Commons Chamber

 House of Commons

Wednesday 9 December 2009

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Cabinet Office

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

Third Sector Recession Action Plan

Anne Milton (Guildford) (Con)
1. What recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the third sector recession action plan.

The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Angela E. Smith)
The Government recognise the extraordinary role the sector plays in helping vulnerable people through the recession. That is why we have given unprecedented help and support to the sector, both through existing programmes and through the £42.5 million “Real help now” programme, the community action plans and the £16.7 million hardship fund. That money is getting out there right now: the programmes have already provided £32 million-worth of assistance to a total of 1,546 organisations. Evaluations of all our major recession programmes are already under way, and reports will be produced from the middle of next year.

Anne Milton
I wonder whether the Minister is aware that charities helping those with mental health problems, such as Oakleaf Enterprise and the YMCA in my Guildford constituency, are facing a massive downturn in income. Instead of the “laser-targeted” package of help the Government’s press release described in February, we have the usual lumbering, bureaucratic, red-tape nightmare so commonly seen from this Government.

Angela E. Smith
I am surprised at the hon. Lady’s comments, and if she wants to give me examples, I will be happy to look at them, because we have tried very hard to minimise the amount of red tape. Indeed, on the hardship fund in particular, we have been praised for the swiftness of our assessment of applications. Obviously, we want to ensure that charities and organisations who need help can get it quickly, and it is impressive that £32 million has already gone out to help them.

Mr. Andy Reed (Loughborough) (Lab/Co-op)
For a number of charities that I work with, there is a bit of a mixed picture. Some of the larger ones have seen their giving going up, but those that I call secondary charities— those that rely on the bigger charities to give them money—are often struggling the most. For example, I met representatives of SPEAK on Monday, and they are struggling to get money from others charities. What assistance can these programmes provide to help those charities that fund other charities, so that we can make sure that the money flows through the system and that secondary charities are not disenfranchised from these programmes?

Angela E. Smith
We have sought to put in place a range of programmes to help charities and voluntary organisations in a variety of ways. In terms of those organisations to which my hon. Friend refers, may I direct him to the grassroots grants programme, as the often quite small donations given under that programme to bodies delivering services at the grass-roots level can be extremely valuable? Those grants range from £500 to £5,000 and are issued through the Community Development Foundation. I will also ensure that my hon. Friend has information on all the grants and packages of help that are available to help charities of different sizes.

Jenny Willott (Cardiff, Central) (LD)
The hardship fund, for charities with a turnover above £200,000, is a key part of the action plan, but the recent decision of the Office of the Third Sector to divert into it £750,000 from the campaigning research programme, which is aimed at smaller charities, has caused outcry across the sector. Does the Minister share my concern that the lack of consultation, or even warning, ahead of that decision has not only damaged the charities directly affected, but has shaken the confidence of the sector as a whole in the Government’s commitment to the compact and their support for smaller organisations?

Angela E. Smith
Yes, I certainly understand the concerns about the transfer of the money. It is nothing to do with the size of the organisations; rather, it is to do with the purpose of the fund. It was a difficult decision to make, particularly because it is not compact-compliant, which I regret and apologise for. We should consider the purpose of the fund, however. When I was travelling around the country talking to different organisations, what came up time and again was that organisations delivering services on the ground at grass-roots level were being hit by the recession and needed help. We could have spent this £750,000 either on campaigning research or on helping those organisations. While it was a difficult choice, the basic decision was sound. However, I apologise to those who have been affected, and for this isolated breach of the compact.

Tom Levitt (High Peak) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the effectiveness with which the hardship fund has been got out to organisations throughout the country, but does she think that the smallest organisations are sufficiently aware of, and therefore taking advantage of, the available help?

Angela E. Smith
I do in some ways, as many organisations have had the help and have been able to make use of it. I think that more can be done, however, and I appeal to all Members to make organisations in their constituencies aware of the grants, support and loans that are available. We want that money to get out to third sector organisations because they are often the glue in communities, providing support on the ground to the people who most need it. We must do as much as we can to get that money out to them and to help and support them. May I direct my hon. Friend to the Government-funded National Council for Voluntary Organisations website, “Funding central”, which has all the information on grants and support? That is helpful to all organisations.

Mr. Francis Maude (Horsham) (Con)
When the voluntary and charitable sector is facing horrendous pressure as a result of the Government’s recession, how helpful is it for Lord Mandelson to be railroading through the removal of the sector’s long-standing exemption on public performance rights? Does the Minister accept that adding at least £20 million in extra cost to voluntary and charitable organisations just now is the last thing that they need, or have the Government just stopped listening?

Angela E. Smith
It is not a case of the Government not listening, and I should also correct the right hon. Gentleman because it is not the Government’s recession; as he may be aware, this has been an international recession, affecting countries across the world. I share concerns about the impact that charges from PPL and PRS could have on charitable and voluntary organisations; indeed, I met them to express those concerns on behalf of the sector. They are now working together to consider a plan to minimise that impact, and I urge all third sector organisations to contact PPL and PRS to ensure that it is minimised. The exemption was long-standing, and I believe that Britain is one of the last countries in Europe to lose it. I share the concern about the impact of this, and we must work with the entire third sector—the charities and the voluntary organisations—to do what we can to minimise it.

Mr. Maude
Part of the Government’s much-vaunted recession action plan was an £8 million volunteer brokerage scheme, which was intended to create 40,000 volunteering opportunities. Has not that much-criticised scheme turned out to be a flop, with only 2,500 opportunities actually being created? Given that leaders in the sector have criticised the scheme as

“a numbers game…not suited to the work of many organisations”,

has the Minister yet got the message that this sort of headline-catching initiative with rigid top-down targets is the problem, not the solution?

Angela E. Smith
It is probably too early to make such an assessment as to success or failure. An increasing number of people are going into placements; this process was slow to start and we are seeing some improvement now. It is important to have targets, because they create an ambition to ensure that we get as many people into placements as possible. For example, in August, 930 people on jobseeker’s allowance took up placements on this scheme—that is important and it is success.

Social Inclusion

Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab)
2. What recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of her Department’s actions to promote social inclusion in Yorkshire.

The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Angela E. Smith)
The social exclusion task force co-ordinates and monitors progress on tackling social exclusion across England. I am aware that in Yorkshire and the Humber a wide range of measures are in place to support more vulnerable adults into homes and jobs. I am also very pleased that Barnsley, Bradford and Rotherham are all sites for the “Inspiring Communities” programme, which will help to raise the aspirations of young people in deprived areas. May I also tell my hon. Friend that when I visited the York Council for Voluntary Service, I was very impressed by its commitment to promoting social inclusion?

Hugh Bayley
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for visiting the CVS. Since York Credit Union opened three years ago, it has done an excellent job in helping people to get out of debt, but we still face a serious problem with door-to-door loan sharks. I am holding a credit agreement offered to one of my constituents, where the annual percentage rate of interest was 2,639,385.9 per cent. I am not making that figure up; it is written here in black and white. Will she speak to her colleagues in the Treasury and press for legislation to put to an end this kind of usury?

Hon. Members
Hear, Hear.

Angela E. Smith
As we can hear, the whole House is horrified by such an extortionate interest rate. We all share concerns about this, because it is often those on the lowest incomes who end up paying the highest prices because of the high cost of borrowing. I can tell my hon. Friend that the Office of Fair Trading is examining the issue and it issued an interim report yesterday. A final report will be available in the spring and the Government will consider its recommendations. As he has done, may I commend the work of credit unions, which provide a way of helping those who are financially excluded?

Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con)
Although I endorse what the hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) has just said, may I ask the Minister to acquire a copy of “The Complete Plain Words” by Sir Ernest Gowers, so that she can start talking in English and get rid of terms such as “social inclusion”, “social exclusion” and “third sector”, and all this gobbledegook, which separates the very people we are trying to help from this place?

Angela E. Smith
That is the first time I have ever been accused of talking gobbledegook; I think that people understand terms such as “socially included” and “socially excluded”, and find them helpful. I have some sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says about the term “third sector” and if he could come up with a better one, that would be helpful. In some ways, I regard the “third sector”—the wider charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprise—as pretty much the first sector.

People with Disabilities

Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
3. What recent assessment she has made of levels of access to voluntary activities for people with disabilities; and if she will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Ms Dawn Butler)
The latest volunteering figures from the Government’s citizenship survey show that in England 32 per cent. of disabled people volunteered at least once in 2008-09. In order to ensure that more disabled people are able to access volunteering programmes, the Office of the Third Sector is piloting a £2 million volunteering fund in England, which will pay for adjustments and support for disabled volunteers. The fund opened for applications on 16 November.

Mr. Tom Clarke
On the subject of diversity, may I be the first to congratulate my hon. Friend on being the first black woman ever to have spoken from the Dispatch Box? May I encourage her and her colleagues to work with excellent organisations such as Mencap and People First to ensure that people with learning disabilities are given the opportunity to play a full part in voluntary activity, which is both in their interests and the greater interest of society?

Ms Butler
I thank my right hon. Friend for his warm words and kind remarks. It is indeed a pleasure to be standing here at the Dispatch Box. I, too, would like to congratulate my right hon. Friend on receiving a disability champion award yesterday. The Cabinet Office is looking at ensuring that disabled people—those with learning difficulties—are totally included in the packages that we are providing, such as the £17.5 million Improving Reach programme. There have been successful bids for people with learning difficulties, such as those from Mind associations. These groups receive the award funding through Office of the Third Sector programmes, including v, grassroots grants, Futurebuilders and targeted support funds.

Sir Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) (Con)
May I obviously endorse the remarks of the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) about the new Minister and wish her well, albeit that it will perhaps be for a relatively short time? Will the Minister accept that for disabled people—whether they are mentally or physically disabled—to be able to participate in voluntary activities is critical to their quality of life. Is she concerned that at the present time, with the recession that we are experiencing, this group of people is suffering—they are unable to indulge in all the worthwhile activities that would make their lives profitable and well?

Ms Butler
I again thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. The Office of the Third Sector is building a platform to ensure that people with disabilities participate fully and are considered to be the same as able-bodied people. The scheme that has been put in place, although it is a pilot, will be reviewed in 2011. If it is successful, it will be rolled out nationally.

Mr. Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does the Minister agree that an important aspect of such work would be efforts to promote among younger people the concept of people with disabilities being more able to get involved in a range of voluntary activities, thereby helping the wider community, particularly across the demographics?

Ms Butler
The hon. Gentleman raises a valid point. Indeed, through programmes such as v and YouthNet, the Office of the Third Sector is ensuring that young people are not only working with and for, but are engaged with, people with disabilities—both those with learning disabilities and those with other disabilities—to ensure that they can play a full and active part in society.

Social Exclusion

Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab)
4. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families on the establishment of a national assessment centre for early intervention policies to reduce social exclusion; and if she will make a statement.

The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Angela E. Smith)
First, I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work on, and commitment to, this issue. I am aware that a number of places, including Nottingham, have developed early intervention policies to tackle social problems. It is important that the impact of individual policies is assessed. Officials from the Cabinet Office and the DCSF have discussed the best way of addressing this, including the role of a centre for excellence in outcomes.

Mr. Allen
There are now lots of green shoots of early intervention in the UK—not just in Nottingham but in Manchester, Glasgow, London and south Wales. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ensure that all those ideas are pulled together so that lots of local authorities that wish to embark on an early intervention programme have a strong, central evidence base from which to draw, rather than replicating individual projects. I hope that she will put her weight behind a national policy assessment centre.

Angela E. Smith
Yes. I know that my hon. Friend has raised this issue with the Prime Minister, too. There is no doubt that as more authorities get involved with early intervention it is very important that they can share best practice and understand what works best to get value for money. Departments will be discussing how best to achieve this, including the role that can be played by such a centre of excellence in outcomes.

Information Commissioner

Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab)
5. What steps she is taking to ensure that material held by her Department which is requested by the Information Commissioner is provided promptly to the Commissioner.

The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Angela E. Smith)
The Cabinet Office aims to respond to requests from the Information Commissioner for material required for an investigation in a timely fashion.

Mr. Prentice
I am not really happy with that answer. I want to know who is responsible for the grotesque delays in responding to my freedom of information request regarding Lord Ashcroft. Is it the Cabinet Office that is dragging its feet, or is it the Information Commissioner who is being dilatory and totally useless?

Angela E. Smith
I might not be able to answer that question in the way that my hon. Friend has invited me to, but I can tell him that the Information Commissioner has not issued an information notice regarding any request that he has made to the Cabinet Office.

Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
What follow-up does the Minister do with other Departments? I have just waited a year and a half to get an answer to an information request from the Department for Transport, and even now it has not been answered fully. Does she think that is too long to wait, or is that the sort of time line that I should expect?

Angela E. Smith
Freedom of information matters are dealt with by the Ministry of Justice, so I will draw the hon. Lady’s concerns to the attention of ministerial colleagues at MOJ and ask them to take note of what she says.

Local Organisations (Funding)

Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
6. How many local organisations have received grassroots grants from her Department in the last 12 months.

The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Angela E. Smith)
The £130 million grassroots grants programme provides much-needed support to small voluntary groups that are doing vital work in our communities across England. In the first 14 months, there have been more than 13,000 grant awards to small charities and voluntary organisations totalling more than £33 million. I am delighted that in County Durham alone grassroots grants has invested more than £487,000 in small grants to local voluntary groups. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. As usual, there are far too many private conversations taking place on both sides of the Chamber. That is frankly discourteous and it conveys a very bad impression to those who are listening to our proceedings.

Phil Wilson
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Some £51,000-worth of grassroots grants have gone to community groups in my constituency such as the Ferryhill 2000 committee, Fishburn kurling club and Thornley Homing club. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that shows the Government’s commitment to local people and communities, and makes an important contribution to the front line?

Angela E. Smith
Yes, I do. There are often small community groups in communities doing first-class, important work. A small amount of money can make a huge difference to their impact on the local community, and that is why the Government have invested so much money in the grassroots grants programme, which gives grants ranging from £250 to £5,000 to small local groups. As some of us who speak to those groups know, that makes a real difference in those communities.

Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con)
In April, the Department launched a programme of grants for small campaigning charities. In October, it sent out grant letters offering the funding. In November, the Minister withdrew the money that had been promised without any consultation. Of course, that has generated real anger in the sector, because with that one decision, the Department that is meant to champion the sector has made a mockery of the compact and has sent out a signal that it is okay for public grant makers to treat charities in that shabby way. I welcome her apology today, but is she really aware of the damage that she has done, and what will she do to repair it?

Angela E. Smith
I suspect that the hon. Gentleman wrote his question before he heard the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Jenny Willott) raise this issue. I regret any damage that has been done, because it is important that people understand my commitment to the compact and to voluntary organisations. I refer him to my earlier comments. At this time of recession, and given the comments that have been made to me by organisations up and down the country, the priority had to be given to organisations that deliver services to communities on the front line. Having said that, I deeply regret the concerns that people have raised, and I assure him that my commitment to the compact is strong.

Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Often, when funding organisations are looking to provide grants to voluntary community organisations, they pay too much attention to the involvement of statutory bodies when they look at those organisations’ financial viability. May I urge my right hon. Friend, when she is handing out grassroots grants, to ensure that the money is going to genuine grass-roots organisations in local communities?

Angela E. Smith
The grassroots grants programme is administered in constituencies on behalf of Government by the Community Development Foundation. I think that I can give my hon. Friend the reassurance he seeks on this matter, but I will send him a list of the organisations in his constituency that have received such grants so that he can make an assessment himself and talk to me further if he wishes to do so.

Government Statistics

Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk) (Con)
7. When she next expects to meet the national statistician to discuss policy on publication of statistics by Government Departments.

The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Angela E. Smith)
I meet the national statistician regularly once every three months, but I have no plans to discuss with her the policy on the publication of statistics by Government Departments. Departments are expected to follow the code of practice for official statistics that is maintained by the independent UK Statistics Authority.

Mr. Bellingham
I thank the Minister for that reply. The ONS has just published the results of the recent census rehearsal, with responses coming in at just 35 per cent., compared with 54 per cent. in 2001. Is not that a major warning sign that the new census is far too long, too intrusive and too much hassle to fill in? Surely the excessive cost of £450 million is totally unacceptable, given the country’s parlous finances.

Angela E. Smith
I refute the hon. Gentleman’s comments on a number of grounds. First, the census pilots are voluntary, and more resources have been invested to ensure that we get accurate and clear responses from people up and down the country in the 2011 census, because we want the best information possible. Secondly, I also think that the cost of the census, which works out to 87p per person per year, is a reasonable amount to pay for the benefit that the census brings to the country.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op)
Is it not the case that there needs to be public acceptability of the level of detail in the 2011 census? Has my hon. Friend had discussions with Jil Matheson about the level of disaggregated data that will be published, the timetable that will be associated with that, and whether full census form information will be published rather earlier than the present limit of 100 years?

Angela E. Smith
I have obviously had discussions with the ONS about ensuring public confidence in the census, although I have not had particular discussions about how long information will remain confidential. I think that 100 years is appropriate, but if my hon. Friend wants to write to me about the matter, I will look at it again.

2011 Census

Mr. Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
8. What her most recent estimate is of the cost of the 2011 census.

The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Angela E. Smith)
The cost of the 2011 census in England and Wales is estimated at £482 million, as stated in the White Paper on the census published in December 2008. As I just mentioned, that equates to 87p per person per year.

Mr. Crabb
Is not the Government’s failure over the last 10 years to monitor correctly the number of people coming into the country one reason why we are facing such an expensive census in 2011?

Angela E. Smith
I think that the hon. Gentleman struggled to find a point to make on this matter. What he suggests is not the case at all: in fact, a comparison of the cost of the census in this country with the cost of that conducted in other countries around the world shows that our census is much more reasonable. It costs about a third of the census in the US, and is significantly less than that conducted in New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Ireland and Scotland. The cost cannot be called excessive, so his point is completely unfounded.

Paul Rowen (Rochdale) (LD)
Given the costs of the census, does the Minister think that including questions on a person’s immigration status is a useful use of public funds, when that information can be collected more accurately by other means?

Angela E. Smith
On the issue of costs, the benefits to the Treasury from the information that it gets from the census amounts to the equivalent of around £700 million. That far exceeds the costs of the census, but the point that the hon. Gentleman makes is also not valid because the ONS chooses the questions independently. It looks at why the questions are needed, and the answers to them are used to ensure that the billions of pounds of public funds are disbursed on the basis of accurate information.

Floods

Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York) (Con)
9. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the operation of the provisions of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 in relation to the recent floods in Cumbria.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Ms Dawn Butler)
I know that the hon. Lady recently visited the affected area to see for herself the impact of the flooding and to meet emergency responders. All sides of the House have paid tribute to PC Bill Barker, who lost his life.

Despite the unprecedented nature of the rainfall that occurred, the prompt and effective response to the flooding in Cumbria was exemplary, due to meticulous and effective preparation by local and national responders working through the framework set out in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. As part of the ongoing Civil Contingencies Act enhancement programme, we will ensure that any lessons that can be learned from events such as this are used to enhance our guidance even further, but tribute must be paid to those respondents who worked together during this time.

Miss McIntosh
Will the Minister join me in congratulating those wardens on the ground in Cumbria who were there knocking on doors and evacuating people, thanks to the warning? Obviously, we regret the loss of PC Barker. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 seems to be working, but we need more wardens of the type that we saw in Cumbria.

Ms Butler
The hon. Lady makes the valid point that we must congratulate those people and wardens on the ground, and I completely endorse her sentiments. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has been working, and it provides a framework that has now been well established. We will continue to look at any lessons that can be learned from that and ensure that it is enhanced further.

Mr. Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley) (Lab)
Would the Minister like to congratulate the emergency services and the armed forces on the provision of the temporary bridge, which has made a real difference to the people of Workington?

Ms Butler
The emergency services and the armed forces worked exceptionally well and speedily in ensuring that the new bridge was built in time and to the benefit of all concerned, so I completely endorse my hon. Friend’s sentiments.

Prime Minister

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Q1.  If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 9 December.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Gordon Brown)
Before I list my engagements, it is with deep sorrow that we remember, from 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, Lance Corporal Adam Drane, who died in Afghanistan on Monday. My thoughts and, I know, those of the whole House will be with his family and friends. Every life lost during this year and during previous years is a personal tragedy, and we mourn every single loss. We mourn heroes whose acts of bravery recognise that a more stable Afghanistan means a safer Britain, and the scale of their sacrifice does not diminish but strengthens our resolve.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

Robert Neill
I am sure that the whole House would endorse the Prime Minister’s tribute to the lance corporal, and endorse his sentiments as well.

Last week the Prime Minister told the House that Spain was in the G20 and that it had been in recession for longer than this country—neither of which, upon checking, turns out to be correct. Do we conclude from that that the pain in Spain is mainly in his brain?

The Prime Minister
I am very glad that we are starting this week’s Question Time exactly as we ended last week’s Question Time—[Interruption]—by talking about the economy. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. We want to hear the Prime Minister’s reply, and certainly people listening elsewhere wish to hear it. We will have no further interruptions.

The Prime Minister
There are some people who get into the White House on false pretences, get their photograph taken and do not have a formal invitation, but the Prime Minister of Spain was invited to the G20 by the President of America, to be part of the G20. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that I invited the Prime Minister of Spain, Mr. Zapatero, to the G20 meeting that took place in London. Mr. Zapatero was at the G20 meeting that took place in Pittsburgh. In other words, Spain was part of the G20. [Interruption.] I know that the Opposition are going to talk down Britain, but it is bit much them talking down Spain.

Ms Angela C. Smith (Sheffield, Hillsborough) (Lab)
The fatal attack last week on four-year-old John-Paul Massey from Merseyside again raises concerns about the effectiveness of legislation relating to dangerous dogs. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet, with me, a small delegation of those who are concerned about the issue to discuss what can be done?

The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This was a terrible death, and I am very sorry to learn about what happened to the little boy in Liverpool, John-Paul Massey. She knows that the police are continuing to investigate the circumstances of the death. They have also referred their handling of an original report from February 2009 to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It would obviously be inappropriate to comment further on that instance, but the issue of the status of dangerous dogs was raised at the antisocial behaviour working party a few days ago. We are working with the Home Office to ensure that those who are on the front line make full use of the powers available to them to tackle the problem of dogs affecting communities. The Government have provided additional advice to the police, and funding to the Association of Chief Police Officers to help to train officers in dangerous dog legislation. This was an event that should not recur, and we will do everything in our power to make sure that it does not happen.

Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con)
May I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Lance Corporal Adam Drane, who was killed in Afghanistan on Monday? The 100th military casualty this year is a very sad milestone. We should honour his memory; we should help his family.

As the Prime Minister and I have both seen, when one speaks to our troops in Afghanistan, it is not sympathy and pity that they are after, but support, not just for what they are doing, but for the mission in which they are engaged. In my view, they are every bit the equal of those men who stormed the beaches of Normandy or who fought their way across Africa in the second world war, and we should be proud of what they are doing.

The new counter-insurgency strategy and the extra troops announced by America last week show that we have the last best chance to get this issue right. Does the Prime Minister agree that we simply cannot waste any time in getting every element of the strategy in place, including troops, helicopters, equipment, development aid, civilian co-ordination and, of course, the pressure on President Karzai to cut corruption?

The Prime Minister
I am very pleased that the right hon. Gentleman was able to go to Afghanistan, and I also know that many Members have visited our troops in Afghanistan. I pay tribute to them for visiting our troops, but I pay greater tribute to our troops for the great work that they do.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we must move quickly. Our additional troops will be going to Afghanistan in the next few days. We have called a conference for 28 January in London, to bring together all the powers that are involved in Afghanistan—the 43-nation coalition. That will discuss—and, I hope, agree on—civil co-ordination. President Karzai has agreed to come, and he will have to report on the reforms that he promised to make in his Administration as he started his second period of duty. At the same time, we are making available all the equipment that is necessary—helicopters and vehicles—to our armed forces.

I can just add one thing—that 80 per cent. of the deaths have been the result of explosive devices. We have now brought in far more surveillance equipment; we have brought in extra engineers; we have brought in extra drones to survey the area; we have brought in more intelligence officers; and we are backing up our troops with the best equipment possible. We will do everything we can to avoid the loss of life as a result of this guerrilla warfare.

Mr. Cameron
US forces are now pouring into Helmand province, and that is welcome. But is not one of the current problems that British forces are still spread too thinly in the very tough parts of Helmand for which we are responsible? Following the increase in US forces in Helmand, is there not a danger that there will be a contrast between the UK forces, who are still spread too thinly, and US forces, who will not be? Does the Prime Minister accept that this needs to change, and change very urgently?

The Prime Minister
If the right hon. Gentleman had heard what I said last week, he would know that I said that we were going to thicken the presence of our forces in a number of key areas. Of course operational decisions are a matter for commanders on the ground, but I think it is recognised that two things have got to happen: one is that we thicken our presence; the second thing, however, which I emphasise as part of our long-term strategy, is the fact that we are also there to train the Afghan forces so that they can take over. So 5,000 Afghan troops will come to be trained in Helmand itself; 10,000 in total will be trained in Helmand over the course of the next year, and we will then want to pass security control, district by district, to the Afghan people. We not only have a reason for being there—the threat of terrorism on the streets of our country—we also have a plan to give the Afghans control over their country, so that at some point our troops can come home.

Mr. Cameron
The Prime Minister is right: of course it is for military commanders to make the precise dispositions. But everyone agrees that one of the keys to successful counter-insurgency is a dense population of troops to protect the civilian population, and the figures tell a vital story. Soon, 20,000 US forces will be responsible for some 30 per cent. of the population, and fewer than 10,000 British troops will be responsible for some 70 per cent. So let me just ask him again: how quickly does he think that this vital issue can be sorted out, so that we have effective counter-insurgency throughout southern Afghanistan?

The Prime Minister
I am grateful that the right hon. Gentleman raises these questions, because I can point out to the Opposition that we are part of a coalition. These decisions are made as part of a coalition: they are made in Helmand with the Americans and the other forces who are there. Yes, we have decided to thicken in certain areas, but yes, the Americans have laid the priority for the next few months and years on training the Afghan forces, and that is what we are also going to do.

I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that we have an Afghan army of about 90,000, it will increase over the next year to about 135,000, and the number will have to go higher than that for Afghanistan to be able to sustain its own security control. The police force is at about 90,000 at the moment. It will have to be improved by police trainers, and we will need more police on the ground as well. That is the way forward for Afghanistan. I would say to the right hon. Gentleman again that decisions about the location of troops are a matter for commanders on the ground, but we work in close partnership with the Americans, and our decisions are taken with the rest of the alliance.

Mr. Cameron
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for that answer, and for discussing this issue. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] No, honestly, this is an important point, and I do believe it has to be sorted out. Crucially, there are political elements to this decision, and what I am saying to him is that he will have our support if he makes those decisions.

Let me turn to a completely different subject. Tomorrow the House of Commons will be publishing the details of Members’ second home allowances for the financial year 2008-09. That is a vital part of the process of rebuilding trust in this place, which everyone wants to happen. As of yesterday, the plans were to issue details of expenses, but without publishing the total expenses claimed by each MP. Does the Prime Minister agree that that would not be transparent and would infuriate the public who put us here, so will he take all the necessary steps to make sure that the current totals are published in full?

The Prime Minister
This is a matter for the Members Estimate Committee to make a judgment on. The shadow Leader of the House is a member of the Members Estimate Committee, as is the Leader of the House. We want the maximum transparency possible. I believe there is nothing that we have to hide, and we have got to get all the information out. Anything that maximises transparency is what I support, but I would have thought that the details of how we do it are best left to the Members Estimate Committee, and it is for the shadow Leader of the House to put his views there. I think, if I am right, that we were trying to reach a consensus about how we would move forward on these issues. I think we should all say that the sooner we can deal with all the issues the better, but the best way of dealing with them is by the process that we ourselves agreed.

Mr. Cameron
With respect, the question whether you publish the totals is not a matter of detail; it seems to me pretty profound. You have got to publish the totals so that the public can see that we are being open, transparent and straightforward about this issue that has done so much damage to this House.

After the Queen’s Speech—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. Government Back Benchers need to simmer down.

Mr. Cameron
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

After the Queen’s Speech, I offered the Prime Minister our support if he brought forward the legislation to implement the Kelly report in full. The Leader of the House has said that she is prepared to talk about this. Can he confirm that the necessary legislation will be brought forward—and, indeed, that it will be published before Christmas? Does he agree with me that we need to end this damaging year for Parliament by showing once and for all that we “get it”?

The Prime Minister
On the very issue the right hon. Gentleman raises—perhaps he should know this—I understand that a meeting is taking place this afternoon to deal with exactly the issues that we are talking about. I would prefer that we agreed that there be the maximum transparency, and that we will do everything we can to make that happen. We have set up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to do this. Let it get on with the job of doing it, and let us reach a consensus in this House that the maximum transparency is what we are going to achieve.

Mr. Cameron
Of course, but the point is that Kelly made a series of recommendations, and the Prime Minister said that the whole point of prolonging this Parliament was to put them into place. Many of these recommendations require legislation, so the legislation needs to be brought forward.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is about to stand up and deliver his pre-Budget report. He should be announcing measures to bring the deficit under control. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that we should show some leadership, and begin with this place? Will he therefore support our plans for a 5 per cent. cut in ministerial pay followed by a five-year freeze, and a 10 per cent. cut in the size of the House of Commons?

The Prime Minister
Our deficit reduction plan involves major changes in how government operates, including how Ministers and civil servants operate. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will agree with the measures that we are bringing forward. I would say to him that the reason why we have a deficit is that we have spent to take ourselves through the recession. If we had taken his advice, more people would have been unemployed, more small businesses would have gone under, more mortgage owners would have lost their homes, and we would be facing a higher deficit and higher debt as a result. Mr. Speaker, when I listen to him now, it seems to me that he has lost the art of communication, but not, alas, the gift of speech.

Mr. Speaker
I call Mr. Kevin Barron. [Interruption.] Order. I am sure Government Back Benchers want to hear their colleague.

Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister agree that people who purport to stand to be Members of this House, and give interviews to national newspapers saying that if they are elected they will not claim expenses, and that their wealth makes them incorruptible, only for us to find that that wealth is held in tax havens abroad, are unfit to be Members of this House?

The Prime Minister
Some time the Conservative party will have to face up to the fact that it is the first party in history to have devised a tax policy just for itself.

Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD)
I should like to add my own expressions of sympathy and condolence to the family and friends of Lance Corporal Adam Drane of 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, who tragically lost his life serving in Afghanistan on Monday. We will remember him, as we remember all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice serving in the mission in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that fairness was in his DNA, and today we are told that fairness will be the centrepiece of the pre-Budget report. So why is it that 4 million children are still living in poverty, one in five young people are out of work and millions of poor pensioners will struggle this winter simply to keep warm? He dares to talk about fairness, but does he not realise how offensive that is to the millions of people who feel that they have been let down by Labour?

The Prime Minister
The last time we talked about it a few months ago, the right hon. Gentleman did not know the level of the state pension. I hope that he knows the level of child benefit and child tax credit, because child benefit, taken with tax credit, has trebled for the poorest families in this country since 1997. We have taken more children out of poverty than any previous Government since 1945, and we are taking more action today: if the right hon. Gentleman listens to the Chancellor, he will hear what he is going to do. Our record in taking children out of poverty, when poverty had trebled under the Conservatives, is one that we will build on in the years to come.

Mr. Clegg
Again, I do not get an answer, I get a list. [Interruption.] Labour Members can shout as much as they like, but it does not change the facts. Here is a list: child poverty is going up again—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. Mr. Clegg must be heard. It is very early in the day and Members are already overexcited. They need to simmer down.

Mr. Clegg
Here is a list that they do not like to hear. Child poverty is going up again. Inequality is going up. Last winter more people died of the cold than did a decade ago, and a child born today in the poorest part of this country will die a full 14 years before a child born somewhere else. That has not changed in 10 years. Will the Prime Minister now be honest? He has failed on fairness.

The Prime Minister
We have taken action over the 10 years. I know that the right hon. Gentleman does not like me reading lists of what we have done, but the problem is that he cannot read any lists of what he has done. What we have done is taken hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, protected children and families against the costs of energy bills, given thousands of children Sure Start opportunities that they never would have had and doubled the child tax credit for nought to one-year-olds to help avoid infant poverty. The right hon. Gentleman wants to abolish the child trust fund, and we are giving young children the chance for the first time to have a trust fund of their own. We are the party that will give every child in this country a trust fund. For the Conservatives and the Liberals, trust funds are just for the few.

Early Intervention

Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab)
Q2.  What recent discussions he has had with hon. Members on an all-party approach to policy on early intervention.

The Prime Minister
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his pioneering work on this issue. Following my meeting with him and parliamentary colleagues, I visited some of the early intervention projects in Nottingham, including in his constituency. I welcome everyone working together on early intervention. There are 50,000 families who need our help, and breaking intergenerational cycles of deprivation requires us all to work consistently on early intervention over the years.

Mr. Allen
Do the Prime Minister and the other party leaders here today accept that giving our babies, children and young people the social and emotional bedrock that they need through early intervention not only gives them a great start in life but, at a time of financial restraint, will save the taxpayer billions and billions of pounds by reducing the bill for low educational attainment, crime, drink and drug abuse, and lifetimes that are currently wasted on benefits?

The Prime Minister
I visited Nottingham, as I said, and saw the success of an early intervention programme that had taken a family that was in absolute chaos, and every single member of that family was benefiting from the professional work that had been done to help them. I have seen early intervention in action. We are putting in a programme in all parts of the country. It is complemented by Sure Start, where young people can get the chance, before nursery school age, to get help with learning, and help for their mothers with health and education. If we are going to have early intervention, we must also have Sure Start. I hope all parties in the House will want to maintain the Sure Start programme. There are 3,000 centres—an average of six in each constituency—and it is something that we want to build upon, not destroy.

Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister accept that early intervention work is especially important in addressing the root causes of poverty?

The Prime Minister
Absolutely: dealing with the root causes of poverty involves helping people to find jobs. That is why we have the new deal—but unfortunately, it is opposed by the Conservative party. Tackling the root causes of poverty means helping people to deal with health problems. That is why we spend money on the health service, instead of calling it a 60-year-old mistake. That is what we are about—helping to deal with the root causes of the problem, by investing in people.

Engagements

Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
Q3.  If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 9 December.

The Prime Minister
I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.

Lindsay Roy
Child tax credits are a vital support for many parents, especially those on incomes of around £16,000. Will the Prime Minister reassure my constituents that he will not cut help for those many hard-working families to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest few?

The Prime Minister
Child tax credits have lifted 500,000 children out of poverty, and they are now helping people through this recession: 400,000 families, some of whose breadwinners are on short-time work or work part time, have been able to claim tax credits worth, on average, £37 a week. That is our way of helping people out of recession. I would regret it very much if any party chose to cut tax credits by £400 million. I understand that that would affect every family with an income above £16,000—which means that it is a policy that will hurt the many, at a time when that same party wants to benefit the few.

Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The Prime Minister should know that skills are vital for economic recovery and our competitiveness, so he will have been as disappointed as I was with Lord Mandelson’s concession in the recently published skills strategy that the Government will miss their 2011 targets for level 3 technical skills. In that spirit of confession, will the Prime Minister now concede that fewer people are beginning level 3 apprenticeships than 10 years ago?

The Prime Minister
We are actually doing far more to increase the number of apprenticeships. There are more apprenticeships this year than last year—and let us remember that there were 70,000 apprenticeships in 1997, whereas there are a quarter of a million now. If the hon. Gentleman wants to help people to get to level 3, why does the Conservative party oppose the summer school leavers guarantee, which helps young people to get those qualifications in their teens? Why does the Conservative party oppose the money that is necessary to give every young person, not just some young people, a chance?

Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Q4.  I have had many letters in recent weeks about the Copenhagen climate change conference. On the subject of low-carbon energy sources, can I ask my right hon. Friend what steps he is taking to convince people further of the importance of nuclear energy and wind farms in that overall policy?

The Prime Minister
We meet in a week when a big set of decisions has to be made at Copenhagen. I know that there is all-party support for our desire to get the best possible agreement at Copenhagen that could lead to substantial reductions in carbon. We—as Europe, and as Britain—have said that we will lead the way in making substantial reductions in carbon. I have to tell my hon. Friend that that will happen only if we have a balanced energy policy, and only if we are able to tackle the issue of renewables. Yes, we need nuclear power as part of our energy policy—I am sorry that the Opposition say that for them it is only a last resort—but we also need wind power as part of the renewables that we are going to create in the future. We need not just offshore wind power but onshore wind power, and I am sorry that applications are being turned down by Conservative authorities, when we want to get wind power and wind turbines in our country. I am afraid the Conservative policy on energy is all talk and no action—all wind and no turbine. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. Before hon. Members get too excited, I want to fit a lot more Back Benchers in.

Alistair Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Q12.  Last Sunday, the people of Northall in my constituency were unable to obtain a drinks licence for their annual lunch at the village hall because the Government-imposed limit of 15 for the year had been reached. Inquiries of Bedfordshire police suggested that neither the lunch nor the hall regularly featured in their investigations of binge drinking and loutish behaviour. Will the Prime Minister review the bureaucratic and unnecessary regulation that prompts these decisions and ensure a return to local discretion, which is how these decisions should be made, or will he make way for a Government who will?

The Prime Minister
I am happy to take this issue up. I want people to have that opportunity. This should be a matter for far greater local discretion, and we will do our best to achieve that.

Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) (Lab)
Q5.  Last weekend a much-loved Leicestershire teacher, Mark Parker, died aged only 56 following a hypoglycaemic attack because of his diabetes. We currently spend £1 million an hour on treating diabetes-related illnesses, but there are still an estimated 7 million Britons with a pre-diabetes condition, probably including Members of Parliament. I was diagnosed only three years ago. What steps will the Government take to ensure that every person in this country has access to a diabetes test? That would save money, and in the long run save lives.

The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is right about the importance of dealing with diabetes. The test for identifying those at risk of developing type 2 diabetes is included in the NHS health check that will be offered to those aged 40 to 74. It will also assess people’s risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease, and help individuals to manage that risk. We believe that we will be able to identify at least 20,000 cases of diabetes and kidney disease earlier, and that will be important for the health of our country and for preventing the further costs that result when people suffer from those diseases. Investment in that programme now will save money later, and it is the right way forward for the national health service to give people personal guarantees that they will have those health checks free of charge.

Mr. John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Q6.  Given that the Prime Minister has said that front-line NHS services should not be affected by cuts, will he join me in condemning the decision by NHS Manchester to close the Burnage walk-in centre, against the wishes of local people?

The Prime Minister
I understand that the closure has been postponed to allow the primary care trust to inform the people about the alternative services that are available. We have invested an additional £250 million in 100 new GP practices in poorly serviced areas and in 152 new health centres. This is a matter for decision by the local NHS, together with patients and others. I understand that the hon. Gentleman said at the last election that a hospital in his area would close: that hospital is still in being.

Jeff Ennis (Barnsley, East and Mexborough) (Lab)
Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating American bedspring manufacturers Leggett & Platt on investing some $22 million in establishing their European headquarters in Grimethorpe in my constituency? That is mainly thanks to the efforts of Yorkshire Forward and the Barnsley development agency. Does he also agree with me that places such as Barnsley and Doncaster specifically, and Yorkshire and Humber in general, are still great places for foreign companies to invest?

The Prime Minister
This is exactly the policy that the Chancellor is pursuing, and that his pre-Budget report is about. It is about recovery from recession by investing in the future, and it is about getting growth in the economy so that we get new jobs in new areas. I applaud the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) does. This is the party of jobs, whereas the Opposition would leave millions unemployed.

Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Q7.  What is the Prime Minister prepared to do about the fact that some of the most vulnerable people who have the greatest difficulty in heating their homes pay the highest tariffs for their fuel, either because they have pre-payment meters or because they live in areas with no gas supply and do not have access to dual-fuel tariffs?

The Prime Minister
I am grateful that the right hon. Gentleman has raised that point, because the Energy Bill is an attempt to deal with some of the problems that arise and to ensure that the social tariff is far fairer for people with difficulties. However, I also have to remind him that into the homes of thousands—indeed, millions—of pensioners in the past few days has come the winter fuel allowance, which is paid to everyone over 60, and is higher for the over-80s. It is one contribution that we can make to help with the heating bills of the poorest in our society, but it is a contribution made to every pensioner and everyone over 60 in our country. I hope that there is now a consensus that that is the right thing to do.

John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Q15.  When I was out with the police on a Friday night in my area, only 14 police officers were on duty in the division, out of a total complement of 2,380. Will the Prime Minister intervene directly and swiftly to sort out the organisational malaise that characterises Nottinghamshire police?

The Prime Minister
The Home Secretary tells me that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is looking into Nottinghamshire police at the moment, but I have to say that the whole purpose of neighbourhood policing, which we have developed over the past two years, is to get more police on the streets. For that, we need to invest in policing and emphasise the concept that the police serve the neighbourhood. That is exactly what we are doing.

Mr. Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
Q8.  Does the Prime Minister agree with Ben Bernanke that the Prime Minister’s decision to strip the Bank of England of its supervising role led to a “destructive run” and a

“major problem for the British economy”?

The Prime Minister
No. I think that anybody who looks at the global recession knows that it started with the problems of the banking system in America, which spread right across the world. Our tripartite system is the right way to deal with these problems, because it brings together the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury. I noticed that only yesterday the Leader of the Opposition changed the shadow Chancellor’s policy on the future of the banking system, and that he also talked yesterday about introducing “flatter taxes”. Flatter taxes mean less tax paid by the very wealthy. Before the Conservatives come to give us lectures on economic policy, they should go back to the drawing board.

Emily Thornberry (Islington, South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Q9.  Will my right hon. Friend give the public a guarantee that he will never lift the ban on hunting with dogs?

The Prime Minister
I am surprised that a political party wants to fight the next election on withdrawing the ban on fox hunting. In fact, that is that party’s only job creation policy—to create a quango to run fox hunting. I believe that it is making a terrible mistake, and it will pay for it at the next election.

 Pre-Budget Report

12:32:00

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Alistair Darling)
Today’s pre-Budget report takes place at a critical time for our economy and for our country. Governments across the world have taken co-ordinated steps to deal with the biggest financial crisis for over half a century. In the UK, our action has reduced the impact of this downturn on families and businesses, but there is still much uncertainty, so the task today is to ensure the recovery and promote long-term growth.

To promote growth, we need to invest in the dynamic sectors of the future—in digital, bio and low-carbon technology—and I will announce measures that will support those industries. To promote growth, we also need to invest in the skills of young people to prevent a lost generation of youth unemployment. I will announce measures to guarantee work opportunities for the young. To promote growth we also need to maintain support until the recovery is secured and to halve the deficit over four years, in an orderly way that does not threaten investment vital to our future. The choice is between going for growth and putting the recovery at risk—to reduce the deficit while protecting front-line services, or cuts that put those services in danger. The choice is between two competing visions. This pre-Budget report is about building a fairer society and securing opportunity for all.

When I delivered the pre-Budget report just over 12 months ago, we were faced with the sharpest and most widespread global downturn in generations. The near collapse of the financial system quickly fed through into the wider global economy. World trade went down sharply and unemployment sharply up across the world. Families and businesses in every continent felt the pain.

Governments around the world intervened to rescue the banking system. We supported our economies with tax cuts, increased Government spending and co-ordinated action to lower interest rates and to boost money supply. No choices were easy choices; indeed, some even argued that we should not have acted at all. But as a result of those actions, there is growing evidence that global confidence is returning. The US housing market, which triggered the crisis, is stabilising—so is the housing market here. Global manufacturing is up almost 6 per cent., world stock markets by 30 per cent.

As the world’s largest financial centre, the turmoil in the banking sector has had a substantial effect on the UK. With more home owners here than in Europe, a global slump in property prices hit confidence hard in this country. As the sixth biggest exporter of goods and the second largest exporter of services, our trade has been hit. But as demand picks up abroad, as is already happening, British businesses will benefit. So I am confident that the UK economy will start growing by the turn of the year.

However, across the world, there remain risks to recovery. Oil prices are volatile. Recent market reaction to financial problems in Dubai highlights just how fragile world confidence remains. So while I am confident that the UK economy is on the road to recovery, we cannot be complacent. We must continue to support the economy until recovery is established. To cut support now could wreck the recovery. That is a risk that I am not prepared to take.

This time last year, we recognised the exceptional trading difficulties that businesses here were facing. In the past, inaction by Government to support firms led to widespread—and avoidable—business failure. I was determined that we did not repeat that mistake. So in an unprecedented move, I cut VAT to 15 per cent. for a year, to put more than £11 billion into the pockets of consumers and retailers. That countered the impact on businesses of the global credit squeeze and the collapse in consumer demand when it was needed most. I can confirm that VAT will return to 17.5 per cent. on 1 January, as planned. I have no other changes in VAT to announce.

To ease problems with cash flow and access to bank lending, we deferred tax rises and extended tax allowances for businesses. Because we chose to intervene, the rate of business insolvencies is far lower than would have been expected. In the recession of the early 1990s, proportionally twice as many businesses went under. While some measures such as the VAT cut and the working capital and trade credit insurance schemes are finishing, it is right to extend others while uncertainty remains. The time-to-pay scheme has helped more than 160,000 businesses spread their tax payments over a timetable that they can afford. They can get additional time when they need it most and, because firms continue trading, the likelihood of companies paying the tax owed increases, so I have decided that the scheme will be extended for as long as it is needed.

Last year, I temporarily increased the threshold for empty property relief to help small businesses. I can announce that it will be extended, so that for 2010-11, empty commercial properties with a rateable value below £18,000 will be exempt from business rates. Seventy per cent. of all empty properties will continue, therefore, to be exempt. I have one further announcement to help small businesses. I have decided to defer the increase in corporation tax for smaller companies. That will leave the 2010 rate unchanged for 850,000 small businesses, helping them until the recovery is secured.

In the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes. I did not want to see that repeated, so we introduced a range of measures to allow families to stay in their homes and to help young couples on to the housing ladder. As a result, repossessions are now running at around half the rate of the recession of the early 1990s. By the time the stamp duty holiday finishes at the end of this month, I expect 240,000 home buyers to have been helped. But with unemployment still likely to rise, it would not be right to withdraw all support now for home owners.

Last year I improved the scheme giving support for mortgage interest, to provide better cover for mortgage interest payments for those who had lost their jobs. More than 220,000 people have been helped so far. I have decided that that additional support will be extended for a further six months. There will, of course, be a cost to that and other continued Government support, but the cost to families of losing their home would be immense, and it would be a false economy for the country. The more successful these measures are in restoring confidence to the housing market, the lower the cost will be to the Exchequer.

The best way of avoiding repossessions is to help people to stay in work or re-enter the labour market quickly. Such a deep global recession was always going to have a damaging impact on employment. The bleak news last week that Corus is to shut its Teesside plant underlined the fact that the reduction in global demand will have an impact on jobs for some time to come. That is why, yesterday, I agreed with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to provide £30 million from within existing resources to help industry in Teesside.

No Government, even during times of the strongest economic growth, can prevent every job loss. Unemployment has risen in the UK and will keep rising for some time, but it remains lower than it was in France, Canada, the United States and the euro area. In fact, even now, there are some 2.5 million more people in work than there were in 1997. Because of our values of fairness and opportunity, promoting employment has always been, and remains, a top priority for this Government. Unemployment can never be a price worth paying.

As the global recession hit our country, we responded by bringing forward investment in vital infrastructure projects to protect jobs, and finding an additional £3 billion to help people to find new work more quickly. We expanded the Jobcentre Plus network and offered support through the rapid response service to staff in 3,000 firms hit by redundancies. Help including training, volunteering and recruitment subsidies has been offered for those still unemployed after six months.

It is clear that we are making a difference. Unemployment has increased much less than expected by independent forecasters. If we had seen the same rate of job losses, relative to GDP, as we saw in the early 1990s, four times as many people would have lost their jobs. Despite the severity of the global recession, the claimant count today stands at 1.6 million, compared with the 3 million reached in 1985 and 1992. Our comprehensive support means that a short spell in unemployment is not turning into a lifetime on benefits, as happened in the recessions of the ’80s and ’90s. Indeed, more than 3 million people have been helped off the claimant count in the past year.

Despite this support, there are groups who need more help. Past recessions have had a very damaging impact on young people, who should have been starting their working lives, but instead were unemployed. Our package of support for the young already includes a place for every 16 and 17-year-old in education or training. I intend to provide funding so that this guarantee will be available to school leavers again next September. In the Budget, I went further and announced that every 18 to 24-year-old would be guaranteed work or training after 12 months out of work. I do not want them to have to wait that long, however, so I am going to bring that forward. I have decided that, from next month, no one under 24 needs to be unemployed for longer than six months before being guaranteed work or training.

In the past, older people were allowed—indeed, often encouraged—to drift into permanent unemployment, but we cannot afford to write off their experience. So we will ensure that the over-50s receive specialist and tailored support to equip them with the confidence and skills they need to get a job. We also want to encourage those who want to stay working part-time after they reach retirement age, and to make work pay for everyone, regardless of their age. To make it easier for those over 65 to receive the working tax credit, we will reduce the minimum number of hours they need to work to be eligible.

We chose not to let people sink when they lost their jobs, but to intervene to help them to stay afloat. That is good for the individuals and their families, and also for the wider economy, boosting spending and, in turn, creating new jobs. The more successful our targeted support, the more likely that the rise in unemployment will be lower than expected and therefore cost the country less, as has already happened. Government action has made a real difference.

The worldwide recession has had an impact on all families, and it is often the most vulnerable who are affected the most, including those on modest incomes who have been put on shorter hours. The Government’s flexible tax credits system has risen to the challenge of the downturn, delivering substantial support to families to compensate for that loss of pay. I can tell the House that so far this year, because of tax credits 400,000 families whose income has fallen have benefited from that extra help—on average by £37 more per week. For those who doubt the value of tax credits, here is the proof that they work.

The recession has also had other effects. For the first time in half a century, the retail prices index has been negative for much of the year. That helps families with the cost of essential goods, but many benefits and tax credits are also linked to the September RPI. RPI inflation last September was minus 1.4 per cent. That would have meant no increase in those benefits in April. I do not believe that such a freeze would be fair, so I can confirm that the basic state pension will not be frozen, but will rise by 2.5 per cent. in April—a real-terms increase of nearly 4 per cent.

I can also tell the House that, from the time of the Budget, I will cut bingo duty from 22 to 20 per cent.—[Interruption.]Obviously a popular measure. I also want to help families in receipt of other benefits linked to the inflation figures, such as child benefit and some disability benefits, so those benefits will rise by 1.5 per cent. in April.

We are committed to helping people back into work, and making work pay. I have decided to roll out across the country a guarantee that anyone in work will always be better off than they were on benefits. If that is not happening already, they will be guaranteed extra money from the Government, making sure that work really does pay for everyone and encouraging more people to re-enter the labour market. So we are continuing to provide targeted support for people and businesses, as we secure the recovery.

Across world economies, the first half of this year saw a sharper deterioration than had been expected. That was also true here in the UK. Up to the third quarter of this year, the global recession has meant a cumulative economic contraction of 3.2 per cent. in the United States, 5.6 per cent. in Germany, 5.9 per cent. in Italy and 7.7 per cent. in Japan. Over the year as a whole, the UK economy is expected to have contracted by 4.75 per cent. this year, but as I forecast at the Budget, I expect a return to growth in the fourth quarter.

Next year, I forecast growth of between 1 and 1.5 per cent., as I said in the Budget. Because of the underlying strength of our economy, the pick-up in world demand and the substantial spare capacity opened up by the recession, my Budget forecast, broadly in line with that of the Bank of England, of growth of 3.5 per cent. in 2011 and 2012 remains unchanged. This growth, however, will come from more varied sources and not depend as much on the financial sector, which will, of course, remain an important part of our economy. Growth will be driven by fresh opportunities to export as the global economy expands and by investment by businesses in the key industries of the future. It is growth that I am determined to support in this pre-Budget report.

Partly because of the reversal of the VAT cut, consumer inflation will rise from 1.5 per cent. to around 3 per cent. early next year, before falling back. The Bank of England expects inflation then to fall below target and reach 1.5 per cent. by the end of next year.

The global recession has had an impact on the public finances in every country, with tax revenues falling and spending increasing to support the economy. Here in the United Kingdom, the financial sector, which provided over a quarter of all corporate tax revenues, has been hard hit. Revenues from stamp duty and income tax are sharply down and it will take time for tax revenues to recover.

Our steps to maintain stability in the banking sector have also had an impact on the public finances. At the Budget, given the extreme uncertainty at the time, I made a provisional £50 billion estimate of the possible taxpayer losses from our interventions in the financial sector. Those risks have now significantly diminished because of the successful intervention of Governments to support the global financial system. Lloyds Banking Group, for example, has been able to raise capital from the markets and is not receiving Government support in the asset protection scheme. We have also restructured RBS’s participation in that scheme, so there are no expected losses for the taxpayer. Other banks are also in a much more stable situation. As a result, I can revise down my provision for any potential impact on the public finances from £50 billion to around £10 billion, but our objective remains to get all the taxpayers’ money back, on top of the fees charged for supporting banks through this crisis.

I have made clear that support during the downturn must go hand-in-hand with steps to rebuild our fiscal strength once recovery is firmly established. Backed by legislation introduced today, the Government will ensure that public sector net borrowing as a share of GDP falls every year and is more than halved by 2013-14, and that net debt as a share of GDP is falling in 2015-16. I believe that that is a sensible timetable. To consolidate too soon, too quickly or too indiscriminately, as some have proposed, would risk delaying the recovery and threatening a longer recession. When Japan tightened prematurely in the 1990s, it pushed the economy back into recession, making debt and deficits higher, not lower.

Taken as a whole, this pre-Budget report secures a fall in borrowing each year until 2013-14 to meet our deficit reduction plan. In the Budget, I forecast that public sector net borrowing would be £175 billion this year and would then fall to £97 billion in 2013-14. Because of the severity of the recession, my forecast for this year’s borrowing is £178 billion. Next year it will fall to £176 billion. As the economy recovers and the deficit reduction plan starts to take effect, it will fall to £140 billion and then to £117 billion, and will reach £96 billion in 2013-14—a slightly lower level than I forecast in April—before falling to £82 billion in 2014-15. As a share of GDP, borrowing will be 12.6 per cent. this year, 12 per cent. next year, then 9.1 per cent, then 7.1 per cent., and 5.5 per cent. in 2013-14. It will fall to 4.4 per cent. in 2014-15. If we exclude public sector investment, or capital spending, and take the economic cycle into account, the budget deficit is expected to fall to 1.9 per cent. at the end of the forecast period.

Public sector debt has increased in every G20 country as a result of this global recession. Net debt as a share of GDP is expected to reach 82 per cent. in Germany, 83 per cent. in France, and 85 per cent. in the United States. As a result of the lower provision for possible losses in our financial sector this year, I can forecast that net debt will reach 56 per cent. of GDP. It will then rise to 65 per cent. next year, and to 78 per cent. by the end of the forecast period in 2014-15. However, net debt as a share of GDP will fall the year after that. Even at its peak, debt will be in line with the average for the other G7 economies.

I believe that we have made the right choices to help the country through the recession when we could have chosen to do nothing. We also need to make the right choices to reduce the deficit. In the Budget, I set out how we would do that by encouraging growth now and in the future, with fair tax increases and with tighter control of public spending. I now want to set out further details of how we will achieve this deficit reduction plan.

The combination of the talents of the British people and today’s low inflation and low interest rate environment provides us with a strong platform to meet our ambition of long-term sustainable growth—so does having the most flexible labour market in Europe, the lowest rate of corporation tax in the G7, and a competition regime that is among the best in the world. That is why ours is judged to be one of the best locations in which to do business and attract inward investment. I am determined to build on those strengths today by maintaining our leadership in the low-carbon sector, boosting investment in our national infrastructure and skills, and supporting our world-class high-tech industries.

In line with the overall neutrality of this pre-Budget report, two thirds of the targeted measures that I shall now announce come from within existing budgets. If businesses are to expand and grow, they need access to credit. Following the intervention by the Government, total bank loans to businesses today are above where they were when the crisis hit in 2007. We have seen over £50 billion in new business loans from RBS and Lloyds alone. But unsurprisingly, at the same time other businesses have reacted to the uncertainty by repaying existing loans, which is why net lending as a whole is down. I am very aware that some small and medium-sized businesses still encounter difficulties in obtaining loans. As recovery gets under way, we shall need to ensure that SMEs obtain the credit they need. We must work with the banks to ensure that that happens. We are also working to secure a contribution from major banks towards a £500 million growth capital fund which will invest specifically in small businesses. We will announce further details shortly.

In January we launched the enterprise finance guarantee, which has already offered Government guarantees on bank loans to over 6,000 businesses. Today I have decided to extend the scheme for a further 12 months, which will guarantee a further £500 million of loans to small businesses.

This week sees the start of the UN conference on climate change, an historic opportunity for the reaching of a universal agreement to tackle global warming. We can be proud that the UK has led the way: on meeting Kyoto targets, introducing carbon budgets, and recognising that developing countries need help to reduce their own emissions. Tackling climate change will bring new opportunities for new low-carbon industries, and that will create the high-skilled, high-paid jobs that are crucial to our future prosperity.

Today I can redirect existing funding and invest in wind power, renewable energy and other green industries. Through the innovation investment fund and the Carbon Trust’s venture capital scheme, we will support at least £160 million of public and private investment in low-carbon projects. We will also invest £90 million in the European Investment Bank’s new 2020 fund, which will enable €6.5 billion of finance to be made available for green infrastructure projects. I can also tell the House that we will double our commitment to finance four carbon capture and storage demonstration projects, which will make us world leaders in that vital area.

As well as investing in clean and low-carbon technologies, we must all become more energy-efficient and cut emissions as well as household bills. The roll-out of smart meters, which will be completed in 2020, will help families to identify how to become more energy-efficient. Improving home insulation is key. A quarter of all the country’s emissions come from households. Already 235,000 homes have benefited from the Warm Front scheme to provide more efficient heating and insulation for the most vulnerable. Today I can announce an additional £200 million, from April, to help with energy efficiency. An extra 75,000 households will benefit from an extension of the scheme. That will go alongside further requirements, amounting to up to £300 million overall, for the energy companies to provide discounts on energy bills for a further 1 million low-income households.

Inefficient domestic boilers add over £200 to household bills and 1 tonne of carbon to the atmosphere each year. I therefore want to build on the successful car scrappage scheme. I want to help 125,000 homes to replace those inefficient boilers with new models. I can also announce changes to the climate change levy, company car tax, and fuel benefit charge.

I have three more targeted measures to announce. From April, people with home wind turbines or solar panels who plug excess power into the national grid will receive, on average, £900 a year. I intend to make that payment tax-free. To help to boost the number of electric cars on our streets, I have decided to exempt them from company car tax for five years. I can also announce 100 per cent. first-year capital allowances for electric vans.

A key component of our growth strategy is investment to keep goods and people moving. The Government have made huge strides in rebuilding the national infrastructure following years of neglect. Continued public investment here is essential to growth. This year public sector investment reached a 30-year high, and has delivered more than 70 road and motorway schemes and improved journey times across the rail network. Work is now under way on Crossrail, the Thameslink project and, from this month, the upgrade of the M1. All that work will continue; so will the rail electrification programmes for the Great Western main line and the north-west that were announced in July.

I have given the go-ahead to further plans for rail electrification between Liverpool, Manchester and Preston. My right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will announce further details shortly. The Government will also respond, early next year, to the proposals for a new high-speed rail line from London to the west midlands and to the north and Scotland.

Since 1997, we have helped millions of people gain qualifications or training. The number of apprenticeships has doubled. New advanced apprenticeships will meet the skills needed in key growth areas, such as advanced manufacturing, low carbon, digital technologies, and the biosciences. We also want to break down informal barriers that close off some careers to undergraduates, particularly from poorer backgrounds, so I can announce that we will offer financial support for up to 10,000 undergraduates from low-income backgrounds to take up short-term internships in industry, businesses and the professions. This will give them a taste of careers that they may not otherwise have considered. We will announce further details shortly.

We are modernising the UK’s digital infrastructure and, in the process, creating thousands more skilled jobs. We have provided funding to help extend the opportunities of the broadband network to more remote communities. We now want to go further, so that we can provide the next generation of super-fast broadband to 90 per cent. of the population by the end of 2017. That will be funded through a duty of 50p a month on landlines, which will be included in the Finance Bill.

The oil and gas industry is an essential part of our economy. To encourage further investment, I am today relaxing the criteria of the field allowances, to support the development of up to eight known fields and to encourage further exploration. We will work with industry to look at how best to ensure the development of infrastructure to the west of Shetland.

We already have a tremendous track record in key growth industries. We have the leading medical biotechnology sector in Europe. Our aerospace industry is the second largest in the world. Our creative sector has increased exports by 60 per cent. since the beginning of this decade. All of that has been supported through our investment in science and our targeted tax policy. This country has a remarkable record of ideas and innovation. We have won more Nobel prizes than any other country of our size. We need to do more to support this ingenuity and ensure this creativity is harnessed by this country. I want to encourage research and development in the pharmaceuticals and biotech industries in particular. So, following consultation with business, I will introduce a new 10 pence corporation tax on income that stems from patents in the UK. This will help maintain jobs in science and technology in this country. 

I also want to build on our world-class achievements in medical research. With the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK and University college London, we are working on plans to establish the largest institute in Europe for research into long-term medical challenges. The new strategic investment fund, set up in April, has already agreed vital support to hi-tech projects such as Airbus in Wales and the life sciences in Scotland. We will expand this work through £100 million of redirected funds and an extra £100 million. By supporting the low-carbon sector and investing in our vital infrastructure and our world-class industries, we will secure growth, create new jobs and provide the revenue to help rebuild our fiscal strength.

Supporting growth is vital to provide the future revenue to halve borrowing over the next four years, but, as I have said, it also requires us to take some tough decisions on tax now. I am determined that any tax increases will continue to be guided by our values of fairness and responsibility. Last year, the banks made collective losses of £80 billion in this country alone. This would have been much higher without the unprecedented level of support from the taxpayer. There is no bank that has not benefited, either directly or indirectly, from this help. This should be a time for banks to rebuild their capital base and become stronger. A tax on profits, as has been suggested, would prevent them from doing that, so I have decided against a windfall tax. However, there are some banks who still believe their priority is to pay substantial bonuses to some already high-paid staff. Their priority should be to rebuild their financial strength and increase their lending, so I am giving them a choice: they can use their profits to build up their capital base, but if they insist on paying substantial rewards, I am determined to claw money back for the taxpayer. I have decided to introduce from today a special one-off levy of 50 per cent. on any individual discretionary bonus above £25,000. This will be paid by the bank, not the bank employee, and anti-avoidance measures will be introduced with immediate effect. High-paid bank staff will, of course, also have to pay, as usual, income tax at their top rate on any bonus they receive. On a cautious assumption, which includes our expectation that some banks will rein back on bonuses, this levy is expected to yield just over £500 million. That additional money will be used to pay for the extra measures that I have already announced, such as help for the young and older unemployed to get back into work.

Under the existing rules, the highest earners benefit disproportionately from tax relief on pensions. At present, a quarter of all the money spent on pensions tax relief goes to the top 1.5 per cent. of earners. To make this fairer, I announced in the Budget that we would reduce pension tax relief for people with incomes of over £150,000. I want to do that as fairly as possible, and to treat individuals the same regardless of whether they receive their pay as current salary or as a future pension benefit, and prevent avoidance, so I have decided to include employer pension contributions in the definition of income for this tax measure. To provide certainty, I will introduce a floor so that, irrespective of the size of employer pension contributions, no one with an income below £130,000 will be affected.

I believe it is right that parents should be able to pass on savings to their children. Before the financial crisis rocked the global economy, I enabled married couples to combine their inheritance tax allowances, and this will continue. I also said then that allowances would rise to reflect inflation and the expected continued increase in house prices, but I do not believe that raising this allowance can possibly be a priority given the impact of the downturn on the country’s finances, so I have decided to freeze the individual allowance at £325,000 for the next year. That will still mean that fewer than 3 per cent. of estates will pay inheritance tax.

I have decided against any further changes to income tax rates or thresholds next year, except for some changes in what can be tax-deductible. Because RPI inflation was negative in September, this will provide a real-terms benefit relative to inflation, but in April 2012 I have decided to freeze the point at which people start to pay income tax at 40 per cent. for one year. No one with income below £43,000 will be affected by this change.

It is also fair that those who should pay tax do not escape their responsibilities. I am determined to tackle activities such as avoidance and evasion, which undermine tax receipts. Since the Budget, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has asked for details of at least 100,000 offshore accounts held at over 300 financial institutions. This pre-Budget report sets out anti-avoidance and smaller tax measures to deliver additional revenues and protect £5 billion a year of existing revenues.

These are tough, but necessary, measures to increase tax, but I have done this in a fair way: those on modest incomes are protected; those on middle incomes will pay more, depending on their earnings; but the biggest burden will fall on those with the broadest shoulders. Today’s measures, combined with those from the Budget and last year’s pre-Budget report, mean that over half of the additional revenue raised will be paid by the top 2 per cent. of earners.

Fairness in tax is a crucial part of maintaining fiscal sustainability, but the majority of the reduction in borrowing will have to come from slower growth in overall public spending. We have already set out our spending plans until April 2011, but I believe it would be dangerous, as the head of the International Monetary Fund said only a couple of weeks ago, to reduce spending too soon, so to continue to support jobs and the economy, we have decided to stick to our spending plans for next year. In 2010-11, total public spending will increase by £31 billion, a growth rate of 2.2 per cent. in real terms, providing continuing strong support for the wider economy until the recovery is firmly established. Once recovery is secured, we must, as I made clear at the time of the Budget, reduce the rate of growth in public spending, and meet our ambitious target to halve the deficit.

We take these decisions from a position of strength. In 1997, our public services were in crisis. Chronic under-investment in health and education had taken its toll: hospitals with too few nurses and doctors to meet the needs of patients; schools with too few teachers, textbooks and computers. The country had failed, too, to invest in transport and national infrastructure, all of which was damaging to our economy and prosperity. That was the record we inherited and that was the record we had to deal with. We have worked to turn it around, through a combination of strong investment and far-reaching reform.

So, although the period ahead is going to be challenging, our public services are in a better state they have been for decades. However, we have to be realistic: the spending environment will be tough over the next few years. For as long as extraordinary uncertainties remain in the world economy, this is not a time for a spending review. We have already set out clear and firm departmental budgets for the next financial year, but to try to fix each Department’s budget now for the next five years is neither necessary nor sensible. We can, however, set out a clear direction, based on our economic priorities and our values as a Government.

We are clear that, following the investment made over the past decade, current spending growth can be set lower than in the past and fall to an average of 0.8 per cent. a year between 2011-12 and 2014-15. That will mean cuts to some budgets, as programmes come to an end or resources are switched, and it will mean that some programmes will need to be stopped altogether. We believe that if Departments can find further savings and cuts within their existing budgets, as many are already announcing, that will release resources so that they can continue to provide services. Already individual Departments have made great strides in finding savings—£10 billion in the NHS, £800 million in education and more than £400 million in the police—but even in this much tighter financial environment we are determined to protect front-line services and sustain the improvements that have been delivered over the past decade. The pre-Budget report sets out our plan to do that while halving the deficit.

First, we must make sure that we get maximum value for every pound we spend. Between 2005 and 2008, we delivered £26.5 billion of annual efficiency savings, and between 2008 and 2011 we are delivering further efficiencies worth more than 3 per cent. of total departmental spending per year. This week, we announced plans to deliver another round of savings, amounting to £12 billion a year by 2013-14. We will abolish quangos, cut consultancy and marketing costs, improve procurement and streamline back-office functions. We will also sell those assets that can be managed better by the private sector.

Secondly, we need to focus better on those areas that make most difference to people’s lives. We have begun a root-and-branch review to examine every area of Government spending to drive through efficiency, to cut waste and to cut lower priority budgets. Today, I am able to announce £5 billion of savings from spending programmes. This includes: phasing-in the roll-out of pension personal accounts; cutting back on the scope of major IT projects; reforming legal aid and outsourcing inefficient prisons; refocusing regeneration spending, so that it is spent where it is most needed; and cutting the cost of residential care by supporting older people to stay in their own homes. Those are necessary choices.

Thirdly, on public sector pay and pensions, public pensions need to be broadly in line with those offered in the private sector. So, by 2012 contributions by the state to public sector pensions for teachers, local government, the NHS and the civil service will be capped, saving about £1 billion a year. Public sector workers will make a greater contribution to the increasing value of pensions, with those earning more than £100,000 paying more. Public sector pay makes up about half of departmental spending. The senior civil service will take the lead with a cut in its pay bill of up to £100 million over three years, and any new Government appointment of someone on more than £150,000 and all bonuses of more than £50,000 will require explicit approval by the Treasury. I can announce that for the two years from 2011 we will ensure that all public sector pay settlements are capped at 1 per cent. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Bellingham, we have, on a regular basis, a running commentary from you, but the House does not need it and the country does not need it either.

Mr. Darling
As with previous pay decisions, we will recognise the special circumstances of the armed forces. There will be savings of £12 billion from greater efficiency, of £5 billion from scaling back or cutting lower priorities, and of more than £4.5 billion from reducing the cost of public sector pay and pensions. These are difficult choices, but they are essential if we are to stick to our plan to halve the deficit and protect the front line.

Our first priority today must be to ensure that our armed forces have all the resources they need. The whole House, especially this week, will want to join me in praising the dedication and valour of our troops, especially those engaged in the conflict in Afghanistan. They deserve all our support and we must match that support with resources. For the next year, I can announce that a further £2.5 billion will be set aside for military operations in Afghanistan. At the same time, we will continue to improve the effectiveness of core defence spending, reducing the civilian work force and restructuring the Department. I also want to do more to help those who have served in combat zones and are retiring from the forces, so I can announce that £5 million will be allocated from the strategic investment fund to help ex-service personnel who want to set up their own businesses.

In 2005, we led the way towards abolishing the debts of the poorest countries, and we have committed to doing more in the fight against global poverty. Spending on overseas aid remains a very small proportion of our overall budget, but it does make a huge difference to the lives of millions of people, as well as creating a fairer world, helping to build markets for our goods and countering extremism. I can confirm that we will honour our commitments, so spending on overseas aid will rise to 0.7 per cent of gross national income by 2013.

Our priority is to protect those services that are absolutely essential to the health of our society and the strength of our economy: the health service, which is crucial for our well-being; the police force, which is crucial for our safety; and our schools, which are crucial for our future. I am determined that we will protect improvements in those front-line services, on which millions of people rely. That cannot be done without a further difficult decision. I intend to increase all employer, employee and self-employed rates of national insurance by a further half pence from April 2011. But to protect those on modest incomes, I have also decided to raise the starting point from which national insurance is payable, and no-one earning less than £20,000 will pay more contributions as a result. This will raise £3 billion a year from 2011-12.

As a result, I am today able to offer guaranteed minimum real-terms increases in front-line NHS and schools spending for two years from 2011, as well as providing sufficient funding to maintain the number of police and community support officers. That means that I can confirm not just that we will increase spending as planned next year on hospitals, schools and policing, but we can pledge that spending on these crucial front-line services will continue to rise over and above inflation after 2010-11, so that we can meet the improved public service guarantees and entitlements that we have set out. There will of course be Barnett consequentials for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I have one further announcement to make: because of my decisions today, I am able to extend free school meals to 500,000 primary school children of low-income working parents who previously would not have been eligible. Once that is fully rolled out, it will lift an additional 50,000 children out of relative poverty and will be a step towards our target of abolishing child poverty by 2020.

The decisions the Government have made have helped support businesses and families through the deepest global recession for more than 60 years. These are decisions that have been followed across the world but, of course, have been opposed by some here. The steps that I have announced today are aimed at securing recovery, reducing borrowing and, through targeted investment, providing a springboard for long-term growth. The choice facing the country is between securing recovery and wrecking it; between investment to build a fair society where all prosper or a divided society that favours the wealthy few; and between ambition driven by the values of fairness and opportunity or austerity driven by an outdated dogma. I commend this statement to the House.

Mr. George Osborne (Tatton) (Con)
Today, confronted with the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history, the right hon. Gentleman faced a choice: would he take the tough spending decisions before the general election or would he completely duck them? We were promised a pre-Budget report and what we got was a pre-election report. The Government have today lost all the moral authority to govern. Instead, the full scale of the economic disaster that Labour has visited on this country is clear to us all: the biggest debt we have ever known; spending cut on almost everything; taxes up on anyone who earns more than £20,000 a year; Labour’s new tax on jobs; and higher interest rates to pay for the higher borrowing. Every family in the country will be forced to pay for years for this Prime Minister’s mistakes. At the end of their period in office, they have indeed adhered to the greatest of golden rules: “Never trust a Labour Government with your money again.”

Everything that the Government have told us on the economy collapses in the face of the truth. They told us that they would be prudent, and the figures that they have produced have shown us that Labour has quadrupled the national debt while in office. They told us that Britain was better prepared than other countries, and now our budget deficit is higher than that of any other comparable country anywhere else in the world. They specifically told us—this Prime Minister told us—that Britain would lead the world out of recession, and now the rest of the world leaves Britain behind as it recovers.

We are the only G20 economy in recession, and that Prime Minister used to stand at the Dispatch Box on occasions like this and say that he had rewritten the laws of economics, that he had abolished the trade cycle, and that he had abolished boom and bust. The numbers that the Chancellor has given us confirm that this Prime Minister inflicted on us the deepest and longest recession in our modern history. No one will ever believe a word they say on the economy again.

Faced with this catastrophe, the Chancellor had three tasks today: first, to restore confidence in the Treasury forecasts; secondly, to produce at last—we hoped—a credible plan to deal with Britain’s record debts; and finally, to show the world that Britain is open for business again and can create jobs. He failed on all three accounts.

First, the forecasts. Every single time this Chancellor has come to this House, he has got his forecasts wrong, and today was no different. He confirmed that the GDP figures for this year show a contraction of 4.75 per cent. That is not only a full percentage point worse than the figure in the Budget—it is almost four times worse than when he delivered the last pre-Budget report. I noticed in his speech a little sleight of hand. He gave the annual contraction figure for the UK and the total contraction figure for every other country. The total contraction figure for the UK is 5.9 per cent., the worst since the 1930s.

It would be difficult to imagine that this year’s forecast for borrowing would be an underestimate, but so it turned out to be. I am told that they are having a row in Downing street: the Prime Minister wants to get his forecasts wrong on purpose, while the Chancellor prefers to get them wrong by accident. Either way, Britain is borrowing £178 billion this year and £176 billion next year. This is a figure that he did not give: £789 billion of additional borrowing over the next six years, and that is based on some pretty heroic growth assumptions in future years. Of course, a sneaky fiddling of the definition of the structural deficit was buried in the report. It all amounts to the fact that he is doubling the national debt from where it is today to £1.4 trillion—£23,000 for every child born today.

Without a hint of irony or contrition, the Chancellor publishes today what is farcically called a Fiscal Responsibility Bill—as if we needed a law to tell us that their irresponsibility has been criminal. This is what one of the Prime Minister’s own appointments to the Monetary Policy Committee has just said about their law:

“Fiscal responsibility acts are instruments of the fiscally irresponsible to con the public.”

The Chancellor should have introduced our plan for a proper, independent office for budget responsibility that will keep the Chancellor honest and ensure that never again can a Government fail to fix the roof when the sun is shining.

So, the Chancellor has not restored confidence in Treasury forecasts. That was his first task. His second was to set out a credible plan to deal with the debt crisis. Yesterday, as he well knows, another credit rating agency warned that that the UK was at risk of a downgrade. Even this morning, the deputy leader of the Labour party was admitting on television that markets are getting more nervous than they were about Government borrowing. The Governor of the Bank of England says that we must

“eliminate a large part of the structural deficit”

over the lifetime of this Parliament. I agree with the man in charge of monetary policy in this country. Yet today the Chancellor is sticking with the same plan that he set out in the Budget—the plan that the Bank of England, the CBI and the OECD have all told him is not credible. The whole object of policy going forward as we come into recovery is to keep interest rates as low as possible for as long as possible. That is not what his recipe provides today.

As the debts have become bigger, so the Government’s response gets smaller. What the Chancellor had to say to the House today on spending is just not credible. He promises more efficiency savings, but coming from the people who have just admitted that they wasted £4 billion on an NHS computer system, that rings a little hollow. As for the waste advisers who wrote those reports that the Chancellor is publishing today, they have lived up to their names by deciding that they will not waste any more time with him: they are working with us.

Then there are the proposals on bankers. We warned the Chancellor two months ago that he should try to stop big cash bonuses being paid out. I said in my conference speech that we should look at the tax system. Let us be clear: the Government are going to pay out a load of bankers’ bonuses that they should not have been paying out in the first place, then put a one-year windfall tax on them and declare it a triumph. The real test of this new tax will be whether it curbs bank bonuses instead of curbing bank lending. Let us hope that it is more effective than those binding lending agreements that we once heard so much about at that Dispatch Box.

The Government say that they will use the money on youth unemployment, because instead of abolishing it, as promised, the Prime Minister has led youth unemployment to a record high. We need a real, lasting plan to get Britain working and to deal not just with the million or more people who have lost their job under Labour, but the millions more who have never had a job under Labour.

On spending, the Chancellor is prepared to tell us what he will spend money on, but he stays almost totally silent on where the real axe will fall. He is achieving the previously impossible trick of ring-fencing a black hole. He said, with understatement, that this is not the time for a comprehensive spending review. This is from a Chancellor who said that that he was acting from a position of strength! Why is it not the time for a comprehensive spending review? The Government have all the figures and they have access to all the information that they need. They had spending reviews just before the 2001 election and just before the 2005 election. Now, suddenly, the spending review has to wait until after the 2010 election. That spending review is the massive missing piece of this pre-Budget report. They have given us lavish detail on the few things that they say that they are protecting, and almost nothing on the many things that they are planning to cut. They are not being honest with the British people about the real price of their incompetence. This has got nothing to do with protecting front-line services and everything to do with protecting themselves. What we see today is not a credible plan on the debt, and the Chancellor has failed his second task.

The Chancellor’s final task was to set out a real plan for growth. What does he propose? A higher tax on jobs. That is his answer to Britain’s unemployment problem—higher costs for struggling businesses and more money taken from families. That is yet another thing that we could have avoided if this Government had taken the hard decisions in the good years.

Let me just say this about some of the tax measures that the Chancellor has announced in the Budget, the last pre-Budget report and this pre-Budget report. The message to aspiring families from these tax changes is pretty clear: if you want to get on in life, if you want to own your own home, save for a pension or leave something for your children, then the Labour party is not for you anymore. All that work Labour did to drag the party on to the centre ground of British politics, as well as all the effort it made to persuade the country that it was for enterprise and aspiration, is gone. Instead, it has erected a sign over the country that says, “Closed to enterprise and wealth creation,” all for the sake of narrow political dividing lines. Instead of telling the country that we are all in this together, Labour now pretends that it can solve our problems by setting one part of the country against another. At the next election, it will be the few who support this approach and the many who reject it.

Instead of a plan for growth and jobs, the Chancellor’s plan means higher taxes, higher taxes on jobs, higher interest rates and turning his back on aspiration and enterprise. His third and final task—failed. There is no confidence, no credible plan, no growth and aspiration is being abandoned.

Why is it that every Labour Government have taken this country to the brink of bankruptcy? Each one in turn seems to ignore the most basic rule of finance: if you keep on spending more than you earn, sooner or later you run out of money. How difficult can it be for them to remember this simple point? The country now faces a choice. There is Labour’s route, which has been set out for us today: higher debts leading to higher taxes and higher interest rates; the recovery choked off; and Britain reduced again to being the sick man of Europe. Or people can choose our route, which is to face up to the problem; set out to eliminate a large part of the deficit in the Parliament for which we are accountable; expect everyone to share the burden, but protect the lowest paid; keep interest rates lower for longer; send the message out loud and clear that Britain is open for business; and transform the economy that Labour built on debt into one in which we save and invest for our future. That is not going to happen under this Government.

The Prime Minister—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the shadow Chancellor. Mr. Prentice, you must calm down. You might have an opportunity later, but you must calm down now.

Mr. Osborne
The Prime Minister always called himself the nation’s bank manager, and so he has been. He bet the nation’s finances on a never-ending property bubble and a City bonanza, and now, like every other failed master of the universe, he is coming to the taxpayer and asking to be bailed out, but he should remember this: most bail-outs start with a change at the top.

Mr. Darling
I have listened to the shadow Chancellor speak for the past 10 minutes or so, and there is one word that he did not mention—one word that he finds quite impossible to let pass his lips: “growth”. Not once did he mention the possibility of achieving growth. He did not mention it in his conference speech, and he did not mention it today, because it is the one thing that the Conservative party seems quite incapable of realising—that we must secure long-term sustainable growth in this country. The alternative that he offered—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. I am sorry to have to interrupt the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I must say, Mr. Blunt, that this constant heckling is not impressive to the people of this country. It conveys a very bad impression of the House. Stop it.

Mr. Darling
Growth is absolutely essential for our long-term future. The hon. Gentleman also barely mentioned unemployment and the need to take measures to get unemployment down. He did not say whether or not he supports the measures that I have put before the House today to get people back into jobs and to make sure that people do not find that a short spell on benefit ends up being a lifetime in long-term unemployment. He did not say where he stands on our priorities of ensuring that we protect the front-line NHS, ensuring that we have got schools for the future and making sure that we have got enough policemen on the beat. He says absolutely nothing about that.

Fundamentally, yes there is a big issue before us. Because of this downturn, we, like every other country in the world, face much higher borrowing than we would like. It has resulted in debt increases, but the question is this: at what rate and how quickly do we reduce that borrowing and debt, and how do we do that? Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should have a word with the Leader of the Opposition, who seems to be talking to himself just now. On Sunday, when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking to the BBC and was asked about our proposals to reduce the debt, he said:

“I don’t think it is fast enough.”

On Tuesday—another day, another audience—when he was asked about reducing deficit, he replied:

“Of course, there is a danger, if you do too much too early, you would choke off some demand.”

That is precisely the argument between the two political parties. Certainly on Tuesday, the Leader of the Opposition seemed to agree with our point of view that, yes we have to reduce the deficit, but we have to do it in a way that is orderly and does not damage demand.

Of course, that comes to the heart of the problem that the Conservatives have. They cannot tell us what action they would take. Not once in the 10 minutes that he spoke did the shadow Chancellor actually say what he would do either in protecting services or in reducing debt. Indeed, all we do know is that he is committed to taking action more quickly. He gave the impression just now that he wanted to cut the deficit, perhaps in the next Parliament, but if we do that we will end up having to cut something like £25 billion more. If that is his policy, he will have to spell out where he is going to take that money from. Who would feel the brunt if that money were taken away?

The shadow Chancellor went on to criticise us for having a lack of aspiration. Both of us expect to be judged—the British public will choose—but I have to tell him that I represent a constituency in which people are aspirational. They want to get on and they want to do the best they can for themselves and their families, but they honestly do not see that the first priority in that is giving a tax break to a tiny minority of the top estates in this country. I really think it is time that he rethought his priorities. We believe that public services help many people in this country. People accept that they have to be paid for and they accept the value of hospitals and of  the schools that their children go to, but they also want to make sure that as we come through this crisis, just as we had to take difficult decisions with the banks over a year ago, we take difficult decisions now but in a way that reduces the deficit but does not damage our economy at the same time. Yes, all of us need to be fully engaged in that, and all of us are. What we have heard from the shadow Chancellor today is long on politics and very short on good ideas.

Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham) (LD)
I thank the Chancellor for sending me his statement, even though it was missing 43 paragraphs.

What is clear from the statement is that the economic position of the country is still very grave. We know now that we are 5 per cent. poorer than we were a year ago, and that the Government estimates of borrowing for this year and next year are higher than even they had forecast. What we needed was a national economic plan, but what we have got is an election manifesto.

There have been genuinely great Labour Chancellors in the past—Stafford Cripps and Roy Jenkins, among others—but they would not have been obsessed, as the Chancellor is today, with drawing tactical dividing lines. There are small things that one welcomes, such as initiatives on jobs for young people, on technology and on environmental policies. This is a good Budget for bingo and boilers; I think that is what it boils down to.

The underlying problem, however, is that for the past decade or more, the British Government have been over-dependent for their revenues on the fickle fortunes of the banking industry. We have had an economy that has been built on sand—on the assumption that property prices rise for ever, and on consumer borrowing—and the economy is now being rebuilt on sand, because the only signs of real recovery that we have are rising house prices and booming bank profits at a time when industry is continuing to decline.

Let me speak specifically about the banks. The Chancellor has clearly been provoked into action by the extraordinarily stupid and arrogant behaviour of the RBS board. What he has come up with, to the extent that it is intelligible, is an extraordinarily complex mechanism. Will he explain precisely how he will stop the banks converting their bonuses into basic salary? He talks about avoidance measures, but how is he going to stop that? Will he give us a worked example of what it means in reality?

Let us take as an example Mr. Bob Diamond of Barclays Capital, who has just walked away with £27 million on the back of a taxpayer guarantee. How would that be affected by the Government’s proposal? Surely it makes more sense, as I think the Prime Minister entertained when he went to the G20 summit, not to try to tax bankers separately from other high earners, but to have a levy on bank profits because the banks depend on a taxpayer guarantee. Until they can be broken up and can stand on their own two feet, they have to pay for the insurance that the taxpayer provides.

The heart of the Chancellor’s statement was about the borrowing requirement and the long-term problem of the structural deficit. What we needed was a clear, long-term way of dealing with this problem. What we had, to the extent to which we can understand the early statement that he made, was that there is an increase in  tax—approximately £6 billion to £7 billion a year—much of which will be in the form of national insurance. Let us be clear about what will now happen. Any worker earning more than £7,000 a year will pay 32 per cent. marginal income tax and 12 per cent. national insurance contributions. All the money raised in additional tax will go to public spending, and none will be used to pay down the borrowing requirement and the deficit. That is a complete distortion of the priorities that the Government should surely have.

In respect of timing, it is obviously right that we heed the advice of the Governor of the Bank of England and others that, if the economy is continuing to stagnate, it makes no sense to embark on rapid cuts in public expenditure and reducing the deficit. That is the problem that the Conservatives have got themselves into, but it is also right that, if there is rapid growth, the Government must get on with dealing with the deficit. What the Government have assumed today is that there will be high rates of economic growth—3.5 per cent. in 2011—but what is the basis for that assumption?

It is a little like the old story of the economist who is given a tin of food to eat and says, “Let’s assume the existence of a tin opener.” The Government are saying, “Let’s assume economic growth.” Why? Have they made any estimate of the very real risk that the economy will revert to a double-dip recession or continue to stagnate? What is the risk of those things happening—is it one in 10, one in five, or one in two? Surely we cannot operate on the basis of a single-line forecast that is based entirely on optimism and very little else.

To the extent that we can understand what the Government are doing about cutting public spending growth, it comes down to two items. Perhaps the Chancellor will confirm that. One of the items involves hitting low-paid workers by cutting the proposal for personal allowances, which I understand has been postponed or deferred. The other is the approach adopted to public sector pay. On the assumption that the Government have made, a 1 per cent. increase for a low-paid manual worker is a real cut. Of course, it is worth 10 times as much for a permanent secretary on £150,000 a year as it is to a worker on £15,000 a year. If there is to be restraint—and we have argued for it—surely it should be a flat sum across the board. We have argued that it should be £8 a week for everyone. That is the heart of the issue of fairness, which the Chancellor claimed was at the heart of his statement.

Of course it is right that we should be concerned with fairness in the tax system and in public spending priorities. The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) keeps saying that we are all in this together, but that is simply not right: we are not all in this together, as some people have done much better than others.

The Government’s claims to fairness are absolutely bogus. The Chancellor’s big, totemic step of the last year was to introduce a 50 per cent. tax rate, but he has delivered a gift-wrapped invitation to tax avoidance by keeping capital gains tax at 18 per cent. He had an opportunity today to deal with that, but he has done absolutely nothing about it. Unless there is fairness, the public will not accept the fact that, for the next five years or longer, there is going to be a real hard slog for the economy. The Chancellor has not set out the way forward that we need.

Mr. Darling
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. We have set out a plan to reduce the country’s deficit over a four-year period, and I believe that that will be done in a sensible way that will not damage public services or the fabric of the economy. Yes, the settlement will be tighter and it will be difficult, but I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not set out some of his proposals in relation to universities, for example.

I think that choices will have to be made, but I believe that people will recognise that, with public spending having grown over the last 10 years, we can proceed with a much tighter settlement than we have had in the past. However, as I said earlier, I believe that we can protect front-line services at the same time.

I listened to what the hon. Gentleman had to say about tax. He did not say what he would do, but that is one of the luxuries of being on his Benches. I think that using national insurance is a fair approach, and I said I would take steps to make sure that people earning under £20,000 would not be affected.

The hon. Gentleman asked about growth. I have set out my forecasts, which are not dissimilar to those of the Bank of England. Indeed, I remember that after the last Budget he and many others criticised my forecast that the economy would grow by between 1 and 1.5 per cent. next year, whereas the consensus among most commentators now is that that is broadly right.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the financial services industry. Yes, it has been a major part of our economy. I am not sure where he stands on these things nowadays, but I believe that it will remain an important part of the economy. It employs 1 million people in this country and, properly supervised and regulated, it is important. However, I think—and I think the hon. Gentleman thinks so too—that people responsible for banks should bear it in mind that they have had a lot of public support, directly or indirectly, and that their priority should be to rebuild the banks’ capital. He asked how the system would work. He seemed to hint that he would have imposed a windfall tax on the banks. I think that would be a mistake, because it would amount to telling the banks to build up their capital position while at one and the same time taking the money away from them. Some of the banks that might be affected by such an approach are those that, arguably, did a little bit less to contribute to some of the problems in the first place.

The way that the system will work is quite simple—there will be a levy of 50 per cent. on bonuses of more than £25,000, and there will be anti-avoidance measures. The hon. Gentleman asked what will happen if people get the money paid in income, and the answer is relatively simple—they will pay income tax on it. That is how the system operates and, unless he is saying that there should be an incomes policy for all bankers, which would be difficult to operate, I disagree with him.

The hon. Gentleman said that I was searching for tactical dividing lines; I have rarely been accused of doing that. I think that the divisions between us and the Conservatives, and between us and the Liberal party, are perfectly there to be seen. We do not have to go looking for them.

John McFall (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
It is right for the Government to use this pre-Budget report to maintain investment in the economy. The private sector is on its knees at the moment because of the banking catastrophe that we are experiencing. It is only the Government, through the help that they are giving to business and individuals, who are keeping the economy going.

However, given the need in the future to cut the fiscal deficit, increase capital liquidity requirements for financial institutions, unwind the £200 billion of quantitative easing and eventually to move interest rates away from zero, will the Chancellor consider further developing a macro-economic framework to deal with those issues?

Mr. Darling
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The priority is to deal with the aftermath of this downturn and I set out proposals for that. I will continue to take every step possible to ensure that we get the deficit down. It is absolutely a prerequisite for making sure that we have sustainable long-term growth in the future. It is something that must remain a priority for the Chancellor at all times.

Several hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Speaker
Order. Twenty-two hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. As usual, I should like to accommodate everybody, and therefore I reiterate my usual appeal and exhortation that each hon. Member ask a single brief supplementary question, and of course that the Chancellor of the Exchequer provide an economical reply.

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Why has growth been non-existent so far, when the Chancellor’s policy is meant to be about promoting growth?

Mr. Darling
There has been no growth in the last year for perfectly obvious reasons. Because of the crisis in the banking sector that has affected this and every other country in the world, there has been a very severe downturn. I would have thought that that was very obvious.

Hazel Blears (Salford) (Lab)
Politics is clearly the language of priorities, and I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has set out this Labour Government’s priorities of supporting young people into jobs and apprenticeships. That stands in stark contrast to priorities of the Conservatives who have chosen to benefit the 3,000 wealthiest estates in the country.

Will my right hon. Friend ensure that his measures to support apprenticeships are directed to communities like mine in Salford where, in the last Tory recession, 75 per cent. of young people were without jobs and hope? We need these measures to build on our success.

Mr. Darling
Yes is the short answer. It is important that we carry on expanding the number of apprenticeships because, not just now when unemployment is clearly too high but also in the future, we will need qualified people with the skills that our economy needs.

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The previous Gershon efficiency savings were found, after independent audit by the National Audit Office, to be largely unproven. Given that, it is difficult to believe that these new efficiency gains will be backed by evidence. To prove me wrong, will the Chancellor pass all his assumptions and proposals on efficiency savings to the NAO for independent audit?

Mr. Darling
I do not accept the general premise underlying the hon. Gentleman’s question that efficiencies cannot be made. For example, we managed to reduce the amount of money that we were paying to drug companies from the NHS. I remember from my time at the Department for Work and Pensions that we reduced the number of middle management employees to ensure that the then Benefits Agency, which formed part of Jobcentre Plus, was more efficient. So I simply do not accept the premise that underlies his question.

Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend really believe that a one-off, short-term bonus tax is sufficient to achieve his aim of permanently changing City culture? How does he justify the prospect of cutting public services and still not imposing a windfall tax on banks, when those bank profits have been fortuitously inflated by quantitative easing, by the offsetting of £80 billion of past losses against tax, by the elimination of rivals in the financial crash and by a vastly expanded market in Government bond sales?

Mr. Darling
My right hon. Friend should bear it in mind that if—when—banks return to profitability, which must be one of the objectives in the longer term, they pay corporation tax on those revenues. On tax and bonuses, I want to try to get banks to think long and hard about paying out large sums when, frankly, they ought to be building up their strength. I have said often enough in the House that I am not against the payment of bonuses in themselves—they can be a good way to reward and incentivise people—but if banks are going to pay those very high bonuses, it is right that the taxpayer should see some benefit from that.

Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)
How much worse off will constituents of mine who earn £25,000 be as result of the Chancellor’s national insurance increase?

Mr. Darling
I said in my statement that, yes, national insurance will go up, and that is necessary because we want to ensure the services that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and mine receive. If they are unfortunate enough to go to hospital or they go to see their doctors or schools, they recognise that they get a benefit from that. I certainly do not think that they want to go back to the days of the past, when a lot of those services were very seriously run down.

Mr. Richard Caborn (Sheffield, Central) (Lab)
I welcome the statement, particularly for the wealth-creating sectors and manufacturing up north—in 1997, we inherited industrial deserts, particularly in areas such as South Yorkshire—and the investment has been made by Rolls-Royce in the Advanced Manufacturing Park. May I prevail on the Chancellor to consider the short-termism of the marketplace? Indeed, I think that everyone appreciates that the statement today tries to tackle some of the problems, but long-term investment in wealth creation and our manufacturing is not four or five years, but five, 10 and 15 years. I hope that that is borne in mind and that the Treasury and the shareholding Executive will get that change of culture.

Mr. Darling
My right hon. Friend represents a part of the country that was at the wrong end of the 1980s recession. On many visits to his part of the country, I have found it impressive to see how former coke works and coal mining areas have been completely transformed and, on the same sites, high-tech industries and cutting-edge developments in advanced engineering employing a lot of people. He is absolutely right to say that we need to encourage that not just for the next five or 10 years, but for decades after that.

Julia Goldsworthy (Falmouth and Camborne) (LD)
The Chancellor applauded the flexibility of working tax credits, but no additional support has been offered to two of my constituents who work in a factory and whose hours have been reduced to a three-day week since July. They are not entitled to working tax credits, redundancy pay or jobseeker’s allowance. Was it not an omission not to include support for them in the pre-Budget report?

Mr. Darling
We have tried over a number of years to improve the help that we give to people who lose their jobs or go on to short-term working. Yes, we are always looking to see how we can improve that, but it is partly constrained by what we can do. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who speaks for the Liberals from the Front Bench, rather gave the impression that he wants the Government to spend less rather than more, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that we need to ensure that we help people to stay in work.

Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
May I compliment the Chancellor of the Exchequer on how he has acquitted himself not only today but for the whole period that he has been Chancellor? It has served the public interest well. Given that the Bank of England will shortly cease to print money to buy Government debt and that the Government will have to go into the real world to raise that money, what will be the impact over the coming year on long-term interest rates, given what he has announced on public expenditure levels for the same period?

Mr. Darling
First, I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. On quantitative easing, the Monetary Policy Committee will have to reach a decision on when it stops that work and then on how it unwinds what it is doing. It is very conscious of the fact that it needs to do that in an orderly way that complements what the Government are doing. Indeed, I think that I made it clear when I announced the scheme that there will be some discussion when it is wound down to ensure that that is done in the right way.

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
The OECD believes that early and ambitious fiscal consolidation will strengthen the recovery. Why does the Chancellor think that it is wrong and he is right?

Mr. Darling
Yes, but the OECD is not arguing for going far faster and therefore damaging jobs and the fabric of the economy. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that—whether it is the OECD, or the International Monetary Fund of which 186 countries are members—none of them support the sort of approach that the Conservatives are advocating.

Dr. Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor for listening to those of us who were pressing for an extension to the free school meals programme, because it is an important measure in helping to reduce child poverty, but does he agree that it is quite wrong for the Liberal Democrats to lecture us on reducing child poverty when the first thing that Hull, which is a Liberal Democrat-controlled council, did was to withdraw its free school meals programme?

Mr. Darling
These things sometimes happen with the Liberal Democrats, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what she said about our proposals.

Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I fully recognise the constraints placed on the Chancellor in balancing and restoring public finances, while not damaging economic growth. One concern, however, for devolved Administrations is to have some certainty about Government spending plans for 2011 and beyond. When will he be able to give that assurance? When looking at those plans, will he bear in mind the House of Lords report that has indicated that Wales and Northern Ireland have greater needs than other parts of the United Kingdom?

Mr. Darling
I hope that, one way or another, the Government have recognised Northern Ireland’s special needs, not just in the regular spending rounds but, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, in other discussions as well. As I have said, the Barnett formula will apply to the announcements that I have made today where appropriate in the usual way. All the devolved Administrations know the spending that they are getting for the rest of the spending review, but spending reviews have been fixed for three years in the past to give some certainty. I think that people will accept just now that, given what is happening, it is not possible to set out definitely what spending might be in three or five years’ time, but they have that certainty for the next year, which will help them.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab)
I note that the Chancellor’s statement included the welcome reference to the fact that anyone who moves off benefits into work will not be worse off. Will he please explain how that will affect people who live in expensive private rented accommodation and receive housing benefit at the moment, but lose all or most of their housing benefit on going into work and thus end up considerably worse off and, in extreme cases, can even be rendered homeless as a result?

Mr. Darling
I understand that concern, and I can tell my hon. Friend that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will make a statement fairly shortly and give more details, but we are all very aware of his point about the withdrawal rates of benefits.

Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury) (Con)
The Chancellor has announced increased funding for current operations, but after the increased costs of the redundancy of kit and the uplift in troops announced by the Prime Minister earlier this month, what will be left for the repair and replacement of our inadequate helicopter fleet, which is putting at risk the lives of our servicemen?

Mr. Darling
First, as I said in the statement, we are making available further sums to the Ministry of Defence. The Secretary of State for Defence will in due course set out how the MOD is reorganising what it does to ensure that it can provide support, particularly on the front line. I have said often enough before that it is important if we send troops into Afghanistan that they are properly equipped and supported. That means some reprioritisation in the MOD. I think that the hon. Gentleman would accept that, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be able to say something about it.

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab)
Does the Chancellor agree with the leader of the Conservative party that the problem is big Government and that there was too much regulation, or does the Chancellor agree with me that Government have a big role to play in protecting people and that the banking problems came about from too little regulation?

Mr. Darling
Despite being posed such a difficult question, I am probably more on my hon. Friend’s side than the Leader of the Opposition’s. The problem was partly caused by regulation that was not tough enough, but partly caused also by the fact that too many at the top of some banks clearly did not know what they were doing. There was a failure of corporate governance as well as a failure in regulation. That situation has undoubtedly had consequences, however, and every Government in the world have had to deal with those consequences. The question before us now is, how do we manage to deal with that situation in an orderly way?

Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Chancellor was incorrect in saying that when the banks return to profit, they will pay corporation tax, because there will be £80 billion of losses to set off first. Does he not think that the citizens of the United Kingdom will be amazed by the fact that banks will be making billions of pounds in profit and not paying a single penny of corporation tax?

Mr. Darling
Of course I am aware of the tax treatment of losses, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware of the way in which tax losses are treated for capital adequacy purposes, so the situation is a little more complicated than the one he describes.

Helen Southworth (Warrington, South) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend make sure that services to safeguard and protect vulnerable children who are at risk are a priority and receive investment?

Mr. Darling
I know that our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families is very concerned about that issue, as should we all be. It is very important that children who are at risk are properly looked after, and I very much hope that we can continue to do that.

Stewart Hosie (Dundee, East) (SNP)
Even if the deficit falls as planned, based on pretty heroic growth forecasts, the national debt will continue to rise, on the Treasury calculation, to £1.7 trillion, which is 91 per cent. of gross domestic product. That is in the Green Book. The Chancellor is right to say that we need a budget for growth, but this was not a budget for growth. This pre-Budget statement specifically confirmed the cut announced earlier this year in both the resource and the capital departmental expenditure limit for Scotland. Why did the Chancellor not take the advice of even his own colleagues in Scotland and have a further year’s reprofiling of capital expenditure to protect the recovery, instead of ensuring that the cuts come now and weaken Scotland’s ability to recover?

Mr. Darling
I say this to the hon. Gentleman: yes, we did bring capital spending forward, and the situation in Scotland would have been infinitely better had the Scottish National party not turned its face against continuing to work with the private sector. The SNP had a vanity project to try to replace the private finance initiative, and as a result, as I know from my constituency and others, the only things being built under the schools building programme, for example, are schools that the previous Labour Administration authorised. The nationalists should have a long hard look at what they have done in Scotland over the past two years, because in just about every single case where they made a promise, they have failed to deliver it, partly because of dogma and partly because they have simply over-promised and overreached. It is no wonder that people are beginning to see through what the nationalists actually do.

Ms Dari Taylor (Stockton, South) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of the innovation investment fund for research into the development of the green economy, which is led significantly by Teesside’s chemical process industry. Will One NorthEast administer that fund, giving local companies an easy opportunity to get advice and access to it? If not, which Department will administer the fund and from what date?

Mr. Darling
I understand that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills will make the situation clear very shortly. The regional development agency, One NorthEast, will of course be closely involved in everything that we do in relation to Teesside. It is important that Jobcentre Plus, the regional development agency and other public bodies all work very closely together, but I shall ensure that my hon. Friend is given that information by the Secretary of State.

Richard Younger-Ross (Teignbridge) (LD)
I congratulate the Chancellor on adopting the proposal that I included in an early-day motion on the boiler scrappage scheme and on also adopting an EDM proposal for an effective 75p rate on banker bonuses. However, if such a rate is to be effective, measures to stop avoidance by increasing salaries or rolling over pay to a following year will have to be in place. What proposals does he have to ensure that such avoidance cannot happen? If he cannot do that, he will be far better off sticking with the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable).

Mr. Darling
I do not know whether the proposals from the hon. Member for Twickenham are to be found in an EDM, but it was not clear to me what his proposals actually were. Anti-avoidance measures will be introduced as part of the Finance Bill. On the other measures that the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Richard Younger-Ross) has proposed, I cannot claim to have read the EDMs, but I am glad that he supports the policies.

Mr. Rob Wilson (Reading, East) (Con)
Will the Chancellor confirm that manufacturing has contracted more under this Government than it did under the Thatcher Government in the 1980s?

Mr. Darling
I am glad to hear that there is common ground on this issue, because, certainly in my first 10 years in this House, it was not accepted that we lost far more manufacturing than perhaps we should have in the early 1980s. I think that manufacturing in this country, despite the downturn and despite the difficulties, is well placed for the future. We have a lot of manufacturing of which we can be genuinely proud, and in the past 10 years, through our investment in science and our support for universities, we have seen a lot more projects come out of universities and develop for the future. Much of what I had to say this afternoon was about encouraging such growth in the future. The policy of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) is not to reverse the situation at all, but, it seems, to make it worse.

Adam Price (Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr) (PC)
In the month when the Holtham commission, which the Labour-led Administration in the National Assembly for Wales appointed, has reported that the people of Wales are losing out to the tune of £400 million a year as a result of the Barnett formula, why did not the Chancellor use this opportunity—perhaps the final opportunity for some time for a Labour Chancellor—to implement the proposal for a needs-based formula and finally deliver justice to the people of Wales and, as we heard from the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), to Northern Ireland as well?

Mr. Darling
I believe that, certainly over the past 12 years, Wales has seen a significant increase in funding because of the increases in spending on health, education, science and research. Wales has benefited from that—tremendously so. If I have a disagreement with the nationalists, it is that I fail to understand what possible justification there can ever be for Welsh independence. I cannot see how on earth it could benefit that country.

Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
The return to growth that is forecast in later years is predicated on consumers generating more GDP growth than they have in the past. The Chancellor suggests that 2 per cent. of GDP growth will be driven by private consumption, but between 2000 and 2007 only 1.75 per cent. of GDP growth was driven by consumer consumption. Does he think that wise, given that consumers are paying down their debt? Why does he think that he should rely on consumers backtracking, when they have worked out that they have a debt crisis even if the Government have not?

Mr. Darling
I think that many members of the public will be reducing the amount of debt that they carry, and that is a good thing. However, it is also true that people can at the same time maintain their spending, and some people increase their spending. Of course, as unemployment starts to fall and employment starts to grow, more people will be in work and more people will be able to spend their money on goods and services in this country.

Mr. Andrew Pelling (Croydon, Central) (Ind)
As politicians are to blame, like bankers, perhaps the top 25 per cent. of our salaries should also be taxed at 90 per cent. However, the Chancellor mentioned in his speech a £550 million yield from the special tax levy, which is the equivalent of £1.1 billion in paid bonuses. Is he implying that the measure is a ban on bonuses? Otherwise, bankers will either redefine themselves as working for hedge funds or non-bank banks, or domicile themselves outside the UK to receive such bonuses.

Mr. Darling
The figure I mentioned is our estimate of what we will get after behavioural changes in terms of both payment of bonuses and, I suspect, people saying, “Okay, I will take my wage in salary.” As I said earlier, the problem is not bonuses in themselves; the problem is when we start paying excessive bonuses or rewarding people for doing things that they really should not do. That is where we get the problems.

 Points of Order

14:09:00

Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I know how keen you are for this House to hear news from the Government first. In the past, when a Budget statement has been made—this is, effectively, an autumn Budget—MPs have been sacked for leaking the information to the media first. Clearly, the BBC and Sky had important knowledge relating to this Budget, so will you look into this to see whether there has been a leak and what can be done about it?

Mr. Speaker
It is not, of course, a Budget. I note, however, the very important point that the hon. Gentleman has raised. I know that there has been a considerable amount of speculation, but I would be reluctant to say more than that. I am happy to reflect on the matter. I know how assiduous the hon. Gentleman is in these important matters.

Greg Mulholland (Leeds, North-West) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I need to bring to the attention of the House a separate, very important and worrying matter. Enterprise Inns is Britain’s most notorious pubco. Its reputation is shown by its incredible litigiousness. It has tried to sue local media and national media, and has indeed threatened hon. Members of this House. I do not know if you are aware of this, but Enterprise Inns has sought by way of legal threat and intimidation to prevent the Business and Enterprise Committee from carrying out its scrutiny of the activities of the pub company—

Mr. Speaker
Order. I have listened very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has said, which is certainly a matter of the highest importance to him and to many others. However, I have to say to him at this stage that if he has a complaint about a breach of the privilege of the House, that is a matter about which, in the first instance, he should come to me, or it is open to him to write to me, but he should not in the first instance raise it on the Floor of the House. Those options are open to the hon. Gentleman. If he wishes to pursue the matter with me in one or other of the ways that I have suggested, I will be all agog to hear what he has to say.

Bill Presented

Fiscal Responsibility

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by the Prime Minister, Ms Harriet Harman, Mr. Liam Byrne, Mr. Stephen Timms, Sarah McCarthy-Fry and Ian Pearson, presented a Bill to make provision for and in connection with the imposition of duties for securing sound public finances.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 13) with explanatory notes (Bill 25-EN).

 Child Poverty Bill

[Relevant Document: The Twenty-eighth Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights of Session 2008-09, Legislative Scrutiny: Child Poverty Bill, HC 1114.]

Consideration of Bill

New Clause 1

The relative low income after housing costs target

‘(1) The relative low income after housing costs target is that less than 10 per cent. of children who live in qualifying households live in households that fall within the relevant income group.

(2) For the purposes of this section, a household falls within the relevant income group, in relation to a financial year, if its equivalised net income for the financial year is less than 60 per cent. of median equivalised net household income after housing costs for the financial year.’.—(Steve Webb.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

14:12:00

Steve Webb (Northavon) (LD)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: new clause 2—The reduction in the causes of poverty targets—

‘The Secretary of State shall make regulations setting out reduction in the causes of poverty targets.’.

New clause 3—2010 Target—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of three months beginning with the day on which the Act is passed, publish and lay before Parliament a report setting out an assessment of progress made towards meeting the 2010 target.

(2) The 2010 target is that in the financial year beginning with 1 April 2010, fewer than 1.7 million children live in households that fall within the relevant income group as defined by section 2(2).’.

Amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, at end insert—

‘(b) the relative low income after housing costs target in section [The relative low income after housing costs target],’.

Amendment 23, page 1, line 10, at end insert—

‘(e) the reductions in the causes of poverty targets contained in regulations made by the Secretary of State under section [The reduction in the causes of poverty targets].’.

Amendment 33, in clause 6, page 3, line 9, at end insert—

‘(ba) the circumstances in which a child living in communal accommodation may be regarded as living in a qualifying household;’.

Amendment 2, page 3, line 15, after ‘costs’, insert

‘except when calculating household income for the purposes of section [The relative low income after housing costs target] (the relative low income after housing costs target)’.

Amendment 3, page 3, line 20, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 34, page 3, line 22, at end insert—

‘(4A) Before making regulations under subsections 1(a) and 1(ba), the Secretary of State must request the advice of the Commission as to what statistical surveys can reasonably be expected to be undertaken.’.

Amendment 4, in clause 8, page 4, line 30, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 24, page 4, line 34, at end insert—

‘(iii) describe the progress that the Secretary of State considers needs to be made in dealing with the causes of poverty in order to meet the targets in sections 2 to 5.’.

Amendment 5, page 4, line 43, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 6, in clause 9, page 5, line 14, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 7, in clause 10, page 6, line 3, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 8, page 6, line 15, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 9, page 6, line 25, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 10, in clause 11, page 7, line 13, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 11, page 7, line 26, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 12, page 7, line 37, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 13, in clause 13, page 8, line 29, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 14, in clause 14, page 9, line 14, at end insert—

‘(b) the percentage of children living in qualifying households in the United Kingdom in the target year who were living in households that fell within the relevant income group for the purposes of section [The relative low income after housing costs target] (Relative low income after housing costs target);’.

Amendment 15, page 9, line 32, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 16, page 9, line 34, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 17, in clause 16, page 10, line 12, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 18, in clause 24, page 14, line 38, after ‘or’, insert

‘section [The relative low income after housing costs target] (Relative low income after housing costs target) or’.

Amendment 19, in schedule 2, page 20, line 9, after ‘5’, insert

‘and section [The relative low income after housing costs target]’.

Amendment 20, page 21, line 23, at end insert—

‘(b) the percentage of children living in qualifying households in the United Kingdom in the renewed target year who were living in households that fell within the relevant income group for the purposes of section [The relative low income after housing costs target] (Relative low income after housing costs target);’.

Steve Webb
A wry smile crosses our faces when it is announced that this Bill is the main business of the day, but in fact it is, in the sense that child poverty is a crucial issue. That view is certainly shared by all those who served on the Committee that considered the Bill.

New clause 1 arises from the discussions that we had in Committee about the most appropriate method of measuring poverty. Hon. Members will know that there are in the Bill four measures or targets relating to poverty, which combine various facets of income, material deprivation, persistence of poverty, and relative and absolute poverty. Clearly, it is welcome that the Bill does not settle on a single definition but recognises that poverty is multi-faceted and that one statistic does not do justice to the whole problem.

In Committee, we discussed the most appropriate treatment of housing costs. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) and I proposed that, for the purpose of income measures, we should measure income after the deduction of housing costs. One of the arguments that the Treasury Minister who responded to our proposal made against it was that replacing the before-housing-costs measure would cause a problem, because we would not have comparable statistics for use in international comparisons. In other words, if we got rid of the before-housing-costs measure and imposed an after-housing-costs measure, our statistics would not line up with those from other EU countries and the OECD.

The point of debates in Committee is to reflect on such issues and then to come back on Report with revised amendments, and that is what we have done in this case. Rather than suggest that we replace the before-housing-costs measure with an after-housing-costs measure, we now suggest in new clause 1 that we do not replace the four existing targets but add a fifth—income after housing costs. That definition will be familiar to the House. It relates to information that is published regularly in the “Households Below Average Income” statistics, so it requires no additional statistical work. The figures are already there, but they would be given the same force as the other four targets in the Bill.

I should say in passing that amendments 1 to 20 are consequential to the inclusion of new clause 1, so wherever the Bill lists the four targets, there would be a list of five. The wording of new clause 1 exactly mirrors the target relating to the before-housing-costs measure and would simply insert “after housing costs”. Another, slightly more involved, consequential change is that where the Bill says that certain things cannot be deducted, one of which is housing costs, it would have to state that that does not apply to the provisions of the new clause, under which housing costs would be deducted.

14:15:00

I have been reflecting on the arguments that the Government might use against making the change proposed in new clause 1. First, however, it is worth making the case for an after-housing-costs measure. We believe that there is added value in looking at people’s living standards after they have had to meet their housing costs, first and foremost because housing is a very large part of most people’s budget and a very big determinant of their living standards. To look at people’s standard of living without taking any account of whether they have high, low or next to no housing costs is to miss a very important part of the picture. Because it is such an important determinant of living standards, the absence from the Bill of an income measure that takes account of housing costs is a significant omission.

Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD)
I strongly support the new clause and my hon. Friend’s arguments for it. Does he agree that the proposal is particularly salient in low-income areas such as my constituency, because many of my constituents cannot afford the basics after they have paid rent, for the simple reason that rents have not come down with the recession, whereas in many cases incomes have declined?

Steve Webb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that very important point. The Bill measures income, including housing benefits and so forth, but takes no account of the impact of housing costs coming out of that income. Many households are in poverty, and if one compares the statistics on income before housing costs and after housing costs, the poverty rate is much higher on the after-housing-costs measure. It is interesting that he should raise that question, because the general assumption is that taking account of housing costs is an urban issue that relates to big cities with high housing costs, but it is clearly relevant in areas such as his, where housing costs can also take a big part of people’s incomes.

Housing costs are a big part of household budgets, and people often have quite limited choices in that regard. It could be argued, “Well, if you have big housing costs it’s because you live in a big house. You have chosen a higher living standard, so why should we deduct your housing costs? That would be like deducting your caviar expenditure. You’ve chosen to spend more and you’re better off as a result, so we shouldn’t deduct it.” However, the reality, particularly for many people in rural areas or others with low means, is that housing is not one of those things that they shop around for, like wondering what tin of beans to buy this week. People in poverty often have very constrained choices about housing, so the level of housing expenditure is not discretionary in the way that spending on a luxury item would be. It really is a necessity, and people have very constrained choices and have to live with the consequences of making them. Assessing income after housing costs have been met would give us another facet. I am not suggesting that it is the only way of looking at things, but it is an additional way.

The second reason why this is important is that the regional impact of housing costs varies considerably, and if we look only at income before housing costs, we do not capture that. Obviously, on average, housing costs will be substantially higher in London and certain other housing hotspot areas. One of the perverse aspects of the measure of income before housing costs is that it includes housing benefit. If that is the only measure we have, we end up with the strange situation where somebody with a huge rent that is being met wholly or largely by housing benefit seems to be relatively well off because all that housing benefit is included in their income, but no account is taken of the fact that it has an equal and opposite cost on the other side of the equation. That bit would never get measured under the Bill as it stands.

Let us take as an example two pensioner households living next door to each other, both with identical pension income. One person has paid off their mortgage and owns their house outright, and the other is on housing benefit and getting their rent paid in full. On the before-housing-costs measure, the person with the housing benefit is much better off than their neighbour because they have housing benefit, but after housing costs they are both in the same position because they just have their pension once they have met their housing costs. Clearly, the measure we propose provides a fairer assessment of relative living standards than saying that the person on housing benefit is better off. Indeed, one could argue that the person who owns their house outright is better off, because they have an asset, from which one might impute an income. The before-housing-costs measure puts people the wrong way round in that sense, so it is not an ideal definition.

I mentioned in response to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) that poverty is greater after housing costs than before them. That is not a reason to put it in the figures, but it demonstrates that, once income including housing benefit is measured, housing costs are seen to take up a bigger proportion of the incomes of the poor than of the rich, which is an important facet of measuring people’s poverty.

We want reliable measures over time. My hon. Friend mentioned the problem of rent inflation. It has been the policy of successive Governments to deregulate social rents, so they have risen far faster than inflation for many years. If we only use the before-housing-costs measure, that makes people appear better off, because their housing benefit shoots up every time their rent does. That seems perverse in the extreme. If we measure income after housing costs, we will strip out the effect of rental inflation, which, as he said, has been very significant. There are strong reasons for having the additional target—it would give us a new lens through which to view child poverty without taking away from any of the existing measures, and it would catch an important facet of poverty.

As I said, I have thought about the responses that Ministers might give. One might be, “Well, we can’t add another target to the Bill. We’ve got four targets, we can’t have five.” If they were to say, “We’ve got four targets, we can’t have 99,” I would probably accept that, but we wish to add one additional target. Why do the Government have four, and not three or two? Each target needs to stand on its own feet as an important indicator of poverty and give us new insights that we would not get without it. That should be the test of each target in Bill. As I said in Committee, I believe that the absolute low income target could go. If we could have only four, I would take that one out, but there seems no substantive reason why five good targets that provide a more comprehensive measure of poverty are worse than four. It is a difference not of kind but of degree, and given the added value of the after-housing-costs measures, the additional target is justified.

When we discussed the matter in Committee, Ministers said, “Ah, yes, but housing is in the Bill. You don’t need to worry, it is already covered.” I apologise if I am running through the Minister’s bullet points for her. The Bill does contain provisions on housing, such as the material deprivation measure, which contains a few questions about housing, but nothing that will capture the cost of housing as a measure of income after housing costs would. The difference between the poverty figures before and after housing costs is, as it says on the tin, all to do with housing costs. They should not be buried as a sub-factor in part of a measure. That is the problem. Although the material deprivation measure has a few housing-related matters in it, there are also a lot of non-housing matters. It would be incredibly difficult to strip out details of housing costs and be clear about whether they, rather than some other facet of material deprivation, were driving the figures. It will be as plain as a pikestaff that housing costs are causing the problem if we use figures for income after rather than before them.

The Minister might say that housing costs are about housing quality. I hope that I addressed that point earlier. The two are not wholly uncorrelated, but they are not very well correlated. Higher housing costs are often the product of necessity and of the part of the country in which people live. Often, as many people who live in private rented accommodation would say, they are not a good proxy for the quality of housing. Deducting housing costs and having both before and after-housing-costs measures, so that one can assess their impact on the figures, therefore seems to us an entirely sensible approach.

Drawing those threads together, the reason why there is not just one target in the Bill is that child poverty is multi-faced. The Government have alighted on four targets, but they could have alighted on three or five. Once one has accepted that there should be more than one, having five rather than four does not seem to make a substantive difference, and there is huge added value in the after-housing-costs approach.

I shall briefly address other amendments and new clauses in this group. I am sure that the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) will speak to new clause 2, which suggests that there should be

“reductions in the causes of poverty targets.”

I had to read that several times to work out where the pause came—I think it means reductions in the causes of poverty rather than in the targets. Clearly we should examine the causes of poverty, not just the outcomes. We discussed the matter in Committee, in the light of which the hon. Gentleman has obviously refined the new clause. I look forward to hearing him make the case for it. New clause 3 argues for an assessment of progress on the 2010 target. We supported the idea in Committee and anticipate doing so again.

Amendments 33 and 34 were prompted by the discussions of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) may be planning to speak to them. They raise some important points about who counts as a child in a qualifying household and whether there are two tiers of children in the Bill. There are children who appear in the household surveys on which all the statistical data are based, and there are other children who come under the Bill’s more general wording about deprivation but who are not covered by the statistical targets.

I do not mean to be in any way critical of the Joint Committee, but in a sense it is easier to point out the problem than to work out what one should do about it. The Committee referred to Gypsy and Traveller children, some of whom are in the statistics because they live in households picked up in the surveys—for example, if they are on local authority or private Traveller sites. However, the most transient might not get picked up in the figures. It is incredibly difficult to think how one might meld them into the statistics, so although it is important that they are not treated as second-class children, I am not entirely sure how we can add them to a measure based on household equivalent income.

Likewise, we discussed in Committee children who are in care. Their well-being is clearly crucial, but trying to measure the living standard of a child living in an institution, for example, is very difficult. A child being cared for in a private household, perhaps having been fostered, will be picked up in the normal statistical surveys, but it is difficult to identify the living standards of a child living in an institution whose meals are provided, but for whom there is no parental or household income that one can measure. It is difficult to know whether their income is 50 or 70 per cent. of the median, or how they could be melded into a living standard measure based on households. I am sure that my hon. Friend would accept that. The real question is whether there should be another statistical target or whether we should give greater weight to the parts of the Bill that refer more broadly to socio-economic disadvantage. I look forward to hearing his suggestions.

New clause 1 need not divide us along party lines, and I welcome the support that the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) has given it. She was a member of the Public Bill Committee and is much respected on these issues, and she rightly believes that housing is a crucial aspect of living standards. I can understand why she would take that view as a London MP. I hope that all parties will support the new clause. I hope for a conciliatory response from the Minister, because I know that my noble Friends in another place attach great importance to housing costs and they will want to return to the matter if we cannot get a better measure into the Bill—one that would improve it and help the Bill to achieve the goal that we all share of ensuring that child poverty is abolished.

Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
In speaking to this group of amendments, I hope to achieve two objectives. The first is to praise the Government for their determination in setting the objective in the Bill. It is an audacious thing to do, and I do not want the debate to pass without that being said. However, I also wish to raise some questions about the balance of the Government’s approach, not in the Bill but up to this point in their campaign to abolish child poverty. I shall question whether they have been far too mechanical in seeing the solution as coming largely from benefits rather than through trying to balance people’s immediate need for more money with an examination of the long-term causes of poverty. I take new clause 2 to be about that matter.

First, on a point of congratulation, no Government in the post-war period, or indeed ever, have set the objective of abolishing poverty in the way that this Government have. At the time they set that objective, I was Minister with responsibility for welfare reform, but I learned about it from a television broadcast. That suggested something about the relationship between the two powers in Downing street and the rest of the Administration, but I was pleased to read more recently that No. 11 was not even consulted before the objective was set in the famous Toynbee Hall speech by the then Prime Minister.

14:30:00

The objective certainly marked this Government out from previous ones, but for most of our stewardship we have thought of poverty—naturally enough—in material terms, and of solutions in money terms. Therefore, the whole effort of the Government’s engineering at the bottom of the income scale has been to raise benefit levels disproportionately to other incomes, so that one took children and their families across a poverty line. As far as one’s first moral responsibility of helping the poor goes, who could fault the Government on that?

However, at least two things have happened since. First, the money has run out, even though the Chancellor was not too willing to admit that in his earlier statement, and perhaps he will not do so for another year. Secondly, the Government have engaged in the debate in a very responsible way, taking that crude initiative and broadening it out. One sees that in the Bill. It is about not only money, but what some of us in the House would refer to as causes.

Although I have not participated in a debate on the Bill before, I have read reports of them, and I have been struck by how they have been captured by Seebohm Rowntree. He was the chocolate manufacturer’s son—his father, Joseph Rowntree, made his name building up that great firm in York and elsewhere. His son made his name—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord)
Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I am not quite sure how far he is going to stray from new clause 1. I am prepared to allow a certain amount of latitude, but he will bear in mind that we have new clauses and amendments before us.

Mr. Field
I thought we were taking all the clauses together, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
Yes we are, but a degree of precision is essential.

Mr. Field
Of course it is.

One thing Seebohm Rowntree did was list the issues that the Government are trying to deal with in the Bill—in a sense, that underpins new clause 1 and the whole of the Government’s approach. At the turn of the last century, he asked why people were poor. He listed low pay, being a single-parent household, unemployment, sickness and old age, but he went on to say that one should not read such things as the causes of poverty, and that they are in fact manifestations of poverty. He said that if we want to look at the causes of poverty, we have to go much deeper into the big questions about political economy.

Therefore, I much welcome the fact that when the Government started to fan out in the Bill how they view poverty, they got on to what I think we need to get on to—namely, looking at the deep, root causes of poverty in our society, with which amendments in this group deal. Indeed, I would argue that it is inconsistent for the Government to adopt such an approach to defining poverty and not to welcome the debate about the link between children in poverty and one-parent households—Labour Members find it easier to link low pay in such households to children in poverty. There seems to be something inconsistent about our approach. We are not prepared to try to teach the nation that if one becomes a single-parent, or makes little opportunity of the 13 years of state investment in education and goes into an unskilled job, the probability is that one will be poor.

I was therefore disturbed that, when in the past couple of days the Leader of the Opposition raised the question—he did so very carefully—of eliminating the discrimination against two-parent families, it was immediately read by some of the single-parent groups as an attack on the status of single parents. I know they have grounds for doing so, because when we were first elected in ’97, we said we were going to abolish such discrimination, but we foolishly presented that in terms of attacking single parents and reducing their income. However, the proposals I mentioned were not to reduce the income of single-parent households, but to raise the income of households with two parents. In that way, the children in such households would be equivalent to children in households in which only one parent earned.

I rose to congratulate the Government on distinguishing themselves as the first ever who decided they could, by their means, change whether people lived in households in poverty. Secondly, I rose to congratulate the Government on broadening how they see the mechanisms by which poverty is transmitted. They have moved—thank goodness—from a rather crude definition and from concern only in money terms, and are beginning to look at the debate about the root causes of poverty, which I think we need to have in what remains of this Parliament and in the next.

That is why the Government’s proposals for raising the performance of our secondary schools are so important. We need to guarantee that practically every child leaves with minimum school-leaving requirements. Those requirements should not be made up by adding slightly bogus vocational qualifications to five GCSEs including English and maths. In the hard world in which the employer interprets such qualifications, children who have them will probably be condemned to poverty in adulthood, and their children with them.

I also believe that we need to get over to younger people that opting for single parenthood is not a desirable life choice. Many have that inflicted upon them, but the way we allow young people to make that decision without spelling out what it means for them and their life chances, and more importantly for their children’s life chances, fails that next generation. It is not good enough for the pressure groups to wheel out upper-middle class young single parents who are having a whale of a time and saying, “I’m so pleased I’m a young single parent. I can’t tell you all the choices I have now I’ve got all that over with,” and the rest of it. The young women who follow that model in my constituency do not have the bank balances to see them through.

I affirm my congratulations to the Government on their long period of stewardship and on staying with this issue. Perhaps a little later than I would have thought, they have widened the debate beyond what Rowntree thought were the superficial causes to the root causes of poverty, which I welcome.

I put that down as a marker for the next Parliament—hopefully some of us will be returned by the electorate. The Government made their choice at a time of record public expenditure. In the next Parliament, there will be record cuts in public expenditure. As Tawney said, when the great liners go down, who gets into the lifeboats is important. It is important for us to help to shape the debate about the priorities and to decide who gets into those lifeboats when the age of big cuts in public expenditure is really upon us.

Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con)
As always, it is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and, indeed, the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb), who ably introduced new clause 1. As the hon. Gentleman said, we touched on this issue in Committee and I understand where he is coming from. Indeed, in Committee I made the point that families are primarily interested in the after housing costs income—how much money they have left to spend on food, clothing, transport and so on, to balance the weekly budget. That is the critical amount for many families.

We do track that figure. In Prime Minister’s questions earlier, the figure of 4 million children living in poverty was mentioned, and that is the after housing cost figure, rather than the before housing cost figure of 2.9 million. In Committee, my hon. Friends and I backed amendment 28, tabled by the hon. Gentleman, which would have removed clause 6(2) which prevents housing costs from being deducted when calculating the net income of a household. We thought that that was overly prescriptive because it would tie the hands of the Child Poverty Commission, which has not even been set up yet, when it came to take a view on housing costs. We were happy to back the hon. Gentleman on that amendment.

As the hon. Gentleman has made clear, the households below average income series already publishes the figures for both before and after housing costs, and it will continue to do so. The Minister made that clear. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will pay careful attention to the after housing costs figure. At 4 million, it is much higher than any of us would like.

My concern about supporting new clause 1 is that we already have four income targets in the Bill, as I said in Committee. I was grateful for the comments by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead when he talked of the importance of widening the range of indicators and targets that we use to track our progress in reducing poverty, which will of course always be measured in income terms. We should have a range of targets in the Bill that drive policy in the right direction. My concern about new clause 1 is that that fifth income target would focus more on downstream intervention, whereas the real need is to focus on the root causes of poverty—those factors that trap people in a life of poverty, about which the right hon. Gentleman rightly talked. In that respect, I tabled new clause 2 and amendments 23 and 24.

New clause 2 seeks to add a fifth target to the Bill, just as the hon. Member for Northavon has tried to do, that would deal specifically with reducing the causes of poverty. I tabled a similar amendment in Committee and made an attempt to put some detail in the clause. Other members of the Committee said, “Well, you have included this, but you have left out that, and we do not think that that’s very good.” I took that point. I accept that the new clause is relatively brief at the moment, but amendment 23 specifies that the actual causes of poverty would be specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State. That is clearly something that the Child Poverty Commission, among others, would have a view on, and it would advise the Government. I think that that measure is essential. Indeed, my overriding criticism of the Bill is that it focuses purely on downstream income intervention and does not do enough at an early enough stage to address the causes of poverty.

I am supported in that point by several commentators, not least by witnesses at the formal evidence sessions in Committee. For example, both Mike Brewer of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Donald Hirsch, a well respected academic from the university of Loughborough, were asked whether the Bill needs to address the longer-term causes of poverty in the early years, and they both said yes. Mike Brewer said:

“I wish that there were a broader range of indicators”.

That is precisely what new clause 2 is seeking to introduce. Neil O’Brien, another witness from Policy Exchange, spoke about the current set of targets driving public policy to

“relentlessly...downstream intervention to give people income, rather than...tackle the causes.”

He spoke of it being necessary to align

“your targets to your broader strategy”.——[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 101-104, Q199 and 203.]

That is the central point.

14:45:00

The Department for Work and Pensions used to go some way along those lines. In its excellent “Opportunity for All” report, it published details of the number of children in workless households, teenage pregnancy, the proportion of children in disadvantaged areas with a good level of development, the number of children not in education, employment or training, childhood obesity and other such factors. Bizarrely, it stopped producing that report in 2007.

I quoted Mike Brewer’s evidence to the Committee, but he has not stopped considering the point. In a recent article entitled “What’s the point of the Child Poverty Bill?”, he wrote that

“in my mind, the worrying aspect of the Bill is that it highlights income-based measures of child poverty over all other possible measures of child well-being. Although the Bill says that a government strategy must tackle socio-economic disadvantage amongst children, the way we will know whether child poverty is eradicated in 2020 will be determined by four measures of income poverty.”

He also points out that

“there is a risk that politicians will always favour policy responses with immediate and predictable impacts on the incomes of parents over responses which mitigate the impact of poverty on children, or improve poor children’s well-being, or reduce the intergenerational transmission of child poverty (such as measures to tackle low achievement amongst white boys in receipt of free school meals, whose results at Key Stage 2 were recently revealed to be lower than all other ethnic groups).”

Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon) (Con)
I am attracted by my hon. Friend’s approach, but does he think that it would be possible to reach agreement on the causes of poverty? Is not that quite a political issue, on which people from different backgrounds or different sides of the House might have a fundamentally different view, especially on things such as family breakdown? Is it possible to achieve his goal?

Andrew Selous
I agree with my hon. Friend that it would not be easy, and my attempt to do so in Committee did meet with some flak from fellow Committee members. I thought that it was slightly unfair as I had made an attempt to put a bit of detail in the Bill, but I was so roughly treated that I have tabled a slightly sparser clause on this occasion. However, I do not think that difficulty should prevent us from doing this work. My hon. Friend may be aware of the comments by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that

“the strategy against poverty and social exclusion pursued since the late 1990s is now largely exhausted.”

That is the very group that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead quoted.

We can all agree on a certain set of indicators, perhaps around worklessness, addiction and educational underachievement, and in fact I thought that there was a degree of unity across the House on the issue of family breakdown.

Mr. Frank Field
I was trying to get away from this debate. The quotation that the hon. Gentleman cited from Mike Brewer was—apart from the last half-sentence—about a more flowery definition of poverty, whether children are fat or not fat. What I was trying to emphasise was that we should be primarily concerned with how to create as many exits from poverty and, equally importantly, how to cut off the supply routes to poverty. The hon. Gentleman may have had a rough going over in Committee, but that is what I thought his clause was about. What are the supply routes to poverty?

Andrew Selous
I mentioned one or two routes in response to my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), including worklessness, educational underachievement and addiction. Nearly 1.5 million children in this country live in households where their parents are subject to serious addiction. Just over 1 million are subject to serious alcohol abuse and 350,000 children have parents who are subject to serious drug abuse. I say to the Government in all earnestness that, unless they ally their anti-addiction policy with their anti-poverty strategy, we will not succeed in meeting the 2020 targets.

I thought that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead phrased his contribution extremely well. I am at one with him on ensuring that the debate is not about stigma or castigating a particular group, but about giving help to every type of family and trying to encourage the right sort of behaviour, which he ably described in relation to his constituents.

Mr. Field
Is addiction not to some extent a presenting problem? Are we saying that if we abolished addiction, we would automatically link that to the abolition of poverty? What does the hon. Gentleman think are the supply routes? Behind addiction is another tale to tell. There are two big routes that the House should want to tackle. The first is why some people can command only low-paid jobs—if they are going? Secondly, we know that the likelihood is that very young mothers on their own and their children will be poor. Should we not at least be telling people that?

Andrew Selous
I agree. There is no great difference between the right hon. Gentleman and myself. I think that his first point referred primarily to education and skills and his second to certain types of family formation. I am in broad agreement with him.

Mr. Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Our party is often critical of targets because of how they distort behaviour to meet often statistical and numerical outcomes. Child poverty is a complex issue involving supply routes, causes and the reasons why some people are sustained in poverty. Does my hon. Friend share my fear that because the Government want to fulfil and not breach their targets, such a Bill, which sets fixed numbers based on income, may risk putting a short-term desire for box-ticking ahead of the long-term need to address the deep-rooted causes of poverty and to support those who need long-term solutions, not short-term political fixes?

Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend served with great distinction in Committee, and it is excellent to see him in the Chamber. He has a point. It worries me a little when I hear Ministers saying, “We have raised 500,000 people”—or however many—“out of poverty.” I take the example of a household that has been nudged from, say, 58 to 61 per cent. of median income. Imagine knocking on the door of that household and asking, “What does it feel like to be out of poverty?” That might be a harsh analogy because I realise that we will always need a target, that it will involve a line and that crossing it will bring only slight differences. However, my general point is that we could visit that household that is just above the poverty threshold and find that things had not really changed. I believe that the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed) talked about the culture of poverty in his excellent contributions in Committee, and I think that he has a sense of where I am coming from.

I hope to press new clause 2 to a Division, and the same goes for new clause 3, if time permits—although I realise that it might not. There is a serious point behind new clause 3. It would put the much easier 2010-11 target to halve the original rate of child poverty by 2010-11 on a statutory basis. I was grateful to the hon. Member for Northavon and his colleagues in Committee for supporting us on that. I look forward to their support if we can press new clause 3 to a Division.

As I said, there is a serious point behind the new clause. We are not just playing politics. All the commentators think it unlikely that we will meet the target. In the light of the pre-Budget report, will the Minister tell the House how many additional children will be brought out of child poverty? I am looking at the section in the report on supporting families to reduce child poverty, on page 81, but that number is not leaping out at me. Perhaps she will enlighten the House in her response.

Interestingly, it has been 10 years, virtually to the day, since the then Chancellor of the Exchequer—the current Prime Minister—committed the Government, in the pre-Budget report on 9 November 1999, to the intermediate goal, as I think it was described, of halving child poverty by 2010. We have had 10 years, almost to the day, of trying to meet the 2010 target. New clause 3 would provide great value by ensuring that the relevant Secretary of State—I understand from Committee proceedings that it would be the Chancellor—comes to the Dispatch Box and explains why the 2010 target of halving child poverty has not been achieved, because, frankly, after today it is not going to be achieved, and then, importantly, how the policy will change, what additional things will be done in our schools and skills training, and how we can strengthen families throughout the length and breadth of the nation. That would give us an early opportunity to learn the lessons on how we need to tweak policy to make further progress. That is the point. If we continue with the current rate of progress, with the strategy that the Government have had in place since 1999, we will not have a chance of meeting the 2020 target, which everyone in the House, I believe, wants to see achieved.

Mr. Stuart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; he is a charitable person and does not necessarily share my view. I believe that the Bill is before the House today to distract child poverty campaigners and the people of this country from the fact that the Government made a solemn promise to halve child poverty by 2010, but had no intention or means of meeting that promise. That was in a time of plenty when we were spending far more funds than the country could afford, and they still failed to deliver on that promise. Instead of being honest with people, therefore, they have set out to promise eradication in 10 years, when we know that public finances will be far tougher. The likelihood is that a fraud and a deceit are being put upon people, including the poorest children in the country, by a Government who are seeking to distract people’s attention rather than tackling the root causes of poverty.

Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend made that type of forceful comment extremely well in Committee. Some believe that that is the case; they think that this is declaratory politics. I would like again to quote Mike Brewer from the IFS. He said:

“Those with a more cynical mind would accuse the Government of introducing this Bill to try to hide its predicted failure to meet its target for child poverty in 2010/11…It is not clear why the Government is unwilling to meet its own target for 2010/11, but keen to bind its successors to more stringent targets.”

That is precisely my hon. Friend’s point. As I have said, therefore, I would like to press new clause 3 to a vote. I know that he will be in the Division Lobby behind me, if we get the opportunity.

Mr. Frank Field
It is easy enough for us to attack the Government for not achieving the objective, but will the hon. Gentleman not at least praise them for setting out on this course and for willing huge taxpayer resources to achieve it? If one wants to criticise the Government, it should be for having a top-down approach—for wanting to do things without thinking how the poor themselves might be set free and given the ability to change their own circumstances.

Andrew Selous
I do indeed pay tribute to the Government’s commitment. I do not think that that is disputed. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the record, he will see that I said that in Committee and I am happy to say it again from the Dispatch Box. I am interested in his point. He is right to talk about the importance of moving away from a top-down approach, which is why I am excited about the potential of part 2 of the Bill—I do not know if he has had a chance to look at it—which offers an exciting new role for local authorities. My hon. Friends and I share a concern that the Government have taken an overly prescriptive and top-down approach to dealing with local authorities, because we believe that having a degree of diversity and trying different solutions is likely to yield more results.

15:00:00

Finally, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) for tabling amendment 33, which is one of a series of amendments that were suggested by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which he serves. He is right to alight on the fact that the current survey excludes those addresses that are communal establishments or institutions. The groups affected include, among others, Traveller children and children of asylum seekers, and the important categories of those in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and looked-after children in children’s homes. I am sure that all of us in the House would want to ensure that those groups are included.

Amendment 34, the hon. Gentleman’s linked amendment, asks the child poverty commission to look at what type of annual survey would include those groups of children. I could not help thinking when I read the amendment that it should also be directed at the Office for National Statistics, because the ONS is the independent body to which the Government look to collect such data. I have no doubt that the Minister will touch on that point when she replies.

I am also interested to hear how the Government view their responsibilities to the children of asylum seekers and the Traveller community. I quite understand that they are difficult communities for the Government to engage with, particularly if Traveller children are moving around the country, or perhaps going abroad and returning again. I am also interested in the exact position of children of asylum seekers. For example, if they are in institutions such as Yarl’s Wood in the north of Bedfordshire, where my constituency is, how exactly do the Government measure income for them?

Mr. Streeter
I will be mercifully brief. I want to raise a number of points in support of new clauses 3 and 2.

As most colleagues will know, I spent quite a lot of time on the international development brief in the 1990s, when we were pursuing the 2015 millennium development goals. They were set in the early 1990s, when giving 10, 15 or 20 years to achieve them seemed a perfectly reasonable and commendable thing to do. Everyone thought that that was exactly the right way forward. As it turned out, the closer we get, the more we realise we are a long way from achieving those goals. With hindsight, it would have been far better to build in more immediate, intermediate goals as we walked along that journey, to ensure that we were moving in the right direction and testing ourselves. That is why I support new clause 3.

We have had the Government target, but new clause 3 talks about not just an immediate target for 2010 in this Bill, but being very specific indeed about what is achieved through that target. I said this on Second Reading, but putting in place a target and setting up a commission are not substitutes for a proper, well thought through and developed strategy for hitting such targets and delivering on the issue that we are all concerned about—there is no one in the House who does not want to reduce child poverty, however it is defined. If we are serious, there is an argument for restructuring the machinery of government, rather than just setting up a commission and setting a target, so that many existing Departments are better placed to bear down on the problem.

I sit on the Select Committee on Home Affairs. Yesterday we heard evidence from the former drugs tsar, Mr. Hellawell. He talked about his time as someone brought in from the outside to take overall responsibility of the drugs strategy in the United Kingdom, and about the difficulty of getting all Departments co-ordinated and in alignment to bear down on the drugs problem. If we genuinely believe that child poverty in this country should be a huge focus for the Government and if we would all like it to be significantly reduced, there is an argument for restructuring the machinery of government to bear down on the problem, and not just setting a target or establishing a commission. I hope that the House will seriously consider agreeing to new clause 3, and if not, to something like it, to ensure that we do not just set waffly old goals, but put down, on the record, achievable targets and stepping stones towards achieving them in the mean time.

New clause 2 talks about the causes of poverty, which resonates greatly with the former Prime Minister’s talk about being “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Of course we would like to be tough on the causes of poverty, but what are they? I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and wondered whether it was possible for us to agree as a House on what the causes of poverty might be. For example, what part do human nature and the choices that we make individually play in the causes of poverty? We have all observed, in our lives and in our constituencies over the years, people in similar circumstances and from similar backgrounds making different choices, with some flourishing and others ending up in deprivation and poverty. To what extent can one factor in those individual choices that are a reflection of individual human nature? Perhaps that is utterly impossible.

Ill health is also a cause of poverty. We have all known families who have been going along very nicely indeed, when the primary breadwinner—or perhaps both parents or a child—sadly becomes ill and the money stops flowing, causing disruption and poverty. Family breakdown, drug addiction and alcohol dependency, which my hon. Friend mentioned, and poor education—all these things can be causes of poverty.

John Mason (Glasgow, East) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman lists a number of issues. We are all committed in this House to getting to the causes, but is there not a danger that, by making the list so wide, that becomes impossible, because everything from the weather onwards becomes a factor?

Mr. Streeter
The hon. Gentleman anticipates me. I embrace that concept, except to say that I am not sure how practical it is. I support probing the issue and I believe that the Government need to think about it more, but I reject the fact that we are measuring only financial poverty. This is a slightly different point, but we know that there are lots of children who are from modest or poor backgrounds but who have a stable, loving family and lots of encouragement and nurturing, and who would not consider themselves to be poor. There are other families with a great deal more financial support and income, but who live in chaotic households and would certainly consider themselves to be deprived of the most important things in life.

We are talking about very difficult issues. More thinking needs to be done. The Bill suffers from the fact that it does not seek to get behind the issue of poverty and try at least to trigger a debate about its causes. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire is on to a good thing in setting out new clause 2, which would require someone to do some more thinking on the issue. I think that the idea is for regulations to come forward to grapple with the problem—I am sure that my hon. Friend will nod at this point.

Andrew Selous
indicated assent.

Mr. Streeter
That would be a very valuable exercise.

Mr. Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
As ever, the hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful and valuable contribution, but does he agree that although poverty, and particularly child poverty, is about more than money, unless we address the financial implications of child poverty, frankly this Bill will be for the birds and we shall make no headway at all?

Mr. Streeter
I agree, or I think I do. I certainly want us to address financial child poverty—of course I do. It is distressing when we come across it, as we all do in our constituencies every weekend. However, I feel even more strongly that I would not want us just to focus on financial poverty, but to see some of the other values and framework principles in life as equally important. Some of us enjoyed them as we were growing up and some of us did not, and they make a huge difference to the sorts of people we become.

Mr. Graham Stuart
There is the possibility of distortion, not only in the child poverty agenda as we get nearer to the targets being met, but across the piece. Does my hon. Friend share my misgivings about such declaratory legislation, which means that child poverty, by being put on a statutory footing, has privilege over every one of the various other priorities that government has to balance at all times, such as the vulnerable elderly? If the legislation has force in the rather poorer decade that we now face, it could lead to the wrong decisions being made from a social justice point of view, in wider areas than child poverty alone.

Mr. Streeter
My hon. Friend is on to a very good point—this is a question of what the Government focus on. This slightly contradicts the point that I made earlier. If we are serious about child poverty, we need to restructure Government Departments and align them so that they can bear down on the problem. My hon. Friend might ask why we should not do that in relation to elderly poverty or to deprivation of all kinds. Of course these are important issues.

I have been in the House for 17 years. I believe that, for all sorts of reasons, the situation is now significantly worse—with the lack of social cohesion, with behaviour issues and the fact that so many children are now growing up in households of chaos—than when I first entered the House in 1992. I do not say that in any political sense. I would love to see whichever Government are in place after the next election focusing on this issue and really getting underneath the surface to try to tackle it.

Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, in about 1980, about one in three children were growing up in poverty, compared with just under one in five now? By any standard, a society with a third of its children growing up in poverty is much more dysfunctional.

Mr. Streeter
I am afraid that I do not really trust those statistics terribly much. From my own experience, looking out on this country and on my own constituency profile and work load, I believe that our country now faces greater challenges in terms of its social cohesion and the quality of life of the 15 to 20 per cent. of the population who are growing up in households of chaos and not being given a chance.

I am talking about new clause 3, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in case you were under any misapprehension. The corollary of what I said earlier about choices is this: I accept that many people growing up in this country do not have the same choices as those who come from secure, stable, nurturing backgrounds. I totally take that point on board.

I think that I have delivered more or less all that I wanted to say. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire is on to a good point in new clause 2, and that we should build specific delivery mechanisms into the Bill, as set out in new clause 3. I hope that the Government are in listening mode.

Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD)
I rise to speak to amendments 33 and 34, tabled on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights by me and the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), the Chairman of that Committee.

The Joint Committee attempts—it generally succeeds—to analyse every piece of primary legislation that might engage human rights, and to issue a report for Parliament and the Government in which we make recommendations, particularly when we feel that the legislation has human rights compatibility issues; we also comment when the measures enhance human rights. We tend to do that before the Report stage of a Bill in the first House, to enable Parliament as a whole to consider our recommendations and debate the amendments. It is good to see the amendments being debated, although there is not always time to do so on Report.

The Joint Committee report was published on 10 November 2009. It makes it clear that the Committee welcomes the Bill and generally recognises it as a human rights enhancing measure. We also welcome the detail provided in the human rights memorandum that the Government supplied and the fact that the Government recognised, implicitly and explicitly, the role that the Bill can play in meeting our treaty obligations under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and the United Nations convention on economic, social and cultural rights. It is good to have the opportunity to debate measures that show the value of our human rights commitments arising from the treaties and the Human Rights Act 1998, particularly in the light of the many attacks—usually based on myth—that are made on the Act in this House.

15:15:00

The matter addressed by the Joint Committee’s two amendments is that the principal duty set out in the Bill is to meet four targets defined by income-based indicators of poverty. They relate to children in what the Bill describes as “qualifying households”. Those are not defined in the Bill—they are to be defined by regulations—but it is clear that they will include households that are covered by certain surveys. The report states:

“The surveys currently used are based on the Small Users Postcode Address File, which includes most addresses which have postcodes and receive less than 50 items of post a day, and exclude addresses which are ‘communal establishments or institutions’.”

That is where our concern arises. Children who do not live in qualifying households under that definition will not be the subject of the targets. That raises the question whether they would suffer discrimination under article 14 and whether the legislation is therefore incompatible with our obligation not to discriminate under article 14 in respect of their enjoyment of other convention rights.

Our argument is not that that would be a matter of direct discrimination; it clearly would not be. However, it would constitute indirect discrimination. The example we give, which has already been mentioned, is that children from disadvantaged groups—that makes it worse; it is not children generally, but children from disadvantaged groups, such as the children of asylum seekers, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, and children living in bed and breakfast accommodation and care homes—would not benefit under the present definition from the duty imposed on the Government to tackle child poverty according to the existing four targets, although if my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) gets his way, there will be five targets. The Joint Committee’s assertion is that that would breach article 14 in respect of the enjoyment of the rights under article 1 of protocol 1, which include the right to enjoy one’s possessions. There are clear examples in case law of the kind of benefits that are covered by that, and an article 8 case is also relevant.

If that is a problem, we need to provide a solution. As my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon said, that will not be easy. It is not, however, the job of the Joint Committee to provide that solution. It is for the Government to propose it and for Parliament to amend it. The Joint Committee has, however, tabled two amendments that we believe go some way towards providing a solution. They would place a duty in the Bill for an effort to be made to ameliorate any discrimination that might, almost by necessity, follow from the use of the existing surveys.

I shall not go through the report in detail, but it makes a number of brief arguments against the proposition that we set out in correspondence with the Government. First, we said that the Bill does not engage article 1 of protocol 1, because it sets out no specific benefits. It simply establishes a framework, and the measures in the Bill are not sufficiently determinative of any decision to allocate funds or resources to particular groups, and not therefore to others. Our view was that the measure would have to have sufficient scope of application; it would not be necessary to identify specific discrimination for article 1 of protocol 1 to be engaged.

The question that is raised is whether the use of binding targets is sufficient to create this problem if a group is left out. We believe that there is a question of discrimination, which is not permitted, if some children are treated better than others particularly disadvantaged children such as those of asylum seekers, Gypsies and Travellers, and those living in bed and breakfast accommodation. We definitely think that that would be a problem.

The Government have argued that no provision in the Bill would result in some children being left out, because the qualifying households will be defined in regulations. They say that there can be no argument with the Bill, because the definition will follow in the regulations. We have not accepted that argument previously, and nor have the Government, when it suits them. We state in the report:

“Our concern about the compatibility with Article 14 ECHR of excluding children not in qualifying households from the targets is not affected by the fact that qualifying households will be defined in regulations rather than in the Bill itself.”

We have made clear that if

“the provisions in a Bill are likely to give rise to a breach of a Convention right in practice, for example because of a regulation making power that is likely to be exercised in a way which is incompatible with Convention rights”,

that

“is of as much concern to us as a breach on the face of the Bill.”

The Government’s third argument is that it is not the intention to discriminate against those children, and I certainly accept that the Government are of that view. Indeed, they point out that the duty to have a child poverty strategy will apply to all children; other parts of the Bill not affected by these amendments do not seek to discriminate. Although we support and welcome that, it does not solve the problem that part of the Bill does appear to discriminate against children. The fact that it is not the intention for the Bill to discriminate against them is not relevant; it is, as we say,

“enough that it is the effect of its provisions that the children covered by the targets are prioritised over those children not caught by the data”.

The fourth and final argument that we have identified the Government using is that the discrimination against children not living in qualifying households is justifiable and proportionate because it is simply not practical to conduct surveys that cover all children. We do not think that that is good enough, because we believe that efforts could be made to identify the children we are concerned about. We have made that clear in a number of places in our report.

Steve Webb
The dilemma is that for the vast bulk of the nation’s children, living standards can be assessed using household surveys on a common standard, internationally defined and all the rest of it. Is my hon. Friend’s argument that, if it is not possible to put children in the groups he refers to on to that same metric—that is the key problem; we know where they are and we could survey them, but converting their living standards into the same metric is very difficult—could we not apply a rational approach to the vast majority of children; or would my hon. Friend’s approach preclude us from doing that at all because it is discriminatory?

Dr. Harris
I do not know the answer to that question, but we recognise that the number of additional children that it would be necessary to survey is relatively small, amounting to about 0.5 per cent. Because the whereabouts of many of those children is already known because of the other responsibilities of public authorities, it would be difficult to make a case for regarding as disproportionate the task of ensuring that the data are available, so that all children can be measured against child poverty targets. I accept my hon. Friend’s point that it would not be easy to apply household data to non-household individuals. I am sensitive to the fact that existing data sets are not conducive to that task, but the amendment does not say that the data sets are conducive. It is designed to get the Government to take extra steps to ensure—perhaps by amending the targets to have two tiers, because although it would be differential, it would not be discriminatory if the intention and effect are good—the best means of identifying, aiding and lifting out of poverty those other children who are just not being measured.

John Mason
I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying and I believe I understand his point. I just wonder whether we simply need a completely separate target for those children. Might that not be the best way to deal with the problem?

Dr. Harris
That might be the way forward. We argue that the Bill as a whole, because of the targets set in it, ends up being discriminatory—not intentionally, but in effect—so if the relevant part of the Bill dealt specifically with those children, it would seem to solve the problem. It is not a matter of saying that those children need to appear in every target, but the relevant part of the Bill that puts a duty on the Government to allocate resources to children living in poverty should not by design, albeit unintentionally, exclude some of the most disadvantaged children. That is really the nub of our argument.

The problem is not that, because the children are not covered by the duty, they may not receive the resources. Instead, the problem is that, given our present difficult financial straits, resources may be moved from those children who are not subject to the targets in order to provide the resources to deal with the children who are covered in the target. We have seen that happen, or at least allegedly happen, before—in the treatment of lone parents, for example, when lone parent benefit for the very poorest was cut in order to increase it for the next poorest group. That happened some years ago and I well remember the debate about it. That is the real problem.

Finally, I would like to deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) in his first, less irate, intervention. He made a very good point. I have always had concerns about target-based approaches to policy, because if targets are not measured correctly or if the target ends up being the wrong one, it can distort policy and resource allocation. We see that in the health service all the time, where the most urgent patient is the one who has been waiting 17 and a half weeks, rather than the one who has waited only three weeks but whose case is clinically more urgent. That is why when dealing with the vulnerable, it is vital that we identify the right groups. That is why I hope the Minister will consider carefully the constructive suggestions made by the Joint Committee.

David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I rise to speak briefly to this group of amendments. I confess that I have not been involved in the debate all along, but would like to raise just a few points.

When it comes to the key principles and objectives of this Bill, I believe the Government’s heart is in the right place, but as right hon. and hon. Members have already said, the target date of 2020 will not be achieved—it is going to be very difficult.

Before I entered this House and became engaged in full-time politics, child poverty to me was a third-world country—a country trying to develop and move on and enter western society. When I came into politics, however, I was astounded at the number of children who were living in poverty across the whole of the United Kingdom. That was a real eye-opener for me.

I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is not in his place at the moment, in much of what he said about poverty. Other Members have raised the point about finding reasons for such poverty. What is the root cause? We have heard a number of different responses to that question.

Ten years ago, the Government pledged to eradicate child poverty within a generation. It had doubled in the preceding 20 years, and the United Kingdom had the worst child poverty record in Europe.

Mr. Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
My hon. Friend has talked of the Government’s commitment to eradicating child poverty within a generation. Does he agree that part of the challenge, not just in Northern Ireland but throughout the United Kingdom, is that poverty is a generational problem? In many societies, estates and communities, the grandparents, the parents and, now, the children have all suffered from the same difficulty, from which no one has managed to extricate them.

David Simpson
I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. There is no doubt that child poverty is a generational problem, and that it is still a reality in Britain today. Figures have been issued ranging from 4 million to 6 million. However, many of the issues have been devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive. Like my hon. Friend, I had the privilege of chairing the Social Development Committee in the Assembly, where all those issues were raised.

15:30:00

In Northern Ireland, where the problem has been historically worse, some 100,000 children are living in poverty. The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) mentioned housing. Far too many young people’s lives are blighted by homes that are cold and damp because their families cannot afford heating. As a result, their health suffers. They go into adulthood with chronic health problems that may plague them for the rest of their lives. Children who grow up in poverty do not have the same opportunities as their peers—the right hon. Member for Birkenhead mentioned education in this context—and that can turn disadvantaged children into disillusioned adults.

Mr. Graham Stuart
How is a balance to be struck between giving families who are living in poverty a sense of empowerment and a sense that they are the authors of their own lives—I am thinking, for instance, of the many first-generation immigrant families who live in poverty but, driven by their values, make sure that their children do not follow them—and giving them support? We need to support them, but not in a way that sustains a lack of aspiration and a lifestyle that will keep successive generations in poverty. How do we provide support in a way that is both humane and politically effective?

David Simpson
I wish that I had a crystal ball. It is very difficult to identify the root of the problem and find a way of encouraging people to emerge from that lifestyle. The hon. Gentleman referred to addiction earlier, and that is also a major problem. As with a disease, we need to find the root cause in order to eradicate this problem, and I believe that it will take until well after 2020 to complete the job.

The Northern Ireland Executive remain committed to the 2006 strategy document “Lifetime Opportunities”. Its key objectives are enshrined in the “Programme for Government”, which sets out some ambitious targets including the lifting of some 67,000 children out of poverty by next year and—as the Bill proposes—the elimination of child poverty by 2020. That will be very difficult, but the aims and objectives are there.

Money was mentioned earlier today. Let me end with a comment made by a parent from Belfast. She says:

“I know that money cannot buy happiness and my children have loads of love, but having enough money is important to ensure that my children are well looked after and have the things that they need in life.”

We owe it to our children and the next generation to act on that.

As I have said, I believe that the Government’s aims and objectives show that their heart is in the right place, but we need to dig for the root cause in order to deal with the problem.

Mr. Graham Stuart
It is a pleasure both to follow the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) and to participate in this debate. I shall address my remarks chiefly to new clauses 2 and 3. The hon. Gentleman and other contributors have mentioned the Government’s heart being in the right place, and I think I agree with that, but there are three drivers behind this Bill, and whereas the first of them is a genuine commitment to tackling child poverty, the other two are more ignoble.

The Bill is designed in part to distract from the Government’s failure to meet the 2010-11 target, and it is also being introduced in the hope that it will serve to create the famous political dividing lines, as is characteristic of so many proposals and legislation since the current Prime Minister took office. The Bill has been introduced in the hope that the Conservatives will fall into a political trap by expressing doubts about the mechanisms it employs or its declaratory nature—or any other of a number of well-founded concerns about it. The Government hoped the Conservatives might be foolish enough to oppose the Bill so that they could be shown to be more interested in the few than the many, thus reinforcing the disgraceful and unhelpful narrative to which the Prime Minister is so dedicated. Therefore, the Government’s heart is not in the right place in two out of those three aims. Furthermore, the fact that the Government are so keen to create these dividing lines prevents us from being able to talk about the fiendishly complex problem of tackling child poverty.

I do not doubt the Government’s commitment to tackling child poverty, but in the boom period that we have recently enjoyed, the low-hanging fruit in policy terms was halving child poverty, and they did not meet their target in 2005—although they missed it by a wafer-thin margin, so I will not place too much emphasis on that. They are going to miss the 2010 child poverty target as well, and they reject spending the money that the Institute for Fiscal Studies says they could spend in order to meet that target next year. Therefore, despite the fact that they made a solemn pledge, they are saying that they will not spend the £4.3 billion on transfers to ensure that they halve child poverty. They could do that, but they have decided not to, because they recognise, as all Governments must, that they have to strike a balance between all the different priorities they are addressing. Why, therefore, would a future Government be able to do that in 10 years’ time, after what will doubtless be a much tougher decade than the past 10 years from a financial point of view? I therefore believe that that will not be done. The Government are setting us up for failure, and they are giving a false promise to people that eradication is in sight. I find the entire Bill deeply unsatisfactory.

New clause 3 is tremendously useful in asking for a report, and thereby asking the Government to talk about what they are doing now—to talk about the deadline not 10 or 11 years hence, but for tackling children being brought up in deprivation today. What are the Government doing now—this month, this quarter, next quarter, all the way through to the end of the next financial year? If they oppose the new clause, they will show that they are not interested in transparency and in looking at the here and now. They will show that they are interested not in the political realities of delivering for the poorest in our society, but in playing political games so that they can welcome the clamour of support for their long-term vision. We have had a lot of long-term visions, and the long-term vision of today is that we have ended up with record numbers of young people in unemployment.

Whenever my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) is sitting on the Front Bench, I am always minded to try to follow his lead by being less strident and more charitable—he manages to achieve that both rightly and effectively. It is, therefore, worth commenting on a few positive things the Government have done. They have invested in early child care such as the Sure Start children centres, and they have made a genuine effort to put in place early intervention, which relates to matters of interest to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen). We must judge the outcomes of today, however, and what we now have are more NEETs—young people not in education, employment or training—than when the Government came to power.

We should also consider the number of people who are on the very lowest incomes. When most people think about poverty, they think about the very poorest. When they have a Labour Government who say they want to eradicate child poverty, little would they imagine that that Government would be smug and proud of their record when the number of children in families on the very lowest incomes—not below 60 per cent. of median income, which is the technical description of relative poverty, but below 40 per cent. of median income—is at its highest for 25 years. That is the reality. The poorest are poorer under Labour, despite the investments and the genuineness of the commitments. Yet we have before us this vainglorious piece of legislation, which is designed to distract and to allow this failing Government, who have so often failed the poorest, to wrap themselves in a cloak of social justice. They do not deserve to wear it.

All this means that we are not doing enough of what the hon. Member for Upper Bann and so many others, including the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), were talking about. We should be trying to wrestle with the complexity of these issues so that we do not create perverse incentives—those affecting the poor and the rich. We want social justice and we want effectiveness, and we want it to be provided in a humane way. We do not want to play politics with looking after the poor in a way that ends up with more of them kept that way.

Dr. William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in meeting the challenge of child poverty, it does not matter to which party one belongs? Child poverty is a problem facing all parties in this House, so it is vital that we reach a consensus on how we take children out of poverty and allow them to succeed in life with the backing of Government and Government policy?

Mr. Stuart
I partially agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, and I certainly welcome the sentiment behind it. I am not always convinced that consensus does lead to the best results. A clash of ideas more often leads to positive outcomes than does a cosy consensus in this place. All the parties signed up to the Climate Change Act 2008, but have we seen a demonstrable change in emissions since it was passed? We have not seen it yet, but I hope that we will. I shall not go further on that; I shall stop before I am stopped, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Steve Webb
It is always a shame to interrupt the hon. Gentleman in full flow. May I encourage him to be a bit wary about this so-called very low-income measure of less than 40 per cent. of median income? I hope he is aware that although that accurately represents some people’s living standards, surveys of income and expenditure provide good reason to think that the measurement of income of those very low-income households is often not a good proxy for their living standards. The classic case is that of the self-employed, whose books show less than 40 per cent. but whose living standard is clearly not that at all. I am trying not to be patronising, but I discourage him from putting too much weight on this measure of less than 40 per cent., where the data really are murky.

Mr. Stuart
I would always defer to the hon. Gentleman on matters of statistics, but when the official Government statistics have been reasonably consistent—he may correct me if I am wrong about this—and have shown an increase in the number of people in that category, either we have had an explosion in black market activity among families or we face a genuine problem. It is perfectly reasonable for those of us who have not slaved for many years in national statistics offices to take Government figures at face value, particularly when they show us an ugly picture of an increase in poverty among the poorest. He may patronise me as much as he likes, but until I am given comprehensive evidence to show that there has not been an increase in poverty among the poorest in this society, I shall remain concerned—even if he wants to dismiss my concern for technical reasons.

It is worth saying that we could have a clash of ideologies here, although there is so much political fear ahead of a general election that not much clashing is occurring. Historically, the Conservative party has believed—or certainly one could caricature it thus—in trickle-down economics. I remember a friend of mine sneeringly saying to me a little while ago, “I suppose you believe in trickle-down economics.” As a good Conservative, I do, to an extent. However, although the previous Conservative Government transformed the country from being the sick man of Europe—we took over from the previous economic wreckage of a Labour Government—to being a much more powerful and dynamic economy, child poverty increased, and nobody who sits on the Conservative Benches is proud of that.

We want to combine a proper recognition of the need for incentives, for hard work to be rewarded, for enterprise to be supported and for the state not to smother economic activity with ensuring that, as we grow the economy, we carry all with us and do not rely on trickle-down economics to give us the magic solution. That certainly did not happen under the previous Conservative Government.

John Mason
I noticed the hon. Gentleman’s phrase about hard work being rewarded, and there is a problem in that a lot of the children in poverty have one or more parents working. Would he be happy to support a higher minimum wage and, in fact, a living wage?

15:45:00

Mr. Stuart
That is a fair question and it would need to be considered. We do not want to price people—particularly single parents who are inflexible in what they can do in the workplace because of their family commitments—out of accessing the marketplace. It is not a battle between those who do not care and those who care and want a higher minimum wage. It is a really tough judgment call to get the right thing for the country as a whole and for the poorest in particular. That is an argument that I would be happy to engage in with the hon. Gentleman. I do not have any firm views on it, and his expertise might easily eclipse mine.

We talked about social cohesion and, as hon. Members have mentioned, households in chaos. We have to deal with that. What do we do when we take measures? I fear that this Bill could end up enabling transfers of money to households, rewarding and reinforcing chaotic lifestyles. The Minister has had nothing to say about that. In fact, one of the Ministers who is on the Front Bench—the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman)—said in Committee, extraordinarily:

“The Government are not wholly convinced that family breakdown is a cause of poverty”.

She actually said that. If she wants to intervene, I would be happy to allow her to retract that today. She said:

“The Government are not wholly convinced that family breakdown is a cause of poverty; on the contrary, we tend to hold the view that poverty is a cause of family breakdown.”––[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2009; c. 15, Q44.]

Of course poverty is a cause of family breakdown. Of course the tensions and pressures of poverty might exacerbate tensions in a family. However, to suggest that family breakdown does not push people into poverty is entirely to misunderstand what happens to families. The fact that we have a Minister on the Front Bench with such a perverse and peculiar view undermines my confidence that the Government know what they are doing.

Mr. Jamie Reed
The hon. Gentleman is making a very interesting case, as usual, which is being enjoyed by Members of all parties. Does he agree that this Bill is fundamentally about the kind of country that we want to be and that it is also about priorities and assurances? Where does that rate in his priorities?

Mr. Stuart
The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I shall try to answer him as straightforwardly as I can. I personally do not support putting child poverty targets on a statutory footing when we have not assessed all deprivation and when we have not considered the plight of the disabled, the elderly poor or any number of other groups. We have not considered the other priorities—we could be at war in eight years’ time. All Governments want the best outcomes for the most people and have a particular interest—they certainly should—in looking after the most vulnerable and the weakest in our society. Should we—the hon. Gentleman will have to forgive me, as I know that he is not a cynical Member of this place—prioritise this issue for cynical electoral reasons so that the Government can capture a headline and distract from their failures?

Ms Keeble
Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that all the studies that are based on Department for Work and Pensions stats, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation study, show that it is children who are most likely to be in poverty in the UK today? That is the point of this legislation. They are the single foremost group. We can identify within that group which household structures and which income structures lead people to be in poverty, but overwhelmingly it is children who are at risk of poverty.

Mr. Stuart
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. Single parent households are twice as likely to be in poverty, according to the Government figures, as two-parent households. We have a Minister who suggests that family breakdown is not a cause, and suggestions have been made that to try to eradicate the disincentives and built-in biases against couples in the benefits and tax system is an attack on single-parent families. I would have hoped that the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), who takes a profound interest in such matters, would support the Opposition, who believe that we need a level playing field. We certainly do not need to reinforce the pressures on couples to split up because of perverse incentives in the benefit system.

Ms Keeble
I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would quote the figures from Department for Work and Pensions tables or from the Rowntree study that show that single-parent households are twice as likely as two-parent households to be in poverty. I acknowledge that there might be a greater likelihood of that, but I would be very surprised to hear those figures, and I would be grateful if he would quote them.

Mr. Stuart
I hope that it is not because of blind prejudice that the hon. Lady has not looked at the basic figures.

Andrew Selous
rose—

Mr. Stuart
I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend, who is a master of such figures and will share them with the House.

Andrew Selous
I am happy to intervene briefly on my hon. Friend to give the Government’s figures on HBAI for 2007-08, from which the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) has frequently quoted. Table 4 on page 66 shows that the chance of being in poverty is 36 per cent. for a child of lone parents and 18 per cent. for a child of a couple—half that rate. Those are the Government’s own figures from a central DWP document on child poverty.

Mr. Stuart
One would hope that in a less febrile battle between false political narratives one would not even need to see the tables; one needs only common sense to see that that is likely to happen. No one wants to stigmatise single parents or to pretend that anyone lives in a model family, least of all today, but one must recognise the realities and try to support people in staying together and to minimise what the right hon. Member for Birkenhead said were the supply routes into poverty. That should be a common cause across the House. It is a shame that we have to read out tables to get people to do what common sense should tell them as a matter of course. That is a key appeal from me.

When debating new clauses 3 and 2, we need to talk about the causes of poverty. That is a complex area, and we need cross-party working and understanding without playing games. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said that the Bill would hold the Government of the day’s feet to the fire to ensure that aims on child poverty were delivered. My duty—not in 2018 or 2090, but right now, as a Member of Parliament who represents many poor families and poor children—is to try to hold this Government to the fire for solemn pledges that they have made, but they do not even want to make a report to the House to ’fess up to what is happening. The failure to do that and to agree this new clause suggests that we will not be doing everything we can to minimise the number of children in child poverty, not in 10 or 12 years’ time, but right now in the coming months.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)
I now have to announce the result of a Division deferred from a previous day. On the motion relating to environmental protection, the Ayes were 284 and the Noes were 192, so the Question was agreed to.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

John Howell (Henley) (Con)
It is always a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart). I note that during his speech he was in his new charitable guise. Despite that, I am grateful for having been called to speak after him. It is rather better that I should follow him than the other way around.

In Committee, I thought that we were getting very close to a university lecture in semantics at times. We learned that eradication meant no such thing, certainly in terms of how the general public would understand it. Similarly, I think that we are in danger of looking at child poverty through the eyes of the House alone and not those of people outside, and of seeing it purely in statistical terms rather than in the wider terms that people outside would see it. Looking at it through those eyes, I do not see how we can achieve the general aim of eradicating child poverty in that broader sense simply through clauses 2 to 5, so I rise to speak in support of new clause 2 and the consequential amendments that deal with the causes of child poverty. We cannot deal with child poverty adequately without considering its causes and how we might break the cycle of deprivation. I agree that income has to be a substantial part of that, but I want to talk about why considering income alone would be inadequate.

In the period between Committee and Report, I have had the privilege of being able to talk to a number of organisations that work to combat child poverty. I have spoken to them in some depth about the Bill and their approach to child poverty in general. One of the things that they welcome is that the Bill sets a framework. They are not necessarily in agreement that it is the right framework, but they agree that there should be a framework. One of the consistent things that has come out of my conversations with them is that they too see the difficulty with a framework that is built only on income targets without taking into account the importance of the family and the broader context that others have spoken about today.

In Committee, the Government tried to argue that the broader context would be dealt with through the mechanisms in clause 8. I shall return to that in a moment but, if that is true and the Bill contains a recognition of that context—through the mechanism of material deprivation, for example—one has to ask why there is no consistency. Why is the recognition of the broader context in one part of the Bill not reflected in the targets at the beginning of the Bill? New clause 2 would rectify that problem.

I still have a great problem: I struggle to see how part 1 and part 2 are linked. It is perfectly right to have local government involved in delivering much of the work needed to help to eradicate child poverty, but that work is about the causes of the poverty and the cycle of deprivation. We heard from, among others, Paul Carter, the leader of Kent county council. He told us how that council was pulling the work together, and not just in recent years: it had been a long journey lasting six, seven or eight years, which had included integrating the work with the delivery of education.

The county council that covers my constituency has taken the same joined-up approach involving education and the primary care trust, with the aim of looking at the causes of child poverty and helping to overcome it. It is a shame that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) is not in his seat at the moment, as that approach goes part of the way to answering the concerns that he raised about how we get to the root causes of child poverty.

In some ways, the Government have recognised that one way to get to those root causes is to use local government. That is what part 2 of the Bill is about, but the Government have not linked part 2 with the targets in part 1 to achieve the sort of broad target that new clause 2 calls for.

We also heard evidence from Charlotte Pickles from the Centre for Social Justice about the need to see things in a family context. She made the point that we need to make sure that the increases in money provided to try to eradicate poverty reach the child, and that it is not unfairly diverted to other causes in any of the various possible ways. I was struck by her comment in her evidence of 22 October, when she said:

“of course, you need to address income levels but that cannot be the sole thing. Unfortunately, the Bill is framed in such a way that we feel that the point of looking at a wider perspective may be lost.”––[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 82-83, Q7.]

I think that that goes to the heart of new clause 2 and the consequential amendments that flow from it. We need to move towards that broader picture.

In Committee, I was astonished that the Minister seemed unable to make the connections between other factors and child poverty, or to see the problem in a way that was not compartmentalised but in the round. In response to question 13, Charlotte Pickles said:

“If your targets are solely focused on income, and not on other issues around poverty, you are not measuring what is necessarily going to bring that child out of poverty.”––[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 86, Q13.]

When taken with the broader context of the family, that child focus was extremely helpful.

However, we did not hear only from Charlotte Pickles and the Centre for Social Justice, as we also heard Neil O’Brien from the Policy Exchange talk about the narrowness of the targets in the Bill. There has been some talk to the effect that the current targets at least give focus. I admit that they do give a focus on income, but that is surely not enough: we have to make sure that the focus is complete, and that it is the right focus. I am far from convinced that that is the case, and it goes to the heart of the Bill’s extremely poor structure.

16:00:00

Mr. Jamie Reed
The hon. Gentleman has made some interesting points, but does he agree that income is the cornerstone of the Bill and that, frankly, everything else—whether health and well-being, the family unit or any of the other issues relating to opportunity—cannot be addressed unless we centralise our efforts first and foremost on income?

John Howell
I am not arguing that we should not take income into account. I have not heard anyone in the evidence sessions in Committee or in the House on Second Reading or today say that income is not an important element; but surely the hon. Gentleman cannot claim that income is everything. It cannot form the complete picture.

Mr. Reed
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I fear that I was not as clear as I might have been. I am not taking issue with him at all. I simply say that income is at the heart of everything that we do. The other issues that he talks of, which are exceptionally important, cannot be progressed in any way unless we first address the income issue.

John Howell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point, but I look at it the other way around. We need to ensure that the increase in income that we use to help to eradicate child poverty is well used and that no other factor will come into play to prevent it from having the maximum effect, but we cannot tell that at the moment, because we do not see in the Bill how to deal with the causes of deprivation and poverty—what the right hon. Member for Birkenhead referred to as stopping the flow of negativity that enters the system and produces the root causes of the problem.

I well recall the comment in Committee that the Bill already took such things into account with the emphasis on material deprivation and the need to consider them in the strategy, but what stuck in my mind most in reading the report of the Committee proceedings was the information that the data on assessing material deprivation were so weak. So why is an imperfect measure buried in the Bill, when new clause 2 could provide us with a much better measure of the things that material deprivation indicates we are struggling to move towards. We must not view the issue in terms of narrow statistics. I do not want too many targets in any Bill, but nor do I want targets that skew the Bill and our actions towards income only.

In Committee, if I remember correctly, the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) was sceptical and said that too many targets would allow the Government too much wriggle room. If there were 10 targets, they could say that they had achieved seven of them and therefore that they had met their goals, but those seven targets might not be the most important ones. I take that point—it is one of the things that needs to be worked out—but I do not believe that the process is impractical to achieve.

Those hon. Members who have been involved in the management of businesses may well have come across the concept of the balanced scorecard, by which the most important quadrants of a business’s activities are divided and a handful of measures used to manage the business to achieve those objectives. Almost all those objectives are not single ones; they are baskets of objectives in which decisions are made about the importance of each in achieving the overall objective in each quadrant.

The methodology exists and is being used effectively in business and local government. In the days when I was a councillor, I happened to be responsible for introducing a balanced scorecard approach to my county council, and the management of the council’s business improved almost overnight as a result, because of the clarity and decision making there had to be, not just in respect of headline-grabbing targets but in respect of targets all the way through. [Interruption.] I think the Minister is trying to intervene on me, is she not?

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Helen Goodman)
indicated dissent.

John Howell
Ah, the hon. Lady is just making faces in response to my comments. If she would like a lecture on the balanced scorecard and how to do targets, she could make an appointment afterwards. I am very happy to share with national Government the knowledge and expertise that I have gained from local government.

I am almost at the end of my contribution. The point has been made that it is practical to look at a way of approaching targets based on the causes of poverty, instead of just sticking to the narrow and somewhat misleading targets that have been set in the Bill.

Helen Goodman
I shall speak to new clauses 1, 2 and 3, and amendments 1 to 20, 23, 24, 33, and 34.

New clause 1, which the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) moved, would include in the Bill a target for relative low income measured after housing costs. The consequential amendments are amendments 1 to 20. The new clause would impose a new target that is additional, as he knows, to the relative low income before housing costs target in clause 2 and the other targets in clauses 3 to 5.

Whether poverty should be measured before or after housing costs and the impact of housing quality on children’s outcomes were debated at some length in Committee. I emphasise that the Government recognise the importance of housing costs to families’ disposable incomes and the impact of those costs on their living standards. That is why the Government have placed, and will continue to place, significant focus on the availability of affordable homes. For example, the latest investment of £290 million at the end of November, delivering almost 5,500 affordable homes throughout 149 local authority areas, brought total Government help for house building since June to £1.8 billion.

Mr. Graham Stuart
Will the Minister give way?

Helen Goodman
Not yet, if the hon. Gentleman would just be a little patient.

As we discussed in Committee, however, there is a number of reasons why the Government have chosen to use before-housing-costs measures of poverty in the Bill. First, measures of housing quality are currently included in the list of items that are used for the combined low income and material deprivation measure, so if a child is experiencing poor housing, that will be reflected in their material deprivation score. More importantly, families who cannot afford items because of their high costs, such as high housing costs, will be picked up in the material deprivation measure. For example, looking at poverty statistics by region, it is clear, using the combined measure, that London has a far higher average risk of poverty than the relative low income measure would suggest, highlighting the additional costs—particularly the high housing costs—of living in London.

Secondly, it is important to note—

Mr. Stuart
Will the Minister give way now?

Helen Goodman
No.

Secondly, it is important to note the drawbacks associated with an after-housing-costs measure. As the hon. Member for Northavon said, measuring income after housing costs can understate some individuals’ relative standard of living because they pay more for better-quality accommodation. Conversely, income measures that do not deduct housing costs may overstate the living standards of people whose housing costs are high relative to the quality of their accommodation. Therefore, the relative low income indicator before housing costs, in conjunction with the combined low income and material deprivation indicator, ensures that we effectively capture the issue of affordability of housing. Given the drawbacks of the alternatives, we consider the material deprivation indicator to be a better way of capturing the impact of housing costs.

The hon. Gentleman asked why housing benefit should be included as income in the before-housing-costs measure of poverty. The obvious answer is that housing benefit is income, but I shall give him a fuller response than that. Households in receipt of housing benefit pay their housing costs using their total income, including housing benefit. Households that do not receive housing benefit need to pay their housing costs from their total income. Including housing benefit enables like-for-like comparison between the incomes that households have with which to pay housing costs and to meet their other needs. To deduct housing benefit from the income of those who receive it would be to underestimate the total income that they had with which to meet their housing costs and other needs.

Mr. Stuart
Will the Minister give way?

Steve Webb
rose—

Helen Goodman
I give way to the hon. Member for Northavon.

Steve Webb
Can I ask the Minister a simple question? If I were to give her a fiver and take a fiver out of her purse, would she feel better off?

Helen Goodman
That is not a very difficult trick question, because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, housing benefit rates vary around the country to take account of the different costs of housing in different parts of the country.

The hon. Member for Northavon asked a slightly more tricky question when he gave the example of two pensioners living next door to each other, one of whom owned their house and one of whom was on housing benefit, with the latter appearing to be better off on a before-housing-costs basis. There are similar arguments against an after-housing-costs measure. Imagine two families on the same income and with the same number of children. One family decides to spend a lot of money on a house in a nice area, and the other decides to spend less on housing because they have other priorities. On an after-housing-costs measure, the first family are considered to be poorer. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman can see the logic of my case.

We discussed in Committee the fact that other European countries measure poverty before housing costs. We have stated our ambition to be among the best in Europe. The ability to make comparisons is vital because they allow us to benchmark our performance.

The new clause would not change the approach to measuring child poverty set out in the Bill; instead, it would add a further target to the Bill, which we do not consider necessary. As members of the Committee, including the hon. Gentleman, highlighted, further targets run the risk of creating a lack of focus. Having four comprehensive targets covering financial poverty is sufficient and enables us to capture the different facets of poverty. As noted, the combined low income and material deprivation indicator will ensure that those whose high housing costs impact on their living standards will be captured.

The new clause proposes a target level for the measure of less than 10 per cent. The level of less than 10 per cent. for the before-housing-costs relative low income measure in clause 2 was selected on the basis that that is the lowest that has been achieved and maintained over time in other modern European economies. The vast majority of European countries publish poverty statistics using only a before-housing-costs measure of relative low income, so there are no comparative data to establish whether a target of 10 per cent. on an after-housing-costs measure is either realistic or in line with our ambition to be among the best in Europe.

Although the targets in the Bill should be ambitious and stretching, they should not be unrealistic. The present level of relative poverty after housing costs is 31 per cent., or 4 million children. Meeting the proposed target would require a reduction to fewer than 1.3 million. I would argue that it is unrealistic to envisage our achieving that in the next 10 years. We published the principles of our child poverty strategy in today’s pre-Budget report, outlining five principles, including cost-effectiveness and affordability. That is key if we are to meet our objectives in a sustainable manner.

I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that in preparing a UK child poverty strategy, consideration must be given to any necessary measures required in respect of housing to support the tackling of child poverty, as set out in clause 8(5)(d). We are currently analysing the impact of housing on child poverty to inform the first child poverty strategy, and that analysis will determine the key principles for that policy area and, subsequently, appropriate monitoring arrangements.

Finally, we are committed to ensuring that the “Households Below Average Income” series continues to publish income figures after housing costs, so that it will always be possible to monitor child poverty trends on an after-housing-costs basis and to keep under review the impact of housing costs on families’ living standards.

16:15:00

Mr. Graham Stuart
The Minister may not have been passionate in her espousal of the importance of housing in tackling poverty, but she has at least acknowledged it, and I welcome the extra money that is coming to the East Riding of Yorkshire for additional affordable housing. Can she explain, however, why a Government supposedly committed to eradicating child poverty have built fewer houses in any year of their time in government than were built in any year of the previous Conservative Administration?

Helen Goodman
I have described this afternoon the investment that we are making, which is providing a record improvement in the decent homes standard. That is having a significant impact on people’s standard of living.

New clause 2 and amendment 23, tabled by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), suggest that regulations under the Bill should set targets on a potentially wide range of outcomes that can be said to be the causes of child poverty, and that the child poverty strategy should set out what progress needs to be made to address those causes in order to meet the targets in clauses 2 to 5. The causes of poverty drew comments from many Members in the debate, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who brought his usual compassionate and well informed perspective to bear.

My right hon. Friend began by congratulating the Government on their excellent record and the scale of their ambition to tackle child poverty, but he suggested that the Government’s approach had been too mechanistic. I point out to him that we are not focusing simply on incomes, taxes and benefits but, as I think he acknowledged, we are also tackling worklessness and education issues. He suggested that benefits had been increased too much compared with income, so I hope that he will welcome the better-off credit that the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced earlier. It will ensure that everybody in full-time work is better off. I remind him also of the significant reductions in the marginal deduction rates that we have recently achieved.

In the discussion about the root causes of poverty, the hon. Members for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), for Upper Bann (David Simpson), for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) and for Henley (John Howell) mentioned family formation. It would not be particularly fruitful for me to detain the House on that matter for long, but I point out that it is extremely difficult to say precisely what is the correlation between family structure and poverty levels. I remind hon. Members of the experience in Denmark, which has the highest level of lone parenthood in western Europe but also comes out at the top of the UNICEF table on child well-being. The lesson that we can learn from that is that the structures and policies that we put in place are far more significant than particular matters of family formation. In any case, it is not clear that those matters are under the Government’s control.

Of course it is important that any Government tackle the broad range of issues and policy areas related to poverty. Clause 8 requires the UK child poverty strategy to do precisely that, but that does not mean that targets on them should be set in the Bill, as that would risk diluting the clear focus on income poverty and material deprivation that is at its heart. Such issues were debated substantially in Committee, and I refer hon. Members to the arguments that were expressed. As we said then, income poverty and material deprivation must be at the heart of the Bill because of the evidence of the impact that they have on children’s lives, both in their experiences now and their chances for the future. Income poverty has an impact on children’s education, health and social lives, the relationships with and between their parents and their future life chances.

Andrew Selous
Does the Minister not agree that making progress on dealing with the causes of poverty is very likely to result in the Government achieving their income poverty targets? The two go together.

Helen Goodman
If the hon. Gentleman had been a little more patient, he would have heard me make a similar point.

Our strategy needs to be multi-faceted if we are to break into generational cycles of poverty, and so truly end child poverty. That multi-faceted approach is supported by the Bill. The UK strategy will need to meet both purposes set out in clause 8(2). As well as showing how the targets will be met, the strategy must meet the purpose of ensuring, as far as possible, that children in the UK do not experience socio-economic disadvantage. That second purpose ensures that the strategy will be broad in scope and that it will focus on a wide range of policy areas, rather than relying on a narrow range of policies related simply to raising household income through financial support.

Moreover, clause 8(5) establishes that the strategy must consider what measures if any ought to be taken across a range of key policy areas. Those building blocks of the strategy have been determined on evidence that shows that those policy areas have the potential to make the biggest impact in tackling the causes and consequences of growing up in income poverty. It follows that amendment 24 is unnecessary, because the strategies will already need to set out the specific actions that need to be taken to meet the targets, and the annual reports will monitor delivery, tracking a wide range of indicators that may change over time, as determined by the needs of the strategy.

As well as being unnecessary, amendment 24 is unhelpful and problematic, because it seeks to require the strategy to define causal relationships that in reality are tenuous and difficult to establish. The strategies will review the evidence on the underlying causes of poverty, seeking to establish clear evidence of causal relationships where they exist, but the problem with amendment 24 is that in many cases it is not possible to establish evidence of clear causal relationships. In many cases, the evidence shows that there are strong associations or connections between growing up in relative poverty and material deprivation, and experiencing poor intermediate outcomes in a range of areas, including educational attainment, health and other aspects of well-being. It also shows that there are strong associations between those intermediate outcomes and the risk of experiencing poor final outcomes in adulthood, including the risk of experiencing poverty and material deprivation. However, the causal relationship goes both ways. Income poverty has both direct and indirect effects on other policy areas, including health and education. Defining the causes of poverty, as the amendments would require, is therefore not possible to achieve at present owing to gaps in the evidence base and limitations in the data available.

The development of the strategy will involve identifying those groups of children most at risk of being in poverty, including particularly vulnerable groups, and assessing what action needs to be taken to meet all the targets on income poverty and material deprivation. The indicators that should be tracked will change over time, as determined by the needs of the strategy, but our ultimate goal—the ending of child poverty—remains constant.

I shall now turn to new clause 3, which was tabled by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire. I understand the need for transparency on progress towards the 2010 target. However, I shall explain why the new clause is unnecessary. Opposition Members have been full of doom and gloom about our prospects for 2010 and achieving those targets—the hon. Gentleman asked a number of questions about where we are and where we think we are going to be in the light of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcements.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Government previously forecast that measures taken since 2008 would reduce child poverty by a further 500,000 in relative terms, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the number is 600,000. The measures that the Chancellor announced earlier today will produce a further reduction of at least 50,000. He announced an extension of free school meals entitlement to primary age children whose parents are on working tax credits, and an increase in child benefit of 1.5 per cent. in April 2010, which is well ahead of what it would be if we had stuck with the indexation in legislation. I contrast that with the freezing of child benefit under the previous Administration, which meant that by 1997 it was lower in real terms than when they took office in 1979.

Steve Webb
I understand that it has been revealed since the pre-Budget report—it was not apparent in the statement—that the 1.5 per cent. increase in child benefit is actually a draw-down of the following year’s increase. The following year will have not a full inflation increase but inflation less 1.5 per cent.—a real-terms cut. Was the Minister aware of that?

Helen Goodman
I do not think that there will be a real-terms cut in the following year as the hon. Gentleman suggests. I will write to him on that point.

I turn now to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris). Amendment 33 would add a further regulation-making power to clause 6, enabling the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out the circumstances in which a child living in “communal accommodation” may be regarded as living in a qualifying household. That came out of the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which the hon. Gentleman is a member. I would like to make it very clear that our goal is to eradicate poverty for all children: the framework that the Bill establishes for achieving that goal—using national child poverty strategies and duties on local government—applies to all children in the UK.

To ensure accountability for and progress towards the goal, clauses 2 to 5 define targets for a range of poverty indicators. As I am sure hon. Members appreciate, those targets will be effective only if progress towards them is measurable. That is why they do not apply to children who are not covered by the surveys that we use to measure poverty. Targets for those children would not be measurable, and therefore would be an ineffective way to ensure that their experiences of poverty are tackled. The Bill therefore sets out that the targets apply only to children living in “qualifying households”.

For many children living in communal establishments, the concept of household income is simply inapplicable. However, we have other policies to address the well-being of those children. For example, in residential care homes, minimum requirements include the provision of healthy meals, clothes and sufficient financial resources.

I am concerned to satisfy the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, because these issues are especially important. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said that the targets discriminate against children not living in qualifying households. In fact, the targets do not discriminate, as only actions can discriminate. He is making a jump in logic and setting up a situation that assumes that the policy that flows from the targets will be discriminatory. That is a mistake and that is why, with the reassurance that the objectives apply to all children, I hope that he will not press his amendments. I hope that other hon. Members also will not press their amendments.

Steve Webb
It is good to see the House filling up for my views on the after housing costs measure of income.

We have had an unexpectedly full debate on this group of amendments and one of the key points that the Minister made is that measuring income after housing costs has many flaws. That makes me wonder why her Department publishes so many statistics on that basis every year. It is presumably because they complement the before housing costs measures, because they tell us different things. Each measure has its relative advantages and disadvantages, and that is why the Department publishes both. To pick one for the purpose of legislation seems inconsistent to me.

The Minister said that we need international comparisons, and my amendment would not prevent those being included. She says that 10 per cent. is an arbitrary figure—obviously it would be the same for before housing costs—and that it is unobtainable. She seems to think that we will just have to live with 1.3 million children in poverty after housing costs. That is a very depressing prospect for the coming decade.

Mr. Frank Field
Will the hon. Gentleman address the Minister’s example of two families in identical positions, one of whom decide to spend more of their disposable income on housing—perhaps living in a better area and because it has better schools, which will help the children exit poverty? Under his proposal, we could beat up the Government for the fact that parents, because they have behaved in their children’s best interests, appear poor, whereas under the single definition, they would not be.

16:30:00

Steve Webb
Indeed. That is why a single measure, either before or after housing costs, does not give the full picture. Were housing costs always about housing quality, I would take the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but often they are only poorly related to housing quality. Measuring income before and after housing costs, therefore, gives us a fuller picture. The Minister did not respond to my example. She repeated it, but she did not explain why the before housing costs would not be inaccurate in my example. For different circumstances, the two measures would be more or less accurate, which is why we need both.

The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart), in an impassioned contribution, raised concerns about the number of children in very low—below 40 per cent.—income households. I raised concerns about the data, and having checked the official figures, I can say that the figures below 40 per cent. are not published on a regular basis, because of doubts about their validity, especially with regard to the self-employed. He asked fairly why the figures show what they do, but I am not convinced that they necessarily show anything more than just problems with the data. However, that is unclear, and clearly we need good data, so I take his point.

The comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) were informed by his membership of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He raised an issue that I had not thought of, and I do not think that the Minister’s response will offer him the reassurance that he seeks. As the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) said, we have part 1 and part 2. Part 1 children are those who find their way into surveys, and part 2 children are those about whom local authorities have to do something. Part 1 children are privileged in the Bill because they have their own targets and the child poverty commission and so on. That infrastructure does not support the sort of children about whom my hon. Friend was talking, so he raises a valid point. As the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) said, separate targets for the groups in part 1 might be the only way forward. I do not think that they can be melded into the existing targets, so they might need targets of their own.

Dr. Harris
The Minister asked me whether I was happy, but then sat down before I could intervene. Does my hon. Friend agree that the matter will be looked at again in the House of Lords? The Minister’s assertion that the Joint Committee said that targets discriminate is incorrect; we were careful to say that it was not the targets, but what might flow from them, that discriminates. The problem was not solved by her response.

Steve Webb
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure that their lordships will want to return to that issue.

In summary, it became apparent a few hours ago, during the pre-Budget statement, that the Government have given up on the 2010 target. Independent estimates suggest that £4 billion or £5 billion might have been needed to ensure that the 2010 target was met, but there was nothing of the sort in the pre-Budget statement. The Government have therefore run up the white flag on their target of halving child poverty. That is why new clause 3 and a report on the 2010 target would be valuable.

Our argument on new clause 1 is not that after housing costs are the only valid measure, but that they complement existing measures. I have heard nothing from the Minister that dissuades me from that view, so I seek to test the opinion of the House.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Division 19
09/12/2009 16:33:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 69
Noes: 290
Question accordingly negatived.

New Clause 2

The reduction in the causes of poverty targets

‘The Secretary of State shall make regulations setting out reduction in the causes of poverty targets.’.—(Andrew Selous.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

Division 20
09/12/2009 16:47:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 206
Noes: 289
Question accordingly negatived.

New Clause 3

2010 Target

‘(1) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of three months beginning with the day on which the Act is passed, publish and lay before Parliament a report setting out an assessment of progress made towards meeting the 2010 target.

(2) The 2010 target is that in the financial year beginning with 1 April 2010, fewer than 1.7 million children live in households that fall within the relevant income group as defined by section 2(2).’.—(Andrew Selous.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Division 21
09/12/2009 17:01:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 214
Noes: 281
Question accordingly negatived.

New Clause 4

Duty to implement the UK strategy

‘The Secretary of State shall take such steps are are in his reasonable opinion necessary to implement the UK strategy.’.—(Dr. Evan Harris.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Dr. Evan Harris
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendment 21.

Amendment 35, in clause 9, page 5, line 21, at end insert—

‘(ba) must consult the Children’s Commissioners for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland,’.

Amendment 27, page 5, line 22, leave out first ‘or’ and insert ‘families and’.

Amendment 36, page 5, line 22, leave out first ‘or’ and insert ‘and’.

Amendment 28, in clause 22, page 14, line 1, leave out first ‘or’ and insert ‘families and’.

Dr. Harris
I shall be brief in speaking to this new clause on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which reported on the Bill on 10 November. There are two sets of Liberal Democrat amendments in this group, the first of which, new clause 4, proposes that the Secretary of State should have a duty to implement the strategy on child poverty reduction. The second set—amendments 35 and 36—is about consulting children and the representatives of children.

Let me deal with new clause 4 first. In our report, we identified that, unlike in what might be considered comparable statutory regimes set out in legislation such as the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, there is no statutory duty in the Bill to implement the strategy. We engaged in correspondence with the Government to ask why that was. We support in principle having statutory duties to implement, as Parliament wishes, access to economic and social rights. That makes sense, as far as we are concerned, and we find it disappointing that there is no such duty regarding the strategy.

17:15:00

The Government offered three justifications for not including a duty to implement the strategy. The first was that a separate part of the Bill

“places a binding duty on the Secretary of State to meet the child poverty targets, which is ‘the strongest possible incentive’ for the Government and their partners to deliver a strategy that over time achieves the targets.”

The second was that

“including a duty to implement the strategy risks tying the Government to measures which subsequent evidence or analysis shows to be ineffective or inappropriate.”

The third was that

“the Bill makes provision for political and public accountability for not implementing the strategy, by requiring that the Secretary of State’s annual reports to Parliament must state whether the strategy has been implemented in full, and, if not, the reasons for this.”

We considered those justifications, and offered our opinion on them. We do not believe that any offer sufficient justification for not including the duty to implement the strategy. The first, which was that the child poverty targets work and that there is therefore no need for a duty, does not work, and we used the comparison of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995—that although many things are done to deliver the strategy, there was still a duty to deliver access for the disabled. For that reason, we believe that it does not seem sensible to make a distinction in this regard.

In respect of the second justification that the Government offered, we did not believe that requiring that duty to be implemented would cause inflexibility because, in other areas, a public authority is entitled to take account of subsequent evidence or analysis when implementing a strategy. It cannot ignore such things just because it has a duty to implement a strategy. We said:

“We note that in the Disability Discrimination Act a duty to implement coexists with a duty to prepare further accessibility strategies after the first one, and similarly in the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act there is both a duty to implement and a duty to assess progress and revise the strategy.”

In respect of the Government’s third justification for not implementing the strategy, we said that, while we welcomed the political accountability that is included in the Bill, we did not

“consider such political accountability to be mutually exclusive with legal accountability”

to implement provision. We therefore recommend to both Houses that the duty to implement the child poverty strategy be included, as we believe that that will

“enhance opportunities to hold the Secretary of State accountable for failure to make progress towards the targets between now and 2020.”

Given the debate that we have had about the 2010 targets, it would be a sign of political confidence on the part of the Minister and the Government if they were to accept that they both should and could include the duty in the Bill.

On the other amendments in my name and that of the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), in paragraph 1.57 of our report, we said:

“In our view the duties to consult children in the preparation of child poverty strategies are insufficiently precise, because they leave it to the discretion of the Secretary of State (or Scottish Ministers/Northern Ireland department) as to whether or not to consult children directly at all: they could choose to consult organisations working with or representing children instead. We recommend that the duty to consult be amended to give better effect to the right recognised in international human rights law to participate in the relevant decision-making process, by requiring consultation with both children and organisations working with or representing them, and by requiring consultation with the relevant Children's Commissioner.”

Amendment 36 therefore proposes the word “and” be substituted for “or” when talking about children and the organisations that represent them. Amendment 35 proposes inserting a new subsection in clause 9 that would require consultation with the Children’s Commissioners for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There does not seem to be any good reason not to require consultation with them, as they have been set up as experts in, and champions of, children’s rights. Members of the Committee do not believe that that would create inflexibility with regard to the bodies that the Government consult. The amendment does not say that “only” those groups be consulted, but just requires that they are consulted.

Given the political sensibilities about the appointment of the Children’s Commissioner, it would show appropriate confidence by the Government to include a duty to consult that person, whom they have gone to such great lengths to appoint after creating the post in a welcome move.

Those are the bases for the new clause and amendments, and I hope that the House will support them.

Andrew Selous
I have looked carefully at new clause 4 and read the relevant comments in the Joint Committee’s report on the Bill, and I am not enamoured of the new clause. It should be up to the Government to decide how to achieve their objectives. As the Minister said in Committee, the Bill includes clear targets. The Government will be held to account in the House, by way of the annual statement to Parliament, and I expect that occasion to be well attended and one on which the relevant Minister will be pressed very hard if sufficient progress has not been made. The press and media, the lobby groups that take an interest in these matters, the charities and many people in the voluntary sector will ensure that a good amount of pressure and focus is put on the targets.

It is a worrying development to bring judges into the Bill to the extent that new clause 4 would do, so I am afraid that I am not with the hon. Gentleman on the new clause. However, I am more inclined to support amendments 35 and 36. It is right that the Government should speak to children. I find it hard to conceive that local or central Government could have any set of policies or provide any service without speaking to the people for whom those services are provided or for whom those policies are designed to assist.

My hon. Friends the Members for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) and for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) and I tabled amendments 27 and 28, which I think are superior to the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, because they would require the Government to speak not only to children, as his amendment would, but to the families. I absolutely understand the focus on children and child poverty, but it would be strange to go to a poor family—the Government measure poverty by considering the poverty of parents or guardians as well as that of their children—and speak to the children but not to their parents. That would not be the right approach, and amendment 27 and 28 would remedy that omission.

Government amendment 21 will ensure that child care is included in the Bill. That very welcome concession is one of the few that the Government have made as a result of the debates in Committee, and it is good to know that all our labours were not wholly in vain in Committee.

It is worth noting in passing that under the Welfare Reform Act 2009, the Government sought to impose sanctions on lone parents when their children were only three years old and that the Conservative party made sure that the age was raised to five, when children go to school, as that is quite young enough to start imposing sanctions on parents. However, the point about child care is important. If we are to require lone parents—separated parents—to seek work when their children reach the age of 5, we must absolutely ensure that child care is in place. It has to be in place before school, on occasions, if there is a journey to work, after work, and, particularly importantly, in the holidays. Part-time and flexible work is incredibly important for that group of parents, many of whom seek to enter the labour market for the first time and are unable to make the step to full-time work, although they may aspire to it.

It is worth noting that there has not been universal success on child care as far as the Government are concerned. In fact, in 2008, more child care places closed down than were created. The child minder work force is in steep decline, and many private sector child care providers are having great difficulties. Although I welcome the inclusion of child care, I think that the Government need to address some significant issues to ensure that child care is adequate and that separated parents in particular can get into work.

Helen Goodman
I shall speak to new clause 4 and amendments 21, 27, 28, 35 and 36, which have been grouped because they all relate to UK strategies.

I shall respond to the points that the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) made on new clause 4, which seeks to impose a duty on the Secretary of State to implement the measures in a UK child poverty strategy. Like the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), I do not believe that the proposed change is necessary. The Bill sets four challenges, which, if met, would represent a considerable achievement. The legal duty to meet those targets is absolute, and it is supported by the duty in clause 8 to publish and lay before Parliament a strategy setting out the measures that the Secretary of State proposes to take to meet them.

The intention is clear: the strategy will drive forward action to achieve the targets. If there is a failure by the Government to take sufficient action, as detailed in the strategy, the targets will not be met and that may result in a judicial review. That clearly places very strong pressure on the Government to implement the measures set out in a strategy. There is a significant difference between this legislation and the legislation that the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon noted. The Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 require the Government to implement strategies to achieve their goals, but they do not contain legally binding targets, unlike the Bill before us, which does contain such targets.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights stated that it is not incompatible to have both a duty to meet the targets and a duty to implement the strategy. I understand the theoretical point, but in practice there is no need for both duties. In fact, a duty to implement the strategy could be unhelpful and have unintended consequences that distract us from the important goals in the Bill. Such a duty risks binding the Government to take measures that may turn out to be less effective than was originally envisaged, or that could have negative outcomes that damage progress towards the target.

The Joint Committee is not convinced that the inclusion of a duty to implement the strategy necessarily results in inflexibility. However, surely the hon. Gentleman can see that the Government would be put in an extremely difficult position. If the Government did not take action to implement measures that, at that point in time, they understood to be harmful or ineffective, they would be infringing the duty to implement the strategy; but, if the Government did take action in the circumstances, implementing the strategy could be argued to be an improper use of public money, because they would have implemented a strategy that had been discovered to be ineffective.

As a consequence, the Government would need to lay down a new strategy every time data emerged suggesting that a measure was not working. Apart from the impracticalities that would clearly result from that, the practical effect would be that attention would be diverted from the real object, which is bringing down child poverty. A far more sensible approach is contained in clause 8, which requires that the strategy must be revised and refreshed at least every three years, ensuring that new developments and evidence about the best way to tackle child poverty are constantly taken into account in the development of future strategies, which gives the flexibility that we will need.

17:30:00

The Bill also demands accountability for action that the Government have and have not taken. If the most recent UK strategy has not been implemented in full, clause 13 requires that the annual report must describe the respect in which it has not been implemented and the reasons for this. Parliament will then hold the Government to account and determine whether they have acted appropriately. I therefore suggest that the amendment risks undermining Parliament’s role in assessing the detail of how the Government take action.

Government amendment 21 seeks to make child care an explicit part of the child poverty strategy. This was raised by many hon. Members in Committee. There was a clear consensus that child care should be added to the Bill because of its great significance, not only in enabling parents to work but in improving educational outcomes for children.

Amendments 27, 28, 35 and 36 deal with consultation and are similar in effect. Amendment 36 would require the Secretary of State, in preparing the UK strategy required by clause 9, to consult children directly as well as organisations working with or representing them. Amendment 27 would have the same effect but in addition require the Secretary of State to consult families directly. Similarly, amendment 28 would require local authorities, when preparing their joint poverty strategies, to consult children and families directly, as well as organisations working with them.

Amendment 35 takes a slightly different approach. It would place an additional duty on the Secretary of State to consult the children’s commissioners for the four nations. Very similar amendments were debated in Committee. As I said then, the Government’s intention has always been that the child poverty strategy should be informed by the views of children and their families, particularly those with direct experience of poverty. Indeed, we are committed to ensuring that children’s views underpin all our policies to improve outcomes for all children.

Amendments 27 and 28 include reference to families. Looking at this from a drafting perspective, it is not clear what that word means. Does it refer only to parents, or to others with parental responsibility? Would it include parents of grown-up children? The problem is that the word “families” can apply to such a wide variety of groups of people that in effect this would become an obligation to consult the general public at large. I am sure that that is not what the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire intends.

Andrew Selous
I understand what the hon. Lady says, but I remind her that in the Government’s own Bills they often have to go back and tidy up some of the drafting, so I do not take that as a massive minus point on our part.

On the central point, does the hon. Lady agree that it is slightly strange to go into a household—let us call it that for a moment—to speak to the children without any reference to the people responsible for them, be they the guardian, both parents or one parent in the case of those living with a separated parent? If the intention is to speak to children, to which she says the Government are committed, it would be natural to speak to the families in which those children live as well.

Helen Goodman
Obviously one would not want to consult children without the permission of their parents. That would not be appropriate, but we do want to hear the views of children specifically. The JCHR made specific reference to article 12 of the UN convention on the rights of the child, and the attractive element of the amendments is the opportunity to give local authorities and the Secretary of State the chance to consult organisations and children.

Amendment 35 refers to the Children’s Commissioners. Of course we recognise that they have particular expertise in this area, and they are exactly the sort of body that we had in mind in the reference in clause 9(4)(c) to

“organisations working with or representing children”.

It is therefore not clear why the amendment suggests a specific reference to the Children’s Commissioners, as it is unnecessary.

We are clear that the development of both national and local child poverty strategies should benefit from input by children, and I argue that the provisions in the Bill go a long way towards ensuring that their views are properly taken into account. We want the strategies developed under the Bill to be as effective as possible, and we recognise that one step towards achieving that is to ensure that they are informed by the views of those experiencing poverty. The challenge is more about how to put that into practice effectively than about the precise requirements set out in the Bill. I am concerned that amendment 35 would not actually help to ensure that the strategy more effectively reflected the views of children or their families.

I am sure that this is not what hon. Members intend, but it is possible that the amendments could become little more than a process requirement, imposing additional bureaucratic burdens that would not help us to understand the concerns of children and families experiencing poverty or make our strategy more effective. In other words, there is a balance to be struck. We do not want to place process burdens on the Secretary of State and local authorities, particularly at a time when we are all conscious of the need to be careful with public money. On the other hand, I appreciate the concerns expressed by hon. Members and organisations outside the House that the Bill does not spell out as clearly as it could our intention to seek the views of children. Although I ask hon. Members not to press the amendments, we are prepared to consider whether amendment 36 would improve the Bill. If my colleague Lord McKenzie feels that it would be helpful, we will introduce it in the other place.

Ms Keeble
I am pleased to be able to speak at this stage, although I had hoped to be able to speak to the next group of amendments.

My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned the processes in the Bill for consulting those experiencing poverty, and she said that the Government had brought forward their proposal to include child care in the Bill because of its particular role in tackling child poverty. In preparation for Report, I consulted in a community in my constituency where there is a high concentration of families with children living in poverty. I talked to people about their concerns, and a key one, which led to my tabling amendment 32, which is in the next group, was the overcrowding that they experience. I hoped that that would be mentioned in the Bill. I wish to make a couple of points about the consultation, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond to them.

When I went around the estate in Southfields, half the people I asked about their experience of poverty and the places in which they lived told me they were living in overcrowded conditions and that that was one of their prime difficulties. The feature of overcrowding that is the biggest problem to them—it is why I wanted overcrowding as well as child care, which Government amendment 21 proposes, in the Bill—is that people have to sleep in living rooms. That is a fact of material deprivation that I had hoped the Government would have taken on board and included among the indicators.

May I give an example to my hon. Friend the Minister? As she will know from Committee, right back in 1935, when there was a debate about poor families, children and housing in east London, a Labour MP said

“the right hon. Gentleman’s standards as regards overcrowding are not”

normal. He continued:

“He contemplates as a normal thing that living rooms should be used as bedrooms. I can never agree to that…in ordinary circumstances”.

He went on to say that if we accept that people should be required to sleep in living rooms,

“we shall be heading for the creation of new slums.”—[Official Report, 20 May 1935; Vol. 302, c. 42-44.]

Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend has persisted in making those points over the course of consideration of the Bill, and they are indeed extremely important. I can inform her that the Department for Work and Pensions intends to pilot a new question for inclusion in the family resources survey, asking families with children about the space they have available in their homes for leisure and family activities. I hope she regards that as significant progress on that front.

Ms Keeble
I am grateful for that, and perhaps my hon. Friend will spell that out more fully on Third Reading, so that we can be absolutely clear that families with children will be regarded as entitled to have a living space in which nobody has to sleep, so they can have space for recreation, family activities, doing homework, and all the other things the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) will regard as important in supporting family life. I look forward to speaking further on the matter if we reach the next group of amendments.

Mr. Graham Stuart
I rise to speak to amendment 27, which deals with consulting families. On page 5, the Bill states:

“In preparing a UK strategy, the Secretary of State…must consult…local authorities…Scottish Ministers…such children, or organisations working with or representing children, as the Secretary of State thinks fit…and such other persons.”

Is it not odd not to mention families or the context in which children live? I would not make this allegation against the Government, but typically it is totalitarian states that try to bypass the context of the family and the parents to speak directly to children. The measure is rather odd. The Minister has tried to say that if we include families, suddenly the Secretary of State would be obliged to consult the whole of the general public, but that is obviously nonsense. The amendment would simply provide that the

“Secretary of State…must consult…such children”,

families

“and organisations working with…children, as the Secretary of State thinks fit”.

We have heard from the Minister, and we will not necessarily hear from her again, unless I have misunderstood the process, but it is a pity she dismissed the proposal. If the Secretary of State does not talk to children in the context of the family, she will not be properly talking to the child. The best advocate of the child is very often the parent. It is not that we do not want to hear directly from children, but if we do not understand the position of the parent as the chief advocate of the child, we misunderstand the essence of the important relationship between the state and children in the context of their family.

Mr. Streeter
Does my hon. Friend also think it a little peculiar and—I hesitate to say this—perhaps typical of a rather bureaucratically minded Government that they are prepared to consult

“organisations working with or representing children”

but not parents themselves?

Mr. Stuart
It is a little peculiar. I am trying to follow my hon. Friend in being charitable, and I do not want to be harsh toward the Government, but I am disappointed.

I would have liked to have heard from the Minister the context in which the consultation will take place. The cheapest and easiest way to consult children who might live in poverty might be to go to a school that serves a poor area and speak to the children there—in other words, entirely removed from the home and family in which the child is being brought up.

17:45:00

I seek reassurance from the Minister, who said that the Government would like to consult children and families, because the Bill does not say that. The only substantive reason given for opposing this suggestion was that it would lead to consulting the whole general public, which is clearly nonsense. Why cannot the Minister accept that talking to children in the context of the family, and talking to the family, is the right thing to do? She has her head bowed—I hope that it is in shame or embarrassment. It would have been useful to hear why she does not think that what we propose would be constructive and where she expects the consultation to take place. Will it be in schools or will it be in the context of the family home? How will it be delivered? I fear, as stated here, that effectively the family context will be excluded because of how the Bill has been phrased.

Dr. Evan Harris
With the leave of the House, I will respond to the points made about amendments 35 and 36. I am grateful for the support of the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), and I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) tabled similar amendments in Committee.

In response to the point about children’s commissioners, the Minister did not give a good reason why they should not be included. They have been suggested specifically because their role is statutory and that is why they are different from the others. If we are to go to the trouble of creating through statute an organisation with expertise in being an advocate for children, it should be a statutory consultee. That is only logical, and I suspect that a similar amendment would attract widespread support in the other place for that reason.

The Minister was concerned that amendment 36 would create a burden of consultation—a process burden. If there is a process burden, and if consultation can rightly be described as a burden—I do not think that it can—it was created by signing the UN convention on the rights of the child. Article 12 is clear in requiring states to assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the child’s age and maturity. The Minister made reference to article 12 herself.

Helen Goodman
Does not the hon. Gentleman think that there is a difference between involving a particular child in a decision that affects them insofar as they understand the issue, for which we have precedent in English law, and the consultation of whole groups of children? I am not suggesting that groups of children should not be consulted—that is a good idea. I simply do not think that the read-across from article 12 is as tight as he suggests, notwithstanding the general principle of children being enabled to participate where possible.

Dr. Harris
I see the point that the Minister makes. However, the explanatory notes on the duty

“to consult children, or organisations working with or representing children as the Secretary of State thinks fit”

refer to article 12. That implies that that consultation with groups is based on article 12, and that that is not restricted to the right of individual consultation on measures that the state imposes on a child. That may be a debate for another day.

I wish to record my thanks to the Minister for saying that she will look at this point. I do not want to be churlish, but it is a point about process. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon raised it on 29 October at columns 256-7 in a very good speech and in terms. At that point, she rejected the argument. The Joint Committee then issued its view on 10 November. The point of Report is for the Government to return to the House weeks later with a clear view, and not to see matters leave this House to be dealt with by the unelected House. I do not mean that in an angry way; I just regret that we are not using Report as it should be used. However, I recognise her willingness to reconsider the point, which ought to be put on the record.

Finally, on new clause 4, I accept that there is some validity in the Minister’s point about whether it would tie the Government down to a duty to implement something that might not be the best way of meeting the obligatory targets. The Joint Committee considered and rejected that argument, but we will reflect on her comments and the Government’s response. However, I reject the argument that a legal duty to implement a strategy undermines Parliament’s ability to hold the Government to account. The processes of the House undermine that ability, and I think that any legal reference that Parliament can use will aid it. I do not accept that argument, and nor, I think, will the Joint Committee. It is clearly a difficult new clause, however, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 8

UK strategies

Amendment made: 21, in page 4, line 23, after ‘education’, insert ‘, childcare’.—(Helen Goodman.)

Clause 21

Local child poverty needs assessment

Mr. David Gauke (South-West Hertfordshire) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 29, in page 13, line 12, after ‘assessment’, insert ‘including—

(i) job creation,

(ii) reducing family breakdown,

(iii) families with disabilities,

(iv) black and minority ethnic children, and

(v) looked after children.’.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: 32, page 13, line 12, at end add

‘which must include the number of households within the area that fail to meet the bedroom standard’.

Amendment 30, page 14, line 38, leave out from ‘of’ to ‘section’ in line 39.

Mr. Gauke
The amendments relate to the duties of local authorities. Under clause 21, which deals with local child poverty needs assessments, the responsible local authorities are required to set out how they will address child poverty. Amendment 29 takes us back partly to an earlier debate, and in the time available I have no intention of running back through the arguments. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) eloquently stated, we believe that there is a lack of balance in the Bill, because it focuses on income targets, which we recognise are necessary, but does not contain enough about the causes of poverty and how we can address them.

To some extent, amendment 29 is another attempt to address the causes of poverty. It would do so in the context of the local child poverty needs assessments. The Government can produce regulations setting out matters that must be considered in such an assessment, and amendment 29 sets out some areas that we think should be included in those regulations, two of which relate to the causes of poverty. In particular, the amendment refers to job creation, which could be a solution and also reduce family breakdown. However, we have had a lengthy debate on those matters, and I have no intention of running back through the arguments.

As I said, we have set out areas that we think should be satisfied by a local needs assessment. For example, it should deal with matters relating to black and minority ethnic children and families with disabilities. On several occasions in Committee we had an interesting debate about issues relating to families with disabilities and the treatment of disability living allowance for the purposes of evaluating a household’s income. Furthermore, assessments should deal with matters relating to looked-after children, which we also debated at length in Committee.

Mr. Streeter
Does my hon. Friend agree that the process of having local authorities working with their partners, other statutory agencies and the voluntary sector to thrash out local child poverty needs assessments using the headings that he has helpfully set out in amendment 29 would be extremely valuable in getting under the skin of what was happening for children in those localities and prove a valuable tool for those authorities and their partners thereafter?

Mr. Gauke
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, there is a recognition of some of those points in the Bill. We have debated such matters in the course of our proceedings on the Bill, but having those points in the Bill would be helpful and would give useful guidance to local authorities.

Given the time and the fact that the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) has already touched on her amendment 32, I will not go into it. However, I would like briefly to say that amendment 30 concerns a matter that we debated in Committee, thanks to a probing amendment from my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell). Amendment 30 relates to the definition of child poverty for the purposes of part 2, which relates to the duties of local authorities. Two issues came up regarding the relative income target in its application to local authorities.

The first issue was about how we measure relative income in a local authority. To be fair, the Minister provided a helpful note about national indicator 116, which stated that it would measure the proportion of children living in families in receipt of out-of-work benefits or working families whose income is below 60 per cent. of median income. That is not exactly the definition in clause 2, so if the Minister has an opportunity, I would be grateful if she could say how significant the difference is between that definition and the definition of relative poverty in clause 2. However, that definition looks pretty close, so to that extent our concern has been addressed.

A second concern is this: what things can local authorities do on the relative income target in clause 2 that are not relevant to those other income targets that clearly belong in the definition of child poverty for the purposes of part 2? The point was made in evidence to us that local authorities do not really have the levers to do anything about the target of 60 per cent. of median income. I can fully understand why that target exists nationally, but if local authorities cannot, as a matter of practice, do anything that is specifically targeted at that income measurement, why have it in the definition of child poverty for the purposes of part 2?

The Government accept that it is right that there should be a different definition of child poverty for part 2 from that for part 1; but if that is so, should we not tailor the definition more, and why should the relative income target be included anyway? We had a debate on that in Committee, but with the greatest of respect to the Minister, I am not sure that we received a clear answer from her. I hope that we will have an opportunity to hear one today, either now or on Third Reading.

Subject to those points, I hope that we will have an opportunity to vote on amendment 29, although I do not intend to push the House to a Division on amendment 30. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could at some point elucidate the Government’s position on those matters.

Ms Keeble
I want to talk briefly to my amendment 32, which says that when local authorities make assessments of need, they should look specifically at the housing conditions in which children live, given the close link between child welfare and housing, as set out in Every Child Matters. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will address that point in her one-minute winding-up speech.

Helen Goodman
Rather a lot of points have been made, and I will have difficulty in responding to all of them. On amendment 32, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), I thought that I had made it clear that we were changing the information that would come in through the survey. It would therefore not be sensible to set a target along the lines that she has just described, because there simply is not the information available to do that.

In amendment 29, hon. Members are seeking to prescribe in the Bill matters that we believe would be more appropriately dealt with in regulations—

18:00:00

Debate interrupted (Programme Order, 20 July).

The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the amendment be made.

Division 22
09/12/2009 18:00:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 133
Noes: 315
Question accordingly negatived.

The Deputy Speaker then put forthwith the Question necessary for the disposal of business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83E).

Schedule 1

The Child Poverty Commission

Amendment made: 22, page 18, line 20, at end insert—

‘Research

9A (1) The Commission may at any time request the Secretary of State to carry out, or commission others to carry out, such research on behalf of the Commission for the purpose of the carrying out of the Commission’s functions as the Commission may specify in the request.

(2) If the Secretary of State decides not to comply with the request, the Secretary of State must notify the Commission of the reasons for the decision.’.—(Helen Goodman.)

Third Reading

18:14:00

Helen Goodman
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Tackling child poverty and deprivation is one of the most crucial roles for any Government. Our goal is—[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Will hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber please do so as quickly and quietly as possible so that the Third Reading debate can take place?

Helen Goodman
Our goal is a society where no child’s life is scarred by poverty, and where every child is given the best possible start in life and has the capabilities and opportunities to flourish. Children who grow up in poverty lack many of the experiences and opportunities that others take for granted, and can be exposed to severe hardship and social exclusion. Their childhood suffers as a result, which is unacceptable. In the current difficult economic times, our focus on tackling child poverty is even more important. Too often in the past, recessions and economic downturns have been allowed to affect the lives of children long after the country’s economy has returned to growth.

Today, we set out the five principles that will guide our strategy on child poverty: first, that work is the most sustainable route out of poverty; secondly, that families and family life should be supported; thirdly, that early intervention is necessary to break cycles of deprivation; fourthly, that excellence in public service delivery is key; and fifthly, that cost-effectiveness and affordability are vital.

Worklessness in families and severe deprivation have not been tackled with the energy and drive needed to deal with entrenched disadvantage. In this context, it is right that we renew and strengthen our commitment to deliver on the 2020 goal through the Child Poverty Bill. The Bill will give us renewed impetus to deliver on our goals and to ensure that the right strategies and actions flow from it.

Mr. Graham Stuart
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Helen Goodman
I would like to make a little more progress.

The Bill will sustain and increase the momentum towards eradicating child poverty, create a clear definition of success, put in place a framework for accountability, and improve partnership-working and collaboration to tackle child poverty at the local level. I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for their contributions to the debates as the Bill made progress. It has been encouraging that it has received a warm welcome from colleagues.

I want to respond briefly to some of the points that were raised and on which hon. Members asked for the Government’s view. The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) asked about the position of local authorities in respect of relative income. The objective is not to have separate relative income targets for each local authority area. There was some confusion about that in Committee, and I hope we have cleared it up. The hon. Gentleman also suggested that local authorities do not have any impact on relative income standards in their areas. We believe that they do have the ability to influence families’ incomes, and, indeed, play a pivotal role in tackling the causes of relative low income. Also, local authorities will soon have the means to assess local progress in tackling low income, and it is entirely reasonable to expect that to be taken into account in the preparation of their needs assessments.

Local authorities have a number of levers at their disposal to help increase family income. In the short term, they can administer financial help for families on low incomes with measures such as housing and council tax benefit, encouraging families to take up financial support, and joining up national and local partners to provide personalised skills and employment support. Local authorities can also reduce low income in the future by driving economic regeneration and neighbourhood renewal, and by providing high-quality education and early years services.

Aside from its positive reception, the Bill has been a credit to the House. Hon. Members have spoken passionately and been extremely well informed on this crucial topic. The focus that the Government have placed on child poverty has ensured that both the moral and economic case for tackling it is indisputable. They have much to be proud of in their record on child poverty. Our efforts and successes in tackling poverty and deprivation across the country have shown that with the political will those problems can be addressed. However, we need to do more to tackle the root causes and consequences of poverty, so that all children have a good start in life, enjoying a fulfilling childhood and having the capabilities and opportunities to flourish. Our vision is of a fairer society: one in which no child is left behind and every child has the opportunity to flourish.

I have very much enjoyed the debate on this important Bill, not only today, but throughout its Committee stage. Delivering this legislation will take us closer to our goal of eradicating child poverty in this generation. This Bill will help to focus efforts across government, local authorities and other partners to improve the lives of children and young people, and I commend it to the House.

18:20:00

Andrew Selous
I have no hesitation in joining the Minister in saying that eradicating child poverty is an ambitious but vital objective for our country. It is both an economic imperative, because no advanced economy can afford to waste the potential of so many of its citizens, and, as she has said, a moral imperative, as no decent society should allow so many children to remain in poverty, as has been the case in the United Kingdom in recent years. I shall repeat what my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) said on Second Reading, because we are both proud to serve under a leader who has said:

“I want me—and the government I aspire to lead—to be judged on how we tackle poverty in office. Because poverty is not acceptable in our country today.”

I am also pleased that it was a Conservative Mayor of London who decided to pay a living wage to Greater London authority staff. That had not happened before.

The long title of the Bill refers to “eradication”, but both the Minister and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions have made frequent reference during our debates to the fact that the Government’s real aspiration is to achieve a child poverty level that is among the best in Europe. It would have been slightly more honest to have said that in the Bill, because the 10 per cent. that is in the Bill represents the best level, and 10 per cent. is not eradication. Some 23 per cent. of children in the United Kingdom live in poverty, which is about twice the level found in the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark—they have child poverty rates of 14, 12 and 10 per cent. respectively. It is also instructive to note that 23 per cent. of UK children were living in relative poverty in 1987, 24 per cent. were doing so in 1996 and 23 per cent. were doing so in 2001. The level of child poverty has remained stubbornly high for more than 30 years.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has drawn attention to the need for us to change our strategy if we are to make better progress, saying that

“the strategy against poverty and social exclusion pursued since the late 1990s is now largely exhausted.”

The former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), has said that

“poverty has become more entrenched”.

That is why we need fresh thinking on this subject, and I was pleased that just now the Minister outlined five themes. A number of those relate to the causes of poverty, to which Conservative Members have tried on every occasion to include reference in the Bill.

The Bill is very much a blank canvas. It sets out the targets to be achieved in 2020, but I was disappointed just now that Labour Members voted against including the 2010 target, even though I believe that some of the Minister’s colleagues joined us in the Division Lobby. As I said, the Government have had 10 years to have a run at the target of halving child poverty, and I think that a formal report to Parliament on that would have been useful and would have provided the Government with an early opportunity to come to the House to explain how the child poverty strategy will change.

Conservative Members have set out on a number of occasions the causes of poverty that we want examined. Our non-exhaustive list includes educational failure, hence our school reforms and our commitment to pay a pupil premium to those schools in the most disadvantaged areas, and the level of skills, which is vital. Level 3 skills, which were mentioned at Prime Minister’s questions, are particularly important and have decreased over the past decade.

Both benefit dependency and intergenerational worklessness are huge problems that cause poverty up and down our country, hence the Opposition have produced some of the most detailed welfare reform proposals that any party has introduced in opposition or in government. Our “Get Britain Working” programme cuts right to the heart of what is needed to deal with child poverty, so that we can help people to get back into the work force and break these intergenerational cycles of worklessness.

Work on dealing with benefit dependency is extremely important, too, and I commend the “Dynamic Benefits” report produced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) in that regard. The issue of debt is extremely serious. We touched on that in Committee. It aggravates poverty for some families in a particularly nasty and unattractive way, trapping them in deep poverty, often for long periods. Some excellent work is being done in the voluntary sector by Christians Against Poverty centres and others up and down the country.

I was pleased to hear the Minister refer to the need to strengthen families, and I was particularly pleased to have support from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) in that regard, too.

We touched on the issue of addiction. I say again that I think that that needs to be part of the Government’s anti-poverty strategy. I recognise that some people might get into illegal substance abuse and alcohol abuse because of poverty, but the relationship also works the other way around. Families and lives that were proceeding along absolutely fine are destroyed because of alcoholism or illegal drug use.

We have also learned from a recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that the Government’s child poverty strategy started to run into trouble as early as 2004-05. That was a key turning point well before the recession when poverty, unemployment and property repossessions all started to rise. Indeed, only a day or so ago there was an further excellent report by the Young Foundation pointing out some of these difficulties and to the important psycho-social problems faced by many families up and down the country. In particular, it pointed out the vital role of the voluntary sector, working alongside the Government to make real progress in dealing with these deep-seated issues.

In conclusion, I want to thank all those who were on the Committee, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke). He was an excellent shadow Minister to work alongside. I want to pay particular tribute, too, to my hon. Friends the Members for Henley (John Howell) and for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart). They were a formidable duo behind us both in Committee and this afternoon. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), who spoke eloquently on Second Reading and made a number of excellent interventions today.

The Bill is not perfect. We will seek in the other place to push some of the issues that we have raised. However, we join the Minister in agreeing with her wish to see child poverty come tumbling down in this country. It is still far too high and we believe that we can make much better progress.

18:28:00

Steve Webb
It was interesting that when the Minister began her speech she said that she thought that it was wrong that any child should suffer poverty and deprivation. She was, of course, right. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said that the Bill talked about eradication, and it is regrettable in a sense—one might call it the poverty of our ambition—that we would regard success as 1 million children still living in poverty in 10 years’ time. It might be that in modern industrialised societies that is, in the Government’s view, the best that can be achieved. Clearly, it would be an awful lot better than the point from which we are starting. To that extent, we welcome the Bill. It is sad that the Government have felt it necessary to oversell it: the Prime Minister routinely at Prime Minister’s questions refers to the Government’s goal in legislation as being eradication, but he never qualifies that with the odd million who will still be left. That is really rather unhelpful.

It is true that the Bill raises the political price of failing to tackle child poverty, but no Government can bind their successor. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) asked what would happen if we were at war in 2018. If that happened, no doubt we would repeal or amend the Act because we would have to spend money because we were at war. We realise that there are always get-outs to such things, but the Bill will make it more difficult, in a relatively normal period, for a Government not to prioritise tackling child poverty.

Mr. Graham Stuart
Does the hon. Gentleman have any misgivings about the Bill? Obviously, no one wants child poverty to be maintained, but if we do not make an assessment of a Government’s overall social priorities, how can we come up with statutory targets for one particular area? Surely that creates a risk, outside of the calamity of major war, that we will prioritise child poverty when it would be better to prioritise something else because of the situation at that time. Is not the Bill more declaratory than proper in its structure?

Steve Webb
In a sense, the hon. Gentleman is clearly right—the Bill prioritises the tackling of child poverty, and he is perfectly entitled to take the view either that it should not be a priority or that we should not presume that it should be a priority. However, I refer him to the situation in the 1980s, when tackling child poverty was neither a priority nor a statutory priority.

Rather shockingly, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire selectively started his history from 1987. He has done that before, but the first time he did so, I thought that it was done innocently; this time, I assume that it was done deliberately. It is worth remembering that the Conservatives started government with 1.7 million children in poverty and that that number rose to 2.8 million under them, so, at the point at which he started his figures, the Tories had already put 1 million children into poverty. He then glossed over the fact that another 500,000 children moved into poverty before the Tories left office. They therefore doubled child poverty. I do not doubt the personal sincerity of the hon. Gentleman one jot, but the idea that the Conservative party is the answer to child poverty is amazing.

Andrew Selous
The hon. Gentleman and I had a similar exchange on Second Reading, so we are going over slightly old ground. I have the HBAI figures in front of me—I am sure that he, too, has them—and I see from table 4.1 on page 72 that the highest point was in 1995, at 29 per cent. However, my point is that these problems have been around for a considerable period. The rate in 1987 was the same as it is today. We have not made the progress that one would have hoped, despite the Government having made child poverty a political priority, because we are only back at the level that we were at in 1987, hence the need for fresh thinking.

Steve Webb
The House might have thought that the hon. Gentleman was making a slightly different point—that it has all been pretty flat for 20 years, and that this is all terribly difficult. In fact, he picked a point halfway up a hill—a hill for which the Conservative party was responsible—because the figures continued to rise after his starting point. The achievements of the Labour Government might not have gone far enough, but they peaked the figures at the top of the hill and started us back down it again, and we are now halfway back down the hill that he started halfway up. The situation has not been static; a long-term trend of grotesque inequality, which his party presided over with apparent equanimity, has been reversed.

Andrew Selous
I hate to take up too much of Third Reading on economic history, but will the hon. Gentleman cast his mind back to the economy that the Conservative party inherited in 1979? It was a shambles and the priority had to be economic growth and regeneration. We were the sick man of Europe and we inherited a shambles. It is not possible for every Government to make progress on both economic and social targets if they inherit an economy that is in total shambles. It is worth putting that on the record.

Steve Webb
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that. Clearly, 18 years is not long enough to avoid doubling child poverty. I assume, therefore, that he is saying that if the Conservatives came to office now, in what they say is a very difficult economic situation, and if child poverty were to double over the next 18 years, that would just be the way things are.

Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it seems eccentric to think that a Conservative policy could assist in dealing with child poverty, given that it might mean that a man who is on his third wife would still get extra benefits from their marriage allowance, while his first wife, who might still be looking after their children as a lone parent, would be being discriminated against and have an allowance taken away?

Steve Webb
The hon. Lady raises a point about the perversity of the proposal to reward marriage through the tax system. The Conservatives started the abolition of the married couples tax allowance, but she may recall that Labour finished it off. It is funny how things come around again.

However, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you would not want me to stray from the Bill, which I welcome. It does not do a huge amount, but it does raise the political cost of not taking child poverty seriously, and that has to be a good thing. It will also engage local government, and we valued the contributions that the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) made in Committee with his proactive thinking about child poverty at local level. That may well turn out to be one of the Bill’s more concrete implications, as the national statistics will not be available locally anyway in quite that form.

As many hon. Members have said, we had a good Committee stage, and I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) for his support. It was also good that two Government amendments—on child care, and the research function of the child poverty commission—were tabled on Report in response to the points that we raised. It is a welcome—and for me a relatively novel experience—to find that the arguments that we made in Committee actually changed something. To that extent, it has been a productive process but I am sure, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said, that our noble Friends in another place will still have some items left on their agenda. However, I certainly encourage my hon. Friends to support the Third Reading of the Bill tonight.

18:36:00

John Howell
I do not know whether it is usual to have so many Back Benchers wanting to take part in a Third Reading debate, but it is perfectly appropriate for this Bill. In Committee, those on both Front Benches commented on the way that Back Benchers had contributed, and that included the amendments that we tabled. For myself, I have very much enjoyed participating in the proceedings on this Bill, as it is an extremely important subject that is very close to my heart. Child poverty is something that we really need to make progress on.

Having said that, I remain disappointed with many aspects of the Bill, given that this is such an important subject. I remain disappointed with the way that it is still ill thought through in terms of the targets that it sets and the way that it is tackling—or not tackling—the causes of poverty. We have heard a lot about both matters again this afternoon on Report.

I also think that the Bill’s structure remains ill thought through, and I still find it difficult to reconcile what it is trying to achieve in part 1 with what it is trying to achieve in part 2. Another matter that was raised in Committee but not on Report is the possibility, as many of the charity representatives who came to the Committee as witnesses stated clearly, that the Government will be taken to judicial review over the non-achievement of targets. That is still the case, as is the potential, given that these are income targets, that judges rather than the Chancellor of the Exchequer will make economic policy—although, after today’s pre-Budget report, perhaps judges could not do a worse job.

Mr. Graham Stuart
My hon. Friend is right to point to the absurd idea that judges might intervene in the complex area of child poverty—perhaps they will demand that billions be given in additional tax credits—but does he agree that there is also the equally absurd possibility of a conflict between statutory obligations? No Government before this one had ever put targets in statute, but now there will be statutes pointing in different directions. For example, whereas the Fiscal Responsibility Bill suggests that there must be cuts, other legislation such as the Climate Act 2008 and this Bill suggest that more should be spent.

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We are discussing the Third Reading of the Child Poverty Bill and not the other legislation that the hon. Gentleman has referred to.

John Howell
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is always good to take an intervention from the other half of the duo, who will no doubt make a contribution of his own in a moment. However, my hon. Friend is quite right to point out that that is also one of the legal consequences of the Bill, and I too think that it is an insult to Parliament as well.

I am also disappointed with the way that the Government continue to treat local government. It is clear from the Bill that they do not take local authorities seriously as entities in themselves, with their own agenda and ability to deliver, but regard them as the delivery arm of Whitehall.

Today is not the end of the matter with this Bill, as there is a huge pile of regulation and, even more worryingly, guidance to be issued to local authorities. All I shall ask of the Minister today is that she please take note of the evidence sessions and the comments made by witnesses. What is required from the Government when it comes to regulation and guidance is a light touch, if any touch at all. Many local authorities are already doing a good job in respect of child poverty, as was illustrated by the evidence to the Committee from Kent and Liverpool in particular. So please let us see in the guidance a recognition of the best practice that already exists.

I asked one of the witnesses what difference the Bill would make and whether it would make a big impact, because one of them had said that something pretty big needed to happen in the field of child poverty. I asked:

“Is that something going to happen as a result of the delivery mechanisms set out in the Bill?”

Neil O’Brien from Policy Exchange answered that negatively in terms of the delivery mechanisms and the aims in the Bill. It is interesting to read what he said next:

“you are not going to be voting in this place on the strategy and all of those things”—

the big picture things—

“you are voting on just a target that is very much focused on central Government and everything they are doing. So, in answer to your previous question, there is a complete mismatch.”––[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2009; c. 110, Q21.]

That is a great shame.

The Bill could have shown greater ambition and taken us a lot further down the road towards eradicating child poverty. Instead, we have had the perversion of the English language, whereby “eradication” no longer means eradication in the sense that the rest of us would use the word. I hope that, with a change of Government, we will get a strategy for child poverty that is much more focused on delivering real change for children and particularly the families in which they live.

18:41:00

Mr. Graham Stuart
It is a pleasure to take part in the debate on Third Reading. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), I have enjoyed being involved in the proceedings on the Bill. The Committee that considered the Bill had the involvement of hon. Members from across the House. That is not always true. Government Back Benchers in particular sometimes seem to spend their entire time writing correspondence. That was not the case in this Committee, and every hon. Member took a deep interest in the issue and brought their own skills to it. Labour Members brought to the Committee casework and an understanding of housing needs in their constituencies. The Front Benchers of all three parties also played a full part in the Committee, which was productive, so it was a pleasure and a privilege to be part of it.

The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) mentioned in his address that he hoped the Bill would make it harder and put up the political price for any Government in future to fail to tackle child poverty. He then launched a rather partisan assault.

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
It was puerile.

Mr. Stuart
Puerile, was it? The hon. Member for Northavon then launched an assault on the Conservative Government, who did indeed inherit a basket-case economy in 1979.

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are debating the Bill on Third Reading, and should therefore be debating the Bill’s contents.

Mr. Stuart
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was trying to answer the points made from his Front Bench by the hon. Member for Northavon. I do not know whether his status is different from mine, but the likelihood of meeting the targets in the Bill is based on an assessment of prior performance. In 1997, when the last Conservative Government came in, we were in a similar position. Okay, the fiscal deficit at its peak in 1976, when the International Monetary Fund came in, was half what it is today, so we are in a worse position from which to make change. Under that Conservative Government, who restarted the British economy, child poverty increased in a way that is regrettable. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) is nodding his head.

Despite the wreckage that is being left of our economy—again, by a Labour Government—if a Conservative Government are elected this coming May, we aim to ensure that we do not just revive the economy while leaving behind children in poverty. That is precisely why my hon. Friends are determined to take the child poverty issue seriously. We accept the fact that the record on child poverty was not great under the last Conservative Government. We aim to do better, but none of us progresses policy development in that area if we just try to make cheap partisan remarks or to suggest that anyone at any time—Ministers in the 1980s any more than today—were indifferent to the welfare of children. They were trying to focus on turning the country around, from a sick of man of Europe and an economic basket case to a dynamo that could move forward. Of course, this Government inherited that position in 1997.

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Could I remind the hon. Member that we are not repeating a Second Reading debate? I have given him some latitude, and I would now ask him to concentrate his remarks on the Third Reading of this particular Bill.

Mr. Stuart
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Stuart
I am grateful also to my hon. Friend, who intervenes conveniently.

Mr. Bone
My hon. Friend is making his point powerfully, as usual, but I have been sitting here listening to the debate and I must say that one way to reduce child poverty is surely to encourage marriage and for children to be born into families where the parents are married, because they stay together longer. It seems as though the two other main parties in the House are opposed to the idea of encouraging marriage.

Mr. Stuart
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. He was not here during the earlier debate, when I reminded the House of what the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who is on the Front Bench today, told the Public Bill Committee. She said:

“The Government are not wholly convinced that family breakdown is a cause of poverty”.––[Official Report, Child Poverty Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2009; c. 15, Q44.]

That is an extraordinary thing for a Minister in this Labour Government to say. They are turning themselves away from all the evidence. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire intervened on me earlier to read out the latest set of statistics, provided by the Minister’s own Department, which show that a child brought up in a single-parent family is twice as likely as a child in a two-parent family to be in poverty. So my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) is absolutely right.

We have a Government who, for their own narrow ideological or political dividing-lines reasons, insist on turning their face against a fundamental aspect of tackling poverty, which is to restore families and help couples—not necessarily married—to stay together to support their children. We know that if we can help to maintain that situation, general outcomes are much better. There is less likelihood of children being in poverty, and there is less likelihood of other unpleasant after-effects in later life, whether they involve mental health, educational outcomes or the likelihood of unemployment.

The essence of what comes out of the Bill will be the strategies that local authorities and the Secretary of State come up with, but it is most important that we tackle the causes of poverty. The Minister normally tries to be honest, and she talked about this piece of legislation—this Bill—ensuring that Governments have to be held to account and take action on child poverty. But, disappointingly, what did she do in her opening speech? Not once did she mention the 2010 target that this Government set, with a solemn promise that we would see child poverty halved. She did not even mention it, and we can only take politicians seriously on matters such as tackling poverty if they face up to their record to date. [Interruption.] I think the hon. Member for Northavon wants to intervene again.

There has been some progress, but the Government have not moved to tackle child poverty. Of course the irony is that, here we are, with this Child Poverty Bill and the Government congratulating themselves on introducing it, yet today, in the pre-Budget report, the door has finally been slammed in the faces of those who hoped—

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. May I remind the hon. Member that there will no doubt be an opportunity to discuss the pre-Budget report, but that now it is the Third Reading of the Bill?

Mr. Stuart
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is pre-Budget reports and future Budgets that will need to put in place the relevant measures, if child poverty and, indeed, the long-term roots of poverty are to be tackled.

Mr. Stewart Jackson
The Government talk a good game about the involvement of local government in the eradication of poverty, and they talk about initiatives such as Total Place, whereby they involve Departments across the piece in the support of local government. However, is it not true that the one Department that will not devolve power and responsibility for funding to Total Place and, I suggest, to the eradication of poverty is the centralised Department for Work and Pensions? The Treasury and other Departments support Total Place, but the Department for Work and Pensions fails to do so.

Mr. Stuart
rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not going to be tempted to stray into a very different debate from the one that we are currently dealing with.

Mr. Stuart
I am extremely mindful of your strictures, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will return to the strategies.

We know very little about the strategies. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire tabled amendments to try to ensure that issues such as family breakdown and looked-after children would be covered in the Bill so that local authorities and, indeed, the Secretary of State dealt with them properly. It is in the strategies that we find the detail of whether we can come up with a way of genuinely tackling, let alone eradicating, child poverty.

Dr. McCrea
Can the hon. Gentleman assure the House that if we do have a Conservative Government in a matter of months, child poverty will be a key priority for that Government?

Mr. Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In the light of what happened with child poverty under the last Conservative Government, I welcome the opportunity to say that it absolutely will be a priority. The leader of the Conservative party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), has said that the eradication of poverty is a major priority and that it is how a Conservative Government would wish to be measured. Statisticians of the talent and skill of the hon. Member for Northavon will be able to remind my right hon. Friend, and indeed me, of that undertaking. We are pledged to tackle poverty, and we want to do so in the most joined-up way possible.

Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I understand that the hon. Gentleman is again responding to an intervention, but may I remind him that we are debating the Third Reading of this Bill, not any future Bill?

Mr. Stuart
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course, it will be under the auspices of this Bill that any future Conservative Government would have to address child poverty—it will be the lens through which they look at it—so talking about what they would do is what the debate on this Bill is about. Unless it is repealed, it will determine and set a framework in which future Governments will have to deal with this important issue.

Mr. Bone
I have been listening to the debate with growing concern—I was here when my hon. Friend made his original speech—and I am beginning to wonder whether I should vote against the Bill. Could he summarise the reasons why I should or should not do so?

Mr. Stuart
If, like me, my hon. Friend does not like declaratory legislation, and does not think that targets should be set in law because they are a meaningless fraud on the British people, he may well not support the Bill. On the other hand, he may accept, as Conservative Front Benchers do, that this framework provides a driver whereby future Governments can show their intent to tackle child poverty. Given the difficulties with increases in child poverty in the past, it is tremendously important that we show the seriousness of intent of Conservative Members who wish and hope to be in government shortly; we must make absolutely clear our commitment to the eradication of child poverty. That is why, although I understand some of the questions about process that my hon. Friend no doubt has, I will not vote against the Bill. We need to show that there is consensus across the House that child poverty is wrong and we no longer want to see it. Through the details of the strategies that are produced in future, I hope and expect by a Conservative Secretary of State, we will be able to work away on the root causes of poverty and ensure that they are tackled.

I want briefly to mention an amendment dealing with rural poverty, which I tabled, unsuccessfully, in Committee. I appeal to Ministers, while we have them here, and before they go away to produce national strategies in addition to the local strategies produced by local authorities, to bear in mind the peculiarities of rural poverty. According to the Commission for Rural Communities, 22 per cent. of rural children and their families are in financial poverty. There are extra costs to living in rural areas. For example, households in rural settlements spend £74.50 on transport each week compared with £57.10 by those in urban areas. That is serious money coming out of income that might be thought to be in the hands of that family, making it better off than an urban family, but in fact they have to spend it on transport. I hope that Ministers will examine carefully the peculiarities of poverty in rural areas.

Like others, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) and the Centre for Social Justice on their work. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State is in her place, because I wish to say that one of the most exciting programmes that the next Conservative Government, if that is what we have, could undertake would be to follow on from the “Dynamic Benefits” report and consider the barriers preventing those who are currently living in poverty from escaping it and getting into work. We need to understand the incentives that affect those on low income with the same precision with which we seek to understand the incentives for the rich, where they may move and what tax they pay. We need to ensure that for people who are not in work, getting back into work pays and they do not find themselves worse off by trying to do the right thing. I do not know the detail of the measure that was announced in today’s pre-Budget report, but if it is a response to that problem and intended to ensure that those who are not in work are definitely rewarded for getting into work, I will congratulate the Government on it. I hope that it is a reality and not just a pretence.

18:56:00

John Mason
I thank the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) for leaving me approximately four minutes to make my comments.

We are agreed that we need to tackle income inequality. There has been much mention of the root causes of poverty, and we agree that we need to tackle them. I was not convinced by the Conservative argument that we should widen the Bill ever further to take everything into account, but income is clearly key. It is worth reminding ourselves of the explanatory notes to the Bill, some of which were extremely good. For example, they state:

“It is nearly impossible to quantify the financial benefits of eradicating child poverty. Growing up in poverty can damage cognitive, social and emotional development, which are all determinants of future outcomes for a child. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that child poverty costs at least £25 billion a year in Britain, and that £17 billion could accrue to the Exchequer if child poverty were eradicated. However, this is a possible under-estimate of the true benefit. There are other benefits associated with the eradication of child poverty which are difficult to quantify such as equity, reducing hardship, deprivation and exclusion and breaking the intergenerational poverty link.”

I think we all agree on that.

The Child Poverty Action Group and others have said that we have to put serious extra resources into tackling child poverty. They have mentioned a figure of some £3 billion, and the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb), who has spoken ably today, mentioned a figure of £4 billion to £5 billion. That is the kind of sum that we would have needed from the Government if they were really serious. Without real money, I cannot see how child poverty targets can possibly be met. I know that we are not supposed to venture into the pre-Budget report, but it seems to have done very little to help.

There are other factors to consider, such as the fact that when people’s work is cut to less than 16 hours, they lose tax credits, as well as the particular problem of single-parent families. In my constituency, there is a real problem of some kids being able to afford to go on a school trip whereas others in the same class cannot. The main issue brought to me is housing problems, and I see many youngsters being brought up in seriously overcrowded accommodation.

I agree with those who have said that less than 10 per cent. of children in relative poverty is a pretty poor target to aim at. Is it ambitious enough? It is certainly not eradication.

John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is the major failing of the Bill? It has redefined the word “eradicate”. Eradicating poverty means to wipe it out, and the target is not to wipe it out.

John Mason
Absolutely. It makes a complete joke of the word.

There are other concerns. The Committee discussed whether clause 15 will be a get-out clause for the Government in future. We clearly have to set priorities for the time we are living in. I might as well mention Trident again, because that seems to be more of a priority for the Government than eradicating child poverty. There is not time to talk about many other things, but I emphasise that the minimum wage is far too low. We need it to be a living wage, and there is some good work being done on that in London, Glasgow and elsewhere. I want the Government to be a bit stronger on that, because it would surely go a huge way towards eradicating child poverty.

Finally, I appeal to the Government to work with the Scottish authorities in taking these matters forward. Westminster clearly needs to take—

19:00:00

Debate interrupted (Programme Order, 20 July).

The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with amendments.

Business without Debate

deferred Divisions

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order 41A(3)),

That, at this day’s sitting, Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply to the Motion in the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer relating to Corporation Tax.—(Mr. Mudie.)

Question agreed to.

corporation tax

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order 118(6)),

That the draft Corporation Tax (Exclusion from Short-Term Loan Relationships) Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 3 November, in the previous Session of Parliament, be approved.—(Mr. Mudie.)

Question agreed to.

Regional select committee (London)

Motion made,

That Ms Karen Buck, Jeremy Corbyn, Clive Efford, Siobhain McDonagh, Mr Andy Slaughter and Mr Andrew Pelling be members of the London Regional Select Committee.—(Mr. Mudie.)

Hon. Members
Object.

sittings of the house

Motion made,

That—

(1) Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business) shall have effect for this Session with the following modifications, namely:

In paragraph (4) the word ‘eight’ shall be substituted for the word ‘thirteen’ in line 42 and in paragraph (5) the word ‘fifth’ shall be substituted for the word ‘eighth’ in line 44;

(2) Standing Order No. 90 (Second reading committees) shall have effect for this Session with the following modification, namely:

In paragraph (2) the word ‘fifth’ shall be substituted for the word ‘eighth’ in line 21; and

(3) Private Members’ Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 29 January; 5 and 26 February; 5 and 12 March; 23 and 30 April; and 7 May.—(Mr. Mudie.)

Hon. Members
Object.

Petitions

Badman Report (Mid-Dorset and North Poole)

19:01:00

Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
My first petition tonight comes from home educators who are concerned about the Badman report. The signatures from my constituency reflect the general concern of home educators up and down the country. The petition states:

The Petition of persons resident in the Mid Dorset and North Poole parliamentary constituency,

Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people’s homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000452]

Park Home Sales

19:03:00

Annette Brooke
My second petition tonight has been organised by one of my constituents, Sonia McColl. It is about a problem involving park home owners, who are on the whole very vulnerable people, and unscrupulous park owners. The petition does not in any way suggest that park owners are all unscrupulous, but there are instances that many of us know about when we need to strike a better balance between the two groups of people.

The petition states:

The Petition of persons resident in the constituency of Mid Dorset and North Poole and others,

Declares that the Petitioners believe that unscrupulous park owners are able to force home owners to accept lower than market value prices for their property, by demanding interviews with prospective buyers and raising unreasonable objections to purchases.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to bring forward proposals to amend the Mobile Homes Act 1983, in order to create the following requirements: that a park owner should not have the right to demand an interview with a person buying a home; that where a park owner believes an interview is necessary, that interview should be held in the office and in the presence of a lawyer with a registered legal practice; that in such a case the lawyer must be satisfied that the reasons for the interview are reasonable, that statements made by the park owner are not fraudulent, and that the buyer’s references are satisfactory; that the lawyer concerned must be acceptable to both parties and shall before the interview make himself aware of the contents of the Mobile Homes Act 1983 and other associated legislation; and that the park owner must meet the cost of the lawyer’s services.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000453]

Badman Report (Harborough)

19:05:00

Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
I beg leave to present a petition from persons resident in my constituency in the county of Leicestershire.

The petition states:

The Petition of persons resident in the Harborough parliamentary constituency,

Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people’s homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000470]

19:06:00

Mr. John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Some time ago, I submitted a petition on behalf of thousands of constituents in support of the “Mahoro Must Stay” campaign. Unfortunately Adela Mahoro Mugabo is still under threat of deportation—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)
Order. I understood that the hon. Gentleman’s petition was on the Badman report.

Mr. Leech
That was last night, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Madam Deputy Speaker
I am afraid that my information is that his petition is on the Badman report. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but would he be kind enough to see the Clerk at the Table to confirm that his petition has been endorsed by the Journal Office? I can then call him to present his petition.

Climate Change (Copenhagen Talks)

19:07:00

Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I present a petition that has been organised by Crediton Climate Action and has signatures from people in the town of Crediton, surrounding villages and many local organisations. Playing an especial part in this have been my constituents Gerald and Laura Conyngham, who are cycling to Copenhagen from Crediton to take part and make their views known.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of the constituency of Tiverton and Honiton in Devon and others, regarding the Climate Change Talks in Copenhagen in December 2009,

Declares that the following should result from the Copenhagen Talks: all countries should agree to take urgent action to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million; developed countries should take the lead, given our major responsibility for past emissions; and developed countries should give financial help to the developing world to help them adapt to climate change and invest in renewable energies.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to do all it can at Copenhagen to achieve these goals.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000530]

Post Office (New England)

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
The New England post office in Peterborough was closed in 2008. I wish to present the petition of 721 residents of Millfield, New England and other areas in the city of Peterborough.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of Millfield and New England and others,

Declares that New England Post Office ought to be re-opened

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take all possible steps to ensure that New England Post Office can be re-opened.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000529]

Deepcut Army Barracks

19:08:00

Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
I wish to present two petitions this evening. The first is on behalf of my constituent, Mr. Gary Hobbs, who collected a petition of 200 signatures requesting an inquiry into the deaths at Deepcut barracks.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of Sutton, Cheam, Worcester Park and others,

Declares that the findings of the Army Board of Inquiry into the deaths of Privates Geoff Gray and James Collinson at Deepcut Army Barracks have not closed the matter and leave questions unanswered and no one accountable for what happened.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons calls upon Her Majesty’s Government to sanction a full, independent, public inquiry into the deaths of Deepcut Army Barracks between 1995 and 2002.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000626]

Freedom Pass

19:09:00

Mr. Burstow
The second of the two petitions is presented on behalf of many thousands of my constituents who contacted my office over the past few weeks, when they learned about the threat now posed to the London freedom pass as a result of an announcement by the Department for Transport of a redistribution of funds from London to other parts of the country to underwrite the costs of their concessionary fare schemes.

The petition reads:

The Petition of residents of Sutton, Cheam, Worcester Park and others,

Declares that the decision of the Secretary of State for Transport to cut the financial support for concessionary travel for older and disabled people in London is unfair to the 1.2 million people who use the Freedom Pass. Further declares that London Councils currently contribute a third of the cost compared to the parts of the country where concessionary travel is fully funded by the Government and that the cut in the grant would result in London Councils covering half of the cost of the scheme.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons calls upon Her Majesty's Government to drop the plans to cut the funding for the Freedom Pass for elderly and disabled people.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000625]

Immigration (Adela Mahoro Mugabo)

19:10:00

Mr. John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
I shall try again. Some time ago, I submitted a petition on behalf of thousands of constituents in support of the “Mahoro Must Stay” campaign. Unfortunately, Adela Mahoro Mugabo remains under threat of deportation and I am now submitting a petition signed by a further 1,300 people who support the campaign.

The petition is as follows:

The Petition of the Mahoro Must Stay Campaign,

Declares that Adela Mahoro Mugabo, who is to be removed to Rwanda, is the widow of a man murdered in 2002 by the Interharamwe Hutus, and as a Hutu herself was accused by the Rwandan Military Intelligence of covering up for her husband’s murderers. The Petitioners further declare that Mahoro was tortured and raped, and is now HIV-positive, and that if she is returned to Rwanda she will still be in danger and will be unable to get the anti-retroviral drugs she needs to survive.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Home Secretary to instruct a reconsideration of the Home Office decision and allow Adela Mahoro Mugabo to stay in the UK, a safe environment in which she will be able to lead a healthy life.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P000493]

Badman Report (Bristol West)

19:11:00

Stephen Williams (Bristol, West) (LD)
I have a petition to present on behalf of 33 constituents in Bristol, West on the same subject as petitions presented by several other hon. Members: the report by Graham Badman into home educators. To avoid detaining colleagues further, I shall not read out the full text of the motion.

Following is the full text of the petition:

[The Petition of persons resident in the Bristol West parliamentary constituency,

Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.]

[P000476]

Badman Report (Cheadle)

19:12:00

Mark Hunter (Cheadle) (LD)
I, too, beg the leave of the House to introduce on behalf of persons resident in the Cheadle constituency a petition expressing their grave concerns about the recommendations of the Badman report. The wording is exactly the same as the petition read out earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke).

Following is the full text of the petition:

[The Petition of persons resident in Cheadle,

Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.]

[P000612]

Badman Report (Brecon and Radnorshire)

19:13:00

Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
By leave of the House, I beg to lay a petition regarding the Badman report that has been signed by seven residents of Brecon and Radnorshire. The wording is very similar, or identical, to the petition presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), therefore I shall not detain the House.

Following is the full text of the petition:

[The Petition of persons resident in the Brecon and Radnorshire parliamentary constituency,

Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.]

[P000623]

Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr. Mudie.)

19:14:00

Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is probably about two years ago that Devon primary care trust informed us, through their then chief executive, Dr. Kevin Snee, that it had been proposed that the upper gastrointestinal unit at Wonford hospital in Exeter be moved to and merge with the unit in Derriford hospital in Plymouth. In principle, I have no objections to proposals, including this one, that aim to create centres of excellence where surgeons can deal with a much wider range of patients and a much larger catchment area to improve their expertise in what is a very difficult area of surgery. Indeed, I support the call for centres of excellence.

In the discussions that I had with the then chief executive, it became clear to me that the facilities at Exeter would be moved to Plymouth and that, from that, the centre would grow. However, the upper GI unit at Wonford hospital in Exeter has developed as a national centre of excellence, using keyhole surgery to perform what are known as minimally invasive oesophagectomies—in other words, the removal of the oesophagus, a serious operation, usually required because of cancer, and one that surgeons need a great deal of experience to perform. To be able to carry out MIOs—which are much easier to say—it was promised that the excellence that had been developed in the centre at Exeter would be moved with the unit to Derriford hospital.

Under normal circumstances, the operation requires major open surgery, with the surgeon opening not only the chest cavity of the thorax, in order to access the oesophagus, but the abdomen. As one can imagine, that is a very large operation indeed. The surgical removal of the oesophagus has large implications for quality of life and recovery after surgery. However, as they have been developed over the years, it has been demonstrated and proven at Exeter that MIOs, where the thorax and the abdomen are entered using keyhole surgery, have a most beneficial effect on both post-operative recovery and quality of life, particularly where there are later reoccurrences of the carcinoma.

Since 2004, two surgeons at Exeter, Mr. Richard Berrisford and Mr. Saj Wajed, have done that operation in preference to open surgery. The Exeter MIO unit has submitted many papers to MIGOCS, the minimally invasive gastrooesophageal cancer study, which is run by the Oxford university medical school. The Exeter MIO unit is the only established UK unit that has published its data, published a safety algorithm and proven that its techniques result in the rapid restoration of quality of life, and it is also undertaking further research. Exeter is the UK’s largest contributor to that national study, as a result of the work done in the MIO unit. Therefore, although I and my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire), who has raised the matter with Ministers in the past, have an interest in Devon and the wider west country, the unit is also of national importance, which is why I am raising the issue on the Floor of the House.

I was first alerted to the problems that have arisen with the removal of the MIO unit from Exeter to Derriford only recently, by Hannah Foster, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Exeter, who was in touch with the local patients group. Patients, who included my constituents, were concerned that they would be denied MIO treatment and that the MIO surgeons, who were meant to have helped establish the MIO unit at Plymouth by last September following the move from Exeter, had not been able to do so.

Mr. Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour on achieving this debate. I raised the issue in Parliament more than two years ago and have continued to do so since. She referred to the move and the culture of secrecy surrounding it. Does she agree with my constituent Mr. David Hamilton of Sidmouth, who is currently undergoing treatment, and others who have raised the issue, who say that people are not allowed to talk to politicians? A culture of secrecy seems to have been created, with a rather sinister air of intimidation surrounding the entire proposal to relocate—a proposal that I do not believe adds anything to the argument, but which makes us in this place rather suspicious about the motives behind it all. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that the proposal is not benefiting anybody?

Angela Browning
I do agree with my hon. Friend. There is already a unit in Plymouth, at Derriford hospital, and it might well claim that it does keyhole surgery. However, the procedure that it carries out is not the same as that carried out at Exeter. The procedure at Plymouth tends to be either keyhole surgery in the thorax with open surgery in the abdomen, or vice versa. In other words, it is hybrid in nature.

The fact that everyone had been informed that the move from Exeter to Plymouth would have taken place by September of this year—so that, under the supervision of the Exeter surgeons, the unit would ideally have been up and running in Plymouth by early 2010—is a matter of great concern. I shall turn in a moment to the subject that my hon. Friend has just raised. Patients are worried, and doctors do not know where they stand, and we face the potential loss of a groundbreaking unit, not only in the west country but in the rest of the country.

Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD)
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Angela Browning
I promised the hon. Gentleman that I would allow him to intervene in this debate.

Andrew George
The hon. Lady is making some important points. May I first apologise to the Minister, because I might not be able to stay in the Chamber to hear his closing remarks? The hon. Lady has raised an important issue that also affects Cornwall. It involves the whole issue of planning for upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery. I entirely accept the view of the Devon and Cornwall peninsula cancer network that patient safety must be paramount in the planning of these services, but does she agree that, rather than taking decisions about sub-specialty surgical interventions for cancer in a piecemeal manner, as is the case at the moment, we need to take a broader, more strategic view of how all these interventions are managed across the whole peninsula?

Angela Browning
I am not sure that I have understood the hon. Gentleman correctly. I said earlier, however, that if I needed treatment for oesophageal cancer, I would want that operation to be done by a person who was doing many such operations, and I would be prepared to travel to do that. Patient safety is important, and some procedures, including this one, are of such a specialised nature that they should not be left to generalist surgeons, who do not see or treat enough patients who require such a procedure in the course of a year to develop sufficient expertise. So I might be disagreeing with the hon. Gentleman on that.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon, however, when he says that the way in which the primary care trust has gone about all this looks extremely sinister. The Exeter surgeons should have been in the Derriford unit by last September, as promised, and working as a team. Teamwork is important in building up the necessary expertise. We have seen examples in other parts of the country of units not making such a transition smoothly. The result is that the consultants do not have enough time to build up their expertise before starting to carry out these procedures. The consequences of that will be obvious to everyone.

Plymouth has not yet carried out a full MIO of the type done at Exeter. Nor has it yet filed any papers with the Oxford study that I mentioned, to which Exeter has contributed more than any other organisation in the country. It has not registered its patients on the national register database in Oxford. I therefore believe that, in the interests of patient safety, Derriford should not be expected to replicate what is being done at Exeter without the proper transitional arrangements in place which are seen to work. That has not happened yet, and I would be very concerned if such procedures were to take place without those transitional arrangements. The health scrutiny committee of Devon county council has referred the case to the Minister, because it is so worried about it.

A further concern is that patients who are now presenting to the surgeons in Exeter are being told that the unit will not offer them operations after the new year. I received a phone call earlier from one of my constituents who was told by phone only this morning—I do not know whether that was connected to our holding this debate—that an exception would be made, and that he would receive his surgery in the MIO unit in Exeter in February. That makes it sound as if it is a one-off case and it does not look as though it will solve the whole problem that I have brought before the House tonight. The Minister is involved and there should be some national intervention in this case, not least because of the research at the Exeter MIO unit.

The research is known as the LOGIC programme; I am sorry about all the acronyms. The laparoscopic gastric ischaemic conditioning trial is approved by the Devon and Torbay ethics committee, has been running since April and has so far recruited 15 patients. It requires a total of 44 to complete the study. If there is a break in the established MIO service, there will not be a sufficient number of patients to allow the research to be completed. It is a very important piece of research. It is so important that one of our local cancer charities based in Exeter, FORCE—Friends of the oncology and radiotherapy centre—has donated £20,000 to the research project. People locally have put their firm commitment behind the research.

Will the Minister confirm tonight that the MIO unit in Exeter will continue until such time that it is safely—and I mean safely—established in Plymouth? If not, why is this being done against the clear recommendations of the health scrutiny committee and contrary to what was promised personally to surgeons, patients and MPs by the primary care trust? Why has Plymouth failed to develop a total MIO, despite giving the reassurance that it would develop it in September 2009, by which time we would have hoped that it would be well on the way to being established?

Will patients in Devon now have to accept the choice of open surgery, which they do not want—those who have seen what is done at Exeter clearly opt for the minimally invasive surgery—or will they be faced with the very real risks of a learning curve in developing a new highly complex operation in a unit not familiar with this procedure? As I have mentioned, there have been disastrous parallels in previous examples of centralisation. I will not name them, but I am happy to tell the Minister privately where we have seen the procedure bomb as a result of the transition not being implemented properly and surgeons not having sufficient time or a team built around them to carry out the transition properly.

A final aspect of the problem is that people come from far and wide for the procedure in Exeter—not just from the south-west but from all parts of the country, because the procedure is unique. If the MIO unit closes in Exeter and is not reopened in Plymouth, a private patient could opt to have the MIO procedure and all the associated benefits if they are prepared to pay for it. NHS patients, however, who until now have had the choice and the benefits of the procedure, will be denied it. I really do not understand why something so groundbreaking and so important to our constituents, as well as being in the national interest, should be denied to the NHS. Something has gone seriously wrong with the way in which the process has been carried out, and I would like the Minister to investigate what it is and put it right.

19:28:00

The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. Mike O'Brien)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) on securing the debate.

The fast and effective treatment of cancer is one of the national health service’s highest priorities. As a result of massive and sustained investment in the NHS and in cancer services by this Government, paying for more consultants, more nurses, more National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence-approved drugs and far better facilities, there are now almost 9,000 fewer deaths every year than there were before 1997.

In 2000, we published the NHS cancer plan, setting out how we would improve cancer treatment and ensure high-quality services for patients. The plan committed the NHS to implementing the latest authoritative guidance available on all aspects of NHS cancer care. However, I can assure the hon. Lady that decisions about exactly where and how care will be provided are local decisions. It is a matter for the local NHS, working with cancer networks, clinicians, patients and other stakeholders; it is not for Ministers to decide that in Whitehall.

The Department, supported by the national cancer action team, has been monitoring progress in the context of local plans. Although I understand the concern  expressed by the hon. Lady, I am sure she will appreciate that if further improvements are to be made in cancer surgery and if better outcomes are to be delivered for patients, local clinicians must be able to secure local solutions to the various issues that are raised. In 2008-09, a total of 3,668 major oesophagogastric procedures took place in England. I understand that about 50 patients currently undergo surgery for oesophagogastric cancer each year at Derriford hospital in Plymouth, some of whom are from Cornwall. About 47 patients undergo surgery at Royal Devon and Exeter hospital in Exeter, and about 20 undergo surgery at Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro.

I understand that Devon primary care trust, working with the South West strategic health authority and the peninsula cancer network, has considered the improving outcomes guidance recommendations for upper gastrointestinal cancers, and that discussion took place with local people. The proposal is that from 1 January next year the oesophagogastric surgical unit at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust will expand to become the centralised specialist surgical unit for patients from Devon and Cornwall with oesophageal and gastric cancer.

As part of its commitment to placing patients and the public at the centre of health services, the Government have established an independent scrutiny and review process for local change. I will deal with that shortly, and will deal in particular with the views of the overview and scrutiny committee, which were raised by the hon. Lady. The proposed change is intended to start from 1 January, which is fairly soon. The local NHS has finalised implementation plans, and patients in the south-west peninsula requiring specialist upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery will be given their surgical treatment in Plymouth from that date. The surgical element of their treatment will no longer be provided by Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro or by Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. I recognise that there is a specific case of which I was not aware. I shall establish further information about it and report to the hon. Lady on whether it indicates any sort of precedent, because at present I simply do not know.

The peninsula cancer network has told my Department that the whole surgical team is experienced and properly trained in both open and minimally invasive techniques for oesophageal and gastric cancer surgery.

Angela Browning
Will the Minister give way?

Mr. O'Brien
If the hon. Lady allows me to say a little more, she may understand my point.

There is no nationally recognised definition of MIO, although this is a national issue. In Plymouth, the plan is to investigate both the role and the definition of minimally invasive techniques for oesophageal cancer as part of a multi-centre study.

Angela Browning
rose—

Mr. O'Brien
The hon. Lady may still wish to respond, bearing that point in mind.

Angela Browning
I said I was aware that keyhole surgery had been performed at Plymouth. So far, however, a single case has not involved keyhole surgery throughout the procedure. Only hybrid operations have been performed at Derriford. I believe that this is an urgent matter involving the safety of patients. If what the Minister is telling me is accurate, either those at Derriford are going to replicate what is done at Exeter—they have not done that to date, which that means that they would practise on the first few patients, and that would worry me—or they will drop the full MIO procedure.

Mr. O'Brien
I will make further inquiries about the hon. Lady’s point. I will say, however, that the intention is for the internationally recognised research on MIO at Exeter to be supported and developed at Plymouth. Once the clinical service has been established, it is intended to support and pursue the research programme currently under way in Exeter and to develop further projects. It is also the case that, following the publication of the review carried out by Professor Mike Griffin and Mr. Bill Allum, a period of public engagement was carried out, with various local meetings.

I understand the concerns that have been raised, and we have looked into some of those raised by the Devon OSC. The PCN has confirmed that equipment to undertake open and minimally invasive procedures is in place in Plymouth. Additional equipment has been ordered, after discussion with a senior surgeon at the Royal Devon and Exeter, and it will be delivered shortly. This will not impact on the delivery of the service from 1 January.

Angela Browning
I hear what the Minister says about the equipment being ready at Derriford. However, if I wanted to climb Everest, I could order the equipment over the internet and have it all ready, but although I might be a bit of a mountaineer, that would not make me ready to climb Everest. Experience and practice are required to go with that kit, and an experienced team as well.

Mr. O'Brien
The hon. Lady puts her case very eloquently, but I have to say that the PCN has confirmed that the whole surgical team is experienced and properly trained in both open and minimally invasive techniques for oesophageal and gastric cancer surgery. As was described in the AUGIS—Association of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeons of Great Britain—consensus statement of 2008, there will be two consultant surgeons operating on each case, which will allow for the incorporation of skills from around the peninsula and the appropriate supervision and mentorship model for minimally invasive surgery. As also described in the AUGIS consensus statement, there is no recognised definition of MIO, and these matters will need to be looked at.

I am concerned by what the hon. Lady says and I will make some further inquiries, but we have been given reassurances, and, essentially, this is a local matter. We therefore have to rely on local clinicians to say whether they can do this. At present, they are coming back to us, through the appropriate procedures they have, and saying, “Yes, we can do this.” She is saying that she believes the qualifications and experience are not in place. I will look again, and we will go back to the local clinicians, but she says something different from what they are currently telling us. I am not an expert clinician, and no more is she, and neither of us knows whether those skills are in place. All she can do is report what is being said to her, and all I can do is report back what I am being told. This is, however, a matter to be resolved locally, rather than nationally.

That brings me on to the hon. Lady’s point about the local health OSC. I am concerned about that, of course, because such committees can refer proposals to the Secretary of State for Health, which he can then pass on to the independent reconfiguration panel for consideration and independent advice. On 20 November 2009, the Devon OSC informed the Department of Health that it would refer the proposals to the Secretary of State. A letter from the committee providing the grounds for its referral was received by the Department on 4 December. However, I now understand from the local NHS that the committee has said it will be writing again to the Secretary of State, seeking to “clarify” its position on its original referral. We await that letter, to discover what the clarification is, and whether or not it is referring, and if so, what exactly it is referring. I initially thought the letter was clear, but it now appears that it is not and that it needs further clarification. As the hon. Lady will appreciate, it is not appropriate for me to comment in detail on the issue at this stage, and certainly not before the Secretary of State has had the opportunity to consider the additional letter from the OSC. I understand that the local NHS is continuing to ensure that there will be full implementation of upper GI surgery at Plymouth on 1 January. That is the current situation.

All patients affected by planned changes will be given support with transport and accommodation. As I stated earlier, the local organisation of health care services is dictated not by Ministers or civil servants in Whitehall, but by the local health care professionals on the ground. The criteria by which any changes should be introduced are that they are clinically-led, that they are focused on the best outcomes for patients and, of course, that they meet the highest levels of patient safety. I urge MPs who have concerns about the proposals coming from their local health service to contact their primary care trust. I understand from NHS Devon that the hon. Lady has not, as yet, been engaging with it and that it would appreciate it were she to do so. I also made inquiries as to whether Hannah Foster, a prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate who was quoted in the local media, had been in contact with NHS Devon. Sadly, she has apparently not raised issues with NHS Devon, other than by attending an engagement meeting. If she wants to do something that is to be taken seriously, engaging with NHS Devon would be an appropriate course for her to take, rather than just dealing with the media.

With local leadership and national guidelines based on the latest evidence, we are continuing to seek to ensure that cancer care is delivered in centres of excellence, which ensure that people get the best quality treatment. The hon. Lady has raised a number of concerns. I shall go back to NHS Devon to make inquiries about some of the points that she has raised and then write to her or meet her, if she wishes me to do so. I aim to ensure that in so far as she or I can be satisfied, given that neither of us are clinicians, such reassurances as can be given will be given. It is important that people know that they are receiving safe treatment at a centre of excellence and that such an important operation is being delivered at a place where they can rely on that excellence being delivered to them.

Question put and agreed to.

19:41:00

House adjourned.

Division 18
09/12/2009 00:00:00
That the draft Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 28 October, in the previous Session of Parliament, be approved.The House divided:
Ayes: 284
Noes: 192
Question accordingly agreed to.