House of Commons
Thursday 13 October 2005
The House met at half-past Ten o'clock
Prayers
Mr Speaker in the Chair
Oral Answers to Questions
Treasury
The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—
Self-invested Pension Plans
There has been widespread speculation about the impact of new rules that will allow self-invested personal pensions to invest in residential properties and other personal assets. Government guidance sets out the implications of putting a residential property into a SIPP, which is unlikely to be an appropriate investment for most people. The Government will keep the matter under review and will not hesitate to act if there is evidence of abuse.
Given that an investor would normally need about £1 million in assets in order to put one residential property into a SIPP and maintain a reasonable diversification of assets within the fund, does the Chief Secretary regard the Government's advice as adequate to prevent what could be a pensions mis-selling problem in the future?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but may I say at the outset that when the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) spoke for the Liberal party on the simplification of pensions and related law, he supported this simplification? All the reasons that he gave then, particularly when he spoke in Committee on 8 June 2004, still stand. I have already said that SIPPs are not an appropriate type of pension fund for most people, and the limitations attached to such investment mean that it is unlikely, in our view, to have an appreciable effect on the housing market. As the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) knows—he has issued a press release on the matter—we are currently consulting on the proposed changes to open up the personal pensions market and, indeed, to make the regulation of providers, including SIPPs, more transparent and comprehensive.
I welcome my hon. Friend's statement that he will review the issue so that we can prevent a whole new set of tax-avoidance rackets arising. Will he examine both the rules for attributing rent to property that may be placed inside self-invested pension funds and the tax rules on debt, so that people cannot use SIPPs as a way of passing on to their successors untaxed tax relief supporting large investments?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, but I have already made it clear that the Government will monitor the impact of the changes. As with all tax policies, we will keep the rules under review. If we discover a loophole or identify distorting effects, we will take appropriate action. As to the policing of the SIPPs tax regime, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs will ensure that the tax privileges granted to pension schemes are used for their attendant purpose and will target compliance procedures accordingly.
The Minister said that the Government have set out their policy, but in the last few weeks Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has had to withdraw its guidance note on the personal use of holiday homes and admit that it had got it wrong. The Government are in a muddle on this issue, which will cost the taxpayer billions and will send property prices soaring beyond the reach of first-time buyers.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the regulatory impact assessment that was published at the time of simplification assessed the entire pension simplification package as costing about £250 million a year. He will also remember that questions have been answered in the House to make it clear that there will be a tax charge on the sort of developments that he suggests might take place. As he is aware, consultation is also taking place on the proposed changes, including regulation, at the moment. If the hon. Gentleman would like to make some comments, it would be appropriate for him to feed them into that consultation.
It is not unknown for regulatory impact assessments to get predicted costs wrong, as in the example of the £10,000 tax-free provisions on micro limited companies, which had to be withdrawn. Would the Minister be prepared to meet some of my constituents who lost their pension funds when British United Shoe Machinery Ltd. went down and explain to them why a scheme that gives tax breaks to the rich and the mega-rich—some estimate to the tune of £2,000 million a year, which is 100 times the amount that the Government are putting into pension rescue funds—is not a bit of an anomaly?
Simplification provides benefits for all taxpayers, including those on lower incomes, and not just for the rich. The simplification process, of which this is part, was widely consulted on. The then Financial Secretary to the Treasury did precisely what my hon. Friend now suggests—he consulted MPs and communities about the effects. Much more flexibility was needed in the pension system and it has been introduced, to the benefit of all those who are in pension schemes.
Economic Performance
As normal, the pre-Budget report will update our assessment on the overall economy, but yesterday's employment figures revealed that there were 350,000 extra jobs in last year alone and 2.3 million extra since 1997. I inform that House that I have today submitted Britain's national economic reform programme to the European Union and published detailed proposals for the Hampton Court summit to raise levels of British and European economic growth.
Yesterday, Mr. Mervyn King was reported as saying,
"The business cycle has not been abolished".
He asked,
"Will the next 10 years be as nice as the last?"
His answer was, "That seems unlikely." Will the Chancellor be kind to me and say whether he agrees or disagrees with those remarks?
First, the Governor of the Bank of England was referring to the trebling of oil prices over the past three years, and the reaction and response that has had to come from Governments around the world. He is right to say that we have had a golden age of stability over the past 10 years. That is simply the result of the macro-economic reforms in monetary and fiscal policy that we made in 1997, which enabled us to have stability and growth.
As for the prospects ahead, the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) will know that, also yesterday, the OECD said that Britain was a paragon of stability, with the most stable economy of all the G7 countries. It noted too that, in terms of income per head in the G7, we had moved from seventh place out of seven in 1997 to third place now. If the hon. Gentleman disagrees with the policies pursued by this Government, will he ask us to adopt the policy that he put on a website yesterday, where he advocated a flat tax that would mean £50 billion in public expenditure cuts? That would be especially interesting, given that he told the House of Commons in July that he wanted more spending on police in his constituency.
Given the Government's miscalculation of its gross domestic product forecast, taxes are going to have to go up, are they not?
The public spending plans that we have published are perfectly affordable. As I said on the radio this morning, we have published in detail our plans for the next few years. They are perfectly affordable, and we will continue with them. What would not be affordable would be the introduction of a flat tax that would cost £50 billion in public expenditure cuts. That is especially important, as the hon. Gentleman states on his website that he wants more expenditure on his local hospitals.
Will the Chancellor agree with my assessment of the Bolsover economy? When Labour came to power, unemployment was at 10 per cent., and all the pits had closed. Now, a formerly derelict textile mill employs 650 people, and factories have been built at every pithead. When we get junction 29A, there will be another 5,000 jobs for the north Derbyshire area. That contrasts with Black Wednesday 1992, when Boy George's pal, the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), was the special adviser to Norman Lamont. What a mess that was!
It is true that the photograph taken on the day this country left the exchange rate mechanism and had to impose 15 per cent. interest rates shows that, standing next to the then Chancellor, was the policy adviser who happens now to be a candidate for the Conservative leadership. People will not forget the 15 per cent. interest rates imposed by members of the previous Government, nor that we had 10 per cent. interest rates for more than four years under that Government. Under this Government, interest rates in Britain have averaged 5 per cent., and have recently come down. We will continue to follow the advice that we should create jobs in communities where there has been dereliction. I do not know about junction 29A, but I hope to visit it some time in the future.
Energy prices have risen significantly over recent times, but analysts such as Utilyx and Barclays Capital say that British business is losing out on £1 billion a year through poor energy-buying practices. Does my right hon. Friend feel that there is anything more that the Treasury might be able to do to encourage British business to retool its energy-buying practices to get the benefits that could accrue from better management?
I will certainly look at the point that has been made. It is clear that the doubling of oil prices has brought new pressures for businesses and consumers, but we also face pressure to look at new measures for energy conservation, alternative sources of energy and better energy purchasing policies by businesses and Governments, as my hon. Friend suggests. We will continue to examine all those issues. At recent meetings of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, we agreed a five-point plan, proposed by Britain, which included seeking better ways of using existing energy.
May I give the Chancellor a second opportunity to obfuscate the clear remarks made by the Governor of the Bank of England on Tuesday? He said that this country is heading for rising inflation and lower economic growth. Does the Chancellor agree, and if so, what will he do about it?
I would take the advice of the hon. Gentleman more seriously if he had not predicted that giving the Bank of England control over monetary policy would lead to deflation and higher unemployment. In fact, in these years—
Answer the question!
In these years, we have created 2.3 million jobs. The Governor of the Bank of England was referring to the doubling of oil prices. In fact, oil prices have trebled in the past three years. That creates a more difficult environment, but in no other decade would a trebling of oil prices have led to anything other than a recession in the British economy. Nor, if I may say so, in any other decade would the increase in house prices of the past few years have been moderated without a recession—but that has happened under this Government and the policies that we have pursued. The hon. Gentleman, who was wrong about the Bank of England's independence, should congratulate the Government on the stability that we maintain and are determined to continue to maintain, with low inflation, low interest rates and rising employment in our economy.
As part of my right hon. Friend's assessment, does he agree that Europe must grow faster?
I agree entirely. The proposals that we are making today recognise the fact that if the euro area economy is growing by only 1 per cent. and 50 per cent. of our exports are to that area, we are directly affected by low growth in the European Union. Therefore it is not a source of celebration when neighbouring countries grow slowly: it is a source of worry and anxiety for the British economy. Because Germany has barely grown in four years, Italy is now in recession and France and the Netherlands are growing slower than Britain, it means that our four major importers in the euro area are experiencing real difficulties.
We must produce policies for greater growth in the European Union as a whole, and that is why we put forward the proposals this morning, first, to speed up the internal reforms in the single market, including competition investigations; secondly, that Europe should make progress in the trade talks so that we end the costs of agricultural protectionism; and thirdly, that we reform the social model in the European Union, so that instead of having 20 million unemployed, we get people back to work. I hope that we will have all-party support for those proposals.
As the Chancellor blames the OPEC oil producers for the sharp slowdown in the economy, to half the Treasury forecast, how does he explain the independent analysis of bodies such as the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which has shown that less than a quarter of the slowdown is attributable to that source? The vast majority of the problem is home grown, caused by weakness in private investment and nervousness among private consumers about their large levels of personal debt and the possibility of the housing bubble bursting.
If the problem was as home grown as the hon. Gentleman suggests, why is Germany growing slower than us, France growing slower than us, Italy growing slower than us and the Netherlands growing slower than us? Why is it that the European Union is growing far slower than us, and Japan, Australia and New Zealand are growing slowly? Why are other countries around the world facing difficult situations? One reason is, of course, rising oil prices, but a second reason—affecting Britain directly—is low growth in the European Union. Interest rates were raised four times last year, so we slowed down the growth of consumer spending. I believe that the Bank of England made the right decision, and the housing market has moderated as a result. Some people, including the Liberal Democrats, predicted a house price crash, which has not happened.
The hon. Gentleman should say now what he has said previously, when he applauded our record of creating stability in the economy. I certainly will not take up the policies of the Liberal Democrats. They dropped their tax rise proposals at their conference last month, but kept all their spending proposals. [Laughter.] Oh, yes. Their home affairs spokesman wanted more money spent on prisons. The dentistry spokesman wanted more money spent on dentistry. The health spokesman wanted more money spent on health, and then the junior health spokesman wanted more money spent on mental health. Far from reducing their spending commitments, the Liberal Democrats have increased them—with no money to pay for any of them.
In north-east Wales, Airbus UK recruited 115 apprentices this year to work in British manufacturing industry. Those apprentices will have the opportunity to secure an aerospace degree by working with the local Deeside college and the North East Wales institute of higher education. Is not that an excellent example of the success of UK manufacturing industry and of the UK economy?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He mentions a factory that I have visited in the last few months, and he is absolutely right that the number of apprentices in the British economy is increasing in a way that nobody could have foreseen a few years ago. When we came to power, apprenticeship was almost dying out as a means whereby young people got a trade or profession. We are now in a situation where in the next years about 300,000 young people will be taking modern apprenticeships. That bodes well for the future of the British economy, but we are not complacent and we must do better. We want more young people to have chances, especially in some of the regions where unemployment is higher. Again, I hope that there can be all-party support for the investment in education and apprenticeships that is necessary for the future of our economy.
For months the Chancellor of the Exchequer stubbornly stuck to those growth forecasts when everyone was telling him that he was wrong. Productivity growth has slumped and business investment is at a record low; indeed, the British economy is growing slower than the average for other developed economies in the world. Could the Chancellor of the Exchequer tell the House when he knew that he had got it all wrong?
The shadow Chancellor has got it wrong. The British economy is growing faster than Germany's, faster than France's, faster than the Netherlands' and faster than Italy's. The British economy is growing faster than the EU's. I have just explained the circumstances in which higher oil prices have caused the difficulties that all economies face. What the shadow Chancellor had better look at is the fact that since the general election he has had only one policy proposal: a flat tax, which would mean that £50 billion would be cut from public expenditure. Can he tell the House how that could possibly aid the British economy in its present situation?
After the mess that the Chancellor has made of our tax system he should listen to the tax reform commission, because it includes the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, the person who advises the Chancellor on tax reform for low-income people, the former president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and indeed the person who is helping him with his tax simplification process. I will send him a copy of the report when it is published. In the meantime, as he is lecturing other European economies about reform, will he explain why we are adopting European levels of taxation and regulation in the UK? Why are we becoming less and less competitive in a more competitive world? Why have we fallen from fourth to 13th place in the world competitiveness league, and why is this 20th-century Chancellor running out of ideas for the 21st century?
We have just been praised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for having the most stable economy in the G7. In fact, the words used by the OECD were that we are a "paragon of stability". If the Conservative party, which ruined the macro-economic policies of our economy with 15 per cent. interest rates and two recessions during the last 18 years, will not begin to apologise for the mistakes the Conservatives made when they were running the economy, I do not believe that a serious debate about economic policy is possible.
Will the shadow Chancellor confirm that his proposal for a flat tax would mean, if implemented on the Adam Smith Institute proposals, a £50 billion cut in public expenditure? How can he possibly think either that it is fair to the British people that a millionaire pays the same rate of tax as a nurse, or that he could ever afford public services on that basis? I remind him that he is currently campaigning for more money for his local hospital.
Child Poverty
The Government have committed to halving child poverty by 2010 and to eradicating it in a generation. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, child poverty more than doubled and in 1997 it was higher in the UK than elsewhere in Europe. Through the new deal, the minimum wage, tax credits and public services we have already lifted more than 500,000 children out of poverty. Last summer, the child poverty review set out a strategy to lift another million children out of poverty by 2010–11, helping more people who want to work find work, making work pay, providing financial support to help all families with the cost of bringing up children, giving the most to those who need it most, building on the success of Sure Start with our children's centres and the 10-year child care strategy, and investing in children's future, so that by 2007–08 total funding for schools will be 60 per cent. higher in real terms than in 1996–97.
The Government have an impressive record in alleviating child poverty, but some areas must still be tackled. In Northern Ireland and Wales, means-testing for families with disabled children has been abolished. That is not the situation in England, where families face huge amounts of debt when they are trying to improve their homes with adaptations. When will the pending review be completed, so that we can have a level playing field for children in England? Will the Treasury support those proposals?
Clearly, poverty reduces the life chances of children and harms their ability to realise their potential. I hear what my hon. Friend says about the review that is being undertaken. I cannot give him the date today, but I will certainly look into it. However, I remind him that the help from tax credits, which is additionally and specifically targeted on families with disabled children, is the most effective route out of poverty, through work and with the support of public services.
Does the Paymaster General agree that trying to achieve the child poverty targets is not being aided by the unnecessary recovery of child tax credit payments? Can she explain why the undertaking, made by the Chief Secretary in the House of Commons on 12 July this year, has not been delivered? That undertaking was specifically not to recover overpaid tax credits until an assessment has been made about whether they should be recovered under the code of practice—in other words, one of the recommendations that the parliamentary ombudsman made in June. Why has that promise not been kept?
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that the recovery of tax credits where they have been overpaid is harming the Government's objective of reducing child poverty. Indeed, it is refreshing—he should congratulate us on this—that the Government are not only committed to reducing child poverty, but are taking steps to do so. All the information that there is a growth in income, either before housing costs or after, shows that the Government are achieving growth with fairness and that the bottom two-fifths of the income distribution are growing the fastest, thus tackling poverty.
On the hon. Gentleman's point about where people have ended the year earning more than they originally told the Revenue, and therefore have an overpayment, I told the House that I had asked Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs to investigate the ability to suspend recovery during payment disputes. That investigation is continuing, and I soon as I can inform the House about how and when such things will be done, I will do so.
In the light of Monday being the UN international day for the eradication of poverty, will my right hon. Friend reaffirm the Government and Treasury's commitment to the abolition of UK child poverty in this generation? Does she agree that we can learn important lessons from the success of the Make Poverty History campaign in meeting our international and UK goals? That could involve building a widespread national and even cross-party coalition for the abolition of child poverty in the UK.
I welcome the campaign that is building up in the UK not only to make poverty history for the developing countries, but to address the separate campaign on ending child poverty in the UK. I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that we need all political parties to become committed to and to actively support the eradication of child poverty, not just to wring their hands and say how awful it is. So they must understand that we have a flexible labour market, that there are lots of challenges in the global economy, and that tax credits with flexibility are the way forward.
Tax credits are indeed a key weapon in the Government's armoury in the fight against child poverty. The right hon. Lady said in February that the tax credits system was
"stable and performing . . . well".
She said in June that for a
"huge majority of families . . . the system is working".
Yet on the latest available figures, 43 per cent. of tax credits are wrongly paid. The Government have said that they will not seek to recover overpayments where recipients could not reasonably have known that they were overpaid, but is not the real problem that the system is so complex that recipients simply do not know what they are supposed to receive and therefore cannot tell whether they have been overpaid? What proposals have the Government not merely for administrative tinkering but for a fundamental review of the system to make it simpler and fairer, so that we do not end up with the ludicrous system of £1.9 billion being overpaid every year and most of it having to be written off?
As the hon. Gentleman knows, millions of people are receiving the correct amount of tax credits. As he also knows, a significant proportion—more than half—of the amount that he quotes has been paid to families whose income grew in excess of £10,000 a year. In a flexible labour market in which people move in and out of work and in which we have the challenge of eradicating child poverty and supporting people into work, the problem that he must address is whether there is an alternative. Is he prepared to help families in those circumstances, which means flexibility, or does he want to abolish the system?
Debt Relief
In Washington, I was privileged to chair the critical meeting of the IMF that secured agreement from the IMF and the World Bank which confirmed for the first time multilateral debt relief for up to 38 of the world's most indebted countries at a full 100 per cent. This will mean $55 billion of debts potentially being written off.
I would also like to tell the House that, in the light of the tragedy in south-east Asia, we will be pressing upon the G20 this weekend the urgency of financing a new disaster response fund to which Britain is prepared to contribute up to $100 million a year and, for reconstruction in areas that are ravaged, a new IMF facility to help countries hit either by natural disasters or commodity shocks. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development is offering a British contribution to this also, and we call particularly on oil-producing countries to make generous contributions to this fund.
In congratulating my right hon. Friend on the role that he has played in securing debt relief for the poorest countries of the world and in the achievements of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, may I ask him what plans he has to ensure that the massive benefit gained by the poorest countries is used in a way that provides for sustainable prosperity in the future? What plans does he have to make sure that the countries not participating now also participate in the future?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and to all others on both sides of the House who have been involved in the campaign for debt relief for many years. The potential for both bilateral and multilateral debt write-off is $170 billion, the biggest debt write-off that has ever taken place. It is a tribute to the efforts of people all over the world, including the Churches and faith groups, that that has happened. We are determined to ensure that the money from debt reduction goes to poverty reduction, and particularly to health and education, and that is why countries have to sign up to poverty-reduction plans.
Equally, Britain is not satisfied that the list should stop at 38 countries. There are more countries that are poor by any definition of the word and they need help with the debts that they have incurred. That is why we will unilaterally service our share of the debts for another 40 countries, making 80 countries in all receiving debt relief from Britain. We will now call, as I will this weekend at the G20, for other countries to follow us in doing so. Although we have succeeded in getting 100 per cent. debt relief for up to 38 countries, the work still goes on to ensure that debt reduction goes to poverty reduction and also to ensure that other poor countries get the benefit of this system.
I very much welcome these decisions and recognise that dealing with third-world debt and economic sustainability is a long-term issue that must continue to be supported by public opinion, but to what extent do the countries receiving debt relief have to comply with criteria for good governance and transparency in spending the money?
That is exactly what we have been trying to achieve. If the hon. Gentleman has read the IMF communiqué and, before that, the G7 communiqué, he will know that their emphasis was on avoiding the corruption that had been a feature of some regimes in recent years. We want to move from conditionality being imposed by rich countries on poor countries to proper accountability of the rulers to their people in those countries. The transparency that is achieved through that will be the best safeguard against corruption.
Yes, an anti-corruption drive is part of this, but we will also push further to ensure that the money actually goes to health and education. The hon. Gentleman should be encouraged that, of the countries that have received debt relief in the past few weeks, Mozambique has announced that money from debt relief will go to health and education, Tanzania has announced that it wants to complete its programme of making primary and secondary education free for its school children, and other countries have announced that they want money to go to infrastructure. The progress that has been made both by the international community and within the countries to ensure that there is an environment that does not tolerate corruption, insists on transparency and ensures that debt relief goes to poverty reduction is something that we should applaud and continue to monitor.
The Chancellor will be aware of the trade justice early-day motion that was tabled this week which referred to the worthy aims of fair trade and the elimination of poverty. He will also realise that a lot hangs on the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong and, not least, economic reform in Europe with the bloated common agricultural policy programme. What measures does he have for me to take to a trade justice campaign meeting on Friday so that I can reassure my constituents that the Government are on the right track to ensure that poverty is eliminated and becomes a thing of the past?
My right hon. Friend knows that, although $50 billion to $60 billion is paid in aid, the rich countries give $300 billion in agricultural subsidies to their industries, which harms the industries of poor countries. What is gained through debt relief and aid could be lost if we do not get a proper trade agreement in Hong Kong in the next few weeks. There are only eight weeks to go until the vital Hong Kong discussions, but I do not think that we will get a final agreement that works if we wait until people arrive in Hong Kong. There should now be urgent discussions between the European Union and America to reconcile what differences remain. Europe should respond positively and enthusiastically to the offer made by America only a few days ago on the elimination of export subsidies and the reduction of tariffs. Europe and America should go to Hong Kong with the common position that, by 2010, we will eliminate export subsidies, reduce the tariffs that are charged and open our markets finally to developing countries so that they have the benefit of trading with us at prices that will allow them to have industries that flourish.
Tax Credits
Estimates of numbers and values of overpayments or underpayments for the 2004–05 awards will not be available until family circumstances and incomes for 2004–05 have been finalised. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs statistics that were published on 1 June for 2003–04 show that 1.9 million families had been overpaid by a total of £1.9 billion, as recorded on the system on 5 April 2004. Subsequent backdated payments in respect of 2003–04 awards brought the total value of overpayments for that year to £2.2 billion. The figures for 2004–05 will be available next spring.
I am afraid that the experience of my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Keys, means that they agree with the Citizens Advice report of June that there has been a completely unacceptable error in the system, so I want a simple yes or no answer from the Minister. Mr. and Mrs. Keys were overpaid, but there was an error because they believed it was money with their names on it, yet it was grabbed back, which left them severely financially impoverished. They believed that they had been paid the money genuinely, so they genuinely spent it. The money has now been reclaimed, so will the Minister assure me—yes or no—that Mr. and Mrs. Keys and the thousands of other families in their situation will be able to reclaim retrospectively the money that she grabbed back from them?
The answer is yes. I will take the hon. Lady's representations, if she sends me the details, and give her a clear answer on her individual case.
If the Paymaster General were the finance director of a company that last year had overpaid its dividend by about £2 billion—representing a sixth in additional money—and had then told recipients that it was perfectly okay for them to spend that money, but subsequently had to write menacing letters to those people to say that they must pay the money back, even though that threatened them with dire financial circumstances, does she think that she would be entitled to keep her job?
As the hon. Gentleman knows—we have gone through the figures already this morning—those who notified the HMRC that their income grew by £10,000 a year or more and received more tax credits than they were entitled to will have been asked to make a repayment. He also knows that, where there is official error on behalf of the HMRC, there is the question of whether the amount can be written off. Finally, he is aware that, for those who are in hardship, there can be additional payments. If a company were as flexible and as direct as the Government in supporting those in the labour market, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor would be able to claim an even greater victory.
My right hon. Friend will no doubt be aware that, in my constituency, about 8,000 families are benefiting from the new tax credit system. As a result, many thousands of families can now take jobs. Does she agree that, when Opposition Members lament the situation in which some families face hardship through overpayment, those tears are from a party that would scrap policies that have lifted 2 million children out of poverty? Are they not crocodile tears?
Order. The Minister will comment only on the tax credit situation.
I thought you might say that, Mr. Speaker, so I shall concentrate in my response on saying how much I agree with my hon. Friend. His 8,000 constituents and many of our constituents are benefiting significantly from tax credits. They have been allowed to see an earnings growth of £2,500 before they have to notify any change in their circumstances. We all know that, while there are difficulties in the system, the system is working very well for the vast majority.
I urge my right hon. Friend to stick to her guns on tax credits. The system is benefiting about 7,300 families in my constituency. Will she reassure the House and outline some steps that are being taken by her Department to assist those who have difficulties in unscrambling the paperwork? Sometimes there seem to be rather large backlogs. What steps are being taken in that regard?
As my hon. Friend will know, I laid out clearly to the House, in six specific areas, how to ensure improvements in the administration of tax credits. As he acknowledges, those changes will improve the system. The policy point that all parties must address is that it is important to recognise that the system before tax credits was widely criticised as inflexible. It did not offer support in bringing people into work and it did not support families by giving most to those most in need. The question is whether we have a flexible system that is delivering our anti-poverty targets and helping people into work. The answer is yes. The challenge is to get the administration right.
Would not the best way of helping poor families be to lift the threshold at which people start paying tax? If there were a loss of revenue, perhaps we could fund the system by slimming down the Treasury, starting at the Treasury Front Bench and working our way backwards.
I am happy to speak to the hon. Gentleman privately to explain to him how the tax system works and the way that allowances benefit the wealthy more than the less well-off.
As the hon. Gentleman well knows, tax credits are a way of ensuring that the most goes to those in greatest need. Nine out of 10 families benefit from this system. He needs to consider how we should support families, how we ensure that they can rise to the challenge of a flexible labour market and how we support them in work while ensuring that we eradicate child poverty and make sure that families can reach their full potential. There is no answer to those questions from Conservative Members.
It sounds as if my right hon. Friend already knows, but may I caution her not to take the Conservative party's advice on tax credits? We should remember that people have to be in work if they are to benefit. The solution of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) would help only the rich. Will she keep in perspective what is happening in my constituency, where 12,500 children are benefiting? Although there are difficulties, which the Department is working out when they are brought to her attention, will she persist and realise that tax credits often give lone parents their first opportunities in many years—opportunities that the Conservative party never gave them—to earn their own living and to look forward to making progress in life, instead of rotting on the benefits on which they were left by the Conservatives?
Indeed. As my hon. Friend will know, employment for lone parents is rising from the appalling rate that we inherited from the previous Government. It is 55 per cent., so we are on the way to the target of 70 per cent. Parents, including single parents, constantly tell us that they want the opportunity to balance their family responsibilities with paid employment. The only way to do so is with a flexible system that supports them when their income drops and makes sure that an increase of over £2,500 in their salary does not cause an overpayment. My hon. Friend rightly said that the most important thing is to keep the principles in sight but drive down the administration, because tax credits should be right first time. That is our objective.
As the Minister has already admitted, overpayments have now affected nearly 2 million British families. Only two weeks ago, the National Audit Office had to qualify HMRC's most recent accounts of continuing tax credit problems. When will Ministers stop tinkering and get to grips with genuine reform of the tax credit system, which is over-complicated, poorly administered and a cause of genuine misery—[Interruption.]
Order. I will not allow the hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle) to shout across the Chamber when she has made a contribution herself. It is bad manners.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, when will Ministers get to grips with genuine reform of the tax credit system, which is over-complicated, poorly administered and causing misery to many families? It is time for action.
The hon. Gentleman clearly does not understand how in certain circumstances an overpayment can arise when income increases over the figure declared to the Department by more than £2,500. He has still not addressed the fact that a fixed system will not support the objectives in a flexible labour market of eradicating child poverty and supporting people into work. The question is whether the hon. Gentleman supports those objectives. I agree that it is important that the system is accurate and delivers the money at the correct level from the first payment. However, it should maintain its flexibility so that, if people's income falls, they can be supported, and, if it rises by more than £2,500, they notify HMRC to prevent overpayment.
Retail Banking
The Government's joint goal with the banks, which we set at the pre-Budget report last year, is to halve the number of adults in households without a bank account, because they lose out both financially and socially. We want to make significant progress within two years, which is why the Chancellor has set up the financial inclusion taskforce to monitor progress towards that goal and to report on what more needs to be done.
Is the Minister aware that, although some of our banks and building societies have embraced that agenda, there is clear anecdotal evidence that other institutions have tried to offload that responsibility by, for example, telling potential customers that they do not have the forms or staff available to process the accounts? Does he agree that it is disgraceful that some of our most profitable institutions are seeking to evade their responsibility, and can he assure me that steps will be taken to ensure that all our banking institutions have a responsibility to provide basic bank accounts for people on low incomes?
Sixteen banks offer basic bank accounts to their customers and I welcome my hon. Friend's interest and that of the Treasury Committee, on which she serves. Some 2.8 million adults live in households without access to bank accounts. The British Bankers Association produces quarterly figures on the number of basic bank accounts, which show that nearly 1.4 million have been opened in the past couple of years. We have set up the taskforce to examine the issues raised by my hon. Friend and to monitor progress. After two years, we will assess what more needs to be done and take decisions based on the taskforce's recommendations.
Is the Financial Secretary aware that a significant number of people in my constituency do not have bank accounts? People are discouraged by the paperwork that is required to open a basic bank account, which includes utility bills and certification by a professional. Does the Financial Secretary agree that such checks should be used to regulate questionable large financial transactions and to identify fraud? Using such checks on basic bank accounts is like using a sledgehammer to crack a very small nut, and it discourages people who need easy and regular access to the financial services industry.
The hon. Lady may not know that the revised banking code covers basic bank accounts, so I shall take the trouble to send her a copy, which she may find interesting. Given her concerns about her constituents, she will appreciate the importance of the £120 million contribution to the financial inclusion fund, which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor launched last year. The fund is designed to improve access not only to bank accounts and banking services, but to affordable credit and face-to-face money advice, which is an important service for our constituents.
When my hon. Friend examines individual bank accounts, will he talk to the banks about people who have an individual account and who want to start a small creative or innovative business? We are all in favour of the money-laundering laws that make it difficult for people to manipulate money from drugs, fraud and organised crime, but more and more of my constituents are telling me that it takes a long time to get a bank account, which makes it difficult to start a business.
My hon. Friend takes an active interest in the subject, so he may be interested in the quarterly figures published by the British Bankers Association, which cover not only the number of basic bank accounts opened each quarter, but the number of basic bank account holders who go on to take up fuller banking services. On money laundering, I hope that all hon. Members understand why the provisions have been introduced. The anti-money laundering regime includes some high-level requirements, and the guidance notes for implementing those requirements are being revised to take account of disadvantaged groups.
Investment and Savings
In real terms, investment has risen by 32 per cent. since 1997. In nominal terms, the investment to GDP ratio was 11.5 per cent. in 1997 and 9.5 per cent. in 2004, mainly due to prices of investment goods falling relative to the general price level. Total UK gross saving as a share of GDP at nominal prices was 16.8 per cent. in 1997 and 14.8 per cent. in 2004.
Why has the savings ratio halved? Is it the Chancellor's tax on pensions, increased national insurance contributions or the burgeoning public debt, or is it all three?
The savings ratio has not halved: the hon. Gentleman's arithmetic is wrong in that respect. He asks me why the savings ratio has reduced. It has of course reduced in other countries too, principally in our international competitors. He suggests that the reduction in the savings ratio reflects a wider measure of wealth in the economy, but it does not. Total household assets in the UK have risen by around 50 per cent. in real terms since the beginning of 1997.The savings ratio is lower now because of the stability that we have created in the economy. Households have reduced precautionary savings because the fear of unemployment has been reduced, as has the fear of inflation.
My constituency, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), has seen a massive transformation over recent years. That is partly because of massive investments that have occurred as a result of macro-economic stability. Does the model that the Treasury uses enable it to look at what would have been the case had we not had that that macro-economic stability?
What my hon. Friend has experienced in his constituency has been experienced across the UK. Business investment is shown to have risen to record levels in quarter two, having more than made up for the cyclical weaknesses seen between 2001 and 2003. Annual business investment growth has been positive for six consecutive quarters. Business investment rose by 3.4 per cent. in 2004, which is its strongest rate of growth since 2000.
We may have the fourth largest economy in the world, but according to the World Economic Forum, Britain's savings ratio is now 98th out of 117 countries around the world. It also says that that is damaging Britain's economic performance. Does the Minister agree?
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, for the reasons that I gave in my answer to the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink). If the figures that he quotes are accurate—I do not have access to them at the moment—America must be 117th.
Immunisation
I should like to inform the House that the international finance facility for immunisation has been launched by the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden. With the backing of the Gates Foundation, it will provide an additional $4 billion over the next 10 years for vaccination against some of the deadliest diseases in the world's poorest countries. It is estimated that, through this facility alone, the lives of 5 million adults and children will be saved.
What is my right hon. Friend doing to encourage the United States Government to participate in that facility?
I am attending a G20 meeting this weekend and, now that the facility has been successfully launched, I shall ask other countries to play a part in its development. We have already added several European countries. I have invited China, South Africa and Brazil to join the facility. I hope that the American Government will back the Gates Foundation, which has already contributed substantial amounts of money to the facility: that is an American contribution. As the figures that I gave the House show, the facility's potential to save lives is enormous.
I congratulate the Chancellor on his work to get the international finance facility up and running. However, we know that the chances of reaching our millennium development goals, particularly in Africa, are fairly slim. We need an acceleration of aid to those countries. How will the IFF will assist in reaching our 0.7 per cent. target for overseas development aid?
The IFF is additional money that we are putting in as the British Government, but we are front-loading the expenditures by borrowing on the international capital markets on the strength of our investment. The Gates Foundation has supported it from the private sector, and we now have several countries supporting it from the public sector. In general, we wish to move towards an IFF not only for immunisation but to finance education and general building up of capacity in health care. Anybody who looks at the figures knows that our chances of meeting the millennium development goals depend on front-loading investment over the next few years. That is why I hope that the all-party support for the IFF that we have here will be reflected in growing support from beyond the 50 countries that are already signed up to supporting it.
Pensions Liability
As was reported to the House last year, the figure stood at around £460 billion in April 2004. Of course, that calculation is based on figures that were published in the 2003–04 resource accounts. Accounts for 2004–05 have still to be finalised and published.
Does the Financial Secretary know that the latest independent estimate places the figure at more than £700 billion? Given that public sector pensions are guaranteed and that the liability is now so large, why does not he come clean and start including the figure on the public sector balance sheet?
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the figures that he cites have been produced using very different assumptions and discount rates. What counts is not the construct of the actuaries in creating the figure for public pensions liabilities but how much cash the Government spend each year to fulfil their pension obligations and whether that is sustainable in the long term. We publish that information; it is fully factored into our public finance forecast. We publish it every year in a report alongside the pre-Budget report as part of our long-term public finance report. The hon. Gentleman can study the proper, Government figures alongside the pre-Budget report in due course.
Business of the House
Will the Leader of the House give the business for next week?
The business of the House for next week is as follows:
Monday 17 October—Remaining stages of the Transport (Wales) Bill.
Tuesday 18 October—Remaining stages of the Identity Cards Bill.
Wednesday 19 October—Opposition Day [7th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate apparently entitled "Government Confusion over Council Tax Revaluation", followed by a debate on emergency preparedness. Both debates arise on an Opposition motion.
Thursday 20 October—A debate on the Thames Gateway on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Friday 21 October—Private Members Bills.
The provisional business for the following week will include:
Monday 24 October—Remaining stages of Electoral Administration Bill.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 27 October and 3 November will be:
Thursday 20 October—A debate on the report from the Home Affairs Committee on terrorism and community relations.
Thursday 3 November—A debate on the twenty-seventh annual report from the House of Commons Commission.
I am grateful for next week's business.
I am sure that the Leader of the House accepts that there is much to discuss after the recess. Does he agree that we need early opportunities to question Ministers and debate the things that are going badly wrong in the national health service? May we have an urgent statement from the Secretary of State for Health on the financial crisis that affects many primary care trusts around the country? I am sure that the Leader of the House knows that vital services are being cut in many places, including mental health services in Oxfordshire, services to the elderly in Surrey and even operations for children at Great Ormond Street.
May we have a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer about his strategy for getting value for money for taxpayers? Will he explain in particular why the NHS is cutting services in many parts of the country when overall NHS funding is rising fast?
Has the Leader of the House seen early-day motion 752, about the Government's programme of hospital closures?
[That this House recognises the excellent service provided by community hospitals in affording locally accessible healthcare; deplores the current programme of closures that conflicts with the Government's commitment to community hospitals given in its 2005 manifesto; notes the strength of public opinion in favour of community hospitals; recognises that the cost of treating a patient in a community hospital is often significantly less than the cost of similar treatment in a district general hospital; further notes the potential loss to the NHS of dedicated staff when a community hospital closes; further notes that bed blocking in large acute units is exacerbated by the absence of step-down care; and calls upon the Government to conduct a review of closures and to recognise the potential for community hospitals to carry forward its plans for locally delivered healthcare.]
Will the right hon. Gentleman provide an early opportunity in Government time to debate that early-day motion so that he and his colleagues have a chance to explain why, having given a commitment in their manifesto to support community hospitals, they have decided to close them instead?
Does the Leader of the House agree that the Public Accounts Committee should conduct an inquiry into why many NHS facilities, such as Bolingbroke hospital in Wandsworth and Westbury hospital, are being downgraded or closed soon after expensive upgrading programmes?
Will the right hon. Gentleman provide for a debate in Government time on the cost to the taxpayer of regular Government reorganisations? I am sure that he remembers the Government, shortly after coming to power in 1997, scrapping county-wide and regional health authorities and creating the smaller primary care trusts and strategic health authorities. Now, things are coming full circle. The authorities are all being merged to recreate the same bodies that the Government scrapped eight years ago. May we have a debate on why that is good value for taxpayers' money?
The hon. Gentleman obviously has not spent his summer recess productively or usefully. I would have been delighted for him to accompany me to see the remarkable changes that extra spending on the NHS is delivering throughout the country. I would be very pleased if the shadow Leader of the House came to Ashfield, where he would see plans for a remarkable new hospital. I have seen those plans for myself, and I know that similar plans are being replicated right across the country. That is the result of the extra spending that the Government have put into the national health service since 1997. That extra spending was desperately needed because of the underfunding by the previous Conservative Government.
Regarding the Chancellor of the Exchequer, we have just had an hour of questions to the Chancellor. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman has not organised his Back Benchers more effectively to raise the issues that he mentioned at such times. However, I am confident that the Chancellor has no difficulty in dealing with these rather poor questions about funding. It is absolutely clear that this Government are investing more in the national health service than any previous Government in history. That is the message that the hon. Gentleman needs to understand. If he would like me to, I will organise a programme of visits for him, so that he can see the excellent work that is being done right across the national health service.
As my right hon. Friend will know, we are now half way through our presidency of the European Union. Will he find time for a debate on the progress that has been made during our presidency, particularly on the decision to open talks with Turkey—we had a statement on that from the Foreign Secretary this week, but these are substantial issues—on progress with Croatia, and on the progress with the EU budget? At the end of our presidency, there will be a debate on what has happened during it, but would it not be a good idea to have it while the presidency is ongoing?
My hon. Friend and I have both had the privilege of being the Minister for Europe, and we know how difficult negotiations can sometimes be in the European Union. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, on behalf of the European Union, on succeeding in the negotiations on 3 October in respect of Turkish membership and in relation to Croatia, as he set out in his statement to the House the other day. I shall give some thought to my hon. Friend's suggestion about a debate on Europe before the end of the presidency. As he said, the House always has such a debate at the end of a presidency, and I anticipate that my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary will keep the House up to date on developments such as those that arise from the informal summit that will take place shortly. However, I will certainly bear in mind my hon. Friend's suggestion.
I make no apologies for asking yet again whether we can have a debate in Government time on Iraq. Despite the welcome statement from the Ministry of Defence on Monday, there remain huge political questions about British involvement in Iraq and the military consequences of that. It is quite extraordinary that this Parliament has not yet had the opportunity to have a debate on this key subject while our Army is in the field.
May we also have a statement or a debate on the preparedness of this country to deal with avian flu, particularly the lethal H5N1 strain that is now developing across large parts of the world bordering Europe and has the potential to become a pandemic? We need to know whether we are fully prepared, and the degree of international co-operation in which we are engaged, in order to avoid what could be an extremely serious threat.
Lastly, could we have a debate on the new ministerial code? I note, having read it with care, that it says that
"every effort should be made to avoid leaving significant announcements to the last day before a recess."
On 21 July, the last day before the longest recess that many of us can remember, we had no fewer than 63 written statements—including the statement that published the ministerial code. Did the recess come as a surprise to Government Departments?
Certainly, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are significant military and political questions arising in relation to Iraq. That is precisely why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence took the first opportunity available to come to the House and make a statement on that question. We are looking forward to the referendum taking place in Iraq. Its political implications will be considerable, whichever result emerges. Obviously, we are hoping for a positive endorsement of the constitution but, equally, we shall have to recognise that if it is not supported, that is what happens in democracies. There would then have to be a consideration of how to take forward that difficult question.
The hon. Gentleman raises the important subject of preparedness for avian flu. I shall certainly ask the Secretary of State with responsibility for that matter to write to him to set out the arrangements that are in place.
On written statements, a number of Members on both sides of the House have experience of ministerial life and they will know that Departments are focused on delivering material on Friday afternoons and, indeed, at the end of a Session. That is a part of the civil service culture that even this Government have not yet been able to change.
Will the Leader of the House ensure that any report from the Cabinet Sub-Committee that is looking at electoral reform is brought before the House for debate, so that the House can quickly come to the conclusion that there is nothing representative about proportional representation? If any Members support proportional representation, perhaps my right hon. Friend will confirm that they can use their European travel allowance to visit Berlin to see it in action?
I recognise that this subject interests Members of the House profoundly and I am sure that my hon. Friend's strong views on it will be taken account of when the consultation paper is published.
The House will have been surprised by the response from the Leader of the House to my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House in asking for a debate on the health service. Is it not clear that the Leader of the House views these matters with a detachment and ignorance that do not match what is going on in the country? It is clearly true that the Government have invested very substantial sums in the health service, but in the south-east of England there is a major crisis, which our constituents demand should be debated in the House so that the Government may be held to account for the failings that are causing considerable difficulties.
I simply do not recognise the description that the hon. Gentleman has given. The amounts of money available to the south of England are consistent with those being made available elsewhere. Indeed, I have seen figures for the reduction in waiting lists, the improvement in treatment and the investment in wards and hospitals, which is available in the south of England as much as in other parts of the country.
In those circumstances, if the hon. Gentleman or other Opposition Members believe that there should be a debate on the health service, the Government will certainly welcome the opportunity to set out, as I did earlier, the significant investment that has been made. It is open to the Opposition to use their Opposition days—there will be two such opportunities in the near future—to debate this important question. The Government will be delighted to have such a debate.
We have just had 60 minutes of Treasury questions during which, for whatever reason, there was not a single question about the most important influence on the health of the British economy, which is the price of oil. Leaving aside the implications of the war in the middle east and the consequences of the hurricane for American refinery production capacity, is there not now a growing consensus that we are rapidly reaching the peak of global oil production? Is it not important that we have a debate about not just the price of oil, but the consequences and causes of the high oil price and the likely trajectory of oil supplies in the years ahead?
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall not forecast the price of oil, or indeed the availability of supplies, but it is clear—I emphasise this—that the Government take very seriously the question of energy. We are urgently looking at alternative sources, both renewable and otherwise, to ensure that this country has the energy available to meet its requirements. That is obviously something that we do, both on our own account through the European Union and globally with other G8 countries.
Given the importance that the Government place on education, will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the serious consequences of cuts in school budgets in Northern Ireland? In particular, primary school principals are having to pay off teachers and classroom assistants, and, even more worryingly, cannot afford to keep on current or replace retiring school crossing patrol personnel, which is the case at Brooklands primary school in my constituency, thus leaving vulnerable children at great risk.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising a specific constituency issue, and I will ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland deals with both that and her general point about education provision in Northern Ireland.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that the near trebling of Government funding for affordable housing is very welcome. I should be grateful, however, if he would consider scheduling a debate about the balance of housing, given that in London, and particularly in my constituency of Hackney, there is a severe need for family properties.
Certainly, the Government take seriously the requirement for affordable housing. My hon. Friend will be aware of the efforts made by the Deputy Prime Minister to ensure that there is a determined effort to deal with the various obstacles that have got in the way of providing affordable housing, particularly in relation to planning matters. The Government take that issue seriously, and I know that she takes it equally seriously.
Pregnant women in my constituency cannot get 12-week ultrasound scans on the NHS and are being told to get them privately, despite the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence issuing guidelines in October 2003 stating that all women should have this service available to them. Indeed, in neighbouring Frimley Park and Guildford, the service is available. I therefore call on the Leader of the House to have an urgent debate next week on the primary care trust funding crisis that we face in places such as north Hampshire, where basic services are simply not available to my constituents.
I do not doubt in any way the concern that the hon. Lady expresses on behalf of her constituents. Indeed, I recognise that it is important that women have that treatment available as is recommended. In one sense, however, she answers her own question by referring to a neighbouring PCT. The question that she should ask is: why is one PCT able to manage effectively the considerable extra budget received in order to be able to deliver this service, while a neighbouring one is not? That might be more relevant than challenging the Government, who are making significant extra spending available.
May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to remarks that our right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made last night on "Newsnight", which appeared to suggest that British forces in southern Iraq are free under certain circumstances, and with the approval of local commanders on the ground, to operate over the border with Iran? That is a serious matter, which, notwithstanding the statement made by our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence last week, must be clarified to the House as soon as possible.
I, too, watched "Newsnight" last night, and thought that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary handled a series of extremely difficult and sometimes emotional questions with his usual very considerable skill. I did not interpret his remarks in relation to British soldiers in the way that my hon. Friend does.
Can we have a debate in Government time on the operation and, indeed, the future of the Child Support Agency? It remains the most dysfunctional and chaotic of all Government agencies—we found in the summer recess that for every £1 that it collects, it costs the taxpayer 54p, and that £1 billion of unclaimed maintenance was written off. Surely it is now time to have a root-and-branch reform of the CSA, if not to pull the plug on it.
All Members of Parliament recognise that there are difficulties with the CSA from time to time. All of us, at our routine surgeries and in our mailbags, get regular complaints. Inevitably, we get complaints when problems arise and things go wrong, but that does not highlight the way in which the system generally works successfully for most people. Certainly, the Government have taken the matter seriously, and we have reformed significantly the system that we inherited, which was complex and confusing. One of the challenges for the CSA today is to ensure that those older cases are transferred to the new arrangements, because only by having those simpler, more straightforward arrangements can the system work much more effectively for everyone. That is to be taken seriously.
Has my right hon. Friend read about the excellent "Stamp It Out" campaign launched by The Sun? It draws attention to the amount of cruelty to domestic animals in Britain—animals that are tortured and often killed. Is it not time we had a debate in which to discuss how that cruelty can be ended, and how it can be ensured that the penalty fits the crime?
I too saw the front page of that newspaper this morning, and I think that the campaign is extremely important. The pictures were truly shocking and revolting. That is why the Government take so seriously their responsibility to deal with cruelty to animals.
I make no apology for repeating the comments on NHS funding made by my hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller).
Two weeks ago, 34,000 people—constituting no less than 49 per cent. of all patients registered with NHS dentists in the Greater Peterborough primary care partnership area—were deregistered and told that they could no longer receive NHS treatment. The area crosses my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara). When will the Leader of the House arrange a proper debate on the enormous crisis that is developing in NHS dentistry? It is having a major impact on poorer families and older people throughout the country, not just in my constituency.
We have been addressing that as a matter of urgency. I apologise for not having up-to-date figures in my head, but the July figures showed that there were about 400 new NHS dentists who were trained as available to the service. That number was expected to increase to 1,000 by the end of the year.
I recognise that there are problems in a number of parts of the country, as does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. That is why we are taking urgent action to ensure that new dentists are available to the service.
Is my right hon. Friend surprised or concerned at the fact that the Adam Smith Institute has enthusiastically embraced the latest NHS shake-up, saying that it will provide huge opportunities for the private sector? Will he comment on the fact that the proposals were published not on the last day of term, 21 July, but on 28 July?
It would be a scandal if we did not have a proper, considered debate on the huge structural changes that the Government are about to introduce.
I should have thought that my hon. Friend and other Members—indeed, anyone who approves of NHS reforms—would welcome changes that are having a measurable impact on the lives of my hon. Friend's constituents, my constituents and every other constituent in the country. Waiting times are being reduced, the way in which treatment is made available is being improved, and more treatment is being made available in new hospitals and new wards. That strikes me as an outstanding success, and if any organisation welcomes those changes and reforms I shall be delighted to join it in the fold.
Under the last Conservative Government, there were many NHS dentists in Wellingborough. Under the present Government, my constituents must go out of the county to obtain treatment.
Let me reinforce what other Members have said. May we please have a debate, or at least an answer to the question of why we are not being allowed a debate on a serious policy change that amounts effectively to the privatisation of dentistry in my constituency?
As I made clear in response to an earlier question, the Government have recognised the importance of making NHS dentists available across the country, and have taken urgent action to ensure both more training and more recruitment. I gave the figures earlier, and I do not intend to repeat them, but significantly more dentists are available to the NHS since 1997. Given that picture, I find it puzzling that the hon. Gentleman should persist in suggesting that there is a continuing crisis.
Given the importance that the House ascribes to international development and the work of the Department for International Development, is it not time that we extended the half hour allotted to DFID questions to a full hour, thus giving international development the same status as other Cabinet responsibilities? Will my right hon. Friend look into that anomaly as matter of urgency?
Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to the tremendous work done in the past few days by officials from the Department for International Development, assisted by Foreign Office officials, in responding to the earthquake in south Asia. They were able to move equipment and people within a very short time to help in the emergency. Certainly no Minister doubts the importance of DIFD's work, and I will consider my hon. Friend's suggestion carefully.
During the recess, a major crisis has developed in our prisons. Overcrowding appears to be leading to the early release and tagging of a significant number of prisoners who pose a potential danger to the public and would not otherwise be released. In those circumstances, is it not essential for the Home Secretary to make a statement in the House very soon?
I expected that question, in view of the publicity given to it this morning.
I still need to identify some practical issues, but I assure the right hon. Gentleman of two things. First, there is existing capacity in the prison system. We have still to establish whether there are specific problems in certain parts of the country as a result of administrative difficulties, but overall there are still places for prisoners. Secondly, no one has been released early as a result of any overcrowding. That simply is not the case.
Does the right hon. Gentleman understand the dismay that will be felt in Lincolnshire at the complacent way in which he has refused to arrange a debate on the NHS? Is he aware that in the hospitals of Lincoln, Grantham and elsewhere in the county, a number of wards are being closed and jobs are being lost? Is he also aware that NHS dentistry has ceased to exist for most Lincolnshire residents?
I simply do not accept the picture that the right hon. and learned Gentleman paints—although I recall Members of the then Opposition before 1997 making precisely the same observations about ward closures. The answer given then was that there had been a significant change in the way in which people were treated, and that is the case now. People no longer spend as much time in hospital as they once did; people are no longer even required to go to hospital for out-patient treatment to the extent that they once were. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that we do not need the same number of wards.
I urge the right hon. and learned Gentleman to look at the figures. It is clear that more patients are being treated and more conditions being dealt with, and that the overall service provided by the NHS has significantly improved.
When may we have a debate on the increasing incidence of tuberculosis in many African countries? When I visited Kenya with other Members, it was shocking to hear of the 16 per cent. annual increase there and the fact that 50 per cent. of cases are not detected, although the disease is entirely curable. That will of course affect achievement of the millennium development goals. When may we have a debate on this important issue?
My hon. Friend is right to raise what is indeed an important issue. I arrived in the Chamber towards the end of Treasury questions. As my hon. Friend will know, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has launched an important initiative to help developing nations in that regard. It is obvious that the Government take the problem extremely seriously, and I hope my hon. Friend will accept that assurance.
Should the Government not welcome a debate on the health service? It would enable them to rejoice in the triumph that after eight years the Oxfordshire pain unit faces closure, the mental health trust is about to announce redundancies among consultant psychiatrists, and disabled children's facilities and a ward in the Nuffield orthopaedic centre are to close. It would also give us an opportunity to ask why the strategic health authority's response has been simply to propose the privatisation of service commissioning in Oxfordshire. For the first time that is to be proposed throughout the country, and it is a major issue for patients in Oxfordshire.
I made it clear earlier that the Government would welcome a debate on the national health service. We have a very good story to tell about the extra funding, the continuing reforms and, indeed, the treatment available to the hon. Gentleman's constituents. I have no difficulty in accepting the challenge, and if any Opposition party wishes to table a motion for such a debate, Ministers will be delighted to take the opportunity to set out the record.
In spring this year, the then Health Secretary told the people of Broxbourne that if they voted Conservative, Chase Farm accident and emergency service would close down. They should have listened to him because they did vote Conservative and Chase Farm accident and emergency is to be closed. Will the right hon. Gentleman bring the new Secretary of State for Health to my constituency, particularly to Cheshunt and Waltham Cross, at the earliest opportunity to explain herself and to reassure my constituents that it has all been a joke and that accident and emergency services at Chase Farm will continue in good health in the near and distant future?
Everyone takes the provision of accident and emergency services extremely seriously, but the hon. Gentleman knows that there are different ways of providing those services and that it is necessary to provide them efficiently and effectively. One of the most important aspects of an accident and emergency service is that it has the necessary back-up available across the medical spectrum in order properly to treat those people who are an emergency. It is no good taking someone to an accident and emergency facility if the support necessary to treat the person properly is not available.
There are a variety of reasons why, from time to time, accident and emergency facilities are required to close. The hon. Gentleman presents an extremely simplistic picture of the overall way in which the health service deals effectively with people.
May we have a debate on the work of the Assets Recovery Agency and the resources allocated to it? Right hon. and hon. Members will be well aware of the agency's fine work, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that in tackling the criminal empire of organisations such as the IRA—we have recently seen evidence of the extent of its empire—it is imperative to recognise that it will take not only considerable time but the resources necessary to get to grips with such organisations?
It is fair to say that the allegations made against the gentleman in question caused a great deal of concern. It is also fair to say that once upon a time I was concerned about his activities; I shall not go into any more detail than that, but the hon. Gentleman will know what I am talking about. It is indeed important to continue to support the excellent work of the Asset Recovery Agency. The particular incident in question demonstrates how effective it can be.
Further to the many questions put by my right hon. and hon. Friends, does the Leader of the House understand that we would happily accept his invitation to join him on a visit to Ashfield hospital to see what is happening in his constituency if he would reciprocate and accept our invitation to come and see what is happening in our constituencies? Has not the Leader of the House detected in the last half hour a growing appetite for a debate on the NHS? Many of us believe that many issues need to be addressed and the right hon. Gentleman believes that he has some answers, so does that not already have the makings of a rather good debate?
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Even with my rather slow reaction to events, I had noticed that Opposition Members were to some extent co-ordinating their questions on this matter. I congratulate them on increasingly effective opposition—long may it continue.
Four more years.
Yes, at least four more years. I would certainly be willing to visit the right hon. Gentleman's constituency and his local hospital, and I look forward to receiving the invitation.
I know that I am new to the House, but I am flabbergasted by the expressions of Government Members. The right hon. Gentleman says that he does not recognise what is going on in the health service in the south-east. He goes on and on about how much money the Government are investing, but he appears to pay no attention to what is coming out at the other end. In my own area, the Guildford and Waverley primary care trust now faces a huge budget deficit—
Will the hon. Lady please take her seat? Perhaps because of the time that I have spent in the House, I never get flabbergasted, but I must tell the hon. Lady that she must ask a question. She must put a question to the Leader of the House about next week's business. If she does so, I will allow her to continue—without being flabbergasted.
My apologies, Mr. Speaker. My question is this: would you like to come down to Guildford so we can open your eyes and show you what is going on? That would take the smile off your face.
I will come down to Guildford one day.
I would not want to get in the way of Mr. Speaker's visit. I have recognised on previous occasions, as now, that there are legitimate questions about the way in which different health authorities allocate their resources. What there can be no question about is that those resources have increased significantly under the present Government. If the hon. Lady would like to debate the allocation of those resources, I have already said that there is every opportunity to do so in the amount of time available to the Opposition for Opposition day debates. If the issue is as important as the hon. Lady says, perhaps she should direct her remarks to the shadow Leader of the House, who has some responsibility for deciding the subjects for Opposition days. He may have noticed that many Conservative Back Benchers want to talk about the health service: they could have done so on Wednesday.
rose—
Northern Ireland
With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement about developments in Northern Ireland during the summer recess period. First, however, I know that the House will want to join me in marking, with sadness, the passing of two very significant figures from the Northern Ireland political stage: Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt. They were politicians of great courage, passion and, above all, humanity and we all in different ways feel their loss.
On 28 July we saw the statement by the IRA that its leadership had ordered an end to its armed campaign. As I said in my letter to Members at the time, that was important—indeed, historic—but it was crucial that the words were carried through in actions, which had to be independently verified. Two weeks ago, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning reported that the IRA had placed its arms completely and verifiably beyond use.
Not so many years ago, Unionists and republicans were agreed on one thing at least—that the IRA would never give up its guns and never give up its explosives: "not a bullet; not an ounce". But the impossible has happened and the war machine that brought death and destruction to thousands of people in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and beyond—indeed, to this House—has gone. It is something that all Members of this House have wanted to see happen for many years and that many feared they never would see.
However, immensely significant as IRA decommissioning undoubtedly is, there is more to be done in demonstrating that the IRA has put paramilitary activity behind it for good. The next formal report from the Independent Monitoring Commission, focusing on paramilitary activity, is expected in the next week or so. That will give an indication of whether progress has been made in meeting the equally important requirement for a verifiable end to all paramilitary and criminal activity. As it will only have covered several weeks since 28 July, the two Governments have asked the IMC to produce an additional report in January to reinforce the crucial verification process.
The Government believe that the interests of everyone in Northern Ireland are best served by local decision making through a devolved Assembly. That requires the rebuilding of trust and confidence and we recognise that that will take time. If the IMC reports confirm an end to IRA activity, the time will have come to move the process forward.
The summer also saw a murderous loyalist feud, vicious attacks on the police and Army by loyalist paramilitaries and sickening sectarian attacks, including obscene threats to desecrate graves in Carnmoney cemetery—all of which disfigured Northern Ireland in the eyes of the world. Of course, that outrageous behaviour appalled the overwhelming majority of people in the Unionist community and I greatly welcomed the opportunity to stand with the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) in his constituency, which had seen sectarian attacks on schools, and join him in condemning such barbarous behaviour. It has taken a long time for the republican movement to acknowledge that violence does not pay. It is high time that the loyalist paramilitaries learned that too. My decision last month to specify the Ulster Volunteer Force/Red Hand Commando sent out a clear signal to those who would persist with that philosophy that they are wrong and that they must stop immediately.
There remains outstanding the question whether a financial penalty should be imposed on the Progressive Unionist party following the recommendation made to me earlier in the year by the IMC. I intend to watch developments carefully over the next few months, in particular the role that the PUP plays in attempting to secure peace and stability in the loyalist community, before reaching a decision on this in the context of the January report from the IMC, to which I referred earlier.
With my deputy the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), I have been visiting loyalist communities and meeting community representatives, clergy, teachers and local residents. Where any community has legitimate concerns, we will address them, but it is equally important that there is political leadership to enable those communities to join in the huge progress that Northern Ireland has made in recent years.
The summer also demonstrated beyond doubt that there is one organisation that we can all rely on to uphold the right of everyone to live in peace. Officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland displayed exemplary courage and professionalism in protecting life and preserving order, despite being attacked with live rounds, blast bombs, petrol bombs and other missiles. We should be under no illusion, following the Whiterock parade, but that loyalist paramilitaries were clearly intent on murdering police officers. Police videos also showed some Orangemen taking off their collarettes and hurling rocks at the police front lines—behaviour that I know that the vast majority in the Orange Order deplore.
Even with those vicious attacks on them—and let us not forget that nearly 100 officers sustained serious injuries in a single weekend—the police remained committed to their task. However, they can be effective only if they receive the support of all sections of the community in Northern Ireland. Time and again, those officers have demonstrated their determination to protect all the citizens of Northern Ireland. It is time that everyone in Northern Ireland—from Sinn Fein to the Orange Order to loyalist communities—acknowledged that and got behind the police to support them in doing their job.
The transformation of policing in Northern Ireland in line with the Patten reforms is one of the great success stories of the Good Friday agreement. It has led to the policing arrangements in Northern Ireland being admired around the world as a model for change. We remain fully committed to that model for the future.
A key element in that success is the role played by the Policing Board. I can tell the House today that I have decided to reconstitute the board from 1 April 2006, with political appointees selected in proportion to the 2003 election results using the d'Hondt formula.
So what do the months ahead hold for Northern Ireland? The Government will continue to do all that we can to facilitate progress towards restoration, but we hope that all Northern Ireland's politicians will seize the opportunity that this summer's developments present. The Government will also take forward work to implement those aspects of the Belfast agreement where work is incomplete or ongoing. We will, for example, continue to support those bodies and institutions that work for the benefit of Northern Ireland on a north-south, east-west basis.
Some areas of the joint declaration of 2003 were dependent on acts of completion by the IRA. Difficult though some of those will be for some people to accept, there should be no surprises, as the Government have long made it clear that certain developments would follow on from such acts of completion.
First, normalisation: in the 2003 joint declaration, the Government set out proposals to normalise the security profile across Northern Ireland when there was an enabling environment. Following the IRA statement, I published an updated programme, on the advice of the Chief Constable and the General Officer Commanding. I want to assure the House that my first and overriding priority—and that of the Chief Constable and the GOC—remains the safety and security of the people of Northern Ireland. We will not do anything that will compromise that, but the security arrangements that we have in place must be in proportion to the level of threat. The normalisation programme published in August, a copy of which I have had placed in the Library, will see the creation of an environment that will allow the return of conventional policing across Northern Ireland, something which all sections of the community should welcome.
The other commitment set out in the joint declaration was that we would reinvigorate discussions with the political parties on the shared goal of devolving criminal justice and policing. The Government will want to explore the scope for doing that over the months ahead. In the meantime, we will bring forward enabling legislation for later implementation, when there is agreement among the parties in Northern Ireland. We will also take forward plans to appoint a victims commissioner. I very much hope to make an announcement about that shortly, because the many victims of Northern Ireland's troubles deserve much better recognition and support. We will never forget them.
The House will know that we have undertaken to legislate to deal with the position of individuals connected with paramilitary crimes committed before the Belfast agreement, dealing with those suspects categorised as on-the-runs. As the House will recall, the proposals were published alongside the joint declaration more than two years ago, in May 2003. This is not an amnesty: nevertheless, the implementation of those proposals will be painful for many people. I fully understand that, but the Government believe that it is a necessary part of the process of closing the door on violence forever.
Notwithstanding the recent turbulence, huge progress has been made this summer. We need to build on that progress. The people of Northern Ireland have shown remarkable patience and resilience over the years. We owe it to them not to be deflected from doing all that we can to see a peaceful, stable and prosperous Northern Ireland, in which all traditions are cherished and respected. They deserve no less.
First, may I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and for letting me see a copy earlier this morning? I want to start by associating myself and my hon. Friends with his tributes to Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt, who served the people of Northern Ireland and the cause of peaceful and democrat politics there well during their careers.
I also support the Secretary of State's words about the police. The bravery and dedication of the Police Service of Northern Ireland deserve the thanks and support of everyone, regardless of their background and community. Loyalist communities may feel a genuine sense of disillusion today, but that cannot justify sectarian attacks on Catholics. Nor can any grievance, however deeply felt, excuse the sickening spectacle of men bragging about their loyalty to the UK and then hurling rocks at UK police officers.
The IRA statement of 28 July, and last month's report from General de Chastelain, are significant and welcome developments. They represent further steps in the transition of the republican movement from terrorism to democratic and peaceful politics. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, if Sinn Fein wishes to be regarded as a normal democratic party entitled to a role in a power-sharing Executive, republicans must end all paramilitary and criminal activity, as he said, but also carry out an important ideological shift? We are surely entitled to expect that the republican movement must support the police, the courts and the rule of law, and give up the belief, which its members still hold and assert, that the IRA and its army council are the legitimate source of authority throughout the island of Ireland.
Given that the history of terrorism in Northern Ireland stretches over more than 30 years, does the Secretary of State agree that it is not surprising that many people—particularly, but by no means exclusively, in the Unionist community—mistrust the republican movement? The right hon. Gentleman will recall that the Taoiseach said last year that what offended him most about republican tactics was the willingness to turn on and off the tap of paramilitary violence when it suited the movement's political ends. In view of that, what period of time does the Secretary of State believe would be reasonable to test whether the republican commitment to peaceful and democratic politics really is both permanent and irreversible?
The Secretary of State will know the position that my party has consistently taken on the question of terrorists on the run. Can he say now whether the terms of the proposed legislation will actually require an alleged terrorist to appear in court and, at least, shoulder the responsibility for his deeds, or will the whole process take place in absentia? Will such a terrorist be subject to licence, so that he could be recalled if he were ever to revert to terrorism? If not, despite the Secretary of State's words, we are talking about an amnesty in all but name.
I welcomed the Secretary of State's comments at the conference of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland that previous terrorist convictions should continue to be a bar to service with the police, but how does he regard people who have not been convicted of a terrorist offence but for whom good intelligence and information exists to suggest paramilitary involvement? Will such men and women be able to serve in the PSNI or the PSNI reserve, or as community support officers? Surely the Secretary of State would agree that it would be utterly wrong to hand over the policing of either loyalist or republican areas to men and women who had until recently been active in paramilitary organisations and mafia-style criminal gangs.
Finally, will the Secretary of State comment on so-called community restorative justice in view of media reports in Northern Ireland that Government support for such projects is being urged on him by the republican movement? Will he accept that if restorative justice is to form a part of our criminal justice system—I have no objection to that in principle—it has to rest on the leadership and involvement of the police service and the other institutions of the criminal justice system? Simply to license what have been violent kangaroo courts run by the paramilitaries would not bring about the restoration of peaceful politics: it would be a concession that none of us would wish to make.
I agree completely with the hon. Gentleman's last point. There is no way that this Government will view community restorative justice—the hon. Gentleman expressed its objectives well and confirmed his support for its principles—as a licence to hand over policing to paramilitaries or some kind of militia. There is no question of that happening.
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks, especially his steadfast support for the police, who had a horrendous time especially on 10, 11 and 12 September. Indeed, I visited the police headquarters shortly after that weekend of rioting and saw some of the Land Rovers and talked to some of the officers. Masses of bullets had been fired that penetrated the armour-plating. Repeated attempts had also been made to shatter the armoured glass to kill the officers inside. They are very brave men. The hon. Gentleman's support will be much appreciated by the Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, who gave outstanding leadership.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that if Sinn Fein wants to join government, it must support the police and the rule of law. One cannot be a Minister, especially in the devolved Assembly that we wish to see established, and not support the police. That would be completely contradictory, and Sinn Fein will have to face up to that, sooner rather than later.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the distrust felt in Unionist and loyalist communities about the intentions of republicans when they make promises, and I understand that. After all, it is barely a year since detailed discussions were held in which the leadership of the Democratic Unionist party, led by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley), showed much courage and determination to see whether agreement could be reached. We later learned that as those discussions took place, the Northern bank robbery was being planned and undertaken. I understand the distrust felt, and other examples show that it is understandable. However, we need to move forward and I am sure that everyone—including the hon. Gentleman, and he was fair enough to say so—accepts that the IRA's statement on 28 July was historic. It has to be implemented, of course, but it was a historic statement. The decommissioning announced by General de Chastelain's independent commission on 26 September was also historic and we had never seen anything like it before, but time will be needed to build trust in the months ahead. The hon. Gentleman asks at what point we can be certain that peace will be permanent, and that is the key question. We will have to continue to work at building trust to take the process forward and I am grateful that he will work alongside us in that task.
On the so-called on-the-runs legislation, I shall have to ask the hon. Gentleman to wait for the legislation to be published—I will notify him of that in the usual way—for the detailed matters he raises. However, I wish to stress a couple of points. It will not be an amnesty and it will involve a judicial process—two important principles. Such matters are very difficult. After the Belfast agreement in 1998, many people found very difficult the release on licence of prisoners who had in some cases committed horrendous crimes, whether republican—as they mainly were—or loyalist. The process of ending violence is difficult, and this is a good example of why that is so.
On the subject of policing, I assure the hon. Gentleman categorically that the same criteria will be applied to future recruits to the police, whether as conventional police officers or community support officers, if the Policing Board decides to recommend that the latter should be introduced to Northern Ireland, given their success in Great Britain. No one will be recruited unless they satisfy completely, down to the last full stop and comma, the normal recruitment criteria for the police that have applied over the years and apply now. There is no question of someone who is a paramilitary one day walking into a police uniform the next day. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman.
We hope to continue the discussions with all the political parties that I have had over the past few months and take the process forward, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will continue to support that.
I, too, thank the Secretary of State for early sight of the statement and associate myself with his comments about the late Gerry Fitt, who was a large character as I grew up, and with those about Mo Mowlam, who was unique in her principle, charisma and drive to remove obstacles in the peace process that no one else could have removed.
I welcome the IRA statement of 28 July and its act of decommissioning in September. Does the Secretary of State agree that both sides of the House must recognise that this is a momentous step forward? Indeed, it is rather more than some of us could have hoped for in 2005. We must all agree that it was necessary for the IRA to take that step and that, to some extent, the long delay requires a rebuilding of trust with the IRA and other paramilitaries.
Does the Secretary of State agree that a key publication is the forthcoming report of the Independent Monitoring Commission? That will help us to see whether the IRA is continuing its previously considerable involvement in criminal activity and paramilitary beatings across Northern Ireland. Does the Secretary of State agree that, for people to develop further faith in those formerly involved in the IRA, there must be total and genuine cessation of the underlying violence that has continued? Does he agree that the IRA must make a statement to confirm that those whom it exiled from their homes during the so-called troubles are free to return home safely and without fear of retribution?
We welcome the Secretary of State's decision to specify the Ulster Volunteer Force. There are of course genuine grievances in the loyalist community, but I am sure he will agree that those grievances should be properly presented through debate in the political system of dialogue and not through paramilitary violence.
It is clear that the police have an appallingly difficult job in the Province and we salute their courage and determination, for much of the time under the greatest of dangers. Does the Secretary of State agree that although there is a case for devolving policing and justice to the Northern Ireland Assembly, that can happen only when the Assembly has proved itself durable and sustainable? Nothing could be worse than the suspension of the Assembly when it had jurisdiction over the police.
We welcome the announcement about a victims commissioner, but can the Secretary of State assure us that the commissioner will have real teeth? Will the commissioner have the opportunity genuinely to act in the interests of victims rather than merely speaking about their concerns?
Finally, in relation to on-the-runs, the Secretary of State really must give a commitment that the needs of victims will come first. Will he clarify what he said to the Conservative party spokesman, the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington)? Is he assuring us that people allegedly involved in terrorist activities will be required to appear before a board or court as part of the process, and that they will not simply be given some form of amnesty? If that is what he is proposing, it is encouraging. We will see the details at a later stage, but it would be helpful in the context of his statement if he gave an indication that that significant stumbling block will be addressed in the way that I described.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his opening comments, especially those about Mo Mowlam, and for his support for the police, as I was to the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington).
I agree that the IRA statement was momentous; that is the correct word to describe it. I also agree that the IMC report is vital to demonstrating that the age of bombs and bullets from the IRA is over—as well as the punishment beatings, the exiling and all that dreadful local activity, including the criminality. That is why the activities of the Assets Recovery Agency are important in tracking down those who we know have been involved in criminality. Exiles should be free to return. If we are to have a normal society, with Ministers exercising devolved powers in that normal society, the horrendous process of exiling must end.
There are many grievances in loyalist communities. Recently, I have been spending a lot of time, with the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), visiting loyalist communities, in some cases under the guidance of members of the Democratic Unionist party, for which I am grateful, trying to understand exactly how we can develop a future agenda. One of the problems is that there are many grievances about the past but the future agenda is not clear. That is where we need to get people, so I accept the points that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) makes.
As the hon. Gentleman says, devolving policing is a good idea in principle, but the conditions must be right. There must be agreement and a sense of permanent stability.
I shall be making an announcement about the victims commissioner when I am in a position to do so. The time is long overdue for the victims of the troubles of the past 35 years or so to be properly acknowledged and their grievances recognised. They are the ones who have suffered most.
In relation to on-the-runs legislation, the victims must constantly be in our minds and should always come first. There will be a fully judicial process, which is why there is no question of an amnesty. I want to underline the following point: if as part of the judicial process concerning on-the-run suspects someone is found guilty and granted a licence and the conditions of the licence are broken, it is important that they will be rearrested and incarcerated. There is thus no question of an amnesty; it will be a proper judicial process and I look forward to explaining the situation to the hon. Gentleman nearer the time.
I welcome the announcements during the recess from Sinn Fein and General de Chastelain. However, does my right hon. Friend agree that, to secure trust and confidence in normality in Northern Ireland, the republican side must recognise the PSNI, and the loyalist side must stop bombing and shooting the PSNI? What progress has he made in securing political leadership on both sides of the divide to obtain that? Will he also give assurances that he will push for extra resources for the ARA, to ensure that former paramilitaries who are turning to criminal and violent activity that undermines normality in the Province will not be allowed to make crime pay?
When my hon. Friend said that he welcomed statements over the summer from Sinn Fein, I assume that he meant the IRA—
The hon. Gentleman was perfectly right.
I thought that Ulster Unionist Members might respond in that way.
I agree very much with my hon. Friend that political leadership is needed both from Unionist communities and leaders and nationalist leaders in support of the police. There has been a degree of ambivalence—to put it charitably—about that from the republican side, not only in recent weeks but over the years. I do not want that bad practice to spread to the loyalist side, or indeed to some on the Unionist side. Support for the police must be consistent across the board.
The ARA will continue to do its work with all the resources it needs.
I would like to say a few words about Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt—two very interesting characters. I had run-ins with them many, many times.
Mo Mowlam earned the medal for having me wrongly arrested the night that the agreement was signed, but a certain chief police officer had a word in her ear and she allowed me to go without charge. I had many interesting times with her, with her shoes off, her feet on the table, demanding that I should be a serf to do her bidding, which I never did.
Gerry Fitt lived in Dock ward, and so did I. I fought him and kept him out of the council during his campaign. Then I left the area and, unfortunately from the Unionist point of view, he was elected. But he was a unique character. He had a good way of looking after people in need and never got beyond himself—who he was and what he intended to do. When the House lost him, it lost some of the humour of debates. I remember when one of my colleagues—the late Johnny McQuade—had a row with him. Johnny McQuade, who was a champion boxer of the British Army, said, "Gerry, come outside and I will deal with you." The Speaker quickly said, "Before you do that, I'll buy you both a cup of tea." That, of course, defused the situation.
I should like to tell the Secretary of State that some matters concern us all about his statement. I also want to tell him that, although I condemn utterly any attack on the police no matter from where it comes—as he knows—it should also be kept in mind that the people who sought to kill the police in Northern Ireland were not loyalists; they were republicans. I have in my study the photographs of some 300 police officers who were murdered by the IRA. So we need to keep that in mind, although of course nobody in their senses in Northern Ireland wants anything that has occurred during the past weeks to occur again.
I am glad that the Secretary of State came to the North Antrim constituency, and I am sure that he would join me in condemning the attack that took place yesterday, when more pipe bombs were left, this time at the state primary school in Harryville. I am sure that he would want to join me in condemning that outrage.
With regard to the Policing Board, perhaps the Secretary of State could help me. I understand that a number of the appointments are political—they involve people from political parties. Will that change, or will we retain the current number of political representatives on the board? Those in the IRA have made it clear that they will not join the board, so they will be left out, as they were left out before. Will their places remain vacant or be filled, as they were for the previous board? We need to know about that.
The House should congratulate the board on what it has done. It has got through a lot of thorny, difficult problems, and every member has made a valuable contribution. Although the old board is going, it needs to be put on record that the people of Northern Ireland are grateful to the Policing Board, although I trust that the Secretary of State will not reduce the number of appointees to it.
On-the-runs legislation is not acceptable to the Unionist majority, and it is not acceptable to many Roman Catholics who have suffered so seriously at the hands of these people that they still cannot get back the bodies of their loved ones for a decent Christian burial. That needs to be carefully looked at. If there is to be no jurisdiction of the court in the matter, the Secretary of State's argument that there is to be no amnesty is weakened. We must be sure that these people are brought to a place where they realise that the court that sentenced them has the right to do such things, that they are bound by all the court rules and that, if they offend again, they will be lifted and brought in. I was tempted to say, "And not let out", but the Secretary of State will know what I am getting at, and I do not need to interpret that. I am sure that my hon. Friends will want to say something, representing their constituents, so I think that I have said enough.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the points that he made and for his very engaging comments on both Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt. I promise never to have him wrongly arrested and never to take off my shoes while I am in discussion with him, or even to try to offer him a glass of whisky, which I think happened on one occasion. I join him in criticising and condemning the extraordinary and very disturbing attack on Harryville school.
As the hon. Gentleman asked of me, I have applied the composition of political appointees to the Policing Board in accordance with the outcome of the 2003 elections. I accepted his arguments that the DUP was in an unfair situation and that the present composition of the board and its political section did not reflect the last Assembly election. He and his colleagues made a very strong argument, and I have accepted it. If the d'Hondt formula is applied to that election, the outcome is an increase to four members for the DUP, two members for the UUP, two for the SDLP and two for Sinn Fein.
There are some months to go until 1 April, when the board will be reconstituted, and it is vital that community balance is retained. I do not know whether those in Sinn Fein will come on to the board—they have expressed no intention of doing so—but if they want to get involved in devolved government, they must, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will accept, take their responsibilities to policing seriously, including going on to the board.
I agree that the board has played an extremely valuable role, and I endorse the hon. Gentleman's congratulations of the role of all its members, including members of his party. I know that, particularly given what he has said, he will want to condemn with me the barbarous attack, probably by members of the Real IRA, on the vice-chairman of the board, Denis Bradley, who in an attempt to maim him if not to kill him suffered enormous damage to his face and head.
I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern about the on-the-runs legislation. I accept absolutely that it is not acceptable to the Unionist community—I fully understand that—and especially to the many victims of the IRA over the years, including police officers, but I assure him that the matter will be subject to a proper judicial process, as he will see when the Bill is published. If people reoffend, absolutely, they will indeed—to use his language—be lifted. The legislation will provide for that.
Like others, I join the Secretary of State in fondly remembering Gerry Fitt and Mo Mowlam. Gerry Fitt was my predecessor as the leader of the SDLP. He was its founding leader, and in founding the party, he built it on the principles of standing for partnership in Northern Ireland, co-operation north and south, and reconciliation and harmony between Britain and Ireland. Those are principles with which he helped to inspire the SDLP, and we have continued with them to this very day. He was a warm character, not at all reluctant to let people know when he disagreed with them, and a man who was ready to proffer all sorts of advice and criticism. When I spoke to him in July, we agreed that we would meet here this month—he obviously planned a very convivial meeting—and I regret that, unfortunately, that was not to be. Gerry Fitt is fondly remembered not just by those with whom he served in politics or by those with whom he agreed, but by people with whom he disagreed. I think he disagreed with us all on very many occasions.
Likewise, Mo Mowlam was someone who brought enormous humour and character to her time in Northern Ireland. She did not always take herself seriously, but she always took her responsibilities seriously. She left Northern Ireland a much better place than she found it.
One aspect of Mo Mowlam's approach in Northern Ireland was that she knew that, if people are to build trust and confidence, they do not create the impression of a deal one way today and a side deal another way tomorrow or next week. Although many people find it tedious to do things inclusively and on a round-table basis, things can be got through an awful lot faster and an awful lot of suspicion and angst can be saved if the same thing is said in the same terms at the same time to everyone. I hope that the Government will learn some lessons from that.
I believe that the process has got into a lot of trouble by deviating from the inclusive approach that gave us the agreement in the first place. I understand why that has happened, and I shall not go into all that now, but we know that it ended up centring on the question of decommissioning. A fundamental mistake was made soon after the agreement by the Governments not using their authority to declare that decommissioning was a requirement of the agreement no matter who said it was not, and that decommissioning was not a pre-condition for the establishment of the institutions. The failure to do that and, instead, to try to focus on the problem parties and to do side deals, sub-deals and pseudo deals meant that we have waited for years. Some of us predicted that Sinn Fein and the IRA would spend years milking not doing something until such time as they decided that they could milk more by doing it. That has been the story of this process.
This summer's developments on decommissioning are very welcome. The failure to decommission was the boulder that was blocking the agreement road. That stone has now been rolled away. On one side of the boulder were painted the words, "Not a bullet. Not an ounce", and on the other were painted, "No guns, no Government". As that stone moves away, the veto on the institutions that the IRA's failure to decommission represented should be removed as well. I hope that we can all work on the basis that we are now on the countdown to restoring institutions in which we can all share.
I know that some colleagues on the Opposition Benches took exception to suggestions that I made elsewhere that, when parties come with demands to Downing street, they should be told where to go with those demands—into the institutions and to make them the agenda there. Some parties thought that I was talking about only one party; I am talking about any party coming in. We should all be told where to take our shopping lists and that is, with our mandates, into the institutions into which we were elected: the Assembly, the Executive, the North/South Ministerial Council and the Policing Board.
I wish to make a further point about the Policing Board. The Secretary of State has indicated today that he is moving to reconstitute the board. I join him in underscoring the success of the Patten vision for policing and I join the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) in applauding the role and the work of the Policing Board in that regard. It confounded low expectations; it has succeeded in delivering; it has succeeded in carrying all the disagreements that there have been within the board and even all the disagreements in and around Patten; and it has worked. Why has it done so? It has worked because the parties have to take the decisions within the board. We cannot run to Downing street or Dublin with the decisions that fall to the Policing Board. We have to face each other and face our responsibilities and mandates. Therein lies the lesson.
Finally, I note that the Secretary of State has said that he will appoint a victims commissioner. The joint declaration in 2003 said that the Government would consider establishing a victims and survivors forum, and I would like him to move on the propositions for both a victims commissioner and a victims and survivors forum. Victims and survivors have waited for far too long in this process. We keep patting them on the shoulder and then the process shrugs its shoulders when basic questions are asked on behalf of victims. We still have not delivered the promise to victims in the Good Friday agreement, and that is why, when victims see measures coming along for on-the-runs and are very worried about what happens in relation to the cold cases and the process of certificates that are being talked about, they feel very much that they are seen as second best. Victims can no longer be ghettoised; they can no longer be patronised; they have to be championed; their interests must come first; and they must be allowed to speak for themselves in a victims and survivors forum.
I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman that victims must no longer be seen as second best. We can all agree to that, and I am sure that it will be agreed across the political divide in Northern Ireland. I ask him to be a little patient. When I am in a position to make an announcement on the way forward for a victims commissioner—which I hope to do sooner rather than later, because the matter has been delayed for too long—I will certainly explain all the details and take account of what he has said.
The hon. Gentleman spoke with tremendous elegance and eloquence about Gerry Fitt, and I agree with him. It is probably easier for me than the hon. Gentleman to say that the SDLP under the leadership of Gerry Fitt, then John Hume and now the hon. Gentleman has always displayed tremendous courage. We would not be where we are now were it not for the SDLP's role.
I agree that we need to learn lessons from the past and that an inclusive approach is important. As we move forward in the coming months, that should be the bedrock on which we engage between Government and the different political parties. I also agree that restoring the institutions is absolutely vital. We cannot put that off for ever; we must do it sooner rather than later.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the Policing Board. We must maintain the commitment to the Patten reforms, update them when necessary and take account of new developments while maintaining the absolutely crucial ethos in the board that he mentioned and that has been the main reason for its success. I welcome the points that he has made.
rose—
Order. The House can probably anticipate what I am about to say. This is a ministerial statement on which questions may be put. May I now appeal for brevity? There is other important business to be considered this afternoon, so I hope that hon. Members will respect that fact.
In genuinely wishing the Secretary of State well in the challenging and difficult days ahead, may I ask him to concede that in Northern Ireland there is a great deal of perplexity about and hostility to the fact that he continues also to have responsibility for Wales? There is a feeling that, at this of all times, a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland should be that and nothing else. He is the first to hold a dual role. I wish him well, but I hope that he will reflect on those words.
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's good wishes. I congratulate him on being appointed Chairman of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. He will do an outstanding job as one of the most outstanding parliamentarians in the Chamber.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that a structured return to devolved government in Northern Ireland provides the best and possibly only opportunity for peaceful economic growth and development and an equalisation of social opportunities in Northern Ireland? As such, it should be a goal that is embraced by all involved political parties.
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. Getting the devolved institutions up and running is absolutely crucial to the future stability and political success of Northern Ireland. My aim as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is to do myself out of a job. It is to make sure that we can get devolved institutions up and running. [Interruption.] I am talking about the devolved areas of my responsibilities.
I want the elected politicians in Northern Ireland—the hon. Members for Foyle (Mark Durkan), for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley), for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson), for Belfast, North (Mr. Dodds) and all the other elected politicians in Northern Ireland—to take responsibility for the decisions that I now take and that are necessary to take Northern Ireland forward.
Apart from calling down the wrath of the full weight of the law upon the heads of loyalist paramilitaries, I would be most grateful to the Secretary of State if he would enlighten the House as to the real efforts being made by the Northern Ireland Office to bring the loyalist paramilitaries in from the cold and to encourage them to begin the decommissioning of their weaponry.
The hon. Lady makes a very good point. This is something that we are working on all the time, and I know that I have her support and that of her party, which has also shown great courage over the years. It is absolutely critical that we get the political leadership in those communities to bring them in from the cold and that we show that there is an honourable future for loyalism in the future of Northern Ireland. That honourable future is to take its place in the political arena, not in the streets with a gun or a blast bomb.
My right hon. Friend referred to the desire to see local government returned to Northern Ireland, but will he comment on the reorganisation of local government councils and on the review of public administration?
Yes, we will announce—I am sure that my hon. Friend will be encouraged by this—our views on how local government should be reorganised. There are 26 local councils in Northern Ireland. It is over-administered, not just in terms of the number of local authorities, but in the number of police authorities, health authorities and hospital trusts. There are also about 100 quangos. It is important that we get an efficient public sector, more accountability to local people and more powers for local councils. That will form part of our proposals for the future.
The Secretary of State paid a well deserved tribute to the bravery of the police, various politicians—both living and no longer living—and the victims. However, one group of people to whom he perhaps inadvertently did not pay tribute was the men and women of the British Army and the security services, without whom we would not be in the position that we are in today. He said that it had taken a long time for the IRA to realise that violence did not pay, but surely the British Army and the security services gave it that realisation. Is it not fortunate that the prescription of those who signed up to the troops out movement at the height of the troubles was ignored by successive Governments?
Yes, it was. I agree with the hon. Gentleman and I am glad that he has given me the opportunity to endorse his point that the Army has played an important role. I stress that 1,200 soldiers backing up the police during the Whiterock weekend helped to hold the line and ensure not only that the violence was contained—despite pretty vicious attacks, including murder attempts—but that it did not spill over into nationalist areas, which was the intention of some of the paramilitaries and others involved in the rioting. That would have created an enormous conflagration, although it was avoided.
In welcoming the statement, may I echo the comments made about Mo Mowlam? I worked with Mo Mowlam for more than 20 years, first on trying to get justice for miners who were sacked and sometimes jailed during the 1984–85 strike, and then as a national official with Unison during her work in Northern Ireland. The people over there made us both realise that the biggest mistake that can be made in Northern Ireland is to leave a vacuum. Over the past few months, we have seen the opportunity to come out of the vacuum that we have been in for several months and years.
The point that has been made today about political leadership should be taken on board by everyone in the Chamber. I am proud that I am now a member of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack). We have taken the decision to work together in a non-partisan way to try to help to move things forward. Does the Secretary of State agree that political leadership will take us to a position where, instead of taking risks for peace, which Mo used to speak about, we can now start taking decisions for peace?
I certainly hope so. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is dangerous to leave a political vacuum, so his points are apposite—as are his comments about Mo Mowlam, who reached parts of the community that no politician normally reaches, whether in Northern Ireland or anywhere else in the United Kingdom.
Will the Secretary of State give us some clarity on two matters arising from his statement? He says that the impossible has happened in that the IRA war machine has gone. Will he give us an explanation for that statement, because it is not consistent with what the Chief Constable recently told the Policing Board, or with what the IMC indicated to us? Where is the evidence that the war machine has gone, as opposed to just some of the weaponry?
The Secretary of State indicated that we can move the process forward in January if the IMC reports that there is an end to IRA activity, by which I assume that he means both paramilitary and criminal activity. Does he accept that possessing funds from the Northern bank robbery and other robberies represents a continuing criminal offence, and that while the IRA still possesses those funds it is still continuing with criminality?
Obviously, I agree that if people have stolen money and are still in possession of it they are criminally culpable, so the hon. Gentleman makes a good point. As for the war machine being gone, he will understand that General de Chastelain made a statement and gave a report on 26 September, which was witnessed not only by fellow members of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning but, for the first time, two clergymen, including Harold Good, a widely respected Protestant clergyman and former president of the Methodist Church in Ireland. That showed that something historic and, as the hon. Gentleman said, something substantial had happened.
I hope that things will move forward after January, but I cannot anticipate what the IMC report will say about IRA activity. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there must be an end to both paramilitary and criminal activity, as I have always said, so he is right to stress that point. It is also important for us to try to create circumstances against the background of a positive report—if it is positive, and the information that I have received so far is that it is broadly positive—that will allow us to find a way of talking again and not leaving a political vacuum.
The Secretary of State made it clear that the Police Service of Northern Ireland has had a turbulent summer combating a great deal of criminal activity, in which it has been supported by the Army. Does he agree that now is not the time for Her Majesty's Government to consider disbanding the Territorial battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment?
As the hon. Gentleman knows, and as I have explained, the process was announced in May 2003, so it should come as no surprise. The situation is difficult for soldiers in the home-based battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment. The 1st Battalion will remain, but that is deployable worldwide, like other battalions in the armed forces. I have received important representations from the leader of the Democratic Unionist party and his colleagues about redundancy terms and other matters. We are examining those requests at the moment and trying to meet them.
The truth is, as the General Officer Commanding told me, that the Royal Irish Regiment home battalions have been operating at about 4 per cent. capacity, on average. If the Whiterock weekend is included, the capacity works out at 10 per cent. There is no longer the same level of threat that there was in the past, so the whole situation must be adjusted. However, I stress to the hon. Gentleman that that will not be done in a way that risks anyone's security.
Will the Secretary of State condemn the remarks made by one of the independent observers on IRA decommissioning when he last night described and branded all Unionists as Nazis? Will he also explain to the House how an on-the-run proposal that will allow up to 150 people who are guilty of murder, attempted murder and bombing to come back to Northern Ireland without serving one day in prison is anything other than an amnesty? The cold case review is investigating 1,800 cases. What are the implications for anyone against whom evidence is discovered during that review? Will they be subject to the same terms as on-the-runs, or will they have to skip across the border for a day or two to qualify for the same treatment?
Although Father Alec Reid has apparently apologised for his remarks, of course I join the hon. Gentleman in condemning what he said. On the question of on-the-runs, I have explained that when the proposals are ready we will make them available to hon. Members, including him, for debate, scrutiny and, if the House so decides, amendment. The proposition is not an amnesty because that would mean that people who had committed offences would in advance be released for ever from being punished for them. I made it clear in an earlier reply that there will not be an amnesty because such people will be subject to the process of the law. The cold cases that are being reviewed by the Chief Constable and his officers will lead to people being charged, if evidence exists. If such people come under the on-the-runs legislation, they will be subject to the appropriate judicial process, so there is no question of people being let off the hook.
Does the Government's definition of "victim" include "perpetrator"?
The definition of "victim" is historically quite contentious in Northern Ireland. What matters is that the victims—the more than 3,000 people who were killed and their families, loved ones and friends—understand that there is a process of recognition of that.
BILLS PRESENTED
Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England)
Mr. Secretary Prescott, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dawn Primarolo, Mr. David Miliband, Mr. Phil Woolas and Jim Fitzpatrick, presented a Bill to make provision about the dates on which new valuation lists for the purposes of council tax must be compiled in relation to billing authorities in England: And the same was read the First time, and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. Explanatory notes to be printed [Bill 57].
Animal Welfare
Secretary Margaret Beckett, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Secretary Prescott, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Clarke, Mr. Secretary Hain and Mr. Ben Bradshaw, presented a Bill to make provision about animal welfare; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time, and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. Explanatory notes to be printed [Bill 58].
Orders of the Day
Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism
I beg to move,
That the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2005, which was laid before this House on 10th October, be approved.
This is the third such application under these provisions. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, when he was Home Secretary, laid an order for the proscription of 21 international terrorist groups under part 2 of the Terrorism Act 2000 on 28 February 2001, which was approved by the House. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when he was Home Secretary, similarly laid an order for the proscription of a further four organisations on 28 October 2002, which was also approved by the House.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has this week introduced the Terrorism Bill for the purpose of further strengthening the United Kingdom's counter-terrorist powers. The new powers in the Bill reflect the importance that the Government place on dealing with those who seek to overthrow legitimate Governments through violent means. The attacks on London in July and the subsequent atrocities in Egypt and Bali have shown us all the importance of continuing the fight against terrorism, and the importance of not only breaking up terrorist groups, but the networks of organisations that support them and give them succour.
Under part 2 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the Secretary of State has the power to proscribe any organisation that he believes "is concerned in terrorism". That is the phrase under the Act. An organisation is concerned in terrorism if it commits or participates in acts of terrorism, if it prepares for terrorism, promotes or encourages it or is otherwise concerned in it. If the Secretary of State is satisfied that a particular group meets those criteria of being concerned in terrorism, he then has the power to proscribe it.
In addition, there are other criteria that can be taken into account. These additional factors include the nature and scale of an organisation's activities, the specific threat posed to the United Kingdom, the threat to British nationals overseas, the extent of the organisation's presence in the UK and, importantly, the need to support other members of the international community in the global fight against terrorism. I think that we would all acknowledge that we are now facing terrorism with a global reach in many different countries.
Proscription means that an organisation is outlawed in the UK and that it is illegal for it to operate here. The 2000 Act makes it a criminal offence to belong to, to support or to display support for a proscribed organisation. The Act allows the police to seize all property of that proscribed organisation.
I acknowledge that this is a tough power. It has the effect of outlawing previously lawful activity. It is right that it has to be given effect by affirmative resolution in both Houses. It is an important power to exercise. The Home Secretary has made it clear that he takes such decisions only after the most thorough scrutiny of all the intelligence put forward by the security and intelligence agencies.
We believe that this power plays a key role in creating a hostile environment for terrorists and their supporters. It also deters international terrorist organisations from coming to this country in the first place. Equally importantly, it sends out a strong signal throughout the world that the UK rejects such organisations and their claims to legitimacy.
I question the Minister specifically on the Uzbek organisation that appears in the list. According to the right hon. Lady's own note, it has as its principal aim the holding of elections in Uzbekistan. It does not organise or recruit in the United Kingdom. It was involved in the Andijan uprising in May, which left hundreds of civilians dead. They were killed not by the Islamic Jihad Union but by the brutality of the Karimov regime that it is trying to overthrow. Should we not tread very carefully before proscribing an organisation that has less blood on its hands than a Government with whom we still maintain diplomatic relations?
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I took a particular look at the organisation to which he refers. The indication, given the information, was that it was perhaps less active here than many of the other organisations that are set out in the explanatory memorandum. I have been assured that the group would cause a threat to British interests overseas in particular. It is always open to any of us to seek to weigh the balance between the actions of one group or another. As for the organisations that are set out in the list, I am saying that the information of the security and intelligence services has been sufficient, when scrutinised carefully by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, for him to reach the decision that proscription is appropriate. I will deal with the provisions on appeal, which are extensive for any organisation that finds itself proscribed.
Reading the note as carefully as I could, it appeared to me that in respect of the Islamic Jihad Union—I would be grateful if the right hon. Lady were to clarify the matter—it was not its resistance to the Karimov regime that was causing the Government difficulties, but the fact that it was associated with direct acts of terrorism in third countries such as Kazakhstan. Can the Minister confirm that that is the case?
There is a range of activities that all these organisations will be undertaking. We have attempted in the explanatory memoranda to outline, as far as we can, the activities that have taken place. As for the Islamic Jihad Union, in March 2004 there was an explosion in Uzbekistan that killed nine people who were involved in the construction of portable improvised explosive devices. Over the following three days, there was a series of shoot-outs and suicide bombings that were carried out in Tashkent, Bokhara and Uzbekistan, leaving about 25 dead and 35 wounded. I also asked about the impact on British interests to satisfy myself that the order was an appropriate way forward.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has carefully scrutinised the information that is available to him. We are being told by the security services that the organisations on the list are of particular concern at this time. That is why the decision has been reached.
I do not have any difficulty with what the Minister has said so far. For the purpose of clarity, I ask her what the situation is with groups such as the Al Aqsa martyrs brigades, which, for all I know, may be on a previous list. There is no evidence of them causing a direct threat to civilians in the United Kingdom, but they have an overt record of blowing up buses and finding other ways of killing civilians in Israel. Is it the case that that alone is enough to qualify an organisation of that sort to go on the list, given that British citizens often travel to Israel?
I have tried to outline that the first requirement is that a group should be concerned in terrorism, and that can be promoting, encouraging or taking part in acts of terrorism. There is a series of other factors that the Secretary of State can take into account, and some will have greater weight than others. One of those factors is supporting the rest of the international community to tackle terrorism. Where groups are active in other countries it is vital that we act together to ensure that we do as much as we can to fight global terrorism. That is one of the factors that are taken into account.
I want to return to the Islamic Jihad Union. It is the organisation that causes some of us concerns because of the country in which it is clearly operating. Can the Minister reassure me that her primary channels of information come from British intelligence and not from Uzbek sources?
The information that we receive is from our own security and intelligence services. Obviously, we have very good relationships with intelligence services throughout the world, and it is right that we should also take account of that information. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, in his careful scrutiny of the evidence available to him, will have taken into account a range of different sources in relation to each of these decisions.
Have the Government either sought or received intelligence from the Uzbek Government on this matter?
I can give hon. Members the reassurance that they are seeking, as the case on the IJU is based on our own intelligence.
I wanted to pick up the need to work together. It is all very well the UK keeping lists of outlawed terrorist organisations up to date, but the Minister referred to Bali, and yesterday was the anniversary of the first major bomb there. Indeed, there was another attack by the same group only a couple of weeks ago. Does it not undermine the work that we are doing here if countries such as Indonesia do not even outlaw Jemaah Islamiyah, the group responsible? Will the Minister work more closely with the Foreign Secretary to make sure that we combat terrorism globally? Our work here is undermined if we travel abroad and are confronted by the very terrorists whom we are trying to prevent from attacking us in the UK.
The hon. Gentleman makes an important and fair point. When we face the threat of international terrorism, it is incumbent on all of us across the world to try to work together as closely as we can. Different countries have different proscription regimes—they are not all identical to ours. Some of the groups on our list are proscribed in other countries, but some are not. It is important that the Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary work closely together and that we work with other Governments to give all our citizens as much security as possible in the dangerous world situation that faces us.
Do other EU countries include the IJU on a proscribed list? Concerns about the Uzbek Government would prompt many of us to prefer to see them on the list rather than groups that oppose them, given that they have carried out acts of cruelty and torture against their own citizens. Have the British Government received representations from the Uzbek Government and other Governments about the inclusion of organisations on the list? It can be argued that many of them display anti-western attitudes, so what representations have been received from the United States?
The IJU is proscribed by both the US and the UN, so other countries have concerns about that organisation. As I said, the intelligence on which the Home Secretary reached his decision was from our own sources, so I hope that that reassures Members that the matter has been scrutinised properly and that this is a proper decision. I shall come on to the appeal provisions, which are robust. If groups feel that they have been wrongly proscribed they have recourse to a review.
Before you come on to that point, I would like to ask you another question about the Uzbeks.
Order. The hon. Lady must correct her use of language. She is not asking questions of me, but of her right hon. Friend the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I am sure that what the Minister said about the IJU is correct, but after the uprising in Andijan people were massacred by the Government, and others were tortured into saying that they belonged to radical Islamist groups. How will the Minister make a judgment in practice about whether people truly belong to the IJU, which is to be proscribed, or have simply been tortured into claiming that they do?
If an organisation is proscribed, anyone seeking either to become a member or to give it support would be guilty of a criminal offence. Prosecution would be a matter for the courts, and it would have to be brought properly. Evidence would be tested and there would be an opportunity for all the issues raised by my hon. Friend to be explored within the criminal justice system, as would happen with any other kind of offence. There would be an opportunity to discover whether evidence had not been obtained properly or did not stand up under scrutiny or cross-examination. I accept the points made by several hon. Members that other people may have carried out acts that we would all find abhorrent. However, we are talking about whether particular organisations pose such a threat that they should be proscribed. The fact that other organisations may be involved in other activities does not mean that the listed organisations should not be subject to a proscription order.
A number of organisations on the list have UK-based supporters but no official representation here. Has an assessment been made of the extent of their support and do any of them have large-scale support networks in this country? Do any of them pose a particular threat and do any particular organisations receive a disproportionate amount of support, help, succour or money from the UK for their activities abroad?
The hon. Gentleman is pressing me to stray into inappropriate areas, given the risk of revealing intelligence. It would be invidious to single out organisations as being strong or weak, as we are engaged in a fight against terrorism. The information in the explanatory memorandum attempts to be as clear as possible about the extent of activity. Most of the organisations do not have a formal representative presence, but a number of people in this country support them. That is as far as I can go in trying to answer the hon. Gentleman's question.
We are seeking to proscribe the 15 international terrorist groups that appear in the explanatory memorandum. We have sought a shortened timetable to try to ensure that the power is as effective as possible by not allowing the proposed groups time to move resources out of the country or to change their names to evade the powers in the Terrorism Act. If we support the order, it will go to the other place this afternoon and will come into effect tomorrow. I accept that that is a short time scale, but there are genuine reasons for it. Hon. Members will note that most of the groups are active in south Asia, specifically Pakistan, but Ansar Al Sunna and Ansar Al Islam are active in Iraq. The Libyan Islamic Fighting group and the Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain mainly target their activities against their respective countries, and Al Ittihad Al Islamia is based in east Africa. A range of organisations are therefore subject to the order. It is clear from the evidence put before the Home Secretary that all those groups are active in terrorism and have linkages to the network of organisations associated with al-Qaeda. They have been chosen because the security and intelligence agencies have advised us that they are the highest priority at the present time. The Government have every confidence in the work of the agencies and we think that they are doing an excellent job in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
What co-ordination is there between the security services? To develop my earlier question, how much co-ordination is there between the various intelligence organisations and how can we secure a global agreement about which organisations should be outlawed?
As well as receiving advice from the individual security agencies, the Home Secretary receives advice from a working group that brings together all the agencies so that they can share information and provide him with advice. Those agencies are mainly home agencies but, as I said earlier, there are extremely close relationships between security agencies across the world, which have become even closer in the light of the attacks that we face. I am confident that there is better information sharing now than there has been at any time. Information sharing and working together are clearly a key part of our policy.
It would be helpful if, without endangering sources and so on, the Government published more information about the history of the funding of those organisations. In particular, knowing the current and past funding of those organisations by states would help us to make a judgment about individual organisations, as we would know where their funding came from in the past and what association they have had with state funding.
I understand why my hon. Friend wants to see that information, but I cannot undertake to publish the details. We have tried to be as open as possible in the explanatory memorandum, and I will re-examine the matter.
Will the Minister tell us whether all the organisations in the order are on the UN list of proscribed organisations?
Not all of the organisations in the order are on the UN list.
Will the Minister indicate whether any organisations on the UN list are not included in today's list?
I am not aware of the detail on that point. Some organisations may be on the UN list, but not on our list. The organisations in the order are those that the Security Service tells us are currently of most concern. If we were to proscribe every single organisation in every single part of the world, our list would include many scores of organisations. We have tried to prioritise, but I am more than happy to go through the list and try to provide the hon. Gentleman with that detail after the debate.
I understand the sensitivity surrounding the extent to which the Minister can discuss what we currently know about those organisations. On the urgency of the situation and the need to pass the order today and take action quickly, will the Minister undertake to return to the House to set out exactly what assets and resources have been seized under the order, because it would be helpful to know whether real assets and resources have been identified? If the list is passed urgently, it must be followed by evidence of the demonstrable case for that urgency.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend has acknowledged that, where people have assets, it is important to take urgent action to ensure that those assets are not removed and that organisations do not attempt to change their names, which means that they would no longer be proscribed under the current legislation—we shall attend to that point in the Terrorism Bill, because that loophole must be closed.
My response to my hon. Friend's request for further information is the same as my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). I will do my best to see whether we can provide such information, but the issue must be placed in the context of the current security situation. I do not want to release information that could advantage organisations whose stated aim is to damage this country. If it is possible to give hon. Members background and context, I shall seek to provide them, but I must draw a line and make sure that people do not know our tactics and strategy.
The Minister is being extremely generous in giving way. A few moments ago, she said that all the organisations on the new list are believed to have some link with al-Qaeda. Reverting to my earlier question about organisations such as the al-Aqsa martyrs brigades, does that mean that she is not putting on the list organisations that are a threat to British tourists abroad, but which are not known to have links with al-Qaeda?
The criteria are not as rigid as the hon. Gentleman suggests. The groups on the list are of the highest priority at this time, but the list is not exhaustive and is kept under constant review. If we receive advice that another organisation has become a serious threat, we will revisit the matter. The criteria around groups that are or are not connected with al-Qaeda are not rigid, and if organisations pose a serious threat to the people of this country, either here or abroad, we will review the matter.
The appeal system is important. An organisation that has been proscribed or an individual who believes that he has been affected by a decision to proscribe has the right of appeal. In the first instance, the appeal is to the Home Secretary. If the Home Secretary confirms the decision to proscribe, a further appeal may be made to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission, which will review whether the legal criteria apply and whether the Government and the Home Secretary have properly exercised their powers. The POAC tribunal consists of three senior judges, who are cleared to see sensitive material and who can see the intelligence used by the Home Secretary as the basis for his decision against a particular group. In closed sessions, a special advocate may be appointed in accordance with our usual arrangements.
As I have said, the Government's prime task is the protection of the public. We want to take whatever action is necessary to ensure the safety of our whole community, irrespective of background, and the powers will be used proportionately and effectively. I have issued a certificate to the effect that I consider that the provisions, which are proportionate and necessary, comply with our obligations under the European convention on human rights. The groups that we are discussing are involved in terrorism and seek to promote the poisonous ideologies of al-Qaeda and its acolytes.
Have any of the 25 organisations that have been proscribed to date appealed either to the Home Secretary or, beyond that, to the commission, and if so with what result?
Five appeals were initially made to the Home Secretary, who dismissed them all. Three appeals went forward to the tribunal, where they were withdrawn without being heard. I am not prepared to go into any detail about those organisations.
I commend the order to the House and hope that hon. Members will support it this afternoon.
I reassure the Minister that the official Opposition will support the order. These are difficult areas, and hon. Members have highlighted the point that it is no light matter for this House to proscribe organisations that may want to set themselves up in this county or that are already operating in this country, if they can be shown to have legitimate aims.
I suggest that a common-sense distinction can easily be made between organisations that seek political change in their country—they might even support freedom fighters—and organisations that support terrorism. The random slaughter of innocent individuals can play no part in the process of trying to bring about political change. The hallmark of the various organisations identified by the Government is that they have engaged in that very activity.
I am mindful of hon. Members' comments about the Islamic Jihad Union. The Government of Uzbekistan undoubtedly leave a great deal to be desired and may properly be described as "a tyrannical regime". The fact that opposition to that regime may manifest itself outside the law is perhaps understandable, but that it should take the form of random suicide bombings that kill innocent civilians must be unacceptable. If this House does not send out a signal that it considers such behaviour unacceptable, we are on dangerous ground.
I understand why the Minister has introduced a list of organisations, but if the Government were to seek to proscribe a controversial organisation about which opinion is divided, they should do it with a statutory instrument that refers to that organisation alone, because the House should not be placed in the position of having to reject an order, despite having a problem with only one small part of it. However, I want to emphasise to the Minister that I am satisfied with the information that she has brought to our notice in respect of the listed organisations.
We have to accept that a great deal of this must be taken on trust. Few of us, unless we are devotees of bizarre websites, are likely to know much about these organisations at all, and we must therefore accept the Government's word that the security services have told them that they pose a danger. However, if one is dealing with an organisation such as Mr. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, ample evidence has been presented on numerous occasions on television of his murderous and unpleasant nature.
I do not wish to take up any more of the House's time this afternoon. We will support the Government if the order, for any reason, is put to a Division. The measures are proportionate and reasonable; in many cases, they are truly and urgently needed. Some of these organisations have been murdering fellow Muslims—for example, Ahmadi Muslims in Bangladesh. That was brought to my notice but is not mentioned in the Government's background paper. Harakat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami is killing Hindus in that country. We should have no truck with them and make it clear that there is no ground for them to have an office, base or organisation in this country. If the order helps to achieve that end, it will be well worth while.
The emphasis of our debate, in the past and today, is on the care that is needed in the process of proscription. Many of us are worried that, in the past, the provision of information to the House, based on the intelligence services' activities, may not have been all that it should have been. Whenever it is argued that the organisations that we are proscribing seek to overthrow a legitimate Government, we should have a thorough discussion about the legitimacy of that Government. We must be sure that not all those who are engaged in armed struggle are defined as terrorists. It behoves the Government to provide us with as much information as possible.
We must have as much information as possible on the role of individual states supporting such organisations and the role that those states played in establishing them, funding them and supporting their activities. That includes the role of our Government in associating with certain organisations that are active across the world. The order is largely based on our trusting the information that comes from the intelligence services. There is deep scepticism about some of that information, certainly since the Iraq invasion and the basis on which intelligence decisions were made at that time.
I want to refer specifically to the operation of the system after proscription. I shall give the example of a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra)—Mr. Balbir Singh Bains—whose family reside in my constituency. It is an example of how the system after proscription should not work. In one list we proscribed an organisation called Babba Khalsa, which the Indian Government identify as a terrorist organisation operating in the Punjab and elsewhere. Mr. Bains visited India and was arrested and detained as a result of an alleged association with Babba Khalsa. He had no such association, as we proved subsequently, but it took us two years to do so. In fact, he was an active member of our local gurdwara and was much respected in the community in undertaking religious duties and community activities. Then it was alleged that Babba Khalsa was proscribed because of its association with Mr. Balbir Singh Bains, a known terrorist. The argument becomes circular in such cases. His family contacted me two weeks ago and told me that they understand that his name is still identified in association with the alleged terrorist group, which is still identified on the Foreign Office website. I urge the Minister to take that information on board and to try to rectify the matter. In all that we do, we must ensure that we are careful after a proscription is activated to consider its impact on the lives of individuals.
I would welcome an opportunity to debate the process by which information on individual organisations is garnered. I understand the problems about how much information can be provided, but it would be useful if we could at least have more about how much comes directly from British intelligence services and how much is provided by the CIA and others, so that we can gauge the motivation of those judgments and reach our own independent judgment.
I would welcome a longer time scale in terms of the indication of organisations that may be listed for proscription so that we can be more engaged in the debate, if only through informal discussions with the Minister, under Chatham House rules in some instances because of the sensitivity of the information.
I doubt that there will be a Division. Nevertheless, I caution that on every occasion we tread very carefully when we seek to use information from other agencies and Governments in proscribing organisations in a way that will occasionally have such a direct impact on the lives of our constituents and their families.
As became apparent from the interventions on the Minister, it is inevitable that in dealing with such measures an element of trust must be placed in the way in which the Government have gathered information and the use to which they wish to put it. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made a point about the transparency of the process and the provenance of information in terms of the nationality of the agency concerned. I hope that as the process evolves—we can expect to deal with more such orders in the months and years to come—the Government will consider that approach.
Liberal Democrat Members do not take substantive issue with the substance of the order, although we have some reservations, to which I shall turn. As my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said in business questions earlier, we have strong reservations about the manner in which the Government have introduced these measures. Introducing an order listing 15 specified organisations in a circumstance where debate is limited and there is no opportunity for amendment could have put the House in a very difficult situation. As it happens, we do not have any substantive information that would contradict the information that the Minister has helpfully supplied in her letter, but that is a happy circumstance and would not necessarily apply in every case. When I first approached this matter, I shared the unease that was expressed by the hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) about the listing of the Islamic Jihad Union. Indeed, I continue to feel uneasy about the inclusion of that group among the list of 15. If it had been the subject of a specific order, there would have been greater opportunity for the House to scrutinise its inclusion.
I hope that nobody outside the House will be in any doubt about the view that we take of the Karimov regime, which is entirely despicable and despotic. The Minister's PPS, the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound), recently did a brave and laudable thing in going there and bringing to the attention of the regime the revulsion that we all feel. I know that the hon. Gentleman and I share a concern about the practice of the Uzbek Government with regard to the operation of the death penalty. The Government's signals to the Uzbek regime have not always been helpful. I am thinking especially of their treatment of my old friend, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who has done us all a great service in graphically highlighting the appalling human rights record of the Uzbekistan Government.
It is often said that because of the challenge posed by al-Qaeda the rules are different and are constantly rewritten. Al-Qaeda is a diffuse and ever-changing organisation. Even with the changes, to which the Minister referred, that intend to ensure that successor organisation are caught by orders such as the one that we are considering and that an organisation could not avoid them simply by changing its name, it will be difficult for the Government to establish that an organisation is a successor organisation. We must recognise that orders can take us only so far in dealing with the challenge that is posed to our country. We must also acknowledge that we require something more than proscription of organisations such as those on the list. We now need resources so that we can play the individual rather than the team.
The order is useful inasmuch as it may prevent attacks by terrorist organisations here. We should neither underestimate nor overstate its importance, whether the implications of the organisations' actions are felt in this country or elsewhere in the world. No one should be under the illusion that the order is anything other than a small weapon in the armoury in the fight against terrorism. I believe that we can expect a great deal more in the future. We are not minded to oppose the Government but I hope that, as the procedure becomes more frequently used, they will listen to what hon. Members have said today.
I, too, doubt whether there will be a Division on the order. However, if there were, I would find it difficult to vote for it. That is not to offer endorsement of or support for any one of or all the organisations on the list. I believe that fundamentalist organisations are, by their nature, barking mad and would be thrown out of any sensible society. That is my approach to fundamentalism.
I am, however, worried about three matters: our responsibilities in the democratic process; the nature of the threat; and the consequences of simply adding names to a proscribed list without due processes of proper parliamentary scrutiny. In considering the organisations that are listed, one of my starting points was to ask what we knew about the involvement of any of them in the current risk or threat to the United Kingdom. So far, 895 people have been arrested and detained under the Terrorism Act 2000, of whom 55 per cent. were released without charge, 15 per cent.—138 people—were charged and 2.5 per cent., which makes a grand total of 23, were convicted of offences.
I have not been able to find out from the Library or the Home Office whether any of the organisations on the list have been involved or implicated in any of the charges, detentions or convictions under the Act so far. When we put names on a list of proscribed organisations, it seems reasonable to ask what evidence we have of the involvement of any of them in current actions that have threatened the security of the United Kingdom. To be unable to get an answer to that is deeply worrying in the democratic process. How can we as a Parliament draw up a list of organisations that we propose to proscribe when we cannot even tell Members of Parliament whether we have any evidence to show that those whom we have arrested under our anti-terrorism legislation have any connections with them? It would be helpful simply to know the answer to that.
The hon. Gentleman will anticipate that I support his view of the process; it is entirely compatible with the position that my colleagues and I have always taken. Does he agree that we could do better if, before the House was asked to debate and vote on such an order, we asked the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Home Affairs Committee to do some work for us to prepare the ground? It would be better, even if we had only one debate, because we could vote on each organisation separately on the basis of some consideration by colleagues with the time to do it before the Government brought their proposal to the House.
That was precisely the point that I was about to make. When we debated the initial proscribed list, many of us made the same points. We said that Parliament had been presented with a complete list and that we were unable to consider individual organisations on the list and vote on them separately. We were told that there was provision for appeals, but that is not the same as a parliamentary right to exercise a parliamentary judgment on the legitimacy of a case for inclusion.
It is dangerous for the democratic process if we start on a path of assuming that Parliament has a right to make lumped-together decisions on composite lists without adequate scrutiny. I would be happy if the list had gone through a separate Committee scrutiny system in the House. I would be happy if there had been a fuller debate in which we were allowed to exercise our judgment organisation by organisation. I might not have liked the decisions that were reached, but at least I could have been confident that our responsibilities for the democratic process had been properly exercised. However, the House is not going about matters in that way and that takes us into dangerous waters, as illustrated by the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned.
I am worried by the point that the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) made about organisations on other people's lists. The House has a right to be told what representations other Governments have made to the UK Government about including organisations on a proscribed list. I suspect that if we looked at the United Nations list, it would contain some organisations whose proscription would be unwelcome to the United States of America. I suspect that we do not include any of those organisations on our list. We have a proscription list that is friendly for the current US Administration. There is a dreadful lop-sidedness to that sort of approach.
If we go through the list, we see that many of the organisations go back to the 1980s. We were not presented with them in the first or the second proscribed list and we must ask what has changed to require their addition to our list of known risks or threats to the UK. The list is littered with expressions such as "have the potential to", "have the capacity to", "they have anti-western views" or "they have anti-American views". Many of us have similar inclinations, but that does not make us terrorist organisations. I was relieved to note that the Socialist Campaign Group was not on the list. [Hon. Members: "Not yet."] Indeed. I would not rule it out for all time.
As the chair of the Socialist Campaign Group, I should like to say that, so far, there has been no indication of that happening, thank God. Is there not a sweet sense of irony, however, that the first group on the list is the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which has been seeking the replacement of the current Libyan regime? The CIA has been trying to achieve that for nearly 25 years.
I am well aware of that. We might also look at Harakat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami, an organisation originally formed to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. I suspect that, at that time, no one would have described it as a terrorist organisation. It was almost certainly founded with the covert backing of the CIA, and would have received direct funding from the CIA for its heroic acts of resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. However, now that circumstances have changed and that group's hostilities are directed towards those whom it regards as the current occupiers of that country, it has become a terrorist organisation. Parliament must exercise greater judgment and scrutiny of the legitimacy of current threats and the impartiality of the lobbying that we receive from other Governments to add organisations to our list.
Two of the criteria for inclusion on the list apply to organisations whose principal aim is to overthrow legitimate Governments and to those that advocate armed struggle or the killing of the leaders of such Governments or of the Administrations that run their country. Bearing in mind those criteria, I would urge people to look at the website of the Christian Coalition of America, which is run by Rev. Pat Buchanan, who actively and openly advocates the assassination of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. If we are to be consistent, we should consider imposing a proscribing order on the Christian Coalition, too. Those who actively advocate the assassination of democratically elected leaders of Governments, and whose organisations platform such ideas openly on their websites, ought to be included in the banning order. The thing is, they are not Muslims. We take a very different view of Christian fundamentalists, including those who advocate armed insurgency and the killing of nationally elected leaders, because they are somehow part of civilisation. I worry when, at each stage of a banning process, we are faced with a list of organisations whose crime has been to shift allegiance from pro-western terrorism to anti-western terrorism, and which excludes organisations that advocate precisely the same acts of terrorism against regimes that the west does not like.
My hon. Friend is in danger of undermining the validity of his case. I should like to cite an example from the list: Harakat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami (Bangladesh). According to the list, that organisation
"targets progressive intellectuals and secular politicians who ideologically challenge the path of the radical Islamists. It also criticises NGO activity as un-Islamic because these organisations are involved in spreading Western ideas of women's empowerment and social transformation."
My hon. Friend is trying to create a caricature. I would argue, however, that since 9/11 and the attacks in July this year, we face a new situation. There are international links between many of these organisations, and by trivialising the issue he is not taking it seriously.
I reject that. I return to the basis of my argument, which is that the House is trivialising the process because we are not being allowed to vote on each of these organisations one by one. I have no hesitation in saying that there are organisations on the list that I would vote to ban. However, there are others about which I would want to defer my decision and to ask questions. The refusal to give Parliament the right to make selective judgments, organisation by organisation, case by case, allows us to do nothing other than make a blanket judgment on a list that cannot be amended.
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is trivialising the matter at all. Indeed, the points that he makes are perfectly legitimate. Perhaps we are being too selective in the organisations that we are banning. The need for extra parliamentary scrutiny—a difficult matter, given that so much of this information comes from the intelligence services—is desirable. Otherwise, we shall not be able to persuade people of the need to take these steps. That is a very serious democratic deficit.
That is pretty much the point on which I want to end. I do not want to focus on the case for or against proscribing specific organisations on this list. I want us to look at our responsibilities as a Parliament. How can we exercise our duty of scrutiny? Our duty is to exercise specific judgments case by case, to see whether we ought, quite properly, to include organisations on a list such as this.
I share the hon. Gentleman's views on this issue, and I also happen to be a member of the Christian Church. I believe that we do inter-faith and inter-community relations a disservice if we take a differential view. That is why, when we debate the Equality Bill, which will come before us soon, we must remember that protecting one faith in this country while not giving protection to the others represents a fundamental flaw in the equality with which we should treat all these issues in Parliament.
I want to finish on this point. We have a duty to ourselves to insist that the way in which we approach the scrutiny of organisations to be included on proscribed lists has to be more selective. I appreciate the difficulties involved in subjecting some of the claims to proper scrutiny, but it cannot be beyond the wit and wisdom of Parliament to set up mechanisms for due diligence questioning. We do not have any such mechanisms as we try to deal with this list today. Doubts will remain as long as we continue to produce these lumped-together lists that we cannot revisit. They cast a shadow of doubt over the fairness, the even-handedness and the wisdom with which Parliament deals with this process.
I am grateful for being able to make a small contribution on the most important and dangerous subject facing Parliament at the moment. I am also grateful to be able to endorse the views of my Nottinghamshire colleague, the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson). He has just made an extremely important contribution, which was not trivial in any way, shape or form. I welcome this opportunity because, like the hon. Gentleman, I believe that these organisations need to be considered in detail. We need to have time to debate what they stand for. We should not simply take a block of names, philosophies and confused ideologies, give them a convenient tag, and write them off. We need to look at the matter in detail.
I shall not oppose the Government today, and I praise the dispatch with which they have now chosen to move, but I wonder why they have taken so long to ban one, two or possibly three organisations that, so far as I can see, probably represent the same thing. I am concentrating particularly on the organisations that call themselves Ansar Al-Islam and Ansar Al Sunna. The Minister might equally have put on the list al-Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers, and a series of other names by which these organisations go whenever it suits them.
It is an aphorism I know, but we are not considering concrete organisations. We are considering ideologies and organisations that have more in common with a piece of mercury, which, when hit with a hammer, will split into various different parts and spring up enormously dangerously. As we are concentrating on those organisations—which, it is fair to say, owe their allegiance to Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the gentleman who brings us on the television screen the charming views of Britons' heads being sliced off with bread knives, who is such an expert in handling the media that when we lose one of our aircraft, whether to friendly fire or enemy fire I do not know, he has his cameras on the spot within minutes and those images projected across the world within hours, and who runs a propaganda machine far in advance of anything that we seem to be able to handle in countering his particular threat—I wonder why this individual has not had more interest shown in him and his organisation before now.
Without making any judgment on the rights or wrongs of the Iraq war, I am interested to hear those criticisms that spring up, saying that the war has made us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks since we engaged in it. Let me point out that those organisations, Al-Islam and Al-Sunna, brought us the January 2003 ricin attack—please note, before we went to war in Iraq. That organisation, I suggest, leaves al-Qaeda as we believe it to exist in the shadows. It is a long way in advance of some of the amateurish operations that we have seen from that group. That organisation tried to use weapons of mass destruction, and I use the phrase advisedly, on the mainland of this country as long as three years ago. If the newspapers are to be believed, it was active as recently as last weekend and its suspects are in custody. Whether they will be charged, released or released on control orders I have no idea. While I am delighted that the Government are getting a move on from this particular point, why has it taken so long to address those two, three or four groups, whatever they might call themselves?
I challenge the Government to go a step further. Many of us have ignored the problem of terrorism—writing it off, thinking it would never happen in this country and that the study of it was too difficult. Well, it has happened. We have had the events of 7 July and 21 July. Possibly, something was planned for last weekend. Certainly, the arrests that followed suggest that we are still very much in jeopardy. Given that a debate on emergency planning is coming up later next week, I ask the Minister why all we see from the Government is lists of names and suggested legislation. Why do we not see concrete methods for the prevention and suppression of terrorism?
The Minister talked eloquently about those organisations on this list of names adding to the hostile environment. There are a million things that we could do to make terrorism that much more difficult to demonstrate inside this country, but I come back to the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South: we need to raise our awareness of it in the House and to ensure that our public understand what the threat is. With the greatest respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), we must not think that these are a series of bizarre websites with bizarre names that we do not understand. We need to understand them.
We the public—not just here in Parliament, but on the street—need to understand what the threat is. We must not just proscribe those organisations, but have a campaign for public information and public training that makes people understand what the threat is and know what to do about it. We have done this a million times before. For instance, I could ask the Government what their approach is on flooding. They are taking it extremely seriously, telling us what the danger is and how to cope with it.
I shall finish on this point, if I may. This is not just a question of proscribing organisations, although that will help, and laying down laws, which might help, although I have yet to see a suicide bomber who would have been deterred by a law. We must have concrete measures, we must ensure that our people understand the dangers and know how to deal with them. We will be attacked again. We must ensure next time that we first make things more difficult for our enemies and that casualties are minimised.
I am grateful to hon. Members for the tone and way in which they have responded to the presentation of the order. Some serious and significant issues have been raised, and I shall endeavour to deal with them as far as I can. If any further detailed information is required, particularly by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), I shall try to ensure that we provide it.
Several Members asked whether we could have had a debate on a single organisation, or perhaps separate votes on single organisations. As I understand it, the procedure we have adopted today is that set out in the Terrorism Act 2000. This procedure is the normal way in which such things are brought forward, but I am conscious of the fact that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) in particular raised the issue of an organisation over which there is controversy rather than a degree of consensus around the House in relation to the order. I undertake to look further into it. I cannot say that we will necessarily do as we have been asked, but I am conscious of the strength of the argument. No Member would welcome the prospect of 15 separate votes on such an order—that clearly would not be sensible—but I am conscious of Members' feelings.
The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson)—not that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is not my hon. Friend; I have two hon. Friends sat behind me—asked whether these organisations are simply fundamentalist, what the depth is of the activity they are engaged in, how we can get more information and what the role of Parliament is in scrutinising such orders. Again, I understand the point, because all Members of Parliament feel a strong duty in wanting to be able to take a view on behalf of their constituents and in terms of their role generally.
Inevitably, I am constrained by the fact that these are matters of huge sensitivity involving desperately sensitive intelligence information, which, if in the public domain, could reduce our ability to withstand the threat of terrorism that faces us. I say to both my hon. Friends that for the Home Secretary to come forward with an order of this nature, he has to be satisfied that these people are not just expressing fundamentalist views, but are concerned in terrorism. We have a definition of terrorism, which is about violence, and he is satisfied that all these organisations—in one way or another in terms of their links to organisations and the activities they are engaged in—are concerned in terrorism.
So, this is not simply a matter of free speech or people expressing views. There is a hard definition in the 2000 Act that these groups have to be concerned in terrorism for them to meet the proscription criteria. I ask my hon. Friends to think about that. This is not an academic debate about what people are saying on which we can all take a view; it is a real situation, as the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) said. We face a serious threat and these people are concerned in terrorism. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield talked about the fact that people have been murdering other people. That is one of the reasons they are included.
When we come to the debate on the Terrorism Bill, proscription will be on the grounds of statements that glorify or exalt, so it will be on the basis of statements made in the future.
Yes, and I hope to say a word or two about the Terrorism Bill before I conclude.
I perhaps did not touch on one matter in my speech, but I would be grateful for the Minister's response. We have been talking about websites, and I pointed out that many people, unless they try to access the websites of these organisations, will be ignorant of them. What becomes the status of such websites in British law once proscription has taken place, and what powers do the Government have to try to remove those websites as a result of proscription?
Any organisation that provided or displayed support, or any individual who displayed support, for an organisation that was proscribed would be committing a criminal offence. Therefore, wherever the publication was—in a book or on a website—it ought to fall within those criteria. But the hon. Gentleman knows that there is often difficulty in dealing with matters involving the internet, because although prosecutions can be brought against domestic website hosts, it is sometimes more difficult to instigate prosecutions around foreign servers. That is a problem we face not just in this field, but when we deal with issues such as paedophilia and selling illegal products.
Yesterday, I discussed the problems relating to selling guns on the internet, which is an easier issue for companies to deal with domestically than abroad. The Terrorism Bill will include provisions to deal with dissemination of material and websites. This illustrates the need for absolutely first-class co-operation between different countries in the international community, so that we can act together rather than individually.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) raised again the issue of transparency of process. I take his point, and it is important that we are as transparent as possible. I do not know what other jurisdictions do when they have their proscription debates, but the explanatory memorandum provides a fair degree of information and transparency for Members. He said that proscription will not solve the problem, which I entirely accept: proscription is simply another tool that we can use to try to create a hostile environment for terrorists in this country. I well remember our controversial debates about control orders and whether those would provide a hostile environment for terrorists in this country, on which people took different views. A range of powers are available, and we must look to use as many powers as we can to protect this country. Therefore, proscription is a useful power, but it will certainly not resolve the situation overnight. We should not hesitate to use it, however, when applicable. I hope that Liberal Democrat Members will support our Terrorism Bill provisions that seek to strengthen our powers against terrorism and to provide such a hostile environment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South raised the question of whether all the organisations concerned were on the American list. My information is that Al Ittihad Al Islamia is proscribed by Canada but not America; Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin is also proscribed by Canada; Lashkar-e Jhangvi is proscribed by Pakistan, America, Canada, Australia and the UN; Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan is proscribed by Pakistan; and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group is proscribed by the US but also by Canada and the UN. Therefore, we are not simply receiving representations from America about the need for proscription. It is important to put that on the record.
Although we are considering Islamic extremist groups today, groups from a range of different faiths and backgrounds have been proscribed in the past: ETA; the International Sikh Youth Federation; Babbar Khalsa, a group campaigning for the Sikh homeland; and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil. Therefore, it is right to emphasise that this is not simply about proscribing Muslim groups. It is about trying to see where the threat is, and taking appropriate action to meet the level of threat that faces us. I would not want to give the impression that we are acting in any other way. Fourteen different Irish groups are also proscribed, so proscribed organisations are from many different religious backgrounds and none.
The hon. Member for Newark stressed the importance of the public being aware of the nature of the threat, which he is right to do. I have had many debates with him, and it is also right that the public should be alert but not alarmed. A balance must be struck, and we are seeking to use all the tools at our disposal to make this the most hostile environment possible for terrorists, and to have sensible powers that strengthen our ability to disrupt, prosecute and bring terrorists to justice in our country.
I am very pleased by the tenor of today's debate, and as we move into debates on the Terrorism Bill in the next few weeks, I hope that we can continue that constructive engagement and that we will have some extremely good law at the end of the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2005, which was laid before the House on 10th October, be approved.
Combating Benefit Fraud
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Plaskitt.]
I am very pleased to have this opportunity to open an important debate on combating benefit fraud. I want to set out the Government's progress to date and the challenges that we still face, and I welcome the opportunity to give an initial response on some of the issues raised in the report of the Public Accounts Committee published earlier this week.
Today sees the publication of our document "Reducing Fraud in the Benefit System: Achievements and Ambitions", announced by written statement to the House this morning. This document outlines our achievements to date, as well as acknowledging that there is more that we can do to reduce fraud even further, and describes our plans to maximise the use of technology and data matching across the Department and other sectors. I hope that hon. Members have taken the opportunity to collect a copy of the document from the Vote Office.
When a figure in the document assesses the level of fraud in one year, and compares it with the level of fraud in another year, are those figures always drawn up on a comparable basis?
I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the annexe at the back of the report, which I hope that he has had time to study, which explains that we are constantly trying to refine the way in which we measure fraud. It is important that we get the measurement as accurate as possible. He is therefore right that, over time, the base moves, but only because we are getting more accurate measurements. That stands in rather stark contrast to the record of the previous Government, which, for their first 15 years in office, did not even have an accurate measurement process under way.
The Minister is therefore claiming that at no point in the document published today is a figure used in such a way as to suggest mistakenly that it is comparable one year with the other.
No, I have not said that. It sounds to me as though the hon. Gentleman should really study the annexe very carefully. As I progress through my opening speech, he will see that there are areas in which we can do perfectly accurate like-for-like comparisons. At the back of the report, however, we explain extremely openly how we are changing some of the measuring methodologies, and it is right that we do so, because if we have an accurate measure of what we are trying to address, we are more likely to have the right tools to address it.
It has been many years since this issue was last debated in the House. The vast majority of our constituents are rightly angered by the activities of benefit fraudsters. Benefit fraud is theft—theft from the public purse, from neighbours, and from hard-working, law-abiding taxpayers. Like us, the vast majority of our constituents also believe in the rights and responsibilities agenda and want the benefits system, which is after all designed to assist those most in need, to be free from abuse. We are seeing success in meeting that objective: benefit fraud is falling. That is due to the success of our policies and to the hard work of our staff in the Department and in local authorities. I am happy to take this opportunity to thank them for their dedication and commitment to helping us to reduce benefit fraud.
I want to describe some of the strategies we have used that have made it possible for us now to state that fraud constitutes less than 1 per cent. of total benefit expenditure. Our latest estimate of fraud stands at about £900 million—less than £1 billion, for the first time since proper measurements began. It is beyond doubt that we have made progress, but we are in no way complacent. The amount lost through benefit fraud is still too high. There is no place for fraud in the benefit system, and we will detect it and punish it where we find it.
Let me outline the problems that we faced back in 1997. This is relevant to the intervention from the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman). A few measurement exercises had been carried out then, but no systematic attempt had been made to estimate the amount of fraud in the benefit system. There was no end-to-end process to prevent fraud from entering the system. Indeed, the phrase "programme protection", meaning protection of the benefit spend throughout the life of the claim, was virtually unheard of and infrequently applied. That could not continue.
The Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office rightly took our Department to task. I am pleased to say that Ministers and the Department received their criticisms positively, and will continue to do so.
In each of the last 15 years the National Audit Office has qualified its assessment of the Department's accounts because of problems relating to benefit fraud, and because of errors in the benefit system. What discussions has the Minister had with the NAO about the level to which fraud and error would need to fall before the NAO could finally give an unqualified assessment of the accounts?
It is true that the NAO has not signed off the accounts for 15 years because of the amount of fraud and error that has been reported. It should be noted, however, that the NAO is now complimenting the Department on what it is doing to improve the measurement systems. As I told the hon. Member for Wycombe, as long as we continue to refine those systems and are clear about where fraud occurs and how we should deal with it, we shall be more successful in dealing with it, and can expect fraud levels to fall.
I thank the Minister for being so generous in giving way. He says that the level of fraud has fallen. What has happened to error, which is dealt with on page 26 of his document?
The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that we still face a considerable challenge in that regard. If he will bear with me, I shall deal with error at length in a moment. If what I say does not satisfy him, he is more than welcome to return to the subject.
The fourth PAC report on fraud and error in benefit expenditure was published on Tuesday. I acknowledge the existence of the issues that it raises. We are working to simplify benefits wherever possible, and the Green Paper on welfare reform, which will be published in the autumn, will outline our vision for a reformed and simplified benefit system.
The report published on Tuesday refers to the 2003–04 accounts. While we welcome the report, it is important to recognise that things have moved on over the last 18 months, and that we have published more up-to-date figures for fraud and error loss than is mentioned in the PAC report. The Department has also made progress in several areas that the report does mention.
We have now improved our estimates of fraud and error, which are accurate to the nearest £100 million rather than the nearest £500 million—which the PAC report mentions and, rightly, criticises. We have begun to benchmark our performance against that of other organisations, as the report suggests. We are, however, proud of our reputation for being at the forefront in the development of estimates of welfare fraud loss, which has been recognised by the NAO. We now use the private sector in debt recovery, as the PAC recommended. Initial performance since April 2004 has been promising, with more than £5 million of benefit debt recovered by the contractors. We accept that there are areas in which we should consider simplifying the benefit system, and we intend to build on that in the forthcoming welfare reform Green Paper.
Will the Minister take this opportunity to re-emphasise that when someone on incapacity benefit, for instance, is invited for an interview to establish what job opportunities may exist, there is no implication that that person is guilty of benefit fraud?
I am happy to give my hon. Friend that reassurance. I am sure she will find that it is reiterated in the documents that are due to appear in the not too distant future.
I apologise for not being here at the beginning of my hon. Friend's speech.
My hon. Friend mentioned the use of private contractors to recover debt. I am anxious to know whether they are used to recover debt from people who are still on benefit, or only to recover it from people who have been deeply criminal, are not on benefit, and have other resources from which recovery can be made.
In most cases, we are using private debt collectors to go after the debt that has proved most difficult for officials in our offices around the country to collect. It is just one part of the armoury against fraud and people acknowledge how important it is to do our best to collect debt.
Understanding the extent of the problem was one part of our strategy from the outset. Our measurement systems are able to tell us where the main areas of fraud occur. We can also publish estimates for the total fraud loss in the benefits system and I have already said that we currently estimate fraud loss to be less than £1 billion and equivalent to 0.8 per cent. of total benefit expenditure. We used our understanding of the problem to develop our strategic direction.
The strategies that we are pursuing were first articulated in the 1998 Command Paper, "Beating Fraud is Everyone's Business", and further described in the 1999 Command Paper, "A New Contract for Welfare: Safeguarding Social Security". Those documents provided the foundation of the development of our policies and much of what they said still holds true today.
Also in 1998, the Government set themselves targets in the form of public service agreements to reduce the proportion of fraud and error that led to overpayments in income support and jobseeker's allowance. Evidence suggested that those benefits were the most vulnerable to loss, so we have measured the levels of fraud and error in income support and jobseeker's allowance continuously since 1997, which was not done before. Our measurement systems produce results, which are published as national statistics.
In 2002, we also set ourselves a public service agreement to reduce loss in housing benefit—another vulnerable benefit—and a service delivery agreement to reduce loss in pension credit. All our most vulnerable benefits are measured continuously and can provide our best estimate for showing changes in levels of fraud over time.
To put levels of fraud and error in context, can the Minister provide an estimate of the amount of non-take-up of benefits in the system? Many who are eligible do not actually claim the benefits to which they are entitled and it would be helpful to have the figures on that.
It is entirely right and proper to have a debate on fraud in the system, which greatly concerns our constituents, but the hon. Gentleman has provided me with an opportunity to stress that my Department is just as concerned about constituents who are entitled to benefits but do not receive them. I am particularly concerned about pensioner take-up of council tax benefits and we are piloting a number of different schemes around the country in order to improve that take-up. Those pilots appear to be proving quite effective. It is just as important that our constituents who have a benefit entitlement should receive it: that is what the system is there for—to provide the help. It is right to think of both aspects together, as everyone in the benefit system and all recipients also expect us to do the best we can to remove fraud. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise that issue. We also publish the results of one-off exercises that report levels of fraud and error in other benefits that we administer. Again, those are published to National Statistics standards.
All those exercises contribute to the overall figure of fraud loss in the benefit system. As I said, the NAO has complimented us on our measurement systems, but we are continually looking at ways to improve estimates and provide results more quickly: we work closely with the NAO to achieve that. For example, we are refining the way we measure income support and jobseeker's allowance and will be able to produce a revised baseline, which reflects how we administer our benefits more closely, for the next public service agreement. We have a good record to date on reducing levels of fraud in IS and JSA. Since 1997, we have reduced levels of fraud in those two benefits by two thirds.
Our initial public service agreement target for income support and jobseeker's allowance was to reduce levels of fraud and error by 33 per cent. by March 2004, from the initial baseline measured in 1997. Our achieved reduction of 37 per cent. means that we exceeded that target, and we have set ourselves an even more ambitious one: we now aim to reduce fraud and error by 50 per cent. from the initial baseline by March 2006. Our latest figures, published for the period up to September 2004, show that we have already reduced fraud and error by 41 per cent. Achieving the remaining 9 per cent. reduction remains challenging, but I am optimistic that we will do it.
I shall now set out what we did on the ground to achieve that reduction, how we persuaded our customers and the general public that benefit fraud is a crime, and how we enabled our staff to prevent and detect it.
In summary, we did that by adopting an end-to-end approach—by getting the benefit right at the outset and then keeping it right once it was in payment. We also put benefits right when there were signs of clear abuse or error. We supported local authorities in their fight against fraud and error, and reduced our vulnerability by pursuing a welfare-to-work agenda.
We also used the measurement exercises outlined earlier to identify the areas that we needed to address first, and where we should deploy the majority of our resources. For example, with income support and jobseeker's allowance, the practice of "working and claiming"—that is, concealing paid employment while drawing benefit—accounts for a large proportion of fraud loss. By targeting our resources in this area, our estimate of fraud in working and claiming has been reduced by around 70 per cent. between 2000 and 2004.
Getting the benefit right at the outset is of great importance—both to us, as administrators of large amounts of Government money, and to our customers, who need to know that they are being paid the correct amount. We made more rigorous the checking process in the Department on new claims, especially for income support, and we did the same in local authorities, which administer housing benefit. We introduced additional checks on claims that carry a higher degree of risk—a theme to which I shall return later—including making visits to our customers' homes to check their circumstances at first hand.
Most importantly, we have ensured that the principles of programme protection are embedded in staff roles throughout Jobcentre Plus. For instance, in Jobcentre Plus, we now have over 2,500 financial assessors, who make sure that the customer is paid the correct amount of benefit, and 1,300 national insurance number allocation officers, who help prevent identity fraud. Those staff are in addition to our fraud investigation officers, and are also solely responsible for safeguarding benefit expenditure.
In addition, of course, we are maintaining the numbers of front-line fraud investigators. We are building on our successes by creating a new, nationally organised service of 2,000 investigators, who will concentrate on criminal law investigations. Also, 1,000 front-line compliance officers will bear down on lower level fraud and non-compliance, making a strong link between detection and prevention. We are not reducing the levels of front-line staff, but refocusing to maintain the number of sanctions while gaining efficiencies in the process.
We have also put more effort into keeping benefit right once it is in payment. We employ data matching, using our information and that of other Departments, to detect claims that have become incorrect. We have worked closely with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs in this matter. Since 2000–01, the amounts of overpayments identified through data matching with HMRC have nearly doubled, to just under £40 million per year.
By means of data matching we identify nearly 130,000 incorrect claims within the Department a year, and local authorities identify an additional 65,000. We are also using increasingly sophisticated technology and analytical techniques to risk-profile the types of cases that are more likely to become incorrect, and we correct them when they do. We also want to make use of additional data sources, and I shall outline our plans in that respect in a moment.
We invested in professional training for our investigators, developing an intelligence-led approach to investigations, and introduced new powers to combat fraud in the Social Security Fraud Act 2001. Our investigators can now access suspected fraudsters' bank accounts and other financial institutions, and there were nearly 40,000 requests for such information last year. We updated our policy on sanctions, including the commencement of cautions and administrative penalties. That ensures that we maximise the deterrence effect as there are a variety of penalties that we can impose for even small offences. In 2004–05, we penalised nearly 43,000 people for benefit fraud—a fourfold increase from 1997. We also now use the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to confiscate the assets of major benefit fraudsters, and we recovered more than £2 million in 2004–05.
We support local authorities in their fight against fraud and are pleased with their success to date. Reducing fraud and error remains a considerable challenge in housing benefit, and we will continue to work with them to reduce it further. We have also introduced the national anti-benefit fraud advertising campaign to deter people from committing benefit fraud, and increased the capacity of the national benefit fraud hotline to receive information from the public about benefit fraudsters. The hotline has proved to be very cost effective. For every £1 spent on running it, we identify more than £9 of defrauded benefit. We welcome the support from the public—our constituents—and want that to continue. We are working to increase the capacity of the hotline still further as sometimes callers are unable to get through. That is not acceptable, and we are taking steps to address that. Soon the hotline will be part of our national contact centre network, which will increase the number of people able to take fraud referrals from the public.
Can the Minister remind the House of whether the number of calls answered by the hotline last year rose or fell?
The number of answered calls was remarkably steady, at around 200,000. There are slight fluctuations that tend to coincide with the publicity campaigns. If the hon. Gentleman reads the report we have published today, he will see that we get a surge in calls when the campaigns run on television and in newspapers. The fluctuations in the graph, which is published in the document, tend to coincide with the anti-fraud campaigns, and it is encouraging that they seem to spark renewed public interest and commitment that lasts for some time.
By getting people off benefits and into paid employment, our welfare to work policies helped to reduce exposure to fraud and error. Adult long-term unemployment has been reduced by more than 75 per cent. since 1997. The Government have outlined their ambition for an 80 per cent. employment rate for people of working age: we firmly believe that work is the best form of welfare.
I have outlined our record of achievement on reducing benefit fraud, and we know that the strategy works. However, there is still more to do. As I have said, the cost of fraud in our system is still too high. Fraud can be reduced still further and we have plans in place to ensure that it will be. We will continue to set ourselves challenging targets to reduce fraud, and we will continue to improve and refine our measurement systems to gain a more accurate picture of levels of fraud in the benefit system and where and when it is most likely to occur. That will be achieved through the public service agreement and the spending review process, and specific targets for Jobcentre Plus, which will be agreed by Ministers each year.
Will the Department for Work and Pensions work with other Departments, particularly the Treasury, on the problem of fraud perpetrated by people with more than one national insurance number, and would data matching improve matters? Does my hon. Friend have an estimate of the proportion of benefit fraud due to identity fraud and the difference that a gold-standard ID card would make in ensuring that the same person cannot make multiple claims?
I thank my hon. Friend for at least three questions, which I shall try to pick up. She is perfectly right to point out the importance of data matching with information held by the Treasury. That certainly assists us and we have plans to do more such work. She is also right to point out that some fraud arises through duplicate national insurance numbers. Our Department has held a cleansing operation on the NI number database and it is much better than it was. She is certainly right to point out that the introduction of national identity cards and the unique specific identifier will be of significant further help to us in that respect. Finally, she asked me whether we had an estimate of the extent of fraud in the benefit system due to fake and false identities. We estimate that to be between £20 million and £50 million. We anticipate that the introduction of the unique identifier that will come in with the card will certainly help us make considerable progress in reducing that element of fraud in the system.
On the point about identity fraud, will the Minister tell us the Government estimate of the total amount of such fraud as a percentage of the whole?
As I have just said, we estimate that the loss to the benefit system as a result specifically of identity fraud is between £20 million and £50 million out of a total fraud loss of £900 million. I shall leave the hon. Gentleman to push the keys on his calculator and work out the percentage for himself.
We need to work more efficiently across the whole Department to use the technology available to us to stop fraud earlier, before it enters the benefit system, or as soon as possible afterwards. We are working to ensure that we receive information from other Departments more quickly.
As I said earlier, we will increase our ability to data match. We are currently able to data match our own information, as well as data from other Departments, which predominantly enables us to detect fraudsters who are working and claiming. However, a large number of fraudsters claim they live alone, when they actually live with a partner, and that type of fraud is difficult to detect using Government sources, so I can announce today that, early next year, we will be piloting a scheme whereby we match our data with those held by credit reference agencies, to help us detect people who are living with a partner but have not declared that to us. We estimate that such information will enable us to identify many thousands of cases of fraud of that type up to 18 months earlier than at present, in keeping with our strategy to detect fraud and error and correct it as soon as it occurs. Once that activity becomes fully operational we estimate that we could save up another £40 million a year. We will also explore the use of private sector data, where appropriate, to help us bear down on other frauds that are harder to detect.
We will also increase our use of risk profiling, to identify the types of people whose claims are more likely to be fraudulent, and to check more frequently that their claims are correct. We believe that the proposed identity card will be a useful tool in all the work of our Department. We shall use it across all our businesses to combat identity and other frauds, and improve the service we give to our customers by verifying their identity more speedily.
Our reorganised fraud investigation service, together with a new customer compliance approach, will enable us to detect, penalise and deter fraudsters more effectively than before. It will tackle serious, high-level frauds, as well as enforcing customer responsibilities to report changes in their circumstances on time.
We will continue to work in partnership with other Departments and local authorities to combat deliberate abuse of the benefit system. We will continue to reinforce the culture of rights and responsibilities in our messages to customers and the public, through the anti-benefit fraud campaign and the national benefit fraud hotline. The new targeting fraud campaign, launched on 3 October, focuses on our ability to detect fraudsters without their knowledge through the use of data matching. Our research shows that the campaign has been successful with the public; 72 per cent. of the public and 67 per cent. of our customers have got the message, "You will be caught", from those television adverts.
We have achieved much on benefit fraud. We know, however, that the monetary value of mistakes made by our staff and customers remains too high, and we acknowledge the comments of the Public Accounts Committee in that regard. We will do more to ensure that our staff administer benefits correctly and to help our customers keep their claims correct. To achieve that, we are developing plans to maximise the use of new information technology, to make the benefit system easier to administer and to introduce more timely communications with customers. We are confident that those measures will help us to reduce the overall loss to the benefit system still further.
In conclusion, as I said in opening the debate, we know that we have achieved a real, measurable reduction in fraud over the past eight years, but we are not complacent. We can do much more to bring fraud down even further. I have described the extent of our achievement to date and presented our strategy for the future. I believe that that approach will enable the Government to make further progress on reducing fraud and error. It will also help to embed the balanced culture of rights and responsibilities more deeply in the benefit system and among our customers.
I begin my speech in this important debate by briefly telling the story of Martin Crowson. Mr. Crowson, who is from Manchester, said that he was virtually unable to walk. On that basis, he made a claim and was paid more than £17,000 in incapacity benefits. Last May, it was reported that Mr. Crowson had been sentenced and jailed by a Manchester court after certificates were unearthed that confirmed that, while he was receiving his £17,000 of taxpayers' money on the basis of his apparent incapacity, he was also training for a black belt in judo. Photographs of Mr. Crowson also came to light in which he was posed riding a camel and wrestling with an alligator.
That will come as news of great interest to the waiting media.
I could go on to tell the story of Gloria Taylor from south Wales who received £13,000 in benefits, while simultaneously having £200,000 in savings; or the story of David Graham, who received more than £4,000 in disability benefits after claiming that he could walk no further than 30 yd at a stretch, but was discovered to be playing golf twice a week; or the story—perhaps the best known to the readers of the tabloids—of Lizzy Bardsley, the "Wife Swap" star.
The hon. Gentleman also reads the tabloids.
Lizzy Bardsley was ordered to pay back some £7,000 worth of benefits after receiving almost £4,000 worth of media fees, but I will not labour the point.
The House will unite in agreeing that, as the Minister rightly said at the beginning, every pound erroneously paid out by the Department because of fraud or error is a pound that could have gone to a vulnerable claimant in real need and that benefit fraud must be rooted out. The Department argues that it is rooting out benefit fraud and error. I shall argue that proper scrutiny of the figures reveals that the Government are doing less well than they claim, that they could do much better and that they would do much better if they applied two sensible principles for reform.
One person who agrees with me that the Department could do much better is apparently no less a person than the Prime Minister himself. According to a Channel 4 news report broadcast earlier this week, he has written to the Secretary of State to ask for action on incapacity benefits, presumably—I can think of no other reason—on the basis that a significant percentage of the payments are being claimed fraudulently and paid erroneously.
indicated dissent.
The Minister shakes his head. If he wants to intervene, I am very happy to let him do so.
The Prime Minister suggested in his letter—I quote from the Channel 4 report—that
"benefits should be time limited. People should not claim it after two years and would move on to other benefits or no benefits . . . many could be £30 to £40 a week worse off".
Labour Members may have seen those reports. The Secretary of State presumably agrees with the Prime Minister. He has recently referred to the current situation as "crackers", so he presumably thinks that the Prime Minister is right. I wonder therefore whether he has confidence in the latest estimate by his Department, which was issued earlier today in a document that I shall come to later, that there is £10 million worth of fraud in incapacity benefit. So I have a question for the Minister, and he is welcome to intervene on me in response: has the Department ruled out time-limiting incapacity benefits—a rumour that some of us heard before the general election—and has it ruled out a two-year cut-off date? There is no answer from the Minister. Those present must make of that what they can, but the Department certainly has not ruled it out.
The Department has estimated up until today—we will come to today's figures in a moment—that of the £109 billion spent on benefits and employment programmes last year, £3 billion may have been lost because of fraud and error. That is less than 3 per cent. of the total. However, we must apply to all these figures what I will call the Rooker principle. In 2001, Mr. Rooker, as he then was—he certainly is not now—said that in relation to fraud and error
"the £2 billion is what we know about. Another £2 billion may be regarded with a high level of suspicion and there is a weak suspicion—sometimes, no more than a hunch—about another £3 billion".—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 8 February 2001; Vol. 362, c. 303WH.]
In other words, Lord Rooker, as he is now, believed four years ago that benefit fraud and error could be more than three times as high as the official figure. If we apply the Rooker principle today, the total amount lost last year in fraud and error could have been £9 billion rather than £3 billion.
Let us assume for the moment that the Rooker principle does not apply and let us return to the official figures. Yes, on one hand, according to the latest Public Accounts Committee report, to which the Minister referred, and according to the National Audit Office, the fraud element has indeed fallen from £2 billion to £1.5 billion. On the other hand, however, the error element has risen from £1 billion to £1.5 billion.
The Minister invited me a few moments ago to do a calculation and my hon. Friends will have been able to do it too. We and the whole House do not need arithmetical genius to grasp the point that there has been no net fall in fraud and error since 2001, and the losses to the taxpayer are, to borrow a word from the Public Accounts Committee's latest report, "astronomical".
In the document issued today by the Department, lo and behold, we have a new figure. The Department claims that its latest best estimate of fraud is around £0.9 billion, so how did it get from £2 billion to £0.9 billion—a quite staggering reduction? Well, we find that £400 million is
"due to a real reduction"—
I shall linger for a moment over the word "real"—
"in fraud in IS, JSA and Pension Credit"
and that the remaining £700 million, which is roughly two thirds of the total new reduction, is according to the Department due to
"a combination of a reduction in levels of fraud in the other benefits".
Let us look at these other benefits more closely. I draw the Minister's attention first to table 1 in the appendix to today's document, which I shall also wave in the direction of the Liberal Democrat spokesman. According to this table, disability living allowance fraud has fallen from £500 million last year to only £40 million this year—a dramatic drop. That gives the Minister some £400 million of his £700 million saving. However, I now draw the Minister's attention—he may not think that we read these documents, but we certainly do—to footnote 2 at the bottom of table 1. It says that
"the 2003/04 and 2004/05 contributions from DLA are not comparable".
Why is that? It is because, as the footnote also says,
"Much of the 2003/04 DLA fraud estimate . . . would no longer be classed as fraud according to the 2004/05 methodology".
The Minister and the Department are quite entitled to change the methodology, and the Minister referred to that point in his speech, but how is it possible to claim a £460 million saving while conceding that the figures on which the savings are based are not comparable?
Does the hon. Gentleman agree in return that it would have been completely impossible to have had a debate of this nature between 1979 and 1995, because the then Government made absolutely no effort whatever to measure benefit fraud?
The Minister asks whether I agree in return, which means that he is conceding my point and conceding that the two are not comparable. In 1997, he fought the election on the manifesto pledge that Labour
"will maintain action against benefit fraud".
Labour was not saying that the then Government were doing nothing at all; it was saying that we were doing something and that it would build on it. He has just conceded that the basis on which the claim is made is simply not comparable.
The Government have failed to reduce the total amount of taxpayers' money being wasted, so can the Minister explain why his written statement issued earlier today mentioned only a fraud figure and specifically failed to mention an error figure? Indeed, was that admission itself an error, or perhaps something worse?
Furthermore, figures issued by the Department up until today have been rounded to the nearest £500 million, as the Minister said, so they have scarcely been a measure of exactitude. The figure is important, because an error margin of such a size would be more than enough to cancel out the 38 per cent. fraud reduction in income support and jobseeker's allowance reported by the Public Accounts Committee. The Committee's report said:
"the Department needs estimates that are more accurate than the nearest £500 million."
I make it clear that we welcome the new rounding to the nearest £100 million, although being £100 million out scarcely represents an accurate calculation either, so the Department will want to work on that. The Secretary of State is in the Chamber. If he sold his memoirs, as he might do, for £100 million and was overpaid so that he got £200 million, or underpaid so that he got nothing at all, he would certainly want to know about it.
On overpayments, which according to official figures amounted to more than £1 billion in March last year, the Committee noted:
"There is no satisfactory audit trail"
of the estimated £9 billion overpaid during the past three years. It also notes that of that £9 billion, only £550 million has been recovered. Furthermore, some of the estimates on which the figures are based are more than six years old, because the Department has rightly given priority to high-risk benefits, such as income support, jobseeker's allowance and housing benefit.
The Minister said, in effect, that the Department has a good chance of meeting the target of reducing income support and JSA fraud and error by 50 per cent. from 1997–98 levels by March 2006. However, we must consider the target of reducing housing benefit fraud and error from the 2002–03 levels by 25 per cent. by March 2006. In the baseline period of 2002–03, the amount of benefit overpaid to working-age claimants in the housing benefit review sample—a sample must be used when examining housing benefit because getting to the bottom of it is complicated—was estimated at 6 per cent. of total benefit paid. Last year, the figure was estimated at 5.8 per cent., which represents a drop. The latest estimate from "Fraud and error in housing benefit" by National Statistics is 6.66 per cent. below the baseline level. I shall not let my imagination linger over the figure 6,6,6. Is the Minister confident that the 2006 housing benefit target will be hit, because there is speculation that the Department might not do so?
The Department is right to prioritise income support, JSA, housing benefit and now pension credit in its examination of fraud and error. I certainly concede that examining fraud and error more widely would result in cost to the taxpayer, so a fine balance must be struck. However, it cannot be right to assume that some benefits, such as the incapacity benefits that Mr. Crowson was claiming, should remain measured inexactly. That brings me to the principles for reform.
First, the tax and benefits system needs to be made more simple. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, since 1997, has been in effect the real Work and Pensions Secretary, has created a cat's cradle. The system is not simple; it is complex and getting more complex. That is not simply the view of the official Opposition or the Liberal Democrats. Thomas Boyd-Carpenter, the recently retired chairman of the Social Security Advisory Committee, wrote in his final report, which was something of a cri de coeur:
"The size, complexity and dispersion of the benefits system"—
I assume that he meant the dispersion off to the Treasury—
"and the blurring of the boundaries"
with tax credits
"has led to a pervading . . . loss of cohesion".
He said bluntly that the system was now "alien" to the people who rely on it. Hon. Members in the Chamber know that what Sir Thomas said as chair of his committee in Whitehall was but an echo of what we hear each week in our surgeries and during our daily phone calls from constituents.
Secondly, the Department should make more use of the private sector. Its written statement issued today refers to
"increasing the use of private sector data",
so it is on to that. That is right, but the Public Accounts Committee notes baldly that the Department
"could not obtain data on fraud and error for the private sector."
That does not sound too hopeful. The Committee rightly recommends that the Department, together with the National Audit Office, should find out what could be done to compare its present performance with that of major private sector financial institutions.
The Department is, as we all know, being asked to shed some 30,000 jobs, which is about a quarter of its work force, at a time when it is trying to tackle the persistent causes of fraud and error. I asked the Minister about the hotline, because I have heard some of the Department's critics argue that the fall in the number of calls answered by the hotline, from just over 211,000 in 2003–04 to 199,000 last year—only 0.24 per cent. of these calls lead to a court conviction—may be related not only to advertising but to ongoing changes.
The Department argues that job reductions will not affect efficiency and delivery, and far be it from us to argue. However, the Department must ensure that any reductions affect back rooms and not the front line. In particular, it should, as the PAC said, assess the savings that can be derived from deploying additional staffing on effective fraud prevention and detection activities such as data matching and intelligence analysis.
We proposed at the election that Jobcentre Plus staff should be transferred to the private and voluntary sectors with no compulsory redundancies and that the role of those sectors should be expanded. We believe that that is a model for the future.
We owe it to the taxpayer and to the vulnerable, and to the constituents whom we see in our surgeries and to whom we speak each day, to deliver a system that is as free from fraud as possible. I acknowledge that some good work has been done, but much remains to be done. As we have seen today, given the dexterity with which the Government slipped out two figures which are inconsistent with each other, we can have no confidence that the Department is free from error. I saw today, before I came into the Chamber, that Harold Pinter, one of our greatest playwrights, has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. If the Department is to rely on the statistical sleight of hand that is illustrated on page 33, the Minister may risk being awarded the Nobel Prize for fiction.
I welcome—as did the shadow Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman)—the progress that has undoubtedly been made and which has been outlined by the Minister this afternoon. Progress has been made in reducing fraud in income support and jobseeker's allowance. More broadly, the figures published today suggest that fraud has been reduced to a total of £0.9 billion. I shall not embark on a detailed analysis of the figures because the hon. Member for Wycombe has done that, but I have one relatively straightforward question.
In the Public Accounts Committee report, the total figure for fraud and error was £3 billion. It is not clear from the figures published today whether the total for fraud and error remains at £3 billion. In other words, should we draw the conclusion from today's report that while the amount of fraud has been reduced to £0.9 billion, the amount of error has increased to £2.1 billion? What is the total figure for fraud and error based on today's new calculations? Should we assume that because a more detailed methodology for measuring fraud has been developed, the amount of error is to fill the gap in the £3 billion figure that has been quoted not only for the past year, but for previous years?
I agree with the Minister that despite the evidence of progress, fraud is still at too high a level. Tuesday's PAC report gave ample evidence and analysis of the reasons for that. It said that the Department is still not performing to the standards that might reasonably be expected. There is a long way to go on both fraud and error—losses due to error remain too high.Today's figures suggest that benefit fraud has been reduced roughly to the level of fraud against the European Union budget, which may be a cause for celebration for Conservative Members but suggests that there is still quite a long way to go. Overall, the fact that the Department has had its accounts qualified by the National Audit Office for each of the past 15 years, including every year that this Government have been in power, suggests that too little has been done on this issue for too long, and too slowly.
The Government's own pronouncements confirm that there is slow progress. In 2000, the Secretary of State said:
"We are taking a zero tolerance approach to fraud."
A press release was headlined, "We are winning the fight against fraud." That was on 28 January 2000, five years ago. Reading the NAO report, it is clear that despite the diplomatic language, the tone is one of real frustration. I would be grateful if the Minister let us know what discussions he has had with the NAO about the levels of fraud and error that would have to be reached before the Department's accounts were given a clear bill of health by that organisation.
The Conservatives should not be too critical of the situation, as their record in Government was hardly one to be proud of. They only began detailed measuring of the level of fraud in 1995, 15 years after they first came to office. The dramatic shift from unemployment benefit to invalidity benefit—now incapacity benefit—took place under a Conservative Government, so their record is none too good. Equally, it is a mistake to view benefit fraud in isolation. The tax credit system introduced by the present Government is part of the welfare system, and we know from various reports that in 2003–04 £2.2 billion worth of tax credits were overpaid. The National Audit Office says that fraud and error in the tax credit system amount to 5 to 11 per cent. of the total bill for tax credits or up to £1.5 billion. It has qualified the accounts for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, so the disease seems to be spreading instead of being eradicated.
Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that overpayments in the tax credit system are partly the result of the way in which the system is designed? Many of the errors in income support arose from the fact that people had to notify the agency of changes in their circumstances on a weekly basis, which caused a great deal of confusion, heartache and error. The tax credit system is much more transparent and easier to use. Overpayment is part of the system, but it is not necessarily an error.
I accept that overpayments in the tax credit system are partly a function of the way in which the system is set up, and I shall return to that later. While figures for fraud appear to be improving, there is little improvement in the figures for both official and customer error. Taken together with the tax credit system, errors in the welfare system overall could reach more than £3 billion a year. That is exacerbated by the problem with record keeping highlighted in the PAC report. The Department could not find records for one out of every eight cases of incapacity benefit selected by the NAO. The report also warned, as hon. Members have said, that plans to cut about 30,000 staff—a quarter of the work force—from the Department
"may affect morale and lead to increased turnover of staff whose skills are most needed to combat fraud and error".
The complexity of the benefit system gives rise to error among both claimants and staff. In the year to September 2004, errors made by pension credit claimants cost £100 million, while errors made by officials cost £120 million. That indicates the extent of the problem.
I welcome many of the initiatives announced today to tackle fraud, particularly the measures to improve data sharing between the Department and Revenue and Customs. Liberal Democrats have argued for such data sharing, so it is good to see that the proposal has been taken up—and today's report outlines a number of successes. Similarly, the division in the system between criminal measures and customer compliance is sensible. I offer a tentative welcome to the use of credit reference agencies, but I would like to know more about the costs. Will the Department have to pay credit reference agencies for every request for information? If so, what is the total amount estimated to be?
The Minister did not refer to a proposal highlighted in the press earlier this week on the use of lie detector software in the telephone system. It may have been dropped or it may have been too detailed to appear in his speech. I would be concerned about such proposals, not least because American research shows that such systems are only about 24 per cent. effective. However, I should like to know whether they have been considered.
On telephone lie detection tests, is the hon. Gentleman aware of the increasing prevalence of such techniques in insurance recoveries across the commercial sector? If they work well across the commercial sector, there is no reason why they should not be introduced in the public sector.
I am not aware of the increased use of lie detector software in insurance, and, given the evidence that I have seen, I wonder whether it would be appropriate in the public sector.
The simplification of the benefits and tax credit systems is crucial to tackling fraud and error. The Minister alluded to the simplification of the structure of the benefits system, and we may discuss that matter in more detail when the welfare reform proposals are introduced in the next few weeks.
Administration is another area in which simplification could make a big difference. A number of different departments and organisations deal with the administration of different benefits: housing benefit and council tax benefit are administered by local authorities; other benefits are administered by the Department for Work and Pensions; and tax credits are administered by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The Liberal Democrats have proposed that the administration of housing benefit should be moved to the DWP, which would increase efficiency, and I am interested to hear whether the Minister has considered or will consider that proposal.
Liberal Democrats have proposed the abolition of council tax and its replacement by a system of local income tax, which, as a result of its being based on ability to pay, would negate the need for council tax benefit and simplify the system.
Have the Liberal Democrats decided whether their local income tax would be based on where someone lives or where someone works? That point is especially important in north-east Scotland, where many residents work offshore or for foreign companies.
As far as I am aware, local income tax, like council tax, would be based on where one lives rather than where one works.
This Government's reliance in recent years on means-testing is one of the reasons why the welfare system as a whole has become increasingly complex—for example, the introduction of the pension credit means that a growing number of pensioners are subject to means-tested benefits. The Liberal Democrats would introduce a citizens pension, which would abolish means-testing for many pensioners, reducing the scope for both error and fraud.
On the tax credit system, we want to re-examine a return to the system of fixed awards used in the earlier form of tax credits, which would reduce errors as well as help to ameliorate the rollercoaster ride currently faced by many of our constituents due to overpayments.
The complexity of benefit forms is a genuine cause of both customer and official error. For example, a disability living allowance application form and notes runs to a total of 55 pages. The latest figures on the disability living allowance show £630 million of customer error and £60 million of official error, which is an example of complexity leading directly to error, not fraud. A big effort should be made to simplify benefit application forms to help weed out more error from the system. Administrative consolidation—for example, the proposal to move housing benefit into the DWP—would also help to make such matters easier by reducing the need for people to supply the same data in multiple benefit applications.
New IT systems can also help. I note that a new e-benefits system piloted in Rotherham has shown early signs of success because it allows people to apply for benefits, including more than one benefit at once, through an electronic terminal, and it would be worth while to roll out such a system.
Some hon. Members have already referred to the telephone hotline. Today's report shows that calls by the public to the hotline help to cut fraud, so it is important that the telephone is answered when people call. In the last year for which figures are available, 80,000 calls to the hotline—nearly 30 per cent. of all calls—went unanswered. That means that valuable tip-offs could be being ignored. I hope that that can be dealt with as the system develops, because if it is as successful as the Minister says, every effort should be made to ensure that every tip-off received from the public is acted upon.
The report highlights as one of the benefits of the advertising campaign the fact that
"belief that Government takes fraud seriously has strengthened".
The Government must ensure that there is no suspicion that spending on a high-profile advertising campaign is mainly a PR exercise designed to give the impression of action rather than generating genuine anti-fraud results.
Greater attention should be paid to sharing good practice. According to the PAC, the Department needs to do more in identifying best practice in local authorities and overseas. I was glad to hear the Minister say that that is being dealt with and I should be interested to hear more about it. An earlier report from the PAC stated that if all regions performed in line with the top quartile of local authorities in terms of savings, that would lead to significant overall savings. Encouraging local authorities to share best practice in tackling benefit fraud would have a serious impact.
The PAC report highlights not only the extent of fraud and error but a significant aspect that has not been much discussed so far—the extent of underpayments in the system. The report says that £385 million of benefits were underpaid in 2003–04—money that our constituents should be receiving. The system is failing to get money to many people who need it. It is necessary to simplify the system and to deal with the errors in it, not only to tackle fraud but to ensure that people get the funds to which they are entitled.
The hon. Member for Wycombe referred to the arrangements for the recovery of benefits identified to have been paid out fraudulently. The PAC report notes that in the past three years only £550 million of the £9 billion overpaid has been recovered. What steps are being taken to improve the rate of recovery of benefits that have been fraudulently claimed?
Many of the issues that I have raised should be dealt with by the benefit reform that we eagerly anticipate and I hope that we will not have to wait much longer for the Government's proposals. However, Liberal Democrat Members are worried about the tone in which the debate is being conducted. The Government have chosen to approach it by talking about fraud first, and then reform. That has already resulted in some lurid headlines—for example, the "on your bike" quotes that we saw earlier this week—which may or may not have been the intention. That risks giving the public the impression that welfare reform is principally about dealing with fraud.
Fraud is a very serious issue that needs to be dealt with, and I have outlined some proposals for doing so.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one area that the Government need seriously and urgently to examine is that of the availability of bereavement help? Certain people cannot get any access to assistance with funeral expenses.
I agree that that is an important issue and I hope that it will be dealt with when the welfare reform proposals are introduced. I look forward with interest to what the Government say about that in due course.
The reform agenda is about something much greater than simply dealing with fraud—it is about providing opportunities for work to millions of people who have been neglected by the system for many years. For example, we know from various pieces of research that 1 million disabled people want to work. In the broader welfare reform debate, we should focus on effective measures to help people get into work and steer away from dramatic headlines that denigrate and risk stereotyping.
Let me quote the Daily Record—perhaps not a source that I am given to quoting. Earlier this week, a leading article stated:
"Blunkett should be careful that his clampdown doesn't victimise the weak and the vulnerable. It's frightening to hear him use the stock phrase of Norman Tebbit to 'get on your bike'."
That is well put. Let us have a debate in the coming weeks that does not court such headlines. Let us tackle fraud and, even more important, the causes of error in the system, including means-testing. Most important, we should provide new opportunities and remove barriers to people getting out of the benefits system.
I speak as chair of the parliamentary Public and Commercial Services Union group, which is an all-party group representing the PCS trade union. I want to associate myself with the statement in the report that the Department for Work and Pensions published on reducing fraud in the benefits system. It states that the Government have developed a comprehensive strategy since 1997. For those of us who have wrestled with the problem for several years in different guises, either in the House or in a professional capacity, it is clear that, objectively speaking, the Government are the first Administration to try to establish some form of longer-term strategy rather than a knee-jerk approach year by year.
As I said, I associate myself with the statement in the Department's report, which reads:
"Our staff have played a huge part in reducing fraud—and we are proud of their hard work and achievements."
Members of the PCS who work in the Department have shown great commitment and dedication to ensuring that our strategy is effective. Some of the results that we have produced are not as successful as perhaps many of us would like. Nevertheless, there have been improvements in bearing down on fraud, error and even non-distribution of resources that did not occur in previous Administrations. I therefore congratulate the Government on their achievement through the commitment and dedication of the staff.
The Government have, however, undertaken a contradictory target-setting exercise, which was highlighted by the Public Accounts Committee when it interrogated Sir Richard Mottram. It is clear that, in establishing our anti-fraud and anti-error strategy, we need to invest in the staffing and new technology resources that enable us to be effective. If the target to tackle fraud conflicts with other targets in the Department, especially the target to shed 30,000 staff, we should acknowledge that and ascertain whether we need to review some of the Department's policies.
The Public Accounts Committee sitting at which Sir Richard Mottram was present highlighted the problem. A simple question was asked about how much the Department would save through the Gershon exercise. In total, the saving is £1 billion. Members of the Committee then asked for the total cost of fraud and benefit error and the reply was £3 billion. Sir Richard Mottram was then asked why the staff who were being cut could not be transferred to tackle benefit fraud and error. Clearly, if the £1 billion in staffing cuts were invested in doing that, the Department might well be able to save £3 billion overall. Sir Richard Mottram's reply was interesting. It was not a yes or a no, but phrased in delicate "civil service-ese". The response was:
"That might or might not be the case, Mr. Chairman, but I am just a civil servant. I do not determine the budget of my Department and I do not determine in isolation how many people we employ."
If any permanent secretary were given the task of tackling benefit fraud and error and was asked how many staff were needed, I do not believe that the first response would be a cut of 30,000 in overall staffing resources.
Is the hon. Gentleman reflecting a concern that the figure of 30,000 may simply be designed to meet a general political target rather than to fulfil the Department's needs and ensure the efficient deployment of resources?
As ever, the hon. Gentleman is there before me. The figure of 30,000 that came out of the Gershon review was part of the bidding exercise before the last general election, in which Conservative and new Labour Front Benchers seemed to try to outbid each other in regard to how brutal they could be in reducing civil service numbers. Even now, having considered all the reports and detailed discussions that took place, I cannot assess the rationale behind the figure of 30,000.
The Public Accounts Committee has hit the nail on the head. It warned that these proposals could lead to a loss of morale. The churning that is going on in the Department for Work and Pensions means that the processes on which we rely to bear down on fraud and overcome error, while not being broken down, are certainly being undermined. We are losing skills from the Department as a result of the scale of the reduction in staff numbers. Those skills have been built up over time and have been proved, as a result of good political direction and strategy development, to be effective. In the past, even the recent past, the management style in the Department—the management's relationship with their staff, their consultation with the trade unions or their involvement of all stakeholders in the development of the overall strategy—has not been that good.
On the basis of the Public Accounts Committee's report, and perhaps on the basis of some of the issues raised in this debate, I believe that it is now time for the Secretary of State to stand back and re-examine the target of a staff reduction of 30,000. Perhaps we should also do a short, simple exercise—attracting independent advice to help us—to determine whether that scale of reduction is appropriate, given the contents of today's PAC report and those of the report produced this week by the Department for Work and Pensions, which demonstrates that the staff were working well and effectively to implement the strategy but are now being impeded by the scale of the job cuts.
I would welcome the opportunity of a further meeting of the PCS parliamentary group with the Secretary of State to discuss these issues. I would also welcome the continuation of dialogue between management and unions as we go through this process. I hope that the management of the Department and the political team that determines the Department's policies will have the strength to stand back and re-examine the issue, to admit that the figure of 30,000 might not be appropriate, and to consider whether the organisation that was suggested as a result of the 30,000 job cuts would be fit for the purpose of maintaining the strategy that these reports show to be working so successfully. I hope that we can arrive at a common-sense solution that will achieve the Government's overall objectives and perhaps reduce the conflict regarding the targets that we have set for the Department for Work and Pensions.
I do not intend to detain the House for long, but I want to raise one specific point. Before I do so, however, I want to pay tribute to the speech of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander), and to congratulate him on his meteoric rise to the Front Bench of his party, as well as on his apparently representing four constituencies, which is an achievement in itself. I also want to echo the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about proposed job cuts. I was alarmed recently to see an internal e-mail from my local Jobcentre Plus, which was passed to me by one of the people who work there, and which stated that the job cuts and reorganisation within that organisation would not be made public until after the general election. The fact that that very date was specified was a matter of great concern to me.
The hon. Gentleman recently fought a general election campaign, following which he was returned to the House, that was in part based on the James report. Does he still stand by what it says about staff numbers in the Department for Work and Pensions:
"We will . . . monitor the government's . . . proposals but have assumed that they are desirable and achievable"?
I am talking about the validity of the cuts not in general, but in particular. I will provide the Minister with details of serious morale issues in the organisation, which I feel he needs to address.
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's kind remarks, and he will also be interested to know that there is a similar example in Nairn, which is one of my constituencies, as it were. The jobcentre was threatened with closure. That threat was suspended during the general election—I was fighting the sitting Labour MP—but the jobcentre was closed only a month ago following the reinstitution of those cuts. I think I share the hon. Gentleman's suspicions about the process.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and the Minister might like to reflect on the fact that we proposed transferring Jobcentre Plus to the private sector at no loss of jobs. That is an important point.
It is rather tired to talk about the last Conservative Government, as they were in power eight years ago, but, for the record, it is worth paying tribute to the efforts made by that Government and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), who worked himself to a frazzle trying to sort out the issue of benefit fraud and introduced reforms and technologies that, at the time, were revolutionary, such as the smart card.
I am sure that the definition of benefit fraud is written in the Minister's marrow. It is, of course,
"the deliberate misrepresentation of circumstances or a failure to notify changes in circumstances with the intention of obtaining benefit to which the customer is not entitled".
We are all aware of the Department's hard-hitting campaign and the stereotypical fraudster depicted in those advertisements. No one in the House would criticise that approach, and it is important to bear down on benefit fraudsters of the kind that the campaign portrays. No one in the House would oppose many of the reforms and the campaigns that the Government intend to introduce to crack down on benefit fraud, perhaps with the exception of what the Minister said about ID cards. I and many of my colleagues, and the Liberal Democrats, feel that the enormous amounts of money involved in the flawed IT and all sorts of other problems would be much better spent in providing, for example, more police to feel the collars of benefit fraudsters in another way.
I want to speak to a particular point concerning disability living allowance, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman). The Government's own figures estimate that in the last financial year £730 million was overpaid in DLA, which amounts to 9.1 per cent. of expenditure. The equivalent estimate of underpayment is £200 million, representing 2.5 per cent. of expenditure.
I was working on those figures as I prepared for this afternoon's debate—multi-tasking, which my wife claims I cannot do, but I was obviously in touch with my feminine side. While working through my correspondence, I read a moving and brave letter written to me by a constituent. She admits to suffering from the horrendous condition of schizophrenia, but says she is
"in the fortunate position of getting lower rate DLA and tax credits which means I can work part-time . . . I get a lot out of doing part-time work, it is therapeutic and"—
this is an important point—
"it is better for society as a whole that I am working and not . . . dependent on benefit."
My constituent goes on to say that her community psychiatric nurse knows many people
"who are less disabled than me who get middle or higher rate DLA."
My constituent knows many people
"who would greatly benefit from being able to work part-time who are as disabled as me but do not get any DLA at all."
It is the system, she claims, that is at fault. She makes the same point as the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey about the 55-page form:
"The current system of applying for DLA depends on your ability to describe your illness and people who are more articulate seem to have a better chance of getting it. It also seems to depend on who reviews your"
case. Her key point is:
"I know there are people who abuse the system but there are also genuine people who are not getting the help they are entitled to."
Part of the Government's strategy must be to make it easy for people not to commit fraud as well as bearing down hard on those who are committing fraud. They can do that by making the system easy to understand, by improving the training and morale of those within the organisations who monitor benefits, and by creating a much more level playing field for applicants, giving professional advice and assistance to organisations such as citizens advice bureaux, which do such a fantastic job in constituencies such as mine in guiding people through the morass of paperwork.
Members are constantly told by constituents that those who break the rules are rewarded, and that those who wish to obey them must follow a tortuous path of bureaucracy and, if anything, are penalised for doing what is right. I urge the Government to bear those points in mind as they work through this important matter.
I am pleased that we have an opportunity to discuss these issues today, not least as part of my learning curve as a new member of the Work and Pensions Committee. It is invaluable to have some good research time to help to prepare for such debates, and the whole subject of benefit fraud and error is very topical given the publication of the Public Accounts Committee's report earlier this week. To ensure public confidence in our benefits system, it is utterly vital that we as a nation are seen to cut down on fraudsters.
For people on benefits, there is nothing worse—all MPs have experience of these cases—than seeing people claiming benefits to which they are not entitled. It cuts to the core of a legal system that chases up those who seek to defraud, and we must bear down hard on it. We must also ensure that the public bodies that administer benefits do so efficiently and do not cause problems that aggravate the difficulties that those who rightly claim benefit and who may have been overpaid suffer when the authorities challenge them.
The Minister laid great store by his claims that improvements have been made in fraud detection over the past few years, and I acknowledge, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) did, the improvements made in reducing fraud in relation to income support and jobseeker's allowance. As other Members have said, however, there is no getting away from the Public Accounts Committee's conclusions that over the past three years the overall level of fraud and error in the benefits system remains pound for pound where it has been. I would be interested to hear anything from the Minister when he responds that gives us some comfort that things are moving in the right direction across the piece. We have heard snippets here and there.
I am particularly concerned about the lack of success in achieving the Government's targets for housing benefit. If there are more measures on that in today's report, I should be pleased to read about them.
The Work and Pensions Committee is due to start a review of incapacity benefit and pathways to work, one element of which is an attempt to get to the bottom of what is happening on fraud. Unfortunately, the statistics in all the reports that I have seen so far are estimated, and incapacity benefit has not had as thorough a job done on it as other benefits. In a way, that is right, because we hope that few who claim incapacity benefit do so fraudulently, but human nature being as it is, I fear that there may be some hidden fraud in that area, too.
Let me list some of the successes achieved by local authorities. A number of written statements on this matter have been published this week, and I am pleased to say that an authority in my constituency, Bridgnorth district council, is judged to have achieved a qualified success. According to the comprehensive performance assessment of April 2004, the council's benefit service was giving a "fair towards good" performance. A more recent assessment suggested that the council had met the standard in respect of 84 of the 89 components of counter-fraud. It was described as having
"a strong anti-fraud culture and a number of strengths in this area."
Its overall performance was assessed as very impressive compared with that of other similar-sized authorities. It has approximately £8.4 million of benefits to distribute, so it is at the small end of councils in the country, but it has imposed a strong culture of cracking down on fraud.
Let me illustrate some of the shifts that have taken place since control of the council moved to a Conservative and Independent administration. There is an assessment of the number of cautions issued by the council. Between 2002–03 and 2004–05, the number was halved from 33 to 16. The number of administrative penalties imposed during the same period tripled from eight to 24. The number of prosecutions rose from six in 2002–03 to 16 in 2003–04, and fell back to eight in 2004–05. That is attributed to the fact that rather than using cautions as its primary means of combating fraud, the council has chosen to impose penalties and to be seen by the community to take cases to court.
I labour the point for a reason. I believe that if we are to restore confidence in our fraud-combating system, such issues must be brought into the public domain. In my area at least, successful prosecutions achieve publicity all too infrequently. Let me make a plea to the Minister. Local authorities that are constantly invited to do more on behalf of the Government are rarely given the facilities that would enable them to do the extra work. Publicity for cases or more resources for anti-fraud measures would be very welcome. I speak not just for Bridgnorth district council but for South Shropshire district council, which is also in my area.
Let me now say something about errors. It is up to local authorities and Government agencies to ensure that enough resources are given to assessment of benefits across the board. As other Conservative Members have pointed out, it is hard to reconcile the proposed Gershon job cuts with greater bearing down on fraud and an accurate assessment of benefits. I shall give another personal example, if I may. Ludlow, a town in my constituency, has a Jobcentre Plus centre that will close next year. Half the current staff will lose their jobs, and half will be relocated to some place yet to be determined, probably the tourist information centre. I find it hard to understand how a sub-optimal team who may or may not be able to provide full nine-to-five cover will be able to do their job properly. I met the regional director, who assured me that the job could be handled perfectly well by a town 15 miles away, but I do not see how that efficiency saving assists in the proper calculation of benefit and bearing down on fraud—major issues across the country, as hon. Members have argued.
To achieve a balance, however, I want to pay tribute, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), to the work done by citizens advice bureaux in assisting people who get into difficulties with the assessment of their benefits. There is no question but that, where errors arise, it causes immense frustration among some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Such people often have to rely on citizens advice bureaux for whatever help they can get. I have received representations from the citizens advice bureau in Bridgnorth, which tried to help elderly pensioners on modest incomes who were struggling with the various assessments made of them and greatly feared having to repay overpayments. It is important to improve standards of benefit assessment in order to allay such anxieties.
Inevitably, with large organisations and complicated benefits, these problems will arise. Unfortunately, we see them across too many areas of government these days. The complexity of the systems that have been put in place gives rise to more and more problems for ordinary people. I urge the Minister to argue with his colleagues in favour of increasing simplicity in our benefits system.
With the leave of the House, I should like to respond to the points raised in the course of the debate. I appreciate the time that hon. Members have taken to debate combating benefit fraud. If I do not manage to cover all their observations in my winding-up speech, I shall want to reflect on them further.
We all appreciate the seriousness of benefit fraud. It is not the victimless crime that fraudsters like to think it is. It is theft from the taxpayer and theft from the most vulnerable people who would benefit more substantially from the total resources allocated if others did not choose to exploit the system for their own gain.
The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), who led for the Opposition, challenged me over the forthcoming reform of incapacity benefit. I suggest that he wait a little longer, because the consultation process is not far off now. When the consultation process commences shortly, he will receive useful advice on the questions that he tempted me to answer now.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether we had had any success in meeting targets on fraud and error in respect of housing benefit. Thus far, progress has been pretty encouraging, but I want to be perfectly candid in saying that these are tough targets. They are targets that we, as well as the 408 different local authorities that administer housing benefit, have to work on. Control over managing that benefit is more dispersed than for others, which makes the target serious, challenging and tough, as it should be. I am optimistic that progress will be made. With particular respect to error over housing benefit, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the level has fallen by 9 per cent. over the last 18 months.
The hon. Member for Wycombe also accused the Government of some sleight of hand over the statistics in the document published today. I am forced to repeat that we could not have had a debate like this at all during the first 15 years of the last Conservative Government, because no serious attempt had been made to measure fraud and error in the system. The Conservative Government came to that issue late in the day and I hope that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that our determined efforts to measure it have allowed us to have a serious discussion of the matter.
Not only did the previous Conservative Government come very late to the concept of measuring fraud and error, their record on prosecutions does not stand much examination either. In the final year of that Administration, 12,000 people were prosecuted, whereas last year, under this Government, 42,000 people were subject to sanctions, administrative action or prosecution for fraud in the benefit system. That is nearly a fourfold increase. The hon. Member for Wycombe might also want to reflect on the fact that, in 1997, one claim in 10 for income support and jobseeker's allowance was wrong. The figure now is one claim in 25. Although in this debate I have freely accepted that there are still plenty of problems in the system, that many challenges remain and that we are still not content with the level of fraud, the hon. Gentleman should acknowledge that the position now is considerably better than what we inherited in 1997.
According to the Department's own figures, fraud savings in 1995–96, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) was in office, amounted to £1.4 billion. However, the latest figures put the total at £0.9 billion, which suggests that my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) was right.
In addition, although I accept that the Minister is producing measurements, he should make them comparable. For example, the figures for last year are simply not comparable with those for this year.
As I tried to explain earlier, the footnotes show why the base has moved. That is all in the interest of achieving a more accurate measurement of the fraud that exists in the system so that we can target our efforts more precisely.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) asked for the latest figures on fraud and error. To clarify the situation, I should explain that they are better than those cited in the PAC report because that was based on assessments made 18 months ago. Progress has been made since then. As was noted in the debate, fraud is now estimated at £0.9 billion, customer error at £0.8 billion, and official error at £0.9 billion. The hon. Gentleman challenged me on the amount of error, which represents 2.4 per cent. of the total spend. We have made progress on reducing error, and although I have acknowledged that it remains a challenge, we should consider it in the light of international standards.
For example, official error in Ireland and France stands at 4 per cent., in the US it is 6 per cent., and in the Netherlands it is at least 7 per cent. That is not to say that our rate of 2.4 per cent. is justifiable or acceptable, but it suggests that our record stands up reasonably well to international comparison.
The hon. Gentleman also asked what the Government were doing to make more progress in dealing with error. I can tell him that we are making a greater effort in respect of the verification of claims, to make sure that they are correct from the outset and that they remain correct. That will help to reduce a great deal of the customer error, and we are also imposing tougher performance standards for administrative staff across the board.
As was noted in the debate by various hon. Members, we will make a good deal more progress in the reduction of error if we can continue to strive for greater simplification in the benefits system. That is right, and it is why the Government have a benefits simplification programme under way. We shall continue with that process, and the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey should anticipate the Green Paper on welfare reform that we are about to publish. That document will return to the important question of benefit simplification.
I assure the Minister that I look forward with eager anticipation to the welfare reform Green Paper, but perhaps I misunderstood what he said about error. He gave the House figures for customer and official error that add up to a total of £1.7 billion. In contrast, the PAC report gave figures for 2003–04 that estimated fraud at £2 billion and error at £1 billion. When Richard Mottram gave evidence to the Committee, the matter was discussed further, and the figures were corrected to £1.5 billion for both fraud and error. The figures are now put at £1.7 billion for error and £0.9 billion for fraud. That suggests that the estimate for error is creeping up, at the same time as the figure for fraud is going down. Would that be the correct interpretation of the statistics?
As I have said throughout the debate, the Department tries to ensure that the measurement of fraud and error is as accurate as we can get it. The hon. Gentleman should study the report that we have published today, because it has important explanatory information at the back about rebasing the calculations. The answer will become apparent if he looks at that.
The hon. Gentleman put several other issues to me and I shall try to speed through them. He asked about our use of credit reference agencies and the cost. It is a commercial arrangement, but I can say that we anticipate that it will pay for itself in terms of the information that is provided. We hope that we will be able to achieve a further £40 million reduction in fraud as a result.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned lie detector software. It is a slight exaggeration to call it that, as it is actually voice stress technology—as another hon. Member mentioned—and it has been employed quite successfully in the insurance business. We are thinking of piloting it for disability living allowance applications and we think that it will be helpful. It does not in itself prove that fraud is taking place, but it is an indicator that can be matched with other information to suggest that fraud may be taking place and to trigger an investigation. It is an addition to our armoury and individuals will know that the system is in operation.
Will the Minister give way again?
The hon. Gentleman made a lot of points and I am still working through them, so I hope that he will bear with me.
The hon. Gentleman also asked me to comment on local authorities and the administration of housing benefit, and he was not the only one to raise that issue. He should know that my Department has helped local authorities to achieve better administration of housing benefit. We have provided financial assistance to local authorities for that purpose, and the vast majority have taken it up. I have visited several local authorities in various parts of the country to see how they have deployed those resources, and the best are very good at administering housing benefit and are making significant gains in performance. However, performance still does not come up to standard in too many local authorities, and we have an inspectorate to work with them. The Department also remains happy to work with them to improve their performance. All local authorities should reach the standard of the best.
The hon. Gentleman asked about benefit underpayment, as did other hon. Members. He is right to say that it should be assessed against the issue of fraud and, as I said, the Department has several programmes to try to ensure that benefit is taken up. He asked about our progress on debt recovery and I can tell him that last year we recovered nearly £200 million of debt. I think the figure is actually £189 million, but he can check it in the recorded information.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about welfare reform and hoped that it was driven not only by a desire to crack down on fraud but by wider objectives. I can assure him that it is driven by a much wider perspective. He will recall that we published the principles of welfare reform recently and I hope that he has had time to study them. They drive the Government's welfare reform programme and will be elaborated further when we publish the Green Paper—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman eagerly anticipates it.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for welcoming the Government's long-term strategy to tackle fraud and error. He asked whether there was a conflict between achieving staff reductions in line with the Gershon review and combating fraud. I hope to reassure him that those two objectives are not in conflict. We will not reduce the 2,000 fraud inspectors. Indeed, we will transfer 1,000 additional staff from the functions that they currently perform into the front line to work on customer compliance to help to ensure that the benefit paid is right at the outset. In fact, I can tell my hon. Friend that when I come to the House with legislation to reform housing benefit, I shall try to resolve another issue in the system that currently prevents local government officials working on housing benefit from investigating possible fraud in nationally delivered benefits. We want to take powers to correct that, which could mean that another 2,000 or so officials in the system will be able to work across a wider range of fraud than those associated only with housing benefit.
My hon. Friend was right to say that to progress staff reductions requires dialogue between Department managers and staff. That dialogue is in place and it needs to continue. There is no doubt that the Gershon challenges are tough and it is extremely important that we proceed through dialogue, and we intend to do so.
Let me deal with the remaining speeches from Opposition Members. I was charmed by the belief of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) that the Conservative party's proposed privatisation of Jobcentre Plus would not have resulted in job losses. Happily, we shall not find out because that is not going to happen, but it is a quaint belief.
The hon. Gentleman rightly moved on to disability living allowance. I am pleased that he has been examining overpayment and underpayment. We made a thorough reassessment of DLA this year to establish the exact position. That is one of the factors that has led to changes in the numbers. After careful re-examination of DLA payments, we found that, although some were inappropriate, they were not fraudulent, yet they had previously been classed as fraudulent payments. It is important to clarify that as it helps us to understand issues in the administration of DLA.
The hon. Gentleman concluded by suggesting that the Government should go for greater simplification in the benefit system. We agree. That is why the benefit simplification programme is under way, with more to come, which I am sure he is eagerly awaiting.
The hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) asked whether things were improving. They are. The figures that I announced and clarified for the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey show that things are improving. We can report that the situation is better than the £3 billion-plus total that the hon. Member for Ludlow has already seen and which was mentioned in the Public Accounts Committee report.
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is a member of the Select Committee and I look forward to seeing the Committee's deliberations on incapacity benefit. I am pleased also that he praised the efforts of his local authorities in helping us bear down on benefit fraud. He was right to do so, and I am happy to add my praise for any local authority, whatever its political complexion, which helps us to bear down on benefit fraud. A significant number are and we are grateful for their efforts. I can reassure him that there will be no reduction in the number of staff tackling benefit fraud.
The hon. Gentleman rightly praised the work of citizens advice bureaux and I am happy to add my praise to his. As well as the CAB, other voluntary organisations, such as welfare rights groups, work hard for no reward to help people deal with the benefit system. They do extremely valuable work.
Eliminating a culture where defrauding others is seen as acceptable is part of the Government's respect agenda, but it is also vital in maintaining support for the welfare state and a caring and compassionate society where self-help and mutual help go hand in hand. Our aim is to reduce loss to the benefit system still further. The strategies we have in place and the further actions I have outlined during the debate will enable us to do just that.
I close our debate by sending a clear message to those who seek to defraud the benefit system. They need to understand that we have more powers than ever to detect, prosecute and punish those committing benefit fraud. By using better technology and effective data matching, fraudsters are being investigated without their knowledge. They will be caught and they will be punished.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
Petition
IsItFair Campaign
I beg leave to present a petition on behalf of a fair number of my constituents from Market Harborough and a number of surrounding villages that forms part of the IsItFair council tax protest campaign.
The petition declares:
That the year-on-year, inflation-busting increases in Council Tax are causing hardship to many and take no account of ability to pay; further that the proposed property revaluation and re-banding exercise will make an already flawed system even worse.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons votes to replace Council Tax with a fair and equitable tax that, without recourse to any supplementary benefit, takes into account ability to pay from disposable income. Such tax to be based on a system that is free from any geographical or politically motivated discrimination, and that clearly identifies the fiscal and managerial responsibilities of all involved parties.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
To lie upon the Table.
Rapid Transit Scheme (Belfast)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Joan Ryan.]
I am grateful to the House for the opportunity that this Adjournment debate provides me to raise the issue of a rapid transit system for Belfast. I am sure that the Minister is also glad that the debate is being held at quarter past 4, rather than 6 o'clock. I can see him working out his flight schedule in his mind already.
This scheme is not a new proposal for Belfast and Northern Ireland but one that was established as an integral part of the Northern Ireland transportation strategy document, yet very little progress seems to have been made on it in the past three years. Belfast, like virtually every other United Kingdom city, faces growing transport problems. Over the next years and decades, those problems are set to increase significantly. Given the relentless growth in traffic, our roads will become increasingly congested, with implications for economic growth and social mobility.
Of course, the motor car must be part of the solution, but we cannot allow it to be the sole one; public transport must play an increasingly important role in dealing with the anticipated problems. Unless we start to deal with those problems now, however, the cost to the economy will be significant. Solutions to transport problems are rarely short-term or cheap, but the cost of not tackling them in advance is even greater.
When I was Minister at the Department for Regional Development in Northern Ireland, we undertook work on developing a rapid transit system for Belfast. I received much support from the Assembly's Regional Development Committee, and later the Assembly unanimously supported me when I introduced the Province's regional transport strategy, which incorporated the piloting of a rapid transit scheme for Belfast. Yet, since devolution was suspended in Northern Ireland, no discernable progress has been made in accomplishing that objective—an objective that, I repeat, was unanimously supported by Northern Ireland's political parties. One might have thought that the Government would be keen to encourage Northern Ireland's political parties when they are able to agree unanimously.
I believe that a rapid transit system can be created in Belfast that will not need to carry the costs associated with light rail but can achieve the modal shift that is required if we are to avoid gridlock on some key traffic corridors in the Belfast area in the future. Historically, it has been difficult to persuade many people out of their cars and on to public transport, as the bus has not been an attractive alternative. Although I welcome the concept of "metro" in Belfast and although the provision of bus lanes and a more reliable service can play an important role in encouraging people to use public transport, for many people they will never be attractive enough to replace the car. Rapid transit has that potential.
The EWAY corridor presents Belfast with a tremendous opportunity to introduce a rapid transit system that can meet the particular circumstances of the city. It offers many benefits, including a potential solution to increasing traffic problems in the corridor, consistency with Government policy, the integration of transport and land use planning, private investment in public transport, the opportunity to encourage people out of their cars and a pilot scheme at reasonable cost that could be expanded right across the city.
In the past, the main objection to rapid transit in Belfast has been its potential cost, but a number of new developments offer a way through this difficulty. Rapid transit projects usually focus on some form of light rail or guided bus system that can, admittedly, be very expensive to create and maintain. Although such systems have been able to encourage people to make the shift from the private car—normal buses have been unable to achieve that—that result has been achieved only at significant financial cost.
There are, or at least there were, those in finance and personnel in Northern Ireland who argue that the cost would be disproportionate. I always contended that they had not placed sufficient weight on the consequences, not least to our economy, of congestion and gridlock around Belfast. Yet they argued that, although rapid transit can be justified in cities with high population densities, it is more difficult to justify in cities with a relatively low density such as Belfast. However, I remember arguing that cities such as Helsinki, even with a relatively low population, have often shown that effective public transport is possible.
The Assembly's endorsement of the rapid transit scheme swung the argument decisively in favour of proceeding with the scheme. Indeed, £100 million was, if not allocated, certainly earmarked for such a scheme to proceed. However, the return of direct rule Ministers left the doubting Thomases in finance and personnel in a strong position to apply the brakes—that they seem to have done. Today, with a relatively new incumbent in office, I appeal to the Government to look afresh at the potential that such a scheme could offer for Northern Ireland and particularly for Belfast.
Changing technology and other alternatives present opportunities to revisit the issue of rapid transit. It has been demonstrated in other parts of the world that, with the correct infrastructure, it is not necessary to have very expensive transport vehicles with very high ongoing costs. I believe that such an approach could be taken in Belfast. For example, the Wright Group from Ballymena in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley)—I believe that the Secretary of State took the opportunity to visit the firm recently—has produced a "street car" that could deliver the same results as light rail at a much lower cost. This is being sold across Europe and in Great Britain, but there has been no opportunity to make use of it in Northern Ireland.
The natural place to have a rapid transit pilot in Belfast is along the eastern approach into the city, an area that has become known as the EWAY. Given that much of the EWAY corridor is already in place and in public ownership, with the old disused Comber railway line, this could be transformed at a relatively limited expense compared with the costs that would be associated with the compulsory purchase of a route. There would also be the advantage of vehicles such as the street cars being able to travel across the designated area previously used by the old Comber railway and then travel on normal streets—albeit in designated bus lanes—thus reducing the costs even further and allowing for greater flexibility.
The development of the EWAY is, strictly speaking, Government policy. In 2002, the Northern Ireland Assembly unanimously endorsed the regional transport strategy, which included proposals for a rapid transit system. The strategy provided for a total cost of £100 million to commence a rapid transit network. On suspension, the then Secretary of State announced that his Ministers would operate within the policies set down during devolution. That is all that I am asking the Minister and the Government to do.
The proposal is also consistent with PPS13 on transportation and land planning, which sets out its main objectives as promoting sustainable transport choices and accessibility for all, and reducing the need to travel, especially by private car. The EWAY satisfies all those objectives. Since devolution was suspended, the project seems to have been put on hold. It will require a long lead-in time. Years are being wasted without any action appearing to have been taken. With direct rule, the project has not been seriously taken forward but there is now an opportunity for the new Minister—if I may call him that—to take it up and carry it forward.
During devolution, I took the opportunity, while in the Department, to examine various forms of rapid transit, ranging from light rail through guided bus to a more conventional bus with high-quality infrastructure and dedicated separate lanes. Brisbane in Australia, in particular, appeared to offer a high-quality service without the need for high expenditure. There are already many cities in the UK that operate rapid transit systems with varying levels of success. The beauty of the EWAY scheme is that it could meet our traffic needs in a way tailored to our own circumstances. Belfast has a tremendous opportunity through the EWAY to tailor a transport solution that will suit its own needs.
Self-evidently, one of the most significant considerations concerning the proposal will be cost. Despite the involvement of the private sector, public investment will obviously be required. However, that could be limited through a number of factors. By using a form of bus-type transport, the need for huge investment would be reduced. Using the old Comber rail line as a significant element of the route would also limit the need for huge investment.
There is also the potential to exploit the planning gain of the scheme by creating a zone at the terminus in which development would be encouraged, but phased, to help to finance the scheme. In planning terms, it is better to control the development that will unquestionably and inevitably take place given that, over the years, it will be attracted to be near to the scheme. The Government should make a virtue out of the necessity and ensure that piecemeal development does not take place at the early stage and that the growth around the EWAY is controlled and in order.
The Government have an opportunity to plan land use and development carefully. Indeed, the promoters of the project will be able to identify development opportunities even along the route. To maximise the benefit from the project, I suggest that we try to make developers pay for a significant portion of the EWAY's cost. Such development payments on targeted development would not only reduce the cost to the public purse, but strengthen the viability of the project by enlarging the pool of patrons who would use the service. Moreover, it could also provide significant resources to interest the private sector in the project. That approach has already won considerable local support from Castlereagh borough council, which has put such a proposition to the Government.
In those new circumstances, and with an innovative approach being taken, the EWAY could not only provide a solution to the traffic problems down the eastern corridor into Belfast, but prove to be a model for the future. Rather than waiting another 10 years until congestion forces the Government to act, or alternatively for the return of devolution, the opportunity should be taken to press ahead with the project now.
The project in the east of the city is a pilot, but the plan worked up during devolution was for the whole city, with an east-west route and a north-south route. It was suggested that it was possible to grasp the public's imagination with such a project. I put it to the Minister that there are examples of places throughout the United Kingdom where people have not been prepared to get out of their cars to travel on buses, but have been prepared to do so to travel on trams, light rail and guided buses. There is, however, a need for ministerial commitment to drive the scheme forward. I hope that we shall see something of that commitment this afternoon.
I suggest that the Minister consider the appointment of an EWAY project group that is tasked to take the project forward, subject at appropriate stages to ministerial approval. The group could comprise representatives from Translink, business the construction industry, financial services and transport-related academia. The extent of local political involvement may also be an issue, and such involvement may come from those elected to the Assembly or representatives from Belfast city council and Castlereagh borough council.
The project group could be expected to provide recommendations on the detail of the scheme, including costings and proposals for raising the funds to offset the costs and options to finance any shortfall. The remit of the group would also include making recommendations on the operation of the EWAY.
This exciting and challenging project is capable of firing the imagination of the public and making a positive contribution to improving transportation and life in Belfast, but it will not happen without political leadership. I hope that the Minister and the Government will take this opportunity to look again at its potential.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) on securing the debate. There may be significantly fewer Members than we would like in the Chamber, but the matter will receive appropriate attention in the broadsheets of Northern Ireland.
I know that the hon. Gentleman has considerable interest and expertise in this subject. That is not least because, as he said himself, he was Minister for Regional Development during devolution in Northern Ireland. In that capacity, the hon. Gentleman brought forward the 10-year regional transportation strategy for Northern Ireland, on which I congratulate him. It was, as he said, agreed unanimously by the Northern Ireland Assembly in July 2002.
We continue to welcome all-party agreement wherever we can find it. The hon. Gentleman said that it is Government policy, and he is right. It is still Government policy. The regional transportation strategy presented a range of initiatives. If implemented, those initiatives would make a significant contribution to achieving the longer-term vision for transport that is set out in the regional development strategy 2025. To remind the House, that goal is of a modern, sustainable and safe transportation system which benefits society, the economy and the environment, and which actively contributes to social inclusion and everyone's quality of life.
The hon. Gentleman, as Minister for Regional Development, knew that it was an ambitious strategy. In looking back at the minutes of the regional transportation strategy meeting of June 2002, I see that he noted that the then First Minister had raised questions over the deliverability of the transportation strategy, but felt that it was
"better to fall short of an ambitious target than to meet a comfortable target."
The hon. Gentleman pointed out that there would be no great problem if the RTS were achieved in 11 years rather than 10.
I comment on that because, when considering the urgency with which we are asked to address this issue, I remind the hon. Gentleman that at the time he recognised that it was an ambitious strategy, that getting there in the end would be better than not getting there at all, that it might be better to regard the priorities immediately ahead of him as ones that needed to be achieved, and that that was not, for one moment, to put the rapid transit project to one side.
The regional transportation strategy is the basis on which all transportation initiatives are now taken forward. It provides a framework for the development of transport plans which contain detailed programmes of major schemes and transport initiatives. Transport plans link with development plans and provide the region with an integrated approach to transportation and planning. The regional transportation strategy, the hon. Gentleman will remember, identified a requirement for £3.5 billion of expenditure from 2002 to 2012 to address deficiencies in Northern Ireland's transportation infrastructure and to work towards realising a long-term vision for transport. The regional transportation strategy included an estimate of £100 million to start a rapid transit network for Belfast. That was to be taken forward in the context of the Belfast metropolitan transport plan, which was published last year. The hon. Gentleman suggested that little progress had been made, but I believe that the transport plan demonstrates considerable progress. However—and this is an extremely important point—the regional transportation strategy makes it clear that the level of available funding from public expenditure would have to be determined through normal budgetary processes. According to the minutes of the meeting in which he took part in a ministerial capacity in 2002, he pointed out that the funding was not complete and that it would be
"impossible to predict what would be happening regarding funding in the future."
Furthermore, commitments to proceed with major schemes cannot be given until, as he will recall, appropriate economic appraisals have been considered and any statutory procedures concluded. I will return to the issue of economic appraisals, which the hon. Gentleman takes seriously. It would be foolish to launch an economic appraisal in the certain knowledge that in the next two or three years there would not be money in the budget to fund the £100 million scheme.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Department for Regional Development published the Belfast metropolitan transport plan last year. It supports the draft Belfast metropolitan area plan published by the Department of the Environment's planning service. The proposals in the transport plan set out the way in which the regional transportation strategy will be implemented in Greater Belfast, and outlines transport schemes and projects until 2015, all of which would be subject to statutory processes and the normal budgetary processes. The Belfast metropolitan transport plan confirmed that rapid transit is a component of a series of proposals to improve public transport in the Belfast metropolitan area. As the plan states, there is a clear requirement to improve the quality of public transport services in the metropolitan area so that there is a modern, integrated and accessible public transport system that extends travel choice for all.
The Government want public transport to be a viable alternative that replaces many journeys currently taken by car, particularly by commuters, and to provide a high standard of transport for people who do not own or have access to a car. The transport proposals in the plan aim to bring about a step change in the quality of public transport services involving the improvement of the commuter rail network, the creation of an extensive network of quality bus corridors, the provision of high-quality park-and-ride facilities in each main transport corridor, and the development of a rapid transit network for the city.
Turning specifically to rapid transit, the Belfast metropolitan transport plan indicates that the pilot stage of a rapid transit network could be implemented by 2015. It confirmed last year that EWAY remains the preferred option for the pilot—a selection that recognises the need to supplement conventional bus services in that transport corridor, which has not had a rail link for decades. The choice was strongly influenced by issues of practicality, as much of the land for the scheme was already in the Department's ownership.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that EWAY emerged from work by Translink in 1998–99, which examined a wide range of transport options for the Newtownards corridor. That work concluded that any future public transport system in the corridor should be bus-based, as forecast levels of demand were not sufficient to justify more expensive rail-based systems, as the hon. Gentleman said. Furthermore, economic analysis showed that the best-performing schemes would use the old railway line as a busway, a road or a combination of the two. Those studies contributed to the development of the transport initiatives included in the Belfast metropolitan transport plan.
The hon. Gentleman will remember that work was undertaken at the same time to examine the technical feasibility and costs of EWAY. The preferred option, which emerged from that work, involves building a new road between Quarry Corner and East Link road for both rapid transport and other traffic. A park-and-ride site at Millmount would have access by new link roads to both the Newtownards and Comber catchment areas. For 5 km of the route, the rapid transit system would run along the former Comber railway on a dedicated busway using kerb-guidance technology. The design of that section would also incorporate provision for walking and cycling. Any delays owing to general traffic on the section between Holywood arches and the city centre would be minimised through the implementation of bus priority measures.
I know that many in Belfast wanted a more aspirational transport system such as a tram system or a light rail system like those in Manchester or Sheffield. The hon. Gentleman has recognised that that would be very expensive. Work carried out by Translink and the Department suggests that the type of system that best meets overall objectives is one that uses guided-bus technology. The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with such systems. Indeed, he referred to his exploratory visits to France and Australia when he was Minister for Regional Development. Advances in vehicle design mean that newer vehicles, which make bus-based solutions even more attractive to the travelling public, have come on to the market.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the Secretary of State's visit this week to the constituency of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley). The Secretary of State took the opportunity to visit the Wright Group, which has developed a suitable vehicle, the streetcar, in Ballymena. That vehicle, which is almost 20 m long, looks like a modern tram, but it is free from the restriction of having to operate only where there are rails on the road. It can carry more than 100 passengers; it is fully wheelchair accessible; it has high quality seating; and it has other facilities such as screens providing passenger information.
The success of the pilot EWAY scheme will dictate the extent of further development of the rapid transit network for Greater Belfast. The Belfast plan identifies three other possible routes, and implementation has been proposed for after 2015. The three routes include a rapid transit route from Belfast city centre to west Belfast, a new route linking Belfast city centre and Belfast City airport through the Titanic quarter of the Harbour estate in the Bangor corridor, and a super route in the Downpatrick corridor.
Moving from the vision to the reality, there has been a steady decline in the number of people travelling on public transport in the Belfast metropolitan area. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the trend began long before the publication of the regional transportation strategy. The good news is that last year the figures began to rise for the first time, but they have still not returned to the baseline level on which the regional transportation strategy targets were based.
Translink has being working on a programme of change for the future, ensuring that new and better services are provided for more people now. For example, the launch of Metro signalled a radical change in the delivery of bus services in Belfast and Greater Belfast. The Metro network in Belfast is operated by modern, accessible low-floor vehicles. Translink is committed to the ongoing improvement of its Metro network to maximise the performance of its services for its customers, and a second phase of improvements to Metro services is being developed. In the forthcoming months, Translink will undertake a fundamental review of the Metro network in conjunction with the General Consumer Council.
These are early days, but the results are encouraging for the people of Belfast and Greater Belfast. Passenger numbers on Metro have increased by 7 per cent., which represents 27,000 extra passenger journeys every week. In addition, passenger numbers have continued to grow on Translink's Goldline services, which are showing a 16 per cent. increase. Translink is also working hard to deliver better Northern Ireland railway services. The new state-of-the-art trains and the new timetable have increased capacity by up to 50 per cent. on the Portadown-Belfast-Bangor corridor and have attracted new passengers. Ongoing infrastructure improvements at stations and the completion of the Larne line relay will further contribute to this step change in Northern Ireland railway services, which will ultimately deliver significant benefits to passengers in the Belfast metropolitan area and across Northern Ireland.
To that end, Roads Service and Translink are working together to establish a quality bus corridor programme to complement the operation of high-frequency accessible bus services on the Belfast Metro network. Quality bus corridors involve improving traffic management and providing bus lanes to ensure that buses are able to run on time, together with more bus stops, shelters and service information for passengers.
Let me turn to the immediate priorities for my Department. EWAY sits within a 10-year plan. For now, however, it is essential that we make hard choices and decide on the significant priorities that we must set across the whole transportation programme for Northern Ireland. As the hon. Gentleman said, transport investment decisions are crucial to the economic success not only of Belfast and Greater Belfast but of all Northern Ireland. EWAY has a crucial future role for Greater Belfast, but for the moment we still have to set our priorities within the Department.
The successes that we are now seeing in public transport have resulted from these correct priorities being set and continuing to be set in the immediate budgetary processes. Let me give one or two examples. With the Department's support, Translink has completed the purchase of 190 new buses and is being assisted to provide more than 350 vehicles to replace some of its ageing bus fleet at an overall cost of nearly £50 million. Other capital investments include the relay of the Bleach Green to Whitehead rail track at an estimated cost of £25 million, the provision of an £11.4 million train cleaning facility at Fortwilliam to accommodate Northern Ireland Railways' 23 new trains, and budget cover of £11 million to improve bus and railway stations. We have also been able to provide £93 million over the 2004 budget period for the development of the core railway network. The budget for the concessionary fares scheme is some £19 million per annum. The scheme provides free and concessionary travel to several categories of people, including children, older people and people with disabilities. That is a recurring and increasing commitment for the Department as more concession pass holders are attracted to use better quality and accessible public transport services.
EWAY is a large, complex and expensive concept, and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, there have been concerns about its immediate affordability. The estimated cost of implementing the pilot EWAY scheme is £96.2 million. The planning cost of the other rapid transit schemes is estimated at several millions more. The implementation of the EWAY proposals, as with all major schemes, will be dependent on, and subject to, detailed economic appraisal, funding availability and statutory processes. Initial and limited economic assessments of the scheme were not conclusive, but indicated that there was a realistic possibility that a bus rapid transit might have a positive net present value.
The future of a rapid transit scheme depends on the budgetary climate at the time, competing priorities, the procurement process used, and perhaps the level of risk that can be transferred to private sector interests. The Strategic Investment Board is fully involved in the consideration of this major infrastructure project. It recently commissioned a report to provide high-level guidance on issues that need to be addressed when considering rapid transit options. The Strategic Investment Board's skills and expertise are being used to advise and assist the Department in identifying private finance opportunities.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the idea of an EWAY transport group. I find that interesting and I believe that we should explore it. At the beginning of his speech, he referred to the importance of all-party consensus on the initiative. If he would like to pursue the idea—I believe that we should do so—perhaps he would consider whether it is possible for him to chair an all-party transport group about it. It would be extremely effective and important for the people who live in Greater Belfast.
The opportunities for expanding such schemes are obvious. The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the advantages for the economy in Belfast and it would be a great shame if the skill and expertise that he amassed as Minister for Regional Development were lost. There is a genuine opportunity for him to become involved in that. However, an all-party basis is essential. The hon. Gentleman rightly made a virtue of the fact that he achieved agreement when he was Minister for Regional Development by bringing about cross-party consensus in the Assembly. I believe that, if he were prepared to consider chairing such an all-party transport group, it would be a constructive way forward.
We may wish to consider other proposals. We had explored the scheme in the context of an overall investment of £100 million in one go. I have been discussing with my officials proposals for considering breaking up the scheme into several components. For example, we have been examining the park-and-ride scheme and whether to consult bus companies about its use. We might be able to consider building the Millmount park-and-ride scheme and perhaps find a bus company that was prepared to work with that. If the hon. Gentleman considers chairing an all-party transport group, he will want to examine whether that, among other ideas, is a runner. The idea of building the Millmount park-and-ride scheme as a separate project from the overall scheme should not be lost on the hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that it would be lost on several people who want to commute in Greater Belfast. The scheme has considerable merit.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether it would be possible to introduce more private sector money. We have explored that and we will continue to do so. We are in some consultation with bus companies about the extent to which they would consider being involved in putting up preparatory moneys to explore the matter.
There is no doubt about the merit of EWAY for Belfast, Greater Belfast and Northern Ireland. In the compass of the Belfast metropolitan transport plan, I hope that EWAY becomes a reality by 2015. I can think of no finer individual than the hon. Gentleman to help us to ensure that, with all-party consensus, it is achieved.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Five o'clock.