My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

• Football (Disorder) (Amendment) Act,
• Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act,
• National Heritage Act,
• Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act,
• Greenham and Crookham Commons Act.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they expect to provide a response to the report of the Select Committee on the Chinook ZD576 accident before the Summer Recess.

My Lords, the Government have said that they intend to respond to the Select Committee's report, which was published on 5th February 2002, before the six months allowed for responses to such reports have elapsed. That remains our intention. Moreover, I hope that it will be possible to publish our reply and debate the issue in your Lordships' House before the Summer Recess.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. However, in the light of the fact that correspondents' letters addressed to the Government on this matter are being answered by the Air Staff secretariat, can he give the House an assurance that, before the response arrives in the House, Ministers, and not only officials, will have read the Select Committee's report and that they will not simply be relying on an Air Staff briefing?

My Lords, I can reassure the noble Lord that all Ministers in the Ministry of Defence have read the Select Committee's report. But that will not preclude us from listening to the advice of our officials before final decisions are taken. I know that the noble Lord will agree that that is the best way to proceed, not least because of the time that he spent as a distinguished Minister in the MoD some years ago.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that staff at Boscombe Down reported to the MoD that they could not recommend controller aircraft release for the Chinook Mk2 owing to the unquantifiable risk associated with the unverifiable nature of the FADEC software, and does he agree that they recommended that it be rewritten? Can the Minister say now, or in the future response to which he has just referred, whether the software has been rewritten and independently verified and who authorised the return of those aircraft to operational service against the advice of Boscombe Down?

My Lords, with great respect to the noble Lord, whose questions I always listen to with enormous interest, the answer to his question will be very much a matter for this House when we come to debate the report. I am conscious that today the Question is about the timetable. This Question should not be an excuse for a dress rehearsal for a debate that the House will have.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

How many deaf-blind children there are in the United Kingdom, what educational provision is made for them and what is the estimated cost of such provision.

My Lords, the Government do not collect information about numbers of pupils with special educational needs categorised by disability or learning difficulty. Sense, the National Deafblind and Rubella Association, estimates that about 3.1 in 10,000 children are deaf-blind. Responsibility for making provision for deaf-blind children rests in the first instance with local education authorities and schools. The type and cost of provision will depend on each child's individual needs.

My Lords, my noble friend's Answer is a little disappointing. On a serious issue such as this, I should have thought that it was absolutely basic to have statistics on what is happening. Does my noble friend agree that dealing with deaf-blind children is probably the most difficult problem faced by parents and carers? Little research appears to have been carried out on this handicap. Can my noble friend comment on that and, in particular, on the education of deaf-blind children? Finally, is my noble friend aware of the valuable work being done by interveners who visit children in their own homes? Can she say whether any government assistance is available for that work?

My Lords, I am sorry that my noble friend was disappointed. I did try to provide some figures. If it would assist the House, I can translate those into an estimation by Sense that there are 4,200 children under the age of 18 in the UK out of a population of approximately 23,000 people in the UK who are deaf-blind. According to information collected by the Welsh Assembly, as of January 2001 there were 60 pupils with statements of SEN whose main need arose from a hearing and visual impairment. Scotland is also collecting information:0.4 per cent of children with a record of need in primary schools and 0.1 per cent in secondary schools had dual sensory impairment. I hope that that reassures my noble friend that I do, in fact, have information.

I also have information about reports which have been recently published by Sense. One is entitled, Breaking Out; another is entitled, Reach Out. We are looking very carefully at those reports, which focus on early intervention for children who are deaf-blind. We are working in that area and opening up the community for deaf-blind children and young people, particularly in after-school and out-of-school activities. We are considering those issues and take them very seriously.

My Lords, assuming that the main means of communication of deaf-blind children is touch signals, are there enough teachers in this specialisation or in any satisfactory alternative means? Are enough teachers being trained?

My Lords, teachers of deaf-blind and deaf or blind pupils must acquire an additional qualification. That is a mandatory qualification. The Teacher Training Agency has been reviewing that and has drawn up new specifications against which training providers can bid. Currently, eight institutions offer the mandatory qualification provision; two of them deal with deaf-blind children: Whitefield School at Kingston University and the University of Birmingham.

In addition, we should ensure that those who work in a support capacity with teachers are able to have training on special educational needs and the needs of children. The noble Lord makes an important point: such children have particular difficulties. My noble friend referred to the role of interveners, which is a crucial part of enabling them to communicate.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that this disability demonstrates the inadequacy—I must take some responsibility—of lumping all children with disabilities together under the category of children with special needs? Does she agree that some children's disabilities are so profound that they require "special" special provision and that that group of children stands out as the most difficult to be put together with other children with less severe disabilities?

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. We believe that the time has come to obtain information about the different special educational needs of the different categories of children in our schools, so that we can adjust the provision and ensure that it is appropriate and adequate. Currently, we are working with officials from the Department of Health to ensure that we have similar categorisation for reasons that I am sure will be clear to your Lordships.

It is true that for some children being educated in a mainstream school is inappropriate as we are not thereby able to fulfil their needs. That is why special schools remain an important part of educational provision and why we are working closely with special schools to ensure that in the future their role is well understood.

Noble Lords will perhaps not be surprised that the number of children in special schools remains the same, but the kinds of disability or special educational needs that the children have are increasingly complex. Therefore, teaching and educational provision of the highest order are required. It is also important that those children who can be educated and wish to be educated in mainstream schooling are allowed to do so.

My Lords, how can the Government say, on the one hand, that services for children with special educational needs are adequate but, on the other hand, admit that they do not have the specific information about the particular special educational needs of different categories of children?

My Lords, the important fact, as the noble Baroness is aware, is that we have schools that are working closely with these children. In the main, we delegate the money to the schools: £1.9 billion for special educational needs in 2001–02. We recognise that we have in our teaching profession real expertise of working with children with special educational needs which we want to ensure is shared. We have to be more sophisticated as we develop our inclusion agenda. That is precisely what we shall do.

My Lords, will the Minister give an assurance that there is active communication between social services departments and education authorities while a child is in school and once he or she leaves school? We tend to ignore the adult world when discussing children with special difficulties. That is particularly true of a group of children whose entire communication with the rest of society depends on properly trained people.

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct. We need to ensure that there is joined-up thinking of the best kind. The booklet produced by Sense, Breaking Out, has much to say about how services can link together to ensure that children, young people and adults are provided for. In my discussions with special schools, particularly those dealing with visual impairment, we have been considering the transition for such young people into adult life. We have considered the role that the specialist services can play in working closely with them—Connexions advisers and the special schools—so that we can ensure that they make the transition as successfully as possible.

My Lords, under the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 deaf-blind children can receive a special assessment and a package of assistance. According to a survey by Sense, the organisation that deals with deaf-blind persons, as my noble friend will know, many children and families do not receive that help. Will the Minister urge local authorities to undertake more work in that regard? If she does not have the figures with her, will she write to me saying how many local authorities provide such assistance?

My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord refers to Section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970. That is carefully monitored by the Social Services Inspectorate and, therefore, is the responsibility of the Department of Health. There is statutory guidance of which local authorities are required to take note. They need good reason not to, and it would be subject to judicial review. The Social Services Inspectorate is now monitoring carefully. I shall pass that request for information to the Department of Health for reply.

My Lords, are there any shortages of specialist teachers who teach deaf and blind people? If so, what are the numbers?

My Lords, I do not have that precise information. I shall be happy to write to the noble Lord. We believe that there is adequate provision, but I shall notify him if that is incorrect.

My Lords, do the remaining special schools act as centres of expertise for the rest of the educational needs of children and is it possible for a child with a disability, but particularly with the serious kind of disability mentioned in the Question, to start in one kind of school and move into another as he or she progresses?

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. We look to our specialist schools to become centres of excellence. Some of them are being co-located with mainstream schools, which will enable the students, even if they have complex disabilities or special needs, to interact with children in the mainstream sector to the benefit of the children in both settings. A number of pupils are registered in both settings and are able to move between them. Children with a particular disability—I use deafness as an example—may spend two days a week with a signer or an appropriate carer in a mainstream setting. That is to be welcomed and encouraged.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What changes in the burden of taxation have occurred since 1997.

My Lords, estimates of net taxes and social security contributions as a percentage of GDP are available in Tables C10 and C23 of Budget 2002.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that brief Answer. But are the Government sanguine that one change that has occurred is that the poorest 10 per cent of people now pay a record rate of between 50 and 63 per cent of their income in tax?

My Lords, the changes that have taken place over the past five years in the tax paid by the different deciles of the population in terms of income are very much to the credit of this Government. This is the first period of five years, or any comparable period, in which the net income of the poorest 20 per cent of the population has increased by as much as the net income of the top 20 per cent; in other words, in which the differentials have not increased.

My Lords, the whole House will be fascinated by that answer. Will the Minister accept that the burden of taxation paid by the bottom 10 or 20 per cent of the population has risen, and risen more quickly than that of the top 10 or 20 per cent of the population, during the lifetime of this Government? Will he also accept that the principal reason for that is that the Government ruled out at the start the fairest form of taxation—if an increase in taxation had to be made—namely, income tax?

My Lords, I am sorry that the Liberal Democrats are following in Conservative footsteps by being more interested in what they call "tax burdens" than in the real income which results from the income and taxes. I should have thought it was more appropriate for them to look at the real prosperity of this country and at the way in which the poor have been lifted out of poverty. The direct tax burden on a family on average earnings with two children this year will be 19.9 per cent lower than it was in 1997 or in any previous year since 1979.

My Lords, perhaps I may refer the Minister to page 12 of the Red Book, where it says that a person on 50 per cent of median earnings—about 10,700 a year—will pay an additional£1.65 a week in tax. Why are the Government raising the tax paid by people who are below their own official poverty line?

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, produced a very interesting pamphlet called something like, Why should the poor pay taxes?, which I read with very great interest. The noble Lord's solution of course would be to increase the tax threshold, the effects of which would be to make poor people a little better off but rich people very much better off. I doubt that that would recommend itself to the people of this country.

My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that the Liberal Democrat emphasis on direct taxation is that it is levied on the people who can afford to pay, whereas indirect taxation applies equally to the poor and the rich?

My Lords, that was not my criticism of the question of the noble Lord, Lord Newby. My concern was that he was interested in the concept of a tax burden—in other words, the percentage—rather than in the real earnings after tax of poorer people in this country. It is that on which this Government pride themselves.

My Lords, does the Minister believe that the current and anticipated burden of taxation will encourage or discourage economic growth in this country, which is much needed by all classes?

My Lords, the Government have made it clear in the projections in the Red Book that over the next few years there will indeed be an increase in what is called the "tax burden". But that will be in order to compensate for so many years of neglect of our public services. It is because of the neglect by the party opposite of our public services that we have to do this. The people of this country understand that and welcome it.

My Lords, does the Minister not know that on the night following each successive Budget, the City has been awash with champagne? Does he not accept that the fastest growing widening of income differentials in recorded time has meant an exacerbation of the problems of housing exclusion, of public sector recruitment and of social resentment? Does he deny that?

My Lords, I do not move in the same City circles as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. Nobody offered me any of the champagne. If he has any to spare, perhaps he will share it with the poorer people of this country who have benefited by this Government's policies. We need only to look at the results of the policies of this Government in terms of direct taxation since 1997. As a result of the personal tax and benefit measures introduced since that time, on average, by October 2003, households will be £740 a year better off; families with children will be £1,200 a year better off; pensioner households will be £1,150 a year better off. I think we can put up with a bit of champagne swilling for that.

My Lords, perhaps I may redirect the Minister's attention to the poorest 20 per cent, about whom the noble Lord, Lord Newby, addressed a question and to which the Minister replied by commenting on the condition of the average taxpayer. I remind him that my noble friend Lord Saatchi referred him to people on below average earnings, and he gave an answer based on my noble friend's pamphlet. Perhaps I may ask again whether people in the lowest 20 per cent of earnings are now paying more in tax than they were last year.

My Lords, it is the fact—this was my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Newby—that the people in the poorest 20 per cent of this country are as much better off under this Government as the people in the top 20 per cent. It is the effect of the tax and credit structure that is more important than theoretical argument about the tax burden. That is the point I was trying to make by reference to the poorest 20 per cent of the population.

My Lords, will the Minister be kind enough to answer my noble friend's question? Are the poorest 20 per cent of people worse off now than they were 12 months ago?

My Lords, that was not the question. But the answer is no.

My Lords, can the Minister say why the Government have been so inconsistent in their tax policy? On the one hand they cut corporation tax and raised even more revenue, and on the other they increased direct taxation like the national insurance upper earnings limit by 28 per cent. Would it not be better to cut direct taxation as well as corporation tax?

My Lords, that is an argument that might not result in champagne swilling around the City! The question I was being asked by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, related to the effect on our economic prosperity. One element that is widely recognised as being contributory to our economic prosperity is the extent to which we have been able to cut corporation tax—after all, it is a tax on success rather than a payroll tax: it is a profit tax—and particularly the ways in which we have been able to encourage small businesses.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What are the details of the plan proposed by the Prime Minister to remove child benefit from the parents of teenage offenders.

My Lords, if parents permit their children to truant, then we know that those children are far more likely to drift into crime. That is both disastrous for them and for their local community. It is therefore essential that we explore all options to stop that happening, including the recent ideas.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her somewhat brief reply. But is that plan practical? For example, what happens to the innocent brothers and sisters within a family which has a child who is out of control? What about all the parents who do everything in their power to try to prevent the child from being unruly? Does the Minister accept that making poor children poorer is not the answer? That is not a substitute for a real, long-term and cohesive strategy to cut youth crime.

My Lords, I certainly agree with the last point made by the noble Baroness, but the Government indeed have a consistent, coherent strategy to cut youth crime. That includes everything from reducing the number of days for which young people have to wait between arrest. and sentencing to extra powers in the 10 areas most affected by street robbery. Since coming to power, our record is one of reducing crime by 22 per cent overall. Street crime is the problem, and what lies behind it, too often, is truancy.

Perhaps I may develop that part of the question. Obviously we want to intervene to try to keep children at school. We want to work with parents and educational welfare officers to keep children at school. But as regards those parents who will not—as opposed to cannot—co-operate with the education system to help to ensure that their children go to school and get the best possible chance, we must consider how best to take these measures forward. At the end of the day, parents get child benefit because they care for their children. Caring for their children includes ensuring that they go to school.

My Lords, my noble friend mentioned the long-term policies that are already in place to address the exceptionally complex issues. There is the complexity of raising salaries in the first place and, for many families, children's disabilities in approaching and making connections with school from an early age. What contribution does she believe that Sure Start is making to lay better foundations for the future?

My Lords, it is clear that behind truancy and, later, street crime often lie problems that go back many years. My noble friend is absolutely right: if we want to invest in children's futures, we must start with children as young as possible. Hence the Sure Start programme, for which I have received support from all sides of the House. By 2004, about 30 per cent of the poorest children will be in a Sure Start scheme—there will be 500 of them. With Sure Start, which is a huge act of faith on the Government's part, we should be able to break the link between poor incomes and poor outcomes for children who are otherwise at risk.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the key practical problem at present is the behaviour of teenage truants? Has she any suggestions as to how a 5ft Bins parent should make a 6ft teenager go to school?

My Lords, the Government have introduced an array of initiatives from parenting orders to anti-social orders for children, and so on. At the end of the day, we want to encourage parents to work with the school system, especially education welfare officers. There are many reasons for truanting, one of which is that the child prefers to drift into a life of crime. But there are others—there may be bullying or disability may be involved.

That is why the Government are not only building on pupil referral units for children already excluded from school but are seeking to keep pupils within the school system by developing learning support units—1,000 of them across the country—to ensure that children at risk of exclusion stay within the mainstream education system without disrupting the learning of other children. I am sure that that is the right way forward.

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords, I think that we ought to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle.

My Lords, the Minister has not answered the fundamental question raised by my noble friend Lady Buscombe: why does she believe that making poor people poorer will reduce rather than increase the volume of crime and lawlessness?

My Lords, the point about child benefit is that unlike other benefits that may be sanctioned, child benefit is universal. Therefore, irrespective of their class and income, those parents who refuse to work with the education authorities to try to ensure that their children go to school enjoy child benefit. We believe that the responsibility for ensuring that the child goes to school goes alongside those parents' right to enjoy that benefit. At the end of the day, the Government's strategy to take children out of poverty, of which I am proud, will be wrecked if those children do not go to school and as a result have no future.

My Lords, will the Minister tell us whether the proposal is really thought through and can be effective? For example, what happens where care is shared between separate parents and where the parent who was supposed to be in charge on the day of the alleged offence is not the one who normally receives child benefit?

My Lords, that is precisely why the Government have been at pains to emphasise that these are a set of proposals to be explored, not a worked-up scheme to bring to your Lordships' House.

My Lords, as the Minister knows far more about social security benefits than anyone else, the House will be interested to know whether or not she is in favour of the proposition. Has she told the Prime Minister—and will she tell the House—to what extent, if child benefit was withdrawn, those from whom it was withdrawn would be entitled to more of other benefits?

My Lords, the noble Lord knows perfectly well that everyone standing at the Dispatch Box—whether he or I—speaks for their party and, in my case, for my Government. Any government who since 1997 will have raised the rate of income support for children under 11 from £16.90 to £37 this October—more than double in cash terms and double in real terms—are a government of whom I am deeply proud.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in order to protect computerised systems against denial of service attacks. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.

Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Earl of Northesk).

rose to call attention to the case for a Civil Service Act clarifying the respective responsibilities of Ministers, political advisers and civil servants; and to move for Papers.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, some of your Lordships may be wondering what is the point of holding this debate when the Government are committed to imminent legislation. It is precisely because that assumption is a little over-optimistic that the debate is timely.

Last November, Sir Richard Wilson told the Public Administration Committee in another place that consultation on a Civil Service Act would start in the New Year. Two months ago, on 26th February, the Cabinet Office again promised that consultation on a Civil Service Act would start shortly. Subsequently, an issues paper was promised, hot on the heels of the significant speech made by Sir Richard at the end of March calling for an Act as outgoing Cabinet Secretary.

It is now 1st May, and there is no sign of government-initiated consultation on the issues. So perhaps the Minister and the Government will take this debate as a little bit of do-it-yourself consultation—an attempt to kick start what appears to be a rather tardy process within Westminster and Whitehall. I am also conscious that this is one of those precious second Chamber moments that we have from time to time when the Minister responsible is here to respond. I very much welcome that.

I also thank so many noble Lords with such a wealth of relevant and distinguished experience for putting their names down to speak this afternoon. I can only say how sorry I am that each of them has so little time in which to speak. I shall try to conclude my remarks in less than the 15 minutes allotted, to leave a few seconds each for those noble Lords who have more to say than they can say in four minutes. Unlike the great majority of them, I am an innocent abroad, in the sense that I have been neither a Minister, a civil servant nor a special adviser. Whether that makes for objectivity or naivety, we shall have to see, but I must declare an interest as chairman of the Hansard Society, which has a long-standing commitment to the value of our democratic institutions and to the need to ensure that our governance is refined and improved where necessary.

I begin with three questions. First, why should we need a Civil Service Act? Secondly, given that we do, what might be the nature of such an Act? Thirdly, when will the Government honour their promise to propose a Bill?

I shall start by saying that, despite the feverish efforts of the press and the unstinting determination of the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions to do his best to help, I doubt that Whitehall is or was in chaos, to use Sir Richard's word. There was a bit of effing and blinding and a lot of embarrassment, but I do not think that there was chaos. Those of us who want an Act do not see it as another piece of short-term crisis management; we probably have too much of that sort of legislation before us already. There is no crisis in the Civil Service. This country has a Civil Service that is notable for its good sense, its good ethos and its good advice and is, rightly, the envy of many other countries.

There are, however, legitimate anxieties, not least on the part of the civil servants themselves, as the service adjusts to the massively raised expectations of governments and citizens. There are new, intensified pressures on the Civil Service to deliver. The senior Civil Service can no longer be properly described as being administrative, with all the calm, static virtues that that implies. The Senior Civil Service is now managerial and is concerned with allocating resources and increasing productivity to achieve objectives, often in relatively short time-scales. That is a more dynamic model than the one with which we all grew up. That has happened in the context of the endemic partisanship of our public culture. Excessive politicisation is creeping in everywhere.

We have had impatient Ministers in Conservative and Labour governments driven by an even more impatient No. 10 and committing themselves—overcommitting themselves—to specific public service targets. They want deliverables, and they want them fast. The temptation for Ministers—and often for senior civil servants—is to micro-manage. That is wrong and should be resisted—indeed, it often is. A change from policy generation to strategic leadership is necessary and is probably only half-realised, as the new Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, made apparent in an interview with The Times this morning.

The impatience to achieve leads to the use of other tools. Special and expert advisers are recruited. Consultants—some thinly disguised as Members of your Lordships' House—are taken on. There are internal reporting systems that drive performance. There is an emphasis on news control and spin in a bid to win the space, make the changes and get the credit. There is a certain can-do attitude to the cutting of corners and, on occasion, a deplorable crossing of the boundaries between national and party interest. 1t is too easy to create a culture in Whitehall in which achievers and believers are pushed ahead, and cooler heads are pushed aside. Prime Ministers notoriously favour those who bring them solutions.

The first reason why we need a Civil Service Act is to make sure that, in the face of the pressures and amid a torrent of understandable change, the well-established virtues of impartiality—or objectivity, as the Committee on Standards in Public Life prefers to call it—political neutrality, promotion by merit and not through patronage and ethical or professional standards of behaviour are not swept away. Rather, they should be entrenched throughout Whitehall and the executive agencies, with a proper process for dealing with any fall from grace. We need a fixed point of reference in a fast-changing world.

The second, related reason for an Act is less well understood. Indeed, it merited only one short sentence in Sir Richard's lecture. By passing such an Act, we shall ensure that the ultimate accountability of the Civil Service for propriety and process is to Parliament, not to the executive. That is a constitutional development of the first importance. The Hansard Society Commission on Scrutiny, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, said that Parliament should be the "apex of accountability". So, alongside a Minister's responsibility for the performance of his or her department, such an Act would create a parallel and clear accountability for the way in which the Civil Service carries out its important functions. That accountability would be to Parliament.

There seems to be widespread recognition of the desirability of such an Act. It formed part of the Government's manifesto commitment; it appeared in the manifesto of the Liberal Democrats; and many Conservatives and commentators are in favour. The First Division Association is also in favour. Of course, such a move was originally recommended by Northcote-Trevelyan in 1853, a prospect scuppered, not least—I must admit—by Lord John Russell, the Liberal Prime Minister. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Russell, his descendant, is not in his place. Be that as it may, the Liberal Democrats are now fully committed to such an Act.

What sort of Act should it be? Like Northcote-Trevelyan, I think that it should be short. The description that they used was "a few clauses". It should create accountability to Parliament via the Civil Service Commission in respect of compliance by Ministers, civil servants and various sorts of advisers with their respective codes of conduct. The codes should be refreshed and refined with the help of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and agreed by Parliament separately. The Civil Service Commission should report to Parliament annually on the state of the service, and civil servants should have easier access to the commission if they believe that there have been infringements of the codes. The commission, either at the request of Parliament or on a discretionary basis if it has substantial grounds to believe that a code has been breached, should have powers to investigate and report. The cultural and career barriers to whistle-blowing must be demolished.

It would clearly establish the proper gearing with Parliament if there were a matching committee here— preferably consisting of Members of both Houses—to consider and initiate reports by the commission. The Public Administration Committee, which has done such valuable work under its chairman, Dr Tony Wright, might provide the right basis for that. I must say that I miss the marvellous work that the old Royal Institute of Public Administration used to do; I am sure that other noble Lords feel the same. We miss RIPA when considering such issues.

My focus in introducing the debate is on getting structure and systems of accountability right, so I shall confine myself to mentioning only two areas of current controversy only. First, we should stop demonising political advisers. No doubt, some are more special than others, and, certainly, some are more expert. However, any government need help and will look for it. I am not inclined towards setting an arbitrary quota to fix the number of such advisers, although, as a matter of political judgment, a bit of restraint, particularly on the part of No. 10, would not go amiss. The line should be drawn in a different place and should not be crossed. If advisers are seen as suitable for an executive role, they should become civil servants—albeit temporarily. They should not otherwise be permitted to issue instructions to civil servants. It is one thing for a chief executive of a company to call in McKinsey—that often happens—but it would be extraordinary for him to put consultants in executive control of his management, unless he hired one or more of them for his management team.

Secondly, there is the apparent misuse of public service advertising for party advantage, an issue that has not been sufficiently discussed. Between 1999–2000 and 2000–01—election year—public service advertising went up by 69 per cent, peaking at an all-time record in March, in the immediate run-up to the election. So far, so circumstantial—but now we also find that the chief executive of the Central Office of Information has been on a direct reporting line to Mr Alastair Campbell since February. Important conventions relating to public service advertising are being breached. In suggesting that that matter should also be part of the code, I invite the Minister to comment on that worrying situation in particular when he responds.

That brings me to my final questions. When shall we have the consultation document? When shall we have the Bill before us in Parliament? Sir Andrew, the new Cabinet Secretary, thinks that, as we have waited 150 years already, there is no particular hurry. That is not the manifesto pledge made by the Government. I trust that the Minister will have something positive to say to us about that. It has become one of the issues on which the Government's credibility depends. Procrastination does not look good in matters of standards. When the Government drag their feet on clear manifesto commitments to bring forward legislation, the Minister might remind himself that the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill has shown that this House and these Benches are capable of finding another way forward. I hope that we shall not have to. I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, I welcome the debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Holme, even though I have only four minutes. There has always been a strong concept of service by those seeking to join the Civil Service. That was especially true in the post-war years. There had been a number of men and women who had served their country well and looked to the planning of the post-war society in which they would play a leading role. That idealism resulted in much of the ensuing work of restoring and repairing our country.

That attitude was a consequence of the great Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the previous century. The report was momentous. The reforms which followed have been the bedrock of our administration and produced the professional non-party-political Civil Service which we have had the privilege to enjoy. They were the greatest development of public service in modern times. The standard set by the Civil Service filtered down into local government, into the professions and even to some extent into industry. That was a development which, looking back, must make us proud that it was in our country that we were able to devise a system of administration which was high-minded, ethical and practical, which actually worked, and which delivered what was promised.

A century later it fell to the Fulton committee, on which I had the privilege to serve, to put forward a number of reforms which, though substantial, did not change the ethos of the service, and the important changes in the relationship with government were accomplished with no great difficulty. It has been the expanding role of the special adviser which has brought the questioning of the relationship between Ministers and civil servants to a position it has not occupied since the 1960s. The Fulton committee recommended the use of specialist advisers— experts with political views.

In 1974, six months before I went to the Treasury, I took on the responsibility of the Civil Service Department. There I had the responsibility of agreeing the salaries of certain specialist advisers; Nikki Kaldor, Tommy Balogh, Brian Abel-Smith and some others. Some of them were inherited from the Labour Party opposition. There were others whose qualifications were difficult to discover and, with justification, they were awarded modest remuneration.

In evidence to the Public Administration Committee in November last year, Sir Richard Wilson gave an account of his early experience. He said:

"I found myself at a much more junior level than I am now in a situation where special advisers were, as it were, giving me instructions and I found myself in quite difficult positions as a result of that. I think this question of how far special advisers in practice can tell or ask civil servants to do things is an issue which has existed for quite a long time as a grey area but has now become a matter of public concern and controversy".

That is an important statement to make. It is true that such situations exist. The civil servant knows that the special adviser has a direct link to the Minister and anything that the special adviser says must have a correspondingly high level of power and influence.

We have now reached the stage where the problem of special advisers needs urgently to be addressed. The notion of spin has always been a part of government— putting a good gloss on policies. It has always been part of any administration. What we have seen more recently are some special advisers who have accorded the practice a level of priority which has been in danger of transgressing the boundaries between spin and deceit. The departure of a number of information officers was in itself a serious signal. In the language of our time, they gave out information, rarely with spin even though, frequently, with a touch of gloss. We need to reaffirm the standards of service which we used to see and have come to expect.

Ever since the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms there have been from time to time anxious voices raised about the changing role of government and the Civil Service. This is another of those occasions. This time, I believe, it is more serious. A major task for the new head of the Civil Service, Sir Andrew Turnbull, is to accept the case for the specialist advisers who bring skills and expertise. However, the paramount need above everything else is to retain the standards of the Civil Service we have had the privilege to acquire.

My Lords, I welcome the debate. It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon. However, as regards being a Minister in the Civil Service Department, I preceded him, rather than followed him, by some four years. I therefore became—although at a junior level—the first Minister of the Civil Service in modern British history.

In those days, the reform tasks of the Civil Service were clear enough. They were to implement the recommendations of the Fulton committee, in which the noble Lord played a distinguished part, and to bring in outside entrants. They are the same changes for which Sir Andrew Turnbull is calling in today's press. Things move rather slowly in Whitehall as that was 30 years ago. There was also the small matter of indexing Civil Service pensions, which seemed to interest and pre-occupy the Civil Service Department to a considerable degree.

We on the political side had our own agenda which we embodied in the phrase "the new style of government". That had two elements to it. The first was that we needed to redefine the outputs and objectives of a great deal of government work in Whitehall so that the organisation behind the achieving and delivering of public services was more efficient. If necessary, we needed to bring in the private sector—that was the dawn of the privatisation idea. The second was that those who were managerially in charge of achieving those objectives would be properly accountable to Parliament via Select Committees, which in those days did not exist in their present form, rather than being lost in the general miasma of ministerial and departmental accountability which we and the public deemed to be extremely weak.

Like today's reformers, we believed that we could clarify the roles between the Ministers, who looked after policy and party-political matters, civil servants, who were supposed to be concerned with administration and impartial advice, and special advisers, most of whom in those days were paid by the political parties and not by the Government and who would be able, it was argued, to help civil servants. That was our high-minded aim.

The brief message that I have for your Lordships from that period, although it was long ago, is that the attempt to spend too much time defining too precisely the boundaries between the different groups does not in the end work. I know the theory—we heard it in the opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord Holme—that the Civil Service is supposed to be impartial and objective and that a Minister is supposed to inject party politics and so forth with the help of the special adviser. That is the theory and it is also the belief of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Its latest publication is full of such assertions.

In practice, that is not the way it worked or works today. Perhaps we can learn a little from our mistakes of the past and pass them on to the would-be reformers who are drawing up new legislation. The truth is that able civil servants are to some degree partisan and want to see the Government's purposes achieved. Of course, they may not want to see them achieved, which would not involve impartial advice but a policy stance. That is bringing policy views into the carrying out of public purposes.

Therefore, it is a myth to believe that it can always be said that all civil servants are impartial and objective. It would make life impossible for Ministers if they always were. Similarly, it is also a myth to imply that all Ministers are so riddled with party bias and so tainted by being connected with parties that they are incapable of objective thought. An appalling heresy has crept into today's debate; that is, that anyone who has anything to do with any political party is incapable of independent or objective advice and thought. If one looks at Ministers in the present Government and in previous governments, one sees that that is an absurd distortion of the reality.

There is a grey area, as Sir Richard Wilson has told us, where common sense and integrity must operate and where rigid rules cannot be laid down. It may, alas, be necessary to have a Civil Service Act which brings the structure and organisation under parliamentary authority. After the notorious Order in Council of 3rd May 1997 the public and Parliament will no longer accept the business of rule by decree in the matter of the Civil Service. That has been abused and therefore will now have to be ended. In effect, that was the second point made by Sir Richard Wilson in his speech.

A Civil Service Act which seeks to define too clearly the role between Ministers, civil servants and special advisers will come unstuck and will be to the detriment of good government. That, at least, is the message and the lesson that we can learn from the past. I hope that it will not have to be re-learnt this time.

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, for providing the House with an opportunity to hold this debate. It is a well-known phenomenon for retired civil servants to show a surprising enthusiasm for things like freedom of information, for which they showed no great warmth while they were in the public service. Certainly when I was in the Civil Service, I was not in the vanguard of those arguing for a Civil Service Act.

I recall giving evidence to a committee of the other place under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Radice. For the reasons which have just been outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, I argued that the Civil Service was better served in meeting the requirements of governments with the flexibility of the Civil Service Order in Council. Why, then, when a non-political Civil Service has survived for almost 150 years on the basis of the Royal Prerogative and the Civil Service Order in Council, is legislation now needed to provide for it?

In my view, the reason does not lie in the ill intentions of either this or any other government. It lies in the changing context in which government is conducted. That has introduced requirements which have become, I think, dangerous to the concept of a non-political Civil Service. I shall cite one example. Governments have of course become more media driven. Today Ministers need not only expert advisers, they also need expert advisers on the art of presentation, and they do not fall comfortably within the proper role of the Civil Service. In my view, that kind of thing is best undertaken by political appointees. Since Ministers have both a governmental and a party political role, the two have to work together. In my experience, people inside the system are very well aware of the borderline between the Civil Service and party political roles and they observe it.

But I shall not deny that in some cases the borderline is crossed, and we live in a sceptical age. What may seem perfectly proper within the system does not always seem so to those outside, in particular to the opposition parties, on whom the continuance of a nonpolitical Civil Service greatly depends. It is time for the distinctions to be clarified and set out in a form which the main political parties and Parliament understand and are comfortable with.

To that end, some changes in the present arrangements could usefully be made. I have in mind three in particular. First, I believe that the time has come to make a distinction between "political" special advisers and "expert" special advisers and to fund them differently.

Secondly, while "political" special advisers should not be debarred from representing the views of their Ministers to the media, this role should be kept separate from departmental press offices, which should be staffed by civil servants operating in a factual and objective way, steering clear of party political debate.

Thirdly, when people with known or declared political loyalties apply for and are appointed to Civil Service posts, I believe that the Civil Service Commission should have a formal obligation to ensure a nil obstat from the opposition parties. Informal arrangements have been reached in the past, but I think that it would be advantageous to put it on to a more formal basis.

I believe that it would be useful if these and other aspects were enshrined in Civil Service legislation. We should not expect such legislation to avoid all future difficulties over the roles of civil servants and special advisers. But in the long term it would achieve something that is more important: it would offer an opportunity to define the distinction between Civil Service and party political functions in a way that the main political parties and Parliament would understand and have confidence in. It would make it more unlikely that a future government would doubt the political impartiality of the Civil Service they inherit and thus it would help to maintain something which, in my view, is an asset to British government and which we sould seek to retain and foster; that is, a permanent, impartial and non-political Civil Service.

My Lords, as a new Member, I have been told this is one of those House of Lords debates which are always extremely impressive. I can see that this is definitely going to be such a debate, with contributions from former Ministers and heads of the Civil Service. Indeed, I believe that one former head of the Civil Service is not going to participate because two former heads are already speaking.

I rise briefly and modestly to support the case for a Civil Service Act. I should say that this is not a new question because many of us have long been in favour of such legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, pointed out, I was chairman of the sub-committee which reported in favour of such an Act. We also came out in favour of introducing the Civil Service Code. We even prepared a draft code which was accepted by the Conservative government of the day. I should like to pay tribute to the role played by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in that. As I have said, we also came out in favour of legislation, but the then government did not see the argument in favour of that proposal.

I believe that strong arguments can be put forward in favour of a Civil Service Act. They do not arise primarily because of the recent controversy over special advisers, although of course I accept that there have been rows about them. I accept also that there has been an increase in the numbers of such advisers. However, I can recall that the previous government also had special advisers and there is nothing wrong with that; indeed, I think that they perform an extremely useful role. At the time rows broke out over the role and activities of special advisers. I recall in particular the row over the position of Sir Bernard Ingham. The sub-committee commented on the ensuing controversy in one of its reports, so this argument is nothing new.

However, a short Act is needed in the main because—to echo the words of Sir Richard Wilson in his very effective speech made in March—we need, first, to define what a civil servant is—at the moment there is no definition; secondly, we need to enshrine in law rather than simply in a code the fundamental principles of selection and promotion on the basis of merit; and, thirdly, we need to enshrine the political impartiality of the Civil Service. I also believe that the time has now come to put into law the Civil Service Code. We need to define in law the code for special advisers and we need to examine the role and number of such special advisers.

In summary, we need to do all that was recommended in the Northcote-Trevelyan report. The Civil Service Commission needs to be put on to a statutory basis for the first time. Furthermore, I think that we need to provide a role for the Civil Service Commission in the judgment of grievances and redress for aggrieved civil servants. I take that view because I am not satisfied that the present system works adequately.

Finally, we need to underwrite the role of Parliament and, indeed, of the Select Committees in the Act's supervision.

Perhaps I may conclude by saying the following. The case for a Civil Service Act has been accepted by the Government. That was made clear in the election manifesto. On numerous occasions in the other place and, I believe, in this House, the Government have stated that they are committed to such an Act.

The argument no longer turns on whether one is for it or against it; what really drives the matter is when will the Government fulfil their commitment. Noble Lords are right to wait with impatience for the consultation paper, which has been promised for a very long time. We are also right to await the legislation. To that end, I believe that the message of our debate this afternoon can be summed up as follows: "It is time to get on with it".

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend for bringing these matters before the House. In the 1960s and 1970s, during my own time in government, I would have been rather surprised at the idea of a Civil Service Act. Governments are organic and comprise more than their formal institutions. As the culture of politics changes, a new balance is struck between Ministers, career civil servants and outsiders. Even in the earlier part of the 20th century, as we know from diaries and memoirs, those ubiquitous public servants, Eddie Marsh and Tom Jones, moved in and out at the highest level on a personal and sometimes political basis. More relevant, many outsiders entered Whitehall during the war and some outstanding figures continued into career civil servants.

Other outsiders served Ministers in the Attlee government as irregulars—in effect, special advisers to Herbert Morrison, Cripps and Dalton. There was also the mixed central planning staff under Edwin Plowden, and talented outsiders moved between the economic section of the Treasury and the universities.

The Department of Economic Affairs, the DEA, in which I became a junior Minister in 1964, had a core of career civil servants but many outsiders, some with strong political loyalties. An able political appointee, Robert Neild, became the economic adviser to the Treasury in 1964, causing a fuss; but in 1997 his lineal descendant was given the less controversial title of economic adviser to the Chancellor.

After a stretch of 13 years in opposition, and then 18, new Ministers were sometimes suspicious about civil servants and civil servants about Ministers, but most grew out of their doubts and became resilient and flexible. However, I am persuaded that there is serious anxiety about the morale of the Civil Service almost as disturbing as in the mitt-1980s.

I agree, for example, that there may be a case for capping the number of special advisers, although the main growth has been at No. 10, which raises wider constitutional questions. I agree also that the Byers episode was a mess and that there are important lessons about the management of a department, and not only for Ministers and press and information officers.

I believe that openness between special advisers and senior civil servants, especially with private secretaries of Ministers and permanent secretaries, is essential to the smooth working of government, based on respect and trust.

These and other matters were usefully discussed in the sixth report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I welcome its recent Issues and Questions Paper, Defining the Boundaries. But in reviewing a growing literature about Ministers, civil servants, outsiders and special advisers, I hope that options will be brought into sharper focus taking a historical view.

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Holme, for introducing the debate. As the First Civil Service Commissioner, I am grateful far the opportunity to contribute to it. I hope that this debate and the wider discussions that will follow the Government's proposed consultation paper on a Civil Service Act will encourage a considered debate and lead to a broad consensus on the framework in which we expect the Civil Service to operate.

I had intended to spend some time outlining the background to our role but, as I have only four minutes, I shall go on to the issues that I wish to raise. In the context of the debate, there are two questions I should like to explore. First, at a time of substantial reform—which I believe is necessary—and when, more than ever, concerns are being expressed about the blurring of boundaries within the executive, is there anything more that needs to be done to support the maintenance of an impartial and competent Civil Service which is equipped to respond to the challenges of today's world, deliver services and serve the best interests of everyone in society? Secondly, does an Order in Council, which is the current means by which the Civil Service is ordered, represent the right legislative vehicle?

First, are the current checks and balances currently in force sufficient to ensure an impartial Civil Service? The role of the Civil Service is clear; it is to serve successive governments with equal loyalty, integrity and deliver the agenda of the government of the clay. Yet the point is increasingly being made that because the number of special advisers has increased considerably under the current administration, that in itself must be a sign that the impartiality of the Civil Service is at risk.

I do not see things that way. For me, the key issue is whether there is sufficient clarity about the roles of civil servants in general and about special advisers in particular; and whether there are effective mechanisms in place to monitor and enforce the various codes governing the conduct of special advisers and civil servants.

I believe that special advisers have a valuable role to play. Their place within the government system is now accepted and they are a useful part of the political landscape. Their relationship with permanent officials and Ministers, of course, depends on their personality, expertise and strength. As we know, things do go wrong. If they are given too much power or influence they will undermine the relationship between Ministers and civil servants.

It is in the public interest that the Civil Service itself should remain a main source of innovation, able to command the confidence of Ministers and execute their policies. It is important to get this balance right, otherwise we risk demoralising the Civil Service and making it more difficult to recruit and retain the high quality individuals needed to deliver public services, now and in the future. Therefore we need clarity about respective roles and arrangements for dealing with situations where boundaries are in danger of being crossed.

When special advisers were first appointed they were seen as a source of party political advice for Ministers, a means by which Ministers—and therefore the government of the day—remained connected with their party. But things have moved on, and the code of conduct for special advisers now includes as part of their role,

"preparing speculative policy papers which can generate long-term policy thinking within the Department, including policies which reflect the political viewpoint of the Minister's party",

and,

"representing the views of their Minister to the media including a Party viewpoint, where they have been authorised by the Minister to do so".

All this seems to go beyond the role of special advisers as set out in the 1995 Order in Council, which states that their purpose is,

"only of providing advice to any Minister".

There appears to be a variance between the legal basis for a special adviser's role and that set out in their code.

There is also the question of the role of special advisers in the management of other civil servants. The Order in Council is again clear in specifying that, with three notable exceptions, special advisers do not manage other civil servants. Yet I saw an Answer to a Parliamentary Question recently which referred to no civil servants being "directly" managed by special advisers, apart from the three exceptions laid down in the Order in Council.

I am not a civil servant, but my knowledge of their specialist drafting skills over many years makes me wonder whether the incorporation of the word "directly" in the Answer might be a cover for relations between special advisers and civil servants that are closer than the Order in Council intended.

Such lack of clarity over the role and powers of special advisers leads not only to speculation about whether there is increased politicisation of the Civil Service but also confuses the rights and obligations of civil servants under both the Civil Service code and the special advisers code.

My Lords, I remind the noble Baroness of the need to strictly apply the four minute rule.

My Lords, perhaps I may make my final point. I can deal with it quickly.

Moving on to my second question about the right legislative vehicle for such issues, I recognise that some will say that changes and clarifications can be achieved without a Civil Service Act; codes can be re-written and Orders in Council changed. In my view, that would not be an ideal situation.

By enshrining in statute the core values of appointment on merit after fair and open competition, and by incorporating in statute the responsibilities and powers of the Civil Service commissioners, including the obligation to report on their work, we would place the constitutional position of the Civil Service more directly under the oversight of Parliament. By disentangling the constitutional position of the Civil Service—

My Lords, I remind the House that noble Lords who stray past the four minutes take time away from other Peers who wish to contribute to the debate.

My Lords, it is appropriate for this debate that, within the category of "special advisers", it is political advisers whose role requires clarification in a Civil Service Bill. So I agree with the Motion.

Noble Lords will recall that I have drawn attention to the need for clear statements of the functions of special advisers ever since the debate that I initiated in this House in 1997. I advocated the introduction of a new Civil Service Bill. I am glad that the Government are now likely to accept such a recommendation. The functions and roles of advisers should be defined in that Bill, and they should be given statutory authorisation. Do the Government accept such an idea and, if so, when can a Bill be expected?

An important reason for introducing such a measure is that special advisers are not accountable to Parliament. Presumably, they cannot be summoned to give evidence to Select Committees. Ministers have recently responded to questions on this subject by comparing numbers. They have pointed to the several thousand civil servants working in Whitehall and to the figure of about 80 special advisers. I suggest that such a comparison misses the point. The special advisers work directly for Ministers—mostly on political subjects—and are expected to depart when a general election leads to a change in the party in office. The large majority of the civil servants are engaged in work which does not involve dealing with Ministers directly on political subjects.

Of course, the two categories have to work together, and they must understand and acknowledge each other's functions. The duties of civil servants have been fairly clear for many years and are set out in documents. The role of special advisers is not yet similarly specified.

I make it clear that I have never objected to the existence and activities of special advisers. I tabled a Question recently, not because I object to them, but because I like to be kept informed of what is happening. The reply confirmed that two special advisers working at No. 10 have the power to instruct civil servants. They are the chief of communications and the chief of staff at No. 10. Is the number to remain at two, or are there likely to be more appointments of special advisers with powers to instruct civil servants?

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, on his success in the ballot and on choosing this subject for debate. I strongly agree with him on the need to clarify the respective responsibilities of Ministers, political advisers and civil servants.

Ministers are supported by a permanent, nonpolitical, professional career Civil Service, with, in the words of G. M. Trevelyan, its accumulated stores of knowledge, experience and sound tradition. The result of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the 19th century was the removal of the Civil Service from the field of political jobbery by the adoption of open competitive examination as the method of entrance.

Of course, the public service is not, and should not be, immune to reform. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me that there has been a more or less continuous process of public service reform, at least since 1979 if not since the Fulton committee, of which the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, was a distinguished member. However, there are continuing values that we should be seeking to retain throughout the process of reform. If, as I believe, the system of government in this country has been relatively free of political and other forms of corruption, that has been at least partly because the permanent Civil Service, as it has been developed, is an important force for integrity in that system.

Special advisers are not a new breed. They have been around in one form or another for a good many years, under governments of both the main political parties. In my experience, a special adviser can be a very useful addition to the support of a busy Minister—to advise the Minister on the specifically political dimension of his policies and actions, and to assist in interpreting the Minister's political views and needs to civil servants—so long as he does not act as though he is usurping the authority of the Minister.

But one can have too much, even of a good thing. There are now over 80 special advisers, 26 of them in 10 Downing Street. That is more than double the number before 1997. I believe that the machinery of government would work just as well, and I dare say better, with a good many fewer special advisers—and not only in No. 10. I am not persuaded that all departmental Ministers need two special advisers in addition to a raft of junior Ministers. I would make the quota one, with two being allowed only in exceptional cases.

So I agree with noble Lords who have proposed that there should be a limit, either on the total number of special advisers paid from public funds, or on the total amount of public funds expended on the employment of special advisers.

We also need to define the role of special advisers and to distinguish it from that of civil servants. Special advisers have a different function—one might say a different agenda—from civil servants. Civil servants are accountable to Ministers for honest and dispassionate advice on policies, for making sure that Ministers are as fully and accurately informed as possible, for the execution of policies once decided upon, and for the administration and management of government.

Special advisers are also accountable to Ministers— in so far as they are accountable at all—but they are advisory, and their agenda in the task of advising Ministers is, first and foremost, party political. The two strands of accountability come together at ministerial level. In my view, it is unwise to try to bring them together below that; the functions and the agenda are so different.

I do not believe that it is wise to put special advisers in charge of civil servants. I know that there are at present only two special advisers—both in 10 Downing Street—who are in that position. Nevertheless, when I learn not only that the Central Office of Information (or whatever it is now called) has been brought under the umbrella of the Cabinet Office, but also—as the noble Lord, Lord Holine, reminded us—that for some of her functions the head of the COI reports and is responsible directly to the Director of Strategy and Communications in 10 Downing Street, Mr Alastair Campbell, then I fear that the Government are laying themselves still further open to the perception that party political considerations are being allowed to exert too great an influence on the activities of the Government's public relations service and the integrity of the Civil Service is at greater risk of being seriously compromised.

I have not been in favour of a Civil Service Act, My preference would be to continue to rely in such matters on codes of guidance and practice which can be more flexible and susceptible to adjustment in changing circumstances than can statutory legislation.

My primary care and concern are for the integrity of the Civil Service. We must not lose sight of the value of that and of the need to preserve it. I. have been out of the public service for 14 years. If the judgment of those who are closer to these matters than I am is that the preservation of the integrity of the Civil Service now requires a Civil Service Act, then so be it.

My Lords, welcoming the Motion as I do, I must declare that I was a special adviser for over five years, heading the Downing Street Policy Unit, where I worked with six of the speakers in today's debate. It is quite a club reunion for us. Four were civil servants and two were special advisers. As such, I strongly believe in the valuable role of special advisers. They are important and their existence is justified in the crucial political dimension of government—and governments are political. Not all special advisers are, or have been, perfect, but that is true of some civil servants and even of some politicians. I am not convinced that legislation would remedy that.

My main purpose in speaking today is to take what is, I think, a minority view, although in a special area, and to question the need for legislation to clarify the specific issue of relations between civil servants and special advisers. We may well, however, need an Act for other reasons, and I believe that the noble Lords, Lord Holme, Lord Butler and Lord Radice and others, will make an excellent case for that. Although I certainly agree that relations between the political and the official side require clarity—problems arise if it is not clear who does what—we do not necessarily need heavy, detailed legislation for that particular purpose. I am not sure that the existence of an Act would have solved those problems in the Department of Transport.

I should perhaps mention one aspect of my experience on entering No. 10 Downing Street, in March 1974. The then Cabinet Secretary, Sir John Hunt, and I had a series of intensive negotiations, assisted by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, on precisely this subject. The result was what we called the concordat, a list of so-called general rules on access to committees, papers and people which was issued to Whitehall. This concordat gave the policy unit necessary access, and in return we assured permanent officials that we would not cross wires, usurp the role of Ministers or seek to replace the normal channels of communication between officials and Ministers. It established in detail where special advisers go and what they see and set no limit on their access to their Ministers. It allowed the flexibility of extra access following consultation so that everyone would know what was going on.

I believe that the arrangement worked, although my four Civil Service colleagues may dissent. I also suggest that it is a more practical and flexible path on this specific issue than legislation, which is often rigid and—as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said from his experience—set in concrete and too heavy handed. Each department could take this approach with its own general rules together with the existing code of conduct, refined to specific needs and subject to revision with each new administration and Minister.

I also think that special advisers might benefit from a brief period of training and induction. They do perform a distinct and valuable role, and I do not believe that a mere six or seven dozen of them are a mighty threat to the great Civil Service machine. However, they will perform their distinctive role better for their Ministers if they work closely with the official machine and if both sides are clear and educated on their own territorial boundaries and responsibilities.

I was encouraged by the characteristically sensible comments by Sir Andrew Turnbull in The Times today and think that this particular issue can mainly be settled departmentally. Sir Andrew says that it can be done following the No. 10 Downing Street Policy Unit model. I hope that that is the task which will be followed, even within the context of an Act addressing the wider issues raised in this excellent debate.

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Holme on initiating this vital debate. As he observed, it is particularly timely coinciding as it does with Sir Andrew Turnbull's interview in today's The Times.

As many noble Lords have remarked, in the past 20 years, the Civil Service has had to operate in a very turbulent milieu. Successive governments have introduced a plethora of innovations in the name of modernising the apparatus of the state. It is of course the duty of government to bring in new methods in order to discharge their duties in whatever efficacious way they think fit. But these have occurred without the slightest attention being paid to the need for proper accountability. It is not any one particular reform that may be objected to in this context; rather, it is their aggregative effect that is at question. As I have said before in your Lordships' House, in sum total they have given rise to the political demi-monde, a labyrinthine series of quagmirish networks populated by "hived off' state agencies, quangos, task forces, think tanks, policy czars, unaccredited peripatetic plenipotentiaries, management consultants and lobbyists. They are the policy context in which the Civil Service has to work.

It is this demi-monde that the Civil Service has had to learn to live with somehow or other. If we had a written constitution, these recent innovations in the workings of the state could not have occurred without adequate provisions being made for robust public accountability. Some of the senior Whitehall mandarinate, such as Sir Andrew Turnbull seemingly, believe that there should be an extension of the demi-monde and that he and his official colleagues are quite capable of adapting to it in some sort of undefined manner. That, of course, is the problem. Others such as Sir Richard Wilson, current head of the Civil Service, appear to argue that the service and many of its qualities for independence, objectivity, merit appointment and non-partisanship, will be unable to withstand much more encroachment by the demi-monde. That is why Sir Richard proposes a Civil Service Act which would put the permanent element of the Executive on a statutory basis. Such an Act is commonplace in most other liberal democracies and would go a long way in delineating the precise role of the service vis-ä-vis the denizens of the demi-monde.

Formal codification of this sort would not only restore a large measure of accountability to the Executive branch of government but would have the additional benefits of making it more amenable to effective scrutiny by the legislative branch and review by the judicial branch. While the institutions and processes of government may become outdated, the basic principles of democracy, of which accountability is among the most important, do not. The constitutional canons of the 19th century are still valid, and they need equally to be applied and adapted to meet our contemporary arrangements. Governments are criticised for their acts of commission when these fall short or go awry, but they are really upbraided for their acts of omission that may well be equally harmful to the good ordering of affairs.

The introduction of a Civil Service Act, now long overdue, would restore public faith in the Government's commitment to constitutional reform. This received a welcome fillip last week when it was announced that the Prime Minister was willing to appear twice a year before the Liaison Committee consisting of the Select Committee Chairmen of another place. That is a clear example of improving public accountability. Commitment to speedy introduction of a Civil Service Act would be another.

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Holme, for introducing this debate. I am encouraged that there is much agreement today about the role of Ministers, political advisers and civil servants and about the need for clarity. It goes without saying that I agree about the enormous value that we derive from a non-political permanent Civil Service that includes appointments to the most senior level. However, I also agree that there is much benefit to be gained from continuing to open up appointments at senior levels to give outsiders the opportunity to compete on merit. Some progress has been made in recent years, but I think that there is probably scope to go further.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I am also persuaded that there is an important role for temporary "expert" advisers who have proven policy skills which appeal to Ministers to assist in the policy process. However, it is important that Ministers, in taking advantage of those skills, appreciate the policy skills that the permanent Civil Service brings. I do not particularly like the fashionable distinction that maintains that Ministers and advisers should set policy whereas delivery is down to the Civil Service. In my experience, it is important that those charged with delivery are fully involved in policy design, and furthermore that policymakers understand that the quality of their design will have a substantial influence on the chances of successful delivery.

I do not think that anyone who has worked at a senior level within Whitehall now doubts that there is also an important role for "political" special advisers. Throughout my time in the Civil Service, there was very little problem with "the borderline" with permanent civil servants. Although there have been some high-profile exceptions, I do not think that they should cloud what has generally been a very positive relationship. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that it is vital that departmental press offices should be staffed by civil servants who provide information in a factual and objective way. That gives confidence to the world outside that they are getting a straight story.

However, I am in the minority today in that I am not yet persuaded that there is an urgent need for a Civil Service Act. I am not sure that such an Act would make a huge difference in practice. It seems that Ministers, civil servants and political advisers generally do know their responsibilities, and the arrangement works well most of the time. When it does not, it tends to be because of personalities and circumstances rather than the absence of statute.

My perception is that within Whitehall there is a marketplace for advice. In practice Ministers will listen to advice from a variety of sources and make their judgment on their view of the merits of that advice. Civil servants do not have a monopoly of policy skills and therefore cannot expect to have a monopoly in the supply of advice. Like all marketplaces there is some role for rules to ensure fair trading, but my tentative view remains that this is best achieved through codes of conduct and clarification. At the same time we need to be sufficiently flexible to cope with future evolution rather than trying to fix things at any point in time.

In coming to that view I was very much influenced by the observation that in the commercial world management practices evolve over time in many ways. We see this in relation to outsourcing and in relation to the proportion of senior management who come from within or outside organisations. We see it in different methods of appointment and the extent to which people use consultants and outside advisers in a whole variety of ways. I am wary about seeking to legislate for best practice today knowing how far life and management practices could evolve in the future. I worry that whatever we set out to define today would not be terribly robust very far into the future.

My own view is that before deciding on whether or not we need legislation, we need much more debate and a greater degree of consensus about some of the substantive issues that have been discussed today. Only when that consensus has been achieved and some of the issues that clearly concern noble Lords have been resolved should we consider whether legislation is necessary or whether just as much could be achieved by a rather greater degree of clarification that could be brought about in some other way.

My Lords, I, too, welcome the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Holme. I wish to reinforce the call for a Civil Service Act and, in the few minutes available to me, to suggest that such an Act is a necessary but not sufficient condition for improving the quality of government in this country.

The case for a Civil Service Act is a persuasive one because of changes in the nature of government. Government in this country has never been some homogeneous whole. It has comprised several parts, and the relationship between them has been one of interdependence. It has been an interdependence of defined parts, each proceeding on the basis of respect for the others. That mutual respect has declined in recent years. We have seen conflict and, more especially, a blurring of the boundaries that have been a feature of British government.

The change that has occurred is, I believe, largely though not wholly, for the reasons mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, the consequence of a trend towards a centralisation of power—the Prime Minister seeking greater autonomy in policy making—and in recent years exaggerated and hence unsustainable expectations of what civil servants should and can do. The Cabinet Secretary has been left with the unenviable task of defending what were previously well-understood norms as to the respective roles of Ministers and civil servants.

Exaggerated expectations may to some degree be attributed to the lack of previous experience on the part of Ministers. There has always been a problem in that each Minister, when appointed to head a department, has basically had to re-invent the wheel. Ministers come in with no training and usually with very little guidance as to what is expected of them. The way in which one Minister runs a department may bear little relationship to how other Ministers run theirs. This is a problem but one ameliorated to some extent if Ministers have spent some years in junior office. In 1997, a new government was elected and most new Ministers had no prior experience of government. There had been some seminars laid on for them in opposition, but in practice this did not appear to equip them for the management of departments.

This analysis leads me to the conclusion that a Civil Service Act is necessary but not sufficient. It is necessary in order to establish the relationship between the different parts of government. However, by itself it is not sufficient. As Sir Richard Wilson mentioned in his recent speech, such an Act would be no guarantee of good behaviour. I believe that it should be complemented by a structured programme of training for senior Ministers. Government in this country has been the preserve of amateurs: Ministers and senior officials have never been subject to professional training. Senior civil servants are managers but their focus has been primarily that of policy advice. Some training is provided through the Centre for Management and Policy Studies, not only for officials but also now, I gather, for junior Ministers. What is needed is a more rigorous training for senior Ministers so that there can be a dissemination of best practice and also in order that Ministers can gain some understanding of the role and relationship of Ministers to civil servants. Stipulating functions and responsibilities by statute is valuable—arguably now it is necessary—but it only takes us so far. To understand the fundamentals of relationships, of how government has developed and how Ministers can get the most out of their departments—in a way that brings out the best in their officials—requires normative guidance and an understanding of best practice.

I have little doubt that the Minister will reiterate that the Government are committed to the introduction of a Civil Service Bill. I shall be interested to know whether the Government also accept that such a measure should be complemented by a training programme for all incoming Ministers. Stipulating responsibilities and relationships is one thing; appreciating them is another. The two must go together.

My Lords, I also welcome the debate. I do not want to be a "party pooper" by opposing the convivial atmosphere in favour of a Civil Service Bill. I am in favour of a Civil Service Bill. I believe that a well conceived Civil Service Bill could do a bit of good and not much harm. However, I lay stress on the words "well conceived".

The noble Lord, Lord Holme, is in a hurry as regards a Bill. However, what is in the Bill matters much more than that we have a Bill. A rush to legislation would not necessarily be right in this case. I say that particularly because if we rush to legislation now we should be rather dominated by what seems to me a febrile and short-run controversy about political advisers. There are many public servants present who are more distinguished than I should ever dream of being. However, if one looks at the governance of our country and the state of our Civil Service and the issues facing it—openness, the skills required, the way it is managed and so on and so forth—special advisers come rather low down the list. I hope that we shall not become fixated on that. Having said that, as a former special adviser I shall demonstrate that I am fixated on it by stating my view of how to deal with the problem, at least in part.

Much of the problem with special advisers arises because we treat them like some kind of ersatz civil servants or centaur civil servants, half man, half beast. We cannot quite get the special adviser concept to fit into the Civil Service box. That is partly because civil servants and special advisers are paid out of the same pot of money voted in the same way by Parliament and subject to the same scrutiny.

My proposal, which I put to the Public Administration Committee in the Commons, is that special advisers should be treated differently. They should be treated in the same way as aides to the opposition are treated and provided for through the Short money, which is specifically voted by Parliament for that purpose. That means that every year the Government would have to justify to Parliament the amount of money they wanted to spend on special advisers and the number of special advisers that that would support. I am pleased to say that the Public Administration Committee adopted my proposal. I was not the least bit surprised that the Government rejected it because of course they would like to be able to appoint as many special advisers as they like at whatever salaries they think they can get away with and with the minimum of parliamentary scrutiny.

I believe that Parliament should take a different view. There is now a chance to get this matter going again. The Wicks inquiry, which I very much welcome, heard evidence from the proposers of the measure and is taking an interest in it. I hope that with the support of this House the Government can be made to think again and the position of special advisers can be regulated at least in the regard that I mentioned.

Finally, let us suppose that a Bill came before both Houses. This week a Joint Committee was established to examine the Communications Bill. That is a complicated piece of legislation involving big but not partisan issues. If we have a Bill on the subject we are discussing, there is a great deal to be said for having a Joint Committee of Parliament to examine it—it should he bipartisan as the legislation will be of use only if it is bipartisan—taking in the great wisdom we have seen displayed in this House and which I know exists in the Public Administration Committee and elsewhere. We should incorporate within the Bill not just the interests of government as an institution and those of civil servants as an institution but also the fundamental interest in all this of Parliament as a representative of our democracy. I hope that the Government and the Houses of Parliament will pick up that proposal and run with it.

My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holme, for introducing this important topic. I should declare my interests: my father was a permanent civil servant, my son was a political adviser, my daughter works for the National Health Service and I was a contract civil servant for five years —I was chief executive of a government agency: the Met Office. Because of its international activities, I was able to observe how civil services operate in other countries.

As other noble Lords have noted, there is no questioning the fact that the British Civil Service continues to have very high calibre staff. They are trusted by Ministers and are expected, as they have done for 200 years or more, to take independent decisions. They do that knowing very well that if they make mistakes, they cannot be quite sure that they will not take the rap. They certainly cannot be sure that the doctrine of ministerial responsibility always prevails.

That theoretical aspect to the operation of the Civil Service is one that a new Act needs to address, especially in light of more open government. It is that unclear element in the relationship between civil servants and Ministers that sometimes gives rise to anonymous briefings and extraordinary misunderstandings about the truth. One remembers Hilaire Belloc's ditty:

"Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,

It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes".

I agree with other noble Lords about the need for political advisers. Implicitly, they refer only to political advice to Ministers, but every senior civil servant needs extremely acute eyes, ears and political advice to perform effectively in relation to Whitehall, Westminster and the wider world.

No one is proposing to offer political advisers to the chief executive of the Met Office or the Passport Agency, so what is to be done? Short of recruiting the extraordinarily sophisticated cadres from the French grandes écoles, we need drastically to improve the political training of all civil servants. That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. Most civil servants work far from Whitehall but they need to understand how the Civil Service, government and politics work. They also need to understand the demimonde, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, called it, and how that relates to the UK system as a whole. I recall inviting a senior police officer to a local Labour Party meeting. He had never previously been to a political meeting in his life.

Many civil servants and politicians sometimes have a better education of the whole system when they visit the United States as Fulbright scholars than they have ever experienced through the UK. I very much hope that the training of UK civil servants is improving in relation to that more political role.

Finally, I very much hope that the Minister will allow civil servants to give evidence during the discussions on the new Act and the new arrangements. In the past, some civil servants have been severely criticised or prevented from doing so. We need to have a wide range of input, not simply from Cabinet Secretaries.

My Lords, there has been legislation on the public service before, but one has to go back to the 18th century to find it. That legislation arose because Ministers in charge of departments had made it a practice to recruit Members of Parliament and put them on the departmental payrolls so as to control their vote. It is worth reflecting on the fact that the first legislation regarding the Civil Service was to prevent the corruption of Parliament.

We should remind ourselves of what the Northcote-Trevelyan report was up to. It was trying to improve the quality of public service, as we are doing today, to eliminate, in its words, "the unambitious, indolent and incapable" and to recruit the best graduates from the universities, which were themselves then subject to fundamental reforms. It concluded that,

"it can only be done through the medium of an Act of Parliament".

The Cabinet decided in 1854 to introduce a short Bill on that subject, but it did not do so because there was a barrage of criticism when the Northcote-Trevelyan report appeared. It was only when the administrative bungling and scandals of the Crimean War brought that matter again to its attention that it set up an arrangement that was based on an Order in Council under the Royal prerogative. That has been the basis for all subsequent legislation. The Orders in Council that were recently passed were not particularly controversial. The public have not been particularly well informed about what is happening. The Civil Service Department no longer exists. It is not clear how its responsibilities are being discharged or who is responsible for them.

The main point that leads me to feel that we should move towards legislation on the public service is the fact that something is happening to the unwritten constitution. It is changing in front of our eyes. It has been widely noted that the Cabinet now meets less regularly and for shorter periods. I suspect that our inherited constitutional system is undergoing a gradual but definite change. It is certainly an advantage of unwritten constitutions such as ours that they are able to respond to new situations more quickly and with greater ability. That flexibility may be its greatest strength.

However, the converse must also be noted—that underlying principles and concepts tend to be overlooked in our scheme of things. It is a characteristic of British thinking that we tend to concentrate on practical matters that need to be dealt with and that we have less regard for the underlying principles that should motivate us. We need to review the workings of our present arrangements, possibly with a view to an Act that sets out some principles—not detailed points of administration—so that we know what we are aiming for. That is why it would be desirable to produce a Bill containing those principles.

We still need to recruit the ablest young men and women to work for our society as a whole. The process must be open and fair. Any tendency to revert to political patronage in the service of the state should be carefully controlled. One possibility is to execute the decision of the Cabinet in 1854 and to pass a short Bill on the subject that sets out those principles. As they say, it is never too late to mend.

My Lords, I add my voice to those who are totally unpersuaded about the need for legislation on this matter. First, that is because we have had much too much constitutional legislation, and a period of digestion would be in order. Secondly, it is because if there were such legislation, it would either be far too restrictive and inflexible—it would not enable the government to adapt to what is happening in the real world, which we cannot predict—or it would be so full of loopholes as to be pretty useless.

I am reminded that between 1967 and 1970, my noble friend Lord Howell and I spent some time working on potential changes in the machinery of government. Because the election of 1970 was a busy moment for important politicians, I was delegated to discuss some of our ideas with the two great giants in Whitehall—Sir Burke Trend, then Secretary to the Cabinet, and Sir William Armstrong, then head of the Civil Service. At that time, one of our main proposals was to set up a body that became the Central Policy Review Staff, or CPRS. At that time, we thought that it should be under the Prime Minister. I was quickly persuaded by those two mandarins that that was not a good idea and that it should work for the Cabinet as a whole. That, of course, is what happened. It was a useful exercise, particularly, I suppose, because it was set up under Lord Rothschild, to whom the famous adage of Lord Curzon really did apply:

"No man should be Viceroy of India to whom that job is an honour".

It was only when Lord Rothschild departed that the arrangement crumbled and subsequent Prime Ministers scrapped it. That was an important innovation which required no legislation either to set it up or wind it up.

Why does all of this matter? One reason is because we want good government. That means honest, responsive and cost-effective government. Perhaps even more, it is because we want government that is perceived as being honest, responsive and cost-effective. To the people of Britain—this is the case in many countries—perception of government is at the same time both fuzzy and sharp. It is fuzzy because they do not make a clear distinction between the legislature and the executive—or even between the executive and the judiciary, let alone between the Commons and the Lords or between permanent, temporary, political or special adviser civil servants. That is unlike the United States whose constitution deliberately separates the legislature and the executive. British government is even more fuzzy in relation to Ministers, civil servants and the hybrid special adviser. Equally, perception can be quite sharp. For the individual citizen, the impact of government is of huge importance, when it is important at all. The great thing about France is that we can learn from it in particular matters because so often things happen in France that—thank God—never actually quite happen in Britain. The French government system is most elitist and authoritarian. The typical Frenchman does not believe that a parliament is capable of defending his interests. Thus when the mob takes to the streets, the people support the mob—which is totally different from the United Kingdom where the people support the government of the day.

In our country, there is confidence in Parliament and still in the Civil Service. It may be eroding but confidence is largely a product of commonsense behaviour. It is the responsibility of those in government—particularly the head of the government of the day—to ensure that standards of behaviour are observed. I have always been a great believer in the need for Ministers to resign when necessary—not because they are necessarily to blame but it gives more power to their successors. When things go wrong, action should be taken. But I do not believe that legislation is needed. The machinery of government is far too complicated to legislate on the lines to which the Motion refers. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's view, if he has one.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holme, for taking the initiative in arranging this debate. On an earlier occasion, I declared both my fraternal interests as a special adviser and civil servant. I am probably the most junior ex-civil servant to take part in the debate. I never was a Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary, Chief Executive or anything similar. Maybe that is to the good.

Clearly we will get a Civil Service Act because the Government have committed themselves to having one. It will come eventually. But in their shoes, I would not hurry—especially not to produce a Civil Service Act on the lines suggested in the Motion. Focusing so tightly on clarifying and defining roles smacks to me of the boilermakers union at the height of its powers. Defining roles is a subsidiary issue. I rather agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that it is likely to be counter-productive, by setting in concrete something that needs to be flexible. We may end up stifling change instead of encouraging it.

Equally, further important changes are needed in the Civil Service but one does not need legislation that can be done, as it has been done satisfactorily in the past, by executive order.

A number of noble Lords are het up about special advisers. My own experience of them has been almost entirely positive. I found them a lively source of ideas that offered a fresh perspective from outside. 'They helped to insulate civil servants from political pressures by keeping political tasks at bay. Far from seeing special advisers as a threat to the independence of the Civil Service or to our constitutional order, the process of government would probably benefit from having rather more of them.

I would like a higher proportion of special advisers selected for their expertise, rather than just for their political affiliation, and to see them spread more widely through the government machine or process—instead of them all congregating around ministerial private offices, where they can become a centre for skulduggery.

We want to avoid at all costs the French or German model, where a lot of politically affiliated civil servants hang around waiting for their lot to get back into power. I hope that we shall not approach the issue of special advisers from the point of view of limiting and restricting their role but of maximising their usefulness to government.

As to further Civil Service reform, I agree with the views reported in The Times this morning of Sir Andrew Turnbull—the new Cabinet Secretary and my former colleague. We need far more people whose talents and expertise lie in delivering services to the public and project management. Civil servants ought to be given much more responsibility earlier. In my experience, one of the greatest differences is that people outside the Civil Service are given responsibility much sooner and stand or fall by their performance. We need that culture in the Civil Service too, so that poor performers will be dispensed with. Sir Andrew is quoted as saying that the Civil Service cannot be a job for life.

I should like to see time-limited contracts for all appointments at senior civil servant level, with those appointments advertised outside. I have little doubt that my own Civil Service career would have foundered earlier had I needed to meet those requirements. Even so, it is desirable to make changes of that sort. My worry is that by focusing on a Civil Service Act, particularly of the scope proposed, we may be neglecting what is really important and pursing instead a rather legalistic and pedantic approach—which will do nothing much to improve the effectiveness of government.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holme, who is, not for the first time, a valuable and timely voice for common sense. Finding refuge in the opaque may be amusing and can certainly be clever but it is seldom particularly honourable. That, for me, is the great attraction of a Civil Service Act—not a neurotically rushed Bill but one that offers the possibility of injecting clarity and order into what has become a disorderly and thoroughly negative national obsession.

I do not believe for one moment that we can get the genie back into the bottle, so we have to deal with the situation as we find it. I entirely understand the reservations that have been expressed during the past one and a half hours because, to a degree, I work within the system. But please believe me—even the best arguments against such an Act would strike discord among a public conditioned to accept transparency as the desirable norm.

My limited contribution to this debate is as someone who, for the past five years, has served—to quote the noble Lord, Lord Holme—as one of the "thinly disguised" consultants. Or was it thinly disguised peers? Most of my family would probably agree with the latter. Five years ago today, I entered what was, to me, an alien world of hierarchies, some of them hard to fathom. I met civil servants involved in policy creation, a group involved in policy advice and, well down the totem pole, a larger group involved with policy implementation. It was there, among the untouchables, that I found my natural niche.

What followed has been without doubt the most satisfying and thoroughly enjoyable period of my working life. I have met and worked with remarkable and entirely committed people. For the most part, the people whom I have met in public service could give a real lesson in commitment and decency to the vast majority of the people that I met over 30 years in the private sector.

I work across departments, urging coherence and timeliness to a group of evermore receptive colleagues. I do not recognise for one moment the scenarios painted in the wake of the Jo Moore shambles. I have dealt with remarkable people, who displayed remarkable civility and a remarkable sense of what is best for this country. I am very proud to have worked with them.

I agree also with the noble Lord, Lord Holme, when he urges us to stop demonising political advisers. It may sell newspapers but does not serve the objectives of good or effective government.

My Lords, I do not know whether any Civil Service Act would apply also to the Diplomatic Service, which relies on an entirely separate Order in Council. My own experience as head of the Diplomatic Service for five years was that the relationship between the small handful of special advisers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the career public servants who staff that office and overseas posts was not only unproblematic but that they worked extremely closely together as members of a team. I understand that happy situation still applies, some 11 years later.

I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for intervening, but in the brief time available I want to deploy some of the arguments for ensuring that the Diplomatic Service continues to operate as a highly effective and professional branch of the public service—and that it receives the necessary resources to cope with the wide and increasing variety of diplomatic, political and commercial challenges that faces it around the world.

I remind the House of the regular support and advice that our 226 overseas posts provide to government and business, by lobbying—often through personal contacts that would not be easily accessible from occasional visits or by long-distance communications; by professional advice that draws on commercial and political expertise, and a good knowledge of the people involved locally at top decision-making levels; and by underpinning the Government's foreign policy work overseas, which has strengthened Britain's reputation abroad and helps to create a climate that promotes the United Kingdom's political, strategic and commercial interests.

I commend this Government for maintaining, as their predecessors have done, a global foreign policy. But an ambitious foreign policy agenda requires adequate resources. I hope, therefore, that the forthcoming spending review will be generous in allotting extra funds for the Diplomatic Service to enable my successors in King Charles Street to retain an effective, and truly global, service.

The three Secretaries of State whom I served as Permanent Under-Secretary—two of whom are Members of this House—will recall the constant necessity to have contingency plans ready for post closures, in case of the need for financial retrenchment. If the Foreign Office had been forced in the last spending review to close any posts, it is easy to imagine that the axe might well have fallen on some in Central Asia, with serious subsequent consequences for our influence and effective diplomacy after the events of 11th September.

I still believe, as strongly as I ever have, that we possess in the Diplomatic Service a uniquely effective tool to promote our interests world-wide. It is also remarkably cost effective. The Foreign Office budget for this year is no more than 0.09 per cent of GDP. I should point out that 87 of our overseas posts have no more than four UK-based staff, and 21 have only one. Even if one includes expenditure on the British Council and on the BBC World Service, the total budget of £1.2 billion is roughly equivalent to the budget of Birmingham City Council.

Even a small amount of money spent now on conflict pre-emption will save much larger sums required later on conflict prevention. Adequate funding for the service is important for British industry and, indeed, for Britain's wider interests, including the consular protection and advice that the service can provide for the 56 million, or so, of our compatriots who now travel overseas each year.

I make no apology for using this debate as an opportunity to remind your Lordships of the vital contribution that the professionalism of this small branch of the public service makes towards global stability. I do not believe that an Act is required for the Diplomatic Service, but I urge the Government to ensure that it continues to receive the resources that it needs.

My Lords, I shall not follow the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, in his argument about the Diplomatic Service, although my two years as a special adviser in the Foreign Office left me with nothing but admiration for that service and the task that it performs. Similarly, I shall not spend an over-long time congratulating my noble friend Lord Holme on initiating this debate. Indeed, the quality of the debate is congratulation enough. However, when the Minister responds, I hope that he will promise a much longer debate on the subject, and further consultation with the expertise that exists in this House. Although I understand the conventions of the House—as I am sure is the case with the noble Baroness—stamping on, and cutting short, the First Civil Service Commissioner when she was trying to give noble Lords some information earlier reminded me a little of the Labour Party conference giving Dennis Healey four minutes to explain his policy towards the IMF.

When the Labour Government came to power in 1997, it is perhaps worth remembering that the big question was whether the Civil Service was capable of adapting to new masters after 18 years of one-party rule. Most observers have concluded that the service passed that test superbly—something for which the noble Lord, Lord Butler, deserves great credit. In addition to the fears of politicisation, there were concerns that what has been called "the public service ethos" had been weakened by the various initiatives of out-sourcing, privatisation, and market testing that had been undertaken during the Thatcher era.

The latter was one of the aspects that we considered in the Select Committee of this House, chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, of which I was a member and which reported in 1998. It is worth repeating our conclusion:

"The evidence we received testified to the high standards of efficiency, integrity, impartiality and intellectual rigour which continue to characterise the Civil Service".

In 1997, this Government inherited a Civil Service, which, although reduced in number, retained both the ethos of public service and a capacity to serve the government of the day. Yet, after five years of Labour Government, there are both criticisms and concerns about the Civil Service and its future direction Which make this debate timely. As the Guardian pointed out in an article headlined "Labour's wear and tear on the Whitehall machine" on 2nd March 2002:

"It should have been a marriage made in heaven. Instead the honeymoon lasted barely months. Long before the Stephen Flyers affair the applause had stopped; now the relationship has become seriously dysfunctional".

It is no use No. 10 Downing Street pretending that there have not been media briefings expressing dissatisfaction at the inability of career civil servants to carry through radical reforms. It is equally pointless to deny that there have not been complaints that political appointees have tried to bully public servants into actions of a political nature.

Of course, there are other factors at work. In his recent, much-publicised, speech on the state of our public service, the outgoing Cabinet Secretary, Sir Richard Wilson, pointed out that today's public servants have to operate in a society less deferential, more service demanding than in earlier generations. It also operates with a far more intrusive media. That is why I cannot agree with the noble Lords, Lord Armstrong, Lord Donoughue, Lord Burns, Lord Marlesford and Lord Powell, who said that a Civil Service Act was not needed.

Just as the City can no longer be governed by an unwritten code that "my word is my bond", or Parliament assume that we are all "honourable" or "noble" and, therefore, in no need of codes of conduct or declarations of interest, so the Civil Service and its values need to be protected and sustained by statutory underpinning and clear codes of conduct for both career civil servants and political appointees.

It is true to say that what had not been anticipated in 1997 was the influx into government, as part of the intake of political advisers, of a new breed of communications experts honed in a much more aggressive "get your retaliation in first" style of media relations. As the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, observed, there were—and are—cultural tensions between career civil servants trained to disseminate information and political activists trained to promote partisan political propaganda Those tensions need to be acknowledged and addressed in codes and legislation. For it is in that grey area between government information and party political propaganda that most problems have arisen.

I believe that there is a broad level of public support for the concept that the Northcote-Trevelyan principles, which have served this country well, should be the bed-rock on which our 21st-century Civil Service is built. I am not sure that there is a need for a statutory limit on the number of special advisers and other outside appointments, as long as other reforms are in place and there is full transparency about what call, and cannot, be done, with the process being kept under regular parliamentary scrutiny.

The interview given by Sir Andrew Turnbull in today's edition of The Times is both a significant and timely contribution to our debate, although I hope that it is not his last on the matter. His comment:

"We have lived without [a Civil Service Act] for 150 years",

as a justification for further delay, sounds to me more like Sir Humphrey than "the mandarin as meritocratic manager" that The Times dubs him. Having listened to today's debate, I believe that this is an idea whose time has come.

Likewise, when Sir Andrew says in the interview that worries about,

"cronyism, the wrong people getting in, people with no merit or claim",

relate to "the battles of yesteryear", I believe that that seriously underestimates the concerns that the Northcote-Trevelyan principles are being undermined by what The Times describes as,

"the clash between the West Wing style of new Labour and the Yes, Prime Minister ethos of the Whitehall establishment".

As I said, I served on the Slynn committee, and I believe that some of its recommendations bear revisiting. It specified a call for a mechanism by which civil servants could, in the public interest, report breaches in the provisions of any Act. It said that a Civil Service Act should include a requirement for an annual report to Parliament. I certainly endorse the call made by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for pre-legislative scrutiny of any such Act. It also said that Parliament's views on any prospective significant changes should be taken by the Government.

Today, the Guardian has an article assessing five years of Labour rule. It quotes an anonymous Labour insider as saying:

"If there was a mistake we made it was in not showing how much we value those who work in public services".

The question which I believe this debate raises is: have those lessons been learnt? Can we now embark on a reform of public services which is built on trust and respect for our public servants? And can we bring Parliament fully into that process of reform, which sees freedom of information as part of the fabric of a modern Civil Service and not as a damage-limitation exercise? I believe that the Government have the opportunity to obtain a genuine all-party consensus on a reform of our Civil Service. In Sir Andrew Turnbull's phrase today, it would give us a Civil Service of,

"professional management, professional people and professional tools",

but one which I believe and submit should still be on those old Northcote-Trevelyan principles of merit and political neutrality.

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Holme, for the extraordinary timeliness of his debate and also for providing in his introduction an overview of a situation which the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, referred to as a matter of public concern and urgency, and which the noble Lord, Lord Butler, called "dangerous". The noble Lord, Lord Holme, has brought together some of the most distinguished public servants in the land in a clarifying debate which, I believe, could not have occurred anywhere but in your Lordships' House, and that is a great tribute to it.

It seems that the Government have achieved a modern miracle: an all-party consensus on a controversial constitutional issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Holme, and many other noble Lords on all sides of the House said, statutory protection is now needed for the Civil Service, codifying best practice and laying down ground rules, rights and duties, and so on.

I believe that that consensus has arisen because critics see three problems. The first, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, concerns publicity or, if one prefers, vanity. Let us consider for a moment the incoming Minister. He is an omniscient being. He has seen the new Jerusalem—a vision of staggering novelty, if only people were sufficiently advanced to grasp it. He needs an advocate or a messenger—someone who can spread the news of his glory far and wide. Instead, what does he find? The classical bureaucracy, where the ideal official, according to Max Weber, conducts his office in,

"a spirit of formalistic impersonality, without hatred or passion, and hence without affection or enthusiasm".

That is not what the Minister requires at all. Enter the special adviser, who provides a magnifying glass so that onlookers can better observe the scale of the Minister's achievement.

Thus it is that half of all the 81 special advisers are now directly involved in communication work and a government press release is issued every four minutes. But let us contrast that approach to publicity with the Civil Service tradition of confidentiality. If the Civil Service had a logo, it would be a light under a bushel. Its rule of thumb is: why say one word when none will do? Therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, the stage is set for drama in the cultural clash over publicity.

But that first problem is minor compared with the second, which strikes at the heart of the vital constitutional convention of ministerial responsibility. Most certainly, there are far greater experts than me in the Chamber today, but I am told that the position is quite clear on this. A civil servant's duty is to his Minister. He carries out ministerial instructions and the Minister is answerable in public—that is, here in Parliament—for decisions made in his name. Furthermore, I gather that all decisions made by civil servants, other than those that could be construed as misconduct, are constitutionally expected to be defended by Ministers on behalf of officials who cannot answer publicly for themselves.

But what if officials were themselves perceived as having power? What if they actually did have power? Then, of course, a procedure would have to be put in place so that they became answerable in another place and in your Lordships' House. That, of course, is precisely the problem created by those famous Orders in Council for the two officials in Number 10. Those orders gave authority and, as the noble Lord, Lord Holme, and my noble friend Lord Campbell said, as did the Public Administration Committee in another place, authority should be followed by accountability to Parliament and its Select Committees.

That brings me to the third problem, before which, I have to say, the first and second problems which I described pale into insignificance. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, described it as the "demi-monde"; that is, the world of units, task forces, tsars, and so on. Many of them are peopled by those who know or are friends of politicians or, even worse, by those who are involved in raising funds for politicians.

In order to address this most sensitive of questions, perhaps your Lordships would forgive a moment of comparative history. As many people say, this Government seem to have moved us closer to a US system. To capture the genius of the US Government, scholars usually turn to the formal clauses of the US's constitution—its separation of powers, its federal system, its Bill of rights and so on.

But, curiously, the US constitution is almost silent about the type of personnel issues which we have been discussing today. Therefore, for example, when John Adams arrived as President, he showed open preference for those of his own political leanings. Jefferson sought to replace federalists with his own partisans. When Andrew Jackson took office in 1829, he found federal offices occupied by political opponents. Therefore, in his first annual message to Congress, he recommended time-limiting official appointments. His concept was simple. He said, "To the victor the spoils". That was the so-called "spoils system", which regarded government office as the peculiar property of a successful political party to be used for its own advantage.

That system caused many problems down the years, and the issue was brought to a head in America early in the first Eisenhower Administration when, by executive order, the President created "Schedule C" and transferred to it all positions of,

"a confidential or policy-determining character".

Many career officials with long and honourable records left federal service in America the next day.

The President justified his action, saying that the posts vacated should be filled by people who sympathised with his policies and were called upon to defend them. But, to critics, the move was reminiscent of the patronage and spoils system of old.

Today, the harshest critics say that we have arrived at, or are getting closer to, such a patronage system in Britain. I shall not go as far as that today but only because of my genuine sympathy for the occupants of Number 10 on whom descends a remorseless, 24-hour, round the clock, seven-day-a-week pressure from the media from the first day that they arrive in office. For them, it is war.

I also have great sympathy for them because it is clear from this debate that the difficulties arise not from the behaviour of particular individuals but from the uniquely unwritten nature of our constitution. There is no fundamental legal document to which officials and advisers can refer which contains a statement of their organisation and their responsibilities.

As many noble Lords have said, things have gone too far in the wrong direction. I would say, although I do not know whether the Minister will agree, that the present arrangements are not good for Ministers because they begin to look too clever by half; they are not good for the country either. As the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said, it adds to cynicism about our institutions.

I hope that the Minister will say why he considers that this rare consensus of all the parties has been achieved on the need for change. I am afraid that so much damage has been done to confidence that we now need legislation to solve the problem.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, for initiating this important debate. Like other noble Lords, I have been impressed by the breadth of experience and the weight of authority deployed in this debate. Clearly, too many points have been raised for me to do justice to them all at the Dispatch Box, but I shall certainly respond by letter as appropriate. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Holme, immediately on one of his central concerns regarding this Government's intentions. The Labour Party's manifesto of last year stated:

"Our Civil Service is world renowned for its independence. Labour is committed to maintaining the political impartiality of the Civil Service".

I assure noble Lords that this Government are totally committed to maintaining a non-political, permanent Civil Service.

Much of the theme running through today's discussion is consistent with the aims and objectives of the modernising and reforming programme that is already in our Civil Service. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, I did not detect an overwhelming consensus in the House. Rather like the noble Lord, Lord McNally, I heard caution expressed by noble Lords, such as the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey, Lord Powell and Lord Marlesford and even the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I also heard direct opposition to the idea of a simple Act being expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Donoughue, Lord Burns and Lord Armstrong. Of course, there may have been a weight in favour of legislation, but it is clear to me that this important debate should continue.

Like many noble Lords I welcome the contribution made by Sir Andrew Turnbull who said this morning that he wanted to see greater movement in and out of the Civil Service. I believe that that will benefit not only the Civil Service but also the private and wider public sectors and the individuals inside the Civil Service. Like the noble Lord, Lord Powell, I appreciated the emphasis that Sir Andrew appeared to place on the need for greater accountability and incentive.

We have heard wise, if conflicting, counsel on the need for legislation. As has been said many times, the debate is timely. It is an important contribution to a debate that is already under way on the future of the Civil Service. I remind noble Lords of how much work is being done in this area. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, implied in his thoughtful contribution, as he reviewed the history of this debate, that there had been a space that now is increasingly filled by committees that are busy with analysis and recommendations on greater accountability.

The process is being taken forward, for example, by the inquiry currently being conducted by the Committee on Standards in Public Life on the roles of special advisers and other civil servants. The Government welcome the committee's consultation paper that has just been issued as a positive contribution to the debate about the future of the Civil Service. The House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee also continues to take an active role in contributing to the debate and Members of this House continue to take an active interest in these issues. Their views will help to inform the way forward.

Sir Richard Wilson set out his thoughts in a speech in March, as referred to by a number of noble Lords, and today Sir Andrew Turnbull, his successor, has set out his views. We have heard from the First Civil Service Commissioner, the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. The noble Baroness and the other commissioners are playing a major role in influencing the debate and the Government are grateful to them for that. I should not overlook the role of the Civil Service trade unions. They are also participating in this wide-ranging debate.

An important discussion is already under way. As we move towards the next stages, we want to consider all the views carefully. In the meantime, the existence of a clear published framework for Civil Service activity in the form of a Civil Service code, the Civil Service management code and other key guidance documents, set out clearly for Parliament and the public the framework inside which the Civil Service works.

The Government believe that the existing framework of rules and safeguards works well and continues to be rigorously applied. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, some central, important issues were addressed in the report of the Select Committee of this House. I emphasise that in January 1998 the House of Lords Select Committee on Public Service, chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, concluded:

"The evidence we have received has shown that the current Civil Service has coped in the highest traditions of the Civil Service with the change of Government which occurred in May 1997. We have also received much evidence testifying to the continuing high standards of efficiency, integrity, impartiality and intellectual rigour which characterise the Civil Service. We pay tribute to the Civil Service for maintaining these qualities so well".

I believe that they are being maintained well today.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life visited issues relating to the Civil Service in both its first and sixth reports and I commend those reports to the House. That committee is currently considering the issue of legislation for the Civil Service as part of its inquiry, "Defining the Boundaries within the Executive: Ministers, special advisers and the permanent Civil Service". The committee asks:

"How could a Civil Service Act help define the boundaries between Ministers, special advisers and permanent civil servants?"

Therefore, we are in the middle of an interesting and constructive debate. The Government will take the committee's conclusions and recommendations into account in determining the way forward.

Noble Lords would not expect me to be able to give a detailed timetable of moves towards deciding a timetable for legislation. I stress that there is no crisis. Sir Andrew Turnbull is right. We have managed pretty well for 150 years and I have no doubt that we shall continue to manage well in the absence of a crisis.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving way. In his eloquent overview of the discussion taking place, so far he has omitted to mention when the Government will publish the discussion paper or issues paper to which they have repeatedly committed themselves and which we were told was imminent. That would focus the discussion. Although I take on board his constitutional strictures that he will not tell us the date of the publication of a Bill, presumably he can tell the House when the issues paper is to be published.

My Lords, today's debate will help to formulate government thinking on this important issue, as will other debates and inquiries that are taking place. As is self-evident today, we are in the process of handing over from one Cabinet Secretary to another. The context in which Sir Andrew has placed this debate is surely the sensible historical context. There is no crisis. It is clear from the contributions that have been made today how deep, complex and important are the issues. Therefore, I counsel noble Lords to follow me in my argument that we can debate these issues in a number of forms to our mutual advantage and we can come up with recommendations through those discussions that will help to take the whole matter forward. I assure the House that the comments made today will be carefully considered when approaching the next stage of the process.

I turn to the question of the special advisers. We would not put my noble friend Lord Puttnam in that category, though his advice has always been special given the depth of his commercial experience. I am sure we were all moved by the deeply-felt tribute that he paid to Civil Service integrity. The noble Lord, Lord Wright, commented on the professionalism of his former civil servants, though I take it that any legislation that might emerge would affect only the Home Civil Service and would not cover that area. But if that was special pleading, it was of a very elegant and persuasive nature.

I agree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Holme, that we must stop demonising the special advisers. My noble friend Lord Lipsey is right in talking about a very "febrile" atmosphere recently. When I look behind me and see the worldly face of my noble friend Lord Donoughue, I realise it is a debate and demonisation extending over 30 years. My noble friend handled it very well back in his professional capacity and put it in the right context for us today.

Civil Service advisers clearly cause concern that this is leading to a politicisation of the Civil Service. From my ministerial experience in three jobs, that has not been my impression. Much more influential in this debate has been the impression given by noble Lords with far greater experience of the Civil Service who appear to give some support to the view that special advisers are not new. That was recognised in the Wicks committee's Issues and Questions paper. They have always been a source of controversy. I noted wryly the other day that Sir John Nott, in his ministerial recollections, was saying that there had been terrible problems with a certain special adviser—Bernard Ingham—and with his boss who seemed to be obsessed with "spin". I had a powerful sense of déjä vu on reading that.

What noble Lords have said today echoes in large part the sixth report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which said,

"We believe that special advisers have a valuable role to play, precisely because they are free to act and advise in a way that a politically impartial civil servant cannot".

We have heard concern expressed about the number of special advisers there are. When in opposition we made no secret of the fact that we would have a strong centre to provide political focus and drive to the work of this Administration. That is what we have tried to do since 1997. But, again for perspective, let us remember the arithmetic. We are talking about 81 special advisers inside a Senior Civil Service of 3,500. We are firmly committed to maintaining a nonpolitical role for the Civil Service.

The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, asks for greater clarity in the respective roles of special advisers and civil servants. That is one of the issues we can put on the agenda for this extensive debate today. But we have been open about the numbers, the costs of special advisers and their duties and responsibilities. It was this Government who published for the first time ever a Model Contract for Special Advisers and a code of conduct for them. The contract and the code of conduct are explicit and public about the role of special advisers, a transparency that was not available under previous administrations. I make no party political point here. It was acknowledged in the third report of the Public Administration Select Committee which stated,

"For the first time ever a specific code for special advisers has been drawn up; it now applies to all Whitehall advisers … The Committee welcomes the Code of Conduct for Special Advisers as a clear statement of the role of advisers and a helpful strengthening of the protection provided to the neutrality of civil servants".

If the noble Baroness or other noble Lords believe that there are contradictions that have been overlooked, let us address them in the coming debate.

We have heard remarkably few anxieties expressed today in relation to the politicisation of the permanent Civil Service, no doubt again a testimony to the experience of the many noble Lords who have contributed. But the appointment of special advisers recognises that there is inevitably a political dimension to a Minister's work. By clearly distinguishing political advice and support from that provided by the official machine, we are ensuring that the key principles of an impartial Civil Service are upheld. Sir Richard Wilson recently, in evidence to the Neill committee, said that he did not think that a Senior Civil Service of 3,500 people was in danger of being swamped by special advisers. That is not what is happening. He did not see a "creeping politicisation".

Clearly, special advisers have an important role to play and it must be complementary to the work of the permanent Civil Service. I am delighted to see that Jonathan 13aume of the First Division Association, again in evidence to Neill, echoed that by saying that his members say that,

"a good Special Adviser is well worth having in any department. It is also fair to say that this government has used its Special Advisers in a much more up-front way. A good Special Adviser",

as many noble Lords have said,

"is an asset in a department, both to the Minister and the Civil Service".

The noble Lord, Lord Holme, was concerned about whistle-blowing and appeals mechanisms. Well established processes are already in place. Grievance procedures are set out in the Civil Service code. They provide for an independent line of appeal to the independent Civil Service commissioners. In addition, the code of conduct for special advisers provides a mechanism for civil servants to complain to the head of the Home Civil Service or to the First Civil Service Commissioner about the activities of a special adviser. The Public Interest Disclosure Act, which the Government introduced, also applies to civil servants, including special advisers.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, asked about the training of Ministers in many of these obscure mechanisms. I have no doubt that that could be improved. But we have an effective centre for management and policy studies which, he will be pleased to hear, I attend regularly—as do many of my colleagues—for tutorials in the art of better government.

The question of the two appointments was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. He has asked me previously and I confirm again that two civil servants have been appointed under the Civil Service Order with executive powers: Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell. The noble Lord asked whether the number would remain at two. As another noble Lord said, the order put in place an ability for three to be appointed. So far as I am aware, there are no plans to appoint a third and the number will therefore remain at two. I trust the noble Lord will accept that we have no ardent plans for the politicisation of the Civil Service in that direction.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving way. In the code of conduct for special advisers which he mentioned, there is a very important statement that they should not be responsible for the line management of permanent civil servants, including their recruitment and matters covered by their contract of employment. So that was already in the code.

My Lords, I believe that section 3·3 of the code gives the three posts in question executive powers over civil servants. That is a difference between Powell and Campbell at present and the other special advisers.

Conscious of the time, let me just say that there are other ways to bring in outsiders to try and enhance the Civil Service. They can be hired as permanent civil servants under the 12-month rule. There is a debate on how that process might be improved. Let that, too, be on our agenda.

A question was asked about the politicisation of the Civil Service through the involvement of Alastair Campbell with the COI. The chief executive of the COI remains fully accountable to Cabinet Office Ministers for the work of the COI. COI Ministers are accountable to Parliament. Individual departments remain responsible for individual advertising and publicity campaigns following a recommendation of the quinquennial review of the COI. The chief executive now has an additional role as a government chief adviser on market and communications and information campaigns. She reports to the director of communications at No. 10.

On the question of money, in real terms the spend on the COI—which in my experience is almost wholly benign—is about equal to what it was in the mid-1980s.

To conclude, the Government welcome the comments made today as a comprehensive, thoughtful and positive contribution to the debate about the future of the Civil Service. In particular, we welcome cross-party support for the key principles underpinning the role of the Civil Service and for our modernisation and reform programme. A wide-ranging debate is under way in a number of areas to which we have made an important contribution today.

We shall reflect on the contributions made by noble Lords and take them into account in the next stage of the process.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, for his reply. As I gave him notice of my question about the Central Office of Information and the dramatic increase in expenditure before the last election, perhaps he will write to me with whatever explanation the Government can find for that level of expenditure—not over time but in that immediate pre-election period.

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. As the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Saatchi, have said, it has been an extraordinarily rich debate because of the experience and perspectives of so many noble Lords. I am extremely grateful to all those who took part. I kept a rough score, just to help the Minister. Of those who expressed a view, it was roughly three to one in favour of a Civil Service Act. But of course that is not the point. The point is that the Government promised a Civil Service Act in their manifesto.

I was slightly disappointed that the Minister could not even tell us when the Government's issue paper that is to precede the Act will be published. If I may say so, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, his little passage dealing with that matter was worthy of Sir Humphrey. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

rose to call attention to the work of universities in widening participation, as set out in Universities UK's report Social Class and Participation in Higher Education; and to move for Papers.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in introducing this debate, I want to bring to the attention of the House the wonderful work being done by universities across the UK to widen participation. In doing so, I should declare an interest as chief executive of Universities UK. Perhaps I may say how much I appreciate the fact that many noble Lords will be speaking in the debate, many of them with extensive experience of higher education. I look forward to their contributions with anticipation.

In many ways, this debate follows up several of the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, raised in his debate last week—in which I was unfortunately unable to speak. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for seeking to give higher education a second bite of the cherry so soon afterwards.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, I want to welcome the words of my right honourable friend the Chancellor in his Budget speech two weeks ago, when he acknowledged the need for investment in higher education. Universities UK hopes that when he announces the results of his spending review in July, he will follow up on his commitment with hard cash.

One specific area in which I know that my right honourable friend takes a keen interest and which is one of the top 10 priorities for the Government in their second term is widening participation. I want to talk today about the vital work done on that by universities. That work is highlighted in Universities UK's recently published report, Social Class and Participation in Higher Education. For both that report and its 1998 predecessor, From Elitism to Inclusion, we are indebted among others to Professor Maggie Woodrow. Professor Woodrow was a tireless campaigner for widening participation until her untimely death in October last year.

What does the report do? It identifies good practice and evaluates the strategies of both the higher education sector and the Government in widening participation. It provides hard evidence on what works best successfully to increase participation among young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. By drawing on 23 case studies, such as the partners programme at the University of Newcastle, the report shows how targeted initiatives by individual institutions are contributing to the social inclusion agenda. Nine of those studies are entirely new and some concentrate for the first time on high-demand subject areas such as medicine and the creative arts.

Without exception, every university and higher education college in the UK is working hard to widen participation. We should be proud of their hard work. They have employed not just lone individuals but teams of dedicated staff on that work. It is not done as an afterthought but is a mainstream activity in all institutions.

Perhaps I may spend a few minutes explaining why that is so. For too long, not all those who could benefit from a university education have had the chance to go to university. That has been a tremendous waste of talent. That lack of opportunity has prevented both the individuals concerned from realising their full potential and the nation from tapping into that potential. As one of the academics at the launch of our publication, herself involved in a scheme in inner London, said, our report is,

"a celebration of unlocking the potential of many people who would not traditionally have accessed higher education".

It is illuminating to consider some specific illustrations of what higher education institutions are doing. Nottingham Trent University has developed progression partnerships—a programme that featured in the first report. I am happy to say that its combination of compacts with local schools and support programmes in the Nottingham area has led to a demonstrable increase in recruitment from those same schools.

The Guy's, King's and St Thomas's School of Medicine is working to widen access to medical courses—an area where access for students from less affluent backgrounds has in the past been especially low. The school of medicine has liaised closely with local schools in south London; provided summer courses for new students; developed new course structures; and provided support to students.

That work is not confined to England, although in other parts of the UK responsibility for such activities is now devolved. For example, the Glasgow School of Art is aiming to increase by 10 per cent the number of students from non-traditional backgrounds that it recruits to study art—another area often perceived to be largely a middle class pursuit.

Universities are also working to ensure that the courses that they offer are relevant and exciting to students, which after all is vital if we are to persuade potential students that they have something to gain from university. I urge noble Lords not to underestimate the huge transformation in what employers, the professions and students now make clear that they want from universities. A good example is the degree in surf science and technology at Plymouth University, which is meeting the needs of local business—it enjoys sponsorship from industry to prove it—and produces graduates with knowledge of areas as diverse as oceanic science, materials technology and business studies.

I use that modern example deliberately, because it is precisely such degrees that are criticised and derided because they sound untraditional by those who hanker after some mythical golden past. Yet it is rigorously academically assessed, attracts excellent students and fulfils a real need. There are many similar examples. Noble Lords associated with universities will know from their experience how frustrating are such criticisms.

Perhaps I should return to the report. It makes clear that the goals of widening and of increasing participation are not necessarily one and the same. As the Government have made clear, it is not enough simply to increase the number of students entering higher education. It has been argued that the target could be achieved by attracting more people from the same sort of background as we attract at present. We must also target more people from less affluent backgrounds who have not previously believed that university was the right option—or even an available option—for them.

The report also makes it clear that the existing mechanisms for student support need review, a fact that the Prime Minster rightly recognised in his party conference speech last year. I am glad to say that he acted on the matter by setting up the current review. I hope that the results of that review will be known soon and that it targets support where it is needed—those who are the focus of the case studies in the report.

We all recognise that the key to widening participation lies in motivating and inspiring young people in our schools. That is why so many of our institutions have compact agreements and other close links with schools in their area. For example, the Government's Aimhigher campaign is an excellent initiative. It brings together schools and universities to motivate and inspire young people to think about the benefits of going to university. Our battle is in schools; we must win the hearts and minds of our young people.

It is also important that we do not forget the role of further education colleges. If we are to meet the 50 per cent participation target, the further development of links between universities and further education colleges is vital. It is through such links that many students will find their way through to higher education. People working in both sectors are striving to achieve that.

Your Lordships will have come to expect me to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Widening participation costs money. All those efforts are likely to produce at least 30,000 extra students each and every year. The 17,000 extra members of staff needed to teach the extra students must be paid. A report to be published next week by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association will set out in stark terms the costs of staff recruitment and retention in higher education and the cost of not meeting that bill. There is recognition in all quarters that to recruit and retain non-traditional students and transfer them effectively into work or further study means additional costs. Those costs make up a significant part of the total bid for the next three years—almost £10 billion—that we have submitted to the Government in this spending round.

I shall give your Lordships one example of those additional costs. The access premium and the way in which it targets resources are critical to change. We have argued in our submission to the spending review that it should be increased to at least 20 per cent. In fact, the results of a pilot study by Universities UK and HEFCE into the real costs of widening access, which are due to be published soon, show that the extra costs of widening access are about £1,500 per student for the two institutions featured. That is a cost premium for them of roughly 35 per cent, as opposed to the 20 per cent figure identified and recommended in a report last year by the Select Committee on Education and Employment in another place.

Of course, all universities are concerned to ensure that our students, whatever their background, have a high quality experience at university. That requires university teaching to be informed by research, provided by high quality and motivated staff. Students must work in buildings fit for the purpose and use equipment comparable to that found in their eventual workplace. We would not want to encourage more students from less well-off backgrounds to enter higher education only for them to be deprived of a first-class education when they got there.

The Government must invest in all those areas. As our submission to the spending review makes clear, it would be investment for success, not only success in reaching the 50 per cent target by 2010 or in widening participation, but the future success of an increasingly diverse student population. That investment will be worth it. The engagement of the students with the world as socially responsible, economically active and enthusiastic members of society will result in nothing less than the continued success of our civilised, knowledge-based economy.

Everyone is trying to reach out to those who, in the past, have not had a chance to benefit from higher education. Last century, the Swiss psychologist, lean Piaget, said:

"The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done".

It is vital that we do not make the mistake of earlier generations and fail to harness the full potential of all those who could benefit from going to university. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, it must be galling for the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, a devoted supporter of the Government, to find that many of the reports produced by her Universities UK do not support her as she might wish. Universities UK has identified a huge funding gap in teaching and research, and the Government have not filled it. The noble Baroness indicated in her concluding words that the document that she has produced today is a menu without prices. She expects a huge amount of money, but I do not expect for one moment that the Government will provide it.

The Government's policy for our universities is a mess. It is riddled with political correctness and hypocrisy, and it is beginning to wreak real damage on our universities. The first mistake was to set the target of 50 per cent participation by 2010. I set a participation rate of 30 per cent in 1990. I chose that figure because, in developed countries, the most effective universities are in countries with a participation rate of about 30 per cent. France is an example of how mass high education can make a mess of things. In that country, there is a participation rate of 58 per cent. That is why so many French students now come to British universities and why few overseas students go to French universities. There are classes of 500 and tutorial groups of 50. Half the students who go to French universities fail their first degree, and there is a huge drop-out rate.

Mass higher education inevitably means massive drop-out rates. It is already happening in the UK. There was a drop-out rate of 41 per cent at the University of North London last year, 33 per cent at Thames Valley and South Bank and 31 per cent at Bolton. Why is it happening? It is too easy to say that it is because students must contribute to the cost of their education. A really committed student will stick to the course. Our clearing system pushes many students who do not get onto the course that they had wanted into undersubscribed courses that they do not want. It is little wonder that so many leave. As the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said in his debate the other day, we need a massive expansion of further education in this country—as the noble Baroness said, it could be linked in some cases to higher education—to produce practical, vocational training. Thus we will avoid the drop-out rate.

The Government's policy is hypocritical. They have decided that more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds should go to our leading universities. I do not object to that as a social objective, rather than an educational objective. I was the first generation of my family to go to university. However, we should recognise what Oxford, Cambridge, University College, Imperial College and the LSE are doing to attract more disadvantaged pupils.

The Government should not ask why top universities do not take more students from disadvantaged backgrounds: they should ask why so many secondary schools fail to produce students with the right qualifications and ambitions who want to go to those universities. Graduates and undergraduates are not created by government decree or by bullying; they are created by the quality of the education that the child experiences from the age of five. That is where the Government so frequently fall down. The universities have not failed. They should not be named and shamed by Margaret Hodge and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Graduates are not made by government decree; they are made by improving the system of secondary education.

Margaret Hodge, Minister for Higher Education, recently said that she wants the top universities to take in students even if they do not have the appropriate qualifications. I am only pleased that Margaret Hodge is not in charge of the selection of the English soccer team! As your Lordships know, the English Soccer team is totally socially unrepresentative of our country. There are no pupils from private schools, grammar schools or city technology colleges in the team. Why should they not be put there in order to give them the opportunity to represent their country and to earn massive sums of money? Fortunately, that will not happen but it is the read-across to another area of activity.

It is ironic that only this week the universities of Manchester, Birmingham and Warwick have opened up a selling office in Seoul, South Korea, in order to attract more overseas students from that country. The Government fully support that policy because there are 17,000 South Korean students at our universities. However, let us think for a moment what that means. Parents from South Korea will be able to buy places for their children at British universities. Those children do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds but from highly privileged backgrounds, fully supported by the Government. Provided that one is not British, if one can afford it one can be asked to pay. Therefore the parents in South Korea are to be given the opportunity denied to parents in Southend, Southport and Southampton. Therein lies the hypocrisy of this Government.

A fundamental review is needed of the funding of universities. I want to see the return of our universities being genuinely independent private institutions with little or no government interference. That means top-up fees and substantial tax breaks to establish scholarship funds. However, I would like to see those return because I would trust the universities to make a better job of running themselves than the Government running them.

My Lords, perhaps I may remind noble Lords that as soon as "5" appears on the clock the time is taken and that there are many speakers on the list.

My Lords, this morning at the LSE's open day I spent two hours talking to potential students and came face to face with the sensitivity of this issue. I was asked by a suspicious young man whether it really is true that my department offers A, B, B as its conditional offer. With 20 applications per place, clearly many students did not believe that. We do that because we like to have good students from state schools who may not have been as well taught as the many students from private schools who apply.

I stood there looking at 200 students, many of them from private schools and extremely self-confident. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in saying that many of them were children of the international élite, born elsewhere, and sent at the age of 16 to English public schools to attain the A-levels or international baccalaureate which will get them into British universities. I recognise that we are in a highly competitive world. Indeed, we are operating against the whole bias of a British school system in which middle-class parents invest between £50,000 and £100,000 in their children between the ages of five and 18 in order to get them into good universities. The people who do that are precisely those middle-class Mail and Times readers who are the target voters for new Labour.

I remember that when I was teaching at the University of Oxford The Times published an article on Oxford attempting in its application process to take into account the nature of the school students attended. I remember being almost physically attacked by one of the people living in my street who was paying a great deal of money for his children to attend St Paul's and who thought that the measure was a gross invasion of the investment he was making and that it was being denied by government policy.

Let us recognise that part of the problem of social balance, particularly in our better universities, is that we are trying to swim against a very strong tide. I agree that universities should pursue an active policy of attracting students from disadvantaged groups and I am happy that the London School of Economics does so, among other things. We have Saturday schools and links with special schools and we attempt to look out for bright children from disadvantaged regions as we go through our applications.

My doubts about what the Government have been doing relate to the multiplication of targets and special funding schemes and envelopes which make university funding and management more complex. I remember the vice-chancellor complaining two years ago about receiving an invitation to apply for a competitive scheme to run summer schools with a six-week deadline before it closed and having to ask himself whether it was worth devoting a huge amount of resources to a competition in which half the applicants would fail. That is not sensible. Universities are promoting a range of schemes: summer schools, Saturday schools, links to schools in target areas, sixth-form colleges and further education colleges.

We should also recognise that the suggestion that we may move towards a comprehensive university in which FE colleges and universities may merge—the universities of Bradford and Central England are discussing that at present—should help considerably in breaking down some of the barriers between sixth-form colleges, further education colleges and universities.

However, we must recognise the diversity of universities and the role of local and regional universities which are, as one of the studies indicates, attracting students who are more likely to go to universities if they can stay at home, particularly if they are young Asian women, than if they are asked to travel abroad. I suggest that universities need to be encouraged to develop their own scholarship and bursary schemes. I regret that for so long the Treasury rules limited the ability of universities to award scholarship funds to students from poorer backgrounds if they were not to lose their Treasury-assisted means-tested grants.

I encourage politicians of all parties to remind successful graduates that they have a moral responsibility to contribute to their universities for funds for those who would like to follow. However, there are limits to what universities can do on their own. Time and time again we find ourselves making remedial work for failures of under-funded schools. I note from the Birmingham report that the university recognises that achievement cannot be measured in isolation from environment. It is stated at the beginning of the report that:

"The raising of aspirations is an important component of widening participation. Years 11 and 12 in school are relatively late".

Many of the problems we have of widening access to universities lie in our schools—in our sixth-forms and earlier—and not in our universities.

I saw that clearly in the state school which my children attended in London and I have seen it time and time again in schools in Bradford. The most important issues are the low expectations of young students and poor attitudes to learning. The answers lie in improving access not only in the universities but in the foundations of our state school system as such.

My Lords, I congratulate Universities UK on producing the report on which we base the debate. When the committee I chaired on higher education reported in 1997, its first recommendation was to expand higher education, particularly in institutions of further education. We saw that as the core of the matter. Its next five recommendations were about widening participation because we felt it was right socially to do so and because we are aware of the low levels of participation.

I am pleased that much has been done to encourage wider participation, notably by the universities and of course by the Government. However, despite all that effort, I read in a report published by the National Audit Office only a few months ago that,

"increases in participation by all social classes have left the poorer social classes filling the same share of the student population".

We have run hard to stand still.

The primary obstacles to wider participation identified by the National Audit Office are early disengagement with education and an associated lack of entry qualifications; poorer educational opportunities; a lack of confidence that higher education is the right course for the students; and difficulties over financial support. In short, we must surmount the problem by raising achievement and aspirations and overcoming the financial hazard. In that respect, I return to the report of Universities UK in which we see that,

"Changes in student support have been regressive, and a disincentive to participation".

That relates to the decision taken in 1997.

Earlier this year, the Cambridge University Press published an article by Professor Claire Callender of the University of the South Bank on the subject. Again, I shall quote from it because these figures shook me:

"Between 1989 and 2001, the amount of state subsidy going to a low income student fell by about 35 per cent, but only by 2·5 per cent for a student from a high income family".

I commend those figures for consideration and verification by the Government.

One of the strengths of our universities, identified in another report from the National Audit Office, is their low drop-out rates. We must sustain that record. But there is a close correlation between drop-out rates and entry levels of achievement. We cannot solve the problem of widening participation at the expense of diminished preparedness to engage with the cost of drop-out rates of, say, 20 per cent. That is not the answer.

The main answer to the problem lies in raising achievement before the student applies for a university place. I want to make one major point about this. For many years we have traded—I use that word with some anxiety in front of the economists present in the House—on a falling marginal cost curve. The unit-of-resource cost has fallen by 40 per cent. However, that curve is now moving upwards, as one expands production and begins to use resources that are less well prepared; in other words, in the effort to widen participation, we are now taking into higher education those who are less well prepared. There is a cost to be met. The Government must grasp the point that the cost curve is rising and that increased participation cannot be done on the cheap.

I do not wish to undermine the vigour of my remarks by making the hundred other points that could be made on this subject. I rest my case.

My Lords, the document from Universities UK tells a powerful and moving story. It made me feel proud to be a university teacher; I have been one all my working life. The report covers an enormous range of institutions, some research orientated and some situated in the inner cities. However, what all those institutions are trying to do is to assess the potential of their students. In my view, that is why the comparison made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, between Margaret Hodge and Sven Goran Ericsson is not particularly sound.

A number of features in the report struck me. First, the idea of access is being built into the corporate approach of all the universities. That idea is as important as the idea of enterprise, which was being built into the culture of universities when I was a vice-chancellor. A positive approach to wider access should be taken up by all vice-chancellors, by members of staff, who should not be afraid of lowering standards and, indeed, by students. It is worth noting that the students themselves can play an important role in encouraging access to, for example, the Oxford Target scheme.

Secondly, the report highlights collaboration between universities and other institutions. In the past our universities were far too isolationist. Now we have examples such as the Medway campus, created by the University of Greenwich and neighbouring institutions. It is a splendid initiative. However, when turning to the position in Wales, the notion that the University of Wales, which facilitates co-operation, should in any way be broken up or defederated strikes me as being totally reactionary.

Thirdly, increased access must be seen as a long-term strategy. My noble friend Lady Warwick pointed out that the work must begin in the schools, such as in the Compact programmes being run in Swansea and Glamorgan, where the aspirations and progress of 13 and 14 year-olds are studied. A prolonged process of special tuition, special monitoring and special counselling has been instituted. However, as other noble Lords have pointed out, there is a problem of retention as people lose their way and their motivation.

A further inevitable consequence is that there will be increasing costs. I hope that the Government will take seriously the call made again by my noble friend Lady Warwick for extra payments. Increased university access is a special need that requires special funding. I know that the University of Glamorgan spends £1 million on premium funding, along with a further £630,000 on widening access. That university has received Special Objective 1 funding from Europe; not all institutions will enjoy that particular benefit.

The report also points out how we should look sympathetically at what the universities are trying to do. Many institutions have to deal with extremely difficult social problems which go far beyond the scope of university life. We read of the London Guildhall University in the City of London, which has introduced a special scheme to increase recruitment among the Bangladeshi, Turkish and Somali communities living in situations of long-term environmental and social decay in that area of London. Many such universities are precisely those suffering from financial difficulties. They are heavily in debt. Indeed, the London Guildhall, even with its outstanding vice-chancellor, will have to cease functioning in its present form and merge with the University of North London. However, one hopes that that move will release extra resources.

Other organisations must respond to what the universities are doing. The Universities UK document indicates that employers have been slow to respond and that the same is true of professional organisations. The buck has to stop with those groups as well; it cannot stop with the universities alone. Of course the Government must help. We have heard about the need for extra funding and the need to address issues on student finance. Funding councils certainly have to change their approach. We are told that we have a diverse university system, but the funding system for higher education tends towards uniformity and thus places a huge burden of debt on the new universities, many of which are making a special and distinguished contribution to wider access.

The last point I wish to make in the time available is simply this: access depends on university staff. It is crucial that they should be encouraged. They should not be treated in the way that other public sector workers have sometimes been treated: chastised by Thatcherites for being unproductive and chastised by New Labour for being elitist, a term which I hope will now disappear into the dustbin of history for all time.

On page 8 the document mentions the Laura Spence affair. That is a gross calumny on my university, the University of Oxford, on Magdalen College and on the medical faculty. There has been no adequate apology at all. The Minister is a distinguished educationalist and I hope that he will acknowledge that this is quite untrue. University lecturers perform a crucial role. Without them, we shall have an under-educated and divided society.

My Lords, I, too, welcome this debate. I should declare an interest as an academic. I wish to touch briefly on what my own university, the University of Hull, is doing to widen participation—drawing on the points made in the Universities UK report—before addressing the wider implications for higher education of increasing student numbers. In particular I wish to reiterate a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, himself a distinguished graduate of the University of Hull.

My own university has adopted a whole-institution approach in seeking to widen participation. It has involved members from the senior management down. It has established a Learning Partnerships Office to work with partners within and beyond the university. It has developed various programmes and initiatives to raise aspirations. We run summer schools. We lay on ACE days—Aiming for a College Education—bringing over 2,000 local school children on to the campus to address misconceptions about higher education and to encourage continuation in education.

We work with others such as Excellence in Cities to provide the Achievers in Excellence programme for gifted and talented children. A number of departments, including my own, lay on conferences, targeting participation from individuals or schools from Widening Participation postcode areas or with low attainment levels.

The university has also placed an emphasis on student retention and meeting the needs of nontraditional students. Our experience reinforces that of the case studies set out in the Universities UK report. We have found that students from less well-off backgrounds have similar needs to traditional students. However, where those needs differ is in respect of other non-traditional students such as mature students. We have created posts to assist with the needs of part-time students as well as providing flexible learning opportunities. I should add that we are already very successful at retaining students. As the Minister will know, the University of Hull is among the top four universities in terms of student retention.

That is a very brief summary. I relate it in order to establish that the university takes widening participation extremely seriously and is devoting substantial resources to achieving it.

However, the more one widens participation, the greater the burden placed on universities. Over the past few years more students have been admitted while demand for places has decreased. There is consequently a qualitative as well as a quantitative change in the student body. It is not only a question of numbers but also the type of education that is provided. There are significant resource implications. Universities are being asked to do more but without being provided with the resources necessary to maintain standards of excellence. This is clear from the report and from what has been said already in the debate.

However, there is a danger of seeing the problem in isolation. The burden on universities has to be seen in the context of other demands being made of them. I have drawn attention before in your Lordships' House to the growing burden of bureaucracy. Academics are finding that they have less time now to research and to teach. They are drowning under a sea of paperwork. Academics are now over-regulated while, at the same time, being under-valued, under-paid and under-resourced. It is no wonder that morale is at such a low point. There is a problem not only of student retention but of staff retention.

There has to be a fundamental review of student finance. The present method is deterring students from all backgrounds. However, there needs also to be a fundamental review of the relentless growth of regulation and the under-resourcing of universities that is undermining our capacity to deliver a quality education. If more and more students are to receive a good education, of the kind that we have been able to provide in the past, we have to ensure that universities have the capacity to deliver it.

I conclude by putting two important questions to the Minister. First, what does the Minister think should be the basis on which more students are admitted to universities? Should it be the achievement of a certain minimum qualification or should it be on the basis of what benefit the student will derive from higher education? Secondly, what are the Government doing to look holistically at the problems facing our universities? Both, in different ways, are fundamental questions and I look forward to the Minister's response.

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Warwick, both for initiating the debate and for the excellent report which got it under way. I begin by declaring an interest: I have, for a number of years, been privileged to serve as Chancellor of the University of Sunderland.

During last Wednesday's debate on education my noble friend Lord Bragg referred to the fact that,

"universities are now a major driving force in increasing the competitiveness of this country".—[Official Report, 24/4/02; col. 288.]

I unequivocally share that sentiment. As I said at the time, we find ourselves operating in a globalised economy in which, if we are to have any chance of remaining competitive, we have to invest in people—that is, the professionals, supported by technology and other expertise, who will help deliver the quality of graduates that we so desperately need.

But as well as investing in people and resources we also need to ensure that we are drawing on all the talents of all the people of this country, whatever their social class, whatever the income of their families, whatever their cultural background. That is one reason why the Universities UK report is such a genuinely important document.

The University of Sunderland has been a pioneer in attempting to widen participation. As such, we enthusiastically endorse and promote the Government's broad ambitions. But we do not delude ourselves of the seriousness of the problems faced by all the universities in this country in seeking to deliver a sustainable widening in participation.

It is not only in this country that the problems are evident; other developed nations face remarkably similar challenges. The commentator, Will Hutton, in his latest book, The World We're In, sets out the situation in the United States. He states:

"In 1979, a student aged between 18 and 24 from the top quartile of income-earners was four times more likely to obtain a degree than a student from the bottom quartile. Yet by 1994, the latest year for which figures are available, the student from the top quartile was ten times more likely to obtain a degree. Given the trends in inequality, college costs and falling state support, this already disastrous ratio can only have got worse over the last eight years".

Surely any self-respecting nation believes that education should be about equality of opportunity, but, in the United States at least, inequality is hardening. There is a real danger that if we do not act, and act soon, the same is likely to happen here.

At the University of Sunderland our opportunity bursaries have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that whenever support for students from poorer backgrounds is available they do come forward. Unsurprisingly, our bursary scheme is heavily oversubscribed and we are faced with a level of expectation that we are unable to support.

The Universities UK report highlights the widely held view that the changes in support for students adopted post-1997,

"have been regressive, and a disincentive to participation".

It is especially depressing that this situation is being felt most keenly by those institutions with wider participation at the very centre of their mission—universities such as Lincoln and Liverpool John Moores.

Moreover, there is increasing evidence that the Excellence in Cities Gifted and Talented Initiative is largely benefiting young people who already have higher education firmly in their sights. Gifted young people from the low HE participation sectors of the UK—many of whom lack family aspiration and adequate support mechanisms—are still, I am sad to say, slipping through the net. This has to change, and we at Sunderland are developing specific proposals to address this.

The report also concludes that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds would not, as had been suggested,

"prefer to study in some form of flexible mode alongside employment or benefit".

Unfortunately, the facts of life for most of our students at Sunderland mean that, whatever their preference, they do find themselves studying and in employment at the same time. More than 60 per cent of our undergraduates are part-time workers. The university recognises that unless changes in the funding system emerge we will have to find the means and stratagems to fit the study and work patterns into which they are forced into an achievable whole.

Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that when financial problems and unfamiliar learning styles combine, it is the students from poorer backgrounds who find it hardest to cope. They face the task of simultaneously earning a living and coping with an ever more challenging curriculum with the very minimum of external support. It is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, suggested, a lack of grit; but it may well be a lack of self-belief.

Our strategy at Sunderland is to work with schools, colleges and other partners to address the underlying issues which at present result in low participation among disadvantaged families. We do not believe that any lasting change in patterns of participation can possibly occur in isolation.

To sum up, the choice for the nation as a whole is a stark one. Do we try to pretend that having an educated middle-class elite—10 or 20 per cent of the workforce—is somehow an adequate response to the challenges of global competition, or do we face up to the realities of that competition and find and fund new ways to harness the talents and skills of all of our people so that we can be reasonably confident of remaining, in every respect, a significant player on the global stage? There is no question in my mind which course of action is the right one.

My Lords, I, too, welcome the debate and I thank the noble Baroness for initiating it. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who has made a great personal contribution to both standards and innovation in British education. I declare an interest as Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, a new university, albeit one which is housed in historic splendour.

We have achieved very high levels of participation and social inclusion, with a 95 per cent intake from the state sector, with 34 per cent from the three lowest social classes, with more than 25 per cent from those whose ethnicity is other than white, and a substantial and growing group of mature students. The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, was kind enough to refer to our new experiment at the Medway campus as a joint project with the University of Kent. Yet, as a new university in a relatively run-down part of south-east London, we have managed to combine that level of inclusion with a Queen's Award for Research last year and some valuable research specialities.

That experience leads me to ask the Government two questions. First, may we have a commitment that the Government and the department are not heading for a two-class university system in their search for the twin goals of excellence and inclusion?

We need diversity across the unified standards and experience of the British university system—in the expression used in the American Constitution, "E pluribus unum". We certainly do not want a reversion to the dreary British class system from which we all hoped that we were escaping. Yes, that may, and should, mean more state pupils at Oxbridge; but it also means that growth points of special research excellence at non-Russell Group universities should be sustained rather than moving to any sort of teaching-only model.

Perhaps I may quote briefly from one of the conclusions in the report of the Science and Technology Committee on the research assessment exercise that it carried out. In paragraph 51, on page 23 of the report, the committee states:

"50% participation is an admirable ambition but not if only 5% get an education of the highest standard … We are supportive of high-quality teaching in a high-quality research environment and find it hard to see how this can be reconciled with the concept of a teaching-only university".

My second question to the Government is this. Do they understand that expansion to 50 per cent—particularly if it is combined with greater measures for social inclusion, which as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, has pointed out, does not necessarily go with a 50 per cent expansion, and hitherto has not—means, first, a long developmental process, possibly lasting five or six years; working with schools or colleges of further education to identify talent and develop it? Secondly, it means building motivation to apply to the universities, remembering that those from the poorest socio-economic groups are far more reluctant to get into debt—they have less experience of mortgages and less realisation of the potential lifetime benefits of a university education to sustain them in taking what is a very difficult personal decision. Thirdly—carrying on with the development of a mental model—it means nurturing performance at university and, fourthly, providing sustaining help and encouragement. Unless those factors are present in a sustained way over a period of years, we see the results in deplorable levels of retention of students. We have far too high a dropout rate, as other speakers have said.

To provide that kind of intensive, sustaining developmental model to promising students is very expensive—which brings me to my final point. I hope that the department and HEFC understand that there is now a significant double bind on the newer universities. The dulcet voice of Jacob speaks of participation and excellence, and the hairy hands of HEFC are squeezing us until the pips squeak., for one, have expressed the hope—and I should like to hear this from the Minister when he replies—that some of the extra funds devoted, thank goodness, to education in the Chancellor's Budget will end up allowing newer universities to achieve both those admirable aims.

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, on introducing the debate, on initiating an excellent report and on being such an effective champion of universities. I look forward to the Minister's reply to the points that she raised.

I declare an interest. I am sorry that, after hearing speeches from two university chancellors, I cannot claim to be a third. However, I declare an interest as a member of the council of the University of Sussex (a more modest occupation) but also as the director of an educational charity which works with schools throughout the UK to raise achievement. It is from those joint perspectives that I express my views on the issues raised in the report. I see matters from two vantage points. I see the difficulty of keeping students in education in the first place; and then the difficulties for the university in persuading them to take the next step.

It is important to contextualise the debate snore widely. The Times Higher Education Supplement recently reported that there are presently 10,000 empty places in 50 universities across the UK. Many are in areas where there are already critical skills shortages. At the same time, the NFER which is sponsored by the Sutton Trust and has done a great deal of pioneering work, has proved that 20,000 bright sixth formers are lost each year to university, principally because they are worried about funding. I do not want to make a simplistic link between the two matters, but I hope that there will be an opportunity for a wider debate in this House on the links between effective education, which is at the heart of the debate, skills, and the needs of a knowledge-based economy.

Many of the case studies in the Universities UK report indicate that those links are being effectively made, and I have seen at first hand what it can mean. I have, for example, visited Youth Culture TV, which takes students who know about television and who are passionate about it. It gives them the opportunity to build skills. It passports them into further and higher education, and they collect a career for life. It is extremely effective. It creates opportunities which those students want and on which they can follow through. That capacity for motivation must be at the heart of success.

If we are to address the fundamental points, we must recognise the scale of the problem. Going to university is simply not on the radar for many thousands of young people in our country. Recently, the University of the South Bank invited 120 nine year-olds to visit the university. When the vice-chancellor asked them whether any of them had ever been in a university before, not a single hand went up. I am sure that that is not a unique example.

The challenge is: how can we close the credibility and information gap? Providing living proof can work well. One Newcastle school in a very challenging area recently hit on the idea of inviting its first university student back to present prizes on speech day. It was living proof that students like him were capable of enjoying and getting on at university.

It must be said, however, that many young people have proof of a different kind. It is exceptionally difficult to motivate young men in particular, when all they know about higher education is that it leaves people in debt and without a firm guarantee of a job.

We must face some harsh facts. The average debt of £10,000 is more than many single parents earn in a year. The pressure on 16 to 18 year-olds to get out and earn is intense. Many of them have the experience of earning during their time in school. It is not something that they can or will give up. NUT research indicates that applications from mature students are down by 15 per cent, and from black and Afro-Caribbean students by 4 per cent. Although help with funding is available, I invite noble Lords to look at Table 16 in the National Audit Office report, which indicates that there are 11 different mandatory funds, five different social security benefits—one of which (and this is good news) will soon be out of date)—and six discretionary funds.

I warmly welcome all the Government's initiatives to motivate and enthuse students in regard to higher education. I share the reservations expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, in relation to the Excellence Challenge and its powers to self-select; nevertheless, we are making a brave start. However, the challenge is to find all the missing students, and to make sure that they share the wealth of higher education.

The report drives home three important lessons to government. First, we must have a decision on student funding, and quickly, because it is casting a blight over student applications to universities, which is causing severe problems. We need a decision, and I hope that it will be in favour of some form of maintenance grant. Secondly, universities must act on the advice of the UK report to make what they are doing part of their whole mission and extend the partnership with schools beyond where it is at present. Thirdly, that means starting not with sixth formers but with children in primary school, when those children are at their most impressionable and when their families are most involved.

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, and to your Lordships for missing the early part of her speech. She knows that I was earlier at a meeting—ironically at the University of London. She and I were sparring partners in the mid-1980s, when she was at the AUT and I was at the DES. She educated me then, and she has continued my education today. Because I left the DES as long ago as 1985, I am today essentially a traveller from an antique land—my only tangential contacts in the interim being with higher education institutions in my former constituency, some of which were generously misguided enough to give me honorary awards. I am also deputy chairman of the University of London council.

I find the document which underlies this debate more a collage or a quarry than a template or a manual, but I concur that the conclusions which harness all this creative energy are comprehensive. I find the distinction therein between widening and increasing participation a little academic, except in one regard, which in due course will reinforce my final conclusion.

However, the reference to social class in the title is central. Just as the social bias in the demography towards middle classes provided a booster rocket to the forecasts of my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking in 1988 and the explosion in participation between then and 1994, the opposite social bias in the immediate future demography after eight years of comparative standstill in student demand also offers an opportunity, however imprecisely predictable, for reasons fully documented in the Universities UK publication.

I am not here to dance on the grave of government forecasting of student demand. If it is errant, we gain, paradoxically, from studying why student demand forecasts go wrong. Overall, one is conscious when looking at future student demand of how many variables there are. Today, the literature about post-16 education raises the potential possible consequences from the Curriculum 2000, and this year's consultation on the 14 to 19 age group introduces further variables. Although I described working class demand as imprecisely predictable, 100,000 student places could flow from successful widening of participation. In the world of the contingent and the conditional, one is reminded of the adage of one's childhood that we could have ham and eggs if we had some ham and we had some eggs.

My concern is that, as we debated last week, the larger university scene has problems enough to deal with, including finance. It is important that those are solved. I am in favour of widening access for all sorts of reasons, both practical and humane, but I do not want the larger problems to be complicated by diversion through the wider access issue, where there are also separate problems enough. While the problems of personal student finance are true, as other noble Lords have said, especially in a part of the community that is traditionally anxious about debt, there is the separate issue that the less well off tend to want—for reasons that perhaps need further research—to work close to home. The provision of relevant courses to meet that need locally may involve institutions in costs on top of those that extra access activity already imposes. Though I appreciate the funding council interest, which has come out in the past three or four years, I hope that the funding of this special area of wider access can be through new and additional government money.

I would not want that separatism to be treated as patronising or representing discontinuity with our educational history or tradition. I began with a phrase from Ozymandias. RAB Butler, the first of four members of the National Union of Students executive in 80 years to serve in the Cabinet—in his case often—was an exact school contemporary of my late father, who once heard RAB inadvertently amend the final line of Ozymandias,

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

so that it closed instead with the words "and beware". RAB's spirit would not have regarded wider access as a threat to an older tradition.

My Lords, at the London School of Economics, I am glad to be a member of the committee specifically dealing with access. This has enabled me to see at first hand the excitement of the Saturday schools and the rest. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Warwick, to whom we are all grateful for this debate, was right to pay a warm tribute to the staff and students who make such work possible and to the commitment and spirit of those participating from school.

As my noble friend rightly stressed, access matters because education is an indispensable investment in our future economic and social strength, in our freedom and democracy—if we take seriously its interdisciplinary and qualitative dimensions and not just its quantitative dimensions—in social inclusiveness and social cohesion and, perhaps most importantly of all, in people as individuals. We must avoid debasing it by a utilitarian approach alone. It has precious inherent value as an end in itself, enabling people to live more fully and creatively and to be what they are capable of being.

For all those reasons, the Government are right in their commitment to access. However, some key issues need to be addressed. My noble friend was unanswerably correct in stressing that if the Government will the ends, they must ensure the means. Access costs money. Whenever I look at the issue, I am struck by the fact that unit costs per student rise rather than fall. It costs more to bring in the students at the fringe than those with already developed academic talent. Support once the students are within the system also costs money. If that support is not provided, there is a danger that we could reinforce a sense of failure by a cynical absence of the necessary resources.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, rightly referred to the pressures on academics. We all understand those pressures and the consequences that they may play safe in their admissions policy, but we must keep the emphasis on potential and not just on proven record. That brings us to the issue of excellence, as measured against the challenges of breadth of intake. Of course there is a need for a range of institutions. The former polytechnics have an important part to play, but it would be ill advised to throw the whole burden of extension on to them. We have to beware of social divisiveness. Our biggest challenges in the century ahead are those of social solidarity and cohesion. That is why I believe that the more prestigious institutions, anxious to open up beyond public schools alone, could be in danger of ending up exchanging one set of middle class students for another. They must look not just at their intake from state schools, but at their intake from nonselective schools and, most importantly, from inner city schools, which face so many demands.

Social mix can enhance the quality of education. It can bring maturity, wisdom and experience to balance cleverness. In turn, that can contribute powerfully to the social cohesion that we all seek. At the LSE, if we have learnt anything it is that there is a key part to be played by younger academics and students, to whom those at school can more easily relate. We have also learnt that we cannot start that process of stimulating interest too young. As has already been said, in too many parts of Britain there is no sense of the relevance of university to life. That has to be tackled at a young age.

I conclude with one observation that will not surprise your Lordships. Everything that we have been saying about access in the domestic context applies to overseas students as well. In our overseas student policies we must be committed to educating not just the wealthy from abroad, but those with potential.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for initiating this debate. Universities UK's wide-ranging report clearly shows where higher education institutions have increased participation among underrepresented groups and demonstrates how targeted initiatives are contributing to social inclusion. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, that more needs to be done earlier, at school level.

As chancellor of De Montfort University, I can say that my university is passionately committed to widening participation and we have considerable experience in doing so. We estimate that 35 per cent of our undergraduate student population is drawn from under-represented groups. De Montfort University consistently performs significantly above its national benchmark for widening participation—a benchmark that also encompasses mature students and students with disabilities. Our approach is a combination of providing targeted specialist support for such students and exploring innovative ways of widening access.

As your Lordships are well aware, students from under-represented groups are often ill prepared not only for university education, but for university life. They may have been disadvantaged earlier in the school system or may come from families and communities that have had little experience of higher education. Without personal and professional support to make the adjustment to university life and to instil confidence in their own potential, they are far more likely to drop out of their university studies, often perpetuating their perceptions of themselves as academic failures.

The services and support which De Montfort University aims to provide include trained financial advisers to help students manage their finances, cope practically and personally with debt and access hardship funds and bursaries; analysis of key skills before or immediately upon starting a university course to identify at an early stage what additional academic support students may need; a dedicated maths learning centre to enable students to reach basic levels of numeracy; and English language support for students who may not speak English as their first language.

We are also exploring innovative ways of broadening opportunities and access for students and reaching out directly into under-represented communities. The university has been recognised and praised by the Higher Education Funding Council for having established strategic partnerships with a network of further and higher education colleges across the region, bringing access opportunities and the experience of a university education to students who may need to study close to their home.

We are working in partnership with local schools and colleges directly to reach pupils aged 13 to 17 and inspire and persuade them to enter higher education, to recognise their skills and achievements, and to work with them to tackle areas where they need more support. In addition, we are actively working with a range of primary schools using undergraduate mentors to raise aspirations early in pupils' educational life. We are also committed to expanding opportunities for foundation degrees or part-time study, which are highly attractive to students from under-represented groups with lesser academic achievements or who may need to remain in full-time employment.

As noble Lords have heard, however, this additional support and outreach comes at a price. The postcode premium of 1000 per cent additional funding allocated to universities shows some recognition of this, but it does not reflect anything like the true cost of providing the necessary support, which is closer to a resource requirement of 20 to 25 per cent. Funding authorities must recognise that fact.

I should like to make two further observations. First, the Government have often faced criticism from those who say that widening participation will lead to decline in standards and in quality of higher education. I absolutely refute that view. On the contrary, I think that widening participation can contribute to enhancement of quality. The absence of formal or traditional entry qualifications does not mean that students lack talent or potential, but it does mean that we have to devote more time and resources to identifying and supporting such students. As a society we have a moral, ethical and economic obligation to provide talented people who for whatever reason have been disadvantaged and have not had opportunities to realise their full potential.

Secondly, talented students who can benefit from higher education deserve the best that higher education can offer, and that includes the chance to be exposed to research and academic scholarship that is at the cutting edge. Therefore, the argument for supporting only a few universities in research would, in my view, perpetuate disadvantage. De Montfort University is by far the leading new university in research, as our performance in the 2001 research assessment exercise demonstrated. Our students, regardless of their background, benefit from our research success, which informs the academic curriculum and inspires students to pursue postgraduate study. Supporting very few universities in research would defeat the objective of widening participation and maintaining standards and quality.

Widening participation is not just about meeting admission targets; it is about supporting those from underrepresented groups to stay in higher education and to receive the best possible education. Efforts by the higher education sector have to be matched by necessary financial support from the funding authorities. I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply.

My Lords, a waste of talent is not always a bad thing. Most Members of this place, for example, have the talent to become lawyers and accountants. We should be grateful that so many of them have wasted it.

When discussing increasing university participation to 50 per cent, which is a thoroughly good idea, we should think about broadening universities' offerings and the way in which they work with further education. It is no good trying to cram another 15 per cent of the population into the current courses. Although those courses may suit some of those undertaking them, others start them only because that is all that is on offer. Our higher education system has to offer courses that usefully demand the attention of half our population for three years. That is where we should be focusing attention.

I have been delighted by the descriptions of what universities are doing today. Nevertheless, I believe that the Government should be focusing, not on pushing 50 per cent of pupils into higher education, but on providing suitable higher education opportunities for 50 per cent of people. Real action could be taken to make that happen.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, clearly explained, the information available to students considering university courses can be very inadequate. Students considering a geography course at Durham, for example, would like to know what former students are doing five years after completing the course and their own employment prospects. Students considering a more career-orientated course at an FE college would be told that information. They would also know what happened to students who had completed their study in the previous 15 or so years. They would have spoken to former students about the value of the course because it is the former students who help to recruit new ones. The providers of more general education do not provide such information, and the poor information that they do provide does not justify giving up three years of one's productive life or putting oneself £10,000 into debt. That is a great deal to ask of people, particularly those not from a rich and supportive family. People have to be confident that they can build a prosperous future on that type of educational base.

I am saddened by the attitude that some universities have taken to AS-levels and the key skills. Oxford and Cambridge dismissed them as if they did not exist. They seemed to say, "It doesn't matter what you do in your AS-levels; we pay no attention to them. We only want your final A-level grades. And key skills do not matter." Even those universities need to look beyond A-levels. It will always be possible for private schools to teach to a higher level than state schools. If universities remain narrowly focused on A-levels, they will find it very difficult to recruit the best students.

Elite universities also have to consider their prerequisites for new students. People wishing to study architecture, for example, must show a previous interest in architecture. But what are the opportunities for people from inner cities to show such an interest? The universities are excluding people from the start. I am delighted that the medical schools are finally realising that one consequence of their triple-A requirement has been to restrict most of their intake to students from the private system. Consequently, they have been overly restricting opportunities. They have to examine each course individually to see how the situation can be improved.

There is a great opportunity to get the situation right, but we have to progress gradually and use all the good will and talent that exist in the university system. Above all, we have to widen opportunities for students to reach higher education through further education. One problem is that some students from the state system are insufficiently educated to get on to the first rung of the ladder of better courses. Universities need to build partnerships with further education. They have to say to students, "Take a year out, go to this FE college and do this course. If you get the qualification, you can join us." Many art programmes require students to take a foundation course before joining. We should be promoting that sort of partnership and flexibility to bring people in from the underrepresented areas and social classes rather than trying to impose a strait-jacket on universities by telling them to take in under-qualified pupils from under-performing state schools.

My Lords, I declare an interest as an almost brand new Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan following the distinguished service of the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees. I have no expertise in the delivery of education but being a Minister responsible for education was part of my portfolio as the Welsh Secretary for five years. Having represented for over 40 years an industrial constituency with more than its share of deprivation, I know something of its problems.

I have found that an important marker of deprivation is the number of children on free school meals. I note that 62 per cent of the children in Peckham are in families dependent on benefits. The family itself is rapidly changing. It is reported today that 47.2 per cent of children in Wales are born to unmarried mothers. That is a challenge to society. We must respond to the need of such families for resources and practical encouragement from the school up. My attitude to education is simple: we cannot afford not to train and retrain and ensure that no one is deprived of training for lack of resources. We cannot afford to see our global competitors doing more. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, indicated that.

Three differing studies have caught my eye. The first, not unnaturally, concerned Glamorgan, The report states,

"that Glamorgan's scheme has made more progress than any of the original case studies. Widening participation seems to be something that Glamorgan enjoys doing".

At my installation I claimed that Glamorgan was an institution which admits more students from disadvantaged backgrounds than any other UK university.

The second study concerns the University of Wales colleges at Aberystwyth, at which the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, used to preside as vice-chancellor, and Lampeter. They are both in Ceredigion which is part of the title I am proud to bear, where I was born, where I live and where I took my first degree. Aberystwyth believes that the use of postcode funding is not sufficiently sensitive to disadvantage and in particular does not recognise rural disadvantage. While 50 per cent of students come from lower income backgrounds only 8 per cent qualify under the postcoding formula for premium funding. I should like the Minister to respond to that point.

The third quite different study concerns the Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine, where, as we all know, there are areas of considerable deprivation. The study reported the comment,

"No one from Peckham will ever become a doctor".

The overall aim is to expand entry to the medical profession on the part of students from disadvantaged local communities. At the same time, the Dean of Medicine, Professor Gwyn Williams, declares,

"When I die it will be inscribed in my heart that this is not dumbing down medicine".

Their worry—I believe that we heard it from the noble Lord, Lord Norton—is finding the time, energy and resources to do that. It comes down to funding again. The Government must put their money where their mouth is. There must be no dumbing down generally. Our communities need excellence which is accessible and relevant to their needs.

I say in passing that I see no merit in the Government juggling the allocation of student places at some of our most prestigious institutions by what might be perceived as financial blackmail. The medical school has recognised that it is both in its own and the community's interest to attract the best. Admission tutors, after all, come from a whole range of schools. The answer lies in the expansion of places, as the medical school proposes, and at the same time giving practical encouragement to many more schools and students to raise standards and to aim high where there is that potential. That, I believe, is the heart of the problem—the preparation by schools.

Finally, I am seriously uneasy about students entering the working world with debts of more than £10,000, on average, as we have heard, or £30,000 in the case of medical students. The same dean said:

"The background I come from, which is South Wales, you did not go to university to get into debt".

That is also my background. The report acknowledges that student finance is one of the barriers to access. Wales and Scotland are acting differently, the price—or, is it the reward?—of devolution. It would be tragic if the Government in Whitehall did not move forward when the conclusions of the review are available. More importantly, we look forward to the Government's response.

My Lords, like other noble Lords I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for introducing this important debate. I congratulate her on the way in which she did so.

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for briefly raising the issue of academic freedom. The quality of experience of undergraduate and postgraduate students and staff is critical if universities are to recruit and retain high quality students and staff. Some of your Lordships will know that in the Export Control Bill academic freedom is under threat.

Two weeks ago, on behalf of Universities UK, formerly known as the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, and the Association of University Teachers, which represents 45,000 academic and academic related staff, I moved an amendment to the Export Control Bill. Without that amendment the Government would have had the power to control co-operation between academics as well as the ability of academics to research and publish their work without first obtaining a licence, and foreign students would have had to work under licensed conditions. I am not sure whether noble Lords are aware that 75 per cent of the research students who come to our universities are from abroad.

That was a matter of great concern to a wide branch of academia and caused high concern to the whole of the scientific establishment. During the course of the debate on the amendment I suggested that,

"the Government's proposed provisions…are totally inappropriate in a country where universities have been centres of learning, research and discovery for over 900 years".—[Official Report, 18/4/02; col. 1109.]

I further suggested that not only would that inhibit foreign students from coming to our universities but it could also result in undergraduates preferring to study elsewhere and graduates and researchers also choosing to do their work elsewhere. Fortunately, your Lordships agreed with both myself and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who added her name to the amendment. Your Lordships' House passed the amendment with a substantial majority. I ask the Minister to use his influence with the Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry to accept our amendments when they arrive in the other place. It is not enough for our universities to attract students and postgraduates from all parts of the country and of the world. It is important that when they are here they should be free to conduct their work and their studies unhampered.

My Lords, it has been a privilege to listen to the debate and particularly the opening speech of my noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe.

I come at this issue from two different directions but I hope with the same conclusion. I am a member of the Court of the University of Luton and I am also chairman of the appeal of Worcester College, Oxford. Luton is one of our newest universities and is about to celebrate its 10th birthday. It has one of the most diverse student populations in the country with 30 per cent coming from ethnic minority groups and 45 per cent over the age of 24. The local government wards which provide high levels of enrolment at the university have high levels of social deprivation. The university does a remarkable job in providing educational opportunities for people who a few years ago would have been ignored and forgotten by the system. It is rewarded with the satisfaction of achieving very high levels of graduate employment. Luton is among the top 10 universities in the UK for seeing its graduates get jobs.

The University of Oxford is also successful at seeing its alumni get employment as the number of Oxford graduates who are Members of your Lordships' House testifies. Last July I asked a Starred Question about removing financial barriers which deterred bright students from applying for a place at Oxford. I did so in the aftermath of the Laura Spence affair to which my noble friend Lord Morgan referred. In her Answer, my noble friend Lady Ashton said:

"I should pay tribute to what Oxford is seeking to achieve. In so doing, I recognise the work that it has carried out with summer schools this year which was funded by both the HEFC and the Sutton Trust, as well as the links that have been made with local education authorities and schools".—[Official Report, 2417/01; col. 1840.]

Oxford and Cambridge hold regional "Oxbridge" conferences, inviting teachers and pupils to well-known sporting centres of excellence to take part in subject seminars, to meet current undergraduates and to learn about the admissions process. They have been to the football grounds of Manchester United and Newcastle United, to Wembley—when it was there—and to Murrayfield in Edinburgh. They have held regional conferences in Newcastle, Manchester, Cheltenham and Sandown this year which were attended by more than 8,000 pupils.

In that context, I should mention in particular the tutor for admissions at Magdalen College, Oxford—Andrew Hobson. That college was at the centre of the Laura Spence affair. Mr Hobson is a Geordie and a Newcastle United fan. After the storm over the non-admission of that student, he went back home, put on a Newcastle United shirt and was photographed in it, wrote a full-page article in the Newcastle Journal and urged youngsters to apply to Magdalen, pointing out that the college's colours were the same as Newcastle United's—black and white. The result was a 50 per cent increase in applications in 2001, compared with the year before. Very many applicants came from state schools, which had never sent anyone to the college before.

In a letter to me, Mr Hobson points out that,

"the Laura Spence year of medical students have just had their part one examination results, and Magdalen took the top two spots in the university".

He added:

"Perhaps our judgment was not so bad in hindsight".

On the question of academic excellence and widening participation, I agree wholeheartedly with the view of the Vice-Chancellor, Colin Lucas, who said in his 2000 oration:

"The improvement of access is in our own interest because it is in our interest to recruit as students the most talented young people we can find, in espective of social or school background, ethnicity or gender. We should be clear about how and why we select students; if we can improve our methods of differentiating between many talented candidates for few places and add new methods, then we should do so. What we cannot do is to abandon our independence of judgement and the methods which, after mature inspection, we know serve to secure its validity. We cannot compromise on quality at admissions".

He added—I am afraid that I agree with him in this regard, too—that academics, not Ministers, should make academic judgments about which students should be admitted.

Had we more time—we are very pressed for time — I would also like to refer in detail to the subject that my noble friend Lady Andrews mentioned; that is, the question of debt. The prospect of leaving university with an overdraft of as much as £10,000 is undoubtedly deterring many people from poorer families from even applying.

However, those are subjects for another day's debate. Meanwhile, I look forward to my noble friend's reply, which I hope will be as supportive as was my noble friend Lady Ashton of the efforts by Oxford and Cambridge to widen access without jeopardising academic excellence.

My Lords, I, too, add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for initiating this timely and relevant debate. In doing so, I should also declare an interest in my capacity as Chancellor of Cranfield University and as the Chairman of Governors of Imperial College, London.

I point out that both Cranfield University and Imperial College are concerned with high-quality teaching and research in science, technology and medicine, with the emphasis on their application to practical and useful purposes in an increasingly competitive international environment. I make clear their strong interest in providing opportunities for those from a broader range of social groups to benefit from a university education. But to achieve that effectively, as many noble Lords have emphasised, will call for significant action from the Government as well as the universities themselves. For example, interestingly, although this country appears from a recent HEFC report to have a similar social profile in its universities to that in most other nations in Europe, we have much smaller numbers staying on at secondary school or college among those aged between 16 and 18 in order to prepare adequately for a university education. That problem is particularly acute in subjects such as mathematics and the sciences, which are essential foundations for those studying science, engineering or medicine at university.

To that end—this is just an example—-our secondary schools need to recruit about 800 qualified physics teachers each year if they are to prepare adequate numbers of and give opportunities to students in those secondary schools to read science, engineering or medical degrees at university. However, I understand that against that requirement of 800 physics teachers each year, last year only some 80 initial applications were received. The implication of that speaks for itself.

Imperial College is seeking to close that gap by offering volunteer graduates in the relevant subjects to help local state secondary schools. We will be announcing next month a new funded initiative in that respect. But, fundamentally, those problems can be addressed comprehensively only in the state secondary schools themselves with appropriate support from government. While we offer the usual range of student accommodation at Imperial College, the much higher cost of living in London makes further heavy inroads into students' hard-pressed financial resources. Again, unless something more significant can be done about that by Her Majesty's Government in order to support the additional costs of widening access to higher education—that has already been recommended by the Select Committee on Education and Skills—I fear that that will act as a further serious disincentive to broadening access in many cases.

In essence, the initiative to widen access to higher education is strongly supported in those universities with which I am associated. But the long-term foundations that are required to achieve it effectively need to be addressed by the Government as a matter of priority. If we do not do that, we will see at Imperial College, for example, more places on our science, engineering and medical degree courses being filled by very able and committed students from overseas who pay the full commercial fees for such education and, incidentally, achieve some of the best academic results. As welcome as our overseas students are, that outcome really cannot be in the long-term social and economic interests of this country.

My Lords, while listening to this debate, it has been interesting to reflect that in Scotland, where there is a tradition of a higher proportion of the population than elsewhere in the United Kingdom entering higher education, the least well off at the present time are no more likely to enter higher education than they are elsewhere in Britain.

The Scottish Executive boasts that it has solved the problems for Scots by abolishing student fees. In fact, fees are simply postponed until a student begins to earn. For too many in Scotland, as elsewhere, the real problem is the cost of student maintenance. The Government's decision, so soon after they were elected, not to implement the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, is by far the biggest hurdle in the way of widening access today.

But, as is the case south of the Border, the Scottish universities are making a huge effort to widen access. I take as examples two universities with which I am familiar—the Open University and St Andrews. I declare a small interest as having an honorary degree at each.

The Open University is particularly strong in Scotland. Increasingly, it uses its own resources or combines them with those of others locally based to help unlikely people into higher education. A report on Scottish universities, Include Me, describes how that arrangement has worked for individuals. They include a young man in a low-paid job on the small Hebridean island of Muck; a 50 year-old worker at a nursery in Aberdeen; and a full-time mother and unpaid carer over 30 years in rural Perthshire. All are now studying for Open University degrees. One was assisted by the OU's fee-waiver scheme; the others arrived by way of local access courses funded by their local authorities.

This year, the Open University in Scotland has added a residential weekend at no charge for 40 participants aged 18 and over with few school qualifications. The places— allocated on a first-come, first-served basis—attracted enormous attention and the course was hugely oversubscribed.

At the other end of the spectrum, St Andrews is a small, ancient, rural-based university that is high in the quality research league and determined not to lower its standards and reputation one iota. St Andrews has few student recruitment problems, yet it goes to great lengths to widen access. It has an annual four-week summer school offering confidence-building practice in how to cope with the skills of academic study; write notes; revise; cope with exams; and use a library. The university's admission tutors pledge to take summer school performance into account when considering degree course admissions. The Royal Bank of Scotland assists with student support and offers bursaries—as does the university—for degree courses.

This year, St Andrews will run the first Sutton Trust-funded summer school in Scotland for 60 pupils from families and schools where higher education is not the norm. The trust is giving a three-year grant of £90,000. Every academic group in the university will take part. St Andrews also has a part-time evening degree programme with no specific entry requirements. At present, 80 students are studying a wide range of subjects and, as with the Open University, enthusiasm and the willing commitment of spare time are producing achievements well up to the university's high standards.

Those are but a few examples of the huge effort being made across Scotland. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a Scots Member of Parliament. He seems worried about access for Scottish students. I suspect that the Chancellor exaggerates but whatever the findings of the current review, I hope that he and his Scottish Executive colleagues will sort out student funding—above all, student maintenance.

My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest. I feel somewhat hesitant in view of the number of university chancellors who have declared their interests because I was a plain, common or garden teacher at the University of Sussex for some time and remain a visiting fellow.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for introducing this debate and to Universities UK for its excellent report on good practice in raising participation rates. That is a tribute also to the universities' flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit. The research assessment exercise set them a challenge and they rose to it. The sad part is that the Government have not woken up to the fact that universities have achieved so much.

In the early and mid-1990s, the great thing was for universities to make their research more relevant to industrial needs. If we look around now, we can see that they have done so splendidly. Universities have risen to the challenge by finding positive ways of opening their doors to students from lower social classes.

It has always been a mystery to these Benches that the Government fell into a paradox. Why did they increase tuition fees and switch from grants to loans at a time when they wanted to increase participation by entrants from the lower social classes? As Claire Callender's figures show, the problems so created hit precisely the students whom the Government wanted to attract to university. Claire Callender demonstrated that for the lower social classes, the increased cost of entering university since the switchover in 1997 has been 35 per cent; whereas for students from the upper social classes it has been only 2.5 per cent.

Liberal Democrats do not believe that tuition fees should have been introduced. We say that education should be free at the point of access up to level 4. We go along with the Cubie proposals and the notion that students should pay something back, which was the concept behind endowments. Under those proposals, endowments would be used to finance a return to residential grants for lower-income students. It is much better that those who benefit should pay—but after graduation rather than before. We would like a mechanism for pouring back some money from graduates into means-tested grants.

How realistic is the Government's 50 per cent target? We feel that that useful round figure was plucked from the air—and that the Government had no idea how to achieve it but offered ex post justification. There is no shortage of graduates but there is a shortage of students with level 2—five A to C grade GCSEs—and level 3 qualifications. We place emphasis not on achieving the Government's nominal 50 per cent target but increasing the number of students with level 2 and 3. That is where the key skills gap is to be found—together with the productivity problem that the Chancellor identified time and time again in his Budget. We need to think hard about helping such students to gain level 2 and 3 vocational qualifications.

Students do not stay on at school largely because they are bored. They fail to see the relevance of the often over-academic A-level curriculum that is the route to university. Students want something more practical and hands-on. One can catch such students if one can devise something that they view as relevant. I may not like the noises that come out of the Guildford Academy for Contemporary Music but its students include school dropouts who are working hard. The academy links practical and academic studies.

Further education colleges provide a number of A-level study opportunities, particularly for students who are less academic. There has to be a climbing frame of qualification. We must introduce a parity of esteem between the vocational qualification and the academic qualification.

As for the idea of a Master of Arts, I should explain that, like the master craftsman, this would be someone who went through the process and then taught others. There is no reason why the plumbers who are training at our local further education colleges should not have some sort of progression structure whereby those who ultimately teach plumbers should become master craftsman and be recognised as having the equivalent of a Master of Arts, or a master's, degree. We desperately need to see that possibility coming through—the concept of the climbing frame of qualifications—rather than just an apex with the academic qualifications at the top.

That brings me to a further issue which has not so far been mentioned in the debate despite the fact that it is probably one of the key issues in widening participation. I have in mind the role of part-time students. I am delighted that so many speakers have taken part in the debate, as distinct from last week when we debated the resources for education. On this occasion, we have heard much more about the 1992 universities. I take my hat off to what those universities have accomplished, and to the degree to which they are actually pulling in students by stimulating their interest. But no speaker has spoken about the difficulty of attracting part-time students. Indeed, if anything, the financing arrangements have put off such students.

It seems absurd that those who study part-time usually have to pay full fees. We are therefore making it more difficult for those who want to sign up to the Open University to do so, despite the fact that it is the cheapest and most efficient way to gain a degree in this country. All this applies to someone who wishes to study part-time. For example, the childcare arrangements available to those who study full-time at universities like Greenwich are not available to part-time students. Indeed, there are a whole range of these arrangements, which are extremely complex. By and large, if one looks through the detail, it appears that part-time students are excluded.

I am not honestly sure that we have the right vision here. We tend to visualise campus universities bringing in more students. We are living in very exciting times in terms of higher education: what we are actually seeing is a merging of further and higher education. There are now more students studying for higher education degrees, or studying for degrees at further education colleges, than there were in total at the time of the publication of the Robbins report. Further education is already playing an extremely important part in the higher education field.

We are also seeing a merging of full-time and part-time students. Twenty-five per cent of our students who are studying full-time are working over 20 hours a week to earn money, yet we class them as "full-time" students. Those who are honest and declare that they are working are classed as "full-time" students, and are consequently discriminated against. That is absurd. We must sort out this problem. We must introduce some equivalence.

We are also seeing a merging of distance and campus-based education. Universities are increasingly using distance learning courses. They are buying modules from the Open University and using them as part of their own courses. That is inevitable. Anyone who has visited America will know that there are more students studying of an evening in American universities than there are during the day. I am talking about the mixing and matching of distance and campus learning and of full-time and part-time learning, as well as the prospect of students being able to take some courses at their local further education colleges and some at university. It is a question of opening the doors to knowledge, and bringing in people by constantly saying, "Come a little further", and so on. That is the kind of world that we must try to create in terms of higher education: it is one of continuing education, of lifelong learning. We must think in those terms and not in terms of cloistered cells.

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for initiating this debate. As we all know, the noble Baroness has a great responsibility to all who work in higher education, a responsibility that she has fulfilled today by focusing on the policy issues and their funding consequences that affect the future of our universities.

Perhaps I may say from the outset of the debate that we believe that access to higher education should be available to all who qualify, whatever their background; and that efforts to raise awareness of the benefits of higher education, particularly to bright young people from those groups that are underrepresented in higher education, should be supported and encouraged. However, we do not believe that university entrance standards should be compromised in any way, nor should admissions policies be distorted by exhortation, or threats, from government Ministers. As my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking, and other noble Lords, have said, young people should be brought up at school to the standard for entrance to higher education.

The report produced by Universities UK, Social Class and Participation in Education, draws attention, interestingly, in its conclusions to the tensions and the distinction between, on the one hand, the Government's objectives of widening participation, and, on the other, increasing access to higher education. They clearly are not the same thing.

As the report points out, widening participation can be achieved without necessarily increasing access. Financial rewards and penalties related to the 50 per cent target can cause injustice. An interesting irony, which is highlighted by the case studies in the report, is that many of the institutions that are actively raising the awareness of young people from underrepresented groups, particularly those working with primary and secondary school children, do not necessarily directly benefit, even if they are successful. For example, Teesside University—from where I declare an interest by having received an honorary doctorate—has a very successful programme of working with young school children on Teesside, especially primary school children. Under the system, if a higher proportion of the children from that area eventually enter higher education across the United Kingdom, Teesside University will not necessarily gain the credit.

It does not help when Ministers threaten to withhold funding from universities if they do not meet the Government's targets. Many universities, usually the more successful ones, have no difficulty filling places with appropriately qualified students. So, is it the intention of government that these universities should displace some of those students with the highest qualifications with others from "postcode premium areas", who may have lesser qualifications? Alternatively, should they expand their numbers to take all qualified applicants—in which case where is the funding coming from? Furthermore, should this be done against other institutions that have difficulty filling their places?

Incidentally, the money held by government to fund the "postcode premium" is top-sliced from the core budget of universities in the first place. Can the Minister say what is so secret about the list of postcodes that are used for special university entry status? There has been a reluctance to let MPs see the list. However, I believe that the list should be a matter for public information. No one is disadvantaged by having that information. Whatever happened to open government?

The letter received by my honourable friend Mr Brady in another place from the Higher Education Funding Council for England attempting to explain the "postcode premium system" should qualify for a wooden spoon award by the Plain English Society for sheer gobbledegook. I know that the Minister will do better in his reply to the debate.

It is important for the Minister to clarify in his response how the Government plan to address the tensions between the policy objectives of widening participation and of increasing access. I also wish to pose another question underpinning this whole debate. My honourable friend Alistair Burt, the shadow Minister for higher education, has been trying to elicit from government—but, so far, without success—a definition of "higher education". Again, perhaps the Minister will be give us a definition this evening. The answer is very pertinent to all those who work in higher education.

It is true that the unit of resource per student has been declining since 1989 to the present day. That is why the Dearing report was commissioned in 1996, with all-party support, to address the future funding of higher education. It is also the case that the introduction of tuition fees was meant to provide additional funding for higher education. Many of us took a very jaundiced view of the Government's pledge on this issue; and I have to say that we were right. We now know from the Permanent Secretary, speaking to the Select Committee in January 2002, that the amount of grant to universities has been cut by the same amount as fee income raised. Therefore, there has been no real-terms benefit to higher education from the introduction of tuition fees.

However, the burden of admitting an additional 30,000 students each year from now until 2010, with a higher proportion coming from under-represented groups, will put enormous strains on our universities. In the debate last week, and again today, so many issues, in addition to costs, have been raised in connection with the Government's policy of expansion.

Expansion should not result in the compromising of standards. It should not risk affecting the quality and quantity of research. Such expansion is causing, and will continue to cause, great tensions in the recruitment and retention of high-quality staff, especially given the Universities UK report findings that, in addition to the need for extra staff to cope with increasing numbers of students, there are problems with an existing ageing staff who will also need to be replaced.

A not unrelated but serious point is university pay. The Belt report has been outstanding for too long, and the Government really cannot go on saying that this is a matter for the universities alone. Their only source of funding is from the public purse and the Government bear a responsibility in this matter. The disproportionate cost of supporting underrepresented groups entering higher education, as quantified in the Universities UK report, also needs to be addressed.

In last week's debate, the noble Lord, Lord Moser, appealed to the Government to put their target of 50 per cent on hold, pending a step change in funding. While I have no difficulty with the aim of helping potential students by all means possible to reach the standards of entry to university, I have my doubts about specific quotas and believe that more could be done to persuade students to partake of high-quality options at further education colleges. Indeed, for many students, it could be the more appropriate decision.

There are so many sub-degree options leading to education and training awards provided by further education. They range from the highly practical subjects, such as plumbing, to take an example close to the heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, to subjects such as electrical mechanics, catering, science and technology, business and communications, as well as foundation and link courses for higher education.

Further education is an important rung in the ladder as an end in itself, as a route into work and, for many people, as a link with higher education. The Minister should understand that the disquiet surrounding the Government's target is considerable. If the Government persist with the idea that an additional 30,000 students should enter university, with all the attendant support that will be required in each year to 2010, then the appeals for funding set out in the UUK report cannot be ignored.

I refer now to the point that I made in the debate last week concerning the Government's policy of social inclusion. The Government themselves have created disadvantages for young people from low-income families who wish to enter university. They abolished the assisted places scheme, which enabled bright young people from poor backgrounds to attend independent: schools. They set their face against selection on the grounds of academic ability. They abolished maintenance grants the greatest blow to students from the poorest families—and they introduced tuition fees.

The supreme irony is that it was a Labour Government who brought about a situation whereby the poorest students leave university with the greatest level of debt. That cannot be unrelated to the falling number of bright young people from poor backgrounds who enter university and the increasing drop-out rate of such students.

Despite all that has been said, the quality of research carried out in our universities is excellent. They produce good-quality students and, even now, the drop-out rate remains relatively low. However, that situation is very fragile, and the reputation of British university education is at risk. The debates both today and last Wednesday, together with the UUK report, have given the Government important information which must be considered and, I believe, with urgency.

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this very wide-ranging debate. Predictably enough, every conceivable aspect of higher education has been covered. It is rather a tall order to respond in 20 minutes to all the points raised but, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Warwick on introducing this very important issue. I believe it is an indication of the importance that your Lordship's House places on widening participation that our debate has been of such high quality and has had so many participants.

At this stage, I join my noble friend in her tribute to the late Maggie Woodrow, who was the author of this report and who, sadly, died last October. There is no doubt that she championed wider participation, and her pioneering work and ceaseless dedication have helped to forge more equitable educational systems both within this country and throughout the European Access Network. I thank my noble friend Lord Puttnam for emphasising how much we need to widen access and the role which universities have to play in that.

Obviously higher education has a positive economic and social impact on people's lives. It is therefore: vital that it is available to all those who can benefit from it. We are a long way from achieving that goal. Despite a doubling of higher education students over the past 20 years—I pay due respect to noble Lords in this House who played their part in that as Ministers—there has been little progress in increasing the percentage of individuals from working-class families who enter higher education. That was a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, drew particular attention.

Fewer than 20 per cent of those individuals go on to university compared with almost half of those from professional families. That constitutes a real failure on our part to exploit the nation's human resources. It puts our economy at a disadvantage, and we compare poorly with other countries, such as the United States and Japan, in terms of the number of qualified students from higher education which their systems produce.

But beyond the cost of lost capital and lost opportunities, we must surely also recognise that the cost of that failure is borne by all our fellow citizens who fail to realise their true potential and who fail to lead fulfilling careers and to contribute fully to our community.

Our determination to share the benefits of higher education more widely is reflected in our manifesto pledge that 50 per cent of those under the age of 30 should enter higher education by 2010. I recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, cast some aspersions about the value of that pledge. However, even though the Robbins report in the 1960s talked of the need to increase the number of those in higher education from 8 per cent, the noble Lord will recognise that there have always been Jeremiahs who have said either that it could not be done or that it could be done only with a reduction in standards in higher education and at enormous cost to the system. I can only say that that has not been proven in the past. It was not even accepted by the noble Lord himself when he was in office, and it will certainly not be accepted by me and my colleagues in government at present. We believe that we are in a position to unlock the potential of poorer sections of society who thus far have benefited far less from higher education than they should have done.

Perhaps I may reassure the House that it is not true that we have highly escalating drop-out rates. Of course, we must have regard to the quality of education and teaching and to the support given to students in order to ensure that drop-out rates do not reach what I believe are the cataclysmic levels that can be found in some systems. The French have ills of another kind at present, but let us not dwell upon those.

However, the expansion of recent years has not taken place on the basis of sharply increasing drop-out rates. In fact, the rates are fairly static. Of course, I recognise that it will be important to ensure that such rates do not increase in the future. We are already making a good start in relation to increasing access. More students than ever are entering higher education. Final UCAS figures for entry in 2001 showed a 5.6 per cent increase over the previous year, and applications are up compared with this time last year.

I want to assure noble Lords that we are certainly not seeing a massive acceleration in the number of students from poorer backgrounds; but nor are we seeing, as has been suggested, a significant reduction in applications from children from working-class homes because of the funding system. However, more of that anon. I shall address myself to the significant question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and others about the funding system.

The measures that we have already taken to drive up standards in schools and our proposal for improving the coherence of the 14 to 19 year-olds' curriculum will raise attainment and yield dividends in the coming years. More work needs to be done to encourage young people to participate, as noble Lords have emphasised, not least the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. She spoke of a particular group of members of our community who need to be encouraged to participate in higher education. Part of the Government's strategy is to ensure that.

The Excellence Challenge Programme and the Aim Higher Campaign have been designed to help raise attainment and aspiration in our schools and colleges. I can reassure my noble friend Lord Puttnam that the programme will ensure that we increase opportunities and aspirations in schools in regard to all our universities. I am deeply grateful for the work of those universities and higher education colleges that have engaged in this initiative, which now reaches out to over 1 million 13 to 19 year-olds.

Of course, we share with the House the widespread demand that the Government should recognise the achievements of higher education. We could not possibly have seen the achievements of recent years if it were not for the substantial co-operation and commitment of higher education staff. I am also aware that noble Lords on several sides of the House, not least my noble friend Lord Morgan, reflected on the trials and tribulations of academic staff and the challenges before them, as did the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. The demands made upon the system are appreciated. It is important that we keep bureaucratic demands to as low a level as possible. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, we need to consider the career potentials of staff and the rewards that they receive.

I can reassure the House that in the expansion we do not intend to reduce the unit level of support for students. We have put a stop to that reduction. We are also committed to funding fully the increase in the number of students that we are projecting over the next few years. Certainly the programme for the years up to 2003–04 is one that is fully costed in terms of resources for higher education. I know that that does not mean that the shoe will not pinch in some cases. Institutions, like our universities and our colleges, can always use increased resources well and so improve quality. I have no doubt about the ability of the system to do that. However, I am seeking to offer the reassurance that the expansion is against the background of the recognition of the demands of the sector for proper resourcing.

There is another rich source of talent that we need to get into higher education. In this country there are 1 million people in their 20s who already have level three qualifications. If we are to attract those people into our universities, we need to develop new and more flexible forms of provision—the argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp—to enable them to earn and learn. There needs to be proper respect and consideration for the needs of part-time students who often appear to be an add-on to the equation of provision, whereas in reality they are an important part of the provision in higher education at present. I agree with the noble Baroness that part-time students and the form of provision provided for them are destined to be an increasing part of our overall provision in future.

The foundation degrees that got under way last September exemplify the innovative approach to teaching and learning required in higher education. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, indicated, such courses are for students with a vocational commitment who need the opportunity to develop their skills but who, otherwise, would find access difficult. The courses enable easy transition from further education courses so that students can move into higher education as and when required. The courses are designed in conjunction with employers, and they are vocational. They respond directly to the skill shortages at the associate professional level and are often available through part-time and web-based study that meets the needs of people leading busy lives.

So we meet an important thread within the debate. A significant number of students need to be attracted within a framework that is somewhat different from the traditional approach of the past. I have no doubt that universities are one of the main players in widening participation. They will need to engage in a wide range of activities to convince young people from less traditional backgrounds that higher education is for them too. Noble Lords have rightly identified that inevitably there is an element of sacrifice and commitment in engaging upon a higher education course.

Every university has its part to play, including the leading research universities. A great deal of commitment and determination is involved, and I am grateful for the efforts of so many institutions. I am also grateful to those institutions that in the past may have been charged, accurately or not, with having a less than solicitous attitude towards students from more limited backgrounds who now participate in schemes to which a number of noble Lords have rightly drawn attention.

My Lords, they participated before. The charges are totally untrue.

My Lords, the argument obtains across a wide range of higher educational institutions I believe we have evidence of a redoubled activity in that respect. There is no doubt that from time to time we all need the spur and challenge of those who express some criticism of the way in which we act.

We recognise that the Universities UK report, Social Class and Participation in Higher Education, is a valuable contribution to the agenda. We recognise that the report builds on strong foundations going back a considerable way, and we recognize —my noble friend Lord Morgan has sought to reassure me—that the universities have been involved in generating a substantial momentum. I am heartened to see that the report shows just how much institutions are committed to widening participation and sharing good practice.

We are also greatly encouraged by the work that is taking place to encourage widening participation in the demanding subjects, such as medicine, where often students have come from a rather limited social background, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said. For the good of our health service and for the good of students, it is essential that we broaden those opportunities.

I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Vincent, that we also recognise the point that he made about particular areas of high level vocational courses at Imperial College and Cranfield. He will know that Sir Gareth Roberts has just produced a report to the Government on science and engineering skills. We are examining his recommendations and I am sure that they will bear significant fruit in the near future.

All this means that we have to make effective use of existing moneys. The postcode system was raised but it defied the capacity of one of my colleagues to express it in plain English. I shall duck that challenge on this occasion. My English is probably not up to it. I can reassure the noble Baroness that HEFCE recognises that aspects of the postcode system scarcely meet the level of precision and accuracy that we require.

There have been many proper challenges. The noble Lord, Lord Holme, drew some attention to that. I can reassure the House that we are looking forward to rather more sophisticated and more accurate measures than what we would all recognise were the first, early attempts to address the Issue. We also believe that rather more refined strategies would be—

My Lords, would the postcode list be published?

My Lords, the Government will be responsible for ensuring that higher education institutions know exactly the opportunities that are before them and the criteria against which they will be operating.

But HEFCE has its responsibilities in those terms. It is not for me at this time to prescribe in greater detail the way in which HEFCE will operate. However, we shall certainly need to win the support and confidence of the institutions under the new structure, and we can rely upon our colleagues in that body to ensure that that takes place.

My Lords, under what clause of the Freedom of Information Act will this information continue to be withheld from us?

My Lords, I am being drawn down a rather devious route when I have only a minute or two in which to conclude the debate. So perhaps the noble Lord will forgive me for not responding to that specific point.

I want to address myself to what was a central element in the debate this evening; that is, the issue of student finance. I can reassure my noble friend Lady Andrews that we are concerned to ensure that proper support is given to needy students. It will require a restructuring of student finance. My noble friend drew attention to specific groups. I have not the slightest doubt that they will fall within the criteria.

A review is taking place at the present time which will report in the fairly near future. Its job will be to sustain and support improved access to higher education. We take on board some of the criticisms advanced this evening about the present system, though once again I seek to disabuse the House of the notion that the present system of financing higher education has led to a significant drop in applications from students from working class backgrounds. That is not sustained by the facts.

We recognise that the perception and reality of debt is an important factor for students. We may perhaps need to adjust to a different situation. We need all the resources we can get in higher education. There is no doubt that the new review will continue with the principles that have been adumbrated since we came to office. It is surely unfair that graduates who, on average, earn 35 per cent more than the average wage, should make no contribution to the education which gave them that advantage. So I can assure the House that the principles behind the review—as if anyone would doubt it—will be based upon some contribution from the state, some contribution from the student and a contribution from the families. However, we hope to produce a better system than the present system and that is the burden of the review.

I pay due tribute to those noble Lords who emphasise that we need to think about higher education in a broader perspective than has been the case in the past. I have no doubt, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, among others emphasised, that further education has a significant role to play. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, emphasised how many students follow higher education courses in our further education colleges. There is no doubt that the partnership that we need to forge not only between further and higher education, but also between the schools and further and higher education, is tremendously important in creating opportunities and ladders for progress. In the past entry to higher education has looked like a series of hurdles that people have to surmount. It is much more important that it be seen as a series of ladders which they can climb.

Therefore I share the view of noble Lords in welcoming this report. It reveals the real progress that the higher education sector is making and we should pay tribute to all those who have achieved those results. But we still have a long way to go. The Government's vision is to close the gap between the learning rich and the learning poor so that everyone has the opportunity to develop their talents to the full. I hope that this report and today's debate will give the sector a new stimulus to make progress in this important work.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his comprehensive and sympathetic reply. I am also grateful for the contributions from all noble Lords throughout the House this evening. It has been an excellent debate. It has shown what a variety of insights can be offered from your Lordships' wide experience, even when shining the spotlight on a highly focused topic.

I realise that we are pressed for time so perhaps I can simply reflect on the fact that all noble Lords emphasised one point above all. To open opportunities from those from lower socio-economic groups will demand innovative and flexible responses and approaches and will require new resources. It cannot be done on current funding methods.

I leave noble Lords with a comment from John Knowles from the Access to Higher Education project at Lincoln University. He attended our parliamentary launch last month and his words sum up today's debate. He said that it is good to see so many students who have benefited from widening participation initiatives and to see the great and the good taking notice. I thank your Lordships for taking notice. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government by what criteria they will select the United Kingdom's entry for the European Capital of Culture for 2008.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, before I start my speech I should perhaps declare an interest as I deal in watercolours and have been known to sell watercolours of some of the cities in the list we are discussing.

In my researches for this debate the one word that came up most frequently was, naturally enough, "culture". So I thought I had better look it up in the dictionary. The most apt sounding definition that I could find was that it was the "intellectual side of civilisation". I am not at all sure that I know what that means. Can the Minister say whether that corresponds with the definition used by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport?

We are talking this evening about an annual award from the EU to what was originally the "European City of Culture", and at this present time still is but will be changed to the "Cultural Capital of Europe" in 2005. Up until 2004 each designated country in the EU will decide which of its cities to nominate and that will be the end of the matter. However, according to the DCMS briefing, from 2005 it appears that,

"The European institutions will take part in the selection procedure".

Can the Minister explain what that means? For instance, will the Government go through the procedure of selection and submit a city to the EU, only to be told by the aforesaid European institutions that they have selected an entirely different British city for 2008? If that is not the case, why are they creating their own selection panel at what must be considerable effort and cost?

The Government announced that they will run a Centres of Culture Award in parallel with the European Capital of Culture competition. That award will be given to each of the cities forming the short list for the ultimate award which will be chosen in March. That is an excellent idea—but only if it is accompanied by a grant substantial enough for each city to make a real impact.

The list of British cities which have put in bids is a large and culturally formidable one. But it seems that the largest and most powerful city in cultural terms—of course I mean London—has not put itself forward. Why not? After all, Athens, Paris, Berlin and Madrid have all been cities of culture in their turn. Was London dissuaded from entering to make it easier to select from others in the list?

Of course, each of the cities which did put in a bid, ranging from Canterbury and Inverness to the leviathans such as Birmingham and Newcastle, has its own specific attributes, which make each one an excellent candidate for the award. The difficulty will be how to judge between one attribute and another. That must in the end be a subjective judgment that will call for a particularly adroit panel of judges. Can the Minister tell us tonight who the chairman will be? Perhaps she can announce the names of the other members as well. If not, perhaps she will tell us when that announcement will be made.

I come to the main reason for this debate: to elucidate the criteria by which the panel will determine its shortlist and eventually, next March, a winner—or will the final winner be chosen by the Prime Minister? There has been a report to that effect. Perhaps we shall hear about that later.

The guidelines published by the DCMS are broadly right but I shall suggest some criteria that I hope will not be used as well as some that I hope will. In my list, political correctness would have no place. Political opportunism, however tempting it may be to choose such and such a city, should in my reckoning be ignored. "Dumbing down", that particularly unattractive but nevertheless descriptive phrase, should not be included in any city's programme.

On the other hand, transport infrastructure is particularly important. Access by rail, air and road—and in certain cases sea—should all be really effective. What happened at the Dome, where the family car driver was virtually ignored, must not be allowed to happen. After all, the winning city will want to attract tourists and visitors from the rest of Britain as well as from abroad.

The winning city must have shown itself to be especially adept at exploiting the assets that it already has, as well as to be likely to have the collective imagination to find new and attractive ideas. To return to the guidelines issued by the DCMS, what does,

"the ability to display a city's cultural wealth within a European context",

mean? The guidelines also state:

"encourage other European States' participation".

Does that mean flamenco dancing in Inverness? Surely, people would visit to Inverness to see Highland dancing.

The object of a successful programme should be to uplift a city's citizens' ideas of culture. As I said, that means the liberal use of lively imaginations. It will be extremely difficult for the panel to compare, for example, the attributes of Liverpool and Canterbury. I hope that they will bear in mind that a good little 'un can often be as good as a good big 'un. Fair and proportionate judgments are required.

I hope that, if nothing else, I have put forward some ideas that will stimulate a wide-ranging debate. I look forward to listening to your Lordships and, as always, I shall enjoy the reply of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for initiating this debate. I must add that when I dealt with the noble Lord when I was a Whip in this House, I always found him to be fair. I am grateful to him for his colourful style in this House.

I am not sure that I require an explanation of the criteria that will be used to determine the successful bid. I have enough confidence in the Government to know that whoever is chosen, the selection will have been made for the right reasons. However, the debate gives me the opportunity to say a few words about my preferred bid.

The Government have asked local authorities to work with partners to develop a local cultural strategy. Whatever happens to the bids when they are finalised and whether or not they are successful, communities will benefit from the fact that they have had to work together to formulate the bids in the first place and are therefore more likely to work together in future.

I know from my experience on Tyneside that many years ago we were forced to work together by the circumstances at the time. In the early I 980s, the North East had unemployment thrust upon us almost overnight. At that time we in any case had the highest unemployment on the mainland. That was partly because of the economic climate, partly because of government policy and partly because, in industry, we as a region had all our eggs in one basket. That made us very vulnerable when downsizing and industrial decline came upon us.

Coal, steel, shipbuilding and heavy engineering were all affected. I hope that I never again have to witness the despair of families who have lost their only wage-earners so suddenly. Not just wages or jobs are lost when there is a rapid decline in a region's industrial base. The loss is much more long term than that. Training and skills are lost. It is much harder to start the wheels of industry again if a workforce must he trained once more.

I have touched on the past problems of the North East simply to highlight how far the region has come since then. Part of any criteria to qualify for the European Capital of Culture must be a city's ability to work together. That is where the Newcastle-Gateshead initiative scores so highly—for out of the problems of the 1980s, the North East decided that it could not survive on government handouts. Not that there were many of those around, as I recall.

After years of struggle, we created the Northern Development Company, which brought together the various elements of the region: industrialists, local authorities, trade unionists and educationists. It involved people from all political persuasions. That body had a number of successes during that period, including bringing the Japanese company, Nissan, to the region. It was the forerunner to the regional development agency, One North East. I am pleased to say that that now has a 10-year strategy that complements the region's new vibrancy.

As the Newcastle-Gateshead initiative clearly demonstrates, it is now an outward-looking region that is self-reliant and has vision, ambition and aspiration. But the North East has much more than that, it has a cultural distinctness that puts it apart from any other part of Britain. Establishing a strategic cultural partnership is not a problem for the region. In fact, it comes naturally. There are a warmth and trust that are easily recognisable and which make it much easier to create working relationships.

I do not intend to list all the attributes of the North, as they can be read in various publications. However, I recommend the Newcastle-Gateshead council's 10-year strategy for culture booklet which highlights much of the regions' culture: the beauty of Hadrian's Wall stretching across the region and through the city; the picturesque city of Durham; and the coastal city of Sunderland. Attractive as those cities may be, it is, however, the city of Newcastle that is recognised as the hub of the region.

I bring your Lordships' attention to recent developments on both sides of the Tyne. There is the Baltic, the centre for contemporary art, the new music centre on the Gateshead side of the Tyne and, of course, the quayside developments on the Newcastle side. I must admit that the last Tory government can, through its Development Corporation, take some credit for working with local authorities in promoting that development. However, I must make it clear that credit for vision and planning must go to the two excellent councils, so ably led by Tony Flynn and George Gill. Both men have a lot of vision and commitment to their community.

I should explain to those who are not aware of the region's geography that it is only the River Tyne that divides Gateshead and Newcastle; they are linked by numerous bridges. We feel justified in referring to the conurbation as "the city".

People in the North are more aware of and more involved in cultural activities because of the cultural enterprise shown in the area. The success of any cultural strategy depends substantially on the extent to which everyone feels included in the process. The Newcastle-Gateshead initiative is based firmly on the involvement of the communities in cultural activities. Whether or not the North East is successful in its bid to be the European Capital of Culture, we have learnt that cultural development can make a major contribution to real progress in the delivery of a regional initiative. That is why the Newcastle-Gateshead initiative recognises that, to be truly effective, it must listen to and involve local people in delivering its programmes and ideas. Winning the title would hasten the process of developing well thought through, imaginative and realistic plans.

My Lords, I can only assume that the noble Lords, Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Stoddart of Swindon, were not aware that European institutions would be involved in the selection process or they would have been in their places making their regular speeches about the iniquities of Europe.

I speak as a humble Back-Bencher. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, will give the official party view on the matter. I come to the question in a genuine spirit of inquiry. I shall say nothing detrimental to the bids of any of the cities hoping for the accolade. I know how quickly "Good morning" leaflets can be got out on the eve of an election, and I do not want any derogatory comments from me about any of the competitors appearing in a last-minute leaflet.

It is worth asking why the prize is worth winning. As well as its artistic and cultural benefits, it brings enormous economic benefit to the winning city. That was first seen in Glasgow, where they had the "Glasgow's miles better" campaign. The city took the opportunity to remind an initially sceptical public of its cultural riches and re-positioned itself as a centre for inward investment by concentrating on the more positive aspects of life in the city and on its cultural merit.

What should the Government look for? Credible candidates must have a genuine cultural base. Even the most skilful PR campaign could not underpin a bid that did not have genuine cultural merit. The city must also have supportive civic leadership. A council with a poor record of support for cultural activities will quickly be found out. There must also be a cross-community vision, shared with local communities and business groups. The bid must fit in with an overall regeneration plan and be seen as bringing benefits to the candidate city and region. I understand why London is not applying; the preferred candidate should be a city that will get a positive benefit from a title that, for London, would simply be a cherry on the cake.

In some ways, the Minister will have to behave like a judge at a 1950s beauty contest of a kind that is now considered so politically incorrect. Various Members will parade the assets of their city before her, hoping that they will catch her eye. That is not, in itself, a bad thing. The process encourages cities and centres to "Search for the hero inside yourself", to use the words of the popular song. It causes communities and their civic leadership to look positively at the cultural aspects of their region, emphasise them and knit them together in a programme.

I make no secret of the fact that my preferred centre would be Liverpool. It would be a fitting culmination for its 800th anniversary celebration in 2008. It would also be a fitting acknowledgement of the successful rehabilitation of the city after the bleakness and lunacy of the 1980s. Since childhood, I have thought about the awesome aspects of the city. There is its architecture, including St George's Hall, the Pier Head and the two cathedrals. There are also the eight art galleries, the Philharmonic, the three universities, the Albert Dock, the maritime museum and Tate Liverpool. All that represents a considerable concentration of artistic and cultural power. We can add the city's sporting heritage and its special place in popular entertainment. I am old enough to remember Ted Ray, Arthur Askey, Jimmy Tarbuck and Ken Dodd.

What about George Formby?

My Lords, George Formby was not from Liverpool. Tommy Handley was. Yes, ITMA. Dare I mention to the Government Front Bench the impact of the Beatles during the wonderful 60s?

Liverpool has certainly had an impact that will weigh heavily, but I do not want to demean any other bids.

In making the selection, the winner should be able to gain real benefit from the title, as Glasgow did, with "Glasgow's miles better". Liverpool has put its bid in under the title "The World in One City". It is part of a general economic, social and cultural programme that has the support of all the relevant regional authorities in the North West. Like me, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, is a former Member of Parliament for a north-western constituency, and he will know that the North West does not always speak with one voice in support of Liverpool.

There is a sense of unity and it would set a seal of self-confidence and self-esteem for Liverpool, which could be converted into jobs, investment and all-round environmental improvements. Liverpool perhaps paid a higher price than most for our change of direction from Empire to member of Europe. This European accolade could be a significant boost to a city which is already on the move.

My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, and congratulate him on securing this timely and important debate today.

I begin by declaring a professional interest in the outcome of this selection process in that a company of which I am the non-executive chairman is helping to promote the Belfast bid. Perhaps more significantly for the purposes of this debate, however, is the fact that I wish to declare a personal interest. I am from Belfast and I am proud of it.

Two thousand and eight will be exactly 10 years on from the signing of the Belfast agreement. The race to be the European Capital of Culture allows Belfast the perfect opportunity to show the world that it is a much changed city. It is also an opportunity to put cultural flesh on the political hones of what the media like to describe as the "peace process" and be able to show what we have done in those 10 crucial years of our history.

For well over a year now, a group of highly committed people from the arts, business, political, voluntary and sporting sectors have come together—and in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Burlison, have worked together—to prepare the bid on behalf of all the people of Northern Ireland—not just the population of our capital city. That group, through the organisation "Imagine Belfast 2008", has been both creative and inclusive in developing our bid through, for instance, a postcard campaign across all of Northern Ireland asking people to "imagine" what they would like to see in their Belfast in 2008. This campaign brought in a huge response from right across the community and some of the best ideas were even projected in a special light show on to the famous Harland and Wolff cranes which dominate the Belfast skyline.

Winning this title would represent a massive opportunity to be brave, bold, pioneering and—dare I say it?—revolutionary about creating change in Northern Ireland. It is a chance to challenge every preconception and misconception about Belfast and an opportunity to present a new image which, in the long term, could help to reposition the city and all of Northern Ireland in the eyes of the rest of the UK, Europe and the world beyond. The bid has been given the full support of the Northern Ireland Executive and was warmly endorsed by First Minister David Trirn1Ple and Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan when it was delivered at the end of March.

However, a key message that I would like to convey to your Lordships today is my confidence that Belfast will be a very worthy representative of the United Kingdom should we be selected to become the UK's nominee for the European Capital of Culture in 2008. To be the UK's entry would be a badge we would wear with honour, while of course bringing our own distinctive Northern Ireland interpretation to our proposed activities. My confidence is based on the ideas within the Belfast bid document which represent a new approach to culture and to the arts, placing them at the very centre of our society and using a definition of culture that embraces every aspect of social, political and creative life in Northern Ireland.

I would also like to offer noble Lords the opportunity to examine this document to see for themselves the innovation and creativity that has been used in the proposal—helping to match the massive physical regeneration of Belfast that has been wrought in recent years. Indeed, I would urge your Lordships to come and see for yourselves how Belfast could and indeed should be a proud and worthy recipient of this honour.

If "Imagine Belfast 2008" is ultimately successful, I am sure that the confidence that I have in my home city will be fully appreciated by your Lordships.

My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend's Question gives us the opportunity to debate issues relating to cultural activities and aspirations in some of our great cities. I look forward with great interest to the Minister's reply to the various questions raised by my noble friend.

European culture in the context of the Council of Europe and the European Union plays a major role. As a former Member of the European Parliament and as a current member of the parliamentary delegation to the Council of Europe, I am greatly involved in developing the continuity of our heritage and the need to define culture as widely as possible in order to ensure for the future that the peoples of Europe know and understand each other at least a little.

I believe that that can best be achieved through cultural activities. I also believe that it is a fundamental principle of our membership of the European institutions to try to work with and develop activities of common cultural interest. In that, the award of European City of Culture plays a very important role. We all know that Glasgow benefited enormously from being the chosen city some years ago. In the current year, the citizens in the fine city in the north of Portugal which holds the title—I believe it is Oporto—have greatly benefited from the influence it has brought.

Many noble Lords will know that, like the noble Lord, Lord McNally, I have a strong association with and an attachment to Liverpool. Liverpool was one of the first cities to throw its hat in the ring for the award. I regret that it did not figure as one of the leviathans to which my noble friend referred in his opening remarks. However, like other applicant cities, Liverpool is, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, one of the great old industrial cities which has had to come to terms with its past in order to transform itself and find a new image and identity. It has gone a long way towards achieving that. It has received aid not only from central government but also from the European institutions. In that context, it can be said already to be a European city.

I know that I have no need to speak at great length in referring to the various attractions of Liverpool. However, as a former trustee of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, I cannot but sing the praises of the Walker and the plans for the updating of the Liverpool museum. I cannot help also but refer to the fine conservation centre which is one of the leading such centres not only in this country but in Europe and probably the world. There is the fine maritime museum and in terms of more popular culture the Beatles museum and so forth. There is the philharmonic orchestra, the playhouse and the three universities. As a great educational centre, Liverpool has a fine reputation and brings together many young people who make the centre of the city a vital place. But in addition to the atmosphere and the living environment, there are many fine buildings in the centre of Liverpool which owe their preservation and refurbishment to the need to accommodate students in central locations in the city. That, too, has been most satisfactory and refreshing.

As has already been said, from the world of sport Liverpool boasts two famous football teams and the Grand National, the greatest steeplechase horse race in the world. Many will also think of Liverpool as primarily a great sea port, with people coming into the city as well as those departing for other shores. As a consequence, we have a number of minority groups. We have the oldest Chinese community in the country. Many groups originating from other parts of the world came to Liverpool because of its success as a port and then stayed to make their homes in the city.

Together with the local authority, other institutions and several individuals, many of those groups have worked very hard on the bid to make Liverpool "the world in one city". To that end, perhaps I may quote a poem which was written with the bid for the European Capital of Culture in mind. It rather sums up the matter:

"The train is now leaving for two thousand and eight,

It's travelling to Liverpool, it'll be well worth the wait,

As Capital of Culture there's plenty to see,

Just listen to this, I'm sure you'll agree.

The first stop's the theatre,

Of which there are four.

The Empire and Everyman provide shows galore and,

The Neptune and Playhouse give you lots more.

The passengers want music,

What shall they do?

My answer is simple,

Your choice is of two.

The Phil provides tunes,

Of a classical sort,

For something more modern,

You have the Royal Court.

The museums and galleries come along thick and fast,

With Liverpool, Life and the Maritime showing the past,

For those wanting art you alight at the Tate,

Then there's the Walker and Sudley where the pictures are great.

And all through the city wherever you go,

You're reminded that this city was the home of John, Paul, George and Ringo".

I have ventured to quote the whole of that poem because it was published as the result of a competition across schools in the city, asking to children to set out their thoughts. The poem was written by Rebecca Loveridge, aged 11, a pupil at the Childwall Church of England Primary School. I think that it is an excellent example of how everyone in Liverpool is enthusiastic about this bid.

I do not doubt that by 2008 a very good bid will have won. Whatever happens, I believe that all those who are now participating in the bidding process will have focused their thoughts and efforts on securing success. In doing that, they will have achieved something for themselves, something that will be lasting. They will have achieved a great deal for all those who will be the future visitors to their cities, as well as for all those who in the future will go to live in them.

Again, I thank my noble friend for giving us an opportunity to debate this issue. I look forward to the reply from the noble Baroness.

My Lords, we are all trying our best not to be too partisan. I wish to follow the general tone of the previous speakers by suggesting that the criteria that the Government should be adopting ought not to be entirely subjective and to argue strongly that, if we are considering the European Capital of Culture, then we should celebrate Britain's great regional and industrial cities.

What we saw with Glasgow as European City of Culture was a major opportunity very well taken to revive the city. It made a huge difference. To an extent we have seen the same effect in Bilbao, Toulouse and Bologna. They, too, used the opportunity of being nominated the European City of Culture to help them to turn around what had been left after the ravages of the industrial revolution and also to rediscover some of the older heritage behind it.

In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Luke, suggested that we have to avoid political correctness and dumbing down. However, I hope that we would all agree that any European Capital of Culture should not be only a city of high culture. When I worked in Oxford, as those open-topped buses drove past my room every 10 minutes with the loudspeakers telling tourists about the famous sites, I came to realise that there is a view of Britain which comprises the rapid high culture tour: London, Oxford, Stratford, Cambridge, Canterbury and off again. Many of us have worked hard to explain to visitors that there is much more to Britain than that.

I have to admit that the first time that Bradford launched itself as a centre of tourism, I was not entirely persuaded. It was not until the following February, when I was walking in a snowstorm with my family up from Howarth to the top of the Pennines to visit the farm that was thought to have been the original inspiration in Wuthering Heights, and then passing around 60 Japanese tourists along the way, that I understood that, in its own way, Bradford is also a real draw for foreign visitors. We have around 8 million visitors a year.

Part of a British strategy for tourism ought to concentrate on attracting more visitors to Liverpool, Bradford, Newcastle and Belfast, as well as to the more obvious places. After all, our great industrial cities are larger than many of Europe's other capital cities. Bradford is larger than Copenhagen; Liverpool is a great deal larger than Berne. Those cities were the creations of the 18th and 19th centuries and, in the nature of their growth, they were immigrant cities.

Between 1810 and 1840, the population of Bradford exploded tenfold. People came to the city from Scotland, Ireland and France; there is an area called "Little Germany" in the city. We still have the descendants of Armenians, as well as families from the great flood of East European Jews who arrived at the end of the last century. The Poles and the Ukrainians arrived at the end of the last war. Today, Bradford is home to a substantial population of people from South Asia and a smaller group from Jamaica, Grenada and other parts of the West Indies.

I still treasure the occasion when a British professor from Newcastle came to stay with us in Saltaire. He asked about the formation of new communities in Bradford. He spoke Gujarati, so we walked down to our local corner shop where we enjoyed a wonderful discussion about the complexities of the Gujarati communities—there are three of them—in Bradford.

The richness and diversity of the local culture of the great industrial cities is very much a part of what we should be celebrating. When we consider the European Capital of Culture, which should be a symbol of the future as well as one of the past, then part of what Britain does have to offer our European partners is the fact that we are now a multi-cultural country, that British citizens come from all kinds of backgrounds, colours, religions and attitudes, and that we manage that successfully. Often there may be tensions— we have endured some fairly strong tensions in Bradford over the past few years—but we do manage our multi-cultural diversity and we wish to celebrate it. We should be looking at heritage, at rediscovery, at reconstruction and at renaissance.

I am extremely proud that this year Saltaire was given World Heritage status. When we moved into the village, it was rapidly going downhill. I am extremely happy that we managed to buy a house there just at that point. Since then, a collection of l960s drop-outs, entrepreneurs who were not entirely sure that they wanted to play the normal game, have managed to persuade the council to turn the village around. That effort has been much helped by David Hockney and a range of other people who wanted to see Britain's industrial heritage preserved.

We now have a thriving village. We have a mill which, at its height, employed some 3,000 people. Today around 1,000 people work there for two electronics companies. It is a flourishing place which also has a great many paintings by David Hockney.

There are many other things that we might celebrate. The Hockney family comes from Idle, a village which is two villages further down the Aire and famous for its Idle working men's club. We need to cherish the industrial heritage which we have throughout the City of Bradford—as in. Newcastle, Liverpool and elsewhere—and to educate our young people about it.

There is also our mixed religious heritage—the chapels and the cemeteries. The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, could tell the House a great deal about the beauties of Undercliffe cemetery in Bradford, which is second only to Highgate in the extravagance of its memorials. Some of the chapels have now been turned into mosques.

There are also the distinctive musical traditions, which in West Yorkshire are much to do with brass bands, the Black Dyke Mills being the best known band in the Bradford area. We have the literature of the industrial revolution—books by J.B. Priestly, the wonderful Armstrong novels about the way in which mill families behaved, and now Barbara Taylor Bradford.

There is the vibrancy of our sporting tradition. I am very proud that Saltaire cricket club now has a substantial number of good young Asians in its teams. It is the club that used to have Jim Laker as its professional in the 1930s. Indeed, Asian cricket is one of the most encouraging developments in West Yorkshire that we all wish to celebrate. The vibrancy of Asian culture and what it has brought in to West Yorkshire is celebrated in the Bradford Mela and in the quality of Bradford's Asian cooking.

Without being too partisan, the opportunity needs to be taken to celebrate Britain's cultural diversity and its industrial and civic heritage, which was allowed to run down in the 1950s and 1960s but is now slowly being rebuilt. It was taken exceedingly well in Glasgow. Let us make sure that we take the opportunity to do the same again.

My Lords, the European Capital of Culture should embody a vision of opportunity. It should not involve simply high culture nor the culture which allegedly made Goering reach for his revolver. It should be culture in the broad sense, in Max Weber's sense, embodying the social energies and aspirations of an entire community.

Perhaps I may suggest one or two possible criterion. Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, the candidate city should represent Britain as it is in all its diversity—a multi-cultural, polylingual Britain; a Britain that has been invigorated and renewed by immigration, by changes in Scotland and Wales and by its relationship with Europe.

It should also, in the famous term of my noble friend Lord Healey, have a hinterland—not only a geographical hinterland but a cultural hinterland. It should interact with the life of an entire region and embody its close links with that wider area. It should resonate and pulsate through many communities, including those in need of social and economic renovation. It should embody naturally a close and vibrant relationship with the whole of Europe, as would be appropriate for such a city. It should also embody in part the ideals of the young. It should convey a sense of renewal, as other noble Lords have said, and should not be elitist or ageist. It should embody the quality of life of every age group. It should convey and contain a cultural base with a great range of activities—social, intellectual and sporting. It should convey ways in which the cultural infrastructure can be taken forward and it should pass the test of sustainability.

That brings me, through a natural and seamless progression of logic, to the claim of Cardiff. I have no interest to declare. I do not come from Cardiff—I used to work in Swansea—and therefore support neither its rugby team nor its soccer team. However, it has a number of qualities which illustrate the wider theme. Cardiff has a hinterland. A bid from Cardiff, as the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, will confirm, is a bid from Wales. It has the support of all 22 local authorities and has resonance all over the country. One feature of its bid will be a new programme of activity for Theatre Clwyd in Mold, which is in the far north-east of Wales. This will have an impact on Swansea, Newport and Merthyr. It benefits from being the home of the Welsh Assembly, which is strongly supporting the bid from Cardiff. The mere fact of devolution is reflected in the considerable cultural liberation of the City of Cardiff in all its aspects in recent years.

The point has been made—quite correctly—about multiculturalism. There is scarcely a city in these islands which has a stronger and longer tradition of multicultural interaction than the City of Cardiff. It has been a highly inclusive place for decades. For generations it has housed within it a large number of migrants from the Middle East, from Africa and from the Far East—and very harmoniously so. We shall not see tomorrow a threat from the British National Party in the port of Cardiff. Tiger Bay and Butetown are famous for nurturing icons of our culture—the singer Shirley Bassey, the rugby league player Billy Boston and the Olympic athlete Colin Jackson. It is symbolical that Cardiff should have a notable art centre in a chapel built in the 1870s for Norwegian seamen coming to Cardiff.

Cardiff also has a very strong Jewish community, which has given the world—not to mention the Labour Party—the great names of Silkin, Edelman, Abse and the family of my noble friend Lord Janner, who is not in his place.

Cardiff cradles above all a naturally bilingual, bicultural city. It is the home of key institutions in the world of the Welsh language—television companies, the Welsh Academi, the University of Wales and its press. I hope this will be reflected in the kind of considerations brought to bear in choosing the European City of Culture.

In spite of everything, those of us who speak Welsh number half a million. It is easily the most robust of the Celtic languages and it is relevant that in 2008 the National Eisteddfod of Wales will be meeting in Cardiff, as also will the Eisteddfod of Urdd Gobaith Cymru, the Welsh League of Youth.

Cardiff is also very much a European city—indeed, its multiculturalism gives Cardiff its outward dimension. It has a strong series of links with not only western Europe but with central and eastern Europe and the cultures of Poland, Romania and the Baltic states. This multiculturalism gives Cardiff its outward look.

Not many cities can be more effectively and completely described as a city of the young. In physical terms, Cardiff is rapidly growing—it has been since the 1980s—and many young people are coming to Cardiff.

The Bay area has been transformed as a haven for young people. In the world of pop culture—with which I am sure your Lordships are totally familiar—Cardiff houses slightly more recent groups than the Beatles, of whom the noble Lord, Lord McNally spoke nostalgically. It has the Stereophonics and Catatonia, who are responsible for the famous disc, "Road Rage", and the memorable remark,

"Every morning I wake up and thank the Lord I'm Welsh".

Cardiff is also the home of major artistic institutions—the Welsh National Opera, which is outstanding —in the world, St David's Concert Hall, the National Museum of Wales, with its unique collection of impressionists, many other galleries, the Chapter Arts Centre, the third largest film festival in Britain and, not least, the Millennium rugby stadium, which has been a triumphant success. Compared with the shambles of Wembley, the Millennium stadium has been a great success, both architecturally and in terms of management. It will host the cup final on Saturday, where Arsenal will win. Many other developments are forecast which convey the theme of sustainability. I mention in particular the Wales Millennium Stadium, due for completion in 2004—a great new venue for opera, ballet and music.

Any cultural capital of Europe benefits enormously. This is an enormous spur to jobs, investment and growth. It would be beneficial for Cardiff and for the whole of the South Wales Valleys, which are suffering deep deprivation at the present time. Cardiff is an outward-looking city. Its history is a chronicle of social inclusion. It has an outward-looking identity, which nevertheless cradles the oldest culture in these islands—that of the nation of Wales. So I hope that the adjudicators, and indeed my noble friend the Minister, will bear these cogent points in mind.

My Lords, I have found the debate fascinating. One must thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for introducing it. I know the noble Lord to be a jolly chap. However, I thought I detected a slightly pessimistic note in his comments about this project—although perhaps it was due to the lateness of the hour. He does not need to be pessimistic. There is no downside to this project. A number of speakers mentioned the experience of Glasgow when it was the City of Culture. The dramatic transformation of that city indicates that we are on the right track.

My noble friend Lord McNally gave me rather a fright. I always get a fright when I am reminded that from this Front Bench I have the worthy and honourable job of representing the party view on these matters. We on these Benches view the project with the utmost optimism and favour. We congratulate the department on the way in which it has outlined the criteria that will be applied when a city is finally chosen.

It has been notable from the contributions that there are advocates of cities who are absent. We have heard very little about Canterbury, for example, or indeed Brighton and Hove; or about Norwich—where is the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis? We have heard little about Oxford. We shall no doubt hear noble Lords express their spirited support for those candidates.

The noble Lord, Lord Luke, need not worry too much about the definition of "culture". We all know what we mean by the word in this country. It is slightly different in terms of emphasis and nuance from what is meant by culture—not high culture but culture generally—in other European countries. We are, as Her Majesty said in her admirable Golden Jubilee Address, a pragmatic and sensible nation. I agreed with those remarks. When we embark on cultural projects, we like to know how things work. We shall be asking the Minister to tell us in her reply how various aspects of the project will work in terms of selection and so forth.

I think that we can all agree that "culture" is civilisation. It is obviously about custom and history, it is about artistic achievement, it is about the quality of life in our country and in the cities and towns throughout our nation. It is right and proper that in reaching a decision the committee, and ultimately the Prime Minister, will take into account not only high culture, or culture as I have described it, but aspects of the life of these cities in terms of what can be done to increase their prosperity and decrease deprivation and exclusion. The noble Lord, Lord Rogan, made a similar reference in relation to Belfast. It is an important part of the process. It may be cheering to the noble Lord to know—this may not come within his area of expertise—that Messrs William Hill make Belfast the narrow favourite in the betting.

I recall doing an interview on the Green some years ago for a French television programme. I was asked to explain what was all the fuss about the Poet Laureate—what was the Poet Laureate, and why were the British so exercised about the matter? I said that they were not exercised about the matter as such:, they were exercised about the fact that William Hill had produced its betting prices on it. They found that absolutely fascinating. I understand that when the programme was broadcast on TV 3 in France it engendered a good deal of interest: not all French people realised that, as well as being a cultural people—which we are, with our great literary culture and so forth—we are betting folk as well, and we like to mix all these things up. That is part of our culture.

Incidentally, Liverpool is second favourite, at 7 to 2. If asked to give a tip—which I advise everyone to ignore, because I am always tipping losers—although I do not want to burden Liverpool, I think that it must stand an excellent chance for all the reasons that have been given. Liverpool has everything. I speak as someone who has no axe to grind about Liverpool. I went there in my working youth, and spent some pretty dank days there, greeting ships coming in and discharging at the port. But I found the Walker Art Gallery fascinating, even as it was in the early 1960s.

I suggest to your Lordships that, outside London, Liverpool has become the most successful and important area of cultural activity—thanks to the excellent work of the late Sir Richard Foster, who died in such tragic circumstances and to whom we should offer belated thanks for the great work that he did there. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, nodding.

Apart from the great architectural and industrial traditions of Liverpool and its great entertainment and musical traditions, it has high culture as well. It is an astonishing city. I do not think that we need to be coy about its history—if I may say this to the noble Baroness, who so passionately advocated Liverpool. It has a history in the triangular trade which involved slavery, but other cities in Europe did as well. We need to cease to be coy about the matter. To that extent I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luke. Let us not be politically correct about that. If Liverpool is a serious candidate, let us take that as part of its culture and let us examine the way it has dealt with it. It merely adds to the strength of its candidature.

We listed the Liverpool entertainers, and I reminded the noble Lord of Tommy Handley, who was a great influence on my life, which shows one's age. There are many others. One has to mention Lily Savage, that wonderful comedian Mr O'Grady, who has unfortunately recently had a heart attack, as well as many others. It is always dangerous to mention Freddie Starr, but he is another talented entertainer from Merseyside along with Mr Jimmy Tarbuck and others. They are part of the lively entertainment culture of that city.

Other cities, of course, have everything to offer, and other noble Lords have put them forward. This is a very exciting and entertaining project. It can only add prestige to this country. It can produce euros and dollars for tourism, which is so important.

Perhaps I may end on the question about London, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Luke. We both love London. But London has a brand image of its own. England has no brand image in tourism, but London has a brand image, as does Scotland. To opt for London now, when there is so much that needs to be developed in other cities in order to expand tourism would be a mistake. That is no criticism of London, but to do so would be to miss a great opportunity.

Of course, Goring waved his revolver and used it to steal many works of art, so he cannot be considered entirely a man lacking in culture, even if he was only a psychopathic admirer of culture.

I wish the whole project well. I should like the noble Baroness to tell us more about the decision committee. Who is going to chair it? When is it going to sit? When is it going to produce a result? I have not understood— though there may be very good reasons—why on earth the losers are to become centres of cultural excellence. What is the thinking behind that? How do they qualify for that apart from by being the losers? It seems an odd, rather British idea.

My Lords, like other speakers in the debate, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for introducing it, although, like the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, I was sorry that he was not a little more upbeat about the competition, as every other speaker has been.

The European Capital of Culture programme is an important EU initiative to develop and promote the contribution that culture can make to a range of wider agendas and to celebrate the importance of culture in the everyday life of our cities. That is something that we should celebrate.

Unlike every other speaker in the debate, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Luke, I am not backing any one of the 12. I have a completely open mind and I shall therefore be boringly non-partisan. However, before I go on in that vein, I congratulate all those who have spoken on their brilliant advocacy on behalf of each of the cities that they are backing. The cities might consider hiring all of them to be on their public relations committees, because they have all done a splendid job tonight.

I am delighted that 12 cities from across the UK have taken up the challenge and submitted bids for the competition to select the UK's nomination for 2008. No city has been leant on to bid or not to bid. It has been entirely a matter for the cities themselves.

Cities create a collective vision, which encourages participation in cultural experience, learning opportunities, growth and regeneration. They can celebrate the richness and diversity of our lives and our cultures and create opportunities for creativity to he cultivated and for growth to be stimulated.

The purpose of the European Capital of Culture, as a competition and as a title, is not simply to highlight existing culture and cultural excellence but to encourage cities to develop and innovate within the cultural sphere. That is what is particularly valuable about it. It is an opportunity to show that culture is central to the life of a city and to demonstrate the contribution of culture to regeneration, social inclusion, education and business.

The competition to select the UK's nomination provides a tremendous opportunity for cities across the UK to explore and develop their cultural heritage and their creative life. To be designated as European Capital of Culture is a great honour and, as a showcase for the cultural wealth of the chosen city, it is a great opportunity.

I am sure that all the cities that have entered the competition will benefit from the process of developing their bids, through building new partnerships and by identifying new and innovative ways of improving and enhancing their cultural life. I am also sure that the city that wins the title will be a magnificent showcase for its own cultural life and for the UK as a whole.

However, I emphasise that the competition is not just about winners and losers. We want all the cities to derive some benefit from taking part in the competition. I very much agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on that. The competition offers benefits for all the towns that have entered.

In response to the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, when we launched the capital of culture competition, we announced that we would expand it in the UK and designate the shortlisted cities as centres of culture. That is desirable, because not everybody can win, but just by dint of entering they will have put a lot of effort into developing their particular culture in the broadest sense of the term.

The Government's criteria, which are based on those developed by the EU, were set out in the document Criteria and Information for Applicants when we launched the competition. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for his broad welcome for the guidelines that we provided. For the record, perhaps I should briefly go through the criteria. Broadly speaking, they fall into one of three categories: objectives, programme and infrastructure.

The successful city will have clearly defined objectives for a year-long programme, and the ability to deliver them; the ability to create an event of excellence with maximum impact for all its residents and visitors; a programme of events that will increase awareness and participation in cultural opportunities, particularly among the young and within community groups; a programme of events that presents opportunities for learning and development for individuals and communities; the ability to ensure co-ordination and full partnership between stakeholders and investors; the ability to display the city's cultural wealth within a European context and encourage other European states' participation; the infrastructure to deliver the above or the ability to create it—the noble Lord, Lord Luke, particularly mentioned transport in that respect; the financial resources to deliver the above; a well developed tourism strategy for the year; a well developed media strategy that promotes it at home and abroad; a programme of events that is sustainable financially and in terms of projected attendance figures; and the ability to translate this into long-lasting benefits.

In making our assessment of the bids, we will obviously focus on the criteria that we have published, but we shall also ensure that the city that we select to be the UK's nomination will meet the EU's criteria. All the bids will be evaluated in the same way against the criteria.

As noble Lords are aware, we decided that the best approach to assess the bids would be to appoint an independent advisory panel. The panel will evaluate each of the bids against the criteria and produce a report and recommendations for Ministers to consider. As the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, has already said, the final choice will be for the Prime Minister. We will announce the members of the advisory panel as soon as possible. The bids from the competing cities cover a broad cultural spectrum. We want to ensure that the expertise of the panel reflects this as far as possible. We shall appoint excellent people who will be able to do that difficult job. Listening to the debate this evening has reinforced my view that this will be by no means an easy task.

I was asked about the timetable. We are currently aiming to announce the shortlist in the late autumn and the final winner in spring 2003, although we will keep the timetable under review. The Prime Minister will submit our nomination, which has to reach the EU by the end of 2003. The EU requires each member state to submit its nomination no later than four years before the start of the year in which a city from that member state will hold the Capital of Culture title.

The noble Lord, Lord Luke, asked why the EU should have a selection panel of its own when the UK has already been through the process. I think it is reasonable that, as some EU money will certainly go into this, there should be a system whereby independent experts from the cultural sector are able simply to review the choices made by member states. I do not imagine that it will be a terribly time-consuming or expensive process. Indeed, I would expect the EU committee to endorse the UK's choice.

The noble Lord, Lord Luke, also asked about funding. As I said, we anticipate that the EU will provide some funding as it has done previously for the City of Culture programme. The Government have not yet made any decisions about government funding but we shall consider that in due course.

A number of speakers mentioned Glasgow. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, and the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord McNally, that Glasgow used the year and the title to great effect and benefited enormously from it. It had both economic and social benefits, and Glasgow made excellent use of the arts and culture both to strengthen and to communicate its own regeneration and vitality. I think that, on the basis of that example, we can all have high hopes for this competition for whichever city wins it. Glasgow in 1990 amply demonstrated the long-lasting cultural benefits that can be derived from taking on this challenge and doing it well.

Apart from a degree of partisanship, which is not at all unexpected in a debate of this kind, there has been a great deal of agreement across the House. I am sure that noble Lords will also agree when I say that the UK's cultural life is internationally known and acclaimed. The European Capital of Culture competition represents a great opportunity for our cities to harness their cultural assets and potential in search of a prize that is an excellent platform on which to celebrate our unique cultural successes. The city that is awarded the title will have an unparalleled opportunity to promote itself and its culture and to represent the UK on the international stage. Whichever city it is, I think that we should all wish it the very best for 2008.

House adjourned at two minutes past nine o'clock.