Engagements (Hansard, 17 September 2003)

§ Q1. Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde)
If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 17 September.

§ The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair)
Before listing my engagements, I express my condolences on behalf of the Government, the House and the British people following the tragic murder of the Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh last week. She was an inspiration to the Swedish people and an internationally respected Foreign Minister. She will be deeply missed.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I will have further such meetings later today.

§ Mr. Jack
The whole House will share in the Prime Minister's words on the sad death of the Swedish Foreign Minister.
851 Can the Prime Minister justify his policy on student tuition fees in the light of research showing that graduates pay £2,000 a year more in tax than non-graduates do, and given that his own parliamentary party has rejected his policies and that he told the British people that he would not introduce student tuition fees?

§ The Prime Minister
I suspect that graduates probably pay more income tax because they earn a great deal more money—something like 40 per cent. more. The choice is simple: either we get more funds into universities so that we have a fair system under which no one pays money up front, or we adopt the Conservative policy, which would result, according to the Institute of Education, in a cut of 100,000 students every year.

§ Q2. Barbara Follett (Stevenage)
Will my right hon. Friend do all he can to ensure that when the Post Office consults the public about the closure of a branch, it must demonstrate that it has taken their views into account? That certainly did not happen recently in Stevenage, when a strong case made for the retention of Chells post office was ignored by the Post Office. As a result, we are losing a strong branch and keeping a weak one.

§ The Prime Minister
I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned hard on that post office in her constituency. I also understand why people feel strongly about such closures. I know, too, that she would expect me to point out that at the end of the current programme of change in the Post Office, 95 per cent. of the urban population will still live within one mile of a post office. It is obviously important that we should try to provide the right facilities, and she will recognise that we are putting about £1.5 billion into the Post Office over the next few years. In the end, however, every decision of this type must, with the proper consultation, be a matter for the Post Office.

§ Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green)
I associate the Opposition with the Prime Minister's condolences to the Swedish Government.
On 10 June the Prime Minister launched a roadshow to sell the single currency to the British people. Can he tell us where it has got to?

§ The Prime Minister
There have been about 60 visits from Foreign Office Ministers over the past few months. It is important to keep the option of joining the single currency open for the reasons that I have given before. The right hon. Gentleman's policy of closing off that option and saying no in any set of circumstances would not be the right one for the British people.

§ Mr. Duncan Smith
The whereabouts of the Prime Minister's roadshow are a mystery even to his Government. The Treasury, when asked, says: There are so many roadshow events we can't begin to list them all. The Foreign Office said: The roadshow hasn't actually begun. Meanwhile, the Minister for Europe said: It's not a literal roadshow, it's only a figure of speech. 852 Given that the roadshow has not even got on the road, will the Prime Minister confirm that there will not be a referendum in this Parliament?

§ The Prime Minister
No, I certainly will not confirm that. We should keep our options open. The right test to apply is whether membership is in the economic interests of this country. We said that we would return to that issue next year. I see absolutely no reason for this country to say that it will foreclose its options and rule out membership of a single currency. We should do what is right for this country and keep the option open.

§ Mr. Duncan Smith
The Prime Minister is spinning roadshows, wasting public money and legislating for a referendum that he does not have the courage to hold. Why does he not admit what everybody else knows—that his dreams, his schemes and his hopes to scrap the pound are utterly wrecked?

§ The Prime Minister
It is slightly odd of the right hon. Gentleman to accuse me of not having the courage to hold the referendum when in his second question he asked me to rule out holding one. We have to decide what is in our best interests as a country. I happen to believe that, in our best interests, we should keep open the option of joining the single currency if it is in our economic interests to do so. The truth is that the right hon. Gentleman now holds a position not merely of blocking any change in the European constitution but of ruling out the single currency even if joining is in our economic interests. That is not a position that will recommend itself to the country, and when his predecessor adopted that position at the last general election, it was rejected.

§ Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge and Chryston)
Does my right hon. Friend share my concern about the imminent job losses at Sheffield Forgemasters—actually, at a local company that is better known as the family firm of R.B. Tennant? Does he agree that every possible effort should be made to consider the options by which we can retain those vital and highly skilled jobs?

§ The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is right to raise that issue as it is important. The Sheffield Forgemasters engineering business continues to have financial backing, and I understand that a series of meetings are taking place between the Department of Trade and Industry, the regional development agency—Yorkshire Forward—and the company. I hope very much that a way forward can be found in the coming months.

§ Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Inverness, West)
Last September, and again this February, the Prime Minister released dossiers to the British public that included the intelligence assessments that underpinned the case for war in Iraq. Why did he choose to withhold from those dossiers other intelligence that would undoubtedly have undermined his case in the minds of the British public?

§ The Prime Minister
I do not accept that it would have undermined our case. If the right hon. Gentleman is 853 referring to the Joint Intelligence Committee assessment about the danger of the weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, it would have been totally irresponsible if we had said that that danger meant that we should allow Saddam Hussein to carry on developing them. That would have been a foolish state of affairs to have brought about. That is why I do not believe that it undermined the case for war at all.

§ Mr. Kennedy
We now know that the Prime Minister was warned by the intelligence chiefs that war in Iraq could increase rather than decrease the risk of terrorism. We now know that the line in the original draft of the September dossier that reassured our public that Iraq was incapable of launching a nuclear strike against Britain was removed before publication. Why was the Prime Minister not willing to trust the British public to form a balanced judgment on those matters? Why did he not play it straight with the public at the time?

§ The Prime Minister
It is extraordinary of the right hon. Gentleman, whose case as I understand it is that those weapons did not exist in any event, now to say—

§ Mr. Kennedy
indicated dissent.

§ The Prime Minister
Oh, I see, they did exist—we should just have done nothing about them. All I can tell the right hon. Gentleman, if he wants it straight, is that the day this country's foreign policy is run by the Liberal Democrats will be the day this country really is at risk.

§ Mr. Neil Turner (Wigan)
Recently, a young girl was raped in my constituency, and earlier in the summer a young girl was enticed to Europe from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). Internet chatlines are the connection between the two cases. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office, and other relevant Government Departments, all join together to ensure that chatlines are properly regulated? May I also ask my right hon. Friend whether there is some way to ensure that internet chatline organisers police themselves so that other families do not suffer the same trauma as those in my constituency?

§ The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend raises a valuable and important point. The Home Office and the task force for child protection on the internet are working together to try to ensure that the internet is safe for children to use. In addition, the Sexual Offences Bill contains measures that bear on the problem and will help. I assure my hon. Friend that we shall continue to work with the industry, law enforcement and children's charities so that we do our very best to ensure that the law is sufficiently tight and also that internet services are greatly restricted whenever they may collide with the interests of children.

§ Q3. Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell)
When the Prime Minister said recently, We should be willing to experiment with new forms of co-payment in the public sector", what did he mean?

§ The Prime Minister
We have many examples of that: in pensions, where people make co-payments; in transport, where there is road-user charging in certain parts of the country; and in relation to student finance, where there is already co-payment through fees. It is important to recognise that when we are trying to boost our public services not all the money will come from the taxpayer. It is a pretty extraordinary thing if today's Conservative party is against those proposals.

§ Q4. Mr. David Borrow (South Ribble)
Fire, police and ambulance services in Lancashire are appointing a number of emergency community support officers to work in rural areas, one of whom will be based in Tarleton in my constituency. In addition to supporting the police, those officers will act as the first responder, having been trained by the ambulance service, and will undertake fire prevention work, after training from the fire service. Will my right hon. Friend congratulate the emergency services in Lancashire on that initiative and will he also urge emergency services in other rural areas—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. That is fine. The Prime Minister can answer.

§ The Prime Minister
I certainly will congratulate the emergency services on the work that they are doing. It is worth pointing out that there are about 1,200 community support officers—something that the Conservatives opposed when we introduced them. Those community support officers will be especially important not only at present but also when the Antisocial Behaviour Bill comes in, because they will be able to issue fixed penalty notices in respect of antisocial behaviour and truancy. It will be important that we increase the number of community support officers, as they are a huge help to the police—whose numbers are now at record levels.

§ Q5. Mr. Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland)
Does the Prime Minister accept that the restoration of basic services in Iraq is not progressing and will not do so as long as it remains under the control of the United States and the United Kingdom? Does he agree that delay in making the United Nations the principal authority in Iraq simply delays the day when basic services such as water, electricity and health care can be given to the Iraqi people?

§ The Prime Minister
First, I do not agree at all that the problem in providing decent services is the presence of the British or American troops. Our troops in the south of Iraq are doing their utmost to provide electricity, water and basic services. The people who are stopping those services are those who are sabotaging them—terrorists and supporters of Saddam. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would be getting to his feet to praise our troops for the work that they are doing in the south of Iraq. As some of the facts do not always come across, I shall also tell him that all 240 hospitals in Iraq are now functioning; by the end of June most of the schools were open and about 5.5 million children were able to take their end of year exams; and we are putting in hundreds of millions of pounds of infrastructure investment to provide better power and electricity. That 855 money was denied the people of Iraq by the regime of Saddam Hussein; had we followed the hon. Gentleman's policy, Saddam would still be in charge of it.

§ Q6. Mr. Barry Gardiner (Brent, North)
Yesterday, a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development catalogued the decline in standards in British schools, but can the Prime Minister tell the House whether any part of that report related to any period while he was in government, or does it represent a catalogue of the failure of the Conservative party?

§ The Prime Minister
It is interesting that the report, which was supposedly about Britain's school performance slumping, was analysing the school attainment of those aged 25 to 64 in 2001, so not a single person involved was in school under this Government. However, the OECD report about this Government and our record shows that, in reading, our 15-year-olds are eighth out of 43; in maths, eighth out of 31; and, in science, fourth out of 31. The report yesterday shows precisely the reason why we needed the increased investment that we have given.

§ Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green)
Can the Prime Minister tell us how much council tax has gone up by since 1997?

§ The Prime Minister
I cannot give an exact figure, but it is true that council tax has gone up since 1997; however, so has the amount of Government support to local government.

§ Mr. Duncan Smith
The answer to the question—the straight answer—is that council tax has gone up by a massive 70 per cent., a typical family is now paying £413 more since Labour came to office, and the very poorest pensioners spend nearly £1 in every £10 on council tax. Can the Prime Minister tell us all where in his manifesto he warned people of those massive tax rises?

§ The Prime Minister
It is correct that council tax has gone up, but it is also correct, as I say, that the amount of money coming from central Government to local government has increased. It has increased by 25 per cent. compared with a real-terms cut of 7 per cent. in the last four years of the Conservatives. The additional money that we are giving to local government at the moment was in the spending proposals, and was voted against by the right hon. Gentleman's party, which is in favour of cuts in that spending, so perhaps he will tell us how the council tax would be lower if we cut the amount of central Government support.

§ Mr. Duncan Smith
Let me remind the Prime Minister of what he actually said. In his manifesto, he promised that there would be no "excessive council tax rises". Yet, under Labour, council tax rises have become the biggest stealth tax of all, and next year he and his colleagues will send them soaring through the roof. Is not the reality 856 that the Labour lies on taxes are the biggest single reason why nobody believes a single word he says anymore?

§ The Prime Minister
The local authorities set the levels of council tax. The question, surely, for central Government is: are we providing them with sufficient money? [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] So it is apparently the position of the Conservative party that the increases that we have given are not enough, which is presumably why they voted even against the increases that we gave them. The truth of the matter is that we have given—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The Leader of the Opposition must calm himself. [Interruption.] Order. I am telling him and other hon. Members to calm down.

§ The Prime Minister
We have put more money into local government, and it is for the local authorities in the end to decide what their levels of council tax are, but that money has helped our education, our social services and our other local services. Whatever the situation is, the position of local authorities could not be improved by the right hon. Gentleman's policy, which is to cut even the money that we have put in. So in the end, it is a matter for local government; but so far as we are concerned, we have been increasing the amount of money to local government, not decreasing it.

§ Q7. Mr. Martin Salter (Reading, West)
Heroin and crack cocaine are flooding into our country, destroying lives and tearing apart families and communities. In my constituency in Reading, street crime recently fell by a third, but the town is still blighted by the scourge of hard drugs, as addicts turn to other forms of crime to feed their habits. What are the Government doing to improve joint working between the police, the courts and the treatment agencies to tackle that menace?

§ The Prime Minister
We are making sure that for the first time there is proper working across the agencies, involving the drug treatment agency, the criminal justice system and the police, to deal with offenders who have a crack or heroin addiction. We are saying to them clearly that they can have the treatment that is available for them, but if they do not accept that treatment, under the Criminal Justice Bill that we are putting through the House, they stand at risk of bail being refused. We cannot have a situation in which people who are drug addicts and who have tested positive for drugs are put back out on the street where they will commit further crime.
More than 6,000 drug treatment and testing orders, which are for those who have already been convicted of a crime, have now been issued, and 50 per cent. of the people on them have either given up drugs or are co-operating with the authorities. That is why the huge 857 investment that we are now making in drug treatment across the country is for the first time giving us the chance to deal with this problem.

§ Q9. Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry)
Does the Prime Minister think that a majority of Labour Back Benchers support his current policy on student top-up fees?

§ The Prime Minister
I believe that when we come to the debate we shall see what the support is. Yes, I do believe, however, that the vast majority of people here will support that proposal. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman why. We have a simple choice: either we make sure that we widen access to university and allow those universities to bring in more and more people, whom we need in today's world, or we adopt the policy with which he has now associated himself, which is to cut by 100,000 a year the numbers going into university. That is an inequitable policy, and this side of the House will not support it.

§ Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that in January the south-west London diagnostic and treatment centre for hips and knees will open? It will be the largest such centre outside America. Not only will it benefit my constituents and those of other hon. Members by performing 1,500 more hip and knee replacements a year, but it will provide an unparalleled base for research in Europe on orthopaedics. Would he support plans to provide such a centre of excellence on this site?

§ The Prime Minister
I am delighted about the centre in my hon. Friend's constituency. By 2005, such centres will be providing around 300,000 extra operations in the health service a year, and will be one of the reasons why every national health service indicator is already better than in 1997. I see from the comments of the Conservatives' health spokesman the other day that they are opposed to those centres. Any constituency that gets one of those centres therefore knows that the Conservatives would take it away.

§ Q10. Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon)
Returning to the vital issue of drugs, for which I make no apology as it is surely one of the biggest social challenges facing our nation, is the Prime Minister aware that we now have a growing number of heroin addicts—up to 250,000—yet only 2,000 places at treatment centres to which they can turn for help? If an addict therefore makes the brave decision to turn his back on a life of misery and crime, there are simply not enough places for him to get help at the moment. Will the Prime Minister take an urgent look at this problem and, if necessary, redirect resources and make sufficient numbers of places available?

§ The Prime Minister
Actually, the treatment position is better than the hon. Gentleman describes. It is improving all the time, and more and more places are being made available. A presentation was made to me yesterday by people working in Manchester on this issue, and, as a result, they are able to extend treatment to the numbers of people that they are identifying as drug addicts in the criminal justice system. The only way 858 we will do that, however, is by investing the necessary money. It is not a question of redirecting it from elsewhere, but of making that basic investment, to which we are committed. Whatever the hon. Gentleman's concern, which I am sure is sincere, the fact is that his Front Benchers are opposed to that money going in.

§ Alan Howarth (Newport, East)
Given that it is essential to bring more money into the universities and to increase opportunity for people to study in universities, is not the fairest and most effective policy to achieve those purposes to allow an increase in university fees, covering the costs through loans to be repaid by graduates as and when their income permits, while bringing back maintenance grants for people from less-well-off households and increasing support for universities and schools to work together to raise educational aspiration?

§ The Prime Minister
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend, who makes the right argument. That is why I believe that, as the debate progress, people will support it. The alternative is to cut the numbers of people going to university and for Britain to become the only country anywhere in the world that is reducing the number of people with access to higher education.

§ Q11. Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York)
Has the Prime Minister seen from the Public Accounts Committee report that 50.000 beds have been lost since 1996? Is he surprised by that when there has been a 20 per cent. increase in fees to the National Care Standards Commission and a 142 per cent. increase in enhanced criminal record checks? What is he going to do about that?

§ The Prime Minister
Today's report is about delayed discharges and it indicates that there is still an awful lot to do. However, I point out to the hon. Lady that, under this Government, we have had the first increase in the number of beds in the health service for many years. We have already halved the number of delayed discharges. It is true that we have got to go a lot further, but there is no way at all, if we compare the position now with that of 1997, that we are not in a better one.

§ Q12. Mr. John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan)
With more than 55 million Britons taking flights abroad each year, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is wholly unacceptable that airlines in this day and age have no legal liability whatsoever for the health or well-being of their passengers? Will he undertake to look into this?

§ The Prime Minister
We are supporting the research into deep vein thrombosis that is being carried out by the World Health Organisation. I also say to my hon. Friend that the United Kingdom will ratify the Montreal convention when all 15 members states of the European Union are in a position to do so simultaneously. At the moment, that is not the case, but I hope that it will be. Obviously, the next steps on this will be informed by the research that is being undertaken by the WHO.

§ Q13. Bob Russell (Colchester)
What does the Prime Minister think will give him the most concern on 859 Friday as he looks at the collapse of the Labour vote in Brent—the fact that Labour supporters no longer trust him or the fact that traditional Labour supporters no longer have any faith in new Labour?

§ The Prime Minister
If I may give the hon. Gentleman some advice, it would be as well to wait for the verdict of the electorate before the Liberal Democrats presume it. From what I can make out, one of the key issues in this by-election is antisocial behaviour. The Liberal Democrats have been putting out leaflets saying how serious they are about tackling it. However, when legislation was before the House to give the police the powers to tackle antisocial behaviour, the Liberal Democrats voted en masse against it. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to tell people that.

§ Q14. Mr. Stephen Pound (Ealing, North)
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. You will be aware that the High Hedges (No. 2) Bill died a "mute, inglorious" death a few weeks ago on the Floor of this very Chamber. This Bill, which was piloted with great skill, ability and intelligence through the upper House by my colleague, Baroness Gardner of Parkes, and by a rather less distinguished parliamentarian in this House, deserves a second chance. Will my right hon. Friend give the High Hedges (No. 2) Bill the chance to rise again—even though that will cause some pain to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope)?

§ The Prime Minister
Well, it says—I understand the disappointment of my hon. Friend that his Bill did not make better progress, but the Government have had a long-standing commitment since August 2000 to bring forward new laws to give local authorities in England 860 and Wales powers to determine complaints about high garden hedges and will make every effort to get them on to the statute book at the earliest opportunity. I cannot say better than that.

§ Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan)
In three weeks' time, the Prime Minister's tenure in Downing street will exactly match that of John Major. Does he not think that enough is enough?

§ The Prime Minister
One of the things that we did on coming to office was to deliver devolution in Scotland. After devolution in Scotland, the nationalists in Scotland had their worst election result. May I also point out to the hon. Gentleman that, since 1997, it is not me who has retired from leadership?

§ Q15. Jim Dobbin (Heywood and Middleton)
May I tell my right hon. Friend that a constituent of mine, Mr. Maurice Jones, who was a company director of Lister Yarns and worked for the company for 42 years, retired recently with little or no pension after the scheme collapsed? Can the Prime Minister offer a ray of hope to Mr. Jones and the 20,000 other pensioners in the same situation that retrospective compensation may be looked at? Surely it is a wrong that needs correcting.

§ The Prime Minister
I will certainly bear in mind the point that my hon. Friend makes. He will know that the pensions protection fund that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced recently is precisely to deal with that situation so that we have insurance underpinning people whose pension schemes collapse. I will look into the issue that my hon. Friend raises very carefully.