Lords Chamber

 House of Lords

Thursday, 6 December 2007.

The House met at eleven o'clock: the LORD SPEAKER on the Woolsack.

Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds.

Common Agricultural Policy: Single Farm Payment

The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether they will alleviate any economic problems facing farmers affected by foot and mouth disease and bluetongue restrictions by making part payments of the single farm payments at the beginning of the payment window which opens in December.

The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker)
My Lords, the Rural Payments Agency’s aim in respect of the 2007 single payment system is to make more full payments to more farmers earlier than last year. However, the Government will not undermine the agency’s recovery, nor introduce unacceptable disallowance risks, by insisting on a particular start date for payments.

The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer but disappointed by it because it seems to me that what I suggested would have helped. Would Defra be willing to commission a thorough study into the full economic impact of animal disease outbreaks in order to establish a system which will respond quickly and sensitively to what I fear threaten to be increasingly frequent outbreaks?

Lord Rooker
My Lords, I am grateful for the right reverend Prelate’s acceptance of the Answer but the situation is a bit like last year. I shall not give any target start dates but we will make more payments to more farmers earlier than last year, which was a substantial improvement on the first year of the scheme in 2005. Defra is looking at the review of this year’s animal disease outbreaks, which have cost the industry an enormous amount. I have just spent three days in the north-west and I am well aware of the direct cost to the industry. They have also cost the taxpayer an absolute fortune. These matters are being reviewed so that we can learn lessons. We are still adding up the full cost as restrictions are still in place in respect of bluetongue, foot and mouth and avian influenza.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, does the Minister agree that this Question does not apply to farmers in Wales and Scotland because they will have received the payment in full? As I see it, the great disadvantage of the dynamic model is that it penalises both government through the excessive bureaucracy of the Rural Payments Agency and farmers through the £30 million it will cost in interest. Have the Government investigated the whole business of scrapping the dynamic model and reverting to a simpler system?

Lord Rooker
My Lords, the answer to the last part of the question is yes. It was a non-runner to wipe the slate clean; it was not possible. It was looked at by myself and the former Secretary of State some months ago. While I was in the north-west, I met farmers from Wales and Scotland who did not waste any time other than saying, “Pleased to meet you. By the way, we’ve had our single farm payment”. I told them that the system in England was designed to be far more efficient than that in Scotland and Wales but that we had not yet been able to make such early payments. All I can say is that we will seek to pay the farmers a lot more money a lot quicker than we did last year.

Lord Teverson
My Lords, regrettably, due to earlier springs and warmer summers, bluetongue will be a presence not just this year but will be back next summer and the summer after that. I predict that it will become a permanent feature of animal disease in this country. What plans are the Government making to combat the permanent presence of this disease in UK agriculture?

Lord Rooker
My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right. It will be very difficult to fight a disease transferred by the midge. At present, along with the industry, the decision has been taken to keep the bluetongue strategy at phase 1; to keep the restricted area and not go for the whole country being covered as a bluetongue zone. If—we expect it to be when—it comes back and hits us really badly, perhaps after a mild winter or if there is another plume from across the channel, clearly in terms of trade restrictions it would be a lot easier if the whole country was a bluetongue zone. By “the whole country” I mean GB, not just England. That is absolutely crucial but we have not yet got to that point. We are watching it carefully. By next spring and summer, we hope to have the vaccine available. All the tenders have been placed through the companies, and we will be working, as we are now, with industry on a bluetongue strategy on the assumption that it will hit us and become an endemic disease.

Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, is there a rumour that the animal health budget is going to be cut? That would be disastrous and a great worry for many farmers.

Lord Rooker
My Lords, the noble Baroness says “the animal health budget”. Defra’s budget is always under threat. We are looking at the consequences of the Comprehensive Spending Review and of the outbreak of disease this year. We have to pay compensation on animals slaughtered. That is fine, and that is important to eradicate the disease. We have paid out compensation on animals that should not have been slaughtered but had to be because of poor biosecurity on the farms in question. That has cost the taxpayer an enormous amount of money. There is no budget for compensation for animal disease as such, but Animal Health has an overall budget of £400 million which is designed to help the taxpayer deal with animal disease. The consequences for the individual parts of the Defra budget will become known only when we have made the final decisions on the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, why do we need six centres?

Lord Rooker
My Lords, six centres for what?

Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, for the Rural Payments Agency.

Lord Rooker
My Lords, the Rural Payments Agency has five operational centres for making payments: in Exeter, Northallerton, Newcastle, Carlisle and Workington. The headquarters are at Reading. That is considerably fewer than the number of old MAFF offices. It could be that the number of offices will be reviewed but, given what the Rural Payments Agency has gone through with the single farm payment, the last thing that I have asked it to do is to start organising offices. I would rather get the payment system up and running well before it starts to look at these other issues.

Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, does the money for repairing and making absolutely perfect the laboratories whence came foot and mouth come out of the Defra budget?

Lord Rooker
No, my Lords, I do not think that it does, because it is not a Defra-run laboratory. It is not a government-run laboratory. Pirbright is the Institute for Animal Health, which is a charity. Defra is a customer of that laboratory, which is sponsored by one of the research science councils from where most of the funding comes. It obviously has commercial research contracts. To the best of my knowledge, we do not provide capital expenditure. There is a huge capital programme that Defra helps with, but the capital part of the Defra budget is not the difficult one, to be honest; it is the normal revenue spending budget.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth
My Lords, the Minister will know from his visit to the north-west that the industry there in the uplands has been devastated by what has happened in the past four months. Why is it that in Wales payment of three-quarters of single farm payments commenced on Monday whereas, for some reason or other, the Rural Payments Agency cannot replicate that in England?

Lord Rooker
My Lords, it is for reasons that I thought the noble Lord would have understood. The system is different. It is a hybrid system that is not the same as that in Wales. In four or five years’ time, some of the farmers in Wales will be complaining that their single farm payments are based on 10-year-old calculations of what they get in subsidies; whereas the English farmers—notwithstanding the present difficulties—will have a modern payments system relative to what they are doing now, not to what the historical level of payments was. I suspect that, in time—and I do not say this as a claim—Welsh and, indeed, Scottish farmers will see the benefits of the dynamic system. Its introduction has been fraught with difficulties—including the computer systems, the rush, some of the decisions on changing the system, mapping problems and all the other issues. It is taking time, and we did say that 2009 would probably be the first year in which the system was stable.

Sport: Women’s Football

11:15:00

Lord Rosser
asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What plans they have for promoting women’s football.

Lord Bach
My Lords, women’s football is the fastest-growing female participation sport with, it is believed, more than 1.3 million women and girls playing some sort of football in the United Kingdom. We fully support the current reviews of the game by the Football Association and the women’s football task force. This is an excellent opportunity to capitalise on the performance of the England women’s team in China and it is important that the reviews lead to a significant improvement in women’s football, including ways of raising the profile and competitiveness of the domestic league.

Lord Rosser
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that helpful reply. Players in the successful women’s team that reached the quarter finals of the World Cup in China this year apparently received just £40 per day for the five weeks’ unpaid leave that most of them had to take to represent their country. Does he agree that the priorities in the game are distorted, when the Football Association spends less on women’s football each year than the annual salary that a Premier League club pays to a single top male player? Will he tell the FA, the Premier League and the Football League to do more to ensure that the fast-growing women’s game is properly financed at all levels, including providing financial support for the England women’s team that is at least on a par with that received by other top national women’s teams?

Lord Bach
My Lords, first, I pay tribute to my noble friend’s long-standing expertise and passion for football and to his knowledge of grass-roots football. The Government share many of his concerns. We appreciate and thank the Football Association for its ongoing commitment to the game but, frankly, we want a lot more and we want it a lot faster. We agree particularly with my noble friend about the financial rewards, on which he made comparisons. The England players are realistic about the current status and financial position of the game and have not called for payments equal to those of their male colleagues; perhaps it is to be hoped that one day they will. Instead, their arguments have focused on the wider impact that the level of remuneration has on the game. The majority of players in the England women’s team took unpaid leave to take part in the World Cup, which meant that they lost wages and had to recoup their working hours. That severely limits the hours that they can train for club or country. The Government do not think that that is satisfactory.

Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is not right that the members of the England women’s team have been financially disadvantaged? If the FA will not do more in this case, could Sport England help, and help now, because the players are suffering real financial disadvantage?

Lord Bach
My Lords, as the noble Baroness will know, the Football Association is carrying out a number of investigations into women’s football. I say again that the Football Association, in the way in which it is reforming itself as a consequence of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is putting much more emphasis on women’s football. We certainly want to encourage that, but there is no doubt at all that there is a huge way to go. The noble Baroness will know that a task force has been set up involving a range of members, including Sport England. We consider the task force to be very important in improving the women’s game.

Lord Addington
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport did not think that it should provide Olympic funding for football because there is so much money in the game? According to information that I have received, it believes that the Football Association should provide it. Given that, will the Government make every effort to ensure that the FA and the premiership dig into their pockets and at least provide a professional national team, which would provide the role models that are seen to be so important?

Lord Bach
My Lords, it is extremely sad that there will not be an England or Great Britain team at the 2008 Olympics. The home nations could not even offer an explanation of why they would not allow the women’s team to compete on behalf of Great Britain, and an explanation is important to us because we want to make sure that we understand the reasons. We understand that FIFA made assurances about the independence of the home nations in the wider football world, so the Government take the view that the home nations’ decision is appalling.

Lord Harrison
My Lords, has my noble friend visited the wonderful National Football Museum at Preston, which tells so well the story of women’s football in this country, including the women’s FA cup final in Preston in the 1920s, which attracted a crowd of 51,000? Will he note that the lack of women in football, especially at management level and in administration, could be remedied and that that would encourage women to participate? Will he consult the football unit of the economics department at Warwick University, which is concerned with that issue?

Lord Bach
My Lords, I am afraid that I have not been able to go to Preston to see the museum, but I will. My noble friend will know that there were 24,000 people at the women’s cup final last year. The reward for that final was £5,000, whereas, for the men’s clubs, to be in the third round proper is worth £24,000, so we can begin to see where the problems are.

Community Relations: National Motto

11:22:00

Baroness Warsi
asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether they have received any proposals for a national motto; and, if so, whether such a motto will improve community relations.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath)
My Lords, the Government have never proposed a British motto and, as announced in The Governance of Britain Green Paper, are focused on developing a question on whether a statement of British values would be useful.

Baroness Warsi
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. What is the basis of that consultation and is there evidence to suggest that a motto—that term has been used—or a statement of values would have a positive impact on community relations? If so and in light of the Minister’s experience in the area, could he give the House his motto, his six words, that would encapsulate this great nation?

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, first, I express my warm appreciation to the noble Baroness and to my noble friend Lord Ahmed for their magnificent work in Sudan, which is appreciated by the whole House.

There is no suggestion by the Government for a motto. On a statement of values, I think that most of us would understand the core British values, yet there is an advantage in expressing them, so that all people in this country understand them, because they are so cherished by the nation. We can all come up with adjectives, such as justice, freedom, democracy and fair play, to describe what we sense it means to be a British citizen.

We think it is valuable, particularly in terms of community cohesion, in taking that work forward. There is much to be done over the next year, but I hope the noble Baroness will contribute her very great talents to that process.

As for a motto, I do not think I will go down that route, but I will say that the motto of Birmingham City Football Club is, “Keep right on till the end of the road”.

Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it would be very easy to have the statement brought into schools so that all our children knew what our values were, including those who have recently come to this country?

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, the noble Baroness put rather better than I could why this might be valuable to the country.

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, if the Minister finds it difficult to provide a motto for the whole country, would he be prepared to consider a motto for your Lordships’ House: “Questions and Answers ought to be short”?

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, yes.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, from these Benches, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, on her efforts last week. I have been acquainted with the noble Baroness for some years, and what she did was entirely characteristic of her. She is a credit both to the House and her community.

It is a relief to hear the Minister say that there are no plans for a motto, and that, under the Goldsmith review, his department will be examining the possibility of a British statement of values. Will the Minister confirm that, once the exercise is complete, the resources will be provided for this statement of values to be taken out both to newly arrived communities and existing communities? As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, has confirmed, social glue and a sense of identity need reinforcing all round.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am not convinced that it is a question of resources. It is best for us to get this right. We have the review of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, which runs in parallel. Clearly, if that comes to a successful conclusion, we will then need to look at how it may be promulgated among citizens of this country, whether new or those who have lived here all their lives. I certainly take the value of schools in that to heart.

Lord Trimble
My Lords, the notion of a statement of shared values is obviously of considerable importance. Equally important, however, is a shared historical experience. Obviously, with regard to those who have recently come to these shores, that will be limited. The thing to do there is to encourage them to integrate fully into our national life so that they can have a shared experience with us today.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am sure that that is right. The noble Lord implied an understanding of the history of this nation and its interrelationship with other countries. I strongly agree with and endorse that.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, in view of the splendidly robust answers from my noble friend Lord Bach to the previous Question, would not the most suitable six-word motto be “Play up, and play the game”?

The Earl of Mar and Kellie
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the word “British” is, in fact, a multinational description, and that the Scottish heraldic motto, “Nemo me impune lacessit”, which can be translated as “Do not sit on a thistle”, is more than adequate?

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I feel the Barnett formula coming upon us very quickly.

Lord Roberts of Conwy
My Lords, what is wrong with the excellent words which face us daily, “Dieu et mon droit”, and “Honi soit qui mal y pense”?

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, that represents the divine right of kings. While it is of course a well known phrase, one would need to reflect on whether that would be entirely relevant to a motto that we are not going to have.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, is there not something intrinsically wrong with the Question? It is not a motto for one nation. Are we not four nations? Is it not time that we said to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies—I do not know who would represent England in this matter—that they must sort out their own mottos? It is not for us to decide on.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am sure that the importance of the union will be a major factor in all we do in this area.

UK-US Mutual Legal Assistance

11:29:00

Lord Avebury
asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What requests they have received from the authorities of the United States of America for documents held by the Serious Fraud Office on alleged offences committed in connection with sales of military aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead)
My Lords, I can confirm that the Home Office has received a request for assistance from the United States of America in respect of corruption allegations concerning BAE Systems. The request is being dealt with in accordance with the bilateral treaty on mutual legal assistance between the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Lord Avebury
My Lords, considering that after five months’ procrastination on this request the Government have now finally refused to give the US Department of Justice the information it sought, and also bearing in mind the comments of Lord Justice Moses in the case for judicial review of the decision to halt the SFO investigation, that the case involved,

“matters of public concern and public importance”,

and that the challenge,

“cries out for a hearing”,

do not the same arguments apply to the refusal of a reasonable request for information by the Department of Justice? Is not the refusal a breach of our obligations under the OECD convention on bribery, notwithstanding the fact that the requests were made under mutual legal assistance of the bilateral treaty? Do not the arguments of the convention apply pari passu to requests made under the bilateral treaty?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, I am somewhat confused by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. The Home Secretary has not refused this. She is in the process of giving this request the detailed consideration that it requires. About 5,000 of these requests come in annually and some of them are highly complicated and have complex investigative and criminal aspects to them. It is not unusual for one to take this long; many take longer than this.

Lord Berkeley
My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that rather than being a bilateral agreement it is a unilateral agreement? It seems—and I think President Bush confirmed this the other day—that the United States believes that it has the right to go into any country and remove anybody it believes has committed a crime in the US. Is it not about time we got equal balance both ways?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, my noble friend raises an issue but we have these mutual legal assistance treaties with many countries, not just the United States, so it is not a one-way street. These things are very sensitive; we have to be very careful when talking about them. It is highly unusual for the fact that one has been requested to come into the public arena. This is an extremely unusual circumstance.

Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, the OECD convention is a convention which we ratified in 1998 for combating the bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions. That requires this country to the fullest extent possible under its laws and relevant treaties and arrangements to provide prompt and effective legal assistance to another party for the purpose of criminal investigations. How is it that this request has been hanging around for six months in the Home Office without being properly replied to? Why has the Home Office objected to the Americans taking evidence from a Mr Peter Gardner, who has taken the invoices relating to these transactions over to America for their purposes?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, I thought I had already answered the noble Lord’s question. As I said, there are about 5,000 of these requests annually. Some of them are highly complicated and they very often take a very long time to deal with. This one is very complicated. There are a number of issues. The Home Secretary is in the process of giving very detailed consideration to this request and looking at all the ramifications and complications.

Lord Avebury
My Lords, this is not a mundane day-to-day request such as the 5,000 that are received, as the noble Lord has explained. It is a matter of vital importance, not only because of the presence of BAE in the United States and its recent multibillion takeover of the Armor Corporation but of the right of BAE to continue doing business in the United States and not to be under the cloud of investigation that it is in breach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is US law? Does not the noble Lord consider that it is a matter of importance to give a prompt reply to the Department of Justice?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, we are in no doubt about how important this is, and there are a number of issues and a number of complications within it. That is why the Home Secretary is considering it so carefully. As I said, it is not unusual for something like this to take a length of time. Many such requests have taken much longer than this. We are looking at it very closely. It is a very important issue and the fact that it is taking time, if anything, shows how important we believe it is.

Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, have the Government given any assistance to the American authorities? Has anything happened as a result of that, or is it just going to be quietly thought about for the next 12 months in the Home Office? Cannot the Home Office give the issue some priority?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, the fact that this has taken time does not mean that the Home Office has not given it priority. I am unable to talk in any detail about the matter because of the need for confidentiality. As with all treaties with nations to do with mutual legal assistance, it is part of the treaty that we do not talk about it. It is very unusual that this matter has come to light. It came to light because of a Statement made in another place. It is very unusual and something that we cannot talk about in detail because it involves criminal action.

Terrorism: Detention of Suspects

11:35:00

Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice. The Question is as follows:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why they are announcing their revised plans to extend the period that terrorism suspects can be held without charge, without the promised consultation with Members of both Houses of Parliament.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead)
My Lords, the Government have already consulted widely on the proposals for the Counter-Terrorism Bill, including those on pre-charge detention. We have made it clear that discussions on the revised proposal will continue both inside and outside Parliament.

Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. How can the Government’s proclaimed aim of seeking genuine consensus before advancing a proposal be reconciled with the statements the Government have issued today, which appear to cut short party consultation and which are not the basis for a consensus? Secondly, it would be helpful to understand from the Minister how the Government rationalise the argument that they have either too much or too little power. The desire for a Goldilocks outcome does not by itself warrant an extension of the powers of the state, which still does not seem justified by the arguments advanced today by the Government. The dramatic scenario is covered by the Civil Contingencies Act. Will the Minister explain why, in situations falling short of that combination, the ability to continue post-charge questioning and the ability to surveil people if they have been released do not constitute adequate power to protect the nation?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, I am fairly new to the House. I have looked in some detail at how much consultation there has been in the past on various proposed Bills, and am absolutely amazed at how much consultation has gone on already. It is quite remarkable how open we have been about our plans for what is to be in the Counter-Terrorism Bill. We have talked broadly, both in this House and in the other place, with various Members. I understand that the noble Baroness has had two consultations with my colleague the Home Secretary in conjunction with the right honourable David Davis. In fact, that week she saw more of the Home Secretary than I did. There has been quite a lot of discussion and debate. I am proud to be part of a Government who are doing that, and I am sure that the House is pleased that we have gone in for so much consultation; my goodness me, I am scarred by parts of it. Consultation is important, and I think that we have done a great deal of it.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, does the Minister think that the publication of a few draft clauses and a couple of bilateral meetings constitutes wide consultation? Would not it be better to continue building the cross-party consensus on the use of intercept evidence and post-charge questioning rather than pursue this “number of days” game, about which he is on the record as having serious doubts?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, I say again that we have had considerable consultation. I have talked with a large number of people about a number of these issues. There is a group looking, under Privy Council rules, at intercept evidence, and we await its report with great interest. There is no doubt that this is a very complex and difficult issue. The approach now put forward is significantly different from the one originally proposed.

As the noble Baroness rightly suggests, I feel scarred by this. As an aside, there was some very unfortunate press reporting about me, which gave the wrong impression. What it means is that there is a firm of chauffeurs that refers to a U-turn as an Admiral West, which I find rather difficult. It was not a U-turn. I believe that we have had a real amount of detailed debate. This is important for the nation; it is important for all of us. I know from all those I have spoken to that it is important to everyone in this House, and I believe that we are moving forward in the right way. This is a very different approach from that which was originally put forward.

Just to make the matter absolutely clear, from detailed trend analysis I have no doubt that some cases will require more than 28 days. What matters is how we protect ourselves from that small number of cases. I have no doubt that the trend analysis shows that. I want to look at all the other safeguards. That is so important for this nation and for the freedom of the individual.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, I admit that I have not seen the Statement or what the plans are, but have the Government—and I hope not—yet gone firm on post-charge questioning, which raises in my mind very great difficulties?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, post-charge questioning is still within the proposed Counter-Terrorism Bill, and there will be ample opportunity within both Houses of Parliament to discuss the details of the Bill and go into depth on those various points. I believe that post-charge questioning will be a useful addendum and will help us, again, to protect the British public.

Lord Mawhinney
My Lords, is the Government’s priority to have wide-ranging consultations and then do whatever they decide to do, using their majority in the other place to drive it through, or is their priority to seek consensus?

Lord West of Spithead
No, my Lords, our intention is not just to drive something through. We have had a great deal of discussion with people and have sought consensus. We knew that there were difficulties here; we have taken advice from people and we have incorporated that in a considerable number of ways. As with everyone in this House, our prime aim is to protect the British public. That is what we are trying to do; that is what is important for all of us.

Lord Dholakia
My Lords, some weeks ago the noble Lord was unsure about the extension of the 28-day limit. Since then he has obviously changed his mind. One is not concerned about this trend, but on what evidential basis is the change necessary?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, I had hoped that I had clarified the issue of my uncertainty about timings. I have no doubt at all that trends were showing that there would be a requirement at some stage—and possibly very soon—to have longer than 28 days to continue our questioning and look at the evidence needed to bring a proper charge against people in these very complex cases. That is because there is no doubt that the terrorists are getting cuter and cuter at learning the way we do these things and making it more and more complex—that trend is there. I was uncertain of the best way forward. I now believe that our proposal is significantly different from before and covers a lot of the concerns I had.

I also wanted to look at whether we could throw money at getting more computer experts and other people in to look at how we could crack these cases quicker. Again, that evidence has now been presented for me. We did not just charge through and say, “We are going to get more days—bang”; we were looking at the details and complexities of these matters. I will be very happy when I have the full information—I have enough now to convince me that I can put this down on paper and share the trend analysis with noble Lords—to show why it is quite clear that it will happen in the future.

The Earl of Onslow
My Lords, I apologise for arriving late, but I ask this question because—

Noble Lords
No!

Lord Richard
My Lords—

The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Ashton of Upholland)
My Lords, we have to take this very carefully. The noble Earl is explaining something, but I think that there is an issue about his arrival which my noble friend wishes to challenge. Is that correct?

Lord Richard
My Lords, I have to say I was not going to ask a question of the Minister. I was going to object to the fact that somebody who had just come into the Chamber had got to his feet, not having heard the Answer or the Question. As I understand it, that is not in accordance with the rules of order and customs of the House.

The Earl of Onslow
My Lords, I am on the Joint Committee of Human Rights. Yesterday, the Crown Prosecution Service said that it could see no need for 28 days. Can the Minister explain?

Noble Lords
Move on.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland
My Lords, the House is making its view known. My interpretation is that in this House it is customary that, if we are unable to be there at the beginning, we take the opportunity to talk to the Minister directly outside the Chamber. I know that he would have wished to have been here, but the noble Earl sadly missed the important part of this debate, which was the Question from his own Front Bench and the response of my noble friend. I think that courtesy to the House demands that we behave in that way. The noble Earl will forgive me, but if he would take the matter up outside, I think that that would be better.

Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, despite all the consultation about which the Minister has talked, there has been not a shred of consensus on the further extension. Why has the process stopped now? Why do we not further seek consensus on such a divisive issue?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, when one looks at the totality of the Counter-Terrorism Bill, I find it remarkable how much consensus there is. That is wonderful, because I know that all of us believe that the security of our people is so important. In that one area, there has certainly been a lot of debate. As I said, I believe now that the proposals put forward are significantly different. There are lots more opportunities to talk it through. Today, we have released a number of documents, all of which are available for people to see what comments have been made and what discussion there has been. There will be opportunities during the next few weeks to discuss the new model with various people, and of course we will have the opportunity in the other place and in this House to debate more fully. I do not think that we could have done more, and I am rather proud of being part of a Government who have done that. I cannot think of any other case where that has happened.

Employment Bill [HL]

11:45:00

Lord Bach
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Jones of Birmingham, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision about the procedure for the resolution of employment disputes; to provide for compensation for financial loss in cases of unlawful underpayment or non-payment; to make provision about the enforcement of minimum wages legislation and the application of the national minimum wage to Cadet Force adult volunteers; to make provision about the enforcement of offences under the Employment Agencies Act 1973; to make provision about the right of trade unions to expel or exclude members on the grounds of membership of a political party; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.

Business of the House: Debates Today

The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Ashton of Upholland)
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of Baroness Shephard of Northwold set down for today be limited to three hours and that in the name of Baroness Perry of Southwark to two hours.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (Amendment) Regulations 2007

The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Ashton of Upholland)
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft regulations be referred to a Grand Committee.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.) 

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Agriculture: Defra

11:47:00

Baroness Shephard of Northwold
rose to call attention to the role of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in securing the efficient and effective delivery of policies and funds that support and promote the farming industry in the United Kingdom; and to move for Papers.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to introduce this debate today. This House has always taken a serious and knowledgeable approach to agricultural and environmental matters and we have in today’s debate many expert speakers. The contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle, who is making his maiden speech today, will be especially welcome. It is also good that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will be replying to the debate. He is rightly a popular Minister in this House, and within the industry is known as someone who listens.

Today’s debate focuses on Defra’s role with regard to the farming industry, but Defra’s overall responsibilities are very broad and could hardly be of more importance to our nation. Its responsibilities include preparing for the greatest global challenge that we have known—climate change—protecting our natural environment, ensuring a safe and sustainable food supply and supporting those who care for 75 per cent of the nation’s land surface. These are enormous policy areas.

When Defra was created in 2001, we were promised that it would provide a strategic and joined-up approach across government—something that I warmly welcomed at the time. I also hoped that the creation of a larger department would give the important issues with which it dealt more salience across government and its Ministers more clout than their MAFF predecessors had. Bringing together different Whitehall cultures is not easy, but Defra officials continue to provide highly specialised expertise at every level, for which I had every reason to be grateful during my brief and now distant time at MAFF in the 1990s.

That expertise is needed in every policy area, because MAFF had and now Defra has to wrestle on a regular basis with natural disasters such as floods, droughts, other environmental events, outbreaks of animal disease and food scares. This year alone has seen them all in abundance: the severe flooding in the summer, foot and mouth twice, avian flu, bluetongue and bovine TB. The department’s experts will have been in overdrive. At the same time, they will be conscious, as are we all, of the effect of these disasters on a farming community already battered by the after-effects of the last FMD outbreak, swine fever, extreme weather conditions and now, with the livestock sector in crisis, very high world commodity prices.

To deal with this, Defra needs to be efficiently run and well resourced and it needs to have the clout to deliver an effective and consistent strategy across Whitehall. How are we to judge the efficiency of Defra? Is it well run? Is it able to cope with the crises that are part of its daily expectations? Does it help or hinder? Sadly, we have examples over the past year or two of problems for farmers arising from Defra itself. The most obvious are the single payment scheme and this summer’s double outbreak of foot and mouth emanating from the government-licensed laboratory at Pirbright. I will address those briefly, as noble Lords will have other examples.

As is well known, in 2005 Defra chose, against EU advice, to adopt a dynamic hybrid system to make single payments. According to the March 2007 EFRA Select Committee report, it did so,

“in the knowledge that it was inherently more complex and risky”,

than the historic approach, and with no proper appraisal of the volume of work that would be entailed. In the event, the financial loss to English farmers of the whole sorry saga has, according to the National Audit Office, amounted to between £18 million and £22 million. Of course, some farming enterprises have been ruined, but the stress and frustration to almost all farmers is difficult to quantify. The Minister has been very open with the House on the problems caused by this episode. He will certainly accept the EFRA Select Committee’s view that that decision was,

“a fundamental failure by Defra to carry out one of its prime tasks”.

August’s foot and mouth outbreak at the government-licensed laboratory at Pirbright has done little to enhance the department’s reputation for efficiency, nor has the second leak of virus from the same premises announced a couple of weeks ago. The independent inquiry by Professor Spratt of University College London concludes:

“An accidental release from a high security containment facility is of obvious concern to the public and raises issues of public trust in both science and Government”.
 

I know that the Minister will wish to point out that Defra is not the only government department with problems, either now or in the past, when my own Government were in power, and he will be right. But he is also fair enough to accept that the farming industry has enough problems without Defra adding to them, as the NFU continues to point out.

Given that Defra deals with issues of enormous national and international importance, such as climate change and flood defences—all government priorities—adequate resources are clearly essential. Last year, Defra had to impose in-year cuts on, among other bodies, the Environment Agency. That turned out to be a short-term view, given what happened in the summer. Now Defra faces cuts of a further £270 million in the 2008-11 Comprehensive Spending Review period. In addition, I understand that it will have to find up to £300 million—it may not be that—disallowance for single payments. In the current year, the administration budget has already overspent by £50 million out of a total budget of £360 million, and there are still six months to go. Meanwhile, bovine TB, with no resolution in sight, is costing some £90 million a year. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the Minister, because I remember from my time in MAFF that the Treasury delighted in taking a very hard line on our budget in the correct belief that we were small and had no clout. Defra is not small. It should have clout. Things have changed and I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Treasury has, too.

When Defra was created, we were told that the new department would deliver a co-ordinated approach in all its policy areas. Has it been allowed to take an effective lead in policy development across Whitehall in areas within its remit? Because of time, I choose only one example—the impact of migrant workers on rural areas—on which I would have hoped that Defra would take a lead. Had it done so, the number of migrant workers, whom we certainly need to help us, would not have come as a surprise to the Home Office.

Biofuels—a policy area that is very close to my heart—have revealed that, although Defra’s intentions were undoubtedly good, its effectiveness in practice proved wanting. I, along with other noble Lords and many Members of another place, have been campaigning for at least 10 years in support of biofuels contributing to the Government’s environmental targets, providing an alternative market for producers and keeping land in cultivation. Two weeks ago, the UK’s first bioethanol plant was formally opened by the Minister in south-west Norfolk, my former constituency. He was immensely welcome. He pointed out that this plant hits all the environmental targets set by the Government. It uses excess energy from the adjacent sugar factory and it will produce 70 million litres of ethanol each year from 700,000 tonnes of sugar beet. Its by-products include stones—this sounds a little funny but it was explained that they are for rockeries—top soil, lime, animal feed, enough electricity to power 200,000 homes in Norfolk, and excess CO2 to cultivate 100 million tomatoes each year, grown under glass on the site. The Minister was impressed by all that and, as I said, he praised the plant for its holistic approach to production. Why then has it seemed to me and to others involved that there has been resistance in every sphere of government towards the development of biofuels in the past 10 years? I think that Defra was on our side during that long journey, so why was it not the lead department?

The Minister will almost certainly not wish to comment on that, but I make the point for a reason. I have already spoken of the immense importance of Defra’s responsibilities, but another area of even greater importance is emerging in which Defra’s skills, efficiency, resources, clout and effectiveness will be tested to the full: food security, or, to say what we actually mean, the food supply, or food shortages. In 2003, Margaret Beckett, then Secretary of State, said:

“National food security is neither necessary nor is it desirable”.
 

The joint Treasury-Defra paper, Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy, repeated this view, which was taken by farmers to mean that what they did could not be of less importance to the Government or to the nation. Defra’s strategy under this Government has concentrated almost entirely on environmental issues, while assuming, dangerously, that the food supply is not an issue. It is now. By 2050, the world population will have reached 10 billion. In developing countries, improving incomes will increase the demand for more and better food. More people will become consumers rather than producers of food. The World Bank has calculated that world food demand will double. Over the next 40 years, farmers in this country and across the world will need to double the production of food, triple yields per hectare, and do so on less land, using less water. Contrary to the assertion that the world is awash with food for us to import, suddenly there is less food than people thought. The fact that the Prime Minister has initiated a review is welcome, but it is a bit late.

It will be Defra’s task to lead and support our farming industry in playing its part in one of the most formidable challenges that the world has ever faced. Our farmers can and will rise to that challenge, but the Government need to do so as well. They must have the courage to change their attitude to the farming industry. They must reorder some of their priorities, especially in research. Above all, they must afford to Defra the resource, clout and respect across government that it will need to meet this challenge. Will the Government do so? I hope that the noble Lord will be able to tell us today. I commend the Motion to the House and I beg to move for Papers.

12:01:00

Lord Harrison
My Lords, I congratulate the so aptly named noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, on introducing this debate on farming. I come from Cheshire, a dairy county, where we are very proud of our products and very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wade of Chorlton, who every Christmas provides roundels of cheese for noble Lords’ delectation in the Bishops’ Bar. There is praise and cheering in Cheshire today following yesterday’s announcement that there is no decision at the moment on splitting up Cheshire. It would be a folly indeed to create two different Cheshires when we want to remain a unitary Cheshire. To give an example of why we want this, farming in Cheshire takes place mainly in the central and southern areas. To split the two artificially would be a very bad thing indeed.

I have in the past asked the Government Questions about milk production in Cheshire. I am very eager to learn more about farm gate prices, which I understand are now at 20.7p per litre since August 2007, at their highest since 2001. Can the Minister confirm that? Is he able to tell us what the trend is likely to be? I congratulate the Minister on his ambition to improve regulation that governs the farming industry and reduce it by a net amount of 25 per cent by 2010. How confident is he of achieving that target?

Does he also recognise that there is a difficulty over administration with the farmers themselves? When I was an MEP for Cheshire, I used to visit farms with the NFU. I was surprised by how poor the resources were for farmers’ record-keeping, which was essential for reporting to the Government. I hope we can help them to learn how to administer their own farms. I am sure that things have improved since my time.

My theme today is innovation and the future. I am pleased that Hilary Benn addressed a “Farming for the Future” conference on 19 November at the Oval. I wonder whether my noble friend can report on that. What was the attendance from the farming community, to try to absorb some of the new and innovative ideas? One such innovation in recent years has been the expansion of farmers’ markets. They provide competition and bring to the marketplace goods that are desirable to consumers. That is also good for farmers. When I was an MEP, in a meeting at Beeston, which is at the centre of the farming industry in Cheshire, I learnt how isolated farmers are. They do not have the opportunity to meet customers face-to-face. I welcome farmers’ markets as an example of where this is now beginning to change. Farmstead isolation is being reduced.

A good example of the obverse of this coin is that the Government are having the Year of Food and Farming to encourage children, who are of course future consumers, to have a direct experience of food farming and the countryside. Again, it is hugely beneficial to bring town and country together in a positive way. On the Fresh Start programme, how many potential farmers are being brought into the countryside with their new ideas about what and how they can farm? In the 1980s, when I was on Cheshire County Council, it was always a great regret to me that we closed or sold off 80 farms that had been provided to bring new and fresh blood into the countryside and new ideas about farming.

I should like to explore innovation more and encourage the Minister to distinguish between good and bad innovation, and diversification. One bad idea is the plethora of motorway advertising which has besmirched our motorways and major trunk roads. Farmers may be trying to get an extra buck or two, but such advertising despoils the countryside and kills the very golden goose which should be saved. I shall not go on more about that because I have spoken on this subject previously in your Lordships' House.

Good ideas sometimes are frustrated by planning laws. A farmer wrote to me about providing truck stops for lorry drivers who are taking goods throughout the country and require not only safe places to stay overnight but also places to eat. He wanted to convert his farm partly to provide such facilities, but he was being balked by the planning conditions. The addition was that he would provide fresh food from his farm for dinners at night for lorry drivers, which seemed to be an excellent example of innovation. One hears further ideas on “Farming Today”, including the Scottish farmer who transferred to herb production, which responds to a new need, or the farmer from Northern Ireland who is making mash available for the market. We need to encourage that kind of innovation.

We also need to encourage marketing. Too often the marketing of the wonderful food that is produced is lax in our country. When I represented the Wirral, I noticed that tomato growers did not talk to each other in the same way as our Dutch counterparts. The Dutch were much quicker at marketing their tomatoes than were the English. I regretted that and I thought more could be done. I saw a wonderful example of this type of marketing when I visited Paris with the European Union Committee. The British ambassador hosted an event for marketing and showing off our wonderful British cheeses to the French, who are very proud of their cheese. Our cheese is very different, but it is a wonderful product and I praise the ambassador for making available the wonderful British embassy in Paris for that purpose.

My closing remarks are on the relative importance of farming, which of course is a central industry. We do not exist as a nation if we do not eat. But there are other important industries, especially in the countryside, associated with leisure, tourism and hospitality, which these days employ many people and sometimes are offshoots of the farming industry. I have in mind the equine industries. As people have more leisure time and money, they are more likely to go horse riding and so on. What are the Government doing about that? I note that the universities which study these matters are saying that when such terrible things as BSE and FMD have happened in the countryside, the Government may have responded there but have been less secure in responding to the tourism industry. In work done at Glasgow Caledonian University, Leslie and Black said:

“FMD was initially treated as just an agricultural problem, without the realisation that the domino effects, particularly the actions taken to control and contain FMD, would have potentially substantial effects on rural economics and tourism especially”.
 

The farming industry is vital to us but we must not neglect those other growing and innovative industries responding to the changes in society that are taking place in rural areas of Britain today.

12:10:00

Lord Teverson
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, on securing this debate. Given the responsibilities of Defra, this area is, as she so well described it, extremely broad.

There are mixed fortunes within the area over which Defra has its purview and remit. On rural affairs, we see the countryside in many areas being more prosperous and having better health and income indicators than ever before. At the same time, more rural remote areas are under greater pressure than they have been for some time, and are more cut off from mainstream society.

In the farming industry itself, we have the contrast between the grain growers, particularly in the eastern United Kingdom, who are having their highest prices for some time—and being relatively affluent, upbeat and positive about the future—while the livestock sector, particularly the more rural hill sectors in the west, have great concerns, some areas having been hit by foot and mouth disease and bluetongue. There are those contrasts.

Great changes are also going on given that climate change, for which Defra has responsibility, brings particular challenges and opportunities for the farming industry and for rural life generally. The Commission’s health check is coming up next year. At one time that was going to be just a “look and see” and planning for post-2013 but it is clear from certain pronouncements by the Commission and member states over the past few months that it is to be a much larger and more fundamental exercise than we had previously thought.

Food security was another area mentioned by the noble Baroness. That is going to be much higher in people’s perspectives within the farming industry. A couple of months ago, I went to a meeting of the farming community in Somerset. I was expecting to go there to talk about foot and mouth disease, bluetongue and supermarkets but one of the biggest issues that came up, along with climate change, was food security. We sometimes think of that as being food availability, although it will probably be reflected in prices when buying food rather than in an absolute shortage. However, there is a real issue concerning biodiversity and the threat from climate change and disease to the small number of crops on which we rely. We need to look more strategically at that whole area. I am not of the Malthusian tradition of looking forward and saying that the world will starve because of that threat, but there are real issues to be looked at strategically with our European partners, and relatively soon.

I will go through some of those bigger changes. First, there is the health check. I remember that the press releases of Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel earlier this year were about looking at the common agricultural policy, something that, from a financial perspective, was demanded by the UK Government during the British presidency. There was going to be little change for the farming industry. However, if you look at the pronouncements coming out of Brussels now, you see that suddenly they have become energised and more interested in this area. There may be a feeling that France may not be quite so obstructive to a change in the CAP, so there is sudden excitement and all sorts of initiatives are appearing in terms of flattening payments rather than grandfather rights, taking out smaller holdings—I had hoped that my modest five acres in Cornwall could have qualified for single farm payment, but it looks like that will be, quite rightly, impossible—scaling down large payments and changing the complex cross-compliance regime. There will be a real agenda of change next year. But I do not yet understand what Defra's view is on that fundamental area, which will greatly affect our farming industry. It is urgent that we understand what positions Defra will take.

On climate change, I live in Cornwall and two issues have been farmers versus nimbys, as they would be described in the tabloids, and attitudes to wind farms. Although there are huge opportunities in terms of climate change and various biocrops, wind farms or whatever, a number of conflicts are likely to arise, which are of great concern. Going back to the meeting that I had with farmers in Somerset a couple of months ago, there was great frustration that a couple of farmers were trying to move ahead with anaerobic digestion systems but were coming up against strong opposition from relative newcomers in local communities who did not want to see that sort of agricultural development. It is important for all of us in the political arena, where it is sometimes easy to align ourselves with local opposition groups, to use the planning system to support farmers to help them resist some of this nimbyism and to diversify into the various areas that are necessary to help climate change.

One or two years ago, Defra had a biomass programme related to wood. I have two wood burners. It is one of the areas where we have a great possibility to move forward. I should like to understand how that strategy has progressed. We must also remember that farmers have a challenge in terms of some of the outputs. I am sure that in the European context, dealing with the problem of methane and nitrous oxide, let alone nitrates from fields getting into our water systems, will be on the agenda and there will be pressure for farming to become more climate change and environmentally sensitive.

The area that we on these Benches see as particularly important is Defra's attitude to rural affairs—the much broader question of the future of the countryside and its prosperity, which is not often talked about. I do not often see much in the headlines and I do not, if I am honest, often see Defra as a great advocate for rural areas. I hope that I am wrong about that, because the Commission for Rural Communities in its recent report identified some 900,000 people as living in poverty in rural areas. In an urban context that would attract massive attention.

There is also the question of mobility in terms of cars and transport and increasing fuel costs, and particularly access to services. There is a government programme to close some 2,000 post offices. They are not all in rural areas, but that will have a major effect on the fabric of the village. Is Defra on the side of the rural community in that matter?

Finally, there is the question of affordable housing. Although I understand that the Government are trying to raise this on the agenda, frankly I believe that we need much more of a blunt instrument to increase affordable housing in rural areas so that we can relieve rural poverty and give people proper places to live. At the moment, because of earnings, that is impossible.

Given my history of speaking about fisheries policy, I am tempted to refer to it as it is very important for Defra. I cannot understand why we still allow discarding within the broader common fisheries policy when there is such a threat to fish stocks. New Zealand and Norway have made discarding utterly illegal but still have quota systems. That can work. I do not see Defra demanding those changes to the common fisheries policy, which I know are difficult to achieve because of unanimity—I do not know whether that will change under the reform treaty—but clearly this outrageous and terrible practice of discarding must be stopped if we are to preserve the biodiversity of our oceans and to preserve future food stocks. The matter must be taken seriously for the sake of the fisheries industry.

12:20:00

Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness for introducing the debate on this important subject, and for the expertise with which she did so. She is right, farming is very important to all of us. My particular interest has always been employment, and farming is a very important employer of labour. It is a substantial employer of immigrant labour. Indeed, I wonder whether the industry would be able to cope as well as it does nowadays without the labour of those who have arrived on our shores from the eastern European countries which recently joined the EU.

There is no doubt about the vulnerability of such workers. They are often almost pathetically glad to be here and to have any sort of job. Sometimes it has been quite a sacrifice for them to get here. They are willing to work hard, often for lower wages than our own workers would find acceptable. They are frequently unaware of basic employment protection, particularly in health and safety, and the accommodation available to them is often substandard and overcrowded.

Some time ago the plight of migrant workers was brought very sharply to our notice because of the tragic deaths of Chinese workers in Morecambe Bay. This led to the introduction of a Private Member’s Bill, the Gangmasters (Licensing) Bill, which was supported by the Government, and which established the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, covering gangmasters working in agriculture, horticulture and the shellfish industry. It did not cover food processing and packaging undertaken by mainstream food manufacturers or retailers. It was introduced in agriculture because it was felt that the problem was considerable there. Subcontractor labour providers were also covered by the scheme. The legislation forces gangmasters operating in agriculture to obtain licences and to operate within the law, including respecting minimum employment provisions. There are also robust maximum penalties for breach of the law, including a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years. This acknowledges the involvement of organised crime in gangmaster activities. The desire of frequently desperate people to migrate has unfortunately led to a growth of trafficking by organised criminals. The legislation was intended to make these criminal activities much more difficult to pursue.

We have now had this legislation in place for more than three years. Agriculture was one of the industries in which it was intended to make a considerable impact and to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable workers. I would be interested to learn today the Minister’s assessment of the success of the legislation. As a former union official, it is my belief that the only way really to ensure that vulnerable people can escape exploitation is by means of union organisation, and my union has certainly given time and energy to recruitment in this area. At the time of the introduction of the legislation to which I referred, the Transport and General Workers’ Union was involved and there was consultation.

The absence of trade union organisation creates a situation in which vulnerable individuals have to seek assistance from somewhere and, I believe with government encouragement, they often turn to CABs. Meanwhile, the legislation had the support of the National Farmers’ Union and no doubt farmers have been assisted in their understanding of the legislative requirements and what they need to do to establish whether a gangmaster is licensed and it is therefore safe to hire labour through his agency.

I hope that the existence of this legislation has led to a substantial improvement in the conditions of such workers. When it was introduced, the Minister for Rural Affairs said:

“We are committed to bringing an end to the exploitation that has, for much too long, been associated with the supply of labour by agricultural gangmasters. There can be no place for unlicensed gangmasters in the future”.
 

I would very much welcome hearing the Minister’s view on the success or otherwise of that legislation, on how we have progressed with the enforcement of it and on the current situation.

12:25:00

Lord Livsey of Talgarth
My Lords, I spoke on agriculture during the Queen’s Speech debate, because the current situation in livestock farming is dire. I want to emphasise some of the points that I made then. Some noble Lords will remember that I called for the sacking of the director of the Pirbright Institute. I certainly do not retract that.

I welcome this important and very timely debate on farming and Defra, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard. The temptation is always to be too negative about farming. I have often accused farmers of crying wolf too frequently. The weather, disease and poor prices all take their toll. The present situation is very mixed, however. For one part of the industry, cereal prices are buoyant, but for the livestock sector, feed prices have doubled, disease has struck in the south-east resulting in animal movement restrictions and, in the west, Wales, the north-west and Scotland, export bans for three months have halted markets. The impact has been devastating—I really mean that—on all the upland areas, including the Pennines, the Lake District and the south-west of England. My remarks apply to all those areas, but the best thing I can do is to highlight some quotations from a speech by Rees Roberts, whom I know well from my time working for the Agricultural Training Board. He is now the chairman of Meat Promotion Wales and spoke at the Royal Welsh Winter Fair last week. This is equally relevant to England, and in particular to the role of Defra. He said:

“This had been one of the most damaging years for our industry that I can remember. Make no mistake—the industry in Wales is in crisis and the whole of the traditional Welsh rural way of life is now under threat. … It is entirely possible that we could come to this event in two years’ time to discover that half of the Welsh sheep industry will have been wiped out”.
 

Those are the words of a very well informed person, not just somebody hyping things up. He says that it will not be possible for Welsh farmers to survive in this situation.

The Welsh sheep industry alone has suffered more than £30 million of losses since early August because of foot and mouth disease breaking out in Surrey. Meat Promotion Wales estimates that more than £2 million a week has been lost since the first case was reported near Guildford on 6 August and losses are continuing to accumulate as farm gate prices are crushed beyond recognition.

In spite of that, retail prices are holding up. Just over a week ago, Welsh farmers were being handed 73p per kilo when consumers are joining long queues to pay £6 a kilo at the checkout. Rees Roberts said that we are heading at speed towards the collapse of our industry’s critical mass. The single farm payment is currently bolstering the hopelessly low pricing structure imposed by the retail sector.

That evidence confirms my long-held belief—I am speaking for myself now—that the Government are inadvertently subsidising the supermarkets, which discount single farm payments and offer ridiculously low prices to producers. There is an honourable exception in all this. Waitrose has paid 2006 prices this year, thereby giving their lamb producers a future in the industry. Why could the other supermarkets not do the same thing in the middle of the biggest crisis to hit the sheep industry for many years? Words fail me to describe their action, which has been despicable.

Frankly, the Competition Commission, for its report, should be able to see the evidence before its very eyes. As an aside, Rees Roberts and his organisation have calculated that to produce a lamb costs 143 pence a kilo, not the 73 pence that has been given to farmers over the past month. Bluntly, the headline is “Supermarkets seize massive opportunity of foot and mouth outbreak to boost profits and hammer the sheep industry into the ground”. That can properly be said. We Liberal Democrats have advocated for the past 10 years to the nation, the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission the importance of installing an independent ombudsman to ensure that the prices paid to primary producers are fair. It should be illegal for purchases to be made at less than the cost of production.

It is very important that the code is updated to include the following—we hope that Defra will ensure that this is the case. Suppliers should be able to complain anonymously to the ombudsman as in Germany and other EU countries, and all agreements between suppliers and purchasers must be in writing. Compliance must be monitored. The ombudsman must deal with complaints and advise the OFT. He must be able to mediate and solve disputes, and his decisions must be binding on the parties within the code. If the current problems for suppliers and retailers are to be solved, those provisions must be included in the Competition Commission’s imminent report, and Defra must ensure that occurs. Defra has a moral obligation financially to support the sheep industry now in its hour of need.

Defra must surely also ensure a European ban on the import of Brazilian beef. FMD is rampant in three regions of Brazil, and yet we are still importing 33,000 tonnes of Brazilian beef a year into this country. Surely what has applied to us in the recent crisis should also apply to the import of Brazilian beef. The efforts of the Secretary of State at Defra to get farmers to absorb disease control costs at this time should be dropped immediately. He should stand up to the Treasury’s demands and face it down; I really mean that. The evidence of the Pirbright outbreak, the Brazilian imports and bluetongue should surely persuade him of that. The point will not be lost on Defra’s staff, who have had a very hard time and who have been working very hard indeed.

Other action points must surely ensure that Defra’s remit to provide social cohesion through upland farming is vital. Those areas have some of the lowest GDP in the United Kingdom. They do not have other production opportunities. The Minister replied to my question earlier today about historic payments. You cannot move mountains or the sheep that are hefted on them. They have been there for centuries, which is why the historic payment is a sensible rationale. I know that is not the view in the EU, but Defra should fight for those principles.

Defra is alert to the threat of climate change, flood-prevention measures and the production of vaccines against exotic diseases. Those are all urgent priorities. Continued research on climate-change-busting agriscience must be a top priority. There is no doubt about that, given what has happened with climate change in the past five years. It is accelerating. Even now, on top of that, Defra has the CAP health check to deal with in 2008, which has been mentioned by my noble friend. The reforms of 2003 must remain in place until 2013. I know that is not a popular view. If Defra is only now beginning to put the Rural Payments Agency into proper working order, this is no time for further changes to take place.

The Government have a duty to fund Defra properly on the issues that I have mentioned. Defra has massive problems to solve, not least that of bovine TB. We know that the Minister is not afraid to speak his mind, and as long as he effectively continues to do so and gets results I, for one, will support him.

12:35:00

The Lord Bishop of Carlisle
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her welcome. I was told that the House is a warm and friendly place and I have found it to be so. It is a great honour to be a Member. I hope from time to time to speak particularly in support of the county of Cumbria, where I have lived and worked for the past seven years.

I am a Scot; my father came from Glasgow and my mother came from Edinburgh. My father, however, became an English barrister, and I grew up in Harpenden in Hertfordshire. I went to school in St Albans, where I was in the same class as Stephen Hawking, the discoverer of black holes and the author of A Brief History of Time. I get a brief mention in one of his biographies because of my conversion to Christian faith in 1955. It was that experience that in due course led to my seeking ordination as a priest.

I have been the Bishop of Carlisle for seven years. As I quickly discovered, the diocese is the most pastoral that I have ever worked in. In our first month, a shop assistant in Carlisle’s Mothercare offered to carry our goods to the car in the car park. That would never happen in the other places where we have lived. Kindness is a basic value in Cumbria and every priest has to be both accessible and pastoral. If you put your answer machine on too much, your ministry is seriously hindered; you are expected to be there. In the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak, which affected north Cumbria very badly, the clergy were there in all the parishes and they earned huge praise for their support of the farmers.

Ever since the 1980s, when the Cumbrian economy was strong, the economy of the county has been going backwards compared to that of the rest of the country. There are many reasons for that, particularly the huge reduction of the workforce in Barrow at BAE Systems and the winding down of the British Nuclear Fuels plant at Sellafield. Very recently, however, there has been an upturn. BAE Systems has a full order book with the Astute submarine class. West Cumbria has seen the arrival of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, for which we are very grateful. A most exciting recent development was the establishment of the University of Cumbria on 1 August. We had a splendid inauguration service two weeks ago, with the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York on sparkling form. I hope to speak about the university on a future occasion.

Every section of the economy of Cumbria is now, and only very recently, starting to move forward positively, except for agriculture, which is why from a Cumbrian point of view this debate is so timely. Farming in Cumbria is mostly beef, dairy and sheep. I want to tell it how the farmers tell me it is. Hill farming is precarious financially at the best of times. As the noble Lord has just stated, this year it has been disastrous because of the ban on animal movement following the recent foot and mouth outbreak in Surrey. The farmers tell me that that could not have come at a worse time. It came at the end of August, at exactly the point in the year when hill farmers sell their lambs and around one-third of the lambs are normally exported for food. When the auction marts reopened, the prices collapsed, both for the farmers on the higher fells and for those lower down. Those who kept their animals instead of selling them have had to buy winter foodstuffs, and the price of lamb has not recovered. Sheep farming is a complex business in which lambs pass from the high fells to farmers lower down for the next stage in the breeding process. Farmers pointed out to me that what has happened this summer will also have serious consequences for next year, because the chain of breeding has been seriously interrupted.

The Government have provided a support package, for which of course the upland farmers are grateful, but they are still in great difficulty. One firm of Cumbrian farm accountants, taking a sample of 30 farms, has calculated that the estimated profit for the year ending next April is an average of just £2,000 per farm family, which compares with £18,000 two years ago. That £2,000 includes the single farm payment. In other words, a huge loss is being made on the livestock. There has been a large increase in applications to farming charities, because the bills cannot be paid. The farmers are borrowing more and getting deeper into debt, and the accountant whom I mentioned says that he is often a shoulder to cry on. Clearer policies to support food supply and livestock, which the noble Baroness pressed for, would do a great deal to help the morale of all Cumbrian farmers.

If hill farming were to fade away, the Cumbrian fells would become wild and the well cared-for landscape would change dramatically, as would biodiversity. That would affect tourism, which is vital for Cumbria. This is not only about land management. One leading young farmer emphasised to me the contribution that farming families make to the social glue of rural communities. They provide social capital—I use the current terminology. Tourism in the Cumbrian hills and lakes flourishes because the farming families bind the rural communities together and a whole lot of related businesses flourish as farming flourishes. It really is vital that the hill farmers are supported.

For dairy farmers, the milk price has risen in the past year, not I think because of any change of heart by the supermarkets, but because of a shortage of dairy products worldwide. Things were looking up for the dairy farmer until August. However, the price of winter foodstuffs has also dramatically increased because of a world shortage of grain, so the gains of the better milk price are being taken away in other ways.

What has long been needed is for the farmers to take more of a stake in the food production process. The First Milk farmers’ co-operative has bought the Dairy Crest cheese-making factory in Aspatria and another producer is to create a new factory for dairy products. All this is good, but the change is slow. It would really help if policies could be developed that encouraged this added value for the farmers.

Meanwhile, the beef and dairy farmers tell me that, at best, they just about keep afloat, but they have no possibility of investing capital in the future of their businesses. As they see it, their counterparts in Belgium and France receive much more support and competing with them in a European market is very difficult. One of the goals that the NFU seeks from Defra is a level playing field across the single market of the EU. The Cumbrian farmer finds it hard to see why we do not have clearer policies to support food production. As they see it, the carbon footprint would be reduced if more food was produced locally and they are aware of important issues about national food security, to which several speakers have referred.

In conclusion, farming is part of the fabric of communities all over Cumbria and many other businesses relate in some way or other to the prosperity of farming. Cumbrian farmers have always faced hardship and I am full of admiration for their resilience, but it is hard seeing them struggle when there could be policies to help them.

12:43:00

Lord Jopling
My Lords, I have two happy tasks, the first of which is to thank my noble friend Lady Shephard for introducing this debate. Secondly, I am given the opportunity to congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his fine speech. I was particularly impressed with it because I had the honour for 33 years to represent in another place the southern part of his diocese. Since he went to Carlisle seven years ago, just before the foot and mouth outbreak, I know how much the diocese did to help in all sorts of ways the stricken farming community of Cumbria, which we were all so concerned about at the time. The right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, gave a dramatic account of the crisis in the livestock industry and I shall not seek to follow either of them down that track.

I hope that we shall hear from the right reverend Prelate frequently. He talked about the importance of being in Cumbria, but I hope that people in his diocese will release him frequently to come and speak as he has spoken today. Many of us have missed for a number of years our old friend John Oliver, the former Bishop of Hereford, who was a great champion of the countryside and of agriculture. I hope that the right reverend Prelate will fill those shoes in the years ahead. Perhaps I may gently tease him, in the hope that he will be able to come here to explain himself, as my understanding is that when he was at Oxford he prepared for confirmation one Tony Blair. The right reverend Prelate has a good deal to answer for.

I declare an interest as a farmer who receives single payments and assistance under the environmental entry-level scheme. As a former Minister of Agriculture, like my noble friend Lady Shephard, I am dismayed at the way in which my former department, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, has descended into the shambolic disarray that is now Defra. At a time of the most serious crisis in the livestock industry, one can only say that the present state of the Rural Payments Agency is a disgrace. Again, the outbreak of foot and mouth disease at Pirbright in recent months is a scandal. The Minister may say, “Oh, but that is not the responsibility of Defra”. But it is, in part, and, in terms of the Government as a whole, it most certainly is a scandal.

I hope that the Minister will not accuse me of extravagant language in talking about the shambolic disarray, because I am not the only one who is implying that. As my noble friend said in her opening speech, the European Community is widely expected to impose substantial fines on the Rural Payments Agency for the situation in which it finds itself. We are told that a fine of something approaching €300 million is likely to be imposed on us as a result of the mismanagement of the single payment scheme. What I find inexplicable is reading in the press of the announcement of major staff redundancy programmes for Defra. We are told that some 300 members of staff are to take voluntary retirement in the near future under the most generous redundancy scheme in history. It seems clear that this huge impending fine on the department and the RPA is why they have had to make all those redundancies at a time when the RPA is quite unable to handle the situation that lies before us.

I ask the Minister why, inexplicably, we are having this voluntary retirement scheme now. Will it put back further the payments from the single payment scheme, which are already delayed, and will the redundancy programme include the RPA, from which farmers already find it difficult to get a reply on anything? The chaos was caused by the Government choosing the most complicated single payment scheme. Frankly, I am sick to death of successive Ministers coming to Parliament and endlessly repeating phrases such as, “We are doing our best”, “We can only apologise”, and, “We are learning from mistakes”. That is really not good enough.

Finally, I want to voice a particular concern. I have here a document that refers to some of the environmental programmes, such as the environmental stewardship scheme, the higher-level stewardship scheme, the entry- level stewardship scheme and the organic entry-level stewardship scheme, as well as the environmentally sensitive areas scheme, of which I claim a certain paternity. The department says:

“It is important to note that these changes mean that we will no longer be acknowledging the receipt of your claim forms or indeed other correspondence”.
 

It goes on to say:

“Alternatively, if you require confirmation that your claim has been received, please contact the Incentive Scheme Service Team after 17 September 2007 on one of the following telephone numbers”.
 

Anyone who has tried regularly to telephone Defra knows that if ever there was an appropriately named department, with its deaf ears, that is it.

I was talking over the weekend to a consultant who helps me considerably at home. He is a person who handles these claim forms and he was telling me of a recent case in which he contacted Defra or the RPA—I forget which—and asked about a form that he had sent in. He was told, “Oh, we’ve lost it, we haven’t had it”. He said, “Don’t be so silly, here is the receipt you gave me”. He also had a copy of the claim. He made the point that farmers could lose thousands of pounds because of the frequent instances of Defra losing claim forms. It is absolutely wrong if Defra is not issuing receipts; certainly some of us in the Chamber today who are former Ministers would never have done that. Will the Minister give an assurance that he will review the ending of issuing receipts? Will he give a particular assurance that it will not apply to the single payment scheme?

12:53:00

Lord Rosser
My Lords, I start with an apology. The Committee stage of the Local Transport Bill is due to start at 2 pm and at least one of the amendments in my name is likely to be reached before the conclusion of this debate, which will almost certainly mean that I will not be present for some of the concluding speeches. Therefore, I offer my apologies in advance.

There are a small number of industries and organisations that do not lack a strong voice in your Lordships’ House and, in my opinion, the farming industry is one of them. That is not an adverse comment; it is simply a statement of fact. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, on securing today’s debate and providing an opportunity once again for issues relating to the farming industry to be highlighted.

UK farming, as we know, contributes just over £5.5 billion to our economy; that was the figure for 2006, at least. The industry employs over half a million people. Many of those employed are not particularly well paid and government action on the minimum wage, minimum holiday entitlements and the position of part-time employees will have benefited some within the farming and agriculture industries. Despite the speech by my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden, there is a temptation in talking about the farming industry to spend too little time considering those employees who earn relatively little and asking whether they are getting a fair deal from those who employ them. Certainly, the more extreme examples of the gangmasters, to which reference has been made, show the extent of the problems that can exist and the need for legislation and regulation in some areas. Once again, the Government have taken action on that front.

Farming in the UK uses, as we have heard, around three-quarters of this country’s land area. Public access and public rights of way can be a source of conflict on occasion. It is not unknown to find rights of way either deliberately blocked off or made difficult to traverse, although it is also true that not every user of a public right of way always acts responsibly. Reasonable access to our countryside is important. The Government’s Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 and the right to roam mean that, in England, people now have nearly three-quarters of a million hectares of land across which they can ramble, climb and watch wildlife. Legislation last year also established Natural England, a new body with responsibility for promoting and encouraging the integrated management of the environment, nature conservation, biodiversity, landscape, access and recreation.

As we know from debates, Questions and Statements in your Lordships’ House, the farming industry has faced difficulties. Last year, there were major problems with the single payments to farmers. This year, 98 per cent of payments for the second scheme year were paid by the Rural Payments Agency before 30 June. One hopes that further improvements in making full payments will be achieved in 2008. This year, which initially looked promising, has been one of significant difficulty and hardship for the livestock industry, with foot and mouth and bluetongue outbreaks and avian flu. The president of the National Farmers’ Union said that the industry had cause to be grateful to Defra officials for their work in bringing the outbreaks of foot and mouth, bluetongue and avian influenza under control.

One does not want to minimise the difficulties faced by those in the farming industry, but there is another picture. The Government launched the Farm Business Advice Service with £7.5 million in funding to provide free advice to English farmers on future options for their businesses. Following the foot and mouth and bluetongue situations, the Government recently announced an aid package to farmers worth, I believe, £12.5 million. Comment has been made that the average farm gate price for milk delivered in August this year was the highest August figure since 2001, although the right reverend Prelate told us in his thoughtful and thought-provoking maiden speech that increased feed costs are having adverse effects. The British food and drink industry has a good reputation and has potential for growth. The underlying trend shows that the amount of lamb and beef eaten here is up, and my information is that cereal farmers are not too unhappy.

The Fresh Start programme aims to secure a sustainable future for farming in England by encouraging new entrants into farming. The Fresh Start Academy initiative helps new entrants to find openings in the farming industry with a 12-month training course in business skills. Some 14 academies are now running and more are in the pipeline. The initiative is industry-led and Defra support includes more than £100,000 for the production and distribution of publications, sponsoring and staffing stands at agriculture shows, hosting the website and providing a secretariat.

Another industry-led initiative, fully endorsed by the Government, is the Year of Food and Farming in Education campaign to promote healthy living by giving children direct experience of food, farming and the countryside. The initiative, which runs through the current academic year to July 2008, will also give young people a better insight into what happens on a farm, how food is grown, reared or produced and how it gets to the customer. Defra has also made a commitment to reduce net administration burdens by 25 per cent by 2010. The department’s 2006 simplification plan contained initiatives to deliver an annual reduction of around £160 million in administration burdens, some of which will assist farmers.

I do not doubt that the farming industry does not think that it is well off. It is a fact of life that every effective pressure group pursues its own interests and agenda as hard as it can, seeking to ensure that attention is paid to areas where it feels that action and investment are required and remaining largely silent about areas where complaints are few. There is nothing wrong with that, since nobody achieves change by giving the impression that there is nothing that needs putting right. However, I hope that at least some of the problems that the farming industry feels that it is having to face, or is about to face, can be addressed to the satisfaction of all parties involved. Equally, it is also fair to draw attention to some of the steps that the Government have taken and are taking to help the industry to operate as efficiently as possible and to address the difficulties that have been encountered, in addition to administering support policies agreed in Brussels that provide around £3 billion to UK agriculture.

13:01:00

Baroness Byford
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Shephard for the way in which she introduced this important short debate today. Her experience as a former Minister and her continued interest in, and practical knowledge of, farming matters were reflected in her thoughtful opening speech. I remind noble Lords of our family’s farming interest, particularly as we are arable farmers, and of my presidency of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers.

Noble Lords have already referred to the fact that many farmers are suffering as a result of rising feed costs, reflected in increased milk prices. I also draw the House’s attention to the difficulties being experienced by the pig industry. Its prices have not risen but feed and energy costs are hugely expensive. It is a sector very much under stress.

I am confining my comments to three topics, the selection of which was, in itself, a challenge: Defra management, cost of regulation and animal health and disease control. To be kind, let me say that Defra’s delivery record as a new department has been at best disappointing and at times a total failure. Described by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, as a “dog’s dinner”, Defra’s broad remit and overarching role into several departments was perhaps too ambitious a concept. The department then had to deal with the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth, which brought misery to many farmers. It imposed closures on some rural areas, with devastating financial implications for many local businesses. Add to that the visual spectacle on television and in the newspapers of thousands of animals being slaughtered and it is perhaps no wonder that the department got off to a poor start.

Unfortunately, incompetence has continued to dog the department. The single farm payment scheme chosen by Mrs Beckett was controversial because, applying only to England, it was different from the schemes chosen by the remaining home nations. Only Germany chose the same route. The RPA was given the responsibility for mapping the eligible areas, calculating the sums and paying the farmers. Due dates were set and Mrs Beckett kept assuring us that the money would be paid on time. March due dates were then deferred to June and, clearly, even this target was not to be met. My noble friend Lord Jopling has again stressed the failures of that saga.

Farmers found themselves in financial difficulty and stressed to the limit, while confidence in the department fell to an all-time low. Between £18 million and £22 million was lost due to Defra management failure. Will the Minister tell us how many of the 2005 and 2006 payments are still unresolved and whether he has confidence that the 2007 payments will be paid in time? Can he tell me whether there are still any remaining IACS payments overdue? My information is that there are. Defra was then faced with fines from the European Commission for late payments to farmers. Will the Minister bring us up to date on what those fines might be? I understand that £64 million in administrative savings were planned for Defra and the RPA for 2005-06. How is that going to be realised?

I turn to animal diseases and the increasing risks to livestock producers. Bluetongue arrived in England this summer. The warmer weather forecast brought midges across from the Continent. The department was clearly not to blame for this new disease outbreak, but one must ask, given that it knew that an outbreak was likely, what strategy was in place. Was it adequate? Did it include vaccination and, if so, what steps had been taken to produce the virus?

The 2007 foot and mouth outbreak has been found to be caused by leaky drains at the Pirbright site. Although the Minister said, when we took the Statement in the House in October, that Defra does not own the site, he acknowledged that his department is the inspector and approver of health matters there. Professor Brian Spratt, in his report into the outbreak, said:

“An accidental release from a high security containment facility is of obvious concern to the public and raises issues of public trust in both science and Government”.
 

In 2002, the Institute for Animal Health review reported:

“Some of the laboratories … are not close to the standard expected of a modern biomedical facility”.
 

The Spratt report, Independent Review of the Safety of UK Facilities Handling Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus of 2007, concluded that, from 2003, the pipes were old and needed replacing but that money had not been made available. This showed an error of judgment, poor financial management, complacency or all three. I understand that in three of the past four years, Defra has cut funding to the institute.

Bovine TB continues unabated. It causes great distress to farmers to see their cattle killed—still about 30,000 each year—and costs the country millions in compensation. The Government urgently need to take firm decisions on tackling this scourge. The longer the delay, the more the spread of the disease continues. Someone within government must take a lead.

This year, 2007, has been a dreadful one for farmers affected by outbreaks of foot and mouth, avian flu, bluetongue and bovine TB. The Government’s reaction is to propose a major shift in the cost and responsibility for future outbreaks of animal diseases, moving that away from government towards industry. This comes at a time when the whole of the livestock sector is in severe economic crisis because prices have not adjusted to the steep increase in feed, energy and regulation costs. To suggest now that the industry should be picking up additional costs from the Government is unfortunate. Indeed, with climate change likely to increase diseases, the Government should think twice about it.

Lastly, I turn to regulation. Defra has committed itself to reducing its administrative burden by 25 per cent by 2010. So far, only 5 per cent has been achieved. What strategy is in place to achieve its target and what areas of regulation have been identified that will make a difference? For a collection of relatively small businesses, agriculture and horticulture are disproportionately heavily regulated, and there needs to be better understanding across government of the cumulative impact across departments and agencies. Inspection fees set in the UK are not in line with fees required by other countries. Is it not time to review the way in which we set such fees, so that UK producers are not put at a competitive disadvantage?

I am sure that all who are partaking in this debate today wish to see UK agriculture and horticulture thrive. Food supply is crucial to the well-being of any country and Defra has its part to play to enable that growth to happen. In that context, I underline the importance of research and innovation as a key to success for the future. I would like Defra to succeed but I am concerned about the generous early  retirement packages referred to by my noble friends, which may result in the loss of high-quality, experienced departmental staff. I hope in this respect that I shall be proved wrong.

13:10:00

The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for instigating this debate and for her incisive development of the issues which we all face with regard to the farming industry in this country. This is a subject which has not always received the attention it deserves, partly because we have tended to look at it as a series of different issues—food, tourism, welfare of farmers, welfare of animals. This debate gives us the opportunity to bring those strands together and to encourage Defra in its pivotal role in the future of the land in this country. I am delighted, too, that my noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle has been introduced here in time today to give his wisdom and current experience of the realism and kindness of Cumbria.

Today, 6 December, is St Nicholas’s Day, a day when that church tradition which we now celebrate chiefly in Santa Claus looks to provision for the future. As a rural bishop, Nicholas looked to the future by providing—so legend has it—dowries to safeguard the future of young women and protection for young men against those who would starve them. I believe that this debate provides the opportunity for Defra to show that it follows in the footsteps of St Nicholas by establishing a firm way forward which will defend and safeguard the future of our farming industry and the way in which that affects and contributes to our whole economy.

I want to concentrate on two issues for the land as we look to the future. The church has long been committed to a vibrant sustainable agricultural sector for our economy. There is increasing evidence of the danger of agriculture coming to be seen as dispensable. We are less and less self-sustainable in our provision of food with an increasing proportion of imports. I want to come back to that in a few moments. One issue is the continuing price pressure which puts farming livelihoods at risk and which is an inevitable result of the dominance of the four great supermarket chains with their skewed buying power. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, for drawing our attention to that. I am also grateful to the Ethical Investment Advisory Group of the Church of England for its recent survey, Fair Trade Begins at Home, which raises for all of us the dangers of the pursuit of cheap food. Through case studies, that report demonstrates practices which it describes as “invisible” and “pernicious”, unknown to the consumer and accepted with bitter anger by farmers as simply inevitable if they are going to do business at all. These include labelling which obscures the country of origin of the primary ingredients of products, flexible payment terms which are subject in practice to arbitrary change, and promotions which are made at the expense of the farmer not the retailer.

If farmers are to flourish as the Government wish them to do, there must be a greater control of prices and a fairer market. I believe that we need a supermarket ombudsman if we are going to achieve fair trade in this sector and I hope that the Minister will comment on that in his response. There are other ways of doing things—in Wensleydale local cheese and ice-cream manufacturers pay more realistic prices for milk—but these are small-scale in the general scheme of things. Unless more is done to end the silent collusion over the continued rush to cheap food, we shall continue to see decline particularly in the dairy and beef industries.

My second point is to emphasise the need to return to the principles of food security and self-sufficiency and to do so before we are caught out by ever advancing climate change. The global challenges facing the world in the next 50 years make our countryside policies crucial and mean that Defra has a particular and major contribution to make. The countryside is not there simply for tourism, biodiversity and recreation, important though all of these are. There needs to be an increasing concern for food itself and I do not believe that we have yet properly tackled that issue. Andrés Arnalds of the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland makes that point dramatically when he argues that more food needs to be produced in the next 50 years than has been consumed in the past 10,000 years since the last ice age.

The global food challenges are immense and Defra has the opportunity to develop policies which can respond to those challenges. Climate change appears already to be affecting many of the traditional areas of food production, such as the Australian cereal farms affected by drought. If we allow our own agricultural industry to decline, we shall store up problems for the future rather than, like St Nicholas, providing for it. There is nothing sadder than to go to one of those once-flourishing parts of the Yorkshire Dales, such as Grisedale at the head of Wensleydale, which has been abandoned by the farming industry. Indeed, the abandoned area is increasing.

The most important point, however, is not the sadness but the danger. We have ideal conditions in many parts of our country for a vibrant farming community but its continuance is not inevitable. In 1988, UK self-sufficiency from all food types was 70 per cent; in 2006, it was 60 per cent. Self-sufficiency in indigenous crops was 82 per cent in 1988 and 74 per cent in 2006. This is a worrying decline. We cannot take it for granted that we can easily source food from across the world. Defra may be the most crucial of all our government departments at this juncture, both in securing fair trade prices for our own farmers now and, even more crucially, in a return to food security and self-sufficiency. Only in those ways will we be able to secure the future not just for ourselves but for coming generations in this country.

13:20:00

Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior
My Lords, it is clear that this House is very grateful to my noble friend Lady Shephard for introducing the debate. By any measure, the past few years have been difficult for livestock farming. I shall restrict my comments to that area of farming, including BSE, foot and mouth, swine fever, tuberculosis in cattle and badgers, avian influenza, bluetongue, and, most recently, the threat that Defra will be looking at making farming more contributory to disease control.

The hardships in farming have already been indicated by several speakers. They come not only from the loss of animals or the interference with their production capacity, such as meat, milk and breeding potential, but also from the disruption of normal trade within the country and in export. An example is bluetongue and the inability of sheep farmers, especially in Cumbria, which I know well since I am a Cumbrian, to take their animals to market, with the consequent reduction in the value of the animals and the extra cost of feeding those animals that farmers cannot sell or move to the auctions. This has been critically described by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle, and for that I thank him.

The indirect losses experienced nationally from disease are well exemplified by the experiences of a few years ago with the lack of exportation of animals and animal products because of BSE and foot and mouth disease. The suggestion from the Secretary of State, as reported in the press, is that the Government are determined to press ahead with the sharing of costs and responsibilities in a consultation before Christmas. Sharing responsibilities and costs is based on the Minister's comments that the present situation is unsustainable. The press indicated that with the industry bearing the costs, this will be the second year in a row that Defra will be cutting back on spending plans.

None of this is good news for agriculture but, as I think we know and as has been mentioned by a number of speakers, farmers will collaborate, or perhaps one should say they will comply. An increasing number of farmers are leaving the industry without knowing where to go and what to do. Unfortunately, a few have taken the suicide route to end their considerations. This cannot be good news for the countryside as a whole. If a greater burden is to be placed on farmers by sharing costs and responsibilities I think that the farmers expect Defra to be prepared, as a quid pro quo, to assist by way of an improved provision of services in disease control, as my noble friend Lady Byford indicated, in surveillance, diagnosis and the provision of vaccination to keep our livestock healthy. An example of support for livestock farming is given in the United States in the Homeland Security Program where, Members may be aware, substantial sums are poured into research and research training to provide the background of surveillance of and provision of information on exotic diseases.

I will set out a few examples where farmers expect more than is being done at present. TB in badgers and cattle is a problem that has been brought to a head in recent speeches by Sir David King, particularly that yesterday to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee where he again dealt with the subject. A vaccine for bluetongue in this country should not be beyond our means or our abilities. We know the strain of the virus. We know the midges that transmit it. And we know that it will come again when the midges become active next year. Furthermore, I believe that a vaccine for tuberculosis in badgers is a strong possibility. I know that that is a contentious statement and the Minister may well reject it, but we have the knowledge and the wherewithal to take that on board. 

A further point that is relative to surveillance of exotic disease is vigilance to detect and monitor the highly contagious entities that I say are poised to enter the UK owing to global trade and travel. Examples are African horse sickness, which is a devastating disease for equines, and rinderpest, which is almost eradicated in the world, but, if we are not careful, could rapidly re-enter parts of Africa. It may be of interest to noble Lords to know that rinderpest a century ago devastated the cattle population of London, in particular, where there were many small dairies; so much so that the then Archbishop of Canterbury offered a national prayer to save us from this plague. Whether or not that was particularly helpful, the plague was cured. Out of that came disease control by the Government.

Surveillance has been shown to be particularly good in the case of the SARS outbreak in the Far East. If they can do it with SARS, so can we. Other areas are public health issues; for example, the importation of bush meat carrying viruses, which, if eaten, are devastating to the human population, and the importation of raw or putrid meat to celebrate the birthdays of people of African origin.

I mentioned the Homeland Security Program. I have some good news. The programme for the training of veterinary scientists, the veterinary training research programme, of which I have the honour to be chairman, is going very well indeed. We look forward at the end of next year to having a substantial number of well trained young veterinarians who are able to pick up the programme of surveillance and help in the control of not only our indigenous diseases but those from overseas. These are examples of developments which will convince the farming community that Defra is on their side, not the reverse.

13:28:00

Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Shephard for securing this important debate. I declare an interest as a farmer and assiduous Defra form-filler. While preparing for the debate, I looked up some of the paperwork that I received in the past few months. The latest single payment scheme book runs to 100 pages; the cross-compliance handbook to 47 pages; the cross-compliance soil management handbook to 40 pages; and, in a little light reading, the set-aside update for 2007 is nine pages. And, one I seem to have missed, the SPS handbook, is 90 pages. That is not allowing for the waste management paperwork, the ELS—the entry-level scheme paperwork—or the countryside stewardship. I do not blame Defra for this paperwork; it is simply doing Brussels’ bidding. It is the implementation agency for our master in Brussels, the Commission, which is responsible for the shambles of the common agricultural policy. It is a shambles, is it not? Even after so-called reform in 2003, the CAP still gobbles up 47 per cent of the total EU budget; it still supports tobacco farmers growing unsmokeable tobacco; the sugar regime remains largely unreformed; and, as the Spanish Minister of Agriculture said:

“There is not one hectare, not one head of cattle in all Spain that runs the risk of disappearing”.
 

That was after the reforms.

If that is reform, it is rather like a drunk saying, “Sure, I’ve reformed—I’ve gone off the scotch and I’m on vodka”. That is the sort of reform it is.

It is arguably even worse after reform. Those now getting paid our taxpayers’ money—we are a huge contributor to the common agricultural policy—are people who have never farmed, and who have not even had any intention of farming. Railway companies in this country, horse-breeding establishments in Germany and golf courses in Denmark and in this country all qualify in some mysterious way for common agricultural payments, which seems pretty odd. That may be a bit of a joke in a way, but it is not; it is a very expensive joke. Britain is still the second largest contributor to the European Union budget; France is by far the largest recipient of common agricultural policy funds—very nearly twice as much as the next recipient, which is Spain.

It looks very much to me as though the British taxpayer is supporting French farming. That seems absolutely mad. It is mad. It is not even as though the CAP is a success. It is generally agreed that it is a gross misallocation of resources; it fails consumers as it puts up prices; it fails the taxpayers because they have to pay the bill; as many speakers have said this afternoon, it has not even succeeded in securing or improving farm incomes; and, perhaps most lamentably of all, it fails the third world and the economies of developing countries.

Noble Lords may think this the ravings of a swivel-eyed Europhobe but it is not so. I want to quote briefly from a document called Global Europe, which was published only in October this year. The quote relates to the CAP as well as other aspects of European finance. Of the CAP it says:

“Internationally, it continues to attract criticism, creates tensions in the EU’s relations with trading partners, and imposes significant costs on developing countries. Domestically, it imposes substantial costs on consumers and taxpayers and is inefficient in delivering support to farmers and promoting an attractive rural environment. Indeed much of the CAP still has a negative impact on the environment”.
 

The authors of this quote from Global Europe were the Prime Minister, the right honourable Gordon Brown, and the Foreign Secretary, the right honourable David Miliband. I think that we can take it as fact that as far as they are concerned, the CAP has had it.

I am supported in that view by the conclusions of a 2005 report by the EU Sub-Committee A. It used to be heresy and what the committee had to say on the CAP was that,

“several witnesses suggested to us”—

and it agrees—

“that such support ought to be financed nationally, not at EU level. Questions of how far to subsidise one’s farmers or how much to pay for protecting the rural environment fall naturally to nation states”.

If the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and a highly regarded EU sub-committee of your Lordships’ House all agree that the CAP is a total failure and that it would be much better repatriating common agricultural policy to this country, who am I to argue? It is what I have been saying for many years. I was grateful for the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who mentioned the common fisheries policy, which is an equally scandalous policy. I have news for him—the only way that is going to be resolved is to repatriate fisheries policy as well. Countries such as Norway, Namibia, Finland, New Zealand and Iceland have very successful fisheries policies. There is no reason we could not run our own fisheries policy in this country just as successfully.

I agree with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the sub-committee of this House that to repatriate the common agricultural policy and the fisheries policy would be good for the taxpayer, good for the consumer, good for British farming and good for the British environment. Finally, it would put Defra back into the centre of British farming policy—it would no longer be a simple cat’s paw for the discredited common agricultural policy.

13:35:00

The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, first, I declare my interest as a trustee of an estate in the north of Scotland which has farming interests with pedigree Cheviots and Aberdeen Angus. I am sure the Minister will agree that the nation must be served with nothing less than a Defra which is well resourced, confident, capable, and respected, and peopled by highly motivated officials with good morale. This debate today has proved quite the opposite. It is sad that that is the case.

I should like to ask the Minister about the number of officials who are to take voluntary retirement. My noble friend Lord Jopling said that 300 staff are to go. I have heard that some of the best are taking the good golden handshake that has been offered. How can a ministry in the parlous state that Defra is in at the moment contemplate losing its best staff? How can it possibly take on the extra work that will be generated by the Climate Change Bill, which begins its Committee stage next week in this House, if it is losing staff now? It is a matter of very great concern and it perhaps adds a great deal to the argument that Defra should not be the lead department when it comes to climate change.

My noble friend Lord Jopling described the situation as shambolic. Indeed that was supported—in fact, introduced—by my noble friend Lady Shephard. Both my noble friends have great experience of the Ministry of Agriculture and of farming. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Shephard for organising the debate so that I can bring in the Scottish element, which has not been raised so far.

It is a tragedy—I know that it will hurt the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—to be a Minister in a department that is either known as Deafra for its deafness or Deathra for the amount that it manages to kill. We were particularly lucky being north of the border that the single farm payment scheme was not administered by the English for us. That would have caused a huge amount of unemployment and the demise of agriculture north of the border. However, one of the quirks of the devolution system is that animal health and welfare policy is devolved but the budget is held by Defra on a GB basis for England, Wales and Scotland. That is based on the basis that GB is one epidemiological zone. While this is true, it opens the door to the sort of political wrangling between London and Edinburgh that we have seen over the past couple of months. By its attitude, Defra is doing a very good job as the stormtrooper for the nationalists north of the border.

The initial position of the Secretary of State, Mr Benn, was that the devolution concordat required Defra to pay compensation only on culled livestock and not for welfare schemes or compensation for economic loss. However, when reminded that Defra had paid for a welfare disposal scheme in 2001, he changed tack and argued that the amounts this time around were not sufficient to access the Treasury contingency fund and could, or should, be accommodated from existing Scottish Government, Welsh Assembly or Defra budgets. However, when questioned as to the top-up LFA payments to English farmers and whether any of that was in respect of economic loss, he had to admit that there was of course an element of that.

I am glad to say that the Scottish Government have found £25 million, including the cost of a light lamb welfare disposal scheme, most of which will go to the ewe payment in recognition of the losses incurred by sheep producers, but that is nothing like the full extent of the losses. There is agreement that the immediate imposition of movement restrictions, which prevented a repeat of the 2001 disaster and a £3.5 billion bill to the taxpayer, was right. However, the restrictions have cost farmers hundreds of millions of pounds. The Government should recognise that, especially given the cause of the outbreak.

Will the Minister confirm that Defra Ministers have an open mind on going back to the Treasury when the full costs of the foot and mouth disaster have been calculated? In Scotland, it is estimated that they will be in excess of between £75 million and £100 million. If we transpose that throughout the UK, we are looking at about £1 billion. Surely that should come back from the contingency fund, not just from the internal fund of the department. If that is not the case, what is happening is government by financial expediency rather than principled policy-making. England has been given £12.5 million from the Defra budget. What happened to the £20 million that we understood that the Treasury was going to provide from the contingency fund?

Against that background and the extra associated costs, it is surely crazy for Defra to suggest that it should achieve its spending cut targets simply by transferring costs to the industry. I hope that the Minister will look at his own costs, because I understand that it costs the Government nearly six times as much per head to collect sheep for TSE testing as it does for the National Fallen Stock Company to collect equivalent casualty animals. If Defra needs to save a lot of money, which it does, it should look to more efficient ways of carrying out the work, rather than simply handing a bill to the industry. That might well involve a significant degree of self-regulation by industry-run bodies, such as the National Fallen Stock Company, but that is a better way to go forward.

As well as dumping its annual animal health and welfare costs on the industry, Defra would like to raise a levy to pay for any future disease outbreaks. Again, why should the industry pick up the cost of managing an outbreak from a body that cannot even manage its own laboratory safely? In Scotland, the industry already has a healthy working partnership with the Scottish Government Ministers and officials. Legislation for responsibility-sharing is not wanted or needed.

Finally, I move on to the question of state aids. There are two points here. First, there is a strong feeling in Scotland that Defra will not use what it calls its negotiating capital to take forward Scottish problems. We saw that when it came to getting state aid approval in Brussels for the ewe payment and—the issue that affected us in the north of Scotland—the Orkney and Shetland shipping charges for livestock. It was a real tragedy that Defra would not use its negotiating capital because it said that it had more important things south of the border to take up with Brussels, rather than take up a remote Scottish issue. There is a mistrust of Defra on that issue. If Defra was to get that right, can the Minister assure me that Defra officials can present the Scottish case adequately and that Scottish officials and Ministers are given a proper and representative degree of interest in negotiations with Brussels?

I have time to raise one more question. It is a wide question, so the Minister may not be able to answer it now, but perhaps he will write to me when he has covered the other points that I raised. Where are the cost cuts going to be in Defra? Given climate change and the need for spending money on all sorts of areas that have already suffered from Defra cuts, where will the cuts be made so that Defra can balance its budget?

13:44:00

Lord Northbrook
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Shephard of Northwold on securing this debate on the role of Defra in supporting agriculture, and declare an interest as a landowner of mainly arable land.

The key issues on which I want to focus are, first, the Rural Payments Agency; secondly, FMD and cost sharing; thirdly, bovine TB; and, lastly, the structure of the department itself and its implementation of regulation.

The RPA fiasco has caused huge dislocation and chaos to farmers across England. In its November 2006 report, the NAO calculated the loss to farmers at between £18 million and £22.5 million. Against better advice, the then Secretary of State, Margaret Beckett, insisted on adopting the dynamic hybrid model, which is far too complicated and is different from the system in Scotland and Wales. There are also serious problems with the digital system of land mapping, where the system gave some farmers fields that they did not own while others had their land cut down and given to others.

What payments are still outstanding that should have been paid in 2005 and 2006? How many farmers do not yet have definitive entitlement statements? When are this year's entitlements due to be paid? I understand that the UK Government set aside £131 million for fines from the EU for failing to pay out on time. To make matters worse, that £131 million provision was increased in spring 2007 to £305 million. Can the Minister confirm that, and confirm whether that figure is in addition to the £131 million and whether it will come off the future Defra budget? It certainly ought not to. Why should farmers pay for the incompetence of the RPA?

I now move on to foot and mouth disease. In two official inquiries into the outbreak, serious failings were identified at both the Pirbright laboratories. If robust systems had been in place at the Pirbright site, could the 2007 FMD outbreak not have been avoided? On this subject, I am concerned, as are others, about the statement by the Minister, Hilary Benn, in his speech at the Farming for the Future conference on 19 November, that a major shift of the cost and responsibility for animal health should be made from government to the industry. Does the Minister believe that the £40 million levy on farmers to fund disease prevention after the outbreak is reasonable? Should not the Government, as the creator of the risk, pay all of that?

On 3 December, 29 UK farming and livestock organisations submitted a statement to Mr Benn calling on the Government urgently to reconsider their proposed measures on cost sharing for animal diseases. I urge the Minister not to rush to conclusions on those complex matters but to reach the right solutions by a much more measured approach.

I now move on to the subject of bovine TB. I am far from being an expert on that, but it seems that organisations such as the NFU are making a good point. If the general population of badgers is expanding as fast in the rest of the country as it is in my county, Hampshire, I can well understand livestock farmers’ problems. As the NFU states, that is destroying livestock farming in more and more parts of the country, at great cost to the industry and the nation. The Secretary of State has asked for more time and space to take a view on the disease. I urge the Government to take robust and strong measures, as recommended in the Chief Scientific Adviser’s advice to Ministers, given in July and published recently.

I now turn to the organisation of Defra itself. None of the following comments is meant to be critical of the generally hard-working staff in the organisation. Farmers do not look to Defra to shield them from the realities of the market place or from their legal and moral duties to manage their land. However, they do look to Defra to work towards three clear goals. First, Defra needs to understand the important role that agriculture and horticulture play in national life. Secondly, it needs to realise that there should be a firm commitment to act, in a positive partnership with the industry, to meet the public policy objectives. Thirdly, farmers look to Defra to help to ensure that there is a level playing field in competitive conditions across the EU single market. However, the seemingly endless change in Defra has had damaging effects on staff moral. That makes it more difficult for farmers to develop good working relations with them and, because of the increasingly large remit of Defra’s scope, puts farmers at the bottom of the list of priorities.

Finally, I want to cover the implementation of regulation. For a collection of relatively small businesses, agriculture and horticulture are disproportionately heavily regulated, as my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke has discussed. Some progress has been made on the deregulation agenda; for example, the reduction of inspections for food hygiene for farmers in assurance schemes. On the other hand, there has been serious gold plating. Does the Minister agree that that has happened, first, in relation to the EU environmental liability directive, which has been extended to national sites and species, not just the European ones required by the directive? Secondly, there is the nitrates directive, which has been unnecessarily extended to include requirements for cover crops. Dairy farms, already under pressure, will be burdened with costs for slurry storage works that will cost the industry hundreds of millions of pounds for, I understand, a minimal reduction in nitrate leaching. Another case of gold plating involves the implementation of the IPCC regulations, which have huge registration fees and ongoing annual fees, which at £3,000 far outstrip those applied in the EU and even in Scotland and Wales. Does the Minister agree about all this gold plating?

I have huge confidence that the Minister will, with his industry experience— unfortunately unusual these days—do his best to address farmers’ and horticulturalists’ concerns and will, in the same way that he has helped to clear up the RPA fiasco, address in his usual forthright manner the concerns mentioned by me and many others.

13:52:00

Earl Cathcart
My Lords, I declare an interest as a farmer in Norfolk. When winding up the debate on Second Reading of the Climate Change Bill last week, the Minister said:

“I am not a business manager”.—[Official Report, 27/11/07; col. 1212.]
 

At the time I thought, “More’s the pity”, because that is exactly what Defra needs. Defra’s incompetence was highlighted by the new single farm payment scheme in 2005, as others have mentioned. Farmers were assured by the Secretary of State that it would greatly simplify payments and reduce the burden of bureaucracy. Oddly, the Secretary of State then implemented an overly complex scheme against all the advice given by experts across the industry. The fiasco that followed led to extreme financial hardship and was devastating for farmers, a third of whom already live in poverty.

Was the Secretary of State held responsible for this foul-up? No. She was promoted to Foreign Secretary. “Good for farming”, I thought, “but heaven help our foreign policy”. It is typical of the Government: livelihoods ruined but the perpetrator rewarded. Farmers have already suspected that the Government did not care where the food came from, as long as it was cheap. Until my noble friend Lady Shephard mentioned it, I had not realised that Mrs Beckett was so insensitive and stupid as to say it in public. We have had three Secretaries of State in the past three years. David Miliband was also promoted to Foreign Secretary. There seems to be a theme: do a stint at Defra, then you get to be Foreign Secretary. Is it not time that we had a Secretary of State who knew something about farming or at least business management?

One of the problems with Defra is the lack of a command structure, which leads to a lack of co-ordination. Like all farmers in Norfolk, and no doubt up and down the country, I have to deal with at least 12 different Defra offices. The mapping is done in Bristol. I correspond with the headquarters at Reading. Northallerton administers the single farm payment but the Newcastle office pays it. Environment schemes are agreed in Norwich but administered in Cambridge, and another office in Newcastle makes the payments. Livestock matters are administered in Bury St Edmunds. One has to inform Cumbria of movements but Worcester of long-distance movements, although to get the movement licence one has to apply to the Norwich trading standards office. There is another office for farm waste.

That is absurd. As things stand, there is total confusion, not just for farmers but for Defra staff. It is high time that Defra was reorganised so that every farmer had just one point of contact to answer on all aspects of his farm. My noble friend the Duke of Montrose tells me that all his Defra affairs are dealt with by the Perth office. If it can happen in Scotland, why on earth can it not happen in England? The Minister is already aware of all these offices and I am hoping that he will come back with a cunning plan.

Defra staff must be so demoralised with the present system—farmers certainly are—because they do not know what is going on, which leads to them giving conflicting advice. For example, with the recent outbreak of bluetongue in East Anglia, the Bury office would say one thing one day, while the next day the Reading office would write saying another. Farmers do not know where they stand, which makes Defra look idiotic and incompetent. The fragmented structure of Defra leads to confusion within it. No one seems to be able to make decisions, because they do not know the whole picture. I am not criticising those working in Defra. The animal health officials dealing with FMD, bluetongue and avian flu have done an admirable job. All Defra staff whom I have come across have been polite and diligent in doing the work that they have been paid to do. It is the system that is too rigid and inflexible, obsessed with form-filling and box-ticking.

I have a stubble field with a 6-metre margin around it. I wanted to put it down to grass, so I asked the Norwich office whether I could add it to my existing countryside stewardship scheme. It advised me that I should ring the Cambridge office, which administers the scheme. “No”, said Cambridge, “Defra has no more money”. I said, “Okay, but if I put it down to grass, where do I put the fence?”. I was hoping that the office would reply, “Up against the hedge”, but no—because livestock must not graze the 6-metre margin, I must put the fence inside the 6-metre margin, 6 metres away from the hedge. I said that that would look absurd. I then suggested taking the field’s 6-metre margin out of the scheme and reducing my payment accordingly. “No, you mustn’t do that”, I was told. A contract is a contract and cannot be changed and, if I put the fence up against the hedge, I might jeopardise my entire payment. So, the field is down to grass, but unfenced. That is completely absurd and inflexible and it lacks logic, but the command structure does not allow for common sense and flexibility.

Agriculture and horticulture are disproportionately heavily regulated and the cumulative impact is crippling. Since 2001, there have been nearly 1,000 new Defra regulations. No one in Defra knows what they all are, but farmers must know. Heaven help them if they do not. Last year, my farm was inspected five times. All the boxes were ticked, but when I asked the fifth inspector, who came to Norfolk from Dorset, why I could not have one inspection looking at all aspects on the farm, I was told, “No, that would mean us inspectors would have to go on endless courses to learn all the rules and then go on frequent refresher courses because the rules are constantly changing”. That says it all.

While farmers are screwed down by Defra bureaucracy, Defra fails to do its job when it really matters. Here, I am talking about the foot and mouth outbreak at Pirbright. The Institute for Animal Health said that the drains were known to be dilapidated and due for replacement as far back as 2002. As my noble friend Lady Byford pointed out, Defra is the laboratory’s regulator. Yet this report, which said that there was an accident waiting to happen, was ignored by Defra. Defra failed to regulate. This shocked and infuriated farmers and destroyed the livelihood of some, which led to a further loss of credibility and trust. The one time Defra should have regulated, it failed. I keep asking myself whose side Defra is on. Defra, or the old MAFF, used to be farmer-friendly. Now Defra controls and overregulates and it is strangling the farming community. Rife with mismanagement, Defra must get its own house in order.

At Second Reading of the Climate Change Bill, I asked the Minister why Defra, not the Prime Minister, was in charge of climate change. The Minister replied:

“Why not? … Defra has proved itself incredibly resilient in dealing with … foot and mouth, bluetongue, the two sets of avian flu … flooding”.—[Official Report, 27/11/07; cols. 1212-13.]
 

He may have convinced himself, but many would say that he is in denial. All I can say is that he should try convincing the farmers that Defra is fit and proper.

14:01:00

Lord Redesdale
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for initiating the debate and I welcome the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle. I was reminded of the dark days of the foot and mouth outbreak, because I am a Northumbrian and we suffered just as badly, and of how the churches and the clergy of the area were such a rock for local farmers and brought the local community together in a time of such crisis. Unfortunately, although the scale of the problem was quite obvious then—the fires were visible from such a distance—the equally hard financial implications of the present crisis are going unseen. I declare an interest as a landowner with two hill farms. I know that the financial pressure of keeping young lambs on the fell without being able to sell them, and then suffering from the feed cost, is a major burden with very little return.

The debate has featured a cornucopia of issues, which I am sure the Minister will address in great detail. I shall focus on a small number because, as the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, pointed out, we had better use the Minister now before he becomes Foreign Secretary. My first question, which is rhetorical, is: why is Defra being hammered so hard by the Treasury? I was reminded of the event that marked the formation of Natural England. I am sorry; I almost lost my bearings, because it was in the Locarno room of the Foreign Office. In a rather long speech, David Miliband said that the Treasury had just informed him that large cuts were being made and that this was obviously very difficult to deal with. He added that he was not going to fight the cuts but that in his next year of office he would seek to reverse them and bring more money into Defra. Unfortunately, he never had a second year in office to do that and now we have a new Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, and further cuts are being announced. This is obviously an issue, because Defra’s role is to act as a lead on farming.

I know, as the Minister does all too well, that farmers are wont to paint a bleak picture, but I was particularly taken by a joke that I was told recently in the local pub. One farmer said to the other, “What would you do if you won the lottery?”. The other farmer turned to him quite happily and said, “I’d carry on farming till it was all gone”. This is the issue: further costs and further bureaucracy. It has been pointed out that many of those costs come from Europe and not from Defra, but it does seem that insult was slightly added to injury after the outbreak at Pirbright. I commend Defra’s role in controlling that outbreak, as I do its speedy action over the avian flu outbreak. Thankfully, that outbreak has not turned into the major episode that it could have turned into, which, just before Christmas, would have destroyed the poultry industry.

As the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, mentioned, Hilary Benn announced on 19 November that there was talk of a levy being imposed on the farming industry to deal with disease outbreaks. This is not a new issue; the industry and the department have discussed it for many years. The timing seems to be rather unfortunate, given that many farmers are still suffering under the cosh of financial hardship. I have a number of questions about how that levy is to be introduced. First, when will it be introduced? Obviously there will be consultation if the levy is to be introduced at all, but will it be introduced under the new amalgamated Levy Board? The order went through the other day. The board is a welcome development. It will do a great deal to slim down and reduce waste, and I am hopeful that it will be a great success. The issue, however, is who will pay this levy and at what point it will be paid. At the moment, if it is paid at the point of slaughter, some members of the industry who rear livestock but sell them on will not be affected by the levy, which might fall disproportionately on one side of the industry. The Minister might say that he will not be able to answer those questions before any consultation, but I very much hope that the consultation will consider that major issue.

The agricultural buildings allowance, which has come directly from the Treasury, is also causing some worry, as the Minister will no doubt be aware. Phasing out the allowance at a time when the industry has to upgrade its premises for animal welfare, which is an excellent reason, and as a result of the nitrates directive, which protects the environment, will cause a great number of problems in the industry. However, what concerns me the most is the retrospective nature of that cut. Can the Minister say whether farms that have taken on the grant will have to pay back money that was claimed under it? Perhaps I have got that wrong, but I am not aware of another tax that has been imposed retrospectively.

There have been many cuts in Defra, which has badly affected morale in the department. It is very unfortunate that the problems with the Rural Payments Agency led to a switch of energy in Defra’s work to deal with that crisis, especially as many people who were assessing the entry-level stewardship and higher-level stewardship programmes were moved away to deal with the crisis. I understand the reasons for that, but it is very unfortunate. I declare an interest, as both my tenant farmers are looking at the stewardship scheme. However, it is vital that many farmers in the upland area are considered for the scheme, and putting it off indefinitely is a real issue.

My noble friend Lord Livsey made the very real point that, although there has been a crash in the cost of lamb, the supermarkets do not seem to have paid the same amount of money to the farmers as they could have. My noble friend mentioned Waitrose, which is an excellent example. I very much hope that the Minister will consider taking a stronger line with the supermarkets, because this is not the first time that this has happened. It happened during the last foot and mouth crisis; for it to happen again during this one, even though it will probably be a short-term event, shows that the supermarkets are taking a very short-term view. Does the Minister think that the Competition Commission should take a further look at this issue?

Defra is concerned not only with farming, but with climate change and rural affairs. I will run out of time if I go into those issues, which are for another debate. However, I hope that the Minister will look, through the role of Defra in fighting climate change, at the skewing of the marketplace as a result of the rush towards biofuels. The case for using corn in ethanol does not stack up on economic and environmental grounds. It has had massive effects in America, where it has had an upward pressure on feed prices. There have even been riots in Mexico because of the cost of food. The impact in this country is that the cost of other feedstuffs for animals has risen substantially. Can the Minister tell us whether any work is being done with pig farmers, who have found that the rise in feed prices has made their industry very uneconomical? While looking at biofuels is, for reasons of fighting climate change, a good thing, there is a massive resource in the country: the large areas of soft woodland in the north-east, Wales and Scotland. When those are felled, the by-product of that waste will be incredibly useful. Defra could take a lead in that. Using wood waste instead of corn to form ethanol would be a much better solution.

14:11:00

Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Shephard of Northwold for tabling this Motion. Her speech and the subsequent debate have drawn attention to yet another area of government weakness and dysfunction. I know the Minister will resent this attack on his department. Both inside and outside this House, he is a highly regarded and respected Minister, who clearly understands the problems faced by UK farmers. Our purpose is less to criticise the Minister than to reinforce his role within Defra. Nor is our criticism of the staff, who work diligently for the department. Our concern on these Benches, and expressed elsewhere in this debate, is the failure of the department and the Government to establish a proper working relationship with UK agriculture and horticulture. As my noble friend Lord Jopling said, this has caused considerable damage, both to the Government’s reputation and to all those who live and work in the countryside.

The perception outside Westminster, particularly in the farming community, is of a Government totally disengaged from the concerns of UK farmers. I declare an interest. I am one of many Members of your Lordships’ House who will go home this evening to the real world of 21st century farming in the UK. I farm in England, where Defra has direct responsibility, and our position contrasts acutely with those working with devolved Administrations elsewhere within the United Kingdom. I regret to say that among my neighbours, friends and colleagues this Government are not seen as an ally, but as a hindrance. “Defra than ever”, they say. There is a lack of trust and a loss of that sense of partnership which should be the basis of a successful farming industry.

I know the Minister will agree that farming is over-regulated and burdened with bureaucracy. My noble friend Lord Cathcart has shown how Defra’s bureaucracy results in a multiplicity of offices and service points. Many noble Lords will know how much time we spend filling in the boxes. Farming should not be like this. Those engaged in farming do so to grow and produce food and to cultivate and care for the countryside. No Government should impose such a costly and time-consuming regime on an industry where so many of the active participants have to do it all themselves. My noble friend Lord Cathcart posed a very pertinent question: why are so many different inspections and inspectors necessary? The notion is that the regulations are so complex that no government official could be expected to understand them all. But what about the farmer, who has to comply with them all, at the risk of financial and legal penalty?

Not surprisingly, farmers see regulation and bureaucracy as a largely irrelevant imposition on their businesses, a tax that they have to pay to be in business and make a living. Why are English farmers subjected to a nightmare single payment system? My noble friend Lady Byford has been like a terrier in exposing its shortcomings. My Scottish friends received their payments on 3 December and the intention in Wales was the same, but English farmers will be waiting until spring. This year it will cost them £30 million in interest alone, let alone the loss of working capital and facilities for investment. As we asked at Question Time today, what is the advantage of the dynamic hybrid model to them? What, I might add, is the advantage to Defra? It must cost a fortune to run. We discussed this at Question Time today but I still find it hard to see why the simpler scheme adopted in Scotland and Wales cannot be used in England.

Many noble Lords have talked this year of disease and disaster. We have already had much debate about this in your Lordships’ House. Noble Lords have graphically described the costs and losses visited on farming communities. I will not elaborate, except to say that the unexpected is part of farming, so it should be part of government planning. What has become of the Government’s contingency funds? How much has Defra been able to draw on this? Meanwhile, how is farming supposed to make up its losses? Cost-sharing proposals simply show how inadequate is Defra’s response. As my noble friend Lady Shephard said in her opening speech, the truth is that the dead hand of the Treasury looms large.

Defra’s responsibilities grow, and yet it faces acute budget costs. My noble friend Lord Soulsby talked of the consequences of this for the industry. A demoralised staff face redundancy. My noble friends Lord Jopling and Lord Caithness pointed to the dangers of this. It is often the case that the best go first. This is a department that prided itself on its expertise. How can it get to grips with its problems and responsibilities in such a situation? One fears that the British farmer will pay the price. It may seem a harsh judgment, but as I said in the debate on the Loyal Address, if Defra were a school it would be in special measures and, I might now add, earmarked for closure.

I hope I have made it clear that my concern is the failure of the Minister to achieve his ambitions for agriculture. He listens and makes it plain that he aspires to deliver, but his lack of influence over outcomes is evident. I take, as one example, food procurement by Government and public bodies. We all know that the Minister believes in a policy of sourcing from British farmers. Indeed, where possible, British farmers should be supplying all government agencies. All we see, however, is that this campaign, which was supposed to apply across all departments of government, has been a total failure. Can we imagine a French Minister of Agriculture tolerating a situation where the military were not fed French-produced food? What do we expect people to eat in French hospitals, French schools and French government catering departments?

I know that the Minister gets up early and I am sure he will have heard the item on the “Today” programme two or three weeks ago about the meat supply company which, among other public sector customers, supplied Her Majesty's Treasury. It is now out of business and it was revealed that rather than making doorstep deliveries, its drivers were dropping produce in the street or throwing it over the fence. It produced in my mind a vivid image, an apt metaphor. I had a picture of the Defra delivery van driving along Great George Street chucking the carcass of British agriculture over the Treasury fence.

The biggest tragedy is that we are now at the start of a new era in which the challenges to farmers and growers will be very different from those of the immediate past. My noble friend Lady Shephard mentioned a number of these. She dramatically illustrated ways in which our understanding of these changes will be considerable. Access to food has become a real issue. In a powerful maiden speech, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle also spoke of the ways in which this will impact on farming. Finding ways to preserve our countryside and yet provide British people with the stuff of life will be a major challenge, not just for British farmers but for Defra too.

We are currently debating the Climate Change Bill. My noble friend Lady Shephard brought climate change into context. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds made a similarly powerful point about its consequence. It will bring a whole new .perspective to government and it is not just Defra that needs to rise to the challenge. This Government must listen to the message of the failure of Defra or they will fail to meet the challenge of the new era. The Government need a positive policy which is designed to support and promote the farming industry of the United Kingdom.

14:22:00

The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle on his maiden speech. As he probably heard, because I think he was present at Question Time, I have spent most of this week in Cumbria. I have not been here until today. I have had my ears bent enormously in Cumbria. Yesterday, I was on a farm on the outskirts of Carlisle. A coach- load of children visited the farm as part of the Year of Food and Farming experiment to encourage children to visit farms to see how they work. We have had a lot of references to the north-west, but, justifiably, we will hear a lot more.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for securing the debate today. The other night, I caught up on the debate in the other place where there were references to and quotes from the noble Baroness’s book on her experiences at MAFF and what she had to say about her Ministers. Now she has this debate today, so things are going really well. What probably will not go down very well is my response. This debate is on the role of Defra, to which I intend to stick. I do not want to spend all my time on the RPA, which figured at Question Time. It has permeated through the debate and I should like to answer a couple of specific questions.

I acknowledge that there are significant difficulties. I know that one noble Lord said that people are fed up to the back teeth with the Minister saying that he is sorry, but that he has still failed. It is true. In Defra, my main role, above all else, is the RPA and single farm payments. I do not qualify that at all and it has been the case since May 2006. The RPA has taken a wide range of actions to improve its performance: 98 per cent of the 2006 single farm payments were made by the end of the payment window, which is our legal obligation, against the target of 96.14 per cent. We of course have set challenging targets for this year’s payments: 75 per cent by the end of March 2008 and 90 per cent by May. As I have already said—it is well known—for the year just finished, we started to test the system in January and started making payments in February.

The RPA is not all about the single farm payment. It is the biggest payment scheme and is worth £1.5 billion to farmers. But the RPA’s staff of 4,000 plus administer more than 30 other schemes, which are worth more than £0.5 billion—for example, export refunds and hill farm allowance. I have a list of dozens of them, including what some people think is the defunct school milk scheme. There are an enormous number of schemes. The RPA also issues the 2.8 million cattle passports every year, which are free—unpaid for—to the farmers. It is a public good for cattle tracing and traceability of the system. Originally, it was intended to charge for them. There is still a case for a charging system, but they are free to farmers. They help to demonstrate to consumers that there is traceability in the system. The RPA is responsible for that as part of its function and role.

There are 11 or 12 single farm payments which remain to be paid from 2005, almost all of which relate to probate. That is no different from the previous IACS scheme arrangements. There were always delays because of probate, breakdown of relationships or changes on farms. In 2006, the RPA achieved its target, which is why for 10 months we heard nothing on “Farming Today” about single farm payments. It was not an issue. The target of paying 96.14 per cent of the fund by 30 June was achieved. The figure now stands at more than 99 per cent. Out of a total of 108,000, there are 115 cases where no payment has been made and a further 110, where, at the beginning of this week, partial payments had been made and the top-up remains to be paid. If necessary, I can give further information on the hill allowance. That is where the RPA stands. By any stretch of the imagination, the overwhelming majority of its work is a success. As I said at Question Time, we are paying more farmers more money earlier than we did last year. I can be confident of that, but I will not give any dates.

In terms of my response, Defra has been mauled over today, sometimes in a very unfair way. It is involved in a complex range of difficult tasks, as was identified at the Second Reading of the Climate Change Bill. It is staffed by a team who are working hard to assist the industry in becoming second to none. Defra and its staff want a thriving, sustainable and profitable farming industry. It is part of our strategic objectives, which is laid out in the public service agreements from the Comprehensive Spending Review. The strategy is no different. It was set out in the sustainable food and farming strategy. It detailed how industry, government and consumers work together to secure a sustainable future for the industry. There was a vision to create a policy framework to help farmers compete successfully.

Yesterday, travelling along George Street, I was reminded of the Plumgarths vans in Cumbria. They were initiated by the farmer of the year, who created a brand new business for local food producers in Cumbria. They serve 18 Asda superstores, one of which I went to visit, which are leading on using local food. I was thinking about the vans belonging to the farmer who did it himself with initial support from various agencies and now assist massive amounts of local producers and supermarkets, as well as local hotels. They are not in competition, but are working together. I make no apology for giving Plumgarths and Asda a plug.

We have to focus on being a smarter regulator in order for the department to being able to deliver. The number of people in the department is not the issue that counts. People have referred to this, but I cannot go beyond what has been leaked in the press. Being a smarter regulator does not necessarily mean having the same number of people doing exactly the same jobs that they have been doing for a while. We need to make public food procurement better. To that extent, I plead guilty as a failure. The noble Lord used my words: French farming Ministers would not stand for what happens here. It is unpatriotic not to use local produce where it is available, and it is available. It is as simple as that. More government departments should do it. In the health service and education it is improving slowly, but in a couple of our key departments, it is not good enough. Defra pushes on this and I have told it: “It is not your job to count the figures. It is your job to change the policies. That is what we are accountable for under the public service agreement”.

So, this has been a difficult year, as everyone has realised. There has been unpredictable weather—no doubt we will get the blame for that as well. Whatever flood prevention measures we take, more than six inches of rain in 24 hours would overcome many of our defences. Volatile commodity markets have certainly contributed, and that volatility may continue. For arable and milk, it is not bad at the moment; but we must be aware that it is still volatile.

The summer flooding provided a stark reminder of what we face if climate change becomes a regular feature, particularly in the middle of the growing season. No amount of planning would have prevented that. The Environment Agency is also a Defra-funded body—we fund it, but do not run it—and it played a key role in that respect. I want to pay tribute once again to the emergency staff of the Environment Agency, who never got the proper thanks for the work that they did at the switching station at Walham, near Gloucester. They did not finish that work off, but they started by identifying it, and moved. The members of the emergency team of the Environment Agency were not on television with their badges and uniforms, but they actually prevented that flooding. Had Walham failed, it would have knocked out electricity for half a million homes.

In many of the problems, agriculture has a key part to play. Farmers are among the first to feel the effects of climate change, and to be in a good position to manage those effects. We will be able to debate that during proceedings on the Climate Change Bill. The Stern review on the economics of climate change said that agriculture accounts for 14 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That is why we need farmers to adapt to climate change; it is that simple. Defra is putting millions of pounds into research programmes to assist with that, particularly to reduce agricultural emissions. That is a substantial amount of money.

However, that money is just a drop in the ocean compared with the amount that we are pumping into the English countryside. The England Rural Development Programme has a budget of £3.9 billion, of which £3.3 billion will be allocated to agri-environment and other land management schemes, including the environmental stewardship scheme, which is open to every farmer in the country. Some £600 million will be made available to agriculture and forestry to make them more competitive and to enhance opportunity in rural areas. I am pleased to tell the House that this programme has, within the past 24 hours, been agreed by the EU. We will proceed to full implementation as soon as possible.

Of all the things that I heard, the one that worried me—and I do not get too worried—was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. The stopping of receipts for the entry level stewardship application form was done only while awaiting agreement on the rural development programme. Because neither the money nor the agreement from Europe was there, we had to stop processing applications. That is a huge tranche of money, but applications will now start to be processed again and all of the associated paperwork will start to flow. The noble Lord was quite right that people should receive acknowledgements for their applications.

Currently, over half of English farmland is under agri-environment schemes. That is more that 2 million hectares, and under those schemes farmers are managing in excess of 180,000 kilometres of hedgerow—enough to stretch around the world four and a half times. That is far different from the time when the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, were running MAFF. In those days, the farmers were paid to dig out the hedgerows. It may have been as a result of the Common Market and everything else, but that was the reality. In one six-year period, a quarter of this country’s hedgerows went, but we are paying farmers to reinstate and manage them to increase biodiversity and maintain the wildlife of this country. That costs money, which is coming from Defra—nowhere else.

Lord Jopling
I think that the Minister has his dates slightly wrong. If he is kind enough to look it all up again, he should find that I was the Minister who started paying farmers to reinstate hedgerows again.

Lord Rooker
My Lords, on that, the noble Lord has my undoubted congratulations. I am simply pointing out what I know; that over a six-year period before 1997—since I remember being challenged about this during my first time round in MAFF—we lost a quarter of hedgerows in the country, because farmers were paid to take them out. It is true that a lot of policy changes occurred before 1997, including on the building of supermarkets in out-of-town areas. For that important change in policy, John Gummer deserved the praise. So I do congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, as I mean none of this personally. My point was just that farmers were paid to take out the hedgerows, and we are paying substantial sums of money to maintain and put them back—and that is coming from today’s Defra, which was described as shambolic here.

For another practical scheme to improve the natural and historic environment, look no further than the ruined Norman moat and castle at Kilpeck in Herefordshire. Natural England—another agency to which we pay money, but do not run—negotiated a new agreement that changed the way the land was farmed, which in turn enabled the area’s archaeological remains to come out of damaging cultivation. Livestock was brought back on to its small fields, which gave a purpose to restoring the ancient species-rich hedgerows that has helped to bring one of our ancient landscapes back to life.

In addition to the flooding, the summer has also seen a number of animal disease outbreaks, which have been listed here. In response to each outbreak the department worked along with key stakeholders. Not a single major decision has been taken in this situation without consulting a massive range in the chain of industry stakeholders. Swift action was required. Being up in Cumbria for three days—about as far as you can get from Surrey while remaining in England—I realise that farmers understood that, with foot and mouth, we had to move fast to shut down movement completely, not knowing where it came from but having proved that we had learnt the lessons of 2001. That has had an enormous cost effect on the whole industry, as I have admitted more than once, but I make no point about that. The contingency plans were delivered effectively on the ground.

The Animal Health agency, another much-maligned part of Defra that used to masquerade as the State Veterinary Service, also provides a crucial service to farmers. It has 1,700 staff in 25 offices around the country and is the first port of call at Defra for most farmers. We need to have those offices around the country. I am conscious that this was raised with me by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, who may have disappeared—I beg his pardon, for he has not. All that the noble Earl said is exactly true, from his own circumstances. However, those 25 offices are managing the economic and public health risks of animal disease. In addition to their 700 field staff, they work closely across the country with several thousand local veterinary inspectors from the private sector. That is our resource; on call and under contract as part of the contingency plan, and that resource reacted rapidly to the foot and mouth outbreak and to avian influenza.

Within hours, nearly 300 people were working from the local disease control centres—first, for foot and mouth, in Reigate and Guildford and then, for avian influenza, from Bury St. Edmunds. Now, those people came from somewhere, but not from those local areas. They had packed their bags at half an hour’s notice to come from virtually as far north as John O’Groat’s, or from Land’s End, as part of the Defra team to assist the farming community in those areas to manage and stamp out these diseases. Again, they were working with our stakeholders. I am not getting into the blame culture, for the reality is that when the disease was there we had to deal with it.

Therefore, we have established robust frameworks to deal with such things, and clearly we will have a debate about cost-sharing responsibility. I cannot answer your Lordships’ detailed questions on that, but nothing will be rushed and there will be a document around which we can debate. We can have no debate without a document, and I freely admit that I have pushed within the department to have one so that we can have a genuine debate. Frankly, no one will talk to me in a serious way without one.

Among other opportunities, I have discussed the public sector food procurement initiative, which we are continuing to push. Equally important to the framework is regulation. I agree with much of what has been said here about over-regulation, and with some of the examples given. I was given direct examples by farmers and others during my three days in Cumbria. We have a policy of delivering a 25 per cent reduction, and we are about to publish our annual assessment of that. I do not know the publication date, but it is before the House finishes for Christmas.

We want to look at how we can work with farmers. I was given the example of four different agencies coming on to a farm in seven working days, some of which might have been duplicating, and some of which were completely unnecessary. We have to stop such things happening over a seven-day working period—some came without any warning, ignoring all the biosecurity arrangements at the farm gate as well. I am going to deal with that. There must be more co-ordination. We have to have a degree of regulation for public safety and traceability, but it must be done in a more efficient way.

The Whole Farm Approach—the IT system that Defra set up—is part of the answer. It provides guidance to farmers, reduces the need for inspections and helps with registration for the waste exemption licences. It went live last year and so far 11,000 farmers have signed up to it. People might think that farmers would not bother about using new technology, but 11,000 have signed up for it. We believe that all of that can assist in providing a thriving, long-term future, although I fully accept that there will be some major problems.

I will finish at this point. I also accept that there are problems with arables and that the milk price has changed, but the worst affected, most damaged farmers are the hill sheep farmers. They cannot do anything else. I was in two valleys, both of them six-mile cul-de-sacs. I had to drive from one to the other, which was the drive of a lifetime I can tell noble Lords. They were both cul-de-sacs, so it was difficult to get across them. I knew about the families I was going to meet before I got there. I knew their ages, whether they had children who wanted to stay in farming or had left. I knew whether the farms were tenanted or owned. I could work out from the information that I had been given by my NFU colleagues and others that, in 10 years’ time, they could both be wilderness valleys if no one goes into farm them.

We have to ask ourselves as a society whether we want the landscape maintained. Should the landscape be maintained for city dwellers who use it for their recreation? If we think that that is a good thing, we have to put a value on it and say that it is for the public good to maintain the landscape; otherwise it is a wilderness. Those are questions that we must ask. How we pay that, I do not know. Quite clearly, it will not work expecting sheep to go to market and come back through the food system. It appears that that is not a viable proposition. Those questions must be asked and answered. Otherwise, we will see the destruction of rural communities and the destruction of our landscape at the same time. In 10 years’ time, I do not want to be someone who is fingered for being part of that.

14:43:00

Baroness Shephard of Northwold
My Lords, as expected, the debate has been knowledgeable and expert. We have had points of view from every sector of the industry, from England, Scotland and Wales, and from the worlds temporal and spiritual. I should like to add my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle on his outstanding maiden speech.

I thank the Minister for his reference to my book, which is out of date, out of print and in my garage. If he would like a copy I would be very happy to let him have one, to know that his life is not necessarily the worst ever lived by a Minister of Agriculture.

No one doubts the Minister's diligence and enthusiasm, and his response this afternoon demonstrates that he has listened not only to the concerns expressed in this debate but to those that he hears as he goes around the country. He mentioned the changes that Defra is having to cope with. It is because we in this House wish to see Defra in a strong position to cope with those changes that we called this debate. I know that he understands that. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Schools

14:43:00

Baroness Perry of Southwark
rose to call attention to the case for an action plan to make opportunity more equal in the United Kingdom by raising school standards and increasing the number of good school places; and to move for Papers.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, it is with pleasure that I move this Motion. The quality of education in our country is an important topic for debate and one in which this House has much to contribute. I am pleased also to speak about the policy Green Paper issued last week by the Conservative Party entitled Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap. The paper sets out many of the party's proposals for improving the provision of education for children and young people in our society.

Many things contribute to the quality of a good school. Hundreds of thousands of hours have been devoted to research which explores what makes a good school. Politicians of all parties have struggled to find the golden bullet to transform our education system overnight, yet we heard only last week that we have fallen in the international league tables in key aspects of performance in reading, maths and science.

As David Cameron says in the Green Paper,

“Britain today is a country where it is harder, not easier, for children to achieve their potential”.

During Labour's 10 years in office, social mobility has stalled and we have fallen down the international league tables for educational achievement. That is both socially unjust and economically inefficient— an unforgivable betrayal of our children's future. Teaching quality and successful learning are, however, complex issues and politicians should tread on this ground with great care and without preconceived prejudice. We have suffered for a decade from the belief in Whitehall and of politicians that the way to improve standards was central control, bureaucratic directives, oppressive targets and a punitive inspection regime, which has demoralised and disempowered teachers. The evidence is starkly clear; that the top-down approach has not worked. Something quite different is needed.

Lest anyone wishes to argue that things are not so bad—and no doubt we will hear an upbeat defence of the current system from the Minister—it is worth looking at some of the downside of the facts, while, importantly, acknowledging the splendid work that goes on in almost half of our schools, and indeed the splendid and brave work that is done by many of the teachers even in our least successful schools.

There is, however, worrying evidence that for a large number of young people, school contributes little of relevance or value to their lives. The curriculum on offer is manifestly unsuited to their needs, interests and motivation, so they fail to achieve any worthwhile qualification. They leave school at the earliest opportunity and sometimes truant even earlier. A third of a million pupils fail to gain five good GCSEs including English and maths every year, while 130,000 young people each year fail to obtain a single C grade.

Sad though those figures are, they reveal a more unacceptable problem; that of social disadvantage. Clever children from the poorest backgrounds fall progressively behind less clever children from higher socio-economic backgrounds. By the end of compulsory schooling, at key stage 4, children eligible for free school meals are on average 40 per cent behind their contemporaries. That is unacceptable in any society and policy must address that issue not only for the sake of the future economy but, above all, for the sake of social justice.

The stakes for young people are high. Research has shown that five good GCSEs generate a financial return between 23 per cent and 27.5 per cent. Getting only one to four good GCSEs contributes less than half that financial return. For grades D or below, the return is zero. This is where life chances are won or lost for the majority of children, yet the difference between the best and worst schools is stark. The top 200 state schools get 95 per cent of their pupils five good GCSEs, while in the poorest schools, it is just four per cent.

There is wide recognition that we have far too many schools where standards are below expectation. Ofsted reported that of the secondary schools inspected in the autumn and spring of 2006-07, 51 per cent were judged below the standard of good and 10 per cent were inadequate. Parents in more socially deprived areas may well despair of finding the ideal school for their child. The challenge to the Government is how to respond to that failure—a failure to which their own well intentioned policies have contributed.

The simple, sad truth is that there are not enough good schools to satisfy the parental desire to find one. The extent of parental desperation was shown in a recent poll in which just under half of parents with children at secondary school admitted that they would be prepared to use any underhand tactic to get their child into the right school. Those tactics include embellishing their religious beliefs, renting accommodation near the school or using an alternative address at which they have no intention of living.

For far too long, the debate in this country has been about the endless zero-sum-gain distribution of who gets the good school places. The real question is not about admissions policies, it is how we increase the total number of good school places so that no parent has to be disappointed. It is therefore to be warmly welcomed that the Conservative Party is taking as a model for policy the experience of Sweden’s past 15 years—another country with high educational outcomes. This system allows new high-quality, non-selective state schools to be created, free from any political control. All parents have the power to take the child out of the state school with which they are dissatisfied and apply to one of these new independent schools. The schools are free and the money follows the pupil from the former school to the new school on entry.

The Swedish experience demonstrates that thousands of children from the poorest areas have escaped from underperforming local schools to be given a chance in life. Crucially, this degree of parental choice and parental involvement has brought about a rise in standards in all state schools. In Britain, the new academies, just like their predecessors—the city technology colleges of the late Lord Joseph’s vision—have often been able to demonstrate the same lifting of standards and life chances for children from all walks of life. I freely acknowledge the wisdom of this Government in establishing these new independent academies within the state system, but it is sad that the Government have allowed so many restrictions on the setting up of these schools that the policy has not flourished as widely as it should.

The Conservative Green Paper promises 220,000 new school places in schools which would enjoy a great degree of freedom. That number would meet the demand from every parent who lost their appeal for the school of first choice in the most deprived boroughs. As in Sweden, the money would follow the pupil, but more than that, the Green Paper promises a premium for pupils from the most deprived backgrounds, so helping to ensure that they get first choice of the best schools and best teaching. To implement this policy as quickly as possible, the current obstacles of centralised bureaucracy and planning rules which prevent new schools being established would be removed. Parents, charities, philanthropists and existing school federations would be encouraged to set up such schools in areas where they were most needed.

Good discipline is a necessary condition of learning, and it must be a priority of government to restore the authority and status of heads and teachers, to enable them to exercise their proper role. When pupils can with impunity defy and insult teachers—even sometimes with physical violence—discipline has vanished, and learning is unlikely if not impossible. I reflect sometimes on my small, four foot 11 inch high mother, who was a phenomenally successful secondary school teacher, telling me, “You just walk in and expect the children to behave. When they see that—they do!”. I wonder if the training of teachers today gives that sort of confidence to new teachers.

I therefore welcome the Conservative Party’s commitment to shifting the balance of power in the classroom back in favour of the teacher, and in the school, back in favour of the head. This will mean greater freedom for teachers in exercising their authority, recognition by government of the professionalism of teachers and an inspection system which enhances the role of the teacher, and disseminates widely those factors which enhance pupils’ achievement.

In recent years there has been too much inspection which has demoralised the profession through naming and shaming bad teachers and failing schools. I have said in this House before that telling people they are bad and shaming them publicly does not make them better and it demoralises their high-performing colleagues. If the authority of teachers in their classrooms is to be restored, and if inspection is to truly bear on standards, inspectors must look for the growth potential and work with teachers to build on the best of practice even in the most difficult and underperforming schools.

The Green Paper promises improvements in Ofsted’s methods with more detailed inspections for schools where attainment is poor, and lighter inspection regimes for those schools where the outcomes are good. I welcome this, as I believe teachers will, too. Discipline, however, depends also on interesting, even inspiring, teaching which engages the pupil from the moment a lesson begins. If children are bored, and the teaching is lacklustre, discipline can quickly become a problem. The expertise of the teacher in her or his subject is central to their ability to engage the imagination and motivation of the pupils. Well qualified teachers, up to date and confident in their subject, are the surest guarantee of good discipline and successful learning. The shortage of teachers in the sciences and in many other key subjects is therefore a matter of concern where government action is clearly needed.

It is not only what goes on in the classroom which establishes a climate of good discipline in a school. I recently visited the new Petchey Academy in Hackney, where the children are seated for lunch at small tables, with one child in charge as host, serving the others politely from well arranged serving dishes. Total order and discipline are taken for granted. This in an area where many of the children have never experienced a family meal seated at table. The overall effect was most inspiring, and the efforts of the children to make me as a visitor part of their lunchtime conversation was a tribute to the climate the principal and staff had established.

Teachers are the most important ingredient of educational standards, and policy must be directed towards raising the morale, motivation and thence performance of the profession, which has been so severely dented by the climate of central control and loss of autonomy under this Government. There seems to be a belief among politicians and the press that the education establishment is somehow opposed to traditional teaching methods and a strong curriculum. With my experience in recent years, I have no idea where this idea stems from. The teachers I meet, the union leaders and the schools I visit are wedded to traditional methods—indeed, it is salutary to remember that the much-quoted success of synthetic phonics in two Scottish authorities was an initiative from the teachers themselves, not driven by any politician. Perhaps it is the long-ago memories of the 1960s and ’70s, when a fundamental error was indeed made by education enthusiasts who believed that innovative and non-traditional methods which were made to succeed by a handful of exceptional teachers and heads, could be also made to work on a national scale.

In the report of the Conservative policy commission on public services, of which I was co-chair with my right honourable friend Stephen Dorrell, we recommend a new partnership with the teaching profession, in which senior professionals have a part in developing policy and an input in determining the criteria for their own accountability to the public. We also recommend the establishment of a royal college of teachers, on the model of the royal colleges in the medical profession. This would be, we suggest, a body to give recognition to a cadre of senior members of the profession, still in practice, who demonstrate both academic achievement and clinical insight.

Such measures would be more than symbolic, important though the symbolism would be. They would provide Ministers with a body of professional expertise on which to draw, and a link between politicians and the teaching profession which has been sadly lacking in recent years. It is striking that the country which enjoys consistently the highest standards of pupil attainment is Finland, where teachers have a high social status and the brightest and best of the nation’s graduates enter the teaching profession. No, my Lords, they are not better paid than our teachers, they are simply selected to the course of training by the most rigorous academic standards. While in this country we too often accept applicants with very modest academic attainment to train as teachers, in Finland entry to the courses is highly competitive, and only those with the highest qualifications gain entry.

The teaching profession has no wish to return to the long-ago days of low accountability and a lack of rigour in method and content which characterised some of the 1960s and ’70s here and in the US. We have today a profession of which we should be proud, with high professional standards, and solid academic achievement in the subjects taught. It is now widely recognised that the traditional methods of teaching, with which teachers are themselves most comfortable, achieve the highest outcomes in pupil attainment. High expectations, close monitoring of progress at classroom and school level and firm discipline all achieve results dear to the hearts of teachers as well as to parents and the general public. It is these principles to which the Conservatives have committed themselves. I beg to move for Papers.

14:58:00

Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for securing the debate and also for attracting such distinguished company. I will leave the detailed response in the capable hands of the Minister, tempted though I am to make some reflections of my own. In part, the noble Baroness’s vision is somewhat stark, to say the least. The debate’s title begs some questions: what do we mean by “equality of opportunity”? What do we mean by school standards and by good schools? Do we have a common understanding or just individual assumptions?

I would argue that the Government have developed several strategies to do what the noble Baroness seeks. Clearly one aspect of achievement and of being a good school is academic progress. It is unquestionable that standards have risen over the past 10 years. Funding per pupil has doubled; there are record numbers of adults in the classroom, a number of strategies to combat underperformance, more personalised learning and so on. The number of teachers and support staff is at its highest for 25 years. Ofsted has said that today’s teachers are the best generation ever. I have to say that observing some of the teaching in the school where I am a governor confirms that claim.

Of course, challenges remain, but this Government have set themselves firmly on course to improve the lot of children and to improve schools. This is apparent in their development of the Every Child Matters agenda, their concern about child poverty, the Children and Young Persons Bill and a Children’s plan for the next 10 years, in addition to school initiatives. I wonder where in the history of government anyone has tried to support children more, and I think that credit is due here.

Since 1997, the number of schools where fewer than 25 per cent of pupils achieve five or more GCSEs has been reduced from 616 to 26. Primary standards are at a high level. In 2007, 80 per cent of 11 year-olds achieved the target level four or above in English and 77 per cent in maths. In 1997, less than two-thirds of 11 year-olds achieved this standard in either subject. I am sure that the Minister will give many more indicators of success. But schools cannot do it all. A member of the party opposite in another place accused the Government of blaming parents. I do not see it like this. Parents have to be supported and the Government's family policies show that this is being done but parents also need to be held to account for setting aspirations and boundaries for their children. Learning and appropriate behaviour and expectations start in the home. Sadly, this is sometimes missing and schools have a great deal to do in making up for such a deficit. This is one of the reasons personal, social and health education is so important and I will return to that subject in a moment.

I want now to look at what I think a good school should do. This was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry. It should foster and encourage an atmosphere where learning can take place and where social skills are developed. For some children, schools provide the nurturing environment which their home does not. A good school develops a love of learning, ignites aspirations, curiosity and good communications skills. It is not just about academic achievement and league tables. A good school fosters physical activity, music, art and culture. Indeed, I argue that academic achievement in some schools, including the one where I am a governor, is not possible without the preconditions of nurturing, developing social skills and having boundaries. A good school does not allow bullying. It has clear values and a positive ethos. It encourages staff to develop and be ambitious. It involves pupils in decisions about the school, perhaps through a school council. It has concern for the personal, social, moral and health education of its pupils.

On this last issue, may I ask the Minister when personal, social and health education will become statutory in schools? When will citizenship be statutory in primary schools? When will we really consider well-being and the social and emotional aspects of learning worthy of high importance? Earlier this week, I worked with the Parliamentary Education Unit and a group of primary school teachers to begin developing materials about Parliament for use in primary schools. It was an exciting day and promises useful results. One of the things which struck me was the teachers' wish to link such work on Parliament to the wider issues of citizenship and PSHE and their vision of being able to translate this into geography, maths, history and English issues. Personal, social and health education and citizenship, as well as being important in their own right, give rise to wider learning.

PSHE is not just about topics such as nutrition, safety, drugs and sex education, it is about how people conduct their lives and how they develop core self-worth, which enables them to have a positive regard for others. It is about encouraging self-respect, which encourages respect for others and for the environment in its broadest sense. It is about enabling young people to feel in charge of their lives and not wafted between contradictory forces.

The school where I am a governor, which my noble friend the Minister has visited, has a strong programme of personal, social and health education, with a deliberate emphasis on fostering self-esteem in pupils so that they are confident, esteem others, communicate and learn the rules of behaviour. Each class sets its own rules and pupils monitor these themselves. Inspectors have remarked on the calm atmosphere in the school, the self-discipline of the pupils and their care for others and the environment. The school I am talking about is not an easy one. Most pupils receive free school meals, some do not speak English on entry and parents are difficult to engage. Nevertheless, the levels that pupils reach in academic achievement tests are in some cases quite remarkable. Some children move from a very low base of behaviour and achievement to good levels. I note in today’s primary school league tables for London that the English results in my school are higher than those in some schools which are above it in the league tables generally. I find that quite remarkable. I am certain that this happens because of innovative, inspiring teaching but also because of the positive ethos developed by personal, social and health education across the curriculum, and by the involvement of pupils in initiatives such as the healthy schools standard, the Sport England active mark, the UNICEF rights respecting school programme and many local and national awards.

The school’s strong policy on PSHE includes the aims of increasing self-esteem, finding ways of resolving conflict, exploring values, offering opportunity and guidance on how to learn. I believe that such aspects of learning enable children and young people to go on learning and to be self-respecting and respect others.

Yet I hear that four schools in the north-east have recently dropped PSHE in favour of something called “financial management”. Research at Manchester University indicates that PSHE in schools is being significantly reduced. Yes, efforts are being made to train teachers and a new specialist association has been set up, but there are 26,000 schools and we are training 2,000 teachers a year to deliver PSHE. Some of those trained will change job, retire, or have breaks from teaching. At this rate it will take 50 years to train teachers in PSHE, by which time the turnover will have caught up with the training. This important area of the curriculum should not be left to chance. Can the Minister offer any words of hope?

I have ended on a plea, but I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for providing a forum to make that plea and for enabling me to reflect on the positive achievements made by this Government for children and for schools.

15:07:00

Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for introducing this important subject. I add my congratulations to hers to all the schools, children and teachers who work so hard and do so well. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said about what makes a good school. There can be no more important subject than discussing how we might help every child to achieve his or her potential, but in doing so we need to reflect on what is a good school. To me a good school is not just one that shows academic achievement; it is one that turns out children who are caring, kind, tolerant, sensitive and enthusiastic about life and learning and who will turn out to be well balanced, good citizens for this country, enjoying themselves and making a good contribution to their communities.

In that context, talking about school structures and school standards is a bit like taking a journey from London to Glasgow but starting in Birmingham. On Tuesday, I spoke at a conference on how to achieve the best for children in the run-up to the publication of the Children’s Plan, which we all look forward to with such enthusiasm. The agenda divided the work into four headings: prevention through universal and targeted services; personalisation, tailoring services to help a child to reach its full potential; positive childhood, helping a child to be healthy, safe and happy; and working with families, finding out what support they need. I took issue with this, not because I did not agree with the headings but because I thought that they were the wrong way round. If a child is not healthy, happy and safe, he or she will not learn.

Family support must come first. The people who are most influential in the life of a child are, of course, the parents, if only because they spend more time with the child than anybody else and have a keener interest in that child’s success than any professional ever could, however good. Parenting is very difficult, but we have nine months’ notice of it. We really have no excuse for not helping parents. Of course, helping parents is very cost-effective, because the vast majority of parents have more than one child. If you help one parent, you usually help several children. Child development is absolutely crucial to future learning and lifetime happiness. It is a complex issue and we do not learn about it in schools. Parents can often benefit from the assistance of highly trained professionals. I saw that last week when I visited TreeHouse—I think that the board is chaired by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones—which is a school for very special children who are on the autism spectrum. I have never seen a better example of family engagement, personalised learning and multidisciplinary working. I would like to send a bouquet of Christmas roses to all the staff, parents and children at TreeHouse.

I can understand why the organisers of the conference that I was at put prevention first. Prevention is better than cure, so early identification is the key. Parents are the key to early identification. The early years are not just the best time to address issues but the most cost-effective time. That is the time that benefits the child most so that it does not lose any time before its special needs are addressed. Then what? What if a special need is identified that is preventing that child from reaching its full potential and from benefiting from the education available to it? I can tell noble Lords what happens if the needs are not addressed and it will come as no surprise. If the needs are not addressed in the classroom, children will become disruptive and they will behave badly. They might be excluded from school or get into crime. That costs us all a great deal of money in the end. So we need integrated services that put the child at the centre and listen to its voice and that of its parents or carers.

We need to do that not just for the sake of the children with special needs, but also for the sake of the other children in the class whose education is disrupted if that child is creating mayhem and distracting the teacher’s attention. It is for every child. How do we get there? It is not through an enormous, expensive, risky database. I am glad that the Minister for Children has announced that the ContactPoint database has been postponed, given all the recent scandals about lost data. We get there through changing the mindset of professionals and through good leadership. It is about the training for understanding other disciplines and when and how to involve them and interact with them. That is what I saw at TreeHouse. It has the advantage, because proximity helps: you see other professionals working together with your little charges. That is why children’s centres and Sure Start schemes, which this Government introduced, are a very good idea, as are extended schools, which give professionals the opportunity to work in that way.

Parents do not care what letters you have after your name. They just want you to work effectively together to help their child. They do not want to have to keep giving the same information over and over again, which is why a certain amount of record keeping and the common assessment framework are not only necessary but desirable. Parents do not want to be stigmatised. That is why we must start with a universal service that has no stigma and which has the potential to reach every mother in the land.

I am not talking about the obstetrician or midwife who delivers the baby; I am talking about the health visitor, who should have a much bigger and longer role—in particular they should stay on longer in the case of those families in most difficulty. I am not just talking about “yummy mummies” groups, but about those hard-to-reach families who are suspicious of authority. Parents learn from and feel supported by one another. Health visitors are in a very good position, with their professional knowledge, to facilitate groups of parents who can support and learn from one another and from the professional expertise of the health visitor. This must not be the nanny state taking over and knowing what is best for your child. It has to be voluntary and wanted, enabling and empowering parents rather than taking over from them. That may involve helping them to train and to get a job, thereby helping to alleviate child poverty, which this Government have done a great deal about.

I now turn to school structures. You only have to look at any school to which the parents have made a conscious choice to send their child, for academic, religious or selection reasons, to see how important parental involvement and commitment are. The schools that succeed are those where the parents are really involved. Many elements make a good school, and I hark back to what I said earlier about it not just being about academic results. Today’s league tables are worrying, because they are still there. I notice in the TES this week that the high master of St Paul’s said that he believed that league tables played mainly to the media’s desire to publish rankings rather than having any benefit for schools themselves and that they are the worst thing to have happened to education. I agree with him.

I worry about the impression of how Ofsted inspects and how it rates a school. Schools will say, “If we are not being measured on it, we won’t do it, because we do not have time”. It is important that Ofsted makes it clear that it takes into account all those measures that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, was talking about. Children will thrive in schools that have good leadership and good teaching, good facilities and buildings—I wish that they all had those—an appropriate level of testing that is supportive and in the interests of the child and not the Government, the involvement of the community and accountability to it, and a supportive system of monitoring how well public money is being spent. Most of all, there is putting the individual child at the centre and ensuring that the resources are sufficient for that child. My noble friend Lady Sharp will say a little more about the pupil premium. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has scrutinised Lib Dem policy on that and agrees with it. Your Lordships’ House will hear more about that when my noble friend Lady Sharp stands up in a few minutes.

15:17:00

Lord Dearing
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for introducing this debate. It has been a privilege to listen to her and to the other two noble Baronesses who have spoken.

I will begin with a question. It is not my question but one posed by Mr Brown at this autumn’s Labour Party conference. He asked:

“Why should we accept so many children destined to fail even before their life’s journey has begun?”.
 

By way of response, Mr Brown shared with the conference what he had learnt from a visit to a school in Hackney, where he sat next to a six year-old called Max. Mr Brown said:

“Max had been falling behind at school, struggling to read. But because of the Every Child a Reader programme, he was now receiving one to one coaching, and he wanted to read us a story”.
 

He continued:

“Today in education, private schools offer one to one tuition. But why shouldn’t all pupils and not just some benefit from extra personal help? And because I want every child to be a reader, every child to be able to count, we have decided that one to one tuition will be there in our schools not just for Max, but for 300,000 children in English and 300,000 in maths”.
 

Brilliant. Let us do it and do it fast. Could the Minister in his reply indicate what timetable the Government have in mind? Can the scheme be extended right away to those in secondary schools, including those who are soon to leave, who are illiterate, innumerate, whom we have failed, and who—I quote the Prime Minster again—

“are destined to fail even before their life’s journey has begun”?

I have one point to add. The cause of the problem—reading or sums—needs to be expertly diagnosed. Either every primary school should have a specially trained teacher to identify the cause of, and the best teaching approach to respond to, the needs of the child, or the local authority should provide that expert diagnostic service.

Reference has been made to the league tables. There is one thing that we could be doing before Mr Brown’s proposals are implemented. I have in mind the league tables for key stages 1 and 2. The placards that I saw when I walked into the House today demonstrate the weight and influence that league tables carry in public opinion. I agree that SATs have done good, because they focused our minds on achievement. Goodness knows, we needed to improve it and still need to improve it, but inevitably SATs can lead to teachers concentrating on the near borderline children who have a chance of reaching the required standard, to the detriment of those who have no chance. Those are the children who are damaged. To avoid the damage caused by the present SATs and league tables, at least at primary level, we should either drop SATs completely until Mr Brown’s policy has been fully implemented or restrict the information on them to value added, which is the whole purpose of education. We can monitor national and sub-national standards by sampling, using SATs-like tests. 

In the highly competitive business of education—competition by schools for pupils and reputation and to avoid the risk of closure through inadequate performance—the league tables produced from the SATs and public examinations inevitably have a powerful effect. While they have had an effect on things that are tested, they are not necessarily the same thing as preparing children for life. Therefore, they need to be rethought. An example that perplexed and troubled me when I was carrying out the review on languages was the influence of the SATs on head teachers who perceive languages as difficult and especially demanding in the levels of marking that apply to them. What has happened since languages became an entitlement as opposed to a requirement is that the proportion of pupils taking languages has fallen from 80 per cent to below 50 per cent. SATs have a powerful influence, as any head teacher will tell you.

My third point is on managing the transition from primary to secondary school, in which those who are furthest behind are in danger of being left behind for good. They move from the good shepherd of the primary school—a small school where they are known—to the anonym of the large secondary without a good shepherd. They get lost, give up, become disruptive and are destined to fail.

We should do three things, which I ask to be considered—I am not expert enough to be sure. First, secondary schools should be accountable to the inspectorate for using effectively the information on each child that they get from primary schools, incorporating that information into the plans for teaching that child, especially for children who fall behind. Secondly, the secondary school should continue a similar arrangement to that at primary schools where there is a good shepherd who knows the child inside out. Thirdly, there should be setting by ability. Again, I quote Mr Brown, this time from his Mansion House speech on 26 June. He said:

“We need a renewed focus on setting by ability in the key subjects essential to our competitiveness”—
 

I would add, to the child’s chances—

“like maths, English, science and languages as the norm in our schools”.

My final point is one that I raised in a debate last month. Mr Brown said, and I think that this Prime Minister of ours gets a lot of things right:

“Past generations unlocked just some of the talents of some of the people. In the new Britain of this generation, we must unlock all the talents of all the people”.
 

As I said in that debate over a month ago, commission after commission has lamented the way in which we have neglected the development of technology and skills in education. Not only have we thereby failed, in particular, young people whose talents and potential lie in doing things rather than through books, but we have been at a competitive disadvantage. Germany, which has been an exemplar held up to us committees of inquiry, has retained a large and successful manufacturing sector. Look at what has happened to ours. In that area, we have been playing catch-up, but we have never done it. What the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, said last December is what the Samuelson commission on technical education said in 1883; namely, that we have advanced but our competitors have advanced faster still. We are in fact 10 years behind the leaders. The Financial Times said in an editorial in 1990:

“The absence of a tier of technical schools is the biggest single failure of British post-war educational policy”.
 

The Building Schools for the Future policy gives us a once-in-50-years chance to provide specially built colleges equipped to the best standards, with continually updated equipment, within the framework of the Government’s policies for academies and trust schools promoted by universities, FE colleges and business working in partnership. These colleges would be vehicles for delivering the highly technical parts of the suite of special diplomas that the Government are introducing. They would prepare pupils to enter higher education for a technology-oriented degree or to progress through an apprenticeship. I am not talking about a narrow technical education alone; I am talking about an education with a particular focus, matching that of the best in the world—not just in Europe, but in the Far East, for example, from where we may have much to learn. I say again that I am not just talking about an education in technology, because I believe, for example, that the arts are for every child and young person. I invite the Government and the other two main parties to reflect with an open mind on that issue against two criteria: how best to develop the potential of every teenager and how best to remedy some of the most serious defects in the British economy. I believe that such colleges have a contribution to make to both.

15:26:00

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for initiating the debate. I shall not engage with the broad perspectives of the Green Paper, but I can reassure her that if she were to walk into a classroom in which I was a pupil I would certainly behave myself very well.

I shall focus on the words “action plan” in the Motion. I believe that many things need to be done and I will perhaps come back to the volume of those at the end of my remarks. However, there are one or two points that I wish to be taken into account by any such action plan, whichever of the political parties is responsible for drawing it up.

The first point is the place of language in primary schools. My remarks come from my own link with a number of primary schools in some of the more difficult areas of this city and, indeed, further north, where there is a particular problem that I hope the Government will address. I commend the Government on the whole prospect of Every Child a Reader, which I think is magnificent because it is essential and at the heart of education. However, a number of our primary schools face a particular difficulty that I do not see being diminished across the piece—in fact, it is growing in some areas. That problem is trying to teach the skills of spoken and written English and reading in schools where a very high proportion of pupils do not have English as their first language, and in which English very often is not the first language of the home, if it is spoken there at all.

There are serious issues here about the ability and opportunity of such children to learn to speak the language in the ways that are naturally available to most of the community. For example, one can go to such schools and find they employ translators on parents’ evenings. I am not critical of that fact. It has to be dealt with and communication with parents, as has been properly emphasised, is fundamental. However, it points to the fact—of which teachers are well aware—that English is sometimes not the first language in many homes and may not be spoken at all. Indeed, there is little conversation in any language in some homes, let alone English. Because of volume factors in certain parts of large cities, English may not be the first language of the playground. Again, the natural opportunities to exercise the skills that all children have the capacity to imbibe are equally reduced, to say the least.

Some localities have significant and sometimes quite sudden rises in immigrant communities. Again, I am not being judgmental; this is a fact we must take account of. It poses a particular problem for schools, as for other public services, and a particular problem for the teaching of reading, writing and speaking English. I want the Government to look at how many schools are particularly affected by this—I am sure that the information is fairly easily available through local authorities and Ofsted—to see whether there is a specific need or problem and then, ideally, target the resources to meet that need. I am well aware of the Every Child a Reader programme and see it having great impact, but there is an additional twist to it. The importance of language does not need stressing: without the basic skills of language, most of the rest of education will be inadequate and, in some cases, even pointless.

While I am on language, I welcome the Government’s positive response to the report and recommendations of my noble friend Lord Dearing. I would love to be able to welcome the Government’s commitment of additional funds to implement some of his recommendations, and hope that the Minister might be able to give us the opportunity to do that soon. May we expect an announcement on the implementation of those recommendations in due course?

The third area on my short checklist is music in schools; I declare an interest as chairman of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. I welcome the Government’s recent initiative and proposals for music in schools, and particularly for the enhancement of the ability to sing within the school and school communities. This is magnificent, and perhaps at last a sign that we are prepared to take music education more seriously than we have in the past. The intention is to improve the ability and opportunity for many children, who have not had it hitherto, to sing well and in groups and communities. I hope that this is the beginning of a more serious engagement with music in schools, and that it will extend to increasing the opportunity for more children to master a musical instrument through the education we provide in the public sector.

The final point on my list for action is more difficult to deliver consistently. The Government must take account, as must those parties who would draw up their own plans, of the constant refrain from huge numbers of teachers and head teachers who find themselves overwhelmed by central initiatives and the paper that goes with them. Whenever one visits schools, that is the constant story. Either they misperceive government intention, in which case the Government and the department should be taking steps to make their intentions plain, or this is a reality. I suspect that it is a reality born of good intentions—but remember what Bernard Shaw said about good intentions: the way to hell is paved with them. I suspect it comes from something we all understand. Ministers and their departments feel the need to be seen to be doing something. Inevitably, therefore, they do. I simply ask them to begin to prioritise, to reduce the number of initiatives. I ask the Minister to take perhaps a little time over Christmas to reflect on the fact that there is such a thing as creative inactivity in this area. Doing something is not always better than not doing something—although, of course, I would expect my own modest list of things to do to be exceptions to such a self-denying ordinance.

15:35:00

Baroness Howells of St Davids
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for calling this debate today. I am proud to say that standards in education have been one of the key objectives of this Government since they came to office in 1997. I am glad to see my noble friend Lord Adonis will be responding to this debate as I know that school standards have been a passion of his during his time in this House and I hope that he will draw attention to the many things the Government have put in place since the previous Prime Minister’s call for “education, education, education”.

Today I would like to focus my attention on just one borough—the London Borough of Lambeth. I have taken a great interest in that borough and I am sure noble Lords who know London will know why. In 1997 there were no outstanding schools in Lambeth; today there are 16 outstanding schools—one of the highest figures for any London borough. In 1997 there were 14 failing schools and currently there are no failing schools. On the basis of improvement, one Lambeth school is now recognised as the sixth best nationally—St Andrews CE. On the basis of value-added education, another Lambeth school is recognised as the eighth best nationally—Kingswood Primary School in West Norwood. In 1997 there were no schools with post-16 provision. Today every Lambeth school either has or has plans for sixth form provision. There were no new secondary schools built in Lambeth for 40 years until the Lambeth Academy was opened in 2001. The Elmgreen School in West Norwood was opened this year; it is the country’s only parent-promoter school. Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton will open next year and there is work towards another secondary school for Brixton under the BSF. All this is because of investment in schools by this Government.

I am pleased that in Lambeth the children of African heritage are now out-performing national standards. Black African heritage pupils form the largest ethnic group there—23.6 per cent. Although recent national research shows that black heritage pupils still lag far behind the average achievement of the majority of their peers, the pupils in Lambeth were consistently the highest achievers at both key stage 2 and GCSE in Lambeth schools between 2000 and 2005.

These improvements have taken place since 1997. All this has been despite having 150 languages spoken in Lambeth schools, something schools outside London are only now starting to cope with and are finding very challenging. But Lambeth is forging ahead despite having had this situation for many years now and I feel that the Government should be proud. I am sure the Minister will agree with me that these successes have been achieved not simply because of the investment and leadership of this Government but by the teachers, the parents and the pupils themselves.

I am old-fashioned when it comes to education. I was educated in the Caribbean during the days of empire. Discipline, respect for your teachers, the three Rs, a map of the world still covered in pink—that is how I can summarise my education in Grenada. People were taught in that old-fashioned way. My generation were better at mental arithmetic, and better at grammar and how to structure sentences. What I attained at my old-fashioned school equipped me well for the rest of my life.

Even in the Caribbean, we have to realise that we must move forward. The Caribbean’s reputation for good schooling has been growing because respect for teachers and respect for elders is still an important facet of raising children. Many black parents still prefer to send their children—and their sons in particular—to schools there.

Attainment in education is one of the key ingredients to equality of opportunity. Children from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds, including many who are black or from other ethnic minorities, need, more than their wealthier peers, to have an excellent education in English, maths and science. I would go further and ask: why should not children from these backgrounds enjoy the benefit of learning other languages?

I believe it is probably a retrograde step that modern languages are no longer compulsory for pupils to GCSE level. In a high-skill service economy in a global world, where communication is vital, those at the bottom need, more than most, to have as many communications tools at their disposal as possible. I would like to see all children in the state sector, not just those in top public schools, have the benefit of understanding the English language through a basic understanding of Latin, but I guess that might make me seem irretrievably out of date.

Discipline is another ingredient of high school standards. That was the hallmark of my education. Sadly, today we have allowed discipline to be eroded in schools and we even allow pupils to sue their teachers.

The most important ingredient is, however, aspiration; and, despite being a black woman in the Caribbean during that era, aspiration is what we were encouraged to have by the bucketful. Higher education was our goal—that must be the standard set for educational aspiration—and nurturing a desire to go on to study and equip oneself with knowledge at the age when education stops being compulsory. Here parents and teachers play a pivotal role; without that twin support, all the government initiatives will come to nothing.

The Minister is a fellow of an Oxford college, and so I am sure that he will be aware of an initiative run by his alma mater in conjunction with the National Black Boys Can Association. This grand scheme was launched at St Anne's College in October this year and it flourishes. It is a very small and organic step-by-step programme to breathe educational aspiration into young black boys. I commend the scheme to your Lordships. By engaging with the boys’ attainment in the key subjects up to GCSE, through the discipline of attending events and lectures and through opening their eyes to the limitless potential, schemes such as the NBBCA hold the key to the future. Only by making a good education a “must have” and doing away with the culture that it is cool or hip to fail will standards of all boys’ education in this country rise.

I know that the noble Lord was instrumental in the academy school in Lambeth. I note too how our leading universities, Oxford and Cambridge, are reported to rebuff my noble friend’s invitation to foster links with academies. I have some sympathy with those universities’ reasoning, and I trust that the Minister will not be unduly hard with them. I hope that my noble friend, in seeking to raise standards in schools, will not limit the horizons of our leading universities to one academy in their locality. I want to see our leading universities spreading their outreach to all schools in all parts of the UK so that all children, like those on Oxford's NBBCA scheme, have the chance to participate in the best education this county has to offer.

We cannot save all the children, but we will save the majority of our children if we remember that they are only children and that they need to be guided.

15:45:00

Lord Howard of Rising
My Lords, I join in the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for introducing this debate. Many of your Lordships have spoken most eloquently and knowledgeably. I would like to speak on one small piece of the education jigsaw, where I have had the opportunity to see for myself what can be done to improve a child’s education.

The first duty of any Government undertaking the education process must be to enable young children to read, write and do arithmetic. These are the basic building blocks without which nothing else can be learnt. We have recently seen new figures that, yet again, show the UK slipping down the education league tables in all too many areas, with reading being one of the worst.

You only have to talk to university teachers who will tell you that they have to offer remedial lessons in literacy—and that is to the educational elite—or to employers to know that many application forms for jobs are simply illiterate. This is a crime. If children do not read, they cannot learn and their life chances are blighted. If they do not read well, they are blind to the greatest repository of literature and ideas and beauty in the world—the English language.

It is a disgrace that educationists have sold a generation short. They have patronised, experimented and excused where they should have inspired. I know the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, agrees with much of this, but he is hobbled by opposition within government, within the trade unions and within the educational establishment. The old methods worked—they should never have been abandoned.

Almost every study shows that synthetic phonics is the most effective way to teach youngsters to read. So why has it been marginalised? And why, incredibly, have the Government now declared war on private and voluntary nursery providers which use phonics systems, harassing them with price controls and interfering codes of practice and downgrading their professional qualifications and standings?

According to regulations promulgated by Mrs Hughes, a friend of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, from 2015 Montessori teachers with specialist qualifications and experts in phonics systems will not be allowed to run nursery schools. This is sheer madness. Voluntary nursery education, one of the best achieving parts of the education sector, is being nationalised by stealth. Of course, the noble Lord will say that phonics have now been reinforced. I hope so, but I have to say, “About time, too”.

Sadly, Her Majesty’s Government’s reaction to this failure to teach children to read is to deal with the symptoms and not the cause. It is not a higher school leaving age we need; it is better schools and better teaching methods. Her Majesty’s Government tinker about the edges instead of tackling the real cause of the problem. They should ensure that teacher training colleges teach systems which enable children to learn. What is the point of literacy hours if the failed methods which made those hours necessary in the first place are then used?

If modern methods were better than traditional ones, literacy would have improved. The contrary has been the case. Since new methods were introduced, there has been a steady deterioration in the standard of literacy in this country. Traditional methods have evolved with time and are now so effective that the majority of children thought to be dyslexic can be taught to read without having to resort to specialists. Most of those children are just badly taught, with dyslexia used as an excuse for inadequate teaching methods. Mr Ed Balls is to be congratulated on the assistance for dyslexic children announced yesterday, but much of the problem of dyslexia could be cured by teaching reading using synthetic phonics.

I referred earlier to first-hand experience. My wife, on a voluntary basis and in spite of none of the help that might have been expected, has successfully taught a small group of primary school children thought to be dyslexic or to have attention deficit disorder, or both, to read simply by using traditional methods. A new enthusiasm for learning has been generated as those pupils discover success, achieving an objective through work and endeavour. That has improved almost all aspects of their lives. That is not an isolated experience, as private and voluntary schools, currently under siege by government directives and regulations, could tell you.

Where traditional methods have been introduced on a broader scale, even in the Probation Service, the same positive results have been achieved. It has been consistently proved that children thought to have serious reading difficulties can learn to read and, in so doing, improve both their behaviour and their prospects out of all recognition.

I ask the Minister to get a grip, to ask those teachers still using the old method—there are still far too many of them—to adapt or to have them removed from the education system. The evidence shows that children whose teaching is based on sight reading and “look see” have a one in four chance of failing, while with phonics, less than 5 per cent run that risk. Surely the West Dumbartonshire project, referred to briefly by my noble friend Lady Perry, which eliminated a  28 per cent functional illiteracy rate in just eight years, is proof, even to the most condescendingly smug professional subscriber to the Times Educational Supplement.

I concentrate on reading because it is so fundamental, but equality of opportunity depends on being exposed to the best and being asked the most in every subject of the curriculum, in every manner of good behaviour and in every exertion of body, spirit and soul.

15:53:00

Baroness Warnock
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for introducing this debate. It is very timely, because we have the document, Every Child A Reader, in our hands. It is a very interesting document and shows that we are concentrating on the right end of the education system: the early years. However, I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Dearing that the transition from primary to secondary school is equally important and that many of the considerations that apply to the very early years must apply again when children change schools at that stage.

We seem to be for ever hearing the dire news of how low our school standards are compared with other European countries. Worse, in my view, are the low standards in state schools compared with independent schools. The gap is widening in many cases and we should work hard to narrow or eliminate it. Equally, we have news of new initiatives and new money to remedy the situation. Any solution will take time. We need to remember that we cannot change things overnight.

I should like to ask the Minister some questions. Is the practice of allowing children to take tests when they are ready under way? That is the ladder system proposed in connection with modern languages by my noble friend Lord Dearing. I think that the Minister will say that it is. Will it be extended to other school subjects? It is used in music, but other subjects, especially mathematics and science, would benefit enormously from such a system. Talented, interested, competitive and ambitious children should be allowed to take tests, not at a time governed by age, but when their teachers judge that they are ready. That system would be more complicated. It also involves trusting teachers to advance a child up the ladder and to judge whether a child is capable of taking a test or whether he ought to wait a year and take the test at an older age than the supposed proper one. We all know that children develop at different times. The difference in development goes on through the child’s life. Equally, we know that there are children who are very talented in particular or in all directions. For those children it is a torment that they are held back, doing repetitive work over and over again, to take the test at the proper time. I know that the Minister is in favour of the suggestions of my noble friend Lord Dearing but I would love to hear what he thinks of extending the practice. Children are competitive. They like competing against themselves as well as other people. If they have exciting targets, they work much better, with more enthusiasm, and enjoy themselves more.

I declare an interest as president of the British Dyslexia Association. I share the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Howard, for old-fashioned teaching methods in reading. One of the reasons that I think that this is a good and proven system of teaching is that it makes it easier to detect early signs of dyslexia. We cannot deny that it exists. It is a neurological condition that applies to reading and, in certain cases, to mathematics. If we teach reading the old-fashioned way, it becomes easier for teachers to know who is finding progress difficult. Those children need to be taught by specialists. As much as I admire the Every Child A Reader programme, it is not necessary to talk about one-to-one teaching for children who are falling behind. If the child is found to be dyslexic—many of those who fall behind will be so found—it is essential that they be taught, not necessarily one to one, by teachers specially trained to teach dyslexic children to overcome their difficulties.

As I have said before in this House, this is one of the areas in which, disgracefully, the private sector is racing ahead of the state schools. Will the Minister say how far we have got in ensuring that, especially in the first year at school and then again as a check-up in the first year of secondary school, every child is watched to see whether they have dyslexia or whether they have the same neurological problems with numbers as other children have with words? If they have such problems, they should have access to a specialist teacher. It is no good their being taught one to one by someone who does not know the technique of teaching dyslexic children. They will be worse off than before, because, as I said, the failure will be even more acute when they do not make progress. If they are taught strategies for overcoming their dyslexia, they will make enormous progress and their behaviour and their pleasure in learning will be equally enhanced.

Finally, I strongly agree with my noble friend Lord Sutherland about the importance of music in schools. This is particularly true of singing, as it is cheap. No one has to go out and buy anything to be able to sing; they can simply do it, so long as someone is there to enthuse them. Here I put in one very nostalgic word for the old-fashioned schools programmes on the BBC, which used to be marvellous for getting people to sing together. I hope that the Government will put every kind of pressure on smaller radio companies—not necessarily only in connection with education, but largely with that—to put on the same kind of programmes that would help children to sing together in schools and would be an enormous help to some primary school teachers who are very unsure of themselves where music is concerned, having had no training themselves. One can do wonders with the radio.

16:02:00

Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, there are shades of, “Are we sitting comfortably?”. I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for introducing a very useful and interesting debate. I declare an interest both as a governor of a small state primary school in Guildford, which is close to the bottom of the local league tables, and as a member of the Guildford High School local council—the school is close to the top of the national league tables. I therefore get a picture of both ends of the scale.

The debate today has been about two things: first, making opportunity more equal; and, secondly, raising school standards so that we have good schools everywhere for everyone. A very interesting report, called Reducing Inequalities: Realising the Talents of All, was sponsored by the National Children’s Bureau, the Institute of Education and the National Family and Parenting Institute, and published in September this year. It revealed that, by the age of three, children from poorer homes are six months behind those from more advantaged homes. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, the gap increases as the child gets older. By the age of 16, those on free school meals are on average 40 per cent behind their counterparts in terms of achievement.

All this research reinforces what countless volumes of research over the years have said and what we all know in our bones: social class is the strongest factor influencing educational performance. Therefore, the question raised by this debate is what, if anything, can we do about this? Can the education system, per se, offset the effects of social disadvantage, rather than reinforcing them, as—I think we must accept—some aspects of the present system do?

Where there is parental choice, middle-class parents flock to middle-class schools, filling the waiting lists and leaving no places for the less well-informed, less well-motivated and less knowledgeable families from the neighbourhood. Where schools are able to select their pupils, as Sutton Trust research has shown so clearly, these trends are exacerbated, since the schools are anxious to be high on league tables. Given the choice, they will obviously opt for pupils who are likely to do well and bring credit to the school. We have now moved to a situation in which we have the banning of interviews, banding systems and the like, in order to arrive at a fair admissions system. None of these systems seems to work that well; we end up with the same problems. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, mentioned, a very large number of parents still fail to get their children into their first choice of school.

For some years, we Liberal Democrats have been pondering what we might do about these issues. We have ended up coming at it in a different way. In some senses the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and the Conservative policy group have arrived at the same place. We have argued that those from disadvantaged homes need more resources spent on them. They need smaller classes and more specialist help. If we did as the Netherlands and Finland have done for some time, and these children carried extra funding with them from their earliest years, schools would, rather than shunning them, be encouraged to take a fair mix from all kinds of different homes. We call this the pupil premium and we believe that it would help to solve not only the admissions problem but quite a number of the problems we have seen. It picks up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, was saying.

It goes back to when the Prime Minister said that we should spend on every state school pupil as much as is spent on private school pupils. I am not sure he knew quite how much private schools cost these days; his children are too small. It would mean spending in the region of £9,000 to £10,000 per year on every state secondary school pupil, whereas we spend around £4,000 on every pupil. It would mean more than doubling what we spend. If we had those resources and used them correctly, we could achieve a great deal.

Let me pick up on some of the points that have been made about how we could use them. At three years old, disadvantaged youngsters are six months behind their more advantaged counterparts. Why? There may be no books in the home, they may not be read to by their parents; they may not even be talked to by their parents. It relates to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland: many parents speak a different language at home, while pupils are expected to speak and write English at school. They may not be encouraged to play creatively. They must catch up with all this in nursery school. They have to learn how to play and how to talk before they can learn to read. 

In any reception class in a primary school that covers an area with a reasonably diverse social mix the teacher will be able to point to several youngsters who lag behind others for these very reasons. What we know, because it has been tried and tested, is that providing these children at the ages of five, six and seven with the extra help of a trained adult, who reads to them and talks to them, helps them to catch up. I am absolutely delighted that the Government are picking up Reading Recovery and Every Child A Reader. Some noble Lords may know that I have been banging the drum about this for two or three years because I have been education spokesperson for some time. It costs an extra £2,000 per pupil, but as I once said to the Minister, surely £2,000 spent at the age of six is infinitely better value than £60,000—the cost when a young person is in a young offender institution—spent at 16. As I say, I am delighted that the Government are picking that up, but we must use it creatively. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, is right. It is no good just giving extra reading help. If there are underlying problems, they need to be recognised.

That brings me to my next point. The report published in September is extremely interesting because it highlights, among other things, the importance of emotional well-being. It shows that performance in schools and in later life depends on the ability of the child to cope with stressful situations and not just on his or her ability to read and write. The lives of quite a few children outside school are chaotic and turbulent. For them, the school represents an oasis of stability. But, from time to time, some of them cannot avoid letting their internal anger and unhappiness get the better of them, and they become abusive and disruptive pupils. Something like 10 per cent of young people in schools suffer from some sort of mental illness and depression. They need help, but at present do not get it. Again—this is another bee in my bonnet—it is vital that all schools  have access to trained counsellors who are able to diagnose what is wrong with these children, to help them overcome their problems and to help them cope with stress and anger management. If they can do this, the children’s education will benefit.

There is a considerable worry about the results that we have seen. It seems amazing to me. I believe that we have one of the best teaching professions we have ever had. The Government have put a great deal of money into schools. As a school governor, I see that coming through, and standards have increased. Yet, when we look at these PISA studies and the poll study on reading, science and maths, we are falling down the league tables. Why? Other countries are moving up fast. There is also a certain quirkiness about how these studies are done and there is bound to be some moving around.

A couple of weeks back, I raised a very important issue at Question Time. It came from the Cambridge Primary Review; namely, whether we are testing too much. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, raised that issue in her introduction. It is interesting that the poll study found that children were not reading because they were no longer getting pleasure from reading. Fewer children enjoyed reading or had books at home. Most disturbing was the fact that performance had dipped particularly among those children who were the better readers. There are dangers that, as a result of too much testing and bureaucracy, we are squeezing out the creativity and the fun from school. It is vital to put that back.

16:13:00

Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, it gives me the greatest pleasure to thank my noble friend Lady Perry of Southwark for giving us the opportunity to discuss such an important issue. Her speech was deeply impressive and I think that we can all agree that we have had an excellent debate. As always, I was fascinated by the thoughtful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. He shares the views of my noble friends Lord Pilkington of Oxenford and Lord Baker of Dorking, who I know are driven by a desire to see children receive the appropriate education and to see vocational education rightfully recognised and valued. I had to say that there because I could not fit it in anywhere else in my speech.

My noble friend Lady Perry is rightly held in high regard for her expertise in education, so it was hardly surprising that she was asked to co-chair our Public Services Improvement Policy Group. My noble friend is to be congratulated on the 18 months she committed to such an exhaustive and exhausting examination of the education system. My noble friend’s report highlighted, as she did today, the inequality of access to high-quality public services. Ofsted has reported that the gap between the outcomes for those with advantages in life and those with the least is not reducing quickly enough. The evidence linking disadvantage and educational performance is clear and disheartening. We heard from my noble friend how fewer than 20 per cent of children eligible for free school meals secure five good GCSE passes including mathematics and English.

The number of young people going to university from families in the poorest 25 per cent is less than one-fifth, compared with almost half across the country.

“RAB” Butler famously remarked:

“Education is the spearhead of social reform”,
 

which is why my noble friend Lady Perry was so right to focus today’s debate on equalising opportunity, raising standards and creating more good school places. Those guiding principles make us such staunch supporters of the academies programme. As the Minister knows only too well, academies admit a much higher percentage of children eligible for free school meals—almost four in 10, compared to the national average of 14 per cent. Also, according to a report earlier this year from the National Audit Office, GCSE performance is improving faster in academies than in other types of schools, including those in similar circumstances.

Just as it was in the grant maintained schools and city technology colleges, the success of academies comes from their freedom to manage and innovate. The think-tank Policy Exchange described academies as being the,

“only concrete example of supply-side reform under Labour”.

Yet, following the Secretary of State’s announcement in July, which was one of his first, new academies will no longer have the freedom and independence that is the source of their ability to make a difference. It seems that the Government are set on watering them down by forcing them back into the national curriculum and encouraging local authorities to co-sponsor them, thereby vitiating their purpose of providing diversity.

Perhaps more worrying still was the announcement that the Prime Minister’s delivery unit was to undertake a root-and-branch review of academies. We are left to draw the conclusion that the present Government lack commitment to the academies programme, and are backtracking. If we are left with that impression, you can assume it will also be on the minds of many who are considering sponsoring academies. As the architect of the academies programme, and a devoted and passionate advocate of them, that must be deeply troubling for the Minister.

We are left with a review that will undermine confidence—and the bizarre situation of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition being a stronger advocate of the Government’s flagship programme than the Government themselves, because if we want better educated children, we simply need more good school places. Parents need to be empowered to send their children to a school where a good education is a genuine possibility, not an uncertainty. The Government are, sadly, not meeting that demand.

In 2005-06, 79,000 appeals were made against school place allocations. Of these, 58,000 failed, and those children ended up in schools where their parents really did not want them to go. Worse, that failure to meet demand for good school places is concentrated in deprived areas: of those 58,000 children refused a place in their preferred schools at appeal, over 50 per cent—nearly 32,000—were in the 25 per cent of English local authorities with the highest levels of deprivation.

Therefore, two weeks ago, my right honourable friend David Cameron and my honourable friend Michael Gove launched our Green Paper Raising the bar, closing the gap, which proposes providing 220,000 new school places by allowing a host of new providers—from educational charities to groups of parents—to set up new schools in the state sector. That will also allow the establishment of smaller schools with a more intimate learning environment. As my noble friend Lady Perry and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned, we believe that the most disadvantaged pupils should carry a premium that attaches to them directly.

We have always wanted education to be well funded, but we want the money to be spent where it can do the most good. More money needs to be reaching the students, especially in areas most in need, rather than being diverted to bureaucracy. I acknowledge what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, said about the resources that the Government have put into education, but after 10 years of huge amounts of money being poured into schools we see some results declining. Surely, the Minister will agree with us that we need to change tack.

At our party conference in October, we announced our Comprehensively Excellent review, looking at the best-performing 100 comprehensive schools and seeing what features they shared in common. It will come as no surprise that right at the top were a strict uniform code, setting and discipline; parental involvement, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, spoke so well; and respect. They are the old-fashioned values that were the hallmark of the education of the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids.

According to the most recent annual report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, behaviour is no better than satisfactory in 29 per cent of secondary schools and truancy is at its highest level for at least 10 years. I cannot imagine how the Government will keep dissatisfied 16 to 18 year-olds in school training when they cannot keep hold of the ones they have now. What we need, as my noble friend Lady Perry said, is to shift the balance of power in the classroom back in favour of the teacher.

However, many children are disruptive because they are struggling. Tackling underachievement early must be a priority before it has a chance to have a knock-on effect and handicap a child’s ability to perform in secondary school. For that reason, we were disappointed by the report published last month by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. It showed that since 2001, England has plummeted from third to 19th in the international reading literacy tables. Only Morocco and Romania saw sharper declines. When its last report was published in 2003, the Government took it as a sign of their achievement, so are the Government willing to take these recent results as a sign that not all is well?

We need to address the problem of literacy as early as possible. My noble friend Lord Howard of Rising had it absolutely right when he said that if you cannot read, you cannot take advantage of the exciting things that education has to offer. Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, said, the teaching of synthetic phonics helps greatly to diagnose and help those with dyslexia. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, that without language, most of what a child does at school will be inadequate and pointless. For us, every child reading by the end of their first two years at primary school, other than those with the most severe special educational needs, is not just a target: it is about our standards and values. We are convinced that the best way to achieve that is through synthetic phonics.

Our instinct will always be to trust frontline professionals, and along with my noble friend Lady Perry, I acknowledge the excellent work of many of our teachers, but when you have a situation where four out of 10 children cannot master the basics, we have reluctantly come to the view that we need to be prescriptive. Will the Government do the same? Equally important, any review of underachievement must turn the spotlight on the many children struggling in mixed-ability classes. We would like to see setting by ability which stretches the strongest and nurtures the weakest. Our children are precious and they get only one chance, so in conclusion, I can do no better than to quote from our Green Paper,

“education is the most powerful means by which individuals can be given the opportunity to shape their own futures and we think there is a moral duty to secure change as quickly as possible before the gap between the fortunate and the forgotten grows wider”.

16:23:00

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Lord Adonis)
My Lords, the House is very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for initiating this debate and I would like to join her and other noble Lords in paying tribute to the work of our teachers and pupils who have achieved such great results in our schools and who strive so hard.

I also echo the tributes to specific schools mentioned, many of which I know. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, mentioned TreeHouse, which does excellent work with children on the autistic spectrum and which I have been glad to visit. My noble friend Lady Massey is a governor of Sir James Barrie primary school in Wandsworth, which I also visited at her earnest instigation. I am glad to have had the chance to visit, soon after its opening, the Lambeth Academy, which my noble friend Lady Howells mentioned alongside many other new schools in Lambeth that are doing such an outstanding job, not least with the Black African and Caribbean community about which she spoke with such eloquence. I am not personally acquainted with Guildford high school and the unnamed primary school that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned, but I am sure that they do excellent work, too.

My noble friend Lady Howells referred to Tony Blair’s famous mantra, “Education, education, education”, as this Government’s priority—as it is indeed. She did not give the follow-on line from the then-Prime Minister, John Major, after the mantra had been enunciated, when he said that he shared the same three priorities but not necessarily in the same order. All that goes to show that when we have a consensus—and it is good that we have a consensus on the importance of education—it is important to define what we mean by the consensus if we are to have a constructive way forward. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, who defined it as increasing the number of good schools: that we should not be seeking to redistribute places in existing good schools, because there are not enough of them. We should be seeking dramatically to increase the number of good schools.

I am glad to say that we have many good schools and that the number has been increasing in recent years. Ofsted now rates nearly two out of three schools as good or outstanding. The proportion of schools judged inadequate now stands at only 6 per cent. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, suggested that I would be relentlessly upbeat in my remarks. I do try to be generally upbeat: I think that it is the job of the Minister to be as optimistic as possible—someone has to be. My motto in the area is “no complacency”. Visiting schools every week as I do, I am the last person to be complacent about the challenges that we face. I will be frank with the House: 6 per cent of schools that are judged inadequate is 6 per cent too many. Two out of three schools judged good or outstanding is not good enough: we need to see a significant increase in the numbers that are marked good or outstanding.

It is a particular concern to the Government that more than 600 secondary schools failed to achieve our new ambition for every secondary school of 30 per cent or more pupils achieving five or more good GSCE passes, including English and maths. The figure was 1,600 in 1997, so there has been a great improvement. We need to see a more significant improvement still. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said that hundreds of thousands of hours had been spent by researchers in seeking to identify success factors in schools. That is rather depressing for me because I have about 15 minutes left in which to summarise those success factors and what the Government are doing to nurture them. However, I think that there will be general agreement across the House that there are five essential elements in producing more good schools: first, there need to be enough effective teachers and support staff. Without good teachers we will achieve nothing in education and we need more of them.

Secondly, every school needs an effective head teacher and school leadership team. Thirdly, there needs to be an effective system for improving or, in extremis, closing failing schools and opening new schools in areas of failure imbued with a culture of ambition and success. Let me say in respect of the academies programme, which seeks to take that ambition forward, that although I greatly appreciate the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for our policy, I hope I am a sufficiently strong advocate of my own policy not to be in danger of being outclassed by her. I will remain as relentlessly upbeat on that point as on our other policies.

Fourthly, we need a modern curriculum that gives primacy to the basics of literacy and numeracy, but with breadth and depth beyond enabling all young people to develop their talents to the full. Fifthly, we need fit-for-purpose school buildings with the facilities necessary to deliver the curriculum but also—this links to the points of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lady Massey—the increasingly wide range of services needed to promote the well-being of children and their families and wider communities.

The Government are focused on all five of those key priorities and I will take them in turn; first, I turn to teachers. There are now 36,000 more teachers in our schools than there were in 1997 and there has been a doubling in the number of assistants in our schools since 1997: 174,000 more. That is thanks to a significant increase in funding that has been made available. There has been an 88 per cent real-terms increase in funding in education since 1997, which above all else has enabled the increase in the number and remuneration of teachers to take place. The real-terms pay of teachers has increased by 16 per cent; the real-terms pay of head teachers has increased by 29 per cent; and a number of incentives to encourage the recruitment of new teachers have been put in place since 1997.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that we have the best teaching profession that we have ever had. Ofsted reports certainly support that view. Meeting new entrants into the profession week by week, as I do, I am very pleased to see the quality of those we are recruiting. Our policy on the training and recruitment of teachers has a number of strands which have sought to address specific problems. We have sought to address the historical problem of the recruitment of maths and science teachers—of whom there were acute shortages in the 1990s—through dedicated recruitment incentives geared particularly to those groups. We have introduced golden helloes, which my noble friend Lady Morgan of Drefelin once famously described as golden haloes. That was a good way of describing them because we want to give them haloes as well. Golden helloes have had a significant impact in helping us to recruit science and maths teachers and we have continued those. We have introduced training bursaries, which are enhanced in shortage subjects, so that students no longer have to train at their own expense, which was the case in the PGCE year when they sought to train. They can now do so with a bursary in place.

We have sought to increase significantly the training available, particularly in maths and science where it was deficient, with a national centre for excellence in mathematics education, the National Science Learning Centre and regional centres in science education which have sought to bring the worlds of higher education and schools together in the training of teachers. All these initiatives have borne fruit. The latest figures from the Training and Development Agency for Schools show that there is expected to be a total of 2,470 entrants to mathematics initial teacher training in 2007-08, compared to 1,500 in 1997, and the comparable figures for science are 3,700 recruited this year against 2,800 in 1997. So we have brought about a step change in the recruitment of maths and science teachers, and not before time.

We have sought to take forward two other crucial initiatives in enhancing the quality of the teaching profession. First, we have sought to boost the mid-career route into teaching. Like other professions, teaching will no longer be a lifelong profession that young people will choose immediately after graduation. We need to enhance the opportunity for career switchers to move into teaching. This is why we have very significantly expanded the graduate teacher programme that makes it possible for mid-career switchers to come into teaching. For the first time the average age of new teachers now in this country is 30. It has been rising steadily. This year there are 7,200 entrants into teaching by employment-based routes, most of them mature entrants, which is a huge increase on the position in 1997.

Our other key priority is to attract more of our most talented graduates into teaching and for them to regard teaching as a career of choice. I pay tribute to all those who have played such an important part in establishing Teach First, the new programme aimed particularly at the highest achieving graduates. It is based on a completely new model which does not require them to undertake a PGCE but to train over the summer as a group, going into schools for two years in groups so that a real esprit de corps develops. It is branded and run by the private sector. Much to our surprise, the evidence shows that nearly half the students in Teach First have stayed on in teaching beyond two years, even though they could follow much higher paid careers. These could provide some of our most talented future school leaders.

That leads me on to school leadership. We need more talented school leaders. That is why, for the first time in the history of our education system, the Government have provided for head teachers to be systematically trained. Before the establishment of the National College for School Leadership and the development of the national professional qualification for headship, NPQH, there was in this country no systematic training of head teachers whatever. When we come to look back on that, I believe that it will be regarded as a colossal failure in the provision of training and support within the education system.

We established the National College for School Leadership, which is doing excellent work under Steve Mumby in Nottingham, but with programmes run nationwide. In 1998, there were 780 teachers studying for the NPQH. In the last full year for which we have figures, there were 4,355, so there has been a big increase in the number of talented senior teachers who are now coming forward to take the NPQH to make themselves eligible for headship.

I believe that other reforms in the system have also enhanced the attraction of becoming a head teacher. In particular, I highlight the greater delegation of budgets and responsibility to schools. That reform goes back 20 years; we have enhanced it but it was started under the previous Government with the policy of local management of schools. If we want head teachers to be really in charge of their schools, they have got to be in charge of the budget, and they must have real managerial responsibility for those areas that determine the success of a school. That is why we have been encouraging those schools that wish to do so to move towards foundation status so that they can also take charge of their buildings and premises, the direct employment of their staff, and so on. That leads to a real sense of ownership and of the rewards for leadership that come with being a head teacher and being a school leader in the wider sense.

Several noble Lords referred to failing schools and the setting up of new schools. Very many underperforming schools are turned around without the need for drastic remedies such as closure or the establishment of new schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, in her Motion, refers to the need for an action plan. As the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, who was one of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspectors, will be only too well aware, the term “action plan” in education comes with a particular reputation attached, because it is what Ofsted requires schools to produce when they are put in the category of underperformance or failure. The action plan regime at school level, concentrating the minds of school leaders on the need to bring about defined improvements where defined weaknesses have been identified, has been highly successful in improving schools. I gave the numbers earlier in respect of schools that have improved. Some 1,668 schools have come out of special measures since 1997, so there has been remarkable success in the Ofsted regime in that respect.

However, sometimes schools do need to close, and it is important that there are mechanisms for establishing new schools. Those mechanisms have been significantly enhanced both by the academies programme which several noble Lords have mentioned, and by the new levers for local authority commissioning that are made available by the Education and Inspections Act, which the House enacted last year.

Let me make it absolutely clear that the Government are accelerating the academies programme; we are not in any way slowing it down. We have 83 academies open and about 50 academies will open next year, which will be the largest number that we have opened in any single year. I can almost name them all because I have played such a role in respect of them. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that there is no weakening or slackening in respect of this policy at all. We are committed to a target of 400. I hope that we will be able to open 50 a year in the years after next year too. We have dispensed with the £2 million sponsorship requirement in respect of universities and successful schools, which was an impediment to many successful organisations coming behind academies. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, referred to the review, which is not in any way questioning the academies policy. It is helping us to ensure that we deliver as successfully as we can on the policy as it is announced. It would be quite remarkable if the Government were not seeking to analyse how we can make the best of our own policy.

I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, both on tackling failing schools and on putting in place mechanisms that enable the establishment of new schools, including schools with a vocational focus. The academies programme and other programmes make it possible to establish schools on that model, and we welcome that. I believe that our policies in this respect are more ambitious and robust than we have ever had in place in the history of state education since the Second World War, and they are leading to the creation of a large number of successful new schools.

The curriculum gives primacy to the basics of literacy and numeracy, but with breadth and depth beyond them. As the noble Lord, Lord Howard, so rightly said, a child who cannot read cannot learn. Therefore, it is absolutely right that we give primacy to the cause of literacy in our primary schools. He was wrong when he said that he thought that the Government had been hobbled in their commitment to synthetic phonics and tried-and-tested—dare one say?—old-fashioned mechanisms for the teaching of reading, which have been so successful. I come before the House unhobbled. I am unashamed in my support for synthetic phonics. The Government appointed Sir Jim Rose to conduct a thoroughgoing inquiry into teaching methods in primary schools two years ago, which has led us to introduce new guidance to schools giving absolute pride of place to synthetic phonics in the teaching methods that we expect in schools, because of the success that is so clearly apparent where it has been used.

Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, will the Minister accept that phonics can be extremely successful when a child’s verbal skills make him ready for them and that the decision on that should be made by the professional teacher?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, the teaching of reading needs to go hand in hand with wider education in language skills. I fully accept that, but I certainly do not believe that it is right to hold back the teaching of reading in a fairly rigorous way because of the poorer home environment and the less-developed social skills that the child may have had before they started school.

The Every Child a Reader programme, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, rightly said, is based on the reading recovery scheme, is a sensible investment if it ensures that children who would otherwise be held back learn to read. That is being rolled out. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, asked at what rate it was being rolled out—it will benefit 5,000 children in 2007-08, increasing to about 30,000 by 2010-11. We want to see it increase, but, I should stress, that is the nationally funded element of Every Child a Reader. There is nothing to stop any primary school using its delegated budget to adopt similar techniques, including small group tuition, and if necessary, one-to-one tuition, for children who are falling behind. Most well run primary schools do precisely that. As in many other areas, we are giving a national lead in respect of best practice, which effective leaders observe in their schools in any event. We are looking to introduce a similar scheme in respect of numeracy—the Every Child Counts scheme.

In respect of vocational education, which the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, was absolutely right to highlight as a priority, we are introducing 17 new diploma lines in four phases between 2008 and 2011. All will be in the main vocational areas, such as engineering, IT, health and social care, and construction and the build environment, where we have had historic weaknesses in terms of generating sufficient trained students from our schools.

I echo the importance of the wider curriculum in respect of PE, sport and music. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, rightly highlighted the importance of music. Only two weeks ago we announced an investment of more than £330 million to enhance predominantly instrumental tuition in schools. We want every primary school child to have an opportunity to start learning a musical instrument free of charge. We are providing at least £10 million a year for the purchase of musical instruments. We accept that the human voice is free and are keen for there to be a big expansion of singing. Howard Goodall, who does outstanding work in the Sing Up campaign that is taking forward the extension of singing in primary schools, is giving an excellent lead in this area.

My noble friend Lady Massey rightly mentioned the importance of PSHE. She never loses the opportunity to ask me when we will make it statutory. She knows that I attach great importance to PSHE—both the curriculum and the training of teachers in respect of it—and we are significantly extending the training of teachers through the certification programme; but as she knows also, I am not in a position to give the dates she seeks as to when it will be made statutory. Nor, I have to tell her, do we have any early plans to make citizenship compulsory in primary schools, although I pay tribute to the outstanding work being done in extending citizenship education into our primary schools.

Finally, I shall address my fifth priority: fit-for-purpose buildings. During the past 12 years, capital expenditure on school buildings has risen from £700 million to £6.4 billion—probably the fastest rate of increase in a capital programme of this size that we have seen anywhere in the public sector. This is enabling us systematically to rebuild or modernise our school buildings, starting with secondary schools. That will make possible and enhance all the efforts in the other areas that I described including teaching, which is important, vocational education, and the wider Every Child Matters agenda, which is important, but requires fit-for-purpose facilities.

In all of these areas, we are committed to producing good schools. We have made good progress during the past 10 years. I welcome the broad consensus on policy that we have seen in the House this afternoon, and once again I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and all other speakers who have enabled us to have such a worthwhile debate.

16:44:00

Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I have no time other than to thank all noble Lords for a debate based on enthusiasm and expertise, not political point-scoring. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Consolidated Fund Bill

Brought from the Commons, endorsed by the Speaker as a money Bill, and read a first time.

Terrorism and Crime (EUC Report)

16:45:00

Lord Wright of Richmond
rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee, Prüm: An Effective Weapon against Terrorism and Crime? (18th Report, Session 2006-07, HL Paper 90).

The noble Lord said: My Lords, in speaking to this Motion, I shall also, with your Lordships’ leave, speak to the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. The two reports that are the subject of the debate were prepared by Sub-Committee F of the European Union Select Committee in May and June this year while I was still chairman. I am grateful to my successor, the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, for agreeing that I should open this debate. I also thank the noble Lord and other noble Lords on the committee, our clerk Michael Collon and our specialist adviser Annelise Baldaccini. I am delighted to see that my predecessor as chairman of Sub-Committee F, the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, will also be speaking in the debate.

Both reports relate to systems for the exchange of information that is or may be of use to the security services and the police in the prevention of terrorism and serious crime. Both are critical of those systems and more particularly of the manner in which they were set up. Owing to that, and because in this speech I, too, shall be critical, I should like to make one thing clear from the outset: I accept, as did the whole committee, that the exchange of information between the security services and police of different countries can be vital in the fight against terrorism and other serious crime. However, the exchange of information about individuals also carries with it risks. The problem is to strike the balance between public security and individual privacy. In the case of both inquiries, the view of the committee was that the rights of the individual have come off worse.

Before I turn to that question, let me give a summary of the background to each report, starting with Prüm. Prüm is a small town less than 50 miles from Schengen and it shares with Schengen the distinction of having been virtually unknown until a treaty was signed there. Both treaties were the initiatives of member states that felt that matters at EU level were proceeding too slowly for their liking. However, while at the date of the Schengen agreement in 1985 there was no alternative procedure, by the time Germany began negotiations with some of its neighbours in 2004 to improve cross-border co-operation, the procedure of enhanced co-operation was available under the treaties. It had never been used; it still never has. Instead, negotiations took place with very little publicity and led to the signature of the Prüm treaty in May 2005. That treaty provided a mechanism for seven states to exchange among themselves information on DNA profiles, vehicle registrations and what are called dactyloscopic data— though I prefer the Anglo-Saxon term, “fingerprints”. The treaty ignored work already being done at EU level. In evidence to the committee, Mr Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor, said that the states party to the Prüm treaty had,

“evaded the substantive and procedural requirements of enhanced cooperation”.

He thought it arguable that the treaty breached the law of the European Union.

The German presidency began in January this year. Within a fortnight, the German Interior Minister started his attempt to have the main provisions of the treaty incorporated into EU law and, within six months, he had succeeded. Yet that was achieved only because the proposal was put forward with no consultation, no explanatory memorandum, no impact assessment, no overall evaluation of the operation of the treaty, no estimate of the cost to member states and minimal involvement of the European Parliament and national parliaments. The only involvement of this Parliament was the Select Committee’s report. In such negotiations as there were, the only achievement of this Government of any significance was the removal of the provisions on hot pursuit across national borders.

The decision incorporating the treaty into EU law was adopted at the end of June, but much of the detail was left to an implementing decision. This, too, was brought out in June, again without consultation, explanatory memorandum, impact assessment or cost assessment. The committee considered it in July and raised questions with the Government. Last week, the committee considered it again, but now it is too late for our comments to have any effect, as last month the Justice and Home Affairs Council agreed the decision. This, the Home Office tells us, does not amount to a scrutiny override because only a general approach was agreed, not the final text of the decision. That, I submit, is an unreal distinction to draw. Any agreement, whatever name is given to it, that is reached on a document not cleared from scrutiny amounts to a scrutiny override if the result is that negotiations cannot in practice be reopened. That has for some time been the view of your Lordships’ committee, and that view is now shared by the European Scrutiny Committee in another place. The result is that this country has, in effect, been made party to a multilateral treaty with almost no involvement in its terms, let alone the involvement of Parliament. That is no way to legislate in a democracy.

The second report concerns the agreement between the European Union and the United States on passenger name records, or PNR. PNR consists of detailed personal information about airline passengers that has to be transferred to the country of destination if a passenger is to be allowed to land, or even to overfly, that country. The country that is understandably most anxious to be certain of the precise identity of passengers, and hence requires most detail, is the United States, which regards the exchange of personal information as a vital element of the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The purpose of PNR agreements is to ensure that only essential information is disclosed, that it is used only for the purposes intended and that it is kept for no longer than absolutely necessary.

The first agreement with the United States was concluded in 2004. It left much to be desired, but was far better than nothing. However, it very shortly became nothing, for it was annulled by the European Court of Justice in May 2006 for technical reasons with which I shall not weary your Lordships. Suffice it to say that the EU had three months to negotiate a new agreement. The Commission negotiators thus started from a position of weakness. The US was not under any pressure of time, but the EU was. The interim agreement that they concluded repeated all the undertakings in the 2004 agreement but was accompanied—and this is a significant point—by a letter from the United States Department of Homeland Security, the DHS, which,

“is intended to set forth our understandings with regard to the interpretation of a number of provisions of the ... Undertakings”.

This letter reduced the value of the undertakings until they were scarcely worth the paper that they were written on.

However, the 2006 agreement was, as I have said, only an interim agreement. It expired in July this year. The EU thus had until then to negotiate an agreement with provisions that meant what they said. We suggested in our report what those provisions might be: limits on the data elements transferred to the US; limits on the uses to which they could be put; and limits on the time for which the data could be kept. All these matters, we argued, should be limited to what was essential to the fight against terrorism and should all be subject to effective safeguards. We called on the Government to use their considerable influence with the United States to help to achieve this aim.

We hoped for an agreement that, even if it was not ideal, would at least mean what it said. We said that, in our view, the worst possible conclusion would be an agreement that again was accompanied by a letter allowing the United States to disregard its provisions almost at will. Yet this is precisely what emerged in July from the negotiations: an agreement that, taken alone, should and would have been a triumph for the Commission negotiators, accompanied by a letter from the DHS, agreed by the Commission negotiators, allowing the United States to interpret its provisions as broadly as it liked. The vital provisions are in the letter, not the agreement. It is the letter and not the agreement that lists the PNR data to be transferred, a list that appears to be shorter than the one in the previous agreement but in fact contains only two data elements fewer. It is the letter that states that the data will be retained for seven years instead of three and a half years as previously. It is the letter that explains that the United States will use the data strictly for the listed purposes,

“or otherwise as required by law”—

United States law, that is, which the United States is, of course, free to change.

The security of the public is the security of the individual members of the public. The competing interests are their public interests and their private interests. In opening, I said that in the case of the Prüm decision and the PNR agreement the view of the committee is that the private rights of the individual have lost out. That is not just our view. In the case of Prüm, the chief defect was to have yet another EU instrument with its own tailor-made data protection provisions that, in the absence of an overarching data protection framework decision covering all Third Pillar matters, were plainly inadequate. But at least an attempt was made to protect the privacy of individuals. No such thing can be said of the PNR agreement.

Our views were and are shared by the equivalent committee of the European Parliament, by the European data protection supervisor and his deputy, who gave us written and oral evidence, and by the working party of national data protection supervisors, which, of course, includes among its members this country’s Information Commissioner, Mr Richard Thomas. He is now conducting one of the inquiries into the case of the missing disks, an episode that serves to remind us of the consequences that can follow if sensitive data are handled with insufficient safeguards.

The consequences are not only financial. Mistakes over PNR can and do lead to individuals being wrongly banned from flying. Our report describes the fate of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, who, on the basis of wrong information, was sent by the United States authorities in chains to Syria where he was kept for over a year in appalling conditions, beaten and tortured. The Canadian Government have awarded him compensation of 10.5 million Canadian dollars. The United States authorities still keep him on their no-fly list.

Both reports contain strong criticism of the way in which these issues have been handled, but I hope that the Minister can assure the House that the lessons of both reports have been learnt. I have, however, a number of questions to put to the Government. In the case of Prüm, why did they allow themselves to be browbeaten into accepting a proposal with no sort of cost-benefit analysis? Why did they accept the proposal before an adequate data protection framework had been agreed? Why have they quite unnecessarily agreed an implementing decision that is still subject to scrutiny? In the case of PNR, the questions are still more serious. To what extent, if at all, did they make use of our special relationship with the United States to attempt to influence the negotiations? Why are they content to be party to an agreement that, like the bilateral extradition treaty, is so biased in favour of the United States? What steps are they taking to protect the interests of those British subjects who inevitably will suffer from the misuse of their personal information? I commend both reports to the House and I beg to move.

Moved, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee, Prüm: An Effective Weapon against Terrorism and Crime? (18th Report, Session 2006-07, HL Paper 90).—(Lord Wright of Richmond.)

16:59:00

Baroness Ludford
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to take part in this important debate this afternoon. It is more important than is apparent from the time slot it has been allocated. That is to pay no disrespect to the authors of the report. I have the highest regard for Sub-Committee F, and, if I may say on a personal basis, for its former chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, who often visits us in Brussels in the civil liberties committee. Like him, I have no hesitation in stressing the need for data exchange, both within the European Union and across the Atlantic. We need to overcome bureaucratic obstacles, eliminate turf wars and jealousies and make our legal systems and the safeguards interactive. We need to have effective arrangements to ensure that suspected terrorists and major criminals are apprehended. Therefore, I do not wish anything I say from now on to give grounds to a charge of being soft on terrorism.

The problem is that both the Prüm decision and the PNR agreement have run far ahead of data protection safeguards and outwith proper democratic controls. That matters particularly because we are on what I will refer to as a merry-go-round, which is spinning faster and faster in terms of data sharing and the creation of databases. I believe that there is a sort of Ministers’ and officials’ playground in which they are using and abusing the inadequate framework for EU law enforcement efforts.

There is a democracy deficit of both Prüm and PNR. MEPs’ views could simply be ignored as we had no co-decision on either, and if you have mere consultation, believe me, it gives you no leverage whatever. On PNR, national Parliaments will be given a take-it or leave-it choice, simply being asked to ratify a concluded agreement. Prüm is a particular scandal. It was negotiated as a simple international treaty, ratified by the Bundestag after a mere half an hour’s debate and then pushed through the Council machinery in Brussels as a German member state initiative to emerge as an EU decision. That is not the way to run a whelk stall.

The Government tell us in response to the committee’s proper call to require the Commission to produce an evaluation report for the Council, the European Parliament and national Parliaments, that the Commission will submit a report after four years, but that it will be to the Council only and more detailed provisions will be set out in an implementing decision, which will not be subject to the views of anyone but the member states. That is not democratic. 

There will be periodic reviews of the PNR agreement by the parties. For the European Union that will be the EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini. The Government say that “modalities”—that is a Franglais word—“will be mutually agreed”. They claim that the information “should be disclosed”. I do not think it is good enough to rely on future modalities or some sort of promise that information should be disclosed. My actual experience for the evaluation of the 2004 agreement was that the review report was six months late and MEPs were only allowed restricted access. We were only allowed to go in a room and read the report, not have copies, and it had been redacted—that is, censored—so we never saw the full report.

There is also a data protection deficit to both these instruments. When and if we get a data protection framework decision, it will be weak and hardly worth the paper it is written on. The promise was that we would have a high-quality data protection framework, on top of which specific measures appropriate to each instrument could be added.

The Government’s response to the committee’s call that Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor, should be regularly consulted in the case of member state initiatives such as Prüm, was that they saw no tangible benefits in such a requirement. Is the real reason that they do not like what he says? Two weeks ago he came to the civil liberties committee of the European Parliament and described the compromise on which there is now political agreement—so it is too late to change anything—as far from satisfactory, a minimum common denominator and unfortunate. He said that the text is neither consistent, effective nor adequate. His main objection is that the scope is limited to the exchange of data—in other words, the data protection safeguards will not cover the collection of data or the processing of data.

Prüm is about setting up databases and collecting data. PNR is largely about collection and processing. So to restrict EU data protection rules only to the exchanges of data leaves a big loophole. Peter Hustinx draws attention to other weaknesses, such as purpose limitation and acceptable use; indeed he says it is weaker than the 1981 Council of Europe Convention. So, in over a quarter of a century, the EU has been unable to move further than the Council of Europe. He said that because it had to be agreed unanimously a minority of member states had watered it down because of the veto and the proposal would have looked a lot better under qualified majority voting. He drew attention to the fact that it does not regulate data protection as regards third party agreements already in place, which of course includes the PNR agreement with the US as well as other things, such as the SWIFT agreement on financial data. A cynic would wonder whether the three-year delay in getting the data protection framework decision—we have not quite got it—had some ulterior motive to it. In the mean time you get all these agreements through—Prüm, SWIFT, PNR—and then say, “Oh heavens, we cannot apply it retrospectively”.

I referred to what I call a merry-go-round which is, frankly, becoming out of control. Governments, Ministers and national officials are giving themselves arrogant licence to do what they like and then try to pull the wool over our eyes. If I sound rather harsh and strong, believe me, I am feeling rather fed up about all of this. We are told that measures are justified for anti-terrorism purposes. Then they get extended, as in the example of the PNR and, as the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, said, to any judicial proceedings or as otherwise required by law. That is potentially huge.

The longer retention period under the 2007 PNR agreement will be retrospective to the 2004 and 2006 agreements. That was three and a half; the new one would be seven; after seven, in the so-called dormant period it will only need a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security to authorise the data to be processed again.

We were promised a push system three years ago instead of the law enforcement authorities being able to pull the data. Now we are told that January—next month—is the target. We are told that the US unilateral undertakings are binding. Do they take us for fools? How can “unilateral undertakings” be binding? As the noble Lord, Lord Wright, says, they tell us that the data elements have been reduced from 34 to 19. This is just a merge of categories—there has been no material reduction in the scope of the information. All we have to do is look at it and read it—we are not illiterate.

We were told that the US federal Privacy Act would apply, not by right, but by grace and favour, to the processing of data of EU citizens. Then, the automated targeting system which would process the PNR data was taken outside the scope of the Privacy Act, thereby totally pulling the rug from under that particular promise.

My favourite one is the whole basis for the use of PNR for profiling. We could have a good argument—which I do not intend to have now—about whether profiling is useful, what are the civil liberties implications and what safeguards we need. The Government accept that, because they state that the system is,

“an important source of data for risk assessment and intelligence ... through a combination of operational experience, specific intelligence and historical analysis, we can build up pictures of suspect passengers or patterns of travel behaviour. PNR data may then be used to indicate suspect behaviour by enabling the identification of individuals whose travel details share common characteristics with those pre-defined profiles”.

So it is a profiling system. Two weeks ago, Commissioner Frattini came to the civil liberties committee and gave a very similar description of the system to be used under the EU PNR system—I do not have time to explain. Until he was blue in the face, he would not accept that it is a profiling system. So we cannot even have a discussion about whether profiling is useful or dangerous because there is no agreement. Member states and the Commission do not have their ducks in a row as to whether we are using a profiling system.

I am running out of time, so I really must wind up. I wanted to draw the attention of the House to the dangers of where we are going. Mixing my metaphors, I think that we also have a problem of policy laundering, where one measure is used as a pretext for another. An EU measure is used as the justification for having to do things at national level, such as setting up DNA databases, which Prüm will require. EU-US PNR is the pretext and model for an EU PNR system. We must end the democracy and data protection deficits, and end this out-of-control system. I hope that it will not take a catastrophe such as disk gate or the rendition of Maher Arar, who also testified to the European Parliament Temporary Committee on Extraordinary Rendition, of which I was vice-chair, giving his harrowing tale, to make us realise that we are going in the wrong direction.

17:12:00

Lord Jopling
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wright, referred to the fact that a few weeks ago I succeeded him as chairman of Sub-Committee F. I was delighted to be able to do that. I am also delighted to be able to take this opportunity to thank him most warmly on behalf of all previous and present members of the committee for everything that he did to make the committee run smoothly and efficiently during the years when he was the chairman. Concerning Prüm and PNR, I echo his thanks to Michael Collon and his team of Clerks and our advisers for all the hard work that they have done to help us with these two reports.

I have considerable doubt and misgivings, as well as the ones, which I support, which have already been drawn to the attention of your Lordships’ House by both the noble Lord, Lord Wright, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. I am especially concerned about how DNA profiles are to be handled. The Prüm treaty made arrangements for reciprocal access to national databases containing DNA profiles.

The German presidency was extremely enthusiastic about that arrangement, but the truth is that there is no harmonisation on either the collection or the retention of DNA profiles. Most countries use those profiles and databases for serious crime only. That is not the case in the United Kingdom, where our DNA database is half as big again as the combined databases of all the other countries in the Union. In the UK new entries end up on the DNA database with all offences, whether serious or minor. If people are arrested, but subsequently not charged, their DNA details go on the database. I see a problem. If other states use the UK evidence, they are in danger of assuming that the people on the database could have been involved in serious crime; they have different national standards.

I must ask the Minister some important questions. Is he happy that the UK will be divulging more DNA data than it receives? What does he believe the United Kingdom’s share of the traffic between states of DNA details from national databases will be? What grounds does he have for believing that other member states will accept not being given full details, if we choose not to provide them? Will the implementing decision set that out fully, or will there be guidelines about how the information should be transferred? Has the Minister explained to other member states the basis on which we collect DNA information?

The noble Lord, Lord Wright, explained that there was no consultation, no Explanatory Memorandum, no impact assessment, and no cost-benefit analysis on the Prüm treaty. The Germans have claimed a great deal of success with the passage of this information. They have told us that information exchanged under the Prüm treaty has, in only two months, resulted in 1,510 hits by Germany against the Austrian DNA database. That included 41 hits on homicide or murder cases, 885 hits on theft cases and 85 on robbery or extortion cases. The German Government have suggested that figures will increase. Surely, that will not happen. Those rather dramatic figures are the result of clearing up a backlog of crimes committed before the means of transferring information was created. Once those backlogs are cleared, a decline in the figures is likely.

Does the Minister not believe that the figures that the Germans have been peddling are highly misleading? Why were Ministers prepared to agree with the decision without any realistic assessment of  its benefits for combating serious crime, let alone the cost, which must be enormous? Has he made any estimate of the likely number of serious crimes that may be solved as the result of the Prüm treaty that would not otherwise have been solved?

The noble Lord, Lord Wright, told us in his opening remarks that the PNR data quite correctly were allegedly to be used only to combat terrorism and organised crime. However, the notorious letter from the United States Department of Homeland Security that we have been hearing about tells us that the US will use PNR to protect the data subject or others from dangerous communicable diseases. It may be very worth while to use this sort of information to deal with dangerous communicable diseases, but does the Minister not think that, if we are to have an agreement of that sort, it should be done through an agreement negotiated for that purpose and not through an agreement to combat serious crime?

On the negotiating mandate, the present Leader of the House told the committee in her evidence that she was not prepared to disclose the Commission’s negotiating mandate while negotiations were going on. However, they are now over, and I wonder whether the Minister can disclose to us now what that mandate was and say to what extent he believes the negotiators achieved their objective. I discussed the Prüm treaty and the PNR arrangements at the European Parliament last week, and I said that I remembered my role many years ago as president of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, when I quite often became exasperated at the lack of negotiating skills of some people in the Commission. I caused some amusement when I said that I would not send some of them to market to sell a cow on my behalf. I stick by that, because many of them do not have the first idea of how to negotiate.

Finally, on the European Union’s PNR initiative, Jonathan Faull, the director-general at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security, has said that the EU should have its own common approach to the PNR system. The Commission has now published a proposal. Sub-Committee F is still awaiting an Explanatory Memorandum before it can scrutinise that document. In order to help the committee, I ask the Minister to say whether the Government support this initiative and will seek to have a system as wide ranging as the United States system, or whether they will look for a system with guarantees for a purpose limitation, with full data protection provisions. I ask this because, when Sub-Committee F comes to examine this document, we may well consider making it the subject of a further short PNR inquiry.

I have asked the Minister a good many questions. I hope that he will be able to answer all of them, but if he cannot answer some of them, I hope that he will write to me.

17:24:00

Lord Harrison
My Lords, I thank Michael Collon and Anneliese Baldaccini, the ever helpful amanuenses of Sub-Committee F, for their help in preparing these reports. I have not had the opportunity to enjoy the chairmanship of that committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, but I have enjoyed the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, and now the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, not quite of Richmond. I can say that they are both wonderful rapporteurs and raconteurs. They have both, on behalf of the committee, explained the issues before us in the case of PNR and Prüm, and illustrated them well from their own experiences. We are grateful for that.

I will not repeat the exegeses that have been presented, most notably by the noble Lord, Lord Wright, as the former chairman, of Prüm and PNR. In turning to the Prüm treaty, I ask my noble friend why we so hastily agreed to these matters. Indeed, it seemed that we were bounced into agreeing to Prüm when there was no proper consultation, impact assessment or costing of what it might mean for us and other member states. We resisted the German presidency ganging up, as it were, with others to present a fait accompli to us all at the end of the story. In many ways I accept Prüm and would like to know why the British Government have been so reluctant to accept the treaty, lock, stock and barrel. I understand that this was under very serious consideration for 12 months and I invite my noble friend to say a few more words about why, in the end, we did not take the plunge.

With respect to passenger name records, there is concern that we have so readily capitulated to the Americans in the area of disclosure of personal data. My particular concern is not only that the agreement is so one-sided, but that another element of this was the American demand that any data received under these institutions should be capable of being farmed out to any institution within the United States that the Americans so choose. Indeed, they told us that this is what they were going to do. That really is reprehensible, and I wonder whether we could have exercised our influence under the special relationship to advise them that this was quite unacceptable.

Before coming into this debate today, I had the pleasure of hosting Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, who talked about financial services issues and the regulatory framework that we are building up in the European Union and with the USA. It did not surprise me that the first question posed to the commissioner was why the USA and the European Union cannot trust each other more on these issues. Again, I invite the Minister to think about the relationship that we have had with the USA over so many years, which has been so fruitful and is often called the “special relationship”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, made some very interesting comments about both of these issues. I am a little more uncertain about the question of profiling. We require a definition of what profiling is done, which is advantageous, right and proper for the defence of the people of the United Kingdom and the European Union, and what profiling oversteps the limits? I am very interested to hear my noble friend’s views on what is legitimate or illegitimate profiling.

Last week, I, too, was with the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, in Brussels. The gathering together of the appropriate committees of national parliaments with our friends and colleagues in the European Parliament is very worth while. On this occasion, we discussed justice, freedom and security matters. As the noble Lord said, the third session, which he addressed in his inimitable way, concentrated on and gave opportunities for us to discuss the Prüm treaty and the PNR reports, which I understand are so valued in Brussels by our colleagues. It would be true to say that the tenor of the debate as it developed was one of trying to find a balance between personal data and the personal safety of the citizen. I do not think that the issue was resolved, but it was well aired, to the benefit of all.

I shall conclude with further information from that session in Brussels. Jonathan Faull, the director-general of the directorate concerned with justice, freedom and security, reported on the success of the European arrest warrant. Noble Lords may recall that it was the subject of high controversy in this country. He told us that the 7,000 arrests made in the 12 months since it came into practice is double the number of arrests of persons who were examined for nefarious activities of one kind or another relating to terror. That is an example of the member states of the European Union acting together and swapping information, thus easing our ability to bring to justice those who need to be brought to justice.

I say that because I return in particular to the Prüm treaty. Sometimes there is a dislocation between the ambitions of our Government to alert us and the rest of the European Union to the very real threats of terror that beset us in the modern world and our reluctance from time to time to engage more closely with our European Union colleagues to put into practice those measures which would aid and abet us in that task. I have long thought that I should add my enthusiastic support for Labour Governments to my record in the hobbies section of Dod’s. It is a hobby that I have practised over many years. I invite my noble friend to say a little more on the very real opportunities that from time to time we neglect, particularly these two very difficult subjects.

17:33:00

Lord Marlesford
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wright, on his skilful chairmanship of Sub-Committee F. He was very good at dealing with people, however difficult they were and whether they were members of the committee or witnesses. I was lucky enough to be a member while it was inquiring into the Prüm convention and the EU-US Passenger Name Record agreement. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord on his excellent introduction to this debate, which set out so clearly the nature and importance of the somewhat esoteric subjects of our two reports. I hope that his speech will be widely read in Brussels and, of course, in both the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Our reports, which owe much to the perceptive intellect of our Clerk Michael Collon, brought out several important and general points that the noble Lord, Lord Wright, highlighted. In my short contribution, I want to focus on those aspects.

First, the way in which Prüm was handled demonstrates some serious shortcomings in how the EU operates, and the extent to which Parliament is able to scrutinise effectively what the Commission gets up to. I should say straight away that when we are dealing with urgent and serious challenges such as terrorism and crime, I have no objection to some countries in the EU getting together to make faster progress than might be possible if the Commission is left to initiate action on the basis of discussions with all 27 member states. However, that cannot and must not be a reason, let alone an excuse, for any agreement reached by that self-selecting group of EU member states being converted into EU law without the fullest consultation and discussion by all 27 members. That consultation takes time and may throw up problems. But rushing into legislation that has not been properly discussed will not only risk bad legislation but can irritate and even alienate individual member states and thus reduce the reputation of the EU among the populations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wright, has illustrated, the way in which Prüm was handled failed to ensure that UK concerns were fully taken into account, especially on costs to the taxpayer. More serious still is that the Home Office appeared to us to have scant regard for the importance of parliamentary scrutiny, for which your Lordships’ House not only has a special responsibility but a high reputation in Brussels. For the Government to have agreed on the incorporation by other states of aspects of Prüm at the Justice and Home Affairs Council before our concerns were met and for the Home Office then to suggest that that did not amount to scrutiny override is, frankly, as deplorable as it is unacceptable.

We are all well aware that much of what is decided in Brussels is based on deals between Governments. It is usually called horse trading, or, as my noble friend Lord Jopling would say, cow trading. I recognise that it would be difficult to give training in those excellent arts to the majority of civil servants, whether in Brussels or home departments, but I was reflecting that I might suggest an alternative way of assessing their abilities—by assessing their prowess at playing the wonderful game of chess.

Obviously, the FCO plays a major part in such deal-making: that is one function of diplomacy. But that is precisely why parliamentary scrutiny of the merits of actual issues is so crucial. The deal-making aspects of the EU are among the things making it so unpopular at street level. Although we will never achieve it, we should at least strive for purity, objectivity and integrity in EU decision-making.

This Government, with their emasculation of the scrutiny of domestic legislation by the House of Commons through the hugely retrograde step of imposing a timetable, or guillotine, on every Bill immediately after Second Reading, have in that respect shown scant regard for Parliament. Frankly, the Home Office has been one of the worst culprits by rushing one law and order or justice Bill after another through Parliament, with the result that the inadequacies of ill-digested legislation instantly seem to make necessary further legislation, which is once again drafted at lightning speed. I am afraid that it is part of the cultural arrogance of the Home Office. It is an arrogance which has become more destructive as the quality, ethos and morale of civil servants in many departments have deteriorated over the 40 years that I have been a Whitehall watcher.

As an aside, I would like to tell the House how delighted I was to learn in a Written Answer last week from the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, that the National Firearms Licensing Management System has at last gone live. I say “at last” because it has taken 10 years from the time that the Government were required by Parliament to do so by Clause 39 of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997. It was originally my amendment, passed against Home Office wishes, with all-party support in this House. For years, the Home Office ignored it and then tried to sabotage it.

I owe a debt to several successive Home Office Ministers, including our late and much-lamented colleague Gareth Williams, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, all of whom pressed the Home Office to introduce the gun register. Of course, I also owe a deep debt to my noble friend Lady Anelay, and the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Corbett, for their constant support. But it was a shameful saga.

I now turn to the passenger name record. Here again, I support the concept of allowing the United States to have access to personal information about passengers to prevent terrorists or serious criminals flying. However, there were, as the noble Lord, Lord Wright, and others have described, all sorts of specific problems with the scheme proposed and then adopted. The greater the threat we face, the more discriminating we must be in the methods of defence that we use. PNR was eventually forced through, virtually unamended, by the American Government and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wright, that it is lamentable that HMG did not stand up a great deal more firmly for our national interests. I feel that the FCO should have brought this issue to the notice of the American Administration at a high level, together with the other problems that we are having with the United States, to make it clear that it is wholly unacceptable for the Americans to treat the EU as some sort of third world country to be patronised and ordered about.

It was only this week that the Times, on 2 December, reported the amazing claim by Mr Alun Jones QC, representing the American Government in a case being heard by the Court of Appeal, that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people overseas if they were wanted for offences in the United States. Sadly, in all too many ways, the United States has in recent years been using its great power, which should be for the good of the world—as it has been historically—in ways that have reduced American international influence. From that we are all losers.

There are, as I have tried to show, important lessons to learn from these two reports and I hope very much that the noble Lord, Lord West, will indicate that the Government will take them to heart.

17:43:00

Baroness Harris of Richmond
My Lords, I, too, have found this a most interesting and important debate. As ever, I am disappointed by the number of noble Lords present, but anyone who has been involved in European Union Sub-Committee reports presented to the House will recognise that this is a similar turnout to most other reports that are read. It is a shame that more Members are not here to listen to what has been a fascinating and important debate. 

Before I begin, I must declare an interest as a former chair of Sub-Committee F. I well recall the time when that excellent committee looked in horror at the proposals being put in place between the EU and the United States on the exchange of data, which I will address in a moment.

Before I get there, I was leafing through some of my back papers on the exchange of data within the EU, which is relevant to this debate. I find that it always pays to keep past papers, no matter how old they are, because they can always be referred to and people can be reminded of what was said at the time. The then Secretary of State, David Blunkett, so many Home Secretaries ago, in a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, the chairman of the Lords European Union Committee, said:

“A large quantity of the data held by UK law enforcement authorities is tightly controlled even within the organisation concerned. This may be necessary for a variety of reasons, including privacy/data protection laws, national or personal security concerns, legal or ethical restrictions on the use to which information may be put, or the need to closely protect information during an investigation or pending a trial”.
 

That is what Mr Blunkett said on 9 September 2004, and how hollow that statement now looks. During that inquiry into EU counterterrorism activities, the evidence we received from the Joint Supervisory Authority incorporating Europol, Eurojust, Schengen and Customs, also dated in September 2004, stated:

“In addition to the right to respect for private and family life guaranteed by Article 8 of the ECHR and reaffirmed by Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the new fundamental right to data protection is enshrined in Article 8 of the Charter. The draft Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe that includes the Charter, also guarantees in Article 1-51 the right to data protection and states that compliance with data protection rules shall be subject to the control of an independent authority”.
 

I wonder whether the independent authority was consulted in either of the reports that we are discussing today.

I turn to the specifics. Especially on Prüm, of course we recognise the real value of the exchange of information between states in fighting terrorism and serious international crime. Most noble Lords have referred to that. The noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, in his opening, said that while accepting the exchange of information was critical in the fight against serious crime and terrorism—a point addressed also by my noble friend Lady Ludford and the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford—there was no consultation, no estimate of costs, no impact assessment and so on.

We must work closely with our international partners to ensure that those dangerous and serious criminals and terrorists who seek to threaten the UK and its citizens are prevented from doing so. However, our concerns are not about the intention of the Prüm treaty but about the way in which it is being implemented. In that we agree with the concerns raised by the EU committee. The treaty of Prüm, as we have heard, was negotiated and signed without any parliamentary oversight. The intergovernmental nature of co-operation in the field of security in the EU inhibits democratic checks where a treaty is presented, already negotiated, for ratification or rejection. Changes are not permitted.

In addition, transposing the provisions of the treaty of Prüm into EU law through Council decision will leave the European Parliament, whose rapporteur is still to be appointed, with the simple consultation procedure. Is that the appropriate way to proceed with such a treaty when we are dealing with sensitive personal data? I do not think so, and my noble friend Lady Ludford suggested that we are going too fast properly to scrutinise EU law enforcement efforts. She referred to Prüm as a particular scandal and not the way to run a whelk stall. She said that it was a merry-go-round out of control and that periodic reviews are simply not good enough.

We are very uneasy about how the security of such data can be protected when an exchange is taking place. We very much share the committee’s concerns in paragraphs 81 to 98, where it recommends that negotiations on the data protection framework decision, instead of being sidelined, should proceed in parallel with those on the Prüm decision. What are the Government doing to ensure that the very high standards of data protection that the UK has applied to information processed in the law enforcement field are replicated across the EU?

I thank the Government for their response to the recommendation in paragraph 102, in which the committee states:

“The threshold for holding DNA profiles on the United Kingdom DNA database is far lower than in any other Member State, and the proportion of the population on the database correspondingly far higher. The Government should as a matter of urgency examine the implications of DNA exchanges for those on the United Kingdom database”.
 

I understand that there are roughly 4 million hits on the database at present. This worried me and I thank the Government for stating in their response:

“The UK (as with other Member States) will decide which profiles on the national database should be exposed to search requests from other member states. There need be no assumption that all profiles would be searched routinely under Prüm”.
 

Can the Minister inform the House how the decision will be made about which profiles will be available for a search request? Will this be done, for instance, by type of crime or by sentence imposed? Will the DNA of those who have been arrested but not charged be available for searching? Will there be any parliamentary oversight of such decisions?

The EU-US passenger name record agreement is equally of great concern to us, as every noble Lord reminded us. Since the EU committee’s report was published, a new agreement has been put in place, which seems to put EU citizens in a substantively worse position than under the 2004 agreement. As we have heard, the retention period has been extended from 3.5 to 15 years. The data will first be held in active analytical databases for seven years. The Department of Homeland Security will then move the data to “dormant” status and has stated that it “expects” to erase it after 15 years, although that expiration will be subject to further discussions.

There will be greater data sharing across US agencies and with third countries. There is a weak legal mechanism for EU citizens to challenge misuse of their personal information. The data can be used,

“where the life of a data subject or of others could be imperilled or seriously impaired”.

So this use is not restricted just to terrorism or serious crime.

The agreements have ignored a number of questions. What data mining will occur? Rarely has there been much consideration of how these data are being put to use by the US Government. Why are all these data important and how are they being processed? The disclosures regarding the profiling system ATS raised more concerns in the US than they appear to have done within the EU, despite the fact that it leaves us to question whether the US is abiding by the agreements at all, while it implements secret risk assessment systems. How legally binding are these agreements? They do not hold the status of treaties within US law, and because they are not ratified by the US Senate, do not become binding US law.

Any promises made in the agreements regarding granting legal rights to EU citizens are not truly actionable. What about data from other sources? While major carriers have their own reservation systems, reservation systems are also outsourced or run by third parties. There are global reservation systems such as Galileo, Sabre and others, which are not within the remit of the agreement, because the agreement applies only to carriers’ databases. The computerised reservation systems—CRS—will permit broad access by US authorities to data regarding citizens from around the world without any restrictions, because many of the companies are based in the US or have databases within US jurisdiction. Similarly, EU citizens flying on any US-based airline, even from EU airports, have less control over their personal information, as those transfers are not governed by the agreements.

When I was travelling here in a taxi this afternoon, I was telling the driver about the debate in which I was about to speak, and I told her how difficult these arrangements are. I asked her whether she was aware that information on her would be picked up very quickly and known about if she decided to fly to the United States; and she was absolutely horrified. She asked, “Why haven’t we heard about it?”. I ask the same question, because the majority of British citizens have no idea what is being held on them.

Both reports raise a number of general concerns in relation to the mechanisms whereby the Prüm treaty and the EU-US PNR agreement came into effect. There is a distinct lack of democratic oversight and parliamentary scrutiny, as many noble Lords have said, in regard to both. There have been insufficient opportunities for national parliaments to exercise any influence over the negotiations or to propose any modifications. Most worrying is the seeming lack of protection of the personal data that are to be transferred and the lack of any remedies for citizens.

Finally, how are we expected to believe that the Government, who cannot even protect the data of their citizens when they are being transferred between HMRC and the National Audit Office, as other noble Lords have said, have adequate procedures in place to protect personal data when they are being transferred to another country?

17:58:00

Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, a number of important points have been made in this debate on the two excellent reports from the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wright, who taught me much of the craft of diplomacy and negotiation that I learnt in the Foreign Office. He is a master practitioner.

I am sure that the House would agree with the aim of both agreements, which is to improve cross-border co-operation in combating terrorism, serious border crime and illegal immigration, in the case of the Prüm agreement and, in the case of the passenger name record agreement between the United States and the EU, to combat terrorism. The question is whether the agreements fulfil their stated aims on acceptable conditions. Like the noble Lord, Lord Wright, and other speakers, I find in that respect that I have to be rather critical.

I shall take the PNR agreement first. Before I get to the substantive point, I echo the comments that have been made by a number of speakers to the effect that it is a pity, to put it mildly, that the Government’s response to a report published in May came out only in October, almost five months after the report and two months after the agreement reported on had been struck. That obviously means that we are debating a report and a response after the point at which they can have any effect on the outcome. Moreover, a substantial number of the committee’s recommendations have been ignored in the final outcome, and that is a poor outcome for parliamentary scrutiny. All of this is against the background of an unsatisfactory negotiation with the United States involving a unilateral interpretative letter from the Americans. I entirely concur with what my noble friend Lord Marlesford said about the public interest being the loser in this respect.

On the substance of the issue, it is clear that there are many advantages to allowing the intelligence services of the United States to have access to certain information about people travelling to their country. My party supports such mutual help, provided that there are safeguards. Indeed, on this side of the House we would argue strongly that the United Kingdom would be better protected and more able to manage immigration if the Government took the importance of border protection as seriously as the United States. It is imperative to have real-time information about movement across our borders, so that at any time it will be possible to know how many people are in our territory and jurisdiction and who they are. There is obviously no quarrel there about the aims, but we need safeguards.

In his reply, could the Minister say how relevant and successful the agreement with the United States has been in its proclaimed aim of combating terrorism? The committee expressed some anxiety that there was very little evidence on this point. Obviously, there may be a need for confidentiality, but it would be of interest to know whether such systems, which increase public and private-sector costs, are really effective in meeting their proclaimed objectives. We should not be frightened of reducing bureaucratic burdens if they turn out not to be fit for purpose or proportionate.

Protection of personal data is another area where public authorities need to be conscious of their duties to the owners of the data—in this case, airline passengers. It is very easy for the state in its various guises to treat information about people’s identities as if it belonged to the state and not to the real owner, the individual. Now that personal data pass from airlines to US Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, there must be an increased danger that the information may in practice be used for purposes for which it was not initially given. Can the Minister say if any regular monitoring procedures will be in place to ensure proper use of data and effective protection thereof?

This is not an idle consideration. Many UK citizens are going to be caught in this net. This is a real cause for concern on the part of ordinary citizens as more than 2 million Britons travel to the United States annually. In their response to the committee’s report the Government said that,

“the retention periods negotiated under the new Agreement will also apply to data collected under the 2004 and 2006 Agreements”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, noted, given that the new agreement doubles the previous retention period, from 3.5 to seven years and adds on a further eight years of dormant, non-operational retention, can the Minister explain what has changed fundamentally since 2004 to require this long period of retention? Why is this necessary? To what purposes might this vast quantity of data possibly be put? I will posit one uncomfortable possibility.

According to the Government’s response to the committee, the PNR may be used,

“for the protection of vital interests of the data subject of other persons, or in any criminal judicial proceedings”.

Could the Minister explain the purport of this apparently vast let-out provision on potential use? Who is to judge the need for such use? Would British authorities be consulted in such cases? Indeed, would the UK authorities be informed? What would the data subject be allowed to know about the decision to protect their vital interests or those of other persons? Indeed, the PNR having been put in place in the name of combating terrorism, here is a provision which would permit, in an apparently wholly uncircumscribed way, the use of information given for this purpose to be used in any—I repeat, any— criminal proceedings. The committee requested that there should be safeguards to ensure that the data were not used for general law enforcement purposes. Would the Minister respond on that important point?

On this side of the House, our anxieties on that point are increased by the quantity of data demanded of travellers under the PNR. Anybody who has filled in the forms knows that they are quite intrusive and reach into personal and financial matters. Can the Minister please clarify the meaning of the quantity of data elements that are to be exchanged? The original agreement allowed for 34 types to be collected. The new agreement ostensibly reduces that to 19, but the Government’s response to the committee’s report states that the number has been reduced as a result of the,

“merging of a number of data elements that cover the same type of information”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, remarked, that sounds less like a reduction in the amount of data that has to be given, than a recategorisation thereof; that is to say, bigger data groups. No doubt the Minister will inform us if another interpretation is possible.

The second of the reports under discussion today deals with the Council of Ministers’ decision based on the Prüm treaty concerning cross-border data exchange in three areas—DNA profiles, fingerprints and certain vehicle registration data—with the aim of combating terrorism, serious border crime and illegal immigration. The Conservative Benches are evidently not against such mutual assistance as a matter of principle, but the safeguards that apply at home to data protection—which, in our view, are in any case weak in implementation if not in concept—need to be present to safeguard much wider exchange across borders, where the risks increase. We do not believe that these safeguards are in place.

As with the PNR agreement, the Government had at their disposal the committee’s report before they gave their agreement last summer to the Council decision. Despite that, as many noble Lords who have spoken in this debate have noticed, a considerable number of the points it made—some of them significant—have not been taken up or reflected in the outcome.

On the plus side, we on these Benches congratulate the Government on their success in removing provisions concerning the unauthorised entry of officials of one state into another. Against this, it is generally disappointing that more notice was not taken by the Government of the report. I share the view expressed by many speakers and I believe that the Government could have applied more leverage, given the need for unanimity to adopt the decision.

Procedure is important. Noble Lords have noted the strong desirability of proper information provided alongside proposals, including impact assessments in particular. The Conservative Benches consider that, whatever the formal position in relation to initiatives taken by member states as distinct from the Commission, Her Majesty’s Government will be serving the public interest in pressing for that rather than excusing failure to follow good practice. Rushing legislation through in the name of protection of the safety of society—and I fear that is what happened— shows a disregard for the rights of the citizen in respect of other protections to which individuals are entitled, including their privacy and the protection of their data. It would have been a sign of seriousness of intent in this regard if the Government had accepted the committee's proposed condition that member states be obliged to consult the European Data Protection Supervisor on initiatives with data protection implications.

As others have noticed, the Government commented in their reply that they saw no tangible benefits in that. I hope the day does not come when they have cause to rue this view. Given the increased powers which the UK Information Commissioner now—at last—has had to be given by the Government as a result of the latest data losses in government, one might have thought that the obligation to consult the data supervisor would be seen as a useful protection for the Government and a potent means of forcing up other countries’ standards of data protection nearer to those already obtained in the UK.

In his opinion, the European data protection Supervisor made a number of critical comments on that decision. If the Government are not disposed to listen to the committee of this House, perhaps they will take the views of the European Data Protection Supervisor seriously. He complains of ambiguity in the purposes of collection and exchange. He queries the scheme’s proportionality, the failure properly to assess the value of data exchange so far and its relevance to wider exchange among all member states. He noted that some of the procedures governing handover by national authorities of data, on which HMG apparently intend to rely for protection, constitute derogations from the principle of availability. He does not say that this is wrong, but one is bound to wonder how long it will be before such reliance is challenged and the safeguards dependent on it weakened. What would then happen to the UK citizen’s right to receive protection from UK courts?

The European Data Protection Supervisor states categorically that the lack of a harmonised legal framework for data protection, which he considers a sine qua non of cross-border data exchange on this potential scale, is a serious shortcoming. The Government, on the other hand, state in their reply that they do not consider it necessary to complete work on a data framework before proceeding. One wonders about the prudence of this. The committee makes the same recommendation. The Government ought to be listening to such experts and to Parliament, and take their advice seriously instead of waiting until they have another data accident. How many more do the Government want?

Finally, like the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, I am concerned about the UK situation. We have over 3 million entries on the police database—more than all other member states put together. On this database there are details of convicted criminals, people arrested but never convicted and volunteered samples of otherwise totally uninvolved people. It is, of course, open to question whether this should be the case but, for now, it is. The comparable German register contains the names of convicted criminals only. Here is a big information mismatch.

Secondly, the protections are different. Not surprisingly, and perfectly reasonably, the German protections are lower. Relying entirely on national practice, and in a situation where there is an obligation on the state receiving a request for data to follow it up, can the House be confident that there will never be a case of information about a UK national improperly and unnecessarily crossing borders and/or being improperly released, thus rendering such data exchange open to challenge—quite apart from the damage that it might do to the individual concerned? I, for one, would not be so confident. It is surely unwise of the Government not to accept the need for national systems and practices in data protection and security to be made more compatible, if not fully aligned, before extending obligations in this field.

At the very least, data on a database should be carefully categorised. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, made some pertinent points on this. It would also be reassuring to know that, when a data file is handed over, there was a definite time limit on the retention of that data file by the third-party country; this point is obscure. What can the Minister tell us about these various issues which will help quieten well founded anxieties on these various scores? Moreover, rushing this decision has meant that the committee's recommendation that there should be a reliable estimate of start-up costs before incorporation into EU law has been neglected, despite the European data supervisor taking the same view.

Along with being willing to take risks with our personal information, the Government seem willing potentially to get into a financial muddle. They say they have an estimate: £31 million, including running costs for the first year. They stress, however, that this is just an estimate and that a feasibility study will follow. I suggest that it is normal do a feasibility study beforehand; £31 million is not a trivial sum and, given the history of undercostings and expenditure overruns in the public sector, I fear that the House is entitled to view this figure with considerable scepticism. Can the Minister give more detail which might increase our confidence in the accuracy of this figure and the value for money that it may represent? The Government say that the public benefit deriving from the high cost will be justified. What is the evidence? Illustrations from Prüm have been cited as examples but as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, has noted, it is open to question whether, when the backlog of crimes has been cleared, the “hit” system will make a yield which is nearly so fruitful. Can the Minister give us more detail on the Government’s realistic expectations on the cost-benefit of this measure and the increases in crime detection that are actually likely to occur?

Many of the concerns of the committee, which are shared on these Benches, involve aspects of data protection—the circumstances in which data may be handed over, the uses to which they may be put and  the protection their storage and retention will be given. In this area there are now an alarming number of loose ends. On these Benches we hope that the Government will in subsequent negotiation pursue these important points and be willing to report further to the House on progress in establishing effective EU-wide rules of a sufficiently high standard. As I have said, the Conservatives welcome much of this agreement but the important questions raised on all sides of the House need to be answered to ensure greater clarity and public confidence, especially at a time when data security is so prominent in the public’s mind. Confidence in this Government’s record in this area is at present low, so I hope the Minister will be able to give some information which will go some way to restoring it.

18:16:00

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity provided by this debate to discuss the two reports. I shall address the points that have been raised in a moment, but first I should like to acknowledge and commend the European Union Committee’s valuable and thorough work in its scrutiny of the European legislation and add my praise for the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, and his work in leading that committee.

The committee recognises in its report the value of data sharing in the fight against terrorism and serious crime and the benefits delivered both for the United Kingdom and for all the participating member states. The Government are in agreement with the committee on this issue. Criminals do not respect borders, so it is vital that we develop a cross-border capacity to respond to crime. This includes co-operation with our European counterparts as well as those in the United States in sharing data specific to countering terrorism and combating serious crime.

The review that I carried out, which was reported in the Prime Minister’s Statement on security to Parliament on 25 July, also highlighted the importance of enhancing existing co-operation to share more information between police and immigration services and internationally across countries. The first line of defence against terrorism is overseas at other countries’ ports and airports, where people embark on journeys and where terrorist suspects can be identified and stopped before they board planes, ships and so on. The Government have already announced how the Home Secretary will enhance the existing e-borders programme to incorporate all passenger information to help to track and intercept terrorists and criminals. We also set out that, in the identification of potential terrorist suspects, there should be maximum co-operation internationally. Both the EU-US agreement on exchanging passenger name records data and the Prüm Council decision are important tools in the fight against terrorism and serious and organised crime. Wherever we take steps to enforce security, there must be proper safeguards in place to protect the individual.

I will address the EU-US agreement and Prüm separately. I had hoped to speak for about 20 minutes; there are rather a lot of questions but I will try to keep to that. On the EU-US PNR, the Government welcome the fact that a long-term agreement has been reached on the transfer of passenger data to the United States. This agreement recognises the need to balance preventing and combating serious crime and terrorism with providing data protection safeguards for air passengers. The letter from the United States provides the EU with assurances on the way in which the US intends to protect personal data under the agreement. In return, the EU has confirmed that, on the basis of the assurances that it has received, it considers the level of protection of PNR data in the United States to be adequate. There is a mechanism—the periodic review—for the EU to reassure itself that the assurances are being adhered to.

The noble Lord, Lord Wright, went into more detail about this letter. All I would add is that the letter provides the EU with assurances on how the US intends to protect personal data. The agreement is a legal instrument. Paragraph 1 refers to the assurances. The assurances from the US are contained in a statement about how it intends to apply its policies. You cannot really unpick the agreement and the letter; they are a package. The agreed package contains important commitments on how the US will handle PNR in respect of data protection.

The EU-led negotiations on PNR set out in the report were valuable. A copy of the report was given to the Commission and to the United Kingdom’s permanent representation to the European Union, and it was discussed with them. The EU Commission was aware of all the points at the time of the negotiations, which I think was very helpful.

Baroness Ludford
My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the Minister, but could he clarify what he just said? He said that the agreement is legally binding. Does he maintain that the whole package—the agreement plus the letter and the undertakings—is legally binding?

Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, perhaps I may get back in writing to the noble Baroness on that specific point. I am not clear on it myself.

The noble Lord, Lord Wright, also mentioned the view of the Commission and the presidency. The Commission and the presidency, which led the negotiations, were well aware of the views of the European Parliament and the European data protection supervisor. A copy of the Select Committee’s report was given to the Commission. As the Article 29 working party on data protection acknowledged, these were extremely tough negotiations, in which the United States had a strongly held position.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned the incentive for the US to move to a push system. A push system is obviously much better than a pull system for the reason that she gave. A deadline of 1 January 2008 obliges the DHS to move to a push system for all carriers operating out of the European Union that have implemented a system that complies with the DHS technical requirements.

Noble Lords mentioned the use of PNR data. The purpose set out in the previous interim agreement was retained in this new agreement. The US receives only that PNR that is necessary to prevent and combat,

“Terrorism and related crimes … Other serious crimes, including organized crime, that are transnational in nature; and … Flights from warrants or custody”,

for these crimes. The agreement also states that PNR data may be used, where necessary, for the protection of the vital interests of the data subject or other persons, for any criminal judicial proceedings or as otherwise required by law. This use of PNR data is not a new concept; it was mentioned in former undertakings.

I do not have the statistics for the agreement between the EU and the US on what has been achieved by PNR data. I would just cite Project Semaphore, which we have talked about in this House before. For example, on the very small quantity of PNR data that we have gathered on specific routes, we found that, as opposed to the one in 2,200 people whom in the past we were able to do anything about, we are able to get something like one in 12 of those people in whom we believe we have a legitimate interest. That shows the extent to which the data safeguard and enhance the rights of legitimate travellers who do not need to be subject to such detailed scrutiny, while successfully detecting the very small proportion of travellers who are breaking the law.

A number of speakers asked about profiling. By using PNR, we can build up a picture of suspect passengers; it is more their patterns of travel than a profile of the person. This enables us to identify individuals conducting those patterns of travel and to see whether they share common characteristics. That has enabled us to identify people who are more of a risk to us. It can also be used to facilitate legitimate travel and allow us not to have to bother with people who are travelling legitimately.

A number of speakers asked about the retention of data for longer. All I will say on that is that terrorist groups often operate over a long period and the recruitment and training of their personnel may be spaced over several years. It is therefore important that data be retained to allow retrospective analysis of intelligence to identify links between known operatives and others.

The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, asked whether passengers were aware of what personal data were held and under what conditions. The main United Kingdom airlines already provide passengers with information about how their data will be used; the EU and the US work with the aviation industry to publicise PNR systems and to raise awareness among passengers. In terms of redress, the new agreement allows people to seek redress if they think their PNR data are inaccurate or have been used. Passengers can also ask for their PNR data from the Department of Homeland Security under the US Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act. I cannot talk much more about that on the Floor of the House, but if the noble Baroness would wish, I can write to her, setting out the interface between the US Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, asked about a proper mechanism for reviewing the workings of the agreement. The details of how the review will be carried out have yet to be agreed. For the European Union, the review will be undertaken by the Commissioner responsible for justice, freedom and security or by somebody whom he designates.

Finally, there was a question about PNR data elements and their purpose. The data will be received only to the extent to which carriers collect those data as part of their normal business, as they already collect a lot of data under the EU borders scheme. The agreement specifically limits the purposes for which they may be used.

I hope that I have answered all the questions on the PNR side. This particular agreement is a proportionate measure. It provides certainty to air carriers that they may transfer passenger name record data to US authorities in compliance with their data protection obligations. The Department of Homeland Security has made a policy decision to extend administrative Privacy Act protections to non-US citizens. That is an improvement over the previous agreement. Furthermore, as I have already mentioned, greater visibility for notices describing the PNR system will enhance transparency.

Turning now to Prüm, the Government expect substantial benefits from this proposal for the work of UK law enforcement authorities. It will offer an enhanced UK law enforcement ability to search across the whole EU to establish matches of crucial forensic evidence in quicker time. This will allow officers to determine whether to pursue or eliminate lines of inquiry. The Prüm model returns a hit or no hit on average in 50 seconds, but it can take up to a maximum of 24 hours.

I know that during the course of the committee’s inquiry, in the report which preceded this debate, and in today’s debate, there have been a number of what could be termed “process-related” issues and questions. I want to reiterate that, despite my short time in this post, I am none the less more than aware of the importance of the parliamentary processes and seek to ensure that we work within them.

The Government have endeavoured to keep Parliament informed of events as they have unfolded. The negotiations did move fast, but that is not necessarily a bad thing if it means that we see the benefits in quicker time.

The negotiations did not however bypass the usual requirements. All member states were offered opportunities in the relevant council committee and at the JHA Council to question and propose amendments to the text, and indeed the UK secured three significant changes to meet UK concerns, including concerns raised by the European Union Committee. Specifically, we secured the deletion of the provision on hot pursuit, which was an issue that the committee felt particularly concerned about; we secured a limitation to vehicle registration data to serious crime; and secured data protection provisions that were both robust and consistent with national law and sought to include a council declaration on the application of existing non-automated data searching between member states.

It was unfortunate that it was not possible to clear the proposal from scrutiny before it was agreed. In responding to the committee’s report within a week, we hoped to be in a position to have this debate before the June JHA Council. That did not prove possible. As such, after much consideration, the then Home Office Minister decided to override the parliamentary scrutiny reserve and agree the Prüm Council decision. The reasons for that were set out in a letter to the committee dated 11 June 2007.

As noble Lords will be aware, we have recently participated in a general approach to the Prüm implementing agreement. I am aware of the committee’s views on the use of general approaches, but place on record that the Government do not consider this to be an override, given that work is continuing at expert level on the detailed accompanying technical annexe.

Coming to the data protection issues, I reiterate that the Government secured specific data-sharing provisions to be included in the Council decision to ensure a balance between the rights of the individual and the need to share data for public security purposes. We believe that the Prüm Council decision and implementing agreement provide such provisions and safeguards.

The noble Lord, Lord Wright, asked why we had been browbeaten into accepting Prüm without cost analysis. We were not browbeaten. There was a full discussion of the text. However, it was not accompanied by full and proper cost analysis—in that, he is completely right. I have to say that that was extremely unfortunate. During the negotiation, there was an expert seminar to explore the experience of the seven original Prüm states, which allowed us to assess resource and cost implications—it was not fully satisfactory, I have to say, but it gave us a baseline. The noble Lord asked why we accepted that before a data protection framework was in place. Prüm has its own data protection framework, which is robust and tailored to the specific system. It is a bespoke system.

The noble Lord also asked why we agreed to implement the agreement while it was under scrutiny. The Government do not accept that the general approach at the November JHA Council—the ongoing negotiations are detailed in the annexe—is an override, because we reserve the right to reopen the text at any time.

A number of speakers asked about access to our own databases and the complexities of our databases compared with those in the European Union. It would not be appropriate to allow direct access to our databases; indeed, that is not intended. We would allow a search on data from reference or shadow DNA or fingerprint databases, but that would be only to ascertain whether there was a hit or no hit on the data. Further information would have to go through the current secure police channels, including mutual legal assistance, once we knew that there had been a hit. Consequently, any disclosure of personal information about individuals whose profiles are on the UK databases would be under existing conditions. That provides for a case-by-case consideration of the legal basis, as well as the necessity for proportionality and justification of disclosure, taking into account data protection and ECHR considerations.

In closing, I stress the importance that the Government attach to these initiatives. The UK Government take data protection very seriously. It is paramount to ensure that when we share information proper measures are in place to protect the data shared. Data sharing is a key part of keeping our communities safe and protected. With ever-increasing travel by offenders and the transnational nature of organised crime, the necessity to share information increases accordingly.

Prüm is a new system for tackling organised transnational crime in a more modern way, allowing for a speedier and more efficient data-sharing mechanism. An important element in ensuring that we are able to share, retain and use data is the data protection standards and safeguards that the Prüm Council decision provides, with which the Government are satisfied.

The agreement between the EU and the US on the exchange of PNR also strikes that balance between the need to combat terrorism and serious and organised crime and the need to provide data protection safeguards. We all agree that the collection of PNR data is a valuable weapon in the fight against terrorism. However, we should not lose sight of the immense value of PNR in combating serious crime, including human trafficking and drug smuggling, as well as its value in securing borders.

I hope that I have addressed all your Lordships’ concerns satisfactorily, but I am willing to write on any issues that I have failed to cover in my speech.

18:35:00

Lord Wright of Richmond
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I would like to express my particular pleasure in sharing a debate for the first time with my former colleague—colleague, not pupil—the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones. I thank the Minister for his attempt to respond. I do not say “attempt” condescendingly; I mean an attempt to respond to our criticisms. They are criticisms mainly of delays and failures that predate his watch—if I have the expression right. I am also grateful for his offer to write further, if, on looking at Hansard, he and his officials consider it useful to bring up other things.

I merely want to take up one point that the Minister made that relates to the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. He said that we cannot unpick the package of the PNR agreement and the DHS letter. Our particular criticism is that the letter does unpick the agreement.

On Question, Motion Agreed to.

Passenger Name Record (EUC Report)

18:37:00

Lord Wright of Richmond
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on The EU/US Passenger Name Record (PNR) Agreement (21st Report, Session 2006–07, HL Paper 108).—(Lord Wright of Richmond.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House adjourned at 6.37 pm.