House Of Commons
Wednesday 18 February 1998
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
Prayers
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
Montserrat
[Relevant documents: First Report from the International Development Committee, Session 1997–98, on Montserrat (HC 267), and the Government's Response contained in the Committee's First Special Report (HC 532); Memorandum from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Current Situation of Montserratians in the United Kingdom (to be printed as HC 555).]
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Jane Kennedy.]
9.34 am
In debating this subject this morning, we should always remember the people of Montserrat, who have suffered grievously from the eruption of the volcano, which started in June 1995. It has meant that many of them—the vast majority—have not only lost their homes, most of which were their own property, but have lost their livelihoods, their schools and their community. They have had to move from one area to another of Montserrat. Many of them have had to go overseas to find a new life. In short, the eruption of the volcano has destroyed their lives and changed them irrevocably.
What this debate must concentrate on, and what we must all think about throughout our praise and criticisms of the policies that have been followed, is our concern for the people of Montserrat. I honestly believe that all those involved on the government side—the Governor, the Government of Montserrat, the Department for International Development and its predecessor, the Overseas Development Administration, and the Foreign Office—have all attempted in their different ways to help the people of Montserrat. There have been some mistakes and failures, and I am afraid that this debate will, of course, concentrate on them, but before we begin on that criticism, we should also remember the dedicated and sensitive work done by many people on the island of Montserrat, in the Department for International Development and in the Foreign Office, who have done a great deal to alleviate the suffering of the people of Montserrat. I know from their testimony to our Committee, the Select Committee on International Development, that they would have liked to do more. Many hours of dedicated work have been involved, and we should pay tribute to that. Undoubtedly, the basic problem arises from difficulties that we have invented for ourselves. The island of Montserrat is a beautiful island 12 miles by seven miles in the most beautiful blue warm sea of the Caribbean. It has had connections with Britain for more than 450 years. It is an island in which 11,000 people dwelt under the British flag. It is unusual for a Caribbean island in that it is not an obvious place for tourist development. It does not have the white sand beaches of many of the beautiful islands in the West Indies. It has a different economy; it has been a successful economy in many ways. In the past five or six years, Montserrat has suffered several serious setbacks. The first was a human one. The elected Government of Montserrat indulged in offshore banking in a way that was, to put it mildly, unsatisfactory. That was followed by a devastating hurricane that destroyed the whole of the main city of Plymouth, which was painstakingly rebuilt at considerable expense to the Department for International Development over the following three or four years. By the time Montserrat recovered in June 1995, it was no longer dependent on budgetary aid from the United Kingdom. It had restored its economy under the leadership of an able development economist, Prime Minister Rueben Meade. Once more, Montserrat was able to look forward to an exciting and rosy future—whereupon the volcano began to erupt for the first time in 300 years. From that moment on, the livelihoods and lives of the people of Montserrat have been destroyed. The government of the island is divided between the United Kingdom, in the person of the Governor on the island, who reports to the Foreign Office, and the elected Government of Montserrat. However, the Governor does not report directly to the Foreign Office, because the Foreign Office set up the dependent territories regional secretariat in Barbados. The Governor reports to the Foreign Office in London via the DTRS in Barbados and to the elected Government of Montserrat—no wonder that several Governors have described their condition as schizophrenic. It is not an easy post to fill: on the one hand, the Governor has to be the representative of the elected Government of Montserrat to the Government of Britain; and on the other, he has to be the representative of the United Kingdom Government to the elected Government of Montserrat and the people of Montserrat. Into that mixture, we have introduced further complications by the way in which we deliver assistance to Montserrat through the Department for International Development, whose development division is also located in Barbados. It has three pockets out of which to finance Montserrat: first, emergency aid, which came into operation because of the volcanic devastation; secondly, budgetary aid to support the budget of the Government of Montserrat, over which rigid control is exercised; and thirdly, development finance. The Barbados development division also mans the DTRS—the Foreign Office outpost in Barbados—in respect of the delivery of development aid. Emergency aid is delivered direct from London, as it was when these events started. Budgetary aid is administered from the Department's office in Barbados. I describe that complicated organisation because it leads me to the points that must be addressed. No one in that system has both the responsibility for the government of Montserrat and the money with which to do anything on the island. The result is an elongated, complicated and contradictory system of management on the island. The recommendation of the report of the International Development Committee, which has not been resolved by the Government's response, is that that should stop. We should provide the island with a management system that is efficient and comprehensible, and serves the people of Montserrat. The Committee believes that that can only be achieved if one Department has both the responsibility and the budget to meet that responsibility. Our report states that we believe that that Department should be the Foreign Office, although it could be another Department—for example, the Department for International Development, if the Government so chose. However, if the Foreign Office claims and acknowledges responsibility, it must be given a separate budget to run affairs in Montserrat, because only then can we simplify the lines of authority and manage events efficiently. The budget for Montserrat should not come within the budget of the Department for International Development; it should be a separate budget. Indeed, the emergency expenditure, which has already cost the British Government more than £50 million—a huge sum to come out of the international development budget—should have been met, not from the contingency reserve of the Department for International Development, as the Government have suggested, but from the contingency reserve of the Treasury, because no one can forecast a volcano's eruption or make provision for it. The emergency was therefore truly unforeseen, and should have been met by an emergency injection of money. Why does the Committee say that? The House should understand exactly what the contingency reserve of the Department for International Development is used for if it is not used to meet expenditure arising from the volcano's eruption on Montserrat. It is generally set aside at the beginning of the year to accommodate and provide flexibility in the administration of the Department's budget. By the end of the year, it has always been entirely utilised—that is, it has been spent on good international development objectives, providing assistance to some of the poorest countries in the world. If we use that money to meet the problems resulting from the volcanic eruption in Montserrat, it is obviously not available for use in respect of the other aspects of aid. That is why we say that an emergency of that sort should not lead to a reduction in the Department's investment in its other aid objectives—expenditure on an emergency should come from the contingency reserve of the Treasury. The Government's response deliberately fudges those issues, and the House should understand what was implied and what the Committee recommended. We have to sort out, first, the aid management scheme and, secondly, who is responsible for what in Montserrat. We have to give the Governor and the elected Government clear powers, and those powers should not overlap as they currently do. Let me give one example from the evidence in the report. Governor Savage recommended to the Foreign Office that we should build 1,000 houses in the north of Montserrat, away from the volcano, so that we could accommodate those who would have to move because of the volcanic activity. He told the Committee that, if the volcano had not erupted in a way that destroyed homes, he would have looked very silly having spent money on 1,000 homes in a safe part of the island which were not needed. That recommendation was made in 1995 and 100 houses have so far been built. Their construction was authorised by the Secretary of State after 19 lives were lost in Montserrat on 25 June last year. The houses have been erected relatively quickly, but, in the meantime, because of the lack of alternative housing in the north, many of Montserrat's people have been living in deplorable conditions in makeshift shelters for more than two years, and they frequently have to move from one shelter to another. None of us would want to live in such conditions, nor would we want any of those people to have to continue to do so, but they are still living there. Why did that happen? Why were 1,000 houses not built? The reason is that the Government of Montserrat did not want them to be built. They thought that, if we built 1,000 houses, it would signal to the people of Montserrat that they must evacuate the island because it had no future and that the people would therefore leave Montserrat; so the muddle continued. That is why I say that we have to sort out the constitution and government responsibilities properly, so that there is no overlap or confusion and so that we give the people of Montserrat a proper system of government of which we and they can be proud. The combination of the British effort on the island of Montserrat and British support for its people is vital for its future. Montserrat will have a rosy future once the volcanic activity has died down. The people of Montserrat have great ingenuity and a strong system of values. In spite of all the difficulties affecting schools, Montserrat's excellent education system still achieves much higher results than any other comparable West Indian island. The people of Montserrat offer us a challenge—to sort out the management, efficiency and control of our aid programme. I do not think that the Government have begun to give us the answers.9.49 am
I agree with every word that the Chairman of the Select Committee on International Development, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), has said. His chairmanship of the Committee has been excellent—especially in relation to the issue of Montserrat—because of his great knowledge of the Caribbean and his many contacts there. It has been a pleasure to work with him; it is a pity that he is in the wrong party. I think that everyone will agree with those sentiments.
I have been involved with this issue for two to three years. In fact, my father recently told me that my great-grandmother came from Montserrat—I have a direct connection with the island, even though I was not aware of it. Last August, the Montserrat Government asked me to visit the island to help them, as there was great conflict between the Governments of Britain and of Montserrat. I was astonished by the chaos that I found when I arrived. Departments were vying with each other, various fiefdoms had been set up, and the Foreign Office was arguing with the Department for International Development, the health Ministry, the observatory and the scientists—it was sheer confusion. It became clear to me that politicians in Montserrat and the British Government needed to do some straight talking. I was pleased that, soon after my visit, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development went to the island to continue the dialogue and assure the Montserratians that the British Government took their plight seriously. I believe that the attention paid by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and my noble Friend Baroness Symons has been extensive; they have worked as hard as they can to help. During my visit to Montserrat, I noticed three clear areas of difficulty. The first was the situation in Montserrat itself after the volcano had erupted. Despite the fact that some of the best scientists in the world were there, their reports were conflicting. There was general confusion about what to do, and people were under pressure. The second area of difficulty was Antigua, where the British high commissioner and others had failed to make adequate preparations to receive the Montserratians who had fled there after the volcano erupted in June and August. The Antigua Government told me about the difficulties that they faced when some 3,000 people descended on the island—they had no facilities to cope. I arranged a number of meetings, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary was able to give reassurances, so that those matters were sorted out. The third question involves the Montserratians who came to Britain; I believe that the previous Government must accept some responsibility for the difficulties that those people faced. Britain is known throughout the world for its organisation, but why was there so little organisation in Montserrat, Antigua and Britain to relieve the plight of the Montserratians? Much water has passed under the bridge, and we do not want to rake over the past. Suffice it to say that, when I returned to Montserrat in September with the Select Committee, I saw a marked improvement. Some of the officials had been replaced by fresh, younger-looking people, who seemed to have much greater empathy with the people's plight and to be more anxious to ensure that the situation improved. Generally, I was pleased with the changes that had occurred in the month or so between my first and second visits. Nevertheless, serious problems still had to be overcome, and the Select Committee's report pointed to a number of areas in which we felt that there was room for improvement. I found the Government's response to our report disappointing; with the exception of one of our recommendations, they have not responded positively. The Select Committee will discuss its other recommendations with the Government, as we want proper explanations. I shall concentrate briefly on the plight of the Montserratians who came to Britain. They have been badly hurt by their treatment, as they have always believed that they are British citizens. They may have been called British overseas citizens, British dependent territory citizens or whatever, but they always felt that they were British and that Britain would protect them— Britain was the mother country. As Montserratians have said to me, they fought in the war and did all they could to assist Britain. We must recognise what it is like to come from a small country, especially in the Caribbean and south America. The Caribbean islands are caught in the middle of a huge drug trade between north and south America. Safety and security are paramount, and Montserrat has always looked to the British Government for protection. As one person said to me, half a dozen bandidos with submachine-guns could take over the country overnight were it not for Britain. Montserratians depend on Britain, but they feel that they were let down when they were in dire straits, not by the British people, but by both the previous and current British Governments—many Montserratians particularly blame the previous Government. Montserratians have not had a very good reception; no special arrangements were made. As they have found, a refugee or an asylum seeker has a better chance of being met and properly dealt with than a British overseas citizen. They have not even been told how long they can stay—that matter has still not been resolved. The Home Office said that they could stay for two years or for as long as the crisis lasted, but no one has stated categorically what the position is. Montserratians have been told that they will be treated as British citizens, which, on the face of it, sounds very good. If one is treated as a British citizen, one is entitled to social security and so on, which sounds fine. However, these people come from a small Caribbean country where they are accustomed to a certain standard of living, warm weather and owning their own homes—some even have swimming pools. They have suddenly been thrust—if they are lucky—into cold, damp, mildew-ridden council flats in Tottenham, Hackney or Deptford. Some have been put into bed-and-breakfast accommodation—in one case, a woman aged about 35, her 17-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter were put into one room. In those circumstances, it is extremely difficult to see Britain as the mother country. Those Montserratians have been treated abominably. A measure of how they have been treated on arrival in the United Kingdom is the fact that the group that has been given the task of looking after the Montserratians— belatedly, from January 1998—has been the refugee action group, an offshoot of the Refugee Council. The British Government are treating the Montserratians not as citizens, but as refugees and asylum seekers. Apart from everything else, the status that they have been given has caused the Montserratians great grief, which they have felt very deeply indeed.Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the many indicators of how badly Montserratians have been treated, and how little care has been given to their resettlement, is the fact that although—as we both know—the largest group of Montserratian evacuees is in Hackney, my borough, Haringey, his borough, and surrounding areas, the Government admit, in a memorandum sent to the International Development Committee, that they have not even bothered to keep central records of Montserratian evacuees in the London area?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am glad that she raised that point. She would be as amazed as I and the Committee were to discover that, not only did the British Government not know how many refugees were coming to the United Kingdom, but they did not even know how many Montserratians there were—and there are only about 3,000 of them. A member of the Committee said, "You have a lot of redundant teachers because there are no schools. Could not you send them round to count the people?" Twenty people could count the population of Montserrat in a day, but the British Government were not clued up enough to do so.
To a large extent, Montserratians who have come here, in the most seriously reduced circumstances, have been left to fend for themselves. They have been expected to use the existing services available to the homeless and the penniless domestically, which are, by and large, entirely inappropriate to their circumstances. Some of them have been traumatised, having lost everything, and they have found themselves in unfamiliar surroundings. They should not have had to grapple with the social security system, or with the intricacies of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, as operated by local authorities. A proper system, specifically for them, with adequate financial aid, should have been established by the previous Government as soon as it became clear that Montserratians would come to the United Kingdom in considerable numbers. Many Montserratians have been left without sufficient funds to buy essential items of furniture and clothing. One family came to me who had asked for a social security grant and been told that they could get a loan to buy furniture. We may find it hard to understand how those people felt about borrowing money. They are independent people who have never had to borrow anything in their life, and when they are asked to borrow money from the state, they feel insulted. Several families who visited me had little but the tropical clothing they stood up in, yet they were entitled to no help to equip themselves with warm clothing for the British climate. When one person came to my surgery, I had to give her my overcoat to go home in because she was shivering from the cold. There has been no one to assist the displaced Montserratians. At Department of Social Security offices, they are met with hard-faced individuals who say, "We have been told that we need not make special allowances for you, so you must cope as best you can." Often, Montserratians have been housed in the most disgraceful temporary accommodation imaginable. There has been some anxiety about unfairness in the method of subsidising local authorities that have had the responsibility of housing the displaced Montserratians. The local authorities that have drawn most Montserratians to their areas—such as those of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and myself—because they already have a sizeable population of Montserratians in their area, have struggled to cope. We have had little or no subsidy from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions scheme. The scheme has been used, in effect, to bribe unwilling local authorities to take Montserratians, and they have tended to be those most able to help in the first place. My local authority—already under severe pressure because we have the highest concentration of refugees of any constituency in the country—has been willing to do what it can to assist, with hardly any subsidy, and I know that the same has been true of Hackney and other London boroughs. I understand that the Home Office is running a scheme that beggars belief. When Montserratians arrive at Heathrow or Gatwick airport, they are allocated to certain local authorities. If, because of family connections or other reasons, they do not wish to go to those authorities, the authorities that they go to are not given any housing subsidy by the Government, whereas, if people go where they are sent, the authority that houses them is given a subsidy. I find that amazing. One would expect a sympathetic Government to welcome the fact that people have connections in this country and to be pleased that they go to those connections instead of going into strange parts. I received representations on that subject from a Member of the Legislative Council in Montserrat, who was very worried about the vulnerable people who had been sent to accommodation in the north of England. He told me that ill, frail, elderly people, and some mentally ill people, who were supposed to have gone into that accommodation in Durham for two weeks, had been there for several months. Although they are very pleased that the authorities in Durham took them on board, there is no Montserratian community in Durham. Those elderly people have been taken out of their warm sunshine and plonked into an old people's home or other accommodation in Durham, where they feel isolated. The surroundings are unfamiliar. The people do not eat the same food and they cannot understand what they are saying. One can understand how difficult that is for an elderly person who has been traumatised by the volcanic eruption. I know that in my area, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), a hospice is available, with very nice gardens in the middle. There are many people from Montserrat in the area. We have asked the Home Office why it cannot put those people in my constituency, in the next constituency, or in Hackney, provided that there is accommodation. I am sure that there will be. Why is it not possible for the Government to do something about housing? There are a number of specialist Caribbean housing associations, such as Carib Housing and Ujima. There are several other black housing associations, which would have been pleased to house the Montserratians. They know what the Montserratians like; they know what to expect; they would have put them in nice, friendly houses. The Montserratians would have been welcomed and they would have been in touch with their people. Instead, we get stone walling from the Government generally, or the Montserratians are told, "You go where we send you and that is the end of it." There is no discussion—no communication. Montserratians in this country feel that they have a grievance. They feel that, when they came to this country, they should have been given a resettlement grant, like those who went to Antigua and other parts of the Caribbean. They feel that they needed something. The Government should have said to them, "Here you are; here is a package"—perhaps a bundle of warm clothes plus X pounds—"so that you can settle yourselves down." That has not happened, and there is grave concern about it. I also raise the question of the return of people to Montserrat. What will happen if people wish to return to the island? Will their fares be paid? What about those who paid their own fares and arrived in this country just before the assisted fares scheme began? Are they entitled to a rebate? I appreciate that Ministers have devoted a great deal of time to this question and that the matter has been difficult to deal with because of the number of Departments involved. I appreciate also that the Government inherited considerable chaos from the previous Administration. However, there is much to be learnt from the difficulties that have been experienced in co-ordinating these matters. I hope that the Government will continue to reflect on the gap between the promises made and the help delivered. It has been an important learning curve for all concerned. When I first visited Montserrat, I blamed many people for the Montserratians' plight, which I said was aggravated by out-and-out racism. I still believe that an element of that is involved. However, I have now met several officials, particularly those from the Department for International Development, in Montserrat and elsewhere, and I believe that they genuinely wish to assist. I must be honest about that. The volcano caused a disaster of such magnitude that the bureaucracy simply could not cope. Underlying my criticism, I am sure that the people of Montserrat would want me to say that they appreciate the help that has been given. I hope that the Government will continue their good work on Montserrat in the future.10.11 am
I wish to address several aspects of the disaster that concern me most. Before I do that, I thank the Chairman of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), who has done an excellent job, and the Committee Clerk, who also worked extremely hard. Their efforts are much appreciated.
Like the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant), during my visit to Montserrat, I discovered that I had a connection with the island. My surname, which is very rare in this country, is apparently a common family name on Montserrat. I have checked my background and my husband tells me that his great-great-uncle did an awful lot of travelling—and it rather seems as if he did an awful lot of other things as well. I shall check in other countries as I travel around the world. I agree with the commitment made in the first paragraph of the Government's response, which refers to makingHowever, I was extremely concerned to hear recently that the Government of Montserrat are encouraging people to return to the island while the volcano remains active. I consider that to be irresponsible behaviour. Many of the actions of the Government of Montserrat suggest that they are sometimes more concerned with their position than with the safety of the people whom they represent. Those are harsh words, but I think that they may be true. I am glad to learn from the response that the Montserrat Government's leaflet to residents has been distributed, and that much effort has been made to inform people of the situation on the island. However, I was very disappointed in the leaflet, which purports to describe the situation in layman's terms. If the health education department from my previous job had seen that leaflet, it would have said that it was incomprehensible to many people. The leaflet is not designed for easy reading. It is complete nonsense to use words such as "prognosis" in a leaflet to be distributed all over Montserrat. I suggest that the leaflet be urgently revised and made readable. I found one sentence in Sir Robert May's report particularly enlightening. On page 2, he says:"it possible for those Montserratians who want to do so, to remain on the island as long as the scientists advise that it is relatively safe for them to be there."
Elsewhere in the report, Sir Robert says:"We should be wary of placing too much faith in the predictions of future activity as a foundation for making decisions."
Sir Robert May says time and again, "Please do not take what I say as gospel. Take it with a pinch of salt, as I cannot make accurate estimations." The rest of my remarks are set against that background of uncertainty. The Government's response mentions the hospital and medical programme on Montserrat. During our visit, I was absolutely appalled by the rudimentary nature of the care at the island's hospital. One doctor and several demoralised nurses working in an old school building constituted the hospital. The wards were dirty, the paint was peeling, the beds were broken and a few old screens and curtains were erected around a seriously ill patient who had just returned from Guadeloupe, where he had undergone treatment for severe burns received during the explosion last August. That was two years after the volcano's first eruption. The Committee's report asked where the equipment from the hospital in Plymouth had gone. No one on Montserrat seemed to know, and the Government's response says that it is "in storage". We still do not know where that storage is or where the equipment has gone. If that equipment comprises beds, screens or basic provisions for hospital wards, why is it not being used at St. John's hospital on Montserrat? The news of the upgrading is welcome. However, the Health Minister on Montserrat said only last week that very little had been done and that health conditions on the island remained appalling. Without returning to Montserrat, it is difficult to know whether the promises have been delivered. I refer now to the health risk posed by the silica dust in the volcano ash. When we were in Antigua, there was a thick layer of dust all over that island and in the north of Montserrat. We have been told that prevailing weather conditions make the north of the island a lot safer than the rest of Montserrat. Nevertheless, there are still children and small babies on Montserrat who are inhaling volcanic dust that contains very fine particles called cristobalite, which could cause silicosis in the future—we are not sure whether it will, but it could. Sir Robert May suggests that Montserratians may attribute any future illnesses to their exposure to ash. They may be quite justified in doing so. Who will pay them compensation? That issue is not addressed in the Government's response. We also recommended that Montserratians in this country should undergo health monitoring and lung examinations in future years. However, the Foreign Office letter reveals that the Government do not know where those people have gone. No one has kept a record of their movements. How can we check on people's health if we do not know where they are? During our visit, the Committee was concerned about the island's evacuation plans. There seemed to be any number of such plans, all of which conflicted with each other, and the island's residents had no clear idea of what they should do in an emergency. Even though the Government claim that evacuation plans are being developed, I am concerned about whether people are aware of them and have practised evacuation procedures. How will the Government of Montserrat manage sick, elderly and mentally ill patients in an emergency? How will helicopters fly if there are ash clouds over the island? How will boats land at the temporary jetty? The eruption on Boxing day last year caused a huge tidal wave around the island that rendered the jetty useless. How will people be evacuated from the island in an emergency? I refer again to Sir Robert May's report, which states:"do not place too much emphasis on results…never before done a risk assessment on an erupting volcano".
Such an event may be improbable, but it could happen. There is no mention in the Government's response of the Wadge and Isaacs report of 1987. That recommended against establishing communities in the Plymouth area of the island. A great deal of money—our money, from the Overseas Development Administration, as it was then— was spent after the hurricane in rebuilding an area of the island that scientists had assessed as probably not safe because of the volcano. I know that this is all hindsight, but where are the explanations from Government Departments? Why was action not taken on that report? What were the vested interests, if any, in the Plymouth area to allow development to take place? Why, after the hurricane, did the previous Government not take the report into account before spending all that money on rebuilding? Why has the Foreign and Commonwealth Office not investigated the disappearance of the report? We are told that it was blown away from the Governor's residence in Montserrat by the hurricane, but no hurricane affected the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Where did the report go? Is not the FCO concerned that a report commissioned by it and costing public money disappeared without trace until the report from Christian Aid brought it to light? I have covered only a few points from the Select Committee report and the Government's response, but there are many others. The Department for International Development has made great strides since last May. If the suggestions of the Chairman of our Select Committee are adopted, it is to be hoped that new lines of management and accountability will speed up our country's response in the future. I ask myself time and again whether a natural disaster in Kent or Surrey would have been dealt with in the same way. I think not. I am still ashamed that our people in Montserrat have been treated so badly."People must also take into account that in the improbable event of a major eruption affecting the North there would be no time for evacuation."
10.21 am
I am pleased to have a chance to contribute to the debate. It has been a privilege to serve on the Select Committee for International Development, and I, too, pay tribute to our Chairman and the Clerk, and to all the work that has been done by Ministers, the Department for International Development and the people in Monserrat to deal with the crisis.
Many of the points that I wanted to touch on have been raised by other members of the Committee, so I shall not hark back over those. I stress strongly the issue of communications. The convoluted problems experienced in dealing with the crisis come back to the labyrinth of lines of responsibility and lines of communication, as the Select Committee discovered. I recall one sitting in which we were trying to get a grip on who did what in which Department. We heard that a matter was dealt with by the British Development Division in the Caribbean, the West Indies and Atlantic department, the Governor of Montserrat, the Overseas Development Administration as it was, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Governor of Monserrat again and the Department for International Development. At one point, I asked for a diagram, in the vain hope that that might make matters clearer, but the diagram was laughable—it was a spider's network of squares, and we gave up. I cannot emphasise enough that the situation needs to be sorted out. I am pleased to say that the new Government, in the first nine months, having been pushed into the situation, are taking seriously the task of sorting out the responsibility and communication problems.The Committee made two clear recommendations, Nos. 13 and 20, about lines of communication. Are not members of the Committee concerned that, in their response, the Government have totally ignored those recommendations? Nowhere in the Government's response is there any reference to them. It is as if those conclusions had never been reached by the Committee. Why does the hon. Lady think that the Government have ignored them?
There is still a long way to go, and several things that need to be done. It is worth recognising that the situation did not arise just in the past nine months. We have not reached this terrible state of confusion overnight. There is an historic problem. The previous Government did not exactly bend over backwards to try to sort out the Kafkaesque situations that the Select Committee encountered. At one point, I wondered whether I had stumbled into a bad episode of "Yes, Minister", being a new Member of Parliament.
I welcome the fact that, as a new Government, we have started to get to grips with issues such as the dependent territories now becoming overseas territories, and ensuring that the same people will have responsibility for decision-making and for allocating resources. So far, we have spent about £50 million in UK aid money in trying to deal with the crisis and development in Montserrat. Unless we deal with the communications issues and the lines of responsibility, that money will not be well spent to bring aid and long-term development to the people of Montserrat, who so desperately need it. We have heard reference to the Wadge and Isaacs report, which was funded by the United Nations disaster relief organisation. It examined the long-term chances of disasters occurring on the island—hurricanes as well as volcanoes. A copy was sent to the Government of Montserrat and to the Governor of Montserrat. The FCO did not get a copy. The ODA, as it was, did have a copy, but we do not know who it was sent to and what happened to it. The report stated clearly that the volcano was a threat to people in Montserrat and that development in Plymouth was not recommended. The FCO at the time did not know that, so the previous Government spent £16.8 million in 1989 on redevelopments around the Plymouth area which were destroyed almost as soon as they were put up. That includes the water supply and the Glendon hospital development. The Select Committee report says that that was administrative incompetence. It was a clear case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. The new Government must take that on board and guarantee that we shall never be left in that position again. We have heard about good communication with the residents of Montserrat. I confess to having been a tabloid journalist and knowing that the average reading age of a person in the UK is between eight and 10 years. The advice to residents of Montserrat—the leaflet telling them what to do and what the long-term prognosis was for the island—made disturbing reading. I shall quote one paragraph on the assessment of risk which people in Montserrat are supposed to understand. It states:Pardon? What are people supposed to do with that information? The section on health risks states:"The risk assessment based on the assessment of the status of the volcano and its hazards suggests that in terms of fatalities the individual risk to people living north of Lawyers River…is 'minimal', 'low' for those in North Olveston and Woodlands…'moderate' for anyone in the Salem area…and 'high' in the 6remainder of the exclusion zone".
We must tackle this as a communications problem. If that is the advice that people are given, the new Department for International Development must ensure that its communications staff put the information into plain English which I and my family could understand, and which the people of Montserrat could understand, too. Communication is a crucial element of the final draft of the sustainable development plan for the long-term future of Montserrat. If people in Montserrat are to have faith that the north of the island can offer their families a future, and that the island towards the south and centre can eventually be resettled, they must have a stake in the sustainable development plan and be involved in drawing it up. The plan must examine issues such as the insurance problems, because at present, there is no insurance cover on the island, so if people want to build new houses or redevelop their businesses, they cannot get insurance. It must consider food production, small and medium-size enterprise development and housing. It is crucial that the plan is communicated effectively to the residents of Montserrat and the people who are currently overseas, but who may wish to return, so that they can become part of that process. The Government have given us a response. There are still aspects on which much more work needs to be done. The Government accept that lessons must be learnt from the handling of the Montserrat crisis. They have agreed to produce a frank and open report of the administration and handling of the crisis and its lessons. That is to be welcomed. The point has been clearly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) and by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) that the people of Montserrat consider themselves to be United Kingdom citizens. The population of Montserrat is about the size of a small market town in Gloucestershire, for example. It is horrifying to think that if, God forbid, there were a disaster in Gloucestershire at one of the market towns, people would have to jump through the hoops and processes that confronted the people of Montserrat before receiving the aid and assistance which they deserved and to which they have a right. We are talking about people who have UK protection. I am sure that the appropriate lessons have been learnt by the Government. I am pretty sure that in nine months, we have made enormous strides. The situation has not, however, developed overnight and those who were members of the previous Administration should answer some strong questions about whether they closed their eyes to a terrible convoluted mess of responsibility and communications and thereby allowed the situation to get to the stage that confronted the Labour Government."There is also a risk to health from exposure to volcanic ash, of which the ash from pyroclastic flows is the most dangerous. Ash from the volcano is known to contain cristobalite, a toxic form of silica which can cause silicosis following prolonged exposure."
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I shall be brief, because I know that the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Sir A. Goodlad) wish to make serious contributions.
I do not share the optimism of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Ms Kingham) that the lessons will be learnt. I am sure that it is intended that they should be learned, but it is clear from the sorry saga of which we are aware that the British Government's administrative machine, of whichever party, wants to do the best that it can without disturbing its own settled procedures. That is by no means good enough. When the Secretary of State for International Development came before us, she said that there areWhen the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Baroness Symons, came before the Committee, she said:"so many players in this thing it is very difficult to have authority over people who make the decisions or know the answers".
What nonsense. This is not just a matter for Montserrat. What would happen if, God forbid, some disaster befell the Falkland Islands, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena or any of the other dependent territories? Would we have a situation in which the various Government Departments could not be pushed about because a junior Minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or the International Development Office, did not have the clout to tell them what to do? That is nonsense. It is high time that the Government set up a structure to respond to such emergencies and to carry clout across Whitehall. It has been said already that it is nonsensical for the Government to say in their bland reply to the Committee that they accept all its recommendations except the 46 that they are not really accepting. What is the merit in saying that structures are being worked out to try to find out where the Montserratians who may be at risk from ash are now located, when, in an earlier part of the Government's reply, they say that it is not impossible to track down the Montserratians who are in this country because they have been absorbed in the social security system like any other citizen? The Government cannot have it both ways. Either we can find these Montserratians or we cannot. It is nonsense to suggest that they cannot be found. A tiny number of people left an island by one exit only. At no stage did anyone count them or analyse who was leaving. That is nonsense. We have no idea whether the people who came from Montserrat are older or younger than the average age of the population. We have no idea whether the people left in Montserrat are older or younger, although I believe that some effort has been made to count who is still there. I have no knowledge they have been analysed in terms of age or infirmity. I do not know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether you have ever kept a hamster in your family. One of the characteristics of hamsters is that they pedal like blazes in a wheel. As that wheel is not connected to anything, however hard the hamster works, nothing else happens. From the point of view of the hamster, such activity is purely a matter of personal health. I have the impression that well-meaning officials and Ministers throughout the Government machine have also been pedalling like blazes. Unfortunately, the machine to which they are attached cannot deliver. It is time that something was done about that. If nothing else comes out of this sorry story, a unit must be set up that can deliver across Whitehall when emergencies arise that affect dependent territories, as they used to be called, for which we have a responsibility. If nothing else apart from such a unit emerges from the report, it will still have been worth while."I am sure you would find that those departments would be very angry indeed if the Foreign and Commonwealth Office came along and tried to issue anything that looked a bit like an order."
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I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant), I have been involved in the Montserrat issue for many years.
Monserrat is a tiny jewel of an island which is a long way away from the United Kingdom. The House should be aware that the entire Caribbean is looking to see how the Government are dealing with the issue. The way in which the Government deal with the Montserrat crisis is a test of their commitment to the region. Every dependent territory, wherever it may be, is looking to see how the Government deal with the issue. For the dependent territories, Montserrat is a test of the UK's commitment to them. In addition, Britain's entire Afro-Caribbean community is looking to see how the Government deal with Montserrat, We know that, when another dependent territory—the Falklands—was in its time of trial, the UK did not count the cost. We would like to think that in helping the people of Montserrat in a tragedy that those of us who have not been to the island can only imagine—imagine three quarters of our country being covered in volcanic dust— this country will not count the cost. I wish to make three main points. First, tremendous difficulties have been caused by the complications of decision making and the divisions of responsibility between London, Barbados and the Governor. There is also the division of responsibilities in the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development. We have seen in the case of Montserrat what happens when responsibilities are divided between two Cabinet Ministers. We have seen that that division of responsibilities does not work. In any situation of this sort, the Foreign Office—the lead Department—would have to call on the expertise of officials in DFID. We have seen what happens, however, when there is split responsibility. Through no fault of their own, the people of Montserrat have been caught up in an administrative tangle. Worse, they have been caught up in turf wars. I hope that we shall learn from this and that a system and organisation will be put in place to deal with such problems so that split responsibilities and turf wars are not seen again. Secondly, there is the situation on the island. In June 1997, 19 people died because of the volcanic explosion. I tabled a private notice question and pressed my hon. Friend the Minister on the state of the hospital on the island and housing generally. I am sad that, eight months later, so little progress has been made. I referred to the state of the hospital, its outside toilets and the disillusionment and demoralisation of the nurses and doctors, and my hon. Friend the Minister had soothing words. He may have come to the House today with more soothing words, but for the people in the hospital, including nurses and doctors—in fact, it is a makeshift building, not a hospital—soothing words are not enough. We know that the Government inherited a terrible situation from the Conservative Government. However, the people of Montserrat have waited long enough for action on specific issues, such as housing and the hospital, which have been raised time and again. Thirdly, I am disturbed about the situation of Monserrat evacuees in this country. The Government have not even bothered to carry out a comprehensive survey of the number of evacuees who are here, especially in north-east London in areas such as Hackney and Haringey, where there is the largest group. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office produced a memorandum on the position of Montserratians in the United Kingdom, which refers to benefits and states that districts are able to provide access to a contingency reserve so as to provide loans and grants. The memorandum tells us that the districts have been reminded of this. I went to the benefits office in Hackney in my constituency not so many weeks ago. Those responsible had no knowledge of the reserve that is referred to in the memorandum. I want an assurance that benefits offices in areas where we know that there are many Montserratians will be approached and asked to apply for the contingency reserve. In Hackney, Haringey and other areas, Montserratians with no clothes, heating or blankets are turning up at social security offices and are being offered loans. How are they supposed to repay these loans? They are not able to claim on insurance.indicated dissent.
The Minister shakes his head. I invite him to come to the Hackney benefit office with some of my Montserratian evacuees, and shake his head at them and see what they say.
I represent and live with the people who are suffering, and what the Minister says at the Dispatch Box about how the benefits system is working does not match the experience of Montserratian evacuees when they go to benefit offices and ask for help. The problem is that we have Government documents and soothing words from Ministers, but on the ground, the experience of Montserratian evacuees is very different. There are many issues that one can raise in relation to Montserratian evacuees: housing, the lack of help for housing associations to provide for Montserratians' specific needs and education. One of the problems that Montserratian parents find, which might surprise some hon. Members, is that their children are rather further ahead than some of the children in our inner-city schools. At the end of last year, I held a public meeting in Hackney, where more than 200 Montserratian evacuees live. They feel most strongly and are most wounded about the nationality issue, because they believe themselves to be loyal British subjects. I am heartened and pleased that the Foreign Secretary is considering making all citizens of dependent territories British citizens, as they were not so long ago. That would help the Montserratians, and it would be a significant gesture to every citizen of a dependent territory. I am sorry that there has been some turf war or struggle about the Foreign Secretary's statement, but one thing—apart from the financial and organisational issues—that the Government could do to show good faith to the people of Montserrat and the people of dependent territories is restore them to full British citizenship. We have heard of the hard work that has been done by the officials from DFID, and the energy and activity of Ministers, but if there are any true heroes and heroines in this story, they are the people of Montserrat, who have undergone a tragedy and disaster, which we can only imagine, with unparalleled dignity and restraint. Just as the people of Montserrat and the dependent territories have always been loyal to this country, so we should be loyal to them now.10.41 am
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) and the Select Committee on International Development on their first choice of subject for investigation and analysis. Their decision to visit Montserrat and to hold an extended series of interviews reflects the concern that is felt in this country and on both sides of the House.
The report and the Government's response to it remind us of the enormity of the tragedy that has taken place, and refuel our deep sympathy for the islanders. It is worth repeating the first and undisputed conclusion of the Select Committee. It was appalled at what it saw on Montserrat, at the conditions that people were having to endure, and at the mismanagement and confusion that have been evident throughout the crisis. As hon. Members have pointed out, many emerge from the affair with credit: the commanding officer and crew of the Royal Navy guard ship; the Governors of the island, Frank Savage and Anthony Abbott; the island's dedicated but beleaguered civil servants; and, of course, the volcano watchers, who monitored the rumblings of the hills. Most outstanding, however, is the stoicism of the people of Montserrat. They have had their homes destroyed and their employment lost. Many have been forced abroad, including to our own shores. Nevertheless, there remains an overwhelming desire to rebuild their lives. As my meetings with Chief Minister Brandt have confirmed, enterprise and self-help are strongly held values on the island. The Montserratians naturally turned to the British Government for assistance that was necessary, not assistance that was unreasonable. They have expressed gratitude for the help that they received, but have felt rebuffed and ignored by the Government on too many occasions. As hon. Members on both sides of the House have demonstrated, the Government's response to the report is less than adequate. Part of the criticism came because the people on Montserrat were talked down to when they were not being ignored by the Government. The Montserratians felt that they were viewed as a burden on other aid programmes. The traditional assumption that British dependent territories have first call on aid for all reasonable purposes seemed to be in jeopardy. Certain remarks were made that clearly resounded around the Caribbean and made matters worse. The Government were seen as aloof and patronising. I understand that at a press conference on Montserrat on 12 September, the Under-Secretary of State promised to return to the island in three months to assess progress on implementation of the promises made during his visit. It is now more than five months since that press conference, and the islanders are awaiting to hear when he will fulfil that promise. The memorandum raises questions that require answering. Many were touched on today. The Select Committee recommended that the Government inform all neighbouring islands of the evacuation plans for Montserrat. Measures to improve regional co-ordination were promised, but none has been spelled out. They are needed and would be welcome today. The Government accepted that a full, frank and impartial report on the lessons of Montserrat should be commissioned. Whom will the Minister's Department nominate, and what will the report's exact remit be? Will the person be a judge? Will the report be impartial? Can the Minister confirm a timetable? Can he explain what its relationship will be with the current discussions on the future of what hitherto were called dependent territories? The Minister will be aware of the disappointment on the island at the Government's decision not to provide support for its building society savers. Will he tell the House what affect that has had on small savers, and what proposals he has to help them? Housing has been covered by other hon. Members. Perhaps the Minister will lead us a little further down the path of what can now be expected. Can he also confirm that the city of Durham, which has no links with the Caribbean, took in Montserratians with special needs, and discovered that no British Government Department would take responsibility for their care? Although the House would wish to recognise Durham's generosity, what has the Minister said to other Departments to ensure that Montserratians with special needs are properly cared for? Who in the Government is monitoring their interests? A number of hon. Members referred to the division between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development, and the exacerbation of the crisis by bureaucratic buck passing. The problem stems from the division between the old Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the new Department for International Development. One has responsibility without the money; the other has money, but not the responsibility. We now learn that the problem is expected to be resolved by the creation of a third department, apparently responsible to both the others. I fear that that option may increase the existing discord exponentially. The Select Committee has produced a useful report. The Government's response has left many questions unanswered. The Minister has an opportunity today to confirm that the interests of the people of Montserrat are paramount, as both sides of the House would wish, and that they should not be penalised by tinkering with departmental structures. As the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, many eyes outside the House are watching the Government and our proceedings today.10.47 am
I also congratulate the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), who has been a colleague and friend of mine since we entered the House together in 1979, on bringing this subject to the Floor of the House so quickly, and on his eloquent introduction. As he said, this dreadful natural disaster has devastated the lives of the people of Montserrat, as I saw on my visit.
I am prepared to go again, as quickly as possible. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary went last week to see for himself what was happening. I hope that when I do go again, the right hon. Member for Eddisbury (Sir A. Goodlad), who is the Opposition spokesman, will join me. I do not think that he has yet been to see the devastation for himself. The people of Montserrat are in an awful plight. I am sure that my hon. Friends will realise that there is no monopoly of concern for the people of Montserrat on the Back Benches; I share that concern. I was pleased that the Select Committee's report provided a balanced view. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) for recognising the hard work—the heroic effort in some cases—of officials on behalf of this Parliament and the Government. The Development Committee made 35 recommendations in its report: eight have already been implemented; II are being implemented; six will be implemented; and four are being actively considered. That is a positive response to the Development Committee. Of the 10 critical conclusions, we have endorsed three and defended our position on seven. For example, it was suggested that there had been no meetings with Caribbean leaders to inform them and discuss the matter. I met Caribbean leaders, chaired by Prime Minister Denzil Douglas, in Antigua on 2 September and we have already had three meetings with Caribbean high commissioners. The Committee proposed a further meeting between the Government and Caribbean regional Governments. Last week, when I attended the Caribbean Regional Forum in the Bahamas, I reported on the position in Montserrat—on what we had done and what the people there wanted us to do. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that the Caribbean leaders welcomed what we had done and paid great tribute to the British Government for what we were now doing. One theme that has come through strongly in this debate, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford and others, is the complicated decision-making procedure. As my hon. Friends said, we inherited that procedure. I was absolutely appalled by the complicated nature of decision making, but the new Government have changed and streamlined it, and have taken Barbados completely out of the loop. The aid management office now reports directly to the Montserrat unit here in the UK, which has speeded up and streamlined decision making.I accept that point totally, and it is very welcome, but as far as the Department of Social Security, the Home Office and the Department of Education and Employment are concerned, Whitehall does not work as a team.
I shall come to that in a moment. I am talking about the delivery of emergency assistance, development aid and support to the island. We are now discussing the matter with the Foreign Office, and account will be taken of the Select Committee's views. However, we must also take account of the fact that the skills for emergency assistance and development are in the Department for International Development, which helps other countries as well as overseas territories. We must also recognise that accountability to Parliament for our money rests in our Department, and we cannot gainsay that.
I liked the hamster analogy, although I certainly do not want to be regarded as a hamster. I want clout, but I also want accountability to the elected House of Commons so that we can have these debates and I can be accountable to Members of Parliament, as I am trying to be today. I think that the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) had that in mind. However, I am also concerned that certain quarters— not the Select Committee—have not adequately recognised what has been done. The Government have provided emergency and development support on-island, amounting to a commitment since the beginning of the crisis of more than £51 million, of which £44 million has already been spent. That makes Montserrat one of the largest recipients of British aid. I do not say that grudgingly, but just to show that it is now on a par with Bangladesh, where 100 million people live in abject poverty. We are also concerned about them.We all recognise that my hon. Friend is making an important point, but it shows that the budget of the Department for International Development is far too low. We all hope that it will increase. I know that my hon. Friend will get his head in his hands to play with if he sits there today and says that more money should come from the Treasury contingency fund, but all those sitting around him in the Chamber today think that that is the answer to this problem. Given that it is such a tiny island, Montserrat is getting a huge proportion of the small budget available.
I would welcome that support. Without giving too much away, may I say that the next few weeks might be an appropriate time to make representations.
We have put in essential infrastructure for the north, including air and sea transport links, a jetty, power, fuel and water supplies, road rehabilitation, and school and health facilities. Moreover, in response to the request, we have doubled the sum spent on upgrading the hospital and have now spent some £1 million. We have, therefore, taken account of what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said. Had we not taken all those measures, the island would be uninhabitable. All that has been achieved against a background of unpredictable and continuing volcanic activity. I want to deal with the Montserratians who have left the island since the beginning of the volcanic emergency in July 1995. Many of them have chosen to relocate in the Caribbean region. We are providing relocation grants and support for travel costs for that group. I stress that the group chose to live in the region, and we have been working all along on the basis of informed choice. Most Montserratians live on Antigua and they will benefit from the £1 million allocated to assist them to establish small-scale businesses in Antigua. We have approved an initial £410,000 for support this year, and are willing to consider adding to that. The Government also share the Committee's concern that some Montserratians in the region may experience hardship once their relocation grant ends. For the first wave of regional relocation grant beneficiaries, that will be at the end of March, which is coming up soon. We are therefore examining urgently options for targeted assistance to those who would otherwise experience great hardship. Some 3,500 Montserratians have chosen to relocate in the United Kingdom, through either voluntary evacuation or the assisted passage scheme. The Home Office has granted all evacuees leave to enter the UK for two years in the first place and is currently considering evacuees' future immigration status. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham will be pleased about that. Resettling Montserratians in Britain has been a complex process, involving co-ordination between agencies responsible for housing, social services, benefits, health care, employment and education. There have been teething troubles because it has taken time for some of the agencies to get into gear, and Montserratians have needed help to learn of their entitlements. We have taken a number of steps to deal with that. We are supporting Travelcare, the voluntary organisation that looks after Montserratians when they arrive at Heathrow and Gatwick. This year, the Home Office is also funding the Montserrat project to the tune of £800,000. The project provides community support to Montserratians to enable them to get their full range of entitlements. In relation to social fund support, most Montserratians in need are receiving not loans but community care grants, and local offices have asked for more money. For example, the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), has authorised £32,165 of additional money for Birmingham and is considering requests from Bristol, South and for Euston. I am sure that he would consider a request from Hackney as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington can tell that to her colleagues there. The population on Montserrat has fallen—everyone wants to know the exact figure—to 2,850, so we do know how many people now live on Montserrat. We are meeting their needs by providing housing, schools, health services, infrastructure and transport links. I am pleased to announce that the remand centre has also now been agreed. In the time left to me this morning, I want to look at the future and discuss the long-term development assistance programme. We have discussed an initial draft of the sustainable development plan, which I agreed on 1 September with the Government of Montserrat. However, the most important element is the health and safety of the people of Montserrat, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) rightly said. That is paramount, which is why we have taken seriously the recommendations of the chief scientific adviser. Because of the risk assessment from the combined effect of ash and the continuing threat of the volcano, which has put further pressure on already overstretched facilities in the north, particularly housing, people are being advised to move out of the danger zone. On 28 January, the Secretary of State for International Development announced our intention to construct a third tranche of 50 houses, and to accelerate the servicing of an additional 120 plots. I am glad to inform the House that my right hon. Friend has now approved £4.8 million for that purpose, and for a further 100 prefabricated houses to enable all those in shelters in the danger zone to relocate to the north. That meets in full our July 1997 commitment to provide 250 houses, and increases the total approved for development in Montserrat to £55 million. I hope that that will end once and for all the activities of those who put it around that we are trying to depopulate the island. We are committed to the people and the island of Montserrat, and as long as I am the Minister and this Government are in office, we shall continue to maintain that commitment.
Teacher Recruitment
[Relevant documents: First Report from the Education and Employment Committee, Session 1997–98, on Teacher Recruitment: What can be Done? (HC 262–1), and the Government's Response contained in the Committee's Third Special Report (HC519).]
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This vital debate will have a big impact on standards in our schools. School improvement is at the heart of the Government's agenda. Since May, there have been numerous important and imaginative initiatives to raise standards in our schools. Each Government initiative ultimately depends on those who work at the chalkface in the classrooms. Bluntly, all the hard work will come to naught unless there are sufficient high-quality teachers in our schools.
We all know and applaud the many gifted, committed and talented men and women who teach our children, but there are not enough of them. It is not enough to pass new laws in the House of Commons, to issue new circulars from Sanctuary Buildings, or to produce headlines on inspections. We need excellent teachers if we are to achieve excellence for all. Last autumn, the Select Committee on Education and Employment produced its first report, "Teacher Recruitment: What can be done?" We found disturbing evidence of a growing shortage of quality entrants. The legacy left by the Conservative party is a teaching profession that cannot attract either enough people or the best graduates. The profession lacks self-esteem, and struggles to meet the needs of the children and the demands of the policy makers. The complacency shown by the previous Government about the problem of teacher supply is outrageous. They created a crisis in teacher recruitment. Our message to this Government must be to set aside that complacency, and to take some urgent, radical steps that will start to turn things around, so that we have a realistic hope of reaching the ambitious targets for school standards. Let us look at the evidence. Last week's figures published by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service on applications for teacher training confirm yet again the Select Committee's findings. We found that 11 per cent, fewer undergraduates are studying teaching this year. UCAS said that there is a further 15 per cent, drop in applications so far for next year. The Select Committee found that one in four of those who complete their training never work in a classroom. In mathematics, the position is dire. Applications for maths teaching courses have fallen by more than a third since 1993–94, and last year one in three places were unfilled. It makes us wonder who is teaching our children maths. The problem is not confined to mathematics. Science, modern languages, design and technology, religious education and music have all been designated as shortage subjects by the Teacher Training Agency. This year, there has also been concern about the number of English and geography trainees. It is not just the number of people going into teaching that is causing concern: the quality of entrants is also worrying. The average A-level grades for all undergraduates is three Cs, but for those who go on undergraduate teacher training courses it is two Ds and a C. I was shocked to discover that nine out of 10–90 per cent.—of the undergraduates in one teacher training institution had nothing better than two Ds and an E. It says a lot about British attitudes to the teaching profession that students need straight As at A-level to become a vet and to look after the well-being of animals, but two Ds and a C will do if they want to become a teacher and look after the well-being of children.I welcome the Select Committee's report. Does my hon. Friend agree that emphasis is placed on the postgraduate certificate of education, which is not the only route into teaching? The two-year BEd top-up course enables people to take higher national certificate and higher national diploma courses. Access courses can lead to a four-year BEd course. The £10 million for postgraduate courses is welcome, but does she agree that we need to consider alternative routes, because they often involve people who have a wide experience of the world and make very good teachers?
I completely concur with my hon. Friend's view.
The Select Committee report states that what is happening in teacher training today tells us what will be happening in our schools tomorrow. The evidence is already emerging. The crisis may not show up in the vacancy rates that the Department produces, because every head teacher tries to ensure that there are the proverbial bums on seats in every class. A recent study by the Centre for Education and Employment Research found that one in five primary posts and one in five secondary posts were difficult to fill. When quality was taken into account, almost two out of three primary posts and one out of two secondary posts were difficult to fill. The growing crisis has been exacerbated by early retirement and by disillusioned teachers quitting the classroom. I hope that the Government's recent work to highlight excellent teachers and to find ways to cut bureaucracy will help, but the problem will not disappear. The number of school-age children is expected to rise steadily over the next five years. The Government have made a welcome commitment to cut class sizes, which means more teachers. An increasing number of pupils are identified as having special needs, and will require more individual attention. The demand for teachers is likely to rise rather than fall. I recognise and applaud the energy and commitment of Ministers in tackling the difficult task of raising standards. However, they have not yet done enough to tackle the teacher recruitment crisis. The Tories may have caused the problem, but Labour must solve it. An advertising campaign will be ineffective unless it is part of a wider strategy. Targets set by the Teacher Training Agency are worthless if it has no teeth and no clear means of achieving them. The Government must respond more enthusiastically than they have done so far to the more radical proposals in the report. We must think more boldly if we are to buck the trend and change direction. There is stiff competition from other employers for our top graduates, so we must and can do more. The easy answer from many is more money and higher pay. The Committee believes that that is too simplistic. We examined international comparisons, and found that Britain is fourth in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development league on teachers' pay. Taking that and the limited public finances into account, we felt that it would be wrong at this stage to recommend higher pay for all teachers. The much more difficult challenge is to raise the status of the profession. Minimum A-level standards for those starting in teaching would show that the Government were serious about making teaching a top profession. A short-term focus on numbers at the expense of quality is just wrong. The experience of accountancy in the 1980s suggests that minimum A-level standards may attract more applicants as well as safeguarding quality.Does my hon. Friend seriously believe that there is a direct correlation between A-level attainment and the quality of a teacher? Is not her presentation of those figures a little simplistic?
We are not claiming that there is always a correlation, but we would submit that there is a strong correlation. We want to attract more higher-skilled, higher-achieving people into teaching. Our contention may not always be valid, but it is often correct. Applications for accountancy courses actually rose when universities asked for higher grades. Too many of us know young people like the daughter of one of my friends, who rejected the idea of teaching because she thought that her good A-level grades would be wasted.
We believe that a fast-track entry scheme could attract talented graduates to teaching. The best graduates want an opportunity to progress quickly in their careers. Accelerated promotion to headship, or advanced-skills teacher status, would attract high fliers who might not otherwise consider a career in teaching. I should like there to be more than one advanced-skills teacher grade, so that progress could be based on ability and performance rather than length of service, and good teachers could be rewarded for staying in the classroom. Money invested in salaries is worth while in that context. Such a system could form part of a wider renegotiation of teachers' contracts. Why can we not do something to help during the fourth and final year of training? Students could be paid part of their first year's salary during their final year of training. That would not cost the taxpayer a penny, and it would fit in nicely with the Government's welcome introduction of an induction year. Why can we not say that we should contribute to a teacher's student loan repayment for each year that that teacher spent in the classroom? The payment could be linked to performance, or could be targeted at shortage areas. Why can we not introduce taster teacher courses as a module for students studying national curriculum subjects at degree level? Why can we not have sabbaticals, rewarding excellent teachers by allowing them to refresh skills in industry or at a local college? Why can we not introduce more flexibility, with part-time working and job sharing to allow more women to combine teaching with their caring responsibilities? I believe that the Select Committee has advanced some radical but practical ideas to head off the growing crisis in teacher supply. I was disappointed by the Government's lukewarm response to our report, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will look at our ideas again. Without sufficient high-quality teachers, any crusade to raise standards is bound to falter. That would be a disaster for the Government, and, more important, for our children.11.11 am
I well understand why the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) tried to hide her disappointment at the Government's response to our report—which I share—with an attack on the last Government's record. May I place a personal perspective on the experience of those who entered teacher training during the time of that Government? My wife first applied to a teacher training college in 1980, and was depressed and disappointed by the attitude of many who took the course with her. They lacked motivation, and appeared to be taking the course as a last resort. Many did not seem to have any heart for the profession to which she, at least, felt that she had been called.
Owing to an interruption in her course, my wife did not complete it then, but she returned to do so 15 years later, and found that the atmosphere and attitude had transformed since 1980. Here were people who were motivated and committed. Indeed, the very fact that someone could return to the course after 15 years and enter the teaching profession said much for the last Government's efforts to encourage late entrants. Under that Government, attitudes in the profession and in our schools changed completely, and this Government must surely admit that they are benefiting from the change. They are now endorsing and building on many of the policies that they opposed time and again when we introduced them in the 1980s—for instance, in their School Standards and Framework Bill. Of course all Governments have problems. If Labour Members do not like the problem of government, there is a simple solution to their difficulty. We faced many problems when we were in government, but it must be said that the current problem is of very recent making. We know from the data collected by the Select Committee, which are published in the second volume of its report, that, as recently as 1996–97, a survey of schools throughout the country showed that 86 per cent, felt that their recruitment problems were no worse than they had been in the previous year—or, indeed, not as bad. In 1997–98, 30 per cent, reported that their recruitment problems were worse than they had been in the previous year. I accept that the data also show a fall in the number applying for courses in key subjects such as mathematics over the past three years or so, but it is only in the last 12 months that evidence of a problem has become compelling. As I have said, no Government are without their problems. The real test of a good Government is not the extent to which they complain, but the action that they take to deal with those problems. The National Association of Head Teachers has told us that the problem of teacher recruitment can be found all along the scale. A recent press release states:There is clearly a correlation between the shortage of good teachers and the strength of the economy. As graduates leave university, if job offers are plentiful and the number of opportunities—particularly in the private sector—is growing, the relative advantages or attractions of teaching unfortunately tend to shrink. If the Government now have a problem that they inherited, it results from the strength of our economy, which is causing students who might otherwise have taken education courses to take jobs of a different kind. [Interruption.] Labour Members laugh in embarrassment, but the fact is that we have established a strong economy. The public sector borrowing requirement is falling to virtually nothing. The Government, however, are finding no resources with which to tackle what will become a deep-seated problem—the problem of not having enough teachers in the supply chain to satisfy the needs of our schools."Almost 2,500 schools looked for a head in 1997. Nine per cent, of all state schools advertised for a headteacher. These were totals last seen at the end of the 1980s."
Is not the hon. Gentleman glossing over the fact that teachers are stampeding out of the profession because of the incompetent way in which the pensions issue was handled? Is that not the greater part of the problem?
There was undoubtedly a problem with teachers' pension provision, and we tackled it. Now there is a problem with teacher supply, and it is up to the Minister to tell us how she will tackle that.
The pressure on the economy, and the attractions of alternative employment, have been greatest in the most prosperous areas. We know from surveys published in our report that schools experiencing recruitment difficulties account for 21 per cent, of those surveyed in shire counties, and only 12 per cent, of those surveyed in cities and metropolitan areas, excluding inner London. In such circumstances, one would expect the Government to take cognisance of the particular difficulties of schools in shire counties; yet, in the coming year's revenue support grant settlement, more than £100 million is being switched from the shire counties to the metropolitan areas. The Government are not paying attention to where the problems persist, especially in relation to teacher recruitment. Another part of the evidence heard by the Select Committee related to the wider role that schools can play. Apart from pay, there is the conditions aspect. I do not think that our report gave enough emphasis to the importance of giving schools more scope to provide better conditions for teachers within their local management budgets. I put a similar question to the Minister a few days ago and I should like her to consider it today. Will she not allow more scope for schools to set their own terms and conditions for teachers so to allow some flexibility and enable them to attract the teachers that they need? That would help in the recruitment of head teachers, especially for schools that are potentially failing and to which it may be difficult to attract precisely the type of head teachers that they require to turn them round. If the Government do not give schools the flexibility to offer a package that will attract the head teachers that they need, they will make the problem far worse. The hon. Member for Barking spoke about quality. Our Committee recommended, as an incentive for students to embark on teacher training courses, the phasing out of the student loan. The Government are compounding the problem of teacher supply by enormously increasing the cost of student education before students get to teacher training courses. That will create a much bigger future problem of teacher supply. We propose the phasing out of student loans when new teachers have completed a sufficient number of years of service. Those who are not much above the student loan threshold will effectively pay a higher rate of tax for years or even tens of years after they leave university. That will deter those who might otherwise consider entering teaching because, although the starting salary in the private sector may be similar to that in teaching, it offers better salary prospects. Our report could have put more emphasis on the changing workplace, on how people no longer embrace the idea of a single career for life. We should do more to encourage late entrants from, for example, banking. That sector contains many people with numeracy skills. [Interruption.] There are some people in banking with numeracy skills—perhaps more accurate than some bank computers. Banking has many more numeracy skills than are displayed occasionally by the Department for Education and Employment. Late entrants—people in their 30s or late 30s—should be encouraged. It is important to make it clear to those entering teaching in their 20s that it need not be seen as a job for life. After they have been teaching for perhaps 10 to 15 years, there may be other openings. The Committee heard evidence about opportunities in banking and in personnel and training departments. Teachers' concerns about limited salary opportunities unless they follow the headship route can be offset by telling them, "If you are still concerned about that 10 or 15 years from now, we shall make it easy for you to enter another career because we value your input to teaching in your first 10 to 15 years." Who knows how many people who may be contemplating a short-term commission in teaching will enjoy it so much that, whatever the outside monetary advantages, they will decide to stay in that outstanding profession for the rest of their careers?11.23 am
I should like to highlight two issues from the Select Committee report, both relating to job satisfaction. The first is under the heading of "Work load" and in that section the Committee states:
The Committee called for"Appropriate use of teaching and non-teaching staff can enhance the job satisfaction of both groups."
The Government responded positively, but perhaps not imaginatively, to that idea by referring to a working party on reducing the bureaucratic burden and simplifying administrative demands on teachers. I urge the Government to widen that working party's remit. On a recent visit to a secondary school in my constituency, I learned that it had topped up the hours of the school nurse, who was available from the health authority, to make it a full-time post. In addition, the school had employed two part-time counsellors who were pupil self-referred only. The impact on the school generally and on the teachers' work load in particular was enormous. Other schools benefit from full-time technicians or site managers. Therefore, there is a much wider remit to be explored. The second issue comes under the heading of "Career Development" and, on that, I concur with the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn). I am pleased to say that the Government have responded favourably to revisiting the local management of schools formula in relation to mature entrants, and are considering the protection of pensions for teachers who, later in their careers, wish to return to the classroom and shed administrative responsibilities. The aspect of career development that was not picked up in the Government's commentary is that of recognising that a job for life, even in relation to teaching, is being eroded. There may be ways of attracting people who want to teach for 10 to 15 years and then use their skills and experience elsewhere. I am not surprised that the Government's conclusion reiterates the need to"imaginative ways of reducing the non-teaching work load to be explored."
I began the inquiry with that objective: I have changed my mind. Just as we encourage those from other professions to enter teaching, we must recognise reality and positively use the movement of staff in and out of teaching to the benefit of schools and lifelong learning. There is a quiet revolution for lifelong learning and there must be a parallel one for lifelong teaching. Last week, I visited a small Roman Catholic primary school in my constituency and found that the recently appointed head teacher had just spent 12 years in higher education. She brought to that school confidence, experience, and a wealth of researched knowledge. A member of her staff, who was formerly an engineer, said that teaching was the most rewarding job that he had ever had. There is a progression from teaching and possibly back again. There are two positive points. The 1997 intake to the House has brought to it probably the largest-ever number of teachers. I trust that they have come here not to escape teaching but to contribute positively to the teaching profession. I wonder how many will return to teaching, taking with them the wealth of experience that they have gained in the House. Secondly, I congratulate the Government on last week's positive contribution to staff morale and expectation. Their contribution of £22 million means that there will be more than an extra 1,000 teachers in the profession and they will all enter classes of 30 pupils or fewer. That is a positive boost to staff morale and a welcome contribution. I trust that the Government will look more radically at this report and make further radical contributions."encourage those who qualify to stay in teaching."
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I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) has said, and I certainly concur with the implicit views in the speeches by the hon. Members for Barking (Ms Hodge) and for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn).
The Government's response to the Select Committee report is long on rhetoric and short on reality. There seems to be uncertainty in the Government's mind about whether teacher recruitment and supply is a problem. One minute the Prime Minister appears in cinema commercials promoting teaching, and the next minute there is an uninspiring Government response to ways of tackling the problems. Perhaps even worse than that, the Government seem to have failed to recognise that, unless they take more positive steps, even their own education plans could exacerbate the situation. We have already heard, for example, of the Government's welcome plans to reduce class sizes at key stage 1, but, on their own admission, they will need an additional 5,000 teachers. My view is that that is too few, but they have funded only 500 extra places for the Teacher Training Agency to allocate. If we are to decide what and how urgently action should be taken, it is surely necessary that we agree the magnitude of the problem. The first step in solving a crisis is to recognise that there is a crisis; and crisis there certainly is, as the hon. Member for Barking has admitted. As others have pointed out, the figures are clear for all to see. First, we are losing more and more highly skilled and experienced teachers through early retirement, as more and more feel bowed down by the growing stresses and strains of the job, by the constantly changing demands and, sadly, by the all too frequent denigration of their work. In the past 12 months, nearly 12,000 experienced teachers have quit the profession early. Secondly, as was starkly demonstrated earlier this morning by the figures published by the National Association of Head Teachers, there is a recruitment crisis affecting head and deputy head posts. For example, governors failed to appoint 25 per cent, of the primary headships that were advertised. They could not create even a short list for 11 per cent, of the headship vacancies and 44 per cent, of advertisements attracted six or fewer applicants. Thirdly, since our Select Committee's report was published, the number of people coming forward to train to enter the profession has declined further. Applications to almost all types of initial teacher training course are falling when compared with last year. Applications even for primary initial teacher training courses, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, are falling behind last year's figure: applications to primary BEd courses are 15.4 per cent. down. Overall, many courses are on a five-year low. As the hon. Member for Barking rightly pointed out, even worse are the figures for applications to postgraduate secondary courses, not least in the crucial subjects of maths and science. Compared with last year, applications to postgraduate secondary courses for maths are 22 per cent., for biology 15 per cent, down, for physics 28 per cent, down and for chemistry 31 per cent. down. All those figures point inexorably to a crisis. The House will perhaps be interested to know that, almost 10 years ago, the current Secretary of State for the Home Department was the Labour party's shadow spokesman on education. He issued a press release in which he referred to theHis press release continued:"alarming drop in the number of applicants for science and maths teacher training places for PGCE."
If he thought that there was a crisis then, I wonder how he would describe the current position, when in every case the recruitment figures are significantly worse. As the hon. Member for Barking fairly pointed out, it is not right to blame this Government for the crisis. Unlike the hon. Member for Guildford, I believe that the crisis is a legacy of the previous Government, not this Government's economic policies. The Conservative policies of underfunding education partially masked the true size of the crisis as teacher posts were cut and pupil-teacher ratios worsened. However, the crisis is definitely growing. My criticism of this Government is that they have failed to take the necessary urgent action. We should consider how the Government have responded. Take, for example, the issue of pay. The Association of Graduate Recruiters' 1997 survey, which was published last month, showed for the year 1996–97 salary increases for the least well-paid graduates of 7.7 per cent. Teachers are, sadly, among the least well-paid graduates, yet, at a time when we need to recruit more, they have had the indignity of a pay rise, already planned to be under 7.7 per cent., phased in, so that the effective increase is under the inflation rate. It is interesting to reflect on how the Minister for Employment, Welfare to Work and Disability Rights must feel about that decision because, only two years ago, while in opposition, he issued a press release commenting on the previous Government's decision to phase in the teacher's pay award for that year. He said about the Conservative Government's plans:"Crisis is not too strong a word to describe the teacher shortages."
I agreed with his comments then and, had he made them today, I would have agreed with them today. One way to help to avert the recruitment and retention crisis would be to pay the teachers' award in full. Perhaps the Government simply do not understand how a market economy really works and think that a pay cut will have no effect on teacher recruitment. It would be interesting to hear the views of Alec Reed, who was brought in by the Government in November to help them with their teacher supply questions. What about starting salaries? Over the past few years, more and more employers have been willing to pay graduate trainees a market-rate salary. Teaching has resisted the trend, requiring trainee teachers, except those on the employment-based route, to be treated like students. Apart from the shortage subjects, there are no further payments beyond the increased loan facility to cover the 36 or 38 weeks of a postgraduate certificate of education course, despite such students often being too busy to take part-time jobs to help to support themselves. Of course I am pleased that the Government are not going to charge PGCE students tuition fees, but I am extremely disappointed that they have rejected the Select Committee's recommendation that same-fee remission should apply to the final year of an undergraduate course. If we are not careful, as with law and medicine, only students from wealthy backgrounds will be able to afford to train as teachers. At least those studying law and medicine can look forward to higher salaries once in the profession; that is certainly not true for teachers. Teaching should become an elite, not an elitist, profession. The Select Committee considered starting salaries or debt repayment based on years of service. Sadly, both those ideas are ignored by the Government in their response. In short, on pay issues, the Government have made education a central plank of their policy, but have refused to pay the price. What other solutions are the Government offering? We have a damp squib of a general teaching council, which will fall far short of what teachers want and deserve, rather than one that will liberate their professionalism. The Government propose to reduce red tape, but, sadly, confusion about the curriculum has increased. They hold out the hope that those who have left teaching will return, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Returners now account for 40 per cent, of those starting new jobs each September, compared with 60 per cent, in the 1980s. Overall, the Government's response seems more concerned with reminding people about Government policy initiatives on the general teaching council, raising standards, education action zones, advanced skills and so on than facing up to today's teacher recruitment issues. None of their policies will work without sufficient high-quality teachers. The sad fact is that any shortfall in recruitment today will mean a shortage of middle managers in 10 years' time and problems with recruiting senior managers a decade later. That is the challenge we face, but, in their response to the Select Committee report, it is a challenge that the Government have ducked. The Government should have listened to their good friend Mr. Chris Woodhead, who last autumn told the School Teachers Review Body:"The staging of the teachers and other awards is a deception and an admission of economic failure by the government who are saying that…they cannot afford to pay at once increases which they accept are justified."
Thus Ofsted, the Teacher Training Agency, the Select Committee and most other commentators have warned the Government that there really is a crisis. However, it seems that Ministers would prefer to gamble with children's education for the sake of misguided, Conservative-inspired economic policies. It is as if the Government, too, ask: "Crisis? What crisis?""Ofsted evidence corroborates … the difficulties of recruitment in shortage subjects…and in some London and other LEAs."
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There is no doubt that teachers are the key to education. They always have been and are even more so now, with the Government's crusade to raise standards, which will require teachers of real quality. The policy of reducing class sizes will require a greater quantity of teachers, so teacher recruitment underpins the whole of the Government's policy.
Anyone in sales would say that the best advertisement is a satisfied customer. The best advertisement for the new recruitment of teachers should be satisfied teachers, but at the moment many teachers are not satisfied with their lot. I know, because I was one until 1 May last year. Are those teachers just whingers? One or two teachers' representatives seem to moan about everything. With so many teachers moving from school to college or university and back to school, some can have a rosy view of the outside world in which they have not worked, and feel that teaching must be the worst job on earth. Such a detachment from the rest of the world should cause concern. Sometimes teachers forget that there is stress in all kinds of jobs. Having said that, there is something, if not rotten, deeply wrong with the state of teaching. The question is why. I agree with most of the reasons in the Select Committee report. Pay is a factor, but it is not the only factor. If there were a huge pay increase for teachers tomorrow, there would still be problems in the profession—the same problems that are causing people to take a pay cut to leave teaching, sometimes as early as 50 if they can be released. The problems that are causing teachers to leave are the same problems that are deterring people from entering teaching. When we talk about work load, we are talking not just about the amount but about the unnecessary work load resulting from years of constant, imposed change. When Kenneth Baker was Secretary of State we looked back to his predecessor, Sir Keith Joseph, and said that he was a butcher. We have the baker, so presumably the next one was the candlestick maker. It turned out to be the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). Worst of all was John Patten. After his reign, we were left with hundreds of thousands of tick boxes, sheets of paper, which we all knew were nonsense, and tests that did not work, which did not help us to achieve our goal of raising standards and educating children. It is not surprising that, after those years of frenzy and despair, teachers are taking a long time to recover from the battering. I always remember the letter that I received one day from Sir Ron Dearing saying that it had come to his notice that some teachers were under the impression that they have to spend a lot of time ticking boxes and keeping records, but that that was never the intention. I wish that someone had told the teachers that many years before. Teachers today have heaps of bureaucratic paperwork and many low grade tasks to perform because they have so little secretarial backup. That, as the Select Committee report points out, is one of teachers' main complaints. Tasks always seem to be added, but few are taken away. People are also deterred from becoming teachers by the fear of unruly children. Keeping order is a great skill and in the early years trying to keep order is particularly tough. The worst thing that happens is when a teacher has to cover for an absent colleague. Keeping order in such a situation can be tremendously stressful. It would help if first-year teachers were exempt from having to cover for absent colleagues. People are also deterred by the lack of a real progression in teaching, not just through the structure but in what one has to do. At the beginning, everything is a challenge, but after a few years people like to take on new challenges and perhaps leave behind some of the challenges that have become mundane. But that does not seem to happen in teaching. After 25 years, I still spent one or two break times a week standing outside the toilets, and every day I had to make herringbone patterns in the register because information technology had not be introduced for registering attendance. I used to wonder whether I really needed a university degree and a postgraduate qualification to stand outside the toilets for up to half an hour each week. Teachers are demoralised by the attacks of so many years. They often have to work in poor quality buildings. I voluntarily ended my career teaching in a portakabin. Looking out on to the other portakabins was like a stalag scenario. We were working in buildings which were freezing cold in winter and boiling hot in summer. Bearing such matters in mind, one must ask whether teaching is a profession like that of doctors, lawyers, accountants and so on. I think not. The problem starts with the strange way in which teachers are trained. For example, the bulk of a teacher's postgraduate year is spent teaching in schools while existing on a grant or a loan. One is still somehsow a student while undergoing professional training. There must be something better than that. It is not surprising that when, coming out of recession, people can find something better to do, they often do not think of teaching. We have to make teaching more attractive.Does my hon. Friend agree that a key problem, certainly in primary education, is the lack of male teachers? We are concerned about the gender imbalance in terms of achievement which, as the Select Committee identified, starts as early as seven or eight. There seems to be a complete lack of positive male role models in the primary sector.
When my husband goes into my daughter's school to help to run the chess club, many pupils call him "Miss". As he is 6 ft 4 in with a beard, that is rather strange, but it shows how few men there are who can be appointed. As the chair of governors at that school, I have found it impossible to appoint male teachers because acceptable candidates do not come forward. Can we be surprised—Order. Interventions must be brief, not mini-speeches.
My hon. Friend is right. When I started out as a teacher I was told that if I wanted to get on quickly I should go into the primary sector, where I would be a head teacher within a few years because there were so few other men in that sector. It is all to do with image and perception. My hon. Friend makes the point well.
It is important to recognise that to prepare, mark and deliver a full timetable of lessons is demanding. If we want to raise standards, we should concentrate on that. We need a new deal for teachers. The ideas in the Select Committee report deserve attention. In particular, we need more non-teaching staff in schools to carry out those low-grade tasks which do not require graduates. I was particularly taken with the idea of sabbaticals for industrial experience and voluntary service overseas. They refresh teachers. I was fortunate enough to teach in Canada for a year on an exchange and I returned refreshed, with plenty of ideas. The Government have plenty of ideas which will help. The introduction of the advanced skills teacher will be helpful. I should like those best teachers to be given the opportunity to join some of the Government's task forces on which we shall rely if we are to drive up standards, whether they are called hit squads or something else. We also need the best teachers in teacher training who, after a few years, can come back into the classroom. It is sad when such teachers lose touch with the classroom. We need an interplay between the two. The idea of training and a qualification for head teachers is excellent. The general teaching council will help to establish teaching as a real profession. The £1.3 billion to repair crumbling classrooms will do a lot to help teachers' morale. The Government have made it clear that they will provide more resources for education each year. If they are used in a thoughtful way, we shall be able to overcome the problems that we have been debating this morning and, once again, teachers will be able to recommend their profession to others.
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I pay tribute to the many excellent and dedicated teachers in our schools. When I visit schools in my constituency, I am struck by the genuine enthusiasm of teachers—despite all the bureaucracy referred to by the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard)—for imparting knowledge and skills to the children in their care. I am struck also by their commitment constantly to look at ways of improving standards. They are getting on with the job, while we merely talk about it.
I echo the comments made by a number of hon. Members about the disappointing response from the Government to the Select Committee report. We asked the Government to look imaginatively, innovatively and flexibly at the issues we raised. Sadly, they have failed to do so. As the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) said, the Government have been more interested in pointing out various areas of their current policy, rather than responding positively to the Select Committee's specific proposals. It is a sad comment on the teaching profession that problems with teacher recruitment seem to follow success in the economy. However, it is not just a problem of recruitment, but of retention—as has been said during the debate. I visited a school in my constituency where two teachers had come in from other jobs because they actively wanted to come into teaching. One was finding it difficult to stay in teaching because of family circumstances and the amount of time that she was having to give at evenings and weekends—over and above school hours—for preparation and so forth. Having actively wanted to come into teaching, she felt that there was great pressure on her to leave the profession. I was talking recently to a director of company which trains people in information technology skills. The company recently launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to train in IT to deal with the problems of the year 2000. Sadly, he said, a significant number of people responding to the advertisements were teachers; teachers in their mid-30s, not those towards the end of their careers. I want to concentrate on two issues from the Select Committee report. The first is the image and status of teachers. In evidence to the Select Committee, it was pointed out that one never sees a good teacher in a television programme, and that sitcoms about schools portray teachers negatively. That is part of the problem. The hon. Member for Waveney asked whether teaching was a profession, and came to the conclusion—given the way in which teachers are trained—that it was not. However, it should be, and therein lies the heart of the problem. The teachers' trade unions need to look at the way in which they have portrayed teachers in the past, because an image of militancy does not go well with an image of professionalism. Some say that the general teaching council will answer the problem of professionalism in teaching, but that remains to be seen and it will depend very much on how the council is set up. From what we have seen so far, the GTC cannot be seen as the answer to the problem of increasing the status of teachers. It is a sad comment on the Government's reaction that the response is, as the hon. Member for Bath has said, a cinema advertisement on the value of teachers—although given that the sub-committee of the standards task force looking at the image issue is chaired by Lord Puttnam, perhaps that is not surprising. The other important issue is career development, career structure and terms and conditions. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn), I think that there is most scope for flexibility and innovation from the Government on this issue. Sadly, their reaction has been most disappointing. I would very much like to see schools freed up to decide the terms and conditions on which they employ teachers. I have believed that ever since I sat on an education committee, and it is a key matter. It would deal with the problem of certain regions which are failing to attract people into teaching jobs. Such a measure would enable schools to look imaginatively at their own needs and to put together packages which reflect those needs. When I was involved in an education authority in outer London some years ago, we had to find ways of improving recruitment and retention. We looked at various ideas, one of which was reflected in the Select Committee report—the concept of providing housing for teachers to enable young people to enter the profession. I wanted to provide cars for head teachers as part of their remuneration package. That was not about offering a more attractive package, but about equating head teachers with senior officers of the local education authority, who had cars. Unfortunately, an election got in the way of that proposal and the Labour party, which took power, chose not to pursue the idea. Imaginative ideas to offer teachers a different package to reflect local requirements are imperative. The Government referred to the possibility that their proposed education action zones could assist by directing encouragement, financial or otherwise, to attract the best teachers. That was not the right response. I want more flexibility. In itself, the Government's response has a problem because—as we have discovered debating the School Standards and Framework Bill—the concept of education action zones offering different terms and conditions to teachers is only limited. The teachers will still be employed by the LEAs, and the extra money or contract will be just that—it will be extra, on top of the standard, and will not completely free up the schools in that zone. One of the points from the evidence from the trade unions concerned career development and structure, where more innovation and flexible thinking is needed. One of the problems is seeing a clear structure and path when one enters teaching. A number of hon. Members have commented on people going in and out of teaching, and that is valuable, but we must provide a career structure which rewards good teachers and does not simply mean that good teachers have to take on extra responsibility. That is one of the problems. Often, people see that the only way to progress is to take on an extra responsibility, and that they are not rewarded for their excellence in the classroom. I am concerned that the advanced skills teachers will not solve the problem, because they will be expected to impart their knowledge to other teachers. That is not the answer. We must find a way to provide a better career structure for teachers to ensure that good teaching is properly rewarded. In that respect, we need to look at the appraisal of teachers to ensure that we identify the skills that we want to reward and encourage in our schools. We must address not just the problem of recruiting to the teaching profession, but of retaining those who are within the profession to ensure that it becomes, once again, a proper profession and that it has the status it deserves. Teachers perform the important task of preparing children for adult life and ensuring that they have the educational quality and standard necessary for them as individuals and, ultimately, for us as a country.11.59 am
I am not sure whether I ought to declare an interest because, like my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard), I speak in this debate as a member of what is rather unkindly called the PIT—the pool of inactive teachers.
In that capacity, I congratulate the Select Committee on its report, but must say that it ought to give us all sleepless nights. The quality of education offered to our children determines not just our present but our future. Improving that quality absolutely depends on a supply of well-qualified, skilled and enthusiastic teachers. If we fail to attract the right people into the profession, we shall fail to succeed in many of our intentions as we shape our society for the 21st century. The outlook, as it stands, is bleak. As hon. Members have said, not enough teachers are entering the profession, and we are failing to keep those who do. Indeed, by some estimates, we are losing 30 per cent, of all trained teachers after five years. The result is clearly a crisis in our schools. Targets for entrants to secondary education training between 1983 and 1996 have been met only in three years: 1983, 1991 and 1992—all years of economic recession and high graduate unemployment. It is no wonder that researchers from Brunei university who gave evidence to the Select Committee said that teaching is a profession that people choose when other more glamorous alternatives dry up. Last year, applications for postgraduate teacher training were down in all subjects except physical education. That gives us serious concerns about the quality of the profession in future. My hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) mentioned the obvious teacher shortages in some subjects such as maths and science, but I draw the House's attention to what I call the hidden shortages: a body may well be standing in front of the class, but children are not necessarily being taught by the most appropriate person. To give just one example of that, I was told in a written answer on 29 January 1998 that there are 14,600 people teaching English in secondary schools who have no first or higher degree in that subject. What other advanced industrialised country would leave the teaching of vital communication and language skills to people who have no in-depth knowledge of the subject and are expected to pick it up as they go along? A crisis in teacher morale has been caused by 18 years of constant denigration and change with which the profession has had to cope. It is not helpful when the Chief Inspector of Schools says that there are 15,000 incompetent teachers, but in evidence to the Select Committee then says that the figure is based on inspections of small schools, not all schools. Such comments do nothing to raise teacher morale or encourage people into the profession. It is a piece of sloppy work which no academic supervisor of a first year postgraduate student would tolerate. Hon. Members need to take care that, in laudable attempts to raise standards, we do not appear to blame teachers for every social ill. Such thinking percolates through to parents, and eventually to children. It makes classroom management much more difficult and underestimates the real problems that teachers face in many of our schools. I visit schools in my constituency regularly, and when I hear, as I do in some schools, stories about parents fighting at the school entrance, children who are victims of domestic violence or even of a child who has overdosed on a patent medicine, I am acutely conscious of the problems that many teachers must overcome even before they can teach. To say that does not excuse poor performance. We ought to be celebrating the success of teachers in such circumstances, and ensuring that they have the necessary resources to overcome such problems. Teaching is a very stressful profession. Professor Cooper of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology says that it is one of the most stressful occupations in the country. In my experience— and I have done several jobs—that is certainly so. We must recognise that and realise that it is precisely because many teachers feel undervalued that they do not advocate entering the profession to others. We are left with undergraduates admiring teachers but having no intention of joining them. If we are to turn that around, we must ensure that teaching is the first choice of profession for our best students, and not the last. We must do that by looking, in the first instance, at the salary structure. Although starting salaries are comparable with most other professions, the career progression in teaching is just not there. We must negotiate a salary structure which pays for qualifications, experience and competence, and keeps good career teachers in the classroom rather than encouraging them to move to administration. As other hon. Members have said, the problem is not just about salaries. Many teachers are demoralised by their working conditions. They have had to put up with constant change. Our schools and teachers need most of all a period of stability in which they can adapt to the change. They also need the opportunity to use their professional judgment, while remaining accountable for what they do—nobody doubts that. That is why most of the teachers to whom I have spoken welcome the changes in the primary curriculum, for instance, because they give them much more flexibility in organising their time in school. We must be more imaginative too. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney mentioned many of the tasks that teachers have to undertake. There is far too much routine paperwork and form-filling.I welcome my hon. Friend's comments on the fact that, when we received evidence from representatives of the independent sector, they too acknowledged that not only small class sizes help teachers, out-of-classroom support with bureaucracy and technician work helps as well. Is not that something that we should try to provide in our state schools?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is wasteful and inefficient to use graduate teachers for such routine tasks. They are not in schools to act as filing clerks. She is also correct to say that the policy of reducing class sizes must be followed if we want to make the profession more attractive. Given all the evidence, not only will the policy lead to more effective teaching strategies: it will lead to greater job satisfaction. Along with that, it is vital that we proceed with the introduction of a general teaching council to raise the status of the profession. We must also proceed with mandatory qualifications for headships, to ensure that our schools and the staff in them are properly managed and well motivated.
We must be a little more imaginative, too, in considering career development. As someone who used to look after probationary teachers, I welcome the introduction of the new induction year. Although that is very important, training must run throughout people's careers, not just so that they acquire new skills but so that they have the opportunity to go on refresher courses in their own subjects. Most teachers enter the profession because they love their subjects, and they need an opportunity to develop that. All the things that I have mentioned are not cheap; they are not quick fixes. They are long-term solutions to the problem. Unless the Government take up some of those proposals, there will be a false economy in the long run. As the old slogan goes, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."12.8 pm
I congratulate the Select Committee on its report. It is a useful document. I congratulate the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) on the way in which she put it before the House this morning. The report makes it clear that there is a problem of teacher recruitment. There is no point in playing the game of whether the crisis began on 1 May 1997. I do not claim that it suddenly appeared on the day on which the Labour Government came to office. However, the report accepts that
I hope that we shall hear from the Minister a rather more serious intention to act than is suggested by the rather feeble response to the report that the Government have so far published. They do not seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation, and their response does not take on board some of the more imaginative proposals that the Select Committee made. I hope that we shall hear rather more from the Minister when she replies to the debate. There are six particular issues to which I should like to refer. The first is the impact of the Government's rushed proposals for student finance on recruitment of students into teaching. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service statistic showing a 15 per cent, drop in applications from students who want to take up teaching as a career is worrying. Although the Government have announced in one of their many rushed, botched announcements on student finance that there is to be a £10 million package to help students in their fourth year, the Committee was right to put delicately the following matter. It says:"the situation has deteriorated and that the Government must act to prevent serious shortages worsening."
We know very little about how that £10 million budget is supposed to deal with the problem. We do not even know whether the scheme will continue in future years. We do not know about the implications for students on BEd courses as opposed to those who take the postgraduate certificate of education route. I hope that we shall hear a little more from the Minister today about student finance. The second issue is the work load of teachers and their authority in the classroom, which several hon. Members have raised. I agree with the comments in the report about the perceived decline in the professional autonomy of the teacher. As the hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) said, there is great pressure on teachers, given the behavioural problems of many of the pupils they have to teach. The enormous stress on a child, perhaps as a result of changes in the home environment, does not suddenly stop when that boy or girl walks through the door into the school. Teachers have to confront the behaviour that results from such stress. Therefore, work load and authority in the classroom are a major problem with which teachers have to wrestle. What have the Government done since 1 May? Instead of an attempt to enhance the professional autonomy of teachers, we have had even more prescriptive and detailed explanations about what should go on in the classroom. Hours have even been broken down into 10-minute intervals, which does not suggest respect for the autonomy of teachers. An objective has been set—I understand the thought behind it—to reduce the number of statemented children educated outside mainstream schools. That has caused considerable anxiety in the teaching profession. Teachers are concerned about how they are supposed to manage the problems of teaching such children in mainstream classes. How do the Government intend to reinstate professional autonomy in the classroom? The third issue is the general teaching council. I was surprised at the stress that was put on the general teaching council in the Government's response to the report. Perhaps that was because the Government had so little to say about any other aspect of the Committee's proposals. What we know from the debates in another place is that the general teaching council proposed by the Government will simply not live up to the expectations that the advocates of such a council have for it. It will not be the sort of body that the people who believed in a general teaching council expected it to be. Despite the claims that have been made by Ministers about the possibility of the general teaching council developing and enhancing its role, all the evidence is that because the legislation is restricted, it will be impossible within the legal framework in the Teaching and Higher Education Bill, which is currently before another place, for the GTC to take on a more ambitious range of powers. The Select Committee is right in its report when it says:"We look forward to seeing more details of exactly how this undertaking is to be implemented".
We have had little indication from the Government so far that they envisage giving that sort of power to the GTC. If we are to raise the professional standards of teachers, and if the GTC is an opportunity to raise them, it is a great disappointment that as yet the Government have said nothing on the scope of the GTC that suggests that they envisage using it in that way. The fourth issue is education action zones, which receive a great deal of attention in the Government's response. They are one of the classic examples of the way in which the Government's rhetoric runs way ahead of the reality. The reality is that the so-called half a million pounds that will go into education action zones is £250,000 of public money with, the Government hope, £250,000 of private sponsorship. We have heard little about how the first six zones or even the eventual 25 are to appear. We have heard little about how the teachers are to enjoy the high degree of autonomy referred to in the Government's response to the report. It came out in the Standing Committee that is considering the School Standards and Framework Bill that teachers in education action zones would continue to be employed by local education authorities. With such a modest amount of public money, with so few zones and with so little extra freedom compared with the freedom that schools under traditional LEA control have, will education action zones tackle the significant problem that the report identifies? I am afraid that I do not believe that they will. Fifthly, we heard from the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) about sabbaticals, which are not mentioned in the Government's response to the report. The report touches on them briefly. Some of us will remember before the election the then shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment going to the National Union of Teachers conference and promising sabbaticals to teachers. That was one of the measures that a new Labour Government would introduce to rebuild teacher morale and enable teachers to develop their skills in the course of their careers. That has rather disappeared from view. When shall we have the sabbaticals promised by the then shadow Secretary of State before the election? I look forward to hearing the Minister's response to that point. The sixth item on my list is the question that has been raised by the Minister for School Standards about men as role models in schools. That is another typical example of new Labour at work. We had a bold announcement that there was a serious problem, and the Minister accepted that we needed to have more men as role models for pupils, especially in primary schools. We have heard again today about the importance of gender balance in schools. But it is okay just saying it. It is easy to say it. The question is what the Government intend to do about it. Having got the headlines that he wanted by expressing his concern, the Minister has not referred to anything that is to be done in practice. Now, as we near the end of their first year, the Labour Government can no longer expect to get by with such general statements of good intent and by simply drawing attention to problems that they say cause concern. We need to know what the Government intend to do. I should like to hear from the Under-Secretary in her response to the debate on this useful report how student finance measures will be adjusted so that they do not have the possibly catastrophic effect on student teaching that looks possible; exactly what the Government intend to do to rebuild professional autonomy in the classroom and to cease interfering in the details of the practical workings of a respected profession; exactly how the GTC will live up to the expectations of its advocates; exactly how education action zones will be used to rebuild the confidence of the profession; when we shall have the sabbaticals that were promised before the election; and how the Government intend to encourage more men into teaching. If the Minister can offer practical and credible responses to those questions, the whole House will welcome them. If she fails to do so, it will be yet another missed opportunity."The GTC should have a role in ensuring that teachers who fall seriously short of the professional standards expected of them are swiftly removed from teaching."
12.19 pm
I thank the Select Committee for carrying out its inquiry into this important subject. I welcome the opportunity provided by that report and by today's debate.
Neither the Government nor anyone who has spoken today disagree with the statement that we need sufficient teachers of good quality and that we need both to retain them and to retrain them throughout their teaching career. Nor would the Government differ from the view expressed by hon. Members that, if we fail to do that, we shall not be able to raise standards in our schools. Teachers are fundamental to everything that we want to achieve in our education system. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) rightly said, if we do not get that right, we stand far less chance of getting anything else right. I do not want my speech in any way to detract from the comments with which my hon. Friend opened the debate. I agree with the statement made by the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) that we need to reprofessionalise the profession, which is a phrase that I have often used myself. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) also mentioned that point. We must give back to teachers, not only their self-belief and self-esteem, but the esteem of the community at large. Many of the proposals that I shall mention could come under the heading of fulfilling that desire to make teaching a proper profession once again and to ensure that teaching take its place alongside other honourable professions in our society. The figures have to be addressed. I accept that the application figures for initial teacher training places in 1998–99 are not as good as we want them to be; I do not hide from that, nor do the Government pretend otherwise. However, I should point out that the recruitment phase is not complete and will not be complete for several months. Last year, the eventual intake to postgraduate secondary courses was 43 per cent, above the number of applications at this stage in the cycle; and the previous year, the figure increased by only 18 per cent, over the same period. Those statistics not only show that it is difficult to make predictions based on December and January figures, but might suggest a trend toward applications coming later in the recruitment cycle. We are confident that entrants for primary recruitment this year will exceed targets, but we acknowledge that recruitment for secondary will again fall short of the targets that the Government set for the Teacher Training Agency. We know that specific difficulties are being encountered in recruiting students for maths, technology, foreign languages and, to a lesser extent, science subjects. Those statistics are cause for concern and we do not pretend otherwise. However, they did not appear overnight: the under-recruitment of students for secondary initial teacher training has been going on for years, as has the problem with recruitment in certain subjects. If one takes his opening comments at face value, the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) appears to have committed two crimes in belonging to a party that not only did nothing to solve the problem, but did not even know that a problem existed. We inherited a particularly difficult situation that the previous Government clearly failed to address. However, that is an argument of the past and it does nothing for our children or our schools. Where the previous Government failed to take action, this Government will take action. A major point made by the Select Committee and one that has pervaded the debate is what witnesses described as the poor public image of teachers and of teaching. There is truth in that and, as a member of the pool of inactive teachers, I know from experience that teachers are not as respected in the community as we want them to be. However, that is changing, and my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Education and Employment have made it clear that teaching is one of the most valued professions. The work and challenges that fall to teachers are some of the most important in the whole of society. Their work with our young children can help to shape this country in the next millennium. In the months since the election, the Government have been able to match the words of opposition with the action of government. The subject of our first White Paper was education, our first Bill was an education Bill and an extra £2.3 billion has been pumped into the education service. The new year honours list contained the first knighthoods for education, and a few weeks ago many hon. Members were present when, here in the Palace of Westminster, we recognised the achievements of the schools that have recently come off special measures. We have begun already to build up a network of out-of-school learning opportunities and support that will engage all groups in society—parents, industry and communities—in the business of education. The message from the Government over the past nine months has been clear: education is important and teachers are important, and we shall take the action necessary to make that clear to everyone who chooses to listen.Will the Minister make that even clearer, by spelling out how much money her Department will commit in the coming year to the problem of teacher supply?
I shall outline some of the initiatives and the money that we have put into them later in my speech, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be patient.
In response to the comments made by my hon. Friends, let me say that our desire to make it clear that education and teachers are important cannot and must not prevent us from tackling poor performance by teachers. Parents expect no less of us, but that criticism will be matched by praise where praise is deserved and by an increasing recognition of successful teachers. As a witness to the Select Committee rightly said, the Secretary of State must lead the education service. The Government have such a Secretary of State and that is what is beginning to happen. The Select Committee raised the important matter of financial support for trainees. I am not sure why the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) does not think that the details are clear, but I shall go over them briefly. In next year's education budget, £10 million has been provided to support our announcement that trainee teachers on postgraduate certificate of education courses will not have to pay the means-tested contribution toward tuition fees. We chose that course of action because we regard the PGCE as a priority, as that is the route followed by most trainees into secondary teaching, which is where the shortages are most pronounced. In addition, the TTA is currently administering a new secondary subject shortage scheme and £9 million is being spent to allow initial teacher training providers to give financial support to students wishing to train in secondary shortage subjects. We have recently introduced two new employment-based routes into teaching. We strongly endorse the case for students to be given an opportunity to take taster courses and, with our encouragement, the TTA has run 73 taster courses this year to allow potential recruits for shortage subjects to see what teaching is like and so help recruitment. The response to those courses has been positive, and we expect them to continue. Since May, the TTA has been active in working to increase recruitment to the profession. It is all very well to laugh at the cinema advertising campaign, but, since that campaign began, it has resulted in 1,000 new inquiries each week to the TTA. There will be an announcement in March of a campaign targeting members of ethnic minorities and a recent "Teaching in London" event attracted 1,500 people who were advised about teaching as a profession. As the Select Committee said, it is not only the quantity, but the quality, of new entrants that matters. In that respect, more than in any other, the Government have already taken swift action and are making progress. I am pleased by the Committee's welcome for the Government's plans for advanced skills teachers, which will lead to the recognition of the skills of our best teachers. I am also pleased by the Committee's welcome for our plan to introduce a mandatory headship qualification for all those going into headship. Together, those two schemes begin to provide the structure for a career in teaching for which so many have asked for so long. A sum of £8 million has been made available for next year for those who want to acquire the mandatory headship qualification, and I hope that it will give teachers the confidence to apply for headships, because there is a worrying trend in the number of headship vacancies. The Committee also recommended an open, robust and transparent model for planning teacher numbers. The Government have made it clear that we accept that. Not only have we said how next year's targets were set, but we shall make the model available later this year, and we shall welcome comments on it. The Committee raised the issue of pension protection for teachers who have moved from management positions and want to return to the classroom. Again, the Government have already taken action. I spent 18 years in teaching; it is a worthwhile job. The pressures are tremendous, but so are the rewards. The problem of teacher recruitment will not be solved overnight. I think that the Select Committee will accept that, in nine months, the Government have acted. We have begun to put in place measures that will ensure that there is a career structure in a properly rewarded and recognised profession. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Barking that the other points in the Select Committee's report will continue to inform the continuing debate both within the Department and with our partners in the wider education service.
Flu Vaccinations
12.30 pm
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this subject. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for Public Health for not only assisting me, but replying today.
The debate is about whether general practitioners have the right to give flu jabs on the national health service to whomever they want, or whether they are limited by other forces. It is also about whether there is a loophole whereby NHS patients can be sent to other NHS surgeries to receive private treatment. In the latter part of last year, I was approached by a number of constituents—at my surgeries and by letter— who were greatly concerned about the fact that they had been refused flu jabs, even though they had previously received them, at the Hope House surgery in Radstock, which is in the south of my constituency. I was shown a leaflet that the surgery had produced, which strongly suggested that patients had been refused because of Government policy. Obviously, I was concerned to hear about this. I took the matter up in the first instance with the Avon health authority, which told me that flu jabs were given at a GP's discretion, and that, although there were guidelines, the GP's decision was what finally counted. I contacted my hon. Friend the Minister, who confirmed that it was up to GPs to decide whether to give flu jabs. She also pointed out the inaccuracies in the surgery's leaflet, which wrongly suggested that the Government had recommended that flu jabs should be given only to people in high-risk categories, and not to those at lower risk. I wrote to the surgery with the information that I had been given by the Avon health authority and my hon. Friend the Minister. The surgery told me that it wanted to administer flu jabs to whoever requested them; it did not want to deny flu jabs to people who really wanted them. It felt strongly that flu jabs should be given on a discretionary basis, but only if that was clear to the public—the surgery was worried that it would be blamed and that there would be a public outcry if it did not give flu jabs on demand. The surgery also told me that, when it had consulted Avon health authority, it had been told, first, that it could give flu jabs only to those people who were listed as being at high risk of developing complications if they caught flu; secondly, that it should in no circumstances give flu jabs to people who were not in a high-risk group; and thirdly, and most alarmingly, that, if it gave flu jabs to people who were not in the high-risk groups, it might face financial penalties—that applied also to other surgeries in the former Avon area. Does my hon. Friend agree that a close working relationship between health authorities and GPs is important? Will she investigate, as a matter of urgency, the discrepancy between the accounts given by the Avon health authority and the Hope House surgery? Does she agree that, if the Hope House surgery's account is correct, Avon health authority should be called to account for its advice, which was unacceptable? What publicity does my hon. Friend believe should be given to the issue of flu jabs in the future? To be told that one does not need a flu jab can be good—it can mean that one is healthy enough not to require immunisation— and should not be a cause of concern. Unfortunately, in Radstock and the surrounding area, such advice resulted in much disquiet and alarm.I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I welcome the debate. One problem is that the people who are at risk are often not clear why they are. I should declare an interest: I suffer from asthma and am invited every year to have a flu jab, even though I do not feel myself to be particularly at risk. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to explain to patients the whys and wherefores of flu jabs, which could help the process of deciding who should receive them?
I share my hon. Friend's concerns; perhaps the Minister will comment on them. I hope that she will also look carefully at what seems to be a loophole. The Hope House surgery's leaflet specified two other surgeries to which its patients could go and how much an injection would cost at them—£10 and £15 respectively. It also stated that people who went to those surgeries should name the Hope House surgery and explain that they required private treatment.
Can my hon. Friend shed some light on whether that loophole could be exploited? The fear is that, if a number of surgeries came together, they could, to make money or reduce demand, refuse treatment to their own patients and refer them to another surgery at which they could receive the injection privately. My final point is that Hope House is a fundholding surgery. Does my hon. Friend believe that the Government's introduction of a new system of commissioning will deal with the concerns that I have raised?May I, Mr. Deputy Speaker, make a short contribution to this valuable debate?
Does the hon. Gentleman have the permission of the hon. Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) and the Minister for Public Health to speak?
No.
I call the Minister.
12.37 pm
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) for raising this important and timely topic. Immunisation is one of the most effective public health measures. People in their thousands now survive conditions that, even in living memory, would have killed many.
In the United Kingdom, immunisation recommendations are published in a memorandum entitled "Immunisation Against Infectious Disease", which is more usually known as the green book. The green book contains the recommendations of the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation—an expert and independent committee that has advised successive Governments since 1963. The green book is a highly respected source of scientific and practical advice on all aspects of immunisation. Included in the green book is detailed advice on immunisation against influenza. I shall now deal with the highly pertinent questions asked by my hon. Friends the Members for Wansdyke and for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on that aspect of immunisation. United Kingdom flu immunisation policy recommends that vaccines should be offered to protect people who are at most risk of serious illness or death, should they develop influenza. Annual influenza immunisation is therefore strongly recommended for adults and children with chronic respiratory disease, including asthma—in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud— chronic heart disease, chronic renal failure, diabetes mellitus and immunosuppression due to disease or due to treatment. Immunisation is also recommended for those living in nursing homes, residential homes and other long-stay facilities, where rapid spread is likely to follow the introduction of flu. However, immunisation is not recommended as routine for fit children and adults, including health care and other key workers, whatever their ages. In addition—this point is central to the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke—the final decision on who should be offered immunisation is a matter for the patient's medical practitioner, and it is extremely important to emphasise that, although the Department provides advice, the decision whether to offer vaccination is a clinical judgment, made by the patient's general practitioner. The decision whether to immunise should take into account the result of flu exacerbating the underlying disease, as well as the risk of causing the individual serious illness. The recommendations that I have described are based on the view of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, that not everyone in the country needs flu immunisation. As I have said, recommended groups should be offered immunisation because, in the view of the experts, they are at risk. People considered not at risk by a general practitioner should not be immunised. For fit and healthy children and adults, of whatever age, a dose of flu is an unpleasant experience, but one which, generally speaking, mercifully does not pose a serious risk to health. Therefore, for most of the population, the advice on treating flu is well publicised by the chief medical officer and general practitioners. We are advised—as we have probably been advised several times—to stay at home, keep warm, rest, drink plenty of fluid, eat what is tolerable, and, if necessary, self-treat with paracetamol or aspirin to relieve the symptoms of flu. Obviously, if our condition does not improve, we are advised to contact our doctor. Fit and healthy people will generally recover fully from flu and experience no serious lasting consequences. In addition, because an occasional bout of flu gives better long-term protection than a vaccination, it could be of benefit to people who are not vaccinated if they come into contact with a similar strain of flu in future, as their body's defences will be ready to react and protect. On the other hand, influenza immunisation is only 70 to 80 per cent, effective, and provides protection only for the season in question, because of the very careful scientific matching of predicted flu strain to the vaccination for that year. As such, it is best recommended for those who might become seriously ill as a result of catching flu—those for whom the immediate, potentially serious, consequences of flu outweigh the benefits of acquiring "natural protection". In recent years, flu vaccinations have increased substantially, and I am pleased to announce that, this winter, a record of 7.4 million doses of flu vaccine have been distributed. That figure is up from 6.2 million doses last winter, and compares with only 2 million doses 10 years ago. However, it causes concern that only about half the people in the at-risk groups are being given the vaccines they need, and, although this percentage is improving, evidently we need to do more and to do better—and we shall. I believe that the entirely admirable desire to improve flu immunisation uptake among those who need it, and to cut the amount of vaccine going to those who do not need it, was what led to the problems highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke in the Avon health authority. On influenza immunisation, it is the role of the Avon health authority to ensure that the United Kingdom policy is implemented locally as effectively as possible, by maximising uptake in the recommended groups. The health authority can do so only with the full co-operation of GPs and health professionals, who are, in turn, responsible for delivering the flu immunisation programme to patients. It may help hon. Members if I clarify when influenza immunisation should be available on the national health service, and I hope that, by doing so, I shall answer one of the questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke. If an individual is in one of the Department of Health's specified at-risk groups, or their GP decides that there is a clinical need for an individual to be immunised, that immunisation is available to the individual on the NHS. The doctor should not charge the patient in that case, except where a prescription charge is applicable. In return for giving a flu vaccine, GPs are reimbursed the list price of the vaccine, about 10 per cent, so-called "on-cost", and a personal administration fee for each vaccine. That money is paid on the understanding that the individual given the vaccine needs it in line with the national flu immunisation policy, as set out in relation to the broad at-risk categories that I have described. Some patients outside the at-risk categories, often termed the "worried well", may be unhappy with being refused immunisation, especially if they have been immunised, albeit wrongly and against the advice, in the past. Those patients are at perfect liberty to obtain immunisations outside the national health service. In the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke highlighted today, the Avon health authority practice that he mentioned had identified two alternative medical organisations from which private influenza immunisations could be obtained. I can, however, assure my hon. Friend that any at-risk patient who needs flu immunisation, whether or not they fit into the broad categories describing the population at risk, will continue to receive it on the national health service. The advice that I have given today as to when influenza immunisation is available on the NHS is unaffected by fundholding or commissioning. If a GP decides that a patient needs influenza immunisation, in line with the green book guidance, based on the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, immunisation should be provided for that patient on the national health service.May I have the Minister's assurance that prescribing budgets, which are to be cash-limited for the first time, will be uprated to allow for a better take-up in the at-risk categories?
I have expressed our clear determination to increase take-up among the at-risk groups. In the light of best evidence available, we shall constantly review the scope of the at-risk groups and ensure maximum take-up. In line with that commitment, we must ensure that the budget allocated to cover the costs of immunisation allows immunisation to be made as widely available as clinical discretion permits within the framework that I have set out.
I return to the leaflet that concerned my hon. Friend. I understand that it was withdrawn in December, and that the regional director of public health for the south and west has written to the director of public health at the Avon health authority to ensure that accurate material is distributed to the public in future. I shall refer to that very helpful letter from the regional director of public health in order to make the position absolutely clear. In writing to the director of public health at the Avon health authority, the regional director made it clear that the information distributed was inaccurate, that the leaflet had been withdrawn, and that it was extremely important that general practitioners were aware of the information provided in "Newsbrief" in September 1997, which set out the prescribing and medical protocols in relation to flu vaccination. The regional director of public health makes it clear that the dogmatic statements relating to influenza as a vaccine were not in accordance with the policy of the Department of Health. Therefore, the chief medical officer's advice to general practitioners about the prescribing framework should be taken as the definitive framework clarifying at-risk groups and guiding the clinical judgments of individual general practitioners. The offending information has now been withdrawn. It is extremely important that we remain vigilant and ensure that accurate information is made available to guide the decisions of GPs in the future. I hope that I have also made it clear that it is quite unacceptable for at-risk patients to be charged for influenza immunisation. The current policy necessarily allows the general practitioner—who has knowledge of his patients—to make the final clinical judgment as to who is at risk from flu. The at-risk groups are highlighted annually to the public through Department of Health flu leaflets, nearly 1 million of which have been distributed over the past two winters. The leaflets are available from GP practices, and directly through the Department's freephone health literature line. Items on flu immunisation were also included in the Central Office of Information's "Sound Advice" audio magazine and the British sign language magazine, "Public Scene". Both magazines are distributed directly to contact organisations for sight, hearing and literacy-impaired people. The chief medical officer also writes annually to all doctors before the influenza season, reiterating the Department's immunisation policy. He stresses in particular the importance of immunisation as many at-risk patients as possible. In addition, my Department also works closely with an organisation called AIMS, the Association for Influenza Monitoring and Surveillance, which promotes flu immunisation through the media, and offers helpful practical advice about how medical professionals can increase uptake in at-risk groups. The chief medical officer launches flu awareness week annually, accompanied by members of the scientific advisory board of AIMS. Both Help the Aged and the British Diabetic Association worked with AIMS last year to publicise the importance of immunising at-risk groups. My Department will continue to work to improve immunisation uptake among recommended groups. We will ensure that those who need the flu vaccine receive it on the national health service. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important subject, and for providing an opportunity for me to set the record straight following the confusion caused by the distribution of misleading information to his constituents. It is also important to reiterate the Government's determination to provide health care to the people of this country on the basis of need rather than ability to pay. My hon. Friend expressed concern about a loophole that could technically provide an opportunity to exploit the private provision of vaccinations as opposed to their provision through the NHS to people at risk. I hope that I have reassured my hon. Friend that, if a GP recommends influenza immunisation, it will be available through the national health service. The Government's plans to build a modern and dependable national health service will in no way affect the availability of free vaccinations to patients who need them. GPs may exercise their discretion in making judgments about patients whom they consider to be at risk and who therefore require flu immunisation. The health authority in this case published misleading information, and that matter has now been set right. My Department constantly reviews both the take-up of immunisation among at-risk groups and the definition of at-risk groups. I shall continue to seek the advice of the independent Joint Committee on Immunisation and Vaccination on that matter. I hope that the grounds for not providing blanket immunisation are well made: there must be evidence that a bout of flu would adversely affect a patient's health or well-being in order to justify vaccination. This is an important part of the Government's approach to disease prevention. We should also take account of the substantial increase in the number of flu vaccinations that we have achieved this year. We must continue to be vigilant and ensure that flu vaccines reach those patients that are potentially at greatest risk. The chief medical officer and I will study in detail our success in targeting and vaccinating the various at-risk groups that I set out earlier. We shall also continue to update the information provided to general practitioners about how they can act proactively to ensure that their patients who are at greatest risk from influenza receive the vaccine that will protect them throughout the winter. Again, it is always a matter of maintaining a proper balance between the protective benefits of vaccination and practical advice for avoiding flu as issued by the Chief Medical Officer, and taking care of ourselves when we do get flu. The matters raised by my hon. Friend will have been of benefit to the many hon. Members who listened to his concerns. I hope that my response has reassured him.
Livestock Industry
12.59 pm
It will not have escaped your attention, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this week is British beef week in the House of Commons. I preface my remarks by congratulating the Chairman of the Catering Committee on the initiative that he has taken, and I thank the Leader of the House and the House authorities for making it possible to stage British beef week in the House of Commons. I urge all my right hon. and hon. Friends and Opposition Members to go along to the Dining Room and sign the pledge book that they will find there. Doubtless, there are so few of us in the Chamber at this time because hon. Members are in the Dining Room, enjoying good old English roast beef.
I must declare an interest. I am a butcher and a farmer, and I represent one of Britain's prime producing areas of livestock. Shropshire is one of the most agriculturally dependent counties in England, and the Ludlow constituency is undoubtedly the most heavily dependent on livestock. In the west of my constituency, in the Shropshire hills, there is no alternative enterprise for farmers to engage in, other than the rearing and production of beef and lamb. It is worth putting on record that nationally more than 700,000 people are employed in the meat and farming industries. Given the nature of the business, a substantial proportion of that number are employed in the meat and livestock sector. The total value of sales of meat in the United Kingdom annually is £15 billion—a substantial sum. This time last week, the headline in The Daily Telegraph read: "Farm incomes at eight-year low, says bank". Last month, the Shropshire Star, always first with the news, carried the headline "Farm incomes dropped by almost half in year". That referred to the report issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on 30 January. By common consent the farming industry, particularly the livestock sector, is in dire straits. Tomorrow I shall be inviting the Minister to tell the House how many fanners have committed suicide in each of the past five years, worried literally to death by financial difficulties and despair occasioned by an avalanche of bureaucracy. Look at the evidence. Over-30-months cattle have been drastically reduced in value because of cuts in the rate of compensation and the reduction in the maximum weight limit to 560 kg live weight. Cull cows are worth 33 per cent, less than two years ago. A constituent writing from Bishop's Castle tells me that, last month, he sold lambs for less than they fetched 20 years ago, in 1978. What other industry could put up with having to sell its product at the prices that appertained 20 years ago? Finished cattle prices are 22 per cent, less than two years ago owing to higher imports, which rose 20 per cent, last year, and the continued ban on beef exports. I remind the House that, before the ban was imposed, 28 per cent, of all beef produced in the UK, valued at £550 million to £600 million a year, went to overseas markets. What does the farmer do when he has no profit or, more to the point, when he has no income? He does the only thing that he can do: he stops spending. The Minister must understand that when farmers stop spending, it is not only the rural economy that suffers. The whole economy suffers, as evidenced by another headline, this time from The Daily Telegraph last Saturday: "Farming slump hits Britain's tractor makers". It was reported:I know well the Minister's views on subsidies to agriculture. He makes no bones about it. He says, if I may paraphrase his words, that he does not see why the people he represents in Birmingham should put their hands in their pockets to pay for subsidies for farmers. I take this opportunity to say to the hon. Gentleman that some of his constituents will almost certainly be affected by that news. Many others in the west midlands conurbation who work in the components industry that supplies the tractor works will also be affected by the slump in the sale of agricultural machinery. There is a knock-on effect. Ministers would do well to consider the urban consequences of the rural crisis to which I am drawing attention. In his speech to the Oxford farming conference on 6 January this year, the Minister of Agriculture said:"More than a thousand workers at the Massey-Ferguson tractor factor in Coventry will be put on a four-day week next month because of a huge slump in machinery sales."
Let us examine that proposition. Clearly, the industry is not successful at present. By any measurement, after only nine months of this Labour Government, the livestock industry is less successful than at any time since the 1930s. I have no doubt that, given a fair chance, the British agriculture industry, and particularly the livestock industry, would be competitive, but it will not be successful if it is burdened with the additional costs imposed on it by the Government. How can it be competitive, especially when it is apparent that the same cost burdens are not imposed on our continental competitors? In its written evidence to the Agriculture Committee last month, the Meat and Livestock Commission cited an independent report that identified extra costs in UK abattoirs over those in other EU states at £26.65 per animal. In the same submission, the MLC went on to instance the considerable increase in extra costs that will apply in 1998, totalling no less than £95.4 million—equivalent to £43 per animal slaughtered. That does not include the cost of setting up the cattle tracing service. It will cost the industry £13 million to set up the cattle tracing service, and according to the same parliamentary answer given by the Department, the annual running costs will be no less than £15 million. Another £3 million is the estimated cost to the industry of providing the second tag in cattle born or imported after 1 January this year. In November 1997, the Minister stated:"I want to see an industry that is successful, competitive and sustainable."
Incidentally, the cost to the industry of the MHS, according to the Minister's reply to me on 26 January, will be £28.7 million in the current year. Interestingly, in that same reply he stated that the £44 million referred to in his speech to the Standing Committee in November to meet the cost of specified risk material controls has escalated to £48 million. I have mentioned several costs that are all over and above the continuing costs of the Meat and Livestock Commission, which amount to £37 million a year. To that sum must be added another £37 million for all the other long-standing statutory charges and levies that are made against the agriculture industry. Coming soon will be the as yet unknown cost of the Food Standards Agency. Has the Minister no idea of the effect of all these cost burdens on the competitiveness of the industry? He talks about having a sustainable industry. How will it be sustainable if one cost is piled on another? I have not mentioned recurring costs of £77 million and non-recurring costs of £20 million that are referred to in the 18th paragraph of his Department's regulatory appraisal of the ban on the sale of beef on the bone. To make matters worse, neither the regulatory measures nor the same cost burdens are being imposed on our continental competitors. No other country has banned the sale of beef on the bone. In a parliamentary answer, the Minister told me that the Belgians were considering a ban on the sale of beef on the bone. He added that the Irish had decided to do what many of us feel should have been done in this country, which is to warn the public that there is a small risk in eating beef that has been prepared or cooked with the bone in place. It has been left to the Irish public to decide for themselves, which I think is absolutely right. The removal of the specified risk material— compulsory in this country for the best part of 10 years—will not be mandatory throughout the European Community until 1 April. I am not aware that the costs, even then, will be borne by the industry, as they are in the United Kingdom. There has been much talk about agrimonetary compensatory amounts over the past several months. As the Minister knows, the industry has expressed the view that the Government should compensate the British industry to the tone of £980 million. The Government have set their face against that. That sort of money is being paid to other farmers in the European Union but not to British farmers. We are no longer eligible for export restitutions. They do not apply in the United Kingdom because we are no longer allowed to export our beef. However, restitutions to other countries that are allowed to export their beef are being paid out of money that has come from British taxpayers' pockets."The Meat Hygiene Service's enforcement of the existing SRM controls in licensed slaughterhouses costs the taxpayer about £18 million a year. When the extra controls on sheep and goats are introduced, the cost will rise by about £26 million a year. The Government have concluded that the cost can no longer be borne by the taxpayer. We therefore propose that from the start of the next financial year, the cost should be recouped from the industry, as is currently done in respect of Meat Hygiene Service inspections."—[Official Report, European Standing Committee A, 19 November 1997; c. 2.]
Perhaps my hon. Friend will comment on the progress that has been made on lifting the export ban. In answer to an oral question on 21 May, the Prime Minister said:
To what extent has progress been made? What is holding up the progress of which the Prime Minister was so confident in May last year?"I believe that we can make progress and I am hopeful that progress is being made."—[Official Report, 21 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 710.]
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, and in this instance I am sure that the Minister will agree with me. When he and his colleagues took office, they were optimistic that merely by conducting a charm offensive in Brussels they would get the other member countries to agree to lift the beef ban. None of the other 14 countries in the EU has the least incentive to lift the ban—let alone an interest in doing so. We can conclude—my right hon. and hon. Friends reached this conclusion a long time ago—that the ban was imposed for purely political reasons and had nothing to do with considerations relating either to animal health or, more to the point, human health. It was a purely political decision.
The Government did not take that view when they were elected in May 1997. They thought that, if they were more reasonable and more accommodating towards the Commission, rapid progress would be made. It was instructive to hear the Minister of Agriculture say on the farming programme on 12 February, barely a week ago, that he believed that the beef ban was political. The only progress that we have made with the Government on the beef ban over the past nine months has been to persuade them of what many people have known all along, that the ban was entirely political. Nevertheless, we have made progress because it is now on the record that the Minister of Agriculture accepts that. It is ironic that, at a time when the European Community is saying that our beef is still unsafe, it is providing £2 million to conduct an advertising campaign in this country. Some supermarkets have had access to that money to advertise British beef. Clearly, something is wrong. I am interested to know what the Minister has to say about that. If the Community really believes that our beef is unsafe, why is it spending £2 million of Community money to advertise British beef? If, as is suggested by that action, the Community believes that British beef is safe, does that not call into question the decision that the Government made shortly before Christmas that led to a ban on the sale of beef on the bone? What is the effect of the charges to which I have referred on the competitive edge of British agriculture? None of the additional charges, costs and burdens on the industry does anything to help us to sell more meat or to compete within our own market, let alone world markets or markets within the continent of Europe. As Ministers continue to load more regulations and cost burdens on the industry, one is tempted to ask whether they take that approach out of prejudice or ignorance. The Government campaigned on the slogan, "Not a handout but a hand up". There are few in the industry who expect the present Minister of Agriculture to advocate additional handouts. After all, the right hon. Gentleman is an ambitious man. We recognise that he will not prejudice his political career by going off message, by appearing to be the friend of the farmer and going against the strictures of his friends in the Treasury. Who can doubt that, at the next ministerial reshuffle, he hopes to become a Secretary of State and to be relieved of the smoke and mirrors of the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy? As we are talking about smoke and mirrors, the right hon. Gentleman's love of the Smoking Room when the House is debating important agriculture matters has not gone unnoticed. While he remains at the Ministry of Agriculture, will he recognise that adding to the meat and livestock sector's costs is not the way to make a successful, competitive and sustainable industry?In his long speech, the hon. Gentleman has given only a cursory mention of the role of supermarkets and their ability to absorb costs. He will agree that it is a two-ended process. The difference can be made not just at the farm gate but at the place where the consumer buys the product. Perhaps he might like to have a word with the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman), who I gather is still chairman of Asda, about what role Asda is taking with regard to keeping prices down and absorbing costs.
I do not quite understand the point that the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) was trying to make, as he made the point badly, but I shall respond, because many people—my constituents included—are concerned about the role of supermarkets. Many of my constituents, who are operating on slim or non-existent margins, look at the apparently healthy margins of supermarkets and, quite rightly, question whether the available profit between the production of meat and its sale to the housewife is being distributed equitably.
We must accept that, nowadays, supermarkets sell an enormous amount of meat. A high proportion of the meat sold on the British market is sold in supermarkets, and they are the customer. Many of us are old-fashioned enough to believe that the customer is right. We may not like what the customer—in this case the supermarket—is doing, but we recognise that supermarkets are the outlet for the product of British agriculture.I am grateful to my neighbouring Shropshire Member of Parliament for giving way. I congratulate him on bringing this most important issue to the attention of the House.
On the point about supermarkets, will my hon. Friend congratulate the farmers, who demonstrated spontaneously and brought pressure on supermarkets and large consumers, such as McDonald's? Up to 80 per cent, of that company's beef is British, and Sainsbury's is running a British promotion this month. That is totally in line with what the Government want. Farmers do not want subsidies. They want to be able to compete on a level basis. Does my hon. Friend think that it is disgraceful that the Government are not helping—I shall be grateful if the Ministers will just listen to this point, because beef was imported into this country last year—Order. We should not have speeches during interventions.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) for his intervention. He is quite right. The supermarkets are doing what they can to sell British beef. I have a letter from the customer services director of Sainsbury's, in which he says to a correspondent:
In other words, Sainsbury's is sourcing all its beef in the British isles. I have another letter, addressed to Mr. Sedgley, in my constituency, from the company secretary of Somerfield, saying:"90 per cent, of our Beef is from Britain…and 10 per cent, is from Southern Ireland."
It is all very well having a pop at the supermarkets, but we have to bear in mind that they are our customers. They have tremendous power—too much, perhaps—in the marketplace. It was interesting to hear the Minister for Public Health say at a meeting last night that the Government propose to put their healthy living clinics inside supermarkets. She was quite rightly asked what that will do for the local shops on housing estates that are trying to provide a local service to people who live away from the areas in which supermarkets provide essential services. It is very well the hon. Member for Stroud shedding crocodile tears, but he should look at how he and his party are encouraging supermarkets to create a monopoly."Over 75 per cent, of meat sold in our stores is British."
Does the hon. Gentleman also agree that the focus on supermarkets—
Order. I am wondering when the Minister will get an opportunity to reply. The Minister is here to reply to the debate. When people put themselves out, particularly Ministers, they should at least get a hearing.
In that case, I shall finish.
I want the Minister to focus on the £79 million of additional cost burdens that he will impose on the meat and livestock industry this year, which almost entirely cancel out the £85 million of additional help to the industry that he announced on 22 December. I want him to look at those costs against the huge financial loss that is already being absorbed by the industry as a result of there being almost no value in meat and bonemeal and tallow, which is costing an estimated £43 million a year, the extra specified risk material disposal charges, which are costing £6 million a year, the loss in value of ox cheeks, £8.7 million a year, and, not least, the £97 million cost this year of the ban on the sale of beef on the bone. When the Minister replies, he might be tempted to rake over the coals of the previous Administration's handling of the BSE crisis, but I respectfully suggest that he leaves that to the Phillips inquiry and concentrates instead on that for which he and his Government have been responsible since 1 May.On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not it a convention of the House that the Minister has 15 minutes to reply to an Adjournment debate?
There is no such rule, but I would expect that a Minister would be given a reasonable time in which to answer. I do not think that the time now available to the Minister is reasonable.
1.26 pm
I have exactly four minutes. When the debate started, everybody knew that it had to finish at 1.30 pm.
I shall address two key points raised by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill). On the cattle movement service, we lost six weeks because the previous Government did not complete the arrangements to appoint the consultants, which they could have done before the general election. No final decision has yet been taken on charging for the cattle movement service. The location at Workington was the cheapest for running costs. I am conscious of that, as the farmers will have to pay the running costs in the end. It was also the only option where I could guarantee that staff could be recruited. The previous Government said that the set-up costs would be met by central Government. I must emphasise that we have not announced the decision on that. It is quite wrong for people to assume that we have. People are going up and down the country, on one radio station after another, telling us what the Government have announced and decided. Nowhere have we announced any decision regarding start-up costs. We have still to make that announcement, and will do so in due course. On specified risk materials, I announced on 19 November that charges could be up to £48 million. I announced that in front of a Standing Committee. I was not questioned about it by a single Conservative Member. Since 1 January—when the conditions came into effect, but not the charges—experience has shown that the real costs will be nothing like as high. We are still consulting, as the hon. Gentleman knows. A letter was issued on 6 February. The consultation ends on 2 March. The decision on charges will not be made until the consultation has finished. I regret that some parts of the industry refuse to pay the existing Meat Hygiene Service charges, which is causing problems of undercutting costs and unfair competition. I was at a medium-sized abattoir yesterday in Staffordshire, which had a high hygiene assessment score and has invested in new equipment. Why should a good firm be undermined by crooked companies—bucket shop companies—refusing to pay? We are looking urgently at bad debt to the Meat Hygiene Service to see what action can be taken. I am not prepared to see the good side of the industry unfairly disadvantaged. There are problems with sanctions. The key sanction would be for us to ask the Meat Hygiene Service to refuse to health-mark the goods. There may be problems with the European Union about that, but the situation cannot be allowed to continue with one part of the industry placing unfair burdens on the other. I repeat that consultation on those charges is still under way, and it would be wrong for anyone to draw a conclusion. As for the hooligans outside the television studio on Sunday, such people do the farming industry no good whatever. Had they been outside a football ground, they would have been charged.
Mr Noel Smith
1.29 pm
I wish to draw to the House's attention the case of a life that has been grievously damaged as a result of treatment by the health services, mostly under the national health service. There has been no redress to that damage, and no one has yet been prepared to take responsibility for it.
Noel Frank Smith, a constituent of mine, was born in Liverpool on Christmas day 1922—Noel was a Christmas baby. At an early stage, he suffered rheumatic fever, and in 1929, at the age of six, he was admitted to Myrtle Street children's hospital. On examination by a specialist cardiologist, a disorder of the heart was diagnosed— mitral valve disease. The prognosis was that he was unlikely to live beyond his teens, and he was told to avoid strenuous exercise. The prognosis had drastic consequences for the rest of his life. He could not lead the life of a normal child, and had regularly to visit to his general practitioner, who prescribed glyceryl trinitrate, a vasodilator designed to decrease his blood pressure to prevent strain being put on the supposedly defective valve in his heart. Mr. Smith's job prospects and earning capacity were curtailed. There was less sympathy and provision for chronic invalids in those days. In short, his quality and standard of life have been affected, as has provision for his old age. Worse still, his painful treatment has had lasting side effects. He now suffers from degeneration of the cell walls around his veins. To put it in his words, his blood vessels are now like a leaky boat. He suffers much discomfort and pain as a result of the pooling of fluids in his legs. He has also developed glaucoma, which he maintains is because his eyes have reacted to his treatment in the same way as the rest of his vascular system. After his initial diagnosis in 1929, Mr. Smith did not see another heart specialist until 1981, when he attended Broadgreen hospital in Liverpool with a chest infection. After tests, he was advised that he did not have a heart complaint, and that the diagnosis of mitral heart disease made 52 years previously had been wrong. His understandable reaction was to instruct a solicitor to prepare a claim against the cardiologist who had made the false diagnosis. However, he was given counsel's opinion that there was no evidence of negligence, and therefore no ground for a claim. Mr. Smith subsequently received a second and contrary opinion based on a number of points, including the fact that, when the misdiagnosis was first discovered, the lasting damage to his health was not clear or known, and that he had not been examined by a cardiologist in the 52 years between the initial diagnosis in 1929 and the second opinion in 1981. I ask the House to consider 52 years of repeat prescriptions for serious drugs for a supposed heart disorder. However, there was an obstacle to Mr. Smith's pursuit of a claim for compensation: he had no access to his medical records. His battle for access to his records was conducted first by Eddie Loyden, the Member of Parliament in whose constituency of Garsden he lived when the misdiagnosis was discovered, and thereafter, when he went to live in Knowsley, by my predecessor, the late Sean Hughes. The matter had not been resolved when I entered Parliament in 1990 and picked up the case. There were three aspects to the story of Mr. Smith's records. First, in 1983, shortly after the discovery of the misdiagnosis, the medical records mysteriously disappeared. They were withdrawn by the medical practitioners unit at Princes road, Liverpool, and mysteriously went to Hertfordshire. A strange story was told about someone registering and claiming benefit, fraudulently using Mr. Smith's national insurance number. It was not until 1985 that the records eventually returned. Secondly, there was the battle to gain access to the medical records. That was pursued, but when Mr. Smith eventually gained access to them, key sections were missing. The whole story is mysterious and sinister. The third aspect, in which I have been most involved, is trying to get to the bottom of what happened to the missing records. I pursued the complaint as far as the health service commissioner in 1996. His response was interesting. He gave three reasons for being unable to help: first, that the complaint was out of time—of course it was out of time by now, given that Mr. Smith had been battling steadily throughout the intervening time; secondly, that he could not become involved because of the possibility of legal action arising from the case; and, thirdly, that there was little practical point, after such a lapse of time, in trying to get to the bottom of how the records had mysteriously disappeared. And that was that. There is yet another cruel twist to the tale. With or without his medical records, Mr. Smith does not have the means to pursue a claim without legal aid. That has been denied, not least because, after the long battle to get hold of his records, deficient as they are, the claim is statute barred, so he cannot have legal aid. The battle for Mr. Smith's right to pursue his claim through the law courts is a sub-plot with which I shall not burden the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), but it is a subject for a whole Adjournment debate. Suffice to say that it has not yet been resolved. One can choose the best cliche to describe Mr. Smith's experience: catch-22; Greek tragedy; or Kafkaesque. It is a catch-22 in that he could not pursue his case without his records, but by the time be got them he was statute barred. It is a Greek tragedy in that Mr. Smith has suffered a rare misfortune on a epic scale, and his twists and turns to alleviate his fate have been doomed to constant and, by now to me, predictable failure, given all the avenues that I have pursued on his behalf. There is no catharsis or relief in this drama because this is not vicarious drama; it is a real life ruined. It is Kafkaesque in that Mr. Smith has been shunted in bureaucratic circles, with functionaries who refer to and reinforce each other but do not address the issue—the ruin of Mr. Smith's life. One could not blame Mr. Smith for concluding that the whole bureaucratic edifice is designed to serve itself and so thwart the individual. I hold what I thought was a common-sense view: that, if no one in the system will accept responsibility for the wrong done to Mr. Smith, the ultimate responsibility rests with the Secretary of State; but successive Secretaries of State have declined to acknowledge that. I leave the last word to Mr. Smith:"the Ministers did answer your letters and mine but…they never acknowledged the questions that we asked.
I would have thought that being responsible Ministers they would have sent a directive to Merseyside Regional Health Authority to get the problem of my missing medical records sorted. Also,
that they would inform me why I was treated for the serious heart complaint that I was mistakenly diagnosed as suffering from for 54 years of my life and also the drastic medical treatment that has caused me so much pain and injury.
I am pleased to have a Minister at the Dispatch Box to respond to the debate. He is a sympathetic Minister, and I hold him in high regard. I realise that he is only the most recent of a succession of Ministers who have been approached about this case. I look forward at least to a positive and sympathetic response to this exceptional story of a ruined life, but I urge him to institute an inquiry into this sorry matter.I know that I am entitled to an explanation and answer to these questions. I also know that I am entitled to compensation for the pain and injury that I am suffering to this day."
1.39 pm
The constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, South (Mr. O'Hara) is fortunate in only one respect: he has a hard-working and diligent Member of Parliament, who has pursued every avenue on his behalf. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on behalf of Mr. Noel Smith.
Mr. Smith's experience over 70 years gives us considerable pause for thought and for regret. For most of his life, he has suffered pain and distress as a result of an inaccurate diagnosis that went undiscovered for more than half a century. His experience may be unique in its duration, and we can only express regret at his suffering. The problem predates the national health service, whose 50th anniversary we celebrate this year. This story began at a time when people did not enjoy, as we all do now, a national health service that is capable of responding to the changes in people's expectations. Not to be registered with a family doctor and via him or her to have access to a comprehensive range of appropriate health care is almost inconceivable today, but Mr. Smith's story began at just such a time. My hon. Friend raised this case with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State last summer. The matter has been pursued through our predecessors and through other channels. When I replied to my hon. Friend's correspondence on 6 August 1997, I could do no more than repeat the message that he had received a number of times in the past. No mechanism is currently in place by which Mr. Smith can seek redress for the initial misdiagnosis and subsequent, apparently unnecessary, treatment that has dominated and ruined his life. I am sure that, on reflection, my hon. Friend will appreciate that the NHS is not at fault. After all, it was at an NHS hospital, Broadgreen in Liverpool, that doctors revealed the truth to Mr. Smith in 1981. The national health service made known to its patient the enormity of what had happened to him. That must have been a time of incredibly mixed emotions for Mr. Smith. He must have been relieved that he was not suffering from a condition that was likely considerably to truncate his life, but the knowledge that he had spent much of his childhood and all his adult life under the misconception that he was suffering from a potentially fatal disease must have been devastating. It was not until Mr. Smith attended hospital for treatment of a chest complaint that the enormity and horror of the situation was revealed. This is an astonishing state of affairs. Mr. Smith had been told that he was unlikely to survive beyond his teens. He was not examined thoroughly at any time until the age of 58. It would be surprising if, at some time during that period, it had not occurred to him that there was something wrong because the prognosis had not materialised. It is clear that, for whatever reason, he did not discuss the matter with his general practitioner, and no inquiries were made as to how it was that he was still in the land of the living. One hopes that such a total breakdown of communication between patient and the NHS would not happen today. I have made inquiries about the medical notes, to which my hon. Friend rightly attaches considerable significance. Unfortunately, every attempt has been made to trace those notes, but without success. I understand that the Liverpool health authority has copious notes on a file dating back to July 1954, all of which Mr. Smith has seen for himself. He is concerned that entries may be missing, but no one can say for certain that they are. Significantly, legislation governing the security of medical records and a patient's right of access is a comparatively recent development. The actions of the clinician working at a pre-NHS hospital in the 1920s, who is long since dead, are not covered by existing guidelines. It is Mr. Smith's misfortune to be in a unique position that is not covered by any known guideline or procedure. We have no reason to believe that the original doctor acted in anything other than good faith, bearing in mind the extent of medical knowledge at the time and the rapid advances in treatment and diagnostic techniques that followed. I accept that successive GPs must have had access to some form of written record to persist with the treatment for more than 50 years. That was investigated by the old Liverpool family health services authority, which contacted all Mr. Smith's former GPs in 1992. The health service commissioner, who was unable at the time to investigate clinical decisions, found no suggestion of impropriety by the FHSA in the retention of or access to Mr. Smith's medical records. I hope that my hon. Friend will find some reassurance in the knowledge that, if there were any way to remedy the situation, we would do so without delay. It gives me no satisfaction whatsoever to say that every possible method has been tried, and that no adequate solution has emerged. I sincerely regret the unfulfilled years of Mr. Smith's life. I am glad that he is still with us, and that the early ill-founded and misplaced predictions were not fulfilled. I am pleased that he has lived to see the day when we can rely on accurate diagnosis and access for all to appropriate treatment as routine features of the modern NHS. Access to medical records is now the due entitlement of every patient. My hon. Friend has pressed long and hard for justice for Mr. Noel Smith. I am sorry that the debate is unlikely to satisfy either of them. I express profound regret on behalf of the national health service. I would be only too happy, if it would assist in any way, to meet Mr. Noel Smith with my hon. Friend at the Department to express to him in person my sincere regrets and the regrets of the health service.It being before Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.
Oral Answers To Questions
Wales
The Secretary of State was asked—
Numeracy And Literacy
1.
If he will make a statement on the standards of numeracy and literacy in Welsh schools. [28398]
4.
If he will make a statement on the standards of numeracy and literacy in Welsh schools. [28401]
Standards of literacy and numeracy in Welsh schools are not high enough, and we have, therefore, set very clear targets for further improvement.
May I say how pleased are the people of Wales that the Government are committed to improving the deplorable standards of literacy and numeracy in our schools, particularly after the reign of the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) as gauleiter of Wales, whose legacy was 645 lost teaching posts? Is the Minister aware that firms such as LG in my constituency, which offer the promise of an enormous harvest of jobs, are insisting on high standards of technical skills, which must be founded on basic numeracy standards? Has he specific plans for improvements in our numeracy skills?
I agree with my hon. Friend that the standards of numeracy are simply not sufficient. That is one of our legacies from the Tory Government. We are putting in train programmes to improve numeracy skills. I was always uneasy about the fact that my two sons never seemed to know their times tables because they had not been taught them and relied on calculators. Nevertheless, they got good maths A-levels and science degrees at university, whereas I just ended up as a politician despite the fact that I know my times tables.
My constituency was one of only three in north Wales to participate in the summer literacy schools initiative. The school that participated was Ysgol Llewelyn in Rhyl. The pupils who attended were seven years old, and their reading and literacy skills were dramatically improved over the summer. Has the Minister any plans to expand the summer literacy schools in Wales?
Yes, I have. As part of our programme for raising standards of literacy and numeracy, I am delighted to announce the extension of the summer literacy programme for 1998 to cover every local education authority in Wales. Our intention is to build on the enormous success of last year's pilots, when more than 700 pupils in Wales were given the chance to improve their reading and to discover the world of books.
Welsh Assembly
2.
What representations he has received from UK national organisations regarding the siting of the Welsh assembly. [28399]
On 3 February, in response to a question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), I placed in the Library of the House a list of all those who responded during the public consultation exercise.
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that reply, but I fear that it will not assuage the sense that finding a home for the assembly is descending into, at best, farce. Will he explain why he has narrowed the options for a site for the assembly down to south Wales?
The hon. Gentleman will know that we had many submissions from all over Wales. I am delighted to take this opportunity to place on record my personal thanks to the authorities, from Swansea and Cardiff in the south through to Wrexham and Flint in north Wales, that showed their interest in and commitment to the assembly.
It is true, however, that the overwhelming majority of submissions favoured either Cardiff or Swansea. Officials in the Welsh Office are examining several alternatives in Cardiff, and we have a good bid from Swansea in the form of the Swansea guild hall site. Those are the sites that commanded widespread public support. It seems right and proper that we should discuss more details with the promoters of those options so that, eventually, within about a month, I shall be able to announce the final site. I have no doubt that that will command widespread support throughout Wales.My right hon. Friend will be aware that, during the Conservative years, for every £1 that the Welsh Office spent in Swansea, it spent £5 in Cardiff. Will he reflect on the fact that the choice of site is one of the few decisions that is entirely under his control, and that he can help to decide whether the new Wales is over-centralised or diffused through what we hope will be the all-Wales, Swansea solution?
I am conscious of the submission by my hon. Friend's local authority, and of the arguments that he, my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Caton) have advanced in support of the Swansea bid. However, it is not a simple matter. I have to weigh in the balance the Swansea submission, offering, as it does, what we have described as the all-Wales option, and the Cardiff option, which will be based on an institution. I have to take full account of both the cost-effectiveness of each scheme and the broader political considerations. It will be a difficult choice, but I will take into account the matters that my hon. Friend has raised.
With the benefit of hindsight, does the right hon. Gentleman now regret ever launching this beauty contest for the assembly site, particularly as it was done only to save his face after the mess that he made in his negotiations on Cardiff city hall? How much has that cynical, face-saving exercise—in which he has merely arrived back where he started—cost the council tax payers of Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham and other councils? Does not his peremptory decision to exclude Wrexham and Flintshire from Monday's shortlist send a chilling message to north Wales that his pious assurances of even-handedness in the whole of Wales are no less empty and cosmetic than this whole sad and expensive exercise has turned out to be?
The right hon. Gentleman has only a passing knowledge of the matters that have taken place in Wales over the past couple of months. I shall deal with two of the points that he has raised. The question of submissions has been one for local authorities. The enthusiasm that they have shown to house the assembly clearly shows that local authorities—be they Wrexham, Cardiff, Swansea or any other of the many that have made submissions—think that the assembly will be good for Wales and for democracy, and will bring increased employment opportunities to whichever location eventually houses it.
The reason why the submissions for Cardiff and Swansea have been selected is that they are the ones that have commanded broad support. The decision to exclude submissions outside Cardiff and Swansea was taken not lightly, but on the basis of careful costing of the submissions and careful analysis of the support that those submissions attracted. If the right hon. Gentleman favoured a submission from Wrexham, Flintshire, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Merthyr or Bridgend, why on earth did he not say so? Why did he not write to tell me what his preference was?Education Funding
3.
If he will make a statement on the funding of primary and secondary education in Wales and its distribution to schools. [28400]
Individual local authorities decide on their budget for primary and secondary schools.
I welcome the additional £50 million that has been announced for Wales. Will my hon. Friend confirm the exact additional amounts for Gwynedd and for Conwy in my constituency? Furthermore, will he confirm that special needs will not be neglected and will also benefit from additional resources?
I thank my hon. Friend. Gwynedd will receive about £1.9 million and Conwy over £1.6 million of the additional £50 million spending on school budgets in Wales. I give her the assurance, especially as I know of her close family interest in special educational needs, that we are determined to improve provision and to adopt a much more flexible level of provision. I will certainly bear in mind her submission to me in response to our Green Paper on the matter.
Is the Minister aware that, despite the additional funding that his Department is making available to local authorities, a number of schools in my constituency and elsewhere are still predicting that teachers will be lost this year? Has he made an assessment of the number of teachers who might be lost to our schools in Wales this year and, if he finds that the number is reaching an alarming level, will he reconsider the level of resources?
I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, particularly against a background when, under the Conservatives, 1,800 teachers in Wales lost their jobs. That is the appalling record and legacy that we inherited. I see no reason why, in either the hon. Gentleman's local education authority or any other in Wales, any teacher's job should be lost, especially when we have put an additional £50 million straight into the schools' budgets. I shall be monitoring that carefully to ensure that it goes into schools and is not siphoned off into general local government expenditure.
One of the obstacles to implementing the new deal in my constituency is the many jobless youngsters who lack literacy and numeracy skills. They were the people who were betrayed by the Tories' failing to provide adequate resources at primary and secondary levels. Will my hon. Friend look into that matter and see what he can do to help bridge that gap in the most basic of all skills?
Yes, I will, and we have been considering the problem since we took office in May last year. We are determined to drive up literacy and numeracy skills. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the shabby record that we inherited. Of the additional £50 million for schools' budgets, £1.5 million has been specifically earmarked for literacy schemes. In addition, another £1 million will be allocated for literacy and numeracy projects to ensure that we tackle the basic core skills which must be enhanced in Wales.
Will the Minister acknowledge that up to half the money provided to reduce class sizes could be swallowed up in the teachers' pay award? On top of that, what does the Minister intend to do about teacher recruitment in key subjects in secondary schools, which is falling to crisis levels? Words come easily, but they will not provide extra teachers in primary or secondary schools, and class sizes in Wales will continue to increase, making this yet another broken Labour promise.
On the contrary, Wales now has a Government who keep their promises and who are determined to deliver higher educational standards. It is rich for the hon. Gentleman to lecture us on school cuts when school after school in Wales suffered savage cuts during the last few years of Conservative Government.
The specific answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is that £7 million of the overhang on the 1997 teachers' pay settlement will fall on this year's budget. An additional £19 million of the staged pay increase this year will fall on this year's local authority budgets. That should take up less than half the £50 million because the Secretary of State has provided a general uprating for local government over and above what would have been provided by the Tories. There is therefore no reason to reach for teachers' pay settlements or any other excuse, let alone one from the Conservatives, to try to drag money out of school budgets this coming year.Does my hon. Friend agree that with the onset of democratic devolution, there is an opportunity to develop an education policy more attuned to the specific needs of Wales? Does he further agree that there is no reason why that process of diversity should not begin now?
I very much agree. Since we took office, we have been developing a distinct educational agenda for Wales. The first ever White Paper on education in Wales was published in July. We shall similarly be publishing in the spring the first ever Green Paper on lifelong learning in Wales. All that, including the School Standards and Framework Bill, is designed to ensure that we devolve opportunities for developing an educational structure to meet the needs and values of Wales, rather than the alien programme that we had thrust on us by the Conservatives, under the likes of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), during the past 18 miserable years.
Tuition Fees
5.
What meetings he has had with student organisations in Wales to discuss tuition fees. [28403]
I met the National Union of Students in Wales to discuss the Government's proposals for the funding of higher education, which included the issue of tuition fees.
Does the Minister think that the prospect of paying tuition fees for a full five years—rather than for three or, at most, four years in the case of other courses—will make able Welsh sixth-form students more or less likely to choose veterinary science as a subject for study? Will the Minister meet representatives of Welsh veterinary students to discuss this question?
I should be happy to meet representatives of Welsh students to discuss this or any other matter and, as I said, I have done so. The full five-year provision is made in respect of medical and dental students, but veterinary students are not covered. I have received no representations on the matter. If the hon. Gentleman— who is an English Member of Parliament—wishes to raise the issue, I suggest that he takes it up with an English Education Minister, not the Welsh one.
Is the Minister concerned by recent figures which show that the introduction of tuition fees is deterring a number of adults from making applications to universities? Does he recognise that, for many adults, to be accepted by a university is a major achievement, but that to be unable to take up that opportunity because of tuition fees would be the ultimate tragedy?
I would be concerned to find any adult or any other student in that predicament. If my hon. Friend has any examples, perhaps he could bring them to my attention. In Wales, more than one third of students are in families who will not be covered by any tuition fee. In addition, more than a further third are in families where the parents do not earn the requisite amount at which the full £1,000 will be levied. That means that only one quarter of students in Wales will pay the full £1,000 fee.
That message has to be got across to ensure that low-income students are not deterred from taking up a university place.Is it not the case that the Government's proposals will do nothing to solve the problem of student poverty, to which the Minister began to refer? Even though students from low-income families are exempt from fees, they will lose the grant and will be that much worse off than they would be under the present arrangements. In any case, the total loan available to them will be well below what is necessary to survive for a year. How does this square with the Government's rhetoric about opening up opportunities for students from low-income families? By the way, what has happened to the White Paper on lifelong learning?
The paper will be coming in the spring. The hon. Gentleman's specific point is legitimate, but no student from a low-income family should be deterred from taking up a university opportunity. The loan will be repayable only if the individual gains a job and earns more than £10,000 a year—and then over a long period when that individual is in work—so each individual from a low-income family will be better off than they are now. Under the present arrangements, students must take out loans which they must start to repay immediately they leave university. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will explain to his constituents that for low-income students, the proposed financial arrangements should be seen as an opportunity, rather than a handicap.
Would the Minister be prepared to issue a leaflet to Welsh students, explaining how the Prime Minister's assurance last April that he had no plans to introduce tuition fees can grammatically and logically be translated into, "We are not only going to introduce tuition fees but, for good measure, we will abolish the maintenance grant as well"? While he is doing that, could he explain why a student at a Scottish university who comes from Newport in Wales will have to pay £1,000 more in tuition fees than a student from Newport in the Republic of Ireland? Is that what the Prime Minister and the Government meant when they asked students to trust them?
May I say in the nicest possible way to the right hon. Gentleman that it comes ill from a Conservative party—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] He asked a series of questions, as it happens. The questions come ill from a member of the Conservative party which set up the Dearing committee to examine the crisis in higher education that the Conservative Government had created. The Dearing committee recommended that tuition fees should be introduced. We assessed that recommendation, and proposed a system that is both fair and logical. If we had not done so, we would have been saddled with a series of universities nearing bankruptcy, which is the fate that awaited them had the Conservatives retained power on 1 May.
Welsh Referendum
6.
If he will instigate an inquiry into problems arising in the counting of votes in the Welsh referendum; and if he will make a statement. [28404]
There has been not one substantive allegation of impropriety in the referendum count. There are no outstanding problems and there is, therefore, no justification for an inquiry.
May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that members of his own party described what reigned on the night as chaos? If the Secretary of State is not going to re-establish public confidence by holding an inquiry, what does he intend to do? Already, counties are campaigning to be exempted from the provisions of his Government of Wales Bill. Will he grant their requests?
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that one question was raised by members of my constituency party. It was dealt with fully and comprehensively by the returning officer. I repeat the challenge that I made to the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) a month ago. If the hon. Gentleman has one substantive allegation, he should bring it forward and let us have the evidence. If he does not have such evidence, he should stop abusing the privilege of the House of Commons by casting aspersions on the integrity of decent, hard-working public servants.
Will the Secretary of State focus his mind not just on impropriety, but on muddle? It would be very helpful to the people of Wales and those of us who fought for devolution if he could give the House a clear assurance that, if all the doubtful votes had been counted adversely, there would nevertheless have been majority for devolution. Such an assurance would go a long way to putting the problem to rest.
Of course I can give that assurance. I remind my hon. Friend that I answered all these matters fully and comprehensively in a series of written answers to the questions tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Thomas) in January. Every question that has ever been asked on this matter has been answered truthfully, frankly and comprehensively. If the previous Government had had this Government's record of honesty, they would not have lost every parliamentary seat in Wales on 1 May.
There is doubt in the public mind. The actual result was only 168 votes a constituency in favour. The Secretary of State's bluster is just not good enough. If the assembly is to go ahead, it must do so on a sound basis and not on the shifting sands of doubt in areas that voted no.
Order. I made a statement last week that questions must be put. The hon. Gentleman did not put a question; he made a statement. I shall be careful not to call him again for some time. [Interruption.] Order. Is my statement being challenged in some way?
It is not a question of whether devolution proceeds; it is a question of when it proceeds. The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) will know that the Government of Wales Bill is proceeding apace through the House of Commons. If he feels that there is any doubt about the validity of the referendum result, he should explain why he and his right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are actively co-operating with the Government to get the legislation through the House of Commons as quickly as possible.
Nhs Trusts
7.
If he will make a statement on the reconfiguration of NHS trusts in Wales. [28405]
9.
If he will make a statement on the progress of NHS trust reconfiguration in Wales. [28407]
I launched the trust reconfiguration exercise to improve the quality of hospital and community health services in Wales through the establishment of a more effective and efficient structure of NHS trusts.
The review will lead to improvements in the planning and delivery of services to patients, the replacement of competition between trusts with a new collaborative approach, and the transfer of considerable resources from management and administration towards direct patient care.Is my hon. Friend aware that the Bro Taf health authority proposal to merge East Glamorgan and North Glamorgan trusts commands no support? It does not command the support of the vast majority of clinical and medical staff, the community health councils or the communities. Instead of heeding the word of a quango, will my hon. Friend heed the words, wishes and feelings of the people of the communities that the trusts are supposed to serve, and those who serve in them?
The proposals made by every health authority in Wales will be considered by the group that I have set up to estimate what best can be made of their proposals. Where there are dissenting voices, the health authority has to report that to the group. I shall make decisions with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State based on all the evidence, not just one proposal.
Is my hon. Friend aware—I think that he will be aware of it—that all the evidence from my constituency is against the recommendation of Dyfed Powys health authority to abolish the local hospital trust? There is much talk of consultation. If my right hon. Friend is looking for more evidence, will he consult the patients in my constituency, who will tell him the same thing?
Apart from addressing a meeting of about 400 people in Llanelli town hall, at which my right hon. Friend was present, I have visited the hospital, spoken to consultants, spoken to the campaign group and spoken to relatives of mine who have been patients at the hospital. All that will be taken into account when we consider the reconfiguration of trusts in my right hon. Friend's constituency.
Given the Government's White Paper on the NHS, in the reconfiguration exercise, will the Minister please consider the total support of general practitioners in Powys for an NHS primary care trust? Will he assure me that he will not deny GPs their wishes?
The hon. Gentleman will know that I cannot make any such commitment from the Dispatch Box. I have before me many proposals affecting the whole of Wales. 1 shall consider all of them before I put concrete proposals to everyone in Wales for further consultation. I am determined that the £5 million to £10 million that can be made available for patient care as a result of the exercise is used as effectively as possible.
As health is to be one of the main responsibilities of the Welsh assembly, would it not be better to stand back and allow the reconfiguration to take place when the assembly has had time to look at it? It is surely bizarre that the new reconfiguration should come into being a few days before the assembly takes up its work.
The great advantage for members of the assembly will be that they will have an extra £5 million to £10 million a year to allocate to health services in Wales, thanks to our prompt action in carrying out the reconfiguration exercise.
Is it lawful for the Cardiff Community Healthcare trust to take over the patient services at Sully hospital, which is owned by another health trust, before the reconfiguration and without any consultation whatsoever?
My hon. Friend knows that I have taken a close interest in what has been happening in his constituency; I can say that everything was done in a legal and correct manner, and that it will not affect any decisions that we have to make on the reconfiguration of trusts in his part of the world.
New Enterprises
8.
If he will make a statement on his Department's strategy to help generate new enterprises; and what plans he has to provide resources to match the proposed reduction in resources being provided by the training and enterprise councils in Wales for local enterprise agencies. [28406]
I am anxious to encourage the formation of more good-quality enterprises. A range of exciting and innovative programmes are under way in Wales. Through the business connect scheme in particular, we shall support enterprise with skills training, mentoring and advisory assistance. The Welsh Office will shortly be contracting with the TECs for the management of the new programme and it will be for them to determine local delivery arrangements with relevant organisations, including the local enterprise agencies.
Is the Secretary of State aware that the development of new enterprises in north-west Wales is being emasculated by the cuts in resources for CELTEC? That £4 million pound cut will result in Antur Menai, the enterprise agency in my constituency that has developed more than 100 new enterprises, having its money halved; and in valuable schemes such as the training for enterprise business course, the local initiative fund and enterprise allowance being scrapped. Is that the way in which we are going to get necessary new jobs, or is it the price that we have to pay for the money that is going into the profligate LG project in Newport?
I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman should want to take issue with the creation of about 6,000 jobs in south Wales. I can assure him that it is my desire to ensure that we have economic prosperity in all parts of Wales, including his constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn). I am aware of the funding difficulties of the North Wales TEC and the problems to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, but the budget of the TEC has not yet been finalised. When it has been finalised, it will be for the TEC to enter into arrangements with local enterprise agencies.
I should point out that, this week, we launched the new deal in Wales and that about £200 million will be available both for the creation of job and training opportunities for young people and to those who wish to start up their own enterprise. That is part of the package, and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I, and the Government as a whole, are committed to getting economic prosperity throughout Wales.Prime Minister
The Prime Minister was asked—
Engagements
Ql.[28428]
If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 18 February.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. Later today, and in addition to my duties in the House, I shall attend a dinner in the City of London with Chancellor Kohl.
Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the first transfer of money from the assisted places scheme to cut class sizes in my constituency and in many others? Is that not an excellent example of Labour education policy? It is good for children, parents want it, teachers welcome it and the Tories oppose it.
Primary school class sizes rose by more than 40 per cent, in the past 20 years. The additional money from phasing out the assisted places scheme is the first instalment to get class sizes down for five, six and seven-year-olds in Britain. It will mean that 100,000 children are in class sizes of under 30 who would otherwise not have been. It is an excellent example of how the education programme of the Government is working well for the children of Britain.
I thank the Prime Minister for accepting the Opposition amendment in last night's debate on Iraq, supporting the Government's policy, but emphasizing the importance of clear objectives. Does he agree that the UN Secretary-General takes to Baghdad the strong support of the British people for the attempt at a peaceful solution to the present crisis; but does he also agree that that solution must ensure the enforcement of the UN mandate on weapons of mass destruction?
Yes, I do agree with that. I am delighted—indeed, it is in no small measure due to British diplomatic efforts—that Kofi Annan can go to Baghdad with the full and united support of the five permanent members of the Security Council. We hope that his mission will succeed, but whether or not it does will depend, of course, on Saddam. However, we should be very clear that his mission is within these parameters: full compliance with the UN Security Council resolutions on weapons inspections; no inhibition or condition that prevents the inspectors from gaining full access to the sites that they need to inspect; nothing that undermines in any way the integrity of the weapons inspection process. Saddam agreed at the end of the Gulf war to let the inspectors do their work and destroy those weapons of mass destruction and he must and will be held to that agreement. Our resolve on that is right, and it is immovable.
I am grateful for the Prime Minister's reply, and for his reaffirmation of the position. Will he also look carefully at the suggestion made yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), that we should consider how we might best ease the hardship of innocent people in Iraq, if necessary by delivering aid directly under UN authority and bypassing the Iraqi regime?
Yes, and I welcome very much the suggestion that was made by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), as well as the content of his speech, which I thought set out excellently both the problems that we face and the fact that the course that we are taking is the only viable solution.
Of course we want to do all that we can to relieve the suffering of the Iraqi people. Our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people; it is with the dictator Saddam Hussein. We shall support—indeed, have been vigorously promoting—the idea of increasing the oil-for-food programme. We shall ensure what could easily happen if Saddam Hussein wished it to—proper humanitarian aid going to his people. Of course that is right, and, at the same time as rightly taking a strong line against Saddam Hussein, we shall continue to do all we can to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people.Will the Prime Minister join me in celebrating this week of British beef? You yourself, Madam Speaker, graced us with your presence this lunchtime in celebrating wonderful cuts of beef—steaks, braised beef and boiled beef. Whatever hon. Members want today in the House of Commons, it is there—British beef. I invite all hon. Members to join me in celebrating this glorious week of British beef.
Yes, I should be delighted to join that celebration.
For the avoidance of doubt, I place on record what the Prime Minister already knows—that Liberal Democrats fully support the Government's position and the Prime Minister's comments on Iraq.
On a different point, can the Prime Minister confirm these two facts: first, that public finances are not in deficit, but in surplus; secondly, that national health service waiting lists are going not down, but up?It is correct that the January figures, as they often do, show a repayment of national debt, but we are still expecting a borrowing requirement— the Chancellor will obviously give details of that when he makes his Budget statement. I should say to the right hon. Gentleman that I believe it absolutely essential to keep a tight rein on public spending.
The right hon. Gentleman will know that waiting lists have been going up since March 1995; it is our pledge to get them down, and we shall get them down. In the meantime, we have put extra money into the NHS— £300 million more than the Conservative party promised. We shall carry on doing what we can to ensure that we get those waiting lists downIt is precisely on that matter of doing what we can to get those waiting lists down that I think there is some doubt. I remind the Prime Minister that he fought the general election nine months ago on a card— [Interruption.] Hon. Members might like to listen for a moment. The card contained some early pledges, one of which was to bring down NHS waiting lists by 100,000— those were the Prime Minister's words, not mine. In the nine months since the election, NHS waiting lists have gone up by 1,000 a week. The question that some are asking is how long it takes before an early pledge becomes a broken promise.
It will be met, as I have explained. In their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats—I do not have the right hon. Gentleman's pledge card with me—pledged an extra £1.1 billion for the NHS over the first two years of government. Actually, this Government are putting in £1.5 billion. Of course, the moment that we do that, he says that he wants even more. I am afraid that not even in Liberal Democrat economics does 2 plus 2 make 10.
We must ensure that we keep within the tight public spending limits, as I shall not have us go back to the boom and bust that the Tories gave us, when we had record interest rates, record repossessions, record bankruptcies, interest rates at 15 per cent, for a year or more, and record national debt. That is the difference between this Government and the previous one. We shall meet our NHS pledge, and when we do, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will congratulate us on it.Does the Prime Minister welcome the support from the Liberal Democrats for the Government's new deal programme? Is he puzzled by the fact that they do not support the windfall tax that funds it? On that basis, could he encourage a Liberal Democrat to become my bank manager?
I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. The Liberal Democrats support the welfare-to-work programme, but they disavow the means of achieving it. We cannot have one without the other. There is no point in willing the end unless one wills the means, and the present Government have willed both.
Ministerial Visits
Q2.[28429]
If he will visit the Lichfield constituency before 2000; and if he will make a statement.
I have no immediate plans to visit the hon. Gentleman's constituency.
That is a shame; people will be disappointed. Lichfield is a beautiful city, with an 800-year-old cathedral. However, if the right hon. Gentleman does plan to visit Lichfield, perhaps he could meet some of Lichfield's business men, many of whom are worried about the Government's plans to force recognition of trade unions, which they feel are a return to the bad old days of the 1970s. Will he make a pledge, or at least give a sign of hope, that smaller businesses in Lichfield and elsewhere in the country—perhaps businesses employing fewer than 50 people—will be exempt from such plans?
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the details of the policy are still under consideration, and they should be announced in the proper way, but I hear the point that he makes. However, I believe that it is important that we have legislation that allows our people the same freedoms that are enjoyed elsewhere in the western world.
Engagements
Q3.[28430]
Will my right hon. Friend have a word with his friend, President Clinton, about the multilateral agreement on investment, which would prevent the rejection of an inward investor with a record of damaging the environment, ill-treating workers or refusing to employ local workers? Bearing in mind that the United States of America is proposing that agreement and yet, ironically, has negotiated an opt-out for its own states and local authorities, will my right hon. Friend either reject the agreement in its entirety or negotiate a similar opt-out for local authorities in this country, and for the Scottish Parliament?
I am afraid that the answer to that is no. Let me explain why. The multilateral agreement on investment is supported not just by the United States, but by Britain. Indeed, we have been active in promoting it, for a very good reason. Contrary to some of the things that are being said, it does not prevent decent regulations, either on labour standards or on the environment. What it does prevent is means of discriminating against foreign companies, and it is actually very important for British business and British exports that we prevent countries using regulation as a backdoor means of discriminating against foreign investment.
We are people who gain, in Scotland and elsewhere, from free trade. We want to promote it as much as possible, and an agreement such as this does not, in any shape or form, prevent us imposing decent minimum standards for our work force. It does mean that we, in common with other countries, cannot use that as a back-door method of discrimination. I think that, once that point is understood, people will support that investment agreement.Under the Prime Minister's proposals for compulsory trade union recognition, does a majority of the work force mean a majority of those voting or a majority of those entitled to vote? [28431]
As I have just said to the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant), a range of issues are being discussed and considered, and it would not be appropriate or right to give an answer until the consideration is over.
Q5.[28432]
Is my right hon. Friend aware that many thousands of women, including many in my constituency and in the north-west, work for poverty pay, and that millions of pounds are spent subsidising the worst employers? Therefore, is not the national minimum wage a good deal for the country, but vital for women? Are not the Tories continuing to fail women by opposing it?
Literally hundreds of thousands of women will benefit from a statutory minimum wage; that is one of the reasons why we are committed to introducing it. It is also important that we reduce the vast benefits bill—now running at more than £3 billion a year—for subsidising low pay.
Every other country in the civilised world has some minimum threshold of pay. There is no reason why we should not have one too. It is right for the work force and, what is more, it is better in the long term for the efficiency of our economy. There is no way in which this country can compete as a low-wage, low-skill economy.Last week, the Prime Minister told me that the Human Rights Bill would not lead to a privacy law and that there was no need to amend it. When did he change his mind?
I made it clear then that there was no backdoor privacy law, and I make it clear again now. That is precisely why the Home Secretary—if people had listened to his speech—said exactly how that could be prevented in the course of the Second Reading debate on Monday.
We all know a U-turn when we see one— even though this is a particularly welcome U-turn. Last week, the Prime Minister said that our questions on this subject were a lot of trivia. This week, what he dismissed as a lot of trivia is now Government policy. While he is in the mood to accept amendments, will the Prime Minister also accept the Lords amendment that guarantees religious freedom? People of all faiths are worried that, under the Bill as drafted by the Lord Chancellor, religious schools may have to accept as teachers people whose way of life or faith is incompatible with the ethos of those schools.
On the first point, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that, last week, I said that we should consider the representations of the Press Complaints Commission and others. We considered them and we came up with an answer that the right hon. Gentleman appears to agree with, yet he still criticises us.
In relation to the second point—I think that the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley) raised it last week—we said that we should consider it. The Home Secretary is still considering the matter. When we have a proper opportunity in the course of debate to make our position clear, we shall do so. My information is that there has been no active, practical problem with this so far. We are discussing whether we need an amendment to make it absolutely clear.We know that the Prime Minister and the Government are considering the matter. However, the Human Rights Bill is more than halfway through its passage through Parliament, and it is time that the Prime Minister stopped dithering and made up his mind. The Lord Chancellor could have sorted it out ages ago if he were not so busy flicking through furniture catalogues. When will the Prime Minister make the decision that the Churches and religious schools are waiting for? Does it not worry him a bit that, for the second time in two weeks, he must consider amending the Human Rights Bill in order to protect human rights?
No, it does not concern me at all. It is entirely sensible, during the passage of a Bill in which the overwhelming majority of issues are supported by members of the public, to consider points that are raised during debate. If we were not considering them, the Leader of the Opposition would attack us for that. I do not understand the purpose of this interchange. As for furniture and fittings, that is something that has occupied the Opposition more than us.
Is the Prime Minister aware that 90 per cent, of lone mothers would like the opportunity to work? [Interruption.] Given the start that the Government have made in supporting and promoting the new deal programme, what more can be done to enable women to take up the four options in the new deal and encourage businesses and employers to play their part in assisting women into work?
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is interesting that Opposition Members jeer and shout about the prospects of getting lone parents back into work. They appear unable to ask a serious question about any issue that actually concerns members of the public.
As a result of the Government's actions, an extra £300 million will be available for people to bid into for child care programmes. One of the biggest inhibitions that lone parents face in getting off benefit and into work is that they cannot get enough help with child care. This fund, which is especially set aside over and above the Conservatives' pledge, is there precisely to help them to do so. I am delighted that my hon. Friend supports it.Q6.[28433]
Will the Prime Minister visit Fowey and St. Barnabas, Saltash hospitals in my constituency and explain to the patients, doctors and nurses there why, when the Government pledged to save the NHS, those hospitals are about to be closed? As a Liberal Democrat former bank manager, I am quite used to looking at both sides of the balance sheet. Why does the Prime Minister concentrate only on expenditure and fail to use any additional income that he has received to help relieve some of the misery in the NHS in Cornwall?
I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman was a bank manager. There should be a job going as the economic spokesman for the Liberal Democrats.
Additional money is going into the national health service, but it will take time to turn it round. We have always made that clear, because it is necessary to make sure that we bring the public finances under control. We are putting more money into the health service than the Liberal Democrats asked for in their election manifesto. It will take time, but it is better to make sure that we get there in a way that is consistent with running a stable economic ship, rather than do it in the way that the Liberal Democrats suggest, which is to spend money on every problem under the sun, trying to pretend that it grows on trees, when in the real world it does not. That is the difference between government and opposition.In the national press yesterday, the Langworthy area of Salford was described not as Coronation street, but as desolation street. It is true. Good, decent families are terrorised by crime and drugs, and surrounded by dereliction, as a direct result of 18 years of uncaring Tory policies. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me and local people that this Labour Government will tackle the desperation in our inner-city areas caused by the Tories?
Some £900 million of capital receipts has been released, and there is a £3.5 billion welfare-to-work programme, the additional £200 million that is going to help pensioners with their fuel bills, and the £300 million that I mentioned for child care. For the first time, through the social exclusion unit, there is a Government who are trying to deal with all those inner-city problems—poverty, housing, unemployment and poor educational opportunity. It will take time, but we shall do it, and my hon. Friend's constituency and others throughout the country will see the benefit and the difference between this Labour Government and the previous Conservative one.
Q7.[28434]
Has the Prime Minister seen the recent letter to the press from three former and very distinguished members of the armed forces, calling for a more restrictive arms policy? Will he assure the House that his proposals for the European Union code of conduct on arms sales will be strong enough to prevent another scandal like the arms to Iraq scandal, so that we never have to face an enemy that we ourselves have armed?
I entirely share that objective. Any action that is taken on a European level must be negotiated with other European Governments, and the hon. Lady will know that there are sometimes difficulties in doing that. Our commitment is firm. The idea of a code that operated on a Europewide basis was an initiative of this Government. We shall prosecute it as speedily as we can.
Q8.[28435]
Was not the best news this week the announcement that there is an extra £10 billion in income tax receipts? That will be very helpful in the Budget.
I hope that my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the rest of the Cabinet, most of whom are spending Ministers, will be able to take part in an exercise that will take us further and further away from the discredited policies of the previous Government and their Tory spending plans. We must wean ourselves away from those in order to save a little for a rainy day and elections—[Laughter.] Oh yes, and long term. We must make sure that the bulk of that money is used to repair the national health service, renew our education system and repair the social fabric. There will be no tax cuts for the rich, and we shall leave the Tory leader fiddling away with his zero-hours contract.Yes; I agree with most of that. The measures that we have taken on the economy will bring the public finances back into balance and cure the Budget deficit left to us by the Conservative party, which will for ever be known as the party of boom and bust. We are not going back to those days. Precisely because of the prudent way in which we have managed the economy, we shall be able to get the investment into our health service and schools that the country wants.
Q9. [28436]
Is the Prime Minister aware that three theatres and three arts centres have closed in north-west England over the past few months, and that museums there are in a desperate state? Not only that, but Southport pier, which is the longest pier in Europe, is in danger of being lost for good. When will the north-west of England get a fair crack of the whip?
We are trying to ensure that it gets a fair crack of the whip. I do not want to rehearse all the arguments that I have already advanced to the Liberal Democrats. We made a commitment that we should live within the spending constraints that we inherited. Many of those constraints were unrealistically low in many ways because of various things that were supposed to happen but did not under the previous Government. As soon as we can get help to the north-west and other areas, we shall.
However, I repeat to the hon. Gentleman that it is important that we do not make the mistake that was made at the end of the 1980s, when people thought that the economy was fine and that we could put ever-rising amounts of money into it. Then, two years later, under the Conservatives, we had record interest rates of 15 per cent., record borrowing, record bankruptcies and record repossessions. If we are cautious, it is for a good reason.When the Tory party was telling us that Britain was booming, many small businesses in my constituency were going bust. Do not small businesses need economic stability for growth? In particular, should we not encourage them to take part in the new deal, which will present both them and the people they can then employ with an opportunity?
We have been delighted by the response from many small employers, as well as large, to the new deal. About 800 employers have already signed up to it. We believe that there will be many, many more. I know that many Members—I hope on both sides of the House but I know certainly on the Government Benches—are organising meetings of the employers in their areas to try to get them interested in the new deal. The scheme has generated enormous enthusiasm among many young people who wanted the chance to work and who are now being given it by the Government.
Q10.[28437]
I return to the subject of trade union recognition in the hope that the House can have a clear answer to the questions put by my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) and for Solihull (Mr. Taylor). Does the Prime Minister agree with the Confederation of British Industry that trade union recognition should require a majority of those in the workplace to vote in a ballot? May I have an answer, yes or no?
No, the hon. Gentleman cannot, until the consideration is out of the way, which is what I have explained to the hon. Members for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) and for Solihull (Mr. Taylor). The hon. Gentleman would not expect, when there is a consultation process under way, for me to pre-empt it now. As soon as the decision is made and the consideration is completed, we shall come and tell the hon. Gentleman.
Qll.[28438]
With reference to last night's overwhelming majority vote, does my right hon. Friend agree that whether or not military action is taken depends entirely on the Iraqi dictator and no one else? Can more be done to nail the lie—it is a lie—that it is the United States, Britain and other countries that are engaged in warmongering, when every effort is being made, as my right hon. Friend said today and as we know, to enable diplomatic efforts to reach a solution? The responsibility for military action, if it comes, must surely lie with the Iraqi regime and no one else.
Yes. If you will permit me one moment, Madam Speaker, I shall explain to the House briefly why the presidential sites are particularly important.
In the first few years of the existence of the United Nations weapons inspectors' programme, the inspectors became convinced that Iraq was operating a mechanism to conceal the amount of weapon-making capability that there was. The breakthrough came in 1995, when the son-in-law of Saddam defected to Jordan and said that such a programme was going on. He later returned to Iraq and was murdered. It was then clear that organisations such as the Special Republican Guard and others were involved in concealment and that that involved presidential sites. The inspectors could not get access to those sites but they could see equipment being moved around inside them. Some of those sites are vast compounds—not just palaces—with hundreds of buildings within them. The inspectors could see equipment being moved around and documents being burnt. For that reason, they started to ask for access to them. Effectively, they have been refused that access for the past two years. That is why this all arises. The idea that this has suddenly come up or that we have suddenly started to take seriously the possibility of those presidential sites being used for weapon-making capability is wrong. We have seen this all the way through. That is why it is important that we make Saddam back down. Iraq is saying, "You can go into those sites, but only once." We have to be able to go into them regularly, to monitor them. It is absolutely vital that we ensure that we are able to get into those presidential sites. That is why we have taken the action that we have.Q12.[28439]
Does the Prime Minister recall giving a pledge during the general election campaign, when he told ITN that the Labour party wanted to extend the scope of PEPs and TESSAs, so that the idea that it would take any action against them was completely absurd? Is he aware that not only I but many other hon. Members have received letters from the public, who are greatly exercised at the action taken by his Chancellor? Does he not feel a sense of shame that he has betrayed so many ordinary people, many of whom put their trust in him?
No, I do not accept that in any shape or form. In fact, as a result of individual savings accounts, more people will be able to save. Under the current proposals, a couple will be able to put £100,000-worth of savings into it. It is important— whatever the Conservative party may think—that millions more ordinary people will be able to save for the first time.
Hillsborough
3.31 pm
With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the Hillsborough stadium disaster.
Few events in recent years have touched the lives of so many people. The families and friends of the 96 Liverpool fans who died at Hillsborough have suffered immeasurably. The whole nation has been profoundly disturbed by what occurred that day. Although almost nine years have now passed, many of the families and others felt very strongly indeed that new evidence was available that would cast new light on the events. As Home Secretary, I was determined to do all that I could to establish whether that was indeed the case. On coming into office in May last year, I gave that question intense and urgent consideration, and on 30 June, I announced to the House that the Attorney-General and I had decided to appoint Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, a senior Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal, to conduct an independent scrutiny of the matter. His terms of reference were"To ascertain whether any evidence exists relating to the disaster at the Hillsborough Stadium on 15 April 1989 which was not available;
(a) to the Inquiry conducted by the late Lord Taylor; or
(b) to the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Attorney General for the purpose of discharging their respective statutory responsibilities; or
(c)to the Chief Officer of South Yorkshire Police in relation to police disciplinary matters;
Lord Justice Stuart-Smith has now submitted his report, which I am publishing today. It is available in the Vote Office. His scrutiny is the latest in a series of lengthy and detailed examinations of the evidence in this case. The public inquiry led by the late Lord Justice Taylor considered fully the causes of the disaster and made wide-ranging recommendations about crowd control and safety at sports events. Those have had a profound and positive effect on both crowd safety at football grounds and on the policing of football matches. The deaths that occurred were also the subject of inquests conducted by the coroner for the Western district of South Yorkshire in two parts in 1990 and 1991. Those inquests involved more than 80 days of public hearings. A further investigation was conducted by the West Midlands police, supervised by the Police Complaints Authority, to establish whether there were any grounds for criminal or disciplinary proceedings against the police. That investigation involved taking more than 5,000 statements. At a later stage, in November 1993, a judicial review of the coroner's proceedings upheld the inquest verdict of accidental death and the conduct of those proceedings. We have now had this further detailed scrutiny by a senior Lord Justice of Appeal. The main causes of the disaster have long been clear. They were identified by Lord Taylor in his interim report in August 1989. Lord Justice Taylor did not attribute all the blame to a single cause or person, but in paragraph 278 of his report he made it clear thatand in relation to (a) to advise whether any evidence not previously available is of such significance as to justify establishment by the Secretary of State for the Home Department of a further public inquiry; and in relation to (b) and (c) to draw to their attention any evidence not previously considered by them which may be relevant to their respective duties; and to advise whether there is any other action which should be taken in the public interest."
Both Lord Taylor, and now Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, have been damning in their condemnation of the senior officer in charge that afternoon, the then Chief Superintendent Duckenfield. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith refers in his report to"the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control".
about—one of the gates at Hillsborough—"Mr. Duckenfield's disgraceful lie"
The South Yorkshire police have in turn accepted the main share of responsibility for the disaster. Sheffield Wednesday football club and the local authority were also criticised by Lord Taylor. With any major disaster, it is almost inevitable that, over time, some new information may become available, but that does not necessarily mean that the outcome of any previous inquiries would have been different. What is crucial is not just whether the information is new, but whether it is of such significance—to use the phrase in the terms of reference—as to justify a new inquiry. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith has considered in great detail all the evidence put before him. That included all the relevant evidence presented to the earlier inquiries and inquests. He has looked equally rigorously at all the information presented to him, by individuals and official bodies, including those representing the families of those who died and others who have acted in support of them. He has produced a thorough and comprehensive report and goes into immense detail to analyse and reach conclusions on each of the submissions made to him. Let me briefly summarise what Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says on the key allegations relating to video evidence and the cut-off time of 3.15 pm for the inquest, and allegations of interference with witnesses. I refer first to the video evidence. Two sets of allegations were made to Lord Justice Stuart-Smith about video evidence. They were, first, that video tapes were stolen from the club's control room to conceal material evidence from the earlier inquiries. There is no dispute that the theft of two tapes took place. The tapes were pictures from the club's closed circuit television cameras, not from police cameras. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says that, in any event, the tapes would have shown nothing significant. Moreover, he is satisfied that all the police tapes were made available in their entirety to Lord Taylor's inquiry and to the coroner. The second allegation relating to video tapes, with which Lord Justice Stuart-Smith deals at considerable length, was made principally by Mr. Roger Houldsworth, a video technician at Sheffield Wednesday football club. It was that the police had blamed their failure to see overcrowding in pens 3 and 4 on camera 5 being defective, when it was not; that evidence of the video tapes taken by camera 5 was deliberately suppressed and concealed; and that two police officers gave deliberately false evidence that camera 5 was not working correctly. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says that the police did not try to blame their failure to spot overcrowding on the terraces on faulty CCTV equipment. He says that the police controllers had a good view over the terraces from the control box, and did not pretend otherwise. He also concluded that"Gate C being forced open by fans".
and that Mr. Houldsworth's existence and evidence were known to the Taylor inquiry and to the coroner. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith concludes that the allegation that the police hid video tape evidence of the terraces is "unfounded". There are allegations about the conduct of the inquest, and in particular about the cut-off time of 3.15 pm. One of the issues that has unquestionably caused most distress to those bereaved at Hillsborough was the decision of the coroner to rule that all those who had died had received the injuries that caused their deaths by 3.15 pm. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says that the coroner did not say that all those who died did so before 3.15 pm, or that all those who became unconscious subsequently died. It was only in relation to how or by what means the deceased came to their deaths that the cut-off time was imposed. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says that the cut-off time did not limit the inquiry undertaken by the inquest, and that he does not consider the inquest to have been flawed. The Taylor inquiry considered in detail the response of the emergency services after 3.15 pm as well as before, and concluded that no valid criticism could be made of them. The main allegations concerning interference with witnesses were that specific witnesses had had pressure put on them by the West Midlands police, and that the South Yorkshire police had collected evidence from their own officers in an unacceptable manner. On the first allegation, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith concludes that there was no improper attempt to alter the evidence of those witnesses. On the second, he records that a number of the initial statements made by South Yorkshire police officers were subsequently amended on the advice of solicitors to the force before being submitted to the Taylor inquiry. He says that in a very few cases, which are referred to in appendix 7 of the report, what was excluded was either factual or comment in which factual matters were implicit. He says that"the importance of Mr. Houldsworth's evidence has been exaggerated out of all proportion",
for those matters not to have been excluded, but he is satisfied that Lord Taylor's inquiry was not in any way inhibited or impeded by what happened. The report also deals comprehensively in appendix 10 with the 10 questions posed by the Granada Television programme in December 1996. Taking those and all other considerations into account, the overall conclusion that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith reaches is that there is no basis for a further public inquiry. He also finds no basis for a renewed application to quash the verdict of the inquest, and he concludes that there is no material that should be put before the Director of Public Prosecutions or the police disciplinary authorities that could cause them to reconsider the decisions that they have already taken. He also concludes that none of the evidence that he was asked to consider added anything significant to the evidence that was available to Lord Taylor's inquiry or to the inquests. I, the Attorney-General and the Director of Public Prosecutions have considered Lord Justice Stuart-Smith's report very carefully. We have no reason to doubt his conclusions. That will, I know, be deeply disappointing for the families of those who died at Hillsborough and for many who have campaigned on their behalf. I fully understand that those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough feel betrayed by those responsible for policing the Hillsborough football ground and for the state of the ground on that day. I hope and believe that the changes that resulted from the Taylor inquiry will mean that such a disaster will never happen again. However, there is another sense in which the system has failed the Hillsborough families. As Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says in chapter 7 of his report:"it would have been preferable"
That highlights some of the serious shortcomings in the police disciplinary system. Earlier this year, the Select Committee on Home Affairs produced a report that made major recommendations for change. I shall respond fully to that report soon, but what happened after Hillsborough is a prime example of why we must improve the current arrangements. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith also comments on whether coroners' proceedings are appropriate at all in respect of a major disaster that has already been the subject of a public inquiry. He endorses the recommendation of a Home Office working group on disasters and inquests—published in March 1997—that the role of the coroner after such a public inquiry should be limited. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith's report emphasises the exceptional difficulty of the coroner's task in conducting the main inquest. It placed an unreasonable and, I think, unnecessary burden on the families involved, given that the Taylor report had covered substantially the same ground. Certainly, I am sure that Hillsborough proved that the inquest system in its present form is an unsuitable means of dealing with disasters of that kind. I think it would be far better—above all, for the bereaved families—if there were one fully comprehensive inquiry into the causes of death and the wider circumstances. When I instigated the scrutiny, I said I would do my best to ensure that the evidence considered by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith was published. Most of the main material that he has considered is contained in appendices to his report. Much of the other evidence that he has considered is already in the public domain, consisting of transcripts of public hearings or material considered by the Taylor inquiry. As I told the shadow Home Secretary, I am arranging for the other material considered by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to be placed in the Library of the House, save where there are overriding reasons for doing otherwise. Let me make it clear that the material that will be published will include all the original statements made by South Yorkshire police officers, together with the amended versions submitted to the Taylor inquiry. All hon. Members will have profound sympathy with the families and friends of those who died at Hillsborough. We can scarcely begin to comprehend what they have suffered. In his report, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says:"I understand the dismay that they have that no individual has personally been held to account either in a criminal court, disciplinary proceedings, or even to the extent of losing their job".
the families and friends of those who died—"I realise that my report and advice will come as a disappointment to them"—
My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, the Director of Public Prosecutions and I have had to consider Lord Justice Stuart-Smith's report in the same light, and we accept its conclusions. The entire country is united in sympathy with those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough. We cannot take the pain from them, but I hope that the families will recognise that the report represents—as I promised—an independent, thorough and detailed scrutiny of all the evidence that was given to the committee."especially since they have had their hopes raised that something more could be done. But I cannot allow compassion to cloud my judgement. I have had to look dispassionately and objectively at what is said to be fresh evidence, in the light of the evidence which had previously been considered".
I thank the Home Secretary for his courtesy in letting me have early sight of his statement, and even earlier sight of the report. It is a long report, and, as the right hon. Gentleman will understand, I have not had the opportunity to read it all, but I have read carefully the chapter that summarises the findings in Lord Justice Stuart-Smith's own words. I also thank the right hon. Gentleman for his willingness to publish all the material, both unamended and amended. I am sure that that was the right thing to do.
We, like Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, express great sympathy for the relatives of those who died, and the spectators who were injured. We, too, find it difficult to imagine anything more horrific than the experience of those who endured it, and of those who lost their families—including children—in that appalling incident. I have four questions on the report. First, is the Home Secretary satisfied that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith fully examined all the so-called new evidence that has emerged, not least from the families, since the Taylor inquiry? Is he personally satisfied that none of it was newly significant? Secondly, is he satisfied that the families' complaints about the so-called 3.15 pm cut-off point have been comprehensively addressed by the judge? No doubt the right hon. Gentleman realises that, although his decision to establish this independent scrutiny was broadly welcomed, it always carried the risk that it would heighten expectations, particularly those of the families who were involved. That brings me to my third question. Does he accept that they will be disappointed by the outcome of the inquiry and that some of them may feel let down? My fourth and final question to the Home Secretary is this. By agreeing that there is no basis for a further judicial inquiry; for a reopening of Lord Taylor's inquiry; for a renewed application to the divisional court; for the Attorney-General to exercise his powers under the Coroner's Act 1988; or for any new material to be put before the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Police Complaints Authority, is he suggesting to the House and the country that matters relating to what happened and how it happened in the worst tragedy in British sporting history are now closed as far as the Government are concerned?I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his opening comments. Of course, the whole House agrees with the eloquent and compassionate words that he used to express some understanding of the nightmare that the families have faced since that afternoon. He asked four questions, the first of which was whether I am personally satisfied that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith fully examined the new evidence, or the claimed new evidence that has emerged. Yes, I am satisfied, and so is my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General.
It does not follow that, when one establishes an inquiry of this kind, one is bound to accept its conclusions, but, as the right hon. Gentleman will have seen from the summary in chapter 7, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith has conducted a most careful examination of the evidence and has reached clear conclusions. It would have been extraordinary if my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and I had not followed those conclusions in those circumstances. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether I am satisfied that the families' complaints about the 3.15 pm cut-off point have been dealt with satisfactorily in the report. I am satisfied about that, so far as the report is concerned. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith states on page 41, paragraph 12 that in his view the coroner had been "widely misrepresented" about what the 3.15 pm cut-off point was meant to mean. He states:The point about the 3.15 pm cut-off was much narrower. I do not think that that will be accepted by the families. The combination, the conjunction, of the coroner's inquest before and after the major public inquiry raises concerns about the purpose of such inquests when there is such a major inquiry, about which I commented in my statement. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the families will be disappointed. Inevitably, there was always a risk that in accepting, as I did, that there was, prima facie, sufficient new evidence needing this kind of scrutiny, the families' hopes would be raised and that that could lead to one of the four possibilities that are mentioned in the terms of reference. That was inevitable. I do not in the least think that it was wrong to set up the inquiry, and I know that the right hon. Gentleman supported me in doing so. The families are disappointed. With your permission, Madam Speaker, I saw them at 2.15 pm this afternoon and, again with your permission, I gave them copies of the report. They are upset, disappointed and angry about its conclusions. They are also angry that I have accepted those conclusions. I understand that, but what I ask them to do—and, obviously, what they were not able to do in the three quarters of an hour that I had with them—is to read the report carefully and, I hope, in time, to come to understand that the establishment of this further scrutiny and the way in which Lord Justice Stuart-Smith conducted it show great respect for their bereavement and continuing concerns. Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked me whether I believe that, as it were, this matter is now closed. We are announcing today that there are no grounds for reopening a further full public inquiry of the sort that was conducted by Lord Justice Taylor, the coroner's inquest, disciplinary matters against the police or certain other matters. Those are our decisions, and they will have to stand. The feelings of the families will live with them for ever, so the matter is not closed in that sense. All of us who have lost children in any circumstances have some understanding of the way in which people never get over the deaths of children, even if they die from natural causes; it is still more terrible if they die from violent causes such as this. However, there are other lessons that we have to learn. As I have said, those relate to the purpose of coroners' inquiries, to the fact that we should not put families through the mill twice, as happened in this case, and to the need to change the police disciplinary system."It should be noted that the Coroner did not say that all those who died did so before 3.15, or that the medical evidence was to this effect."
One has to live on Merseyside to understand the palpable sense of grief, resentment and anger that still exists in our part of the world at what we regard as the continuing injustice as a result of the Hillsborough affair.
My right hon. Friend has rightly pointed out that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith had to consider two questions: was there new evidence; and was it sufficiently strong to be a basis for reopening the inquiry? I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to paragraph 14 and related paragraph 13 on page 41 of the report, which deal with the 3.15 pm cut-off, which is one of the most important sources of anger. Referring to new evidence about whether people were alive after 3.15 pm, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith says:referring to whether people might have survived if they had been given better medical treatment. He justifies that conclusion by referring to the divisional court, which rejected such grounds, concluding that such questions"it is difficult to see the relevance of further evidence that person A was alive at 3.15 pm but died subsequently"—
If a person had a cardiac arrest in hospital and was not satisfactorily treated, would that be regarded as simply death by cardiac arrest, or would the consideration of neglect come into it?"were not relevant to the inquiry into how—i.e. by what means— the deceased had come to their deaths."
The point that my hon. Friend raises is often raised in relation to the conduct of inquests. It comes up when, for example, there have been allegations of deaths in custody and in many cases when there has been a violent or unexpected death. The relatives believe that part of the purpose of the inquest is to allocate blame for what has happened, whereas the purpose of the inquest is much narrower: to try to identify the cause of death. It is in that context that Lord Justice Smart-Smith makes his remarks. It is important to recognise that all that he says in paragraph 14 on page 41 follows the decision of the divisional court, which followed a thorough judicial review hearing, not to grant a reopening of the inquest.
Again, my hon. Friend flags up a need for changes in the way in which investigations are held into major disasters such as Hillsborough. I repeat that we believe that, in future, there should be what are called mini-inquests into the immediate causes of death, followed by a comprehensive inquiry, which, in practice, would include the purposes of subsequent main inquests under a senior judicial figure, and a final, formal inquest, which would simply receive the main inquiry's report. In our judgment, that would be a far more satisfactory way of dealing with these matters, and far less frustrating to the relatives and friends of the bereaved.Although the report has not provided the Home Secretary with support for a further general inquiry, does he recognise that this outcome will make it even harder to lift the cloud of grief and frustration that hangs over the families and friends of those who lost their lives? Bearing in mind Lord Justice Stuart-Smith's reference to the "disgraceful lie" of a senior police officer, the evidence of material omitted from police evidence and Lord Justice Taylor's assertion that the principal cause was a police failure, is it not understandable that the families will be bitterly disappointed that the door seems finally to be closed on any disciplinary action against particular individuals who should bear some responsibility? Will the right hon. Gentleman look again at that aspect of the issue and give priority to a reform of police disciplinary procedure?
The right hon. Gentleman asks whether it will not now be even harder to lift the clouds of grief over the bereaved families. I cannot speak for them, but it would have been far worse had I not set up this further scrutiny. They came forward with serious new allegations and it was important that they were examined by someone of the experience and distinction of Lord Justice Stuart-Smith. However, the right hon. Gentleman is right—there can be no dispute about it—that the families are bound to be bitterly disappointed by the fact that no one has taken the blame for what happened. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith makes that clear and shares the bitter disappointment of the families, as do I and, I believe, the House. As I said in my earlier remarks, that underlines the need for there to be significant changes to the police disciplinary system.
My right hon. Friend has mentioned in the context of the report his consideration of the future conduct of inquests. Will he extend his review to consider carefully the way in which relatives are treated during inquests? They are treated in a most dispassionate way, which results in much of the grief that is expressed vocally by many of the people, including my constituents, who suffered in this terrible tragedy.
Yes, I will. We have the helpful report of the disasters and inquests working group, established under the previous Administration, which made recommendations in March last year. Part of the reason for the frustration—often anger—at inquests, of relatives and others who are bereaved, goes back to a misapprehension about their purpose. To some extent, that will be dealt with by the kind of changes that I have already outlined for inquiries into major disasters.
My right hon. Friend acted promptly and properly in commissioning the scrutiny, for which I thank him. I agree that the bereaved parents will remain upset, disappointed and angry. In that knowledge, will he give the matter further consideration? Does he accept that it is not possible for all of us at this early stage to assess the report's full implications and to read it in detail to form our judgment? Therefore, will he support calls for an opportunity for the House to consider the report further, so that we may give a reasoned assessment of the report and attempt to deal with the unresolved problems and traumas faced by the parents? I support them in not wishing to leave matters simply as they stand.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her opening remarks, and I fully understand her concern— which is widely shared—that there should be a debate on the matter. I am probably one of the few who has had an opportunity to read the report thoroughly, and I shall pass on my hon. Friend's remarks to my right hon. Friend the President of the Council. I hope that my right hon. Friend will take them into account.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and for his consideration in seeking your permission, Madam Speaker, to speak to the families first before making it. He has accepted the deep disquiet that they feel as a result of the report by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, and I know that it is deep. I particularly welcome my right hon. Friend's undertaking to publish all the available evidence. What would his attitude be if, at some stage, the families were to consider private prosecutions or taking further action?
Subject to certain constraints, individuals in this country may take private prosecutions. That is entirely a matter for them and for the judicial processes. It would be improper for me to comment.
I speak with some knowledge, as I was on the terraces at Hillsborough that day and not in some directors' area. I had to wait for two hours to see whether my friends were alive, and I know that a number of people from my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) were killed on that day.
May I express my bitter disappointment—not at the Home Secretary, whom I thank for organising the scrutiny—but at the conclusions of the report? The families will be bitterly disappointed by the fact that no one has been brought to justice, and such an injustice does not give confidence in our judicial system. I ask my right hon. Friend for his comments on that. If we cannot have a debate on the Floor of the House on the report, would you, Madam Speaker, be prepared to allow an Adjournment debate on the subject in the future?Of course I understand my hon. Friend's personal feelings in the light of the fact that he was present on that terrible day. I understand, too, that those feelings will live with him for the rest of his life. The families are bitterly disappointed and, as I said, I hope that their disappointment will be directed at my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and me as well as at Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, because it is our view that he has done a thorough, comprehensive and detailed job with the utmost integrity. He has gone into all the allegations carefully and, as he said, it was his job to look at the evidence presented to him and to put compassion aside, as the families would have wished him to do. It is a matter of huge frustration that no one has been brought to justice. That represents severe defects in terms of police discipline, and I have spoken about the need for that to be changed. It is not possible to put the clock back nine years to do so.
Does my right hon. Friend accept that there will be deep unease on Merseyside and elsewhere, and that people will feel that there is no justice in this world? Does he further accept that because few of us have had the opportunity to read the report—although he was kind enough to analyse it with the parents—far more scrutiny is required by the House of Commons; possibly by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which should be asked to report?
Furthermore, I add my voice to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) and ask that there should be a proper debate following a reasonable period to allow us to read the report. For example, it would seem that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith ruled as not significant a couple of videos stolen from Sheffield Wednesday. How on earth could he say that they were not significant if he had never seen them? Many questions have been raised by the report, and the parents will not feel that justice has been done until they are answered.Lord Justice Stuart-Smith explains why he came to that conclusion and how he could judge that the videos were not significant when he had not seen them. One of the videos was from a misplaced camera angle. It was known that it had been pointing at a wall. Therefore, the tape was of no value, even though it was stolen. As for the other video, two points are made. One is that it was a club video. Police videos in part covered the same area. In addition, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith makes the point that the police admitted that they could see with their own eyes what was going on on the terraces and did not need this crucial video evidence. That is one example of why it is very important that everybody should read the report's details. When they do, they may be reassured that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith has gone into the matter in great detail and with great care.
That brings me to my hon. Friend's first point. I have already accepted that it is a matter of fact—there is no question about this—that there is great disappointment among the bereaved families and friends of those who died on that terrible day. I do not think that it is correct to say—to pick up my hon. Friend's words—that there is no justice in this world. On reflection, he will perhaps accept that Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry was conducted impeccably, with great thoroughness. There has been no criticism of either the way in which he conducted that inquiry or his conclusions. That may be only partial justice in the context of this terrible tragedy—it is partial justice. I understand that the conduct of the inquests was controversial, but that has a great deal to do with the system of inquests, and that was not found to be unjust. It is inevitable that an inquiry's conclusions may be uncomfortable to one side or another. I hope that those who read the report will understand that it represents a thorough inquiry in the best traditions of British justice.As one of the Members of Parliament who represents the Nottingham area, may I take this opportunity, on behalf of those Members, to express our sympathy with the families and people of Merseyside? Does the Home Secretary agree that the people of Nottingham, along with those on Merseyside, will want a full and frank debate on the report, which amounts to more than 200 pages and has only just been published today? Will he do all that he can to ensure a full debate, so that people will have the opportunity to express their views and opinions to me and other Members of Parliament, and we can express those views in the Chamber?
I accept my hon. Friend's point. I should have made the point in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) that there is obviously considerable feeling about the need for a debate. I shall pass that on to my right hon. Friend the President of the Council.
Is the Home Secretary aware that I find it difficult to believe that 95 people were killed but nobody is to blame? Is he further aware that inquests on the deaths of many people, such as after mining disasters and for this matter, are not fit and proper places to start the procedure? He would do well, during this Parliament, to introduce measures to ensure that inquests are fit to deal not just with the death of three people in a house fire but with mass disasters. I have never believed that inquests are competent to do the job.
Will the Home Secretary do me a favour? If, perchance, there is another unfortunate incident of this kind, will he not invite these tinpot judges and justices—distinguished though they may be—to deal with the problem? I have never believed that they understand working-class culture. Over the past few years, all these people—Lord Justice Scott, Lord Justice Taylor, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith— have been investigating matters. What do they really know about what makes working-class people tick?My hon. Friend makes the point that no one is to blame. It is not the case that the earlier inquiries found no one to blame. Indeed, on page 49 of his interim report—Cm 765—Lord Justice Taylor was explicit and damning. He said:
There has been no cover-up of that. There was a failure of police control, and Lord Justice Taylor pulled no punches whatever in reaching that conclusion. I hope that that gives the lie to my hon. Friend's suggestion that judges are incapable of holding investigations into matters of this kind. I note that, whenever there is a call for an inquiry, there is a great demand for members of the Court of Appeal to hold them. It is inevitable that not everyone will be satisfied by the result of an inquiry because such judgments defy human behaviour. However, Lord Justice Taylor's report showed great understanding of soccer and soccer culture. He was an ardent soccer supporter himself. I had the occasional discussion with him about it. That is one of the reasons why he was chosen to hold the inquiry. When my hon. Friend has had a chance to digest Lord Justice Stuart-Smith's report, he will appreciate that it has gone into the allegations with great care."the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control".
Does my right hon. Friend accept that it is that clear evidence that will make it impossible for the families to accept disappointment, inasmuch as they know that the police failed and that nothing is being done about that?
Will he say a few words about the evidence that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith put forward in respect of the stolen tapes? Surely, if the stolen tapes are missing, we must ask two questions: first, who was responsible for that theft, and, secondly, for what reason were they stolen if not for concealment? It is for that reason that I add my support to the call of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) for a full debate in the House to examine the individual pieces of evidence and missing evidence before coming to a conclusion.I appreciate that I am one of the few people who have had the benefit of reading the report. If my hon. Friend reads it, as I know he will, he will see that the question of the two missing tapes is dealt with in some particular detail. I have explained why Lord Justice Stuart-Smith reached the conclusion that he did about whether the fact that they were stolen was significant.
This goes back to the point that I made at the beginning of my statement. When we consider whether a major public inquiry into events that took place nine years ago should be reopened, with all the inevitable problems caused by the effluxion of time, the issue has to be not only whether there is new evidence—which there might be—but whether it is of such significance as materially to alter the conclusions of the first inquiry. That is what Lord Justice Stuart-Smith has examined. He has come to the conclusion I have described about the two missing tapes. It is a matter of supposition why the tapes were stolen. People steal things for the purposes of concealment or for more prosaic reasons. They may have wanted the tapes for their own use. No one has ever been apprehended for the theft of the tapes, but in the circumstances described and set out in the report, it is palpable that they were not material to the question whether the police were to blame for failing to recognise that a serious disaster was taking place at the Leppings lane end. That was the issue. If Lord Justice Taylor had said that the police were not to blame and that the tapes were likely to disclose why, the tapes would have greater significance. However, Lord Justice Taylor said that the police were to blame. He also pointed out—this was confirmed by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith—that one of the reasons why the police were to blame was that they did not have to rely on video evidence; they could see with their own eyes what was going on, and they failed to make proper decisions following that.May I take my right hon. Friend back to the issue of police discipline and the feeling among the relatives that no one has been brought to justice? May I ask him specifically whether Lord Justice Stuart-Smith addresses the issue of early retirement by police officers to avoid disciplinary procedures? May I press him for a speedy response to the Select Committee on Home Affairs report on police discipline?
I have already referred to Lord Justice Stuart-Smith's remarks about the fact that no one has been brought to justice and that no one has suffered any disciplinary proceedings or even lost their job as a result either of those terrible events, or of Lord Justice Taylor's clear conclusion that a failure of police control was the principal cause of the disaster. By implication, it is clear that Lord Justice Stuart-Smith is not happy with what happened, and neither are we. I have looked in great detail at the helpful report from the Select Committee, of which my hon. Friend is a member. As I said earlier, we intend to make an early announcement about that matter, with a view to improving the system of police discipline.
Point Of Order
4.21 pm
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I have given you prior notice of this point of order, which concerns the accuracy of statements recorded in the Official Report. We all judge the Official Report to be of immense use when we write our speeches or assemble arguments, and it is important that statements recorded in it are accurate, so I ask your guidance. On 21 January, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Ms Palmer) introduced a ten-minute Bill about air weapons. I have spoken to the hon. Gentleman and we have discussed the matter, although sadly he cannot be here this afternoon. I should say that I wish him no ill and I am sure that it was confusion of facts, rather than any other cause, which led to this point of order.
The Official Report states:However, in response to a written question from me, the Home Secretary said that, although he had no figure for the past two years, he could find no fatal injuries and a total of 22 injuries recorded during eight of the past 10 years. I can find no other evidence of anybody being killed. Every policeman injured is a serious matter, but the discrepancy between 22 and 7,000 is large, and I wondered whether you could give your judgment on that, Madam Speaker."In the past few years, one police officer was killed and another 7,000 injured by airgun attacks."—[Official Report, 21 January 1998; Vol. 304, c. 1014.]
The answer is a polite no. It is not a point of order the hon. Gentleman is challenging the figures used by another hon. Member and that is not a matter for the Speaker, but a matter for debate and argument. It is not for the Speaker of the House to determine the figures or to become involved in arguments about the substance of debates. The hon. Gentleman may try to use other methods to bring the matter to the attention of the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer).
Water Industry (Amendment)
4.22 pm
I beg to move,
The Bill is to amend the Water Industry Act 1991 and for connected purposes. In short, it is a Bill about sewage, or, more precisely, about the sewers and the works that take away our sewage. It is not an engaging subject, I admit, but it is a very necessary function. The Bill would correct what I believe is an unfair omission from the privatisation of the water industry as carried out by a previous Conservative Government. Around the country, especially in rural areas, are a number of small sewage works that were excluded from the privatisation of the water industry. That leaves the owners with the continuing liability for the cost of maintenance and upkeep. Since 1991, the environmental standards imposed on those works have been raised, adding to the financial burden on owners. I give as an example Stafford borough council, owners in the years before 1991 of a number of small sewage works provided under public health and housing provisions. Today, those works service a mere 160 or so households in rural areas. The cost of that is ridiculously high, as service on such a small scale is hopelessly uneconomic. If you will excuse the pun, Madam Speaker, it is not the council's business. As a result, the council has to choose one of two unattractive options. It must either require the service users to pay a service charge many times in excess of the water company's charging rates, or subsidise the charge using other people's council tax and rent payments. In 1996, the cost to Stafford borough council of such a subsidy was almost £100,000 for the year. Under the 1991 Act, an owner in that situation can ask the water company to adopt the sewage works, but the water company cannot be compelled to do so. In the event of a disagreement between the company and the owner, an appeal may be made to the regulator, Ofwat. The adoption procedure, including the appeal procedure, is contained in section 102 of the Act. The criteria that are set out in the section stack the odds against the owner. My Bill would turn that around and place an obligation on the water company to adopt the sewage works. It would substitute a new section 102, which would provide that an owner or any of the owners of a sewer or a sewage disposal works may request that a water company make a declaration to adopt such a sewer or works. The company would be required to make, within four months of such a request, a declaration that the sewer or works are to be vested in the company. The specified date of vesting must be no later than six months after the date of the declaration. That framework provides an overall maximum time scale from request to adoption of a year. In the event of a dispute, an appeal would lie with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. For a water company not to carry out the procedure would be an offence, subject to the defence of due diligence. The Government who devised the sale of the water industry considered that question ahead of the 1991 Act. A consultation paper on water and sewerage law was issued in March 1986; it stated that the Government foresaw that the problems of private sewers would increase unless remedial action were taken. It therefore proposed that all sewers and private sewage works should be transferred to the water companies. The paper continued:That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision with respect to the water industry.
I am confident that most hon. Members would regard that proposal as a fair and reasonable solution to a future problem that the then Government had anticipated. But what happened? The Government completely reversed their position, and excluded such sewers and sewage works from the Bill. I believe that the fair and reasonable solution was abandoned in favour of maximising the privatisation receipts. Sewage may not be the most glamorous or engaging subject for our consideration, but I hope that the attention of the House can be captured by a call for fairness and equity in whatever circumstances it may arise. Therefore, on behalf of those few private owners such as Stafford borough council, which have been disadvantaged by the 1991 Act, I ask the House for leave to present this amending Bill."The cost of the proposal is difficult to estimate but water authority figures suggest that it could range from £10 million to £30 million per annum in extra maintenance expenditure nationally, depending on the assumptions made. This compares with total water authority revenue of about £2.5 billion. These increased costs, if passed on in higher sewerage charges, would add little to the average annual bill."
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. David Kidney, Charlotte Atkins, Mr. Peter Bradley, Mrs. Janet Dean, Mr. David Drew, Ms Julia Drown, Dr. Brian Iddon, Jacqui Smith, Mr. Tom Levitt and Ms Joan Walley.
Water Industry (Amendment)
Mr. David Kidney accordingly presented a Bill to make further provision with respect to the water industry: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March, and to be printed [Bill 124].
Social Security
4.29 pm
I beg to move,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
I understand that with this, it will be convenient to discuss the following motions:
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating and National Insurance Fund Payments) Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
That the draft Social Security (Incapacity for Work) (General) Amendment Regulations 1998, which were laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
The main uprating order increases social security expenditure by £2.5 billion. In these uprating debates, it is a tradition that we are able to look at social security in the round rather than discuss the detail of the uprating orders, and I wish to follow that tradition today.
There are a number of reasons for celebration. It is the first uprating for nearly 20 years that a Labour Government have introduced to the House. This year also celebrates the 400th anniversary of this nation taking national action to combat destitution. It is also the 50th anniversary of the implementation of the Beveridge system. Therefore, on a number of counts, it is appropriate that we are holding this debate and that it should be wide-ranging. However, the uprating order uprates benefits that are, in the main, of a pre-Beveridge structure. Although there has been a tenfold real-terms increase in social security expenditure, and although the proportion of gross domestic product spent on social security has increased from a little under 4 per cent, to well over 12 per cent, of GDP, we are operating under a system that owes its origin to the pre-Beveridge age. I want to develop that point briefly to the House, and in so doing to present information on how much of our social security uprating and the total bill is today determined by a structure of benefits that operated before the Beveridge scheme came into existence. That shows in this area, as in many areas of government, how the dead hand of the past influences not only the present, but the future. Some hon. Members may be as surprised as I am to learn that £5 in every £8 that we spend in the current year on social security is spent on a benefit structure that pre-dates Beveridge. In other words, only £3 in every £8 we spend results from the legislation that followed the Beveridge report, or subsequent social security legislation following 1948. That is one of the background reasons why the Government are undertaking such a thorough review of welfare provision in this country. We therefore have a social security budget approaching £100 billion, which shows a growth in expenditure of £43 billion since the previous Labour Government left office. If we are not merely concerned with the extent to which the dead hand of the past continues to operate on how that huge budget is spent, it is important for the House to consider how the claimant roles have changed, for that also makes a case for the welfare reforms that the Government will shortly introduce. If we now regard 1948 as a dividing point, when both the national insurance scheme that Beveridge advocated and the National Assistance Act 1948 came into force, we find that, then, two thirds of people drawing benefit were retired and, obviously, a third were below retirement age. Of those claiming benefit then, there were few single parents, and few who could be deemed to be long-term sick and disabled. Today, more than two thirds of those who claim benefit are below retirement age. That fact lays the basis for the Government's programme of a modern, active service, which the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley), has done so much to promote energetically since last year's general election when Labour took office. It also provides the rationale and the basis for many of the programmes that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced. For example, the welfare-to-work programme ensures that those aged between 18 and 25 have opportunities to re-enter the labour market. It also underpins the reason why we have introduced pilot projects to increase the contact that lone parents have with the labour market, and why we seek bids from groups that promote the interests of the long-term sick and disabled as to the sort of projects that they wish the Government to back at this stage of our welfare reform. An issue that we wish to register in the debate is the effect of the dead hand of the past on current expenditure. As I said, about £5 in every £8 that we spend on social security each year is determined by a benefit structure that predates Beveridge and his report—let alone the legislation passed by the House following the publication of that report. That is part of the background to the major welfare reform that the Government are undertaking. It is also important to comment on how the world has changed since Beveridge wrote his report and this House debated it, as that is pertinent to the current reform of welfare. I shall mention five major changes. First, when Beveridge published his report, there was unanimity that the state should extend welfare coverage. The Government plan to reform and extend welfare, but I believe that consensus now favours a mixed economy of welfare. Although the state plays a crucial role in provision, it will also play other welfare roles, particularly in the area of regulation. In the future, the state will look increasingly to ensuring that individuals can make choices fairly. That role will be combined with the state's historic role of providing benefits. Secondly, while we shall aim to increase welfare expenditure, we shall aim also to decrease the proportion of the budget that is covered by taxpayers through benefits guaranteed by the Government. That is a marked change from when Beveridge presented his original report. At that time, the unanimous view was that there would be an increase and that it would be run by the Government— or the state, as some said then.I seek some clarification. Is the Minister saying that there will be an increase in total welfare expenditure, but that it will not all be public welfare? Does he envisage an absolute decline in state social security spending—not merely in spending as a share of national income?
I am grateful for that intervention from my hon. Friend—that is what I call him. We are speaking relatively. Therefore, we are talking about which shares will be spent faster than others. The Government's aim is to slow down the rate of increase of social security expenditure, so that some of the budget may be shifted from welfare payments to educational and health opportunities. I was happy to give way to my hon. Friend, who has also made my next point: that there is a difference between the Government's proposals and those that Beveridge advanced.
I hope that it is becoming clear to the House and the country that there are four stages of welfare development in this country. I said earlier that we were celebrating the 400th anniversary of this nation's intent to deal with destitution. For a large part of those 400 years, welfare policy was about dealing with destitution. In this century, most decades have dealt with how to relieve poverty. Under some of the actions of the previous Government, but particularly under this Government, we have moved to a third stage of welfare, which is how to prevent poverty in the first place. The fourth stage is how we move even beyond that, to provide a range of benefits and opportunities so that individuals can fulfd their full potential. The question posed by my hon. Friend from the Liberal Benches was relevant, for, if we are thinking of welfare in terms of the third stage—preventing poverty in the first place—and the fourth stage—moving to a situation in which individuals can fulfil their potential—we are less concerned with paying benefits, although that is a crucial function for those who need them, and we are increasingly interested in using public funds—taxpayers' money—to create those opportunities.If I understand correctly that the right hon. Gentleman and his Government intend to encourage a more mixed economy in welfare, which I take to mean that people should be able to make their own arrangements, is it not imperative that those who have been saving particularly for their old age should be given every encouragement? Is that not the antithesis of what the Government have so far done in raiding pension funds?
I am always happy to give way to the hon. Lady. Ever since she has been in the House, she has tried to show that there is some major difference between her point and mine. Both of us are agreed on the fundamental point that those who have funds invested for future pension provision will rely on the health of the economy to pay rich dividends when they retire.
It is therefore important for the hon. Lady not to try to make a cheap debating point against the Treasury Bench, but to take the longer-term view that she usually brings to issues in the House, and to realise that the long-term health of the economy will pay the dividends to pay those pensions. She should not be obsessed, as she wants to appear today, with short-term changes. I beg her to take her usual longer-term view of the future of the country, rather than the short-term debating point that she makes in that intervention, although of course I was happy to give way to her and will be happy to give way to her later in the debate, if she wishes to catch my eye.rose—
I give way to another hon. Friend—I call him my hon. Friend because we served so long together on the Social Security Committee.
I am grateful to the Minister for what he has just said. May I project us into the future, following up my hon. Friend's point?
Does the Minister believe that, for those who may be well enough off today but may not be in the future, there should be fiscal encouragement, which clearly involves the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his Treasury Ministers? Does he not believe that there should be fiscal encouragement in the mixed economy that we all support? I am delighted that his speech is constructive and philosophical in that respect. Should not fiscal encouragement be given as part of the package that he is announcing to the House this afternoon?My hon. Friend knows full well that that is a question for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not for me. It is an important issue, and the Government are clear about it.
When Beveridge published his report, he hardly mentioned occupational pensions. Large numbers of pensioners are not poor today, thanks to occupational pension schemes. It is important to nurture and spread success, and for politicians to be aware that sometimes the framework in which they view developments can be so limited that they fail to see where the advances are coming from that will deliver the rich rewards from which most of those in occupational pension schemes are reaping the benefits today. I congratulate my hon. Friend, as I have referred to him, on a good try in suggesting that I should answer a question that would be appropriately answered by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am sure that my hon. Friend, as I have called him, will have an opportunity to put the question to my right hon. Friend in the near future. As this is the last uprating debate before the publication of the Green Paper, I want to conclude my remarks by making a comparison—There will be a statement next year.
It took my hon. Friend all of seven seconds to realise that it will be another year before we have another uprating statement. I congratulate him on being so quick off the mark.
I wish to end by making a comparison with—Before the Minister concludes, does he recall the statement made by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security the other week during social security questions—I notice that the right hon. Lady is not in her place today—to the effect that the Government had taken the advice of the Government Actuary and had acted properly on it? The reality is that the Government have not fully adopted and accepted the advice of the actuary.
Will the right hon. Gentleman explain what the Secretary of State meant? Will he also explain why the Government have not accepted in full the actuary's advice on rebates to private pension funds and to money purchase schemes?The Government have accepted in the main the recommendations made by the Government Actuary. In the round, I believe that we have fulfilled what is required of us, given that we asked for and received a report.
The hon. Gentleman has noted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is not in the Chamber. The hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), who sits on the Government Front Bench, has tried to make something of that during the day. As departmental Ministers, we are happy to present ourselves as a team. I am happy to underscore the point that my right hon. Friend has been generous enough to allow me the opportunity of presenting the orders. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will reply. It is interesting that, if I am not speaking, the hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green says that I am being gagged. If I am speaking, he says that my right hon. Friend should be undertaking the debate. I said before the last helpful intervention that I wanted to end my contribution to the debate by making a comparison between what Beveridge tried to achieve in his report and what we shall be aiming to achieve in the Green Paper when it is published shortly. It is clear from reading the Beveridge report that he thought that, by extending state provision, he would be achieving what he called a big-bang approach. That is not the approach that the Government have been following or will follow, or that will be detailed in the Green Paper. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will find set out in the Green Paper a clear idea of the society that Labour hopes that the country wishes to join in building. It will be a contrast with the big-bang approach to which Beveridge gave such emphasis. The Green Paper will contrast in another sense with the Beveridge report, in that Beveridge was keen on producing a shopping list of policies. In contrast, the Green Paper will give a description of the sort of society that we hope the country will be supporting 15 years hence, as a result of the reform programme that will start following the publication of the Green Paper. Beveridge was keen on detailing different benefit rates, but that will not be the preserve of the Green Paper. Instead, we shall be setting out clearly the objectives that the Government will hope to achieve by their reform programme. Again, in contrast to the Beveridge report, instead of giving chapter and verse to the genesis of each benefit rate, we shall be presenting in the Green Paper a series of success measurements by which we wish to be held accountable in trying to achieve the objectives that we shall be setting out. Beveridge thought that his report was the end of the debate. We hope that the publication of the Green Paper will be the beginning of the debate in earnest about welfare reform in this country. The Green Paper will be followed by a series of proposals on pensions, counter-fraud strategy, and the Child Support Agency.The Minister just told us that the Green Paper will be the beginning of the debate. What is the road show about?
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not pay more attention to the road shows, which have been fairly well covered. I thought that he would have read about them. The road shows were about establishing the need for reform, which has been—and is being— successfully done. Hon. Members even on the Liberal Democrat Benches seem to be generally in favour of the proposed reforms.
This is the last uprating debate before the publication of the Green Paper, and the measures that will follow from it. I have considerable pleasure in commending the draft measures to the House.4.50 pm
I suspect that this will be a fairly quiet debate.
I welcome the Minister of State to his position. It is not the case that I am critical when he is not here and critical when he is. I welcome him and the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley). One could not ask for a more generous and reasonable pair on the Treasury Bench to lead the debate for the Government. My point first—I want to get it out of the way—is not a small, political point but a very real point. The Secretary of State for Social Security and Minister for Women is the first Secretary of State since 1978 not to have made the announcement on uprating, which was made in December, or to outline the position at the start of this debate. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, before 1978, there was a slightly different structure but the Secretary of State still came to the Dispatch Box. It is not that the right hon. Gentleman is not welcome; it is that the Secretary of State is not here. The uprating announcement is the biggest thing that happens to social security every year. As he said, it is an opportunity to debate the round, to debate what has been happening in the past year, and how it will affect us. The Secretary of State's absence seems very much in keeping with the behaviour of her colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who was not present during a huge debate on beef on the bone and spent his time in the Smoking Room. If I did not know about the Secretary of State's habits, I would, perhaps, ask my colleagues to check the Smoking Room to ensure that she is not also there. I gather that the Secretary of State for International Development also was not at the Dispatch Box this morning to hear a rather important debate. With respect to the Minister of State, this place matters. This is where the power to pass orders comes from. This is where the debate should be held, and the Secretary of State should be held to account. I am not being churlish. I hope that the point is taken and that it is made clear to her that the House is concerned that she is not here. I certainly thought that she would be.Should I draw any conclusions from the fact that, for the first time, the uprating orders have been signed by the deputy Actuary, not the Actuary? I understand that the Actuary was not there on that day. I ask the hon. Gentleman for guidance on that.
With respect to the hon. Lady, who is a new Member, silly little tricks such as that are a waste of time. If she cares to look at the Order Paper—
What is the answer?
Hold on In the Order Paper, there is one name against each of the draft measures—that of the Secretary of State. If her name is there to move the draft measures, she could at least have respect for the House and be here. That is the answer. I have made a simple point and will now move on. What has happened is in keeping with the way in which the Government constantly treat the House.
As the Minister of State said, the annual uprating order is an opportunity to talk about the detail of this matter. Clearly, it is a straightforward and traditional uplift in line with two measures of inflation, and it would therefore be wrong for anybody in the House to try to block it. It deals with those in need, and it is only fair that those payments should be made at the earliest opportunity. I therefore welcome the order and make no bones about it. I wish to make one or two small points before going on to deal with the wider subject of social security. When the Conservatives were announcing the uprating in 1995, the hon. Member for Withington said that the freezing of capital and earnings disregards was a problem. There seems to have been a slight change in his position since then, and I hope that, when he winds up the debate, he will explain why. He might like to check Hansard on that. I suspect that the same logic exists in the general debate on welfare, where there have been a number of changed positions. Before the election statements were made on lone parents; the Government have certainly changed their position on that subject since coming to power. They changed their mind on freezing lone parent benefit. In opposition, the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith)—now the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport—said that the move would save only £5 million out of a budget of £90 billion. He said that there must beIf it is such a small measure in relation to the overall budget, why are the Government doing it now? Is it purely for reasons of cost, or is it on principle? Do the Government support the underlying principle? I wish to discuss two specific areas. The first is pensions, which form the largest part of the welfare budget. Too often in these debates people discuss benefits but miss the point that pensions constitute a growing and sizeable chunk—nearly 40 per cent.—of the overall welfare bill and therefore should be dealt with. Last July, the Government announced a consultation process, which was supposed to be the start of a comprehensive reform of existing pensions arrangements. However, before the consultation process was properly under way, the Chancellor drastically changed the parameters of the pensions debate. The Minister for Welfare Reform has already spoken about that in response to an intervention. However, by abolishing the advance corporation dividend tax credit, the Chancellor took a significant chunk—some £20 billion—off the funds held by occupational pension funds, and changed the whole pension debate. In the pensions debate of 9 July, I said that the abolition of the ACT credit would create a massive problem for SERPS because it would, in essence, devalue the rebate. The Minister of State, who is smiling, knows that only too well; indeed, it was clear to those of us who know about pensions the moment the announcement was made in the Budget. I said that we should waste no more time and called for an immediate out-of-sequence review because those who had opted out of SERPS would be in difficulty and would be confused about their position, and those who were thinking about opting out would also have difficulties. The Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who is responsible for pensions, said that those were "arguments of convenience", yet in December the Government began to realise that the decision to abolish the ACT dividend tax credit had done exactly what I and others had predicted, and sent for the Government Actuary to review the matter. That was logical and reasonable, except that it took until December for the Government to get round to doing it. As was predicted back in July, the Government Actuary returned with some sizeable recommendations. My point today is that that has taken time and created confusion for those in both personal and occupational pension schemes. Having announced the changes to the rebates, the Government proceeded to implement only part of the recommendation in the Government Actuary's Department report. The Minister said that, in the round, they did the right thing, but I disagree. I think that they have interfered in the process and have tilted the balance against occupational pensions at a time when the Government have legitimately said that occupational pension provision was the right route for many people, as it was a serious and supportive way to provide for their future. Calculations by the National Association of Pension Funds, Pensions Week and others show that it will cost taxpayers up to £0.5 billion to uprate the rebate for personal pensions to correct the mistake made by the Chancellor in the Budget. By lowering the rebate by more than the Government Actuary recommended, the Government have hammered contracted-out money-purchase occupational pension schemes, and by freezing final salary schemes and not following the Actuary's recommendation that the rebate should be raised, they have also put those schemes under pressure. An examination of the calculations brings us to the rather cynical conclusion that the taxpayer will pay the cost of correcting the Government's mistake on personal pensions. By not doing what the Actuary recommended, the Government are throwing the problem back on to occupational pensioners. They are asking them to bear the burden of their failure to follow the Actuary's recommendation. People will be in doubt about what to do about their pensions. They will have to decide whether to go back into SERPS and change what they have been doing for some years, or to stay out and bear the extra cost, which is estimated to be close to what it will cost taxpayers to bail out personal pensions as a result of the changes. This is the same Government who said:"some really important objective to include such a tiny measure within those proposals".—[Official Report, 20 February 1996; Vol. 272, c. 204.]
They were strong on occupational pensions, and were critical about the administration of personal pensions, but when it came to making the corrections, they did the opposite. They have had to rob Peter to pay Paul to get out of the hole that the Chancellor got them into when he made changes in the Budget in haste, and did not listen to what the Treasury was telling him about the effect of the calculations. There is a further serious problem. As I said in July, even if the Government undertake the out-of-sequence review, it will not be implemented until April 1999. People in occupational pension schemes, and even those in personal pension schemes, will have to wait for the next year and a half wondering whether to go back into SERPS or to stay out. Even if the rebate is altered in their favour, they will still have to bear the cost in the meantime. That proposal comes from a Government who have been talking decisively about pensions. The Minister did not touch on the present review of pensions in his interesting comments about welfare reform. The Chancellor's moves in this area have had a bigger effect than simply cost. The Department has been boxed in, because the key to the resolution of the problem of unfunded pension liability is to deal with SERPS by phasing it out in due course and ensuring that pension provision is funded. I applauded the Minister for his comments before he came into government. I heartily agreed with him, and I still agree with him. The trouble is that the changes that have been made to the rebate have driven a coach and horses through the possibility of a proper review of pensions. There was one big review and, by the end of the autumn, 2,000 responses had been received from various companies and individuals. That first review told the Government clearly that SERPS had to be phased out, but they could not do that because they had begun to enhance it. So they had to have a second review. There were 191 submissions—quite a difference from the 2,000 that were received the first time. The reason became clear when companies were consulted. Companies are sick and tired of the review process: they are fed up with it. Having made their submissions the first time, they were asked again to try to get the Government off the hook. The Chancellor's hand is on this. He has boxed in those at the Department. If it is possible to feel sorry for them, I do. Given that—as I said earlier—pensions constitute about 40 per cent, of the welfare budget, they are a big issue. Arguably, a Government who tackle that—we made serious inroads into it, but the present Government now face the challenge—tackle the greatest part of the problem that accompanies the unending provision of payments from that budget. The challenge and the opportunity are there. Another aspect is the constant leaking and rowing about what will happen to the basic state pension. The Government have said on a number of occasions that the issue is not for review, and that it is not in the equation; but the real point is the persistent comments about means-testing the pension. As the Minister of State knows better than anyone else, when we are dealing with that issue we need to be cautious in our choice of language and in our delivery of that language. I am concerned about the fact that so many people seem to have taken the opportunity to comment in speeches. For instance, the other day the Secretary of State for Health was able to comment at one of those roadshows on what would happen to the state pension. I understand that he made clear his view that means testing was definitely on the agenda, and that there would be a complete overhaul of that aspect of pension provision. We have heard half-denials and acceptances, but, out there, a group of people who currently receive pensions are legitimately beginning to wonder what the position will be. I understand that a Government must govern and must make decisions, and I do not seek to block the Government's route to decisions and review; but I believe that pensioners have a contract to continue to be paid the pensions that they believe they were contracted to receive. I ask the Minister of State, or the Under-Secretary who is to wind up the debate, to take this opportunity to dispel the unnecessary fear that has been generated throughout the country by comments such as those by the Secretary of State for Health. As I have said, this is a big issue. Perhaps only those receiving disability benefits are as scared as the people affected by it. I urge the Minister to clarify the matter. If he wants to intervene now, I shall be more than happy to give way, but I sense that he does not want to intervene."We must continue to value the contribution that employers can make to their employees' security in retirement."—[Official Report, 9 July 1997; Vol. 297, c. 1037.]
My hon. Friend made an interesting point in challenging Ministers to give an assurance in respect of the state retirement pension. Will he now give an assurance that the Conservative and Unionist party has no intention of means-testing the state retirement pension? I am thinking not only of those who are over retirement age and are drawing the pension, but of those who, like me, are about to reach the age of 60. I have been contributing national insurance and tax payments in the belief that, when I reach the state retirement age, I shall be entitled as of right to a state retirement pension, whatever the amount may be at the time—although that pension will be subject to taxation. Will my hon. Friend give a commitment that the Conservative party will not means-test it?
I have no problem in giving my hon. Friend that undertaking. It was the Minister of State who opened the debate about means testing and he made it clear that he opposes its extension across the board. It is for him to say how that squares with the affluence test or means test that has been suggested by the Secretary of State for Health, and the Secretary of State for Social Security who, around Christmas, I gather, entertained the concept of affluence testing and was probably urged to do so by the Chancellor. When the Prime Minister returned from Japan, the right hon. Lady was told to stop talking about affluence testing, and we have heard nothing since. I suspect that the Minister of State is rather pleased at that because he does not have to try to redefine the concepts of affluence testing and means testing.
Is that Conservative commitment by the hon. Gentleman of the same nature as the one that was given in 1979 when pensioners were promised a continuance of the basic pension? Shortly afterwards the earnings-related element was abolished and, as a result, single pensioners in my constituency are now £18 worse off. Married couples have lost more than that.
When we were in government we maintained the purchasing power of the basic state pension. The hon. Gentleman can check any record that he likes. Is he suggesting that the Government are about to re-link the basic state pension to earnings? Does he have interesting information about that? The Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) who corrals him through the Lobby and pages him to tell him what to say may have got the message wrong. I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman if he wishes to say that his Government will re-link pensions to earnings.
I cannot make a commitment on behalf of the Government, but I understand that they have said that the poorest pensioners will be protected. My constituents were not protected over 18 years when the previous Government were in office.
There we go again: a Back Bencher is unable to make yet another commitment on behalf of a party which promised that it would not change lone parent payments and promptly changed them when in government. We do not need any lessons from such a Government.
I have dealt with pensions, and I hope that the Minister will address the issues that I have raised. I should like to move to the issue of the review. The Minister made an interesting, almost philosophical speech about where the Government should and could go. I listened with great interest and agreed with much of what he said, as I often do. He invited us to be positive, as we have been because we have laid down our criteria on the matter. I said that on welfare reform in general there must be a structured programme: otherwise, there are merely leaks and innuendo and nothing about which to be positive. I was fascinated by the intervention of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) who speaks for the Liberal Democrats on these matters. He mentioned the roadshow. If the Government are keen to sell the concept of welfare reform, the opposition parties would be happy to help them. The problem arises when we try to define what we are selling. What is the structure? No wonder there is fear. The more the Government cannot answer questions the more people fear that benefits will be squeezed, changed or abolished. What is the purpose of a roadshow that is presented only to a restricted part of the Labour party? It is absurd. We have to learn, as do the public, from snippets that are given to friendly journalists about what was said at a roadshow. That is not the right way to go about a reform programme, and I shall later deal with that in detail. The debate on reform is important, but without a clear understanding of the framework we shall not be able to move off. The Minister of State is honest and honourable, and I am sure that he would be happy to let the House and the world know his thinking on what the Green Paper should contain. He had time before his party came to government to think the matter through, and has written and spoken much about it. In government, it should not have taken him long to formulate a structure, although I admit that there would be problems. I wrote to the Prime Minister after he answered a question in the House in September and asked him when the Green Paper would be published. He had obviously spoken to his Minister of State because he said in early November that the Green Paper would be published at the "turn of the year". The document obviously had structure and was close to being published, or the Prime Minister would not have made that statement. In January, I again wrote to the Prime Minister, drawing his attention to the delay and asking when the Green paper would be published, because there were reports about the matter in the newspapers. There was no response, so I sent another letter and eventually the Prime Minister replied. The correspondence states that the Green Paper will be published "when it is ready." Every hon. Member will accept that nothing can be published until it is ready: the Prime Minister's reply was a truism. The question of publication remains, because for all the Minister of State's fine words in opening the debate we are no farther forward. The Government have been in office for some months and we are engaged in a serious debate on matters that do not even have an initial structure. Who is in control of the process and battling to change it completely? It is clear that the Green Paper will not be published until the Budget or after it. The Budget will be the focus and lead for all welfare change—call it reform if you will—and that has led to a series of stupid interventions by the Chancellor's press spokesman or Downing street about exactly what will be in the Budget and who was right and who was wrong. The Prime Minister's press spokesman said that the Chancellor was psychologically flawed. Irrespective of whether I agree with that—and there is a great temptation to endorse the view of the Prime Minister's office on it— it shows the frustration of Downing street about whether the Chancellor has seriously gripped the issue. Without the Green Paper it is not possible to focus on how the welfare reform programme will move. More important, I cannot recall a time when the Department of Social Security has not taken the lead in welfare reform. The Minister of State knows that, for many years before Labour came to government, the then Secretary of State for Social Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), led the debate throughout. Many of the changes were accepted, even welcomed, by the Minister of State and some of his colleagues. They may have wanted other changes, but they accepted that reform had started and that my right hon. Friend had made a huge effort on the process. Under my right hon. Friend's direction, that Department, which is responsible for the welfare budget, led the debate. There were no noises off from Ministers who were pitching in to try to claim that they controlled some of the debate about a section of that budget. Such a crucial reform programme cannot be tackled in such a piecemeal way. Everybody in the Cabinet seems to be able to speak almost at will, saying one thing one week and being contradicted the next. That creates problems and confusion for people out there who need to know what is going on. I say again that the confusion is so great that it is beginning to be felt even among people who the Minister of State and his right hon. and hon. Friends would consider to be their natural allies in the general debate. The other day, after the Prime Minister spoke about welfare as being the big issue, The Big Issue said: "If you're poor, vote Tory. They would do more for you than Blair". All I say to the Minister of State and his right hon. and hon. Friends is that that highlights to some degree the confusion out there as to exactly what is going on and the fear that has been engendered.People have seen through Labour.
Perhaps people have seen through Labour. It is not difficult.
I have just a quick question to the hon. Gentleman. I may be entirely mistaken, but do I see a photocopy of The Big Issue or did he actually pay for one?
I paid for one; it is just here. That is why The Big Issue wrote that headline, I expect.
Was an ex-Tory Member of Parliament selling it?
I look forward to many of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues assisting some of those selling it in four years' time.
If my hon. Friend is right to say that the Chancellor is the person who leads on this matter, does that not mean that, instead of getting consultation on these welfare reforms, we shall get no consultation? Is that perhaps the plan? The party in government is so afraid of its Back Benchers that it wants no consultation on the issue at all.
I do not think that the Government are particularly interested in consulting more widely; otherwise, these roadshows would have been public roadshows. The Liberal Democrats have hit the nail on the head. The desire is not to engage the public but to engage Labour Back Benchers. It occurs to me that one reason why the Secretary of State is not here may be that we saw her pulled from the roadshow in Wales, after the Chancellor said that the people attending his roadshow were a bunch of Trots or Conservatives. The mind boggles at the thought. I must admit that I did not get my ticket or invitation, but next time I will try harder; perhaps the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) should try harder, too.
The Chancellor then said that we needed tighter security and a greater vetting of invitations: not greater public debate, but tighter security. I will not be tempted down that road, but I saw the boots growing on his feet even as we looked. The point is that it was not a public debate. My hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) is right about that. The Chancellor is clear about that. It seems that the Minister of State is not clear about it. I genuinely believe that he would like an open debate, and I respect him for that.Is my hon. Friend aware that the Secretary of State for Social Security and the Minister for Welfare Reform distrust each other so much that they will not allow each other to appear separately in front of the Select Committee? We have waited nine months to have the pleasure of the company of the Minister of State, someone whom we knew very well in the previous Parliament: he turned up every week. However, he has not been allowed to appear on his own before the Select Committee for nine months. He has been allowed off the leash only to the extent that the Secretary of State sits beside him like a minder. Is that not extraordinary? Has it happened before?
I am guided by my hon. Friend on this because, to be honest, there is no one whom I would less like to think of as distrustful than the Minister of State. He is genuinely someone who would be prepared to trust people and to take everyone at their own measure. Whether the same applies to the Secretary of State is another matter. Perhaps she has recognised that she still is in charge of the Department and attends with the Minister of State to find out exactly what is going on in relation to the Green Paper. I do not know; perhaps they do not talk.
We are talking about a huge uplift in Department of Social Security payments. This is a massively important time. Huge, unanswered questions remain about the Department, the Secretary of State and the reform and review process. The Government seem to have put their Department into a state of drift. It is rudderless. It is sitting almost becalmed while every other Department of State manoeuvres around it, pulling pieces off it as though it were a piece of flotsam, and viewing its budget as something to be grabbed. It is clear that the Chancellor views the Department of Social Security as part of his package of redistribution. He views the next Budget and the last one as a means of raiding the Departments and people who have put money aside for their future. He wants to redistribute the money into other areas of Government spending, which he will then spend in the run-up to the next election. We heard that slip from the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) when he made a point to the Prime Minister about special provisions for an election. We know that that is true. It is out of the bag from an hon. Member who has been around long enough to know these things. He has been here long enough to recognise the cynicism of what is happening. The Government intend to redistribute the money from the Department of Social Security—that is all there is to it. It appears that that is what the reform is all about. The money will be spent in an attempt to buy votes in the run-up to the next election. I say to the Minister of State, a man whom I have consistently respected, who still deserves respect and whose integrity should be driving this review: if the Department and the Secretary of State for Social Security do not get a grip and seriously start to insist that the Department's view on the matter must prevail, we will end up with a review of cuts, with no purpose other than the saving of money. If the review is a top-down levelling, it will achieve nothing but the displacement and continual growth of this sector of Government expenditure. Reform that changes the structure and delivers more focused benefit to people in need is what matters, but that is not the Chancellor's priority. I say to the Minister of State and to his colleagues: "Get a grip before you lose it."
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I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for Welfare Reform for the way in which he has introduced this important debate. It may be a quiet debate, but it is about a big and potentially noisy issue.
The upratings debate is an opportunity, particularly at this time in the reform process, to ask some fundamental questions. Perhaps the most important question of all is: what is social security for? What are the objectives? Many people rush to give a seemingly simple and clear answer to that question, saying that it is simply about the attack on poverty. Historically, that was always the answer. Like my right hon. Friend, I have noted that, 400 years ago, Parliament was discussing this very subject of poverty relief, leading to the Poor Relief Act 1601 and the Elizabethan poor laws, as we now call them. However, in modem times, although poverty relief and the attack on poverty are clearly major—perhaps the major—objectives, social security has other objectives too. Our debate would be poorer if we forgot those other objectives. I know that my right hon. Friend now has to leave the House to give the Beveridge memorial lecture. I hope that the House agrees that that is the perfect excuse for his absence, and we wish him well. In modern times, we have realised that there are other social security objectives apart from poverty relief. All citizens during their lifetime face needs and risks. They include the risk that, in work, a person may become injured, need some income support or become sick. There is also the risk, if that is the word for it, that we may need an income when we reach retirement age. I agree with the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), and hope that that is a non-means-tested income in old age. It is too soon to wish the hon. Gentleman well in his retirement, but in many years' time I hope that that goes well for him. Therefore, there is an issue about how we insure, either publicly or privately, against the risks and needs that we face during our lifetime. That is the second objective. The third objective is to support children. We often refer in debates such as this to the founding fathers of the welfare state, but let me refer to a founding mother—a former distinguished Member of the House, Eleanor Rathbone. Eleanor Rathbone's campaign attracted much support across parties and across society and led to the family allowance system, introduced by the coalition Government shortly before the 1945 general election. What Eleanor Rathbone said in one of her books on the subject is worth repeating:That led to the family allowance and, when that was merged in the late 1970s with the child tax allowance, to what we now call the child benefit scheme. There are other objectives, but I have highlighted three—the attack on poverty, the need to insure people for the risks that they face during their lifetimes, and the important objective of supporting families with children. I want to reflect on some of the issues that we now need to face in modern times in relation to all three. First, there is poverty. What we call the safety net, and what William Beveridge intended to be a safety net for the few, has now become a major system of income support, supporting almost 10 million citizens, those drawing the benefit and their dependants, including 3 million children. Before the last election, I asked a parliamentary question and was shocked to find that one in three of babies bom in Britain are born to parents on either income support or family credit—in a sense, bom into poverty. If we share the ambition to create a young country, that is the worst possible indicator that, in the recent past, we have not succeeded—a safety net for 10 million, intended for the few now supporting the many. The two powerful recruiting sergeants for income support are economic recession and family breakdown and insecurity. That system of income support, allied to other means-tested benefits, such as housing benefit, free school meals and the rest, represents not an attack on poverty but its institutionalisation. It is associated with complexity, stigma, poverty and unemployment traps, disincentives and, yes, for a minority, it leads to a culture of dishonesty and fraud, which we need to recognise. Any anti-poverty strategy is, first and foremost, about the Government's welfare-to-work strategy; about the new deal. I do not want to say too much about that, but we have perhaps a year or two to get that right. We do not look forward to a recession in the future, but the business cycle is the business cycle, and a time when employment is increasing is the right time to try the new deal and to work out how to get it right. When more difficult times come, as they will, we need to have the experience. It will be far more difficult to get our young people and our longer-term unemployed, some with disabilities and learning difficulties, into work, so I wish that vital project well. Secondly, there is child maintenance. We debated the Child Support Agency recently. I simply say, briefly, that the more that we can do to crush the culture whereby more and more fathers, following a marriage breakdown or other circumstances, are not maintaining their children financially, the better. Yes, the CSA has messed up the lives of some men, but that should not camouflage the mass of irresponsible fathers who do not support their children. The numbers paying child maintenance may be as low as 20 per cent, and certainly not much more than 30 per cent."Children are not simply a private luxury. They are an asset to the community, and the community can no longer afford to leave the provision of their welfare solely to the accident of individual income."
I agree with what the hon. Gentleman has just said. Behind every lone mother there is an even more lonely father who is not contributing properly to the upkeep of his children, leaving it to the state. Will the hon. Gentleman therefore press his Government to ensure that any reform of the CSA—something about which they are now talking—does not end up with the burden being dumped back on to the general taxpayer?
Yes, we must re-establish the principle that, whether one is a mother or a father, a baby is for life and, certainly during the childhood and youth of that child, both parents have a financial obligation to support it. It is a simple and obvious point but, sadly, we need to restate it loudly and clearly in these more difficult times.
Thirdly, we must get the tax benefit system right. I welcome the Chancellor's proposals for a working family tax credit, which he will announce in more detail in the Budget. We need to put incentives into work. We need to be able to tell poor families, perhaps on income support, that it is worth their while working. The tax credit is a useful device, but it is important that we match that with a concern about families and children. Therefore, what we call the purse-to-wallet issue— policies that end social security benefits that go to mothers and give the benefit through the tax system, often to fathers—is one about which we must be cautious. All the signs are that the Chancellor recognises that point and that the new working family tax credit will offer a choice— have it either as a fiscal benefit or, as now, as a cash benefit. It may interfere with the purity of the system, but I am convinced that that choice is important to the welfare of our children.On that specific point, does the hon. Gentleman think it satisfactory that the way in which the Chancellor has got out of the problem is to give a choice whereby the woman in a couple can elect to have the benefit? Might that not be a problem if, in the sort of families about whom we might be worried, who are not very good at sharing, there is pressure from the father to require the mother not to tick the box and so to get the money himself? Is that a concern of the hon. Gentleman?
Yes, the hon. Gentleman raises an important concern. The Select Committee on Social Security is considering that very issue and will be producing a report shortly. I think that I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that matter will be dealt with in the report. I see the Select Committee Chairman agreeing that that will be a feature of the report.
The hon. Gentleman is making an extremely good and thoughtful speech, which is helpful to the debate. Does he agree that, if there is an unwillingness for child benefit to be paid to the wife of a millionaire or someone who is extremely wealthy, the way to deal with that is through a fiscal process of taxing child benefit? Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of that? I believe fervently in child benefit and want to see it paid to the mother for the benefit of the child, but, if a family is pretty well off, I am happy for that child benefit to be taxed, so that there is more money in the pond to help those in genuine need.
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I was trying to make as brief a speech as possible, but I am tempted into a dissertation on an important but rather complex question. Independent taxation is a major complication here. For example, if one tried to cream off all or some of the child benefit for those paying the higher rate of tax, and if, as I think the hon. Gentleman believes, and as we have always thought, child benefit is an income for mothers, the logic would be to tax the mothers, and no Government want to introduce a new tax on mothers. If that technicality is ignored and the higher-paid person—often the father—is taxed, the issue of independent taxation is breached.
I am open minded on that. Although a universalist on these matters, if we could find a simple and clean technical way of creaming off some child benefit from the really quite well-off and using it for nursery education or whatever, I should be happy with that. I am yet to be persuaded that technically it is as simple as some suggest. A little later I want to say something more about child benefit. My fourth point in relation to an anti-poverty strategy concerns child care. I welcome the Government trying to find more resources for after-school clubs and nursery education and, I hope, mainstream child care, too. Governments and Parliament should be wary, when it comes to those with children under five, of implying that the only way in which a mother can properly look after her child is to go out and find a job, often a rather low-waged job. When it comes to children under five, mother knows best. If anything, I should like a premium in our child benefit system for children under five. Much family poverty is concentrated among families with younger children because there may be only one breadwinner, or perhaps no breadwinner.Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that some of the changes seem fiscally to encourage the idea that it is better for a child minder to look after a child than a mother? Does he agree that more in-depth thinking is required, because I cannot believe that that is the intent of the Government?
Choice is important—it should be a choice for the family. I feel passionately about that in terms of the youngest children. I make no judgment; it is a judgment for the family whether a mother should go out to work and find substitute care or whether she should stay at home to look after her child. We have all been involved in such decisions. It is a choice for families, and not for the state. We should, if anything, load the benefits system in favour of under-fives.
Having spoken about poverty, I shall speak about finding a modern way to enable citizens to insure themselves over their life cycle against the needs and risks they face. We have the national insurance scheme and a range of private provisions, principally the occupational pensions sector. The question now is, as Beveridge asked—probably my right hon. Friend the Minister is reminding his audience of it even now—what risks do people face over their life cycle and how are they met? One of the modern risks is that, in our very old age, we might become frail and need not hospital care, but nursing home care or intensive domiciliary care in our own homes. If Beveridge were here today—I sometimes think it would be a good thing if he were—he would say that that is one risk we need to insure against. That raises colossal issues about the future of national insurance. Why do we not discuss national insurance more? It is extraordinary. Its big sister, income tax, raises £77 billion, but national insurance raises £50 billion. It is big business, and it looks after many people—not least through retirement pensions. There are those who say that it is unsound actuarially and that we should come clean and merge it with income tax. I am in the opposite camp. I think we need a renaissance of ideas about national insurance. National insurance recognises the balance between rights and responsibilities. We put into the community chest of the nation when we can, and we draw out when we need to. There is a need for a reinvigoration and a relaunch of national insurance.The hon. Gentleman has been talking, in effect, about a contract. In that context, does he think that the Government should allow out-of-school child care to be means-tested?
I have not thought that through adequately enough to know. I have implied that, instinctively, I am anti-means test. I think the welfare state is blocked up with means tests. It is not unreasonable that some fee should be paid for out-of-school care when a parent is in work and earning money. However, those earning low wages—or, perhaps, parents not in work who need care for the sake of the child—may have to be means-tested. I am in the peculiar position in this House of having an open mind on the subject.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that funding for the new out-of-school care is coming from the windfall tax, the out-of-school child care initiative and the new opportunities fund. Is he aware that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon, Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth) believes that those schemes should be means-tested if the people operating them wish it?
I had not heard that view, but it is not unreasonable. We must look carefully at that matter, but the appropriate thing would be to do a run on it with the aid of a computer to see how it would affect the poverty trap and the willingness of parents to send their children to care, as opposed to alternative methods of care, which often may be more about neglect than care.
I have talked about the life cycle, and the needs and risks that we face. I am struck by the fact that a number of proposals relate to how we meet costs over the life cycle. Higher education is becoming more expensive and tuition fees and loans have been introduced. Many young people will start off in life by having to pay back considerable amounts of money. I support the policy, but I worry about some of its implications. Ideas are proposed on pensions which essentially mean persuading people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and after to pay higher contributions than they are paying now. We have other proposals about individual savings accounts and others—from the royal commission in a year or so—about how we fund long-term care. Meanwhile, people are trying to buy homes. Some of the proposals are from the Department for Education and Employment, others are from the Department of Health, the Department of Social Security, or the Treasury. Is it naive to suggest that we should look at these matters together? It might make sense to offer people—either through the public or private sector—a hybrid, or a life cycle account.Although it is not my place to commit the Opposition Front Bench, my right hon. and hon. Friends have made it clear that we are willing to co-operate with the Government in remedying the flaws in the welfare state. Much of what the hon. Gentleman has said this afternoon, I have found congenial. However, the hon. Gentleman's problem is with his Back Benchers, who will not allow the Government to bring in sensible reforms which follow in the footsteps of measures put in place by the previous Government to encourage people to make their own provision, particularly for their old age.
His Back Benchers—who are conspicuous by their absence—will create merry hell, as they have done at the roadshows, which they have positively wrecked.As a humble corporal, I do not have my own Back Benchers, so I do not have to worry about them. I have to worry only about sharing my thoughts with the House.
The hon. Gentleman should have Back Benchers.
That would help enormously. It is useful that the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) is interested in my thoughts.
I often worry that, in these debates, children are the forgotten army. The debates are often about adults— working mothers and fathers, taxpayers. Let us think more about children. In an old-fashioned way, I should like to say that I support the child benefit scheme. If we find civilised ways of targeting it a bit, we should do so, but we must avoid the means test. Child benefit is universal. It avoids the complexities of the means test. Far from adding to poverty traps, it is a good welfare-to-work measure. One has it when on income support, and takes it when one goes into work. In addition, it is an income for mothers—that is absolutely crucial. I believe that a premium for those with children under five might be appropriate. I have referred to the two major recruiting sergeants for poverty and insecurity as economic recession and family breakdown. Although this goes wider than the debate, it follows that the best social security programmes of all have little to do with the Department of Social Security and everything to do with a strong economy and strong families. Within this, the reform of state benefits is vital. I wish my ministerial colleagues well, because they are dealing with a more complex system than confronted Beveridge, and with a more complex society and economy than those confronting the reformers of 50 years ago. This is an important subject, and I wish everyone taking part in the debate well in grappling with its complexities.5.48 pm
The absence of the right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) shows not just the absence of the Secretary of State on an important date in the social security calendar but an absence of leadership in the welfare reform process—at least so far as the Department for Social Security is concerned. It shows an absence of any policy on welfare reform, which was meant to be at the heart of the new Labour Government's policy. Indeed, it was meant to fill the gaping hole in their promises of extra spending on education. They said that they would reform the welfare state and channel the extra billions into education.
Where are those radical welfare reforms that we were promised? Where is the great Nixon-in-China, only-Labour-can-do-it end to the dependency culture? When will the Green Paper, which has been promised and delayed, promised and delayed again, be published? Review after review has been announced. There is the child benefit review, the welfare-to-work task force, the tax and benefits task force, the social exclusion unit, the family policy committee, the pensions review, the long-term welfare review, the disability benefits review, the royal commission on long-term care and the comprehensive spending review. They are all very worthy, but where is the policy? The agenda is in chaos. Even the reviews that are about to report will bring forth nothing but tinkering and hype. The tax and benefits task force is a classic example. When it was set up in May, it was heralded by triumphalist press spinning. It was to be headed by Martin Taylor, a chief executive of Barclays bank. The Financial Times reported on 20 May that it was told by Labour sources that the task force would lead toThe Sunday Times was told that the Prime Minister had agreed that"the full scale merger of the tax and benefit system."
Nine months later, when Martin Taylor appeared before the Social Security Committee, he said:"Brown should consider all options for reform, including ultimately merging the separate tax and benefit operations into a new streamlined system."
So there was to be no tax and benefits integration from the Taylor task force. What about reducing the high marginal withdrawal rates as people come off benefit and start paying income tax? Surely the Taylor task force would be able to do something about those. The response from Martin Taylor was:"I think that the arguments against full-blown integration are well known, well rehearsed, and I accept them."
The lesson is not to expect radical reform proposals from the tax and benefits task force or any of the numerous reviews, committees and units that have been set up. There is no leadership in the DSS. Those seeking to lead are being crushed by internal dispute and internecine warfare with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That brings me to the Treasury: the source of the problem. There is not just a turf war. The Treasury's tax and proposals so far have been incompetent, ill thought out and extremely damaging, and have impacted on what the DSS has been trying to do. The Treasury's incompetence starts like a pebble thrown into a still pond, which sends out ripple after ripple until the whole pond is no longer still but a cacophony of waves. The pebble was the 2 July Budget and the decision to end the repayment of dividend tax credits on dividends paid to non-taxpayers, especially to pension funds. That raised £5 billion a year for the Chancellor, but its consequences were not foreseen. In order to avoid companies having to pay large amounts of tax on foreign income dividends, foreign income dividends had to be abolished. Such unforeseen consequences caused an outcry from companies which had large amounts of overseas interests. So, four months later, the Treasury had to deal with that problem by abolishing advance corporation tax and introducing quarterly corporation tax payments for companies. That, in turn, is causing enormous concern in the corporate sector as companies are trying to find £2 billion a year in extra corporation tax payments. That, too, will have to be changed in the March Budget. So the mess and the ripples continue. Ending dividend tax credits also affected pensions. Private pensions lost 11 per cent, of their income as a result of the measure, so contributors had to increase their payments to secure the same pension. Consequently, the state earnings-related pension scheme became more attractive relative to private schemes—unless rebates were increased. Associations such as the Association of British Insurers said that its insurance company members would have to recommend that their customers opted back into SERPS unless national insurance rebates for opting out were increased. Five months after the July Budget, a whole swathe of extra rebates for private pensions were announced. That announcement totally contradicts the Treasury claim that ending dividend tax credits would not reduce the value of private pension funds. The Treasury said that ending dividend tax credits would help companies retain investment funds, which would lead to a healthier economy and higher share prices, and thus increase the value of private pension fund investments. It is a pity that neither the pension fund industry nor the DSS believes that. They have both taken the correct view that, if £5 billion a year is taken out of industry through tax, investment is reduced by £5 billion a year. On 22 December, the last day before the Christmas recess, the uprating of the rebates was announced in a written answer—but the rebates are not enough. That is because the Government increased some by less than the amount recommended by the Government Actuary and reduced others by more than that recommended. The Government Actuary's report recommended a 2.4 per cent, rebate for the youngest age group in contracted-out money purchase schemes. The Government announced a 2.2 per cent, rebate. The Government Actuary recommended a 7.3 per cent, rebate for a 47-year-old. The Government announced a 7.1 per cent, rebate. So the ripple continues. The pensions marketing manager of Britannia Life Ltd. said of the Government's decision on rebates for COMPs:"I would counsel you against believing that there is anything magical you can do with tapers which changes the world."
The head of the research at the AON consulting firm said:"I cannot see why anybody would want to stay in a COMP."
It is difficult for us in the House to believe what the Government say. In January, the Social Security Secretary said in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) that the Government"It's getting difficult to believe what the Government says."
That answer was very carefully worded and designed to leave us with the impression that the rebate changes were purely a matter for the Actuary and that the Government followed his advice. As we know, the Government did not follow his advice. Subsequently, the Secretary of State went too far when she said:"considered the Government Actuary's advice and we changed the rebates."
Will the Minister tell us what the Secretary of State meant? Why did she say what she did when it is clear that the Government did not follow the Government Actuary's advice? Why did not the Government follow that advice? Why will members of contracted-out money purchase schemes have to pay, according to Pensions Week, an extra £200 a year as a result of the decision? All those problems have arisen from that one decision on 2 July to abolish dividend tax credits on dividends paid to pension funds—one wrong decision leading to a ripple effect of highly damaging and unforeseen consequences. There is pure incompetence and chaos. Coupled with an absence of policy and leadership, that chaos is causing damage in the community. Policy is being developed by informed leak—kite flying. Labour suggests taxing child benefit, so someone in the Treasury leaks it to see what the reaction will be. Labour suggests trying a means-tested disability living allowance or taxing it. They think that that would be a good wheeze to raise a few hundred million pounds, so someone in the Treasury leaks it. Those messages are read by people who need such allowances—decent, vulnerable people who rely on the money; independent people who would cease to be independent if DLA were means tested or taxed. That is best expressed by a Mr. Tim Armstrong, a 17-year-old disabled student who lives in my constituency. He wrote to me this week with his concerns about the Government's leaked proposals. He said: "Dear Mr. Gibb,"We sought that advice and acted properly on it."—[Official Report, 26 January 1998; Vol. 305, c. 5.]
I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may be considering imposing income tax on the receipt of Disability Living Allowance. It would be unfair to tax this Social Security benefit as it is intended to help disabled people meet the increased costs which arise as a direct result of their disability. These costs are the same for both those liable to tax and those who do not pay tax. Few disabled people would not be taxpayers if DLA becomes taxable. The tax I would have to pay might mean that I could not afford to have a car under the Mobility scheme and would lose the independence that DLA gives me.
So would I. He continued:Please explain to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that to make DLA taxable would be to tax disability and make disabled people much more dependent. I would like to know what his response is."
"I also understand that the Secretary of State for Social Security is considering the possibilities of means testing DLA and of transferring this benefit to local authority Social Services departments. Both these steps would be damaging to disabled people like myself. Means testing would have a similar impact to making this vital benefit taxable. Handing over control to local councils would almost certainly mean the end of the superb Motability scheme and the freedom of choice that disabled people enjoy in arranging their mobility needs.
So would I, but unfortunately she cannot be bothered to be here, or dare not be here. Whatever it is, it is not acceptable, and neither is the lack of progress that the Department of Social Security and the ministerial team have made in almost 10 months since the Government came to office.Please explain to the Secretary of State for Social Security that to make DLA a means tested benefit would be very damaging to many of your constituents.… Again I should like to know what her response is."
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The uprating debate covers a number of benefits that have direct relevance to women. People often see women as drawing benefits. They do not accept the vital role that women play in the work force. I wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that simply uprating assumes an acceptance of the status quo. I look forward to considerable change to the benefits system. Unlike Opposition Members, I would rather wait for a Green Paper that gets it right than have things rushed through. We accept that this is a unique opportunity to reform a system that has been salami-sliced for many years, to get the structure right. We need to get it right for the next generation as well as this one. I would rather hold back and get it right.
I wonder whether the hon. Lady thinks that the issue of lone parents should also have been left until the Green Paper.
My view on the lone parents issue was that we were implementing the previous Government's policies. We shall all have to wait to find out how the new benefits system will affect all such issues.
I always find it extraordinary that people accuse us of not providing reform proposals, and in the same breath draw conclusions about what the reforms will be. The Taylor review is dismissed as not producing anything worth having and at the same time it is criticised for not having produced a report. We cannot have it both ways. I welcome the Government's policies on women. Two issues are stated clearly. We want equality of opportunity for everyone, and that means that women continue to take their rightful place in the work force, but we also support the many carers of children, who are often women. Throughout the world, women are now the main breadwinners in about 30 per cent, of households. By 2010, some 80 per cent, of the female work force in industrial societies will be of child-bearing age. Any reforms of the welfare system have to take account of women, children and the implications for families. Women have been failed badly by the previous Government. The Employment Service did not recognise the need to return to the work force. The benefits system assumed that women relied on men. Child care did not catch up with the changed role of women. The pensions system failed women miserably. The one issue on which I should like to focus today is the benefits system's failure to recognise the significance of caring for children. That should be recognised within the benefits system. I welcome the tax and benefit reforms. I welcome the fact that a number of benefits will be delivered through the wage packet. I welcome the national child care strategy and the money put into child care, but—I endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks) said—who speaks for the children? Children are the next generation. They are our future. It worries me that the debate on welfare is a discussion among adults in which we do not recognise children's needs. Families are getting smaller. On average, families now have 1.7 children. There is a tremendous growth in single households; 28 per cent, of all households are now one person. Fewer people are getting married. At the same time, one in five children live in households in which there is no adult earning—that is, 21 per cent. We need to reform the welfare state. We accept that children who grow up in households in which someone is earning fare better; that money that comes into a family via the wage packet is of greater benefit than that which comes via the benefit cheque. We need to introduce family-centred policies, but we should not overlook our responsibility especially to the very youngest of children. We need to have a debate. We should not simply assume that children have the same needs at every age. Those of us who went to America saw in Wisconsin one extreme. It was deemed that mothers should go back to work once their children were 12 weeks old. In Britain, we send out a signal that a mother should not be expected to go back to work until the child is 16 years old. That is clearly outdated and wrong. We need a debate about the appropriate age. When the new deal for lone parents is rolled out nationally, it will begin to strike the right balance. It will require mothers of five-year-olds to attend an interview.I am sure that the hon. Lady would not want to mislead the House inadvertently, but the new deal does not do that. It simply invites them in to an interview. That is one of the weaknesses of the policy. We are wondering what the Secretary of State plans to do. She has a return rate of 6 per cent, on letters inviting women to an interview. Will the hon. Lady make it clear that the policy does not require them to attend, but simply invites them to an interview?
As I understand it, when the national programme is rolled out, mothers will be required to attend an interview. I may be wrong.
The hon. Lady says, "As I understand it". Does that mean that someone on the Front Bench has instructed her to say that compulsion will be part of the system? It is a fascinating point. Will she tell us that?
I may have misunderstood. I need to go back and check it.
I thought that the hon. Lady was making a statement on behalf of the Front-Bench team.
I do not presume to make a statement on behalf of the Front-Bench team, nor do I claim to be perfect.
I shall help the hon. Lady by changing the subject slightly. She has spoken on a number of occasions about failure. She will be aware that a week last Friday, the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) accused her and some of her hon. Friends of being failures. Why and how does she think that her hon. Friend is wrong?
I will not rise to challenges that are not worth rising to. I will move on to the subject of our responsibility to families, women and children and to mothers and fathers.
The way forward is to ensure that, as often as possible, families are supported by working adults and that children grow up in families in which someone earns. In the case of under-fives, there has to be choice—my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North used the phrase "mother knows best", which is a phrase with which I have a little difficulty, but there must be a recognition of the special needs of that generation. I mentioned Wisconsin, which has a cut-off of 12 weeks old, whereas ours is five years old. In Norway, there has been a tremendous extension of maternity leave and even compulsory paternity leave, whereby the mother will have difficulty drawing all her benefits unless the father takes off four weeks to look after his baby. We have to accept that there is a range of options, but there must be a strong emphasis on striking the right balance. I urge Ministers to accept in the review that the right balance when smaller children are a factor will, at times, involve increased part-time work. It is not necessarily my idea of progress for mothers of very young children to have to work full time for low pay and put their children in state nurseries. We need an element of choice and a recognition that the right balance for families and children has to be struck. We need to hear the voice of children.6.10 pm
I greatly enjoyed the opening remarks of the Minister for Welfare Reform, who has now left. His canter through history was illuminating and although we were obviously the audience for his warm-up act or rehearsal for his Beveridge lecture later, I welcomed it all the same.
I also welcomed the right hon. Gentleman's rather teasing statements about what would be announced in the Green Paper—frustrating though they were. However, I am concerned about some of the remarks made about the timing of the Green Paper's publication. When I hear that it will come out at the time of the Budget or after the Budget, I think, somewhat cynically, that the announcement might be made at the same time as the Budget. I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State winds up the debate, he will give assurances that such an important statement—we have been waiting for the Green Paper for some time—will not simply be pushed out on Budget day and lost among other announcements. I cannot share the right hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm for today's orders, and I certainly cannot join him in celebrating the first orders for so many years to be laid under a Labour Government. I regret that he did not use today's debate to clear up some of the misunderstandings that have arisen about the direction being taken by the Government's welfare reforms. Of the few errors in judgment made by the Government since entering office in May, the manner in which welfare reforms have been handled and the Government's failure to deliver have been among the biggest. Since May, the debate on welfare reform and benefit levels outside the House has been somewhat controversial and, at worst and in many cases, insensitive and alarmist—although today's debate in the House has been friendly, despite one rather unwelcome intervention. The climate of rumour and misinformation over the past few months has left many of the charities to which I have spoken feeling bemused and angry. Perhaps more important, it has left those who are on benefits and who read the newspapers feeling both rejected and confused. That is why it is a shame that the Minister of State did not do three things that might improve the climate and why I hope that the Under-Secretary will do them instead. First, he could make a statement that the Government intend to overturn the freezing of benefits to lone parents. Secondly, he could have the courage to review the increases in pensions for those above the age of 80. Thirdly, he could give an absolute assurance to disabled people that the Government will not attack their benefits and will introduce a proper review of the current benefits integrity programme. The world has moved on since we first debated these benefit cuts and proposals in December last year. There have been two developments that should encourage the Government to think again. First, we know far more about the economic circumstances that this country is facing and we know that they are getting better by the day. We know that the Chancellor has more room for manoeuvre than any Chancellor has had in the past five years. If it is true that there may be £1 billion, £2 billion, or even £3 billion available, how can we turn round to lone parents and tell them there are not the resources available to maintain their benefits? If it is true that those extra resources are available, how can we turn round to the over-80s and justify the level of pension that they receive? It is time for the Government to turn what they currently call the Chancellor's war chest into a war on want and use those resources to tackle some of the unfairness in the system. The second development is growing evidence that many of people who receive the benefits that we are debating will suffer a double whammy this April. In addition to the rumours about cuts at a national level, there is a second, local whammy in the shape of cuts in local authority social services budgets up and down the country. I have heard of social services departments facing huge cuts, and many of those cuts will be achieved by cutting services to individuals receiving the benefits before us today. What we are giving today at national level will, for some, be taken away at local level in April. The net impact is that many people will be worse off come April. Let me illustrate that point. In Hampshire, the current social services budget, which provides essential support for the most frail and needy in the county, is facing cuts of £3 million. What does that mean in reality for a pensioner? One announcement is that the cut means that charges for meals on wheels will have to be increased by 21 per cent., or £2 per day. If we take into account the effect of today's orders and the settlement whereby we are giving pensioners a percentage increase in line with inflation, we can see that a pensioner who receives meals on wheels will be worse off. That situation will be repeated up and down the country in respect of the old, the disabled or those who are in receive of local social services. Let us take the example of a disabled person on incapacity benefit who, after today's announcement, will receive an increase of £2.25 per week in his allowance. However, in Hampshire, that person faces charges on equipment that he gets for his house and possibly the end of schemes to provide help in the home. The net impact on that individual, despite our debate today, may be that he will be worse off come April.So that I am clear about the case that the hon. Gentleman is making, may I ask whether he is arguing that the amount of the benefit uprating should be further increased to compensate for those charges; and, if so, by how much?
I am arguing that, although we may take comfort in the inflation-linked increases in the orders, at the end of the day, people in need care little about whether their benefits are set by the House or by local authorities; what they have to live with is the reality of how much money is in their pocket at the end of the week. I am attempting to demonstrate that, because of the effect of the double whammy, the net impact on many people might be that they receive less overall. That comes against the backdrop of disabled people in particular reading in the press that cuts to their benefits might be introduced. That is the point that I want the House to take into account.
The picture is worrying for many individuals and for the groups that will be most affected—the old, lone parents and the disabled. Let me say a few words about pensioners. How can it be right that, for almost the past quarter century, no party has done anything to address radically the additional sum paid when a pensioner turns 80? Today, as we pass these orders, we add another year to that period of non-action, and I know how let down many pensioners feel about that. Because of the rather unusual circumstances in Winchester, where the people seem to like fighting elections, I spent most of last year on the campaign trail, out and about talking to people, many of whom live in residential homes and old people's homes. Perhaps if Mr. Malone had done more of that sort of thing, the result would have been different. I detected an interesting shift of opinion over the period of those elections. In the run-up to the May election, there was enthusiasm and a mood of optimism among pensioners, who looked forward to the prospect of having a Labour Government. However, when I spoke to the same people during the November campaign, the mood had shifted. They were disillusioned, not necessarily only with the Labour Government, but with politicians in general—I hope that that was not a reflection on my six months as their Member of Parliament.Does the hon. Gentleman accept that 80 is an arbitrary age, and that we should consider the wider issue of the long-term health care of the aging population? We should take note of the royal commission on long-term health care, rather than focus only on uprating at a particular, but not necessarily appropriate, age.
My evidence from speaking to many people last year, including those over 80, is that they cannot wait for reviews; they want action now. They felt insulted by and angry about the suggestion of a 25p increase, which was the figure that was cited time and again. As economic benefits begin to appear, surely the Chancellor of the Exchequer should allow the Secretary of State for Social Security and her ministerial colleagues to do something about the proposed 25p increase, and offer a decent amount of money for those over 80.
I offer a personal view—I am not now speaking for my party—about the resources that we give to pensioners. I found it frustrating not to be able to answer many of the questions that pensioners asked me, such as why they did not receive a decent pension. I know that politicians are not supposed to highlight problems for which they do not have quick, smart solutions. I do not have solutions to these problems, but I made a commitment to those individuals that I would raise their concerns. All politicians should try to ensure that pensioners receive a decent pension. I recognise the Government's attempts to ensure that people of my generation receive one, but I believe that we need to deal with the problems of today's pensioners. Lone parents are another key Liberal Democrat concern. Liberal Democrats strongly oppose the proposed benefit freeze for 1.5 million lone parents. It has been said that as many as half of those lone parents will not be able to take up welfare to work. For them, the freeze represents lost benefits; today, the House will reaffirm a decision that could mean a real cut in lone parents' living standards. Why are the Government hitting lone parents in that way? I should have thought that lone parents would agree to welfare to work, but would also expect flexibility and a caring approach from the Government. I have a lively, 20-month-old daughter, and I am beginning to realise the traumas and joys of bringing up children. I marvel at how many lone parents can bring up children on their own, and I recognise that they face additional costs. I am not alone in that recognition. In November 1996, the Secretary of State, who was then Opposition spokesman, said:Let us hear today that the Government will change and compromise on this measure and at least increase in line with inflation current benefits for lone parents. I am surprised that disability issues have not yet been mentioned in the debate. I urge the Minister to send a strong signal of support to disabled groups, to reassure them about their current and future benefits. We must debate the changes to disability benefits, which is why the Green Paper must contain the details. We have been playing a cat-and-mouse media game of speculation and counter-speculation. Stories have been flying around in the right-wing press, half-portraying some disabled people as fraudsters. According to a parliamentary answer given in another place, however, no cases of fraud have yet been unveiled by the benefits integrity project. I do not dismiss the possibility that there is fraud—indeed, Liberal Democrats take the matter seriously—but I do not believe that it is healthy to create a climate of mistrust as a prelude to a much needed discussion on the reform of disability benefits. Moreover, we should not constantly talk about errors in the system and misconstrue them as examples of claimant fraud. Worryingly, the figures derive from the Government's own statistics, the release of which has been carefully timed. Do those figures paint a bleaker picture than the reality of future changes will be? If so, the Government are prolonging in the worst possible way the undeniable anxiety that disabled people feel about their payments, which in many cases are the mainstay of their livelihoods. In the past week, we have heard that cases in which benefit has been cut under the integrity programme will be independently assessed. Although I welcome that, I have no doubt that the need for it has been highlighted by a number of shocking cases in which disabled people had their benefits cut when they should not have been. The Government's announcement smacks of reacting to events, rather than pre-empting them. Earlier this week, the Government were giving mixed signals; the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State seemed to be at odds on the suspension of the benefits integrity programme. The Prime Minister seemed to say that the Government had agreed to reflect on the matter, whereas the Secretary of State had apparently ruled that out in an earlier meeting with Lord Ashley. Is it not time to halt the review, reset its parameters, retrain its assessors and reassure those being assessed? We must clear the air soon. We need to examine the realism behind some of the Government's proposals for disabled people's benefits. No one wants to deny disabled people the right to work if they want to, but, equally, no one wants people with disabilities forced into work that they cannot do. Moreover, how many disabled people are likely to be able to take up work? Will there be 500,000 or 1 million, and will there really be jobs for them? Today is the Government's last chance to show that they listen to the voices of those in need. Liberal Democrats want to make it clear to the Minister that, although we support the Government's review of the benefits system and will work with them, we urge you today to unfreeze lone parents' benefits, act now for a fair pension for those over 80 and reassure the disabled about their benefits. By doing so, you could show that the Labour Government do not want to be judged only by the iron Chancellor—"Lone parents are some of the poorest people in Britain. They face additional costs in bringing up their children… Lone mothers not only do not have their partners' income; they do not have their partners' time."—[Official Report, 28 November 1996; Vol. 286, c. 501.]
Order. The hon. Gentleman keeps using the word "you". The Chair is not responsible for these matters. Will he try to use the correct form of address?
I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
By doing what we suggest, the Government could send out a signal that they are listening to vulnerable people and standing up for the values of the people who elected them.6.26 pm
I think that the country believed at the general election that it would be much easier for a Labour Government than a Conservative Government to reform the welfare arrangements. That was one of the main reasons why the Government were elected.
Conservative Members are concerned that so many things have already been done that may prejudice the rational across-the-board reform that the Green Paper envisages. We have expressed our full support for the thinking of the Minister for Welfare Reform, and, within the parameters that we have described, for the Government's proposed thorough reform of welfare. If we step back, however, we see that different parts of the Government have different agendas. The left, right and centre are all fairly disillusioned about the measures that have already been taken, and the public have the perception of a shambles—they do not understand where welfare reforms are going and how the big issues will be tackled. The first of those issues is the poverty trap, which has caused the dependency society. The solutions lie in taxation as much, if not more, as in social security. They are self-evident: we should raise the level at which income tax applies, and we should consider more generous child benefit arrangements. I cite the example of Canada, where an unsatisfactory family tax credit arrangement, which is similar to the one that the Government are considering, has been rejected. The second big issue that has been mentioned in the debate is: should we continue with a national insurance system? Many politicians regard national insurance as just another form of taxation. The public do not; they continue to believe that their benefits are linked to their national insurance payments. If any of those benefits were means-tested, the public would, rightly, be outraged. However, if there is to be a major change—if, in future generations, the principle of national insurance is to be abandoned—that needs to be made absolutely clear. Similarly, there need to be attractive tax incentives for people to take out their own private arrangements. I believe that many hon. Members are mistaken in not realising that the majority of the population believe that they are paying for their benefits on an insurance basis. The third big issue—which is pretty obvious—is that it is no good having fancy slogans about welfare to work if there is no work in the communities. By far the most important thing is to follow policies that will lead to work opportunities in the areas of deprivation. Make-work schemes with the state add little, and will not solve deprivation in the long term. There is a big issue of principle concerning whether we should continue with rights, and rights that are subject to tribunals and legal proceedings, or focus on the way in which much is done in Europe, which is based more on the principle of administered schemes. The Social Security Bill takes almost a halfway house approach; there is some attempt to cut the complications and costs of the various adjudication and tribunal processes involved in the concept of welfare rights, but the result is likely to leave many injustices, and cause us to think radically about the European system. To my mind, so many welfare situations require case officers to assess what is fair for that situation that it may be better to have that assessment and deal with it than to have the expense and complication of fighting legal rights. We must bite the bullet on fraud. Should we have identity cards? Should we use the Inland Revenue for intelligence? Incidentally, should we use Inland Revenue data to tackle some of the major Child Support Agency problems? There are the big issues of the family unit, and tax incentives for the family unit. One hopes that both main parties will compete in making proposals to strengthen the family unit. It must be wrong for one person keeping four, five or six people to be paying roughly the same tax as one person keeping one person, or one person keeping two people. Quite often, two people earning a similar amount, keeping just two people, pay less tax than one person keeping four people on the same income. That must be wrong. Therefore, 1 view the whole area of tax arrangements for the family as part of the territory to be addressed. Why are we worried that the process of rational consideration of reform is going off the rails? As others have commented, we have seen the dangerous business of the Government testing things—I do not know whether they are testing public reaction or trying to sell ideas. The concept of means testing has been tested and withdrawn. The concept of taxing disability benefits has been aired, as has that of means-testing old-age pensions. In my opinion, that only creates confusion and worry among those most in need. Instead of testing public political opinion, we should decide the right way to proceed. The welfare-to-work programme, although desirable in principle, is in danger of disappointing greatly. There is an element of stick and carrot. The stick sometimes falls on the wrong people, and the carrot will not work if there are not enough jobs. I perceive that, in future, people in their forties and fifties are more likely than the young to have difficulty in obtaining employment. What are the several agendas? The Treasury has a specific agenda of cutting costs—a revenue agenda: hence the means-testing ideas and the taxation of benefits. The Chancellor has a redistribution agenda, concerned with ways in which the middle classes will suffer more taxation to make it possible for the Government to spend more, in due course, on health and education. In the pensions area, we have not focused on principles such as those operating behind the "40IK" arrangements in America, which pull together all aspects of saving. We have changed personal equity plans and tax-exempt special savings accounts—largely for revenue reasons, not reasons of principle. We had the advance corporation tax arrangements, which messed up the state earnings-related pension scheme situation and are relevant to the subsequent stakeholder pension reforms. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) said, we believe that the danger is that the territory has already been boxed up, limiting the scope for the right sort of stakeholder pension proposals. We await the family tax credit, but I fear that we may be falling into the trap of the Canadian failures, and I suggest that the simpler arrangement of more generous child benefits may be more effective in achieving its objectives. On single parents, it is my belief that the community differentiates between women who have been abandoned by their husbands and have children to bring up, and the other side of the coin. The community at large would wish to be generous and supportive to the former, and would often believe that it is better for those mothers to stay at home and bring up their children, at least when they are young. By contrast, the community wants to discourage young people from having children by themselves at the taxpayer's expense. Those are two quite different cases within the single parent area, where I suggest that a single approach to welfare and tax misses the point. The disincentives will bear too hard on genuine cases needing support. All parties need to think more about that. The CSA is not achieving its objectives. Last week, we had a valuable debate on the subject. The married woman who has been abandoned by her spouse is not receiving support from the husband in 80 per cent, of cases, and now, if that married spouse wants to work during term and be at home with her children in the holidays, the new arrangements will be a direct disincentive to her doing so, because, if she stops working, she loses her income support, and then her overall take is lower when she is out of work. In summary, I suggest that the view of the country would be that, if one means-tests what people regard as insured benefits, deep misunderstanding and unpopularity will result. People do want the system to be tightened up, to stop it being milked. There is huge sympathy for supporting those in real need, and the methods by which dependency communities could be ended need to be more economically oriented than welfare oriented. I hope that the chance for radical and constructive reform, which we all hoped would be led by the Minister for Welfare Reform, has not been lost as a result of the morass and competition within the Government, among Cabinet Ministers, that has already happened. The population at large perceive that that has happened.6.39 pm
I am very pleased to be able to make a short contribution to this interesting annual debate. While witnessing the mutual love-in when the Minister of State was in the Chamber—I am not being facetious—it occurred to me that the Under-Secretary might usefully report back to his colleagues in government on the Opposition's offer to co-operate on some of the work.
I have been involved in the social security area since my election in 1983, and I remember the days when the present Minister for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), used to knock spots off the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler). It was argument by half brick in terms of a meeting of minds. If the hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) were to sit around the table, there would be a chance—I put it no stronger than that—of isolating some areas of agreement. Perhaps that course of action should be considered. I preface my remarks with that suggestion, which I believe is worthy of exploration.Who would write the minutes?
The Under-Secretary could write the minutes—the one who writes the minutes is often the most important member of the committee.
The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) referred to the morass that he believes surrounds these issues. I crossed swords with the hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green early in the Parliament, when he claimed that there was confusion across the Government regarding the progress of their reforms. I said then that I supported the view that fundamental reform could not be driven only by Benefits Agency Ministers. I cleave to that view, but I am becoming concerned that I may lose the argument. There are nine or so reviews under way, and even those who share my view are beginning to wonder whether the Government's overall steer is coherent and thought through. Although I cleave to the view that the review should be conducted outside the Benefits Agency— Treasury involvement is very important also—concern is beginning to be expressed about whether the Government know where they are going. I appreciate that one cannot always believe what one reads in the papers, but that is all that some of us have to go on. The Minister and the Secretary of State have willingly agreed to appear before the Social Security Select Committee next week. That is a very important appearance. If they do not convince people like me, who are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of the Government's intentions, it will be even more difficult for the Government to persuade people that they know what they are doing in the long term. When I participated in these debates as spokesman for my party, I would always point out that 20 sides of uprating details represent unreasonable complexity. I talk regularly to Benefits Agency staff, and, in the main, they are committed to their work. They work hard, and they deserve more credit than they sometimes receive for operating a system that they believe is so complicated as to be almost impossible. It is very difficult to deliver "right first time" results consistently. We must not forget that. We make piecemeal changes to the system all the time, and there is much detail in these pages. No objective observer would start from this point—not in a month of Sundays. In the long term—such things cannot be done quickly—the Government should look at the totality of benefits. The last time that I discussed the matter with some quite senior staff in the Benefits Agency, a long argument ensued about how many benefits there were. I do not criticise those senior managers, because the system is complicated. We should bear that in mind. We have a complicated raft of benefits, levels, provisions, discretions and exemptions. We also have interaction between the tax and benefit systems. That is getting worse as tax comes down the income scale and benefit goes up. It is perversely difficult to get the overlap period right, because of the unintended consequences of changes and so on. Interaction of benefit is almost as important as the level of benefit. That leads to all sorts of confusion, until the system becomes unworkable. If the Government introduced proposals to solve those problems, I am sure that they would receive support from all sides of the House. I listened with interest to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten). There is a worrying level of concern about the disability living allowance. I advise the House that my colleagues on the Select Committee and I agreed this morning to produce a short report on disability living allowance and the role that it will play in future benefits. The review will not be pejorative: we will take evidence, and, if we think that the Government should do things differently, we shall say so openly, and without anti-Government prejudice. The review is designed to reassure those who represent disabled people, and particularly those Government officials responsible for the integrity programme, that they will have a chance to clear up the confusions and misconceptions that may have arisen as a result of recent press reports. I am always puzzled by the fact that we uprate benefit levels annually but never examine the capital limits. I think that the capital limits are £3,000 and £8,000. I may be wrong, but I think that the last time they were increased was in the 1986 legislation, at the time of the Fowler reports. We cannot disregard the impact of leaving the capital limits at that level for so long. If we are to continue to have annual uprating debates, capital limits should form an integral part of our considerations. Perhaps the Government will reflect on that point for the future. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) referred to tapers, and the fact that Martin Taylor said in his evidence that tapers were too difficult. Something must be done about tapers. I do not doubt that it is difficult, but the rates of withdrawal of benefit are almost as important as the rates of benefit. Debates such as this should consider how tapers may be dealt with and improved, and what consequences taper changes will have. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton gets very excited in Select Committee meetings—where he is a distinguished and valued colleague—when people talk about poverty levels in this country. He makes the genuine point—I agree with him—that measures such as 40 per cent, of average earnings or some other rather notional measures produce figures that are not very meaningful. Some of our European sister nations are better at this than we are. When the Select Committee visited America, we were told that there is an American poverty line that derives from some of the original Rowntree work. It uses levels that are applied and accepted by everyone who participates in debates as givens, around which discussions may take place. There is no point in taking 40 per cent, of average earnings, because that is a simplistic and pretty meaningless figure. If we looked at assets, debts and housing conditions, we might end up with a figure that was acceptable to all those who take part in debates. That would help to inform the process. The figure needs to be set at a realistic level to be meaningful. I am not encouraging the Government to undertake any more reviews, as they have enough on their plate already—One hundred and forty-eight.
One hundred and forty-eight reviews, I am helpfully reminded from the Opposition Front Bench.
We need some grasp of what constitutes an adequate benefit. I do not believe that it is possible to live on income support rates. It may be possible for a few short months, but in the longer term, income support rates and the like are not sustainable. According to press reports today, NatWest has produced an index in an attempt to identify an adequate pension level. The finding was that an adequate level was £179 a week. For pensioners in my constituency, that is a king's ransom. That index may or may not be useful, but it is at least a contribution to the debate. It contrasts starkly with what people can expect to get from a basic state pension plus SERPS and any additional income from income support or pensioner premiums. I also noticed today an interesting report in the press— I think it was in the Daily Express—about the problems faced by women who are getting monthly pensions of 32p because they were encouraged to pay national insurance contributions at the married women's reduced rate. There was a serious problem with that in bygone days. That has left them in severely distressed financial circumstances. In his wonderful speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton spoke about SERPS. I am extremely concerned about the contracting-out rates for SERPS. I spoke about that earlier in the Parliament, when we discussed social security, and I remain very sceptical about the level at which the rebates have been set. I am sure that, in the fulness of time people will opt back into SERPS in large numbers. It is too early to say what is happening, but I believe that the trend will get worse. The Government will have to examine the problem and take positive action. The level of take-up is an important element of the levels of benefit that we are setting today. When the Government were in opposition, they made great play— rightly—of the level of take-up of some means-tested benefits. They now have it in their power by imposing a duty on the Benefits Agency to maximise benefit entitlement. They could do that at a stroke. It would entail more work for Benefits Agency staff, but it would get money quickly to the people who need it most. I do not know what assessments have been done of the scope for additional take-up, but it is a scandal that we allow so many of our most impoverished households to face price increases that outstrip the increase in the retail prices index. My constituents are facing huge increases in water charges, for example. After the Budget, they may have to deal with a considerable increase in transportation costs because of the excessive increases which, it is rumoured in the press, we should anticipate in the upcoming Budget. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) referred to increased charges from social services departments for services such as meals on wheels, alarm systems and so on. Those are increases, over and above inflation, of 5 or 10 per cent, and sometimes more. That makes it extremely difficult for retired people, particularly those—usually women—who are living on their own on the basic state pension plus income support premiums. The Select Committee has made comment to Governments about the position of overseas pensioners who do not have access to any uprating in certain countries with which we do not have reciprocal agreements. The Minister will know that Governments of both complexions in the recent past have considered the matter and said that they would not uprate the pensions available to overseas pensioners. That is not a sustainable position in the longer term. The problem will have to be addressed, preferably to bring some equity into the situation soon. I know that a large sum of money is involved and that there are competing priorities, but I ask the Government to examine the situation carefully. The orders, and the debate, are extremely important. We wait with keen anticipation to see what the Government will introduce. With the best will in the world, it will be the year 2000 and beyond before there can be any substantial legislative changes. The main point that I would emphasise from the debate this evening is that there are households in this country where children and old-age pensioners are suffering now. Of course the future must be addressed and we must get matters right, I hope on an agreed basis, with consensus across the entire House. In the short term, however, we must do the best we can to do better for the poorest, most disadvantaged members of our society now.6.55 pm
The debate has been extremely interesting, and many hon. Members have made interesting contributions. If I may single out one, the contribution of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) made me think in a way that I had not thought previously about the vital question of the age at which a single mother should be considered best suited to an opportunity for work, and the age at which a single mother is better thought of as being at home. That is a critical matter that needs to be addressed.
The debate as a whole has demonstrated what the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) said a moment ago: there is an opportunity for a remarkable cross-party consensus. Many of the contributions from both sides have shown that. I must make an admission that may lead to my achieving a severe black mark with my Whips. Most of what I understand and believe about the social security system comes from a long acquaintance with the works of the Minister for Welfare Reform, who is by any account the most profound analyst of what went wrong with our social security system, and who has produced in his work—gradually evolving, not a constant pattern across time—the most coherent explanation of the direction in which we as a country might move to remove the twin evils that he identifies: the evil of a system that inclines people towards vice rather than virtue, and the evil of a system that inclines people towards dependency rather than self-help. That is now the common currency of political debate, across the political spectrum. That in itself constitutes a remarkable achievement, but, beyond that, the right hon. Gentleman has proposed in his various works an amalgam of measures which, taken together, constitute a radical revision of the basis of social security provision in this country. We are all familiar with the elements, and I do not intend to bore the House by reciting each one, but they include the elimination of means tests, the elimination of SERPS, the creation of a properly funded pension scheme for all, the creation of some form of savings account that carries one through a lifetime, and the redirection of social security towards incentives to build rather than to destroy families. Those are elements which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) has illustrated admirably in a set of speeches, could command support from all parts of the House. There is therefore a golden, and in the post-war period perhaps a unique, opportunity for the reform of the system—a reform on which the economy and probably the social cohesion of this country over the next 50 or 100 years heavily depends. That is no light matter. It is a matter of profound regret to me—I hope that this does not sound too pious—that there are so few of us in the Chamber debating an issue of the deepest social and economic significance. We have a golden opportunity before us, and I fear that this opportunity is binary. It is remarkable in that respect. In most areas of government it is possible to reform in a patchwork manner, with one element or another being changed gradually, but that is not so with social security. In many other areas, a favourable circle exists, which means that a reform can be introduced that is beneficial for a secondary reason, while saving money in the short term. As I have said, that is not so with social security. To achieve the reforms that the Minister of State so admirably set out that could command cross-party support, two things must be accepted by the Government. First, there is the need for the whole to be considered on a global basis, so that there might be radical action. Secondly, there must be the acceptance that, in the short term, some elements will involve extra expenditure, and certainly will not save money. These are critical elements that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) began to admit in his tenure of office. Alas, we see the signs of these critical elements being rejected, by, one suspects, the Treasury. As soon as these two elements—the drive to radicalism and the acceptance of some short-term costs—are lost sight of, we are no longer in the territory of radical reform that will command cross-party support—the revision of a system that currently distorts the economy within society. On the contrary, we fall back, surprisingly, on no change whatsoever. We may tamper with a particular element that, in the absence of radicalism as directed to the whole, and in the absence of a willingness to spend some money in the early stages, will achieve nothing. I wish briefly to allude to one element of that— earned income tax credit. I suspect that many Members on both sides of the House would have a great deal to say in favour of a radical system of earned income tax credit. Many of us believe that that is at the root of trying to resolve elements of the poverty and unemployment traps. However, if the system of earned income tax credit, by a process of attrition and by the removal of elements of radicalism, is watered down into a working family tax credit, with opt-outs and arrangements for ticks in the box and a re-amalgamation with social security to solve the wallet-purse problem, so that the system becomes unrecognisably different from—that is, entirely similar to—the family credit system, we are left with no change. It may be argued that that is not the worst thing that a Government can do—create no change. If the system were a working system and the Labour Government were merely trying to put their stamp on a working system, there would be nothing to which we could object. However, the Minister of State has correctly analysed that the social security system does not work now in social or economic terms. To make changes that are not changes because they change nothing about the way in which people behave, because the Treasury has intervened and removed radicalism and the willingness to spend money up front, so as to end up with the same creaking system but with some further patchwork and, I fear, some further complexity—not integration and radicalism but disintegration and lack of radicalism—is a terrible and tragic waste. Alas, here we are in a Chamber that is almost desolate, with a Minister of great importance but not the Secretary of State. For reasons we understand, the Minister of State is not present at the moment. We sit in the absence of Treasury Ministers, the Minister without Portfolio and many others. That being so, I hope that, by making these remarks, I shall not suddenly transform the Government's attitude. However, I hope that the Minister, who we know from experience in Committee is especially clear-minded, will take back the message that has been adequately conveyed in many other speeches, and especially admirably by my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. Let the Minister take back the message that there are Members on both sides of the House who have the good will, if necessary, to enable the Department of Social Security to carry forward a genuinely radical programme. There is a prize open to the Government in political terms—alas, from the Opposition's point of view. However, the prize is of sufficient worth for the country as a whole to make it possible for us, the Opposition, to accept that it should be given to the Government. That is a remarkable state of affairs. It will be genuinely a tragedy for the country if the prize were lost as a result of the Department not being able to get the Minister of State's vision—perhaps uniquely for a politician, worked out by himself and set down in writing—into an Act and into a structure that will serve the country well in future.7.4 pm
I must admit that, as a new Member, I was rather taken aback when the Minister of State said at the beginning of the debate that the custom of the House on days such as this was not to talk about the orders before it. That rather threw me, as I had prepared a speech about the orders. With the indulgence of the House, I shall make a brief, fleeting reference to them.
I have in my hand a small, gummed, perforated piece of paper. It is a humble first-class stamp. Yet this stamp is more valuable than one of the social security benefits that we are talking about. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) rather gave the game away, but I forgive him. On page 14 of the order we find listed under the heading "Non-contributory Periodical Benefits" a description that reads:The rate of benefit is 25p. I was about to say that it was the smallest social security benefit in the system. It dawned on me, however, that in terms of weekly amount there is a smaller one. The rate of benefit of 25p will be the same in 1998 as it was in 1997. Indeed, it will be the same as it was in October 1972, when it was last increased. It will be recalled that those were the days when five shillings really were five shillings. The benefit is paid to about 2.4 million pensioners, at an annual cost to the Exchequer of about £30 million gross. I wish to assure the Government Whips that I do not propose to call a Division on the non-uprating of the age addition. However, its presence within the benefits system produces an odd result. On someone's 100th birthday, he or she will receive a telegram from the Queen. On someone's 80th birthday, he or she will receive an insult from the Department of Social Security. What should happen to the humble 25p age addition? Well, it could be abolished. Its abolition would save the Government a little money. Apparently the DSS needs that money, although no one else seems to. The addition would be scarcely missed by the recipients. The alternative would be to make the addition a worthwhile sum—for example, a fiver."Age addition (to a pension of any category".
Perhaps £5 a week.
From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman suggests £5 a week. I suspect that he is sympathetic to the proposal, so he has prompted me. Let us say £5 a week for starters. We could build on that.
Basically, the State pension increases with age. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) perceptively said that there is nothing magical about the age of 80. As she said, it is merely a threshold in the existing system. However, the State pension could be tiered more generally to increase with age. What about cost? As a Liberal Democrat, I am always acutely aware of the costs of our proposals. The net cost, after savings, from income-related benefits and income tax, would be £310 million. Would this money be well spent? I hope that the House will remember the figure of £310 million, because I shall return to it. In my view, the money would be well spent. Why? First, the oldest pensioners are the poorest pensioners. I studied the Government's figures on pensioners' incomes for official verification. The Government take account of the recently retired—those five years after retirement—and those who are more than 75 years of age. I would be more interested in the over-80s, but let us take the over-75s. The latest figures show that the recently retired single pensioner, which is the relevant comparator of the over-80s, for obvious reasons, has an average median income—I am not trying to exaggerate in any sense— after meeting housing costs, of £93 a week. That is the figure for a typically recently retired single pensioner. The typical over-75 pensioner has £77 a week. The figure for the over-80s would probably be lower than that—perhaps not a great deal, but a little lower. There is a £16 gap between the recently retired single pensioner and the older single pensioner, and that gap is growing. Since 1979, the recently retired figure has increased by 52 per cent., while for the older pensioner it has increased by only 40 per cent. There are two fundamental reasons why the gap is growing between the recently retired and the elderly pensioner. Elderly pensioners are more likely to be women—two thirds of the over-80s are women. Low lifetime earnings, which feed through into low earnings-related pensions, and the period spent out of the labour market, particularly before protection was built into the benefits system, mean that elderly pensioners receive lower state pensions. My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) has already said that some people are getting 32p a month. An increasing number of the women are divorced. They had assumed that they would get a share of their husband's pension rights in old age, but divorce has suddenly done away with that. I hope that the Government will soon introduce proposals to rectify that injustice. As women, and because of the jobs they did, they may not have been entitled to join their employer's occupational pension scheme. For all those reasons, women tend to be poorer in old age. There is another reason why the over-80s tend to be poor. It is something with which my incisive brain has wrestled, but I noticed that they retired a long time ago. Why is that significant? Inflation has eroded the value of their pensions. Even the best pensions are typically price-indexed only up to 5 per cent. We have had double-digit inflation since they retired, and many pensions are not indexed to that extent. They have poor pensions because of inadequate indexation. Almost all the over-80s will have retired before the state earnings-related pension scheme became a possibility. They are possibly getting a graduated pension, but not SERPS. Assuming that the economy continued to grow, newly retired pensioners will have had another 15 or 20 years of economic growth, and their pensions, pegged to their pre-retirement earnings, will have grown in real terms much faster than inflation, which is the best that the older pensioners can hope for. So the gap between the newly retired and the very elderly is likely to remain with us.I am interested in the idea of giving a higher pension to the very elderly, but there are two difficulties with that. First, a large number of people in poverty in old age are among the younger pensioner group. How would we justify the proposal to them? Secondly, is there not a problem that, in 10 or 20 years' time, the over-80s may be richer because they are getting SERPS, and perhaps are benefiting from occupational pensions? If we had that proposal, would it need to be phased out at some stage? What would be the political and social implications?
The hon. Gentleman makes two perfectly fair points. I am arguing for a tiered pension that rises gradually with age, not necessarily at the magic figure of 80. Younger pensioners would not necessarily feel aggrieved, because they would expect to be 75 or 80 one day. I would be surprised if recently retired pensioners have a particularly high incidence of poverty. I simply do not believe that. There will always need to be a means-tested safety net. The less people have to rely on means-tested top-ups, as the hon. Gentleman said earlier, the better.
Just as there is a quinquennial review of national insurance contribution rates, so there might be a quinquennial review of the differentials between older and younger pensioners. If the trends are changing, the pension system might be adjusted to reflect that, although, in the past 15 years, the trend has, if anything, gone the other way. I recognise the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but I think that the differential is likely to remain. The proposal is attractive, first, because it is well targeted on the poorest pensioners, without means testing, and, secondly, because old people take up their pensions. Take-up of the basic state pension is almost 100 per cent. The Government are acting on the fact that take-up of income support is poor. Their own figures suggest that 390,000 people over the age of 80 fail to take up their income support. How much does that cost? Interestingly enough, £310 million. I was flicking through the Labour party manifesto this morning—as one does—and came across the extensive section where Labour promises more money to poor people. I have underlined the five lines. It says:One of my various roles in life is to be constructive towards the Government and to offer them a means of delivering their manifesto commitments. We saw earlier that the ones on the little cards are a bit shaky, so let me help them with this one. If the Government were to accept my suggestion and add £5 a week to the pension of the over-80s, that would guarantee that the poorest pensioners in the land—the elderly who are entitled to but do not claim their income support—would get the money. The manifesto uses the word "automatic". One cannot get much more automatic than adding it to their pension. The Government have promised pilots in April, so I asked the Secretary of State what they would do to help elderly pensioners to claim their income support. The answer several days later was that they would let me have such information as is available in due course. They did not seem to know what was going to happen in April, or could not give me a summary of it. That rather worried me. As £15 million had been set aside for these pilots, the Government should know what it was going to be spent on. I offer the Government a chance, even at this late stage, to alter the uprating order to help to fulfil their manifesto commitments. The third attraction of the mechanism to help elderly pensioners is something of an anorak's point, but I hope that the House will indulge me for a moment. State pensions are linked to contributions—those who have poor contribution records get low state pensions—but the age addition is not. Whether one gets lp or £60 a week of state pension, one gets the same age addition of 25p. If I were to put the Government's £300 million into the age addition, it would go to women with poor contribution records just as much as to people with full contribution records. It would be a much more progressive way to help pensioners than any addition to the basic state pension, as that would be reduced for those with poor contribution records. My final observation is that, if pursued over a number of years, this proposal would restore to the basic state pension its historic role. The Minister for Welfare Reform is no longer with us—he is off to talk about Beveridge and the history of pensions. In 1908, the pension was for the over-70s, at a time when a male born in that year could expect to live to 51. In 1998, the pension is for the over-65s, and a male can expect to live to 77. In other words, we have gone from a system that was insurance against living too long to something that gives an inadequate flat-rate benefit to 10 million people for the last 20 years of their lives. With the Deputy Prime Minister, I am a great believer in traditional values in a modern setting. Therefore, we should restore to the pension its role as an insurance against poverty in extreme old age. The recently retired can, by and large, cope. The very elderly often cannot. They Miss out on all sorts of things—the extra winter fuel payment from the Government, for example. They were given £20, not £50, because they were not claiming their income support. They would not miss out on this £5. It would be action today for some of the poorest pensioners in the land. I commend it to the House."We will examine means of delivering more automatic help to the poorest pensioners—one million of whom do not even receive the Income Support which is their present entitlement."
7.18 pm
I shall, if I may, ask a question that has not yet been raised. The Minister will remember that, in his social security uprating statement on 2 December, he made the point that they do not intend
He may also remember that I asked him a brief question about that, because I felt, and made the point at the time, that that meant that there would be a real-terms increase for businesses. He replied simply:"to increase the earnings for the three lower rates of employers' contributions."
thus presumably expecting that employers would not raise their own salaries or those of their employees in line with inflation. Indeed, the explanatory note on this order goes on to say:"No employer will pay more on existing payrolls as a result of the freezing of the bands."—[Official Report, 2 December 1997; Vol. 301, c. 176–84.]—
will"This Order does not impose any new costs on business. Certain contribution rates, thresholds and limits"—
If those brackets had also risen in line with inflation, there would not be any real-terms increase for businesses. What estimate has the Minister made of how much more businesses will pay in employers' contributions to national insurance than they would have paid if the earnings brackets had been increased in line with inflation?"increase broadly in line with the rise in price inflation."
7.19 pm
Like last week's debate on the Child Support Agency, this debate has been interesting and intelligent by House of Commons standards. It is always a joy to listen to the Minister for Welfare Reform, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and today was no exception. Given his knowledge of the background to the welfare state and his thinking the unthinkable, it is well worth listening to him, although I was somewhat puzzled that, when he went through his litany of anniversaries celebrated this year, he failed—perhaps for obvious reasons—to mention that this is the 67th anniversary of a Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, cutting benefit levels, particularly unemployment benefit, which brought back the national Government of 1931. This is a slight parallel to that, given the fear and confusion in the country at this time among disabled people about what might happen under this Government to disability living allowance and other disability benefits. I hope that, during his wind-up speech, the Minister will give a categorical assurance about that if he can.
We were extremely fortunate to have the customary thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks). His contributions to these debates are always worth listening to, and we are indebted to him for what he had to say today in a perfectly calm and reasonable, rather than party political, way, which was the hallmark of this debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb), who made a powerful speech on pensions and the impact of the Government's raid on pension funds in last July's Budget, by abolishing ACT credit dividends. In a relatively short time in this House, my hon. Friend has made his mark as an expert on social security matters and has done sterling work on the Social Security Select Committee. Although it is all the vogue to have coalition politics, with the Prime Minister inviting the Leader of the Liberal Democrats to be on a Cabinet Sub-Committee, I seriously began to worry on behalf of my hon. Friend when the Chairman of the Select Committee kept calling him his hon. Friend. Out of kindness to my hon. Friend, I shall ask the Conservative Whip on duty to disregard that, so that my hon. Friend's career is not blighted. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) made an interesting speech and analysis of how he felt welfare reform should move forward. He made an interesting point about the future of national insurance and said that, if one was to have a genuine and positive reform of the welfare system, the national insurance part of which has now become confused in people's minds, there is a good case for considering replacing it with an alternative system. That is not only thought provoking but worth considering further during this series of reviews. In a fascinating and thought-provoking thesis, my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) gave us the benefit of his views on where welfare reform could and should be moving and put forward the case for replacing the family credit system through earned income tax credit. It was an important contribution to this debate. As always, we benefited from a speech by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), the Chairman of the Select Committee. Our debates on these issues would be amiss without an interesting speech from him. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) said, it is ironic that, only nine months after the election of a Labour Government, one should be able to buy magazines like The Big Issue with the headline, "If you're poor vote Tory. They would do more for you than Blair, says Iain MacWhirter". That shows the confusion and fear—and betrayal to a point—especially on the issue of lone parents, which features in the uprating orders before us, that is felt outside. If there is ever a warning to a political party, it should be that, if it promises all things to all men before an election and then immediately does the exact opposite on election, it will cause grave disenchantment. The 48 Labour Members who failed to support their Government in the crucial vote last December showed that some of them are still prepared to keep the faith. A number of important issues arose from the debate and I hope that the Government will deal with them. I trust that, in replying to the debate, the Minister will answer the questions that remain unanswered or need clarification. I am afraid to have to tell him that there are a number of outstanding questions which I asked on 2 December following the uprating statement in the House. The Minister, gently and courteously, totally ignored the questions, as he used to do during debates in the Social Security Bill Committee upstairs. I know that the Minister is genuinely decent and honourable—I hope that that will not harm his prospects in a Labour Government—and I understand the difficulties that he has had to grapple with on contentious issues such as lone parent benefit, family premiums, and child benefit extra payments, but we would appreciate it today if he answered the questions that we have asked. The Government have dug themselves into a hole over their handling of pensions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said in his opening speech. The July Budget caused untold damage to the pension industry, which will not even be put partially right until at least April 1999 when the re-rating of the rebate for contracted-out pensions will come into effect. That change to the rebate was made in extremis after an emergency consultation with the Government Actuary, as my hon. Friends the Members for Chingford and Woodford Green and for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said. Even then, the changes that the Government made were not what the Government Actuary had advised. The damage to pensions has cost the taxpayer; and the change to the rebate system will cost the taxpayer anything up to half a billion pounds over the next five years. The Minister will no doubt say that that is all being considered in the two pension reviews currently under way, but the main review is set to report with an initial framework by 30 June and the pensions problems need to be addressed now with increasing urgency. The uprating order shows that the basic state retirement pension has been increased in line with the inflation rate of 3.6 per cent. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said, we have heard in the press—it has now been spelt out by the Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) in his speech as part of the road show—that the Government are contemplating means testing the basic state pension. That is not only a fundamental departure from precedent and the way the state pension has operated since its introduction, but it is totally at variance with what the Labour party said before the last general election. The Minister must clarify this issue tonight and say unequivocally whether the Government intend to means test the basic state pension. The Minister has not intervened either to confirm or indignantly refute that, so if he does not completely rule it out in his winding-up speech, we can reasonably assume that the Government are seriously considering it, and that the Secretary of State for Health has let the cat out of the bag. I urge the Minister to deal with that point. Furthermore, I am slightly surprised that the Minister of State and the hon. Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and for Croydon, North did not mention VAT on fuel, because that issue is usually raised in debates on social security benefits and payments. The Under-Secretary has never responded to the point that I made during the uprating statement. Everyone will benefit from the reduction in VAT from 8 per cent, to 5 per cent, by 3p in the pound on fuel bills. That will particularly help pensioners, even if it is—I choose my words carefully so that they cannot be misconstrued—a relatively small amount of money. If the Government had introduced this change on 1 October instead of on 1 September, pensioners would have benefited more. Inflation was 3.6 per cent, in September, and 3.7 per cent, in October. If the change had been introduced on 1 October, pensioners would have had £6 a year more in their pension, so they are now £6 a year worse off, although I accept that they benefit from the reduction in VAT. I shall now deal with the position of lone parents, which is a prickly issue for the Government. I again want to ask a question that has still not been properly answered by the Government in previous debates or at the time of the uprating statement. What principles lie behind the Government's case for freezing lone parent benefits? We all know the reasons why the previous Government announced that they wanted to equalise the benefits system between lone parents and couples with children. The House will be relieved to know that I shall not rehearse the arguments, but that was vigorously denounced by the Secretary of State and, I suspect, by every Labour Member in the run-up to the election. Now 419 of them minus 48 have forgotten the pre-election rhetoric. What is the principle behind the Government's decision to freeze the premium for existing lone parent claimants who will continue to receive payments after April and after the orders on child benefit have been passed? When the uprating was announced, for obvious political reasons nothing was made of the fact that the Government had frozen the premiums or lone parents. I congratulate the Under-Secretary on his deft handling of that question during the uprating statement. In the nicest possible way, he parroted an answer about the amount that the Government were making available to lone parents from April this year. He was factually 100 per cent, correct, but he avoided answering the question 100 per cent. He did not confirm that the Government had frozen premiums. I congratulate him on his impressive sleight of hand. The Government have ensured that payments to existing lone parents in receipt of child benefit are frozen.Has my hon. Friend noticed the presence on the Government Front Bench of the Secretary of State? Is there any reason why she has turned up now? Why did she not attend the debate at the beginning? She is the first Secretary of State since 1978 not to attend an uprating debate.
Order. I do not think that the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) should pursue that intervention.
I shall abide by your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, although, if I am not pushing you too much, I should like genuinely to say that it is a pleasure to see the right hon. Lady.
From April, payments to lone parents with child benefit will be frozen at £17.10 a week. To the best of my knowledge, the Government have never admitted that they have narrowed the differential between what lone parents and non-lone parents receive. The differentiation was £6.05 a week, and it will now be £5.65 a week. As the Under-Secretary said on 2 December, the rate for family premium will be £15.75 from April. He failed to point out that that is what lone parents were receiving last April, so it has been frozen. The differential was to be reduced from £4.95 to £4.70. The Government are not only freezing payments to existing lone parents who, by not reading the small print of the announcement, were led to believe that they would still receive the extra money. They never assumed that payments would be frozen, and that the margin between couples with children and lone parents would narrow and would wither on the vine. I have no doubt that, in the coming years, the Government will continue with this policy, so that benefits will wither into insignificance.Is the hon. Gentleman aware of what the current Secretary of State said in the equivalent debate this time last year? She said:
Does he agree with me that what he is describing is precisely a shaving of the benefits of the poorest families year by year?"We have said that the way in which to stop… the blossoming of the social security budget, and hence the increased burden on taxpayers, is not to shave the benefits of the poorest families year by year."—[Official Report, 19 February 1997; Vol. 290, c. 944.]
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for quoting back at me a quote that I used in numerous speeches in the Committee considering the Social Security Bill, of which he was a member, and in the crucial debate on Report when we had that contentious vote.
Child care was included in the uprating orders and is also in the orders before us tonight. The Minister failed to answer the straightforward question about whether the Government intended to means-test child care costs. He did not even attempt to answer. However, I have an interesting answer that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth), gave to a written question about whether the Government plan to means-test places for after-school clubs. He replied:many schemes already operate a means test—"Funding to establish new out of school childcare provision will come from the receipts of the Windfall Tax, the Out of School Childcare Initiative and the New Opportunities Fund totalling £300 million over five years from 1998 and 2003. Schemes will be free to determine their own fees. Many existing schemes already adjust fees according to the family's circumstances"—
That means—unless I am wrong—that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment is confirming what Ministers at the Department of Social Security have been reluctant to confirm: that child care costs that have been paid for with public money, through the windfall tax and so forth, will be subject to means testing. I hope that the Minister will confirm that when he winds up. For a long time, we have been promised a Green Paper on welfare reform. The issue has featured largely during the last three hours. My hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green described, with some eloquence, the background and the problems that the Government have encountered since May. When the Government came to power then, they announced that they had a Minister at the Department of Social Security whose remit was to think the unthinkable in regard to welfare reform—whose reputation, indeed, was to that effect. As a consolation prize, that Minister was given the Prime Minister's telephone number, so that at any point he could telephone the Prime Minister to share his thoughts on the unthinkable. Unfortunately, however, life did not work out quite like that. We are all aware of the tensions there have been in the Department of Social Security. We are aware of the heavy hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is far more interested in a Treasury-driven cost-cutting welfare reform than in some high-falutin' intellectual review of welfare reform. For the last six months or so, the country has had to put up with the leaking, the counter-leaking, the arguing and the scrapping, as each person fights his corner—and who are the innocent victims in that free-for-all among Ministers? The innocent victims are disabled people, who are terrified and utterly confused about what may well be happening."and we expect that new schemes will wish to consider doing the same."—[Official Report, 30 January 1998; Vol. 305, c. 438.]
Scaremongering.
There is no point in the junior Government Whip saying that. Having been in the House for 10 years, and having listened to the scaremongering of the Labour party, I think it takes a bit of gall for him to sit there and say it.
The Minister for Welfare Reform—whom I am delighted to welcome back to the Front Bench—was given the remit of coming up with an intellectually based, wide-ranging review of the welfare state. As 1 said earlier, his mandate was to think the unthinkable, and to come up with radical solutions.It was to think the workable.
We hoped that even the present Government would come up with a review that was workable—as well as, possibly, unthinkable. The right hon. Gentleman tempts me to stray. Perhaps the problem was that we did not use a broad brush; we did it bit by bit.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said earlier, pressing the Minister, we need to know when the Green Paper will be published. The Prime Minister has replied, unsatisfactorily, to my hon. Friend's correspondence. The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) made the valid point that we fear that the Government will seek to squeeze it out into the public domain on the same day as the Budget in the hope that its impact will be minimised. Conservative Members hope that that is not what the Government seek to do, because we believe that such action would do a great disservice to the future of welfare reform, and would question the Government's commitment to a welfare reform programme that radically addresses the problems of welfare standing and the welfare state rather than being merely a cosmetic exercise imposed by the Chancellor for cost-cutting purposes. The DSS is intimately involved—no doubt driven by the Treasury, in this respect for fairly valid reasons—in the question of the proposed earned income tax credit. That is being trumpeted as a radical welfare reform, but many have suggested that it will be no more than a more expensive version of family credit that will be more difficult to administer. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset dealt with that very well. Whatever the details, however, there should be a unified approach to the welfare system: I cannot impress that enough on Ministers. Individual measures such as the EITC could help, but, in an intellectually rational review, that should only be part of a package that seeks to address the problems that the Minister of State has identified so eloquently not only in the past but—as I said earlier—at the beginning of his speech today. We do not want a cost-cutting Treasury-driven exercise. That would be a wasted opportunity, given that we now have within our grasp the chance to come up with a sensible and radical reform process. Uprating is clearly fundamental to maintaining benefits in line with inflation, and my hon. Friends and I certainly do not oppose the orders. However, I believe that a number of questions, which I have identified, need and deserve answers. I hope that, just for once—if only to humour me—the Minister will answer the questions that we have posed.7.46 pm
Let me begin by reflecting on many of the sentiments that have been expressed in today's thoughtful and wide-ranging debate. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State set the constructive and philosophical basis on which many of the speeches have been built. Clearly hon. Members on both sides of the House see the need for welfare reform, and the need for a debate both inside and outside the House. The public need to be involved in that debate, and today we have tried to take it forward. Although the immediate subject is the new benefit rates that will be introduced in April and the consequential changes to national insurance, all the issues that have been raised show the importance of the welfare debate. Labour Members welcome that.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for his kind remarks about my enthusiasm for the delivery of social security services—what we call active modern service. I do not think enough attention has been devoted tonight to the importance of ensuring that, whatever reforms come along and whatever changes are made, customers—our constituents; the people in the country— deserve the best service possible. As the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) said, we ought to recognise and value our staff in agencies throughout the country. Only this morning, I was speaking to staff at a conference in Brighton. They spoke of the difficulties that they experienced because of the complexities of the current system, and the lack of modern information technology and computers to allow them to do the job that we are asking them to do. I accept that part of the welfare reform agenda is to have a modern, customer-focused service that recognises people's needs.The Minister has been speaking for just three minutes. Does he intend to apologise for the absence of the Secretary of State during the debate? The hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks) apologised for the—
Order. The hon. Gentleman raises matters that are not before the House.
We are trying to have a sensible debate, and the hon. Gentleman is lowering the tone. I was wrong to allow the intervention, and I shall not take any more.
The hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) made an important contribution when he spoke about pensions. I shall read his comments and, in the spirit of co-operation, refer them to my fellow Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who has responsibility for pensions. The hon. Gentleman alluded to my earlier comments in the House about the problems of capital and disregards. The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshirealso spoke on those matters. I have not had a chance to look at my comments in Hansard, but I do not dissent from the view that there are problems with capital and disregards. In our review of benefits and the general review of the welfare state, capital and disregards will have to be considered, because they are part of the impediments, disincentives or complications in the tax and benefits system. I commend, as I always do, the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks) and his three-pronged approach to welfare reform—the attack on poverty, insurance against risk, and the needs of the family. He clearly set out the principles that we must recognise as the welfare reform programme unfolds. We welcome his major contribution. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Smart) rightly highlighted the needs of children and spoke about the importance of a child care strategy. The hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) also spoke about child care and about how the new arrangements will be put in place. We have made it clear that child care clubs throughout the country can organise themselves and charge for services in many different ways. We are not trying to impose a blueprint or a set of constraints on the development of those clubs. It will be up to them to look at local circumstances and needs and see how they can best address them by the provision of quality child care within the framework of our national child care strategy. I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises the value of such a strategy in complementing welfare reform. The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) spoke about pensions and poor pensioners, and the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) also made an important contribution to that debate. I know that, as we review pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen will read their suggestions to see how their ideas, if they are considered sensible within the overall pensions review, can be progressed. We must not forget how much the Government have already done to help poor pensioners. We have recognised that the poorest pensioners are those who are not claiming the benefits, especially income support, to which they are entitled. We shall introduce pilot projects to see how we can improve take-up. The hon. Member for West Chelmsford spoke about VAT on fuel. In spite of Conservative opposition, we reduced VAT on fuel, and that benefits pensioners throughout the country. In addition, we gave an extra £50 and £20 to pensioner households this winter for fuel bills, and that will be followed through next winter. No one should pretend that nothing is being done to help the poorest pensioners. Such help is an important item on the Government's agenda, and it will continue to exercise our minds as the general pensions review unfolds. The hon. Member for Newbury asked a specific question about national insurance contributions. I hope that I can give him a satisfactory reply, but if he requires further clarification I shall ensure that he gets it from my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen. No employer will pay more on existing payrolls as a result of our freezing the bands. If each band were to be increased by, say, £5, employers would pay £130 million less in contributions in 1998–99. A higher Treasury grant would have to make good that reduction in the national insurance fund income. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's question, but if he wishes to write to me on the matter I shall be pleased to respond to him. Everyone who has contributed to the debate is awaiting the Green Paper with bated breath. That is understandable because it is the next stage in the debate, in the House and outside it, on welfare reform. My right hon. Friend made it clear that the Green Paper will be published before the next uprating statement. I can confirm that. Every day is a day fewer to wait, and I am sure that the Green Paper will be welcomed by all hon. Members.Will the Minister give way?
I will give way, but it is for the last time.
Perhaps the Minister will at least say whether the Green Paper will be published on Budget day. A clear statement that it will not be published on that day would put our minds at ease.
The hon. Gentleman presses too hard. I have made the position plain: it will be published before the next uprating statement.
Hon. Members spoke about disability benefits. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security, who I am pleased to see in her place, has already introduced extra safeguards to improve the quality of decisions that reduce or remove entitlements as part of the benefit integrity project. When my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State met disability benefits consortia, they assured them that we will continue to review the operations of the project because we want benefit payments to be right and decisions to be fair and to be seen to be fair. Groups of and for disabled people have been involved in the project from its early stages, and we shall continue to work closely with them. That exercise is completely separate from the welfare reforms that are being considered. It must be right to ensure that, throughout the benefits system, payments are right and decisions are fair. I repeat the Prime Minister's assurance that no decisions have been made about the reform of sickness and disability benefits. When options are available for discussion we shall consult disabled people's organisations and others who have an interest in these matters. We have had a wide-ranging and interesting debate that has shown cross-party concern for the need for welfare reform. The Green Paper will be the new focus for that debate, and I commend the orders to the House.Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating and National Insurance Fund Payments) Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
That the draft Social Security (Incapacity for Work) (General) Amendment Regulations 1998, which were laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.— [Mr. Kevin Hughes.]
Petition
Poole Harbour Bridge
7.59 pm
I am here to present a petition requesting that Poole harbour bridge be maintained in the national roads programme. The bridge is vital for the future infrastructure of Poole. It has great public support throughout the borough and the district around Poole. It is needed for the sensible development of the port and to take traffic out of the centre and old town of Poole, so that people's quality of life is improved and the town's prosperity increases.
I do not wish to say much more on the context, as I secured an Adjournment debate at the end of last year and I am sure that the House is aware of the strong arguments in favour of the project. I briefly thank the people who organised the petition: the eight members of the bridge action team are Ann Stribley, Tony Gardner, Colin Cartwright, Bernard Ewart, Brian Leverett, Brian Ellis, Chris Bulteel and Graham Mason. I say a big "Thank you" to The Daily Echo, which is our main newspaper in the Bournemouth-Poole area and which gave much support to the campaign, and of course to Poole borough council, which always supported efforts to improve the prospects for the area. The petition carries 24,536 names. It says:To the House of Commons
The Petition of the people of Poole and District
Declares that for the future prosperity of the Town, and for the relief of traffic congestion, there is an urgent need for an additional route into the Port of Poole.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Environment Transport and the Regions to retain within the National Roads Programme the proposal for the new Poole Harbour Bridge, and that its construction be scheduled as soon as may be practicable.
And the Petitioners, being residents of, traders in and visitors to the Borough of Poole, remain
Not many projects in the national roads programme would attract 24,536 names in support.Yours sincerely
To lie upon the Table.
Nhs Dentistry
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr Kevin Hughes.]
8.2 pm
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this matter. I could be very, very grateful because the main business has finished so early but, despite the fact that my colleagues are here in great force, I shall respect the things to which we always pay verbal tribute. This is half-term week, and the Minister's family are in London, so we shall not keep him here until the end of the available time. I hope that, in return, he will be particularly nice, helpful and responsive.
Fifteen years ago next week, I was elected to this place. When I was elected, one of the places that I knew from the beginning I would be proud to be the Member of Parliament for was Guy's hospital. One of the best things about the hospital is that it has one of the greatest dental hospitals in this country, with one of the greatest research records and ratings. That is at one end of the market of dentistry, as it were, and it is important. At the other end, I am lucky to have, within 10 minutes' walk from the front door of my home in Bermondsey on the Old Kent road, a very good dentist. I am pleased and grateful for that. In many other parts of England, however, national health service dentistry is becoming a contradiction in terms. In many parts of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, NHS dentists are increasingly becoming an endangered species. The message that I want above all to give to the Minister is that it is for this Government to take urgent action, because otherwise, in many regions, NHS dentistry could become a thing of the past. We look tonight—this is the first debate on dentistry since the White Paper on the health service was published—for a demonstration of a clear commitment to dentistry as a core part of the NHS. I should like the Minister to address two large subject headings. One is inequalities in dental and oral health and the other is inequity of access to dental services. As in many other sectors of the NHS, NHS dental services are very much a lottery—of postcode and of geography. We cannot have a national dental service if access to it depends on where people live and if, in large parts of the country, people cannot register with an NHS dentist. With your leave, Mr. Deputy Speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) will, I hope, say a few words that will reflect the fact that, in rural areas, the problems are much worse than in some urban areas. Many of my colleagues, not just in the south-west but in rural areas and in Wales, have exactly that experience. I do not lay the blame at the Government's door. The 18 years of the previous Government saw a steady erosion of access to NHS dentistry. There was a reduction in services provided on the NHS for free and in the number of people who were registered with an NHS dentist. Government figures from the Minister's Department show that, over the past two years, the number of people who are registered with an NHS dentist has dropped by 800,000, and that the number has been falling at the rate of approximately—this is worrying indeed—500,000 per month so far this year. Those are frightening figures, and we need severe, urgent and effective action to start to remedy that decline. It is even more important that we do so because the variations in the dental health of the population as a whole are unacceptably high. I entirely accept that the Government want to end inequities of health, with unequal distribution of health and welfare. Dental and oral health is just as much a part of that. Before I elaborate on those two subject headings, I put three questions to the Minister, because this is a good opportunity to do so. First, there is little in the White Paper about dental care. Does he accept the premise that dentists should be as much involved in primary care groups as other practitioners in the health service? I should be happy if he gave me a considered answer later, but I ask him seriously to consider that issue. Secondly—this point has been put to me by people in the service—it seems nonsense that, if people go to their dentist and an oral inspection reveals something that needs treatment by a consultant, they cannot be referred directly from the dentist to the consultant; they have to go from their dentist to their general practitioner and then to the consultant. If that is true, we could save much money, bureaucracy and delay by short-circuiting that. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) has put it to me that we could open up dental services a bit. If people go to an optician, they receive a prescription for something, but they do not have, as it were, to cash it there; they may be able to have it dispensed somewhere else. If, for the foreseeable future— I shall have this debate with the Minister on another occasion—there are to be charges and different prices for any dental services, people should be able at least to shop around. They should not, as it were, be caught, being given the diagnosis and the remedy—for which they have to pay out of their own pocket—in the same place. On inequalities in dental health, my colleagues and I in this Parliament, as in previous Parliaments, believe that the rising cost of dental care is one of the most crucial factors in deterring people from regular dental check-ups. We believe strongly—the evidence is strong—that this is a false economy as regular checks reduce the need for emergency care, which ultimately is more costly for both the individual and the state. People aged between 25 and 35 are apparently much less likely than any other section of the population to be registered with a dentist. That stores up problems for the future, because that is exactly the period during which problems can set in. It is an anomaly—I know that the Government are reviewing those issues—that people have to pay for a consultation with their dentist, whereas they can see their GP for free. That is not logical. Charging for dental care is just as much a disincentive to good oral and dental health as charging for a visit to a GP would be a disincentive to good physical health. That is demonstrated by the fact that the over-75 age group is the only section of the population in which dental registration is not declining, because that group does not face a bill for dental care. My friend and colleague, one of the professors at Guy's dental school, tells me that not just dental examination but oral examination is hugely important. There are as many deaths in Britain from oral cancer as there are from cervical cancer. I understand that we are talking about double the population because we are talking about men and women, but nevertheless the figures are not insubstantial. More than 50 per cent, of people with HIV have a diagnosable, specifically recognisable lesion and many of them are spotted, before people have understood that they are afflicted by the HIV virus, by dentists and dental practitioners; and 80 per cent, of people with AIDS have a specifically recognisable lesion that dental practitioners can spot. Therefore, we are talking not just about care of the teeth but about many other things which present in the mouth as health issues first. I hope that the case for better access is well made. The figures are there to justify it and I hope that the Minister will give a positive response. I come now to inequity of access in terms of geography. In reality, we have a rationed dental service—rationing by post code and by local provision. In my time in the House, we have never debated whether there should be rationing, let alone that sort of rationing, and it has never been agreed as an NHS policy. If it is not an agreed NHS policy, there should not be rationing, so we would argue that we need to remedy the fact that it is. At the moment, we effectively have not a two-tier service but a two-type service, depending on where one lives. Access to NHS dentistry is a hit-and-miss affair depending on which town or county one lives in. That means that there is not equality of access to dental care. The priority must be dental registration. According to my figures, as many as 40 per cent, of children and 50 per cent, of adults may well now not be registered with a dentist. If NHS dentists become scarcer, those figures will rise. The British Dental Association tells me that at least 5 million people may be dropped from dental registers this year simply because they had not visited their dentists during the previous 15 months. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to make a simple point about that.Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should urge all dentists in our constituencies to allow those people who have not visited their dentists in the allowable period back on to their lists, and encourage dentists to do everything that they can to keep people visiting them so that they automatically stay on their lists?
I agree without reservation. I hope that I can persuade the Minister that, given that the 15-month watershed was not of his making but was inherited from his predecessor, that policy should be reversed so that we need no longer have such a watershed which, as the hon. Lady implied, causes so many people to drop off the list.
Many people today—perhaps millions—are deregistered without knowing it. Before Christmas, the Liberal Democrats highlighted the issue, but the Government did not respond as acutely and urgently as they could to ensure—the hon. Lady's point—that people knew what was going on and to ensure steps were taken to prevent people from falling off the list, as some now have. Staying on the list is the only way of avoiding prohibitively high prices for dental treatment. Those not on the list do not get free or NHS-paid-for dental care.rose—
I would rather not give way, only because of my undertaking to the Minister, which is important. The hon. Lady can have a word with the Minister later.
There are two specific follow-on problems. Patients who want to register sometimes cannot find a dentist with whom to register, and some cannot get back on to the list where they were and cannot find anywhere else. That is a particular problem in rural areas. Those who are unregistered and need emergency treatment are in trouble, and it can cost them a fortune. There are shortages of places to go to the dentist but there is also an increasing shortage of dentists. That is a result of the systematic and growing underfunding of dentists. Many dentists have been driven to private practice because of the difficulty that they faced in delivering high-quality treatment within the fee scales. The fee scales set three or four years ago by the Government clearly had a huge consequence of people leaving the NHS and going into private practice.Is my hon. Friend aware that, in some parts of mid-Wales, dentists who were practising have closed down and left, leaving people with a choice of either going private, waiting or having no dental care at all? In effect, many people in the country now regard dentistry as being privatised through the back door.
My hon. Friend speaks about a part of Wales which he and I know well, and people do have that perception. They think that the NHS has lost much of its dental service, which has been privatised. That was never the intention, and it should not be the intention. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) told me earlier today that she had never understood why, from the beginning of the NHS, dentistry and ophthalmology have been treated separately from core services so that people obtain them from different places rather than going to the GP or a common place of provision.
rose—
I shall give way for the last time, or the Minister will not have his pizza with his kids.
Will my hon. Friend address a particular point which a number of my constituents have raised— that there is no NHS dentistry in large chunks of north Cornwall? Many of them have paid considerable national insurance contributions over many years. They thought that that was an insurance policy to enable them to take advantage of an NHS. That is simply not there. The occasional provision in a caravan of a salaried dentist, when and if they can get there, is simply not an NHS dentistry service. I hope that, in addressing that wider problem, my hon. Friend will ask the Minister to deal with the specific question of the rural areas which simply cannot now recruit new dentists to provide that service.
My hon. Friend makes the point well, and I am sure that the Minister is seized of it. That is not an isolated example. We could, as I presume the Minister would accept, present dossiers of evidence from probably every county in England and, arguably, most counties in Wales too, making exactly that point. Often there is no dentist at all, or one only occasionally, and that is not a comprehensive health service.
Dental services are underfunded, and it is not surprising that dental practitioners have reduced the dental services that they provide. The BDA estimates that £40 million needs to be invested in NHS dentistry. I do not pretend that that figure is perfect. On 1 January 1998, when millions of people fell off the dental registers, Ministers announced an extra £10 million for the service. That is welcome money, and I heard the Prime Minister's reply to my right hon. Friend the leader of the Liberal Democrats at Question Time today. However, investment from the war chest of money being stashed up by the Government in things such as dentists, dental training and dental health is far better than keeping it locked in the bank and paying off a bit more of our national debt. We need the money and investment to increase registration rates, retain the dentists within the NHS and guarantee the availability of emergency treatment for all non-registered patients. We need an effective strategy for oral health promotion. That means the reintroduction of free dental checks to encourage regular visits and free treatments for all, but particularly for children, the elderly and those on low incomes. Secondly, as we have long argued, dental health must be an integral part of national and local health promotion initiatives. Thirdly, I make the gentle suggestion of a White Paper, or a Green Paper, on dentistry. That would be welcome. It could reasonably be done and I make that as a constructive suggestion. In due course, it would be a helpful way forward. For understandable reasons, the White Paper has little in it about dentistry, and oral health was not mentioned at all in the Green Paper on public health. Fourthly, we need incentives to attract dentists into poorly served areas and to bring them back from the private sector into the NHS. Health authorities need support in that respect. Lastly, we need an increase in the number of dentists being trained. Core dental services must be put back in the NHS mainstream, and that means free dental services in terms of checks and provision. If the health of the nation is to be improved, the health of people's teeth and mouths is as important as the health of any other part of their anatomy. We hope that the Government will respond, because it is vital to the health of the nation as a whole.8.19 pm
I wish to talk briefly about two issues—rural access and the public health implications of the decline of NHS dentistry. Some places have suffered more deregistrations than others, and places such as Cornwall, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Hampshire appear near the top of the league tables. Access to NHS dentistry is often most difficult in rural areas, where access to other services can also be difficult.
My awareness of the difficulties of access started seven years ago when my dentist in Taunton told me that he could no longer keep me as an NHS patient. Because of the fee structure, he felt he was unable to provide a high-quality service. When I raised the issue in the local press, I was denigrated by local Tories who said "Problem, what problem?" The Conservatives' interest in the subject is evident tonight by the empty Benches. One dental practitioner in Taunton accepts new NHS patients. In the whole of my constituency, only two practices accept new NHS patients. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), people from Frome must travel 15 miles to Wincanton to find the nearest dentist who will take new NHS patients. Across Somerset as a county, only 10 out of 71 practitioners accept new NHS patients. More worryingly, less than half those practices will take new child registrations. There are many other problems of access to public and community services in rural areas. I should be the first to say that those problems have not appeared in the past nine months. They are the result of 18 years of under-resourcing by the previous Conservative Government. That is why the Conservatives' new-found concern about the countryside is taken by rural dwellers with a pinch of salt. I do not blame the lack of NHS dentistry on the Government. I agree with the Prime Minister who, when Leader of the Opposition, told the then Prime Minister:People now want to know what the present Government are going to do about it. I shall now refer to the public health implications of the reduced availability of NHS dentistry. Even if people can find an NHS dentist, two things put them off visiting the dentist—fear of the drill and fear of the bill. In a poll published two years ago, 50 per cent, of people said that they would go to the dentist more often if check-ups were free. The figure was even higher among young people— 63 per cent, said they would go more often if check-ups were free. The implications of check-up fees deterring people from going to the dentists are that there will be a reduction in oral health. I am told by local GPs that there has been increasing demands on their services caused by poor oral hygiene, gum disease and mouth infections which would previously be seen at an early stage and prevented by a dentist. Regular dental check-ups—as my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) said earlier—help the early detection of other illnesses.The British Dental Journal said this year that there was increasing evidence that dental health—especially gum disease—may be linked to coronary heart disease. I am not a biologist, and I do not understand the link, but I am sure that the scientists could explain it. The link is especially obvious in men aged between 40 and 50. That could put poor oral health alongside smoking and fatty diet as a significant factor in the development of heart disease. We heard earlier that as many people die from oral cancer as from cervical cancer, and the figure is about the same as for those who die from skin cancer, which is not gender specific. In a survey of Members of Parliament in 1997, 90 per cent, of Labour Members said that they wanted to see a reduction in oral cancer as a public health target. The incidence of oral cancer is increasing, and yet dental check-ups could detect it at an early stage. As we know, early detection greatly improves the survival rate for any cancer. Two weeks ago, in a response to my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders), the Prime Minister said that the Government"I do not know how he dare mention dentistry in the NHS after what his Government have done to it."—[Official Report, 15 October 1996; Vol. 282, c. 586.]
Liberal Democrats also want that as soon as possible— but we want it sooner rather than later."want as much NHS dentistry as possible".—[Official Report, 4 February 1998; Vol. 305, c. 1039.]
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I shall refer to one aspect of NHS dentistry—the deregistration of patients. This is a subject of some seriousness, which The Times and The Sun have highlighted in recent days, giving rise to headlines like "Tooth of the Matter" and "MP Knows the Drill." It is an issue of national concern.
The British Dental Association has estimated that up to 8,500 patients per constituency will fall off the lists as a result of the change from 24 months to 15 months. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) has said, that is equivalent to up to 5 million patients in 12 months. The British Dental Trade Association said that, far from enabling preventive care, "deregistration hinders accessible dentistry". It also pointed out that the NHS White Paper mentions dentistry only twice.The hon. Gentleman points out that the trade associations say that there is a great danger to dental health as a result of deregistration. Is it not the case that all that a dentist needs to do is to say that he will accept patients back on to his books, and then there would be no problem? Is it not the responsibility of dentists, as much as anyone else, to solve the problem?
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. However, there are already enormous difficulties in getting on to an NHS dentist's list, and I suspect that people who lose their place will find it difficult to get back in future. In a letter to me on the subject, a private individual said that he welcomed the
Those examples highlight the seriousness of the issue. I hope that the Minister will seriously consider the restoration of the 24-month period."efforts to publicise the true state of affairs that exists here and doubtless across the country."
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I congratulate the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) on securing the debate, and I thank him for honouring the commitment that he gave to me in private. He will allow me to get home and, I hope, to see the kids, which will be refreshing in the middle of the week.
It has been a good, well-tempered debate. I hate to break that trend, but it is important to recognise the scale of the problem. We should do what we can to address it, but we must not create a crisis out of a problem and, in his early remarks, the hon. Gentleman was in danger of doing so. I shall reply in some detail to the points that he made. That is not to say that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have not managed to raise some important issues. I have noted with a great deal of interest that they have been expending considerable effort and not a little ingenuity on raising one particular issue: the registration of patients. I understand, for example, that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) is even offering photo opportunities of himself with his mouth wide open. That is always extremely dangerous for a politician. I would ask him to take heed of the age-old adage that all politicians should bear in mind: before opening mouth, make sure that brain is engaged. I am sure that in his case that will be perfectly true. I shall deal with the issue of the registration period in a moment, but I shall first set out why NHS dentistry is not about single-issue slogans. The issues that we must address are extremely complex. Anybody who pretends that there is an immediate solution to some of the difficulties we all face has simply got it wrong. The Government value the important contribution to public health that dentists make through their work. Since the NHS dental service was established almost 50 years ago, there have been major improvements in the oral health of the population, especially among children. It is important that we recognise that, for all the problems, we have taken great strides forward. Our generation, and those that will follow, are in a far better position than the generations that have gone before. Much of that is due to the success of the NHS and the considerable contribution that dentists have made to it. However, we should not rest on our laurels. The Government are committed to NHS dentistry. Dentistry has achieved much in the past, but we want it to achieve even more in the future. We want it to improve further, both to reduce inequalities in oral health and to improve the population's access to NHS services—two of the points made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey. I should like to make one very important point, to which the hon. Gentleman alluded. Improvements in oral health depend not just on the availability of dental treatment. Prevention has a key role to play, too. For example, there is overwhelming evidence that fluoridation of the water supply reduces tooth decay in children. At the moment, legislation leaves the water industry, which was privatised by the previous Government, in the position to decide whether to agree to local health authority requests for new fluoridation schemes. Therefore, a health decision has been taken by privatised water companies. That seems to me and to the Government to be anomalous. The Government believe that the position needs to be reviewed, but we of course acknowledge that hon. Members on both sides of the House hold extremely strong views on fluoridation. That is why the public health Green Paper, "Our Healthier Nation", which we recently published, seeks to take account of those views and—I hope—find a way forward. It is also important to acknowledge the contribution that dentists can make to prevention through oral health promotion and education and through screening. We also took that into account in preparing the Green paper. There is an important role for dentists in the early detection of pre-malignancies and cancers of the mouth—an issue raised by the hon. Members for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) and for Carshalton and Wallington. For the future, further work needs to be done on how best to diagnose and manage such conditions. We are looking at those issues. To coin another old adage, prevention is better than cure. We are exploring ways of making that come to life in oral health. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey referred to dental checks and his party's manifesto promise, on which it fought the election, to restore free dental checks. He is well aware that there is help to protect the most vulnerable groups, but that the Government are considering such issues, particularly dental health checks, in the comprehensive spending review. I remind him that the comprehensive spending review is being conducted in the context of our election manifesto commitment that, if someone is ill or injured, there will be an NHS service to help, and that access will be based on need and need alone. We are exploring those issues.If, as I hope, the Government are persuaded by the argument and the preventive health care case, which the Minister has endorsed, on restoring free dental checks, they will be unreservedly supported by my party, and applauded for doing so.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. In due course, the results of the comprehensive spending review will become known. Although prevention is important, treatment has a an equally vital role in tackling oral health problems.
Before the Minister leaves the subject of prevention, will he comment on the previous Government's abolition of the school dental service, which did hugely valuable work and in which prevention was very much the order of the day? I know that there are arguments both ways, but will he at least give an undertaking to examine the particular role performed by the service? It was extremely valuable in deprived rural areas—and no doubt in deprived urban areas—where going to a dentist was not a normal family habit, as it was in better-off areas.
We must have in mind the outcome that we want. We all want improvements in the population's oral health and, particularly, we want guarantees that children's oral health is safeguarded. There are a variety of ways of doing that. The school dental service was one way; ensuring access to an NHS dentist is another. When I address the way in which we are trying to improve access, perhaps I shall be able to offer the hon. Gentleman assurances that we are determined to tackle the access problems that he and his hon. Friends have raised.
It is vital that NHS dental services are properly planned, to address the differing health needs of different parts of the country. As the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey is aware, we set out in our White Paper, "The New NHS", how every health authority will work with NHS trusts, primary care groups, other primary care professionals, the public and other partner organisations to develop a health improvement programme for each area. I shall give the hon. Gentleman two assurances. First, in response to the direct question that the hon. Gentleman asked, we expect primary care groups to engage with dentists in their area. That is extremely important. It is important that primary care groups are not just the sole preserve of family doctors. We want other primary care professionals, dentists and community nurses equally to be engaged. Secondly, and equally important, as the health improvement programme for an area is the local strategy for providing health and health care, it is extremely important that dentists are involved in the process of drawing it up. Indeed, I would expect oral health to feature in health improvement programmes generally. I hope that that helps to satisfy the hon. Gentleman's concerns on that issue. I am determined that, as part of the new NHS, general dental services should contribute increasingly to the improvements in public health that we seek. We are thinking how best to use the resources available to meet those objectives and improve the responsiveness, efficiency and fairness of the service. So far, so good. I think that there is unanimity across the Floor of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Stop now."] I cannot stop now, because it is important that we nail a couple of accusations that have been levelled, and put the issue in perspective. The hon. Gentleman said that NHS dentists are becoming an endangered species. I have heard others say that, nowadays, no one can find an NHS dentist. That is an absolute myth. Most of the population find NHS dentistry accessible. The tens of millions of people registered with dentists prove that. So does the record number of dentists on health authority lists—more than 19,500 at the end of December last year. In other words, the vast majority of patients in the vast majority of places for the vast majority of the time are able to get access to an NHS dentist. That said, it is obvious that the running down of NHS dentistry by the previous Government has left certain parts of the country with acute and, in a few cases, long-term problems of access to general dental services. Where that happens, it is unacceptable, and we are determined to take action. I remind the House that, from the inception of the NHS, dentists have been free-standing, independent contractors. Where they decide to locate their businesses—for that is what they are—is a matter for them. Tragically, in the view of some, they choose to locate their businesses in the leafy shires rather than in hard-pressed rural areas or the inner cities, where oral health problems are arguably greatest. If anyone pretends that he has a simple answer to that complex problem, I should be delighted to hear it. I do not believe that there is a simple answer. We need to plan incrementally to make improvements year by year. That is precisely what we want to do, but the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) has a big idea.I wish I had. I want to go back to the point that the Minister made about the severity of the situation. Will he confirm that a dentist who reduces the NHS participation in his list from 90 per cent, to 10 per cent, is still included on the list of NHS dentists? Will he confirm that as a result of that, the number of dentists taking NHS patients can increase, but the number of patients on anyone's list can fall dramatically? As my hon. Friends have said, in several parts of the country that appears to be the case.
I endorse what the Minister has said about the way in which that has happened and the role of the previous regime, but the situation is serious in many parts of the country. As he correctly said a few moments ago, they happen to be parts of the country in which people can least afford to pay for dentistry. That is why there is such a crisis in those areas. I accept that it is not everywhere, but where it is an issue, it is a serious one.I agree. This debate is in danger of becoming almost too consensual. I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Government not only recognise the problem but are taking positive steps to solve it. The investing in dentistry initiative was launched in September to, may I say, an almost universally warm welcome from, among others, the British Dental Association. It is an extremely important initiative. It will improve the availability of general dental services and extend the benefits of good oral health, by focusing help on the areas with the most serious problems.
Among a range of possibilities, grants may be made available to dentists to expand existing practices or set up new ones in return for long-term commitment to the NHS. Schemes may be able to help newly qualified dentists and those with domestic commitments who want to return to work part time. Up to £9 million has been made available for 1997–98. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) raised local concerns, which I well understand. I can tell her that of the 200 applications that we have so far received from dentists wanting to expand their commitment to NHS dentistry as a result of the Government's initiative, some 73 have come from the South and West region of the national health service. I recognise that there are particular problems in her area. She may be pleased to know that 13 proposals for investing in dentistry schemes were recently received from Somerset health authority. Of those, one was for an orthodontic clinic in Taunton and one was for improvements to a surgery in Taunton. All those proposals are currently under consideration. We are extremely encouraged by the positive response that we have had to the investing in dentistry initiative. We are giving dentists incentives to come back into NHS dentistry. We are providing meaningful opportunities for them to re-engage with their NHS patients. On 1 January this year, I was able to announce £10 million for next year to maintain the Government's drive to improve access to NHS dentistry and to tackle oral health inequalities through the initiative.I am grateful to my hon. Friend for agreeing to a bid to the initial investing in dentistry fund, which will mean that next summer in South Swindon we shall have for the first time in a long time a dentist accepting NHS patients. However, that is only a step. Will my hon. Friend assure me that the new bids from South Swindon will continue to be considered until we have a satisfactory NHS dental service in my constituency?
I can assure my hon. Friend that I expect to see many more bids come in over the course of the next few months and beyond and that all the bids we receive will be looked at seriously. I am aware of the problems in Swindon and in the Wiltshire health authority area generally in respect of access to NHS dentists. We have made a start on addressing those problems, and we shall continue to tackle them. It is important that we target resources on the areas where there are most problems, such as that of my hon. Friend and of the hon. Member for Taunton.
I am delighted that the Minister recognises that there is a problem in the south-west, in Somerset and in Taunton in particular. Earlier he referred to dentists preferring to work in the leafy shires, but by many people's definition, the county town of Somerset might have appeared to be just such a place. I hope that the bids that the Minister gets from Taunton and Somerset will receive a favourable response.
They will be properly and fully evaluated, but, as the hon. Lady is well aware, whether they receive a favourable response is a different matter. In due course, a decision will be made.
The Minister has made a perfectly good point about the history of independent contractors and the resulting anomalies and huge differences—for example, my area is well served, but that of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard) is badly served. We would encourage him to act in a way that is consistent with the White Paper and require health authorities to plan for the necessary provision of dentists in their area; and to continue both incentive and disincentive schemes to make sure that gaps are filled and that, if someone wants to be a dentist in a place where there is no need for one, that person will not be greatly supported by the public funds of the NHS.
Overall, the Government currently spend about £1,000 million, net of patient charge revenue, on general dental services in England, but that expenditure is wholly dependent on the level of activity of NHS dentists—it is demand-led. It is affected by a range of factors, including changing treatment patterns and a continuing shift to part-time working, especially as there are now more women dentists, which is a good thing, in my view.
Moving on to the points raised by hon. Members and by the BDA about some patients finding it difficult to get dental care under the NHS in future, apparently as a result of changes to the registration period for continuing dental care, I want to say loudly and clearly that that is simply not the case. Let me explain why. From 1 April 1996, the previous Government made changes to the registration period for adults and children. Those changes were agreed with negotiators from the BDA. The registration period for both adult continuing care patients and children in capitation was harmonised to provide a period of continuing dental care for 15 months following each course of treatment. It had previously been 24 months for adults. Dentists receive a monthly fee for each child and adult registered with them under the NHS. That fee, which is to ensure that the patient receives a period of continuing care from the dentist with whom he or she is registered, is paid whether or not the patient attends the dentist again during the registration period. Some recent publicity has given the incorrect impression that a new policy has been introduced with the intention of deregistering patients from the end of December last year. Not only is that untrue; it is nonsense. Patients lapse from dentists' lists if they have not seen their dentist since registering. Before that change, each year, an average of 4.5 million patients lapsed from dentists' continuing care patient lists in England alone, indicating that they had not returned to their dentist in two years. That means that the dentist had been paid, but no continuing care had been provided. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues may think that that is a useful way in which to spend public money on NHS dentistry, but the Government and I do not. We want NHS dental moneys to be made increasingly available to encourage the active care of patients, because we are serious about improving the oral health of the population. That means that treatment must be targeted where it is most effective. Patients who attend the dentist regularly will be unaffected by the change, as their registration period will roll forward, but much has been made of the implications for patients whose registration will lapse as a result of the shorter registration period. The hon. Gentleman, his colleagues and the BDA have implied that patients subject to the shorter registration period will lose access to an NHS dentist. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) rightly said, however, that will happen only if individual dentists refuse to re-register lapsed patients. It is for dentists to decide. If they decide not to re-register patients who were previously on their lists, their overall NHS work load, and therefore their income, will decline from previous levels. Evidence gathered in recent months shows that that is not happening to any significant extent. Indeed, many dentists seem to have been most anxious to encourage patients back to register again. In case anyone is worried, the Government have made it absolutely clear that the money previously paid to dentists over the longer registration period, which has now been released, will not be lost from NHS dentistry. Any savings will be reinvested in the general dental service and targeted at achieving better oral health among the population. The shorter registration period already means that payments to dentists are now focused on patients who receive active care from them. That is the right priority, which will ensure real oral health gains. The Government are moving the agenda for dentistry forward. As the hon. Gentleman is aware, a range of initiatives have already been taken, including the piloting of personal dental services, which will allow greater flexibility in the delivery of local dental care. I am aware that a bid from his area is currently being considered. We inherited problems connected with the availability of NHS dental services and the considerable variations in oral health across the country. By the careful use of the resources available to us, and by seeking greater efficiency, flexibility and fairness, we shall tackle those inequalities in oral health status and improve access to NHS dental services. When we do so, I hope that we shall have the support of the hon. Gentleman and his party.Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes to Nine o 'clock.