House of Commons
Thursday 9 December 2004
The House met at half-past Eleven o'clock
Prayers
Mr Speaker in the Chair
Oral Answers to Questions
Trade and Industry
The Secretary of State was asked—
Miners' Compensation
In the past four years, as part of the largest health compensation scheme in the world, the British Government have paid more than £1.1 billion to compensate more than 171,000 miners for injuries relating to vibration white finger, and more than £1.2 billion to more than 221,000 miners for injuries relating to respiratory diseases. We have paid a total of £2.3 billion to nearly 400,000 people, with individual payments of up to £130,000 for vibration white finger and £370,000 for respiratory disease. We have paid a total of more than £75 million in the most affected constituency.
When does my hon. Friend expect full payment to be made to private mine claimants?
The House will be pleased to note that we have made compensation payments to miners who spent all or part of their working lives in private mines. However, I regret that it took far longer than it should have done to persuade private mine owners to accept their liabilities and agree a formula for compensation for 2,600 miners who have submitted claims. I have asked for claims to be expedited so that payments can be made as quickly as possible.
The Minister cannot stress strongly enough the fact that the hold-up in many cases is for miners who worked for British Coal and subsequently for private employers such as Cementation—there is a long list—when the pits closed. The net result is that miners worked for those companies for a few years. British Coal is prepared to settle as a result of the Government's intervention, but the private mine owners are holding out. My hon. Friend must lay it down strongly that they must pay their fair whack of the bill and get the matter settled.
I am certainly willing to do that—indeed, I have been doing that. Private mines use two excuses: first, they dispute the length of time people spent in the mines; and, secondly, it is suggested that the amount of dust to which they were exposed in the private mines might have been different and that, therefore, matters could not be proportioned for someone who had worked for former British Coal for 80 per cent. of the time and for a private mine for 20 per cent. of the time. We have said that that is nonsense and asked for the proportion to be worked out in relation to the amount of time spent in private mines. I understand that all the private mines have now agreed to that. Payments have already been made to some miners but, to my mind, that is not only four years too late but far too late. We will certainly convey a strong message to private mine owners.
My hon. Friend knows that some of my constituents have received substantial sums from the fund. Does he know that more than 3,000 miners in the United Kingdom have received less than £200, whereas solicitors have received substantial funds for those cases? Will he confirm that there is an agreement on a minimum payment of £500 for every ex-miner who suffers from respiratory disease? If that is the case, when will the payments be made?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for championing the case of miners who have received woefully inadequate payments. That has happened because compensation payments can be drastically reduced, for example, if a miner had a history of heavy smoking. I have been pressing for a minimum compensation payment of £500 to be funded out of the solicitor's fee, which is £2,300 per case. Solicitors have agreed that in principle and I urge them to implement that agreement in full without further delay. So far, we have paid solicitors more than £400 million for their services. I do not want any delays in making the minimum payments of £500.
Fraud
On 10 August, we published details of a new national strategy for intellectual property crime to ensure that the Patent Office, the police and trading standards officers work together more effectively to tackle counterfeiting.
Will the Secretary of State acknowledge the tremendous contribution that the creative industries make to this country's prosperity and condemn those who illegally copy video games, other videos and DVDs? They not only undermine our future prosperity, but the funds that those illegal activities generate are often used for serious organised crime. Will my right hon. Friend therefore assure me that the Government will not only condemn people who do that but take action against them?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Britain is a world leader in the creative industries, and I completely condemn the counterfeiters who threaten jobs and profits in those industries. It is estimated that about a quarter of the counterfeiters are also involved in drug smuggling and money laundering. That is why we are strengthening our efforts here and working with other Governments internationally to try to catch the criminals behind the counterfeiting.
I share the Secretary of State's view that this form of fraud is significant and important. What would she say to businesses in my constituency and elsewhere about the fact that missing trader fraud—or carousel fraud, as it is also known—has increased significantly in recent years? What steps has she taken over the past six months to try to address that problem?
As the hon. Gentleman says, this is a matter of real concern, and we have asked trading standards officers and the police to work more effectively together to deal with the problem.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the work that she is doing on intellectual property and counterfeiting matters, but will she acknowledge my disappointment at the apparent insufficient zeal that is being displayed by the Department of Trade and Industry in pursuing those UK companies, their associates and agents, who, it is alleged, have been involved in bribery and corruption, and who will now be subject to far less severe strictures than had been expected when the first announcement on this matter was made in the spring of this year?
I am sorry that my hon. Friend is disappointed. In fact, the new bribery and corruption laws will provide us with some of the strongest anti-corruption laws in the world. I am sure that he agrees, however, that we should not impose unnecessary bureaucratic regulations on our exporters. We should work with them and demand only the information necessary to ensure that they comply with our bribery and anti-corruption laws, which is precisely what we and the Export Credits Guarantee Department are doing.
Does the Secretary of State agree that, while the entry of China into the World Trade Organisation was a welcome move, China has serious deficiencies in its approach to the protection of intellectual property rights? What steps have the Government taken to help China through those deficiencies, and what success have they had?
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of China's entry into the WTO. I have taken every opportunity—most recently, when I was in Beijing in October—to raise the issue of counterfeiting and piracy with the Chinese Government. They are aware of the problem, and I am glad to say that British companies operating in China are now beginning to see evidence of a more effective approach by the Chinese authorities. However, we will keep the pressure up, in order to protect the intellectual property of our companies.
My right hon. Friend is quite right to say that people are moving out of the drug trade into counterfeiting. In Scotland, we have done a lot of work, particularly under the provisions of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, to get money back from the drug barons. Will she assure me that the Government will do their level best to ensure that the counterfeiters are also dealt with under those provisions, so that we can get the money back from people who are taking food out of the mouths of others, particularly those in the music industry? If things go on like this, it will have a detrimental effect on the music industry.
My hon. Friend is right. I have discussed this matter frequently, particularly with representatives of our music industry. We shall certainly ensure that the police do everything possible to use the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 against these criminals, and the Serious Organised Crime Agency that we are establishing will also improve the way in which we deal with this kind of organised crime.
Fisheries
The European Commission imposed provisional safeguard measures in August to levy additional duty on imports above a certain level. With our strong ally in this cause, Ireland, we continue to press the case of Scottish salmon farmers.
I thank the Minister for that answer. Indeed, I commend the Department, and the Minister for Trade and Investment, the hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Alexander), who I know has acted in this area, for their efforts to date. Unfortunately, however, aquaculture in my constituency remains an industry under the cosh, and safeguarding measures, important though they are, can help only in the short to medium term. In the long term, the industry needs a level playing field on which it can compete with countries such as Norway. That will involve the elimination of some of the extra regulatory burden and charges such as Crown Estate rents. Such charges do not have to be paid by the industry in Norway. What will the Minister do to progress that agenda?
The Department of Trade and Industry has been working closely with the Scottish Executive and colleagues there who make representations about the tremendous pressures on the industry. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has written to each member state counterpart to press the case, and our co-sponsor, Ireland, is supportive as well. This issue will be subject in early January to a proposal from the European Commission, and it is hoped that a decision will be taken by the end of next month, with measures being introduced at the beginning of February.
The hon. Gentleman will know, as he takes a keen interest in this issue, that there is no certainty of support from other member states, but I have outlined just one of the steps that my right hon. Friend has taken. The Prime Minister has also made representations, as have other Ministers. We are acutely aware of the pressure that the industry is under, and will do what we can to alleviate that. The best way of supporting it, however, is to ensure that it is not subject to any sort of unfair competition.
May I, too, pass on the gratitude of the industry to the Minister, his colleagues and officials who have been fighting the case in Brussels? Is he aware of the latest figures from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, which show that the Norwegian industry has been losing £100 million a year over the past three years? Is that not strong evidence of the existence of illegal and underhand subsidies being paid to that Norwegian industry?
Certainly, I know that my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade and Investment has discussed these issues directly with Norway. I am particularly grateful to him for briefing me on that issue earlier this week. We know of the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Western Isles (Mr. MacDonald), how hard he presses the interests of his constituents, and the meetings that he has had with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and others. We are aware of the issues and want to make sure that other member states, which seem more sympathetic to Norway and the practices that have come in for great criticism than to the problems facing his constituents and our colleagues in Ireland, address this issue. We believe that we have the firm support of the European Commission in this matter, and my right hon. Friends are making sure that they apply as much pressure as they can and advance the arguments with the 23 other member states, to make sure that we get a successful resolution early in the new year. We realise the threat that is posed to our industry.
Will the Minister bear it in mind, before he goes down the traditional Labour-EU protectionist route—which militates against the interests of the British consumer and, in this case, those of a poorer country, too—that these safeguards would cause Norwegian salmon to be exported to third countries to the detriment of Chilean producers, who in many instances are considerably poorer, and who have a right to sell their salmon, too?
I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman speaks for the House in relation to this matter, but let me touch on an issue that I have not covered: Chile. We are aware that it was excluded from the provisional measures because its imports were assessed as being less than 3 per cent. of the EU value. I do not see Norway as a poor country, and I do not believe that if there are unfair subsidies, anyone in the House would support them.
UK Competition Law
Over the past 18 months, DTI Ministers and officials have had discussions with all parts of the newspaper and magazine industry about the proposal to remove the exemption of vertical agreements from prohibition under UK competition law.
I thank the Minister for his answer. He will be aware of the current deadlock in the industry and the impact that changes to the newspaper and magazine supply chain will have on the viability of small independent retailers. Given the vital role that small independent retailers and newsagents play in our communities, particularly the 254 small retailers and newsagents in Leicester that sell less than £300 worth of newspapers a week and are particularly at risk, will he assure the House that he will seek a resolution to the deadlock and provide legal certainty before 1 May 2005, when the competition law changes take effect?
As the hon. Gentleman will know, there has been a great deal of discussion about the vertical agreement. Indeed, as I studied it horizontally this morning I saw a clear need for both sides of the industry to consider the impact of last year's decision so that they would have time to think about how they should come together. DTI Ministers have met representatives of all sectors, including the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, and are well aware of the issues that concern them. The Office of Fair Trading is also talking to the industry, and we hope to make some announcements along the lines that the hon. Gentleman wants by early spring.
Does my hon. Friend accept that small independent newsagents in every constituency in the country are being increasingly squeezed by the superstores? They have always had a problem with the wholesalers. We want those small newsagents to survive, because they are an important part of the community network throughout our constituencies.
I agree that it is vital to maintain the small newsagent network. Newsagents have been assiduous in expressing their views about their relationship with the wholesalers. The OFT's purpose in talking to both sides of the industry is to secure an agreement, and I hope that one can be reached.
Post Office
The Government have invested more than £2 billion in the Royal Mail and the post office network since 1999. We have appointed a strong management team to the Royal Mail, which is successfully turning the business around. I am delighted to announce that I am reappointing the chair, Allan Leighton, for a further three years.
I am sure the Secretary of State realises that the post office network plays a vital part in keeping rural communities together. The closure of post offices such as the one in Watermoor in Cirencester, leaving the elderly and the vulnerable to walk an additional three quarters of a mile, is extremely unwelcome. What will the Government do to prevent further closures once funding ends in 2008?
May I make a positive suggestion? Should not all post offices be able to sell all Government services—passports and driving licences, for instance? That would enable them to remain more viable than they would be otherwise.
I know that the hon. Gentleman is extremely concerned about the impact of the Watermoor closure. Both Postwatch and the Post Office thought about it very carefully. I understand that most customers are already choosing to shop in Cirencester, and there are direct bus services from Watermoor to the main branch in the town centre. [Interruption.] There are bus services to the centre. As for rural services, we have indeed extended funding until 2008. I know that the Post Office is making enormous efforts to find an alternative to the branch that is currently in Tesco in Wootton-under-Edge, which is also in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I am sure he will regret the fact that Conservative public spending cuts would mean less money for the post office network in future, not more.
I welcome the reappointment of Allan Leighton as chairman of the Post Office, but does my right hon. Friend share my concern about the way in which the consultation process works? She and I, along with the late Jim Marshall, wrote many letters to try to prevent the closure of post offices in our Leicester constituencies, but our representations were rejected. Petitions were presented, but Post Office officials refused to meet Members of Parliament before the deadline. It looks as though decisions are made and the consultation process is a farce. When she welcomes Mr. Leighton to his reappointment and invites him for a cup of tea and a mince pie at the Department, will my right hon. Friend ask him to have another look at a process that leaves everyone frustrated?
I understand my hon. Friend's concern, but in fact, we took steps last January, after considerable concern had been expressed in the House, to strengthen the consultation process and sort out the problems that had arisen. I simply do not accept his assertion that that process is a sham; indeed, as a result of it, 400 Post Office proposals were either withdrawn or changed. In the case of Leicester, I am glad to say that, as a result of the representations made by my hon. Friend and I and the late Jim Marshall, two post offices that had been slated for closure—in Clarendon park and Abbey lane—have been reprieved.
The Secretary of State may be aware that yesterday I was in her constituency—I did her the courtesy of informing her in writing—and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Gill), looking at the installation of Community Point in post offices, which have sadly been let down by the failure to follow up the Your Guide experiment. Does she accept that this initiative by the National Federation of SubPostmasters might offer the way forward, the ultimate objective being that at least 5,000 of these Community Point units be installed throughout the country? Will she undertake to ensure, through the office of the e-envoy, that Departments across government use this service, which can print out up-to-date Government forms and eliminate the risk of stocking out-of-date ones? It could ensure that all post offices are used as a Government information network, to the benefit of their own business and of the public. Will she ensure that this experiment actually delivers the results that Your Guide did not?
As I think the hon. Gentleman is aware, the very good Your Guide experiment, in which we invested nearly £25 million, simply did not deliver the increase in customers that the sub-post offices were looking for. However, the investment that we have made has proved enormously successful, in that 21 million bank account customers are now able to do their banking at post offices, thus hugely increasing the Post Office's potential customer base. I certainly hope that the current Post Office experiment in e-government connections will prove successful, and I shall discuss this issue with the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly), and with the Post Office, directly.
While I welcome the changes that were made last January, there is still huge concern about the urban reinvention programme consultation process. Decisions are being made, and consultation is then taking place upon their implementation. Although such changes happen in only a minority of cases—including in my own constituency—this process falls a long way short of the assurances that the Post Office gave to the Trade and Industry Committee last year, which Ministers subsequently gave to me. Communities should have a say in the planning of their local post offices' facilities, but that is simply not happening.
I understand my hon. Friend's concern, but the Post Office has more branches than the whole of the banking and building society systems put together, and because there are simply too many branches for the number of customers, it is just not possible for our sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses to make a living. In order to get proper community involvement in these decisions, we changed the consultation process so that decisions are made on an area basis, instead of one by one. I am afraid, however, that even with the very substantial support that we are providing for post offices, it is up to Post Office Ltd.—the management— to decide which branches will be viable in future, and to ensure that 95 per cent. of its customers, and if possible more, are within a mile of a post office branch. That is the way to get a strong post office network that can deliver for customers and go on playing a strong role within communities.
Is the Secretary of State aware of the continuing concern of many pensioners about the new system for paying pensions at post offices? The blurb says that they are not supposed to give their PIN to anybody, but what about those pensioners who rely on a neighbour to collect their pension because they are house-bound? Giving their PIN away exposes them to a considerably greater risk than simply asking someone to pick up their pension, but what are they supposed to do, particularly if they do not have a neighbour who is a close friend?
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I am glad to say that recent Department for Work and Pensions customer research shows that the vast majority of customers are happy about opening a Post Office card account and using the associated card. Of course, the system was designed to take account of the point that he makes, so that an elderly person who cannot collect the benefit at the post office can make an arrangement for a trusted person to do so on their behalf. I will check the precise point, but my understanding is that, in those circumstances, another person can be given their own PIN in order to get the cash payment. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman with further details on that point.
Marine Renewable Energy
We have announced a £50 million marine renewables deployment fund that will provide continued support to wave and tidal stream technologies. That builds on the £15 million of research and development support granted to the sector since 1999.
Does my hon. Friend agree that Britain has the skills, the ability and the resources to become a world leader in wave and tidal energy technologies? The opportunity must not be frittered away as previous Governments frittered away our opportunities with wind power. In that context, will the Minister do everything he can to speed up the delivery of the £50 million? I understand that there is some disappointment in the industry that the funding is subject to further consultation, which does not end until next August.
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that this country has the skills and resources necessary to become a world leader in the area of wave and tidal technology. I plan to put forward a consultation paper in January, but the consultation will be short, lasting only about four weeks. We hope to make an announcement at Easter and to start to deploy the funds shortly afterwards. I do not know where my hon. Friend got the month of August from, but it is wrong, as we plan to deploy the money well before then.
The Minister will be aware that one of the greatest supports that could be given to marine renewable energy would be to have transmission charges that encouraged rather than undermined renewables in the north of Scotland. He will also be aware that last week Ofgem delayed a decision on transmission charges, saying that further work needed to be done. Obviously, without knowing the level of transmission charges, it is very difficult for renewable operators to plan ahead. Will the Minister give us some idea of the time scale for taking a decision on those charges?
We have had discussions with Ofgem about its view on the transmission charges regime and it assures me that it still hopes to be able to hit the original target date of April for putting the better system of transmission charging in place. We hope that the transmission charging system will operate effectively. There has been some further delay and further consultation on the part of Ofgem in relation to determining the right mechanism for charging. As I said, though, Ofgem assures us that it still expects to hit the delivery date of April.
One of the challenges of offshore power generation is indeed the cost of transmission charges to the mainland grid. I wonder whether any joint talks have taken place between those planning offshore wind generation and those planning offshore wave and tidal generation? It would seem to me to be common sense to use common transmission networks.
Since the Energy Act 2004, which came into force in July this year, there have been considerable consultations between both offshore and onshore organisations and companies, and Ofgem. A report is expected to be published shortly on how best to make progress on the issue of transmission. It is important to get it right, so it is important to conduct the consultation in a way that takes account of the needs of both offshore and onshore wind transmission.
In a genuine and constructive effort to help the Government avoid being just all talk and to accelerate the realisation of a UK marine renewable energy source, will the Minister agree to meet me and my constituent, Mr. Alex Southcombe, who has invented WaveMaster—an outstanding innovation currently being successfully trialled? On the basis of my research, it provides one of the best early prospects of commercially enhancing this important marine renewable.
I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and his constituent.
I am delighted to hear that and look forward to doing it quickly.
Does the Minister therefore concede that banking everything on wind turbines, especially on land, which attract such understandable hostility because of their effect on local communities and amenity, is heading Britain in the wrong direction? Does he agree that the development of the widest mix of renewable technologies is now, more than ever, a matter of urgency, given the reality of climate change and the Prime Minister's humiliating admission yesterday that his Labour Government are projected to fail to deliver on their manifesto pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent. by 2010?
I am just trying to remember quite where the Tories were on funding wave power or renewables. Their funding was pretty well non-existent. The Government are on course to overshoot our Kyoto target of 12.5 per cent. of the basket of greenhouse gases. We are on target to achieve 14 per cent. We have additionally set ourselves a higher target of getting to 20 per cent. by 2010, and we have always said that it would be tough to hit that target, but we have six years to go. We cannot insulate the UK from the impact of climate change, which affects the whole northern hemisphere, but we are putting a range of funding into the renewables exercise and certainly are not committed to just one funding package. There is £500 million for low-carbon technology—including £50 million for marine technology—as well as £66 million for biomass energy, £31 million for solar photovoltaics and £170 million for offshore—not onshore—wind farms. We are also funding research into the hydrogen economy. What the Tories completely failed to do, we are delivering on.
Renewable Energy
We aim to generate 10 per cent. of electricity from renewables by 2010. The renewables obligation, together with the climate change levy, will create £1 billion per annum in financial support for renewables by 2010, including £117 million in capital costs for offshore wind farms, £10 million of which will be for Scroby sands, off the coast of my hon. Friend's constituency.
If we are to stand any chance of meeting our renewables target, is it not vital that wind energy developments that are commercially available now proceed as quickly as possible? We have gone offshore because of the slow pace of onshore wind farm development, but is not there a risk that offshore developments could be obstructed by unreasonable objections? For example, although there is no evidence that wind farms adversely affect birds, some environmental organisations are gearing up to take a strong line. Will my hon. Friend ensure that unreasonable objections do not obstruct the development of offshore wind farms? Do we not all have to learn to co-exist if we are to reduce CO 2 emissions and tackle global warming?
My hon. Friend is right to say that we all have a vested interest in ensuring that we tackle the problems caused by climate change. It is also important that discussion of wind farms be based on facts rather than myth. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has advanced some concerns and we are studying them so that we can obtain a factual basis and people can be sure that they make decisions on wind farms on the basis of the reality rather than fears and concerns.
There is plenty of evidence, not just from this country but from California, that wind turbines are the cause of death of many birds. Would not it be better if the Government concentrated on redoubling their efforts on energy conservation? A small increase in energy conservation would far outweigh the huge subsidies paid for the useless and inefficient wind turbines littered throughout the country.
My great concern is that the Conservatives are getting themselves into a position in which they are running down the whole concept of wind turbines, which are the only feasible way in which we can hit the 2010 target of achieving 10 per cent. of electricity from renewables. The Conservatives are creating a massive credibility gap for themselves. By offering a local veto on planning decisions, they are not recognising that there is a national as well as a local interest. In effect, they are offering little or no response to climate change issues, which is bad not only for the Conservative party but for serious political debate on climate change in this country.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the best places for renewable energy sites would be existing generation locations, especially nuclear and former nuclear power stations on the coast? Will he look carefully at licensing arrangements with the new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority so that we can loosen restrictions to ensure that wind and other renewables can be tied into those stations?
We have just issued new planning guidance, which sets out a long-range strategy for dealing with applications for renewables, not just for wind technology but for a series of other renewables, and will enable various opportunities to be realised and deal with various concerns. Our objective is to encourage growth in renewables and my hon. Friend's point about identifying the areas where renewables would be most appropriate is a good one.
As the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) said, one problem with wind farms is the high cost of their connection to the grid; another is that they can connect to the grid only through overhead transmission lines, which are costly, environmentally unfriendly and lose an enormous amount of electricity. How does that square with the Minister's renewable energy policy?
The creation of a new transmission infrastructure is a key issue on which Ofgem is consulting. Following the enactment of the Energy Act 2004 in July, Ofgem started a wide consultation on how we can ensure that we have the right transmission systems for both onshore and offshore wind generation. The same applies for renewables in the broader case, where we are building up micro-generation and considering how even homes can feed back into the grid the extra energy that they might create.
Although I agree that we need to develop renewable energy sources, does my hon. Friend agree that, where there is a cluster of applications such as those that completely surround the site of special scientific interest at Thorne Moors in my constituency, they should be looked at as a whole and not on a site-by-site basis?
At present, the planning rules require that various applications be considered on their individual merits. We are looking at how we can ensure that cumulative applications, where a series of applications is in situ, can be considered in terms of their overall impact on an area. In some situations, that can be done with one inquiry, while in others there will be individual inquiries for different applications, but it should still be possible to consider the cumulative effect of all the applications in those individual inquiries.
Inward Investment (South Yorkshire)
UK Trade and Investment promotes the UK as the top inward investment location in Europe and works in partnership with all the UK's development agencies to attract the maximum inward investment. UK Trade and Investment is expanding its inward investment operation and will make further resources available to Yorkshire Forward, which is the inward investment promotion agency for Yorkshire and Humber.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware that South Yorkshire is a great place to live and work but that it has also been one of the poorest regions of the European Union and receives objective 1 funding. As the future of regional funding is still unclear, can she give me an assurance that the Government will make getting investment into Britain's poorer regions a high priority, ahead of other regions?
I agree with my hon. Friend about the attractions of South Yorkshire. I can assure her that the three quarters of regional funding that comes domestically from the Government have made an important difference in South Yorkshire. Over the past year, the regional development agency alone helped to create 16,500 jobs and 730 new businesses, and brought in £275 million of private sector investment. Of course, all that activity is under threat from cuts proposed by both Opposition parties.
Africa
During our presidency of the EU, we will seek to make significant progress on the Doha development round, including a successful conclusion to the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in the autumn. A successful development round would deliver enormous benefits to Africa and other developing countries.
The "Everything but Arms" agreement offers the potential for greatly increased exports from the poorest countries in Africa to Europe, but that potential, sadly, has not been realised in a large increase in the volume of exports. What proposals will my right hon. Friend take to her colleague Trade Ministers in the EU for changes of policy to use that agreement in a way that substantially increases the export opportunities for the poorest countries in Africa, which, in turn, of course, would increase the opportunities for us to export goods to them?
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point, and the most practical change that we can make is to alter the rules of origin, which restrict the capacity of the least developed countries to take advantage of preferential access. In the longer term, of course, we must deal with the problem of tariff escalation on value-added goods to enable African countries, in particular, to produce not only primary produce, but industrial goods as well.
The common agricultural policy is inefficient, costly and extremely damaging to the export potential of developing countries, particularly those in Africa, which all hon. Members would seek to help and assist. What positive, aggressive action will the Government take to amend the CAP to achieve what the world wants: a fair deal for the poorest countries of the world with agricultural industries?
The hon. Gentleman is right and he will be aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs played a key role last year in negotiating new, radical reforms to the CAP. I am delighted to say that, since then, the EU has signed up to an end date for the export subsidies on agricultural products that are devastating to developing country farmers. We still have more to do and we continue to press hard for a substantial reform of the sugar regime. Again, that is vital in Africa. We are helping to lead the way on all that in Europe and will continue to do so to help to make poverty history.
My right hon. Friend may have had the opportunity to read early-day motion 333 on the proposed economic partnership agreements between the EU and African countries. They are bilateral agreements that seek large- scale liberalisation of African trade, but they fail to discuss the terms of the CAP. Does she share my concerns that such agreements could undermine the benefits of the multilateral negotiations that are offered at the WTO and that they fail to address the development needs of African countries, which are badly hindered by the CAP?
Our current system of European trade preferences with countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific is simply not compatible with WTO rules. That system must be replaced by 2008. We are negotiating economic partnership agreements with those countries, so that they can continue to gain as much access to European markets as possible, but we are absolutely clear that the agreements must be negotiated in a way that enables the development needs of those countries to be met. I am glad to say that we have already given some €20 million to those countries to help them to negotiate agreements that will be good for their people.
Energy Markets (Western Europe)
Ministers have frequently discussed the development of the EU's internal energy market with other member states. I recently met the new Commissioner for Energy, Mr. Andris Piebalgs, and raised the issue of the EU gas market, in particular, with him a few days ago. We are looking for further steps by the Commission, in particular, to ensure compliance with the 2003 gas and electricity directives.
Does the Minister agree that one reason why British manufacturers, in particular the engineering industry, suffer high energy costs is that they cannot get access to low-cost competitive gas supplies because of the monopoly exercised over the German and Dutch pipeline and the lack of common carriage? What concrete legal action can he take to ensure that the principles of the directive, the single market and the European competition rules are enforced?
We need to ensure that there is broader liberalisation of the market for energy in the European Union. We have ensured that the Commission is aware of our wish to see that liberalisation proceed apace. The aims of the 2003 directive, which are binding on other member states, require a legal unbundling of network activities from supply, the establishment of a regulator, the publication of network tariffs, the reinforcement of public service obligations and the introduction of monitoring of security of supply. In dealing with some of the problems that the hon. Gentleman identified, especially with regard to Germany, we are engaging not only with the Commission, but with other member states directly to ensure that we move forward with that liberalisation.
Is not the biggest problem with the market in Europe the fact that the consolidation of companies took place ahead of liberalisation—exactly the opposite of what happened in this country? That makes it difficult for consumers on the continent to switch suppliers and, indeed, difficult for companies in this country to compete on the continent in the way that the continental companies compete in the UK. What can the Minister do about that?
I agree that the problem arose because the European market developed differently from the UK market. However, directives place obligations on European member states. We have made it clear to the European Commission that, for gas in particular, which is more of a problem than electricity, we want it to apply those directives. The directives were passed, they were broadly accepted and now they have to be applied.
Minister for Women
The Minister for Women was asked—
Pension Gap
I regularly meet my right hon. Friend to discuss a range of issues, including women's pensions. Today's women pensioners, of course, benefit substantially from the pension credit, winter fuel payments and so on. The state second pension and the home responsibilities credit are helping women in particular to build better pensions for the future.
I thank the Minister for that answer, which highlights the complexity of the situation that faces women pensioners and, indeed, all pensioners. She will be aware that the average state pension for women is £51 a week. As a result, some 63 per cent. of women pensioners rely on means-tested benefits. She may also be aware that the National Association of Pension Funds reported this week that a citizen's pension based on residency would be
"do-able, affordable and achievable within six years".
Will she join the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in veering towards the implementation of that idea?
The hon. Gentleman is right that most women who have retired do not get the full basic pension. There is no doubt that, for future generations of pensioners, and of women in particular, the citizen's pension would deal with that problem. That is why I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend is looking at the option of a citizen's pension. We will do so, of course, in the context of the final report of the review group led by Adair Turner.
Does not the fact that, for all sorts of reasons that are not of their own making, so many women get to pensionable age without achieving a full set of stamps prove that, if we followed the advice of some other political parties to put all our money into the basic state pension, we would do nothing to tackle the pensioner poverty that many women face? Will it be a major aim of a third term for a Labour Government to ensure that we abolish pensioner poverty for women?
My hon. Friend is right. We have already done an enormous amount—I see it every day in my constituency—to tackle the shocking problem of pensioner poverty that we inherited. If we had simply linked the basic pension to average earnings, we would have given the poorest pensioners far less help than we have given them through the guaranteed minimum pension and now the pension credit. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for their enormous effort and the success that they have had in reducing poverty among the current generation of pensioners.
How can the Minister come to the Chamber and praise the Chancellor of the Exchequer for what he has done on pensions when, in fact, every year since assuming office he has taken £5 billion or more from pension funds? In 1997, Britain had more money in funded pension funds than the rest of the European Union put together, but now we are in a worse position than most other comparable countries entirely as a result of the actions of this Government and the Chancellor. Of course, it is women, whose pension funds tend to be the smallest, who have suffered most. After seven years in government, for the Minister to stand there and say that as far as the basic state pension—
Order. I was wondering when the hon. Lady was going to stop.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I regret that the hon. Lady, for whom I have a great deal of respect, was not willing to give us credit for what we have done for women who have already retired. They have benefited hugely from the pension credit, the winter fuel payment and all the help, including free television licences and so on, that we are making available both to people who have retired and to future generations of pensioners. I hope that she supports, as I do, the home responsibilities credit and the state second pension, which make an enormous difference to women who are now in work, and the Pension Protection Fund to protect people who have contributed to their occupational pension but whose firms have simply walked away. I think that she should give credit where it is due.
I am pleased that the Minister has an open mind about the citizen's pension, but does she acknowledge that many women receive lower pensions because they are carers? The nature of caring means that many of them are part-time carers who also hold down a part-time job. They do not pay contributions, so has she considered introducing a carer's credit to help them to have a pension in their own right in the shorter term?
The home responsibilities credit, both for the basic pension and the state second pension, is already helping some women with caring responsibilities. I agree that more needs to be done to support carers and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is looking at that.
Engineering
The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology was launched in September to tackle the barriers that hinder female participation in these sectors throughout the career lifecycle. In particular, it will support higher education institutions to aid the retention and progression of female undergraduates on science, engineering and technology courses and into the labour force.
I am grateful to the Minister. In fact, I have a brochure produced by the resource centre, so we are thinking alike. I do not know whether she saw the Richard Dimbleby lecture last night—I had the privilege of attending it—which was presented by James Dyson, who promoted engineering in this country. Is she aware that, in China, 60 per cent. of graduates are in science, engineering and technology but that the figure is only 35 per cent. in this country? Of that 35 per cent., only 5.3 per cent. are women, so we have a long way to go. What steps will she take to ensure that 50 per cent. of engineering students are women?
There has been progress in the past 10 years. The increase in the number of female science, engineering and technology graduates has been larger than the increase in the number of their male counterparts. However, we still have a long way to go, which is why the resource centre was set up. It will also find ways, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, to overcome misapprehensions about engineering, which is no longer about grubby, heavy industrial workplaces but at the cutting edge of our economic success. The manufacturing forum, for example, which met for the first time last week, brings together representatives from business, trade unions and so on. One of its key priorities is improving the image of manufacturing, particularly so that we can attract the many skilled and talented women engineers, both for their own good and for the success of UK manufacturing and engineering.
Public Companies
On Tuesday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry launched the DTI's new booklet, "Building Better Boards", to coincide with the publication of the new female FTSE figures, which show that 17 per cent. of all new directorships went to women in 2004. Those figures are better, but they are not good enough, which is why the booklet and advice issued by the DTI spells out the business case for diversity and the different ways in which companies can develop and recruit a much wider range of talent.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend and the DTI on that booklet and on their work to ensure that board members in companies are drawn from the widest calibre of candidates. Can she do anything further for the 31 companies in the FTSE 100 that still have no women on the board?
First, like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on Tuesday, we can communicate the business advantages: for example, businesses with women on the board experience an increased return to equity. Secondly, we can make sure that talented people who have gained board experience in the voluntary sector are better enabled to get on to boards in the private sector, which is something that we are working on alongside the Cass business school. Thirdly, we can set an example in government by the way in which we use the head-hunter contract. We expect that contract to bring the widest range of people on to public sector boards, which should impact on good practice in the private sector.
Business of the House
Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?
The business for next week will be as follows:
Monday 13 December—Opposition day [1st allotted day]. There will be a debate entitled "The Government's Failure to Improve School Discipline" followed by a debate entitled "Family Justice". Both debates arise on an Opposition motion, followed by proceedings on the Consolidated Fund Bill.
Tuesday 14 December—Remaining stages of the Mental Capacity Bill.
Wednesday 15 December—A debate on "European Affairs" on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Thursday 16 December—Remaining stages of the School Transport Bill.
Friday 17 December—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the following week will be:
Monday 20 December—Second Reading of the Identity Cards Bill.
Tuesday 21 December—Motion on the Christmas recess Adjournment.
I should like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for January will be:
Thursday 13 January—A debate on the reports from the Environmental Audit Committee on environmental crime and the courts and environmental crime: fly-tipping, fly posting, litter, graffiti and noise.
Thursday 20 January—A debate on the report from the Work and Pensions Committee on the work of the Health and Safety Commission and Executive.
Thursday 27 January—A debate on fire safety.
I thank the Leader of the House for the business. Will he join me in expressing the House's condolences upon the death of security officer Mark Peters following a road traffic incident yesterday? Mr. Peters had worked here for almost seven years and had given very good service. Our thoughts are with Mrs. Peters, their two children and their whole family.
Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the other place on the improvements now being made to the Constitutional Reform Bill, particularly the saving of the Lord Chancellor, who will remain a lawyer and who will sit in the other place for many years to come? Will he confirm that when the Bill reaches us, the Committee stage will be taken on the Floor of the House, as is usual with constitutional measures?
Is the Leader of the House able to report on any progress on my request for a full foreign affairs debate so that we can discuss the situation in Africa and the middle east?
May we have a statement on the new contract for NHS dentists? On Tuesday this week, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), having previously claimed that "dentistry's sorted", said that the reforms were "proceeding on time", and went on to claim that
"dentists recognise that we are moving in the right direction . . . and . . . we will be able to implement the new contract by October."—[Official Report, 7 December 2004; Vol. 428, c. 1027–1029.]
Today we hear that the British Dental Association has withdrawn from discussions because the new contract will mean that dentists are not able to spend enough time with each patient. The Leader of the House is always saying that we are safer with Labour—not our teeth, though. May we have that debate?
May we have a debate on hospital cleanliness? According to the South Wales Evening Post—a regular read of mine—the Leader of the House's constituent, Mrs. Jennings, a former hospital cleaner, was shocked by the filthy condition of a Swansea hospital where she was a patient. She is quoted as saying:
"If something isn't done soon in Morriston, then superbugs will be the norm."
There has been a huge rise in MRSA under Labour, and 5,000 people a year are dying as a result. The Leader of the House likes to say that it is safer under Labour—not in hospital, it is not. May we have that debate?
Finally, the Leader of the House will remember that the Government used to publish an annual report on themselves. [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] We have not seen it for a while. Could the Modernisation Committee perhaps consider whether in future it could be written by the Home Secretary? Would the Leader of the House care to comment on his own assessment for the year:
"If there's anyone who upsets colleagues more than I do, it is Peter."?
I think that I got off very lightly, actually.
I am grateful for the opportunity that the hon. Gentleman has given me to put on record the House's gratitude to Mark Peters. He was a young father with two young children, and his wife Bernadette has been plunged into this dreadful tragedy. In common with other security officers, he was employed at the vehicle search point at Black Rod's Garden Entrance. He did a valuable job for us, and I am sure that the whole House will wish to express our sympathy and condolences to the family on the tragedy that has befallen them.
On the Constitutional Reform Bill, the truth is that we remain committed to the reform and modernisation of the constitution of the United Kingdom. The Bill has not yet been considered in the Commons; of course, such a major constitutional measure will need to be debated on the Floor of this House. Despite all the comings and goings in the House of Lords, this is not about the title of the post. It is about separating the judiciary from the Cabinet, ensuring that there is an independent judiciary, and ensuring that the Secretary of State concerned, who is ultimately responsible for the delivery of the justice system—for example, under the current Secretary of State there has been a dramatic increase in the recovery of fines—is not required to spend a lot of time on the Woolsack rather than on ensuring that the criminal justice system works efficiently. That is what the changes are designed to deliver, and they will do so.
I am still considering the hon. Gentleman's request for a debate on Africa and the middle east. We are in a very congested part of the timetable at the moment, with Second Readings coming through and so on. The middle east and Africa are vital issues, and the Foreign Secretary will continue to report to the House, as he always does extremely diligently.
On dentistry, we inherited an absolute shambles from the Conservatives. They closed training places for dentists and cut the provision of NHS dentists. We have been recruiting more dentists and have opened 47 NHS dental access centres in areas where they are needed most; they now treat more than 300,000 patients a year. I am sorry, but I am not going to take any lessons from Conservatives on dentistry. There is a problem, but we are tackling it and we will solve it.
On MRSA, I am well aware of the problem, and my constituent has indeed raised the issue with me. However, the truth is that it has been made more easy to identify and more transparent as a result of the recording procedures that we have put in place, which did not exist under the previous Government. We are driving forward a programme to deal with that.
All these issues, whether it is the provision of dentistry or the cleaning up of our hospitals, would be put at risk by the shameful robbery from the NHS by the Conservatives of up to £1 billion to pay for their patient's passport, to allow those who can afford to pay in part for their operations to take money out of the health service and go down the road to a private hospital. That is the truth that they will not face.
Will my right hon. Friend find time for an urgent debate on the planning processes for wind farms throughout the country? In and around the north Lincolnshire area there are plans for 176 turbines, some in farms that are large enough for the Department to approve and others in smaller farms that will be dealt with by local authorities, of which there are several. That leads to a situation in which no one is considering the cumulative effects of all the applications. During Department of Trade and Industry questions there was a helpful reply from a Minister who said that he hoped that something could be done about that. However, there is no time scale and the applications are being considered now. When can the House debate this issue so that hon. Members and the local planning authorities know what will happen?
Clearly, a balance has to be struck between ensuring that wind farms are not literally in people's back yards and ensuring that wind has a major contribution to play in meeting future energy needs, and renewable energy in particular. We must resist a nimby attitude. If we are to provide for an alternative that does not involve a wholesale increase in nuclear power, we must go down the renewable road. That is not only wind, but wave and tidal power, fuel cells, PV solar and solar.
I join right hon. and hon. Members in expressing condolences to the Peters family.
How soon will we have a statement on corruption in the sales of arms? He will be aware, I hope, of the extensive and important report in today's edition of The Guardian, which indicates that the sale of arms to Indonesia was the subject of a major corruption episode. We are only now learning exactly what happened. It has been alleged that Alvis paid £16.5 million in bribes to President Suharto's eldest daughter to secure a £160 million sale of Scorpion tanks, which were used for internal oppression.
The significance for the Government's policy is that the sales were backed by the British Government's Export Credits Guarantee Department, which was left to pick up a £93 million bill when Indonesia ran into financial crisis. I hope that the Leader of the House will agree that there are important implications for the Government's arms sales policy, about which the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry gave a mealy-mouthed reply a few minutes ago, indicating that the company had succeeded in watering down the Government's constraints. There are also important implications in terms of freedom of information legislation, which comes fully into force at the turn of the year. Will the Leader of the House give us an undertaking that there will be a statement on all those matters?
The Leader of the House is widely reported in the media this morning as commenting on the deaths at the Deepcut Army barracks, saying that there were too many to be a coincidence. Will the right hon. Gentleman give the House an opportunity to express a view on the suitability of the limited review that is now taking place, given that his comments would suggest that the Ministry of Defence is inadequate to do the job? Otherwise, why is he making these comments now, after all these years during which these things have been going on? He says, rightly, in the comments made in the newspapers this morning that he finds the situation very disturbing. I hope that he will agree that we need a much more substantial debate in the House, on a substantive motion, so that we can express a view about the adequacy of the investigations that are now taking place.
The article in The Guardian on the sale of arms was obviously serious and disturbing. The matter is being investigated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to take this opportunity to applaud the fact that it was this Government who brought in a new code, and got the European Union to adopt a similar one, which prevents the export of arms for internal oppression or external aggression. Any arms exports have to be judged against those important criteria. We have led the world in the matter. The Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Prime Minister are trying to enlarge the code beyond the European Union to make it global.
The hon. Gentleman asked why I was commenting on Deepcut now. The answer is that, on Tuesday, when I met regional political editors, I was asked a question about it. I have said nothing that differs from the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence at the Dispatch Box only a week ago or from anything that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has said. I support their programme of investigation—that is the best way to sort the matter out. The hon. Gentleman suggests that there is difference of opinion between the Ministry of Defence and me; there is not.
Will my right hon. Friend ensure that, on Tuesday, Labour Members have a free vote on amendments to the Mental Capacity Bill that relate to euthanasia? I remind him that it is long-standing practice in the parliamentary Labour party that Labour Members have a free vote on matters of conscience. If euthanasia is not a matter of conscience, what on earth is?
I understand my right hon. Friend's point. Of course, we continually review the circumstances in which there might be free votes. If the Bill opened the issue of euthanasia, there would unquestionably be a free vote, but we are not changing the current law. Any final arbitration on such matters under the Bill, as under current law, would be for the courts to determine on a case-by-case basis. That is the sensible way to proceed. I remind my right hon. Friend that the Bill had its Second Reading on Monday 11 October and was carried by 326 votes to 62. There were no votes in Committee and the measure was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. We have tried to get the Bill right and bring the law into a modern framework but we are explicitly not reopening the question of euthanasia.
Will the Leader of the House give further consideration to the request of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) about dentistry? Some years ago, with the full co-operation and assistance of the then South Cheshire health authority, I got a national health service dentist established in the village of Poynton in the north of my constituency because all the other dentists had gone private for those who were not pregnant women or children. That dentist now threatens to withdraw from the NHS, with all the problems that that would create for thousands of my constituents and those in the surrounding areas. The Leader of the House suggested that there is a problem. May we therefore have a debate because the problem of dentistry is great for all hon. Members and I believe that we would all like the opportunity to debate the subject?
I acknowledge that there is a problem—indeed, the hon. Gentleman was fair enough to point out that I did. We are devolving record funding to primary care trusts to sort out the problem, and 1,000 new dentists will be recruited by October 2005. There is a historic problem that goes back to the time of the Conservative Government. We are getting a grip on it and we will solve it in due course.
May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 336 on the Mental Capacity Bill?
[That this House notes the most recent report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights which is severely critical of sections of the Mental Capacity Bill; notes in particular the criticism of those sections dealing with the withholding and withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment and of assisted food and fluids; further notes the conclusion that the presumption in favour of life-sustaining treatment in relation to the withdrawal of assisted food and fluids is not sufficiently strong in the Bill to satisfy the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 2, 3 and 8); believes that it would be disastrous if the Bill, which has the laudable aim of seeking to transform the lives of mentally incapacitated individuals and their carers, were to become a vehicle for the introduction of euthanasia; regrets that, despite Government assurances, the declaratory provision in Clause 58 that nothing in the Bill is to be taken to affect the law relating to murder, manslaughter and suicide is not sufficient to rule out the threat of euthanasia by omission posed by the Bill; and calls upon the Government to take note of the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights and to amend the Mental Capacity Bill to make it clear that it gives no statutory authority to any decision made with a purpose of bringing about the death of the person about whose personal welfare the decision is made.]
More than 100 Members have signed it to express their concern about the possibility of euthanasia by omission and by withdrawing sustaining foods and liquids. Will my right hon. Friend reconsider carefully the human rights implications of his decision? Will he also consider the conclusions of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that the position in the Bill as currently drafted is contrary to our undertakings under the European convention on human rights, which we proudly incorporated into our legislation?
As I said a moment ago, the Bill does not reopen the question of euthanasia. However, I understand the concern that my hon. Friend and others have expressed and which is demonstrated in the early-day motion. For several hon. Members, a question mark remains about the issue. I am sure that there will be an amendment on this matter—if it is selected—for debate next week. The issue will then be able to be resolved in the way in which the House normally resolves these issues. Any uncertainties or anxieties will then be resolved, and people will have the chance to recognise that we are doing the right thing.
The Leader of the House will be aware that the first contingent of Black Watch personnel returned from Iraq this morning, and that is very welcome. He will also be aware, however, of the continuing concern in Scotland about the future of our historic regiments. There is speculation that an announcement will be made on that next week. Will he confirm when that announcement will be made, and will he give us an assurance that it will be made first to Members of the House by the Secretary of State for Defence?
I will certainly ensure that the Secretary of State is aware of the hon. Gentleman's question, and, in particular, of his concern about the form that any announcement should take. We will consult about that. The Black Watch has performed heroically, as it always does, and done a fantastic job. I recall some of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues—if not the hon. Gentleman himself—saying that members of the Black Watch would not be back before Christmas. They are back, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be generous enough to acknowledge that.
May we have a debate on under-age drinking? I understand from the press this morning that the Home Secretary is planning to strengthen the laws on pubs and clubs where under-age drinking goes on. The main problem in my constituency involves young people who buy cans from shops or off-licences and cause problems in the area. Last weekend, the residents of Whitchurch who live around the Court field had a very distressing time caused by young people who had been drinking breaking down fences, setting fire to dustbins and generally causing distress. It is important that we consider the issue of young people buying alcohol from shops. May we have a debate on the subject?
I would be very happy if there were time to have such a debate. If my hon. Friend were successful in applying for one, that would be all to the good. I can confirm that, this morning, the Cabinet endorsed a proposal by the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister to impose restrictions on premises found to be selling alcohol to under-age drinkers—indeed, under the proposal, such premises could be closed down for 24 hours in those circumstances—and we are looking for a suitable legislative opportunity to introduce the measure.
Another one!
Well, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) has just explained about the problem in her constituency, and I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would agree that there is too much antisocial behaviour as a result of excessive alcohol intake by children. We need to provide for extra procedures if we are to get a grip on that, and we shall do so as we tackle antisocial behaviour through the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Bill, and as we have done in previous legislation, often without the support of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
In the village of Burghfield in my constituency, the police are experimenting with devoting more of their time to tackling yobbishness and antisocial behaviour. May we have a debate on whether we should have more police around the country to tackle this kind of activity, and on whether that, rather than more laws, might be the answer?
We have recruited more than 12,500 extra police officers and 4,000 community support officers across the country, and the number of community support officers will go up to 20,000 under Labour's spending plans. That would all be jeopardised, in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency and elsewhere, under the savage cuts that the shadow Chancellor proposes to make within a couple of years of the Conservatives coming into office. That is the reality that people will face at the general election.
Our debate on the Mental Capacity Bill next week has already been mentioned, but many Labour Members feel that it is only right for us to have a free vote on a matter of conscience. The conscience issue is the withdrawal of food and fluids, and the amendment that has been tabled does not go far enough. I believe that the time has come to respect the views of Labour Members by allowing a free vote on what is a very important constituency issue for many of us.
I agree with my hon. Friend that it is an issue of conscience, and an issue of deep concern to our constituents. I have had representations on it, as, no doubt, has he. But, as I have explained, this is not about reopening the issue of euthanasia. When he looks at the Order Paper on Tuesday morning, he will see that amendments have been tabled to deal with Members' concerns right across the House, and I think that he will be satisfied by that, subject to their being selected for debate. I think that we can move forward on this on a basis of consensus and agreement.
Earlier this week, a report was produced on the prescribing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs, including anti-depressants such as Seroxat, and it highlighted a number of problems. There was no ministerial statement on the issue. Bearing in mind that depression affects one in four of our constituents, are there any plans to debate the matter on the Floor of the House?
I realise the concerns about this matter. I think that a Select Committee investigation is being carried out on it, and its report will be considered in due course. However, the hon. Lady would have the opportunity to question the Secretary of State for Health on the issue if she tabled a question to him.
My right hon. Friend cannot help but be aware of the impending statement by the Secretary of State for Defence on the infantry review. May we have a debate on the outcome of that review? My right hon. Friend will be aware from the Adjournment debate that I was lucky enough to secure on Tuesday on the future of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers that, if the Army were to recommend cutting one of the two remaining fusilier battalions in that regiment, one of the unintended consequences would be that the Royal Anglian Regiment and the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment would have to be merged and possibly lose their titles, thus decimating three of the most successful super-regiments in the British Army.
I know that the Secretary of State is considering all representations on this matter, and I applaud the way in which my hon. Friend has mobilised opinion in her constituency and led a campaign on behalf the many recruits from Rochdale who went into that regiment. She will find that the Secretary of State has listened closely to her representations, although I cannot prejudge the outcome of the review.
The Government have an ambitious legislative programme, with 27 Bills and 10 draft Bills, to which the Leader of the House is adding by the minute. Some six of those Bills will have had a Second Reading before Christmas. On the basis of experience so far, can he tell us how many of the rest of the Bills are likely to hit the statute book, should Parliament be dissolved before Easter?
The answer is no.
My right hon. Friend will know of the importance of the report of the United Nations high-level panel on threats, challenges and change, which was published last week. Will he give a guarantee that there will be a major debate on this matter in the House, because it touches on issues that affect us all, including the future of the United Nations, reform of the United Nations, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and failing states. This matter is too important for us to allow it to slip off the agenda.
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. I acknowledge, as I am sure the whole House will, the work that he, as an expert Back Bencher, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) have done on this issue. We all want the United Nations to be reformed, so that it becomes a product and a reflection of the modern world, rather than of the colonial world in which the Security Council was constituted immediately after the second world war. We want the Security Council to reflect all the continents of the world, and to reflect some of the more powerful nations—Japan and Germany, for example—in a way that it does not at the moment. That, coupled with earlier intervention and the reform of the United Nations, is imperative; we all back those proposals.
Will the Leader of the House give us an assurance on the truthfulness of statements made by Ministers, both in this House and in Westminster Hall? On 2 March this year, the Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality, the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael), promised me that
"in view of the opinions expressed by hon. Members of all parties and the chairman of the national park authority, I have concluded that 30"—
that is the membership of the Peak District national park—
"is the number to which we should move."—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 2 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 247WH.]
I have learned today, however, that the Government have changed their mind on that matter, and are now going to introduce legislation that will take the numbers down lower. That is in direct contradiction to the assurance that the Minister gave me in March. May we have an urgent statement or a debate on this matter?
I realise that this is an important local issue for the hon. Gentleman and others, and I am sure that the Minister will have taken careful note of what he said.
Has the Leader of the House heard about the plight of Dover Athletic football club, which, in common with many other charitable trusts, is facing bankruptcy or possible closure because of retrospective VAT liabilities? Will he arrange for a debate on the Floor of the House to examine the impact of the complex VAT rules on small struggling clubs such as Dover Athletic which add so much value to local communities?
I was very concerned to hear about the predicament of Dover Athletic football club, because such clubs play a vital role in the local community, especially by bringing youngsters into creative forms of energy use rather than the alternatives ones that often disfigure our local communities. I know that my hon. Friend has strongly supported the club, is having discussions with the chiefs of the VAT collection service in the south of England, and is making representations to Treasury Ministers. As a result of his representations, let us hope that we can find a way to make sure that Dover Athletic is not plunged into bankruptcy, which it now faces.
Northern Ireland
With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on Northern Ireland.
Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Irish Prime Minister—the Taoiseach—travelled to Belfast to publish an important set of documents: their proposals for a comprehensive agreement in relation to the political process in Northern Ireland. I want to explain to the House the background and the significance of those proposals.
Just over a year ago, the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly changed the political landscape there. Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist party became the leading parties of their respective communities. At the time, there was much speculation that bringing those two parties to agreement together would be a difficult, if not impossible, task. In the months since the election, our efforts have been dedicated to building the trust and confidence necessary to enable those parties to lead an inclusive and stable Executive.
In February, we began a review of the Good Friday agreement involving all the parties. We spent many months discussing possible changes and improvements to the operation of the political institutions. In June, the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach met the political parties at Lancaster house and identified four areas that needed resolution to enable devolution to be restored in Northern Ireland. First, there had to be a complete and decisive end to paramilitary activity by the IRA; secondly, the process of decommissioning illegal weapons had to be completed within a clear time scale; thirdly, in that context, Unionist parties must agree to operate the power-sharing institutions in a stable and sustained fashion; and, finally, we had to create the conditions in which all parts of the community in Northern Ireland could support and participate in policing.
The documents published yesterday, copies of which have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, represent a series of statements that would have been published in sequence by the Governments and the other relevant organisations if there had been an overall agreement. Those proposals include commitments in the form of a statement from the IRA that the causes of the conflict would be removed by the implementation of this agreement and that IRA paramilitary activity would cease immediately and definitively; and that decommissioning of IRA weapons would be completed by the end of December this year, under the supervision of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. I shall return to that issue later.
There were further commitments to the effect that after a period during which the good faith of the earlier commitments had been demonstrated, an inclusive power-sharing Executive would be established in March 2005. The restoration would take place on the basis of agreed changes to the operation of the institutions under strands 1 to 3 of the 1998 agreement. Finally, the proposed agreement sets out a time scale in which republicans would support policing and the policing structures established under the Good Friday agreement, in the context of the devolution of policing and justice powers, as envisaged by the agreement.
Any observer of the political process since 1998 will recognise how significant and substantial the progress represented by those commitments is. Before I turn to the outstanding area where agreement has not yet been reached, I want to pay tribute to all those involved. The leaderships of the DUP and Sinn Fein have negotiated tirelessly and in good faith. I have no doubt that they want to reach a final accommodation. I also want to pay tribute to the Ulster Unionist party, the Social Democratic and Labour party, the Alliance party and the Progressive Unionist party, all of whom have made essential contributions and without whom the progress that we have already seen in Northern Ireland would not have been achieved. And, as always, our partnership with the Irish Government has been close and decisive in driving this process forward. The progress of recent months owes much to the energy and determination of officials of both Governments.
The House will know that, despite this remarkable progress, there remains an outstanding issue that could not be resolved: the transparency with which the decommissioning process should be carried out. That issue will be familiar to right hon. and hon. Members who have followed the twists and turns of recent years. They will understand the significance of the promise of a completion of IRA decommissioning by the end of the year. But both Governments also recognise that public confidence in the process is critical to the success of any settlement and wider political stability in Northern Ireland.
For that reason, the Governments set out in the documents published yesterday a proposal that we regard as a fair compromise. Under the proposal, set out in annexe D to the document, photographs of weapons to be decommissioned would be shown privately to political parties in January and published at the time when the Executive came to be established, in March. We believed that this proposal should be acceptable to all.
I would have liked to be telling the House today that a final comprehensive settlement had been reached that would enable devolved government to be restored. That is the shared aim of all parties in this House and, more importantly, the firm desire of the whole community in Northern Ireland. Despite the efforts of so many and the remarkable progress made, we are not quite there yet and that announcement will have to wait a little longer.
I am absolutely convinced, however, that the day when the final piece of the jigsaw can be put in place is not far off. I remain optimistic that we will be able to resolve the outstanding issues and restore devolution. We have published the proposals now so that the people of Northern Ireland can discuss and debate the issues. The Governments will continue to press forward so that the remaining gap can be bridged. To that end, I will be meeting the Irish Foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, and we will engage jointly with the parties next week. There will also be a meeting of the British-Irish intergovernmental conference on Thursday 16 December. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach will have the opportunity to meet again at the European Council the following day.
The outstanding issue is about more than photographs. It is about confidence and trust between the parties. We will strive to encourage and build that trust. I know that in these efforts to move on from the legacy of the past, I can rely on the support and good will of the whole House. Anyone who has followed the political process in Northern Ireland over the past number of years will appreciate that yesterday was a very significant milestone in that journey towards lasting peace and stability.
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I am also grateful to him for his customary courtesy in giving me early sight of its contents.
I share the right hon. Gentleman's disappointment, and that of countless people, both in the United Kingdom and beyond, that a comprehensive agreement has not yet proved possible. We welcome his determination, and that of the Irish Government, to press ahead in the hope that a settlement can be reached, preferably this side of a general election. Does he agree, however, that what underlies the details of yesterday's publication is the fact that the prime obstacle to an agreement and an enduring political settlement remains the reluctance of republicans to show openly that they have completed their transition from terrorism and political force to becoming a political movement that campaigns to achieve its objectives exclusively through democratic and peaceful means?
After six years of waiting for the republican movement to deliver the decommissioning promised in 1998, and after so many false dawns, is it not wholly understandable that there is now widespread public scepticism in Northern Ireland about the movement's further pledges, and also a demand for concrete evidence that decommissioning has actually taken place?
Will the Secretary of State confirm that asking for photographic evidence of decommissioning is not just the position of the Democratic Unionist party, but the position of Her Majesty's Government and, for that matter, of the Irish Government? Is it not the case that if the IRA is so vehemently opposed to the attachment of that condition, there is nothing to stop it going ahead and simply delivering the decommissioning and cessation of paramilitary activity that it tells us it wishes to carry out?
I have a few questions to ask about the Government's document and the draft statements annexed to it. First, the Secretary of State said again today that it was the issue of photographic evidence on which the talks foundered; but he will be aware of the comments of the Irish Deputy Prime Minister, Mary Harney, who said
"It would be wrong of anyone to assume that this was just about photographs, that that was the only outstanding issue".
What were the other issues on which agreement was not possible yesterday?
Secondly, both yesterday's draft IRA statement and the actual statement that the IRA published today talk rather vaguely about the IRA instructing its members
"not to engage in any activity"
that might endanger a new agreement. Is it the Secretary of State's clear understanding that that undertaking from the IRA would indeed mean a firm pledge to cease all the activities listed in paragraph 13 of the joint declaration, including beatings, shootings, intimidation, racketeering and organised crime? Is it his clear and unequivocal understanding that when the IRA talks about moving into a "new mode", that means the effective standing down of its military organisation and a commitment that it will no longer engage in recruitment, training or targeting?
Thirdly, this morning's IRA statement says that photographs were "never possible". Will the Secretary of State explain on what basis the documents published yesterday included references to photographs as part of the process? Were there any prior agreements with republicans that that was going to happen?
Fourthly, the Prime Minister said yesterday that once the necessary legislation was passed Sinn Fein would recommend support for the police, and would take up its seats on the Policing Board. But the republican statements that we saw yesterday and today do not make such an unequivocal commitment; they merely commit Sinn Fein to holding a meeting to consider its position. How firm are the undertakings given to the Government that the republican movement really will accept the police and the rule of law, and has a clear undertaking been given in respect of the timetable within which that must take effect?
Finally, the documents published yesterday make no reference to other elements of the settlement, such as security normalisation and on-the-run terrorists. Can the Secretary of State confirm that unless and until IRA weapons have been put beyond use and paramilitary activity has ceased, there will be no movement from the Government on either of those issues?
I am, as ever, grateful for the hon. Gentleman's co-operation and that of his party.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned scepticism in Northern Ireland about the political process. I suspect that there is an element of that, but I hope that there is only disappointment in Northern Ireland today, rather than despair. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman or anyone else wishes to read a document containing 21 or 22 pages, but the bulk of it is about agreement.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether there were any other obvious areas of disagreement. I cannot find them in the document, but I think that the question goes beyond the issue of photographs to that of confidence about the transparency of decommissioning. It was, after all, owing to a lack of such transparency that the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), when he dealt with these issues some time ago, found it impossible to move forward. Transparency and confidence are the important issues. To what extent can confidence be arrived at in Northern Ireland—particularly, but not exclusively, in the Unionist community—so that people can be confident that decommissioning has happened in a proper way?
The hon. Gentleman referred to the other statement from the IRA. It is certainly our understanding that there has been a big change in the wording. For example, a reference to the removal of the causes of conflict if agreement is reached is a world away from the old idea that those causes of conflict would go away only with the unification of Ireland. That is a big change over the last few years.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned a "new mode" for the IRA, in the context of recruitment, training, punishment beatings and other matters. Of course the Government consider all those issues hugely important to attempts to resolve the problems, and to defining paramilitary activity and the ending of such activity. He also mentioned the statement that it was "never possible" for the IRA to accept photographs. Over the past 24 hours there has been some discussion about what did or did not happen in the negotiations, but what is clear is that—certainly from Leeds castle onwards—the issue of photographic evidence was there all the time. Of course we did not agree on it: that is the point. Most things were agreed; what was not agreed was the bit about photographic evidence.
The IRA clearly has a different view from everyone else. Our view is that whatever it takes to persuade people, confidently, that transparency has arrived is what we will accept as a Government—or as two Governments.
We believe that the statement in this document constitutes a commitment to examining the way in which Sinn Fein approaches the structures of policing in Northern Ireland, and—in the context of devolution of justice and policing—a clear commitment to involvement in those structures. The timetable is set out in one of the annexes.
The hon. Gentleman referred to other elements of discussion that featured in the negotiations. He specifically mentioned issues including that of on-the-runs. In the joint declaration they are related to acts of completion on the part of paramilitary organisations, particularly, in this case, the IRA. It is the Government's firm view that those acts of completion—the end of paramilitary activity and full decommissioning—must take place before on-the-runs and other issues are dealt with.
Like my right hon. Friend and the Government, I am very disappointed at the unsuccessful outcome of his endeavours and those of the Irish Government over the past few months to bring agreement to Northern Ireland. Not only would such agreement have settled the issue of the structural governmental framework; it would have enabled the people of Northern Ireland, through their local representatives, to further their economic and social well-being.
The Secretary of State said that the two parties that he mentioned particularly, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist party, were leading parties of the respective communities. May I point out to him that combined they represent 49 per cent. of the people of Northern Ireland, and that the other 51 per cent. have, de facto if not de jure, been virtually excluded from the negotiations? I encourage him, when he has further talks next week with those parties, to enter into dialogue with all the political parties in Northern Ireland, in order that—notwithstanding the question of photographic evidence—the confidence and trust that he indicates is missing can be established.
The statement refers to causes of conflict that would have been removed by the proposed agreement. What are the remaining causes of conflict that the agreement would have removed? Secondly, what new demands were made by Sinn Fein that, if met, would enable it to reverse its decision not to support policing and to discourage people from joining the police service? The devolution of policing powers has been agreed by all parties as an appropriate way forward. Did Sinn Fein require anything new to enable it to change its mind on the question of assisting the maintenance of law and order in Northern Ireland?
Can the Secretary of State make it clear whether Sinn Fein was correct in stating that it did not see any reference to the use of photographic evidence until approximately three weeks ago—apparently, the date was 17 November—or was there prior knowledge of such a way forward, but it simply had not been put in writing?
I greatly regret that an agreement was not reached for the sake of the people of Northern Ireland, and I encourage the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the Irish Government to continue their dialogue. But if they want success, they should address not only the extremes of paramilitarism and political thought, but the 51 per cent. of people—the moderate ground—who were excluded de facto, if not de jure, from the last round of talks, and include them in meaningful dialogue.
My hon. Friend is right about the percentages to which he refers, but at the same time I was not responsible for the Assembly election results. The people of Northern Ireland voted as they did, and the result was that the DUP and Sinn Fein both secured a greater number of Assembly seats than did the other parties. However, no one party in Northern Ireland can say that it has an exclusive right to the views of either community, because that is not so. In a sense, every party in Northern Ireland is in a minority, because no one party commands the majority. As I said earlier, it is important to pay tribute to all the parties—including my hon. Friend's—which have made a tremendous effort and done great work in producing this process. So I do not for one second diminish the role of all the other parties; I am simply accepting the reality that, for the agreement to work and an Executive to be set up, agreement will have to be reached between the two parties that achieved the election result to which I referred.
My hon. Friend is right to point out that a settlement in Northern Ireland—a proper working Executive and Assembly—cannot be achieved unless all the parties in the Assembly work together properly. Although Sinn Fein and the DUP will of course have more ministerial seats than the other parties, they will not have them all. The whole purpose of the Good Friday agreement was to ensure an inclusive Executive who, in this case, would represent my hon. Friend's party, the Ulster Unionist party, the DUP and Sinn Fein.
I can assure my hon. Friend that all the parties will be involved in next week's negotiations and discussions. It is important to hear what every party has to say and what solutions they might have in trying to overcome the current difficulties. It is fair to say that in past months all the parties had the opportunity to discuss all the issues currently under discussion. After all, there was the review of the agreement itself, and some very long nights in Stormont—involving my hon. Friend's own party—when we discussed accountability, the role of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, and so on.
The devolution of justice and policing was an issue of particular concern to Sinn Fein. My hon. Friend is of course right to point out that such devolution is part of the agreement, but from Sinn Fein's point of view—it is of course for Sinn Fein to speak for itself—it regarded involvement in Northern Ireland's policing structures as being intimately bound up with the devolution of justice and policing to the Assembly and the Executive.
Clearly, the Liberal Democrats welcome the progress made in bringing the DUP and Sinn Fein so close to an agreement; we really have come a long way. I spoke to some friends at home last night, who said that the mood was one of great disappointment: so near, yet so far.
Does the Secretary of State agree that the new plan to endorse the whole Executive of the Assembly by the Assembly is a very important step forward in terms of collectivism? Ministers are there to serve the whole community, not just their party or tribe. The committee of the centre is to be placed on a statutory footing. Will it be able to scrutinise all the actions of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, or merely those falling under its current remit?
On paragraph 14 of annexe B, which deals with community designation, do the Government intend that candidates should declare their community designation before election to the Assembly? I hope not, because we would have very grave concerns about further entrenching sectarianism in this way. We are also worried about the IRA's statement. Does it or does it not amount to acceptance of paragraph 13 of the joint declaration? Why is the IRA so resistant to providing photographic evidence, and what alternative solutions has it proposed to this vexing problem?
We welcome the developments concerning the secretariat of the British-Irish Council and the east-west parliamentary framework, which will help to further good relations between all Parliaments in these islands. Is it the Secretary of State's understanding that, in the context of the agreement, paragraph 6 of the DUP's statement—on working for agreement on policing—is compatible with Sinn Fein's commitment to movement? Indeed, has Sinn Fein indicated that it would get involved in current policing arrangements, such as participating in local district policing partnerships, immediately—in other words, before the Bill to devolve policing and justice to the Assembly would have been enacted?
In the light of the comments of the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady), do the Government not accept that their expressed intention to hold meetings with all the parties must be more than just warm words? Does the Secretary of State not accept that many friends of the agreement—in the Social, Democratic and Labour party, and in the Alliance party in Northern Ireland—have felt excluded from the current process? Would it not be a shame to make enemies out of friends of the process, simply through that sin of omission?
I do not intend to commit any sins of omission or commission in the time ahead of us. I have met the Alliance party, in one form or another, three times in the past few weeks, and I recognise the important role that it has played in the Northern Ireland peace process. For example, it has often brokered deals between the other parties. The hon. Gentleman can rest assured that we will have a conversation consisting of more than just warm words with David Ford and his colleagues next week; indeed, we will have such conversations with all the political parties in Northern Ireland.
The committee of the centre will be a meaningful committee. The review that we undertook some time ago, which dealt with the issue of the committee's functions, pointed out that various functions of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister will be discussed in the months ahead. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a definitive answer, therefore, as to precisely what the committee will be dealing with, because that depends on the functions of the OFMDFM.
I took the hon. Gentleman's point about the secretariat of the British-Irish Council. Sometimes, the strand 3 arrangements are forgotten. Meaningful communication between, and meetings involving all parts of, these islands is a very important aspect of the Belfast agreement. Indeed, the last meeting of the British-Irish Council was held in Guernsey and was, I thought, particularly important. All it lacked, of course, was representatives from the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive to put their case to it. On policing, the agreement of Sinn Fein to deal with policing issues is intimately locked up with the devolution of justice and policing. Indeed, the last paragraph of annexe F says that Sinn Fein will
"convene a special Ard Fheis to decide on the issue of policing as soon as the legislation is enacted."
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, the Taoiseach and, indeed, the Secretary of State himself are to be congratulated on their perseverance and determination over the months to try to reach a successful agreement with all the participating parties. That is in the spirit of the Good Friday agreement, which was to make peace through addressing causes and to end divisions without requiring anyone to surrender. Whether we like it or not, the IRA regards itself as an army that has, in fact, made a ceasefire and is prepared to surrender its arms if there is a satisfactory political solution. That is the position, but the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) said:
"If the IRA-Sinn Fein are honest and face up to their responsibilities, they have to take the humility and the humiliation".
That is not acceptable to the IRA, which brings us to the issue of photographs. For many of us, that seems a simple solution to the problem. It is absolutely right— I am sure that my right hon. Friend would agree—that there must be verification of decommissioning and that the Unionists are entitled to proof, but surely not to trophies. The last experience with General de Chastelain showed how difficult the position was. Does my right hon. Friend understand—
Order. I understand that these are extremely complex and sensitive matters, but it would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman made his contribution more concise.
Does my right hon. Friend understand the real fear that photographs could be used publicly to humiliate the IRA over decommissioning? If that were agreed to, it would create dangerous divisions within the IRA and would be seen as election propaganda for one wing of Unionism over the other wing of Unionism, which sought peace without humiliation.
I suppose that, in a way, all politicians could take lessons in humility. So far as those comments are concerned, I can do no better than refer to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who said yesterday that it was not sensible to make them at a crucial point in the negotiations, but also that it was not sensible to overreact to them. They are, after all, words; what is important to the people of Northern Ireland is ensuring that the Northern Ireland Executive, the Assembly and devolution are restored.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to refer to verification, because without it and without transparency, there is no way that the Unionist community—nor, indeed, the nationalist community—could understand that decommissioning had properly taken place. He would be the first to agree that the people of Northern Ireland and those of the Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly in favour of decommissioning when they voted for the Good Friday agreement.
My hon. Friends in the Democratic Unionist party have been delayed in Northern Ireland by business arising from yesterday and have asked me to apologise for their absence. Will the Secretary of State take note that the DUP remains totally committed to the principle of power sharing in a devolved Government, but remains unshakeable in its opposition to that taking place in any circumstances other than with a complete, transparent and verifiable decommissioning of weapons? Is he also aware that, in his meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) yesterday, General de Chastelain was unable to report any meaningful dialogue with the IRA, let alone any progress on the issue of verification?
I understand that the meeting did take place yesterday and I am sure that, as time goes by, there will be more meetings with General de Chastelain. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the issue of transparency. What is clear from the document, however, is that decommissioning as such is now taken as read and everyone believes that it will happen. The issue is whether people can be confident enough about the transparency of the verification. That is what remains to all politicians in Northern Ireland to resolve.
The hon. Gentleman is also right to stress the commitment to power sharing. Everyone welcomes the DUP's public commitment in the document to power sharing in the context of complete transparency of decommissioning and the end of paramilitary activity. Incidentally, it is also the position of the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble)—although he can speak for himself—and his party that there cannot be a proper power-sharing Executive in Northern Ireland that embraces Unionism without an end to paramilitary activity and proper decommissioning.
I suppose the first thing to say is, "Congratulations, commiserations, but please carry on". Many people in Northern Ireland believe, like me, that the crucial final sign that the paramilitary communities, both republican and loyalist, are finally committed to peaceful political ways forward is when they agree to work jointly with the Police Service of Northern Ireland in a cooperative way. Will my right hon. Friend tell us today whether unwillingness to serve jointly on district partnership boards from either side in the equation—there have been nominees from Sinn Fein and the DUP—was one of the aspects of trust to which he referred in his statement when he said that the outstanding issues amounted to more than photographs?
I thank my hon. Friend for her congratulations and commiserations and we will continue in our endeavours to bring the process to a successful conclusion. She is right to point to the critical issue of policing, as many right hon. and hon. Members have already done, in the process. Until the policing arrangements are accepted by every part of the community in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday agreement, the Patten report and the important reforms of policing in Northern Ireland will not be absolutely complete. I believe that we are getting to that stage and that the policing arrangements are an important part of the process. My hon. Friend is right to remind the House of the importance of that matter.
My colleagues and I broadly welcome these proposals for the implementation of the Belfast agreement, and I would appreciate it if the Secretary of State confirmed that many of the matters included—for example, the ministerial code and the secretariat for the British-Irish Council—were in operation during the first Assembly or have been agreed then or since. The paper has to be read against the background of the joint declaration, so will the Secretary of State tell us more about the proposed implementation of that declaration? In particular, have any changes been made to it, especially with regard to normalisation procedures, their extent and the timetable for introduction? Have any changes resulted from the negotiations leading to these proposals?
There have been press reports and reports in the Dail over the last week or two of some measures that the Irish Government have negotiated with some of the parties. I would appreciate it if the Secretary of State gave us a complete account of the other matters that the Irish Government are negotiating, which are part of the mix for some parties but not for others. We need to get a full picture, which these proposals, on account of those other matters, do not provide.
I welcome, too, the overnight statement from the IRA, particularly as it largely repeats the draft that the Government have included in the proposals. Perhaps, though, the Secretary of State would consider some of its language against last October's statement, which, in some respects, depending on how one interprets it, is actually a stronger statement. Perhaps he would let us know why the language has varied from that of last October.
I also welcome the statement by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) that the document has resolved all the issues that he and his colleagues have with the Belfast agreement. We welcome their completion of the process towards acceptance of the agreement, which they started when they participated in the Assembly and took office.
I have to say that we regard—
Order. I must ask the right hon. Gentleman to confine his remarks; otherwise, this will become almost a statement in itself.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will endeavour to ask questions. We regard the request for photographs as reasonable. The Secretary of State said that it has turned out that the IRA had a different view from everyone else. Does "everyone else" include those republicans to whom he was speaking during the negotiations? Finally, with regard to the proposals in the document for the Government to nominate two clergymen to act as additional witnesses to decommissioning, can the Secretary of State confirm that that would enable the Government to nominate such persons as the hon. Member for North Antrim or the former hon. Member for Mid-Ulster? Might that be considered a way of resolving the impasse?
It is an idea worth considering.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his general agreement to the points in the document and his support for the move forward. I agree, incidentally, that a number of institutional issues in the document were beginning to arise when he was First Minister. He and his party referred to them, indeed, in meetings at Stormont.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the joint declaration and its relationship with normalisation over the various aspects of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 and on-the-runs. All those things can come about only in the context of acts of completion, which the Government have referred to. The right hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity next week to talk to us about the detail, but what is certain is that such normalisation would be enacted only in the context of proper acts of completion on paramilitarism and decommissioning. The right hon. Gentleman referred to other issues and we can again talk in detail about them when we meet next week. For example, the question of a financial package in Northern Ireland has been referred to by his and other parties, and issues such as confidence-building measures for nationalists or Unionists were discussed. He has already raised with me and the Prime Minister some of the issues that the Irish Government raised. The Irish Foreign Minister will be present, too, next week, so there will be an opportunity there.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to last October's statement by the IRA. We will study the two statements for comparisons. Finally, he referred to photographs and to the importance of the issue. I simply repeat that it has been discussed since Leeds castle. We did not agree in the end, but many of us thought that we had a compromise.
Despite all the shortcomings and the unfortunate failure to get the power-sharing Executive working again, is not it a fact that the peace process of the Good Friday agreement has given much, if not all, of Northern Ireland a great degree of prosperity, substantial development and investment and freedom from day to day terrorist violence? Is not that an accomplishment in itself? We should not forget the importance of an agreement that we hope will lead to a binding agreement for the future of Northern Ireland.
I could not agree more. I reiterate that Northern Ireland is in a much better state today than it was some years ago. That is so in terms of unemployment and general prosperity, and Northern Ireland is the fastest growing region in the United Kingdom. People are living a much better life than they used to, a life no longer encumbered by the difficulties of the past. All that is the result of an agreement forged by all the political parties in Northern Ireland.
If right hon. and hon. Members have read leading articles in the newspapers here and in Dublin and Belfast, they will know that commentators overwhelmingly referred to the importance of yesterday in getting the agreement that we want and on the points to which my hon. Friend referred.
As the Minister who started this process more than 15 years ago, may I warmly commend the Secretary of State for the hugely significant progress that he and his colleagues have made with the Northern Ireland parties? Does he recognise that there is a variety of reasons for lack of confidence in the decommissioning process, one of which, I regret to say, relates to the handling of that issue by his predecessor, Dr. Mowlam? Will he be encouraged by the strong support on both sides of the House for his commitment to transparency in the decommissioning process, even if the last step of the way delays the inevitable, final and wonderful outcome for which so many people have striven for so long?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for those kind words. I agree that the process started more than a decade ago when the previous Prime Minister, John Major, was heavily involved. The right hon. Gentleman will understand, from having been a Minister himself in Northern Ireland—as will all Members who have been involved in Northern Ireland politics over the years—that the transparency of decommissioning has been an issue from the very beginning. If—I hope it is not if, but when—we deal with it, we shall have found our way to a complete resolution of the difficulties that we face.
Does the Secretary of State accept that all of us who have been involved in the process wish him well and believe that real progress has now been made? Inevitably, however—and rightly—he mentioned compromise. Does he accept that there is not much more room for compromise because the real problem is that we have not yet had transparent decommissioning? Until we do, the Belfast agreement will not have been fully implemented and there is not much room for compromise from the Unionist or democratic nationalist side on that point.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. He has been deeply involved in Northern Ireland politics for some time. We did have a compromise; that is the point. In the proposals, which, of course, were not accepted, the compromise that the two Governments set out was that photographs would be taken but would not be published until the Executive was up and running. Clearly, that was not acceptable to the IRA, so we must try to find another way to ensure that we get some confidence and trust on transparency.
Another new issue was the use of independent observers who were clergymen. That development can be welcomed, and we must all use our intellect, intelligence, experience and expertise over the next number of weeks to see whether we can find some way to ensure that there is sufficient transparency to command the confidence of everybody in the community.
First, may I place on record my thanks to the Secretary of State and all those who have been involved in the effort to bring lasting peace, security and prosperity to the people of Northern Ireland? Naturally, like many others, I am disappointed that there has not yet been a final solution, but I recognise the need for transparent decommissioning. I welcome the agreements that have been reached between Sinn Fein-IRA and the DUP to date. In six of the 13 paragraphs of annexe E, the expressions "new agreement", "new powers" and "new arrangements" occur. Will the Secretary of State write to me identifying the parts of the Belfast agreement that will require amendment arising from the recently agreed proposals for agreement between the political parties in Northern Ireland?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the thanks he expressed to me and to others involved in the process. So many people have been involved, including the hon. Gentleman and his party. Like him, I am disappointed that we could not go to the Waterfront hall in Belfast yesterday to announce a full agreement, so that in the new year we could ensure that there was, first, a shadow Assembly, with a full Assembly later on in 2005. But we shall keep on trying; that is important.
I shall, naturally, write to the hon. Gentleman about the points he made as he requested, but I say two things. This set of proposals is based, first, on the fundamentals of the Good Friday agreement, but also on changes suggested during the meetings held between all parties to review the agreements. The hon. Gentleman would very much welcome, for example, the changes on strand 3 to strengthen the secretariat. When the agreement was signed, it was never intended to be so set in stone that we could not, with the agreement of everybody concerned, make changes to it. However, everybody would also agree that certain fundamental points of the agreement, such as the principles of consent and power sharing, cannot be changed. People voted on those things, but there are details on the operation of the agreement that we can change. I thank the hon. Gentleman again, and I will write to him.
As no quantity of photographs could ever prove that any group of people had given up all their weapons, does not the Secretary of State feel somewhat exasperated at the insistence of one side on photographs and the refusal of people on the other side to supply them? Surely, what really matters for the future is the intent and action of people on either side of the dispute, not what weapons they may or may not have got rid of, on or off the record.
I am often exasperated by what we have to deal with sometimes in Northern Ireland; I sometimes express that feeling in more Anglo-Saxon terms. However, there are also occasions—yesterday was one of them—when I feel disappointment but also hope, because we have come so far in agreement. Although there is still work to be done on the issue we have been discussing this afternoon, there is nevertheless a feeling of hope, even though we were disappointed.
The hon. Gentleman is right. Ultimately, what is important is whether weapons are used and whether there is paramilitary activity in some form or another. That hugely important point is dealt with at great length in the document. Decommissioning is still important, not only because illegal weapons should not be there and should be handed over, but also, as I am sure he understands, as a hugely important symbolic gesture. When those weapons are handed over, in the way specified in the agreement, it will be a question not of anybody surrendering anything, but of abiding by the Good Friday agreement. That is what the agreement said should happen and that is why General de Chastelain has the commission. I welcome the hon. Gentleman's comments and I hope that we shall be able to resolve those issues in the weeks ahead.
We should all remind ourselves that the documents are not about the triumph of one community over another or of one political tradition over another. We hope that they are the final reconciliation of those communities and traditions. I return to a point mentioned by other Members, the photographs. Annexe D, which I accept is a draft, says that
"the IRA representative has told us that the IRA will have photographs of the weapons and materiel involved taken by the IICD",
but there is a contradiction in statements subsequently made by the IRA that that is not the case. Surely it must be possible to convince both sides that the issue is confidence in the process. Photographs are not a substitute for independent verification, but an important symbol that weapons have been decommissioned. They are not a symbol of the IRA having been disarmed; they are pictures of weapons that are no longer of use. At this late stage, cannot we convince the IRA that the pictures are of weapons, not pictures of the IRA being disarmed?
I should very much like to do that over the next couple of weeks, but we must find ways and means to examine transparency and achieve confidence. That is what we have been talking about all afternoon. It may seem simple to people outside the House, but it is not. Like everybody else, the hon. Gentleman knows the history of Northern Ireland and he is right to point out to the House that it is not a question of triumphalism or surrender on anybody's part; it is the fact that the Good Friday agreement was voted on by people north and south. Part of the agreement is about decommissioning and that it should be carried out in a verifiable way, so that people can understand that it has genuinely been done. If the hon. Gentleman has any ideas, I should be glad to talk to him later.
Points of Order
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on a matter of good order in relation to ministerial responsibility for answering written parliamentary questions. I am gravely perturbed by a report in The Guardian, the contents of which appear to have been confirmed in statements made by the Leader of the House of Commons, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), to the effect that under a new system, howsoever introduced, Ministers are now binning hundreds of parliamentary questions tabled by hon. and right hon. Members, answers to which have not been provided for periods of up to 11 months. My understanding is that the hon. Members for Blaenau Gwent (Llew Smith), for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), for Lewes (Norman Baker), for Selby (Mr. Grogan) and for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and others have all been affected. Is it in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for Ministers to plumb new depths of abject contempt for the rights of the House? For my own part, on the strength of only seven and a half years in Parliament, I long ago came to the conclusion that I am justified in launching whatever level of interrogative onslaught is necessary to get the information and answers that my constituents and I require.
Order. I am conscious of the fact that that was something of an interrogative onslaught in itself. The Chair cannot rule on the systems in operation. Obviously, the Chair is concerned that Members should have opportunities to get answers to their reasonable inquiries, but as to the technicalities of a system for dealing with that, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman pursue his inquiries with the Table Office.
Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It probably reflects on me, but I was surprised to discover that there is a report that questions tabled by me have not been answered. Can you give guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as to how I can find out which questions have not been answered? Are records kept by the Table Office of all questions tabled so that we can check through them?
I think I can say to the right hon. Gentleman that the Table Office should be able to assist him in discovering that information.
Estimates Day
[1st Allotted Day]
VOTE ON ACCOUNT, 2005–06
IT Projects (DWP)
[Relevant documents: Third Report from the Work and Pensions Committee, Session 2003–04, HC 311-I, on Department for Work and Pensions Management of IT Projects: Making IT deliver for DWP customers; the Government's response thereto, HC 1125; and the uncorrected oral evidence taken before the Work and Pensions Committee on 17th November 2004, from the Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and Mr Doug Smith, Chief Executive, Child Support Agency, HC 928-iii, on The Performance of the Child Support Agency; and The Department for Work and Pensions Departmental Report 2004, Cm 6221.]
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the year ending with 31st March 2006, for expenditure by the Department for Work and Pensions—
(1) resources, not exceeding £26,303,662,000, be authorised on account, for use as set out in HC 1235 of Session 2003–04, and
(2) a sum, not exceeding £26,318,077,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs as so set out.—[Paul Clark.]
I am privileged and delighted to open this short but very important debate. I recognise perfectly that my colleagues who serve on the Work and Pensions Committee and colleagues who serve on the Education and Skills Committee have been selected by our colleagues who serve on the Liaison Committee to share this valuable time on the Floor of the House this afternoon. With a little help from our friends, the business managers, I hope to be able to complete this important debate by 4 o'clock, so that the education section of today's important business of estimates consideration should be completed by 6 o'clock.
I am very pleased that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has found time to listen to this debate on an emerging subject of importance in public policy, given the way in which information and communications technology affects the provision of public services.
Last July, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions published a report called "Department of Work and Pensions Management of IT Projects: Making IT deliver for DWP customers". It is an important piece of work, which the Select Committee undertook during the Session. I acknowledge at the outset the support that we got from our specialist advisers, Dr. Sarah Pearce and Tim Jarrett from the Library. I recognise the time put into the inquiry by my three main supporters on the inquiry: the hon. Members for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) and for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), the latter two of whom are in their places, as I would have expected, and I hope that they will be able to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
In addition, I want to thank some of the witnesses. Sir Peter Gershon gave generously of his time, when he was responsible for the Office of Government Commerce. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) was very helpful. In particular, Mr. Tony Collins, who represents Computer Weekly, advised and informed the Committee's work as the inquiry proceeded.
I refer colleagues to annexe 2 of the report. Nothing more than a glance at that annexe is needed to recognise—given the work done by the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and the Comptroller and Auditor General—that technical failures in ICT projects have been a feature of public policy. We went back as far as 1999, and hon. Members need only consider what happened when the national insurance recording system was upgraded in 2000–01 to recognise that the problem has been with us for some time. However, the problem is now more significant, and looking to the future, it will be become more significant still if Government policy, as we currently understand it, is rolled out as planned.
Annexe 3 serves a useful purpose in listing the current DWP modernisation programme. A glance at that annexe serves to remind the House just how much more dependent the successful delivery of DWP front-line services will be on the success or otherwise of the implementation of ICT programmes in the future. All those programmes involved complicated new technology systems that are delivered in an elaborate policy framework, on a scale that is larger than normal for comparable commercial projects and over unusually short periods, all of which lead to a very high-risk environment, to put it mildly.
The Select Committee started the inquiry in November 2003. One of the main drivers of the need for the work in the first place was that we were worried by the extent to which the Department's 2003 plans for a reduction in staff appeared to be founded too much on increased efficiencies that could be delivered by new ICT projects. Those fears were compounded after the announcement of the comprehensive spending review in July 2004, which, as the House will know, includes a further additional tranche of staff reductions that will amount to a net loss of 3,000 DWP jobs by 2008. That is a matter of some concern, not just for the staff involved or the Select Committee, but for anyone involved in the efficient and safe deployment of services by the DWP in future.
Everything that I learned in the inquiry, which included an important case study of the Child Support Agency, led me to the conclusion that it is absolutely not safe to implement job losses on that scale if the justification for doing so rests on increased functionality and efficiencies provided by new ICT systems. Staff reductions may well be justified—we must always look for efficiencies—but not on that scale nor over that period. All the evidence that the Select Committee took, particularly from front-line staff at the DWP, supported that view.
Of course, it is true that the Treasury may well be looking for its pound of flesh, but to be fair to the Treasury, it has spent large sums of public money on and made capital investment in modernisation. That is welcome, but if it is looking for unrealistic payback times that damage the front-line services that affect the clients, it is up to Ministers at the Department to ensure that those clients are protected from a process that appears to be going too far, too fast.
As I said at the beginning, I am grateful to the Secretary of State for taking the trouble to come to the House to listen to the debate this afternoon because we are looking to him and his ministerial team. We in the Select Committee have been working carefully with them. Indeed two of them have been distinguished members of the Select Committee. We rely on their professional competence, but they have a hard job to do. They must be able to stop the process before it damages some of the front-line services if they believe that they are taking steps that may go too far, too fast, and there is a risk that we are.
The report talks about three things, and I want to spend a couple of moments on each. First, what strategies will be adopted for the future management and scrutiny of major mission-critical ICT projects in the DWP between now and 2008, and how can best practice be embedded in those future programmes? Secondly, what will happen next with the CSA? That is a matter of real concern among hon. Members on both sides of the House in the short term and in the longer term. Thirdly, I want to make one or two reflections about matters for the House of Commons itself. Have we got mechanisms in place to deal with those big, complex projects adequately in future?
The first thing that I want to say about the DWP's immediate modernisation programme is that everywhere I go with the Select Committee—I am sure that my colleagues who also serve on the Select Committee will echo this—I cannot help but be impressed by the quality of the professional front-line staff. They do a first-class job, sometimes in extremely difficult circumstances.
For example, on 22 November, 40,000 of the computer screens went down for a number of days. I happened to be in Blackpool last week—as I am sure that the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) know—and the staff dealt with that failure efficiently and professionally, but it knocks the stuffing out of people who are taking their duties seriously. They are public servants; they take their work very seriously indeed. Their morale is knocked for six when those failures happen. They always do the best that they can to apply remedial measures in the short term. They deserve recognition for what they do. It is very easy to attack organisations such as the CSA and let them believe that we are attacking front-line staff. I want to make it clear that anything that I say about the CSA, or any other agency, casts no aspersions on the quality of their work.
The report satisfied me that there is a huge amount of best practice in the industry, in both the private and the public sectors, but there has been only patchy compliance with best practice in the past. The only way that we can be sure that we are getting best practice is to achieve far more openness and accountability—they are vital tools in our hands as a Select Committee to try to ensure that best practice is always complied with—and the DWP should be significantly more open about all its IT projects.
The OGC has had an important influence on best practice. The introduction of gateway reviews has been a significant step forward. However, too many of the OGC's recommendations are optional. We must consider giving greater powers to the OGC to enforce best practice, and we should be insisting on greater transparency—again, enforced by the OGC.
Hon. Members will know that I sat on the Work and Pensions Sub-Committee that produced the report. On commercial confidentiality, on which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will comment, does he share my memory of the flavour of the overall evidence, which was that the Government were more concerned with hiding behind commercial confidentiality than were the commercial suppliers?
Absolutely. It was a revelation. I fully expected to run into a lot of hostility, suspicion and concern from the commercial sector, but that was far from being the case. Instead, it welcomed us with open arms. Subject to the terms applying fairly to everyone and the protection of the genuine tenders for contracts—obviously, we are grown up enough to understand that they have to be protected, otherwise that way madness lies—it egged us on. We should grasp that opportunity. The hon. Gentleman is right. The conclusion we are driven back to is that the Department is merely protecting its own situation by hiding behind a cloak of commercial sensitivity and confidentiality. It is not justified.
The hon. Gentleman touched on the gateway review. An early gateway review was disclosed to me in response to a parliamentary question at the start of the process, when it was relatively new, for a project relating to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I noted no dramatic consequences as a result of that disclosure and found it reassuring. However, consistent questions since to gain gateway review outcomes have been denied.
My experience mirrors the hon. Gentleman's, and I am grateful to him for raising that. I think that the Government decided it was all too difficult and started putting up the barriers. I cannot understand why. If Parliament is treated in a grown-up way, Members will respond sensibly and positively.
The new Secretary of State—he will not be new for much longer because his face is becoming familiar—should always grab opportunities to simplify policies. Some bits of work are being done, which I welcome, and outside advisers are looking at the ineffably complicated edifice that we are trying to computerise. I recognise that CS2, the reform programme of child support arrangements, was an attempt to simplify matters and that that has gone wrong, but we should not give up the drive to make things more understandable.
The combination of the complexity of the social security system and of project management for major ICT projects frightens people to death. I am grateful that so many Members have turned up because it is a worry that people give up on trying to understand any of it. At the same time, £12 billion of capital investment has been devoted to such projects in the current period across central Government.
I used to think that the computer implementation of projects was simply an administrative matter for civil servants to get on with. It is not that at all. Instead, it is critical to the future development of public services in the United Kingdom. We have to understand the mechanisms available to us and scrutinise that work. We have to bear in mind that questions of fairness and equity limit the potential for extensive change, but we must keep up the momentum to get a simpler social security system that we can explain easily to our constituents when asked about it.
In that regard—I cannot help but sound carping—the response to the report was unsatisfactory in both its tone and content. There was a lot of management speak of which I could not make head nor tail. We asked for reasonable, important responses to deadlines. We thought hard about those and they were not just thrown out. We asked ourselves searching questions, as the Secretary of State would expect, because we know the Department well. It always treats our reports seriously and the responses are usually good. This one did not measure up.
I hope that we can get the Department to develop the way in which it thinks about such things, in particular the deadlines. It needs to publicise the work done on the business case studies, gateway reviews and implementation assessments. All those were covered in the report in measured recommendations, which were all denied. There is no way that I can disguise our disappointment with that.
The thing that worried me most was the Department's refusal to inform Parliament on a routine and regular basis about proposed IT projects. If that is the attitude, we are on a collision course, which is in no one's interest. We are not going away, however. The matter is on the agenda. A casual response to what we think is an important report is not the end of the story—
Next time it's personal.
Soon it will get personal. That is the hard way to do things, and I would rather take the easy way.
Timetables are also important, and we need to do some work on the Department's plans.
On CSA reform, I reiterate what I said earlier about the commitment of the staff. We need to be told the state of development of the new simplified system. I know that the Secretary of State is thinking about that carefully. I am confident that I know as much as anyone can know about it, because the Select Committee spent a great deal of time looking at the problem, but I am still in the dark about progress on CS2. It is worse than that, though. There were some interesting contradictions between what the retiring chief executive of the agency said to the Committee recently and how the contractor supplier, EDS, understands the situation.
The software remediation work, which is what EDS was working on, was completed on Monday 6 December. That means that the migration process can start. The contractual obligations of EDS with regard to the software are, as I understand it, complete. It has been handed across and signed off. The Department now has it to make use of. That does not mean that it can switch it on and it will all be right. There will be a long period of updating and amending the data in the old system. Most or some of that will need to be done manually, which may take another six months or so. Therefore, if my estimates are right, it might be another six months until the conversion of the old cases can start. Once that happens, it is bound to take a period of time beyond that. Once the calculations are made and are available, there has to be a phase-in period so that the new system does not dish out high increases in liabilities to people who are making some payments.
All that leads me to believe that it will take two or three years before the complete system is operational and everyone gets all their payments in full. In fact, it might take to the end of the next Parliament. If that is the case, I would rather know that. It might sound like bad news, and Ministers may get bad crits, but it is time that they came clean and said how long it will take to put things right.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that at the bottom of page 2 of the EDS briefing paper produced for the debate it states:
"software which allows start of bulk migration of cases to new systems delivered on time"?
That is my understanding. I am not trying to create trouble between the Department and its supplier, but there is a straight conflict between the evidence. It would help if we could understand the Government's position. We are not looking for definitive times that are undeliverable, because that is not in anybody's interests. I just think that we should be told the whole truth in its unvarnished form so that we can make judgments about what we do next. That leaves aside the whole question of backlogs, the difficulties of staff training and staff relocation. None of that helps with enforcement or debt reduction, which are also big areas of difficulty. All those issues are overlaid by the staff reductions that the agency appears to be facing, but I know that the Secretary of State is considering those carefully.
All in all, the situation is very difficult. The sooner that some light is shone on it by the Secretary of State, once he has finished his consideration, the better. If he cannot do it this afternoon, I hope that he will let us know early in the new year exactly what he intends to do. It is not an easy situation, but we would rather know the truth than be led on indefinitely in an area of policy that is causing great stress and anxiety throughout the UK.
We need transparency across government. What I have learned from this inquiry is how inadequate are the mechanisms that are available to Parliament. I was surprised at the extent to which the industry is willing to engage in a much more transparent partnership with Parliament in the process of scrutinising some of the projects as they are developed in real time. 'The National Audit Office looks at such matters historically and I look forward to its report on the CSA. In fact, I shall go to the hearings and sit at the back. We might even be able to sell tickets. However, we need reports that are more in real time, so that we can track exactly what is going on. The biggest block is the difficulty that Departments seem to have in being free and open with the information that Parliament needs. Given that we will enter new territory on freedom of information early next year, people will start looking for recourse through the courts if they do not get the information that they want, such as business process statements and gateway reviews, transparently and openly from the Government. People will go to the Information Commissioner and ask for information that is withheld by Departments on the ground that their work is paid for by taxpayers' money. Parliament is entitled to know about expensive projects.
These questions are not easy, but I hope that the new Secretary of State will reflect on the response that he gave to the Committee. I hope that that is not his last word. I do not need to tell him that this is a huge issue, both collectively and in the individual elements of the CSA and other departments. I hope he will give urgent and proper consideration to the issue and try to devise a process that will in future give Parliament more confidence that it will be able to monitor and scrutinise such projects as they develop more coherently than is currently possible.
I am delighted to contribute to the debate and I start by congratulating the Committee on the quality of its report. I say that as someone who 10 years ago served as an IT director in a large company and therefore had to be familiar with the principles of how large projects should be run and, in many cases, how they fail. The Committee's report was excellent and demonstrated to me that even my 10-year-old knowledge is not completely out of date. The report addressed many issues with which I was familiar when I worked to try to deliver major projects. The Committee has done everyone a considerable service, and I share the disappointment of its Chairman at the quality of the response, which did not attempt to address many of the core issues in the report.
As I mentioned in an earlier intervention, I took an interest in the Office of Government Commerce gateway process at an early stage, because with my background in the business I welcomed the attempt to take a much firmer grip of technology projects, to address the risks that might be involved in delivering them and to discover what could be done to control those risks to achieve the desired outcome. I obtained an early gateway review of a change programme in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which was reassuring. I thought that some further steps could be taken, but I am sure that the gateway process has altered since then. I was impressed by the initial start.
I have asked for gateway reviews on other occasions—several times for the project we are discussing—but the Committee's report contains various phrases that echo precisely previous parliamentary written answers that I have received on why disclosure was judged to be inappropriate. That serves us ill in many ways, including in the performance of our role as guardians of the public purse. These are important projects. I recognise that many of the issues involved are substantially beyond the ken of virtually all Members of Parliament, but nevertheless we can take advice on the content of documents and they should be available to us so that we can make our own judgments.
I recognise the merit in removing some of the personal comments that might be made that could be attributed to individual members of staff or those involved in the supply of the system. However, enough would remain to be publishable after that process and allow the documents to be made more widely available. Indeed, by coincidence, I received a written answer today to a question to the Chancellor—because the OGC process is the property of the Treasury—as to whether he had reviewed the gateway process following analysis of failures in the CSA system and process change programme. I was concerned to learn that there has been no such re-examination "as a direct result" of the CSA system and process change programme. Perhaps there has been a re-examination that was not a direct result. We await changes in the way in which the OGC operates and the disclosure of its activities in the future. I hope that that will happen soon.
The principles of delivering a project of the kind we are discussing are outlined in some of the papers that the Committee has produced. The first point, which is worth repeating to those who are not comfortable with technology, is that we should forget about the technology. The issue is how to make the human processes more efficient. Unnecessary elements in those processes should be removed and the most sensible way to deal with a particular task should be devised. Then the technology should be applied. All too often, those who commission a programme start from the other end. They say, "Well, this is a major technology project. We can see all sorts of problems with it." The first problem is to define the most effective way to do the job to be done. I admit that I did not see a huge amount of evidence, from what I could tell anyway—we would have liked to have greater disclosure—of that process having been properly undertaken within the CSA before the project started. But the revisioning of how to do the job in question is much the most important part of a project.
The second element is investment in the specification of how to do the job so that it can be put into a system. Again, in complex projects that element is often elided with others. People say, "Well, we need to map this down accurately, but no doubt there will be opportunities to amend it at some future stage." That is wrong, because those opportunities should not occur. The specification should take some time. A large proportion of the project's life should be spent defining the system properly so that it can then be turned into code.
That investment in time, however, should be balanced by rigid discipline. There are references in the report to project management and skills. IT project managers are strange people, and they are not comfortable to deal with, in my experience, because—I would use a rather unparliamentary term to describe the characteristics that many of them have—they are extremely detail-oriented if they are doing their job properly. They are highly protective of the discipline of the project, and will constantly remind people who attempt to depart from it of the consequences. It is therefore not easy to deal with a robust project manager, but their approach is valuable, because it is important to resist the desire for change while development is under way. That requires tremendous restraint. We all recognise that human beings make errors, and in the process of designing a major system, people may leave something out or fail to spot something else of importance. The specification programme should remove as much of that risk as possible but, nevertheless, something is bound to be missed. The project manager's task is to say, "I am sorry, we will not change this now. It will be changed in a properly planned process in future. The first task is to deliver a stable system that functions according to the original spec."
There were worrying signs in the project that people were all too free to suggest that something had been missed, something else could be added and so on. It was hard to work out the exact nature of the changes—I can understand the problems faced by the Committee, as Doug Smith gave some rather opaque answers—but I am concerned about changes of any substance whatever. Robustness is therefore needed from the outset. When one is commissioned to produce something that is highly complicated and of an extremely high risk, one must be disciplined and exercise restraint.
The hon. Gentleman appears to have taken a close interest in the project, so presumably he is aware that Mr. Smith told the Select Committee that about 50 change requests—
Fifty-five.
I am grateful for the exact figure. Mr. Smith said that the CSA had made 55 change requests. Tony Collins of Computer Weekly, however, said that the figure claimed by EDS is about 2,500.
Those statistics demonstrate that this is a hazy area. There was a casual approach to counting the changes, some of which were claimed simply to be screen changes, but they can be of material significance to the system. To be too casual about managing change in the process of development shows either an improper grasp of the way in which a complex project should be run or a lack of transparency.
The Select Committee highlighted the critical value of honesty about progress and deadlines. When I was responsible for a project I was keen, like everyone else, to deliver systems rapidly. Early in my career, I attempted to talk up the progress in delivering one. However, I was firmly told that that was not acceptable. People had to attempt to remove areas of risk in the programme, and time had to be set aside to make sure that the system worked properly. I was not a politician at the time, but I was told that I was driven by the political purpose of persuading my business colleagues that I was doing my job correctly. That mirrors almost precisely the temptations in the DWP project. People felt that they had to say that the programmes would be delivered rapidly when, frankly, the complexity of the task should have made them much more hesitant about such ambitious deadlines.
I will not dwell further on the gateway process. It is imperative not just for this project but for any other major system project in government that we are given appropriate disclosure, although I accept that there may be constraints on the advice that project leaders receive.
There is a tendency, particularly in political circles, to be obsessed with the peripherals of an IT project or front-end considerations, such as how it appears to the citizen or whether they can go online and do certain things. I am disappointed by some of the presentations on the use of IT in government, as the importance of such things has been greatly overestimated. The critical elements are the infrastructure and the core systems, which are incredibly boring, but are the foundations on which the service is delivered. The appearance of the screen or the way in which citizens can access the system and get the information that they want are, frankly, secondary considerations that are some way down the line in a project. That is a generic issue, and does not apply to the DWP project because, thank goodness, there has been no attempt to allow people to access the system and look at one another's requirements
Finally, as the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood) rightly said, we are undertaking a huge number of complex IT projects at the moment. I firmly believe that we need a holistic view of the use of technology in government that is driven by the concept of priorities. We must consider where the resources most need to be applied. It is sometimes forgotten that they are finite and that we do not have limitless numbers of skilled purchasers and project managers to do such tasks either within the industry or, critically, in government. We must apply those resources to ensure that we deliver our objectives properly, which requires a willingness to say, "I am sorry, that must wait for some time while we complete a number of other projects." Ministerial leadership is needed, and I am concerned that sometimes Ministers distance themselves from the process. I have made private remarks to Ministers about the CSA systems and, given my background, mentioned my willingness to talk to some of the people involved. Almost invariably, however, Ministers were uncomfortable with the technicalities. We need a ministerial focus of some depth on such subjects to lead a strategic process of change in government. It would be too optimistic to rely on individual departmental Ministers, given all their responsibilities, to try to understand and fix these things. A more strategic and holistic view is therefore needed and, above all, a more transparent process. I, too, was delighted to read some of the industry's remarks that suggested that it was not particularly worried about transparency, but were rightly concerned about the effect of some of the projects on its reputation. It is keen to achieve better quality outcomes, and some of the proposals that I have made this afternoon would help to achieve that.
Our debate highlights one of our prime duties as Members of Parliament. We must hold the Government of the day to account on the expenditure of public money, which, we must remember, is precious. We have learned this afternoon that a total of £12 billion has been invested across government in recent IT projects. The sums involved are huge, and the Department for Work and Pensions, the highest spending Government Department, is at the top of the list on IT spending. Parliamentary scrutiny is essential, and we must ensure that the Office of Government Commerce enforces best practice.
Computer Weekly, which has been referred to several times, has suggested that project gateway reviews should be published in the public domain. In the United States of America, they have gone further by passing the Clinger-Cohen Act, which requires departments to report to Congress during the life of a project and highlight any deviations from that project specification. That is an American law, but I understand that the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who is a former Treasury Minister, indicated that she would look favourably at such a law in this country. Will the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions update the House on whether the Government intend to go down that path? All Governments of whatever persuasion will provide a better service to taxpayers and the public if they are subject to full and proper parliamentary scrutiny. That is true of future Labour Governments, Conservative Governments and Governments of any other persuasion. I hope that the Secretary of State will reply positively.
As part of its recent inquiry into the CSA, the Work and Pensions Committee went to Australia to examine the child support system. On that visit, we learned that the Australian Government have experienced similar problems to this Government regarding the computers that run their child support agency. The Australian Government got rid of their external commercial supplier during the life of the project, took the project in hand and made it work successfully. We must examine that example on a case-by-case basis, but it raises a number of questions.
I suspect that our Departments of State contain people who have expertise and who are capable of seriously examining commercial projects. They should be given the power to terminate a contract with an external supplier if the project looks like it will not come off and they should, like the Australians, have the courage to terminate such projects. If Departments do not have such expertise, they should scour the world to buy in the finest talent to oversee such projects. I cannot think of a better use of taxpayers' money than having people who understand such matters and who have the top technical expertise in the industry to make sure that projects deliver on time. Given the £12 billion sum that was mentioned earlier, expenditure on those people's salaries is money well spent.
As a member of the Committee, does the hon. Gentleman recall that we got the impression that the DWP did not have the expertise to negotiate the contract and set up the agreement with EDS? However, we took evidence that the DWP has—not a moment too soon—beefed up its in-house technical, computer expertise, if not its legal expertise.
The hon. Gentleman is right, and he has made the same point as me. It is excellent that the DWP has increased its expertise, but we must ensure that top-level expertise exists in all Departments, and particularly in the DWP, to keep track of commercial suppliers hired by the Government.
When we were in Australia, we saw the benefits of a computer system that works, when we sat with Australian staff and listened to phone calls from the Australian public. It is was a joy to hear a phone call come in, to see the correct information, including the previous details of the case, coming up on the screen and to observe the member of staff giving efficient answers straight away and taking the case forward. We want that service for all CSA clients and CSA staff—the CSA employs about 12,000 staff—in this country.
The CSA has operated an appalling telephone system. Earlier this year, clients who rang the CSA had their calls routed to any member of CSA staff in the country who was not using their phone. The calls were answered by members of CSA staff in different offices in different parts of country, who were often unable to access the client's details. That was frustrating for both the member of the public who had rung in to try to get a service from the CSA and, indeed, the poor CSA staff. That level of service was appalling and unacceptable. The issue concerns not only computers, but a decent telephony system that serves the public.
In Australia, the computers and telephones work and proper information retrieval is possible. I asked Committee staff to analyse the case load levels of Australian staff and UK CSA staff. Where the computers work, it is no surprise that each Australian member of staff can handle a much greater case load than UK CSA staff.
In a few years' time, when the computers work—the objective for which we are all aiming—the CSA can employ fewer staff, whom we can pay more because there will be fewer of them. CSA staff are not particularly well paid—the average salary of a CSA member of staff in this country is about £14,000. I should like to see a situation in which we can employ fewer CSA staff who are better paid and who operate computers that work. That vision is achievable, because, as in many areas of social policy, Australia has led the way and shown us that it can be done. I hope that we all look forward to that vision.
Finally, I shall discuss the complexity of welfare benefits generally—the Select Committee Chairman, the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood) commented on that matter in his opening remarks. When we went to Australia, we met someone who said, "The price of the equity is complexity," which is no doubt true in many cases concerning social security. If one is going to be completely fair to people in different circumstances—different incomes, savings, ages and family situations—one will be faced by a complicated welfare and benefits system.
Equity also concerns a robust, dependable system that works and that delivers the money that clients need on time, week in, week out, without failure. A system that works is a matter of equity and social justice. The welfare system is complex. The new CSA system is simpler and concerns percentages of income, but when it was converted into a computer programme, it took 60 million lines of software code to deliver the project. We must examine a simpler welfare and benefits system that is robust and that delivers—the new, simpler CSA system still requires a highly complex computer system.
I join other hon. Members in congratulating the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood), and his colleagues on a very important report. If I may say so, my hon. Friend is an anorak's anorak. He was willing to go boldly where no one else was willing to go, and he has done the House, and all our constituents, an important service. Scarcely a person in the land is not affected by one or other computer system, whether for child support, tax credits or national insurance. They all affect our constituents to varying degrees, and they have to be got right. My hon. Friend and his Committee have done an important service in bringing this before the House.
The motion on which the House will be asked to express its view at 6 o'clock allocates £26.3 billion to the Department for Work and Pensions, on account, for 2005–06. It is probably out of order to ask too many questions about that £26.3 billion, because we are supposed to talk only about the bits of it that refer to the management of IT projects. Will the Secretary of State tell us how much of it refers to IT projects, to the nearest billion?
I have a feeling that we are not quite as rigorous in scrutinising public spending as we might be. I looked through HC 1235, a document referred to in the motion, to see whether I could find out what the £26.3 billion was spent on. There are six very vague headings. Apparently, ensuring the best start for children and ending child poverty in 20 years will be a snip at £113 million, whereas promoting work as the best form of welfare will cost £15 billion and improving rights for disabled people will cost £6 billion.
If I understand it correctly, this £26.3 billion is 45 per cent. of the expected figure for 2005–06, which takes us up to about £50 billion—about half the Department's whole budget. Will the Secretary of State clarify why we are talking about only just over half the budget—is national insurance excluded, for example? I am slightly befuddled. Given the vast sums that the Department deals with, some indication of what on earth we are talking about would be helpful.
On IT, we heard informed contributions from the hon. Members for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) and for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous). This has not been a partisan occasion, and I shall not seek to make it so—or not too much. The issue of in-house expertise is vital. I was shocked, when I read my hon. Friend's report, to find that ITSA—as in "it's a" shambles, or rather the Information Technology Services Agency of the Department for Work and Pensions—had been contracted out: handed over to one of the poachers, as it were. That is extraordinary. There is a concept in economic regulation called regulatory capture, whereby the regulator wants a quiet life and the best way to get it is to get on well with the people he is regulating. It is regulatory capture gone mad to hand over the people who know about managing IT projects to the people whose projects they are supposed to be managing.
I am reassured that the Department is now starting to build up its in-house IT expertise. However, I do not believe—this is no disrespect to the people the Department has taken on, because I do not know them—that one will get the quantity and quality of people while things are not done in-house, because surely anybody who could work for the DWP managing entire IT projects on this scale could earn three times as much working for EDS. If everything is outsourced, there will never be the quality and calibre of people being taken on. Will the sort of person who is up to the challenge take a job with the Department for a third of the money?
It was fascinating to hear about the Australian experience, whereby when the system went wrong it was brought in-house and then worked. I am worried that Departments of all sorts have lost the expertise. Initially, such IT projects were done on a public-private partnership basis. We are now reaping the rewards of that, and the Treasury has accepted that it is a mistake. However, projects are still being outsourced to a very small band of competitors. That is worrying. If the Department could choose from dozens of potential suppliers of these services, then when one of them makes a complete pig's ear of it, as it is known in technical circles, the Department could really give it a hard time by enforcing the penalty clauses and withdrawing contracts. But when it is only one of two or three, the Department dare not upset it and has to get on with it. It all seems to have got terribly cosy. The Department cannot get really tough because if that supplier goes away, it is down to two. I gather that EDS is one of only two potential suppliers for the Ministry of Defence's computer system. That terrifies me.
Has the hon. Gentleman read reports, as I have, suggesting that EDS may be a provider for the Government's identity card scheme?
That would not greatly reassure me, given the scale of the project.
DWP projects, in particular, tend to deal with vast numbers of people. The national insurance computer deals with more people than there are living in the country—it has records of the dead on it. National IT systems do not get much bigger than that, and I cannot see that having very few people who can do it and very limited in-house expertise is the way forward.
I will be interested to hear the Secretary of State's response to a suggestion in the Committee's report about breaking such projects down. Can they be compartmentalised in any way, or are they simply indivisible? What is the Government's thinking on breaking down some of these projects into more manageable chunks?
The hon. Member for South Derbyshire rightly mentioned openness and parliamentary scrutiny. The House is constantly frustrated when it tries to oversee these things. I cannot think of many other areas in which things in Government go wrong, and in some cases have a devastating effect on our constituents, yet we cannot ask questions about them. We cannot even be told what has gone wrong or that it will be put right. One example would be the mess-up with the 40,000—I thought it was 60,000—PCs in the Department that went wrong the other week. The Secretary of State did not come to the House, and I do not believe that there was a written ministerial statement. The shadow Secretary of State wrote a letter that was replied to—I was grateful for a copy of that—but the strategy was to try to keep it quiet. [Hon. Members: "It did not work."] Indeed, it may well not have succeeded, but why should it have to? The presumption that IT matters are secret and the House should not be told even about things that go wrong is unacceptable. There should be a shift of emphasis towards a presumption of openness, not secrecy.
I want to mention NIRS2, which is another computer system that has gone wrong—there are plenty to choose from. For years, we did not have reliable information on the contracting out of the state earnings-related pension, as was. Not so long ago, when I asked questions about contracting out, the latest figures were for 1995–96 because the computer system was such a mess. Currently, the latest figures are for 2001–02. We are promised 2002–03 figures by the end of this year. When we are well into 2005, 2002–03 figures will be the most recent that we get. That cannot be acceptable. We spend about £11 billion on national insurance rebates, and the Government cannot tell us definitively how many people are getting them, or what has been happening to the numbers—have they been going up or down?
When I ask questions about NIRS2 functionality I am told that it is sorted out, yet we cannot have the data. I presume that that is because although the computer now works, it was such a mess that there is a backlog of data entry or some such. I hope that when the Secretary of State entered his new Department he was appalled at how little information it could give him about what it was doing. NIRS2 is not a sexy computer system, as it were, but it is a very important one. I hope that the Secretary of State will put resources into enabling it to give us reliable information. Information about trends in contracting out is terribly important, and the data that we have are so out of date that it might as well be pre-Beveridge.
I turn finally to the Child Support Agency. The presumption is that the new computer system is the problem and the old one is fine, but I heard that neither is working and that as a result staff are being sent home on annual leave and something called snowflake leave—I do not know what that is; I hope that the Secretary of State can tell me. Of course, we have no statement and no written information. Can the Secretary of State assure us that the old system is working properly—let alone the new one, which we know is not?
What is the Secretary of State's strategy for going from old to new? I recently had a meeting with a group representing lone parents, during which we discussed whether the Department might simply let nature take its course, bearing in mind the fact that in 16 years everybody will be on the new system. Every child who is born will go straight on to the new system and the older children will drop out. At some sort of tipping point, everybody will be on the new system. Perhaps three years short of that, so many people will be on the new system that it will be a fairly easy job to move the last lot across. I am not saying that it could take 16 years. I am asking whether that is an option for the Department—simply allowing nature to take its course and allowing a gradual, natural transition, or is the Department determined to have a CSA day, at which point everybody gets switched over on to the new system? What is the Secretary of State's latest thinking?
We ask repeatedly, "When?" and the answer is always, "When it is ready." Given that we are whinging about the problems of computers, of course we want the system to be ready. What is the Department's latest estimate? It has always been reluctant to give us an estimate, on the ground that it may be held to account for it. I will do a deal. If the Secretary of State will tell us when he thinks that it will happen, I will not criticise him when it fails to happen.
Our constituents want to know. People telephone to ask when they will go on to the new system. I tell them that I do not know and that I have asked the Government, and they do not know. Understandably, these people are dismayed. Those who are waiting need something better than that.
Like every other Member, the hon. Gentleman will be pressed from time to time by non-resident parents who will be better off under the new system, and not by those who will be worse off. Does he agree that it would be useful to have some statistics from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that indicate, by extracted samples, the likely proportions of people who are on the old system who will either be better off, worse off or much the same? That would give a feel to what the scale of the political impact might be.
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. If he were to read some of the written answers that I received when I probed these matters, he would find that the Department has made such estimates. As he said, on average non-resident parents will pay less. However, because of the £10 disregard, on average certain parents on benefit will gain.
I was coming on to the point that the slowness matters not only from the point of view of changes in the rules, but for every week lost, £10 is lost for good for a lone parent on income support. We may think that the odd week or two is acceptable, but if we are talking about a year or two that is £500 or £700. Those are huge sums for lone parents on income support. It is important that if the Department thinks that the transition will not happen soon, it should have a plan B. It is unacceptable that some of the poorest families in the land are missing out on a tenner a week through no fault of their own, whereas if they were new cases they would be getting the money. We have the situation where two lone parents living next door to each other, one having had a baby after a certain date and the other having had it before a certain date, will find that one is living on £10 a week more than the other, and that that will be ongoing. That is not sustainable. The Under-Secretary of State or the Secretary of State hinted that something might be done for that group. Perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us what that might be.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), to whom the Secretary of State offered a job at the end of the Queen's Speech for his knowledge of these matters, said that people are critical of these computer issues. We can telephone the excellent CSA hotline for Members. I pay tribute to the staff who deal with our queries and I should not drop them in it. However, it has been said to me that it is difficult to work with the new system. If I telephone about an old case, that is great, because all the information that I want is accessible. If I telephone about a new case, the staff have to go through complicated procedures and they cannot give me the information that I want on the phone. The information is less accessible on the new system. I wonder sometimes whether the people who have to deal with the system have been fully engaged in the process from the start.
A big issue—almost like the £450 million—is that on occasion it has been mooted that the new CSA computer might be given up as a bad job. Is that still an option? Is that still under consideration? If so, will the Secretary of State clarify how that would work in practice? Would the money that has already been handed over remain handed over? Would any of it be reclaimed? Is there a get-out clause—a break clause—for failure to deliver an effective computer system? Could the Secretary of State pull out? What would it cost the taxpayers if he did so? Is he considering pulling out, or is he of the view that eventually everybody will be a new case and we can then get the new data correct?
I am baffled by the fact that the old data are such rubbish. One of the problems seems to be that the new system is intolerant of dodgy data. I suppose that we should be thankful for that. It appears that the old system is riddled with rubbish. The data are inaccurate. Indeed, they are full of mistakes. That is one of the problems with migrating to the new system. People do not fit because the data are rubbish. Why was the CSA allowed to get away with that for presumably the 13-odd years of its existence? It was running a system involving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money that was based on rubbish data. Presumably it was getting assessments and liabilities wrong.
There is a can of worms there. The House has failed to scrutinise that because nobody told us. The Secretary of State's predecessors failed to scrutinise what was going on when the old system was being run. The National Audit Office might want to examine how that was allowed to go on for so long with entirely inaccurate data.
The Committee has done the House a tremendous service in addressing a huge issue. The CSA is not the only example, but it is certainly the most obvious one. I hope that the Secretary of State can reassure us by telling us where he is heading with the CSA. I hope also that he will consider running some of these projects in-house in future, as an option. Or does he have an ideological objection even to considering that approach? I know that it is a bit old-fashioned, but I would welcome some of these projects being run by the Government.
I begin by congratulating the Secretary of State. That may seem a strange, curious or bizarre remark after a debate of this sort. If for no other reason, as the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood), said, I congratulate him on coming to the House this afternoon. We all know that, sometimes, Secretaries of State with easy announcements to make come to the House, but those with difficult debates to face slough them off on junior Ministers. The right hon. Gentleman has not done that. The Opposition will not be congratulating him on much else.
Speaking as a member of the Select Committee as well as an Opposition Front Bencher this afternoon—[Interruption.] I have not had any complaints about that to date from Government Members of the Committee but perhaps I have received the first. The report, the Government's response, the response to that response and the events that followed were unique in my admittedly limited experience of these matters. They were also deeply worrying and should concern every Member of this place, and I want to explain why.
I should pay tribute to the Chairman of the Committee for the way in which he went about his work; I pay tribute also to the members of the Committee who have spoken this afternoon, including my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous). When the hon. Gentleman put the report together, an important focus of it was the Child Support Agency's IT programme, which not unsurprisingly has been the focus of this afternoon's debate.
My general experience is that the Select Committee does not pull punches in reaching is report conclusions. None the less, the reports are written reasonably; the volume is not normally playing at full blast. The current report is reasonable—how could I say anything else?—but, in announcing its conclusions, the Committee turns up the volume.
The report states:
"It is shameful that the benefits of policy simplification have been frittered away on a decision to build an IT solution that is clearly over-spec, over-budget and overdue."
The decision to deliver a simplified policy through a more complex IT system was, in the Committee's view, "astonishing." The service that the CSA's telephony system provides is "appalling." The Committee said that a former Secretary of State for the Department, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), had promised the House not only a simpler child support system but a simpler IT system. Above all, the Committee had been refused access to reviews of the IT system that the Department conducted. The Committee concluded that that
"is certainly convenient for the Department and makes us suspicious."
The Committee asked:
"Was the CSA's IT programme mis-sold to Parliament?"
The Committee demanded a full post mortem. It asked the CSA to guarantee by 1 December—a date that has passed—that the migration of old cases to the new scheme would be complete by May next year, and to publish a contingency plan by February 2005 if it could not migrate to the Committee's deadline. The Department's response—what there was of it—appeared in due course. There was no response to the request for a contingency plan or, therefore, to the deadlines that the Committee recommended.
The Chairman demonstrated again this afternoon that he is not someone who is prone to wandering through the Corridors, searching for Ministers, with a broken bottle—full or empty—in his hand. He is always moderate. However, on reading the Government's response, he and the Committee lost patience. Out whizzed a press release, which said that the Committee was "profoundly dissatisfied" with the Government's response on publishing business cases, gateway reviews and implementation assessments. It stated that commercial confidentiality, going further than before,
"is being used to prevent Parliament from gaining access to key information about IT projects."
It summoned the new Secretary of State, who is in his place, before the Committee, with Doug Smith, the then chief executive of the CSA.
I am aware of that. We all know what followed as the Department scrambled at full speed to anticipate events. Would that it had responded so speedily to the Committee's recommendations in the first place.
Mr. Smith appeared before the Committee. The Secretary of State announced that Mr. Smith had decided that
"now is the time to stand aside".
The media were less diplomatic: "CSA Chief Quits in £460 Million Chaos" read one headline. Mr. Smith told the Committee that there was no date for migration, no firm date for what he called the recovery programme and, above all, no contingency plan. The Secretary of State said that he had not ruled out the nuclear option of scrapping the computer system. He pledged to make a "quick decision" on that, as the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) will be interested to know. Later that day, the Prime Minister told the House that the current state of affairs was "not acceptable".
As I said earlier, the Secretary of State's presence this afternoon is very welcome. We all hope, whatever our party and whether we are members of the Select Committee or not, that he has some answers on, for example, the quick decision. We cannot expect an exact date but can he give some guidance about when he will make the decision? In the meantime, will he give us a timetable for the appointment of the new chief executive of the CSA when Mr. Smith goes? Is EDS right that the new version of software that was implemented on 6 December provides the capability to migrate cases from the old computer to the new system? That was mentioned earlier. If EDS is right, why is not at least migration happening now?
If the Secretary of State decides not to press the nuclear button, to use his figure of speech, will the recovery programme be completed by spring, as Mr. Smith expected? Hon. Members should note that, in the phrase that Mr. Smith used to the Committee, the deadline is
"an expectation rather than a detailed plan."
What exactly is being recovered? What news does the Secretary of State have of the migration and conversion of data?
To pick up a point that the hon. Member for Northavon made, when will lone parents get the £10-a-week payment to which they are entitled? After all, as hon. Members of all parties have said, that is at stake. The CSA is in crisis. Of the 478,000 applications to the new scheme since April 2003, only 61,000 non-resident parents—13 per cent.—have made a first payment. The CSA has failed to collect £750 million from some of the poorest families in the land.
We are not considering simply a technical story of computers, software, data and telephones that do not work, but a human story of needy children, lost cash, bewildering letters, parents getting away with not paying and desperate parents with care hanging on at the other end of those telephone lines. The story goes wider. The hon. Member for Northavon and other hon. Members said that on 22 November the Department's computer operations were paralysed by what has been described as
"the biggest software crash in Government history. "
We understand that, following an attempted software upgrade—we cannot be sure because we do not really know—civil servants were unable to authorise new benefit claims or amend existing claims for approximately three days. Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us whether the crash was linked in any way with a crash that apparently brought down the Home Office's national fingerprint computer system last week. According to insiders, that meant that
"no offender's identity can be verified".
It was described as Britain's "biggest-ever police IT disaster."
The Department issued 19 press releases last month. As the hon. Member for Northavon pointed out, it did not find time to issue a press release to explain exactly what happened on 22 November. The public, like the Select Committee, are still in the dark. My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) wrote to the Secretary of State to ask him a series of questions. I shall not repeat them all; the list was long. However, I want to ask when Ministers were first made aware of what had happened, what instructions were issued and what, if any, implications the Secretary of State believes the incident has for the future. After all, it is the future that is at stake.
The Select Committee travelled to Blackpool and Preston last week. We were told in Blackpool by both the Disability and Carers Service and the Pension Service that the Department was expecting the computer systems to take the strain as staff numbers were reduced. The CSA is an IT disaster, a human disaster and a DWP disaster, and we cannot be confident that it will be an exception to the rule when we read that the company that might deliver the Home Office's grand identity card scheme—perhaps the biggest-ever Government IT scheme—is EDS.
So the Secretary of State must reassure us today. We cannot reasonably expect him to provide instantaneous solutions; I am sure that he will be grateful for that. However, we—along with demoralised CSA staff, parents with children in need, the Committee and the House—are entitled to clear answers that will sweep away the cobwebs of evasiveness, secrecy and non-co-operation of which the Select Committee complained.
What mechanism would be appropriate to ensure proper accountability to Parliament in relation to these issues? Does my hon. Friend think, like me, that measures similar to the Clinger-Cohen Act in the United States could be the answer, or do we need an uprising in desire from the Government Back Benches for greater parliamentary scrutiny?
That is a good idea. In fact, I should put on record that there has been scrutiny from the Government Back Benches this afternoon. We had some very strong scrutiny from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), who very ably recommended himself to the Department as a kind of freelance IT consultant—
Or CSA chief executive.
Even that, perhaps. We also had scrutiny from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), and others. If a Select Committee sends its report to the Government and no answer comes back on key recommendations, all we can do is keep up the pressure on Ministers. I have tried to do that, as have my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), the hon. Members for South Derbyshire and for Northavon, and the Chairman of the Committee. After this story of non-co-operation, the Committee is entitled to an apology.
I should like to join other Members in thanking the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood)—along with his Committee and, indeed, his Sub-Committee, which produced the report on IT—for securing this debate on an issue that is rightly of great concern to the House. I also thank him for the way in which he introduced the debate. His tone was measured, and he got to the root of the problem without seeking to turn this into a party political debate.
May I say to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) that I think that it is the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) who has "sloughed off" this afternoon? I should like to have seen him in his place. The hon. Member for Wycombe said that he had not heard any complaints about that yet; let me be the first to record one. A Select Committee that is enhanced by its chairmanship is a little diminished by the fact that the hon. Member for Havant is not here to reply to the debate and has left that task to the hon. Member for Wycombe, who is a member of the Committee. Indeed, two of the Conservative Front-Bench spokesmen on Department for Work and Pensions affairs sit on that Committee, which rather confuses the issue. To be fair, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who is also a member of the Committee, like my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), did not make a party political speech on an issue that concerns the whole House equally.
The hon. Gentleman will now be in trouble with his party Whips.
I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would put on record the respect in which he thought I made a party political speech.
The hon. Gentleman should just read Hansard. I think that he made a party political speech; he aimed to say that the Government had somehow been curiously guilty of IT failures. I remember, however, something that happened under the previous Conservative Government, because I was involved with it as general secretary of the Communication Workers Union. They had a marvellous idea called Horizon—the payment card initiative—which I fully supported. It was an absolute disaster. Members need only read the National Audit Office report on it. The developer was also the financer; it was one of the most incredible errors by a Government on an IT case that we have ever seen.
Having said that, I think that modern IT developments offer enormous opportunities to businesses, public services and the way in which individuals conduct their day-to-day lives. That is why this debate is so important. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 52 per cent. of households have access to the internet at home, with almost 60 per cent. having used the internet in the past three months to buy or order tickets, goods or services, 36 per cent. using it for personal banking and financial services, and 23 per cent. for looking for a job or sending a job application.
As the Select Committee's report makes clear, the challenge facing the Government is to exploit the power and opportunities presented by modern IT, which the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) mentioned in the debate on the Queen's Speech. Meeting this challenge has meant taking on a number of very big projects, including those involving significant expenditure, and it is right that they should be closely scrutinised by the House.
We have moved from large private finance initiative projects to smaller off-the-shelf solutions. The CSA project was the last of the old style. None of the projects, however, is risk-free, and only by taking on such projects are we able to harness the power of IT to help to deliver better public services more efficiently. I hope that the House understands and accepts that in doing this we are bound to encounter some problems, and that such problems are far from unique to government—they are also experienced by the private sector, as we all know from the publicity that surrounded the recent difficulties that Sainsbury's encountered.
Indeed, a survey undertaken by Oxford university and Computer Weekly on the IT projects of 1,000 project and programme managers, found that one in 10 IT projects were abandoned, three quarters were challenged, and only 15 per cent. succeeded, with similar results for both private and public sectors. Those findings are not limited to the UK, as there is a similar story in the US. Last year's Standish Group survey of more than 13,500 IT projects in the US found that only one in three projects were successful; that on average, cost overruns were 43 per cent. and time overruns 82 per cent.; and that only half the required features and functions made it to the final product.
One of the best defences against such problems, which was mentioned in the debate, is having high-quality staff, and in particular sufficient numbers of appropriately skilled people to negotiate contracts and monitor IT suppliers effectively. In 2002, the DWP was the first Department to recruit a chief information officer, who is a member of the executive team and responsible for the delivery of the DWP's IT projects. The DWP has also recruited a series of top individuals, predominantly from the private sector, who have experience of operating and negotiating IT contracts and delivering IT services and projects. Those appointments include five information systems directors, a chief technology officer and a sourcing director, with a director of IT service delivery currently being recruited.
We therefore take on board the argument about the need for expertise in the public sector. We have been working to transform the overall capability of the Department's IT function. The objective is to move to a smaller and more professional approach, reducing overall staff numbers by more than half, but increasing skilled resources in key areas such as sourcing, risk and portfolio management. By bringing in experts in IT and procurement, the Department will build a high-calibre team of professionals able to deliver a world-class information system and IT service to the Department.
To save vast amounts of taxpayers' money, and to ensure value for money, is the Secretary of State able to pay such consultants what he needs to pay them to ensure that he can get absolutely top-class people to do the job in the hand?
I think that we are—the pension is good, as everyone keeps telling us. Certainly, from the standard of the people who are applying for these jobs —I will talk about the CSA chief executive in a minute—we believe that we are offering appropriate terms and conditions.
In terms of the people being hired by the Department, and the people who have joined since two years ago, can my right hon. Friend say a little more about whether any of those individuals, at that level or lower, have the skills to do the software, computerisation and business transformation development? Does the Department now have hard expertise in computer matters, or does it merely have better expertise in supervising procurement, which, to me, the list that he read out suggested?
This is a debate about the management of IT systems, but from my understanding, the people concerned do have the necessary qualifications. Certainly, those whom I have met are well acquainted with the more techie, nerdy, anoraky end of IT projects, if one wants to use such terms. Indeed, it was specifically for those capabilities that they were recruited from the private sector. That is a key part of the progress we are making towards being better equipped to tackle the challenges that still face us. We are seeking to improve our expertise in IT, but also in addressing the business-change aspects of major IT-enabled transformations. For example, we have a programme director from the private sector for child support reform.
Let me deal with some of the key issues that have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire made two points. He expressed concern that we had rushed into the CS2 project. It was originally supposed to go live in October 2001. The then Secretary of State decided that it was not ready, and his successor decided that it was not ready the following April. It eventually went live in March 2003. I do not deny that there were problems, but there was no mad rush to get CS2 up and running.
That was not quite what I was saying. I was more concerned about the fact that the preparatory phase—which involved understanding of the process of business change and the key appointment to which my right hon. Friend has referred, and also the specification process—had not been given enough weight in the project. That is the element that was rushed.
My hon. Friend may be right about that. I mistook the point that he was making.
My hon. Friend's other point, which prompted an intervention from the hon. Member for Wycombe, related to the number of changes made to the initial contract. The hon. Gentleman said that there had been 2,500 changes, and that that was reprehensible. I wrote to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, the Chairman of the Select Committee, giving the details. I am sure that he will share them with other Committee members. In the meantime, I can tell the House that according to the record there were 1,016 requests for changes—not 2,500—and 55 were agreed to as proper changes under the terms of the contract, while 657 were agreed by both sides to be defects. When the Department said that a defect should be rectified, it was itemised as a change. The remaining 304 are still under discussion. I hope that that explains the position, and that the hon. Member for Wycombe is now entirely satisfied.
No doubt the hon. Gentleman is about to tell me that he is.
That means that the Secretary of State knows that I am not entirely satisfied. May I ask whether EDS agrees with those figures?
Yes. They are the figures agreed with EDS, which is why I pointed out that 304 changes were still under discussion. I will keep the Select Committee posted on them.
Will my right hon. Friend clarify the question of dates? When Mr. Smith appeared before the Select Committee on 17 November, he said:
"Since December 2002, which is the last piece of review that we did, we believe that we have made something like 50 to 55 requests for change, against around 1,000-plus changes that needed to be made to the system" .
It is not clear whether "Since December 2002" means that the figures related to a period leading up to that date or to a time between December 2002 and November 2004.
I cannot put my hand on the letter that I sent to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, but if the answer is not in that letter I shall write a supplementary letter to ensure that the Select Committee has the information.
The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire made an interesting point about Clinger-Cohen. He said that we should consider introducing that American legislation for our UK procurement system. We believe that the steps that we are actively taking to strengthen our ability to manage these large projects are better than the Clinger-Cohen legislation, which could lead to a tick-box approach. That is not just our view. When pressed on this issue by the Public Accounts Committee, John Oughton, chief executive of the Office of Government Commerce, said:
"I do not think that this is the right route"—
the Clinger-Cohen approach—
"for us. I do think the route for us should be based on working with departments in partnership, collaboration. I do not think mandate helps."
So we and the OGC have considered this issue separately, and we do not think that the Clinger-Cohen approach provides a solution.
We expected the important points made by the hon. Members for Roxburgh and Berwickshire and for Northavon (Mr. Webb) to be raised, and I hope to cover them in the rest of this contribution. I understand the Select Committee's concern about the publication of the OGC gateway reviews. The House will know that the OGC is considering general disclosure of gateway review information in the light of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which will come into effect in January 2005, so we will need to use this guidance to judge potential disclosure on a case-by-case basis. I can assure the House that if disclosure is judged to be in the public interest and is not covered by one of the exemptions in the 2000 Act, disclosure will happen.
I must make it clear to the House that, as the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire said there will be a number of instances where disclosure will not be in the public interest. For example, if published too early, some financial information could jeopardise our ability to get the best value for money from commercial competition for a contract. Unless there were strong and overriding public interest reasons to the contrary, it would not be sensible to disclose such information. Similar concerns will apply in business cases. Nevertheless, I will do what I can to help the House and the Select Committee to get the information that they need to scrutinise this important area of Government activity. It is fair to say that the hon. Gentleman's disappointment at our response to the Committee's recommendations was to a major extent based on this issue. I hope that we will have the OGC report very soon, so that we can take this matter forward.
Will my right hon. Friend release the OGC gateway reviews relating to this project, given that it is reasonably clear that selective disclosure will happen at some point? As I pointed out earlier, selective disclosure appeared to be possible at the very start of the OGC gateway process; only more recently have people become rather more chary of it.
My hon. Friend seems to be asking whether we will apply this provision in retrospect. I want to have a good relationship with the Select Committee, and for it and the House to feel that we are being as open as we can be. I shall certainly consider what we can do retrospectively with other gateway reviews in the DWP, which is the only Department in respect of which I am able to give a commitment.
The hon. Member for Northavon referred to the question of overdependence on EDS. At one level, we are taking steps to increase the number of suppliers with which the DWP does business. We need access to a greater range of suppliers if we are to take advantage of the best that the market has to offer. Although existing suppliers such as EDS and BT will be free to bid for future work, we have made it clear that a natural result of this strategy is likely to be a reduction in traditional suppliers' share of DWP business. However, our traditional suppliers will continue to be important to our ability to deliver modern and effective services to customers. Consequently, as well as taking steps to access a greater range of suppliers, we also need to improve what our existing suppliers offer us.
I hope that the House will be pleased to hear that we have begun a constructive and frank dialogue with EDS. I met its senior executives from America yesterday evening and made it clear that we intend to extract greater value from Department for Work and Pensions IT contracts. In the case of EDS, we are its most important customer. For EDS to be successful as a business, it needs us to be a satisfied customer. The DWP is currently jointly restructuring its arrangements with EDS to create maximum value. We are looking for a radical transformation to deliver standard services at more competitive prices and we are instigating a programme that, subject to commercial agreement, will simplify existing contractual arrangements and create a catalogue and framework for new services. Overall, that transformation programme will give the Department a greater level of assurance on IT delivery for the future, but let me address in more detail the two most high-profile recent issues with EDS.
First, there is the fault with the digital object identifier system. Hon. Members have mentioned the computer failure that occurred across the DWP two weeks ago and the hon. Member for Wycombe asked several questions about it. I have now received the initial analysis of the incident and provided a copy of the report this morning to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire and to Opposition Front Benchers. I was seeking to make that point when the hon. Member for Northavon was speaking. I was referring to that matter, not to my reply to the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts). The report was marked confidential and sent to the Select Committee and to the hon. Members for Havant and for Northavon this morning, as I said.
Let me be clear about the scale of the problem. It was never about a failure of our main computer systems. As was mentioned in the Queen's Speech, they operated normally throughout. For regular pensions and benefits payments, it was business as usual and customers continued to get their money as normal. The basic problem was that a routine upgrade to a small set of computers was accidentally applied to a larger group than intended. That affected those computers and could not be reversed. To use a non-computer technology phrase, EDS effectively put a round peg in a square hole and could not get it out again. Consequently, a large number of our PCs could not operate properly and there were some delays in dealing with new or amended claims because many staff were not able to access their systems. Thanks to the efforts of our staff, however, we worked round the problem.
Under the terms of our contract, we will pursue compensation from EDS for failures in the level of service, and we are now getting further information on the business impact and the resulting administrative and operational costs to assess the need for further compensation. Much of that information will help answer the questions posed by the hon. Member for Wycombe and I will be pleased to provide it to the House. EDS takes full responsibility and assured me yesterday that it has "bullet-proofed"—its term, not mine—against this happening again. Turning from that high-profile case to—
Before the Minister moves on, is there not an important issue about how the Department responded? The first I knew about the problem was when I turned on the television on Friday morning of the week in question. No information was given to the House about what was going on—the hon. Member for Gravesham (Chris Pond), refers to bandwagons, but we are talking about our constituents getting poor service and the Government refusing to tell us what was going on. Why was the report marked confidential? Why is the tendency to hold back information rather than to supply it openly?[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions,
I am talking about a report from EDS to the Government, its customer, about what went wrong. It supplied the report to us marked confidential, so it was then up to us to decide what to do with it. We were happy to share the information.
As to what happened that week, a problem occurred and we were made aware of it on the Tuesday, but it was a problem with people's desktop computers rather than the mainframe. About 20 per cent. were unaffected, but 80 per cent. became affected, albeit the process was gradual. Between Tuesday lunchtime and Thursday evening, when it was finally put right, it was all hands to the deck to find out what was going on in order to put it right. There was no attempt to keep the problem under wraps. It was simply a nose-to-grindstone, shoulder-to-the-wheel attempt by the Department and our staff to put it right. I assure any aspiring conspiracy theorists about that. It was certainly not a conspiracy, but the alternative explanation, however unparliamentary it may be to say so.
I apologise for not having been here for the start of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, but I have asked many questions previously about these and related matters. The point that the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) was underlining was that of procedural necessity in relation to disclosure rather than the periodic exercise of ministerial fiat. Is the Secretary of State arguing that greater openness about costs will, on the whole, tend to their reduction over time? That would seem sensible. Is he alert to the fact that companies have, on the whole, a vested interest in making the process as lengthy, extensive and complicated as possible in the name of their own commercial success?
The final point has certainly occurred to me; the hon. Gentleman has put his finger on one of the real problems as regards how we solve these issues. A combination of the gateway process, having the right management systems and the fact that we are not reliant on only one supplier but are diversifying across a number of them will help put things right. Governments deal with such vast systems, not just in this country, but in others, so there has perhaps been a tendency to put too many eggs in one basket.
Let me move on to the most important issue. I am not saying that what happened a couple of weeks ago was not important but it did not affect our customers, apart from new applicants. The Child Support Agency, as many hon. Members have said, affects our customers daily. Last weekend, EDS completed a very smooth software release for the CSA system, despite its being the largest and most complex release since the system went live. This change is, in the terminology, 3.5—the fifth of six changes. So far, there have been no problems and the change has gone successfully.
The Dispatch Box is wood!
The hon. Members for Roxburgh and Berwickshire and for Northavon, and others, have asked why, now that has happened, we cannot migrate. There is one more software phase—3.6—to go through, as the Select Committee knows because it was part of our evidence. That will happen next spring, and we have to make sure, now that things are moving in the right direction, that we can clear the backlog and the cases jammed in the system. Before migration occurs, we have to be absolutely sure that all that is done. We got the software in this weekend, but that did not lead us to say, and the House would not expect it to, that we should think three days later about migration. That would just repeat some of the problems that my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire suggested had happened in the past.
There has, then, been some welcome progress on the CSA computer system. The current software release is the fifth out of six that form the most important components of the recovery plan, but there are still problems that inhibit the staff, so I was pleased that the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire said what he did about the staff who are working very hard in terrible circumstances. The final release will not be delivered until the spring.
In yesterday's meeting, I told EDS that I would conduct a formal stocktake with the Child Support Agency, EDS and the Department early in the new year. I have made it clear that I want to be personally assured, on an ongoing basis, about EDS's continued commitment and delivery track record. The plan for migration and conversion is dependent on EDS successfully remedying defects in the current system and the development, testing and successful implementation of the software for the bulk conversion of cases from old-scheme assessments to new-scheme calculations. Migration and conversion will not take place until I am absolutely satisfied that the new system is capable of supporting the full case load and that the business is stable.
I take the point made by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire: if it is two years away, he would rather have the bad news than nothing at all. However, until the stocktake, we will be unable to give some kind of comfort about the date when people can expect to have their cases migrated. When we are in a position to do that, it is fair that we tell the House how we expect the process to go.
The hon. Member for Northavon asked what we would do about the £10 benefit disregard. The big problem with the CSA not working is that the £10 disregard is a tangible benefit to poor children, so the reference by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Chris Pond), at the Dispatch Box at DWP questions was about us looking at whether there was a way that we could get the £10 quickly, without waiting for the computer system to be sorted out. As I pointed out to the Select Committee, initial feedback was that the process would be so complicated, it would take so long and there would be so much bureaucracy, that we might as well spend the time trying to get the computer system right. However, the issue is still being considered.
Another important point is that £5 a week is stacked up under the old system and paid out as a £1,000 job bonus. That is available under the old system but not under the new system. As more and more lone parents go into work—in general, we are talking about lone parents—that £1,000 is an important element and we must ensure that they understand that that financial arrangement is still in place.
When I appeared before the Select Committee, I explained that the system is improving to a degree that would make it very difficult to decide to go through the real nuclear option, about which I was asked, bearing in mind that pulling the plug means the end of CS2 and the hopes and ambitions of the whole House for the system—it had a remarkable amount of political cross-party agreement—as well as the end of our hopes for an easier system. We are still at the stage where the system is improving to such a degree that it is difficult to contemplate scrapping it, but it is not yet coming up with the type of customer service that means that we can make a decision definitely not to scrap it. We are still in that difficult situation.
The option is not an easy one, but it must be faced. I have not yet come to a conclusion. As long as the system is appreciably improving—moving in the right direction—and EDS honours the undertakings given to me, the answer to the question, "Would you pull the plug?" would be "No" — but I shall look at it again in the new year.
The Secretary of State told the Select Committee that he would make a quick decision. He has just given us an insight into his thinking and has concluded that, at present, the balance of the argument is in favour of letting the system continue. Will he give us any more guidance about when that quick decision will actually be taken?
I said that we would look at the matter again in the new year. The stocktake will be in January and there will be a new chief executive—I shall come to that in a second. The word "quick" will be as elastic in parliamentary terms as saying that we will publish a report in a spring that generally runs from April to December.
I want to reiterate, and make it absolutely clear, that this CSA system is the last of the old-style projects. We have learned lessons from it and there is no question but that we would do it differently if we were starting today. We need to meet today's challenges and our new chief executive will play a crucial role in helping to do so. I can confirm that the advertisement for the new chief executive has been completed and should be appearing in the weekend press. I hope that it will attract a strong field of candidates from which to choose, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam, who is leaving Parliament at the next election.
In conclusion, the DWP's IT systems are vast. They contain more than 20 million customer accounts and make 13 million payments every week. We are part way through one of the largest change programmes anywhere in the world, which is transforming DWP businesses by implementing major organisational and business process change, delivering better services to our customers and freeing up staff to help people on the front line.
That change is at the heart of our aspiration to transform the customer experience. Today, customers can claim benefits over the phone and get jobs through the internet. The number of new integrated Jobcentre Plus offices has already reached almost 550. At the same time, 26 centralised pension centres have been established to provide a telephone-based service designed for the needs of today's 11 million pensioners.
The programme to modernise the way benefits are paid has so far resulted in almost 20 million accounts receiving direct payments. The public service agreement target is to reach 85 per cent. by 2005, but the current projection is that we will exceed that, reaching 93 per cent. in that time scale.
The Government's most popular online service is available through 9,000 touch-screen terminals, giving access to 400,000 vacancies in the internet job bank. The Jobcentre Plus website is one of the most popular in the country. In October of this year, it was the 66th most visited site in the UK, while in both Government and employment sectors, it was the most visited of more than 1,000 UK websites in each sector.
The Department has also been shortlisted for awards in recognition of achievements in connection with the modernisation programme. Those awards include IT department of the year and IT manager of the year, sponsored by Computing magazine, and the project professionals group won the Office of Government Commerce best practice delivery award in October 2003.
The modernisation of our transactional processes is crucial to delivering improved services more efficiently. It frees up resources for front-line services, modernising and streamlining corporate back-office functions, including reducing the reliance on clerical processes and reducing fraud and error.
Almost everyone in the country will come into contact with the DWP at some stage of their lives. Our commitment to better public service lies at the core of our use of IT. I welcome the continued scrutiny by the Select Committee in helping us to ensure that we get the best value for money that we can from our IT projects. I welcome the opportunity of the debate to put on record some of those facts and to answer some of the legitimate criticism that has been made by the Select Committee and others, and I look forward with optimism to a future where we can get ever greater value from our suppliers and deliver a continually improving service to our customers.
Debate concluded, pursuant to Resolution [6 December].
Question deferred until Six o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54(4) and (5) (Consideration of estimates) and Order [29 October 2002].
Academies
[Relevant documents: Fourth Report from the Education and Skills Committee, Session 2003–04, HC 58-I, on Secondary Education: School Admissions; and the Government's response thereto, Cm 6349; and uncorrected oral evidence taken before the Education and Skills Committee on 1st December 2004, from the Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, HC 86-i, on Secondary Education; and the Department for Education and Skills Departmental Report 2004, Cm 6202.]
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Education and Skills—
(1) further resources, not exceeding £448,598,000, be authorised for use as set out in HC1234 of Session 2003–04,
(2) a further sum, not exceeding £461,594,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs as so set out, and
(3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.— [Jim Fitzpatrick.]
It is always a privilege to have a debate on the estimates. If one is the Chairmen or a member of a Select Committee, it provides an opportunity to bring some of the deliberations that we conduct across the road—in our case, in Portcullis House—into the very heart of the Chamber. It also a privilege to be the Chairman of a great Select Committee, such as the Education and Skills Committee—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear"]—with such fine members.
I usually open any speech, as one does regularly, on the role of a Select Committee Chairman by saying that one of the great advantages is travelling all around the country to places where people know a great deal about their sector of education—a lot more than I do—but my Committee and I have expertise and knowledge right across the piece. From early years, lifelong learning and secondary education to higher education, we cover it all. Indeed, there has been a massive increase in our work, given the Children Act 2004, which takes us into totally uncharted territory. That is very exciting; it also gives me the ability to have a broad range. I sometimes say that we have as broad a range as the Secretary of State himself, except that we tend to be in the job longer than he or any Minister does. The average career of a Minister is two years, two months. It was a first when we had an Education Secretary who stayed for the full four years in the last Parliament. It did us a power of good to have that continuity. The Department has a corridor that displays the length of time that former Education Ministers spent in the Department. One wonders how long it took them to get a grasp of the job before they made a reasonable and positive input.
Over the past year, the Committee has considered secondary education across the piece. That has been our main inquiry. We break our big inquiries into smaller ones to keep everyone on their toes and to keep interest going. One of my colleagues, whom I shall not name, chairs another Committee and thinks that the attention span of Members of Parliament on Select Committees is not that good, so we have to give them a healthy and diverse diet. I would not say such a thing. Indeed, I think that if an election takes place when predicted, we will be like Virgin airlines, with nine aircraft in the air, all of which we have to bring into land safely by the spring.
The Committee has concentrated on what has been going on in schools for 11 to 16-year-olds. The winter supplementary estimates provided an additional £36 million for the academies programme for the current financial year. That is a substantial amount of taxpayers' money. Following the comprehensive spending review, the Minister announced on 30 November capital allocations for academies of £207 million for 2005–06, £365 million for 2006–07 and £467 million in 2007–08. That is an awful lot of money. The Committee has to ask whether that represents a worthwhile investment by the Department for Education and Skills on behalf of the taxpayer.
As I said, the background is that we have been looking in some depth at the four strands of secondary education—diversity of provision, pupil achievement, teacher retention or recruitment and school admissions. On diversity of provision, we considered in particular the Government's current programme for rolling out a large number of specialist schools. The programme started off with a small number of specialist schools, but the ambition rapidly increased for every secondary school to be a specialist school. Although the Committee is not critical of that ambition, it is our job to evaluate the programme on the basis of the message that we regularly get from the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, which is that the Government's watchword is: policies based on evidence. So policies are not implemented if there is no evidence-base.
We challenged the Government by examining specialist schools. Rather than seeing a systematic evaluation of programmes rolled out into a policy for specialist schools, we found an interesting accretion of policy, going back seven Secretaries of State to Kenneth Baker, now Lord Baker, who instituted the city technology colleges, and Sir Cyril Taylor, who has a greater ability to survive than the vicar of Bray. The schools may have a different name, but he is still influential in their development.
We wanted to distinguish between following a policy based on evidence and a policy inherited from elsewhere. It has been the Government's aim to put in place a structure of secondary education to improve attainment for all pupils. There is nothing wrong with that. We applaud it. Of course, that has been dominated by other watchwords, many of them emanating from No. 10, including autonomy, diversity and—one of the most popular words with all parties—choice. My colleagues and I especially want to consider the implications of the work that we have done on secondary education for the most recent manifestation of specialism—the city academies.
I turn now to the main lever for making almost all secondary schools independent specialist schools with the option to become foundation schools—a Bill to that effect was included in the Queen's Speech. Every school will be able to have a meeting of governors and decide to become a foundation school. Once that resolution is made, it will own the school buildings and will, to all intents and purposes, be autonomous. For some of us, that is a worry because it cuts out the local authority which has traditionally mediated between Government and the delivery of education through schools. That is a big change. Some people have said that the proposed Bill is not very big or important, but everyone in the sector knows that it is very important. I believe that it has already started its progress in the other place.
We have had a foundation hospital initiative in the health sector and now we are to have foundation schools. In some areas, the Government consider educational attainment to be so poor that more is needed than just specialist or foundation schools, and so we have the academy programme. I put it on record today that I am not against academies and my Committee has made no recommendation on them. However, they will be very important and take up a lot of taxpayers' money. If they are set in the context of the overall destination and progress of Government policy on secondary education, they challenge all of us interested in the quality of schools to face up to some of the changes and what they might mean.
Academies were launched in March 2000 by the then Secretary of State, now the Home Secretary, as part of the fresh start initiative, under which failing schools were closed and replaced with new schools. The academies were to be publicly funded independent schools with power to set their own governance arrangements and to disregard certain parts of the national curriculum, so as to innovate both in what was taught and how it was taught. The academies were really the best and finest example of the Government's thinking.
The aim is to have 200 academies, 60 of them in London. All will have independent sponsors, who will contribute £200 million in capital and will be able to decide on the vision and the ethos of the school. The representative of one sponsor came to see me in my office a couple of days ago and I asked him why his organisation wanted to sponsor an academy. He said that he represented one of the largest financial institutions in the country, if not the world, and it knew a good bargain when it saw one. It is a good investment to get that involved and raise one's profile for £2 million. To be fair, that group employs 8,000 people and sees the investment as a way of participating energetically in the school and making a real difference in the quality of the school.
If one studies the problem of underachievement in some of our major cities and towns one can see that, whatever the policy pursued under Administrations of different political persuasions, it is difficult to raise achievement in certain schools or a cluster of schools. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are both obsessed, as I always say, with education and how to raise standards in such an environment, so I understand why the notion of an academy is attractive to them. It may well be the best way to achieve a high profile and raise standards dramatically.
I do not know whether the Select Committee looked at this, but does my hon. Friend accept that there is a stark difference between education in urban and rural areas? We cannot pretend that every good school is to be found in rural Britain, and sucking resources into cities may be counter-productive.
My hon. Friend makes a good point, which I shall deal with later. However, I want to rattle on, as there is a great deal of interest in the topic, but we have only two hours for debate.
The concept of a publicly funded independent school having sponsors and setting up its own governance is an interesting one. Academies have had a slow start. According to the latest figures from the Secretary of State yesterday, there are 17 in existence, but another 35 are planned. The eventual plan is to have 200, 60 of which will be in London. However, 200 academies are the equivalent of 5 per cent. of secondary schools, which is a high percentage, given that the proportion of schoolchildren in independent education is 7 per cent. The number of academies is therefore small but significant. Academies have been subject to a number of criticisms, and I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards and the Secretary of State for the comprehensive, myth-busting letter that they sent us after the Secretary of State appeared before the Select Committee last Wednesday. We always appreciate fast, informative responses.
It has been suggested that academies will be outside local education authority control. I would be interested to hear the response from my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards to the argument that they have a more favourable capital funding arrangement than other schools in the locality, which are therefore disadvantaged. While people think it is wonderful to have a beautifully designed new academy, with all its resources and new buildings, they are worried that a school a mile and a half down the road that has been doing well may suddenly be dragged down by the competition with a super-duper, all-singing, all-dancing—literally, in some cases—school.
Does my hon. Friend agree that while the Government have the laudable aim of raising achievement in deprived areas, it is feared that the independence of academies might conflict with the Government's other laudable aim of making schools work together for the benefit of their area? Does he agree that that problem must be tackled as the academy programme is rolled out?
My hon. Friend, with whom I have worked closely on the Select Committee, is right.
It is argued that sponsors spend relatively little and have too much control over schools, thus skewing the way in which certain subjects are taught. There is concern that creationism is taught in one or two Anglican schools. The Select Committee visited one Anglican school, and although the ethos is different, we did not find evidence that creationism was being taught as a science subject in the curriculum. We understand that creationism was discussed in liberal studies as something that can be evaluated along with other theories. I do not go along with the tabloid scare stories.
On 1 December, we took evidence from the Secretary of State on secondary education and discussed academies in depth. Following that meeting, the Secretary of State wrote to the Committee seeking to dispel 10 myths about funding, the way in which academies admit pupils and the role of sponsors. His letter addressed our concerns, some of which have been put to rest.
I want to examine how academies fit into the rest of the school system. If their aim is to improve attainment across all schools, planning and co-ordination will be needed to provide appropriate provision across an area. In that context, the Committee has consistently pointed out a great danger. Some time ago, we went to New Zealand, where about 10 years ago a previous Labour Government gave all schools independence, which means that local councils no longer have any remit for education. We have found plenty of evidence that that policy has caused great difficulties, because it means that no intermediary exists between central Government and schools.
When the Committee examines schooling in a particular area, we often find systemic failure—not one or two failing schools, but a cluster of failing schools in an LEA area. LEAs are often responsible for addressing such situations, but I understand that the Government are impatient with their patchy performance. Some LEAs are good, some are excellent, some are pretty awful and some are average, which is true of most human institutions. It irritates Ministers when an LEA does not get its act together over a long period of time.
Although LEAs are examined by an inspectorate, Ofsted, the range of other powers builds quasi-government bureaucracies. For example, the Learning and Skills Council, which has a budget of £9 billion, is the biggest bureaucracy of all. It has an active interest and role in post-16 education. A previous Government made all post-16 schools independent. Such schools own their own buildings and premises, and they operate independently from LEAs. Some people argue that today's problems in the further education sector exist because a systemic answer is not available.
When it comes to addressing our skills needs, how can we lift performance? I spoke to the small business community this morning. How can one get technical colleges to respond with the right kinds of courses, in the right kind of time frame and with the right sorts of modules, if one cannot intervene on the local level?
A few moments ago, the hon. Gentleman mentioned clusters of failing schools. Surely the question is why LEAs have allowed such clusters to develop for so many years. LEAs are not the answer.
The hon. Gentleman has a point. Members of the Committee and I would not suggest that LEAs are the only answer. We should be wary about following the same route as New Zealand and should not throw away something that can be fixed. I hope that the Minister will address that point.
The Government are in two minds. On the one hand, they want independent schools. The new Bill will allow for foundation schools. We will have autonomous schools all over the country, and academies in city centres and town centres that will be even more independent because they have even more control over their own curriculum. On the other hand, weakened LEAs will have little power over those clusters. Some Government thinking—Professor Tim Brighouse has been very much involved with it—says that schools should increasingly co-operate as collegiates, working together as networks and clusters of schools, including schools with different specialisms. We applauded that when we spent a week with Tim Brighouse and his team in Birmingham. Of course, he is now an adviser on London education.
Our Committee is worried that those two policies do not marry together—at least, they do not appear to; perhaps the Minister will put our minds at rest. Is it possible to address systemic failure and to encourage collegiate systems and co-operation through clusters of schools, at the same time as giving more independence to schools than ever before? Who will draw these institutions together? I hope that the Minister will answer that when he winds up.
My hon. Friend mentioned colleges of further education. He will know as well as I do that they were given their freedom some years ago. Is he suggesting that that was the right way forward and that they have blossomed as a result? Will not the academies go down the same route?
If one looked at comments on the FE sector by some of the ministerial team and by David Bell, the chief inspector of schools, one would not be too complacent about post-16 education. The situation is patchy. There are some excellent sixth form colleges, such as Greenhead college and New college in my constituency, but there are real problems in the sector, as David Bell said last week.
I want to conclude by mentioning three questions that are being asked about academies. First, there is the question of sponsors. Some people ask why sponsors are necessary, but the Government want academies to work and sponsors provide the money. I believe that there is a healthy level at which sponsors can operate. However, I am reminded of what a member of our Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis), said when we discussed specialist schools. In a part of the country that does not have any big business, or indeed has very few private sector businesses at all, raising £50,000 for a specialist school is pretty difficult, and £2 million looks more or less insuperable. It will be less easy to find £2 million in some areas than in an area where one can see the towers of Canary wharf, with all its massive financial institutions, just down the road. Some parts of the country may not be able to find an active sponsor, as opposed to one who gives the money and then walks away.
Secondly—I shall not rehearse this argument—there is the problem of being outside local authority control.
Finally, there is the question of academies being able to have a sixth form. That might sound desirable, but planting one of those in the centre of a town or city without careful consideration of the impact on other sixth form provision in the area could do a great deal of damage, particularly in relation to shortage subjects such as maths, IT or foreign languages. It is difficult to find staff for existing sixth form provision, and spreading the gruel rather thinner may make life extremely difficult. Specialist schools with their specialists are all very good but they need qualified teachers in particular subjects. Having examined teacher recruitment and retention, we found that there was not the crisis that the popular press had claimed. However, we found that there were problems with three or four shortage subjects. Some of those problems are being addressed but there is still a difficulty.
We have reached the stage where, more or less, we know that small sixth forms are a problem. They do not have breadth, diversity and depth. If introducing academies means many small sixth forms again, just when we know that we want to be on course to more substantial sixth forms, there will be a problem.
It has been alleged that capital allocation for schools might not be the best use of the money. We are talking about £1 billion over the next three years as the Government move towards 200 by 2010, set against £6.5 billion in the "Building Schools for the Future" programme over the same period. When we consider the amount of money that the Government are spending on education and on the "Building Schools for the Future" programme—this applies to any Member who has been in the House for as long as I have—we think, "Wow! We have been waiting all these years to have a Government who put this sort of investment into education. It is wonderful." Do not ever think that the Select Committee has always to be critical of the Government. It is a wonderful investment in the education of our children in future. It is fantastic. I will not continue on that theme, although I am sure that the Minister would like me to do so.
We are asking whether it is a good idea to take so much of the overall budget in the "Building Schools for the Future" programme. We hear that the Department is saying, "If there is not an academy in your plans, you will not get the money. You have got to have an academy." That has been described as sending the heavy mob out of the Department and leaning on people. I have not met anyone in the Department who would meet that description. However, we get the idea of the sort of pressure that perhaps the Minister will say something about. Perhaps he thinks it is legitimate pressure to say, "Unless you have an academy you will not get 'Building Schools for the Future' money." I was concerned about that level of coercion.
I refer again to the written statement of 30 November, which states:
"The Building Schools for the Future plans will be assessed according to rigorous school improvement criteria and funding will not be released until the Government and local people are satisfied that they meet the full potential for transforming standards. This includes considering Academies and other options for new schools in their plans. As we said in the five year strategy, the Government will not stand by and allow local authorities to sustain failure by refusing to engage with Academies where they can meet parental demand for good school places."
I can understand what the Minister is getting at, but there is a balance between having something that the Minister wants to achieve and involving local people who know something about their local education provision, and who think that what they want to do may not include academies. I want to draw out the Minister a little on that.
In his evaluation letter yesterday, the Secretary of State said:
"There is a five-year PriceWaterhouseCooper study on academies, the second annual report of which is to be delivered this month."
In the statement my right hon. Friend argued that the Government could not wait five years before taking decisions. We understand that. It is a reasonable position, but what encourages the belief that academies are an answer in areas with a long history of poor attainment? In his response, perhaps the Minister will say what he thinks—rather than a bit of hope and a bit of passion—is behind the view that academies will succeed in areas where other programmes have not succeeded.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who chairs the Select Committee. I hope that he receives the expected Christmas present from the Secretary of State after his policy defence.
Liberal Democrat Members are unhappy about granting another £36 million to a programme that constitutes little more than an act of faith by the Minister for School Standards and the Secretary of State. It lacks any sort of evaluation and is untested and untried. It appears to hang together only by an act of faith. Santa Claus might be a mythological figure but, for academy sponsors, he is not only real but bears an uncanny resemblance to the Secretary of State.
As the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, where else, for an outlay of £2 million, can one receive £24 million of capital and have all one's running costs covered in perpetuity? It is the most remarkable offer. The ability to decide the broad curriculum provision for groups of young people over whom one has no other control and with whom one has no other involvement is also thrown in, simply on the basis of being a wealthy individual or corporation. We should examine and challenge that, not simply accept it as an act of faith.
Before reverting to the academy programme, let me briefly consider the Select Committee report on admissions that was published in the summer. It directly relates to academies and admissions. I want to take the unusual step of congratulating the hon. Member for Huddersfield on an exceptionally good and balanced report. Some of the evidence from key practitioners and some recommendations were telling. The fact that they mirrored Liberal Democrat policy in their entirety is purely coincidental. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) on having such influence on the Committee and making it see sense. It was interesting to note that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), who is not with us today, was the only dissenting voice in the Committee proceedings.
It was especially telling that although there were high levels of satisfaction for parental preference, that applied especially outside London, which was the big problem. In a future examination of academies, perhaps the hon. Member for Huddersfield will consider whether the programme deals with a London-centric issue rather than a problem that applies throughout the country. There is a danger of taking the genuine problems in London—I would not understate them—and believing that they are translated elsewhere. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider that.
We were especially pleased that the Government took from the Select Committee report the proposals on co-ordinated and one-stop admissions policies. That was useful, especially in London but also throughout the country. When the Minister for School Standards sums up, will he assure the House that he will evaluate the first round of admissions to ascertain its effectiveness? Genuine concerns exist, especially in the voluntary-aided sector, that the measure may not be the panacea that many of us believe that it will prove. That is a genuine suggestion, which I hope that the Minister will take up.
We are particularly pleased that the Secretary of State has followed up the Committee's recommendation to give a greater degree of regulation, particularly from the Catholic schools' point of view, and to include the Catholic Education Service and put it on the same footing as the Church of England Education Service. It will be good that that sort of guidance will be available throughout the country, and that both those organisations, which are crucial to the delivery of our education service, will be involved in the admissions process.
The key element in the report relates directly to the academy programme. It is that the Secretary of State refused to accept the Select Committee's core recommendation, which was that statutory powers be given to admissions forums. That is hugely regrettable, because virtually everyone who gave evidence to the Committee, including the chief schools adjudicator, Dr. Philip Hunter, said that that was important. I want to make it clear to the Minister that the Liberal Democrats do not want admission arrangements that stifle diversity or innovation in our schools. We want a principle that, wherever the state funds a school, that school should have to conform to an agreed set of principles through a statutory code of practice. That is a reasonable request.
As the hon. Member for Huddersfield has clearly outlined, under the academy programme, the new Education Bill that is going into the House of Lords either this week or next and under the move to extend foundation status, the aim is to ensure that half of Britain's schools will be state-funded independent schools by the end of the next Parliament. If they were all outside a statutory code of admissions practice, we should have a real problem.
I can give the hon. Gentleman an absolute assurance that academies and schools that choose to have foundation status are bound by the code of practice.
I accept entirely what the Minister says; of course he would not say anything that was untruthful. However, with all due respect to him, he knows that the Select Committee made it absolutely clear, as did the chief adjudicator, that the code of practice is often honoured more in the breach than in anything else. There are huge swaths of schools that ignore the code, certainly in practice, and I do not think that that should be allowed.
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, if the code is being breached—he says that this is happening across swaths of the country—there is a system to enable the adjudicator to clamp down on it?
According to the evidence taken by the Select Committee, it is quite clear that that is not happening. In fact, whenever the Chairman or other members of the Committee challenged anyone on that issue, there was a feeling that people did not want to upset the apple cart, that the admission arrangements were working and that it would be unhelpful to challenge them. A statutory code of practice would deal with that issue because, by law, it would have to be observed.
The reason that the Secretary of State and the Minister are not keen on a statutory code of practice for admissions is that such a code would allow local authorities, in particular, to plan a universal service. It would enable them to deal with the expansion of school places, the closure of schools and the building of new schools and facilities. The Secretary of State and the Minister deliberately do not want local authorities to be involved in those matters. The reality of the new Education Bill is not only that it introduces the idea of more foundation schools that will be independent state-funded schools; it also virtually removes from local authorities any ability to plan or offer provision within their areas. Members ought seriously to challenge that, and I know that the hon. Member for Huddersfield and his Select Committee are going to look into the matter.
I want to be generous to the Minister and the Secretary of State in regard to the academy programme. I believe that they are absolutely sincere in wanting to provide educational opportunities to children living in some of our poorest communities. The first 17 academies were launched in some of the most deprived areas anywhere in the country, often replacing schools that, at best, had a disappointing record of educational achievement. That is important to say, and it is why I have been supportive of the party stance in areas such as Lambeth, Islington and Southwark, which have Lib Dem councils, and where we have been involved in supporting academies as part of an overall improvement in provision.
The Minister is right that the state of affairs that existed in many of our poorest areas, not only in London but throughout the country, could not continue. As the Home Secretary famously said, we cannot simply allow social deprivation to be an excuse for educational failure. For too long, that has been the case. What we have not recognised is that, sometimes, the hill that needs to be climbed is much higher in those areas, and therefore they need a great deal more support.
I do not attack academies simply for the sake of saying, "This is something new, and therefore we must not have it." But where is the evidence that spending a disproportionate amount of a precious resource on academies—£1 billion on capital in the next three years—will solve the problem without destabilising the remaining education provision in particular areas? The Minister must address that when he sums up.
We would argue that the right approach is to give all schools that are not in special measures, or not showing signs of weakness, the freedoms that academies and foundation schools will have. When the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) was the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, he and I proposed an amendment, on the Report stage of the Bill that became the Education Act 2002, which would have done exactly that. It would have given every school and local authority autonomy and freedoms to innovate without having to ask the Secretary of State. Now, unless the Secretary of State chooses such schools, they cannot have such powers. We have an army of brilliant head teachers and teachers, committed governors and committed communities who would like to do far more to improve their school but are physically prevented from doing so by a Secretary of State who says, "I will decide which schools are allowed to have those powers." That is incredibly sad.
I make this offer to the Minister: if he gives me £25 million, the ability to build a new school, select my students, expel those who are difficult, and impose my chosen ethos and curriculum regime, I will deliver results. I have delivered results in schools and in areas that, as he knows only too well, are incredibly deprived and depressed. Head teachers all over the country who watch this debate will be saying, "That is what I am doing. Why do I not get my share of those resources and the freedoms to be able to do things differently?"
Where is the evidence on which the Minister and the Secretary of State based the move to the academy programme? Did it come from the charter schools in the United States, as I suspect? If so, will he produce any evidence that demonstrates that that has improved educational attainment standards in public schools across the United States? There is no evidence of that. There is evidence that there are some brilliant charter schools. There is also evidence that there are some appalling examples of charter schools, which the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) and I visited some five or six years ago, and in which I would have been ashamed to educate my children. If the Government's evidence for such a model did not come from charter schools, where is the model that suggests that the programme will be successful?
Will the Minister publish the PricewaterhouseCoopers 2003 report, and let us see it? Will he produce the 2004 report, which is now in his office? If he will not, will he tell us why we cannot see those reports? If what is happening in the academy movement is so exciting, let us see what PricewaterhouseCoopers is saying about it, and form some opinions.
How are sponsors chosen and vetted? I have seen no criteria in the plans that have been published so far to determine who is a good sponsor and who is not. Do we just ask "Are you a rich bloke with £2 million? If so, we will slot you into one of the academies", or is it more subtle than that? Will Chris Woodhead and his new organisation, Cognita, with its vast resources, now be regarded as a suitable sponsor for a group of academies? After all, the last Secretary of State reappointed him as chief inspector of schools.
Are Sunny Varkey and the Gems foundation being actively considered for a group of academies, as I understand that they are? If so, I think Members need to know that we are going down a very different route. It may well be possible to translate the Edison project or the Advantage project in the United States to England, but we should be think carefully first.
Creationists now seem to be perfectly reasonable people to run our schools, which I find staggering. I also find it staggering that the Minister should think that because the people of Doncaster rejected creationism as a theme for their school, we should think them outrageous. Who would not be considered acceptable as a sponsor? David Beckham? Ozzy Osbourne? Ozzy Osbourne would make an interesting sponsor of an academy somewhere, but it would be very tough on the Animal Liberation Front.
My main point, however, concerns the destabilising effect. The Government plan to have 50 academies by 2007, and 200 by 2010. Where have those figures come from? Why that number? How is it being decided where the academies will be? The original premise of the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) was that if schools achieved less than 25 per cent. A to C grades over three consecutive years, they would be considered for special treatment. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with identifying real challenges and what should be done about them. But if that is the criterion, it takes no account whatever of all the surrounding schools that may well have been working their backsides off to improve performance and move up. Will the planting of an academy destabilise that?
Then there is the important question of small sixth forms. The Government's new premise is that any 11-to-16 school that wants a sixth form will get one, irrespective of whether that is destabilising. Earlier this week we met a group who wanted to sponsor a host of academies, but said that there must be sixth forms. They want five-to-19 academies, much like the one that is to be set up in Islington.
The point about collaboration is crucial. Under the Government's five-year plan, which covers academies and foundation schools, schools will select students aged 11 and there will be a new wave of highly successful specialist foundation schools. What will happen to the Tomlinson proposals? How do the academies fit in with these proposals? What about the need for collaboration between institutions for 14 to 19-year olds? How do local authorities fit in with these proposals? Without a statutory code of practice for admissions, how can we ensure that such schools actually collaborate? Who will force the academies to join in and support those programmes?
At the end of his speech, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) raised the interesting issue of local authorities being blackmailed into agreeing to include an academy as part of the "Building Schools for the Future" programme. I asked the Secretary of State the simple parliamentary question whether one needs to have an academy as part of one's "Building Schools for the Future" programme. The Minister's written response was that he would write to me in due course. The "Building Schools for the Future" website states:
"DFES will expect local authorities to use the LEP model unless they can demonstrate a better value for money and more effective method of delivering the investment made possible by Building Schools for the Future".
Local authorities cannot satisfy that requirement without having an academy, because they cannot build schools themselves. The Minister has specifically told authorities in Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Doncaster, Islington and Southwark that unless they have an academy, they cannot have the money. That is neither right nor fair.
The hon. Gentleman has made a very serious accusation that is completely untrue. I remember answering his and other Members' questions on this issue and I referred them to the very clear statements in the five-year plan and the "Building Schools for the Future" document. The latter states:
"The Government will expect local projects to provide a proper evaluation of academy options and that such reform is critical in order to demonstrate the expected impact on educational standards of large-scale capital investment".
That remains the position and, if the hon. Gentleman likes, I can quote from the five-year plan. I have asked for the parliamentary question that he says I did not answer to be investigated, but the position is absolutely clear and has been repeated in all our discussions throughout the country.
Before signing off a parliamentary question, the Minister should actually look at it, rather than simply writing back to the Member concerned, saying that he will provide an answer in the future, particularly in cases where the policy is clear. That is an arrogant way to deal with such matters. Why is Newcastle being forced to include an academy that it does not want?
My understanding is that the Liberal Democrats won the local election there promising to have an academy.
The Minister makes light of this issue, but the reality is that, as Members know full well, no money can be accessed unless an academy is included. It would be a very sad group of local councillors who, given the option of a £100 million-plus building project, did not meet the Government's expectations. Can the Minister point to a single major "Building Schools for the Future" project that does not include an academy? Can he point to a single secondary school negotiation currently taking place that does not include an academy? If he can, he will have a better case.
At most, 5 per cent. of our 3,500 to 4,000 secondary schools might become academies by 2010; the majority will not. The majority of heads and staff working in some of the most deprived areas and difficult of circumstances are delivering brilliant results. They get not a word of praise from the Minister. Unless they are prepared to go down this route, they will not be trusted with the freedoms and flexibility that would enable them to do an even better job for their children. What a wonderful Christmas present from the Minister.
We all recall that when the project was launched it was defined as a radical new approach to bring the cycle of failing schools in inner cities to an end. The project was launched by the then Secretary of State with a vision of excellence and diversity. It was to be a vision of transformation. I want largely to celebrate the project through the eyes of one of the new academies—the Bristol city academy. I want to look at how it emerged and assess its prospects for the future.
The academy lies in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Jean Corston) and it was precisely one of the inner city sites that the then Secretary of State had in mind for the project. It had and has an excellent head teacher in Ray Priest, initially head of the St. George community college, and was supported during the early years of the present Government, both as part of an education action zone and as part of the excellence in cities initiative. The idea of collaboration supported the school and saw it develop into an academy.
I congratulate the chairman of governors, the staff and the consortium of sponsors who came on board. Interestingly, the consortium was led by the university of the West of England and Bristol City football club. No one individual came in with a lot of money and his own theory of education. What happened was due to organisations that had already supported the school and its emphasis on sport. Bristol City football club was committed to serve an inner city area; and UWE was interested in raising standards in an inner city area, so it fully collaborated in the project. The academy was born out of collaboration and I trust that it will continue that way. As long as the present head remains there, I have no doubt at all about that. Collaboration with the local education authority, Bristol city council, was also important. The collaborative work goes on and the present head and governors are in place.
The academy is celebrating excellence with diversity. Educational attainment, judged by those gaining five A to C grades in GCSE, is steadily improving. It has gone up from 17 per cent. to 22 per cent. and now stands at 33 per cent. I take note of what other hon. Members have said about sixth forms. Significantly, where last year the academy sent only two students to university, this year it sent 17, including one to Oxbridge. Those young people were still supported by the education action zone. Indeed, the EAZ helped to ensure that all those students took a laptop, or equivalent funding for it, to university with them. The academy has grown and developed out of collaboration, which I believe provides a model for the future.
While this school has succeeded, the LEA has had the difficult task of closing two other schools in Bristol. I am not saying that the closures are the direct result of the academy. Rather, they are the result of the changing demography within Bristol, whereby more people are now living in the inner city. We have succeeded in building on brownfield sites and many more people are moving into areas around the school, which will benefit from it. In other areas, schools have had to shut. Either of those schools could presumably have become a foundation school. Even if they did not, however, it was the LEA that had to take responsibility for shutting them, with all the anguish and concern that that caused to parents and children. We have to have a strong LEA taking strategic decisions, and it should be involved in the strategic decisions of the academies. In my book, the academies should still be within the LEA's remit.
For now, there is a successful academy, and I can do nothing except celebrate what has been achieved. It has, however, been done against a specific background, and I cannot say, for the long term, whether, under a different head and a different management, that school might not, as it becomes more and more popular, select its young people, instead of the local community choosing to go, in a very celebratory way, to a brand new school.
We have to conceptualise what will go on in future, therefore. If we have, as we do now, 16-plus in the hands of the learning and skills councils, if 5 per cent. of academies are independent but publicly funded, and if more and more foundation schools become independent, is it, indeed, the long-term objective of Ministers that all secondary schools will be outside the LEA? That is a question for the long term, but I would like an answer from the Minister. What is the ultimate long-term objective of the policy? Are the Government saying that only an independent sponsor—someone from outside the immediate education sector—is capable of bringing new imagination and creativity to failing inner-city schools?
In LEAs, where things have gone badly wrong, another LEA has come in alongside the LEA to support it in difficult circumstances. I do not want the expertise of LEAs to be taken away to other agencies and sponsoring bodies so that we undermine the democratic accountability of schools. Ultimately, it is only through the collaboration of primary schools with secondary schools, and of secondary schools with secondary schools, that we will get the best attainment for our young people at every level.
We must not forget the extensive parental choice that the Government have developed and encouraged. Parents seeing a new school and all the extra facilities that academies and foundation schools have will of course gravitate towards those schools. As a Labour party member, however, I want to be assured that the fundamental principle for education is that every child matters. If every child matters, we cannot allow some to steam ahead at the expense of others.
Like other hon. Members, I do not damn outright the concept of the kind of mutual approach that I have seen at the Bristol city academy. I can see what has happened, and I can see the value of it, but if every child matters, the two schools that have shut in Bristol needed as much care and protection from the LEA and from the Government as was put in to enhance the achievement of the young people in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East. We must have a broad-based policy. We cannot embark on an expensive project for 5 per cent. of our schools if it will be to the detriment of even another 5 per cent., let alone a larger proportion, which it could well be. I am looking for an in-depth analysis. Like the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), I want to know why we have not yet received the initial report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. It may only be short term, but if it is available it should be in the public domain, as should the report that is to be delivered this month.
Let us have transparent government. Let us see what is happening. Let us celebrate—as I do—the Bristol city academy, but let us use that experience as a lesson for the future. Let us understand exactly what the long-term objectives are for the relevance of LEAs in what is a difficult position: transformation—another word used by the former Secretary of State. It is a hugely difficult management skill to get from failing schools to successful schools—to take a changing demographic situation and ensure that schools are available where they are needed. Capital investment is recognised and valuable, but it must be in the right place and at the right time. The wishes of children and their parents must be recognised.
I celebrate what I have seen in the city of Bristol, but I want recognition of the real concerns that are being expressed by the Select Committee and others as we suddenly go from 50 to, perhaps, 200 schools by 2010.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey), a fellow member of the Select Committee. She is right to cite the Bristol city academy, whose results over the past few years have improved from 25 per cent. of pupils achieving five good GCSEs to 33 per cent. She is also right to praise the head, who was named head teacher of the year for the west of England. But she is wrong always to assume that in life there is a zero-sum gain. Some people can gain without it being at the expense of others.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), the Chairman of the Select Committee, on securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee under his chairmanship. It is a delight, too, to see the Minister for School Standards on the Treasury Bench and I look forward to his response at the end of the debate. It is also a pleasure to see my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) on the Opposition Front Bench and, of course, the Liberals are here, too.
The debate about academies and the whole issue of diversity of provision in state education is a huge red herring. There are 3,409 secondary schools in England, of which 12 are currently academies. A further 35 academies are in preparation, with a total of 200 expected by 2010. I am not against academies. They are a worthy attempt to try to raise educational standards in areas where standards have traditionally been unacceptably low. But that is all they amount to, although the Government may be right to begin taking LEAs out of the loop. We should really be focusing on the general level of educational underachievement in the remaining 3,200 secondary schools. Indeed, in the Government's response to the Select Committee report on school admissions, they say that they are concerned to ensure that every school is a good school.
The same is true of specialist schools. Of course, it is nice to have a variety of schools from which to choose. Some schools may specialise in the subject in which one's child excels, but are not such schools a luxury that we should come to only when we have sorted out the basic problems facing our education system? People want a basic high standard of education right across the board. The present situation is rather like a hotel chain boasting that it has swimming pools when its bedrooms do not even have bathrooms, or even beds in some cases. In reality, what choice is there for most children?
In my constituency, all three secondary schools are now specialised—business and enterprise, maths and computing and sport. But what if a child is gifted in foreign languages? Where should he or she go to school in my constituency? In reality, most parents have the choice only of one or two schools and in some instances neither would be the one they really wanted.
Having said that, to the extent that going for specialist status galvanises a school into pushing up standards, it is a good thing, but the idea that diversity itself will push up standards is nonsense. We must raise educational standards throughout the school system. Let us not kid ourselves into believing that they do not need raising. Consider the academy results themselves. In a parliamentary written answer that the Minister for School Standards gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger), he said that:
"of the three academies with GCSE results in 2003 the number of 5A*-C grades rose to 21 per cent. and 35 per cent. respectively from 7 per cent. and 25 per cent. in 2002".—[Official Report, 7 September 2004; Vol. 424, c. 981W.]
However, those figures are still very low in absolute terms. Consider some other results. At Greig city academy, 23 per cent. of pupils achieve five GCSEs. At Unity city academy, the figure is 17 per cent.; at Manchester academy, it is just 9 per cent.; and at the Academy in Peckham, just 12 per cent. In some instances, those schools have shown decreases since they became academies.
The 2003 programme for international student assessment results—the PISA study—are very damning. They show English schools at 11th place in science, 11th in reading and 18th in maths. The more authoritative study is even worse. TIMSS, the third international mathematics and science study, shows Britain at a very poor 20th out of 41 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The PISA study is striking not just because of the results, but because of the reason for the OECD's decision to exclude figures from the main tabulated results. The reason the OECD did that was the very low participation rate by schools in England—just 64 per cent. One in three schools refused to take part. The minimum response is 85 per cent., which most countries far exceeded. There was also a low participation rate among students.
All that gives the impression that poorly performing schools were too embarrassed to take part and that schools tried to exclude their poorly performing students to boost their results. That was not a factor in most other countries that took part in the OECD survey. The OECD's press notice says:
"There was a potential non-response bias."
In other words, the results in the appendix to the PISA study probably exaggerate the results in a positive sense. The actual results were probably worse than those published. We faced the same low response rates in the 2000 PISA survey, which Professor Prais of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research believes were a contributing factor in the relatively good results in 2000.
It is also of enormous concern that the PISA study reported that the advantage of being educated in the independent sector was greater in the UK than in any other country, except Uruguay and Brazil. In other words, being educated in the state sector in the UK puts people at a greater disadvantage than in most other countries. PISA went on to say that, even when pupils' family backgrounds were taken into account, the advantage of attending an independent school in the UK was significant.
I shall quote briefly from the PISA report. It states:
"This suggests that private schools may realise a significant part of their advantage not only from the socio-economic advantage that students bring with them but even more so because their combined socio-economic intake allows them to create an environment that is more conducive to learning."
Some Labour colleagues will respond to that by saying that we should smash the private schools and force those children into the state sector, which will provide a better mix of socio-economic backgrounds, thus solving all the problems in our state education system. Again, of course, that is absolute nonsense.
Private education accounts, as hon. Members have said already, for just 7 per cent. of pupils. If that 7 per cent. were put among the 93 per cent., it would have little effect on the overall balance of socio-economic groups. We must focus on the 93 per cent. of pupils who are educated in the state sector. I find the argument about intake astonishing. Are those who use that argument saying that children from families of a low socio-economic group are less intelligent than those from other groups? I do not accept that. Are they saying that such groups behave less well than other socio-economic groups? I do not accept that either. The only potential impact that a school with a high proportion of children from a low socio-economic background can have will be the low expectations that that generates among the teachers, and we must address that.
The letter from the Secretary of State to the Chairman of the Select Committee lists the proportion of pupils who are eligible to receive free school meals. There is no correlation between that eligibility and results. Some 59 per cent. of pupils at the Djanogly city academy in Nottingham are eligible to receive free schools meals and 50 per cent. get five good GCSEs. At the Walsall city academy, where 50.9 per cent. are eligible for free school meals, 47 per cent. achieved five or more GCSEs at A to C. However, the Greig city academy has, at 37 per cent., a much lower proportion of free school meals eligibility, yet only 28 per cent. achieved five good GCSEs.
I accept that at a primary level, a child who comes from a family with books and an environment that values education will have an advantage, but if we ensure that our primary schools teach reading and arithmetic properly, I do not see why even that disadvantage cannot be ironed out over one or two years. It is interesting that advocates of phonics in the teaching of reading—I am sorry to bring this up, but the Minister no doubt expected it—can demonstrate that the focus on synthetic phonics and the use of text that does not necessitate a look and say teaching method are an enormous advantage for children from lower socio-economic groups and from ethnic minorities. The Government would achieve far more if they focused on reading strategies and eliminating the fault lines in the national literacy strategy than they are by focusing on structural issues, such as academies and diversity of schools.
The teaching method used in the national literacy strategy is analytical phonics, which incorporates phonics and whole word sight reading. The alternative, more traditional "c-a-t" method is known as synthetic phonics, as the Minister is no doubt by now fully aware. St. Andrew's university carried out a study of 300 children in primary schools in Clackmannanshire. It showed that the group taught using the traditional synthetic phonics method read words about seven months ahead of the children taught the analytical phonics NLS programme and their spelling was about eight to nine months ahead.
In the 90 per cent. of our secondary schools that are neither private nor academies, 17 per cent. of children are arriving unable to read properly and 37 per cent. cannot write properly. Those children have already missed out on six years of reading and they rarely recover from that in secondary school. Under the synthetic phonics programme, children learn to decode any word by the end of their first term.
The other major problem in our secondary schools is that of mixed ability teaching. The fact that a school is an academy or a specialist school does not have an impact on whether it has mixed ability teaching. I was always told that mixed ability teaching was a thing of the past in our comprehensive schools; it was a 1960s fad that had gone. When I tabled parliamentary questions, however, Ofsted responded that 60 per cent. of lessons in secondary schools still take place in mixed ability classes—71 per cent. in year 7, 60 per cent. in year 8, 54 per cent. in year 9, and 59 per cent. in year 10. An enormous body of academic evidence points to huge increases in educational achievement when streaming and setting takes place.
As usual, the hon. Gentleman makes an intelligent and thoughtful contribution. On setting and mixed ability teaching, does he accept that the average he quotes hides quite a lot? For example, the percentage of schools that use setting in maths is much higher than it is in other subjects. I hope that he accepts that setting in maths is higher than it is in PE or other subjects that make up the average that he quoted.
I accept that for maths. Some 80 per cent. of lessons in maths take place in setting, but that still means that one in five lessons are not setted. The Minister implies that only peripheral subjects are taught in mixed ability classes, but 55 per cent. of English lessons are setted, which means that 45 per cent. are in mixed ability classes. In history, 75 per cent. of lessons take place in mixed ability classes and in geography only 36 per cent. of lessons are in setted classes. He is right in precisely what he says, but he is wrong to imply that mixed ability classes are confined to non-core subjects because they are not.
My concern about the drive towards diversity, limited as it is, is that it seems to be the only area of education policy that politicians dare to enter. Structure has been for many years the sole area of education reform that politicians feel safe engaging in. They will not try to reform teaching methods, classroom configuration or teacher training methods, which seem to have become no-go areas for Ministers—of Administrations of both parties. I am especially surprised, and a little disappointed, that this Labour Administration has continued the focus on structure, because Labour's 1997 manifesto made it clear that it would stop doing so. It stated:
"We reject the Tories' obsession with school structures".
Since 1997, the debate has continued to focus on structures and until the Government begin to address the real causes—whatever their assessment of those real causes is—of an underperforming secondary state system, we will continue to see embarrassing international surveys and further botched attempts to conceal what is happening in our state schools.
The Government tell us repeatedly that, especially for education, they believe in evidence-based policy making. The Education and Skills Committee has repeatedly asked where it can find the evidence for most of the Government's proposals, although yesterday morning—in a refreshing change—we received a lot of well thought out evidence on how the national literacy strategy had come about. That was a unique experience.
Last week, when the Secretary of State gave evidence before the Committee, the hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) asked him about the evidence that led to the introduction of city academies. His long reply did not answer the question at all, so later in the meeting I repeated the question—on what basis did the Government intend to create 200 schools, almost totally funded by the taxpayer but handed over to rich private individuals. Again, I did not receive an answer.
The benefit of city academies is supposed to be that their additional status and the extra money that is provided to them will lead to improvements. The average cost of building an academy is £25 million, twice the cost of building a new comprehensive school. However, if the benefit is the extra money and status, they could be given to state-run schools under state head teachers. Indeed, programmes such as the fresh start initiative did exactly that. Perhaps the benefit of academies is the freedom they have to innovate, which the Department's website makes much of. However, it was the Conservative Government who introduced the straitjacket of the national curriculum and it has been continued by the present Government. They could take the straitjacket off. Why cannot the Government give head teachers within the state system the freedom to innovate? Why does it have to be given only to private institutions?
The benefit of academies may be the ability to select 10 per cent. of pupils by aptitude—the Orwellian newspeak used by the Government for ability. But why cannot that freedom be given to state schools, as it has been given to specialist schools? All the benefits of the academy programme that the Secretary of State told us about last week could be and are delivered by the state system. Those benefits are obviously not the real reasons for introducing academies.
What is unique about academies is that they will have individual private sponsors who will take them over, largely at taxpayers' expense. Do those sponsors have to have an educational vision? The Department's website makes no reference to that: it appears to be enough simply to have £2 million to spend. What is the educational vision of a car salesman, a fashion designer, a car importer, a construction firm or the head of a recruiting agency? We do not know. All those people may have an educational vision, but no one has told us about it yet.
Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), I was not a head teacher in an inner-city school in Leeds, but I was a teacher for 22 years and I am a stakeholder—horrible word—in the system, with two of my three children at the local comprehensive school in Chesterfield. I have an educational vision and I know what I would like to do in schools. I have a lot of educational experience, but I do not have £2 million to buy into the system and run my own school.
The Government propose to hand over 200 of our schools, funded almost entirely by the taxpayer, to rich individuals who will be able to do what they like. What is the problem with that? Many concerns have been expressed. The Government's least favourite teachers' union, the NUT, produced a detailed briefing last year, which stated:
"Academy status has the capacity to undermine local communities of schools and the effectiveness of local authorities' support. Sponsorship has the capacity . . . to undermine democratic accountability and curriculum entitlement".
The report comments that neighbouring schools could be left to foot the bill for the new academies, after it emerged that the Government want local authorities to use money earmarked for school refurbishment to expand the academies programme.
Academies are independent schools, and therefore outside the responsibility of the local education authority. They have the potential to disrupt fair and efficient admissions arrangements operated by authorities, as the Select Committee said in its critical report on admissions policies. Although academies are represented on local admissions forums, they are responsible for their own admissions arrangements. The admissions proposals for Sandwell academy are rigid in their categorisation of pupils according to ability bands. Such policies will lead to children being denied places in their neighbourhood academy because such schools select a proportion of their intake.
Concerns have been expressed about academies targeting pupils in their recruitment drives. In Bristol, for example, the NUT said that when the St. George community college was due to reopen as an academy glossy leaflets advertising the new school were distributed in the more affluent areas of the city. The Greig academy in Haringey, which experienced difficulties recruiting pupils, targeted the leafy suburbs rather than the neighbourhood of Tottenham, but we have been told that academies are purely there to benefit the deprived inner cities. The NUT is not the Government's favourite union, but the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, a much more moderate union, which I joined in 1978, said:
"The academy programme is an untried and untested experiment—the 12 city academies that have already been established have not had the time to demonstrate that their provision has raised standards of attainment for pupils in deprived communities.
There is emerging evidence that academies operate selection practices that result in an atypical intake in terms of the communities that they should serve. There is emerging evidence that academies select their pupils (rather than parents and their children selecting academies.) Such selection practices put further pressure on neighbouring schools . . . There is emerging evidence that some city academies exclude a disproportionate number of pupils".
We have some evidence on expulsion. In 2003–04, the King's academy in Middlesbrough expelled 28 pupils permanently—10 times the English average. In the same year, the other academy in the city expelled 14 pupils, which is also above the average. The two academies therefore expelled 42 pupils, while the other five secondary schools in Middlesbrough expelled a total of 10 pupils.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has done his research and, as he said, 28 pupils were expelled from the King's academy in 2003–04. Does he accept that in the previous year, its predecessor sent 38 pupils to the referral unit run by Middlesbrough council?
I accept the figure, because it was given to the Select Committee last week. However, sending pupils to a pupil referral unit is not necessarily the same as permanent expulsion, as the Minister well knows.
To add insult to injury, when a state school expels a pupil, the money attached to that pupil rightly goes back to the LEA, which must provide a teaching alternative such as a pupil referral unit. The academies, however, hang on to the money. Not only are the two academies in Middlesbrough dumping their 42 problem pupils on the system but they keep the money.
Concerns about teaching creationism in science lessons or explaining that God saved us in the second world war in history lessons have been aired before. Bob Edminster, who is to sponsor two more city academies, defended the Vardy schools' teaching of creationism:
"If you tell people they are descended from monkeys how can you expect them to behave like anything other than monkeys?"
Such people should not be given control of two tax-funded state schools. Faithworks is a Christian consultancy that seeks to help Church groups to set up more academies, and provides advice on the way in which organisations can get round anti-discrimination laws that protect gay people. I thought that we had got rid of section 28, but perhaps it will return via the back door.
Business sponsors may get something back too. This summer, The Times Educational Supplement pointed out that the West London academy, Ealing, paid £108,000 to businesses and a charity with major connections to Alec Reed of Reed Executive, who sponsors the West London academy. The King's academy, Middlesbrough, paid £290,000 to organisations and individuals connected with Sir Peter Vardy, its sponsor. Both academies admitted that none of the work for which those payments were made had been put out to tender, which is a legal requirement in state schools.
In conclusion, the Minister said last year that every town should consider whether it needs an academy, but I disagree, because setting up one independent school funded by the taxpayer but placed outside the system would be to the detriment of any town. Parents want good, local community schools; they do not want a minority of well-funded, star-rated schools outside the system, which will soon reach the point at which they are selecting pupils, rather than pupils are selecting them.
The debate has been interesting, and the majority of contributors have adopted a sceptical tone towards the Government's policy on city academies.
The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) said that the Government's policy is about autonomy, diversity and choice, although I was not sure from his remarks whether he is for or against that. That sense intensified when he said that he is not against academies—it was not clear from his speech whether he is in favour of academies. The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) and he both asked whether academies contradict the Government's policy of collaboration. In my experience, people who run academies see their role as working with, not against, local schools. Yesterday, I heard that message clearly, when I visited the City of London academy, Bermondsey. In Shropshire, the Thomas Telford school has used its resources to part-fund two other academies in the area.
The contribution from the hon. Member for Huddersfield was characterised by scepticism, but the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) abandoned that tone and spoke against city academies—apart from when Liberal councils call for them to form part of the Liberal manifesto. He rightly raised the combined admissions code and its effects. Having talked to a wide range of schools and organisations in the school sector, I get the sense that the combined code is not working well. In some ways, it diminishes choice with regard to voluntary aided schools in particular and grammar schools in part. Schools that act as their own admissions bodies have certainly experienced an increase in the number of applications that they have had to process this year. In some cases, the number of applications has doubled or trebled, because they have had to process applications not only from applicants who have put them first, but those in which parents have rated them as their second or third preference.
The hon. Member for Bristol, West was in a typically celebratory mood about the academy in Bristol. The increase in the number of children who go on to university since the academy has been set up is interesting, and it should be commended and celebrated. She also said that one cannot allow some to steam ahead at the expense of others. If one encourages excellence, however, it helps to drive up standards in other schools. Rather than establishing equality of misery, we should aim for the best for all schools and make sure that, where possible, every school achieves it.
In a typically thoughtful contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) highlighted the need to expand and improve standards in not only the 5 per cent. of schools that will become city academies, but all schools. He returned to the theme of setting and phonics. The best way to bring about setting and phonics in our schools is to give parents control and make schools accountable to parents rather than politicians. He commented on the relationship between independent schools and performance. Where schools are accountable to parents and responsible for meeting children's aspirations, better performance is achieved and, perhaps, more traditional methods are used.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) continued the hostility towards academies. He criticised the academy in Sandwell for its approach to banding, but had it not taken that approach, he and others would accuse it of creaming off the best. One cannot have it both ways. I know that it is Liberal party policy to try to do so wherever possible, but there are times when one has to be consistent.
Yesterday, I visited the City of London academy in Bermondsey—an excellent school that will make a great contribution towards raising standards in the area. It is an example of a city academy that has been opened to fill a gap in existing schools provision. I have also been to the Greig city academy in Haringey and the Walsall city academy, which are funded by the Mercers Company—the latter academy is also funded by Thomas Telford school. Those are examples of academies that are not funded by businesses, fat cats or entrepreneurs but by people who have a strong educational vision and a commitment to education that has existed, particularly in the case of the Mercers, for many years.
Unlike most Members who spoke, I support the concept of city academies. I welcome the support that they get from their sponsors in terms of finance, education expertise, and the drive to ensure the delivery of improvements in school standards. I also believe that it is right to give schools more freedom and flexibility in organising the school day and introducing innovative approaches to the curriculum and changes to the staffing structure. Those are freedoms that all schools should have, not only city academies.
I welcome the way in which city academies are able to develop their own governance arrangements. It was interesting to talk to someone who has been a governor of a maintained school and has also been involved in the governance of a city academy. His strong message, based on his experience, was that those who are involved in the governance of city academies feel that they have responsibility for what happens in the academy as well as ownership of the problems and solutions. As a governor of a maintained school, he did not feel that he necessarily had the same clarity and focus of responsibility.
Academies have been successful. The detailed rebuttal that the Secretary of State issued yesterday demonstrated some of their successes. He said in his letter:
"Academies are . . . popular with parents and pupils and invariably receive far more applications than their predecessor schools, and some are already heavily oversubscribed."
He points out:
"The quality of teaching at the City of London Academy, Southwark is rated by Ofsted as 100 per cent. good".
That shows some of the strengths that academies can provide. Results have improved in seven of the 12 academies that were open at the start of this year. The Secretary of State refers to the Walsall city academy, where attendance rates for pupils who had also been at the predecessor school have increased by 10 per cent. Certainly, the pupils to whom I spoke, especially those who had been to the predecessor school, recognised the improvement in education opportunities that the academy had brought.
Why do so many people oppose city academies? Is it because they have raised the level of attainment of their pupils where so many others have failed? Is it because they show that it is not only the educational establishment that can make a contribution to raising standards in our schools? Or is it because they break the monopoly of LEA provision? We need to focus on what works for our children and raises standards in our schools, not on the arguments of the past.
I shall come to my criticisms of city academies in a moment, but I want first to raise a separate issue. It is highly appropriate that the Paymaster General is in her place. When I was at the City of London academy yesterday, I was told that it is required as part of its funding agreement to have a strong community emphasis, and required under a section 106 agreement to provide community facilities. There is a snag about that. Under the VAT rules for charities, for a school to qualify for zero-rated status in order to recover the VAT on its buildings, more than 90 per cent. of the usage of the facilities must be for charitable purposes. If a school chooses, for example, to rent out its sports hall for use by a community group, and that accounts for more than 10 per cent. of the use of the facility, the school will lose its zero rating. It will then have to pay VAT on the building cost of the school. I understand that the matter has been raised with the Secretary of State and that he will discuss it with the Treasury. Perhaps the Paymaster General will take advantage of the next six minutes to resolve the issue, which restricts the use to which city academies can be put to benefit communities.
We have talked about the freedoms that academies have but let us not forget that they are not a new idea. They are the lineal descendants of the city technology colleges that were set up by Kenneth Baker. Although academies have greater freedoms than foundation schools and mainstream schools, there are some freedoms that they lack in comparison with CTCs.
The first concern that academies have raised with me is that some of the funding for them, particularly standards fund funding, comes through LEAs, not direct from the Government. CTCs receive all their funding directly from the Government. Academies find, especially if LEAs are not very supportive of them—in his evidence to the Select Committee, the Secretary of State highlighted the fact that some LEAs are not as welcoming to academies as others—that there may be delays in receiving standards fund money. They have to go cap in hand to the LEAs for their share of the money. I would welcome all moneys for city academies going directly to them rather than being channelled by the LEA.
Secondly, those who have experience of both CTCs and academies recognise that CTCs have much greater flexibility over staffing, remuneration and rewarding excellent performance. The academies would welcome the opportunity to receive that freedom as well.
The criticism that I have is that we have not simply two-tier schools with two-tier freedoms but multi-tier freedoms. CTCs have more freedom than academies; academies have more freedoms than voluntary aided schools; and foundation schools have more freedoms than community schools. I believe that all schools should have the freedoms that CTCs enjoy. All schools should have greater freedom to innovate, to create new staffing structures that are right for their schools and the needs of their pupils. They should be able to decide the organisation of the school day best to meet the needs of their pupils. They should be able to develop stronger partnerships with the type of organisations that act as sponsors. They should have the freedom to set their own admissions policies.
One of the success factors behind academies, as I discovered from conversations with those involved in them, is that professionals have been set free. They have had the opportunity to reach the cutting edge of academic performance. That is one of the reasons why academies are successful and will become even more successful. Professionals have been set free to develop solutions that meet the needs of their pupils.
We need also to ensure that academies are not established as a result of bullying, cajoling or persuading LEAs, or because gaps are identified in the structure of schools. Under the right to supply, we will give a range of organisations the opportunity to establish new schools where there is parental demand. We will not be dependent on Government diktat to persuade LEAs to have city academies. We want schools that have those freedoms to be able to involve the private sector, to involve voluntary groups, to involve organisations such as the Mercers that have a long tradition in education and to involve organisations that have a different and positive vision about how we will raise education standards.
Some of those organisations will adopt the methods outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. They will offer what parents want by setting parents free, setting professionals free, giving parents the right to choose the best school for their children and ensuring that more organisations are able to fund a greater diversity and choice in our schools, thus raising standards in all our schools. City academies are part of the answer, but I believe that we need to give all schools the same freedoms that they enjoy.
I am delighted that we are holding the debate, because it provides an excellent opportunity to bring to a wider audience not only the progress that is being made in English schools but some of the challenges for the future. It also gives me the chance to thank the Select Committee and its Chairman for their hard work on a huge range of policies. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) was the first man to turn me down for a job, but I have not held that against him for too long. The work of his Committee, notably on key stage 3, teacher recruitment, assessment for learning and recently on specialist schools, has been invaluable.
I was glad that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) said that the 93 per cent. of children in state schools and the quality of the education that they receive constitute the important issue. He knows that secondary education in this country is undergoing great change. There are 210,000 teachers in secondary education—20,000 more than there were seven years ago. They are backed by 80,000 support staff—almost double the number in 1997. They are all working together under the terms of the radical agreement on remodelling the school work force.
Nearly 2,000 secondary schools have a specialism. Funding in secondary schools is, on average, £1,000 per pupil per year higher than it was. Several hon. Members have referred to the "Building Schools for the Future" programme, which will mean that the capital spend in 2007–08 reaches £6.5 billion.
Although it has not been mentioned in the debate, it is important to note that more than 250,000 youngsters in the 11 to 19-year-old sector are on the modern apprenticeships programme. It did not get coverage today but it is important. Further education colleges serve hundreds of thousands of young people and we shall doubtless discuss them on other occasions. It is worth pointing out for the record that 13,000 pupils are now in pupil referral units throughout the country, not 4,000, as the press reported recently.
I hope that hon. Members accept that Ofsted recognises the improvements in standards that the test results show. Ofsted stated that leadership and management, which the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) mentioned, is good or better in 82 per cent. of secondary schools—up from 56 per cent. in 1996–97. Ofsted also said that the quality of teaching was good or better in 78 per cent. of secondary schools—up from 59 per cent. in 1996–97.
We believe that results are improving because of the hard work of teachers and pupils. Standards are rising in an exam system that an independent report characterised last week as the best in the world. I hope that, in the summer, all politicians will take a vow of support for the young people who sit their exams rather than damning them.
I take it that the independent report to which the Minister refers is not the 2003 programme for international student assessment—PISA—survey?
The independent review group that Mike Tomlinson recommended in his review of A-levels in 2003 was led by the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which also publishes PISA. Perhaps that is the ground for the hon. Gentleman's confusion.
In the last part of our debate, I hope that we can dwell not on the story of improvement, which is significant, but on the fact that there are still some areas of the country where attainment is not as we would want it. Needless to say, I am proud that schools in the most challenging circumstances have increased their GCSE performance at a greater rate than the national average. I am proud that, for the first time, achievement in GCSE exams in London is higher than the national average. If we had promised that seven years ago, we would have been laughed out of court. However, significant challenges remain and, even with rising standards, we need to tackle them.
We can do that by replacing or federating the worst schools; devolving extra money through programmes such as excellence in cities to change the structure and culture in low-performing urban areas; increasing the number of specialist schools, which use their specialist expertise to create a centre of excellence as a lever for improvement in a school and an area; and getting the best schools to lead the rest with our aspiration of 600 leading schools helping four or five partners each by 2008. We should view the academies programme in that context, because academies are destined to play their biggest role in our disadvantaged areas.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) made an important speech that reflected her constituency experience of the Bristol academy. She asked whether academies were the only answer for low-performing schools. The answer to that is no. There remain 450 schools in which fewer than 30 per cent. of pupils get five A to C grades. That figure contrasts with almost 900 in 1997. Although reducing that figure has been a magnificent achievement, there are 450 schools too many where fewer than 30 per cent. of pupils get five A to C grades. An academy is not the single transferable answer to the challenges of all the schools, but it will be the answer for approximately half—up to 200—of them.
Academies operate on a simple set of values. Children with least parental support and least family history of educational success need the most radical educational intervention if they are to get the start in life that they deserve. The Government are determined not to let those children fall further behind. We all know the history of intervention in those schools—a new block, a new head, a new parents' centre, a new link with business: all those initiatives are, in and of themselves, worth while, but on their own, they do not get to the root of educational underperformance. They can do that only if they are all put in place together.
Many hon. Members have asked for the evidence for the need for the academies programme. It exists in this country and others, where ad hoc initiatives have not got to the root of underperformance, but where a cohesive approach that addresses issues of leadership, capital, governance, innovation and teaching quality at the same time does address those significant challenges.
It is important that we put it on record that academies are independent schools in the state sector funded by the Government. They are all-ability schools for local children. They have the flexibility to develop a broad curriculum built on, not instead of, the core subjects of the national curriculum. As I will demonstrate, they work as part of the family of local schools. They have a special relationship with sponsors drawn from the private and charitable sectors, some with extensive educational experience, including in existing state and private schools. They are built to meet the demands of teaching and learning in the 21st century, as all secondary schools will be under the "Building Schools for the Future" programme.
There are currently 17 open academies, and 36 further partnerships working to establish academies. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield said that we had made a slow start, but I would describe it as careful and deliberate, to ensure that the academy programme is built on secure foundations. No one should expect instant results from the academies programme; not every academy will achieve instant success. However, the early test and exam results from the open academies are very encouraging—more so than I would have expected a year or two ago. Of the 12 academies operating at the start of this year, seven achieved increases in the percentage of children getting five A* to C grades at GCSE since 2002. At the Bexley business academy, one of the most notable successes, that rate has increased from about 4 per cent. three years ago to 36 per cent. in 2004. At the Capital city academy, the figure has doubled in the same period. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said that these figures are still too low, and of course he is right. I can assure him, however, that if he visits any of these academies, he will meet teachers and pupils who are determined to raise them further.
Will the Minister tell us how the success rate of the academies in their first two years of operation compares with that of a similar group of schools—fresh start schools, perhaps—over the past few years?
I should be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with the details, but the answer is that it is better. That is because we have taken a whole-school approach to improvement.
The academies are bringing pride to pupils and hope to communities. That is why parents want to send their children to them, and many are oversubscribed. In regard to further evaluation, I have no objection to publishing the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, although it has not arrived yet. I look forward to it. Last year's report was simply an exercise involving setting out what the reports were going to do in future years. The first report of substance on the academies programme is now due, and I have no objection to publishing it. This is a five-year research programme, and PWC itself says that the definitive results will come in five years' time.
As well as describing what academies are, we should also explain what they are not. There are stories being peddled about academies that are, frankly, a series of myths. When I listened to the hon. Members for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) and for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes), I thought that they must be living in the world of "Alice in Wonderland", rather than the real world. It transpired that what they feared above all was not that the academies would fail but that they would succeed. All they could talk about was the danger that would arise if we had successful academies. Let us go through the myths that they peddled. They said that academies received more funding than other schools, but actually that is not true. In recurrent terms, they are funded at a comparable rate—
Not once did I or my hon. Friend say that. The only issue that we raised was that of capital.
It certainly is an "Alice in Wonderland" world where capital does not count as money. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the record, it will be absolutely clear that he complained about the £25 million that was being spent. In recurrent terms, academies are funded at a rate comparable with other maintained schools, their building plans are based on the same cost benchmarks as all other schools whose buildings are approved by the Department for Education and Skills, and they are receiving an initial substantial capital investment in their building, which is simply part of the "Building Schools for the Future" programme.
I was asked by the hon. Gentleman how many projects in that programme include an academy—13 of the first 15 projects include an academy.
I rest my case.
Well, I would say that I rest mine, which is that local authorities and local people recognise the potential of academies to contribute to educational transformation. Academies do not make a monetary profit for their private sponsors. Procurement and payment for services must be in line with legal requirements and conditions attached to Government grant. Sponsors are involved for philanthropic purposes, and we should welcome them.
Furthermore, academies are not selective schools. The Education Act 2002 makes it absolutely clear that the school
"provides education for pupils of different abilities who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated."
Academies are required to follow the school admissions code of practice, and to comply with admissions law, which does not allow them to hand-pick pupils. The data on free school meals percentages in the academy programme show that they are way above the national average in all but one case. On a related point, academies do not have special privileges to exclude pupils—my exchange with the hon. Member for Chesterfield made that clear or at least demonstrated that any suggestion that the school that he mentioned was engaging in underhand practice was wrong. They work by the same rules as other schools.
Although academies are taking on some of the toughest schools in the country, their record over the last three years is worth examining. In relation to fixed-term exclusions, the academies' total of 832 in 2003–04 is a significant reduction on the 1,271 in the previous year. We have dealt with the King's academy in Middlesbrough, but the Manchester academy reduced exclusions in its first year by more than 80 per cent., and the Walsall academy, which the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) has visited, has improved attendance for students from the predecessor school by more than 10 per cent. in the first half of the school year.
The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough accused me of refusing to answer a question, and claimed that I was not answering him properly and simply fobbing him off. He tabled a question on 29 November for an answer on 2 December. A named-day reply was sent and the full answer has gone today. My reply simply said that we would get to the bottom of the issue and write to him with the full details. I certainly was not fobbing him off, and as I said in the debate, we have stuck rigorously to the words of the "Building Schools for the Future" prospectus in February 2003, repeated in the five-year plan.
A final myth is peddled about academies: that they are somehow a cancerous growth in the middle of a local system of education, not just inhibiting collaboration but destroying it. Let me take the example of sixth form provision. If the hon. Gentleman considers the funding agreement for the Manchester academy, he will see that collaboration on 14 to 19 provision with other local providers, be they schools, work-based learning or further education colleges, is written into it. It is also alleged that somehow LEAs are being forced out of the programme. Every academy is put to the Department with LEA support, and that is written into the legislation. In relation to the "Building Schools for the Future" programme, that is a massive vote of confidence in the ability of local government to help to lead reform in the strategic way that was mentioned.
As for the demand that we make sure that all projects in "Building Schools for the Future" have quality at their heart, imagine the row that there would be if we said that there were no quality thresholds for distributing £2.2 billion of public money a year. It is absolutely right that we have those quality thresholds, and I am happy to defend them.
Now is not the occasion to debate the Conservative party's proposals for abolishing LEAs or abolishing the proximity rule in relation to admissions. I look forward to doing that during the general election.
Our manifesto in 1997 said:
"Education will be our number one priority",
and it has remained so. The five-year-olds who entered primary school in September 1997 achieved the highest standards of any generation of 11-year-olds. Today, they are in year 8, the second year of secondary education. Every English secondary school is on the road to developing a centre of curriculum excellence, every English secondary school is benefiting from the key stage 3 programme and from massive investment in buildings and technology, and every school is benefiting from the work force agreement. Not every school will become an academy, but for those in greatest need, it is right that we make the greatest effort. Academies make that effort, and I hope that the whole House will support pupils, parents, governors and sponsors in that project.
It being Six o'clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker proceeded to put forthwith the deferred Questions relating to Estimates which he was directed to put at that hour, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54 (Consideration of estimates) and Order [29 October 2002].
Vote on Account
Resolved,
Department for Work and Pensions
That, for the year ending with 31st March 2006, for expenditure by the Department for Work and Pensions—
(1) resources, not exceeding £26,303,662,000, be authorised on account, for use as set out in HC 1235 of Session 2003–04, and
(2) a sum, not exceeding £26,318,077,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs as so set out.
Supplementary Estimates 2004–05
Resolved,
Department for Education and Skills
That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Education and Skills—
(1) further resources, not exceeding £448,598,000, be authorised for use as set out in HC1234 of Session 2003–04,
(2) a further sum, not exceeding £461,594,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs as so set out, and
(3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.
It being after Six o'clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker put the Questions required to be put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 55(2) (Questions on Voting of estimates, &c).
Supplementary Estimates 2004–05
Resolved,
That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005—
(1) further resources, not exceeding £6,294,293,000, be authorised, for use for defence and civil services as set out in HC 1234 of Session 2003–04,
(2) a further sum, not exceeding £7,160,331,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out, and
(3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.
Estimates, 2005–06 (Vote on Account)
Resolved,
That, for the year ending with 31st March 2006—
(1) resources, not exceeding £131,777,005,000, be authorised, on account, for use for defence and civil services as set out in HC 1235, HC 1236, HC 1237 and HC 1238, of Session 2003–04, and
(2) a sum, not exceeding £123,221,531,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out.
Ordered,
That a Bill be brought in on the foregoing resolutions; And that the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Paul Boateng, Stephen Timms, John Healey and Dawn Primarolo do prepare and bring it in.
Consolidated Fund Bill
Dawn Primarolo accordingly presented a Bill to authorise the use of resources for the service of the years ending with 31st March 2005 and 31st March 2006 and to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending with 31st March 2005 and 31st March 2006: And the same was read the first time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Monday next, and to be printed [Bill 12].
Delegated Legislation
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
Road Traffic
That the draft Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) (Amendment) Regulations 2005, which were laid before this House on 8th November, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.
Electricity
That the draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Efficiency Obligations) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 10th November, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.
International Immunities And Privileges
That the draft International Criminal Court (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 24th November, be approved.—[Margaret Moran.]
Question agreed to.
European Union Documents
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 13244/04 and Addenda 1 and 2 on Turkey's progress towards accession to the European Union; and endorses the Commission's conclusion that Turkey has sufficiently fulfilled the Copenhagen political criteria and its recommendation that accession negotiations should be opened.—[Margaret Moran.]
Question agreed to.
Allotments
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Margaret Moran.]
I am delighted to have secured a debate on the provision and promotion of allotments. It is a long time since I tended my own allotment at Kidbrooke gardens and allotment society in south-east London, and I did so neither assiduously nor well; but this weekend, in my constituency and throughout the country, legions of dedicated vegetable growers—and, in some cases, fruit and flower growers—will be taking out their garden tools at the crack of dawn, ready to set foot on their own patches of land. It can be back-breaking work, but the rewards are worth it, not least taking home the day's produce to be cooked for dinner that night.
I believe that allotments are a great untapped resource. They have a long history, extending well back into the 19th century. Their origins lie in attempts to alleviate poverty in rural areas. Today, in contrast, they are largely an urban feature. Before the advent of legislation, sites were provided in parts of the country, less from necessity than as a leisure activity, for what were then known as the labouring classes. In terms of leisure activity we are coming full circle, but between times allotments proved a useful and significant national asset, playing a vital subsistence role in two world wars. I believe it is time to reassess their importance, and to that extent signs are hopeful.
The Independent carried an article in April hailing the revival of the city allotment as a new generation of women, young professionals and people from ethnic minorities embraced the obvious benefits of "grow your own" to challenge the stereotypical assumption that allotments were the exclusive preserve of white retired men. There is some basis for that stereotype, in that it often holds true. But the trend is for the social mix to change and to widen—shades of "The Good Life", perhaps.
The last time a comprehensive survey was carried out, the estimated total number of plots was just under 300,000. That was in 1997, so it is clear that there is a lack of up-to-date figures; however, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is working on that problem. For the moment, assessing the national trend in site numbers is somewhat difficult, but it would appear that their decline has halted and that the numbers have levelled out. It is surely important to establish reliable indicators. Some 342 plots are available to local residents in my own constituency, for example, and they are well used. In Wirral as a whole, there are waiting lists for most sites and, in a sense, this is pleasing. But we must remember that legislation covering the provision of sites, some of which dates back to 1908, makes it incumbent on most local authorities to ensure adequate provision in accordance with local demand, an issue to which I shall return.
Given that allotments are most often sited in urban areas, they have long provided a tempting target for developers and sometimes, I am afraid, for local authorities. Despite stringent legislative restrictions on the uses to which allotment land can be put, there continues to be pressure. For example, as I speak, the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners is making representations to the Government office for the south-east regarding what it views as Horsham district council's deliberate announcing of an allotment site as surplus to requirements, despite demonstrable local demand for such provision. It is not for me to comment on that case, but the threat of development can loom large over any allotment site. It is unfortunate that statistics on the loss of statutory provision are unavailable.
I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the allotments in Fazakerley in my constituency, with which he will not be familiar. Despite existing legislation, the local council is slowly but surely degrading the allotment society's autonomy and its ability to run the allotments in a proper manner, and interfering in a cavalier fashion with the way in which the allotment holders organise themselves. The intention is probably to put pressure on those allotments, so that the council can sell the land for other uses.
I suspect that that is a Liberal Democrat approach to the issue, and it is not one that I would support. What I do support, however, is the point that underpins my hon. Friend's intervention, which is precisely in line with my argument.
It is self-evident that allotments are intrinsically a good thing. If there are any disadvantages, they are not apparent to me. Allotments enable those with only limited expertise to cultivate and maintain a vegetable patch consisting, if they wish, of organic vegetables. Such vegetables are not only healthy and good to eat but extremely cost-efficient. While the vegetables on offer in supermarkets might look better, many of them are not as good and are certainly pricier. All the benefits of allotments are well established and continue to hold good. The popularity of organic fruit and vegetables is testament to the demand for such food. The allotments in Plymyard Hall, Teehay lane, Beaconsfield, Carlett park, Forward road and Mayer park, some of which I have seen at first hand, are an extremely valuable asset in my constituency.
In a modern context, the benefits of allotments are brought sharply into focus by the problem of obesity, which is affecting an increasing number of people. Merely meeting existing local demand for allotments is necessary, but perhaps not sufficient. Such demand needs not only to be managed but actively created. What better way to tackle sedentary lifestyles than through the promotion of allotments? Doing so would encourage the consumption of more fruit and vegetables and the exercise and taking of fresh air that their cultivation undoubtedly involves.
I hope that, in making those remarks, my hon. Friend did not have in mind our hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), who, I should say, is well known for being very nifty with a spade.
At least my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) knows when to stop digging. [Laughter.] Now I have completely lost where I was. I would not like to suggest that my hon. Friend was in any sense other than appropriately built.
I am glad to say that living healthily does not have to involve an hour's slog at the gym every night or even a particularly zealous forbearance in respect of what we can eat and drink. It may be as simple as building exercise with a purpose into one's daily life. I personally bike to the House, but that is my way of doing things. Allotments are certainly one way of staying healthy and moderate but regular exercise is something that I am sure the Government would want to encourage. The campaign to introduce "five a day" fruits and vegetables has been successful and eating healthily is now accepted as a desirable norm.
Allotments should gain a similar level of attention as that campaign, but not everyone gives allotments the respect that they deserve. Plymyard Hall allotments in my constituency have been subject to vicious and seemingly incomprehensible attacks from vandals. I have been witness to the effect that that can have, with greenhouses smashed, shed doors kicked in, plots trampled on and produce destroyed. It is difficult to overstate the distress caused to allotment holders. The police now have the powers to deal with that sort of menace through antisocial behaviour orders, but they have to be lucky enough to catch the offenders in the act. Unfortunately, the eyes of the police cannot be everywhere at once.
In the case of Plymyard Hall allotments, vandalism has declined markedly since the closure of the local off-licence and the adoption of a zero tolerance approach by the local inspector, both of which are heartening developments. In respect of physical security, however, funding is necessary. Fences, closed circuit television and even trespass signs would all serve as a deterrent to those intent on causing damage. That last measure would require relatively small amounts of money, but would make a huge difference.
We must do all that we can to make allotments accessible, both practically and financially. Formerly, it was specified that new plots had to be within three-quarters of a mile of a home owner who had requested them, but that is no longer enforced and it should not automatically be viewed as a bad thing. Location does matter. Allotments are by their nature integral parts of the community and, as such, need to be sited within it. A community will not flourish if its facilities are subject to uncertainty of tenancy. Threats hanging over allotments—as, potentially, in Walton—to move them to alternative sites are all too common.
Rents need to be set at reasonable levels and the Allotment Act 1950 requires that they are, but what is considered "reasonable" may not be the same as it was 50-odd years ago. Even so, owning an allotment is good value, generally speaking. Compared with other methods of cultivation and, of course, purchasing vegetables from a shop, allotments are, so to speak, dirt cheap. In my constituency, a plot can be rented for £25 a year against the council's upkeep costs of £31 and there are discounts on top of that for the elderly and unemployed.
Affordability is something that local authorities should stress. My constituency local authority has been commended by the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners for its good work, winning the best-run allotments award twice in a row. It is sadly not always representative of the national picture. There are cases where rent is charged, on the basis of the council's estimate of its value, at 10 times the national average. It is surely not right that allotments should be a profitable enterprise for councils.
There are, of course, problems with funding at a local level, but it is also apparent that local authorities are unwilling to channel what little they have available through allotments. Compared to other leisure activities, they are inexpensive. I understand that, yard for yard, parks can cost up to three times more than allotments to maintain. Professor David Crouch, in his submission to the 1998 Environment Committee report on allotments, made the following observation:
"Can allotments and other open spaces be regarded as comparable? Allotments include the labour of allotment holders, substantial productivity for local populations, including food, physical and mental health, exercise, amenity, festivals, sustainability and recycling, social service rehabilitation and very strongly inter-ethnic community building and disability restoration and schools-schemes, so doubling their use, as intensive use for food, and for the wider community, which already their amenity provides."
All that added value should not be overlooked. Allotments are not just about people growing vegetables. Some things that the professor listed already take place in city farms and community gardens, but those are not the same things as allotments. Allotment societies have two concerns. City farms and community gardens should be seen as a supplement to, not a replacement for, proper allotment provision. The special protection afforded to allotments is, in that respect, something of a mixed blessing, for it affords councils very little room to be imaginative.
An allotment site can be granted non-statutory status only with the permission of the Secretary of State, and while he or she may be loth to do that, reluctance may be diminished if what is proposed is, for example, a community garden. The rub is that once the statutory provision is removed, only PPG17 stands as a last line of defence to prevent future appropriation for development. That is not to say that I have any lack of faith in local authorities. That is not the case, but allotments can be unnecessarily vulnerable.
Allotments need investment if they are to be made more attractive, and that is rarely forthcoming. Money can be found, it seems, but only for the more eye-catching, non-allotment initiatives. A derelict site in Leicester, for example, was the beneficiary of a £53,000 investment to facilitate a city farm. That is to be welcomed, but it is difficult to envisage the same funding being given to enhance allotment facilities. There is no reason why allotments should not receive similar provision, with communities working in partnership with local authorities to build up and promote their use. That need not be an expensive exercise. It could be as simple as paying for more prominent signs to advertise their existence.
Allotments are a national treasure. Their nature has led some to play down the need for a central role. I disagree. A whole host of areas would benefit from greater leadership from the centre. We need to educate our young people about the benefits of allotments and give them basic skills. We need protection from antisocial behaviour. We need to encourage further a diverse social mix of allotment owners, which means that there has to be more room for councillors to use their imagination while still protecting statutory provision.
That may require some legislative consolidation. The Government have acknowledged the need for that in their response to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee's report. Legislation needs to be overhauled for development, so that allotments are part of, not ancillary to, a coherent strategy for communities. We need to ensure greater security of tenure, while providing the capital, ideas and leadership to promote allotments to a new generation. The two things are mutually dependent.
If I were permitted a wish list, it would run as follows. First, I seek greater protection from development. Secondly, I want an image change, possibly including a new name; "allotment" has a dated ring to it, worth while and valid though allotments are. Thirdly, I seek better security measures. Fourthly, I want a big push on promotion. Fifthly, we need more investment in current plots, not least in toilet facilities; while the men who run allotments might not be so delicate, if we are to encourage women to participate, we need proper toilet provision. Sixthly, we need more plots. All that need not cost much but could bring considerable benefits to our allotment holders and potential allotment holders and to our leisure and fitness.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman) on securing today's debate. The Government entirely agree that allotments provide an asset in a whole range of areas of our lives. They are not just valuable green spaces. It is our objective to ensure that they are properly protected, promoted and cared for. They cover a number of facets of life. They improve the quality of life by promoting healthy food, exercise and community interaction, as my hon. Friend said.
Allotments are an important part of our wider, cleaner, safer, greener agenda, which, as my hon. Friend is aware, is being led by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, through public service agreement 8, which is about delivering improvements in the quality of our environment—not only in the built environment, but in deprived areas and other parts of the country. Measurable improvements should be found by 2008; there is a time scale for improvements to bring about cleaner, safer, greener public spaces.
Before I deal with the promotion of allotments and the protection of such facilities, and the issues raised by my hon. Friend about the Plymyard site, I want to record our congratulations to his local authority on winning the best-run allotment award for two years in succession. I am sure that that is in no little part due to his diligence in arguing the case for allotments with the authority. One reason why the local authority may have received that award was the action it took on the problems of antisocial behaviour at the Plymyard site to which my hon. Friend referred—greenhouse windows were smashed, shed doors were damaged and plots were trampled on. Initiated by the local authority, which brought together plot holders, the police and the community patrols, an action plan was drawn up.
Local action is needed to deal with antisocial behaviour generally. In that case, a lead was given by the allotment authority—the local authority—and through co-operative working a solution was found. We are pleased that things have improved at the Plymyard site. Dealing with such issues, as well as promoting, developing and maintaining allotment sites for the wider community, needs local initiatives, although I shall come to what central Government can do, and have done, on various options to promote allotments. Invariably, however, the tools for dealing with many of the problems that people face, especially of security at allotment sites, are to be found at local level.
Some of the problems are low level—a bit of graffiti; occasionally, a broken shed window—but some are far more significant, such as the trampling of produce that has taken a long time to grow, with a lot of tender care and the early morning rising to which my hon. Friend referred. It is disheartening for allotment holders when their tools are stolen. A situation can build up where people who might have taken on a tenancy do not do so because they are worried about security.
Local authorities have a responsibility to provide adequate security. In 2001, we worked with the Local Government Association and others to publish "Growing in the Community—a Good Practice Guide for the Management of Allotments", which was aimed at local authorities and others who manage allotments, so that they take responsibility for maintaining boundaries in good order and ensuring the provision of adequate security measures.
As with many things, there are rights as well as responsibilities. Plot holders have responsibilities, too, and we issued a guide for them on the steps they should take. They often construct their own sheds, so they should obviously take responsibility for ensuring that sheds are secure and locked. In addition, some tenancy agreements specify plot holders' responsibilities.
I suspect that one of the best ways to deal with security is to have better provision and greater use of sites, so we need to consider how to promote allotments and how to engage with the local community to show the benefits of allotments, which were so ably described by my hon. Friend.
We need to look at some of the root causes of some of the security problems. We can help to reduce some of the activity that causes so much concern and upset, perhaps by promoting allotments more vigorously and positively. That can be done through some of the traditional ways of advertising—posters, adverts, postcard drops—and by opening up allotment sites, using open-site policies to try to encourage other people to consider the available options.
I noted clearly that my hon. Friend said that he felt that alternatives, such as city farms and community gardens, should not supplement good allotment provision. Although I suspect that many people would not disagree with that view, we must consider the issues as they stand. Reference was rightly made to the new survey that is being undertaken through the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and we hope that the decline has been stopped and that we will see an increase. Certainly, some encouraging facts and figures have come from various surveys. For example, an increasing number of people under the age of 50, women and ethnic minorities are becoming involved in allotments.
Clearly, we hope that we have stemmed some of the decline, but we must recognise that, in some places, many plots will not be used. We should not deter finding ways to encourage people to go to those places for a loosely related activity, so that they can see what is going on and become involved in some of the benefits. For example, part of a former allotment site could be sold for use as a community garden. We could therefore find that far more people become involved in allotment provision and the benefits that come from it.
Where a progressive allotment society is working with the community and has identified plots that are available to satisfy the demand in the community, will my hon. Friend encourage the local authority to work very closely with the allotment society? In my case, Alan Rees, who is the chairman of the allotment society in Maesteg, is doing wonderful work with the community and school children, trying to encourage them to use allotments.
Absolutely. We would positively encourage such work because it is only by working closely together and in genuine partnership that people can start to open up some of those possibilities. In fact, numerous examples abound showing the different approaches that can be taken to involve school pupils with disabilities. One of the things that the allotment initiative can do is involve people from across the community—from whatever age group or ethnic minority, as well as those with disabilities—and that can produce genuine community cohesion where it did not exist previously, but that takes work. Positive action needs to be taken by people who have an interest, particularly local authorities, which are invariably allotment authorities.
In terms of disposals—unfortunately, my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) has left the Chamber—the Government aim to ensure that allotments are protected, promoted and cared for. We protect statutory allotments from disposal in section 8 of the Allotments Act 1925. If a local authority wishes to dispose of statutory allotments, consent from the Secretary of State is required. Consent decisions for the disposal of statutory allotments are made against a set number of criteria, aimed at ensuring that allotments that are needed are not disposed of. One thing introduced into the criteria is the need to ensure that allotment sites are properly and adequately advertised, so that they are not left to wither on the vine. They must also be promoted, and there may be a waiting list to consider. All those things need to be taken into account.
I am well aware of the case in Horsham, but I shall not comment on it. No doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South is aware that that would be wrong. However, from the PSA, the guides that we have published and our publications on growth areas, such as "Creating Sustainable Communities: Greening the Gateway", it is clear that our programme is not just about putting a roof over people's heads or getting them a job, but about leisure and recreational and healthy living, something to which allotments can contribute.
On diversity, invariably there is the stereotype of grey-haired gentlemen over 50 on allotment sites. The picture is changing, however. More than half the owners of the Sturminster road allotments in Bristol are women. I take my hon. Friend's comments about the proper provision of facilities. I suspect that with more people becoming interested in gardening, the popularity of allotments will increase.
I hope that my hon. Friend recognises that we are concerned about allotments and their security and promotion, but we would positively encourage allotment authorities to promote them keenly for reasons of healthy living and exercise, for the production of food and for the provision of open space. To help with this—
The motion having been made after Six o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned at twenty-eight minutes to Seven o'clock.