past four years the contributions by this Front-Bench spokesperson have usually been somewhat briefer than those of the mover of the motion, but I shall endeavour to speed up.

The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings may be tempting me down the path of the announcement on quangos made by his leader. As regards the Higher Education Funding Council, perhaps he is catching up with the policy announcement that we made six months ago. It would be much better to have one adult learning council bringing together the whole panoply of quangos that exist in this sector so that we have some strategic leadership. Every employer or employer representative group that I meet says that one of the things that they most lament about the Government’s record is the labyrinthine system that they have constructed in the skills sector, which makes it incredibly difficult for employers to negotiate their way round it, and equally difficult for potential employees to find out which might be the most appropriate training route for them.

As the hon. Gentleman observed, the number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training has now hit 935,000—and the rise has largely been concentrated among the over-18s. He also mentioned social mobility. It is important to note that only a negligible proportion of NEETs are children of graduates. Only 1 per cent. of the children of professional parents become NEETs, but the proportion is 7 per cent., rising to 11 per cent., among the children of those with a routine occupation. After 12 years of a Labour Government, we still have a fairly immobile society.

Let me turn to graduate unemployment. This weekend, Bristol university had celebrations for the centenary of the granting of its charter. This week, graduation parties will be taking place in Bristol—and, I am sure, in universities all over the country. However, those celebrations over the champagne, cake and sandwiches, which many of us remember, will be tempered by the conversations taking place among those brand-new graduates. People will be asking each other, “What job are you going to?”—that is certainly what I remember from 20 years ago—but they will also be wondering about their employment prospects. This will probably be the most gloomy set of graduation parties ever, as people have to admit to each other that despite their achievement they still have no job to go to.

We should remember that this cohort of new graduates are from the top-up fees generation—the first people to leave the higher education funding regime with £9,000 of fee-related debt that they will have to pay off during their working career. What a total change from the prospects that they thought must have been opening up in front of them back in the autumn of 2006 when they commenced their studies.

Mr. Lammy
This is an opportunity for me to ask the hon. Gentleman, who has flip-flopped on this issue on several occasions, what is, today, the official position of the Liberal Democrats in relation to top-up fees.

Mr. Williams
I am entirely happy to provide the Minister with that clarification. The official position today is the same as it was yesterday, a year ago, and at the time of the 2005 general election. My party remains opposed to the tuition fees method of funding higher education; at the next general election I, like all my fellow candidates, will be standing on that platform. Just as at the last general election, our manifesto will be a fully costed document in which we set out how we would fund our commitments to students and graduates.

In 2007, 6 per cent. of graduates were still unemployed after six months; in 2008, that figure had risen to 8 per cent. We do not know what will be the relevant statistic for the current cohort of graduates, but everyone expects it to be significantly worse. As was widely reported over the weekend and in this morning’s newspapers, the Association of Graduate Recruiters has said that graduate job prospects are down by 24.9 per cent. this year. That is affecting employers across the piece, whether they are blue-chip companies or professional firms.

Only last week I spoke to a colleague in chartered accountancy who said that the number of graduate entrants into that profession, which is an enormous employer of graduates from across many different disciplines, is down by a third in many firms. As we might expect, the numbers are down in banking and financial services. The numbers going into engineering are down by 40 per cent.; as we know, the construction downturn is affecting all our constituencies. I would not like to be a new architecture graduate at any of the graduation parties taking place around the country. People who invest a significant slice of their life in qualifying to be an architect—much longer than for many other degree programmes—are entering an uncertain future.

Overall unemployment is also predicted to increase. Most economists agree that at some point in 2010 unemployment is likely to reach 3 million again. That brings back memories for many of us in the Chamber. The Minister has mentioned his memories of the early 1990s. I am sure that some of his colleagues, like my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) and myself, will also remember the misery of the 1980s. [Interruption.] Yes, perhaps even the 1970s. If this Government are still in office, Labour MPs should hang their heads in shame when we reach the statistic of 3 million people being unemployed. What a record for a Labour Government. Will they be going on marches for jobs and publishing pamphlets condemning the Government of the day, as happened in the 1980s? I somehow doubt it.

What has been the Government’s response, particularly for young people? A couple of measures were announced in the Budget. First, there was the jobs or training guarantee. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey pointed out earlier, there are many uncertainties around that programme. In order to qualify for it, a person not only has to be under 25 but must have been unemployed for more than a year. Moreover, it is not intended to start until some time early next year. It is completely uncertain how many people will benefit from it and whether it will really make a difference to young people. As my hon. Friend said, someone who is currently in work or in an apprenticeship wants protection now, rather than having to wait for a year in unemployment before relief is afforded to them.

There was also the announcement of the future jobs fund, involving 150,000 jobs; at least a number was put on that proposal. It specified that 50,000 of those places should be in sectors such as social care—that is a worthwhile area, but one of the debates that we will have at the next general election is about the size of the state—and that another 50,000 should be in so-called growth sectors. The example given was hospitality. I do not know what world the Government live in, but I would have thought that hospitality is not usually a growth sector against the background of a recession: that is a triumph of hope over experience. It also seems to be a triumph of spin over fiscal reality. The Government are keen to announce large sums of money for initiatives when there is not much clarity as to when they will start or what they will deliver, but at the same time they are cutting existing budgets—those of the regional development agencies, for instance. The South West of England Regional Development Agency has had its budget for this year cut, which means that some of the programmes that it would have funded in the city of Bristol, such as the regeneration of Stokes Croft, have had to be chopped.

Young people leaving school or college who wish to enter higher education this year will face uncertainty as they await their A-level results. We know that the Government have cut the growth in the number of places, but why has that happened? We had a statement last week from the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills about next year’s student maintenance support settlement. I remembered last year’s announcement, when the Government botched their figures. Their predictions for the number of people who would qualify for student support were completely wrong. That is why they are having to cut the planned growth in the number of places this September.

It is extraordinary to do that against a background of recession, because we know from all previous recessions that the typical response, especially of young people, is to try to shelter in education and training. It is also extraordinary when there is a bulge in the number of young people expecting to go to university. The number of 18 to 21-year-olds is about to peak, before it falls for the rest of the decade. What an extraordinary time to restrict the number of places in higher education.

The Million+ group, which represents most of the post-1992 universities, has rightly pointed out that clearing, which has been a facet of higher education for as long as I can remember, is unlikely to be a feature this year. That will damage many universities that have had a successful record of widening participation. I also fear the effect on the fair access proportions in our research-intensive universities if they have to turn away marginal applicants.

The Minister said that higher education places were an academically competitive process. Of course they are, but his response to the situation appeared to be—he can tell me if it is not—that someone who does not succeed this year can by all means come back next year. That will not give much relief to young people who get their A-level results this year and then find they do not have a place.

Mr. Lammy
Given that the hon. Gentleman has said that he would abolish tuition fees and that we should create a situation of unmanaged growth in additional student numbers, is he saying that the Liberal Democrat  position is to cut the unit of resource in order to fund extra places? What I said was that there would be growth. There is growth this year of 18,000 places, and there will be growth, but the Government have to look carefully at managing it, while listening to universities.

Stephen Williams
The Minister has questions for me, and at the next general election we can by all means have those debates, but the sector has questions for him. In particular, will he agree that the cap that has been put in place this year could be lifted? If so, will the places be fully funded so that quality is maintained? At the very least, will he agree to be flexible with universities? This year, for the first time, they will face financial penalties if they depart from the caps and constraints that have been put on them.

Mr. Lammy
Is the hon. Gentleman really telling the young people of Bristol that they have to wait until the next general election to know how the Liberal Democrats would fund extra places?

Stephen Williams
No, and I think the record will show that that is not what I meant in response to the Minister’s earlier intervention—but it is he who has got us into this mess. The Government’s botch-up over the number of people who would qualify for student grants last year has forced the cut in the planned increase in places this year. That will affect people who started their A-levels or other qualifications two years ago and are now waiting for their results and hoping for a place. The Government have moved the goalposts.

To emerge from this recession, we will need a skilled work force at skilled technician, post-apprenticeship and degree level. We also need to protect those currently in apprenticeships, which is why we favour diverting growth in the Train to Gain budget to funding employers’ off-the-job training costs. We also need a national bursary scheme to incentivise students to take subjects that are critical to this country’s economic future. We need higher education itself to be more flexible to enable adults to study part-time, and we need the financial regime that those adults face to be on a fair basis and equal to the regime for those among their peer group who study on traditional, full-time degree programmes.

Of course, all that needs to be underpinned by independent advice and guidance, as the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings and I have mentioned so many times in debates such as this, so that people can be steered into the subjects that we will need for this country to prosper in future, particularly engineering and sciences. That is essential if we are to have not just a sustainable economy but a sustainable society, and have any chance of meeting our 2020 climate change targets.

The previous Labour Government are remembered in history, as they entered their final months, for the winter of discontent. This Labour Government, as they enter their final phase, will be remembered for a summer of despair for the young. With unemployment heading towards 3 million, we know that this Prime Minister and this Government have not abolished boom and bust. The Prime Minister has said—I heard him say it in the Chamber a short while ago—that he came into politics in the 1980s because of unemployment. We should therefore all be sad—and he and his Government should be particularly sad—that unemployment will now be part of his legacy.

18:05:00

Natascha Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams), and to take part in the debate. I have been the chair of the all-party youth affairs group for about a year, I am currently the honorary president of the British Youth Council and I have been a trustee of the UK Youth Parliament. Youth issues, and at the moment especially the plight of young people during the recession, are therefore particularly close to my heart.

I wish to pick up on a number of things that hon. Members have said, but I first make the general point that when I meet young people, as I do quite frequently during the course of events here in Parliament, I find that one really important thing is to ensure that we give them a bit of hope. What I have heard in the debate has been depressing, because without a doubt young people fare far worse during a recession than anybody else. That has always been true, and it will be true in future.

However, we must not talk down the possibilities of what young people can do, especially those from more disadvantaged backgrounds. We need to give them hope and identify what they can do, not just to support them through the recession but to give them some idea about what they can do at the end of it. We can offer them possibilities during the recession that mean they are far better equipped to get much better work and opportunities at the end of it.

I wish to say a big thank you to YMCA, the Foyer Federation and especially the Institute for Public Policy Research, whose youth tracker report on young people and the recession, which I hope everybody here has read, has been absolutely invaluable in considering how we can better gear our policies to ensuring that young people are not only looked after and supported through the recession but better equipped at the end of it.

Professor Gregg of the University of Bristol said in the youth tracker report something that is worrying and that we must all bear in mind. He stated:

“People who experience long durations of unemployment in their youth still have sizeable wage penalties in their 40s”.

We all talk about our personal experiences of recessions, but what happens to young people in the current recession will have an impact on their lives when they are in their 40s. When we look back at the policies and legislation that have been put in place in former recessions and see where people in their 40s are, we see the significance of ensuring that we look towards the future. It is in the next 20 or 30 years that the impact of the recession will become clear.

We have to take a long-term view. That is the role of Government, and it is why the Government have put forward many of their policies. I want to emphasise the positive before I lay down some markers about things that I would change during the recession. What we are doing will support young people and give them the hope to get through the recession.

We should use the recession as an opportunity to put right discrimination against young people, who have always been slightly discriminated against. If we consider unemployment in the past two decades, we see that when it was at a record low of 5 per cent. for the general population, the figure for young people aged between 18 and 24 was 10 per cent. That is a dramatic statistic, which shows how we as a society view young people.

I have a criticism to make about the national minimum wage. We should use the recession to examine differential minimum wage rates. If we are considering raising the school-leaving age to 18 and if we accept the need for some sort of apprenticeship minimum wage rate, there is no excuse for a developing rate. From October, 16 to 17-year-olds will be on an hourly minimum wage of £3.57; the rate for 18 to 21-year-olds will be £4.83, and the adult rate will be £5.80. For me, it is a straightforward matter of equality. If people are doing equal jobs, they deserve equal pay. We should use the recession to tackle that.

We should also examine the 16-hour rule. We should encourage young people, including older young people, to study, stay in education and get trained in the skills that they need to get out of the recession. As my hon. Friends know, the 16-hour rule means that people can stay at college for only 16 hours a week before being classed as studying full time. A student studying full time is said not to be available for work and cannot therefore claim benefits. We want to get the most disadvantaged to study, but they need the support and security of benefits to know that they can do that, and they are massively disadvantaged by the 16-hour rule. It means that either they study too slowly to get the qualifications that they need to make them employable or they start dropping out. If I could choose only two things to re-examine seriously, they would be the minimum wage and the 16-hour rule.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend accept that many among the group that she mentioned suffer learning disabilities and mental health problems, and that we should encourage those young people in particular back to work through study? They are currently disadvantaged by the 16-hour rule.

Natascha Engel
That is a good point. Young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds—for example, those from broken homes, those who have been homeless and are encouraged back into studying, those who have chaotic lives—benefit from the security and safe environment in which to learn that studying can provide. My hon. Friend mentioned people with learning difficulties and mental health problems. When security is taken away from vulnerable groups of people, their problems are exacerbated. If we encourage more young people into further education and apprenticeships that provide a secure environment, that can only be to the good.

The recession means that many more people will go to Jobcentre Plus and claim jobseeker’s allowance. Hon. Members mentioned that, this summer, a group of school leavers will be searching for training opportunities and jobs. As school leavers, they will be less experienced and tend to have fewer qualifications, so they are far more likely to end up in jobcentres. We must therefore ensure that jobcentres are fully equipped and have staff who are fully trained to deal with young people. Not only being unemployed, but going into a jobcentre can be terrifying at that age.

Let me revert to the message of hope and to considering the motion and the amendment. It is silly to say that the September guarantee, whereby all 16 and 17-year-olds will be guaranteed an apprenticeship, or a college or training place, does not give hope. Encouraging people to stay in some sort of education—apprenticeships, training or schools—until they are 18 is a good thing. It is not a tick-box exercise, and I think that the recession will ensure that the target is reached naturally.

The future jobs fund is also a good idea that will give many young people hope. However, unless it has employers’ full support, it will not work. Young people who have been out of work for 12 months will be guaranteed a subsidised place for six months, but I do not think that the amount of time is so important. It is important that employers take some responsibility and ensure that they mentor the young people in those workplaces so that they either stay there or move on to something else in which they are involved. It is important to ensure that they learn something and get something out of the experience.

We must take a more holistic approach to getting through the recession, give young people, especially all those who are now between 16 and 25, a message of hope, but appreciate that we are not talking about a sausage factory for getting children from school into work. Although work is fantastic, we must also recognise that recessions hit families hard, sometimes leading to marriage breakdown, arguments, children running away from home or simply leaving home without the support that they need. We must look at the bigger picture and ascertain how to help children and young people who are between 16 and 25 and ensure that they are okay when they leave school and attend jobcentres, start training or, hopefully, go into some sort of further education. We must consider how we make sure that we look after their mental and physical well-being, give them the maximum number of opportunities and the hope that is necessary to see them through.

18:17:00

David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
We are lucky to have present so many Front Benchers, who have given so freely of their time and made such lengthy analyses of the problems that the recession has caused young people. My analysis will, of necessity, be much briefer. As I see it, we have a huge shortage of skills and jobs—we are losing approximately 2,500 jobs every day—and a large surplus of people coming into this country. Net migration is about 237,000—of course, gross migration is much higher. As some people come in, others decide to leave. However, of those who come in, some unfortunately go on the dole and are supported by the British taxpayer through different benefits, but others find jobs, some that British people could doubtless fill, as the Prime Minister originally suggested.

What are we doing wrong? In the short time that I was on the internet looking through university degrees this afternoon, I managed to discover the problem. Many degrees that we offer will simply not lead to the jobs to which people aspire—indeed, they will probably lead to no jobs. The work of 10 minutes revealed that the University of Plymouth offers a degree in surf studies. I do not have a degree, but I spent 20 years surfing, week in, week out in Wales, and I know that there are only about four jobs that one could get with a degree in surfing: surf instructor; working in a surf shop; surf board designer, which simply requires a practical frame of mind, and surfing professional—a handful of people manage that every year, and nobody checks whether they have a degree. That is not much use to anyone.

Thames Valley university offers, among the film and theatre studies that one would expect, a three-year science degree in culinary arts management. I asked myself, what is that? It is something to do with being a pastry chef. Under the section headed “Career progression”, we learn that

“A graduate would expect to gain a position as a commis chef”—

I think that is some sort of trainee chef—

“progressing to chef de partie, sous chef and eventually executive chef”.

So there we are: a three-year science degree and what can people hope for at the end? It is to become some sort of trainee chef.

My favourite example was from Metropolitan university, which is offering something called game studies. For a minute, I optimistically thought that it might be something to do with game theory, a respected branch of economics, but no. One clicks on the link to read that

“Videogames have emerged as a major new force,”

blah-de-blah, “contemporary culture,” and so on, and that the course will

“allow you to study them academically,”

but with “theoretical” and “practical approaches.” Apparently, the course

“covers the nationally recognised Game Study syllabus”—

whatever that is—

“and is excellent career preparation.”

Mr. Lammy
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David T.C. Davies
I would be delighted to give way to the right hon. Gentleman—does he want to apply for a job?

Mr. Lammy
I suspect that the hon. Gentleman has nothing against, for example, the music industry. Will he acknowledge that the games industry is now a bigger part of our creative economy than the music industry?

David T.C. Davies
I have nothing against the music industry or the games industry. I have nothing against PlayStations either; indeed, I used to have one. What I have a problem with is people writing a thesis on how to get to level 10 on “Grand Theft Auto”. I do not think that that is a good use of three years or of the taxpayer’s money, nor do I think that it will lead to a job. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to lecture me about economics, let me tell him that I see things in a fairly simple way—[Laughter.] Yes, I do not—[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)
Order.

David T.C. Davies
I do not have a degree, but I am quite happy with that fact. I study history as an interest and what I have learned is that since man started herding animals together, all societies have had four requirements: food, shelter, construction and an ability to make tools to make life better for the next generation. Those are the basic fundamentals of any economy, but let us look at what goes on in 21st-century cities. [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), laughs, but let me tell him something.

Let us take food. We still need food, yet what have we done to our farms and our farmers? We have absolutely destroyed them. We are now dependent on imports, with more than 50 per cent. of our food coming from abroad. What about shelter? We cannot find anyone from within this country to take part in major construction projects such as the Olympics. We have imported workers from abroad because we do not have the necessary skills. What about warmth? That was what stone-age men needed—I see it as energy today. We still have enough oil in this country to supply our needs, but we have to bring in lots of specialist people from abroad to fill the jobs on North sea oil rigs. We are dependent on the middle east for our oil and on the Russians for our gas. We do not even have a nuclear industry any more—we are dependent on the French for that, having destroyed our own nuclear industry. Those are jobs that we could have created. When stone-age man was making tools out of bones and things—

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I hope that in the time remaining the hon. Gentleman will concentrate his remarks on the motion.

David T.C. Davies
I will, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I have learnt that in 2007 the Germans were still running a €200 million trade surplus in exports. That is what we should be training up our young people to do, but we are not doing any of that, because, as the Minister said, we have decided to concentrate on the creative industries and financial services. Both of them—

Mr. Lammy
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David T.C. Davies
No, I will not give way. The right hon. Gentleman had well over half an hour earlier and took all sorts of interventions that turned into mini-speeches. He mentioned the creative industries—[Interruption.] Yes, we have chased after creative industries, but in a downturn we should be thinking about the four areas that I have mentioned, in which there will always be jobs for people. However, we have had to give out thousands of work visas—this is on the Government’s figures—to people who know about things such as computer services, financial services and health and medical services. We are importing people from abroad because we do not have the necessary skills. We are shutting science departments in various universities, closing chemistry laboratories and stopping physics courses so that the right hon. Gentleman can push his idea of the creative industries for people.

It was the Prime Minister himself who talked about British jobs for British workers. There are still jobs out there, but they are not being filled by British people because they do not have the skills. We are pushing more than 50 per cent. of the population through university to do Mickey Mouse degrees—at great cost to the taxpayer and themselves, because they come out with all sorts of debt—yet we still cannot match the skills that are required to the skills that we produce. That is what is wrong. I look forward to somebody—anybody—following up on the Prime Minister’s promise and creating British jobs for British workers, but it will not be the right hon. Gentleman.

18:26:00

Christopher Fraser (South-West Norfolk) (Con)
Given the time constraints we are under, I shall try to restrict my comments to the debate in hand. However, following my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), let me say that there are many subjects beyond the motion that need separate debates.

I am pleased to stand up for the young people of South-West Norfolk. I know that all hon. Members here will be concerned by the fact that almost 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds were not in education employment or training in the first quarter of this year. That is an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) mentioned from the Front Bench. It is also an ongoing problem that I hope the Minister took on board and that I hope the Minister responding to this debate will address. That figure is unacceptable and does our nation no good. We look to young people to help us out of this economic downturn, because their contribution to our economic success will be vital.

Last week, we heard from the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families about the Government’s plans for our schools system. I hope that the Minister will accept that not all children are necessarily academic and that vocational training provision is equally important for young people. I hope that he will address that in his closing comments.

What is the Minister’s response to the Local Government Association’s suggestion that more power should be given to local councils to provide local training courses, which would be funded from a reduction in jobseeker’s allowance claims? Unemployment has hit Norfolk hard, and the manufacturing sector in Thetford in particular. According to the most recent figures, the number of people on JSA has increased by almost 96 per cent. in one local authority area in my constituency and by more than 82 per cent. in another. Those are shocking figures, and many young people will inevitably be included in them, having fallen victim to the recession.

I am aware of cases where young people have been caught by a “last in, first out” policy, which without a doubt knocks their confidence when they happen to be in their first job. I have had many letters from young people who have lost their jobs and are desperate to retrain, but are prevented from taking up a full-time course because it will take between six and 18 months to get them on one. What advice can the Minister offer young people in South-West Norfolk who want to reskill but are unable to do so for a considerable period? Does he accept that the current economic climate gives rise to a genuine need to relax the rules on jobseekers’ ability to apply for full-time training courses?

That is an issue that I have raised before in the House, as well as one on which the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) commented. The Minister confirmed that many FE colleges structure their courses to be compliant with the 16-hour rule that operates in respect of JSA, which the hon. Lady also mentioned, but what about those who want to enter full-time training? That is an important issue, and one that increasingly fills my postbag as a constituency Member, so I would genuinely like to hear the Government’s response. The fact that so many young people are eager to retrain is, of course, extremely encouraging. However, does the Minister accept that it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that all those who wish to enter training are given the access that they need?

I would like to mention the specific challenges for those living in rural communities. Young people in South-West Norfolk have to travel longer distances to jobcentres and training courses. As a result, they face higher fuel costs. As I have said many times in this House, a car in my constituency is a necessity, not a luxury. For a young person on a course, that adds an extra financial burden that is not placed on those living in urban areas. What consideration is the Minister giving to young people living in rural areas who not only are struggling as a result of the recession, but are hampered by their geographical location? What advice can he offer them?

Since I was elected, I have always been keen to speak out in support of the role of apprenticeships in helping our economy to flourish. However, over the past year, there has been a fall of some 8 per cent. in the number of 16 to 18-year-olds taking up apprenticeships, while for 19 to 24-year-olds the figure has fallen by just over 2 per cent. Does the Minister agree that now is the time for more people to start apprenticeship schemes, not fewer? Like other colleagues, I have seen evidence in my constituency that many of those who are halfway through their apprenticeships are being made redundant as a result of the recession. What provision is available for those young people?

Does the Minister accept that more needs to be done to reduce the excessive red tape associated with certification and inspections, so that more companies will be encouraged to open up workplace apprenticeship schemes? Small businesses and enterprises often find it difficult to take on apprentices because of the high costs involved, despite the desire of those who run them to make a genuine effort to bring new young people into the business, train them up and help them to succeed, for the sake not only of the business but of the wider economy. Let us not forget that small business and enterprise was the backbone of our economic success in the 1980s and 1990s, and it should be the backbone of our success as we pull out of this recession.

Let us also remember that Governments do not create jobs—businesses do. It is the role of the Government, in my constituency as much as in any other, to create the environment in which business can thrive. We have heard many words today about what the Government might or could do. Can we now focus directly on empowering business people to do their job properly, so that the fiscal stimulus that was mentioned by the Minister earlier can be directed at people so that it affects the bottom line and so that they can make a contribution accordingly? What hope can the Minister offer a small business that wants to run an apprenticeship scheme but feels unable to do so financially?

I shall turn briefly to an issue that affects many of my colleagues in Norfolk as well as me. I make no apologies for raising the Learning and Skills Council’s funding crisis and its effect on further education provision. I have raised the matter in the House before. I was dismayed by the recent announcement that only 13 out of the 144 frozen college building projects have been given the go-ahead. Furthermore, all 13 are in Labour-held constituencies, and none is in Norfolk. Will the Minister look at the problems at Easton college and City college, both of which serve my constituents? They have both been left in the lurch. Does he acknowledge that this fiasco has left thousands of young people wondering whether they will be able to access the high-quality training opportunities that they deserve?

In my constituency, a forum has been put together in support of the new Thetford college. The aim is to build an innovative education facility for 14 to 19-year-olds that will boost the local economy and provide hope for a town that has historically been associated with deprivation, social exclusion and unemployment. Does the Minister recognise that projects such as those, with strong roots in local communities across the country, must be supported and encouraged as much as possible, not just in cherry-picked constituencies but in areas where we have fought long and hard for the young people, and particularly in my area of South-West Norfolk? Young people in Norfolk and elsewhere want a bright future anchored in a good education, with excellent training opportunities and support when times are tough. What assurances can the Government give to the young people in my constituency who are afraid that their futures will be jeopardised by this recession?

18:33:00

Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con)
As the last speaker from the Back Benches, I have just a few short minutes, so I think I will abandon my speech and concentrate on just one of the points that I was going to make.

I feel that I am standing here as much as a mother as an MP, because my daughter opened her university results today and we all found out what grade she had got. It was a great day for us. I have now been a university mother for six years, and my children are the first on either side of the family to go to university. We are therefore incredibly proud of them, and Jennifer is also incredibly proud of her result—[Hon. Members: “What did she get?”] I am not allowed to say.

I want to talk about the targets for getting our young people into university. To set that in context, I would like to tell the House what I have noticed during my six years as a university mum, not only in relation to the daughter who got her degree today but to the older one as well, and to the groups of their friends whom I have got to know.

The first thing that has surprised me is the number of children who drop out in their first year. The figures that I saw when I was on the Education and Skills Select Committee were quite staggering, particularly the number of young people who drop out as a result of mental health problems and depression. It has occurred to me that some of the people doing certain courses at universities such as Newcastle and Bournemouth should not be doing those courses in the first place. They were not their courses of choice; they were the courses that they were offered subject to their GCSE results at school. They were not passionate about or even interested in the subject; they had been offered the course while going through the clearance process. Those people were often the ones who dropped out after the first year.

Sadly, many of those young people were also getting depressed and unhappy at university because they were not doing an appropriate course. On top of that—leaving tuition fees aside—the loan that those students, and my girls, were getting was £1,000. Out of that, they were paying £300 a month for their hall of residence, £5 to use the washing machine, £3 for the dryer, and so on. The costs mounted up, and the £1,000 student loan did not go very far. It did not enable them to eat, for example, and if they came from a family that was unable to subsidise them, they would become more and more depressed.

Students would also become depressed because they could not find employment to subsidise them while at university. An example is a student who started the course with my daughter. He applied for a job as the supervisor of a hand car wash, as he had to work in order to stay at university. He could not manage on the £1,000 student loan. He was refused the job because everyone else working at the car wash was Polish and, as he could not speak Polish, he would have been unable to supervise them. The situation was similar in every bar, café and supermarket in that town.

That poor boy dropped out of university; he did not come back after the Christmas break. Without employment, he could not afford to stay on, but he still has his first term’s student loan to pay off. Moreover, that was at a time when we were not facing a recession; it was in better times. As I said, my daughter graduated today, but she is facing a grim future. Although she will not find employment, the interest on her student loan and those of all her fellow graduates will be racking up while they try to find work. We have known for the past year that she would graduate and probably not find employment.

Along with many hon. Members, I have employed American interns. There is one aspect of the education system in America that I really like. The academic year is split into six months for studying and six months for working, if work can be found. The students can work and save up for their six months of studying. That increases the number of students who can gain access to university. It gets more bums on seats; it gets more children through.

I have commented on the 50 per cent. target; I think that it should be 100 per cent. Every child should be entitled to access to the type of education that they want, be it academic or an apprenticeship or whatever. I just wish that we had had access to similar educational opportunities when I was at school. The time has come to think out of the box when we look at our young people and our universities. During a recession, to say that we want to get 50 per cent. of our young people through universities, often studying inappropriate courses that will not equip them for employment even if they finish them, does them a disservice. Given what we are facing, the Government and the Opposition have a duty to take a radically different approach.

We are burdening young people—my daughter is just one of them—with student loans and they do not know how they are going to repay them. They do not know when they will get a job and begin to repay them. The interest on student loans is racking up—it started to be payable on my daughter’s loan today—yet there are no prospects of jobs.

Will the Minister take this thought away? In other countries, where things are done differently, more people go through universities, and with less financial hardship. Perhaps we should be less dogmatic in our approach, and start to be slightly more adventurous and ambitious in how we regard our young people and the academic education that we offer them.

18:39:00

Mr. David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
We have had an important and interesting debate this afternoon, with many issues raised on very important matters, reflecting the current economic situation and the problems that our young people face. Our motion highlights our concerns about young people in the recession. It sets out the current problems and the failings of this dying and discredited Government, and proposes some positive measures to help alleviate this worrying situation. Regrettably, the Government do not seem to be listening to facts this afternoon, and they do not seem to have the degree of concern that they should have about the principal victims of the recession: our young people. I believe that this recession has been made worse by the Government’s failures and failings.

We heard from the Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property a long diatribe, with the usual history and spin in equal measure, but he failed to raise his game to the occasion as we would have expected. On the other hand, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes), in moving the motion, displayed his usual vigour, constructive argument, robustness, policies and logical argument—[Interruption.] No, the Minister must listen further: I am never biased; I am objective and rational.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings posed several questions to the Minister, who regrettably did not answer them and was rather partisan in his response. We were all disappointed by his flawed history lesson and his rewriting of history with artificial passion. He seemed to paint an idyllic picture, which is not borne out by the experience of people in London. The Minister is a London MP, and the suffering of young people in London as a result of the recession is among the worst. If everything has been so good over the past 10 years, as the Minister tried to tell us, why do we have the problems that we are debating today?

Before we go any further, let me correct the Minister. As usual, he did not paint the whole picture when he talked about apprenticeship statistics. The official figures show that despite his target of providing more apprenticeships for young people, the number of 16 to 18-year-olds starting an apprenticeship fell by 8 per cent. in the first three quarters of 2008-09. The Minister did not tell us that. The number of 19 to 24-year-olds starting an apprenticeship fell by 2 per cent. Both figures show a reduction in the number of apprenticeships.

Regrettably, too, the number of NEETs—the people not in employment, education or training—has increased from 671,000 or 13 per cent. in 2001 to 810,000 or 13.6 per cent. in 2008. On both the percentage and the figures, the Minister failed to come clean, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings highlighted. That is the problem with the current Government; no one believes what they are saying. The spin and the complacency that we have seen are the Minister’s rather disappointing message today.

Across the country, people are losing their jobs and families are struggling. Official figures show that unemployment is hitting young people hardest. My hon. Friends and I are concerned about the future for our young people, as I am sure are the Minister and some of his hon. Friends, although not many of them are in their places. About 935,000 young people aged between 16 and 24 are not to be lightly dismissed if they are not in employment, education or training. I have already pointed out the increases.

When the Government came to office in 1997, the youth unemployment and NEET rates were much better than the OECD average. However, the UK’s position has deteriorated and it is now far worse than the average in the OECD—worse than that of our competitors. This recession, together with the Government’s cuts to sixth forms, apprenticeships and the crisis in further education college capital funding means that the problems faced by NEETs are set to get worse in the next few months. Research by the university of Sheffield and the Prince’s Trust suggests that if unemployment reaches 3 million, 1.25 million or 40 per cent. of those will be under the age of 25. Let us not forget that that is a huge figure. Overall, as the Government admit and as can be seen in the figures, unemployment at 2.2 million is far too high—and, also on their admission, set to rise. Lives are blighted, talent is wasted and the human cost of unemployment is a very serious matter. [Interruption.] It is no good Ministers just barracking. These are facts that they do not like to hear, but we are going to tell them.

We have had some interesting and effective contributions, particularly from my hon. Friends, to this important debate. The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats, was moderate and constructive in his approach. He highlighted the complexities of training routes and spoke about employment rates for graduates and the reduction in their job prospects. All those issues are a matter of real concern for all of us—[Interruption.] If the Minister would only listen and stop talking he might be able to work with us and see what can be done to improve the situation.

The hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) spoke with real passion about the consequences of unemployment for young people. It was her belief that we need a long-term view. Of course a long-term view is important, but today we are talking about the issues that are affecting people now. Today is the most important thing. Of course we look in the long term, but we are concerned about those young people being hit by the recession now. The hon. Lady raised concerns about the unfairness of the minimum wage for young people and said that the 16-hour rule needed review. I will leave it to her Ministers to take those matters into account.

My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) was his usual robust self, highlighting aspects of higher education courses that he did not like and speaking about skills shortages, which are important.

My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Christopher Fraser), who is assiduous in supporting and speaking up for his constituents, made a reasoned and effective speech. He commented on the plight of the unemployed in his area and the travel problems experienced by young people in attending their courses. That is very important in rural areas, particularly when unemployed people have to travel in order to go on courses.

My hon. Friend also highlighted one of the great tragedies of the present Administration: the funding crisis in FE colleges. As he pointed out and as I was going to point out myself, only 13 colleges have been given the funding that they requested—13 out of a huge number which in good faith made claims out of determination to improve their facilities so that young people, and not-so-young people, could be trained and retrained. The Government’s response is shocking.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) made a short but very effective and powerful contribution, and I am sure that we will all want to pass on our congratulations to her daughter on the success that she heard about today. My hon. Friend spoke with real concern about students who drop out of courses and about the depression that students on inappropriate or ill-advised courses or those worried about finance—a matter of real concern for young people today—might experience. She also highlighted, as did the hon. Member for Bristol, West, that another result of the recession is fewer job opportunities for those coming out of college or university this year. That, too, is a matter of great concern.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, despite the Minister’s attempt to gloss over it, the number of adult and community learning places has been cut dramatically in the past four years by 1.4 million—at the very time the country was heading towards recession. The Government have cut those places with the result that young people are not getting opportunities to train or to learn new skills.

We heard, too, that FE enrolments have plummeted, despite increases in the budget of the Learning and Skills Council. The LSC has effectively delivered less for more money. It is no wonder that the Government want to get rid of it and replace it with three quangos.

The time left for debate is very short, but I would like to deal with the crisis in higher education, particularly for those who want to go to university. The Minister said that everyone will get a place and that there will be no problem—[Interruption.] Yes, he did. He said that there would be no problems for anyone getting the qualifications. He glossed over the problem, as he does so well and so regularly. Well, I thought that it was lamentable Lammy—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”]

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Member may wish to withdraw that remark.

Mr. Evennett
Of course I do, Madam Deputy Speaker, but when one is being barracked from a sedentary position—[Interruption.] Well, Conservative Members believe in reasoned debate.

The Government must start a new approach to ensure that young people have a better future. As our motion highlights, we have put forward proposals to try to alleviate the recession and its effect on young people. We look to the Government to take some of our suggestions on board. Today we have discussed, for instance, funds for adult and community learners, the Government’s “equivalent or lower qualifications” cuts, and the reduced opportunities for those who return to work and for older people. The aim of our fund is to encourage further education enrolment and help people to acquire new skills.

The young people of our nation face a bleak situation because of the recession. We need a Government with vision, ideas, and proposals to alleviate the current crisis and build for the future. Our motion is a positive start. The Government are decaying, out of touch and incompetent. It is time for them to go, and for us to have a new Government who can do something for our young people.

18:50:00

The Minister for Further Education, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs (Kevin Brennan)
This has been an important debate, to which there have been excellent contributions from Members on both sides of the House. I greatly enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), who, as ever, was passionate in putting his side of the argument. In emphasising the importance of now, he did not explain how cutting £5 billion now from Government spending and not matching the September guarantee now would help our young people through the recession, but no doubt he believed what he said.

I commend the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams) for his speech. He pointed out—interestingly, I thought—that there were fewer unemployed people in his constituency now, at the height of the recession, than there had been in 1997. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the economic downturn and the issues that we have debated this evening, that is testament to the Government’s efforts to create jobs.

Stephen Williams
Will the Minister give way?

Kevin Brennan
Time is very short. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am usually delighted to spar with him. It is, I think, testament to the strength of job creation over the past 10 years that even now, when a recession is upon us, the employment rate is higher in his constituency than it was back in 1997.

My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) called on us to have some hope, and I think that she was right to speak of hope for young people. One of the things that has emerged from the Government’s 50 per cent. target is that more than 50 per cent. of young people from all socio-economic backgrounds now say that they want to go to university. There has been a big change in recent years, and it contrasts with some of the archaic attitudes taken by some, although not all, Opposition Members. In January 2006, when the present Mayor of London was shadow Minister for higher education, he said:

“I wouldn’t dream of having a numerical target. It’s crazy to chivvy people into university when they are not suited to it.”

That typifies the attitude that is sometimes displayed by the Conservative party.

The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies)—whom I like immensely; we are colleagues from Wales—made what I would describe as a proper Tory contribution to the debate. He told us what he thought university and education should be all about, but rather down-played the importance of the creative sector of the economy. That is not the only part of the economy, of course, but  the hon. Gentleman’s speech showed that creativeness and entertainment are an important part of our national life, even if his comedy was sometimes inadvertent.

The hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Christopher Fraser) made a serious point when he spoke of the need for local authorities to take more responsibility for 16 to 18-year-olds. That is exactly what the Government are doing through some of their further education policies. I agree that we should try to cut red tape for small businesses when it comes to apprenticeships, but I do not think that cutting Train to Gain is a very good idea if businesses are to be helped to improve the skills and aptitude of their work force. The hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford mentioned that. I hope that he will ask his Front-Bench colleagues to revisit that policy, because I do not think it would be wise to take £1 billion from Train to Gain at this time.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Learning and Skills Council. I have acknowledged in the House the mistakes made by the LSC in the capital programme, but I can tell him that there is a capital programme. There has been record investment in recent years, the LSC has announced a further half a billion pounds of investment, and the Government have a forward programme of capital investment in further education, which his party has not guaranteed to match. I urge him to talk to his Front-Bench colleagues about that.

Christopher Fraser
Will the Minister give way?

Kevin Brennan
I have very little time, but I will.

Christopher Fraser
Will the Minister give me a guarantee that he will meet the consortium from Norfolk to discuss the issue at the earliest possible opportunity before the recess?

Kevin Brennan
I shall be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and a representative from his constituency, although as I have inherited a large backlog of meetings from my predecessor, it may not be possible before the recess.

I, too, offer my sincere congratulations to the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) and to her daughter on her success in obtaining her degree. The hon. Lady expressed the view that a number of people should not be taking up university places, because of the drop-out rate. Her party’s motion calls for us to provide more university places this autumn although we have already achieved a record level, but I accept the sincerity and seriousness of her contribution. What she said about the American system of credits was important, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property is dealing with the issue.

A number of issues raised by both Front Benchers and Back Benchers deserve further discussion, not least that of apprenticeships. Despite the impression given by the Opposition Front-Bench team, the Government have rescued apprenticeships from oblivion. In 1997, the number of apprenticeships was dwindling to next to nothing and only 23 per cent. of that small number were completed, but we have trebled the figure. In January the Prime Minister announced a further £140 million package providing 35,000 additional places this year, which will allow us to deliver more than 250,000 apprenticeship starts. As I said, in 1997 the equivalent number of apprenticeships was 75,000, with fewer than a quarter being completed. I do not think that we are about to take a lesson on that from the Opposition. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) mentioned level 3. In fact, the level 3 proportion of starts for 16 to 18-year-olds is rising, and the overall number has risen this year as a proportion of the number of apprenticeships being taken.

The subject of NEETs was also raised. We should bear in mind that people are not always in that position through no choice of their own. Some young people on gap years tend to be included in the count, as do young carers, people with disabilities, and people who volunteer. The fact is, however, that almost 80 per cent. of 16 to 18-year-olds were in education or training at the end of 2008, the highest ever rate. Six million are now working or in full-time education—the figure was 5.2 million in 1997—and the proportion of 16-year-olds not in education, employment or training is 5.2 per cent., the lowest rate for more than a decade. Obviously, because of the recession, the picture is serious. However, it is not entirely negative. As a result of the Government’s commitment with the September offer and their commitment to apprenticeships, the number of 16 to17-year-old NEETs will fall, and more people will stay in education.

Time is short. Let me end by saying that there was a time when it was said that unemployment was a price worth paying, and that there was no such thing as society. That is no longer the case. This Government are committed to helping young people and helping people through the recession, and we will continue to do that.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

Division 181
06/07/2009 18:59:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 190
Noes: 287
Question accordingly negatived.

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the proposed words be there added.

Question agreed to.

The Deputy Speaker declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to (Standing Order No. 31(2)).

Resolved,

That this House recognises this Government’s commitment to not repeating the mistakes of past recessions, and to ensuring young people are not trapped in long-term unemployment; notes since 1997 there are 300,000 extra students in higher education and public funding has increased by over 25 per cent. in real terms; praises this Government’s commitment to helping graduates through the downturn, including an ambition for 5,000 extra internships this autumn; notes investment in apprenticeships is over £1 billion this year and that in 1997 there were only 65,000 starts compared to 225,000 in 2007-08; further notes the success of Train to Gain in supporting over 1.2 million course starts; further notes the September Guarantee offering all 16 to 17 year olds an apprenticeship, school, college or training place; and commends this year’s Budget for investing £1 billion in the Future Jobs Fund to guarantee a job, training or work experience for every young person unemployed for 12 months, part of a £5 billion investment in tackling unemployment.

Identity Cards

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)
May I inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister and has imposed a 12-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches?

19:16:00

Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
I beg to move,

That this House believes the Government’s identity cards scheme should be cancelled immediately.

May I begin my remarks with an apology to the Home Secretary? When he made his statement about identity cards last week, I joked with him that his announcement was a fudge arranged between a new Home Secretary who wanted to scrap the ID cards scheme and a Prime Minister who did not. I had, not unsurprisingly, assumed that the result was an ugly compromise between the two, resulting in a voluntary scheme that will cost a large amount of money but will not work. I had also assumed that the Home Secretary had been forced into it in order to keep the Prime Minister off his back, but it now seems that I was completely wrong. The Prime Minister had nothing to do with last week’s announcement—in fact, he did not even know all the things that the Home Secretary was going to announce. On reflection, I suppose that is hardly surprising, given that this Prime Minister is clearly no longer in control of his Cabinet, the Chancellor keeps going off piste and the Home Secretary is now joining him.

What did surprise me was what that statement actually means. It means that the completely daft announcement made last week that the Government’s flagship ID card scheme, which we were once told was designed to play a central part in the battle against terrorism, will be voluntary was not another stupid pronouncement from the Downing street bunker, but was, in fact, the brainchild of the new Home Secretary. Perhaps my apology should be to the Prime Minister and not to the Home Secretary, who was clearly off his rocker when he made that announcement. How on earth is a voluntary ID card scheme going to work? Will the terrorists sign up? Somehow, I do not see the al-Qaeda sleeper cells all rushing down to Boots with their 30 quid to make sure that they have their own ID cards. What about the organised criminals? Will the traffickers and drug smugglers all rush to sign up? Somehow, I doubt it. What about the benefit fraudsters? They probably will not sign up either. So what we are left with is a multi-billion pound ID scheme for young drinkers in pubs and the vain hope that there will be enough volunteers to pay for it.

Although we did not agree with them, at least previous Home Secretaries appeared to have some method to what they were doing—this one appears to be taking a flight into cloud cuckoo land. How many millions of people does the Home Secretary honestly think will get up one morning saying to themselves, “I know, I’ll skip the curry tonight, go down the shops and spend 30 quid on an ID card instead.”? How on earth can a voluntary ID card be of any use in law enforcement?

Let us make no mistake about it: the ID card scheme was the magic bullet that the Government told us would solve everything from crime to immigration fraud and terrorism. We were told that once it was introduced, citizens would be safe in the knowledge that there was a piece of plastic and a database that, when combined, would provide the single source of truth about a person.

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very good point. Does he agree that it was always absurd to suppose that an illegal immigrant coming into this country would somehow escape all passport checks but would suddenly be caught out by a check on an ID card? It is completely unnecessary, is it not, to demand an ID card as well as a passport? We should use the passport.

Chris Grayling
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, if we had a proper border police force in this country—that is what we need—the problem would not arise in the first place because we would intercept those illegal immigrants at the border.

We were told that with the card, nobody need any longer fear that their identity could be stolen, because the Government would have it under lock and key—unless of course someone decided to burn the contents of the database on to a CD and then post that through a letter box, leave it in a car or on a roundabout or follow any of the other imaginative ways that the Government have worked out for losing our data. No longer would people need fear that crimes would go unsolved. Between the DNA database, the ID cards and the identity register, the police could just take a quick swab, poke a few buttons and, hey presto, the criminal’s identity would be revealed. No longer would people need to fear terrorism. For all the comments that the Home Secretary made last week about the terrorism issue being overplayed, we have all sat here month after month, year after year while his predecessors have told us that voting against ID cards was betraying the nation because they were an essential part of the war against terror. Now it seems that either those views were exaggerated or the current Home Secretary has got it wrong.

Dr. Nick Palmer (Broxtowe) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman says that he has consistently voted against these proposals. Will he cast his mind back to 23 January 2002, when he voted in favour of my proposal to introduce ID cards?

Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that in the early part of this decade, we were more supportive of the Government’s proposals than we are now. We have become completely convinced by what we have seen over the years from successive Home Secretaries that this Government are incapable of delivering this scheme. I have spoken with many people in the security world and not one has argued that we are wrong about ID cards and that they are an essential part of the security tool kit.

I ask the Home Secretary why he has changed his mind about ID cards and terrorism. After all the statements by the Government over so many years that ID cards were an essential part of combating terror—including comments after incidents in this country and in others—what has suddenly changed?

The Government told us that the ID card would keep us safe, that it would prevent crime and terrorism and that it would tighten up our immigration system. We are now being told that it will be a benign, handy-sized piece of plastic that will help us to travel around Europe in peace. Of course, it will also be useful for those aged under 21 and trying to buy a drink in a pub. We are left, according to the Home Secretary, with none of the advantages his Government have trumpeted, save continental travelling, and all of the disadvantages. We are left with the staggering costs to which the Government have already signed up through the poisoned pill contracts; the identity register; the cost to the individual; and the hidden nasty that is still there—compulsion by the backdoor of the passport office.

Jacqui Smith (Redditch) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Chris Grayling
I will happily give way to the former Home Secretary.

Jacqui Smith
A central plank of the Opposition’s argument is the savings that they argue could be made by scrapping the scheme. The credibility of their case is therefore dependent on the hon. Gentleman being able to tell us how much can be saved, over what time scale and what that money would be spent on. Can he do so?

Chris Grayling
The credibility of what we say will be determined by whether this scheme is right or wrong. We have argued all along that this scheme is wrong, and we are now seeing the Government back away from it. I fear that the right hon. Lady and her predecessors have written poison pill clauses into the contracts for this project that will make it much more difficult for a future Government to back away from the scheme. I will happily give way to her again if she can tell us that there are no such clauses in any of the contracts that would tie the hands of a future Government. If this Government are tying the hands of their successor, as I fear they may be, that is an unacceptable practice by any Administration. It may make it harder for us to do the right thing, but it will not stop us. The right hon. Lady does not appear to want to intervene on that point.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend struck by the fact that the right hon. Lady, one of the main architects of this policy, did not make a single argument in favour of ID cards in her intervention, and instead chose to ask the Opposition questions about it? Does not that speak volumes?

Chris Grayling
It does indeed speak volumes, but then very few positive reasons for the scheme remain. One reason why I was taken aback by the reports at the weekend was that I thought that the new Home Secretary had realised that and was trying to scrap the scheme outright. I was disappointed to discover that that was not the case. We will have to await the arrival of the new Government to secure that change.

Of course, the battle over ID cards between Ministers has been played out over the airwaves and the newspaper columns for some time now. We have seen an array of different opinions aired about how best either to keep or end the scheme. In March, the then Home Secretary insisted that the scheme was going ahead. She said:

“We are on track to introduce identity cards this autumn, and we have already started to issue ID cards for foreign nationals. Next month, we plan to award two contracts for the national identity scheme”.—[Official Report, 23 March 2009; Vol. 490, c. 15.]

However on 28 April, a national newspaper reported a “senior Cabinet minister” as saying:

“My sense is that ID cards will not go ahead. We have to find savings somewhere, and it would be better to shelve schemes like this that aren’t popular.”

On the same day, another former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) also called for the ID card scheme to be scrapped, in favour of mandatory biometric passports. Asked whether ID cards could be dropped, he said:

“I think it is possible to mandate biometric passports. Most people already have a passport but they might want something more convenient to carry around than the current passport and may be able to have it as a piece of plastic for an extra cost.”

Then on 29 April, when asked at the Institute of Directors conference if he supported ID cards, the Chancellor rowed back and said:

“ID cards are an interesting point because the lion’s share of the expenditure is going on biometric passports. People are rightly concerned about who comes in and who goes out of this country. Your old conventional bog-standard passport was okay but it was not too difficult to improvise, shall I say. The biometrics means that it’s very much more difficult. That is the bigger cost.”

So he made a commitment to biometric passports, but was very cautious about ID cards.

When the current Home Secretary took over, things looked much brighter for those opposing ID cards. He reportedly launched an urgent review of the identity card scheme, paving the way for a possible U-turn on the policy. A source was quoted as saying:

“Alan is more sympathetic to the civil liberties arguments than previous home secretaries. He is genuinely open minded. He wants to see all the evidence and then he will make his decision before the end of the summer”.

Statutory instruments relating to the scheme were due to be debated this week but have now been postponed.

Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) (Lab)
It is not the fact that Ministers have made different statements at different times that concerns some of us: it is the fact that we now have a scheme that will be compulsory for some people who are resident in this country and voluntary for others. The two-tier system being created is the real problem.

Chris Grayling
I understand that point. The issue for me, with the various different views coming out of the Government, is that we have a total lack of strategy. The Government have forgotten what the scheme is all about and they do not seem able to explain its purpose. We have something that is neither fish nor fowl, and that is no way to run what would be one of the biggest schemes of its kind that this country has ever seen.

Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind)
Can the hon. Gentleman explain to the House what the Conservative party intends to do to tighten up controls on foreign nationals who work and live in this country, if it does not go forward with an ID scheme?

Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman clearly was not listening to what I said a moment ago. The big issue that we have when it comes to people getting into and out of the country is the lack of a proper border police force. That has been central to the strategy that the Conservative party has put forward for a long time. The Government made an attempt to copy the policy two years ago but failed to do so properly. We need properly policed borders.

The new Home Secretary raised expectations that he would change things, but immediately he rowed back from that and said:

“We remain on course to bring in a policy that we believe has widespread public support”.

He added:

“In my very first interview as Home Secretary I made clear that ID cards were a manifesto commitment and that legislation governing their introduction was passed in 2006”.

It was reported that the contract to make the cards—for which Fujitsu, IBM and Thales were bidding—would not be awarded until the autumn of 2010, a year later than expected. Then came last week’s announcement, in which the Government abandoned plans to make identity cards compulsory for British citizens, to scrap the airside scheme and to extend the voluntary scheme in Manchester to the north-west as a whole. I have to say that I still do not understand how a voluntary scheme works. What is the policing benefit of a voluntary scheme. If a police officer stops someone in the street, can he ask for an ID card? The person can say, “I didn’t want to have one, so I can’t produce it.” Where is the benefit to an individual of buying an ID card and, more to the point, where is the benefit to the country of spending billions of pounds on setting up the mechanisms in the hope that someday enough people will buy enough of the cards to get that money back? It seems to me to be a scheme without a purpose.

Even last week’s announcement was not the final thing to be said. Despite what appeared to be a final clarification from the Home Secretary, the noble and dark Lord Mandelson intervened and insisted that the Government still planned full take-up of ID cards. He insisted that the Government have

“always made clear we want to move to a full take-up of ID cards and what Alan Johnson has said is fully consistent with that.”

He was quoted as saying that last week. Perhaps the Home Secretary could clarify. Given that the noble and dark Lord is de facto the Prime Minister of the country at the moment, and appears to have rowed back on the Home Secretary’s commitment of last week that the scheme would only be voluntary, will the Home Secretary clarify the scheme’s status? Will he categorically rule out compulsion and will he say that Lord Mandelson’s comments were wrong?

David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
It is no surprise to any of us that the Darth Vader of modern politics is in favour of the scheme. However, my hon. Friend is being unfair on my previous opponent the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith). The author of the scheme was the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett). He has said, in these terms, that the database society is a bad idea. Let us not worry about the card or the passport. What is my hon. Friend’s opinion of the national identity register, which is the key threat behind the system?

Chris Grayling
My right hon. Friend has raised a valid point that I had planned to come on to in a moment. The truth is that the national identity register establishes a level of data collection that goes far beyond anything that has ever been required for passports or that even needs to be required for a system of biometric passports. It remains our intention, as it was when my right hon. Friend was shadow Home Secretary, not to proceed with the national identity register. I see little reason why the rules that apply to the application for a passport should change radically given the current circumstances. To extend those rules to a national identity register such as that proposed by the Government at a time when the nation’s finances are straitened and when genuine questions arise about civil liberties seems to suggest that it is a project that we do not need to pursue.

We need clear answers to some of the questions that remain before the Government. The terms of the motion that we have tabled gives the House a clear choice to vote for or against the scheme. First, can we have some transparency about the existing contracts and the amount of taxpayers’ money that has been spent already? More to the point, how much public money has been committed to the scheme?

As the House will know, I have written to the contracting groups—as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) before me—to advise them that a Conservative Government will cancel the scheme. I repeat that warning today. One of the first acts of an incoming Conservative Government will be to cancel the ID scheme. The scheme and the register are an affront to British liberty, have no place in a Conservative Britain and are a huge waste of money.

Chris Huhne (Eastleigh) (LD)
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that he will also cancel the contracts that are in place to establish the centralised biometric database?

Chris Grayling
We will certainly cancel the national identity register. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we might be in a position in which, in order to allow people to travel to the United States, we need to process biometric data and to pursue the introduction of biometric passports. We have not backed away from the biometric passport option and, I understand, nor has he. Clearly, data collection will be necessary for biometric passports. However, it is not our intention to proceed with a compulsory national identity register.

What do the Government intend—this relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne)—to include in the national identity register? Section 4 of the Identity Cards Act 2006 gives the Secretary of State the power to designate certain documents under the Act, such as passports. As the explanatory notes to the Act make clear, that means that

“if, as is intended, passports were designated documents, an individual in applying for a passport must at the same time include an application to be entered in the Register if he is not already entered in the Register”.

The Home Office consultation on secondary legislation on ID cards, published in November, reaffirmed the Government’s intention to designate passports. It said that:

“once passports are designated under the Act, it will be possible to record each individual’s identity details, including fingerprint biometrics, on the National Identity Register”

The Government proposed holding applicants’ referees’ details on the register, too. That is very different from the process of simply applying for a biometric passport, as the hon. Member for Eastleigh will, I am sure, agree.

The Home Office’s spurious idea of what is voluntary was demonstrated when the consultation went on:

“Designation is not the same as ‘compulsion’ as there is no penalty if someone chooses not to apply for a designated document”.

However, as we discovered this afternoon when my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) asked his question, it appears that one cannot “unvolunteer” for one of these passports. I would be interested to hear the Home Secretary’s confirmation of that.

Martin Linton (Battersea) (Lab)
What will the hon. Gentleman achieve by abandoning the national identity register but maintaining a register, also maintained by the Identity and Passport Service, of those who have biometric passports? The information on the identity card is identical to that on the passport. It consists of only five bits of information: name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality and address.

Chris Grayling
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. He needs to go and look at the legislation and he will discover that nearly 50 categories of information need to be provided under the Act. That is a huge jump from the current means of applications for passports.

Martin Linton
I know that there are 54 places on the computer where the information can be put, but all the information other than name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality and address is identity information from other Government Departments—the national insurance number, the national health service number and so on. They are simply cross-references with other Departments. The only personal information on an ID card, as on a passport, will be name, age, date of birth, place of birth and nationality.

Chris Grayling
If that is the case, it prompts the question why we need a database for national insurance numbers. The current application system for passports seems perfectly adequate to me. If we had to have biometric passports, the data will clearly have to be stored. I see no need to create a much more substantial database containing 30 or 40 extra items of information that are not necessary in an application for a passport.

Chris Huhne
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point, but I am not sure that I would accept that it is necessary to store biometric data. After all, the document would have the biometric data and it is an additional guarantee of veracity. Why is it necessary to go one step further and store it centrally?

Chris Grayling
My view is that we should do the minimum that we have to do. If data are submitted for a passport application, they will probably be retained in the passport database. We do not need to create a gargantuan list of items with biometric data attached. We do not need to store somebody’s national insurance number and biometric data side by side with all the other items to which the hon. Gentleman is referring on a national identity database. We need a passport system.

David Davis
The issue is about more than the fact that we do not need to do this. I feel sympathy for my hon. Friend in dealing with the slow learners on the Government Benches. We are talking about a risk. The Government have already lost 25 million records. What will happen when they lose every other record—when they lose the metadatabase with access to all the databases in the Government? This is a serious danger; it is more than an inconvenience.

Chris Grayling
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is also right to point out the Government’s lamentable record of managing data. The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) asked why the Opposition have formed the view that we have. We have formed that view for two reasons. First, there are strong civil liberties arguments against an identity cards scheme. Secondly, we have no faith whatsoever in this Government’s ability to manage such a scheme on the basis of cost or data protection. They have proved to be systematically incompetent over the years in managing such a big scheme and they should not be trusted with one.

Mr. Ben Wallace (Lancaster and Wyre) (Con)
Is it not the case that the fundamental difference is that the biometric passport database is a static database—one submits one’s details, they are held there and they are effectively used as verification when one applies to update one’s details—whereas the national identity register is a live database? It is not only constantly updated with, effectively, one’s details, as one is obliged to do under the 2006 Act. It is also constantly updated every time it is interrogated by public service deliverers such as the NHS, and so on, and therefore forms a fundamental footprint of how one lives one’s life and how one accesses public sector services. That is the fundamental difference.

Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. On many occasions over the years, we have seen the Government introduce something that develops mission creep. Step by step, something that was designed for a particular purpose becomes much more substantial. We are talking about the need to have a database for passports and for nothing else. The Government’s proposal for a national identity register is something that, as sure as night follows day, will develop an acute mission creep and will involve far more things than we would ever countenance as acceptable.

Martin Linton
The hon. Gentleman is very generous in giving way. But there we have it, do we not? The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) has identified the only difference between the passport register and the national identity register: the passport register is kept up to date when people change address. Is that the Opposition’s objection? The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) has not produced another difference between a list of passport numbers—people who have passports—and a national identity register. They are identical, except on that one point.

Chris Grayling
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is talking complete nonsense. He needs to go back and read the Identity Cards Act 2006 and look at the difference between the two schemes, one of which is a vast collection of personal data, as opposed to a limited amount of information needed to issue a passport. If he does not understand the difference between the two, I am afraid that I will not be able to help him.

Does the Home Secretary intend to press ahead with making it compulsory for passport applicants to be entered on to the national identity register? When will that happen? Can he give us an updated statement of the costs of the scheme? How much is the total bill? He talked about the scheme being self-funding. How long will that take? How many people will need to sign up for an identity card before the scheme becomes fully self-funding? Frankly, I do not believe that it is possible to make the scheme self-financing. That raises a third question—the subject of the motion tonight—straightforwardly, why cannot he just scrap the scheme now?

While the Government have been promoting a scheme that is becoming less and less substantial by the week, a considerable opportunity cost has been lost to the country. Although the Home Office’s considerable resources could have been devoted to sorting out the problems that we actually have, the Government have been concentrating on inventing the answer to a problem that we do not have. They could have been working on sorting out the asylum system and the immigration system, designing a better strategy for countering terrorism and dealing with policing issues, yet they have devoted eight years to a massive national folly.

I had hoped that the signals given out by the Home Secretary when he took office meant that he had brought a degree of common sense to his new job. How wrong I was. I should not have been surprised, though. The Government are no longer capable of taking clear-cut and straightforward decisions; instead, they just dither. If they are not sure about ID cards, they say, “We’re not sure if we can scrap them, so let’s have an unworkable, botched job instead.” That is no way to govern this country and no way to run the Home Office. They should either stand by their principles and believe that the scheme has a purpose—in which case, stick with it and get on with the job—or they should accept that they were wrong and make big changes. Sitting with one leg on either side of the fence is the most ungainly and painful of all options, but the Government have long since forgotten how to do anything else. So, tonight, we have given the House an opportunity to put the Home Secretary out of his misery and to give a clear answer on ID cards: get rid of what is a ludicrous fudge and scrap the ID card scheme once and for all.

19:42:00

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Alan Johnson)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“acknowledges the continued and growing problem of identity fraud in the UK; accepts that a universally accepted biometric passport or identity card linked to a national identity register will help secure the identity of an individual and reduce the incidence of multiple identity fraud; further recognises that for certain groups, including young people, an identity card will enable them to provide proof of age and more broadly enable people to travel throughout Europe; considers that it is right that non-European Economic Area foreign nationals should be obliged to apply for an identity card which provides a simple and effective method of determining the right of residence and entitlement to employment and benefits; welcomes the fact that for those joining the National Identity Service there will be a choice between identity cards and biometric passports; and notes the fact that any decision on whether membership of the scheme should be compulsory would require further legislation.”

My hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration is hotfooting it from Heathrow even as I speak, and will reply to the debate.

Having spent my first few weeks as Home Secretary looking at this issue again from first principles, I am more convinced than ever that the national identity service is a sane and rational policy that needs to be implemented rather than scrapped, and accelerated rather than delayed. When I announced the results of my deliberations in a written ministerial statement to the House last week, it was reported in The Guardian as

“a decision to press ahead with the main elements of the national identity card scheme”,

and by The Independent as

“the last rites for ID cards”.

The Guardian, as so often, actually got it right.

The policy was forged following full public consultation and a supportive report by the Home Affairs Committee in 2004. The former leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said in December of that year:

“We must protect our citizens in every way we can and in my judgement, that includes ID cards.”

I was fascinated to hear in the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) supported ID cards. I have it here in front of me now: on 23 January 2002, under the heading “Identity Card—Motion for leave to introduce a Bill”, just 13 Conservative Members supported that Bill, one of whom was the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell. So we have a consensus, and his speech can be read as an effort to say, “We’ll introduce an identity card scheme,” because most of what he said related to what the Government could or could not do, and I suspect that we have found a covert supporter of the policy. Of course, he would not be alone, with so many other Conservative Members supporting the policy, too.

Mr. Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman has just said that the identity card is about the safety of the British people, but one of the problems with the scheme is that it has become the panacea for all the Government’s problems, from benefit fraud to terrorism. Will he set out clearly what he believes the purpose of an identity card is?

Alan Johnson
I will certainly do that, but the hon. Gentleman will have to be patient for a while. I am going through the policy in chronological order. In 2002, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell supported identity cards. In December 2004, the then leader of the Conservative party supported identity cards. The following year, the manifesto on which my party successfully stood in the general election contained a commitment to introduce identity cards. There was no reference in that manifesto to compulsion and no mention of their use in fighting terrorism. So the manifesto made no spurious claims of what identity cards would do. We won the election. Parliament subsequently approved the legislation, and the Identity Cards Act received Royal Assent in 2006.

Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman suggests that there was never any mention of terrorism. The Prime Minister described identity cards as an important weapon in the war against terrorism, and said that it was crucial to the destruction of terrorism that we should be able to spot quickly where multiple identities are being used. For the Home Secretary to stand there and say that the Labour party has never claimed that ID cards would be useful in the fight against terrorism is simply wrong.

Alan Johnson
The hon. Gentleman is struggling a bit. The Prime Minister was absolutely right in everything that he said, as I was right in what I just said. Our 2005 manifesto—that is what I said—did not contain any reference to compulsion, or to ID cards as a weapon in the fight against terrorism.

Chris Grayling
The right hon. Gentleman suggests that I have changed my mind. He clearly voted for motions and supported policies on compulsion and the importance of ID cards in combating terrorism. When did he change his mind?

Alan Johnson
Let me say it one more time: the platform on which we stood at the 2005 election—the manifesto that said that we would introduce ID cards—made no mention of compulsion and no mention of terrorism.

Martin Linton
My right hon. Friend passes rather quickly over the vote in December 2004, but is he aware that all the Conservative Members here this evening voted for the Second Reading of the Identity Cards Bill, with—I must add, to be fair to him—the sole exception of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green)?

Alan Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend: it gets better and better all the time. So why, given all this and the fact that every public opinion poll then and now shows substantial public support for identity cards, should we leave the path of good governance and common sense and wander off into the dense ideological undergrowth that the motion from Her Majesty’s Opposition tries to tempt us towards?

Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman will know, because he pays great attention to such things, that the Scottish Parliament overwhelmingly rejected the concept of ID cards—not even one Labour MSP was prepared to support it. Will he respect that decision? Will he ensure that people in Scotland will not have to use ID cards, which no one in Scotland wants, to access public services?

Alan Johnson
This is not a devolved issue, as the hon. Gentleman knows. Of course, we have made it clear since 2007 that if people want to use their biometric passports, which all parties agree on, as their identity card, there is no need for them to get an identity card as well. Their passports will do to verify their identity.

As I understand it, three essential arguments are being deployed against the introduction of identity cards. The first is that they are unnecessary, the second is that they are too expensive, and the third is that giving people a single, safe and secure way to verify and protect their identity—for the benefit of the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir), I should explain that that is the justification for the cards—will damage civil liberties.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is right, of course, to set out the attitude previously taken by the Tories—or at least, by quite a large number of them—towards identity cards. However, on Tuesday it will be four years since 52 people were slaughtered by murderous psychopaths. Will my right hon. Friend accept, as his predecessors did, that no identity card scheme would have prevented the terrible events of four years ago?

Alan Johnson
We will indeed mark four years since 7/7 tomorrow. I was on “Any Questions?” on 8 July 2005, the next day. The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) was on the panel as well. I was a member of the Cabinet, and at no time that evening, in that very sombre debate, did I claim that identity cards would have stopped that dreadful attack. Nor have I ever heard one of my predecessors, or anyone on the Labour Benches, claim that. It is a complete fallacy to suggest that anyone ever did. The one thing that united all the people on the panel that evening—people of all parties—was our abhorrence of the outrage, and our absolute determination to ensure that we do all that we can to prevent such a thing from happening again. I have not used that argument in putting the case. Nor did my predecessor or her predecessor, so I think that it is a spurious argument.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Alan Johnson
I shall give way to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) first.

David Davis
I thank the right hon. Gentleman—and friend. The simple truth is, of course, that the then Home Secretary said that identity cards would not have prevented the outcome, but the Prime Minister subsequently said that they would be a help in defeating terrorism. The Home Secretary has to deal with that. Let me bring him back to the issue of improving the security of our identities. His Government have had the misfortune to lose the records, including bank account details, of 25 million people. When the Government lose someone’s bank account details, that person can change their bank account. What do they do when the Government lose their fingerprints?

Alan Johnson
That is obviously an issue in the debate. The simple fact is that the information that went missing was downloadable. The information on the national identity register will not be downloadable. It is as safe and secure as it could possibly be—as safe as any system that we could possibly devise. According to the right hon. Gentleman’s argument, at no time in future could the Government have any databases, because some Inland Revenue records were lost. We have a huge database in the NHS, at the Department for Work and Pensions and at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. It is nonsense to suggest that the knock-down argument against identity cards is that future Governments of all political persuasions should never set up such a database.

Mr. Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)
May I bring the Home Secretary back to the subject of the efficacy of identity cards? I accept that he has not claimed that identity cards would have prevented 7/7. The challenge for him is to identify any criminal activity that the introduction of a voluntary system of law enforcement would have prevented. Unless he can do that, he cannot demonstrate that identity cards would be efficacious in delivering the public policy objectives that the Government claim.

Alan Johnson
I will come on to that in a second, but the right hon. Gentleman cannot suggest that identity cards would not make a contribution to tackling identity fraud, benefit fraud, money laundering, people-trafficking, or a whole range of other problems. Incidentally, they would make a contribution towards tackling terrorism; as I have said, identity cards are a tool, not the toolbox. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell—my new friend as a supporter of ID cards, I discover—says that he has never spoken to anyone in the security services who says that ID cards would make any difference. In the five weeks that I have been in this job, I have not spoken to anyone in the security services who says anything other than that they would make a valuable contribution.

I set out the three principal arguments against identity cards: they are not necessary, they will cost too much, and they will interfere with civil liberties. I shall now take each of those in turn. Right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House will, I am sure, recognise that people traffickers, drug dealers and, indeed, terrorists depend on ready access to bogus documents. At present, there is no single effective way of recording or establishing someone’s identity. That makes people more vulnerable to identity fraud, makes the job of the police and others in tracking suspects more difficult, and makes proving one’s own identity, or verifying someone else’s identity, a laborious and complex process. It puts us in stark contrast to other European countries, most of which have a central and secure way of registering and tracking people’s identity.

There are numerous databases that hold personal details of people living in this country, but none of them exists purely to verify someone’s identity. Personal information on anyone who holds a driving licence is held on the DVLA database. The NHS holds personal details of everyone who is registered with a general practitioner and allocates them a unique NHS number, which apparently used to be their identity card number before identity cards were scrapped in 1952.

Chris Huhne
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for mentioning the NHS database, because it is a rather good example of the sort of problems that we may have in store. It was originally estimated that the Spine system would cost £2.3 billion, but the National Audit Office now puts the figure at £12.4 billion and rising. What assurance can he conceivably give the House that the identity card scheme, and the national identity register, will not have a similar catastrophic effect on the public finances?

Alan Johnson
The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. The assessment in 2003-04 of how much the NHS database would cost was £12.3 billion. Its cost now is assessed at £12.4 billion. It has gone from £12.3 billion to £12.4 billion; that was always the cost. The problem with the NHS database is that we have not been able to spend the money that was originally put  aside, because it has been too slow in being constructed. It is not a problem of spiralling costs; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong on that.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Alan Johnson
I want to make progress, but I will give way one more time, to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris).

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab)
I remain a supporter of identity cards: in the context of illegal immigration, identity is a huge problem. However, I have to say to my right hon. Friend that several Labour Members have concerns about the technology and the cost. As he just pointed out, the NHS computer system is years behind schedule. Will he assure me that that will not happen with the national identity register? I am pretty dubious about both the technology and the cost.

Alan Johnson
I do not want to get on to the subject of the NHS database, although I am tempted. The simple fact is that the identity cards system is on time and on schedule. It has been on schedule from the time it was set up. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell asked me for a report on the costs: we give one every six months and the most recent was in May, so I believe that I can placate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West on that point.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Alan Johnson
I will give way to the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Benchers, and then I will make some progress.

Chris Grayling
I have a simple question for the Home Secretary: how many people will have to volunteer to take up an ID card, and will have to pay their £30, before the scheme breaks even?

Alan Johnson
I do not know the answer to that question, but I will let the hon. Gentleman know. The point is that we have always put forward a voluntary scheme. We said in the manifesto that it would be voluntary. It was in the Bill that we took through Parliament that it would be a voluntary scheme. We want it to be universal, just as it is voluntary to carry credit cards and they are universal, and just as it is voluntary to have lots of other items that are universal. We have never based our assessment of the costs on the ID cards being compulsory.

Chris Huhne
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way again, but I am slightly astonished by that reply. He has just announced a change in policy as regards airside workers, for whom identity cards were to have been compulsory. The key point that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) makes, which I think is absolutely correct, is that as soon as we make the scheme voluntary, we spread the substantial overhead cost of the scheme among fewer and fewer people. One then cannot raise the amount of money that one expected, and the cost to the Exchequer is substantially higher. The risk of the cost to the Exchequer will be dramatic. What does the Treasury think about that?

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. May I ask Members who make interventions to be brief? There is a limited amount of time left for Back Benchers’ speeches in this debate.

Alan Johnson
I shall come to cost in a moment. As for airside workers, we expect that ID cards would be made free to them for the next 18 months. We expect that removing the argument about whether identity cards are compulsory and ensuring that those workers get the same benefit as all other British citizens from a voluntary scheme will mean that we can speed up the process and get much wider coverage over the next 18 months.

The details of the 80 per cent. of people who have a passport appear on the UK passport database. The DWP allocates national insurance numbers and holds personal details and benefits records. The upshot is that whenever a GP surgery, employer, job centre, bank or passport agency tries to verify someone’s identity, they have no foolproof way of doing so, which makes it both easier for people to create multiple identities and more burdensome for people to prove their identity.

Identity fraud has grown, not diminished, since the debate began in 2004. The UK’s fraud prevention service, the credit industry fraud avoidance system—CIFAS—estimates that the incidence of fraud whereby someone impersonates a victim in order to take over their bank account more than tripled between 2007 and 2008. A study in the US has ascertained that each time an identity is stolen it takes the victim, once they are aware, an average of 330 hours to sort everything out and claim back their own identity.

The question is: do we need to deal more effectively with the problems of identity fraud, which is a feature of illegal working, benefit fraud and terrorism? The answer must surely be yes. Will a national identity register help? Of course it will. The introduction of fingerprint biometric passports from 2012 will secure identities much more effectively for 80 per cent. of the adult population. The details of everyone aged 16 or over who applies for a passport will no longer be held on the passport database but on the national identity register, and will be linked to their unique biometric data.

Just like the current passport database, the national identity register will record someone’s name, date and place of birth. It will also record their current address. It would not hold details of any criminal record or any medical information. Like the DVLA database, it will require people to update their details when their name or address changes. It will be overseen by an independent identity commissioner, and all arrangements for sharing data will be subject to parliamentary approval. Unlike any other existing databases, any unauthorised disclosure of information in the national identity register will be a specific criminal offence that could lead to two years’ imprisonment. Tampering with the register could lead to a 10-year sentence.

The second argument is about cost. If identity cards were scrapped today, it does not follow that the Government would save any money at all. Of the total cost of £4.95 billion, 70 per cent. is for the systems to produce the new biometric passport, which the Opposition support. A further £379 million is for the compulsory scheme for foreign nationals, which the Opposition also support. Over 10 years, the operating costs of identity cards will be recovered through fees, so they are not a charge on general taxation over that period. Any initial savings from scrapping identity cards would be offset by the loss in fees that they would generate, which would make a significant contribution to the costs of technology and other systems necessary for the introduction of biometric passports.

The third argument is the civil liberties argument, which unites the Liberals with the libertarians. Holding an identity card is not a new concept for people in the UK. In the second world war, all British citizens were issued with an identity card that showed their name and address and an identity card number, which was held on a national register. When this requirement was abolished seven years after the war ended, the national register was transferred to the newly formed NHS. Identity cards do not create or extend the Big Brother society; they are an attempt to control it—[Laughter.] They are also an attempt to give every individual a greater right to determine the use of their own identity, where so many wish to abuse it. I presumed that was why the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell supported the concept in 2002. I do not know why he is laughing now.

In today’s world, people invariably carry a range of plastic cards because they are required to prove their identity regularly. We need them to get into our place of work, to access cash, to pay our bills. Everyday events such as signing a tenancy agreement, starting a new job, or registering at a new doctor’s surgery require people to produce not only their passport but a selection of any number of other documents to prove their identity—utility bills, driving licence, payslips, birth certificates, six months’ worth of bank statements, all carried around by people in an attempt to prove that they are who they say they are. Many people would much rather produce their biometric passport or a credit card-sized ID card that fits easily into a wallet than waste time trawling through their personal paperwork, and many are likely to choose the £30 identity card over the £72 passport.

It is wrong to suggest that identity cards will make it possible for the Government or other bodies to repress or restrict liberty in any way. The Leader of the Opposition recently used an argument as spurious as his cod German accent when suggesting that it would. As is set out in law by the Identity Cards Act 2006, it will never be a requirement to carry an identity card at all times, and the police will have no new powers to stop people and demand that they produce their papers.

Private organisations will be able to access any information held about an individual on the national identity register only with that individual’s consent. Police and security services would be able to do so only under specific provisions approved by Parliament. There is no question of the national identity register being used to compile information about people’s political or religious beliefs, or their criminal or financial records. It will hold only the most basic, personal details, and substantially less than the personal records held by the NHS, the DVLA, or the Department for Work and Pensions. Everyone will have the right to see the information held on their record, and the names of any organisations that may have checked their identity against that record.

I point out again that the Opposition parties support the introduction of biometric passports, which will necessitate a register and will be available from 2011. They support our policy of compelling foreign nationals from non-EEA countries to have an identity card. Apparently, they do not think that the arguments of necessity, cost and civil liberties apply in the areas where, as I have explained, the majority of the costs are incurred.

Martin Linton
On that point, can my right hon. Friend see a difference between the official Opposition’s policy on biometric passports and the data that would need to be kept on those, and their view on the subject of identity cards? From what my right hon. Friend has just said, it seems that there would be no difference between the information on the credit card-sized identity card and that on the biometric passports, which the Opposition support.

Alan Johnson
It is a puzzle why Opposition Members support not just the passport but the necessary register of information. There seem to be some differences between the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), who has now left his seat, and the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell. There is certainly a difference between the two Opposition Front-Bench teams. I respect the fact that the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) has been consistent, but the official Opposition accept the need for biometric passports, and therefore must surely accept the need for a register of who has those biometric passports. They argue that, having established a system to lock in a person’s identity in that way, we should not give our citizens the option of a card rather than a passport. That is the argument. Our argument is very clear: people do not need to have an identity card if they wish to use their biometric passport as their form of identity. Her Majesty’s official Opposition say, “No, no. If they want to take a more convenient route and have a card, they shouldn’t be allowed to do it.”

Rob Marris
On the question of having a card instead of a passport, and the figures that my right hon. Friend has given to the House tonight, I would say that if the scheme is to be self-financing at £30 a shot for an identity card, 35 million of them will have to be taken up in the next 10 years. Does he think that that is going to happen?

Alan Johnson
My hon. Friend, unusually, has made a bit of spurious calculation; usually we leave that to the Opposition Front Benchers. The simple fact is that 70 per cent. of the costs are for the biometric passport, which all parts of the House support. A further £349 million of the cost—

Rob Marris
A further £379 million.

Alan Johnson
A further £379 million of the cost is for the compulsory identity card for foreign nationals, so I cannot see any way in which my hon. Friend’s figures add up.

Rob Marris
rose—

Chris Huhne
The Home Secretary should give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Alan Johnson
I would prefer not to, just for the last few minutes of the debate, because my hon. Friend is a great supporter of the scheme and will want to discuss the issue in detail with me afterwards.

Chris Grayling
Will the Home Secretary give way?

Alan Johnson
No.

Any sensible pragmatic Government would take advantage of the passport scheme to introduce a more convenient, voluntary alternative—a convenient piece of plastic to match all the others that people carry, rather than a valuable booklet. As I announced last week, I shall accelerate the roll-out of identity cards so that as many people as possible are able to access their benefits. Beginning in the Greater Manchester area, we will quickly move to the rest of the north-west and roll out the measure throughout London. There will be a focus on the most vulnerable in our society: those who not only do not hold passports, but do not have bank accounts or credit cards either—the socially and financially excluded.

But identity cards will not be compulsory for British citizens, and as I announced this week, that includes airside workers. After listening to unions and others in the airline industry, I believe that under a voluntary scheme, we can better explore how ID cards might simplify and make more secure the current arrangements at different airports for airside staff to verify their identity. My view is that, given the practical benefits, take-up will be high.

There is not one convincing argument for scrapping identity cards. It would not save money; it would, in the long term, cost us more, hamper the efforts of the public, the police and the security services to tackle identity fraud—which not only costs the economy £1.2 billion every year and causes considerable personal distress to those affected, but is the bedrock of much serious and organised crime in this country—and weaken, not strengthen, the defence of civil liberties. To scrap the scheme now, as the motion demands, would be an extremely expensive mistake that would deny the British people the practical and pragmatic step that they voted for in 2005 and have supported ever since. That is why I commend the amendment to the House.

20:13:00

Chris Huhne (Eastleigh) (LD)
I welcome the Opposition’s motion on identity cards and have only one key point to make: the ID card scheme is not just about the cards, but about the national identity register. That is why we tabled an amendment, which is on the Order Paper but was not, unfortunately, selected, calling explicitly for the abandonment not just of ID cards but of the centralised biometric register.

I shall deal with the Home Secretary’s point about the need for the register, because I simply do not see it. I was even more astonished after hearing his replies about costs than I was at the beginning of the debate. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) calculates that 35 million people would need to apply voluntarily for ID cards to make the scheme self-financing. A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that the figure is certainly about 30 million or 35 million.

The House should duly note, however, that we face the gravest crisis in the national finances that anyone can remember for generations, that we have a public  sector deficit of more than 14 per cent. of GDP, and that the Home Secretary is unable—completely unable—to tell us how many people have to sign up for his voluntary scheme to make it self-financing. I hope that he has not had his first meeting with the Treasury, because when he does he will be completely shredded by it.

Rob Marris
I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I have re-done the figures on my calculator and they come to 36.67 million. That is based on 70 per cent. of £4.9 billion, which is £3.43 billion, the foreign national stuff and the division of the resultant figure by £30, which comes to about 36 million. I may be wrong by a million or two, but it is a very big number.

Chris Huhne
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman, with whom I had the pleasure of serving on a Finance Bill Committee a number of years ago. I can certainly testify that his figures on the issue are a good deal more credible than those that we have been offered by Treasury Ministers. I find it absolutely astonishing that the Home Secretary has come to the House today to defend a project that amounts to a menu without prices. We are being asked to buy a pig in a poke, and we have no idea of the ultimate cost. The changes that he has announced have serious cost implications, yet he has no estimate to give the House.

Mr. Weir
The figures from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) are based on the Government’s cost of £4.9 billion. Alternative figures from the London School of Economics have put the cost as high as £10 billion to £19 billion, and, on those figures, more than the entire population would have to have identity cards before the scheme broke even.

Chris Huhne
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing that out, and I simply return to the point that I was trying to make. When I was shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I looked at Government IT schemes and found that more than four in five such schemes right across the government had exceeded their original budget. If the Home Secretary believes that he is going to stay within his budget, he is living in cloud cuckoo land.

The Home Office has already pushed a substantial part of the scheme’s cost beyond the planning period, so we do not really know whether the cost that the Home Secretary has mentioned is the full cost or merely the cost as currently shown in the planning period. I notice that nobody from the Treasury Bench is attempting to clarify that point, but I should be pleased if they did.

Chris Grayling
They do not know.

Chris Huhne
I agree.

The Government have rightly climbed down on applying for cards, and airside workers will no longer be forced to have them. Indeed, no British national with a vote in the forthcoming general election will need to have an ID card, and that perhaps tells us just how popular the Government really think this laminated poll tax is going to be. But that is only part of the argument. If people want to travel, they will need a passport and their biometric data will be entered onto the national identity register. They will be subject to penalties of up to £1,000 in fines if they do not keep the register up to date, for example, with address changes.

The Government have merely devised a new route by which they will collect the data of four in five of the population who have a passport: have passport, will travel, will be registered on the identity database. If that is choice and if that is voluntary, it is the same choice that the taxman gives the taxpayer. The Treasury says, “Pay taxes or go to jail.” The Home Office says, “Join the national identity register or give up foreign holidays.”

Rob Marris
It is a green measure.

Chris Huhne
Quite.

The database fundamentally reverses the relationship between the individual and the state. The Government helpfully tell us that identity cards will make asserting our own identities more convenient and affordable, without addressing the fundamental question of why we should be required to do so and why they seek to establish a national identity database in the first place. During questions today, the Home Secretary was asked about the point of biometric data if they were not on the database, and on that issue we have an important point of difference with the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). The answer is easy: biometrics enable the authorities to check that the holder of a passport—or, indeed, a card—is who they say they are. Biometric data such as fingerprints are much less easy to forge and equipment enables them to be checked; we do not need to put the data back on a database to make them useful. A central database is another logical step—a disproportionate one, in our view—in achieving higher security against identity fraud.

Dr. Palmer
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman accepts that fingerprints would be a good way of verifying the identity of a passport holder. As I understand it, his party would abolish the holding of such data on a database. How would he prevent people from applying for multiple identities?

Chris Huhne
The hon. Gentleman anticipates my next comment. The database would provide a check against the issue of duplicate passports or ID cards with the same biometric data. However, the Government have not provided any evidence that there would be a substantial problem. Nothing in what the Home Office has proposed indicates that it would be worth paying £5 billion for that benefit—let alone the £20 billion that the LSE estimates the project will ultimately cost us.

Other states do not think that there would be a substantial problem. Those lucky European states that we inoculated after the war against nanny state intrusion, such as Germany—not Sweden, I should say to the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton)—do not allow such centralised databases, and for very good reason. They know how databases can be abused; they suffered from them during the Nazi period and under Vichy France. That is why we should not begin to go down this route.

Martin Linton
I ask the hon. Gentleman, in a genuine spirit of mystification, whether he is suggesting that the Passport and Records Agency should issue passports, but not keep a record of the people to whom it has issued them. If he is suggesting that it should keep such a record, what would be the difference between that and the national identity register, other than the fact that there would be a duty—as there already is for those with driving licences—to update the information when a person changes address?

Chris Huhne
The key point about the national identity register is the access that other agencies will eventually have to it. That is why the database becomes a tool that is much more than just a static record of people who have applied for a passport. Clearly, it is normal for a person’s name, date of birth and so forth to be recorded. But we do not need to centralise the collection of biometric data on that record, because the next time the person applies for a passport their fingerprints will be the same and they will be able to be checked. Why is it necessary to have them on the database merely to issue the passport?

The truth is that national identity cards and the national identity register are a technological solution in search of a problem. When will Home Office officials and Ministers learn that just because we can do something does not mean that we should? The concept is not difficult to grasp. We might be able to clone humans, but we have rightly decided that we should not; we can run an Orwellian database, but we do not have to do so. George Orwell wrote “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as a warning, not as a blueprint. Ministers should read it again and not park their democratic values when they do so.

Martin Linton
I have heard some more well-turned phrases, but I still do not understand the distinction that the hon. Gentleman is making. He seems to support a database of people who have biometric passports. He is not against biometric passports, fingerprints or the recording of facial images—he just does not want to call the database of people with biometric passports a “national identity register”. The only real difference is that it is now to be called that. The police and the security services already have access to Passport and Records Agency information—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord)
Order. That was a very long intervention. Front Benchers have not been quite as bad in this debate as they were during the previous one, but I should say that time is running out and a large number of Back Benchers are seeking to catch my eye. Interventions are part of debate, but they take time out of it.

Chris Huhne
The hon. Member for Battersea is much more intelligent than he is letting on. The key problem is the document. Does the document attest that the person standing in front of the passport official is who they say they are? If it is to do so, we need a record of the person’s biometric data in the document, but we do not need the same record back at the UK Border Agency. That logical step is entirely different, because it enables other agencies to begin to abuse the situation.

I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) is no longer here. He said that 25 million items of data were lost, but the number was 28 million—in the one year of 2007. There were a further 17 million items of lost data in 2008. Do I trust even someone as competent and charming as the Home Secretary to keep my personal data safe? No, I do not—and the Government’s whole record suggests that I should not.

The slipperiness of ministerial justifications for the scheme is extraordinary. When the ID card scheme was launched, the cards were heralded as the solution to the problem of terrorism. It might not have been in the manifesto, but in 2007 the Prime Minister stated that they formed the backbone of any anti-terror policy. That was always nonsense, and was demonstrated as such not least when every one of the Madrid bombers was found to have a legitimate Spanish ID card.

The current Home Secretary seems to be singing from a different hymn sheet. He says that ID cards are no longer integral to the fight against terrorism, but that they are necessary to protect us all against identity fraud. I can see the argument that it is useful to take biometric data when issuing a new passport so that the new document contains those data. However, I say again to the hon. Member for Battersea that I do not accept that a centralised database is necessary.

The advocates of ID cards, including those on the Benches of the official Opposition, said that the cards would be of use to the police in fighting crime, but that does not bear a moment’s examination. If it remains voluntary to carry ID cards—as the Government, to give them credit, have always said it would be—ID cards essentially become akin to a driver’s licence. If a person does not have it on them when challenged by the police, they are asked to produce it in short order at a police station. If the person involved is a gangster on their way to the costa del crime, I doubt whether they would bother to turn up later to produce their ID card. Very few countries make carrying an ID card compulsory, precisely because it is so draconian to lock up forgetful students, disorganised journalists or amnesiac grannies. [Interruption.] Yes, I was speaking very much for myself.

Another argument is that ID cards and the database will somehow prevent illegal working or illegal immigration, but employers in sectors with known high levels of illegal working are already required to check identification and eligibility documents for foreign workers. The problem is not the fiddling of identity, but that the UK Border Agency does far too few checks and does not prosecute enough of those illegal employers. Only 114 employers have been prosecuted for employing illegal workers since 1997, yet that is the main way of enforcing immigration control in a country with 7,723 miles of coastline and 192 million air travellers coming in and out every year.

Keith Vaz
One of the problems is that the UK Border Agency has been targeting the wrong employers and the wrong people. It turns up with great drama at a factory or other enterprise, gets all the workers together, and ultimately finds out that none of the people is here illegally.

Chris Huhne
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee for that observation, which reinforces the point I am trying to make—that ID cards are a sideshow set against the lamentable failure to investigate and prosecute firms that hire illegal workers.

Liberal Democrats believe that the register would be a terrible mistake. People need not just take our word for it. A recent report for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, “Database State”, gave the national identity register a “red” rating, meaning that the database

“was almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned”.

If anyone has an unnerving sense of déjà vu, it is probably because we have heard this all before. The Government’s national DNA database was also given a “red” rating in the report, along with eight others: that makes 10 Government databases that are barely legal, let alone reasonable or effective. Yet the Government continue to fiddle around the edges instead of curbing this illiberal and illegal obsession with databases.

I have mentioned our concerns about criminal and civil offences relating to the national identity register in the Identity Cards Act 2006. It is worth reminding the House of those offences and their penalties, so let me spell them out: a penalty of up to 10 years in prison for tampering with the register; a civil penalty of £2,500 for failing in the duty to register on the database when required to do so under the Act; and a penalty of £1,000 for failing to inform the register of a change in personal details of those held on it, such as an address. The practical application of these penalties is likely to be that the innocent student will be pursued and fined for failing to update their address every time they move house, while would-be terrorists will happily keep police informed of their name and address. The most dangerous terrorists are so-called “clean skins” with no criminal record or contact with the security services. They have no problem declaring their identity because what they really want to hide are their intentions.

Would those penalties and civil liberty infringements be tolerable for the sake of increased identity security? I would argue not, given that the Government have never provided figures on the suspected duplication of identity documents. The total estimated cost of identity theft to the UK economy is falling. In 2002, the annual cost to the economy was £1.3 billion, whereas the most recent estimate conducted by the then official identity fraud steering committee in October 2008 put the figure at £1.2 billion: a substantial fall in real terms over a six-year period. In fact, a centralised database may attract identity fraudsters.

Martin Linton
For the illumination of the House, will the hon. Gentleman add the estimated industry figure for the amount that the ID card would save in terms of ID fraud?

Chris Huhne
I do not know which industry figure the hon. Gentleman is citing, but I am happy if he wants to intervene to give its source.

A centralised database will not lead to these potential gains; indeed, it may well attract identity fraudsters. The Government believe that they can create an un-forgeable database using advanced technology, but history tells us that that is completely misguided. The Pentagon thought it was hacker-proof until it came across Gary McKinnon, who proved otherwise. Technology moves at a frighteningly fast pace. Even if something were un-forgeable today, it almost certainly would not be in six months’ or a couple of years’ time.

Martin Linton
The industry estimates published by the Home Office a couple of years ago were £1.1 billion for the total quantified financial benefits, including the impact on ID fraud, with the impact on ID fraud itself being £570 million. Has the hon. Gentleman seen those figures?

Chris Huhne
I certainly have, and I have taken into account their source. Could it be the same source that predicted that we would have little more than 50,000 immigrants from central and eastern Europe, and then the figure ended up at 750,000? The source that the hon. Gentleman is quoting is responsible for the worst Government forecast on record; if he is happy with its authority, all I can say is heaven help us.

I fear that the Government may try to deprive us of access to public services unless we sign up to ID cards. The cards may not be mandatory in legislation, but they may increasingly be required to access possibly every type of public service, including health care, education, leisure facilities and public transport—the list is potentially endless. In the Government report entitled “Safeguarding Identity” published last month, officials state that the ability to provide high-quality public services efficiently

“is dependent on our ability to know who everyone is, wherever and whenever they need a service”.

I do not understand why biometric information needs to be stored on a national centralised database in order for me to tell a doctor or a nurse who I am. On a practical level, making ordinary life dependent on the reliability of a complex administrative system makes the inevitable myriad small errors potentially catastrophic.

At every level and every turn, the entire national identity register scheme, including ID cards, is flawed. It will not prevent terrorism, illegal working or crime, and it will not protect us against identity fraud—it might even make the problem more difficult to disentangle. Why are we doing it? I am forced to conclude that Ministers have no real grasp of why they want ID cards and the database, other than that it can be done.

Dr. Palmer
rose—

Chris Huhne
I am winding up now, and you have quite rightly told Front Benchers to keep it short, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I shall no longer give way.

The Liberal Democrats have consistently opposed the introduction of ID cards for everyone, regardless of nationality. We would scrap the entire national identity scheme immediately and spend the money on putting more police on the street. The people of this country and our visitors should not have to justify themselves or their identity to the state when going about their lawful daily business. We should not have all our most personal data stored on a central database. This insidious scheme is based on a fundamental flaw in ideology—the idea that we are servants of the state. We reject that view. The state is the servant of the citizen and must not be allowed to get above itself.

Although we would like the motion to be crystal clear about the issue of the database, I was reassured by what the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said, so for the reasons I have given we shall vote in favour of it.

20:36:00

Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). I will probably have to continue to do so as Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs.

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate. In fact, this is the first time that I have been able to participate in a debate on ID cards since I became Chairman almost two and a half years ago, which shows that the House has not had the opportunity to discuss the matter in great detail since the Government decided to pursue the policy. I therefore welcome the fact that the Opposition have chosen to have a debate on the subject and that we are able to discuss it so soon after the new Home Secretary has taken over and made his first statement on the matter.

I will obviously be brief, because we are on a time limit and I know that a lot of right hon. and hon. Members wish to participate. I am not at the moment absolutely convinced that the Government have got it wrong, but I am working my way to that position. That is partly because there have been so many changes to the original policy enunciated by the Government, so many reviews and changing nuances, that I wonder whether they are as committed to the concept of ID cards as they were when they introduced the original Bill and had the support of so many Members of all parties.

The problem that I have is that when I look at the reasons why the cards were originally introduced—one has only to look at the Home Office website to see the six key reasons—I wonder whether the practical implication of them meets the Government’s criteria. The website says that they are intended to

“help protect people from identity fraud and theft…ensure that people are who they say they are…tackle illegal working and immigration abuse…disrupt the use of false and multiple identities by criminals and those involved in terrorist activity…ensure free public services are only used by those entitled to them”,

and finally

“enable easier access to public services”.

The history of ID cards has proceeded since the Government introduced the concept. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) for reminding the House that the introduction of the cards had broad support throughout the House. Some Opposition Members even voted enthusiastically for the concept, which I did not know until he raised it today. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) clearly spends most evenings poring over the Division lists to ascertain how we all voted. I am nervous about how I vote now in case, in five or six years, my hon. Friend points out that I voted a particular way. However, my hon. Friends have helped identify the broad agreement in the House about the need to do something. Whether introducing identity cards is what we must do is another matter.

The Home Secretary is perfectly entitled, as a new Home Secretary, to examine a policy and consider whether he wishes to continue with it, even though it is in the manifesto and a measure on it has passed through the House. If a Government believe that a policy that they are pursuing is wrong or that its practical implications go against what they perceive to be right for the country, no Member would hold that against them.

For example, we last participated in such a debate when we discussed the Gurkhas. I agreed with everything that the hon. Member for Eastleigh said then against the Government’s views, and Parliament decided that the Government were wrong. The Minister for Borders and Immigration is in his place after his day trip to Calais—to do important business, I am sure. The Government entrusted dealing with the aftermath of the Gurkha vote to him, and he devised a good solution to the problem: to accept Parliament’s will and grant the Gurkhas the right to remain in the country. It is therefore possible for Parliament to deliberate in such debates—the Gurkha debate was on a Liberal Democrat Opposition day motion—and convince the Government that they are wrong.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend and I are both admirers of the new Home Secretary, but was it not a tad misleading of him to suggest last week that he had decided that identity cards would be voluntary from now on, when the Identity Cards Act 2006 already makes them a voluntary tool, and altering that status would require primary legislation? The announcement was bigged up, as they say nowadays.

Keith Vaz
My hon. Friend puts that well. I cannot answer for the Home Secretary, but I am sure that the Minister for Borders and Immigration heard what my hon. Friend said and will comment on it later.

I am worried that we will have a position whereby different people hold different sorts of identity document. Foreign nationals resident in this country will have to have an identity card; they are obliged to have them. Others, in the north of England, starting in Manchester—even though only 3,500 people said that they wanted an identity card—and now in other northern parts of the country, will be entitled to apply for identity cards. However, people in the rest of the country, if they choose not to do so, will not have such a card. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) pointed out, having an identity card will become compulsory only when a certain percentage of the population has opted for one. Before that happens, primary legislation is required in order to be in a position to make them compulsory. That is the first practical problem.

Although one takes an intellectual position about whether one supports the concept of identity cards, the practical implications, especially given the Home Secretary’s actions last week, mean that some residents in this country will have identity cards and others will not, and some citizens will have voluntary cards because they happen to live in Manchester or Newcastle, while others, for example in Leicester, will not. We therefore have not a fudge, but a bit of a shambles.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Could the problem not be overcome simply by giving every adult in the country a biometric passport? All the other arguments would then disappear. That is the simple answer; I do not know why the Government do not get on with it.

Keith Vaz
That is, indeed, a simple answer. We have paid for the infrastructure and technology to ensure that that happens, but I am not sure that my hon. Friend’s solution deals with those who do not want to travel and therefore do not apply for a passport. I do not know what the figures are—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea would give them to us if he were here. However, there are simpler methods of dealing with the matter.

My second point is about cost. I was present when the former Home Secretary challenged the Opposition spokesman about cost, but I am not sure what the cost is. We have been given the figure of £4,785 million and told that cards for foreign nationals would cost £326 million, but perhaps the Minister can confirm those figures when he replies to this debate. I have also heard anecdotally that one of the reasons why the scheme cannot be scrapped is that the contracts have been signed. With the contracts signed, it is not possible to renege on them, because the Government are bound by them. [Interruption.] I welcome back the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), the Minister for identity, even if briefly for today.

If those contracts are signed, what would be the cost of cancelling them? Would it be more than the cost of doing what the hon. Member for Eastleigh has suggested it would be better to do, which for policing would mean putting the money into front-line services? As we all know, budgets are not overflowing with money. There will be a debate over the next 12 months about the possibility of police forces throughout the country wanting to cut the number of front-line officers because—they claim—of the money that the Government have given them over the past year and a bit. We need to know a figure for the total cost and it is extremely important that we have it as quickly as possible.

The House will know that the Home Secretary has agreed to give evidence to our Committee next week. A large portion of our questioning will focus on ID cards, because we are concerned to know precisely where the Government stand. We will want to know facts and figures from the Government, particularly how much the scheme will cost and how much it would cost if the Government decided not to proceed with it.

We have heard in interventions by Opposition Members that the Opposition have written to the suppliers and made it clear that, should the Conservative party win the next election, it will not proceed with the ID card scheme. I am not sure whether, should the Opposition win a general election, they would be in a position to cancel a contract that the Government had signed. If such a contract were binding on this Government, I assume that it would be binding on a future Government too. If that is the case, we have a right to know whether what the Opposition have said will make any difference.

My penultimate point concerns the security of the database. We have had assurances from this Home Secretary, as well as from the previous Home Secretary and others, that the database is secure. I will not make the point that other hon. Members have made about the security of databases at the moment—I know that the Minister for identity also has responsibility for databases—but the fact remains that we have a security problem. It is a good job that we have not had many losses this year compared with the end of last year, but once we have the information proposed, we will have the mother of all databases. Therefore, we will need to be absolutely secure in the knowledge that that information will not leak out or be lost or sent anywhere in error. I am sure that the Government will try to reassure us on that point.

My final point is about the third category on the Home Office website, which says that ID cards will

“tackle illegal working and immigration abuse”.

It is therefore good that the Minister for Borders and Immigration is answering this debate. That problem will not be solved by ID cards. The Mayor of London estimates from reports that he has commissioned that the number of illegal immigrants in London alone is probably 861,000. The Minister has been very honest, fair and open with our Committee: he has never put a figure on the amount, because he once did that about another matter and we kept hounding him over it. Very cleverly, therefore, he will not give us a figure this time, but the fact is that there are a lot of illegal immigrants. I do not believe that they will go to Manchester or Newcastle, now that the scheme is being extended there, and apply for a voluntary identity card.

Unless we secure our borders, we will get a lot of illegal people in this country. At the moment—subject to any announcement that the Minister responsible for immigration has made in Calais today about securing our borders even further; I know that that is one of the great templates of his mission—those people are already in the country, whether they are in the bogus colleges that we have heard about in our inquiries, coming in on the backs of lorries, or whatever. There are probably hundreds of thousands of illegal people already in the country, and I do not think that the scheme will deal with that problem.

I am still with the Government on this issue, but less enthusiastically so than I was 12 months ago. They will need to keep making their arguments very clearly on this point, and they will need to put facts and figures before the House if they are going to convince me and other right hon. and hon. Members to continue to support them in the Division Lobby on this and future occasions.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. In order to try to get everyone into the debate, I am going to put a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches after the next speech.

20:50:00

Mr. Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)
I listened with considerable care and interest to what the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) had to say on this subject. I thought that I was going to agree with virtually everything he said until he concluded that he was with the Government, although he might be about to peel off. I am not with the Government on this issue, but I absolutely share the right hon. Gentleman’s sense that this is a policy in search of a problem. Every time I hear Ministers explaining why it should be supported, I sense that the problem that it was intended to solve has changed since the previous time I heard them justifying it.

I have always taken a reasonably relaxed view of this policy. I have not objected to it in principle from the beginning, based on civil libertarian propositions. There are clearly civil liberties issues at stake in relation to identity cards, and particularly in relation to the national identity register, but I was, and still am, prepared to concede in principle that arguments could be made to justify introducing such measures that would outweigh the civil liberties issues involved.

However, as the arguments have been made, I have become less and less convinced by the merits claimed for ID cards and the register, and more and more concerned, partly about the cost implications—I will come back to that—but mostly about what we are learning about the culture of the Government and their attitudes towards the civil liberties involved. They have not been consistent in their development of the arguments for the merits claimed for the policy, and they have demonstrated a cavalier attitude towards the civil liberties issues that leaves me very worried about the weight attached to those issues in the mind of the Government in assessing the balance of the benefits.

Let us begin with the specific benefits that have been claimed for the policy during the time that the Government have been advocating it. It was introduced by the former Prime Minister, and it has been followed up by the present one. It was said to be the key element in the Government’s fight against terrorism and benefit fraud, and in the enforcement of proper immigration controls. All those claims have been made for the introduction of ID cards, but as each claim has been made and challenged, the argument has moved on. We have not heard any justification of the claim that the policy will deliver significant benefits in terms of counter-terrorism or benefit fraud, or in terms of other, broader aspects of law enforcement.

The point of my earlier question to the Home Secretary was that I would like to hear a Minister talk me through the logic of having a voluntary system of law enforcement that will provide a vigorous means of enforcing laws that we cannot currently enforce to the standard that we would wish. If it is voluntary, I do not see how it can become the cutting edge of law enforcement. I have never heard that flaw in the logic explained.

The claims that have been made for the ID card have made anyone interested in public policy sit up—they have also been directed at voters and designed to make them sit up—but those claims have never been substantiated. What we then need to do is to look at the costs in the cost-benefit balance that are undoubtedly involved in the development of this policy, costs both literal and metaphorical.

First, as to the costs literal, it is unclear from the figures bandied about by the Government, by the Opposition Front Benchers and by various interested IT experts exactly how many thousands of millions of pounds this scheme is going to cost. But even if we take the Home Secretary’s most modest interpretation, we are talking about £1,000 million, which is going to be recovered at £30 a head from people buying voluntary ID cards. In his days as the Health Secretary—I speak as a former Health Secretary—I suspect that the current Home Secretary could have found quite a lot of attractive uses for £1,000 million beyond giving people a piece of plastic that will allow them to identify themselves as aged over 18 when they go into a bar. This seems to me to be an essentially frivolous use of a significant level of resource as we go into a recession—and this, as I said, is to take the Home Secretary on his own terms.

The reality is that almost all independent parties think that the scheme will cost significantly more than the Home Secretary acknowledges, and whether it is a charge made on ID card users or on passport users or paid by taxpayers, it is unarguably a cost that is not currently borne by the economy but which the Government intend the economy to bear in the years ahead at a time when fewer resources will be available. The Government’s decision to impose those costs on the economy will necessarily squeeze out other expenditure that seems to me to have higher benefits attached—or, of course, deny the possibility of reducing the tax burden in order to promote the more efficient development of economic activity in Britain. The Government have made no convincing benefit claims for this policy and have not seriously addressed the pounds cost that they are imposing on the British economy.

That brings me to my next point, which I believe is the strongest argument against the policy that the Government are pursuing because it tells us about the culture in Government in terms of the importance that they attach to the privacy of the citizen and the maintenance of citizens’ defences against the developing power of the state. The power of the state is enhanced, of course, by the power of modern information technology.

I believe that among the responsibilities of those elected to this place is our responsibility to seek to insist that the Government should account for increases in the power they wield over the private citizen. We, as Members of Parliament, should be jealous of the privacy of the people who send us here, and we should be concerned to restrain the ambitions of Government to invade the privacy of the people who send us here. What concerns me most about the policy is that it demonstrates that the Government do not observe those same instincts. The national identity register is already subject to inadequate control. What information are we going to be obliged to contribute to this register? The answer is that it is defined by secondary legislation and we are already hearing that extension of the scope of such information is anticipated.

David Taylor
The right hon. Gentleman is making a fair case in saying that a large, centralised register of this kind is innately vulnerable to unauthorised access. Over the weekend, his party announced that a future Conservative Government would flog off health data to Yahoo and Google. Does he support that policy? Does he fear that such a system would be less secure than a centralised system operated by the present Government, or does he believe that it would be more secure?

Mr. Dorrell
I would apply the same strictures to information held by all parts of the public sector, such as the national health service and the education service. I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s innate suspicion of private as against public. Indeed, I suspect that recent experience suggests that the public sector has been a less effective guardian of the privacy of the individual than the private sector.

The key point, surely—I suspect that the hon. Gentleman and I can agree on this—is that information should not be held on databases unless there is a serious reason for it to be held there, and unless there are serious safeguards in relation to what information is collected, the way in which it is held, and the people to whom it is made available. What worries me about this whole policy area is that the Government have been too free and easy, that the burden of proof has been too easily discharged over the development of the database and the extension of the uses to which it can be put, and that, when we analyse the supposed benefits of a serious increase in the scale of information available for manipulation in the totally technical sense of the word—information available for use by the Government—the Government’s policy has not been given sufficient weight in the cost-benefit analysis.

I believe that the Government’s approach to this policy has been fundamentally frivolous. It has been policy by press release, not policy driven by a desire to deliver hard results. What we have learned about this Government as the policy has evolved is that they do not possess the instinctive understanding that I believe a British Government ought to have of the importance of the privacy of the private citizen. That is why I will support my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Lobby tonight.

21:02:00

Dr. Nick Palmer (Broxtowe) (Lab)
I put my name down to speak in the debate partly because, as mentioned earlier, I proposed the introduction of identity cards before it became fashionable on the Labour Benches. I benefited from the support not only of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) but from that of the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) and that of the distinguished hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). When the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) said that the Liberal Democrats had consistently opposed the policy, he was forgetting the record of his colleagues and his predecessor. However, I was not totally on message when I presented my Bill, and I will not be totally on message tonight either, because I think that there is a case for delaying the implementation of the card aspects of the scheme. I shall say more about that shortly.

One of the striking features of public opinion over the years is how stably it has remained in favour of this project, despite almost universal media opposition to it. Barely a single newspaper is prepared to put in a good word for the identity card scheme; the reason why support remains quite strong—significantly stronger than support for any of the three major parties, I would say—is that people feel, intuitively, that it makes sense.

I think that people should ask themselves two basic questions before deciding whether, in principle, they favour an identity scheme. First, they should ask how often they actually wish to pretend to be someone else. Secondly, they should ask how concerned they would be if someone pretended to be them. Most people would reply “I never want to pretend to be someone else, and I would be concerned if someone pretended to be me.” On the basis of intuition, it is still widely accepted that it is a good idea to have a way of verifying the basic claim that people are who they claim to be. We are one of the very few countries in the world where establishing someone’s identity consists in part of their producing a gas bill. There is a lot to be said for a verifiable approach.

Paul Holmes (Chesterfield) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the public were in favour of ID cards when they thought they would solve terrorism, crime and illegal immigration, but as they are now realising that they will not do that, and also that they will have to pay for them, their satisfaction ratings are falling?

Dr. Palmer
As the debate has progressed, the satisfaction rate has not remained as high as it was, but it is still surprisingly high; it is about 50 or 55 per cent. depending on exactly how the question is put. I agree that there are concerns about aspects of the scheme, but I think the public are basically sold on the concept that it is a good idea to be able to identify people.

It is important to distinguish between the cards and the database, however, but we have not yet fully addressed that point. They are two completely separate issues. The hon. Member for Eastleigh touched on the matter, but I wish to explore it a little further, because in this context the difference between the Conservative motion and the Liberal Democrat amendment is particularly striking. The database is, and always has been, primarily for the purpose of law enforcement and official verification; that is what it is for. There might be doubt about the identity of someone who is under criminal or terrorist investigation or who is suspected of being an illegal immigrant, and it might also be necessary for an emergency identification to be made if, for example, someone is unconscious after an accident; for all those purposes, it is perfectly reasonable to propose that it would be good for the authorities to be able to check who people actually are.

On the other hand, the cards have always been primarily a tool for consumers. Several Members have asked, “Why would we have voluntary cards for crime prevention?” The answer is, “We wouldn’t”. Crime prevention is addressed by the database; the purpose of the card is to enable people conveniently to identify themselves without having to produce a gas bill, for example, or a set of utility records or mortgage statements. I have lived in countries that have identity cards, and people generally find it convenient to have them as a consumer tool.

There are, however, objections to the scheme to which we should be prepared to listen; and, to be fair, we are starting to listen to them.

David Taylor
My hon. Friend is very knowledgeable about these issues from his previous life before entering this place. Would he not acknowledge, however, that he is perhaps being a little disingenuous in trying to distinguish between cards and the register? Let us say there are 30 million cards out there; because they have been produced by the system, they would, de facto, be a register, whether in name or practice.

Dr. Palmer
I am not absolutely sure that I have followed my hon. Friend’s point. Is he saying that if we were to issue numerous cards, the record of those cards would in effect be a register?

David Taylor
Yes.

Dr. Palmer
Well, I am sure that is true, but my contention is that if we had the register without the cards, that would still fulfil the crime prevention aspect but it would not fulfil the consumer aspect.

The first thing to do, which we have got right, is to make it absolutely clear that the cards are not compulsory now and never will be. Several speakers have said that the Bill always stated that there would be the need for further primary legislation to make them compulsory, but we were ambiguous about whether that would happen. If they are intended to help the consumer, as I contend, the first step in building confidence in that objective is to make it clear that they are voluntary. If they are voluntary, the question of their being an imposition—something that restricts people’s liberty—does not arise, because if someone does not want one, all they have to do is say, “No, I will not have it.” The Government have taken an important step forward on that.

The next thing that we need to address is the audit trail, which has barely been mentioned this evening. One of the main objections of libertarians, including so many Liberal Democrat voters, even though the hon. Member for Eastleigh has not stressed this issue, relates to the audit trail, because they suggest that by keeping track of the number and type of organisations that have inquired about the identity of an individual, one can build up a picture of the kind of person that individual is and that that could be used against them to try to profile them as being a higher or lower risk. That genuine issue needs to be addressed, although I hope that such a situation would not arise.

The original reason why the audit trail was to be included was to protect people and give them the reassurance that they could see which organisations had been looking at their data. If we are serious about that and it really is the purpose of the audit trail, we should give the individual the power either to dispense with the audit trail or to edit it. By “edit”, I mean that if the trail records that I had visited a particular bank on a particular date, I would be able to look up the record to verify that, ensure that no entries had been made that I did not authorise and then choose, if I so wished, to say that I wanted the record deleted, and all that would then be left would be a note saying that I had deleted a record on such and such a date. If we were to introduce such a power, we would go a long way towards reassuring people who are afraid that the database will, in some way, be used to profile them. If the purpose of the audit trail is to protect people, we should be willing to introduce such a power. We need to distinguish between the urgent and the merely desirable.

David Davis
The hon. Gentleman has been making a thoughtful speech. One of the things that I object to about the national identity register is its sheer comprehensiveness. As the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) pointed out, it is one thing to have a register that, in essence, includes simply one’s identifiable aspects—one’s name and address, and biometrics—but it is another thing entirely for it to contain the other 49 elements. Would the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) be willing to countenance having a register that contains only the identity mechanisms, and nothing else?

Dr. Palmer
I would certainly be willing to countenance that, because a mature dialogue can include that kind of consideration. However, the basic concept of the scheme seems to me to be an objective that is close to being supported by all three Front-Bench teams; the differences are less large than the public may suppose.

The Conservative policy is becoming clear. It is to have the database—not the card, but the database—under a different name. That is a hypocritical attempt to steal  Liberal Democrat voters without addressing the real concerns of libertarians and liberal-minded people who worry about a biometric database. I favour the basic concept, but I think that there is real scope to address those concerns in the manner in which I have suggested. If doing that and dealing with the current financial crisis means that things take longer, we should be willing to accept that the card aspect of the scheme is not the highest priority for immediate introduction. If our taking longer allows us to get a scheme that has wider public support, we should be prepared to listen and to amend the scheme. What I do not favour is a populist motion such as the one before us tonight, which simply says, “Scrap the cards and then let’s have a database by another name.”

21:14:00

Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my neighbour, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer).

I wonder what the good folk of Manchester have done to have this wretched scheme visited on them. This whole argument bores me stiff, because I have been over-exposed to a policy and theory that should have been settled a long time ago. I have no doubt that Labour Members will point out my voting record, because I supported the proposals as a shadow Minister. At the time, we were broadly in support of the proposition. After the 2005 election, too, I sat through endless weeks of drivel, as the case was made time and again, in painful and needless detail, by which time we opposed the Government’s proposals.

This issue bores me because the Government will not come clean about it. The reason I and others supported the measure originally was not because it was claimed to be a particularly powerful tool against terrorism. I can see that there may be advantages to the scheme provided that it works, that we can afford it, and that the cards cannot be forged. However, I cannot buy the argument that the card would ever be able to control, or even deter, terrorists. After the 2005 election the Government changed their position, and the prevention of terrorism became the principal argument for the card. I could not understand that, which is why I voted against the scheme the second time round.

I am sorry if I am ranting, but I am delighted that the Minister is in his place—I know from his record and his conduct that he will listen carefully to what I have to say. I am probably the only person in the Chamber tonight who has seen an identity card scheme—although that is a slight misnomer, as I shall explain—being put into practice to try to counter terrorism. We have already heard that identity cards were in place in this country during the second world war and for seven years afterwards. That is not the scheme that I mean; I was not around then, although I may look old enough. The scheme I mean was the introduction of a driving licence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It was never claimed to be an identity card or a tool to counter terrorism, but it was described to the security forces—I was a serving officer at the time—as a crucial tool against, principally, the Provisional IRA.

The driving licence had to be carried in Northern Ireland, and it was not like the simple piece of green paper that we carried in England, Scotland and Wales at the time. It was a more complex bit of kit. Initially it contained a photograph, and then it was further improved to contain a thumbprint or fingerprint. For the first couple of tours I did in Northern Ireland, the card was not in being. As I recall, it was introduced in 1978, and by the time that I returned in 1979 we were told in pre-deployment training, “Gentlemen, this is the answer. The Provisionals in particular use vehicles in the day-to-day execution of their business. You will, as a result of this card, be able to clamp down on individuals. It is not easy to forge—you will be able to see forgeries—and you will be able to identify those who are opposing you.” Let us not forget that this was long before databases and computerised intelligence work.

We bought this argument hook, line and sinker, but the fallacy of it was brought home to me at about two o’clock on a rain-sodden night on a hillside in South Armagh, when any sensible Christian man would have been tucked up in bed rather than cuddling a rifle on the side of the road. We eventually saw a pair of headlights approaching us through a blackthorn hedge, and I sent two soldiers down to stop the vehicle and find out what was going on. They flagged the vehicle down and about three minutes later they came chasing back through the driving rain and said, “Right sir, he’s fine. He’s absolutely fine.” “How do you know he’s fine?” “He had one of these new driving licences—he’s got to be all right.” Suddenly, from being a tool to counter terrorism this driving licence turned into a pass that, in the eyes of the simple soldiers whom I was looking after, meant that that particular bloke was all right. Well, he was not.

Let me go on to give another example. In January 2006, in a mess hall of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, just outside Baghdad, someone who was allegedly an Iraqi policeman came into the mess hall with a 100 lb device contained in webbing about his body and blew himself to pieces. He killed 17 American soldiers and injured about 35. When questioned afterwards about how this “alleged policeman” had got into the mess hall, the guard on the gate said, “Well, he had a pass on him.” He had an identity card on him. In other words, in the examples that I have just given the Minister, these various cards—far from fighting terrorism—aided and abetted terrorism. The Minister might well challenge me on the Northern Ireland driving licence scheme, and we can discuss it if he has time, but that was certainly my experience.

I also found it quite extraordinary, during the endless iterations of Committees that I had to sit through, that the Government made it quite clear—or at least implied—that the scheme was not going to be voluntary at all. Yes, the inception would be voluntary, but enabling legislation was put in place that meant that, at the drop of a hat, identity cards and the concomitant costs could suddenly become compulsory.

There were also howlers that came with that legislation that made no sense whatsoever. For instance, if someone was not resident in the United Kingdom for a period of more than three months, they did not need an identity card. How could that possibly match up to the Government’s claim that the cards would be an important tool against terrorists? Not all terrorists are home-grown. It is fascinating, for instance—as tomorrow is the anniversary of the bombings in 2005—that all four men involved in those bombings were home-grown passport-carrying Britons, yet they felt the need to carry multiple forms of identity on their bodies so that their dead bodies could be identified. In that case, had there been an identity card scheme in place, far from hindering those gentlemen, if that is the right term, in the execution—bad pun—of what they were doing to themselves, one of the documents that they would have carried would have been the very identity card that the Government have billed as a crucial tool against terrorism.

We will also find that that situation is impossible to solve if someone is a native or citizen of the Free State of southern Ireland. In other words, the southern Irish—people from Eire—living and working in this country will not be required to carry an identity card. We might think that it is all over in Northern Ireland and in Ireland as a whole, but, as the events of a few weeks ago at Massereene barracks and elsewhere showed, it patently is not.

I would suggest that there might be arguments for the card—theoretical arguments, in some ways—if, as I have already said, I thought that we could afford it, if I did not think that it was a gross intrusion on civil liberties, if I did not think that the cards could be forged, if I did not think that the Government were incapable of putting the scheme in place and, most importantly, if the Government would stop constantly shifting the ground on which they make their arguments. If they would come clean about the fact that the scheme is a menace, and not a nuisance, they could, in my eyes at least, recover some of the credibility that they had in the past. As things are, however, the scheme must be scrapped: it is expensive and a pest, and will aid terrorists rather than hindering them.

21:24:00

Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer). He gave me some information that I have never heard before, and some useful context to the debate.

My track record is that I supported the Identity Cards Bill on Second Reading, partly in deference to my party’s manifesto and partly because I do not have a deep-seated civil libertarian objection to the idea in principle. However, I withdrew my support on Third Reading, as I did not believe that the detailed design of the scheme was likely to be implemented satisfactorily, partly because the justification was muddled in the first place. We have already heard that idea set out by other hon. Members. There were claims that the card would be an anti-terrorism tool, that it would control illegal immigration or that it would prevent identity fraud. The ID card has virtually no role in dealing with the first two, and is effective in the third only if the citizen chooses to use it properly.

The only possible basis for the ID card would be if it were seen as a convenient proof of identity—essentially, a citizen’s tool. For that to work, that principle should have been the foundation of the argument in the first place. I have heard it many times from the industry in which I worked before first coming to Parliament that that should have been the basis of argument right from the beginning—but it was not. One must wonder, to be honest, whether we could possibly justify a scheme costing this much for the narrow purpose of providing a useful convenience for our citizens in demonstrating their identity and their entitlement to services.

Any project of this kind would have to be based on trust. The holding of personal data in one place has already prompted substantial public mistrust, and we  have heard examples in the debate—I do not have the time to repeat them—but we all understand that human failure is an inevitable part of managing data, and that it is impossible to devise a system that wholly protects us against it.

Lack of trust is not merely an inconvenience; it is an entirely disabling impediment to success in a complex information systems project. The suppliers that have been called on to provide the system have made it quite clear that the project must be explained to citizens and that trust must be built. We have seen some frankly fatuous attempts to do that. The “yoof” attempt, via www.mylifeid.org, which was aimed at youngsters, fell by the wayside extraordinarily rapidly under the ridicule that it attracted.

It would help in building trust if one could show functionality. We have drawn out the example of airport workers. That was one area where it was suggested that ID cards should be compulsory, yet those who might have an interest in the cards being introduced—the British Air Transport Association—clearly said:

“We do not see the ID scheme bringing any security or business benefits.”

Frankly, if that area was seen as the target for the initial compulsion but saw so little value in the scheme, one must take some heed of that. It obviously has its own way of establishing secure identity—it must have, to carry on its business—and felt that the scheme would add little or nothing.

There are also practical objections. The national identity register must include a person’s address. That is one of the elements within it. That detail will change frequently. It is not currently required for a passport. It is an offence for driving licence holders to fail to notify a change of address. Precisely the same sanction will apply to anyone who fails to update their address on the national identity register. We might assume perhaps that that is something that our dutiful citizens follow by rote. Well, the evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency estimates that 20 per cent. of the addresses held on its database are wrong.

Inaccuracy is inevitable and will be substantial, so what value will holding people’s addresses actually have? Even if we assume that everyone will attempt to notify changes of address, the cost and scale of the activity involved will be huge. The Home Office estimated, in an answer to me, that 14 per cent. of people change their address every year. We have not discussed, and I have not seen any information on, the ongoing cost of managing the national identity register. That cost will be huge, if the task is to be done reliably and is to fit the scale of the undertaking involved. It is far from clear whether the cost of data management and updating has been built into the costs that we have heard to date. I would certainly like the Minister for Borders and Immigration to set out his estimate of the cost, based on the data that his Department has provided to me.

The practical use of the project is unclear, the trust of our citizens has not been won, and the detailed design of the project is flawed. It deserves termination. But for my lack of knowledge of the contractual obligations entered into, and any consequential costs, I would gladly  support the Opposition’s motion tonight. However, I must confine myself merely to withdrawing support for the Government’s position.

21:31:00

Mr. Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
The Scottish National party has always opposed the identity card, and we will continue to oppose it. We will join the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats tonight in the Lobby. I agree very much with the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), and it is a great pity that the Liberal Democrat amendment was not selected, because it goes to the crux of the matter.

We have always been concerned about the confusion regarding the purpose of the identity card. It was first proposed after 9/11 by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to fight terrorism. It seems to have gone through many rotations since. It became the solution to whatever problem happened to be uppermost in the Government’s mind—benefit fraud, people trafficking or whatever. Frankly, the scheme has never been credible because of that.

The arguments hit a new low tonight when the Home Secretary effectively said that the scheme was for the convenience of the citizen, who could carry a small card rather than a passport or other documents to prove their identity. That might be useful, but it is not worth at least £5 billion of public money.

There is another serious concern about identity cards. It was mentioned that during the second world war, everyone carried an identity card. I do not think that we can quite equate the current situation with war time. In any event, even then there was what the Americans call mission creep, since the identity card went from having three purposes to 39. In 1951, the English High Court said:

“This Act was passed for security purposes, and not for the purposes for which, apparently, it is now sought to be used.”

In other words, the identity card took on more and more functions.

We must be clear, given the Home Secretary’s recent announcement, that the identity card is not dead. Biometric passports are proposed. I understand that 80 per cent. of the population carry a passport, so there will be a large number of such passports in circulation. Will those passports effectively become ID cards? That seems to be the way things are moving. I am deeply concerned that we might get into a position in which the Government say that a person cannot access health or other services unless they produce a specific piece of identity, whether that is an identity card or a biometric passport. I do not see why we citizens should need to do that, but in the case of many services, the Government determine what identification is needed. It seems that we are moving towards effective compulsion by the back door, because one will either carry the document or not access services. That is very disreputable.

Dr. Palmer
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Weir
No, I will not. I do not have much time.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) raised with the Home Secretary the example of the Scottish Parliament, the right hon. Gentleman rather brushed it aside, but it is an important example. When the Scottish Parliament voted on the principle of ID cards, no one, but no one, supported it. The Labour party abstained en masse. But the Scottish Parliament controls public services in many areas in Scotland, and ID cards or biometric passports will not be made compulsory to access those services, whatever the Government down here choose to do.

The Home Secretary assured us that the database was totally secure—he even stated, if I heard him correctly, that it was not downloadable. I am no computer expert, but I am fairly certain that it would be impossible to create a database that is not downloadable in any event. Others have mentioned the Government’s record both on IT projects and on loss of data, so I shall not elaborate further.

I am concerned about the huge costs associated with the database and the lack of clarity about the costs involved. The Government give a cost of between £4 billion and £5 billion. In an intervention, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), who is no longer in his place, pointed out that for that cost to be covered, some 35 million people would have to get an identity card voluntarily at a cost of £30. Members can decide how likely it is that that number will do so, unless the Government try to make it compulsory by the back door.

That is not the largest cost that has been estimated for the scheme. There is great difficulty involved in trying to find out the true cost of the identity card scheme. The London School of Economics put a 10-year cost range between £10.6 billion and £19.3 billion. That has been strongly attacked by the Government, who do not accept those figures, about which there has been considerable controversy. Using the method employed by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, as I pointed out earlier, more than the entire population of the UK would have to apply voluntarily for an identity card at a cost of £30 for the Government to get anywhere near covering the projected cost. It is impossible, and the figures do not add up.

It is interesting to note that such is the controversy about the figures that the London School of Economics has stated that it will not issue further costings because of the secrecy and contradictions around the identity card scheme. It should cause all Members great concern that we cannot get even such basic information.

The identity card has been proposed for all sorts of reasons, but there is no evidence that it will deal with those problems. There is no evidence that it is a cost-effective way of addressing those problems—for example, benefit fraud. Identity is only a tiny part of the problem of fraud in the benefits system, and even if the identity card helped to tackle that, it would not tackle the main problem. Many countries have much worse identity card theft than Britain, because they rely on a single reference source, which will effectively be the problem if we move towards an identity card or a biometric passport in this country.

Commenting on the recent announcement by the Home Secretary, Liberty said that the Government proposal still amounted to a compulsory scheme. It said:

“The Home Secretary needs to be clear as to whether entry on to the National Identity Register will continue to be automatic when applying for a passport. If so, the identity scheme will be compulsory in practice.

However you spin it, big ears, four legs and a long trunk still make an elephant. And this white elephant would be as costly to privacy and race equality as to our purses.”

I could not agree more with Liberty. The whole thing is a disaster area. It does not do what it says on the tin, to quote someone else. It will be a massive cost that we cannot afford in these economic times, it is a waste of money and it should be ditched immediately.

21:39:00

Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
This has been a most instructive debate: those who have always opposed identity cards now seem to do so with more strength and passion than they ever did; and those who supported them reluctantly seem to be moving from that position. Even the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer), who is a leading enthusiast of them, admitted that he is now not in favour of what the Government are doing. The case was put very well by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who described the Government’s position as a shambles, and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell), who described ID cards as a policy in search of a problem.

The Home Secretary revealed the essential emptiness of the Government’s position. I am delighted to welcome the Minister for Borders and Immigration back from France to wind up the debate. He did not listen to the first hour and a half, and, candidly, I would have advised him to stay and have the dinner; it would have been more fun than trying to respond to this debate.

The Home Secretary’s speech revealed the essential emptiness at the heart of the Government’s remaining arguments for the scheme. He was at pains to say that the Government had never argued that it was going to stop terrorism or be that effective against crime or benefit fraud, and that, in fact, there had never been any particular purpose to it. He is right: those arguments were all used at various stages—and some of us voted against the scheme all the way through—and never were at all convincing. However, what remaining shred of conviction and argument one could have had about the effectiveness of identity cards in fighting crime, terrorism and benefit fraud is completely removed when they are voluntary.

Laura Moffatt (Crawley) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Damian Green
The hon. Lady has not been present for the whole debate, so if she will excuse me I shall not, because we have very little time left.

The Home Secretary revealed the hollowness at the heart of his argument when he said that the scheme had always been intended to be voluntary, but those of us who sat through the debates do not quite remember it like that: it was clearly a scheme that the Government always intended to make compulsory. The legislation states that there has to be another vote for it to be made compulsory, but the provision is in the legislation and it was always clearly the Government’s intention to move to compulsion. That was one of the last things that made it logical. What is completely illogical is the Government’s position since last week. They have tried to pretend that the scheme was always meant to be voluntary, but none of its so-called benefits applies if it is to be voluntary.

The Home Secretary has blown a hole in the centre of the arguments that successive Labour Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries have made. The previous Prime Minister talked about ID cards being

“an essential way of tackling illegal migration and crime”.—[Official Report, 18 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 833.]

The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), when he was Home Secretary, talked about ID cards making “our borders more secure” And his successor but one, the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), described identity cards as “central to measures to prevent illegal working”. All sorts of claims have been made—none of which can be credibly made about the current system.

Laura Moffatt
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Damian Green
All right, I will give way to the hon. Lady, because I am like that.

Laura Moffatt
I am deeply grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I certainly was present for the beginning of the debate; I just missed an hour in the middle. Has he had discussions with Conservative leaders of local authorities? At a recent roadshow run by the Home Department, the Conservative leader of Crawley borough council saw the enormous benefits of ID cards, both in delivering council services and for the business community. Would the hon. Gentleman like to answer that?

Damian Green
I see no advantages to the identity card scheme, and I could happily discuss it with my colleagues in local government.

We all now agree that ID cards will not prevent terrorism; that is now of no dispute between anyone. They certainly will not prevent illegal immigration, because foreign visitors will not have to have an ID card unless they plan to stay in the UK for more than three months. They will not prevent identity fraud. Microsoft’s national technology officer, Jerry Fishenden, has said that introducing ID cards would make the problem even worse, warning that it could

“trigger massive identity fraud on a scale beyond anything we have seen before”.

[Interruption.] The Minister for Borders and Immigration asks how, but I suggest that he talk to Microsoft. We are five years into the scheme—why does he not talk to one of the world’s biggest and most successful computer companies about the effects of his policy?

The Government should have spent time and resources on ensuring that biometric passports were secure. In November 2006, an investigation by The Guardian found that the passports could be electronically attacked and cloned with a microchip reader costing £174. A computer expert took 48 hours to write software that could take all the information from the chips.

How have the Government got to the current situation? Contrary to all the assertions about opinion polls showing that ID cards were popular, when real people—airport workers in Manchester and London City airport—were told that they had to have identity cards, they rebelled. Neither the airlines nor the airline workers wanted them. Nobody wanted them, so the Government promptly retreated. As a good former trade union official, the Home Secretary recognised that the trade unions were against the idea, so—as Labour Ministers do when faced with trade union rebellions—he retreated and announced a U-turn.

Previously, the Home Secretary had claimed that, despite their resistance, the airport workers had to have an ID card for security reasons. Now, however, the pilot schemes are to be voluntary. One of the most absurd bits of last week’s announcement came when the Home Secretary claimed that he was accelerating the roll-out of ID cards. I gently suggest to him and the Minister for Borders and Immigration that given our discussions today, in various forms around the House, of the fines of up to £1,000 for which people will make themselves liable if they take a voluntary ID card, the voluntary take-up will be particularly small.

That brings me to the subject of costs, which has dominated a lot of the debate. The bad news for the Minister for Borders and Immigration, who is about to wind up, is that the Home Secretary was completely and characteristically honest about the issue—he said that he had no idea how many people would voluntarily take up the card. If the Government have no idea about that, they can have no idea of the cost to the taxpayer. Everything that Ministers say about the cost is bogus; they do not know any more about it than anyone else.

None of the rest of us knows much about the cost because Ministers have spent the past few years energetically trying to hide it. They keep asserting that 70 per cent. of the cost is due to the passports and that only 30 per cent. will go on ID cards—although 30 per cent. of £5 billion seems a lot of money and worth saving to me. However, even if what they say is true, the Government have adduced no detailed evidence for the assertion; they have not allowed anyone to look at any of the accounts, but simply repeat the assertion. We simply cannot know how much preserving biometric passports but not proceeding with an identity card scheme or the national identity register would save. On that point, I reassure the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) that we could happily have imported his party’s amendment into ours; we are as strongly against the national identity register as he is. It is one of the central things that are wrong.

One of the other myths perpetuated this evening is that the passport database is essentially the same as the national identity register. I commend schedule 1 to the Identity Cards Act 2006 to all those who have been peddling that myth; they should read the list of the information that may be recorded on the identity register. The list includes:

“the ‘audit log’ of how and when any information from an entry was provided to any person or body.”

Any attempt by anyone to look at a person’s records gets registered. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary says that that is absolutely right. There is much more on the national identity register—[Interruption.] We do know, although some of the right hon. Gentleman’s colleagues do not seem to. They seem to think that the information is the same as that on a passport, but it absolutely is not—it is much greater and more intrusive than the information that would be on the passport database, and it would be dishonest of the Government to claim otherwise.

The scheme is not wrong only in cost terms. A Conservative Government would scrap the scheme not just because it is a waste of money—it is also wrong. The Government do not understand a simple, obvious truth: we cannot defend our liberties by sacrificing them. We have taken a principled stance against the Government’s control state. We are fundamentally opposed to the Orwellian society that Labour is trying to create through schemes such as this. Privacy International—the Home Secretary should be ashamed of this—now ranks Britain as the most invasive surveillance state and the worst at protecting individual privacy of any western democracy. That is what we have come to after 12 years of new Labour Government. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary is objecting to Privacy International, which is no doubt another body that he has no time for. Frankly, however, he must recognise that ID cards are a bad idea whose time has never come.

Anyone who cares about either freedom and privacy or the state of the public finances—some of us care about both—will vote for our motion. The ID scheme is a sickly policy that needs to be put out of its misery. If this Government will not do that, the Conservatives will do it if we win the election. I commend our motion to the House.

21:50:00

The Minister for Borders and Immigration (Mr. Phil Woolas)
It is a pleasure to serve under your speakership in this Chamber for the first time, Mr. Speaker. May I start by apologising to you, to the House and to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for not being here at the beginning of the debate? I am sure that the House would have been supporting me in what I was doing in France in securing our borders.

The modern-day Conservative party has an identity crisis. It is seeking to square its authoritarian instinct with its liberal appeal. Up and down this country there are Conservative councils that use CCTV and use access cards for local services, and whose members and activists support the idea not only of an identity card but a compulsory identity card; we know that because people tell us so in our constituencies. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, who has flipped on this issue, showed his true colours on 23 January 2002 when he supported the very wise Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer).

Two prime myths are perpetuated by the Opposition. I refer to the official Opposition, not to the Liberal Democrats, who have been consistent in their folly in opposing our policy, unlike the Conservatives, who have been inconsistent in their folly. The first myth is the allegation that the Government are allocating up to £5 billion of public money to pay for an ID card scheme. That is simply a fabrication. We have heard the accusation that clarity has not been given; the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) made that point. I refer hon. Members to the document, “National Identity Service Cost Report”, published in May 2009—particularly to pages 6 and 7, where tables lay out the estimates. The first paragraph on page 7 says:

“The estimates—

that is, for the total of £4.945 billion over a 10-year period—

“are gross costs and do not reflect income from fees and charges.”

The cost of the passport service is covered by the fee for the passport, which is currently £72—a bit more for someone who wants it fast-tracked and a bit less for a child. The total fee for the estimated number of passports issued over the next 10 years is up to £96.7 million; that gives us a gross cost. The £4.95 billion figure quoted for ID cards is a gross cost before fees and income. Then the question arises as to how much of that money is to be spent on the identity card. The answer is that that depends how many people get one. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell rises up in mock accusation saying that we do not know. Does any business person know how many units of their product will be sold in 10 years’ time? No: they know the average cost and the marginal cost.

Chris Grayling
Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Woolas
No, I will not, because I want to bust the other myth, too.

The cost of the scheme is covered by the fee, so the accusation that it is a waste of public money is false. Further, the Conservatives’ own public finance policy is based on the idea that they can save money by scrapping the ID scheme, but the fact that it is a gross cost before income shows that there is no money to save by doing that. Once again, there is a black hole in their argument.

Rob Marris
Perhaps my hon. Friend can elucidate. From memory, the report gives the distinct cost of identity cards as something in the order of £1.2 billion over 10 years. That suggests, in round terms at £30 per identity card, a take-up of 36 million voluntary ID cards, many by people who would not have passports. Does my hon. Friend really believe that there will be 36 million volunteers in the next 10 years?

Mr. Woolas
I refer my hon. Friend to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, who explained clearly to the House the difference between the cost of the cards and the cost of the national identity register, establishing which will incur costs in order to provide the biometric passport. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell is not denying the desirability of or need for that identity register. The cost report laid before the House explained that difference thoroughly. In any event, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) is to undertake a study, and I ask him to consider the points that I have made.

Chris Grayling
rose—

Mr. Woolas
I ought to give way to the hon. Gentleman, so that he can explain his own policy.

Chris Grayling
May I ask the Minister a simple question? The Home Secretary told us last week that the voluntary ID card scheme would be self-financing. How many people need to sign up for that voluntary scheme in order for it to break even and become self-financing?

Mr. Woolas
The economics of that argument are ridiculous. The same could be said of the passport service. If, goodness forbid, the hon. Gentleman were ever in a position of having to take a decision and he were asked what he thought the passport fee for the next year should be, and his officials provided him with a brief saying, “We don’t know how many are going to be sold next year, Minister, so we can’t set a fee”, what would he do? He would say, “We will base it on cost recovery. We will look at the previous average cost of passports and the marginal cost of production”, just as any business person has to do, and he will set his fee. [Interruption.] The fee will be £30 next year and £30 the year after; we have said that. This is not difficult economics.  [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) says “Do the maths”, but he clearly does not know what marginal cost is.

The second myth that has been perpetuated in the debate is that because there are six good reasons for an identity scheme, no one reason is good enough. It is argued that an identity card system in Madrid did not stop the terrorist bombing. On that logic, the police force in Spain could be abolished. They had a police force, but that did not stop the bombing. The Government have not said, as the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) claimed, that it was the key element—[Interruption.] The Opposition might not like the argument, but the right hon. Gentleman said that we had claimed that ID cards were the key method against terrorism. That is not what we said.

Mr. Dorrell
Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Woolas
I cannot give way; I have very limited time.

Another argument that is put forward is that the scheme will not help diminish fraud. Clearly the 24 European Union countries that have opted for an identity card scheme think that it will help attack fraud. It is not the key element, but it is one element.

Of course, the Opposition want the scheme to be compulsory so that they can get their arguments about the alleged Orwellian nature of the Government on the record. However, when we pulled the rug from under them two years ago, and when my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary reinforced the policy, the 71 per cent. of people who want an identity card were with us and against them.

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

Division 182
06/07/2009 21:59:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 206
Noes: 293
Question accordingly negatived.

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 32(2)), That the proposed words be there added.

Division 183
06/07/2009 22:15:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 283
Noes: 203
Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House acknowledges the continued and growing problem of identity fraud in the UK; accepts that a universally accepted biometric passport or identity card linked to a national identity register will help secure the identity of an individual and reduce the incidence of multiple identity fraud; further recognises that for certain groups, including young people, an identity card will enable them to provide proof of age and more broadly enable people to travel throughout Europe; considers that it is right that non-European Economic Area foreign nationals should be obliged to apply for an identity card which provides a simple and effective method of determining the right of residence and entitlement to employment and benefits; welcomes the fact that for those joining the National Identity Service there will be a choice between identity cards and biometric passports; and notes the fact that any decision on whether membership of the scheme should be compulsory would require further legislation.

Business without Debate

Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) (No. 2) Bill

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 56), That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Question put forthwith, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Delegated Legislation

Mr. Speaker
With the leave of the House, I shall put motions 3 and 4 together.

Hon. Members
Object.

Mr. Speaker
Objection taken. The motions will therefore be put separately.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Companies

That the draft Overseas Companies Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 14 May, be approved.—(Mark Tami.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

International Monetary Fund

That the draft International Monetary Fund (Limit on Lending) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 2 June, be approved.—(Mark Tami.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Justice and Security

That the draft Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 (Extension of duration of non-jury trial provisions) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 8 June, be approved.—(Mark Tami.)

The Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 8 July (Standing Order No. 41A).

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Identity Cards

That the draft Identity Cards Act 2006 (Provision of Information without Consent) Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 6 May, be approved.—(Mark Tami.)

The Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 8 July (Standing Order No. 41A).

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Identity Cards

That the draft Identity Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on Penalties) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 6 May, be approved.—(Mark Tami.)

The Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 8 July (Standing Order No. 41A).

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Identity Cards

That the draft Identity Cards Act 2006 (Fees) Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 6 May, be approved.—(Mark Tami.)

The Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 8 July (Standing Order No. 41A).

Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you will know, it is very difficult to be successful in the ballot for questions. I was delighted that I came up in the ballot for questions to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government but, to my horror, I received notification this morning that my question had been bumped from tomorrow’s Order Paper and made into a written question to the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. Exactly the same thing happened to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride). I know, Sir, that the Ashes are coming up and cricket is on everyone’s mind, so is it not fair to suggest that, similar to what happens under the LBW rule, the benefit of the doubt should be given to a Back-Bench Member who is asking a question, rather than to the Executive who are trying to bump a question? I would be very grateful for any ruling that you could make on this matter.

Mr. Speaker
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and, more particularly, for giving me advance notice of it. What I say to him is that I, in common with my predecessors, strongly deprecate the notion of late unstarring of oral questions. I hope that that point is heard very clearly by those on the Government Front Bench. The hon. Gentleman will understand that, despite his brief description of the position, I am not closely familiar with the details of his particular case, or that of the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride), but what I can and should fairly say to him and to the House is that I will indeed look into the matter.

 Three-tier Education (Bedfordshire)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mark Tami.)

22:32:00

Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con)
The subject for this debate is two-tier and three-tier education. When I became the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, a system of three-tier education was in operation, as is the case now—that is different from what happens in most of the rest of the country. Shortly after I became an MP, three-tier education and whether or not our area should transfer to offering two-tier education became the subject of much debate among parents, schools and councillors. At that time, the remit for education was under the authority of the county council. A vote was taken and the decision was to retain the three-tier system. That vote took place nearly three years ago, since when a cultural change in attitude towards three-tier education has taken place in Bedfordshire, because we have seen year-on-year improvement in children’s outcomes. That happened because the attitude previously had been that at some stage the area would change to having a two-tier system, so the three-tier approach had been slightly neglected, but, following the vote, outcomes have improved.

One of the reasons why the vote to retain a three-tier system was carried was that it was felt that sacrificing a generation of children in the transformation from one system to the other was too high a price to pay; many children would probably have been spending much of their education in portakabins while schools were being sold off to raise finance for new schools to be built or while mergers of schools were taking place, and it was felt that the transitional impact on those children would be too great. That was one of the issues. Another was, of course, the cost. It was felt that no evidence existed to demonstrate that huge improvements could be achieved through the change or that this would be a life-changing event, in terms of academic or other outcomes, for children. On the contrary, the evidence demonstrates that the pastoral care given in middle schools—in the smaller school environment—can hugely enhance a child’s education. All that was lacking was the commitment to get behind three-tier education, invest in it and make it work well.

We have had a change recently in Bedfordshire and we now have the unitary authority system. The Central Bedfordshire authority is taking a sensible and measured approach to the issue and is consulting the various portfolio holders and members of the executive. It is taking a steady and reasoned approach and will go to full consultation. It has also brought head teachers from all three tiers into the consultation. Nobody in the Central Bedfordshire authority has taken the decision to change to two-tier, so it is going through a genuine process and evaluation.

However, the same cannot be said in Bedford, where the mayor—I believe that his party is Better Bedford—has decided that the change will be made. The decision was made a while ago—perhaps the mayor wants it to be his legacy. That change appears to be very much against the wishes of parents, if the e-mails that I have received are anything to go by—or the 20,000 hits in the last 60 days on the save our schools website for Bedford, or the presentations made by parents at the 20 or so consultations that have taken place over the last few months. The strong feeling is that parents in Bedford like the smaller school system, especially as many of the schools are in rural areas—not all, but some. Parents like the smaller schools and the pastoral care, which works well especially for children with learning difficulties or special needs. It is much easier, in the small school environment, to focus on those children and identify problems earlier.

The original proposal was that the decision to change from three-tier to two-tier would be taken using mayoral powers. The mayor is now rowing back from that and the decision may be taken by the full council. However, some of the information that has been given out to parents and schools is not entirely accurate. One of the areas of propaganda is the claim that the Building Schools for the Future funding will not be available to schools in Bedfordshire should they retain the three-tier system. I do not know whether that is true, and I hope that the Minister will clarify the point. I would argue that middle schools are upper schools. They are still educating children of that age—it is not as though a whole age group are not being educated. Therefore I fail to see why that should be the case.

It is also claimed that in order to obtain Building Schools for the Future funding, a school has to demonstrate that the funding would have a transformational effect. I would argue that over the last three years we have seen transformations taking place in education in Bedfordshire. For example, in Mid-Bedfordshire there are no schools in special measures.

Some of the other information that has been given out is slightly duplicitous and a bit naughty. For example, the consultation document that has been given out includes eight pages of information about the two-tier system, which the mayor wants to change to, and 18 words about the three-tier system.

I have received about 600 e-mails and letters, and there are lots of stories about pressure being put on people; I have no personal evidence of that—it is only what I have been told by parents and teachers.

Another matter of which I have proof is that in the consultation document, GCSE results in the borough are limited to the state schools, compared with the figures that are collected on the national basis, which include the results of independent schools. Bedford has an independent school system known as the Harpur Trust, made up of a fee-paying group of schools. They are quite low-cost and very good. They were set up as a trust and have been established for a long time. Their examination figures have been taken out of the consultation document, so just the very select figures from the state schools are being used as a comparator with the national figures. There are issues concerning the use of those figures.

The “Save Middle Schools” campaign, which is running in the area, has not been allowed to give out its literature in the upper and lower schools because of pressure from elsewhere to prevent it from doing so. That too has been an issue of concern.

Let me turn to my main concern. I like three-tier education—I will put my hand up to that. If I was pressed against a wall by parents about this issue—and I am, frequently—I would say that I like three-tier education, because I am particularly interested in special needs and because I like the small teaching environments and the pastoral care and teaching that can be given in such environments. I like the fact that our outcomes have been good over the past three years. However, it is not my decision, and it is not the decision of councillors.

When the mayor of Bedford was elected, the decisions about education in Bedford were made by the county council. It was not within his remit. He did not stand on any manifesto or any platform to do with changing to two-tier education. The same can be said of Central Bedfordshire council, because all the councillors recently stood for election, and not one of them included three-tier and two-tier education in their manifestos. Nobody in an elected position in Bedfordshire has been elected as a result of any recent statement on education, because it was not within their remit at the time at which they were elected.

If we are going to subject a generation of children to a change from three-tier to two-tier education and if that means that children will have to study in portakabins and will receive an education that involves a lot of change, that must involve parents, governors and, most importantly, the children. Anything we do in education in this country should be focused on achieving an educational outcome for the particular children involved. I believe that it should therefore be the responsibility of the parents, teachers and governors to decide whether that change should take place. I hope that the Minister supports that view. As no elected person in Bedfordshire—including the mayor of Bedford—has the mandate to decide whether we should change to two-tier education then, if the decision is to be taken, it should be taken by the parents via a referendum.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) wants to speak about the financial points, so I shall finish my speech. May I ask the Minister whether it is the case that, if we retain three-tier education, we will be prejudiced against or damaged in any way as regards receiving Building Schools for the Future funding? Culturally, are the Government putting any pressure on the mayor, on Better Bedford, on the council in Bedford or on whoever else is involved to change to two-tier education? Will we be financially disadvantaged? Does the Minister agree that if such a huge change is to take place within education, parents and teachers should have some kind of referendum as no one has the mandate to introduce such a change?

Rather than taking an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire, if it is acceptable, Mr. Speaker, I shall hand over to him to allow him to make a speech.

22:44:00

Alistair Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con)
With the kind permission of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) and the Minister, may I offer a couple of comments on the debate? First, I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend on succeeding in applying for and winning this Adjournment debate on what is, as the Minister will understand perfectly well, a contentious issue.

My understanding is that there is no guidance from the Department for Communities and Local Government or from anywhere else that either a three-tier or two-tier system is innately preferable. I am sure that all our evidence would show that the quality of the school and the education system is determined by the quality of the head teacher, the ethos of the school, the quality of the staff and the work that goes on there. The Government express no preference for one structure or the other. However, for parents in an area where the matter is up for consideration it is one of the utmost importance, because it concerns their children—either those who are in the school system now, or those who will come into it in the future. So the debate in Bedfordshire is keenly contested.

Two debates are going on. As my hon. Friend said, our constituencies share local authorities. Most of her constituency covers Central Bedfordshire; my constituency is split quite evenly between Bedford unitary council and Central Bedfordshire. Bedford unitary council is going through the process of deciding whether to retain the three-tier system. Central Bedfordshire is not yet able to make that determination, but has indicated that it is considering the future of its education system.

We seek the Minister’s clarification of three areas, if he would be so good. First, on the funding elements, as my hon. Friend said, there is a relationship between the decision to be made about the future of our schools and a possible bid for the Building Schools for the Future programme, linked to the desire to improve the quality of our schools. As she also said, there has been issue about whether any bid under that initiative would be related to the structure of the schools. Having held a meeting with the Minister’s predecessor, I am convinced that the Government do not have any preference one way or another, and that it will be possible for Building Schools for the Future money to be available for authorities that maintain three-tier education. I would be grateful if the Minister would say whether any applications from authorities with three-tier education have been successful. Has any area with a middle school structure been successful in obtaining funds under the Building Schools for the Future programme?

Secondly, we seek the Minister’s guidance on the decision-making structure. He may not be able to answer us this evening, but he might be able to do so by letter. In Bedford council, there is an elected mayor, with a cabinet and council. There is a debate about whether the decision on the structure of schools should be made by the mayor alone, by the mayor and his cabinet, by the mayor and his cabinet and a third of councillors, or by the whole council. My view—and, I think, that of my hon. Friend—is strongly that a decision of such importance should be made by the full council. I wonder whether the Minister can give any indication of whether, under the system of elected mayors, it is possible for the decision to be made by the mayor on his own or by the mayor with the approval of the cabinet and a third of the members, or whether it must be made by the full council. If he cannot answer that tonight, I would be grateful for confirmation by letter.

Lastly, I wish to make a brief point about funding. Building Schools for the Future is an imaginative initiative, but I am afraid that Conservative Members feel that it falls into the same trap as a number of Government initiatives: it talks about very large sums of money projected into the future, and there is scant evidence that there can be delivery of those sums. If Bedford unitary council is to make a decision on the structure and future of schools, it is essential that it understands what future funding will be. Can the Minister say that if a decision is made to go two-tier and the council comes to the Government in the next few months, the indicative funding of £340 million will be made available, there and then, up front and banked? If that it not the case, what will the funding be in 2010, 2011 and 2012? Can the Minister honestly say that the funding will be there in successive years? If it is not there up front, as all the indications are that Government finance will be under heavy pressure, I do not think that those sums can be sustained in the future.

Accordingly, what I seek is for the council to be able to make its decision understanding absolutely clearly what Government funding will be. So I look to the Minister to tell us what the funding is likely to be post-2010. Does he take the Prime Minister’s view that all is well and rosy, or does he take the Chancellor’s view that, in fact, no one can predict what Building Schools for the Future funding—or indeed any other Government funding—will be post-2010? None the less, it is essential that that before the councillors decide whether to have a three-tier or a two-tier system in Bedford unitary council and Central Bedfordshire, they should really know what the facts of the funding will be. I am very grateful for the time that has been allowed to me in this debate.

22:50:00

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Mr. Iain Wright)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) on securing the debate, and having heard her contribution to the Opposition day debate earlier today, I congratulate her daughter on securing her degree. The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) advanced their arguments in their usual style, and I appreciate the manner in which they did so. The last time I responded to the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire in an Adjournment debate, the subject was the proposed eco-town in Marston Vale. I think that I reassured her on that matter; I hope that I can do the same again tonight.

In responding to the arguments advanced by the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire, I want to do three things. First, I shall discuss briefly school reorganisation and the merits and disadvantages of the two and three-tier systems. I shall also mention my Department’s policy on the three-tier education system, which is linked with that subject. Secondly, I shall discuss funding and, crucially with regard to this debate, the links between school reorganisation, departmental policy and funding. Thirdly, I shall mention the consultation for schools in Bedfordshire, with which both hon. Members and their constituents are engaged.

I can well understand the emotion as regards schools and their reorganisation; I have seen it myself in my constituency. I think that the whole House would agree that schools are a vital part of the community, and it is fair to say that people feel an ownership of them, and possibly hospitals, that it is difficult to apply to other institutions. The education of their children is rightly of major concern to parents. They want a school system that allows their children to enjoy learning and become equipped with the skills that will allow them to fulfil their potential and realise their ambitions. As we have heard tonight, it is in that context that Bedford borough council is carrying out a public consultation on the proposal to reorganise its school system from three tiers to two tiers.

I have read the council’s school organisation review document, which states that such a change is necessary for four reasons: to raise standards in schools, particularly at GCSE; to address growing support for change within the borough; to address the declining number of middle schools nationally; and to use investment from Building Schools for the Future and the primary capital programme to produce an education system that will remain fit for purpose for the next half century. In the document, the local authority states that children aged 13 who change from a middle-tier school to an upper-tier school do not have sufficient time in upper school to adjust to the effects of changing schools before having to choose their options for the 14-to-19 routes to qualifications.

Being in a secondary school from the age of 11 allows children to become accustomed to their secondary school, their teachers and the specific style of learning that will enable them to make more reasoned and personalised choices in their options. The local authority also states in the document that upper school head teachers and governors believe that they would be able to deliver better GCSE results if they admitted their students at the age of 11 rather than 13.

Nadine Dorries
That may be the view of head teachers and governors, but there is no evidence to back up that view. On the contrary, we are doing very well with our GCSE results as things are. They are improving year on year. There is no evidence for the position that they take; it is just a view.

Mr. Wright
Let me come on to that, if I may; the hon. Lady has raised an important point. On the merits and relative disadvantages of the three-tier and two-tier systems, there seems to be a certain logic to the idea that there is naturally a degree of disruption when a child changes school, although that argument is not in the school organisation document. That disruption would be minimised if a child changed school only once, at the age of 11, as happens in a two-tier system, as opposed to twice, as happens in a three-tier system, in which a child goes to middle school at the age of nine and to upper school at the age of 13.

Let me touch upon a fundamental part of the two hon. Members’ arguments. There is no clear link between a particular system of school organisation and educational attainment. It would be wrong for me to stand at the Dispatch Box and state, for example, that in all cases a two-tier system automatically lends itself to higher educational success. There is no evidence for such a causal relationship, because the situation is more complex than that, taking into account historical and cultural attitudes to school organisation, the calibre of leadership, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, and close engagement with parents. Local people and agencies know best what is most appropriate for their area, based on an acute understanding of these complex factors, and can make judgments on school reorganisation accordingly.

It is on that basis that I say that my Department has no prescribed view on any particular pattern of school provision. Both two-tier and three-tier systems can be successful and effective, so we think that it is up to the local agencies, in close consultation with affected local parents, to decide how school provision is organised in their area. We have no plans to phase out middle schools as a matter of national policy or to remove support from three-tier systems where they exist.

That brings me to the second fundamental point that the hon. Gentleman made, which relates to funding. The school organisation review document that I mentioned acknowledges that the Building Schools for the Future and primary capital programme streams provide an unprecedented opportunity to transform secondary and primary school provision. The document states:

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to access this level of funding from Central Government and the Borough Council is determined that the money should be used wisely to achieve a transformation of its schools so that we have an education system in Bedford which is fit for the 21st century in state of the art accommodation. The Council must be able to demonstrate its ‘readiness to deliver’ with a clear vision for the future”.

We would all agree with those sentiments.

It is important to dispel the notion that the substantial Government money available through Building Schools for the Future and the primary capital programme is somehow conditional on the local authority changing the manner in which its schools are organised—that we would not provide the money unless it changed to a two-tier system. Let me reassure the hon. Lady that that is categorically not the case. I have already mentioned that my Department does not take a view on school reorganisation, and this policy position is reinforced through BSF and PCP funding.

In answer to the argument put forward by the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire, I can say that we have funded, through Building Schools for the Future, a number of local authorities that have middle schools in areas such as Hertfordshire, Kent and Staffordshire, and, closer to my patch, in Newcastle upon Tyne and North Tyneside. A far greater driver towards securing funding is pupil place planning—the projected numbers of secondary age pupils to be accommodated in the schools covered by the project. It is therefore vital that any plans that Bedford brings forward are predicated on responding to the educational needs of its pupils, and not on how much funding it gets. If a change of school organisation is proposed, the educational rationale for doing so must be clearly established.

In respect of Bedford, I point out to the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman that the local authority is at a relatively early stage in developing proposals for its Building Schools for the Future project. Bedfordshire was included in wave 6 of BSF, before the outcome of the local government review and local government reorganisation. However, because of specific local issues and concerns, the project was delayed. Partnership for Schools is ready to hold a remit meeting—the point at which programme time scales are set—as soon as a date can be arranged with the local authority.

The third element of my response is the consultation process—

Alistair Burt
Before we leave the subject of funding, may I come back to a point that I made earlier? If the Department agrees that the proposal put forward by Bedford, whether for a three-tier or a two-tier system for the improvement of schools, is appropriate, does all the money arrive up front before the election and before the clamps come down, or is the future funding in doubt because inevitably it will be funded year by year post-2010, and none of us knows how much money there will be in the kitty then?

Mr. Wright
The hon. Gentleman will know that I cannot possibly comment on, or answer, that point about future waves. I do not know the specific proposals that Bedfordshire local authorities will bring forward or the agreements that will be made with Partnerships for Schools. A whole range of different factors is in play, notwithstanding the complex area of public finances post-2011. However, I can say that school reorganisation is based not on funding but on educational rationale and attainment.

I have already mentioned the key part of my response: it is up to local people to determine what schools need and what schools should look like. Given the importance of local buy-in to any proposed changes, the consultation is vital, and in May 2007 we put in place new arrangements that must be followed whenever a change in school provision is proposed. For school closures and alterations to school organisation, there are five clear stages in the process. They include, first, consultation, whereby the proposers must consult all interested parties before publishing their proposal, allow adequate time and provide sufficient information to consultees; secondly, publication, whereby a notice detailing proposals must be published in a local newspaper and posted at the main entrances of the schools named in the proposals and at some other conspicuous place in the area; and thirdly, representations, whereby local people have six weeks from publication to submit their representations for or against proposals.

That is the situation in Bedford. The consultation runs to 24 July, and I strongly suggest that if necessary, the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman encourage all affected parties—particularly parents—to have their say. Following representations, a decision will be taken by the local authority and then implementation will take place.

I hope that that clarifies the Department’s place in the process. We have set the framework and put in place arrangements to allow people affected by school reorganisations to have their say. However, I hope also that in my response I have stressed that local people should decide how schools are organised locally. We do not prescribe a certain model, and we certainly do not influence decisions by making funding conditional upon operating under a certain model. Local people should decide what provision should be like in their area. In the case of Bedford, local people have until 24 July to have their say, and I encourage all those concerned to do so.

Question put and agreed to.

23:01:00

House adjourned.