Westminster Hall

  Westminster Hall

Tuesday 12 December 2006

[Mr. Bill Olner in the Chair]

Kate Barker Reviews

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Liz Blackman.]

09:30:00

Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD)
I am delighted to have secured this debate. I should make it clear that the title is “Kate Barker Reviews” so that we are not constrained from discussing the Kate Barker planning review that was published only last week.

I am particularly grateful to the Minister. I know that because of the manner in which Westminster Hall debates are managed, this week was a week off for Ministers from the Department for Communities and Local Government. Although I originally tabled the debate with the intention of enticing a Treasury Minister to address the matters raised by the Kate Barker reviews, it appears that I was not successful and that it was thought more appropriate for the Minister for Housing and Planning to come along on behalf of the Department for Communities and Local Government. I am grateful to her for being here today to address questions of deep concern to many Members of Parliament.

The background to the debate is the two commissioned reviews by Kate Barker, that on the housing supply, which was published in March 2004—and the subsequent alteration of planning policy statement 3, which was published only on 29 November—and last week’s land use planning review and the issues that arise as a result. I intend to cover housing issues, in particular housing numbers, affordable housing, the planning aspects of housing and out-of-town retail development, particularly when it comes to planning. I will not be covering green belt areas or the national planning commission as proposed in the latest Barker review. No doubt others will wish to raise those issues.

I should make it clear that before I was elected in 1997 I worked largely in the charitable sector with parish councils, housing associations and others to try to stitch together affordable housing schemes in Cornwall, and in Devon before that, and worked in the voluntary sector in the communities sector to address the lack of affordable housing. I worked on that from the late 1980s and through the 1990s. I raised other issues in another guise. Indeed, I have had a lot of the issues that I shall raise today published in a book, “Cornwall at the Crossroads”, in 1989.

Mr. Paul Truswell (Pudsey) (Lab)
Is it still on sale?

Andrew George
It sold out very quickly, sadly, and we could not afford to reprint it. It was written by two fine academics—Bernard Deacon and Ronald Perry—and me; I am not a fine academic.

Many of the issues that applied to Cornwall in the 1980s—I am sure that many hon. Members present will be surprised if I do not mention Cornwall once or twice—apply today in spades. The concerns about the lack of affordable housing and the pressures of development and inappropriate development in the countryside apply more today than they did then.

The problem that I want to address with regard to housing is based on the central assumptions of Kate Barker and the Government that housing is fundamentally a problem of numbers and of insufficient housing being built; that the housing market works perfectly well when supply and demand are in balance; and that as a result of simply ensuring that the supply of housing is sufficient, market equilibrium will ensure that the market delivers a price that is suitable for those seeking accommodation. We accept that many thousands of people will never have a hope of getting into the market and will require some assistance or at least the provision of affordable rented accommodation.

As I mentioned earlier, I shall use Cornwall as an example and argue that because planning is fuelled largely by greed rather than need, the system fails to respond to what is needed but responds to what developers recognise will give them the largest profit. I shall argue, too, that although it sounds counterintuitive, the best way to develop affordable housing is to constrain development for unfettered permissions, particularly in areas such as Cornwall. No doubt that could be applied to many other areas. Taking some of the earlier principles of what was PPG3—planning policy guidance note 3—and is now PPS3, to allow for those exceptions to be brought forward and for the Government to give local authorities proper support in delivering the exceptions would be a better way of bringing forward fettered sites to provide affordable housing in perpetuity.

We need stronger powers at local government level to deal with the dysfunctional market in many areas—particularly areas associated with recreational tourism, which are often also associated with a high demand for second home ownership. That certainly applies to my part of the world, west Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly. I want to impress on the Minister the fact that the United Kingdom is not a housing market of bland uniformity, and that simply pulling levers from Whitehall will not provide for all the needs throughout the country. The Government need to let go of some of those levers to a greater extent than they say they are prepared to, and should give powers to local authorities to address the issues that are particular to the microcosm of their area, so that local authorities do not have policies forced on them that add to the problems. A lot of the policies that have emanated from Whitehall in recent years have added to the problem of the lack of affordable housing in areas such as mine.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that much of the answer lies in the hands of communities? To put a plug in for the Sustainable Communities Bill, surely communities should be obliged to make themselves sustainable; and they can do so only if they have affordable housing to care for the next generation. I am glad that the Minister is on the Front Bench to hear this, and I hope that she can take the Bill through Committee. In my view, Barker has to take account of the fact that we must link those concepts together.

Andrew George
The hon. Gentleman and I have debated these and other issues long and hard, and he knows that I am a strong supporter of the concepts behind the Bill. I know that many challenges will have to be met to ensure that the proper interests of the community and the interests of those who want to create an exclusive community are properly balanced in the proposed legislation. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that I am keen to ensure that those principles are brought out in effective legislation.

I have some rather stark figures to illustrate and demonstrate the point that I wish to make. I was born and brought up in my constituency, and housing numbers have doubled in my lifetime. I was not born in 1961, but figures from that date are the most accurate that I can find. In 1961, there were 110,500 homes in Cornwall; in 2006, there were 228,000. Few other places have seen such a dramatic rise. People often think of Cornwall as a sleepy backwater where things never change. They have changed tremendously during what, in conventional terms, would be called two generations.

People also think that places such as west Cornwall have plenty of land. In fact, population density in Cornwall is incredibly high. Four of the most densely populated rural districts in what the Government call the zone of the south-west—I always use that word rather than region—are in west Cornwall. They are Penwith, Kerrier, Carrick and Restormel, and they have an average population density of between 2 and 2.1 per square hectare. Only five other districts in that zone have a higher population density, but most of them are places with large towns. For instance, the constituency of the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) has a population density of 2.34; East Dorset has 2.36, Taunton Deane has 2.21, and West Wiltshire has 2.29—all marginally above that of west Cornwall. However, most of them are small rural districts with large and predominant towns, which west Cornwall does not have.

It is assumed that there is a relationship between house prices generally and the lack of affordable housing—the failure to develop affordable properties. During the last couple of decades, Cornwall has seen some rapid housing development; between 2001 and 2006 well over 12,000 properties were built. However, we saw an unprecedented rise in house prices in that time, so despite all that house building the housing problems of local people became dramatically worse. Their problems were already appalling but, inconceivable though it may be, they have become worse. The relationship between the lack of affordable housing and the need for new houses demonstrates that building houses in itself does not address the needs of those who desperately need affordable housing. We can build houses until we are blue in the face in Cornwall, but it will have virtually no impact on the needs of local people.

Cornwall’s housing stock has changed considerably since the early 1960s. Figures show that whereas owner-occupied properties formed about 45 per cent. of the total in 1961, they now form 75 per cent., which is what I understand the Government target to be. Local authority properties formed 16 per cent. of the total in 1961, but the figure is now down to 11 per cent. Private rented accommodation was 33 per cent.; it is now 14 per cent.

It is inevitable in such circumstances that private sector rents should be extortionately high. Indeed, the majority of the many housing cases that regularly come to me—I am sure that other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson), will bear this out—confirm that there is a significant difference between the local reference rent, which the rent officer believes the market will bear and which therefore dictates whether housing benefit is available, and what is charged in the market. That is a big mismatch, and it has to be made up by local people. That itself is causing significant problems.

I mentioned the rate of housing growth in Cornwall. Since 1961 Cornwall has been the fifth fastest growing county, and since 1981 it has been the fourth fastest. The only places that are growing faster are counties such as Buckinghamshire, which I recollect has a new town, Cambridgeshire and Wiltshire. They have seen high levels of growth in comparison with Cornwall, but Cornwall’s housing problems are not the result of its failure to allow the development of housing; indeed, quite the opposite is the case.

Cornwall is a classic example of the need to develop an intermediate market. Such a market would cover the massive leap between local incomes and the lowest rung on the housing ladder. A report published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation only a few weeks ago demonstrated that those parts of the country with the highest percentage of the young population fall into what is called the intermediate market. At the top of that league is Penwith; second is Carrick, which is just to the east of my constituency; and fourth is Kerrier. Those people cannot afford to get on to the bottom rung of the housing ladder. In normal circumstances, they would be able to get into the market, but they are struggling to find affordable rented accommodation.

Another problem is that the housing market over recent years has largely been driven by second home ownership. Over the past couple of years, I have undertaken a survey of estate agents in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. It demonstrated that twice as many properties were being sold to second home buyers as to local first-time buyers. An update of that survey earlier this year showed that five times as many properties were being sold to second home buyers as to first-time buyers.

There is no lack of people desperate for affordable accommodation in my constituency. Thousands of families—they are not feckless or incompetent, but hard-working local families—are desperately in need of affordable accommodation, but they are unable even to demonstrate their interest in the market because the market is out of their reach. Yet we have high levels of second home ownership. Indeed, down on the Lizard and in St. Ives, estate agents reported to me that 65 and 60 per cent. respectively of all accommodation sold over the previous year had been sold to second home purchasers and none to first-time buyers. That is how dramatic and serious the situation is. I am not interested in the politics of envy; I do not mind people having as many homes as they wish. However, we need to ensure that all those who need a first home get one before we start allowing people to have the luxury of owning properties for recreation or as an investment. That is the kind of problem we have.

Having pushed the Government for many years, I applaud them for addressing the inconsistency and, I would even argue, the immorality of a situation where, as a result of the council tax rebate, hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was being spent in subsidising the ownership of second homes by the wealthy, at a time when many thousands of people in places such as Cornwall did not have a first home. The rebate had to be found somewhere and it was a subsidy for the wealthy to have a second home. That has largely gone, but there is still a 10 per cent. left for those districts that are taking full advantage of adding the extra 40 per cent. However, we need to do a great deal more than that. Since the extra 40 per cent. was added, second home purchases have if anything increased. The problem of the reduction in accommodation in an area such as mine has certainly increased.

What else do we need to do? I hope the Minister will consider possible changes to the use class order although I can see obvious difficulties. We need to ensure that those who wish to use a permanent property as a temporary or occasional residence apply in the same way as they would to use a residential property as a shop, office or factory.

Mr. Drew
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be interesting to know what local authorities do with the income that they receive from second homes? I am worried that we have not ring-fenced that money and that there may be some exotic uses contrary to the spirit of what that money should be used for, which is to invest in the provision of housing or at least to hold an investigation into how to provide more houses for those who need them.

Andrew George
I entirely agree. There is an avenue for either an academic or Government study to find out what has happened to the receipts from the increase in council tax. In Cornwall, the county council nets the vast bulk of any council tax increase, but as it is not the housing authority, it has magnanimously agreed to hand the bulk of that money back to the district councils on the proviso that it is directed at addressing the problem of the lack of affordable housing. I do not know whether that has been applied in the same way in other parts of the country, but that was certainly the spirit in which the Government intended that money to be used.

As one of those who led the campaign to have the council tax rebate removed, it was certainly my hope that any additional revenue created as a result of that change could be directed at addressing the problem of lack of affordable housing in areas such as my own—although it would admittedly only scratch the surface. Two years ago, I was pleased and proud to cut the ribbon and hand over the keys to the first properties in Goldsithney in Penwith district in my constituency. They were the first homes built with money from receipts from the additional money created by the removal of the council tax discount.

I am aware that time is moving on and I do not wish to detain other hon. Members who may wish to speak. I hope that the Minister will carefully consider giving more powers—rather than controlling or constraining powers—to local authorities to address the problems of affordable housing that cannot be addressed from Whitehall or by regional spatial strategies. I have many misgivings about regional spatial strategies. The Government zone has been defined for administrative convenience and it is a fundamental failure for the Government to assume that it is equivalent to a region and therefore has by implication some internal integrity or community of interests.

The Government have also failed in considering that it is appropriate for spatial strategies to have superior statutory power over directly elected bodies. We should not accept the Government’s belief that simply building properties is the answer to the problem, and that the way forward is to hand housing figures down to the Government zones and force those figures on the basis of predict and provide. We are approaching the problem by applying a sledgehammer to it rather than giving local authorities the powers to find their own solutions in their own areas.

We need to give local authorities far greater powers to create an intermediate market. In places such as Cornwall, the way that the market has operated at least for the last decade, and is likely to operate in future, indicates that we need to do more to enable local authorities to create a new intermediate market. That requires that greater powers be handed to local authorities so that they can constrain inappropriate development. Such developments do not address the need for affordable housing, but simply use scarce construction capacity and development sites for properties that are out of the reach of local people. We need to ensure that scarce development sites and construction capacity are directed at the needs of the local community. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will look carefully at addressing the problems of high levels of second home ownership.

I also hope that the Minister will address the issues raised in Kate Barker’s land use planning review in respect of out-of-town retail. I have many misgivings about the proposal that the Government should remove the needs test for out-of-town retail and, in particular, grocery development. The potential impact would simply be to create a developers charter, which would have an enormous impact on town centres, town centre developments and independent stores, which are in many areas often hanging on by a thread. There would also be an impact on village services, which are very fragile. Such large developments contradict the Government’s other stated policies and intentions regarding constraining unnecessary private car journeys, and traffic congestion. They also contradict the recent Stern report on climate change, also commissioned by the Treasury. Lifting the lid on such large developments and allowing further development—particularly by the big four supermarkets—will put further pressure on and cause damage to many small suppliers in this country.

I hope that the Minister will look at the issues addressed by both of Kate Barker’s reviews— particularly in relation to housing—and at the points I have made regarding the need to ensure that local authorities are given more power. It is not appropriate for the Government to take a sledgehammer approach. It is important to ensure that the Government are not seduced by Kate Barker’s proposal and do not simply lift the lid on out-of-town developments in the way that many people will fear that the latest document suggests.

10:00:00

Mr. Paul Truswell (Pudsey) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate and I am grateful to him for his clarification of the title. I came to the debate assuming that it would be about the most recent tome that has descended from Kate Barker, relating to land use planning. I understand his comments about enticing a Treasury Minister to the debate. However, I believe that we can derive some comfort from the fact that the Minister who is present has demonstrated past skill in enticing Treasury Ministers—let me put it that way. No doubt she can share the concerns that we express today with the Economic Secretary to the Treasury over the breakfast table or wherever they exchange their most intimate political secrets.

The debate on land use planning has become something of a kaleidoscope, in my experience. Just when we think that we can see the whole picture, someone shakes up the bits to produce a totally different scenario. My hon. Friend the Minister will probably be aware that I initiated an Adjournment debate in October on community involvement in the planning process. That was prompted by concerns that the interim Barker report contained proposals that would militate against community involvement in planning and shift the balance further in the direction of developers. The final report has done nothing to assuage those concerns. Focusing on just one element of the process—albeit the important economic element—to the exclusion of other important components, such as community involvement, is bound to raise anxieties. I hope that my hon. Friend shares those anxieties and is discussing them in other places with other people.

It is not easy to see how the latest review and its recommendations taken as a whole will fit together with planning guidance, such as the recently published PPS3 on housing, or with the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, not to mention the eagerly awaited guidance on climate change. The terms of reference for the Barker review on land use planning filled me with instant trepidation. They talk about “the context of globalisation” and a series of other economic and business imperatives, some of which do not fit easily or squarely with the ability of communities to assert their interest in the planning process.

The thrust of the review seems to be that, somehow, business is hard done by; the cards are stacked against it. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. In 25 years’ experience as both a councillor and an MP, it has been demonstrated unequivocally to me that more people engage in the planning process than almost any other aspect of local democracy. Communities in my constituency are in constant conflict with planners and developers about excessive and overbearing housing and office projects. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that community involvement in the planning system is seen as very much on the debit side of developers’ balance sheets.

Let us be clear—I made this point during my Adjournment debate and I take the opportunity to make it again here—we are not talking about nimbyism. Most people in my constituency do not oppose the development of derelict brownfield sites. Many of those sites are eyesores, and people cannot wait to see them developed sensitively, but they want to ensure that such developments display real sustainability and sensitivity to the needs, problems and character of the neighbourhoods involved. They fear that key considerations are often lost in the pursuit of profit, and I certainly do not want matters to be made worse by any action by Government based on Ms Barker’s recommendations.

Some people might contend—I would count myself among them—that from a community point of view, the planning process already favours the developer. Developers have a right of appeal against refusal, but communities cannot appeal against the granting of planning permission. The argument is trotted out time and again that, somehow, elected councillors represent the community interest, but it is certainly questionable from the point of view of my constituents whether that argument is valid in practice.

Applications for over-intensive developments have been and continue to be made across my constituency. I am referring to places such as Pudsey, Yeadon, Horsforth, Rodley and Farsley. In my Adjournment debate, I cited the experience of the town of Guiseley, where planning permissions over the past six or seven years have given the go-ahead for about 1,200 extra homes—a major increase in the size of the town without any commensurate improvement or increase in the local infrastructure to support it. Clearly, that is not a sustainable approach.

There is a familiar gavotte that we do when planning applications of that type are submitted. The developers submit applications for housing with a density of 70 to 90 properties per hectare on brownfield sites, which is far in excess of the 30 to 50 indicated in PPG3, and the community coalesces to oppose that density. The developers argue that the sites fulfil the requirements of PPG3, which will be replaced by PPS3 in due course, for greater density because there happens to be a rail station, a major road, the A65, and a few buses that go along it from time to time. However, the trains are overcrowded at peak times, the road is congested for much of the day and the bus services have been reduced and have become less reliable and more expensive since deregulation and privatisation. Those factors, which are intimately known and experienced by local people, never seem to be factored in to the deliberations of either developers or planners.

I am pleased to say that, in most cases, community pressure has led to eventual planning permissions for about 50 properties per hectare, in some cases almost halving the figure that was originally asked for. I have to say at this juncture that I am pleased that PPS3 and the Minister’s statement acknowledge that, all too often, housing development takes place in the form of flats, whether or not they are needed to meet local housing need. In my constituency, greed has definitely elbowed out need, given the sort of housing applications that have been submitted by developers.

I want to take hon. Members on a whistle-stop tour of some of the recommendations in the review that relate, or rather do not relate, to community involvement. Recommendation 1 suggests that, where plans are out of date or indeterminate, applications should be approved unless there is good reason to believe that the costs outweigh the benefits. That recommendation appears to take no account at all of the 2004 Act process, whereby nowadays plans cannot be out of date in the way they used to be. Plans must be reviewed annually and replaced every three years, so it is difficult to see in what circumstances that presumption in favour of permission should apply.

Recommendation 2 says:

“The Statement of General Principles should be revised to make clear that in determining planning applications, due regard should be paid to the economic, social and environmental benefits of development”.

However, as far as I can see in the current planning framework, PPS1 does that. Perhaps, if I may quote my old dad, Ms Barker wants jam on it in terms of promoting the economic and business element of the planning process.

Recommendation 4 states:

“Wider planning policy should be made more responsive to economic factors.”

I concur entirely with the comments made by the hon. Member for St. Ives about one aspect of that recommendation and its implications. Part of the recommendation—the removal of the needs test—would significantly undermine the “town centre first” policy. It also exaggerates the impact of the needs test on competition and downplays the impact of supermarket domination in terms of the share of the retail market as a whole. Small businesses throughout the country are already beginning to look with concern at what the implications of that recommendation might be if it is translated into practice by my hon. Friend and her ministerial colleagues. I suggest that the test remains a vital tool for resisting development that might adversely impact on the vitality and viability of a community and local economy.

Recommendation 10 refers to the framework for decision making for major infrastructure to support a range of objectives, including the timely delivery of renewable energy. The recommendation appears to suggest a process by which national statements of policy would discuss issues of need, and public inquiries would be limited to discussions of local circumstances. More worryingly, from the point of view of community involvement, I understand that there would be examinations in public, which would presumably be by invitation only. The process would substantially reduce the opportunities of ordinary members of the public to participate in discussions of development that would have a fundamental impact on their lives. The development of national policy through White Papers, for example, is not a process with which ordinary members of the public can easily engage. There are no direct mechanisms for community participation or engagement and there is no independent testing of the policy.

Recommendation 11 relates to the creation of an independent planning appeals commission. I fail to see how that would be subject to direct political accountability.

Recommendation 15 deals with the streamlining of the planning process. The 2004 Act has already removed a major stage in the adoption of a development plan. Introducing the recommendation would represent another major reduction. The report endorses the local government White Paper proposal to abolish the independent testing of statements of community involvement. I suggested in my Adjournment debate that that sends all the wrong messages about the Government’s expressed determination to enhance public involvement in the planning process.

Andrew George
The hon. Gentleman skirted over recommendation 12. One of the themes in the Kate Barker review appears to be that the Government should adopt the approach of intervening only on the basis of target numbers, not merit—in other words, they should have a target to call in fewer planning applications than they now do, because to do otherwise gets in the way of the efficiency of the planning process. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should always—as I hope they have in the past—call in only on the merit of the application and their concern about its consistency with policy both nationally and locally?

Mr. Truswell
I do indeed agree. As I said when I began, I am giving a whistle-stop tour of the report. I did not realise that such a generous amount of time would be available because of the hon. Gentleman’s relatively short speech and the relatively small turnout of hon. Members today.

Andrew George
But quality.

Mr. Truswell
Absolutely.

It is also worth reflecting on how the Barker report regards the planning process overall and at local level. There is a general sense of the process of producing plans being foreshortened, regardless of the consequences for public participation. Paragraph 4.25 of the report states:

“There is no reason for plans to be of great length.”

It is hard to see how that apparently minimalist view of a local planning document fits the ambition for a robust planning system that would show a positive change in a participative and accountable manner. Paragraph 22 of the executive summary even mentions 

“the danger of consultation fatigue”.

I fail to see how reducing the periods for consultation would assist the community that is supposed to suffer from such fatigue, since it often takes residents—who are not, as we know, particularly knowledgeable about or aware of the planning process—some time to get their heads round it and mobilise their views and concerns.

Recommendation 23 refers to performance management and customer satisfaction surveys, but I suspect that the customers in this case, as with the rest of the report, are the developers and those applying for planning permission, rather than the community—yet the community is at the sharp end of the impact of many applications and its members are equally customers of the service in that their council tax goes to pay for it.

Recommendation 27 states that a series of reforms to improve the efficiency of the planning appeals system should be introduced. I should not necessarily dissent from that as an overall objective, but it appears that part of the recommendation suggests the removal of the right of members of the public to appear at a public inquiry. Written representation almost certainly favours those with the resources and expertise to develop their arguments in an appropriate way over those who simply want to attend and give oral evidence—often, as we know from experience, from the heart. Introducing the recommendation would reduce community participation in the planning process and contribute to a wider sense of the illegitimacy of the planning process in the mind of the public.

Recommendation 31 suggests that business should

“make use of the potential to offer direct community good-will payments on a voluntary basis when this may help to facilitate development.”

I am sure that over months and years of debate that part of the review will be highlighted many times, and so it should be, because it sounds like a form of legalised bribery. Above all, it is likely to be counter-productive. It would require businesses to enter into informal and costly arrangements. It may even encourage speculative objections on the basis that there might be, as we say in the north, a bit of brass at the end of it. Most worrying is the assumption that people’s responses to planning applications are based on purely financial considerations. That takes us back to the implicit theme that nimbyism is somehow a major obstacle to businesses’ submission of planning applications.

I have no objection to improving the efficiency of local planning authorities or the appeals process, but local communities should not be penalised because of the shortcomings of the aspects of the system that I have discussed. I should dearly love to receive today from my hon. Friend the Minister a categorical assurance that nothing in the Barker review on which her Department and others choose to act will militate against community involvement in the planning process.

10:17:00

Mr. Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate. We did not have the opportunity to discuss in any great detail the points that he was planning to raise, and I, like the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell), assumed that he would be focusing more on the issues raised in the recent land use report. However, this debate is a good opportunity to tie the two reports together with his points—which he has made consistently over many years—about the need for a new approach to the provision of affordable housing, and to deal in particular with the issue of second homes in our part of the country. Those themes sit very well with the discussion by the hon. Member for Pudsey of community involvement.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will be happy for me to point out that when his book was published in 1989 I was in my teens, growing up in Cornwall. That shows the length of his experience on these issues.

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Yvette Cooper)
Did you buy the book?

Mr. Rogerson
I think I might have done, actually. I think I have a copy of it somewhere—in pride of place in my book collection.

My hon. Friend made some strong points about the need to be tough with developers when securing solutions that will work for communities, and about the fact that planning must be a matter of providing solutions both by way of new development and by bringing benefit to existing communities, so that new development blends and works with existing settlements. As to the issue of second homes that my hon. Friend raised, I shall be interested to see whether the Minister will respond to the idea of a new use category, as suggested in the affordable rural housing report earlier this year. Local solutions are needed for local problems, and the intervention by the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who is no longer in his place, about the possibilities in the Sustainable Communities Bill touched on key matters in this context.

I also welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for Pudsey. As he said, he raised issues of concern earlier this year about community involvement in planning. That is the key to restoring people’s faith in the planning process and restoring a more positive relationship with developers so that we can be constructive about providing the necessary housing and business opportunities for the future.

The hon. Gentleman was right to focus on the terms of reference in last week’s review of land use planning, which focused very much on the needs of the business community and how it is affected by the planning process. It is only fair to take this opportunity to redress that balance slightly. The hon. Gentleman made some very good points about the need for community involvement. Both he and my hon. Friend spoke about the requirement to demonstrate need with regard to commercial and retail development, to which I shall return.

The report sets out the challenges facing the planning system, those who operate it and—very much so—the communities that it shapes. For my party, the solutions suggested in the report are a mixture of the welcome, the unhelpful and, on a few occasions, the alarming. We would welcome the changes suggested to reinvigorate planning departments across England and address their democratic oversights. An investment in more training and moves to increase the status of the profession should help to correct the view that planning is about acting as a gatekeeper for small changes to existing dwellings. Such a change would help to strengthen the hand of a community through its elected local authority in reaching agreements with developers and would help to increase participation in the planning process. I must confess that in my time as a local authority member, I avoided serving on the planning committee, which was called the development control committee. It seemed to me, as a young, newly elected councillor, to be very much about those smaller scale developments, and did not interest me hugely as a ward member and a new member of the authority. Reclaiming planning for the more strategic objectives of our local communities is particularly important.

We would also support anything that could be done to streamline the application process for changes such as building extensions or conservatories and fitting satellite dishes and domestic wind turbines. Those sorts of application make up about 50 per cent. of the total and are generally of far less concern to the wider community, other than immediate neighbours, than are proposals for new housing and retail developments. It is on those, more major, areas of development that the Liberal Democrats are determined that local people should have their say. We believe that local authorities are the best arbiters of opinion in the communities that they serve. A reduction in the number of ministerial call-ins would therefore be welcome, but it must be a retrograde step to give that power to yet another quango. That brings me to the less welcome suggestions in the report.

I expect that the Minister will assure me in the strongest terms that the proposed planning commission would be independent and work within strict guidelines set by elected representatives, but surely, transferring higher-level decision making from a remote but accountable Minister to a body that is entirely unaccountable would be a fundamentally undemocratic act. Will the Minister tell us how that policy chimes with the Government’s commitment to localism?

There is a real danger that a report spun as a fast track for householders could turn into a steamroller for developers. If the Minister is concerned that local authorities cannot, rather than should not, handle the larger applications, will she tell us how many decisions taken in Whitehall or by the plethora of quangos take place within two months? That is a key question because 80 per cent. of local authority planning decisions are taken within that time. As for the other 20 per cent., local authorities and developers are often frustrated that the turnover of planning officers is very high. We have a shortage of planners and a system that does not value them highly enough.

The changes to the status and training of members and planners suggested in the report should help to overcome such problems, but responses to the interim Barker report identified acute gaps in skills and resources in planning departments. Training was said to be patchy and departments were said to be particularly poor at dealing with sustainable development, economic development and, perhaps most crucially of all, community involvement.

The Government are concerned about nimbyism, but communities have to be brought along by professionals and not left behind by developers. The statutory requirement to deal with 85 per cent. of applications within 13 weeks has acted against the remaining 15 per cent., and has led authorities to refuse applications quickly rather than consider them more carefully. Who could blame local authorities for scrabbling to get the planning delivery grant when they struggle to keep council taxes down against a background of reduced or ring-fenced central Government funding? The result is that the proportion of refused applications increased by 14 per cent. between 2003 and 2005, so local authorities are taking decisions on rejection more quickly to meet targets rather than engaging a little more. They need the capacity to spend more time exploring applications. What is the Minister doing to address those problems and, in so doing, to assist local authorities, communities and developers alike with a professional planning process that is consistent, transparent and efficient?

There remains the prospect of another centralising measure in the form of the planning gain supplement that would funnel money straight into Treasury coffers. Why cannot those revenues go to local authorities, where they properly belong? My party favours a strengthened and simplified form of the arrangements under section 106 that have gradually grown and become more common. We could create a tariff system like that introduced by the Liberal Democrats in Milton Keynes, whereby communities could see the benefit of supporting new development and be less fearful of a lack of capacity in local infrastructure.

If the Minister thinks that local involvement brings a risk of nimbyism, she is wrong. The lack of community involvement is leading to disengagement with and suspicion of the planning process. I strongly believe that the planning process should not simply let residents air their concerns as part of a tedious precursor to inevitable and unstoppable development in which they have no real voice. Many of my constituents appreciate the fantastic views from their windows, but that does not mean that they value them more than having a place for their children and other people in their community to live. They do not, but they want to know that any new development will build communities, not just houses, and will benefit local people and not just developers and holidaymakers. That falls in with the “greed not need” argument put by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives.

The Liberal Democrats believe that involving local people means listening to them and giving them real control—and, yes, that does mean giving them the power to halt any proposed development. After all, what is the point of a system that allows for complaints but cannot deliver refusal? As my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) said in the debate on the Queen’s Speech, the test must be whether the system allows for a refusal.

With the right incentives—a local income tax and re-localised business rates might be a good start—councils and communities will feel much more moved to approve. I do not think that the proposal to offer individual incentives—or bribes, as they will surely become known—is helpful. Like the hon. Member for Pudsey, I can imagine a scenario in which growing lists of people object to things, saying, “I object, my neighbour objects, my dog objects,” and so on, on the off chance that they might be helped out with a bit of cash from the developer. That money should go through a section 106 reform system to be spent on local communities. It would be very unhelpful to give developers a get-out by allowing them to give some of that money directly to the neighbours to a project rather than to the wider community, which goes far beyond the immediate neighbours to a development.

While housing is a key concern and was focused on by my hon. Friend, I want to address briefly the matter of supermarkets and city sprawl.

Mr. Bill Olner (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Member should address them briefly because we want to give the Minister time to reply.

Mr. Rogerson
Absolutely. I apologise, Mr. Olner. I shall be brief.

I agree with both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Pudsey that there should be a requirement to demonstrate need with commercial developments, particularly retail developments.

I hope that the Government will move towards creating incentives to renovate existing properties rather than allowing all the pressure that comes with new development. I hope that the Minister will take on board the suggestions that there should be greater status for planners and that the process should be simplified to make minor alterations to existing buildings. I hope also that she will resist the calls to create a new quango, to centralise section 106 moneys and to allow a new increase in the supermarket strangulation of town centres. The country deserves a more responsive and locally driven planning system that delivers healthier, wealthier and greener communities.

10:29:00

Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)
Thank you, Mr. Olner. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate. His interest in housing and affordable housing is well known to the House, and his contribution was typically thoughtful and considered. Indeed, the debate is probably best described as being about two significant volumes: on the one hand, there is Kate Barker’s report; on the other, there is the hon. Gentleman’s 1989 publication “Cornwall at the Crossroads”. Those of us who love provincial literature have another name to add to the list of Cornish authors of distinction, and when we think of such writers in the future, we will think not simply of Winston Graham’s “Poldark”, Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” or even Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, but of the hon. Member for St. Ives and “Cornwall at the Crossroads”.

However, it is perhaps time that the hon. Gentleman picked up his pen again, because I would be interested to read a new book from him—one entitled “Liberal Democracy at the Crossroads”. His speech contained some interesting perspectives on the development of Liberal Democrat thinking, and as we all know, a healthy debate is going on in the third party about whether the future should be economically liberal or economically populist. I fear, however, that there was more that just a hint of economic populism in the hon. Gentleman’s speech. He attempted—briefly—to repeal the laws of supply and demand by suggesting that there was no real linkage between an increase in housing supply and the price of housing.

One advantage of Kate Barker’s work—this backs up the work of most of the economists who have looked at housing markets in Britain and, indeed, across the world—is that it makes clear that, if one wants to tackle affordability, one must tackle supply. Although a variety of factors have driven up housing costs in this country and contributed house prices rising above the retail prices index generally—a trend that most of us consider malign—constraints on supply have undoubtedly been one of those factors. To attempt, however elegantly, to deny that linkage, as the hon. Gentleman did, is to seek refuge in economic populism rather than economic liberalism.

Andrew George
That is an interesting twist on what I said. The figures that I presented made the point that, in some areas, we cannot build our way out of the problem of a lack of affordable housing. That is especially true in an area where the housing supply has doubled—indeed, where it has increased faster than almost anywhere else in the country—but where local people’s housing problems have become worse. Of course, there is a national, broad-brush perspective, but the hon. Gentleman must surely accept that we cannot micro-manage development and meet the need for affordable housing from Whitehall.

Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. He is right that the national picture shows that there has been a shortfall between the number of houses that we have built and the number of new households that have been created—indeed, the Minister has drawn attention to that—and that shortfall has been one of the primary factors in fuelling house price inflation. However, the hon. Gentleman also makes a valuable point by drawing attention to the fact that there are specific local and regional markets in the overall national housing market.

All my concerns about Barker I—Kate Barker’s first report, on housing supply—relate to the way in which she argues that we should try to influence specific house prices in some regional markets by having targets for house building in those markets. That seems to be a step too far in the direction of manipulating prices on the basis of centralised state direction of supply. I believe in allowing supply and demand to come more happily into equilibrium by ensuring that we have a system that is more responsive to market pressure.

In that respect, although I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about how second home buying affects the price of homes in his constituency, and I pay tribute to his attack on the politics of envy, we must recognise that the existence of recreational and second homes plays a significant role in the health of the economy in many rural parts of Britain by ensuring that they have a viable tourist sector and, therefore, remain economically healthy. Thanks to the alteration of council tax rebates, we have a way of ensuring that those who have second homes contribute more effectively to the community, but it is important to bear it in mind that attempts to restrict second home ownership, not least through the manipulation of the planning system and the use class order system, would be another lurch towards economic populism rather than economic liberalism.

Andrew George
I am pleased that the Conservative spokesman is clarifying the Conservative approach to second home ownership, but does he not agree that in areas such as mine, where second homes have increased in proportion and number, there has been a commensurate decrease in the number of hotels and guest houses that can compete in the market? The council tax discounts and other means that give second homes and holiday homes an advantage are damaging one of the basic elements of the local holiday trade.

Michael Gove
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concern for the hotel and the bed-and-breakfast trade, but it is not for central Government to prescribe where people should stay when they go on holiday; it is for central Government to facilitate choice wherever possible. However, his plea that local authorities should be given greater flexibility when attempting to fill the gap in the intermediate market was well made. All hon. Members recognise that the rate of house price inflation has led to a growing intermediate market, with a growing group of people, whom we would not classically define as the sort of people who would wish to be in social housing, being incapable of competing in the full property market. There are several ways in which such individuals can be helped, including through low-cost home ownership schemes and the thoughtful provision of affordable housing in appropriate rural areas, and local authorities can play an important part in helping to provide such housing.

The hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) made a fascinating speech, and I can only say that I am sorry that I was not there for the Adjournment debate that he secured earlier this year. Having read the speech that he made then and listened to his speech today, all that I can say is that he is—not all the time, but some of it—marching in time with the concerns of those on the Conservative Front Bench. In a speech on housing supply and affordability, which was made from the Conservative Front Bench last week, my colleagues and I made it clear that people who are concerned about development are not nimbys, but that they have legitimate concerns about the sensitivity and aesthetic quality of what is being built. They have concerns about over-intensive and, indeed, dense development, the lack of infrastructure and how communities are being steamrollered into accepting development, rather than brought along through consultation.

The Opposition represented all those concerns in last week’s debate, and the hon. Gentleman eloquently encapsulated them in his speech, but, sadly, they were either dismissed or overlooked by the Government. Pudsey has a proud tradition of having Conservative Members of Parliament, and if the hon. Gentleman wishes to take the opportunity today to cross the Floor and to join the party that better represents his interests on this matter, we would be delighted to welcome him.

Mr. Truswell
All that I can say is that talk is cheap. If the Conservatives in Pudsey and Leeds shared the hon. Gentleman’s views, they would be doing considerably more through the planning process to protect the communities that they purport to represent.

Mr. Bill Olner (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is getting rather long, and we need the Minister to reply to all the questions that hon. Members have put to her. Would the hon. Gentleman wind up his intervention?

Mr. Truswell
If Conservatives in Pudsey and Leeds shared the hon. Gentleman’s views, they would draw up an action plan based on the 2004 Act, which would do considerably more to protect the communities that they supposedly represent.

Michael Gove
I absolutely take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We are both believers in localism, so I shall not stray into the concerns he mentions, but simply say that we both agree that local communities are often the best judges of what development should take place in their precincts.

As ever, the hon. Member for St. Ives made a thoughtful speech, in which he drew attention to the importance of community involvement. He also drew attention, as did the hon. Member for Pudsey, to some of the concerns that individuals might have about the introduction of side agreements—what some might term planning by inducement—which is one of the ideas entertained by Kate Barker.

Some people might also be concerned that Kate Barker opens the door to developers offering help by paying for planning consultants to facilitate developments in which they have a direct interest. As I am sure the hon. Member for Pudsey would acknowledge, that raises questions about conflicts of interest and the integrity of the planning system. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response.

Like the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson), I agree that the Barker report has good and bad parts. Kate Barker correctly identifies the fact that there is a problem with the planning system in this country and that it is overly complex and bureaucratic. However, as a result of her terms of engagement, she could not criticise the people who have been in charge of the planning system for the past 10 years—this Government. They have made it significantly more complex and bureaucratic.

Kate Barker’s role is that of an investigating magistrate who has been invited by the mafia to come to Sicily to explain why the crime rate is so high, and who knows that she dare not point the finger at the mafiosi who have invited her. I shall adapt the metaphor so that it might be more appropriate for the Minister. Kate Barker is in the position of a talented London Weekend Television producer called Peter Mandelson, who has been invited to advise the Labour party on why it had been unelectable for so long, but who is unable to refer to the party’s own policies in the course of his prescription.

If we were to look at what the Government have done to make planning more complex, we would see that they have added an additional layer to the planning process—the regional layer of planning. That regional involvement has made the process unnecessarily complex, and it has introduced delay. It has done more than that: it has constricted communities that wish to grow and prevented them from doing so.

A number of right hon. and hon. Members have drawn attention to the fact that some villages, towns and settlements in their communities wish to have new housing development, but because, under their regional spatial strategies, the development is considered unsustainable or unviable, or because planning targets for that region have been hit, a moratorium has prevented them from expanding.

One of my specific concerns is that if villages and towns are to remain sustainable and viable, they must be allowed to expand. One of the concerns about how regional spatial strategies have been implemented is that specific villages wishing to grow and to sustain local shops have been told that they cannot do so. As a result, there will not be the services to keep those villages sustainable, because there will not be the required number of people.

I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean), both of whom have vividly drawn attention to the problems that their constituents face as a result of regional planning guidance preventing new housing from being built. I should also say that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox) has also drawn attention to the way in which the RSS in the south-west has prevented growth from occurring.

Kate Barker draws attention to a worrying new concern: such regional bodies, which are out of touch, unaccountable and unelected, could be given a new planning power to redraw the green belt. It is vital that we recognise that the green belt has afforded useful environmental protection for many of our settlements and for the country as a whole. Of course local communities retain the right to permit development in the green belt if they believe that it will enhance local amenity, but if an unelected body were to redraw the green belt, we would no longer have community involvement in securing that protection or in enhancing it. Will the Minister let us know whether she welcomes that weakening in national protection?

In addition to the regional layer of bureaucracy, the report opens the door to another new layer of bureaucracy, as the hon. Member for North Cornwall pointed out. It contains the idea of a national planning commission, which, once again, would be a new, unelected, unaccountable and distant quango. It would not replace ministerial powers, because it would operate alongside them. As Kate Barker points out, there will be no change in the 2004 Act and in the effect that ministerial powers will have. Once again, we will see that the Government’s answer to bureaucracy and complexity is yet more bureaucracy and greater complexity.

10:44:00

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Yvette Cooper)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing this wide-ranging debate. He is right that this was the Treasury’s week for responding to the Adjournment debates, but I assure him that I have always taken the view that it is unwise to allow the Treasury to respond on one’s behalf if one can possibly avoid it. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) that I take that approach at the breakfast table as well as on the Floor of the House.

Hon. Members have raised a series of issues on both the first and second Kate Barker reviews. I will try to deal with the reviews in turn, because it is important to distinguish between them. The first Kate Barker review on housing was done several years ago. The Government published a detailed response and are taking forward a range of detailed policies, some of which reflect her precise recommendations. Others reflect the aims behind them, although the approach to the implementation differs significantly. We have taken the time to deliberate and we have changed many areas in response to the first Barker review.

We have not yet set out the Government’s position on the second report. We have welcomed it, and we think that it includes important overall analysis on the need to speed up and improve the planning system to support economic development. We have not yet taken a view on the individual recommendations, and we are keen to hear views on them, including the views of the MPs in this debate, before we do so.

It is also important to be clear that our response to the second Barker review will not change our response to the first one. We are already implementing our response in respect of our approach to housing and to changing planning for housing across the country. We have set out planning policy statement 3, which must now be implemented. We will not change that in response to the second Barker review, which looks more widely at economic development.

I wanted to respond first to the points made by the hon. Member for St. Ives about the overall analysis behind the first Barker review. He asked whether there is a need for greater housing supply. We think that there is a clear link between housing supply and long-term house prices across the country. This country’s long-term house prices are rising more rapidly than those of other countries, and our new supply is lagging behind increased demand.

The figures are clear. In the last 30 years of the 20th century, there was a 30 per cent. increase in the number of households and a 50 per cent. reduction in house building. More than 200,000 new households are being formed every year as result of the ageing, growing population and the fact that more people are living alone, yet historically we have been building an average of 150,000 new homes a year. That gap is unsustainable. We are increasing house building now—the most recent figure given was 170,000 new homes—but there is still a gap between rising demand and the growth in supply. That gap also fuels underlying house price pressures.

Research and modelling done in response to the Barker review suggests that if we were simply to carry on at the current rate of building, given that rising demand, the proportion of 30-year-old couples able to afford their own home would drop from more than 50 per cent. to nearer 30 per cent. in the next 20 years. Such a situation would be unsustainable.

Andrew George
I accept the broad-brush analysis of national figures, but the point that I was seeking to make was that one cannot apply that rather homogenised approach to everywhere in the country. The figures that I supplied to the Minister show that Cornwall has not lacked growth—its growth was faster than that in many other places—but it has still not addressed the problem of affordability. This requires a much more sophisticated approach than merely heaping more housing on the place.

Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the situation is more complex in some areas than in others. My next point is that we then have to examine individual housing markets, many of which reflect a much more complex picture. The nature of the national housing market often means that if, nationally, we do not build more houses, the effects will be felt in every part of the country. Sometimes it will take time for that to happen and sometimes there will be lags in the process, but those effects will be felt.

It is right to say that there are variations. For example, the housing market around Salford in Manchester will be complex because a booming city centre sits alongside areas of low demand, where people have moved out and there is boarded-up housing, with the problems that that brings. Part of the low demand pathfinder approach has been about addressing such problems and the fact that high-demand and low-demand areas can be close to each other.

Similarly, let us consider the relationship between Burnley and Warrington, which are very close together. Burnley has experienced serious problems of low demand, whereas Warrington has experienced a rapid rise in house prices. Rural areas face different pressures because of the need for additional protection for the countryside, and differences in, for example, agricultural wages. The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that there are particular pressures because of the seasonal labour market, tourism, the impact on wages, and the level of retirement, as well as the demand for second homes. He knows that, and it is not easy to find fair and workable measures to respond to the demand for second homes, which is high in some areas but low in others. The Rural Affordable Housing Commission looked at that in detail and suggested that Michael Lyons should look at it further. It is clear that those problems do not apply to every area and that it is difficult to find an effective response.

Local and regional strategies must reflect local circumstances. The new PPS3, which we introduced 10 days ago, provides greater local flexibility and supports stronger action by local authorities to ensure that additional homes are delivered.

We have also introduced the national housing and planning advice unit, which will look at providing more detailed analysis at regional and local housing market level to support local decision making on how to respond to pressures within the housing market. We want to ensure that we can look at local complexity as well as the national picture. The overall need is for additional supply, but with greater sensitivity in individual areas.

The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) defended economic liberalism—I think that was his position when teasing the Liberal Democrats—but the problem with his approach is that he is an economic liberal except when local communities, and in particular Conservative local councils, tell him otherwise and that they disagree with his approach. It is for him to decide whether he wants to describe that as economic populism, community populism, Conservative populism, nimbyism or simply having jam on it, but he knows that his approach is inconsistent.

We have set out our approach to planning for housing in PPS3 and we believe that it is the right approach. It emphasises the need to bring forward more land for housing and to take more account of housing demand pressures. It also makes clear the priority for brownfield development in the planning system. Local authorities will have to set their own brownfield targets to help to meet the national target, and they will have to do more to bring forward brownfield land. English Partnerships is working on additional strategies to help them to bring forward more brownfield land. PPS3 also includes additional safeguards compared with the first draft of the statement. There will also be greater flexibility to decide what sort of brownfield land should be developed and what densities should be in their areas, and stronger emphasis on quality, design, green space, homes for families and spaces for children. It also emphasises the need to consider sustainability, and we will make it clear that that must be implemented alongside the new planning policy statement on climate change, which we will publish in draft later this week alongside the timetable to deliver zero-carbon homes.

Our approach to new housing is that we want increased quantity and increased quality at the same time; we want to give local authorities greater flexibility and responsibility at the same time; we want to deliver new homes and higher environmental standards at the same time. That has evolved from the initial Kate Barker report, and our discussions and debates throughout the country. We think that that is the right way forward.

Andrew George
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. She is being very generous. She said that her Department intended to give local authorities greater powers and flexibility. Taking that into account and the case that I have made to her today, will she tell us whether that will include local authorities’ ability to ensure that an intermediate market can genuinely be developed and that they are not constrained in the way that many local authorities have been by pressure to grant more and more permissions for unfettered housing development?

Yvette Cooper
I question the hon. Gentleman’s argument that the way to develop an intermediate market, shared-ownership housing or lower-cost home ownership is to restrict other kinds of market development. We want more market housing, more shared-ownership housing and more social housing. We believe that all three are necessary. We said that, as part of the new planning policy, local authorities should have greater powers to require more affordable housing, shared ownership and social housing on smaller sites, and not simply be limited to larger sites. That is particularly significant in rural areas.

The rural exceptions policy is already in place and we are looking at other ways to expand shared ownership. I think that local authorities could have a much stronger role in shared ownership, particularly in the use of local authority land, but also in other ways of promoting it. We are looking at that further.

Michael Gove
How many local authorities support the social homebuyers scheme?

Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman often asks that question and I am sure that he has read the answers to parliamentary questions on this in great detail. The social homebuyers scheme has only just begun, as have the local authority and housing association pilots. The first homes were marketed only in November last year and more local authorities are expecting to do so in April. The social homebuyer scheme is an important way of allowing council house and housing association tenants the chance to buy a share in their own home. We also think that there is much wider scope for shared ownership for all sorts of first-time buyers, which is why we set out the shared equity taskforce, which will extend opportunities for home ownership to 160,000 people over the next few years.

I want briefly to cover the remaining issues that were raised as part of the response to the second Kate Barker review. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey raised the importance of community consultation. Part of the reason behind the 2004 Act was to have much greater community involvement at the beginning of the process. If people’s only engagement in the planning is when the notice goes up on the lamp post at the end of their street saying that there will be a new development in the area, they tend to react negatively. Communities should be involved more positively from the beginning. That continues to be our approach and it is extremely important because it is the best way to have a positive debate throughout the community about how to meet the additional needs, whether for jobs or housing, in those areas. We take that very seriously.

Our approach to supporting town centres has helped to deliver urban renaissance in many of our towns and cities throughout the country. Regeneration and renaissance are extremely important. The current system requires a series of tests on new developments, including the impact test, the accessibility test, the sequential test, and so on. Some of them overlap and Kate Barker argued that some tests are unnecessary and do not offer out-of-town-centre protection. We shall be interested to hear people’s views on whether there are ways to simplify the process and at the same time to emphasis, if not strengthen, the focus on town centre development, which is extremely important, while also supporting economic development.

I think that everyone agrees that major infrastructure development is a problem under the current planning system. We have already made changes to housing and major retail development processes under the Town and Country Planning Acts. That was the right approach and we are looking more widely at major infrastructure. Again, there will plenty of opportunities for further consultation.

We believe that the green belt plays a vital role in preventing unsustainable urban sprawl. It is critical, and the general presumption against inappropriate development in the green belt is also extremely important. Those key principles of green belt policy should be supported. We also think that a range of areas throughout the report have not been properly understood in the first round of reporting on the proposals, and that wider debate is necessary on the proposals and particular responses to them, which we will consider. The Secretary of State has made it clear that she wants to hear views on the proposals before we set out the Government’s response.

 Children with Disabilities

11:00:00

Mrs. Joan Humble (Blackpool, North and Fleetwood) (Lab)
It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak on this important issue. I want to concentrate on the report that I, my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) and hon. Members from all political parties have produced, with support from a consortium of children’s charities: Children Now, Contact A Family, the Council for Disabled Children, Mencap and the Special Education Consortium.

The background to our report and to the debate is that the Treasury and the Department for Education and Skills asked us to provide a report that would feed into the 2007 comprehensive spending review. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor had previously announced that the CSR would include a review to consider

“how services can provide greater support to families with disabled children to improve their life chances”.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill and I convened a series of parliamentary hearings to support the Treasury/DFES review. In July, we held hearings that focused on uncovering evidence of good practice and on finding ways to improve the outcomes and life chances of poor disabled children. The report from the hearings will feed into the review and, I hope, provide solutions to the challenges of improving services for those young people and their families.

A cross-party group of about 20 MPs took part in the hearings, which covered three areas: early years support, family support in children’s services and the transition to adulthood. The hearings were well publicised by the consortium of charities, and Children Now produced a flyer. On the back there is a list of vital statistics, some of which are repeated regularly. It is worth repeating them again, however, so that we understand what we are talking about. There are 770,000 children with disabilities in the UK; over 90 per cent. of disabled children live at home and are supported by their families; only one in 13 families receives services from their local social services; disabled children are 13 times more likely to be excluded from school; and, sadly, eight out of 10 families with disabled children are at breaking point.

One quarter of those families say that services are poor or lack co-ordination. In fact, when we undertook our inquiry one deeply disturbing statistic that we found was that not only did over 80 per cent. of families believe that they receive poor services, but over 80 per cent. of professionals believed that they delivered poor services. Clearly, there are issues that we must address, and our hearings considered them in detail.

Lest the Minister become concerned that I am being too negative, we also recognise that the Government have made substantial progress: £13 million has been provided to fund the early support programme, £27 million has been announced for children’s hospices, and the Department of Health and DFES children’s national service framework has a specific standard for disabled children. It says:

“Children and young people who are disabled or who have complex health needs should receive co-ordinated, high-quality child and family-centred services which are based on assessed needs, which promote social inclusion and, where possible, which enable them and their families to live ordinary lives.”

We applaud that.

Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con)
I, too, congratulate the Government on their work, particularly the provision to the children’s hospices of £27 million, which has now been divided among them for the next three years. However, will the Minister bear in mind the need to provide a fair funding formula, and the need for the Department of Health to work with the Association of Children’s Hospices to establish that formula for the long term?

Mrs. Humble
I am sure that the Minister has heard the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Indeed, there is an excellent children’s hospice, Brian House, in Blackpool. I visit it regularly and I see the amazing work of its staff, so I agree that children’s hospices do an excellent job and I applaud the Government’s provision of additional money.

The Prime Minister’s strategy unit report, “Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People”, also prioritised early years service and the transition to adulthood. Most recently, “Opportunity for All”, the eighth annual report from the Department for Work and Pensions, said:

“The way in which services are designed and delivered to support disabled children and their families in the early years has a huge impact on disabled young people’s prospects and expectations as they become adults. This has repercussions for the whole family, including the parents’ ability to care for their children and participate in education, training and employment. We have made progress by developing a programme of work that will:”.

The report then lists the elements of that programme, but I shall not take time by listing them now. DWP is also part of a cross-departmental focus on services for children with disabilities and their families.

I shall make some comments about the importance of key working, which we highlight in our report. Initially, however, I shall outline the report’s priority recommendations. The first and by far the most important recommendation is that significant additional resources should be targeted at disabled children and their families, and that they should be made available to planners and commissioners of universal and specialist services. Secondly, additional funding should be linked to the development of minimum standards or to a “core offer” for disabled children and families, creating a universal entitlement to a minimum level of service. Thirdly, Ministers should ensure that services for disabled children are part of every local agreement, and that national public service agreement targets are developed for disabled children. We make a series of recommendations, and I advise Members who have not done so to look at our summer report, which goes through them.

I should like to speak at length to many other recommendations, including the development of advocacy services; however, from our public inquiry, which incorporated three evidence sessions, there came powerful evidence of good practice in the use of key workers on the early support programme, and powerful evidence of how difficult life was for parents if they had to negotiate a variety of agencies all by themselves. One parent told us of her frustration. She said that rather than concentrating on caring for her son:

“I am practically full-time learning how the ‘system’ works and researching and implementing all my own interventions—even after pouring hours over months into trying to locate suitable education for my son! So far I have plenty of people telling me what to do, but no one helping me to do any of it.”

Sharon Kelly, a mother who gave evidence at our first session, said:

“Since Early Support got involved with us, there has been a dramatic change in our family. My daughter is no longer a jigsaw puzzle with twenty-one different pieces. My daughter is Alysha and twenty-one people are there at the end of a phone through one person.”

Coincidentally, the early support pilot in my constituency has concentrated on mainstreaming the principle of early support.

As well as visiting projects in Manchester during the summer with my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, talking with early support practitioners in Salford and visiting Tower Hamlets, I met Janet Berry, the co-ordinator of my local child development centre in Blackpool, and a group of parents and children. It was clear that the parents welcomed key workers into their lives as single individuals who could help them to co-ordinate services, but it was also clear in my discussions with professionals that key working necessitated major training for the staff of the different agencies involved and meant introducing new literature for parents and new material for training sessions. All that costs money. It does not happen by magic. Blackpool is fortunate to have been one of the pilot areas, so it can use that money to develop key working. When we spoke to key workers in Salford, we saw that additional resources had to be put into the system to develop it. If key working is to be mainstream, the Government will have to consider what additional resources are needed to co-ordinate that excellent service.

In the introduction to the August 2006 report of the Blackpool early support pathfinder, Janet Berry says:

“In times of change, there are fantastic opportunities, and I believe the Early Support materials, principles and processes are a gift to local authorities and partners from the health and voluntary sectors. As always with gifts, we only enjoy and benefit from them when they are opened and explored. As a pathfinder, Blackpool has been able to do just that. We have been able to open the gift and begin to explore the benefits. However, it is important to recognise that Early Support provides the foundations and the tools to build a service surrounding the child and family that is fully co-ordinated and integrated, but it takes the skills and the commitment of leaders and professionals from education, social care, health and the voluntary sector to work creatively in partnership to realise that vision.”

I want that vision to be translated all over the country. We are developing it in Blackpool. Evidence for our review came from people who did not benefit from that vision and people who did.

I would like to speak about many other matters, but I know that other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall just refer to two essentials that have come out of our review: short breaks and appropriate services during the transition to adulthood. Short breaks are absolutely vital for families. Without them, they reach breaking point. Sadly, many local authorities are cutting back such services because of enormous budget pressures.

The full report of parliamentary hearings highlights demographic changes. More children born with severe disabilities now survive into childhood and indeed adulthood. Those demographic changes are putting pressure on health, education and social services to offer the support that such children and their families need and deserve. Short breaks are one of the key services that the families with whom I meet want more of. They want them regularly, and they want to know that they can rely on them to make their lives much easier.

Families also face pressures during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Most parents feel pressure when their children are small. As the children grow older and reach 18, they leave home to lead their own lives as adults. For families with disabled children, it is the exact opposite. At the stage when parents want to enjoy time to themselves, too many find that they are looking after their children more because the transition to adult services let them down. Services are not there, so parents are under enormous pressure. The Commission for Social Care Inspection will shortly produce a report on the matter, and I look forward to reading it.

The Government have many excellent policies, but sadly, as a result of demographic changes and financial pressures, services all too often simply do not exist. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues in other Departments will use our report’s detailed evidence to support their bid to the Treasury for more money, and that it will support them in developing the services that we all want for families with disabled children. A disabled child can both be a joy and bring pressures to the family. Our job as politicians is to do what we can to remove those pressures and to help the family. This is a key opportunity to do so. Every disabled child matters. That is our message. I finish by paraphrasing the children’s commissioner’s remark when we launched the report. He said that it was one report that should not be left to gather dust on a Minister’s shelf. I will not let that happen, I am sure that many of my colleagues in this place will not and I sincerely hope that the Minister will not.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Bill Olner (in the Chair)
Order. I am about to call another speaker, but four of you want to speak. Please have a little bit of self-discipline on timings, because I am sure that the Minister will want plenty of time to have a few words on this extremely important subject. I call Tom Clarke.

11:16:00

Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
It is an enormous pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble). She made a remarkable contribution to the review she mentioned, not just at committee sittings and parliamentary hearings, but during our visits to the Spark centre in Tower Hamlets and to the early support programme Salford, as well as in many other ways.

In an excellent speech, my hon. Friend outlined the thinking of the review’s cross-party membership extremely well, as one would expect. She referred to the children’s commissioner. She will know that I have just returned within the past few minutes from a meeting with him. She wisely declined an invitation to attend early this morning—she might well have been caught in traffic, in which case this debate would not have taken place—but she was there in spirit, and I thank her sincerely for her marvellous work.

Our report quoted the children’s commissioner. We heard a great deal of evidence from professionals, parents and many others, and the commissioner said that

“the plight of children and families with disabilities is nothing short of a national scandal”.

Those are strong words. Privately, some of my colleagues—not those who took part in the review—felt that they were. Like my hon. Friend, I do not want to sound at all negative. With the greatest respect to the ministerial team—we recognise the marvellous progress that has been made, although our responsibility is to identify what problems still exist—and speaking for myself alone, I think that I understand where the children’s commissioner is coming from, particularly after our meeting this morning.

The commissioner sees his job, and those who work for him see theirs, as a great challenge in the modern world. They feel a degree of frustration. They have an excellent relationship with the Department for Education and Skills, but they have nevertheless made it clear that they feel that their remit is considerably restricted. That applies to disabled children as well. They would prefer to report to Parliament itself rather than to one Department.

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner drew to my attention something fairly significant that must impact on disabled children in England particularly: it receives 30p per child. In Northern Ireland the amount is £3.80, in Wales it is £2.10 and in Scotland it is 90p. It would be unfair of me to complain too much about Scotland, but I do not believe, as we argue for more resources, that 30p per child in England is exactly appropriate. Therefore, I share the views of the children’s commissioner that we ought to address that issue, as well as the strong views that have been expressed. For example, children being in prison has been an issue of late, but the number of children with disabilities in prison, especially those with learning disabilities, is a challenge to us all. Therefore, if the commissioner sounded angry, there was certainly justification for that, and I have the feeling that my right hon. and hon. Friends will agree.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood referred rightly to demography, which was one of the biggest issues that we had to address. As she said, today there are 770,000 disabled children, which is an increase of 62 per cent. in the past 30 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) has often referred to the improvements that have been made in medical science, and of course we welcome that progress. Nevertheless, that increase in the population of disabled children does not come without problems. Those problems were identified in services, diagnosis, child care, gaps in data, early intervention, early support, and the impact of the benefits system. We made some important recommendations on those issues. The backdrop to all that—again, we were unanimous in this view—is our determination to eradicate poverty, especially poverty among children, and disabled children and their families in particular.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood referred rightly to the emphasis on short break provision and respite care. Even if we had not had our views on that before we came together in the review, the evidence that was submitted on the issue was extremely compelling. Three out of 10 written submissions from parents raised the matter unprompted. The issue clearly must be addressed. Parents, carers and others are absolutely dedicated, as we saw in our visits, but we simply cannot allow them to rely on that dedication without the support of respite care, for example. One evening a week would make the world of difference to people who, despite their love for their children, have taken on a task that by its very nature demands their attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and becomes extremely draining.

Some of the stories that we heard from parents were heartbreaking. All of them addressed the issue of resources. We also heard, rightly, from the Local Government Association. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said in the Budget statement that led to the review that he was dealing with the issue of resources for disabled children. I hope that our review will be helpful in addressing how those resources are directed. However, we all want to ensure that when resources are made available, they go to where we hope they will help to address the problems that people face and meet the needs that patently exist in virtually every part of the United Kingdom.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood rightly referred to the evidence that we heard on autism. I find it unacceptable that, for example, the time taken to diagnose autism varies up and down the country. Sometimes it takes many months and even years, but if people in that situation are fortunate, it might take only a matter of weeks. There ought to be a UK approach on such matters. Some people who suffer from autism or Asperger’s often experience bullying and other unacceptable antisocial behaviour, which is another reason why we must identify those issues quickly and have a strategy to respond to them.

My hon. Friend rightly referred to advocacy. Much as I am watching the clock, most people who know me would expect me briefly to say something about advocacy. Where we saw advocacy in action, it represented best practice. The case for advocacy is now overwhelming, not only in the interests of the child, which we all agree ought to be paramount, but in our attempt to deliver services nationally and locally. For example, one mother told us that, apart from coping with the trauma of finding that she had a disabled child, she had to deal with 21 different specialists during the first months. However, when a key worker arrived, he or she was able to deal with those 21 people and allow the mother to continue with her job of mothering in a difficult situation. We want to see more of that.

We recognise the role of the carers and we support early intervention. Indeed, our report made the specific recommendation that there should be a national centre for excellence in early intervention, because at that point we could anticipate and respond to many of the problems that would otherwise arise.

Apart from the many other issues that arose during our review, and to which my hon. Friend rightly referred, one of the biggest issues is the period of transition. Given my interest in disability over many years, I regret to say that we as a Parliament have not really addressed that issue to the extent that I would wish, however well meaning we might be. The transition period is the period after the educational system has fulfilled its responsibilities and when young people with learning disabilities find that their normal day is not their normal day any more. The bus does not come to collect them any more, and there is no school or training centre for them. That means enormous problems for both the child and their family. I do not wish to exaggerate the impact of such problems, but I very much regret the fact that, in some situations, some of those children find themselves in prison. That cannot be acceptable.

I conclude on this note. I reassure my hon. Friend the Minister that, although this debate is inevitably about problems and how we answer them, I do not ignore some of the positive aspects of society’s approach to disabled children and some of the Government’s achievements, which we of course acknowledge. Nevertheless, we still have a great deal to do at this point in the millennium. In earlier days, we acknowledged the work and commitment of people such as Shaftesbury and Barnardo; indeed, we saw the impact that Barnardo has even today. In view of the timing of this debate, just ahead of Christmas, I conclude by quoting Charles Dickens:

“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.”

If that applies to children in general, as it does, it is even more appropriate to disabled children. That is our challenge today.

11:29:00

Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North) (Lab)
I am delighted to play a part in this debate, because at least I feel that there is an open door, in that the review has helped to open up the issue of disability in our society. There were many Ministers who came to the review—in fact, there were more Ministers at one stage than we sometimes see on the Front Bench during Prime Minister’s questions. There is so much interest, and the door is open. I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends for really leading the Committee’s review and taking it into pastures new. I was a bit player in that, but I could see that a review is often more important than a Select Committee. I congratulate them on taking that path to get things done. They have my support, and that of many others, as they press on to ensure that things happen.

It is often said that we can judge any society by how it treats its vulnerable people. That is true of what we are discussing. We are beginning to open up about and consider people who, sadly, are born with disabilities or acquire them during their lives. I am pleased to play a part locally in coaching disabled people in football; I must say that some of them are better than parliamentary team players whom I know.

The Olympic games are coming here in 2012, but we seem to have missed the fact that the Paralympics will be associated with them. On many days, the Paralympics in Greece were better attended than the Olympics. The world has huge interest in the Paralympics, and I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on bringing up the issue.

I turn to genetic disability. When I was much younger, we knew of about two or three conditions, associated with disability, for which there was a correlation with a gene that was sometimes, but not always, transmitted through family. At my last count, there were about 250. Yesterday afternoon, I dissuaded somebody who wanted to set up an all-party group on Marfan syndrome from doing so. Abraham Lincoln suffered from the condition, which affects particular people taller than 6 ft with long fingers. I hope that the Minister is listening. Sadly, they die from aortic aneurysms that have not been known about because there is no genetic testing for the syndrome. The condition does not run in the family, but a gene is associated with it.

Sadly, we have heard about the Chancellor’s little boy, who has cystic fibrosis, and about Duchenne muscular dystrophy. They do not consist simply of a gene and a condition; every affected individual has a different range of symptoms. That tells us clearly that we have to treat such people as individuals when it comes to their social lives. Genes do not always have the same aberration; they can be different within a gene. There are many different types of cystic fibrosis, Marfan syndrome and so on. Medical people are not always taught that lesson; they think that just one condition is involved and that all its manifestations should be treated the same.

I turn to the issue of quality of life. Last week, I spoke at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence conference. It is tearing itself apart over “quality of life”, which it has to define before deciding whether drugs will improve it. A huge debate is coming up about what that phrase means.

Two friends of mine, Annie Kerr and Tom Shakespeare, have written a book that discusses genetic disability. They say that the problem is not inherited genes, but the society in which people develop, and that society cannot handle the kind of lifestyles that some people can undertake. It always wants the perfect person: the Olympic champion, the Wayne Rooney—perhaps not Wayne Rooney, but a star of that ilk.

The medical model is wrong; we should think about the society and quality of life that we provide for individuals. Deep down, that is what the report is about in a broader sense—what schools such people should go to, the medical treatment they should get, their employment prospects and their chances of independent living. In my constituency, the Julian Housing group is amazingly good at helping individuals and giving them the confidence to lead their lives on their own. We have to think of all such things and join them up in many different ways.

Disability is still stigmatised in many quarters. My people in Norfolk say, “We are very good with disability—better than other counties.” However, when I press them, they say, “Yes, a lot more can be done.” Last month, during Enterprise week, I went to Norfolk and Norwich Scope Association—NANSA—which deals with cerebral palsy. It was an amazing day. The people who work there are mainly women, and the commitment, devotion and time that they give the individuals with whom they deal are absolutely amazing. The women help them to access toys and equipment so that their quality of life can be improved. 

I have met mums at the association who can work only part-time because they have to care for their son or daughter. In that situation, a person has to be hard, rather than mad, and want to do something about it. I was inspired by what those mums had done. They tell me about how hard the disability living allowance forms are to fill in and how little help they can get. They often talk about their poverty. We have heard about respite care, but those women cannot get their benefits that easily either. There are only a few after-school and holiday clubs. The child of one woman at NANSA had been on a waiting list for a special needs youth club for several years; other children were also finding it hard to get a place. There are special schools in Norwich for kids with different types of ability, but they are over-subscribed so the kids cannot get in. That is not an example of good society or of how to handle those issues.

I shall come to a conclusion to allow others to speak. When we talk to people in Norfolk county council who run services for the disabled, we ask, “What is the matter?” They say, “We sit around the table, we talk about kids, but when disability is mentioned, everybody shuts off and goes for a cup of tea.” That is not tolerable. No money is ring-fenced for looking after and buying equipment for people who have such disabilities. I am told stories of how Government money for such equipment has been taken out—that sounds like the national health service—and put into other areas of endeavour.

Disability is stigmatised in debating chambers—in Norfolk, at least. I am sure that it is true elsewhere. We need an agency that pulls all the resources together. People should not work in the silos where they work magnificently; we need to consider the co-ordination of treatment and develop the careers of those with disabilities.

I shall really finish now. There are a lot of problems in thinking about how we target or resource young people as they grow up. I know children who were cut off at the age of 18; there was nothing for them. It is not like that at the Connexions career service, which helps fully able people and provides a whole programme under which they can develop. I know that Connexions has a bit of trouble here and there, but disabled children do not have such a service. In Norfolk, at least, there does not seem to be a progression of interest and services to take them through to adult life. People are forward-looking; they want to do that, but do not have the resources.

I have just finished an inquiry on myalgic encephalomyelitis. It is interesting how many children have the condition. They cannot get out of bed during the day. There is a lack of co-ordination between education, medical and social services in respect of looking after children with the condition. In fact, some do not even believe that it exists. If our inquiry showed anything, it was that ME is a condition and that 250,000 or more people suffer from it. I ask the Minister to consider such problems, which are not like autism, which is now associated with disability; conditions such as ME are still not taught at medical school.

The families of disabled children do not ask for much; they simply want to be able to lead a normal life and to get the help and support that would allow them to do that. They want the right information, the right equipment, occasional respite and short breaks. That does not seem unreasonable; such things should be provided.

11:39:00

Mrs. Betty Williams (Conwy) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) on securing this debate. I thank her and my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) for how they chaired our inquiry sittings before the summer recess. Later, while some of us were enjoying ourselves elsewhere, they worked extremely hard to compile the draft report, which we considered after the summer. I salute what they did and applaud their deliberations and recommendations. The report is totally evidence-based, and I hope that the Government will accept not some of but all the recommendations.

I shall give my perspective as a parent as well as a parliamentarian. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood, who was the vice-chairman of the inquiry, worked extremely hard when she was the social services chairman in her area many years ago. Today, the needs of people with disabilities have risen some way up the political agenda. I am very pleased about that, but it was long overdue. As has been said, disability is more than just a word. Unfortunately, councillors, parliamentarians and people in other places think of one thing when they think of people with disabilities: someone sitting in a wheelchair. That is not entirely the case. There are different degrees and different disabilities, and that certainly applies to children with disabilities.

As a parent, I shall concentrate on children with learning disabilities, as that is where my husband and I have the greatest experience, although we also have experience with physical disability. I should like to share with Members what it was like for us as a young couple in 1973, when things were not as good as they are today. For example, we took our son to an orthopaedic consultant at the local hospital. He looked at our son, who was lying on the examination couch—we had gone to him because of our son’s physical handicap—and he asked me, a young mother, how my son was getting on. I said, “We think that he is improving.” He looked at our son without examining or even touching him and said, “With a case like this, I would not be too optimistic.” That is how some consultants treat children with disability. He had no interest in a child who had learning disabilities as well as a physical disability. We must put that right.

The report deals with the need for more funding, but money is not always the issue. In some cases, we need to change people’s attitudes. My husband and I thought that the consultant knew what he was doing when we went to see him, but we got back to our general practitioner and said, “Never send us to that person again.” We were directed to another consultant and never looked back. If I had listened to the first one, I would have thought that my son would never walk, but with our hard work and with the help of other consultants and a wheelchair, he is able to walk. That is why I say that disabilities mean different things to different people, and we need to change people’s attitudes.

Another issue that has been mentioned by colleagues is the disability living allowance, which used to be called the attendance allowance. I have a sorry story to tell about that as well. My husband and I applied for the attendance allowance reluctantly. Families and parents of children with disabilities are reluctant to apply for any help, whether financial or otherwise. We must address that point and make it easier for them to ask for help when they desperately need it.

Mrs. Humble
Sadly, in order not to invest in services, service providers—whether in health or social care, or whatever—all too often rely on the fact that parents will carry the burden. Surely, parents increasingly should stand up and demand services, so that those who should provide them do so.

Mrs. Williams
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and totally agree with her.

When the doctor came to our house, we had the impression that he was just ticking boxes on a form. My son had just had an operation and had plaster casts up to his knees on both legs. The doctor asked, “Does he wander away from home, Mrs. Williams?” I am not a violent person, but at that moment I could have slapped that doctor’s face. That would have been a gross insult to any parent, and it is why I honestly believe that we must change attitudes. For him, it was a question of ticking a box: the question was on the form, so he thought, “I need to ask the parents,” and he did so without even looking at the child to find out what he was able to do. That is another aspect.

On education, I must be careful. As hon. Members know, I represent a Welsh constituency. Education, health and other services are devolved to the National Assembly for Wales, but we must ensure that a disabled child in Wales does not receive better or worse services than a disabled child in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland. We need to have a healthy debate among our colleagues to ensure that disabled children receive the services that they need wherever they live and whichever Administration look after their interests.

We remember the Warnock report, which came out in the early 1980s. It put great emphasis on children with learning disabilities being able to receive their education through mainstream schools, and an attempt was made in the following decade to run down some of the special schools. As a parent, I was privileged to have been a governor of an excellent special school, Ysgol Pendalar in Caernarfon, before our son was born, so I had an idea what sort of education my child would have once he was old enough to attend school. The majority of parents in this country are not privileged with background knowledge, as I was.

I am conscious as well that some local education authorities are guilty—they probably have been for a long time—of not statementing a child because it saves the school money. That is cruel and callous, and it should not happen. We must put a stop to such attitudes. LEAs jolly well know that if a statement is placed on the child, the parents can make demands on them.

I could go on and on because I feel strongly about the matter. I wanted to share with colleagues what my husband and I had to go through in the 1970s, but the greatest worry that parents face when they are told that they have a profoundly handicapped child in the household is what will happen to the child when one or both of them die. We want to be sure, and to be happy and content in our own mind, that our son or daughter will receive adequate service when we die. That is why I repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood said.

We deliberated for hours, and we now have the report. I am confident that the Government will ensure that it is read properly—the intentions are good—and that we in Parliament will not rest until we are sure in our own mind that families with disabled children are properly looked after as we go into the next decade.

11:48:00

Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con)
It is with total sincerity that I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Members for Conwy (Mrs. Williams) and for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson), the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) and the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble). Members spoke eloquently, passionately and often movingly, and made their arguments very well indeed.

I congratulate everyone who was involved in the production of the report. It is a valuable contribution, but it is not an end in itself. It is more a new start for policy makers and the Government in moving forward in an important area. “Every Disabled Child Matters”—that is a wonderful and compelling campaign. We have 770,000 disabled children in the UK and each deserves to be able to live just an ordinary life, as the report explains. That would be wonderful, would it not? As far as possible, it is our duty as parliamentarians to try to achieve that. They need the right support at the right time in their lives.

When one considers life chances and what is important in the development of a child into an adult and in how people can live their adult lives with dignity, it is apparent that speech is very important. Someone can get by if they cannot read, write or add up, but not if they cannot speak. People look the other way, and quality of life is low. The provision of speech and language therapy is central to the dignity and quality of life of many people with disabilities, particularly those with complex disabilities.

I hope that the Minister will look positively to find ways to close the gap in the provision of professional speech therapists. We need a few thousand more and we need them in the next year or two. The Government are planning to close the gap over the next five years, but frankly that is not good enough. It is betraying the children and young adults who need those therapists now. I know that the Minister is a good and caring man and that he will be listening carefully.

My next point was raised more eloquently than I am able to do by the hon. Member for Conwy, and it concerns the special place of special schools in our society. Like the hon. Lady, I was involved in special schools, both as a parent of a special child and as a governor of special schools in the constituency of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke)—in fact, I was chairman of the governors at a special school in her constituency. I learned to value, cherish and love the staff, the governors and the parents who made the schools so special. The best atmospheres and the best schools that we have in this country are the special schools.

I know that the Government are supporting extremely well the SLD schools, for those with serious learning difficulties—sorry, for those with severe learning difficulties. I had trouble with my own speech when I was a child, which is why I still have trouble when I am trying to make speeches in the Chamber, as hon. Members all know. However, my problem is with the schools for those with moderate learning difficulties. In some counties they are being left to wither on the vine. There was a policy of closing them down and moving everyone into mainstream education. We all know that mainstream education is very good for some children; it suits them and is right for them. However, for other children mainstream education is not good, and they require a special school for those with moderate learning difficulties.

Some education authorities and counties are trying to allow those MLD schools to wither on the vine and go away. They are not referring parents to the schools early enough. They are not enabling parents by giving them the right advice and information. The professionals seem to think that they know better than the parents; they do not. The parents usually know best what is right for their children, especially their special children. I make a plea for the MLD schools.

I want to refer to statementing, which the hon. Member for Conwy mentioned. It needs to be quicker, cheaper and easier for parents and counties, social services and local education authorities to get children statemented. We need the statementing process to be reviewed and to be made easier.

One final plea is for a return to a form of sheltered employment for disabled people—those with learning difficulties, complex difficulties and physical difficulties. We have seen difficulties with Remploy, which I hope can be addressed, but I want to see sheltered employment schemes in the private sector as they were in the 1980s. I had a sheltered employment scheme in my business that employed 10 people, and they added an enormous amount to my company. They gave more to my company than I ever gave to them by giving them employment. They brought us together as a community and added great value in many ways. I want us to review what we can do to ensure that people have opportunities throughout their lives, and are not merely cut off at 18, as the hon. Member for Norwich, North said.

I praise the carers of special and disabled children. There is the voluntary sector, with people such as Eddie Stacey, who runs the Phoenix club. I went to its Christmas dinner last Thursday at the Paddocks in Canvey Island, and there were 100 people there. It was a wonderful, joyous occasion. On the one hand, we have the voluntary sector, and on the other we have the professionals. They are caring people, who are not valued enough and not paid enough, and there are not enough of them. We must address that. However, mostly we have the parents and the families who do so much to care for and love their special children. As the hon. Member for Norwich, North said, the measure of a benevolent and caring society is how it treats vulnerable people. There are few groups in society that are more vulnerable than disabled children, God bless them.

11:56:00

Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I, too, start by congratulating the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) on securing the debate and I broaden my congratulations to include the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke). I congratulate them on their chairmanship, vice-chairmanship and strong leadership of the commission and review, on which I was honoured to be asked to serve. I want to thank Contact a Family, the Council for Disabled Children, Mencap, the Special Educational Consortium and Children Now. Their support was felt strongly throughout our hearings. I want, too, to congratulate the organisations on their production and launch of the “Every Disabled Child Matters” manifesto. It is telling that it was seen to be necessary to produce a separate manifesto, and it is obvious that there are many areas where the needs of disabled children are not yet sufficiently well covered by the “Every Child Matters” agenda.

As we have heard, the population of disabled children sadly continues to rise. We are talking about 770,000 children—7 per cent. of all children. It is important to appreciate the individuality of every child, and the range of needs is enormous. They are varied, some are more complex than others and almost day by day we are learning more about certain conditions and how we can offer help and support. Like other MPs, I have had many cases brought to my attention in my constituency. What concerns me most is to hear over and over, “It is a constant battle.” Why does it have to be a battleground for families who are already facing so many problems?

It was an interesting experience to listen to the evidence throughout the hearings, but for me the saddest part was that there were no surprises in what we heard. It is time to give more attention to the many problems that face families with disabled children. As we know, many of the possible solutions can involve a great deal of expenditure. I said in another debate in this Chamber that in some ways I feel we need a national debate to establish the proportion of resources that we as a society are prepared to devote to addressing the many and varied needs of those children. Indeed, there are issues about their quality of life, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson).

Given the shortage of time, I will focus on a few matters, and I make no apology for starting with respite, which has been mentioned by every speaker this morning. If it is not at the top of my list, it is at least very near to it. People who come to our surgeries often say, “If only we had a break, it would make life so much easier to cope with.” The pressure on family relationships—between siblings and couples—is enormous.

I recently visited a respite centre in York called The Glen. I found during that wonderful visit not only that respite can be of enormous benefit to the families but that it can provide quality care for the children. It is a win-win situation, with children getting a change of scene and mixing with other children—and, in the case I have just cited, receiving high-quality care with superb resources.

I note that York city council ran an invest-to-save policy. By making more respite care available, it is possible to keep the child within the family rather than having to use residential care. That is so important. As we know, the availability of respite care is a post code lottery. People moving into my constituency who have received respite care in other areas are shattered because they get only a tiny proportion of it in my area. That makes it even harder to downgrade.

I deal now with the key worker and early support scheme. I too was very taken by the evidence of Sharon Kelly, who told us that she was dealing with 21 agencies, not to mention a baby with severe needs. It brought home to us how important the key worker is. I congratulate the Government on moving forward with that scheme, and I hope that we will be told when the key worker and the early support scheme will be available throughout the country.

Early intervention is all-important, as is a multi-agency approach. Again, we are moving in the right direction, but we are not yet there. I often cite a recent example from my constituency of a very disabled child forced to go to a nursery school on one side of the county, but the school was in a different primary care trust area from where they lived and it was a battle to get the necessary therapeutic services. Much work is needed to change our culture and attitudes, as the hon. Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams) so eloquently explained.

I shall touch on the Child Care Act 2006. I served on the Committee that considered that legislation. I know that the Minister was not involved, but we were concerned about the implementation of the excellent provisions on child care for disabled children whose parents were working. We were concerned that local authorities would not have sufficient funding, because it is expensive to provide and tailor child care for children with disabilities. I wonder whether there has been time to monitor local authorities to find out whether they have enough money—whether they are supplying what the 2006 Act says they should.

I was equally interested in the final recommendation that there should be more resources for the training of staff on information services. That was another principle of the 2006 Act, and another factor that the Committee raised. It is important that information is available to help the parents of disabled children and to alert them to their eligibility for various benefits and to support them in applying for the disability living allowance. I wonder whether the Minister and the Government have reviewed the provision of such services following the 2006 Act. It is a scandal that, even today, families are totally unaware that they are eligible for the disability living allowance. It is often MPs who tell their constituents about it, but that cannot be right. There has to be a better supply of information.

I had the pleasure of speaking during the debate on the Select Committee report on special educational needs. It is important that the Government should reconsider their response to the Committee’s recommendations. The Government did not go far enough. It was excellent that they should have focused on the fact that teachers need better training and that we need more specialist special educational needs co-ordinators. Much progress has been made, but I agree with other hon. Members about the variability of statementing across the country. It is not yet right, and certain aspects of special educational needs need to be reviewed, but sadly the Government did not accept that. We do not need a moratorium, but we clearly need a review.

I, too, have always been concerned about the transition stage, and it was good that the review was able to consider a number of aspects. I have always been concerned about the limited educational choice offered to parents of children aged 16 and above. In my area, they usually go to the local college, but parents feel frustrated that they are not offered a choice and that they have to do much research themselves.

I deal now with communication, which has many aspects. First, the voices of children and parents, which we picked up on in our review, must influence the way services are designed and delivered. We are moving in that direction, but it is not universal for children’s views to be sought. Some children with complex needs should have an independent advocate. I agree with the Children’s Society that, as a minimum, every disabled child or young person placed away from home should have a statutory right to independent advocacy. That is so important for all children who are not able to speak up for themselves or who need support to do so.

There also needs to be someone to listen. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children points out that three to four times as many disabled children are likely to have been abused as is the case among the general population. It is therefore important to provide helplines for those who suffer abuse.

I refer briefly to the charity I CAN. I am pleased that the Department for Education and Skills has agreed that the charity’s early talk programme will be rolled out as a pilot in more than 200 children's centres and a number of primary schools in England. The number of children with communication difficulties is staggering. Perhaps one in 10 has a physical difficulty, but we are creating disability by not talking at home as much as we used to, so as many as 50 per cent. of five-year-olds arrive at school without the speech and language skills needed to participate fully. It is important to note that such needs are growing all the time. I echo the point about speech and language therapists. I believe that some are unemployed, as are some physiotherapists. I hope that they will soon be employed.

The Scope campaign “Speak for yourself” aims to help those who need technology to support their communications. I understand that the DFES has funded a communicating aids project that has provided equipment to more than 4,000 children. However, the funding came to an end in March this year, and the scheme has not yet been rolled out universally. The Minister may wish to reply in writing, but I wonder why no formal public evaluation of that excellent project was undertaken. The general point is that successful projects need sustained funding.

I shall make that my last point, having seen the time. Much innovative work is going on, but we need to ensure that there is a minimum universal offer and that projects do not come to a shattering end simply because one pot of money has been closed and nothing has been put place to fill the gap.

12:08:00

Mr. Jeremy Hunt (South-West Surrey) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the contributions of so many passionate and committed speakers. The one most likely to stay in my mind was that of the hon. Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams), who told us of her conversation with the consultant and his saying about her son, “With a case like this, I would not be too optimistic.” Her experience, and how she dealt with it, is testimony to the quiet heroism of the many hundreds of thousands of parents seeking to deal with the huge challenge of trying to give the best possible childhood to their disabled children.

I add my congratulations to the “Every Disabled Child Matters” consortium for raising the issue and pushing it up the political agenda. In particular, I thank the organisations that make up that consortium: Contact a Family, the Council for Disabled Children, Mencap and the Special Education Consortium. I add my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) and the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) on the excellent way in which they have chaired the parliamentary inquiry on this issue. The inquiry had an enormous impact on moving this issue up the political agenda. I hope the result will be that, finally, a wrong is righted in terms of how we, as a society, address the issue of disabled children.

Groucho Marx said that politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Many parents of disabled children would feel that that echoes their experiences. I suggest that the plight of disabled children should be central to social policy today because it concerns the health of our families. A healthy society has healthy families; social breakdown occurs when there is family breakdown. At the moment there are many things wrong with state support—for example, the bureaucracy of social services and the inflexibility of local education authorities. Parents who face the enormous challenge of dealing with a disabled child—perhaps the biggest challenge that they have had in their life—find that instead of focusing all their energy, attention and love on bringing up that child, they are forced to focus their energy and attention on fighting the system to get the best possible deal. That cannot be right.

I will give hon. Members an example from my constituency that I heard quite recently, where a child with cerebral palsy was placed in a school that his mother did not agree was right for her son. She told me about the 11 steps it took to get that decision changed. Step 1 involved the mother questioning whether the LEA’s choice of school was right and at step 2 the child was assessed by an educational psychologist at nursery school and at home. Step 3 involved the LEA case officer giving the mother just 10 days to identify alternative schools for her son, but refusing to tell her which schools were accessible. At step 4 the mother searched frantically for 10 days to try and find alternative schools and by step 5 the mother was told she had been allocated two schools—neither of which were on her preferred shortlist. One of the schools was a one hour and 10 minutes drive away and would have meant a two hours 20 minutes drive every day. At step 6, a panel confirmed a place at the nearer of the two schools, but it was not one of the schools she had chosen. By step 7 she was given two more weeks to identify an alternative school. At step 8 she was finally offered a place at a local mainstream school that she thought would be appropriate, but at step 9 was told her child could not be offered a place because there were no accessible toilets. Step 10 involved the mother fighting the school to ask a surveyor to assess the cost of introducing accessible toilets and by step 11 the LEA finally allowed the child to go to the school, but only from 9 to 12 in the morning for the first year because the accessible toilets would not be completed. That is an example of the nightmare that parents up and down the country face with the statementing system.

Sir Al Aynsley-Green described the education provision for autistic children as “shocking” and “appalling” in his role as children’s commissioner. There is copious evidence from the parliamentary inquiry that parents think that social care and education provision are poor. The inquiry stated:

“Our hearings have found that services for disabled children are failing to deliver the Government’s stated objectives for children and families—the Every Child Matters outcomes”.

There is not simply a shortage of money. We spend £3.5 billion on special educational needs, £14.4 billion on social care and £14.7 billion on disability benefits. Often, a shortage of imagination, as well as a shortage of money, is the root cause of the problem. We have heard from hon. Members today that the numbers of disabled children are increasing. Taking into account all the different types of cerebral palsy—hemiplegia, diplegia, quadriplegia—one in 400 children is born with cerebral palsy. The number of severely disabled children is around 49,000, which has doubled since 1988. Yet the support that those children receive from the state is appalling. A recent survey by Mencap said that seven out of 10 families with a severely disabled child are at breaking point because of a lack of short breaks. An earlier survey said that 48 per cent. of such families receive no help at all and 30 per cent. receive less than two hours help a week.

I would like the Minister to consider what I think some of the solutions are. We need a simplified benefits system with a single assessment process. According to one Mencap survey, 37 per cent. of families are dealing with eight or more different professionals. The “Every Disabled Child Matters” consortium talks about the key worker concept mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke). In Austria, a disabled child is assessed by a single multidisciplinary team, which includes a paediatric nurse, a children’s doctor, a physiotherapist and an information officer. That team is at the disposal of parents and, from the moment of assessment, is available to help them. Such an assessment should be passportable so that if parents move to a different part of the country they can take it with them, it is recognised by other authorities and they do not have to go back to square one.

The benefits system and the accessing of resources are hugely complicated. The different sources of finance include: the disability living allowance; the severe disability premium; the individual learning fund; the wheelchair service; and funding from the local council for housing adaptations, from social services and from the LEA. The result of that complexity is low take-up rates; of the 772,000 disabled children in this country, only half are claiming DLA. A recent excellent survey, “Out of Reach”, by the Child Poverty Action Group and Contact A Family, described a survey in which 27 per cent. of parents took more than two years to discover that they were entitled to DLA. A third could not identify the fact that claiming DLA was not related to how much they were earning and a third were put off claiming by the length of the form.

We need a reformed statementing system and to look at whether we can have an independent assessment of children’s needs. There should be more creativity in special educational needs teaching. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) talked about the chronic shortage of speech and language therapists, and we need to solve that problem. As well as focusing on the basics, we need to concentrate on the things that build the confidence of disabled children. As one parent of a disabled child said at a seminar that I went to, “We need to educate the soul of the child because the soul of the child is not disabled.” There is huge disappointment—I ask the Minister to address this—at the Government’s response to the Select Committee on Education and Skills report, particularly the statement in the response that

“the evidence does not, in the Government's view, suggest a system in need of fundamental review”.

The Minister would need only to talk to two or three parents who have gone through the statementing process and he would find that his mind changed very quickly on that.

I would like the Government to consider links to poverty and social exclusion. The Government know that the income in disabled households is 20 to 30 per cent. lower than in other households and that statemented children are three times more likely to be excluded. Special educational needs children account for 64 per cent. of all exclusions and are twice as likely to be on free school meals as other children. That is the group to target if we wish to address poverty and social exclusion among children.

Bill Clinton once said that being leader of a political party is like working in a graveyard: there are lots of people underneath, but they are not necessarily listening. I hope that our leaders and other people are listening and that this can be the start of a change in policy for parents who just want to be parents, for families who just want to be families, and for children who, despite the enormous challenges that nature has thrown in their path, just want to have a happy and fulfilled childhood.

12:19:00

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Parmjit Dhanda)
It is good to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Taylor. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) on securing the debate. She has done a terrific job not only in securing it, but in the role that she played in the parliamentary hearings. We heard testimony to that throughout the debate. For a Minister, it is quite nice sometimes to throw away one’s speaking notes and be in listening mode, and this has been a good opportunity to do that because, as my hon. Friend said, those parliamentary hearings will play a key role in the Government’s children and young people’s review. The role that she played alongside my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) is supported by hon. Members throughout the House who played a role in the hearings, not least my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who has joined us in this debate. The least we can do is pay credit to him for acting as a catalyst at the outset of the process.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood talked about the early support pilots and the value of key workers, and it has been interesting to see that. She makes a very good point, and in the context of the debate, we will take a close look at that issue. It is useful to have that feedback from her about what is happening on the ground with those pilots.

My hon. Friend also mentioned, as did most contributors to the debate, the value of short breaks. She will be aware that, within existing legislation, there is provision for short breaks, but I appreciate from what we have been finding and hearing, not just in the debate but in other forums, that parents of disabled children bring up that issue time and again, so I am grateful to her for making that clear to us again today.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill made it clear that he would not talk about the problems that have been identified and the additional billions of pounds of funding, so I shall not do so either. It would be easy to talk about how things have moved on and changed, but we are here today in the context of the parliamentary hearings and the role that they will play as part of the children and young people’s review, in which the Department for Education and Skills and Her Majesty’s Treasury are involved jointly. It is important to listen to that review. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is sitting alongside me, has said that the interim findings in relation to the hearings and the evidence that my hon. Friends have taken will be available in January. I hope that that will be useful and helpful.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) talked about the science of the issue—I am quite accustomed to him doing that. He had me quite concerned when he talked about tall people with long fingers and the ramifications of that for their health. He also said that he was doing a lot of coaching for disabled children in his constituency. His coaching of my good self has not done me a great deal of good over the years, but there we are. He also made a very good point about the need for greater joined-up working across Government with regard to ME. The DFES and the Department of Health need to take that on board. We are conscious that it is an area in which it is important to have greater and stronger working across Government.

I think that the most passionate contribution to the debate was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams), who talked about her personal experience from 1973. That made me think. In 1973, I was two years old, so I am probably of a similar age to her son. She also talked about the effects of DLA and the difficulties that people have with forms. I note that, among the 27 recommendations, there is a section on that on page 71 of the report on the hearings, so we will look at it in the context of our review. My hon. Friend also said, very passionately, that this issue is not just about money; it is about a change in people’s attitudes to children with disabilities. That could not have been explained in any starker terms than the ones she used when she told us what happened when she and her child saw a consultant back in 1973.

The hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink)—another veteran of the Select Committee on Science and Technology—made interesting points about special schools, as did the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt). Rather than getting into a long and in-depth discussion on that issue, I say to both of them that I was in Westminster Hall just a few weeks ago for a three-hour discussion on it, in response to a report produced by the Select Committee on Education and Skills. I urge both hon. Gentlemen to obtain the relevant copy of Hansard, because it was a comprehensive and interesting debate. We are doing everything that we can to support parental choice, and we are doing some excellent things on specialist educational provision, but rather than opening that up in this debate, I urge hon. Members to have a look at the record of that debate if they get the chance to do so.

The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) also contributed to the debate—we must stop meeting like this; we will probably do so again later today when we have a discussion about looked-after children. As is her way, she peppered me with an array of questions, and I promise to write to her to try to answer some of them. I disagree with her on one aspect of what she said. I think that it was probably a slip of the tongue more than anything else when she said that it is sad to see the increase in the number of disabled children; the figure is now at 770,000. I believe that we need to celebrate what my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North said, which is that more children are surviving. There have been real changes over the years in terms of science and technology and medical breakthroughs. However, I agree entirely with the hon. Lady that the role of the key worker is very important. That was also highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood. The hon. Lady made kind comments about the roll-out of I CAN and what we are doing in the DFES to support that, and I appreciate her remarks.

The hon. Member for South-West Surrey said that this issue is not just about finance. He mentioned independent statementing as well, and again I refer him to the debate of a few weeks ago, because on that occasion, as on many others, we were asked whether, in terms of the direction of travel, we are talking about taking that out of local democratic accountability. I do not think that that is the most effective way forward. A great deal of work is being done on statementing and the period in which parents should have a response, but I urge the hon. Gentleman, if he has the opportunity, to take a closer look at the record of that debate. If he wanted to get into correspondence with me, I would be happy for him to do so.

The exercise that we are discussing has been very worthwhile and innovative. As the document says:

“This report results from an innovative exercise in consultation carried out alongside a government review process.”

In my short time in government and my longer time in Parliament, I have never been aware of a process linking a Government and departmental review with a series of parliamentary hearings set up by a group of Back Benchers, involving not only hon. Members on both sides of the House but, as has been mentioned, charities and voluntary organisations—the third sector. It has been a very worthwhile process. I look forward to taking a closer look at the report and its 27 recommendations. It is a sign of just how important the issue is that sitting alongside me is someone who is not only one of the guiding lights of the process, but a Treasury Minister. I congratulate all involved in securing the debate, most particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood.

David Taylor (in the Chair)
The next debate, on community policing in Somerset, will be opened by the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne).

 Community Policing (Somerset)

12:30:00

Mr. Jeremy Browne (Taunton) (LD)
Thank you, Mr. Taylor, for that introduction, which, if I may say so, sounded rather enthusiastic.

Perhaps I may set out a little context before I come to the substance of my remarks. I go out and about in my constituency at the end of the week and over the weekend, speaking to people, as I am sure most hon. Members do. I knock on their doors and ask them what their concerns are. Overwhelmingly the biggest concern reported to me, which is mentioned again and again, is not the health service or education—although those subjects come up—but neighbourhood crime and antisocial behaviour.

I want to cite a particular example from this Saturday, precisely because it is so unexceptional. It is very routine, and I am sure that other hon. Members present will have had the same experience. I knocked on the door of a woman in her 20s living on her own in a nice area of Taunton, and said, “What is of concern to you; is there anything that I may be able to turn my mind to as your Member of Parliament?” She said, “There are a couple of things that particularly bother me. One is that I have a fence running along the side of my garden and groups of local young people knock the fence over routinely, mainly because it gives them a short cut and they do not have to walk the long way round.” She said that when they have knocked it over, many other people rather inconsiderately use the short cut as well, and she keeps having to mend it. Sometimes, however, what happens is even more gratuitous and pointless than that, because even when a hole has already been made in the fence people still kick at other bits of it, and try to knock them down. The woman said that the only solution she could think of was to build a wall instead, which would obviously be expensive.

The other point that the young woman raised was that on the public footpath going beyond the house a lot of teenagers routinely use mopeds, or some of those little motorbike objects, which causes her disturbance and irritation. She has been in correspondence with the police, and has even met the police officer for her area and raised her concerns with him. I use that example, not because it is exceptional but because it is wholly unexceptional, to show the importance that people attach to the matter of antisocial behaviour. I realise that the Government attach importance to it as well. It is probably the matter of greatest day-to-day concern to people in my constituency.

This is not a subject unique to major cities. It applies just as much in towns—even quite small towns—and rural communities. The people I talk to say that what bothers them is late night noise, the people in the flat above who play loud rhythmic music at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning or argue in the middle of the night, people walking back from the pub who vandalise wing mirrors on cars on their way, graffiti bring sprayed on shop shutters—after all, why are those shutters there in the first place if not because people fear that the glass would be broken without them?—graffiti on walls or fences on private property, vandalism at bus stops, abandoned supermarket trolleys or even as small a thing as litter and the way it diminishes the quality of life in a neighbourhood.

Against that backdrop, I was very pleased when the Government announced in their White Paper “Building Communities, Beating Crime” in 2004 that there would be a major expansion of the number of police community support officers. There are some people who have reservations about police community support officers and are concerned that they may be seen as a replacement for the regular police, rather than an additional resource. That is not on the whole a concern that I share. I think that their contribution is extremely useful, as long as they do not replace the regular police. I understand the anxiety that some people may have, but, assuming that it is not borne out, PCSOs are extremely important.

My experience in the communities that I represent is that much of the necessary work does not need high-level policing or armed response units. It requires people in the neighbourhood who know the names of the main figures in the community, work with local voluntary groups and even know the names of the regular troublemakers and who their parents are, and who have got down to the nitty-gritty and become woven into the concerns of the community. I think that PCSOs can fulfil that function extremely effectively. They represent a figure of authority and provide an element of visibility, which is an aspect of policing that many people appreciate. I am a huge admirer of PCSOs and the role that they can perform.

I was delighted when the Government made a commitment to providing 24,000 additional PCSOs by 2008. Not only was that commitment in the White Paper in 2004; it was in the Labour general election manifesto in 2005. I like to think as well as possible of everyone, and I therefore assumed that it was likely that the commitment would be put into practice if Labour won a majority in the House at the general election. I was surprised, therefore, and saddened, like many other hon. Members, when on 27 November, only a few weeks ago, the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety made a written statement to the House of Commons and said:

“The Home Secretary and I accept the argument put forward by the police service itself that the delivery of neighbourhood policing does not necessarily need 24,000 PCSOs. This settlement therefore provides continuing support towards16,000 PCSOs in 2007-08 and we will not expect forces to increase the number of PCSOs beyond that number.”—[Official Report, 27 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 83WS.]

The Minister of State says that it is the police service that takes that view; that may be so in some police forces. I have obtained the numbers of PCSOs in each police force in England and Wales, per 100,000 of population. I see that in London, for example, there are 31.3 PCSOs per 100,000 of population—a very healthy number. Across England and Wales as a whole there are 12.8, which is much fewer. In Avon and Somerset police force, which covers my constituency, there are just 8.6 PCSOs per 100,000 head of population. I suggest that some chief constables may well be more relaxed about the issue than others. Certainly, in my constituency we are very keen to have more PCSOs—not just in towns such as Taunton and Wellington but in smaller towns and rural communities where PCSOs have been extremely effective. They would be even more effective if their numbers were increased.

It was on the basis of the commitment in the 2004 White Paper and the Labour manifesto commitment in 2005 that Avon and Somerset police embarked, at some expense, on a consultation period, which involved going around different urban and rural communities in Bristol and Somerset and trying to get a feel for how many PCSOs each community needed. The process involved working closely with the chief superintendents in each area and consulting community groups. The process was called the neighbourhood agenda, and the aim was to ensure that in addition to the regular police officer in every community there would be a framework of PCSO support to reassure the public and make a difference in tackling the antisocial behaviour and neighbourhood crime that I touched on at the beginning of my speech.

Avon and Somerset police are very concerned, and I share their concerns, that the latest announcement of a reduction from 24,000 to 16,000 new PCSOs across England and Wales will be hugely detrimental to their neighbourhood agenda. The figures may suggest the scale of the problem. The chief constable of Avon and Somerset originally envisaged that as a result of the Government’s commitment in the White Paper we would have 541 additional PCSOs. Now, following the statement of 27 November by the Minister of State, the estimated number of PCSOs that Avon and Somerset will get is 346. So there has been a cut of 195. That is a very serious reduction and means that the neighbourhood agenda and the basis on which the public were consulted—in good faith and with the expectation that they would have those additional officers at their disposal—have been substantially undermined. The police are probably somewhat upset that the basis on which they consulted with the public has left them looking as though they promised more than they are able to deliver, even though when they undertook that consultation they expected that they would deliver 541 PCSOs.

Let me boil down what the changes mean for West Somerset basic command unit, which covers Taunton Deane, West Somerset and Sedgemoor district councils. That BCU, which serves a population of about 250,000 people and covers Taunton and other towns of substantial size such as Bridgwater, Wellington and Minehead, will see a reduction from 108 PCSOs to 70—a cut of 38. At this moment, a chief superintendent in my BCU and the chief constable of the force are considering how they can scale back the neighbourhood agenda that they have discussed with local people and that they hoped would underpin their response to the antisocial behaviour and neighbourhood crime that I mentioned.

I do not wish to give the impression that the police are not responding to those sorts of incident and crime, because they are and they are making a valuable difference in many areas. Neither do I want to give the impression that the sole method of dealing with that community level crime and antisocial behaviour is through extra police numbers, because I accept that it is more complicated than that. Several factors come into play when one tries to explain why people are less considerate of their neighbours than they ought to be. However, it is important that there should be a strong police visibility and that people feel that the police and CSOs who support them are woven into their community. It stands to reason that if their numbers are dramatically reduced, they will be able to do that far less effectively.

This whole area is a day-to-day concern of people in my constituency—I suspect that this is true of many places—and I very much want the House, the Government and the political process to reflect that in policy and in the priority that we give to debating such issues. I would be grateful if the Minister reviewed the decision to cut back on the number of PCSOs because it has undermined not only the police but the neighbourhood agenda that they are pursuing. In Avon and Somerset, it has substantially undermined the worthwhile efforts that have been made to reduce neighbourhood crime and antisocial behaviour.

David Taylor (in the Chair)
Permission having been sought from and given by the initiator of this short debate and the Minister, I call the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) to make a brief contribution.

12:43:00

Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
I am very grateful, Mr. Taylor. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne) on securing the debate and on his comments, with which I wholly agree. We Somerset Members often feel like the poor relations in policing terms. The county is in the Avon and Somerset police authority area—a police force that I know well from my previous experience as the chairman of the police authority—but resources inevitably go, quite properly, into policing Bristol and the major conurbations in Avon. Those areas are a magnet for resources simply because of the crime that is generated there.

Very often, we in rural Somerset feel slightly forgotten in policing terms. Having said that, there has been a welcome improvement in the past year or so as the chief constable and the local chief superintendents have got to grips with the concept of neighbourhood policing. They have built beat teams around constables and sergeants and supplemented them with police community support officers. All that is integral to visible policing and reassurance in the rural areas of my constituency, and that of my hon. Friend, so there is a great deal of upset that the plans to introduce the extra PCSOs, which were at a high level of preparedness, have had to be scaled back to such an extent.

I understand the Home Office position on this. We know that some chief police officers said that they did not want to recruit PCSOs on the scale that the Home Office envisaged, which was an extra 24,000. There are three reasons for that. Some simply do not agree with having PCSOs in any case and are not wholly wedded to the concept. Some have enough PCSOs for their needs and prefer to put their resources into the additional recruitment of full-time officers. Some simply cannot recruit PCSOs, and I think that that last category was one of the big drivers in the change in the Government’s position. I tell the Minister emphatically that that is not the problem in Avon and Somerset. The chief constable there is confident that he can recruit those extra PCSOs, who are integral to the strategy of neighbourhood policing in our areas.

I am prepared not to argue with the policy decision to reduce the scale of PCSO recruitment across the country this year, but I make a plea to the Minister. If, as I suspect, there are forces that even with that cutback will not recruit to the level to which they are expect to recruit, given that Somerset has not only the capacity but a strong will to do so, can any moneys that are then available be made available to Avon and Somerset to enable us to meet our commitments? It simply is not possible for the force to fund the PCSOs within its budget without the Government’s support because that cannot be done without reducing the full-time strength of the police force, which we emphatically do not wish to do. We see PCSOs not as a substitute for police officers, but as a supplement to them.

I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important this initiative is in providing visible policing in the rural areas of my constituency—not only in Frome, but in smaller towns such as Castle Cary, Bruton, Martock, Langport and Somerton, all of which have individual difficulties with policing. Will the Minister give whatever flexibility he can within the system to accommodate the needs of Avon and Somerset?

12:47:00

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Vernon Coaker)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne) on securing the debate. I know from the parliamentary questions that he asks that he has a keen interest in community policing. He has pursued that interest not only at times such as this, but consistently since he became a Member of the House. I also welcome the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) to the debate. He has also fought hard on behalf of his constituents. I thank both hon. Gentlemen for the way in which each presented their case and for their thoughtful arguments.

Community policing is being delivered in England and Wales through the neighbourhood policing programme. By April 2007, neighbourhood policing will have been introduced in every area across England and Wales and will be supported by 16,000 PCSOs. Every community will have a neighbourhood policing team by 2008. Already, by the end of August 2006, more than 6,700 neighbourhoods had a dedicated neighbourhood policing service. That equates to more than 2,600 teams in total because some teams cover more than one neighbourhood.

The number of sergeants, constables and PCSOs dedicated to neighbourhood policing averages 18 per cent. across England and Wales, and forces are on track to deliver the 16,000 PCSOs who will support further roll-out. Both hon. Gentlemen asked specifically about the 16,000 PCSOs. As we understand it, there are no spare PCSOs; all 16,000 have been allocated and 200 posts were recently redistributed through a bidding exercise. However, we keep these situations under review, so hon. Members should bear that in mind if the number 16,000 is not reached. I hope that that is of some help, although I do not promise anything.

On Avon and Somerset, the hon. Member for Taunton will be aware that that progress is mirrored in his constituency and his force, and the facts and figures that illustrate that bear repeating. As at September 2006, Avon and Somerset had a dedicated neighbourhood policing presence in every area and it is on target to deliver a neighbourhood policing team for every community by 2008. As at the end of June 2006, it also had 154 PCSOs, who have been warmly welcomed by communities and community safety partners alike.

I thank the two hon. Gentlemen for their support for the role that PCSOs can play—their role is not to replace regular police officers, but something different—and for the contribution that PCSOs make, and I am sure that that message will have been heard loud and clear. As the hon. Gentlemen will know, there was some controversy when PCSOs were introduced, but they have shown that they can make a contribution to community safety and they have proved the doubters wrong.

As the hon. Member for Taunton said, the number of PCSOs will rise to 346 in Avon and Somerset by 2007. I take this opportunity to congratulate Avon and Somerset police on their work and commitment in relation to the roll-out of neighbourhood policing and on their discussions about it with local partners.

I would also like to say something about the number of police officers in Avon and Somerset. As at March 2006, Avon and Somerset had 3,389 police officers—an increase of 400, or 13.4 per cent., since March 1997. Similarly, the number of civilian posts has increased by 580, or 39 per cent., since 1997. That is important because it frees up officers to do the front-line patrolling that we want them to do.

The Government have invested significantly in policing across England and Wales, as well as in Avon and Somerset, and we will continue to do so. This year, Avon and Somerset will receive an increase of 3.3 per cent. over the comparable figure for 2005-06 and about a further £32 million from other funding sources. The final force budget for 2006 was £236.7 million—an increase of 4.2 per cent. On a like-for-like basis across England and Wales, Government grant and central spending on services for the police will increase by more than 62 per cent. between 2000-01 and 2007-08.

However, it is important to set the analysis of policing numbers and funding in the broader context of the impact on communities. The two hon. Gentlemen will know better than I do that we are already seeing the impact of neighbourhood policing in Avon and Somerset and elsewhere. In Avon and Somerset, public confidence in the local police has risen significantly in the past two years, from 48 per cent. in 2004-05 to 53 per cent. in 2005-06. Neighbourhood policing was set up to achieve that goal and it is succeeding; indeed, it was set up to deal precisely with the problems that the hon. Member for Taunton came across when he visited some of his constituents recently, such as the problem with the fence, as well as some of the other antisocial behaviour problems. Neighbourhood policing is specifically about doing something about such problems, as well as about reassuring people and making them feel that the police will respond to the so-called low-level issues that we all know blight so many people’s lives and communities.

Let me reassure people in Avon and Somerset by saying that the same progress has been reproduced in the recorded crime figures for their area. Between 2003-04 and 2005-06, overall crime across Avon and Somerset fell by 4 per cent., with robbery and vehicle crime falling by 9 per cent. and domestic burglary falling by an impressive 18 per cent. We should congratulate Avon and Somerset police on their work in that respect.

Let me also give the hon. Member for Taunton some statistics for his constituency. In the same period, in the area covered by Taunton Deane crime and disorder reduction partnership, overall crime fell by 14 per cent., violent crime fell by 19 per cent., vehicle crime fell by 29 per cent. and robbery fell by 31 per cent. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will join me in congratulating his police and police across the Avon and Somerset area on what they have done to achieve those reductions.

Mr. Browne
Just for the avoidance of doubt, I should say that I am a huge admirer of the work of the police in Taunton Deane and across the West Somerset basic command unit. They have made real, tangible progress in reducing many categories of crime, and I certainly do not seek to be critical of them. All that I want is for the Government to give them the tools to carry on doing such a good job and to make further improvements.

Mr. Coaker
I understand. I was not trying to suggest that the hon. Gentleman was saying anything different and I apologise if I gave that impression. All that I was trying to do was to lay out the figures so that he had something that might be of use to him and which he could tell his constituents.

To take up the hon. Gentleman’s point about PCSOs, there will be a 41.3 per cent. increase in funding for PCSOs and neighbourhood policing across England and Wales in 2007-08, with total funding of £315 million. As he will be aware, Avon and Somerset constabulary will receive £6.8 million as its share of the funding next year, compared with £5.1 million this year. As I said, that will contribute to funding 346 PCSOs, who will help to deliver neighbourhood policing across Avon and Somerset by April 2007.

To answer another of the hon. Gentleman’s specific points, PCSO numbers are distributed according to the police formula grant. That is how we try to ensure a reasonable spread of PCSOs across the country.

Mr. Heath
That is what concerns us. The police formula grant does not reflect the number of PCSOs in post, or the need or the ability to recruit. Those are the crucial elements that should inform the distribution of the grant.

Mr. Coaker
As I said right at the beginning, we have a target of 16,000 and we will see how that progresses. Our expectation is that it will be met, but we obviously keep all these things under review.

As the hon. Member for Taunton fairly said, we want local and neighbourhood policing to be based on local decision making, and that local tailoring is particularly important. That shaping of policy can be done only by the police, who, as I am sure we all agree, are the experts when it comes to determining how policing should be done in their areas. It was the demand for such an approach that prompted us to review PCSO numbers. Put simply, we received requests from the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Chief Police Officers to review both how we were going to roll out neighbourhood policing and the number of PCSOs.

Let me quote an APA press release entitled “APA welcomes neighbourhood policing funding”:

“Commenting on the Government’s announcement today (27/11/06) of grant allocation for Police Community Support Officers and Neighbourhood Policing…APA Chairman Bob Jones said: ‘We are pleased that the Government has listened to the case, made by the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Chief Police Officers, for greater flexibilities and freedoms in determining the ways that policing is provided to local people…We look forward to discussions with the Home Office and ACPO on the introduction of further flexibilities’”.

The point that I am making is that we want to roll out a neighbourhood policing programme, and PCSOs play a crucial role in the roll-out of neighbourhood policing teams. In representations to us, the APA and ACPO have said, “Give us greater flexibility on PCSO numbers because we can deliver neighbourhood policing with a reduced number,” and it is incumbent on us to listen to what they say. The decision on the numbers was made not by mandarins in the Home Office who determined that we should come to the 16,000 figure, but on the basis of the representations that we received. We all want more local decision making and local accountability, and difficult decisions sometimes come along.

The two hon. Gentlemen have shown their commitment to neighbourhood policing, and the Government also have a wholehearted commitment to it, but we must listen to the advice of ACPO and APA, as well as that of hon. Members and other stakeholders, when determining how best to implement that commitment. We share the common goal of reducing crime and making people feel safer, and that is we want to achieve.

 Blyth Valley Academy

13:00:00

Mr. Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)
There is great concern in Blyth about the academy. I shall try to explain the history to this matter. I could have had a meeting with a Minister to discuss it, but I would rather have things on the record because I can foresee things happening and I want to clear my name in respect of education and the kids in Blyth.

It is not that I do not want an academy because I do not like academies—I am not afraid of them, in any case. If our only school was a high school that was crumbling and falling down around people’s necks and our only chance of getting a new one was to have an academy, I would have to bite my tongue and have an academy. I could be in that situation, as indeed some hon. Members are. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Murphy) is in that position, so he might have to accept an academy to get a new school in his area.

Blyth is a different kettle of fish. Blyth Valley, which I represent, comprises the old town of Blyth, which has a population of about 39,000, and the new town of Cramlington, which has a similar one. In addition, there are the outlying pit villages of Seaton Delaval, Seghill and Seaton Sluice, whose population is about 20,000. Cramlington has one very good high school. The area around Seaton Delaval has another good high school—the Astley community high school.

Blyth had two high schools, which were underachieving and were undersubscribed by students—there were surplus places. In 2000-01, I believe it was, the decision was taken to amalgamate the two schools and to have one high school in Blyth. We should not forget that Ridley high school and Tynedale high school were no more than 2 miles apart. In fact, Ridley high school was one of the schools that tried to educate me.

It was thought that Blyth needed only one school, the same as Cramlington, which has the same number of people. There was a bit of a furore about the decision and I went to see the Minister at the time, who, if I remember correctly, was my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett)—and his dog. We asked for money to refurbish Tynedale high school, because it was the newer school. It was built in 1969 and the early 1970s, whereas Ridley high school was built in the 1950s. Ridley high school was not a crumbling school. It was a fairly decent school, but there was a decision to go for the refurbishment that I mentioned.

People looked at the refurbishment plans and thought, “What we will do here, with just about the same money, is build a brand new school without the private finance initiative.” That was amazing in those days, because everything was PFI. They went ahead, and we went back to see the relevant Minister, who got back to me saying, “We have looked at your plan. We think that it is a great idea to have a new school in Blyth. We will let you build a brand new high school.” That school is the brand new Blyth community college, which was built at the cost of £14 million. We closed, and subsequently demolished, both the other schools, which was all right. There was a bit of a mix-up, and the school did not get off to a good start because the amalgamation meant that pupils were coming together from other schools. After five years, that situation is now settling down.

Blyth community college is now working on wheels, and its results have been fantastic. Its headmistress is excellent. I do not want to praise her too much, because if I did so, she might be head-hunted by some academy. She has got the results up near the top. They are as good as the rest in the area. I know that the college had a poor start, but it is motoring now.

The question we must now ask is why we got rid of the schools in the first place. The argument was that we did not have enough students to fill both of them. All of a sudden, five years hence, another argument has come up. The academy that people want to build is to be built on the Ridley high site, where a school has just been pulled down. It is 2 miles away from Blyth community college.

People raise the issue of the catchment areas. I was always told that academies had to be built in poorer areas. The academy’s catchment area is to be what we consider the wealthiest part of Blyth. Blyth community college has the poorest of the catchment area in Blyth; its area is so poor that the two wards that it covers were in the 10 most deprived in the country a few years ago. I do not know where they come now, because I have not looked, but we were getting extra money for them because they were so deprived.

We can see what is happening. Tynedale and the area served by the Blyth community college—the Cowpen area, which is the poorer area of town—will get the pupils that I referred to, and will split away from the affluent area of Blyth. I am talking about Blyth south and the old town of Blyth, not about Cramlington or Seaton Delaval. That area will get all the good pupils. Well done, Mr. Vardy; he knew exactly what he was doing.

The situation starts to worry me. If there were not enough students five years ago, why are there more students now? How can people get away with two schools? Cramlington is the same size as Blyth. It has a high school that is no different from the one in Blyth. Why are they not building the new school in Cramlington or in Seaton Delaval? Why are they building it in Blyth, 2 miles away from the other school? That is a question for the Minister, not for me—I cannot get that answer.

I spoke to the leader of the county council, who said, “You know Ronnie, it is a £25 million investment in Blyth.” It is nice to have a £25 million investment in Blyth, but to whose detriment? Is it to the detriment of the kids’ education? Will it result in the splitting up of education and a two-tier system? That is what it looks like from here. That is why I want to put things fairly and squarely on the record.

I am not worried about creationism. I know that Mr. Vardy and the Emmanuel Schools Foundation use the creation idea—God made the world—although he denies it, saying, “We don’t teach that.” I do not know exactly what they teach, but I have been told that they teach a bit of creationism in the other schools. I have never been to one of those schools.

I met the Prime Minister before the summer recess, and I had a few words with him. I told him what was happening. He asked me whether I had ever been to an academy. I told him that I had not, and that I did not need academies so I would not be going to one. That is it as far as I am concerned. I do not need an academy in Blyth, so I do not want one and I am not going to see one.

People who have visited academies have said that they are not bad. Therefore, I am not knocking academies or even their creationism. If anyone wants to believe fairy stories such as God made the world in six days, that is up to them. Kids always get told fairy stories at school, so that is just another fairy story.

A plan was put forward, and there was an argument about the sixth form. Let me take the Minister back. I think he knows that the education authority in Northumberland has had a bumpy ride because it is changing from a three-tier system to a two-tier—one of the few left in the country. I do not have a problem with that. I do not know where it is getting the money from to do it, but it is their problem.

I think that the money is behind this academy. The authority wants the academy because it does not have the money to do other things. The academy could take in children as young as four and take them right through to the sixth form. There might be a seventh and an eighth form if the school leaving age is increased—children might spend even longer there. I think that this is something to do with the money, and that is why the authority is trying to get the academy name. We must be careful not to create a two-tier system. I will keep banging the drum and telling the Minister that that is what I think is happening in Blyth. 

Then there is the Whiteman plan. County Councillor John Whiteman came up with a plan. The Minister may have received a briefing from the Northumberland county council education department, but I bet that he has not been told of the Whiteman plan, although it is well known and documented. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy with me or I could have given it to him, but I can certainly send him one.

Tynedale middle school, which is on the site of Blyth community college, is going to be bulldozed, although it is a fairly new school. Under the Whiteman plan, the school would be kept and revamped. It would cost £5 million to revamp the school and to make it a sixth form attached to the college. That would be ideal because the middle school and the college would be on the same site. It was a great plan, but where would the £5 million come from? The answer is simple. Ridley high has just been pulled down, so the site could be sold for housing for at least £5 million or £6 million. That was the plan, and it could have worked. We could have sold the site for housing—but not the playing fields, which is fair enough—and the money could have been spent on revamping Tynedale, making a sixth form for the college and getting the other kids to the college. That would have been ideal for Blyth.

However, that is the easy way out, and the county council does not want to do it. It has a secret plan. I cannot fathom out what it is, but I have an idea. I think it is all to do with money and getting an academy built so that more schools do not have to be built. Academies take kids from the age of four and it is unnecessary to build more schools. Academies get £25 million, do they not? Vardy provides £2 million and gets £25 million back. I reckon that that is a good deal. I wish I could go to the betting shop and get that deal.

I want the Minister to take the Whiteman plan on board, because he knows nothing about it. Obviously, the county council briefed him when I obtained this debate, but it is dishonest and is not telling the truth. I am telling the truth today. There is a feeling among people in Blyth that they do not want an academy. They feel the same as me. They are wondering what is happening and why they are getting two high schools, or two academies, which is a better word. Why is that happening in Blyth and not in Cramlington or somewhere else? I do not know why Northumberland education authority thinks that Blyth needs two community high schools or two academies.

I know the Prime Minister’s argument. He says that he wants academies all over the place. He wants more than 200 of them, and to take the people who run schools away from the schools and put them on a board—like a board of directors—to run the schools. The truth is that that is a sure way of privatising schools. In a few years, God forbid, the Tories may be elected and, heavens alive, academies will be ripe for privatisation. The next thing we will know is that there will be a voucher system and those with money and a voucher will be able to buy a place in an academy, but a poor kid round the corner whose father may not have the best of jobs will not have the money to put with a voucher. We know the system. Schools are half-privatised now. The academies are run by Vardy and the rest of them. That is the beginning of privatisation, and a big, big worry.

I implore the Minister to look at the Whiteman plan. If he does not have a copy, I will get one for him and send it to him. I do not know whether he can stop the proposal or whether it is in the hands of the county council. The worst aspect is that the Labour group on the council decided by two or three votes to have an academy. The Labour group made its decision by only a few votes and then put it out for consultation. Why did it make a decision before consultation? That is appalling.

I remind the Minister that when the system changed from three to two tiers, Northumberland county council was hauled in front of the courts because of how it ran the consultation. The judge gave it a right walloping and it had to back off. I am afraid that the same may happen again, because in a democracy decisions are not made before consultation. If a decision has been made, why go to consultation? In all fairness, the proposal did not go to the full council. I know that the Liberal Democrats are not happy with it. The Tories will be happy because of the privatisation. They will be delighted to have an academy in Blyth. The big worry is why the council has made a decision before going out to consultation. The Minister should look at that.

I have been asked by several people for a ballot to end the argument once and for all. If we could have a ballot in Blyth on whether we need two high schools, the parents could decide. Is there no mechanism, apart from the Labour group making a decision and saying that Blyth will have an academy? I do not know whether there is a mechanism for a ballot. There will be local council elections for the districts in May and I do not know whether a ballot or referendum could be held then to ask people whether they want two community high schools in Blyth. That would be fair. I do not have a clue what the result would be, but there have been several public meetings and they have all been packed out. The recent ones were full to the door, so people are concerned. I understand that Vardy held a meeting a few weeks ago and that it was full. I heard that he explained and made a good presentation.

As I said at the outset, I would not have a problem if an academy was all that was on offer. I would accept that. But why would Blyth want an academy when it already has a state-of-the-art community college? Sometimes I wonder what is going on. Will Blyth, with its poor end and its affluent end, be split into two? Will it have a two-tier education system? I do not want to say what I really think, because I do not want to harm the other school, but I foresee bad things ahead for one school, and I am worried. That school has taken off now with a great headmistress and is working well. I am here today to put on the record the fact that I am totally opposed to an academy on those grounds. I do not believe we need it.

13:19:00

The Minister for Schools (Jim Knight)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) on securing this debate. He is a strong advocate for his constituents’ interests and clearly wants to find a solution that will work for his community in Blyth. I welcome the opportunity to debate the issues with him so that I can give some facts about academies. I will then talk about the situation in his constituency and scotch some of the myths about Vardy academies specifically.

I want to ensure that when parents and stakeholders are thinking about whether an academy would benefit their community they have all the facts to hand. First, I shall set out the ideals of the academy programme and how it is already making a difference to some of our most deprived communities.

Despite the overall rise in standards over recent years in our schools, many pupils have not shared in that success. They are the pupils who would most benefit from an excellent education. They are pupils who live in areas blighted by disadvantage and poverty, and who attend schools with poor facilities and demoralised teachers. In such a situation, often only radical solutions work, and academies represent a fundamentally different education model. They are not private schools and they do not represent privatisation; they are state schools and they are independent of the council.

Mr. Campbell
The Minister is way off again, because he is talking about deprived areas for academies. The catchment area of the academy under discussion is not deprived. I have explained that.

Jim Knight
I shall return to that point, but Blyth overall meets the academies’ deprivation criteria. I understand what my hon. Friend says about the catchment area, but the sponsors and the local authority, the latter being the democratically accountable body—[Interruption.] Well, together they decide on the catchment area; the decision is not in my gift.

Academies are set up to address entrenched problems. We expect them all not to be an overnight success, but to make steady and sustained improvements in achievements. Some are already having a dramatic impact. Overall, the proportion of pupils gaining five or more A* to C grades in academies rose by six percentage points, compared with a national average rise of fewer than two percentage points. Those successes are repeated at key stage 3. In science, academies are improving their results at a rate of six times the national average. The impact of those improvements should not be underestimated in communities with a long-standing legacy of underachievement. The real test of that success has been the way parents have responded, flocking in droves to take up places in academies. That is why the Prime Minister last week announced a doubling of the number of academies—so that even more communities will share in the benefits.

I shall now focus on the situation in Blyth Valley. First, the proposals for an academy are dependenton the outcome of a separate consultation onschool reorganisation. As my hon. Friend said, Northumberland county council is consulting parents on a move to a two-tier system from a three-tier system. That consultation will close this week, and Northumberland will consider its model alongside other proposals before embarking on further consultation. The way forward will become much clearer in the new year, but if the decision was made to retain the three-tier model, the academy would not comply with that and it would not proceed.

The consultation on reorganisation is rightly a matter for Northumberland county council; I do not want to and cannot pre-empt the results. But I think it is important that opposition to reorganisation should not be confused with opposition to the academy. The academy has been proposed because if reorganisation takes place, there will be a basic need for more secondary school places in Blyth. The community college, as has been said, is doing a good job, and I understand the concerns that have been raised locally that the academy will take—

Mr. Campbell
If Blyth needs more secondary schools, as the Minister rightly says, and that is why we are going to have an academy, why is it not happening in Cramlington? The town is the same size, and it has the same type of pupils, so why are they not getting two high schools?

Jim Knight
That is something for the local authority to consider. It is responsible for school organisation matters; we respond to its interest in an academy, and in Blyth’s case, to its need for more sixth-form places.

The proposed academy would offer 1,150 new places, including a sixth form, and it would specialise in engineering and enterprise. Although funding for school buildings will be available to Northumberland county council through the Building Schools for the Future programme, that is for the long term. It has been put to us that the need in Blyth is more immediate, which is why an academy has been suggested. It would accelerate the capital investment, and given the results in other academies, the local authority is positive about the potential of an academy to deliver real change. I am aware of the concerns about the possible effect on the community college, but it is clear that more places are needed and that another school must be created. I should hope that, rather than presenting a threat to the community college, the academy would claw back pupils who have traditionally moved outside the area, including the 30 per cent. who transfer on to the sixth form. I should also hope that it would be part of the answer to the question of how to increase staying-on rates in the area, which we all agree need to improve. We should expect to see the new academy working together with the existing school for the benefit of the whole community. I hope to explore that idea generally through the academies programme.

Turning to the specifics of the proposal, I want to offer my hon. Friend some reassurances about the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, run by Sir Peter Vardy. The foundation has a successful track record of delivering academies on time and to budget, and of bringing about real improvements in standards once they are established. For example, the recent Ofsted report on the King’s academy found that it was

“a good school with many strong features”.

One of the foundation’s schools is the strongest school in the north-east. Although the proposal for Blyth would create a school with a distinctly Christian ethos, it would not select on the basis of adherence to the faith—it is not allowed to—nor would it select on any other criteria. Far from the tabloid perceptions, a Christian ethos does not mean Christian indoctrination.

The curriculum followed in the foundation’s academies is completely consistent with the national curriculum, and to meet those requirements, all teachers have to teach scientific theories in science. Neither intelligent design nor creationism, as I have made clear in recent days, is a recognised scientific theory, and they should not be taught in the science curriculum. Rather, we require that the theory of evolution is studied as part of the pupils’ scientific education, and Ofsted has confirmed that it has no concerns with how science is taught either at Emmanuel college or at the King’s academy.

Although the Biblical version of creation is taught in religious education, it is taught alongside other views of how the world came to be. Students are taught to consider opposing theories and to draw their own conclusions in a spirit of rational inquiry. [Interruption.] And they do not walk around with Bibles; Bibles are available to inform religious education. I hope that clears up some of the more outlandish claims about the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.

My hon. Friend asked me about the Whiteman plan, and he is right: I am not aware of it. I might want to discuss other points with him, and when I visited Northumberland recently, I promised that I would return to look at some of the schools in the county. I would be delighted if, as part of that visit to his region, we could have further discussions and my hon. Friend would join me in visiting an academy. He has said that he is not interested in visiting academies because he does not need them, but I would be interested to visit one of the Vardy academies with him as part of an overall discussion about the future for Blyth.

To conclude, if the result of the consultation were a move to a two-tier model, an academy in Blyth would offer a practical and immediate solution to the problems faced by the community. I am sure that my hon. Friend will continue to support local parents to ensure that they have a strong voice in the debate, and I hope that he will work with the project team and the local authority to come up with a solution that meets their needs.

Mr. Campbell
Will parents be balloted?

Jim Knight
The only ballot mechanism of which I am aware in such circumstances is the parish poll, if the local parish authority wants to organise one. A ballot is not part of the process of setting up an academy. Some enterprising Members of Parliament poll their constituents and use the results for whatever purposes they see fit. Naturally, that is open to my hon. Friend, too. I hope that we can work together and reach a consensus, because the results of the 15 parent consultation meetings so far have shown huge support for the academy proposal.

 Grosvenor Square (Security)

13:29:00

Mr. Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Those of my constituents living in and around Grosvenor square represent an almost entirely undefended front line in this country’s war against terrorism. The reason is plain: the Home Office, the Metropolitan police and Transport for London have sought to protect the US embassy from a terrorist bomb attack while largely ignoring the needs and wishes of local residents.

Since September 2001, my postbag has bulged with heartfelt letters from people angry at how their daily lives have been ruined. They live in fear of a suicide bomb attack, regarding their homes as part of an unsightly fortress reinforced by concrete bollards. In short, many Mayfair residents regard themselves with good cause as voiceless pawns in a bureaucratic nightmare affecting their every waking hour.

I spoke on a couple of radio programmes this morning, and found that it is assumed that people well off enough to live in Mayfair can just sell up and leave. I have two things to say to that. First and foremost, everybody, rich or poor, deserves representation in Parliament. Secondly, the reality is that those homes are virtually unsaleable, given issues that I shall discuss in detail. Another point is that wealthy though bits of my constituency are, every one of them—particularly Mayfair—is cheek by jowl with less well-off areas. A lot of people in my constituency live in social housing, as I have mentioned in debates on the Crossrail project. The areas south of Oxford street, for example, consist almost exclusively of Peabody Trust homes and other social housing.

It is pretty well universally appreciated that the US embassy is in Grosvenor square to stay. I accept the practical reality that this is a capital city, and that one expects the US embassy, in spite of all the security considerations, to remain in the centre of the capital. Hoisting it out to some suburban area is not a practical political suggestion. As it is, the embassy stands proudly on the western side of Grosvenor square. To many people, it is one of London’s iconic buildings. Naturally, the square’s history goes back to a time when kings and queens of England ruled the United States of America, but the area’s proud links with the US also go back to the 19th century, and long may they continue.

The US is our ally today. The safety of its embassy and the surrounding neighbourhood should be a crucial consideration for us all after the events of 11 September 2001. The distress caused by the piecemeal building of security works around the embassy and traffic alterations on the western side of the square has been enormous. After five long, torturous years, the matter still has not been resolved. Similarly, there is no fundamental resolution or solution and no sense of long-term security for the embassy, its staff and local constituents.

Following the 9/11 bombings in New York, the US Government understandably increased security at American embassies throughout the world. In November of that year—more than five years ago, following the invasion of Afghanistan—roads east and west of the square were closed to traffic by cement bollards. To paraphrase one of my constituents, chicken wire was erected, which made visitors and everyone living in the area feel that they had stumbled upon some low-grade prison or military camp. Yet many other roads and streets running past the embassy were open to traffic and remain open to this day.

As the local Member of Parliament, I shared many residents’ exasperation when month after month I was unable to find anyone in any corner of officialdom to accept responsibility for the situation. Any MP knows that one of our advantages is being able to break down the walls of bureaucracy on our constituents’ behalf. It is one of the most important things that one can do as a local MP. It is frustrating that after endless representations to the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the US embassy itself, Transport for London—which is part of the Mayor of London’s quango—and Westminster city council, I remain unsure to this day which institution has overall or ultimate responsibility for the matter. The failure of any organisation to take the lead means that the square’s future remains unresolved, bringing much pain to staff at the embassy and people living nearby.

I call on the US and UK Governments to accept their joint responsibility and move forward to help to provide a permanent solution. As the Minister knows, I have been in touch with his private office to get as full a response as possible, although I appreciate that he may need to make further representations in writing during the weeks and months ahead. I accept that the embassy must stay where it is. Not all Mayfair residents share that view, but for practical purposes the embassy is in Grosvenor square to stay. For the sake of local residents and businesses, we should seriously consider extending the pedestrianised zone to the largely residential area around the embassy. Similarly, any barriers or bollards should be designed in keeping with the local architecture of a highly desirable residential area in the centre of London.

It should not be beyond the wit of the authorities to take a long-term view on the US embassy’s security needs and plan accordingly. We must accept that we are in this for the long haul and that security from terrorist attacks will be a constant part of any future Government’s considerations. I take the view that the war on terror will be here for my lifetime and the lifetime of our children and grandchildren. It will last as long as, if not longer than, the cold war. We need a permanent solution for the arrangements around Grosvenor square.

The crucial element is to ensure the safety of local residents and those who work in the neighbourhood as well as the security of those who live and work in the embassy compound itself. That contrasts starkly with what we have had to date. Since the chicken wire went up in 2001, changes to the security fences and reinforcements to the concrete bollards in and around Grosvenor square have made the embassy more and more impregnable to roadside attacks. It is estimated that more than £6 million has been spent on this high-security area, yet the UK authorities have given very little consideration to local residents.

It seems intolerable that the Government and police should stand back and let such an unacceptable risk continue simply to ensure London’s traffic flow. As long ago as 2003, the police identified the embassy as one of the UK’s top six terrorist targets, and the danger has become even more acute in recent years. I hasten to add that the other five are the Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing street, the Ministry of Defence a stone’s throw away in Whitehall, Buckingham palace and the Israeli embassy, none of which sit in such built-up residential areas. All have at least a 35 m stand-off from traffic.

The latest proposals for Grosvenor square represent another short-term resolution. Vehicles and pedestrians are now prevented from entering or moving in the small cul-de-sacs behind the embassy, namely Blackburne’s mews and Culross street. On the other hand, the two main thoroughfares alongside the US embassy, Upper Brook street and Upper Grosvenor street, will be cordoned off by the Metropolitan police only when they choose to enforce such regulations at a time of a serious threat to the embassy.

Last night at a meeting at the embassy, members of the administrative and security staff outlined the forthcoming perimeter security project. The project was given the go-ahead in November 2005. In a letter to me at that time, more than 12 months ago, Home Office made it clear that it was the Home Office’s view that

“the current threat does not justify closure of the roads.”

Such illogical reasoning showed once again that the Government’s concern in the matter has been the threat to the embassy and not the interests of the long-suffering local populace, which have received scant attention during the past five years. In July 2006, Westminster city council gave planning permission for the enhanced security measures around the embassy. The consent prompted a host of potential traffic management plans, which were sent out for consultation and outlined at last night’s meeting.

I cannot speak too highly of the efforts of local west end councillors, especially Glenys Roberts, whom I understand was in the press today for her defence of residential interests around Scott’s restaurant. I think that she has made many friends in Mayfair, as Scott’s now has no licence and, although it is open before Christmas, is not entitled to charge any of its customers. I suspect that its tables will be booked up for quite some time to come. Glenys Roberts has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of those residents who live close to the embassy. They have demanded, and continue to demand, a search for a sensible, long-term solution to those security concerns that also recognises the importance of local traffic management.

Town planning has been much in the news of late. As a Member of Parliament, I am fully aware that planning issues are a matter for local councils. In almost all cases, I rightly remain detached from planning disputes. I am sure that the Minister, who represents Harrow, East, which is now under a Tory council, will equally stand clear of planning disputes. However, the element of security in the planning issues concerning Grosvenor square has forced me to communicate the concerns of my constituents as widely as possible.

I hope that this debate, here in our nation’s Parliament, will at last allow all parties to recognise now, in December 2006, that the security threat from terrorism is not “simply a passing phase” in our history, as was claimed by the consultant to Westminster city council’s planning department three years ago. The Prime Minister has stated in his recent speeches that this country faces such a terrorist threat for many years to come. That is a contention with which I wholeheartedly agree. I suspect that Islamic fundamentalism will be with us for as long as the cold war, if not longer.

On the basis of such a threat, I can only call on the Government to give proper consideration to the safety and financial interests of the residents whose homes are so close to the US embassy. Most of those residents have lived there for many years, and some of the properties have been in their families for generations. Those residents are understandably worried about the massive loss in value that their properties have suffered as a result of this country’s support of the US in the middle east. Above all, they would like to sleep soundly in their beds, rather than wake up each morning to the ugly sight of security protection, without the least hint of traffic calming, or of street design or furniture in keeping with the ambience of a district such as Mayfair. The situation is a crying shame for the many tourists who come to Grosvenor square to see a great iconic building, and little short of a disgrace. I have been willing to support the right of the various demonstrators in Parliament square to demonstrate; none the less, as we have seen, the unsightly sights have been cleared up, and I hope that there will be similar action in Grosvenor square.

Having given the Minister some notice of what I intended to say, I want to ask him some brief questions. First, how can the Home Office explain the logic of fully protecting the embassy by closing the roads on the east and west sides of the embassy, while leaving it vulnerable to attack from the north and south sides, as is the clear indication of the road closure programme that has been announced? Secondly, do the Government understand that, by installing the concrete blocks on the north and south sides towards the centre of the street, they are pushing any potential terrorist attack towards the residents of the street, thus trading the security of the American embassy for the security of the residents?

I can only exhort the Minister to give the matter his full attention in the year ahead and, in providing the security that the embassy of our major global ally deserves, not to lose sight of the amenities that local folk have an entitlement to enjoy. Those who remain in their homes in central London, more than five years after the tragic events of 9/11 and only 18 months after four bombs went off in our own city, find themselves quite literally on the front line in this country’s fight against terrorism. That surely should merit some more Government support and sympathy.

13:43:00

The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety (Mr. Tony McNulty)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) on securing this debate, and welcome the opportunity to take part in it. I listened carefully to what he said and shall try to give him some answers. I fully accept, as everyone should, that people living in London have a right to a voice and to representation, wherever they live in London. The notion of the well-off in Mayfair—for want of a better phrase—not having their voice and representation facilitated is complete nonsense, and I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman on that point. They have as much right to their views and their voice as anyone else in the country.

The hon. Gentleman knows, from the thrust of his comments, that we are trying to strike a balance between the concerns of local residents and the real concern for the security of what he described as an iconic building. I agree with him, too, by the way, that seeking a longer-term and more permanent solution must be the way forward. He was generous in his description of some of the temporary measures, which are indeed ugly—very ugly. They might work in security terms, but to be fair, they were only ever offered as a temporary but pressing solution to a real problem.

I am sorry, too, that the hon. Gentleman has experienced some difficulty in trying to find out exactly who is responsible for such matters. A number of Departments and other bodies have worked closely with the embassy to develop a range of measures that are both flexible and sufficiently proportionate to deal with the threats to the embassy, and its staff and surrounding area. Furthermore, those partners have worked with the local business and residential communities to establish and implement appropriate security arrangements that take account of their views. However, a number of different Departments and organisations have a role, on account of the numerous issues that such a complex project involves. The hon. Gentleman knows what they are, but I shall repeat them anyway.

Westminster city council is responsible for the planning and traffic issues. The Home Office, with its remit for matters of national security and policing, has a clear interest. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, on diplomatic grounds, is the main channel to the embassy, and the Metropolitan police has a strong interest, because of its operational responsibilities. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s frustration on that score, but reassure him that it is not a question of Whitehall’s refusing responsibility; rather, the issue crosses a number of different responsibilities. My predecessors who dealt with the issue in the Home Office always sought to answer any letters as fully and as helpfully as possible, although that is helpful as defined by the Home Office, not by the hon. Gentleman.

In the future, should the hon. Gentleman wish to write to someone or discuss the matter, I am more than happy for that person to be me. If the issue that he raises is not my responsibility, I will undertake to pass on his concern to whichever organisation is responsible. I am not setting myself up as the planning, traffic, security and diplomatic tsar for the Grosvenor square area and its Mayfair residents, but it might be useful, given the complexities, if the hon. Gentleman can at least have the assurance that there is a one-stop shop. If I do not have the answers or if an issue is not my responsibility, I shall ensure that he receives the answer from elsewhere.

Mr. Field
I thank the Minister for his kind offer. That is a sensible route forward. I hope that, in his new responsibilities as Minister for Grosvenor square, he will qualify for a grace-and-favour property in Mayfair as well.

Mr. McNulty
I was going to resist saying this, but I should also point out that I was not there in 1968, as I was only 10 at the time. Politics was certainly on the horizon, but I was not there.

I turn to the specifics of the proposed permanent arrangement for the Grosvenor square area. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is time for a long-term, fully considered and planned solution to be found for the security of the embassy and its surrounding area. Government officials and representatives of the Metropolitan police have looked carefully at the proposals of the State Department for the security of the embassy and its surrounding area, with a view to offering the embassy the best protection possible, taking into account its location and the need to minimise the impact on members of the public and local residents.

With that in mind, consideration was given to the need for the arrangements to be flexible and proportionate to the threat, making it possible not only to open and close the roads and grade the degree of physical restriction around the embassy to the requirements of the Metropolitan police, and to minimise the unsatisfactory and unsightly nature of the temporary arrangements currently in place, but, just as importantly, to respond to the concerns of local residents. At the very least, the plans that are before the embassy for implementation—which, as the hon. Gentleman said, have been passed by the council—seek to strike that balance, not only between local aesthetics and security, but between what might be appropriate now, given the current threat, and what might need to be appropriate, given any further threat in the future. The solution tries to balance those two elements, closing roads off when appropriate, but having a temporary arrangement where not appropriate. That balance is the way we should go.

The embassy submitted a planning application to Westminster city council in April 2004. The application was supported by the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Metropolitan police. It proposes the erection of two entrance pavilions to Grosvenor square, guard booths to Upper Brook street and Upper Grosvenor street, fencing around the perimeter of the embassy, with gates to Blackburne’s mews and Culross street, and raised planters and security bollards. It also includes alterations to the road lay-out to facilitate closures, when necessary, to parts of Grosvenor square, Upper Grosvenor street and Upper Brook street, a point to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

Outline planning approval was granted in July this year, and detailed approval in October. Work will start in January and be completed 13 or 14 months later. As the hon. Gentleman said, last night a meeting was held between the US embassy and local residents and businesses to discuss how work could proceed with minimal disruption and inconvenience. I am happy to tell the embassy, and certainly any Home Office officials involved, that dialogue and discourse with local residents should continue during the disruption that there is bound to be during the 13 or 14 months of works.

In any residential area—in deepest Leicestershire or deepest Mayfair—not knowing how a schedule of works will unfold is as disquieting as the disruption caused by the work. I hope we can ensure that dialogue is maintained. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will let me—his new-found champion of Grosvenor square—know if that does not happen.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that residents’ safety is important to us and everyone involved. Security in the area for workers, residents and visitors remains under constant review. The Met police is totally committed to ensuring everybody’s safety, and the measures proposed will support the police in achieving that for the long term. I am satisfied that the permanent security measures that are being promoted, although in the first instance aimed at increasing the security of the embassy, will also significantly increase the security of those living nearby.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned road closures and said that many residents would like Upper Brook street and Upper Grosvenor street to be closed permanently. However, there is another factor as well as safety, aesthetics and amenities for the local residents, the security of the embassy and everything else: the area is important for pedestrian and vehicular through traffic, and we also want to minimise disruption to that.

There is a facility for those roads to be closed off as and when security needs to be stepped up in response to whatever threat. I am pretty sure that if and when the hon. Gentleman next canvasses in Grosvenor square, he will find as many people opposed to permanent road closures for Upper Grosvenor street and Upper Brook street as he will those in favour. In my experience, such consultation exercises always come out at about 50:50 and tell us nothing about how to go forward.

As I said, our view is that the current threat does not justify permanent closure. The right and balanced approach must be to allow for temporary closure with rising bollards and checkpoints. I feel confident of that, given that closure could be achieved very quickly at the instigation of the police. That is the right balance between security and a general lack of disruption. Although we are living in difficult times, the response in respect of the embassy, as for any other building, needs to be flexible and proportionate to the threats. I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s points, because the area that we are discussing is a terribly useful cut-through when Park lane is busy, and I go around there every now and then on my way to west and north-west London.

The temporary measures would never win any prize for aesthetics or architectural value, I hope—although plenty of things that won prizes in the ’60s and ’70s should have been knocked down before they were built. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the aesthetics, and I suspect that the embassy does; moving towards a more permanent solution must be better.

In conclusion, I hope that what I have said, in particular about the great effort and thought that has gone into implementing security measures that have as little negative impact on the local residents as possible, will go some way to reassure the hon. Gentleman and his constituents that their concerns are, and will continue to be, treated seriously.

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, generously put, that the embassy is not going anywhere; as he said, more eloquently than I, the local residents are not either. We need to strike a balance between the two. I have tried to show that we are sympathetic to his constituents’ concerns about their safety, their daily environment and the value of their homes. However, the longer-term solutions for the security of the embassy and the surrounding area will go some way to address those issues. The range of security measures proposed is entirely appropriate, and has the credit of being as flexible and proportionate as possible, to deal with a change in threat to the embassy, its staff and the surrounding area.

Finally, I repeat that, given the complexities, if the hon. Gentleman needs in future to raise any matter of any description about the embassy and its surrounding area, I will be happy for him to target it at me. I shall either respond myself, or ensure that the issue goes to the appropriate authorities. I appreciate that not knowing where to tag an initial inquiry, let alone secure an answer, must be as frustrating for him as it is for the residents.

With that kind and generous offer, most uncharacteristic of me, I again congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Two o’clock.