Lords Sitting of 23 February 2005

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Coventry.

EU Constitutional Treaty: Trade Union Rights
Lord Wedderburn of Charltonasked Her Majesty's Government:
Notwithstanding the preambles and explanations to the European constitution, what consequences the fundamental rights in the constitution, if ratified, will have, directly and indirectly, on the rights of trade unions in the United Kingdom.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Sainsbury of Turville): My Lords, we do not believe that the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which forms Part 2 of the EU constitutional treaty, will have any direct or indirect effects on the rights of trade unions in the UK. The charter is a showcase of existing fundamental rights; it does not create any new ones. The charter is addressed to the EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies, with due regard to the principle of subsidiarity and to the member states only when they are implementing European Union law.
The charter does not extend the scope of application of European Union law beyond the existing powers of the European Union, or establish any new power or task for the Union. Nor does it modify powers and tasks defined in other parts of the EU constitutional treaty, which specifically excludes EU action on legislative areas such as pay, the right of association, the right to strike and the right to impose lock-outs.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that very clear Answer. In the light of it, will he advise the Trades Union Congress to look carefully at a report given to it last year? It concluded that there is no way of,
"protecting UK labour laws … from the impact of the fundamental trade union rights guaranteed by the EU Charter".
The Government take a different view, as the noble Lord has made abundantly clear, and that view may well be arguable. In view of the importance of this point for British workers and their unions, will the Government consider publishing in the near future a paper with the detailed reasoning on the matter, which has never been fully explained?
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Secondly, I assume that I am right to judge that it will not enact domestic labour laws that meet international standards, and that they are still in the posture of my right honourable friend Jack Straw in his pithy remark:
"We are not going to change Thatcher's laws and we're not going to let Europe change them."
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, there is no need for the Government to publish any documents on this. If people read the document and the relevant clauses carefully, it is clear what it says.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, does the Minister agree with the Foreign Minister, who wrote in Le Monde that a "no" vote would be an error for the European Left and a disaster for the trade unions?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, this is not a debate on the European constitution, which we will no doubt cover in great detail. A "no" vote would be disastrous for the whole of this country, including the trade unions.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that as such important bodies as the Trades Union Congress are apparently misunderstanding the sensible provisions that are made in the constitution, the time has now been reached when the Government, who have to win a referendum on this matter, need to get a much greater explanation of their point of view through to public opinion? The time for that publicity campaign, if it was not last week, is certainly now.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I agree that we need to get more people to focus on this legislation and on what it actually says. As people do that, it will become clear what the powers are. Without quoting in detail from the text, a number of articles specifically cover this point, and they make the answer clear.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I remind my noble friend that in the EU unions are generally regarded as social partners. With that recognition goes an acceptance of the need for unions to have basic rights. Does he agree that the constitution will support that point of view?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, the constitution is clear, and the role of the social partners at union level is explicitly stated. It is also stated that the unions shall facilitate dialogue between the social partners. The constitution recognises the interests of unions and workers, and it is in their interests to support the constitution.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, have Her Majesty's Government ratified the charter? If they have, roughly, what is the effect on our law?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, we are talking here about the constitution, of which the

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charter is a part. It is clear that we are signing up to the charter as it is set out in the constitution. Clearly, that has many implications; but as regards the subject of this Question, which is trade union rights in the UK, it has little effect.
Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, will my noble friend note that unions right across Europe have welcomed the Charter of Fundamental Rights? An analogy would be the Highway Code, which is a code rather than the specifics of the law on driving a motorcar. Nevertheless, the philosophy built into the charter protects the workers of Europe against any negative changes and underpins the improvements for part-time workers, fixed-term contract workers, and equal opportunities that we have seen under the Social Chapter in the past 10 years.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I very much agree. The charter showcases the key social and economic principles and rights that the Union's institutions are bound to observe. Again, that is important and is stated very clearly.
Lord Brookman: My Lords, may I give a practical example of where I hope that the new constitution would help workers? At the moment two unions—one that 1 used to lead—are suing my Government because they believe that the Government are in breach of a directive on safeguarding workers' pensions. Will the new constitution help that type of situation?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I think that I am right in saying that already built into the constitution are questions of law that relate to trade union matters. I was simply making the point that the constitutional treaty does not alter that situation. However, provisions have been built into it that are very important for trade unions.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the substantive Question was about the constitution, and the Minister's substantive Answer was about the charter, which he emphasised in his further replies was part of the constitution. Can he explain the relationship between the constitution as a whole and the charter, and assure the House that nothing in other parts of the constitution is of higher authority than the charter? In other words, which comes first?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, my remarks addressed the question of the constitutional treaty—the total treaty—of which the charter is a fundamental part. My Answer related to the whole of the constitutional treaty.

Lord Birt
2.45 p.m.
Lord Peyton of Yeovilasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will publish the reports by the Lord Birt to the Prime Minister on transport, crime, and on other matters on which he has given advice.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the noble Lord. Lord Birt, has worked on a number of Strategy Unit projects. His advice has been reflected in a number of Strategy Unit reports.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, I do not think that I could have expected a better answer from the noble Lord. However, is he aware that the invitations occasioned more than a whiff of surprise for two reasons? The first is that it was not generally known that the noble Lord, Lord Birt, possessed any particular knowledge of either crime or transport. The second is that the Prime Minister's invitation surely indicated a really serious lack of confidence in his colleagues and their Civil Service advisers.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord's second observation. Far from it being the case, I am sure that the Prime Minister has great confidence in the team that he has assembled around him. It does a very good job. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Birt, provides very valuable information to the Prime Minister and other Ministers, and that his role in that regard is no different from that of other specialist and unpaid advisers appointed by previous governments.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords. is it not a fact that many of us, from all parts of the Chamber, give advice to the Prime Minister? The question is whether the Prime Minister takes note. I am constantly giving him advice, but he does not take any notice of it.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: Is that not the true position?
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the noble Lord will be reassured if I say that I am sure that the Prime Minister takes very careful account of what he says.
Lord McNally: My Lords, all parts of the House would consider missing advice from the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, as an opportunity missed. However, is there not a more serious matter here? The noble Lord, Lord Birt, was supposedly going to give "blue-sky thinking" advice to the Prime Minister. There is now very clear evidence that he is interfering directly in matters before Cabinet and Parliament; I refer to the charter of the BBC. What guarantee do we have that the new BBC charter will not be drawn up on that famous Downing

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Street sofa—so roundly condemned by the noble Lord, Lord Butler—by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, Mr Alastair Campbell, who is now hack in 10 Downing Street, and other unpaid and unaccountable advisers who have no responsibility to either Parliament or Cabinet?
There is a constitutional issue about which, if I were any self-respecting Minister in the Cabinet, I would be extremely worried. This Parliament should be worried about it, too.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I am not sure that there was a question among the noble Lord's observations—and observations they were. They were observations based in the main, I can only comment, on idle press speculation. I am not prepared to respond to that.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, I declare an interest as a former vice-chairman of the BBC who had some responsibility for appointing the noble Lord, Lord Birt, as director-general.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Barnett: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend to suggest to the noble Lord that it might be in his own best interests and the national interest if his reports were published? If they are not, we get only the media version, and the media do not seem to like him.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I rather suspect that we ought to approach that last observation with some delicacy. We should not always seek to follow the media's agenda. As to the noble Lord's point about published reports, the noble Lord, Lord Birt, obviously provides blue-sky thinking, advice and support to the Prime Minister and a number of other Ministers, and works very closely with the Strategy Unit in No. 10. The majority of its reports are published documents and in the public domain; they make a valuable contribution to policy thinking and public debate.

Council Tax
2.50 p.m.
Lord Greavesasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they intend to adjust council tax bands to take account of inflation and other factors before the revaluation of properties takes effect in 2006.
The Minister of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Lord Rooker): My Lords, the Local Government Act 2003 provides for the revaluation of all English domestic property on 1 April 2007 using the 1 April 2005 property values. The independent inquiry into local government funding headed by Sir Michael Lyons, which is due to report by the end of this year, will inform decisions by Her Majesty's Government on council tax hands.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and note that he has confirmed that the
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report will come out at the end of this year. But is it not the case that the revaluation will seriously affect millions of people—millions of poorer people if Wales is anything to go by? There, four times as many people found that their council tax went up, as opposed to those who found that it went down, as a result of the revaluation. Is it not the case that taxation will be a major issue in the coming general election and that council tax is a major part of that? People want to know where this Government stand and whether their council tax will go up or down. Why will the Government not tell us now what they intend to do about the banding and the council tax system?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I gave the reason in my original Answer—that is, the Government have set up an independent inquiry chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, who has impeccable credentials on this issue. He is due to report by the end of 2005, following which, if action needs to be taken, there will need to be a full public consultation and parliamentary debate. That will inform decisions taken by the Government. We are not going to make decisions on the hoof as we go along. That is why we have set up an independent inquiry.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, does the Minister agree that it would be quite wrong to increase pensioners' council tax by more than the rate of inflation after the election?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I shall not go down the road of answering questions on issues that might he raised after the election—presumably questions asked of a Labour government, which is quite an admission. As I said, we have set up an independent inquiry, and local government has been flooded with money from central government. All local authorities have had inflation-led or higher than inflation-led grants for this year and, since 1997, local government has had a 33 per cent real terms increase in funding. So we do not expect any substantial or unreasonable council tax increases this year.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, does the Minister agree that a dangerous and serious situation surrounds this issue? I live in a village where a high proportion of the houses are former farm workers' cottages. They are selling at £350,000 plus and they have been handed down through the families. The people who live there could not afford to sell their houses because, first, they would have to find somewhere else to live and they would not find anywhere else cheaper and, secondly, they could not afford to pay the tax and the agents' fees. We have the absurd situation whereby people are assessed for tax on an asset which they cannot get rid of.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, these are the very issues that we expect Sir Michael Lyons to inquire into. He is not limited to looking at the present mechanism of council tax. We all understand the reason for the council tax: it was a substitute for the poll tax. Nothing in the legislation of the early 1990s required a revaluation of the council tax figures. It is true that the business rates are revalued, but not domestic property.

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The situation has changed since then. The very issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, will be dealt with and considered by the Lyons review.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, the Minister suggested that this matter would require a long period of discussion, a long period of consultation and then proper extended parliamentary consideration. In view of events in the other place today, is that not a rather unfashionable view for a Minister in this Government?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am an unfashionable Minister.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that some people who have experience of local government are not very happy with government money flooding to local authorities and believe that local authorities should have the power to raise more of their own money? In conjunction with the report on the investigation into revaluation, can he say whether the Government would consider returning responsibility for the business rate to local authorities and whether they should find other forms of income which would help them to balance their books rather than be beholden to the Government?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I imagine that all the points raised by my noble friend—he is still my noble friend—would naturally be covered by the independent review, to which people will probably submit evidence to that effect. I am not pronouncing on that, but the review goes much wider than simply considering council tax bands. It is much more open than that. Sir Michael Lyons can come forward with any and every suggestion that is practical, and he will do that because of his experience. Nothing is ruled out in that sense.
We have said that taxation on property is cheap to raise, and that was always said about the old rates system. It is very cheap to collect because property does not move. But it has other consequences because it is not based on ability to pay in the normal sense. As the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, said, and for historical reasons that we all understand, people can end up living in very expensive properties but with a very low income.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, will the review cover the increasing imposition laid on local government by central government, which is really the root cause of its need for extra money and why taxation has to rise?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I repeat that the review is open, but I reject what the noble Lord implies in his question. When new burdens are placed on local authorities by central government, central government departments are required to fund those new burdens. That has not always been the case but it is what happens at present. When ideas float around Whitehall, I always
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see a reference to "new burdens", and the departments must be able to fund those new burdens if they are imposed on local government.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, the Government have subsidised council tax this year, just before an election, with something like £1 billion extra money. Is that permanent money or will it be withdrawn next year before the settlement is discussed?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, anyone would think that central government had not assisted local government every year. That is quite normal and one year does not differ from another. It is true that there are fluctuations, and there have been big fluctuations in recent years. We are seeking to assist local government. On the other hand, the proportion is very small because the total amount of government grant and business rates in the year 2005–06 will be £60 billion. That is £3.5 billion, or 6.2 per cent, more than in the year 2004–05, and I do not apologise for that.

Carbon Dioxide Capture
2.58 p.m.
Lord Ezraasked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they propose to take in response to the view recently expressed by Sir David King, the Chief Scientific Adviser, that capturing carbon may best address the issue of global warming.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Whitty): My Lords, before I reply, according to the Guardian, it is the noble Lord's birthday today and I am sure that the House will wish to extend its congratulations once again.
Carbon dioxide capture and storage technologies can play a very important role in tackling climate change but not by themselves. Those technologies will be extensively covered in the carbon abatement technology strategy, which the DTI will publish shortly. We also support work by the IPCC and international experts who are working with the EU on the basis of including those technologies under the European Emissions Trading Scheme. They are also working to resolve outstanding legal issues under the Ospar and London Conventions.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his kind reference to my advancing years, which I hope will not prevent me continuing to ask Questions on energy policy.
In connection with the present Question, does the noble Lord agree that climate change is now likely to move ahead faster than was originally estimated, as Sir David King has mentioned and as will no doubt be considered later today when the excellent report of the EU committee is debated? Does he agree that every avenue should be explored to deal with that situation, including carbon capture, in view of the substantial

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reserves of coal available both in this country and elsewhere? Is the noble Lord aware that the United States and Canada have developed successful methods for the capture of carbon from coal and that the Norwegians have been injecting carbon into their oil wells in the North Sea for a number of years to access oil which would otherwise not be recoverable? In all those circumstances, should we not be moving ahead faster in this area?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I am aware of those examples, which prove the point that carbon capture and storage can be combined with production facilities and reduce carbon emissions very substantially. We wish to give such technologies a very substantial boost. There are some unanswered questions in relation to them. We are supporting the R&D and we are looking at including these technologies within the emissions trading scheme. They are a major part of the portfolio of measures needed to tackle the problem of climate change, which, in the light of recent information, looks as if it may be proceeding faster than previously thought.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, in his Answer, the Minister referred to the Ospar Convention, which was negotiated and signed when I was Secretary of State for the Environment. Is it the case that it is illegal under that convention to pump sequestered carbon dioxide hack into sources under the sea? Presumably, that is why the Minister said that the convention would have to be renegotiated. Why have the Norwegians therefore been allowed to do that without any renegotiation of the Ospar Convention? Why does it loom so large in the eyes of present Ministers when other countries do not seem to face the same difficulty?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the noble Lord is right to suggest that under-ocean storage is in general illegal in most cases under the Ospar Convention. However, in relation to the enhanced oil recovery aspects—in other words, if it is part of the management of an oil or gas field—it is not illegal. The Ospar Convention is referred to in order to establish whether it could be extended to other potential sites.
Lord Clark of Windermere: My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Forestry Commission. Does the Minister appreciate that trees are wonderful at carbon sequestration? While they are growing, they capture the carbon and while they are being used, they store it. Is he aware that 50 per cent of new houses in Scotland are timber-framed, but that only 10 per cent of those in England are? Will he have discussions with the Building Research Establishment to see if that percentage in England can be increased to capture more carbon when we build our houses?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, we are well aware of the role that forestry can play in carbon capture and in restricting carbon use and carbon emissions in buildings and elsewhere. Indeed, the sustainable building process, in which we are engaged in England, is looking at, among
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other things, the enhanced role of timber in houses as part of a number of measures to make buildings less carbon consuming.
Lord May of Oxford: My Lords, I welcome the Minister's implicit recognition that there is no single solution to the problem of climate change but that we need many parallel actions, including some—of which carbon sequestration is an important part—that reduce the input of greenhouse gases, and others that seek to adapt to the consequences. Does he agree that it is a pernicious delusion to imagine that we can avoid hard choices—or at least delay them, as some would urge—by the promise of as yet unproven technological fixes?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I agree with that. While there is faith in technology—and many technologies are now coming forward, including some dealing with carbon sequestration—blind faith that technology will always provide is wrong and misguided unless the framework and support system for the development of that technology are created. In so far as it represents the view of influential people, not excluding some in Washington, it seems to be a dangerous, complacent and irresponsible policy. We need to create the framework in which technologies can help to deal with the huge problem that is facing the globe.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, does the Minister agree with the proposition that, while a multifaceted approach is essential—as he said—and carbon sequestration may well play a proper part in that, the basic problem that has to be tackled is to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions in themselves in quantum? It is perfectly true that sequestration does that in a sense, but the total volume has to be reduced anyway. Sequestration does not reduce the total volume; it merely puts some of it away in a cupboard.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, it stops the emissions of that carbon to a large extent and therefore makes a contribution to the effect that carbon has on the atmosphere and on the globe in general, so I would not be quite as dismissive as the noble Lord implied in his final remarks. It is a carbon-saving technology, but a whole range of issues, involving energy efficiency, the use of carbon fuels and the replacement of carbon fuels by other sources of energy, are equally important.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, in the speech to which my noble friend referred, Sir David King also said that the Government should be looking at small-scale Chinese pebble-bed nuclear reactors. Will the Minister tell us what they are and whether the Government are seriously considering them?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I think that they are exactly as described: they are relatively small nuclear reactors. I do not necessarily view them as a major contribution to the UK's energy problem, but with the boom in the Chinese economy and its consumption of fossil fuels at the moment, it is wise for the Chinese to look to all measures of saving carbon, including that which the

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Question was about; that is, carbon sequestration. If we can build carbon sequestration into the coal-fired power stations in China, India and elsewhere, we will avoid what would otherwise be a substantial increase in the carbon emissions from those economies.

Drugs Bill
3.6 p.m.
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and ordered to be printed.

Business of the House: Debates this Day
The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Amos):
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Lord Waddington set down for today shall be limited to three and a half hours and that in the name of the Lord Marlesford to one and a half hours.—(Baroness Amos.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Immigration and Asylum
3.7 p.m.
Lord Waddingtonrose to call attention to immigration and asylum controls for the maintenance of good race relations, national security and the provision of public services; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, immigration is an important issue of great concern to the public and, judging by the number of noble Lords who have put their names down to speak today, we think that it is a highly appropriate matter to be discussed in this place.
There are always people ready to make mischief out of immigration, but history shows that if genuine concerns are addressed in a sensible manner, immigration can cease to be politically very contentious. 1 say that with some diffidence, but I believe that by the latter part of the 1980s, with firm and fair immigration control established under the government of my noble friend Lady Thatcher—who I am glad to see in her place today—immigration policy had ceased to be a very contentious matter. It is the abandonment of that firm and fair immigration control that has brought immigration policy back into the headlines now.
It would be foolish and wrong to start a debate such as this without a clear acknowledgement that immigration has brought great benefits to this country. Britain is immeasurably better off as a result of the new Britons who have come here over the past half-century. Very many individuals have made a great contribution to society and we are privileged to have some of them as colleagues in this place.
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In more general terms, we all know that immigration plays an important part in creating a dynamic and competitive modern economy, providing skills that are in short supply and filling gaps in the workforce.
But none of this should make us fail to recognise that while immigration can bring great benefits, too much uncontrolled immigration can bring dangers. People can be frightened by over-rapid change in a locality, and good community relations can be imperilled as a result. As most immigrants tend to go to the same parts of the country, an intolerable strain can be put on public services in those parts—on hospitals, schools and housing.
The truth of this is, frankly, recognised in a report of the Government's own Community Cohesion Panel set up after the Bradford riots. The report entitled The End of Parallel Lives? states, referring to the troubles in Bradford and to places like Bradford:
"The 'pace of change' … is simply too great at present … inward migration does create tensions … communities will perceive that newcomers are in competition for scarce resources and public services … The pressure on resources … is often intense and local services are often insufficient to meet the needs of the existing local communities, let alone newcomers".
Now, presumably the Government say that it is in recognition of these problems that they are implementing what they call "controlled immigration", but I have to say that to describe what is going on as "controlled immigration" is a very strange use of language.
The goings-on leading up to the resignation of Beverley Hughes did not look to me much like controlled immigration. Thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians were granted British visas by the Home Office even though immigration officials knew the applications were fraudulent and said that they should be turned down. Some of the visas were granted to people who were in the country already, having entered illegally, others were for people in the country who had been refused asylum but had not left the country.
Then there is the business of sham marriages, giving people the right to stay in the country. One of the first things that Labour did was to scrap one of the barriers to this kind of abuse and put nothing in its place, so I do not find much evidence of controlled immigration there.
Then one has to ask: is immigration controlled or out of control when entry is allowed for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of bogus students, many of them signed up to attend bogus institutions? It is, to put it mildly, somewhat surprising that it should have taken an approaching general election for the Home Secretary to come to the House of Commons and say that from now on we will make them all have sponsors.
How can one talk of "controlled immigration" and, in the same breath, concede that thousands of unaccompanied children are literally dumped in Britain every year—3,000 in 2003 and 6,200 the year before? The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was kind enough to tell me of his interest in this matter and I understand that he will be saying a few words about it later.

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But the most staggering change from the days of firm and fair immigration control is the more than threefold increase in the number of work permits granted since Labour took office—73,0000 were given out last year to people who were already in Britain on another pretext. Why were they allowed to enter the country for one purpose and then to stay for an entirely different purpose?
We are told that a total of 175,000 work permits will be issued this year. That is not filling gaps in the workforce. That is not immigration control but a system out of control. What about border controls so lax that the other day the Metropolitan Police Commissioner felt it necessary to express his concern about what he called the tide of foreign criminals entering the country? Again it has taken an approaching general election for the Home Secretary to come to Parliament and say that he has plans—not at once but in the next five years—to do something about it.
What about the criminals who import illegal immigrants and then leave them to be exploited, like the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers? How many times have the Government said that they are about to crack down on that kind of thing without anything happening?
According to the Office for National Statistics, total net immigration to the UK, which in 1997 was 46,800, has over the past five years averaged 157,000 a year. That means enough net immigration a year to populate each year a new city the size of Peterborough.
According to the Government's own predictions, the population of Britain will grow by 6.1 million over the next 30 years; 3.6 million of the 6 million will be new immigrants and they and their offspring will together account for 5.1 million of the 6 million. That is enough to populate six cities the size of Birmingham.
Of course almost certainly those figures are a hopeless underestimate and will have to be revised upwards. Why? The reason is that they do not take any account of how wildly inaccurate were the Government's predictions of the number of people who would come here from the new member states of the EU. An absolute maximum of 13,000 a year, the Government said, but in fact they have been arriving at the rate of 10,000 a month.
The figure of 6 million also takes no account of failed asylum seekers who do not leave the country when their claims are turned down, and other illegal immigrants. But even assuming the published figure is right, admitting to the country enough people to populate six cities the size of Birmingham is not filling gaps in the workforce to meet the needs of an expanding economy; it is changing the landscape.
I find it impossible to accept that immigration on this scale is necessary for the economic benefits it brings. Benefits for whom, one might well ask. Large-scale immigration like this certainly does not benefit the unskilled whose wages it tends to lower and among whom unemployment tends to rise.
The Prime Minister talked about the benefits of immigration for an expanding economy. But, if his prediction was correct, it would mean at the most an
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increase in wages for individuals in Britain of roughly 50p a week. So, one is talking about a trivial benefit for all these enormous changes that would come about by that scale of immigration.
We were told in January that the Government were going to introduce new measures to demonstrate their determination to address public concerns, but the Home Secretary's Statement in the other place a few days ago was about the thinnest I have ever read. We were told that people would have to be here on a work permit for five years rather than four before they could stay permanently. But most people—I know from my experience when I worked at the Home Office—make themselves irremovable long before the four years are up. The truth is that there is no point in such a change if there is to be no limit on the total number of work permits issued.
I do not doubt that the Government are worried about what might be the electoral consequences of their incompetent management of immigration, but, insulated from real life as most of them seem to be, I do not think they really care about the worries of ordinary people.
Certainly, Mr Blunkett did not seem to be caring when he famously said on BBC "Newsnight" on 12 November last year that there is no obvious limit to legal immigration. Mr Clarke did not seem to be caring very much when he said on "Newsnight" on 7 February that the current, unprecedented rate of around 150,000 additional people settling in Britain each year was in his view "about right".
So far I have not said a word about asylum policy. I am certainly not mixing up the two issues. I have been very careful not to do so, because I want to make a very important point. Although asylum may be the most contentious and difficult area, it is only to a small degree responsible for the enormous increase in immigration under Labour. In fact asylum accounts for less than one-fifth of foreign immigration. It follows that immigration could be greatly reduced, brought under proper control, and the sort of firm but fair immigration control we used to have restored, without touching asylum policy.
Turning very briefly to asylum, however, there is a crying need not just for someone to run the existing system with a modicum of competence, but for us to examine whether the time has come to introduce an entirely new system. Of course we should maintain our proud tradition of giving refuge to people fleeing persecution, but surely we should seek to do so without allowing the system to be abused in so obvious a fashion. Only two in 10 of those who arrive here and apply for asylum are actually granted asylum, and rather less than another two in 10 are granted exceptional leave to remain. As to the rest who are refused, they are not sent back to where they came from. Just one in five is removed, and it is estimated that there are over a quarter of a million failed asylum seekers now living somewhere in Britain.
The system is in a chaotic state and I cannot believe that it cannot be made to work better. However, the question that has to be addressed is whether we should not aim to secure a new system.

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The Home Affairs Select Committee was certainly not very happy with the present system. It made the very important point that the vast majority of claimants enter Britain by circumventing controls, either completely or by deception. That means that asylum seekers who do manage to make a claim in Britain are not representative of the world's wider refugee population. They are more likely to be young, male, healthy, educated, with access to significant financial support, and less likely to be old, female, ill, uneducated or poor; and a large proportion of them arrive in Britain as the result of illegal people-smuggling operations conducted by criminal gangs.
It was no doubt as a result of all that that, not so very long ago, the Prime Minister himself said that the UN Convention was drawn up for an entirely different world, and he hinted broadly that he was in the business of negotiating changes to it. The fact that since then he has, stealthily and without consulting the public, signed up to EU directives which effectively prevent him from doing so is hardly a reason for his criticising the Leader of the Opposition. The same thing goes for the suggestion that people should be sent to zones away from the country, where their claims could be assessed.
The Hague programme of the EU calls for a feasibility study of just such a proposal, and I understand that discussions have actually taken place between the EU and Libya. It is absurd, therefore, to dismiss out of hand the suggestions that have been made by my right honourable friend Mr Michael Howard.
I have spoken for long enough and I am anxious to hear what noble Lords have to say about this fascinating and extremely important subject. I beg to move for Papers.
3.24 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, we are all very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for introducing this subject. He was Leader of the House when I entered it, and so I should first of all declare my various interests.
1 came on a work permit in 1965. I did not then know for how long I would stay. Nobody told me how long the work permit was for, but I think that the LSE was unable to sack me and so I stayed. Twelve years later, I became a citizen.
I am very proud that, under this Government, the number of immigrants has trebled. We should make no bones about it. There has been immigration over all of human history, and there are very few examples where immigrants have cost more to the country to which they go than they contribute to it. One third of Europe's population migrated to North America in the 19th century. In the 19th century, 20 million people migrated abroad from this country. Migration will continue, despite the fact that nation states everywhere discourage their people from leaving and, at the other end, try to control immigration.
For a party which believes in economic freedom, I am surprised that the Opposition is so much against immigration. Except for the honourable exception of Mr Major, at every election that I have witnessed—the
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last six—come election time, the Conservative Party raises the flag of immigration control and, every time. we hear it trot out the same arguments.
As the noble Lord has said, 157,000 people have come in legally since Labour came to power, compared to his figure of 46,800. Have real wages fallen? No. Has unemployment increased? No. The idea that there is a fixed pot of work to be done, and that the more people you have the less there will be for everyone to do, has been around for 200 years. Sometimes people on the Left have held that view; sometimes people on the Right have held it. It is a fallacy none the less, especially if an immigrant comes and does not have full entitlement to lots of benefits. Most immigrants work. They have to work. Very often they work in marginal, lower-paid jobs. However, the contribution they make through their skills, through their tax payments, and through their citizenship qualities is enormous.
The idea of "fortress Britain" is not only no longer viable, but it is also not even desirable. Let me say why. A number of recent studies, through the United Nations and elsewhere, have argued that, given the trend in longevity all developed countries are experiencing, if we do not have immigration in Europe—and I include the UK in that—the balance between workers and dependants. children and retired people, will be so bad that there will not be enough active workers to sustain the pensions of the retired people. We know about this problem. There are some partial solutions, of course: that people cannot retire at 65 but must retire at 75, or whatever.
The UN Economic and Social Affairs Committee has said that Europe needs 100 million extra people between now and 2050, if the balance between workers and dependants is be maintained at the same ratio as it is at present. So the six Birminghams—or whatever number of Birminghams it is—which will be created by immigrants over the next 20 or 30 years are absolutely essential. They are not surplus to requirements. There are jobs for them to do. because there will not be enough people of working age to do the jobs, which will produce the surplus, which will finance the pensions.
Let there be no doubt about it. As far as unskilled people are concerned, because of the enlargement of the EU, there are people of sufficient numbers who are entitled to come here in any case, and they will come. Not just Bulgarians and Romanians, but Poles, Hungarians. Czechs and Cypriots—everybody will come. What is wrong with that? Because there will be a large supply of unskilled labour from within Europe, the choice is on the margin of the skilled people. Quite correctly, the Government have decided that the country needs skilled, professional people. Why not?
The noble Lord raises the question of people being given work permits who are already here. It is simple to explain that. I have worked for 40 years in the London School of Economics. We have bright students who come from abroad. They graduate; they get a PhD; and then we want to hire them. Why? Because we know how good they are and they are good enough to stand up in competition against people, some of whom may have migrated, some who want to migrate and others

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who are natives. If they are good enough to do the job, if there are the best people to do the job, of course we apply for a work permit. Why would we not? That is the law of the land.
There is nothing sinister about the fact that people who are already here apply for work permits. Everyone who gets a work permit is here for legitimate reasons. Converting from one thing to another is not a bad thing. My one slight worry about my right honourable friend's policy is that he wants unskilled people to come here only temporarily if they are from outside Europe. But some of them get themselves skilled while they are here. We ought to allow them to change category from unskilled to skilled.
It is essential to realise that the old Malthusian spectre is now gone. We have had full employment in this country throughout the Labour Government's term. There has been a remarkable drop in youth unemployment, thanks to the policies introduced by this Government. Unless we manage our labour influx much more skilfully than we have so far, we will be in real trouble. There will be inflation and a decline in the standard of living.
Let me say one thing further about those policies. The Americans have an intelligent policy on immigration. They have occasional amnesty for illegal immigrants. The projections are that America will gain from that relative to Europe for the next 50 years. We should adopt the same policy. Let us legitimise those people, because they have come here in horrible circumstances and have worked hard. Let them stay here and contribute more without fear, without insecurity, without any trouble.
3.33 p.m.
Baroness Neuberger: My Lords, I rise to speak in this debate for two reasons. One is my alarm at the tone of public debate on these issues in this country and the other is my personal background. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for introducing this debate. Of course, some of that tone is not new. Robert Winder's excellent book, Bloody Foreigners, records the fact that there were 3,000 foreigners in London in the year 1500,6 per cent of the population, and Tottenham, according to one alarmed Londoner in Henry VII's day, "has turned French". So this is not new. We have often felt threatened and disliked having that number of people of foreign origin in this country.
I share a great deal in common with the leader of the Conservative Party in terms of background, but that has led me to rather different views about these matters. My mother was an asylum seeker. She came as a domestic servant, because you were allowed to work in those days, as we should allow asylum seekers to work now. Wonderfully welcomed by good people in Birmingham, she got her parents and her young brother, still at school, out from Nazi Germany. Most of the people who helped them were not Jewish. Although there were press campaigns and concerns about so-called flooding, many people helped. I wish it were so today. For the record, my paternal grandparents were so-called economic migrants and I
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am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for saying that economic migrants bring something to the country. I hope that they have.
I am appalled by the tone of the debate coming from both the Conservatives and the Government. I know that I am not alone. The UN High Commission for Refugees issued a press release on 8 February this year which expressed concern about the state of the debate on asylum in the UK. It stated:
"'The international partnership reflected in the 1951 Convention is absolutely essential to addressing today's asylum issues', said Anne Dawson-Shepherd, the UN Refugee Agency's Representative to the United Kingdom, 'An estimated 87 per cent of the people of concern to the UNHCR are looked after by some of the poorest countries in Africa and Asia'.
'As well as talking about moral obligations and international co-operation, we need to talk reality too' … The public continues to be confused by the mixing of immigration and asylum and by the myths that have seeped into the public debate in the UK'.
World-wide, the number of asylum applications has continued to fall and is at its lowest for 17 years. The UK is not the top receiving country. Pakistan is the most generous host—looking after over 1.1 million refugees—and has been for years. The UK ranks just 74th world-wide in terms of refugees per GDP per capita".
It is clearly perfectly possible to design a managed immigration system, but it must be fair, not wholly geared selfishly to what Britain needs but also to its obligations. The immigration system needs to work properly, efficiently and sensibly. In that regard, the pressure for health checks in countries of origin needs to be examined closely and seriously. Let us take tuberculosis, for instance. I shall ask the Minister three questions before I move on specifically to asylum.
With the proposal now on the table to test would-be migrants from countries with high prevalence of TB, first, do the Government have any evidence that the prevalence of TB in migrant populations is related in any positive way to the host population, or may the migrants be different from much of the population—being, for instance, both younger and wealthier? Secondly, do the Government have any evidence that such tests will reduce the number of cases of TB in this country according to any model that public health experts may use? In other words, would there be any fewer cases? Thirdly, how ethical is it to tell countries bearing the brunt of the 2 million TB deaths per annum, compared with 450 a year in the UK, that they must set up chest X-ray units for their would-be emigrants? Should we not be helping poorer countries to do that more widely anyway?
I return to how, when it comes to asylum and refugees and the deliberate muddling of the categories, the debate has gone too far and we should be ashamed. Refugees cannot help being refugees. Asylum seekers very largely cannot help being asylum seekers. The children certainly cannot help it, even if they are dumped in this country.
We as a family set up a charity in memory of both my parents to help young refugees and asylum seekers, especially with access to education. We did that because people were so good to my mother and her family when they came and we wanted to carry on the

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tradition. Knowing the details of what happens to children and young people is educational, to say the least.
Let me tell your Lordships about the young asylum seeker and refugee endeavour awards that we hosted with Hillingdon council a few weeks ago, a moving ceremony where one sees young people who have been through terrible things doing brilliantly well out of sheer determination and hard work. One young lad, in England for less than three years, had won a place to study medicine at Cambridge, but had no idea what had happened to his parents in Afghanistan. Already speaking four or five languages, he learnt English and is predicted to get four A grades at A-level. He will make a brilliant doctor. Is he not the kind of person that we should be welcoming wholeheartedly and congratulating, instead of abusing?
Some of your Lordships will have read in today's Independent,
"Happy birthday—we're throwing you",
out of Britain.
It tells of an 18 year-old Albanian being sent back, even though he saw his parents shot dead for their political beliefs. Can that be humane, or even sensible? Let us take a different child, a Rwandan, from last year's endeavour awards ceremony. I will not give him a name, he is too young, he is only 10. He saw his parents killed before his eyes and had been deeply troubled. He has managed to concentrate, after great difficulty, and began to achieve in his standard assessment tests and to be well liked at school.
There are hundreds and hundreds more, just a few of whom I have been privileged to meet: tough, resilient but often deeply disturbed young people who have had terrible experiences that are clearly not of their making. Yet because of the tone of the public debate, these kids—they are already troubled and doing their best in tough circumstances—are subject to catcalls in the street. They get called asylum seekers as a term of abuse, as though it were their fault. When other children use "asylum seeker" as a term of abuse when it should be a statement of fact—someone seeking asylum—it is time for this country to think hard about what we are teaching and what this language of the debate about immigration is leading to.
I have two last points. The first is that we are being roundly criticised by the United Nations for what we do; and I declare an interest as a vice president of the United Nations Association. Asylum seekers and migrants, including children, can be detained at any stage of their claim to remain in the UK for any reason, and with no time limits. The UNHCR suggests that the UK detains more people for longer periods and with less judicial oversight than any comparable country in Europe. It is not clear why this should be so unless those measures are purely to satisfy public opinion that "something is being done". However, one of the unintended consequences is that it compromises seriously the education of the children among the detainees. The UK has been roundly criticised by the
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UN for its attitude to asylum seeking children and the Children's Alliance, a coalition of children's charities including the biggest in the land, has spoken out in the wake of the 2002 UN condemnation arguing that,
"children's human rights are being sacrificed to adult opinion".
I could say a great deal more. I conclude by saying that we should worry about the state of some of our detention centres and removal centres. In 2002, and again last year, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, criticised Lindholme, an immigration centre in Doncaster. We were assured that something would be done. I should like to know from the Minister whether something has been done.
The tone of this immigration and asylum debate, nationally and locally, should make us ashamed. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, we need immigrants in this country to do a variety of jobs. And we have obligations. As someone who would not be alive if this country had not acted rightly, if not sufficiently, in the 1930s, and as someone whose mother was welcomed by people who had no particular interest except their sense of what was right and wrong, I ask: can we not now think differently about immigrants and asylum seekers and change the note of xenophobia in the music, showing leadership and moral courage instead of following a nasty, racist trend that victimises those who cannot answer back?
3.42 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for bringing these matters to our attention. It was just over 30 years ago that the Leicester Mercury carried a notorious front page headline, "No room here". It was sending a signal to Ugandan Asians seeking a new home after Idi Amin's expulsions. For three decades the city has repented of that headline even as the process of immigration from east Africa, south Asia and other parts of the world has continued. It has repented because these decades of immigration have brought prosperity, civil renewal and cultural diversity to a city whose key industries in hosiery and textiles were in terminal decline.
The great majority of those who have arrived have been people whose primary identity has been their faith rather than their nationality. They puzzle over the reasons why some government policy, elaborately developed to enable effective working with faith communities, can at the same time include immigration and asylum proposals which have the effect of increasing their insecurity and slowing down the process of their identification with the cultural values of the host country.
In the brief time available to me, I want to build on what the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, said about the tone of the debate. In Leicester, for 30 years two key principles have shaped and undergirded the commercial, political and religious leadership of the city. Neither are adequately discussed by the major parties' proposals. Indeed, both are undermined by much of what is contained in them and in the public debate on these matters.

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The first principle is that of trust—the systematic, often laborious, unglamorous and repetitive work of building up understanding and, therefore, trust between different communities about our traditions, languages, festivals, foods, cultures, and so on. The second principle is the management of anxiety. In my experience, this is best done by making speedy, sensitive and appropriate collective responses to world events, whether in Kashmir, Israel/Palestine, or the effects of the tsunami disaster. Those are the two key fundamentals in the building of social cohesion which I believe we all want to see. I have to tell noble Lords that the effect of some of the public debate on this matter is not to undergird or enhance these principles but to undermine them.
It is claimed that,
"firm immigration controls arc essential for good community relations".
But the fact is that much of the language currently in use heightens anxiety and undermines trust in both the immigrant and host communities. We are in danger of making immigration a lose-lose issue.
Of course, the Government's promise in their current proposals to speed up asylum claims, to give proper attention to the root causes of immigration, proposals to enable protection for refugees in countries of origin, and linking development with the prevention of involuntary migration, and so on, are to be welcomed. But I want to draw attention to some major concerns, particularly in relation to the Government's proposals relating to asylum seekers.
First, they make the status of the refugee increasingly precarious. I refer in particular to the proposal to grant refugees temporary leave to remain for only five years in the first instance. Those who work with these people know how much their lives become fixated on the outcomes of their hearings. Their lives are on hold; they cannot plan for the long term; they are psychologically absorbed in the process. Are we to inflict this condition on them and their families every five years or so? This is a recipe for making insecurity and anxiety a permanent condition of life.
Secondly, it is already becoming clear that it is virtually impossible in practice in some cities for asylum seekers to get any legal support due to changes in the legal aid system and the requirement of a new examination for all solicitors who wish to engage in work with asylum seekers. This has led to almost all the firms in my home city dropping that work from their portfolios.
Thirdly, there is not enough in the Government's proposals about the Home Office's assessment of safe countries or the routes through which people are enabled to leave their home countries. The suggestion that the UK Government should co-operate more closely with countries from which unsuccessful applicants have come would have required HM Government in the past to seek to enter rational negotiations, for example, with Iraq and Zimbabwe. Is that a realistic proposal?
Further, the Government's proposals in the document, controlling our borders, seek to address the difficult issue of returning unaccompanied
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asylum-seeking children. It is vital that the Government ensure that policy-making in this area is guided by domestic and international standards on children's welfare and is removed from the current highly political debate on immigration and asylum.
The Churches and faith communities are well placed to speak for the most vulnerable in our towns and cities whose lives, freedoms and rights are most likely to be subtly undermined by the tone of our immigration debates. We want to express concern for a relatively small number of people within our society who are involuntary exiles from their own country, many of whom are daily denied what they need to realise their full potential. In many cases these people have come to Britain to find themselves disbelieved, denied the possibility of working, kept waiting for months and, finally, refused. They have often been detained behind barbed wire and threatened with deportation back to their own country and the security forces from which they fled. One of the most corrosive and undermining experiences for people who have escaped persecution, especially for those who have suffered rape, imprisonment and torture, is to be told by officialdom that their story, their personal, human narrative, lacks credibility—in other words, that they are lying.
Jeremy Harding, in his book The Uninvited, put the issues this way:
"The more freely capital and goods move around the rich world, the harder it becomes to inhibit the movement of people, with the hostility of … voters to foreign influx growing in proportion as the ability to restrict it dwindles. The power of government to reverse this process is no greater than it was in the past, but its capacity to signal an intention and project that signal is far stronger".
It is for the reasons that I have sought to outline that I hope that we shall exercise extreme caution in the signal that the House sends from the debate today.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, on entering the debate, I cannot help reflecting on that Russian proverb which says that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. Can we have a measured debate on immigration in the somewhat febrile atmosphere of a pre-election period?
As I said in my maiden speech, as the child of second-generation Jewish immigrants, I have reason to be grateful for a sympathetic immigration policy. I live in multi-cultural, multi-racial Southall, and my children benefit from attending schools that reflect the multi-ethnic nature of our community, as do the local hospitals, the local authority, the building sites and the restaurants, all of which employ a significant number of former immigrants. I have no doubts about the benefits that they bring to our society, but the need to separate fact from fiction and to deal with prejudice arising from misperception and the racists who use the issue to promote their misguided views makes immigration an issue that we should treat with care.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for introducing the debate. I warmed to the initial points that he made about the benefits of immigration, but I

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despaired as we were given a litany of problems. The noble Lord seemed to be painting a picture which did not recognise that we have the lowest unemployment for 20 years or more. The problem is not unemployment; the problem nowadays is finding workers to fill the vacancies. We benefit hugely from immigration in that regard.
It is a changing landscape; nobody could argue against that. We need only consider the inner-city communities to recognise that fact. There are problems, but it is manifestly wrong to say that the Government have not attempted to deal with them. The noble Lord instanced the disaster in Morecambe Bay, which was a terrible tragedy. He forgot to mention that legislation to license the people who exploit illegal immigrants resulted from that terrible tragedy.
The Independent—indeed, all today's newspapers— quotes the dramatic fall in the number of asylum seekers since 2002. Whether you rejoice in those figures may well depend on your standpoint, but at least they serve to separate fact from fiction. Last year, 40,200 people, including dependants, claimed refuge, which is down from a peak of more than 110,000 two years earlier. Home Office statistics show that asylum seekers are arriving at a rate of just over 2,800 a month, compared with 7,600 at the peak in 2002. Iranians are now by far the largest national group claiming refuge in Britain, a fact of which, I must admit, I was unaware.
I too have examined the Government's policy. I may part company here with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and the right reverend Prelate, but it seems to me that there must be a policy on immigration. Nobody denies that. I read the statement made by the Secretary of State. He said:
"Each year there are millions of visitors to our shores. We have global communications, global economies and global movement of people. We have to adapt to these developments, not by putting up the shutters, but by managing, controlling and selecting".
If I had a worry, I would add the words "in a humane and fair way" to the end of that statement. That is, perhaps, the difficulty.
We cannot pretend that we do not live in a changing world. We must deal with the situation. Is the Government's policy absolutely right? I am sure that, like all policies, it will change and develop and will be capable of improvement in the light of a calm assessment. It builds on significant progress. Asylum applications are down by 67 per cent, back to 1997 levels. Four out of five new claims are now decided in two months, rather than the 20 months that it took in 1997. That is important. It benefits people who are left in a terrible state of limbo. They might not always like the outcome of their application— I am trying to help an individual at the moment who does not like that outcome—but it is far better that those claims should be processed in a reasonable time.
The number of claims outstanding is at a 10-year low, and the number receiving NASS support continues to fall. Border controls have been tightened, with the introduction of detection technology and the presence of UK immigration officers in mainland
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Europe. Enforcement action against illegal working has been stepped up. That is important because there is a large amount of criminal activity associated with it that benefits nobody, other than the criminals who seek to exploit the appalling tragedy of workers who have done nothing but try to get themselves out of a terrible situation in their own country and go somewhere which, they hope, will be better.
Key measures in the strategy include a transparent points system for those coming in to work or study. I would have thought that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, would welcome that. There are financial bonds for specific categories in which there has been evidence of abuse to guarantee that migrants return home. There will be an end to chain migration and an end to appeals when applying from abroad to work or study. Only skilled workers will be allowed to settle longterm in the UK, and there will be English language tests for everyone who wants to stay permanently.
I must admit that I agreed with the point made by my noble friend Lord Desai about not focusing only on skilled workers but recognising that there is also a need for unskilled workers. After all, people are capable of changing from unskilled to skilled. We should recognise that.
The Home Secretary said:
"This country needs migration—tourists, students and migrant workers make a vital contribution to the UK economy. But we need to ensure that we let in migrants with the skills and talents to benefit Britain, while stopping those trying to abuse our hospitality and place a burden on our society".
I worry about some of those words, for the reasons that others have given. Nevertheless, we must recognise that they address a public concern. That concern may be misplaced, and it may be a misperception, but we should concern ourselves with how we handle that.
The Government's policy is broadly right for dealing with a situation that is difficult to get absolutely right. If I look at what the other main party offers, I become very concerned. The Tories' proposals on immigration and asylum policy do not give much detail. They say that there will be an annual quota for immigration and asylum, but they refuse to give the size of the quota. They even imply that more, not fewer, refugees could be accepted. They say that no one will be allowed to apply for asylum in this country and that they will process applications in centres near the country of origin, but they have no idea where those will be, how they will fund them or how they will get the agreement of other countries and of the UNHCR. That does not make me believe that there is a serious attempt to deal with an exceedingly difficult policy in any way other than to encourage a debate, not in the best way, during a pre-election period.
I hope that we recognise that there is a challenge. We live in a society that is more mobile than it used to be and a truly global world. There will be real pressures, but, in the final analysis, immigrants have brought enormous benefit to this country and will continue to do so.

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I do not think that we should be ashamed of our record. While I understand the concern expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, about people being called asylum seekers, I can reflect only on the atmosphere in my local primary school where I am a governor, and where many different languages are heard—there are 29 examples where English is the second language at home. There is a tiny amount of racial incidence in that school.
We should look at the good that is taking place in multi-racial, multi-cultural Britain, and should not embrace a policy of despair. We should honestly recognise that it is not an easy problem. Have we got it right? I doubt it, which is why the debate is worth having. Nevertheless, I believe that the Government's policies take us in the right direction.
4 p.m.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Waddington has drawn attention to the sharp increase in immigration in recent years. Net cumulative immigration has amounted to almost 750,000 between 1999 and 2003. If net immigration were to continue at the present level of 150,000 a year the UK's population would rise to 69 million by the middle of this century, which is roughly 12 million greater than it would be without immigration. It follows that during that time the composition of the population would alter considerably.
The matter deserves to be debated openly. Of course, there are benefits in multi-culturalism—rich benefits. But, as Prospect magazine has pointed out, there are also risks in too much diversity.
I want to concentrate purely on the so-called economic arguments for immigration because, from time to time, the Government have attempted to close down the debate by arguing that a high level of immigration in the modern world is inevitable and produces great benefits. Some of the arguments are questionable and some are static snapshots that ignore the longer term.
The Government frequently point out that a Home Office survey argued that in 1999–2000 immigrants contributed £2.5 billion net to the Exchequer. That is another dodgy dossier. The interpretation of that report, if it is extrapolated into the future, is distinctly dodgy. The Home Office conceded that that figure depended on Britain's position in the business cycle. That point was taken up by Professor Robert Rowthorn, the Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, who strongly disputed the Government's conclusion.
Moreover, the study ignored the higher cost of housing in the south-east, where two-thirds of migrants settle. Like many studies, it ignored the lifetime impact of immigrants and their dependants, and the fact that since the mid 1980s immigration has been adding to the population and new investment has been necessary.
The Government also try to argue that immigration will improve the balance between the old and the young, thus helping us with our pensions problem. Unfortunately, there is a problem with that reasoning:
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immigrants themselves grow old. That argument would hold water only if the migrants were temporary migrants to this country. The Home Office again conceded that point and went on to argue that for that argument to have any impact, net inflows of migrants not only needed to occur on an annual basis, but had to rise continuously. That issue was gone into by a Select Committee of this House, which pointed out that to stabilise the age of the population of this country, immigration would have to be at the rate of 500,000 a year. That is clearly not practical.
The more central point that high levels of immigration add to economic growth is also very arguable. Many major studies have been carried out in the United States, Canada and Holland. and none has supported the view that immigration is needed for economic prosperity. Indeed, the study in the United States was followed by a recommendation that immigration be reduced. When the Government argue that immigration increases economic growth, they forget that when dependants are taken into account the population increases by virtually an identical percentage.
The most plausible economic argument for immigration is labour shortages. I wholly agree that it is in our interests to import skilled and talented people with special skills. Whether that is in the interests of the developing world, however, is a different matter. Different questions arise with mass unskilled immigration. The benefits are not so clear, especially if immigration is permanent, not temporary.
The right response to labour shortages ought to be higher wages, more training and investment. No doubt employers and the CBI do not want to pay those costs but the local population are the losers when labour is imported. The noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Desai, referred to the fact that immigration has increased but unemployment has not. We also need to take account of the effect of immigration on the other economically inactive groups, including the one million on incapacity benefit who, according to Alan Milburn, would like to work if the conditions were right. Mass immigration, through its pressure on wage rates, intensifies the poverty trap.
The effects of unskilled labour are felt not just in the areas where immigrants arrive but in other parts of the country. A recent study found that immigration into the south of Britain led to significantly reduced migration from other parts of the UK—from Scotland and the north—to the south. If that is correct, we should expect to see the effects of immigration showing up in those areas where there is a surplus of labour that may be deterred from moving south by competition from immigrants.
Some economists—and presumably the Government—would argue that forcing unskilled labour to compete at lower wages is desirable on grounds of national competitiveness, as costs are reduced, prices decline and, in the long run, workers are no worse off because they gain as consumers. Nominal wages are reduced but real wages are not. Of course, such an argument depends on continuing immigration.

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However, many economists, including Professor Rowthorn of Cambridge and, possibly the leading migration economist in the world, Professor George Borjas, have argued that any such gains from mass unskilled immigration are likely to be small. Borjas argues that a 10 per cent increase in the labour force followed by a 3 per cent fall in wages would generate a surplus of only 0.1 per cent of GDP—not 1 per cent, but 0.1 per cent. That is the boost to output of lower cost. That is not the lifetime cost with discounted tax contributions and benefits received of immigrants. That would be a very different calculation over a lifetime. The boost to output is so small because most of the benefit goes to the immigrants themselves.
It is often said—and we have heard it again today—that immigrants are needed to do the jobs that locals will not do. It is not so much a shortage of labour as a shortage of cheap labour. Again, the answer is to raise wages and to have more specific training.
It is said that the NHS would collapse without immigrant staff. We are importing 15,000 nurses and 10,000 doctors a year, which is an indictment of the Government's medical training policy, but that is not a reason for having 150,000 immigrants a year.
Martin Wolf, the distinguished Financial Times economic commentator, made the point that mass unskilled immigration to deal with labour shortages can be self-defeating. He said:
"If the response to shortages is to import labour, additional demand for goods and services, then further shortages of labour will emerge. The argument from shortages creates an open-ended demand for more immigration. If the UK had a population of 120 million it would still have labour shortages and so a demand for yet more immigration. The demand could never be justified".
Many economists argue that the main beneficiaries of immigration are the immigrants themselves rather than the host country. Of course, there is an argument for migration and immigration that is based on global concerns rather than the concerns of any one country, but the first duty of government is to the inhabitants of this country.
Mass immigration for permanent settlement is not the answer to an ageing population or labour shortages. It harms the weakest sections of our society. Ultimately, this is not an economic issue. It is a political and social one. The Government should stop trying to justify a political decision with very questionable economic arguments.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for introducing this debate. I agreed with perhaps his first two sentences, but he and I have been disagreeing on these issues for around 35 years, which we will no doubt continue to do.
The noble Lord referred to the "intolerable strain" of immigrants on public services. Eighteen months ago, unfortunately, I had to spend cumulatively about a fortnight in Burnley General Hospital. All the doctors who saw me were not born in this country. A lot of the nurses were local, the rest of them came from
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the Philippines. I was extremely grateful for their care, commitment and competence, and will continue to be so.
The consultant who carved me open on the fateful day of my operation originally came from Sri Lanka; his family was Sri Lankan. My operation had to be deferred for three weeks, which I am pleased to say was not harmful, because he had to attend the funeral of his brother in Malaysia. That is an indication of how the world has changed.
Many families throughout the world are genuinely global as families and communities. It is ironic that the English were, perhaps, the greatest global colonisers. They used to look at the globe, half of which was red, and say, "Isn't it wonderful?". Now, many of us are among the least global in our lifestyles. Far too many retreat into what used to be called "little Englandism". We can argue about whether that is good or bad, but it is a fact that will not go away. We have to come to terms with it. My view is that to be global is a good thing.
I am angry about the Dutch auction taking place between the Labour and Conservative parties on immigration and refugees in the run-up to the general election. That is not because it is being done for reasons of naked, unprincipled and selfish party advantage on both sides, although it clearly is, or because it will be particularly successful. There is a myth in this country that immigration and race issues are election winners, which goes back to Enoch Powell in 1970 and 1974. I do not think it goes much beyond that and it will not succeed.
However, I am angry because it is being done without a care in the world for all of the individual people who will suffer as a result. Most of those people are neither immigrants, legal or otherwise, nor applicants for asylum, justified or otherwise. They are members of ethnic minorities who are legally settled here, in some cases for several generations. In most cases, they are British citizens who have as much right to be here and to integrate as everyone else. But their lives and lifestyles are being put at risk.
Mr Howard and Mr Blair may take care when using words such as "immigrant" to use them correctly. But they know what they are doing. When people hear the word "immigrant", they think of someone with a skin that is some shade between black and Roma. When they hear the words "cutting the numbers", they do not think of cutting the numbers of immigrants coming through Dover, they think of cutting the numbers who live near them.
The Independent has been quoted already today and there is an article by Trevor Phillips which puts that rather well. He wrote:
"In the pre-election campaign, the language is 'controlled', 'managed' 'immigration' and 'asylum'; but much of the electorate is hearing 'stop'. 'black', 'foreign' and 'Muslim".
It is to do with "triangulation", a word which puzzles me. I read much about it, written by clever political reporters, but I do not think that most people understand what it means. It seems to mean that new Labour gets scared that some Right-wing issue is

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playing well for the Tories, so it neutralises it by taking over the Tory ground or even leapfrogging it to the Right. I am not sure what that has to do with triangles, but that seems to be the way in which it works.
The main effect will be to make it more acceptable to dish out the low-level racist and cultural rudeness that many people—British citizens and immigrants alike—experience day-in and day-out. You only have to talk to people to hear about the fear of crime being more of a problem for many people than crime itself, which can imprison people in their homes and restrict what they do. But the fear of racism and that kind of rudeness works in exactly the same way for members of ethnic minorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, referred to the Cantle report on parallel communities in northern towns. The more that leading politicians debate immigrants as a problem, the more ethnic minority communities will turn inwards and the more they will build defensive barriers to keep the rest of us out; and the further we will be from what I would like to see—a liberal vision of a society that is both diverse and integrated. In parenthesis, it is interesting that much of the rise of anti-Semitism in this country has been put at the door of some of the less understanding members of the Muslim community.
But that is a defensive reaction against being attacked. If minorities are attacked, in many cases some of those people will lash out and attack other minorities. I tell my Muslim friends in Nelson and Colne where I live that in this country, at least when it comes to the challenge of the BNP, fascism and so on, Jews and Muslims are on the same side and should be fighting on the same side.
The global economy and wars and repression mean that the movement of people between countries and across continents will continue whatever politicians try to do. Equally, there are pressures within society that lead inexorably to people coming together. Employers need workers. Children meet at school. Students meet at university. Politicians need votes. Customers and service providers alike have to maintain at least a minimum level of politeness if they are to sell their goods. People fall in love. People worship their sporting and show business stars despite their prejudices. Even the tabloids need to sell papers to more than just the bigots. Even the bigots need to buy their curries.
Many of us work for a multicultural society because we believe that it is right. I am very proud to have spent much of the past two years helping to get a very good friend of mine—Sajjad Karim—elected as a Liberal Democrat MEP for the north-west. He will be a brilliant MEP. The fact that he is a Muslim and from an Asian background is an added advantage, but that he is a brilliant Liberal Democrat is most important, and there are many more of them to come.
Meanwhile, a lot of individuals will suffer directly from the Blair-Clarke package that has been announced. Refugees face the prospect of being uprooted and sent back after five years. How can that contribute to their social and psychological well-being and integration into British life'?
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Unskilled workers will not be allowed to bring families with them. How can encouraging camps of single men or women contribute to family stability or the Government's favourite buzz phrase "social cohesion"? Unskilled workers from outside Europe, mainly from the black and Asian Commonwealth, will be replaced by people from eastern Europe who are mainly white. There is only one word for this—intentionally or not—it is indirectly racist.
Both the Labour Party and the Tories are being dishonest. The Tories have upfront hard-line policies that they know will not work in the modern world and cannot work. New Labour pretends to be anti-immigration to stop the unbelievable Tories stealing xenophobic votes. But it knows that it cannot cut immigration and does not intend to do so. It has at least more understanding of the British economy than the Tories or the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who has just addressed us.
Meanwhile, a lot of people will feel more insecure, more disliked and more unwanted—all because Mr Blair and Mr Howard appear to think that the place to slug out the coming general election is in the Right-wing political gutter in company with people like Kilroy-Silk and Nick Griffin. The prospects are appalling and it is a disgrace.
4.19 p.m.
Baroness D'Souza: My Lords, this is a very timely debate and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for introducing it. I say timely because the Government have set out in the Home Office document, Controlling our borders: Making migration work fur Britain, the dilemma that the UK, among other European countries, faces in dealing with asylum seekers and they give fair warning about the ways in which they will deal with the problem. I am of course aware that this debate is perhaps more concerned with the inadequacy of current controls rather than the need to adhere to international laws that protect asylum seekers.
But my concern here is to underline the need to bear in mind the principles and practices governing the treatment of refugees which is enshrined in several international treaties, notably the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. Although this document was drawn up in the chaos of the aftermath of World War II when Europe was awash with displaced people, the fundamental principle of protection of the vulnerable applies equally today.
I have a special interest in Section 5 of the Home Office document which noble Lords will know refers to removals—whether by means of assisted schemes, voluntary returns or return to safe third countries. Paragraph 76 also refers to unaccompanied asylum seeking children and concludes that it is not in the child's best interests to remain in the UK separated from parents and announces the start of a project to undertake return of these children to Albania. This is a complicated business. There are many, many reasons why children end up as unaccompanied asylum seekers. For example, given the increasing obstacles to asylum introduced throughout Europe in the past few years, desperate

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migrants, whether genuine refugees or not, have no alternative but to seek other ways to leave economic or political persecution. Some will deliberately take along young children believing that their chances of successful asylum application will be strengthened. Others tell false stories hugely to their disadvantage in order to pass through immigration controls.
More sinister, however, are the rise in illegal methods and the exponential increase in trafficking of drugs and of women and children for prostitution. The statistics in so far as they are known—and we have to accept that in this brutal underworld of people trafficking we know relatively little—are shocking. It is estimated that thousands of illegal would-be entrants have perished in the seas separating Europe from north Africa and eastern Europe. Traffickers aiming for a quick getaway force asylum seekers off boats at gunpoint. There is nothing to protect asylum seekers who use smugglers with the result that these people, if they survive the journey, are drawn into a network of exploitative relationships in order to pay off debts.
Children are an especially vulnerable group and we know that trafficking of young children from eastern, central and southern Europe for the purpose of prostitution in western Europe and beyond has become big business. The smuggling of children from Albania is widespread partly because of its geographical position. It is estimated that something like 4,000 children were trafficked from Albania to Greece between 1992 and 2000. Repatriation of these children with a view to family reunification is not therefore a simple solution.
Child asylum seekers are possibly the least protected group of children under UK domestic law. The Refugee Children's Consortium, a network of some 28 child-focused NGOs, points out that the refusal rates for indefinite leave are very high for children when compared with adults and the Home Office decision-making procedures have been repeatedly criticised by the Home Affairs Select Committee and by Amnesty International. Children are not guaranteed legal representation and guardians to see them through the process are rarely appointed. The result is that the special conditions which have driven a child to become an asylum seeker are inadequately researched and serious errors in repatriation can and do occur.
As a result of the ever-present threat to children UNHCR —the UN refugee agency—and Save the Children have published a statement of good practice that incorporates some of the relevant provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to which the UK is a party. The statement makes clear that child refugees must receive special attention to ensure that the child is involved in decisions that affect his or her future, that he or she is never returned to a context of unsafety and that every effort is made to establish what is in fact in the child's best interest—something that may well be counterintuitive, particularly in those countries where trafficking is rampant and where the social service infrastructure is weak and child protection measures wholly inadequate.
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All other factors such as the fight against illegal immigration should be secondary to the fundamental protection to which a child is entitled and governments are obliged to provide. I would therefore like to seek the assurance of the Minister that the good practice provisions referred to be made statutory in any forthcoming legislation concerning asylum seekers.
4.27 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I had the good fortune—I hope that he thinks the same of me— of travelling to Pakistan with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, who proved to be a good and affable companion. But that does not stop him from suffering from tunnel vision when it comes to issues of asylum and immigration. All who take his point of view argue about balancing, moderation and immigration. Then they embark on the most immoderate of approaches and, unfortunately, that was the case today. Hardly a word emerged from his lips about those who are leaving the United Kingdom. Fortunately, some sort of balance has been applied in this debate. and I thank all those who have participated.
We should be chary of playing into the hands of extremists and racists, which has been done in part today, notably by the noble Lords, Lord Waddington and Lord Lamont. Some 34 years ago, I made a speech on this issue in Committee in another place in 1971. It was then that I quoted the debate that had taken place on the Aliens Bill in 1904—more than a hundred years ago—but redolent of much of that, in my opinion, is ill-advisedly advanced today. At that time it was the Jews, fleeing from persecution in the East in large measure. The Chinese were not immune from that. Together, they were the butt of the racists' abuse. Attacks, not dissimilar from those iterated today, about seeking to enter this country, were replete, but exemplified by somebody from the Conservative side who represented Bethnal Green of all places—Major Evans Gordon. He asserted that the burdens of immigration were being transferred to the poorest and most helpless. Unfortunately, we hear that again. He spoke emotively of people driven from their homes deprived of their work and of an "unrestricted influx". Those ugly words are also repeated today, all too often.
Sadly, all this was iterated by the then Conservative Ministers. Those "undesirables" all too often became valued members of the community. My own grandparents were among those assailed and I am not prepared to condone what happened at that time when the voice of moderation was hardly ever heard. There was no balanced debate about immigration. All that happened at that time was that the bigoted views of a few became wholesale in their application. I do not say that a complete parallel should be drawn with the past, although some would do well not to overlook it. I am thinking particularly of the Leader of the Opposition. He would be among the first, in my view, who ought to pay a tribute to those who have exercised some degree of moderation as far as this is concerned.

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I do not argue for a complete absence of immigration controls, because that would be impractical and impossible. What I contend is that recognition should come from immigration authorities and from politicians that most immigrants, and certainly asylum seekers, who come here are looking for a better life and better opportunities than they have experienced elsewhere.
Both therefore are entitled to be dealt with civilly, rather than in a hostile fashion, particularly when their claim is rejected or when they take up residence. Regretably this is not always the case. The shrill claims that are heard about asylum seekers and immigrants are unacceptable.
If claimants deliberately break the law, then normally, and I stress normally, they should be returned to their place of departure. But we have an obligation to look at that place as well, to make sure that there are no kinds of ordeal to which they would be subjected. They are still entitled to respect, and that they do not always have.
In my view the press and the public media have an especially significant role to play. Their role should not be to inflame the situation—a role gleefully adopted by some tabloids in particular, although certain broadsheets are not immune from blame. Their task should be to educate and inform about the reality, and not as so often happens to distort those realities. Asylum and immigration are hugely sensitive topics and should be dealt with sensitively.
Having said all that, I am glad that we have had the opportunity to debate those issues—I hope, moderately.
4.33 p.m.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry: My Lords, I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, said with great interest. 1 remember him well as a friend and companion on the opposite Benches in the other place. I agree with him very much that immigration and asylum are sensitive issues and must be dealt with sensitively. I think he is perhaps a little optimistic in thinking what help we might get in that respect from the media, but there is never any harm in trying. I fully agree with him when he thanked my noble friend Lord Waddington for introducing the debate and for making us think about this difficult subject at election time.
I followed my noble friend Lord Waddington as Minister of State responsible for immigration matters at the Home Office. He went on to higher things and I inherited what was even then—in 1987—not an easy task. At that time asylum applications were around 7,000 a year and we thought that was extremely high. Then, too, Lunar House was in a mess, as it still is now.
One thing that my noble friend left me was 70 asylum cases of Tamils leaving Sri Lanka. The cases had not been fully resolved. There was judicial review and they were sent back for me to look at as my first task as Immigration Minister. I asked my office to do an assessment of them, to tell me which were the really hard ones, so that they would be the ones that I
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would have to look at. I had an awful lot of other work to do. "No, no", they said, "it has got to be your judgment, your decision, entirely".
My experience of looking at those cases, very soon after I went to the Home Office in 1987, did rather sear me. I well remember looking at photographs of people's knees and having to make a judgment on whether that was a self-inflicted wound or where they had been hit or tortured by the police. It was on that kind of judgment that I had to make a decision on who should go back to Sri Lanka and who should not.
Against that background, I really do venerate the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. It is worth reminding your lordships of the wording. A refugee is one who.
"owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted … is outside the country of his nationality and"—
in consequence—
"is unable or … unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country".
Way back, since 1987, we were saying that the UN Convention needed revising. It was written for the late 1940s and early 1951, particularly to help people fleeing in front of the Russian armies as they went into eastern Europe. Clearly that is unsuitable for a world in which travel agents say, "Jump on this plane. We will get you into the UK. Dump your passport into the loo as you go and apply for asylum the moment you arrive". I remember as Minister that that is exactly what happened. I was taken to see one aeroplane in which that was happening.
I do not think—I would say this to my colleague, David Davis, in the other place—that there is any case for us withdrawing unilaterally from the Convention. Try to reform it certainly, but to step away from it would be a dishonour for this country. We would be reneging from our obligations to try at least to find out who are the genuine refugees and who are not.
David Pannick wrote a very good article in The Times of 8 February, in which he pointed out some details. If we were to resile from the convention we would also be breaching Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and it would be necessary for us to withdraw from the European Union. That is perhaps extemporaneous to this particular debate. What is more apposite is the comment he made that the essence of the matter was that the decision-making process should speedily and accurately distinguish well founded claims and baseless applications. People who have no right to remain should indeed be removed without delay.
That is at the heart of the matter. It comes back to where I think more money needs to be spent at the moment—on the standard of entry clearance officers, who interview at the first stage. The impression I get from talking to those involved at the Immigration Advisory Service is that there still is an extraordinarily low standard at the first stage of process. In consequence, many claims are refused wrongly or indeed permissions are granted wrongly.
I would hope that if the Home Secretary has extra funds, he will use them at that level, on entry clearance officers. I have to say this rather carefully, but I am advised that they are often illiterate and ignorant, let

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alone of course the absence often of good interpreters. The standard of that process should be greatly improved.
That leads on to the other point that I would like to make, which is about the extraordinary announcement by the Home Secretary the other day that he was proposing that there should be no right of appeals for intending overseas students who wish to come and work here. Now, noble Lords will remember that the 2000 Act provides that the removal of right of appeal can be done by statutory instrument and no longer requires primary legislation. But it has been pointed out to me that 65 per cent to 70 per cent of appeals made by overseas students who have at first sight had their visa application refused are eventually approved. Why is that? The reason is that the standard at the first gate is too low.
If we go further and say that in addition, as has been threatened, charges will be greatly increased from £155 to almost £500 for those who require visa extensions, what will be the effect? There will be a major withdrawal of international students from this country. It is very arrogant to think that international students will stay here if they are being confronted with these sort of difficulties—charges that are not being made on them in other countries.
I declare an interest in that I am on the council of Sussex University and also know its neighbour, Brighton University, very well. Both have pointed out to me that something like 8 per cent to 9 per cent of their students are international and pay full fees, which is a very important addition to the universities' income. They also bring a cultural benefit to the university, which helps domestic students who may not have had much international experience. So I very much hope that that proposal can be revised; it is being studied by UKCOSA and Universities UK, and I hope that new proposals will be accepted.
To indulge in any auction on who can be tougher about immigration at election time is a very great mistake. There are no votes in it; it is bad for race relations; and, much more, it is bad for the reputation of this country. I believe that the immigration problem, in a world of globalisation, is bound to get worse, with increased travel, numbers and Internet information inevitably encouraging people to move from poor countries to richer, as they did from East Germany to West Germany. But we must remember the words of John Donne:
"No man is an island, entire of itself: every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main".
There are no more islands in the globalised world; we are all part of continents, and we must learn to deal with that.
4.42 p.m.
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for allowing us the opportunity for this important and timely debate, and I thank him for referring to me in his opening speech. I
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was warned that my noble friend Lady D'Souza would speak on unaccompanied children, so if I may I shall write to him on the specific point that he raised.
I feel that I hardly need to speak, because the points that I wish to make have just been made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, so I wish to concentrate on the importance of continuing our commitment to the 1951 Convention on Refugees. I draw to your Lordships' attention the conclusion of the European Union committee report of last April, called Handling EU asylum claims: new approaches examined. It looks at a number of the approaches that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, outlined. The report says:
"The 1951 Convention regime has stood the test of time. There is no viable alternative to it as the principal international instrument of protection for those at risk of persecution".
I congratulate the Government on their investment in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. I remember as a schoolboy reading about what a shambles Lunar House was in. I know that there must still be a long way to go but, having visited the inspectorate last year, there seemed to have been an important investment there. The fact that 80 per cent of initial decisions are made within two months of application must be some indication that improvements are being made—though I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, that there may still be a long way to go.
Your Lordships have raised concerns about housing in the past. Given that now more than 100,000 families are homeless, though thankfully they do not live in bed-and-breakfast accommodation any more, we have to take that matter very seriously. The advice that I have had is that all asylum seekers given housing assistance by the National Asylum Support Service are dispersed, generally to areas experiencing low demand for social housing. Once granted refugee status, a person can apply for assistance under the homelessness legislation. Section 11 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 automatically establishes a refugee's local connection as being with the authority to which they were dispersed. That makes it very difficult for refugees to be given housing in areas already experiencing pressures on social housing. I hope that gives some assurance to noble Lords.
I shall give some examples from the past and present as to the importance of the UN Convention on Refugees of 1951. I begin with the history of Laura Selo, in an excerpt taken from I Came Alone—The Stories of the Kindertransports. The excerpt says:
"There were children's transports coming to England, and the Czech Trust Fund in England and the Committee in Prague were finding families who would take refugee children like us. It was my mother's wish that we three children should not be separated, but the Committee could not find anybody willing to take all three of us into their homes. But, at last one day we heard that we were finally leaving for England, and that a lady called Miss Harder would have all three of us — She was a spinster, in her early fifties, who owned a small confectionery and tobacco shop just by the Archway Underground Station in Highgate. The Committee, although it had been touched by her desire to help, had never found a child who would have been suitable for her to take in. Probably they thought she was too poor. When, just by chance, someone mentioned the three of us and the fact that our mother did not wish us to be parted, Miss Harder offered to take us all, to

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the Committee's astonishment. She was asked to think the matter over carefully, taking into account her circumstances, lack of accommodation and the responsibility, but she had made her decision. She even turned down the Committee's offer of financial help because, as she put it, she did not want another child to be deprived of its chance of coming over to England because she had taken the money.
Those early weeks when we were miserable—we missed our mother and often cried—must have been very difficult for Miss Harder … Gradually we learnt English and got to know Miss Harder and after the first few months, we managed to adjust ourselves to our new surroundings and began to settle down. Then came a telegram from a friend of my mother's in Prague saying that mother had disappeared. After that another message said that she had been arrested and imprisoned as a hostage for my father. Our foster-mother tried everything to console us and take our minds off our sorrow. Somehow her efforts to comfort us brought us even closer together… but six months after our arrival in this country, Miss Harder died of consumption, and what she had tried to prevent, happened: my sisters and I were separated. They went to foster-parents and I got a job as a maid. Now, one of my sisters lives in San Francisco and the other one in New York, while I live in London. Our mother died in a concentration camp.
I think it is only now, after all these years later, that I understand what a truly kind, wonderful and courageous woman Miss Harder was. She was my second mother for those few months. My sisters and I owe our lives to her, but we can never repay her for her kindness for having taken three unknown children into her home, given them love and understanding and her compassion".
I believe that that example speaks for itself in terms of the importance of adhering to the convention, which, if it was withdrawn from unilaterally, would certainly be very weakened and would risk the danger of other countries following us—other countries indeed poorer than ourselves. At the same time, back in 1938, a Member of your Lordships' House received a telegram from the Foreign Minister of the Spanish republican government. The Member was the vice-chairman of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief. The telegram said:
"1 can assure you after having visited the entire city in which 2,000 people have been killed and an equal number wounded that the worst predictions of the coming aerial warfare have been converted here into the most abominable reality".
This Committee on Spanish relief provided hospitality and ultimate repatriation for about 4,000 Basque children.
Since then, the promise made to my parents and to many of your Lordships—that, if we defeated Hitler, we would move toward broad sunlit uplands—has, for us, largely come true. Yet in many parts of the world tyrants and despots like Hitler continue. I have talked with your Lordships previously about the experience of meeting young people from Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. Only today, listening to the news at lunch, we were hearing of Darfur and the way the Government stand back from the militias' rape of the innocents in Sudan.
I wish to conclude simply by welcoming what the Government have said in this regard:
"The 1951 Convention is part of the legal and ethical framework that enshrines basic principles of human decency. We reject the idea of a fixed quota on refugee numbers or pulling out of the Convention as unworkable, unjust and counterproductive".
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I hope that the Minister will, in his response, reaffirm the Government's commitment to adhering to the convention.
4.51 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I went to a London school and in 1937 my headmistress, together with the distinguished MP Eleanor Rathbone, went to Germany—and, in the following year, to Barcelona. On each occasion they brought back refugee children who they adopted. One of them became a doctor and another a magistrate: they became friends of mine. From early in my life I have therefore seen, met and known refugees.
No consideration of the process of asylum in this country can ignore the incomprehensible position adopted by this Government on the issue of asylum seekers from Zimbabwe. In 2002, as a result of protests from all parties, the Government temporarily suspended the forcible removal of asylum seekers from Zimbabwe before they could even leave the aircraft and enter the country. Henceforward nobody could enter without a visa. In 2004, asylum seekers whose appeals had failed received letters requiring them to apply for voluntary repatriation—since the Home Secretary had decided, in their case, that Zimbabwe was a safe country to which they could return. Meanwhile, of course, accommodation and a basic allowance were withdrawn. They were forbidden to work and were, in effect, in limbo.
The tribunals ignored the FCO report on human rights and the fact that Amnesty International and the UNHCR had, for over three years, consistently reported that there was, and is, widespread abuse of human rights—and not just, as Her Majesty's Government have said, turbulent political conditions. They were also ignoring the African Union's own human rights commission report as early as 2002. The Home Office, however, bases its decisions on what are acknowledged to be deeply flawed procedures—and I warmly agreed with what was said by my noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry—applied to individuals who had inadequate and often incompetent legal advice. The tribunals took no notice of the UNHCR or of any other body in assessing human rights in Zimbabwe. The Government totally ignore the fact that returned asylum seekers fall straight into the hands of the CIO when they come off the aircraft; they can expect, and receive, no mercy.
How can any honourable, or even sensible, government decide that if an appeal is unsuccessful,
"that means it would be safe for that particular individual to return to their country of origin"?
The Home Office letter I am citing was withdrawn, but in December 2004 the new letter said,
"You must now leave this country".
On 10 November the Government had decided to end the
"temporary suspension of enforced return of failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers".

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It also announced—evidently as a success—the fact that out of a total of 2,025 decisions on Zimbabwe only 195 were granted. Nearly 90 per cent of claims were refused and 82 per cent of subsequent appeals to the independent adjudicator were dismissed or withdrawn. The Government
"expected these people to leave voluntarily, but if not they would consider it entirely proper to enforce their removal as they would nationals of any other country".
Those removals have begun.
I shall have the opportunity, in the week after next, to discuss the long-term and serious effects for both this country and Zimbabwe of what I regard as a misguided and essentially unjust policy. Today, I want merely to urge that those who attack asylum seekers for battening on the state and costing the country money should remember that these people are not allowed to work. For many of them, that is the greatest hardship that they face. We take away their self-respect and they can do nothing to remedy their situation—nor to pay taxes, as they would wish to do. I believe that this policy should be reviewed and that asylum seekers should not be confused with the unfortunates who are brought in by people-smugglers as part of a corrupt financial transaction. More resources could be allocated to catch both the smugglers and those they smuggle in—who often have no word of English and no skills. These are the arrivals most likely to create a certain just resentment in the community.
The Government should amend their policy at least to allow those who have the skills we need to work. If it is necessary to make this an exceptional, temporary measure applicable only to Zimbabweans—perhaps as former Commonwealth citizens—then surely that could be done. Our dependence on such countries as South Africa and Indonesia for a high proportion of our NHS doctors and nurses has been widely and recently reported. Yet I know of a qualified Zimbabwean doctor—fully registered with the General Medical Council—who has been forbidden by the Home Office to work. That is only one example. A high proportion of Zimbabwean asylum seekers are professional people—British-trained, and therefore able to assimilate easily into the country.
The Government should recognise that those Zimbabweans who come here on, for instance, Malawian passports have no other way of obtaining entry and seeking asylum. Without a passport they cannot obtain a visa—and I doubt whether the embassy in Harare would issue one if the applicant were to declare that his object was to seek asylum. I hope the Minister will tell me if I am wrong. It takes a year to get a Zimbabwe passport and I doubt whether those who need asylum would have the faintest hope of getting one. I believe that a number of Kosovo citizens were allowed to come to this country on condition that they returned home once it became safe. I can see no reason why that option should not be offered also to refugees from Zimbabwe.
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I have two final points. First, I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger. In the days when refugees came here from Nazi Germany—and later from Stalin's Russia—I do not think we would have dreamt of sending them back, small as this island was then and is now. Secondly, like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, I too remember our honourable behaviour in admitting the Ugandan Asians. One of them—now a father himself and, I think, even a grandfather—told me that when his family arrived he, as a small boy of five, was told by his father that he and the whole family must work hard to give back what they could to this country. That is what true asylum seekers feel and we should give them that opportunity. It is dishonourable not to do so.
4.58 p.m.
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, as we have heard, asylum seekers are again becoming the cannon fodder of an election campaign. In some ways, Labour and Tory thinking in another place has converged into a more aggressive stance which can only damage the chances of future applicants. The Government's new strategy has been greeted with dismay by those who work with asylum seekers. Its robust language—of crackdowns and rooting out abuse—amounts to an obvious manifesto. Its five-year approach is bound to alarm legitimate asylum seekers still further.
The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, himself warned us of an ominously changing landscape. However, I am grateful to him for the opportunity that he has given, and the balanced way in which he introduced his remarks. I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, about initial decisions. I also accept that over time there have been important volte-faces and changes of policy—and that there has been some fruitful common ground between the Home Office and leading refugee agencies. I hope to concentrate today not on the numbers game, but on a more positive aspect; namely, so-called voluntary returns.
Voluntary repatriation is the durable solution that everyone wants to see for countries that have apparently reached a degree of stability. The Home Office makes much of this as part of its strategy of detention and removal. In fact, it is even called a "removals initiative". We are easily deceived about the nature of a post-conflict country such as Afghanistan or Sudan as it reaches the same point in the process. The turmoil in Iraq has made Afghanistan appear to be a land of comparative peace and plenty, or so the FCO would have us believe. The reality is that while 3 million or so refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran, Afghans in this country, even after the elections, are as fearful as ever; so we must beware of our own propaganda. Kabul may be peaceful, but it has become an international fortress, and its shanty towns are magnets for the poor, displaced and homeless. Outside the main cities of the north, the shield of NATO and coalition troops is no protection for refugees returning to homes that are still devastated. The general idea that Afghans can be safely returned if their application fails is pie in the sky. However, some hundreds have already been removed to an unknown fate.

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For the minority who must contemplate a return, there is a range of opportunities, including voluntary assisted returns with the help of the International Organisation for Migration, including an ingenious scheme, "Explore and Prepare", which enables returnees to go out and see for themselves. Some of these schemes are based on the success of the UK voluntary return programme in Kosovo. By the end of June 2000, after 11 months. some 55 per cent of those refugees had returned home. The package included air transport, a cash grant, advice from voluntary agencies and further assistance from the IOM.
However. Afghanistan is a different story. A thorough review of the main voluntary returns to Afghanistan programme last year, undertaken by Refugee Action and the Refugee Council, showed how little take-up there has been. Afghans in the UK are wary of false dawns after 23 years of civil war. Concerns about security, as in Iraq, have grown rather than receded. Among other things, they mention the continuing ethnic strife, revenge killings, the slow pace of reconstruction, poor housing, lack of jobs, restrictions on women, human rights abuses and the threat from mines.
How far arc the Government willing to extend their assistance to refused asylum seekers who are not apparently in need of international protection? Will the Home Office and the FCO leave this problem entirely to the voluntary agencies and the UN? In the context of the UK's commitment to Afghanistan, does he agree that those Afghans who may have had a legitimate initial claim, but who failed the test, have fallen into a black hole as far as the Home Office is concerned? Once a person is to be removed from the UK. it seems that our famous sense of decency and much-advertised belief in human dignity are removed at the same time.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, mentioned detention. I notice from Section 5 of the five-year plan that the detention capacity is to be expanded. Speaking as a patron of the Haslar visitors' group, will the Home Office look at the group's annual report, which has just been published, and which has a number of modest proposals for assisting those who are being removed? For instance, those proposals include making more effort to keep in contact after the dreaded refusal letter, sending out a positive reminder letter encouraging people to approach the IOM, improving the clothing allowance under the detention centre rules, or providing small amounts of cash for internal travel in the home country.
A government who claim fairness in their asylum policy should be ready to make those small improvements. This debate is about public services and maintaining standards. Some may think that the Home Office should be congratulated on attempting to reduce the number of assaults in removal vans, but that was only because of pressure from Haslar visitors and after a report from the Medical Foundation recording a dozen assaults in those vans in a period of three months. That prompted the Home Office to install CCTV in the vans. Unlike in Her Majesty's
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prisons, there is still no welfare officer at Haslar after months of requests. Many detainees are being treated worse than criminals.
I hope that the Minister will acknowledge today that the efforts of the churches and charities are not only to serve the oppressed, but to show up and point out the continuing mistakes and inadequacy of our system of government.
5.5 p.m.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, as ever it is a privilege to follow the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and his delicate dissection of a highly-focused element of today's landscape. Your Lordships' House owes a considerable debt to my noble friend Lord Waddington, not only for securing this debate, but for his masterly exposition of the subject and the scene. He has placed some of us in his particular debt by obviating the need to essay a comprehensive survey of the data ourselves. My observations will be subjective, but will seek to illumine some incidental corners of the scene.
In 1968, when the Conservative Party won control of the London borough of Camden for the first and only time, I was appointed chairman of the Camden Committee for Community Relations by the late Lord Finsberg. I accepted the post, provided that there was a significant increase in financial resources from that which the previous Labour council had used, though I also gave a commitment that unlike Oliver Twist I would not ask for any more over the three-year period. Nineteen sixty-eight was the year of the late Enoch Powell's river Tiber speech. It was a sharp baptism, but I have retained an interest in the subject ever since.
The Conservative Party, even at the height of its majorities in 1983 and 1987, was necessarily short of inner-city seats. I myself thought that this was an incidental disadvantage for us in formulating immigration policy. I personally regretted that the Treasury did not afford more resources to the immigration service when the refugee pressure began to build up 15 years ago, although I acknowledge that the pressures on public expenditure in the early 1990s were extreme. I join my noble friend Lord Waddington in recognising the immense contribution to this country, referred to by others in this debate, both by refugees and by those who arrived here in less traumatic circumstances. The country has been the richer for their contribution. The noble Lord, Lord Rees-Mogg, once opined in one of his Monday morning articles in the Times that I was the only member of the then-Major Cabinet whose family had come over with the Conqueror. I am grateful to my forebears for having cast our lot in these remarkable islands.
These virtues cannot blind us to the fact that, as some of my colleagues have said, all is not well in the world that we are debating today. After the 1997 general election, was one of only two Conservative MPs representing inner-city seats, the other being the late Alan Clark in Kensington and Chelsea. Despite our multiple decimation at the general election, I had thought that it might be an Indian summer of parliamentary life. That

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it was not, was because the decision of the Home Office not to reply to asylum seekers' letters, and then in due course to request MPs to cease writing to Ministers while the immigration records were computerised, meant that my correspondence with the Home Office at official level rose forty-fold in that Parliament.
Labour London inner-city colleagues with better access to the actualities of Lunar House during the computerisation period told lurid stories of the Health and Safety Executive shutting down properties into which paper records had been moved for months on end for decontamination and fumigation. Individual papers eaten by rats were also reported. Without ministerial emphasis, it was inevitable that MPs' mail became separated from the files to which they referred. Home Office officials were commendably civil and sought to help, but it was clear that they were vastly overstretched.
If I may make a personal comment, I thought that Ministers who could no longer answer mail from MPs—and I did not blame them for that—were foolish in not informing MPs, who were after all regardless of party now their main line of representative contact with applicants, of some of the detailed data about benefits policy that could have saved all of us writing a mass of unnecessary letters. I can make that comment because, inadvertently, I was sent an instruction from Lunar House on its way to the Benefits Agency in Leeds. I told Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, that I thought that the information being in the public domain would save all of us a great deal of trouble, with which—in answer to a planted question by myself—he concurred.
On the negative side, the crux of the problem in terms of the community at large is—to borrow an emotive word from Latin America—the "disappeared", those liable to deportation who have never been deported. We British are a tolerant race, but the existence of an estimated 250,000 people in our midst who should not be here strikes the indigenous Briton as unfair, to use a particularly British criterion. It is made worse when a minority of them run prostitution rackets, or settle arguments with a knife.
The delays in deportation likewise provoke that reaction of unfairness. Two Nigerians who had been working as resident club servants in a West End club in my constituency, undisturbed for 10 years, were suddenly arrested at dead of night and immediately deported. I was flooded with correspondence from the highest names in the land who were members of the club in question. If I may say so, those who disappear after MPs have invested much time and trouble in their cases do their whole communities harm by that ingratitude.
I shall not dwell on my party's policies for those matters save in one regard, which is my party's recent announcements on health policies, particularly in relation to TB and HIV/AIDS among immigrants. Since 2002, I have been pro-chancellor of the University of London. My noble friend Lady Chalker of Wallasey—no mean witness herself in these matters, and chairman of the governing body of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine—made it possible for me to have
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an informal briefing over lunch with the school's leading academics. Unprompted by myself and long before my party's recent announcement, they volunteered that health controls would in fact be a very sensible development.
Let me conclude with topical issues. For two years, the panel set up with the ALG, the Home Office and the London Asylum Seekers Consortium—it considers the special pleading of councils with a shortfall on Home Office grant funding for local authorities for their part in support of asylum seekers—has worked well. However, in the third and current year, the Home Office cut down the amount reclaimable under the special pleading arrangements without substantiating why. It would be helpful if the Minister would say a word about that.
Secondly, Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 is currently being piloted by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate at three of its local enforcement offices across the UK, covering 120 families of which 32 belong to 11 London local authorities. The legislation may lead to the Home Office support being withdrawn from families who have no right to remain in the UK. That is likely to result in families presenting to local authorities as destitute. Social services departments will be required to assess their needs, and may have to support the children of failed asylum seekers or support whole families. There has been no written assurance from the Home Office that the costs associated with the Section 9 pilot will be reimbursed. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.
Thirdly, since the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, there has been a real increase of destitution in the UK. The Act denied any access to benefits for those EU citizens residing in the UK. That meant that those EU citizens or failed asylum seekers with special needs or community care packages had to be supported by local government, without any means of reimbursement. Westminster's current spend—I take Westminster simply because it was my constituency—in support of failed habitual residents who cannot be moved out of the country is just under £500,000 a year. Such council tax accretions are not good for community relations.
Finally, in an area of the Minister's current responsibilities, there are consequences as well from these matters on inner-city affordable housing stocks that run the risk of exacerbating community relations among the indigenous population. You have to represent an inner-city seat, as the noble Lord did, to know what those reactions are from families who have lived in the same neighbourhood for four generations.
5.14 p.m.
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for initiating the debate—if only it helps to lay to rest the myths and more extreme ideas that have been brought forward. In declaring my interest, I must advise your Lordships that for four happy years I chaired the European Union Committee's Sub-Committee F, which dealt of

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course with these very issues. Indeed, some of your Lordships taking part in the debate were members of that committee when we discussed at length proposals involving illegal immigration, border guards, the role of Europol, asylum and so on.
The European Union has been moving steadily towards a common and comprehensive policy on all those matters, because it is self-evident that we cannot tackle the serious nature of illegal immigration, terrorism and national security on our own. We are all reliant on each other to secure the safety of our borders. Legal migration brings many benefits, but is undermined if illegal immigration is allowed to flourish. Illegal immigration creates insecurity in host countries and attracts organised crime. It places illegal immigrants at risk of exploitation. We all know the horror stories of the Chinese who were found dead in the lorry in Dover, and the young women trafficked from Eastern Europe. Worst of all, we heard some terrible stories of children-trafficking when we took evidence from London airport's Immigration Crime Team. The image of that visit and the stories that we were told will stay with me always.
Perhaps it might be helpful to make sure that we understand what we mean by the frequently—and wrongly—used words describing the people who wish to come here. In part 2 of our report, A Common Policy on Illegal Immigration, we gave these definitions on page 9:
"A refugee is a person who is recognised as having a well-founded fear of persecution under the terms of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. An asylum seeker is someone who is applying for refugee status but whose application has not yet been determined. If the application is successful (whether it leads to recognition as a refugee or the grant of 'exceptional leave to remain', a subsidiary status) the person concerned will not be an illegal immigrant. But if the application is refused outright, the presumption will he that he or she is an illegal immigrant, and must leave the country unless there is a successful appeal".
The finding of the committee was that illegal immigration is largely fuelled by opportunities to work. We found little evidence, however, of enforcement of existing controls on illegal working. We felt that that was a powerful "pull" factor for people wishing to get into this country without proper documentation.
As the lead article in the Spectator of 29 January this year found,
"of the 91,000 Eastern Europeans who arrived in Britain to work during the first five months following EU enlargement last May, fewer than 15 have claimed benefits. They are coming to work: on our building sites, in our hospitals, in our restaurants. Without this external supply of labour, wage inflation would have soared and interest rates would be markedly higher than they are. Not only that; it would be all but impossible to find a cleaner or a tradesman in London".
Of course there is a clear need for co-operation between member states on external border controls. The strength of the external frontier is only as strong as its weakest link. As we say in paragraph 50 of our report, Proposals for a European Border Guard:
"Effective controls at the EU's external border protect all the Member States, including the United Kingdom and Ireland despite their non-participation in Schengen".
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We welcomed the Government's active participation in external border issues, but it is unfortunate that that is limited by our increasing isolation in terms of practical co-operation, particularly our exclusion from the European border management agency as a result of our not being a full member of Schengen.
Remembering the words which defined the various categories of applicant, it is futile to look for quick fixes—whether withdrawal from the 1951 convention, quotas or transfer to a faraway island—to reduce the asylum caseload. Extraterritorial processing is not the answer, for legal, constitutional and practical reasons. The key is a robust and speedy initial determination system. The quality of that initial decision-making, which must include a proper appeals system, is the single most important component of an effective asylum system, backed up by prompt removal or voluntary departure of failed asylum seekers.
If the Government are unable or unwilling to remove failed asylum seekers, they must not leave them in a state of limbo with no legal status. There can hardly be a more distressing sight than the pleading eyes of a young mother who may not fit the exact requirements of an asylum seeker but who knows that a return to her country of origin spells hopelessness and suffering. And she may of course have paid a small fortune, in her terms, in order to get here in the first place.
We desperately need talented and professional people to come to work and live in this country. We need to make it a welcoming and positive place for them to come to, perhaps initially as students and then to apply for jobs here once their studies are completed or, perhaps more importantly, so that they can take their skills back to their own countries and have an enduringly happy memory of their time here. So I was, of course, delighted to read that the Home Secretary said when speaking in a House of Commons debate on the Government's five-year asylum strategy on 7 February this year:
"Overseas students make a major contribution, economic and intellectual, to our education institutions, and many as a result develop lifelong ties with this country. The positive effect of migrants is true throughout the United Kingdom".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/2/05; col. 1181.]
How incongruous, then, that the Government are proposing to implement substantial increases on the charges that overseas students have to pay to extend their leave to remain in this country to complete their studies.
I declare my interest as a member of Court at the University of York, where the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brian Cantor, informed me of his deep concern about this matter. He advises me that the former proposals, introduced in 2003 without any consultation whatever, were received by students, as may be supposed, with great negativity. Those proposals—to raise the level of fee from £250 to £500—will truly be a double whammy. The University of York has worked extremely hard to help the Home Office to ameliorate its processes in order that students should perceive some improvement in services in return. Those are not evident.
So, in the light of the Prime Minister's initiative to increase the number of international students studying in the UK, I ask the Minister: what assessment has

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been made of the impact of the increased charges on universities' recruitment efforts; what justification do the Government suggest universities should give students for the increased charges; and when will they be brought in? International students at York and other institutions make an enormous contribution, as the Home Secretary recognises, and this is a poor way indeed to encourage them to come here in the first place.
Finally, there is no real knowledge yet of how many illegal immigrants we have in this country. Many are economic migrants coming here for a better life. They do not become a drain on services because they cannot: they cannot access benefits as they are not legally here. They keep hidden from the state as much as possible. They work in the lowest paid and often dangerous jobs. They are therefore often forced into the hands of criminals, who take full advantage of their fearful status.
In order to ensure that we have fewer illegal immigrants in the future, we would do better by providing help in the countries of origin of these economic migrants, giving them better information on just what they can expect when they come here. And we would do better by supporting those countries in whatever way we can to give their own people the hope and security of a sustainable future in their own land. That is the challenge that we face and that is what we must work together to achieve.
5.23 p.m.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I admit that I have a great interest in migration but not very much interest in immigration. I suppose that I have been a migrant all my life. At the start of the war I was migrated—it was not a positive decision of my own—to the United States. Then I migrated to Canada, then back to London and then to some sort of institution called a prep school. I should declare an interest in that I am a director of one of the construction companies that built the immigration centre at Gatwick—not that there is any relation between the two institutions. I then migrated to another place and then to the Mediterranean as a member of the Navy. Then I migrated back to work in the north-east of England. I suddenly realised that I had never been in one place for more than two years at a time.
Then, one day, I met what became a mentor. I was visiting my mother in Sussex and there in the vegetable garden, which was pretty ropy, was a Worzel Gummidge-like creature—animal or man—picking vegetables. I asked him, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm picking vegetables for my dinner". I said, "Why arc you here?". "Oh", he said, "I come every year". I asked my mother about him and she said. "He's a gentleman of the road". I got to know him quite well and he told me that he made marks on trees and he taught me about insects and other things. I then became fascinated with the migration of toads, butterflies, geese and all God's creatures. I find that migration is healthy and, if I could have my way, everyone would travel free without let or hindrance, wherever it might he on the face of the Earth.
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But one day, when my mother had come to London and was trying terribly hard to get Conservatives elected in Westminster, I found a white plastic table and some very ropy chairs outside her house in Tufton Street, which served as a form of Conservative headquarters. I said, "What are you doing?" "Oh", she replied, "the gentlemen are arriving tomorrow". I asked, "What do you mean?", and she said, "The gentlemen of the road". Four or five of them had followed her when she came to London. We discussed, first, whether my noble friend Lord Tugendhat would be a suitable candidate to be elected as Conservative MP for Westminster and then, later, whether the suitable candidate would be my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville.
The gentlemen of the road explained to me that they migrated down the Old Kent Road every year to visit the cinque ports in Sussex. where the anti-Papists burnt effigies of the Pope. Then they migrated back to London and went to see their girlfriend Sally. The girlfriend was the Sally Ann—the Salvation Army. I then asked myself what the problem was. Surely people should be allowed to migrate wherever they want. Ultimately, immigration is the problem—that is the let and hindrance.
Perhaps I may refer the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to a Question that I asked in this House:
"What documentation is acceptable as proof of identity to permit British subjects to travel without let or hindrance within the European Union".
The noble Lord replied that it had to be a passport. I asked whether we could use our parliamentary passes and the noble Lord replied:
"I think that that is a preposterous suggestion because the photo-identity pass does not identify the person concerned. It might state that it is an official document, and the notice to turn it in to a police station if lost is helpful, but what on earth does that really tell anyone? I therefore [cannot] take the suggestion seriously".—[0fficial Report, 16/5/02: cols. 419-20.]
A year later, I asked the Government whether they would let me know what documentation issued by which government department was proof of identify for what purpose. After about three months, the Government wrote me a nice letter advising me that a passport was acceptable everywhere in the world. However, the Department for Work and Pensions listed 22 separate documents as providing help with proof of identify. I then realised that the problem we have in this country is one of information and recognition.
The passport is, of course, the only true proof of identity and at present our British passports have on the bottom approximately 24 numbers and six letters. That should be enough coding for anything without having to go into biometric details. I then said to myself, "Let's assume that anyone who doesn't have a British passport might be a suspect in the United Kingdom". The Government say that between 72 and 81 per cent of British subjects have passports in the United Kingdom. Effectively that means that over the past 10 years approximately 51 million passports were issued, and passports last for only 10 years. So the difference must be accounted for by foreigners, illegal immigrants or someone else.

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Then I wanted to know how many British people there were on the face of the Earth outside the United Kingdom. That, of course, is impossible to determine and so we do not seem to know where our people are. Therefore, surely we should say that everyone is welcome in this country, provided they conform to certain requirements.
When I migrated to Germany to work for a while, I found to my horror that I required a number of documents. First, I had to have an Aufenthaltserlaubnis— that is, a permission to stay—then an Arbeitserlaubnis, which was a permission to work, and then a Gesundheitserlaubnis, which involved stripping naked in front of a rather attractive woman doctor who examined you thoroughly, including taking your blood, and said whether you were healthy and fit. I thought that those principles were fairly simple.
What do you do at a party or gathering where you do not know somebody? You talk to him for a moment, and then you usually say, "I'm terribly sorry, what did you say your name was?". If you are trying to make conversation, the next question you ask is. "Are you married?", "Do you have children?" or, "Where do you live?". In general, those are the only questions that we need to ask people who are entering this country.
I totally object to the whole idea of identity cards. I totally object to driving licences with the extra piece of paper. When I tried to hire a car the other day and found I had not got the extra bit of paper, I could not hire one.
I say to the Minister. who is a pragmatic man, that the simplest thing to do these days is to get rid of all the other documentation and say that a photocopy of the colour page of a passport is all that is needed for proof of identity for British people. We then come to those people who are not British. That is difficult because we have the problem of the Schengen states and who can come in and who cannot. But it would surely be a very simple activity at customs, or whenever, to say to someone who has a passport—they will all carry them— that we do not accept, "Here is a piece of paper that is adequate proof of identity for your stay".
The problem with immigration is that we worry too much. The problem with migration is how long people migrate for. In general, we want people who can be economically helpful to migrate for a while. We know that many of those who come here from some of the poorer countries and work are benefiting their own countries because they export substantial quantities of moneys back home. So the economic argument is obvious: anybody who comes to this country and works is fine.
But then we get to Lunar House. One receives a copy of a letter from a Minister about a friend that states, "We regret to advise you that your great friend, who you have known for many years, is slightly suspect and his presence in the United Kingdom might be prejudicial to good order and public discipline"—I am not sure whether that might be "public discipline and good order". That is what we are concerned about: it is how we identify and keep out those people who may
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be dangerous to us in one way or another. But if, in trying to concentrate on that tiny minority, we remove the freedom of the great majority, then we have a problem.
It is interesting that we are a multicultural society but approximately 87 per cent of people outside London and 50 per cent of people in London are white. I am always conscious that one cannot use the words "black" or "white", but when I chaired a government body for sport and recreation, we used to have wonderful discussions about the ethnic differences. One of our black sprinters said, "You know, you never see a black man swimming". I asked why, and he said, "We've got different specific gravity. We've also got longer hamstrings and are thus good at explosive sports".
Over my life, both in this country and around the world, I have learnt more from local people than I have from my own kind. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been an international migrant.
5.33 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord. Lord Waddington, for giving us the chance to debate this important subject, which is of concern to so many people. The Motion rightly differentiates between immigration, in the sense of economic immigration, and asylum, even though the demarcation line between the two is inevitably sometimes blurred.
I shall start with immigration. Apart from ultra-purist freemarketeers such as Milton Friedman—and. I suspect, the noble Lord, Lord Desai—who believe that anybody should be able to settle anywhere without hindrance, most of us would agree that every country has the legal and moral right to determine its own immigration policy, whether it be relaxed or restrictive, or somewhere in between the two.
The prime example at one extreme is the United States, which permits substantial legal immigration—and winks at large-scale illegal immigration across the Rio Grande, which provides a valuable source of cheap labour—asking only that immigrants embrace the American way of life as quickly as possible. That undoubtedly helps America's economic growth, and is facilitated by a low population density—less than one-seventh of that of Great Britain—that ensures that house prices and rents remain affordable.
At the other extreme is Japan, which, while reluctantly allowing in temporary workers, does everything possible to prevent immigration for permanent settlement. The electorate is prepared to sacrifice some economic growth for the sake of racial and cultural homogeneity. I predict that when China eventually becomes so prosperous that its supply of indigenous cheap labour dries up, which it will at some point, it too will adopt a very restrictive immigration policy, allowing in only those of Han Chinese descent. A similar policy can be found in some smaller countries, with Iceland, for example, discouraging immigrants who are not of northern European origin and Ghana positively banning those who are not of black African origin.
There are other countries which would have banned immigration, had they been allowed the democratic right to do so: Tibet is a prime example—the Tibetans

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certainly do not feel culturally enriched by the Chinese influx—as well as Estonia, Latvia and, to a lesser extent, Lithuania prior to 1989.
The immigration policies of other countries range between these two extremes. For example, Germany favours the Volksdeutsche and France fluent French speakers, wherever they may come from in the world. Of course, both Germany and France are much more lightly populated than we are.
As for our overcrowded island, the Government are at long last aiming in the right direction, albeit seven years too late. Of course immigration brings many economic benefits, but there is also a downside. Some years ago. the Observer—and I do not think that anybody would argue that the Observer is a Right-wing newspaper—concluded that the pros and cons of large-scale immigration were very finely balanced, with the short-term productivity benefits being almost outweighed by the need for massive investment in extra schools and hospitals and, I suggest, eventually in old people's homes. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, made somewhat the same point.
Tens of thousands of Britons spend two, three or five years working in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York and so on, and return home at the end of their contracts with bulging wallets and broadened minds. How much better for all concerned if more of the immigration into this country had followed a similar pattern, with returning immigrants investing their savings and their know-how in their countries of origin.
This point is still relevant today, as the Government declare their intention to go on admitting highly skilled immigrants. Is it morally acceptable to lure doctors and nurses from Third World countries to our shores for good? Of course we need them, but their own countries need them even more. It would surely be more ethical and correct to offer them short-term contracts in the hope that after a few years they will return to minister to their compatriots.
Let me re-emphasise that the population of the United Kingdom in 1951 was 50.225 million. It is expected to grow to 64.18 million by 2026, which is an increase of almost 28 per cent in 75 years and is unparalleled elsewhere in Europe. Our desperately congested roads and railways, the imminent concreting over of much of southern England and the driving up of house prices to way beyond the reach of first-time buyers are testimony to this.
This overcrowding also has a bearing on asylum to which I now turn. There are those in different parts of the political spectrum who now agree that economic immigration must be almost totally stopped but who say that there must never been any cap on the granting of political asylum. Really? Suppose that, heaven forbid, a new Pol Pot were to come to power. this time not in Cambodia, but in China, causing a quarter of the population—remembering Cambodia, and, indeed, East Timor—to fear for their lives and to flee westward en masse. Would we really be able to accommodate 8 million people—in other words, 2.5 per cent of
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the exodus—which is a realistic proportion in the circumstances? Thank God, this is an extremely unlikely scenario, but not a totally impossible one, which is why one should never use the word "never" in politics.
In parenthesis, I remind the House that in April 1977 a previous Labour government refused point blank my plea that they should admit a mere 750 Vietnamese boat people, arguing that we were not technically responsible for them under the 1951 convention, which was indeed true. In fairness, the two opposition parties were equally unenthusiastic. It was left to Mrs Thatcher, as she then was, five years later to admit 20 times as many as had been turned down in 1977.
Now, in response to a Starred Question on 7 February. the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. defended the 1951 convention as it stands, even though the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, speaking from the Conservative Front Bench, put it to him that four years earlier the Prime Minister had written in the Times that the convention needed reforming.
Clearly, the Government must have changed their mind since 2001. But I suggest that the Prime Minister was right then and must be wrong now. After all, in 1951 the world population was approximately 2.5 billion; today it is two-and-a-half times higher at 6.3 billion and is expected to rise to 8.9 billion by 2050. In 1951, there were no jumbo jets carrying passengers for as little as 2½ pence per mile on some routes across continents—equivalent to just over a farthing a mile in 1951 prices—not least because jumbo jets had not yet been invented.
In 1951, only a small proportion of the world's population had access to radio or telephone, almost none to television and nobody at all to the Internet. Few in the Third World believed that the streets of London were paved with gold; not least because hardly any of them had a clue where London was. What a contrast to today.
In 1951, though there was virtually no democracy anywhere in Africa, almost everyone on the continent had enough to eat and there was no mass slaughter. Today. the standard of living in much of sub-Saharan Africa is appreciably lower than it was in 1951; hence the thousands of Africans who drown each year trying to reach Fuerteventura, Lanzarote or Tarifa, hoping to claim refugee status.
The point is that none of this could possibly have been foreseen in 1951. The convention therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, stressed, is most certainly ripe for reform, and the gold-plating of its provisions by our judiciary should be reversed.
5.42 p.m.
Lord Dholakia: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. for giving us this opportunity for the debate, which has aroused recent widespread publicity. The noble Lord was once the Home Secretary. In those days I did not agree with many of the things he said; today I stand in the same position.

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Immigration and asylum issues are fairly emotive. Despite the nature and effects of various pieces of immigration and asylum legislation, the circumstances surrounding them remain contentious.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that every country has a right to determine its immigration policy, and the United Kingdom is no exception. However, the noble Lord, Lord Desai, is also right in that the matter is not helped by the way the issue is covered by the press and politicians. The barometer of xenophobia can best be understood by the effect of hostile pronouncement in some tabloids accompanied by tough government measures to curb immigration and asylum to this country.
I do not question the right to free speech and expression, but I hope that equally understood is the fear it generates in minorities in this country. Too often we seem to be playing the numbers game. I believe that immigration policy should be based on the country's need. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.
Let me go back to 1951, some 54 years ago. The then Labour government set up an interdepartmental committee to consider the possibility of legislation and administrative methods to deal with immigration. So pre-occupied were the Ministers with the numbers entering the United Kingdom, that the welfare and integration of newcomers was not even discussed. In fact, the key policy recommendation was—and remember I am talking of I 951—that,
"any solution depending on an apparent or concealed colour test would be so invidious as to be impossible of adoption. Nevertheless it has to be recognised that the use of any powers taken to restrict the free entry of British subjects to this country would, as a general rule. be more or less confined to coloured persons".
That is before systematic migration from the Commonwealth began. It was also the precursor to almost all Commonwealth Immigration Acts introduced since 1962.
Such attitudes have not only shaped our immigration policies, but have also done much harm in the way we have conducted our race relation policies. In the past we have seen race and immigration issues being exploited during election campaigns—in 1964, Peter Griffiths fighting Patrick Gordon Walker in the Smethwick election, and in 1968 Enoch Powell in the "Rivers of Blood" speech. Those are good examples to quote.
I suspect that with the proximity of the general election in the coming months, the same pattern as in previous years will emerge; and we have been proved right. It is important that we take great care in the way such issues are debated. Rational debates are part of our political process, but it carries with it responsibility to ensure that it has no damaging effect on those who provide much needed services to our country and those who need our protection.
There is evidence that emotive pronouncements have resulted in violence and harassment. It will be a shame, indeed a tragedy, if refugees who have fled from persecution were to find themselves victims of harassment in this country.
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Britain has a rich tradition and history based on a nation of migrants. They have made, and continue to make, unique contributions to the prosperity of this nation. In arts, science, technology and now even in politics, they have made important contributions.
Consider the last major intake of refugees in the 1970s. We had a Conservative government who accepted over 28,000 Ugandan Asians. No one would dispute that they have contributed so well towards our economy. We are indeed grateful to the then Home Secretary the noble Lord, Lord Carr of Hadley, for the way he handled the issue. It was a political decision of courage and a lesson for politicians to learn.
The noble Lord, Lord Carr, told me that the Heath Cabinet took fewer than five minutes to reach the conclusion. That was the acceptable face of the Tory Party then. We are now seeing major political parties competing with each other in readiness to curtail the arrival of newcomers.
No one disputes the need to take into account the national interest, but, with the increasing development of a global economy, the pressure to migrate is immense. Western nations require the skills now available in many parts of the world. The drop in the birth rate signals a dilemma for countries like Germany and Britain. Who is going to pay for the welfare and pensions in a declining working population? It is here that we need to balance the rhetoric with reality.
We shall have to look at immigration and the arrival of newcomers as an ongoing process. No longer can we slam the door in the face of those who make a substantial contribution to the prosperity of our nation. A debate about what a modern and effective immigration policy should look like needs to be defined. It should not be a reaction to emotional outpourings of tabloid newspapers or a knee-jerk reaction to political point scoring.
We need to draw on many complex and interrelated issues. Immigration should be looked at on the basis of huge economic benefits for the United Kingdom if we are to adapt to the new environment of global economy. The cost of mismanaging immigration could have dire economic consequences for generations to come.
The stark reality is that if we fail to produce wealth, and it is people who produce wealth, this country cannot sustain health, education, pensions and service provision for future generations. Countries like the USA. Canada and Germany have realised that.
Migration is not simply about economics. We all benefit by the enrichment of our social and cultural lives. The whole area of immigration cries out for more research. What brings people here? What are their skills? How do they settle in this environment? Does immigration react with social stability? How do we raise the level of political debate? How do we challenge many of the assumptions that are made? The contribution that migrants make to our economy does not seem to receive much prominence.
The Government statistics confirm that non-EU visitors spend over £6 billion a year; overseas students spend £2.7 billion on goods and services and £2.3 billion on tuition fees.

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Would we be able to maintain our health service if overseas doctors and nurses were not recruited? Would we be able to maintain our financial standing in the City of London without the help of IT and finance professionals from abroad? Would our transport infrastructure survive without the labour from Third World countries? The level of migration to Britain is less than to many other countries in the world.
Britain is a tolerant nation, and we can all be proud of our record on race and community relations. The old days of the 1950s and 1960s, when we relied on unskilled workers to provide labour for our industries, have gone. We now have a technological revolution in many parts of the world, and in particular on the Indian subcontinent. They have the skills which we need. The demand is universal. They will go elsewhere if our immigration policy is seen to be hostile.
Let us also look at the other aspects of movement of people from one country to another. The post-war efforts culminated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to seek asylum. The 1951 UN Convention on Refugees gave that right a legal expression. Today, in the 54th year of that convention. we celebrate the proud history of offering shelter to those fleeing persecution. Unfortunately, the recent pronouncements from Michael Howard are a matter of serious concern. May I say what a delight it was to hear the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, say that it would be tragic if this were to happen. He and I come from the same county of Sussex, and I have always appreciated his particular concern on the serious issues of immigration and asylum.
It would be a tragedy if the United Kingdom failed to meet its basic obligations under the 1951 convention. This obviously includes giving sanctuary to convention refugees who arrive on our shores.
In conclusion, we need to enlarge and not reduce the scope of the convention on the rights of refugees. There are also issues concerning unaccompanied children and their rights as asylum seekers. Immigration must not simply be regarded as a matter of numbers. It is about human beings desperately searching to improve their lives from those of poverty, persecution and despair. We, in turn, enhance our civilised values by helping them. That is the acceptable face of Britain that I want to see.
5.53 p.m.
Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, with his great experience of this subject and his deep commitment to it.
May I start, however, by echoing the sentiment of the House and thanking my noble friend Lord Waddington for bringing this important debate to the Floor of the House? It seems that hardly a day goes by without an article in one of the daily newspapers or an item on the television evening news regarding immigration and asylum. Yet it seems that this Government have still not found a solution to what many feel is a growing problem in society.
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My noble friend Lord Waddington, if I may say so, articulated the sentiments of my right honourable friend Michael Howard, who had the courage to raise this issue and which excited a suspiciously immediate reaction from the government. My right honourable friend's attitude has not been so much about the principle of immigration and asylum but about improving the management of what is a clearly imperfect system at the moment—a point which has possibly been overlooked in some speeches today.
We on these Benches believe that Britain is a great country; that we have a proud tradition of giving refuge to those fleeing persecution, and have always offered a home to families who want to come to this country and work hard.
As so many of your Lordships have noted, Britain would not be the diverse and successful country it is today if such policies had not been in place. This debate has been greatly enhanced by the speeches of several noble Lords who are themselves recent descendants of asylum seekers or, indeed, who have at some stage been refugees themselves. However, as this debate has highlighted, it is time that we looked at the facts and the pressures that Britain is currently facing—this year, this month, today.
The current statistics make alarming reading. Britain has seen an unprecedented increase in immigration since this Government came to power. As has been noted, it has more than doubled to 150,000. My noble friend Lord Waddington has graphically illustrated the problem by comparing English cities.
The cost of the asylum system, both at local and national level, must also be taken into account. Let us take the county of Kent. It receives many asylum seekers through the major port of Dover, and many who arrive at the Eurostar terminal at Ashford or further down the line. In 1996, Kent County Council's asylum budget was less than a quarter of a million pounds; last year it was £53 million. In fact, since this Government took office local authorities have spent £3 billion on asylum. I am sure that this figure would he more acceptable if the asylum system was working. However, the system is in chaos, from top to bottom.
The mice may have been cleared from Lunar House, but the Public Accounts Committee stated earlier this year that it took nine hours' work to process an average application, and that £150 million had been wasted by the Government in moving employees from clearing claim backlogs to removing asylum seekers.
The process of removing failed asylum seekers is another failure. There are currently over 250,000 failed asylum seekers living in Britain today, and the Government have allowed the immigration system to fall into disarray. May I give three examples? Work permits have been given to people whose claims government officials knew to be fraudulent. Companies are rarely, if ever, successfully prosecuted for employing illegal immigrants. In the last three years there have been only nine prosecutions and three convictions. Although it does not refer to the ethics of the subject under debate today, in an age of global terrorism, the Government have no idea who is coming into or leaving the country.

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This poses a serious risk to Britain's security. Failed asylum seekers are rarely removed. Fewer than one in four failed asylum seekers are recorded as being removed or departing voluntarily.
I turn to the rights of appeal for overseas students, to which my noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry drew attention. In the House of Commons on 7 February this year, the Home Secretary introduced his five-year strategy, stating:
"Overseas students make a major contribution. economic and intellectual, to our education institutions and many as a result develop lifelong ties with this country".
He went on to say:
""We will abolish the right of appeal against refusal of leave to enter the UK for work or study".—[0fficial Report, Commons. 7/2/05: cols. 1181-83.]
That leaves the expensive and time-consuming process of judicial review. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, took the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill through this House last year, and I should be particularly interested to hear his comments on that.
It has to be said, however, that the blanket removal of appeal rights for students flies in the face of those assurances given by the Government. Applications by students are often refused on a variety of grounds, such as inability to follow the course, lack of funds to maintain the student, lack of intention to leave the UK at the end of study, and so on. These are subjective, not objective, criteria and are often found to have been wrong decisions by entry clearance officers when examined by an independent adjudicator on appeal.
The need for an appeals system is exemplified in the report of the National Audit Office, Visa Entry to the UK, published on 17 June last year. Paragraph 19 on page 9 states:
"Over the last three years. 50 per cent of appeals by applicants intending to visit family members in the United Kingdom have led to the initial decision being overturned. The provision of additional evidence which was not available to the entry clearance officer and the support of the sponsor were often influential in the decision being overturned. But. in some cases, adjudicators raised concerns over the robustness of the original decision. The refusal decision is reviewed again by an entry clearance manager when the appeal is received, and both the initial and adjudicator's decision are based on the balance of probabilities. However, a more rigorous quality review and enhanced staff training would help to prevent borderline cases reaching appeal".
That is a comment on the first stage of the interview process. Removal of appeals will send the wrong message to overseas students coming to the United Kingdom.
It is no wonder that the Prime Minister has stated that people are right to be concerned about immigration and asylum. Clearly, something must be done. Immigration must be brought under control. We believe in firm but fair immigration controls. They are essential for good community relations, the maintenance of national security and the management of public services. It is now time to act.
The noble Lord, Lord Desai, commented on the statistic that in 30 years' time, immigration will have amounted to five times the population of Birmingham. Surely it is reasonable to expect that that huge figure needs to be controlled efficiently and humanely, which is the object of my party.
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For Britain to continue to be a rich, successful, strong and creative country for the people who currently live here and those whom we will welcome in future, changes need to be made to the current asylum system. We believe that there should be an annual limit to immigration, 24-hour security at ports to prevent illegal immigration and an Australian-style points system for work permits, which would give priority to people with the skills that Britain needs. Such measures will ensure that Britain will not have the current asylum crisis that we are experiencing and will mean a better quality of life for the asylum seekers themselves who want to come to live and work here—a sentiment so appropriately echoed by my noble friend Lord Waddington, to whom I once again express my thanks.
6.2 p.m.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, with 19 speakers and 20 minutes allocated, I cannot begin to respond. A minute for each speaker would be an insult. I have been asked many specific questions. Although I shall make some general remarks to start with as quickly as I can to put some issues on record and cover some points, I will ensure—I normally try not to do this, but in this case, as with the prisons debate, I must—that we give specific replies to the specific questions, because they are important. As I say, I shall try to deal with as many as possible.
I missed the final point made by the noble Viscount. His last sentence led me to say, "Here we go", because he talked about an asylum crisis, whereas the quarter's figures published today for 2004 show that there has been a 67 per cent reduction in intake since the peak of October 2002. We can use words like crisis, but they are emotive. Although I do not deny that there has been a big increase, that does us no good. Whatever may be the situation in Lunar House today. it is far better than it was four or five years ago.
I will step out of bounds to say that when the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, referred to receiving that letter when he was a Member of the other place, I was in the other place. I have never had any trouble separating my role as a Member of Parliament, a constituency Member, from being a member of the Government. When I received that letter, I wrote more letters to the Home Office as a result, because I did not want my constituents thinking that I was easing off because we had been asked to help with the pressure. I did that only because I was chasing cases. I was trying to help.
I did not say, "Let sleeping dogs lie. It is so chaotic. Time will take its toll and, by and large, we will get a successful result". I cannot even count the number of letters that I sent. The noble Lord mentioned a 40 per cent increase. I certainly wrote more letters as a result of getting a letter asking me not to write. That may be counter-productive, but in that position, you are the only conduit for your constituents who are worried sick about the lack of reply to their cases which, I must say, were taking 20 months to get a first decision, com pared to today, when it is two months. So there has been a

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substantial increase in the flow of decisions. I mention that point because I thought, "That is exactly what happened to me".
The opportunity that the noble Lord. Lord Waddington, has given the House has been very useful. Most colleagues congratulated him on giving the House the opportunity to have the debate, even though they went on to say that they did not agree with everything he said. This is a debate; that is what it is all about; we do not expect to agree. However, the tone of the debate has been positive and helpful. It has made clear that the vast majority of people come to this country perfectly legitimately and lawfully.
Every year, about 90 million people come to this country and the vast majority are visitors, students or returning residents. Clearly, 90 million people are not staying in this country each year, but that is the flow of people coming to this country. We need to maintain the security of our borders and we have radically improved the robustness of controls. Where there are abuses, we seek to tackle them. We always feel as though we are one step behind the crooks and spivs because, as I have made clear before, the profits from people-trafficking world-wide are greater than from traffic in drugs. Let us make no bones about it: this is big business. It involves people's lives, it is true, but it is big business. Therefore, it is not as though we are simply dealing with individual claimants.
In some ways, we have gone a lot further. It is not generally known, but we have moved UK border controls out of the UK into continental Europe—into France and Belgium. For some years, the French have allowed British immigration officers to travel on French internal train journeys with the right to ask people about their tickets and passport arrangements. And yet all we hear is carping criticism of the French over Sangatte. The French allowed us to do that and we have similar arrangements elsewhere.
We have also embraced new technology, such as heartbeat and carbon dioxide monitors, especially at ports. We have tried to put effective managed migration programmes into place in a robust way against abuse.
As an aside, because it has been legitimately raised two or three times, I pay tribute to the decision of the Conservative government led by Sir Edward Heath about Ugandan Asians. I was not even in the other place at the time, but I must say that we cannot compare that with what has happened now. We knew that 32,000 people were going to come here. We knew that they were going to come. It was managed. Recently, it was unmanaged when we reached 70,000 or 80,000 asylum cases a year. We did not know who was coming, when they were coming or where they were coming from. The Ugandan Asian situation was totally different from that. I pay tribute to that Government, because many of those people were massively successful and made a massive contribution to our economy.
I must refer to one other point, which is that controls coming in are one thing but there is a lack of embarkation controls. That has been commented on
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by many people. The fact is that after 1997, we continued the previous Government's policy of scrapping what embarkation controls there were for the good reason that they were not working. They did not actually tell us anything. We need some kind of embarkation control to know who is leaving the country, but the only way we can do that is with modern technology: e-borders and biometric ID cards. There is no other solution. We are stepping up that process and the old system of embarkation controls did not work.
In respect of public services, we do not look on immigration as a burden. In fact, we think that the opposite is the case, generally speaking. Immigration provides more nurses, teachers, doctors and builders who can help deliver public services. I know that there are sometimes pressures relating to the countries from which those people have come. We do not deliberately go trawling in Third World countries to damage their services; we have a policy in respect of that.
We have dramatically cut unfounded asylum claims. That is important. People are entitled to claim asylum, but people who are refused their claim have no right to remain. The latest figures, published today, show that from the peak in October 2002 numbers are down by 70 per cent. We have made the system better and more efficient. Four out of five claims are decided in under two months rather than the 20-month average before 1997. Cases awaiting an initial decision are at the lowest level for a decade. We have removed more of those whose claims have been refused. The removal rate is nowhere near the targets we set but it is twice the level of about 1996–97. It is not the easiest task in the world to remove a group of, let us say, young single men in a block of flats who have no justified claim. There are serious issues. It has to be done with great care and sensitivity.
As regards the dispersal of destitute asylum seekers away from those local authorities which traditionally face greater responsibility, one cannot compare what happens now with what happened in the past. I do not want to bandy figures because that does not get us anywhere. The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) did not exist. Therefore, the situation is different. We reimburse local authorities for the vast majority of their expenditure. I shall give specific answers on some issues relating to that because it is a burden on the local authorities: there should not be an additional charge on their council tax payers.
Other issues have been touched on in passing: that does not mean they are not important. As regards good community relations, if people have confidence that our system is as robust as it can be, fair, open and transparent, they are more likely to be welcoming and tolerant of those who have a right to be here. The point is that people have the right to be here. We seek to ensure more confidence that that is the situation.
On the other hand, issues will come before the House in due course to ensure that we use the law where we have to. They make clear that we will not tolerate hatred of people based on their race or religious beliefs. There is a strong case for that. That is

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why we need that new protection. That is why we have expanded the existing criminal offences in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. I shall not go into great detail. The House is aware of the arguments.
Immigration and asylum is an issue of our time. I suppose it always is. We are an island nation. It would be vulgar to claim that the subject is switched on and off just before a general election; and I do not do so. There have been a number of pieces of legislation before your Lordships' House on this matter in the past few years. It is not an issue that the Government have saved up. We have sought to meet situations as they arise. Sometimes it can feel as though the authorities are always seeking to close loopholes that the spivs and people-traffickers have exploited. We shall always face that situation in a modern age but we have to use new technology.
Many noble Lords mentioned the economy. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, took apart the Home Office report published in about 2001—just before I went to the Home Office—on the effects of managed migration and the benefits to the economy. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, we have at present 600,000 vacancies. We do not have rampant wage inflation. We are still short of people. It is true that we have a big increase in work permits. I think that that is managed well. There have been more prosecutions of people employing illegal labour. There is definitely a benefit. In terms of the Treasury's view, there is a contribution. I shall come to the figures when responding to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. But even the Treasury's current figures demonstrate that there is greater benefit to the country than disbenefit.
Several noble Lords referred to the 1951 UN convention. I have nothing to say other than to repeat the government policy which I stated in this House on 7 February. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, asked Her Majesty's Government:
"Whether they intend to renegotiate or opt out of the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees".
My reply was:
"The answer is no. We have no plans to withdraw from or renegotiate the 1951 refugee convention. It is part of the legal and ethical framework that enshrines basic principles of human decency through which all countries meet their obligations. A better and more realistic way of addressing today's protection issues is to adopt effective domestic asylum procedures and to work with other governments and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees".-—[Official Report, 7/2/05; col. 540.]
In supplementary answers, I made the point that the convention had been written for another age but the fact remains that we have no plans to pull out of it.
We published the five-year strategy on the same day, 7 February, as I recall. My noble friend Lady Scotland repeated the Statement which had been made in another place about the strategy which gives a clearer, tighter system. It gives greater clarification about whom we admit to the UK and why; and who is allowed to stay in the UK, and why. It also details how we police the system and how we ensure that people leave when they are no longer entitled to be here.
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I realise from what has been said that some of the issues—they will come before noble Lords in due course—are somewhat controversial. I have no doubt that they will be fully debated. The strategy in the five-year plan is the result of a top-to-bottom analysis of what has happened in the past few years with regard to asylum and immigration that the Prime Minister announced in April 2004. It looked at how the system operates to develop an approach which is simpler, more straightforward and more robust.
We are not interested in "fortress Britain". Neither are we interested in an open house. It has to be in the middle—
Lord Renton of Mount Harry: My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving way. On the point raised by myself, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and my noble friend Lord Bridgeman, there is great concern about the suggestion in the five-year strategy that no appeals will be allowed for students coming here to attend college or university. There is a genuine belief that that will turn off a lot of overseas students from trying to come here at just the time the universities need them. Will the Minister please ensure that this point is taken up with the Home Secretary?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I shall give a response because the point has been raised previously. The noble Viscount referred to the orders that I took through the House last summer with the House's support. If I can get to that matter, I shall certainly do so. If not, I shall write to everyone who has participated in the debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, raised the issue of sham marriages and bogus colleges. It is true that there have been both in the past and that there are probably both today. We are dealing with it. We have brought in new regulations. In the first two quarters of 2004, registrars reported almost 2,300 suspicious marriages. However, with the new enforcement system, that has fallen to around 1,200 in the past two quarters. Legislation introducing the certificate of entitlement to marry, which was much debated in this House, came into force on 1 February 2005.
Action has been taken over visits to colleges. Some 25 per cent were found to be non-genuine. We have carried out visits when adverse information is received. There are some issues relating to students and colleges which we ignore at our peril. That is not an answer to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, but the issues are being raised.
I shall not repeat all the figures. The overall immigration level is low compared with other countries. A speaker quoted from a letter from the United Nations High Commissioner. The figures were very similar. In this country, our net migration is about two migrants per 1,000 natives. That is about the same level as Germany, which is about 1.7. In 2003, the figure was 2.66. The figure is lower than the USA and Australia, with 4.5 migrants per 1,000 natives.

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It is also worth pointing out that almost 2 million people of working age move between European countries each year—and rightly so. We are an international community for people moving round. The noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, gave a graphic description of the situation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, asked about Lindholme. We put together action plans on both reports from the Inspector of Prison. In particular, refurbishment programmes currently under way will be completed by April. We remain committed to pulling out of Lindholme when alternative accommodation is identified. We are putting into place a service level agreement between the Prison Service and the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to sharpen accountability for operation of the centre.
On TB, the noble Baroness asked about testing and health checks. In 2003–04 some 400 people were diagnosed with TB at Heathrow and Gatwick making it the highest imported infection risk faced by this country. All we are doing is looking to have those checks carried out before people enter the country. The fact that that system provides an incentive for people to be checked for TB and, where necessary. to be treated will be of benefit to countries with high rates of TB. We are not damaging the countries which people come from. However, it is an issue that we ignore at our peril.
The right reverend Prelate and many other noble Lords raised the issue of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. It is a very sensitive issue, and I cannot do justice to it. We take our responsibility for children extremely seriously. I think that I have told the House that, when I visited ports of entry as a Home Office Minister, I came across cases in which children had clearly travelled on a plane with an adult and had then been abandoned and the paperwork destroyed at the airport. The children were left wandering around. It is an incredibly difficult situation. We think that it is in the best interests of such children to reunite them with their family, if we can, and find acceptable reception arrangements in their own country. By and large, it is not in their interests to be separated from their parents or their country.
I may have read the wrong figure out: I gave a figure of 400 cases of TB. I apologise: it looks like it is 100. I had better get that checked before I am on the receiving end of a lot of correspondence. It is still a high number.
I was asked whether the Government would reimburse local authorities for costs incurred as a result of ending support for the failed asylum-seeking family. We have always made it clear that the Government will reimburse local authorities for costs incurred in taking a child into care as a result of the withdrawal of support. However, as was made clear lots of times in both Houses, we do not expect that to happen in many cases, as the intention of the policy is to encourage families with no right here to return but not to render them destitute. We do not want to split families up.
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The noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, made several points. I doubt that I will be able to deal with all of them. The current situation is that the Treasury estimates that forecast migration accounts for about 15 per cent of the trend growth forecasts. On average. migrants—I was surprised at this, but these are the figures that I got from the Treasury—have higher average wages than the native population. In fact, they are about 19 per cent higher than those for UK-born workers. I was unaware of that. That is a benefit. We think that we can improve productivity in any case and fill the labour shortages.
Several speakers raised the issue that is constantly raised of allowing asylum seekers to work. There is no possible change of policy on that; it would simply send all the wrong signals down the line. A large number of asylum seekers make unfounded claims: we know that. I accept what has been said: we have to improve the initial decision. There is no question about that, and we are conscious of it. However, we do not want to create an incentive. We want people who want to come to the country to work to use one of several managed migration routes, not the asylum process. If they do not, they gum up the system for the genuine asylum seekers whose cases are being considered. I do not say that they slip through the net. but they get in the way of dealing with those who are fleeing persecution under the terms of the 1951 convention. They are coming here for economic activity, and we want them to come in for that.
I shall finish on this point, which, I hope, will deal with the issue of students and appeals. We do not take the view that appeals in all areas are a right. Those refused can, of course, apply again. Under the new proposals. we will improve and extend independent monitoring of our entry clearance process. The efficiency and quality of the first decisions must be vastly improved. There will be other measures to improve performance. However, some issues—I have not got a note here, so I will make sure that it is in the letters—can be issues of fact; they are not all subjective. If you do not have the money or if the college is not registered, the position is clear. Why would there be a right of appeal? If a college is not registered. that is a matter of fact. We do not want spurious appeals gumming up the system. People have the right to reapply, if they want, but there are some areas in which there is no basic, intrinsic right of appeal.
We want to stop the three levels of appeal that were inherited. The system was played with, and people remained longer than they would have otherwise. creating families and doing other things that, on humanitarian grounds, made them more difficult to remove. I shall cover that point in the letter that I shall write.
I was asked many other specific questions. I shall make sure that they are properly answered. They deserve to be, if only because of the quality of the debate that we have had today. I am grateful to everyone for it. including the noble Lord, Lord Waddington.
6.25 p.m.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, we have had a most interesting debate. I am grateful to all noble Lords and noble Baronesses who took part and to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for his robust and spirited reply.
I have had my say, and I know that the House would not welcome it if I were to say any more. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Official Statistics
6.26 p.m.
Lord Marlesfordrose to call attention to the adequacy of official statistics for the determination of policy; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, as we work our way through life, as politicians, civil servants, people in some other public role, people in business or mere citizens of a state, we never really know where we are going, let alone where we will end up. It is, however, helpful to know where we have come from and, if possible, where we are. It can help to guide us on the route ahead and, perhaps, give warnings of obstacles and precipices in our path.
The main value of statistics is to help with such much-needed guidance. They therefore fulfil a noble and crucial role in national life. Their accuracy and, above all, their integrity are the measure of their worth. A particular responsibility of government is to identify the information that is needed to guide public affairs and to use the statistical facilities to provide it.
Let me use a general example from the private sector. It is probably a mere half century since businesses realised that cash flow was an essential tool to ensure that they remained viable. In some form or other, cash flow is now used almost universally. It is even less time since the government of the day realised that rapidly rising inflation was making the old Plowden system of the 1950s—planning public resources in volume terms and making the cash available through parliamentary supplementary estimates, usually passed on the nod—was no longer viable and was contributing to financial catastrophe. That was in 1976, which followed the infamous year in which inflation in this country reached 26 per cent. The conclusion was that there was a need to introduce cash limits to control public spending.
The credit for that great change was certainly not due to the then Chancellor, the noble Lord, Lord Healey. It should go to Sir Leo Pliatzky, the then Second Permanent Secretary at the Treasury. As a journalist on the Economist, I used to discuss the problems with Sir Leo. It was a useful link for me and had come about because I had suggested in that paper that there was an urgent need for the government to introduce cash-flow controls.
There is now public disquiet about the relevance, accuracy, validity and, indeed, integrity of the use of some statistics in the conduct of government business and the formulation of public policy. That is why the
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Opposition have decided to have this debate today. The Omnibus Survey shows that two-thirds of the general public believe that figures are changed to support an argument and that mistakes are suppressed. I think that they are right. Over half believe that there is political interference in the production of statistics. I think that they, too, are right. On 28 February the Office for National Statistics and the independent Statistics Commission are each publishing a report on this serious situation.
There are so many examples of misleading or misused government figures. I start with two fundamental examples from the heart of government—the Treasury. The first I owe to my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford who described it so well in his book, The Edge of Now. It relates to the decision on 4 June 1998 of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England to raise short-term interest rates yet again. A crucial factor in the MPC decision was that the ONS figures had shown that earnings were rising alarmingly in the service sector of the British economy. It subsequently transpired that the figures were substantially wrong and a great deal too high. The collection, sampling and evaluation were all to blame. The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee subsequently issued a sharply critical report on the affair.
My second example is bang up to date. It refers to the remarkable decision announced in January to reclassify the expenditure on the repair and maintenance of roads—a very large sum—as capital rather than current expenditure. Some might suspect this transfer of expenditure from above to below the line, which is so helpful to the Chancellor in his struggle to balance the books before the election, is just too much of a coincidence.
Frankly, the explanation given by Mr Len Cook, head of the ONS, in today's Financial Times makes no sense at all. The idea that any private sector enterprise would be prepared to have maintenance costs of any capital assets, whether buildings, roads, plant or machinery as capital expenditure, and therefore disallowed for deduction against trading revenue, and thus for tax relief, is absurd. It flies in the face of the need, which I hope the Minister will confirm, for public finances to be subjected to the same disciplines as private finances whenever possible.
That is essential so that proper judgments can be made in national resource allocation. Otherwise, we could once again descend into the socialist morass of pre-emption of resources for public purposes without that discipline of which our cautious Chancellor is so proud, and which the EU stability and growth pact rules are supposed to underwrite.
I should mention to the Minister that yesterday we had his honourable friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury along to Sub-Committee A, and I raised the matter with him. One of the Treasury officials helpfully said that Eurostat will be commenting on the point I am not sure that Eurostat is held in great regard for its integrity at the moment, although it did a good job in establishing that the Greek Government's deficit for 2003, which was originally reported as 1.7 per cent of

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GDP, was in fact 4.6 per cent. We are all well aware that the head of Eurostat, M. Yves Franchet, along with some of his staff, had to be removed for some rather doubtful financial behaviour. It may be that Eurostat is not the answer to our problems.
That brings me to what we as a party have proposed. My right honourable friend Mr Oliver Letwin, has published our framework for financial accountability, together with a national statistics draft Bill. Under this radical approach we would make the ONS independent, responsible directly to Parliament, with at its head a national statistician who would be an officer of the House of Commons. It would not collect the data but would analyse it and have a central role in planning statistical activities across government. The auditing of the validity and integrity of government statistics is well overdue.
I underline the importance of the Government getting the statistics that they actually need for the formulation of public policy. That means asking fundamental questions as to what figures are actually needed, and for what.
Let me give an example. Recently, I elicited through Written Answers, the astonishing fact that it would appear that in 2003–04, Defra's Rural Payments Agency, which has the job of paying and administering the CAP schemes, had a gross cost of £3.6 billion before making payments under the IACS scheme of £1.6 billion. It thus apparently cost more to run the scheme than the scheme gave to farmers. Surely someone in government should have worked out the cost-effectiveness of the wretched CAP. It does seem to me to be a prima facie reason in favour of the renationalisation of farm support.
I do not have time to go into the many other areas in which the Government have had completely inadequate statistics. Immigration is one example. I listened to part of the previous debate, when again and again statistical problems were the key to what was needed. Another example is the lack of an adequate exchange of data between the National Register Office and the Passport Agency, which I have discussed with the Passport Agency. Further examples are the needs of the National Health Service; penal policy problems, that were so well highlighted by Sir David Ramsbotham in his deeply disturbing book, Prisongate; and education results, to mention but a few. Perhaps the biggest failure was the lack of early warning for a policy change. The demographic changes should have caused the Government to face up much earlier to the need for the change of retirement age.
I conclude with three proposals. First, there should be a review of all the figures that are collected in terms of their current relevance rather than their historical importance. For example, do we need all those figures collected from farmers that date from a time when agricultural had a greater importance in the national economy? Secondly, the collection of statistics should help the private sector as much as the public sector and local government as much as central government. Thirdly, Ministers should constantly ask themselves
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what statistics they really need to know to run the country properly. I would call that a creative approach to statistics planning.
I have a final thought for the party that got to power and has remained in power to a significant extent through its considerable—indeed enviable—skills of presentation. It is ultimately bad politics to mislead the electorate by playing fast and loose with figures. It is bad government to mislead yourselves in the same way. I beg to move for Papers.
6.37 p.m.
Lord Moser: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for introducing this subject, which is close to my heart after a lifetime spent in statistics.
I need to distinguish the three elements of the set up: ONS, the Office for National Statistics, and its head called the National Statistician; all the departments—each ministry—have their own statistical office; and, independently of those two, the Statistics Commission. which the Government set up in 2000.
It is true that there have been some errors, especially in the construction of macro-economic statistics. If I had lots of time I would try to explain the incredible complexity of GNP. It is rather a miracle that all over the world statisticians in government can piece together from literally tens of thousands of bits of information on income, expenditure, production, and so on, the national accounts. It is a remarkable achievement, but it is so complex. Bearing in mind that every little bit probably has an error attached, it is even more remarkable that the sum total—the ultimate GNP—is as accurate as it is. Incidentally, it is widespread opinion round the world that our statistical system is one of the best in terms of accuracy, but occasional errors will occur, and the noble Lord has mentioned one or two.
It is crucial that we distinguish between errors and revisions. It is inevitable that if one tries to produce economic or any other statistics very quickly, there will be errors that will be corrected when later information is available. These are called revisions. Every country does them. It is part of the ordinary process of producing good statistics that when later information is available, one corrects the initial estimate.
In this country, the record is extraordinarily good for recent years. Between the first and third estimates, the difference is usually of the order of 0.1 per cent, which is fairly trivial. But there will be revisions. One of the examples given by the noble Lord was a revision caused by new information becoming available. There is a trade-off. We could lessen the revisions if we took more time, but the Government's pressure is always on timeliness. So data are published very quickly, then later revised.
One reason for revision is later information. The other reason is that methodology is constantly being improved. That is the role of the statistical office. For all of my 10 years in charge, one was always trying to improve methodology. Perhaps I may say that road maintenance, which has now hit the press, is the latest example. It is

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absolutely correct for the National Statistician, with his office, to seek constant improvements—one such was sought in 2002 on this subject.
Whether the statisticians are right in making that change is a technical matter. On the whole, they are governed by IMF, World Bank, OECD and United Nations rules. They may be wrong in that technical change, but it has nothing whatever to do with, as, sadly, the shadow Chancellor said, fiddling the figures. That is a ministerial and political point. One can argue about the methodology, but one cannot call it fiddling the figures. In fact, Ministers did not even know that that change was being discussed by the technicians.
Everyone, including politicians, has to get used to the fact that there are errors and revisions. When I was in charge, my main problem was Ministers and the opposition parties over-interpreting the accuracy of figures, which is a greater problem in causing public mistrust than faulty figures. That is my first point on the present concern about accuracy and revision.
In my view—I am no longer in any way involved—the ONS now has a very fine record of macro-economic statistics. It also has a good record on social statistics and on widening user links, because the Government are not the only customer for official statistics. Equally important are local government, the trade unions, the business sector, the academic world and the general citizen. The ONS record in widening its customer base is probably one of the two or three best in the world. It is also very good at research and innovation. I could give a number of examples, but I will not take that time. All told, the ONS, including its leader, Len Cook, the retiring National Statistician, deserves its high reputation for statistical accuracy and leadership.
Public trust remains a major problem. It is probably greater in this country than in any other. It relates partly to the statistics about which the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, spoke, but it is also a wider issue. The trouble is that many of the Government's statistics are not published by the ONS. As I said, each department has its own statistical office. For example, National Heath Service waiting lists are the responsibility not of the ONS, but of the Department of Health; migration and crime statistics are the responsibility of the Home Office. We have a semi-decentralised system where some of the most sensitive statistics are published by departments, independent of the ONS.
The National Statistician, which was the post that I held, is widely regarded as responsible for those statistics. He tries to influence departments, but that influence is very limited. He has strong influence over appointments to statistical offices, but not over what departments do. In my view, the greatest problem regarding public trust links not to the ONS but to the individual departments. There are errors in those departments and they do not always obey the codes of conduct that the National Statistician has turned out.
In my day, the National Statistician, and that was me, was responsible directly to the Prime Minister via the Cabinet Office. In a strange way, that gave me, and
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my office, a greater reputation for independence than if I had been under the Treasury. It is a matter certainly for discussion whether the statistical office in future should remain so closely linked to the Treasury with its very clear policy interests, as opposed to under the Prime Minister or, in some sense, separate.
I conclude with a few final remarks. First, the Statistics Commission was set up primarily to monitor and scrutinise all government statistics. It does a first-class job. Its publications—now some 20-odd reports—are of the highest order. It is independent of government and, through its independence, achieves the kind of aims that the opposition party is now looking for. The Statistics Commission should be strengthened and should feel more free than at present to criticise Ministers and the media when they misuse statistics.
Secondly, I would keep the National Statistician and the Office for National Statistics as they are. It would be a disaster from a statistical point of view to separate analysis from collection, as has been proposed. The ONS should build on its strengths with full government support.
Finally, there is a great deal to be said for the proposal from the Statistics Commission that, partly in order to keep the departmental statisticians under greater control, there should be statistical legislation to bind it all together under the authority of the Statistics Commission as a statutory body, which I hope the Government will consider.
6.49 p.m.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, it is a daunting prospect to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moser, for reasons of my own very slight personal experience in this area, but it is nevertheless a great privilege.
All our speeches in debates such as today's open with a conventional paean of praise and appreciation for whichever noble Lord has opened the debate. But my thanks to my noble friend Lord Marlesford are the more heartfelt because, by choosing this debate, he has opened my eyes to how much has been going on in the field of official statistics over the past decade.
As to the opening of the debate by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, I still retain pleasure at the barrister who, after affording consultation in his Chambers to a solicitor and his client would conclude the occasion by saying, "Well, there we are. I don't know where we are, but there we are".
My credentials as a statistician to create a statistical paradox are less than minimal, though in the second year of an MBA at the Harvard Business School 45 years ago I did do the optional course of advanced applied statistics under the legendary coupling—legendary at least within Harvard—of Schlaiffer and Raiffa. Schlaiffer was a full professor with a background in ancient history and I think that Raiffa was an assistant professor. I can still recall moments when they would turn towards the class and say that they wanted to have a private bilateral debate for five minutes but since they would take short cuts we were under no obligation to try and follow what they were

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doing on the blackboard. I also learnt more than a little at the feet of Sir John Kingman when he was chairman of the Science and Engineering Research Council and I was his inadequate Minister.
I alluded to the developments in this field over the past decade, going back to the 1996 Act under the previous government. They will be familiar to those taking part in this debate, which obviates the need to repeat them, but I want to dwell on some aspects of the use or abuse made of statistics by politicians. I am conscious that I am at the margins of the subject of this debate in doing that, but I notice that there have been other references in earlier speeches. The integrity and adequacy of statistics is an important foundation to the confidence the public place in them, and if politicians undermine that confidence, they are not rendering any service to the common weal.
It is an odd anorak addiction to admit to, but my party—and no doubt other parties too—maintains an e-mail running commentary on the statistical background which our opponents are applying either in support of their postures or on a rebuttal basis to observations that we have made on their records. I fear that the instant rebuttal principle which we have absorbed from the United States is the enemy of intellectual honesty—I picked up on what the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said—yet intellectual honesty is
critical to the good health and reputation of statistics.
I am particularly concerned when Ministers take public exception to statistical analyses produced by their own official departmental body. There was one such by the Health Secretary in commentary on an article in the Guardian in October 2003 about ONS statistics from 1997 showing deterioration in NHS productivity over the previous six years. I have not the slightest objection to Cabinet Ministers disagreeing with their own official statistics, but the common weal is better served if collective responsibility is observed in public and internal argument conducted in private. As to accusations across the political divide of lying, even if described as "fibs" buttressed by statistical arguments, I sigh for the demise of one of my favourite 19th century earnest endeavours, the Society for the Suppression of Mendacity.
One of the immense virtues of the Minister who is replying to this debate is his own intellectual honesty. He is robust in defence of the Government's achievements and policies when he believes alternative views are wrong, but he is magnificently generous when, as with David Willetts's unveiling of conceptual errors in official pension statistics, he believes that credit is due elsewhere. He is a model to the generality of the administration in which he serves.
Some of us in your Lordships' House will be looking forward to Sir Christopher Foster's new book on public policy to be published next month, not least because he has served over three decades as an adviser to governments of different cues and in different departments. None of us can be sure until publication day what he will say, but I have some cause for thinking that he will deplore the decline in the amount of statistical background to policy choices which
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government official papers of whatever colour now display in favour of the alternative of setting out the outline of the Government's ideas and then laying greater emphasis on consultation.
If I am right, we shall have to await the historians' verdict on this Government as to whether this is the general cultural change or a predilection of this administration. But I am personally greatly attracted by my party's desire to see the independence and expansion of official statistics tied to the same kind of gold standard as the National Audit Office provides. The Government who conferred independence on the Bank of England might sensibly be attracted to the same principle. In the mean time, it is in tune with my right honourable friend Michael Howard's emphasis on accountability.
The Royal Statistical Society has given my right honourable friend's intentions a guarded welcome, while sensibly implying, as it did to the similar general pledge by Labour in 1997, that the proof of the pudding would be in the eating. Meanwhile, the Statistics Commission, created as we know by the present Government, has shared the view of the Treasury Select Committee, the Royal Statistical Society and the report of the independent government communication review group—the Phyllis review—that although the non-statutory framework for official statistics introduced in 2000 has been beneficial, legislation requiring government departments and agencies to follow a new statutory code of practice, enforced by a statutory commission, is necessary.
I conclude with a final bee which has buzzed in my bonnet throughout this Government's life—their insistence on referring to running costs as investment. In the last Parliament, in response to a press release, I took my life in both hands and taxed the present chairman of the Labour Party, when he was at the Cabinet Office, with Labour's divergence from Sir John Hicks's magisterial work on national income accounts. He effectively adopted the attitude of Humpty-Dumpty that he could call anything whatever he liked.
I listened carefully to the observation of the noble Lord, Lord Moser, about the roads expenditure example. I cannot help feeling, however, that the description of revenue expenditure as investment runs the risk of undermining public confidence in the process.
6.56 p.m.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, I feel great timidity in following such eloquent speeches from my noble friend Lord Brooke and the noble Lord, Lord Moser. However, I would like to begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Marlesford for introducing this debate tonight. When it came up, I thought that I would be totally inadequate and unqualified to speak in this debate so I wish to make my contribution in a slightly different way.
The primary aim of the Office for National Statistics is:
"To provide an accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive and meaningful picture of the economy and society, [and] to support the formulation and monitoring of economic and social policies by government at all levels".

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I reflected on how that affected the work that I do in leading for the Opposition on the environment, food, farming and rural affairs.
My noble friend rightly referred earlier to the difference between the Government's position and that of private business. In some cases, if cash flow were allowed to run as rampant as it is in private business, some businesses would be in closure much earlier, so it is important that statistics are correct and that various government departments can assess and control their public spending in the correct manner.
There is also, as another noble Lord said, an opportunity for parliaments, citizens, local governments and many other outside bodies to judge what the position is in various aspects of government business. My noble friend was right to give the example of the IACS scheme where more money has been spent on delivering the system than has been paid to those who it is supposed to help. That is nonsense.
This debate gives me the chance to reflect on some of the questions that I have asked the department over the past few years and which I would like to share with noble Lords tonight. One Written Question that I asked was about the assessment,
"made of the extra cost of providing public services in rural areas in England compared to urban areas".
The Answer was that,
"no overall assessment has been made of the different costs of providing public services in rural areas in England compared with urban areas"".—[Official Report, 10/05/02: col. WA 206.]
If not, why not? A BMA report has just come out that highlights the difficulties of getting coverage within rural areas.
Another Question was about the account that the Government will,
"take of the extra cost of providing public services in rural areas in the local government grant distribution formula in or England".
The reply was that:
"this included issues of concern to rural areas, such as the treatment of sparsity. We will consult on options for reform over the summer and will consider the responses when we come to take decisions".—[Official Report, 8/05/02: col. WA 183.]
I wonder how much further that matter has moved on.
There was another question about incorrect statistics. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said—but that does not help us when we are trying to judge the department and what is going on if the statistics are wrong.
In August 2002 I raised two questions with Defra. My first was about why capital spending in terms of actual out-turn and planned out-turn for 2002–03 and 2003–04 is in every case more than £1 million above the departmental expenditure limit. It seemed a perfectly straightforward question.
I was told that there was an error. The tables that I was asking about had,
"complications with compiling historical information following the recent Machinery of Government changes, and the restructuring of DEFRA with its revised objectives that followed".
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Delay would surely have been better, rather than producing incorrect figures. Here I do not necessarily agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moser. but his experience is much better than mine.
I turn to another subject that I find extremely worrying. In February this year I asked how many consultations have been issued by the department since its inception. I was told that some 222 consultations had taken place and 193 were completed. The reply went on to say that the Government do not hold information centrally on how many have resulted in a formal action, but many have led to proposals being changed in response to the stakeholders' comments.
I wonder why an overall impact assessment was not done. Surely this has implications for the department's budgetary action.
I shall return to rural proofing and give another example. When I asked the Government which departments had failed to achieve their rural proofing in the last full year, the answer came that the Countryside Agency published its report on its first full year of rural proofing in April and that table 2 in the report commented individually on how far rural proofing had been effectively implemented in each of the departments. The answer went on to say that the report does not explicitly categorise some departments as having succeeded and others as having failed. What then was the purpose of the exercise?
I again turn to regulatory matters. I asked a Question on the costs of what is called the WEEE directive, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive. In his letter, the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, replied:
"A partial regulatory impact assessment to assess the financial and other impacts of the … Directive … was completed in March 2002. A further assessment will be carried out once the Directive has been adopted. Any indirect costs which Local Authorities might face as a result of the UK's approach … would be an important factor in agreeing the best legislative framework".
Was it only a partial assessment and not a full assessment? It seems strange.
I turn to another issue that I have been following for many months. I asked the same department, Defra, how many consultants and professional advisors were employed by the department in each of the years from 2000 to 2003. The letter I received in response from Defra stated:
"The information requested cannot be provided as it is not held centrally. The Department is in the process of compiling a central list for the future, but this will take some time to complete and will not be retrospective".
Is it just me who wonders how you can run a department if you do not know the costs that you are incurring? How can one budget for that? Surely you would need to know that necessary information.
In raising these issues, I have tried to highlight some of the reasons why statistics are very important to all of us, whether we are in government or in opposition, but I suspect they are more important to those of us in opposition. The Government, after all, have their civil servants to do a lot of the work for them.

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I end with one more example, where I think that the Treasury has made a big mistake. This is on the question of the introduction of the horse passport scheme. My question was why value added tax registration was not considered during the setting up of this particular scheme. The letter answering that stated:
"VAT is specifically a Treasury matter and was, therefore, not included in the consultation carried out by this Department regarding the proposals to extend horse-passport requirements to all horses. However, Customs and Excise are considering representations".
That is highlighted because now that it has gone out to organisations, VAT has to be paid on it, whereas if it has been a government scheme, such as the cattle scheme, there would have been no VAT on it. Surely there should be joined-up government and departmental understanding.
I again thank my noble friend for raising this issue. I am sorry that my tack has been slightly different from that of other noble Lords, but I have highlighted the difficulties some of us have our job in the way that we feel we should be doing it.
7.6 p.m.
Lord Northbrook: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for initiating this important debate on the adequacy of official statistics for determining policy. I particularly enjoyed the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Moser, having been at the coal face.
A year or so ago this would have seemed a rather arcane subject to be debating, but it has been getting rather more publicity recently. Indeed, Saturday's Financial Times gave it front page coverage. It is with that article that I would like to begin. The article starts:
"The Treasury was embroiled in a row over 'fiddled figures' last night, after government statisticians said they would reclassify public sector accounts before the budget in a way that could save the Chancellor from breaking his self-imposed rules on borrowing".
In a footnote to the public finance figures, the ONS said that it would make a "substantial" reclassification of road maintenance expenditure.
On page 2 of the same edition of the Financial Times, the headline to a further article was:
"The national statisitician's reputation for independence is at issue in a balance sheet switch".
The article goes on:
"Buried within yesterday's press release from the Office of National Statistics was a potential bombshell, which could save Gordon Brown from embarassment over the public finances but risk damaging the national statistician's reputation for independence".
The article goes on to say, as referred to be other speakers, that the ONS had decided that some government current spending on roads should be classed as capital expenditure. That was, said the Financial Times,
"supremely convenient to the Chancellor, who is expected to have to raise taxes after the election if he is to meet his golden rule".
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The article goes on to say that the Chancellor has made meeting his fiscal rules an issue of political credibility and, with the Budget and the general election coming up, would not want his grip on the public finances to appear shaky. That is why, the article continues, it would not be surprising if the Treasury were to fudge the way the rule was calculated and why the ONS announcement raised eyebrows among some unnamed economists who said, according to the Financial Times, that the impending reclassification was an example of government "jiggery-pokery" with the accounts.
Richard Alldritt, chief executive of the Statistics Commission, the watchdog set up by the Treasury in 2000, said:
"The timing issue looks potentially uncomfortable so we will be askng the ONS what triggered it and to clarify why it was wrong to classify some of this spending as current in the past. We reiterate the need for demonstrable independence in official statistics".
The ONS then rushed out a statement asking more questions than it answered, saying that the Treasury
"influenced its decision to reclassify the statistics, but that its influence was not improper".
With great respect, that would seem to refute the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Moser, that Ministers knew nothing about it. Peter Spencer of the independent Item Club said that the move was likely to show how close the Government were to meeting or breaking their fiscal rules.
Finally on this subject, I am sorry that the ONS could not have published the reasons for the change in time for this debate. Surely if the office made the change, it must know why in advance—or was it compelled to do so in such haste that it had to think of the reasons for it afterwards?
That latest episode led me to recall some other interesting examples of the Government adjusting statistics. Last year the Treasury was accused by some economists of a fudge because of a change in presenting the golden rule. Instead of simply subtracting deficits in one year from surpluses in another—a method referred to by the Chancellor in the past—the Treasury has calculated those budget balances as proportions of gross domestic product. This means, as I understand it, that past surpluses gain relatively more weight compared to current deficits.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research warned two years ago of the likelihood that the Government would have encouraged a careful analysis of the constituents of current and capital spending. Martin Weale, its director, said last week:
"It is perfectly reasonable for the ONS to look at this but part of the trouble is that it is not completely independent—it reports to the Treasury rather than to Parliament—so the risk is that people will assume that there has been political pressure. If we had statistical independence, that concern would be allayed".
The Conservative Party has just such plans, which I will come on to later.
I can further recall earlier examples of the Government ensuring that much of their transport expenditure was classified as capital rather than current. In the 2003 review of railway finances, the Department for Transport put in a late request to the

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then rail regulator, Tom Winsor. to pay rail subsidies in the form of grants to Network Rail rather than subsidies to rail operating companies. And why was that? Because grants count as capital expenditure in government accounts, while subsidies arc classified as current expenditure. The regulator said that it was,
"regrettable that such a fundamental issue should be raised at such a late stage in the review".
But he granted the request, which will help the Government meet the golden rule in future by about £6 billion.
The Government have not been consistent about what should or should not be on the books. Take, for instance. foundation hospitals: the Chancellor insists that they should stay on the government books and not be allowed to borrow on their own account because the Treasury would have to bail them out if they went bust. Yet the Treasury has been very happy to take a very different view in cases where to admit that it was lender of last resort did not suit it— for instance, with Network Rail. While the Treasury has recently agreed to include Network Rail's £21 billion debt in the whole of government accounts, which are to be published for the first time in 2005, the Chancellor still refuses to include the debt in his own calculations of whether he is meeting the golden rule.
Sir John Bourn, Comptroller and Auditor-General, has insisted that Network Rail borrowing he included as a form of public debt. In a letter to the Statistics Commission late in 2002, Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, indicated that the Government would accept Sir John Bourn's demand. But in a bizarre twist it will be included in the whole of government accounts but not in the golden rule calculations. That in my view is clearly nonsense.
These inconsistencies show the huge need for a more independent statistics monitoring regime. The Government were clearly mindful of that when they published their framework for national statistics in August 2000. It was full of laudable statements such as that the Government believed national statistics should provide an accurate, up to date, comprehensive and meaningful description of the UK economy and society. They said that it would,
"be used by government, Parliament and the wider community and in decision-making and debate, and will offer a window on the work and performance of government itself".
That sounds all well and good.
Also in 2000, the Government created the Statistics Commission, as,
"an independent non-departmental public body to help ensure that official statistics are trustworthy and responsive to public needs".
It operates independently of Ministers and the producers of statistics and does so openly, with all its papers normally available publicly. Since being set up it
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produced a report in May 2004 entitled Legislation to Build Trust in Statistics. In summary, it recommended legislation that,
"will require government departments and agencies to follow a new statutory code of practice enforced by a statutory commission. This will help ensure we have a statistical service in the United Kingdom which serves, and is seen to serve the public interest".
In the minutes of a meeting to discuss how to take forward its report, the commission states how it expects the Government to respond. It said that,
"a formal government response is expected but is unlikely to contain any promises. Our informal understanding is that the door remains open for discussion and that the relative simplicity and evolutionary nature of the proposals are strong selling points. Less helpfully the issue is seen by some as encouraging criticism of the government and of official statistics".
Without such a framework, the ONS continues to be put under pressure.
The Atkinson report, commissioned by the ONS was a welcome inquiry into the measuring of government output in the national accounts. Time prevents me discussing it in as much detail a I would like, but I shall quote its conclusion that,
"there is a need for major improvements in indicators used to measure public service outputs".
The report also urged the Office for National Statistics to be transparent.
The Conservative Party plans to make the Office for National Statistics independent of Ministers. We believe that it could be run according to the structure of the independent National Audit Office. I shall leave it to my noble friend Lady Noakes to describe our plans in more detail, but I should like to say that 1 believe they offer a much more sensible, honest. and transparent system for national statistics than we have today.
7.17 p.m.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, I have only one claim to fame in the world of statistics. I imagine that it is unique in this Chamber. I was put in charge of a country's cost of living statistics at the age of 21—those of Kenya in 1968, eight weeks after my final exam in PPE in Oxford, luckily with a special paper in statistics. Among other things, I ran their motor vehicle statistics, and gratefully received from the Nairobi BMW distributor the only little bribe that I had in my two years in Kenya; what a sad contrast to the corruption there today. That bribe was a pair of scissors for my desk, which work as well today as they did 36 years ago. Thank goodness for that, I think, when my heart sinks at the daily pile of post that we have to open in this place. It is another triumph of German engineering reliability: they manufacture too well for their own good. Another reason for caution in interpreting statistics, however, is that those scissors will have featured only once in national accounts, while I have enjoyed their services for 36 years.
Statistics used to be a dry, technical subject. However, first economics, and now politics and other social sciences have become far more mathematical. with a welcome shift of emphasis from high-flown theorising or

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blue-sky thinking—to use the cliché du jour—to measurement and empirical testing. So statisticians have rather come out of the closet.
As we have heard already from the noble Lords, Lord Marlesford, Lord Northbrook, and others, decisions by the National Statistician in this country on how to classify the operations of Network Rail, for example, as we were hearing, and more topically on whether to treat road maintenance expenditure as capital or income, can have a critical impact on the ability of government to meet important and highly visible targets that they set themselves. When apparently statistical rulings take on great political significance, it is time for us to stand back and to ask whether our national statistical service is not only acting independently but is clearly seen to be acting independently. Sadly, that is not the case today.
As the independent Statistics Commission points out,
"trust in statistics is essential for effective administration and delivery of public services. Unless decision-makers trust the statistical evidence they will ignore it with a potential high economic cost. Unless the public trust the figures, they won't trust the decision-makers—they won't believe Ministers, for example, on the National Health Service".
Last week we heard that national statistics were to make substantial reclassification of road maintenance expenditure from income to capital account—which would. coincidentally of course, give the Chancellor a thick safety cushion against breaking the golden rule. We are told the decision was taken entirely by the National Statistician, but,
"after a joint enquiry with Treasury statisticians".
Who took the initiative for this inquiry, and why? Ask yourselves: how many small groups of statisticians are huddling together in corners of the Treasury, trying to work out where they can hold joint inquiries with national statistics to reclassify elements of capital expenditure as current spending?
I have today spoken to the chairman of the Statistics Commission, asking him to carry out a thorough inquiry into who initiated the possible reclassification of road expenditure—and why—looking carefully into the audit trail and the unusually opportune timing of the announcement. I found him most receptive to this request. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Moser, I believe that he is being rather naive in underestimating the degree of political pressure on statisticians today. I do, however, warmly welcome the noble Lord's suggestion that national statistics should not be so closely linked to the Treasury.
There is a clear conflict of interest if the Chancellor of the Exchequer appoints the National Statistician—and reappoints him, as happened with Mr Len Cook, shortly after his classification of Network Rail as a non-public body, despite the effective government guarantee. Now, Mr Cook has had a rough ride from the press—unfairly so, perhaps, to some extent—and certainly all the rougher because his name is such a gift to headline writers. He might have got off more
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lightly—and this is a true story—if he had the name of the chief statistician of the Department of Education in the 1970s; Mr K G Forecast.
No other finance minister in Europe appoints the head of their national statistical service. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, will develop what the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, already said about Conservative plans for independence of the national statistical service. I think that is a useful piece of work: certainly, the proposals that they make would be a considerable improvement on the present situation. However, I doubt whether it is necessary to have quite so much organisational upheaval as they propose. Indeed, I rather agree with the independent Statistics Commission, which, in commenting on the Conservative proposals, said that they obviously had,
"some important parallels with the Commission's recommendations—notably a statutory body reporting to Parliament and a binding code of practice that all government departments and agencies would be obliged to respect".
They welcomed, as I would, the,
"commitment and the explicit recognition of the importance of an independent statistical service".
Yet there are significant, substantial changes there—particularly, under the Conservative plans, involving removing a large number of staff from the Civil Service. I would have thought one could achieve the same effect by going more down the line which the Statistics Commission itself produced in May of last year.
The Statistics Commission has, so far, done a robust, independent job in pressing for improvements in official statistics and cutting the scope for the Government to delay or spin official announcements. However, the key point is that the commission can only advise. It cannot decide. It must, in the view of these Benches. he reconstituted. It must be given the statutory power to appoint the National Statistician, to lay down the code of practice for national statistics and to ensure that we have a genuinely independent national statistical service—as the 1997 Labour general election manifesto promised. I commend to the House last year's excellent report of the Statistics Commission, Legislation to Build Trust in Statistics. Its title says it all: a proper powerful statutory commission— accountable to Parliament—is long overdue to protect the independence and integrity of our national statistics.
7.24 p.m.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Marlesford has selected an excellent topic for today's debate. Doubtless the inclusion of the words "official statistics" has frightened off all but the most hearty Members of your Lordships' House—but the small number of us here has been more than made up for by the quality of the debate.
I cannot claim any competence in statistics, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay. As many people know, my own background is in accountancy and while statistics might seem to be a near cousin of accountancy, being based on numbers, I can assure noble Lords that they are quite different. Interestingly, the way that accounts have developed—

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particularly in this country, with clearly defined bodies of rules and independent regulatory frameworks—means we have achieved a high degree of trust in financial statements, whether those of the public sector—of government departments and so on—or of private sector companies.
When we come to statistics, while we can find a body of rules—we have UK rules, European rules and international rules; there is no shortage of rules—what we do not have is a properly independent regulatory framework for statistics in the UK. It will be known that my party is the party of deregulation; we would not lightly look to a regulatory solution to a problem. That is true whether we are talking about the public or the private sector. Yet we are firmly of the view that the integrity of our national statistics requires something to make it more accountable and transparent. That is why we have proposed our framework for statistical accountability, which I shall return to in due course.
I should like to rehearse some of the problems that have arisen with our national statistics. At heart, there is a justifiable concern that statistics in this country have become intertwined with politics, and that is damaging. My first example is pensions—an issue already referred to by my noble friend Lord Brooke. A couple of years ago, the ONS suddenly reduced the amount of pension funds by over £100 million without explanation. When challenged by my honourable friend David Willetts, they withdrew the statistics for three months. When they re-released their statistics, they showed that in 2001 this country was saving £86 billion a year—around 9 per cent of GDP—which was simply not credible. The figures were reviewed again and came down to £43 billion—virtually halved. Since then, they have been reduced even further.
That is had enough. However, even though the ONS warned, when putting out its £43 billion figure, that there were 30 more areas that needed work, the Government selectively used the statistics in their pensions Green Paper to state—not once but three times—that pension contributions had risen by 40 per cent between 1997 and 2001. That was part of the "Pensions crisis? What crisis?" stance that the Government were taking then and, to some extent, continue to take. They were so desperate to get some statistics to back the "no crisis" story that they wilfully ignored the known problems with the statistics. So the case of the missing pension contributions was in part an issue of how good the statistics were but really, and importantly, that was also in part an issue of playing politics with numbers. Neither aspect reflects well on the robustness of statistics in the UK.
My second example of where statistics and politics fall over each other is health productivity. Here we see some of the problems that arise when responsibility for statistics is dispersed—some held in the ONS and some in the Department of Health. The Government have poured money into the NHS since 1998 and it is of course a matter of great public importance to know whether that money has been well spent. The Department of Health used to publish a cost-weighted activity index in its annual departmental report, which showed a splendid story throughout all the years that Conservative governments had care and custody of the NHS.
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However, from 1998 onwards, it started to show that NHS efficiency was negative. By 2002 the annual loss of efficiency was around 8 per cent each year. It was no surprise, therefore, to find that the Government stopped publishing the figures in the Department of Health's annual report.
The ONS figures for public sector output and productivity told the same story—that money going into the public sector generally was evaporating without producing anything. Nowhere was this more true than in health and education. We know that the Prime Minister called a meeting in 2003 and urged that,
"a change to the definition of productivity was vital".
The head of the ONS was at that meeting. It was no surprise that a review of public sector productivity, led by Sir Tony Atkinson, was then announced. He has now reported, and even his analysis has yet to produce any different view of productivity. The NHS still shows up as a place where productivity goes backwards.
The Department of Health's response to statistics about NHS performance has been unhelpful throughout, or at least since the department's figures started to paint the truth in a way that Ministers found unpalatable. My noble friend Lord Brooke has already referred to that. For example, getting answers to questions about health efficiency has been near impossible. I have been experiencing the same difficulties as my noble friend Lady Byford in trying to get reliable statistics about an area in which we have a policy interest. For example, rather than giving answers, the Government constantly claim that the statistics do not show quality improvements. They conveniently forget that neither do they show the 5,000 deaths each year from M RSA, or the impact of the failure to meet cancer targets.
The most recent example of problems with our national statistics has already been raised by several noble Lords. It is the decision, apparently taken by the ONS but not yet promulgated officially, to reclassify expenditure on the repair of roads from current expenditure to capital expenditure. We shall need a full debate on the substance of that in due course. I will just say now that the timing of the decision and its content are, to put it mildly, politically convenient for the Chancellor, to whom the ONS reports. It will join the decisions, already referred to by my noble friend Lord Northbrook, to put foundation hospitals on the public sector balance sheet, but keep Network Rail off the public sector balance sheet, as matters that have more than a whiff of political intervention about them.
It is against this background that my party has proposed a genuinely independent statistics service. The pivotal element of our proposals is a national statistics office headed by a national statistician who would be accountable directly to Parliament and not to Ministers. The national statistician and his staff would prepare the national accounts and other reports on the economic and social condition of the country, but would not itself carry out data collection and publication across Whitehall. The national statistician would prepare a statutory code of practice applying across Whitehall, and he and his staff would have a power to audit compliance with

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that, which is absent from the current arrangements. Government departments would no longer have a free hand to collect and publish what they want; it would all have to be approved by the independent national statistics office and the national statistician. The fundamental model is that of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the National Audit Office. The national statistician would be accountable to Parliament and would thus be independent from Government both in fact and in appearance.
As has already been pointed out today by several noble Lords, the key issue is trust—not just trust in the numbers that are bandied about, but trust in government. Trust is a rare commodity in public life at present, and we know that trust has been damaged in the past eight years. The Government's own creation, the Statistics Commission—a non-statutory quango—has helped to get some of the issues in the open, but it too believes that a more robust statutory framework is necessary, and the Royal Statistics Society agrees. That is in essence what we have proposed, and we have already published a draft Bill to show how it can be done.
I hope that the Minister will not be in denial this evening. I hope also that he will not simply defend the status quo or point to some magic such as the Atkinson review to solve all the problems. I invite him to join in an all-party consensus and to commit the Government to putting our statistics service on to a proper independent footing with statutory powers and proper independence from Government, so that we can have a new start in untangling numbers and politics.
7.35 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord McIntosh of Haringey): My Lords, I know that I should not say this, but I was disappointed in this debate. The subject of the debate as on the Order Paper was so interesting and so important—the adequacy of official statistics for the determination of policy. I thought that there might be some constructive contributions as to the way in which statistics might be made more adequate for the purpose of the determination of policy. We discussed some interesting issues: the issue of public trust in statistics; a number of particular difficulties that have occurred in statistics over the past few years; the organisation of statistics; and the independence of the statistics office. All of those are interesting and to some extent important, and it is my duty and pleasure to reply to that debate, but I would have liked the debate to be more about what we could do.
I agree profoundly with the opening remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. Unless we have a sound statistical basis for policy—not just statistics in the sense that we have been talking about it but in my sense survey statistics as well—we are simply not going to be making the best possible decisions. I would like to have seen us debating the way in which some decisions taken in government—all governments, not just this Government—have been hindered by bad
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statistical decisions. There has been no suggestion of that at all. I am sad, and I am disappointed; but I will soldier on as I always do.
On the issue of the organisation of statistics, the facts are well known, and the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, fairly referred to them. We knew when we came into office in 1997 that the trust in statistics was low. That is why we overhauled the system and established the framework for national statistics, which became operational in 2000; and that is why we had the objective of ensuring the quality of official statistics, guaranteeing freedom from political interference in their compilation and presentation. That is why we supported the independence of the National Statistician. By the way, he may be appointed by the Chancellor, but he is appointed under Nolan principles, which were not current under previous administrations. That is why we set up an independent Statistics Commission, as well as setting up the independence Office for National Statistics. The framework set out the role of the National Statistician as both the head of national statistics and the director of the ONS. It set out the role of Ministers in relation to the National Statistician, the ONS, and the Statistics Commission.
In his characteristically distinguished contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said, "Of course you have to take into account the statistics that are produced by departments as well"—and that is true. He made some helpful suggestions about those individual department statistics and the need to strengthen the Statistics Commission. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, made some helpful comments on that as well. The most important point that he made, which is a criticism of the Conservative proposals, is the need to keep analysis with data collection. I am somewhat of a cookbook statistician myself. All of us involved with survey research are pseudo-statisticians rather than the real thing—except when we read the classic text by the noble Lord, Lord Moser, I think from 1953. It was my leading text.
We have proposals from the Conservative Party that in many ways echo the changes that we actually introduced five years ago. They say that there should be a national statistics office established by statute; that is what the Statistics Commission says and it has to be taken seriously. The Conservatives want that office to report directly to Parliament, about which there are difficulties. They want it to separate the collection of raw data from the analysis of all available official statistics, and to publish analyses and reports based on them, with a separate social and business surveys office headed by the Registrar General.
There is nothing very radical about that. Everything said in this debate will certainly go into the review envisaged by the framework for national statistics in 2000. It was said that there would be a revision in five years—in other words, during this year. That revision will take place. The Royal Statistical Society has already been involved. The Statistics Commission has already made its suggestions, which have been quoted today. I want to take the whole of the debate as evidence for that

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review, and certainly the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Moser. To that extent. I very much welcome the debate.
The second issue discussed was public trust. I was puzzled by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, saying that t here was survey evidence that people did not trust official statistics. There is; there is survey evidence about distrust of all sorts of things—politicians, journalists, estate agents and so on. It is a worrying fact, because we wish statistics to be trusted. However, in this Chamber, surely our concern should he above all with whether it is objectively true that the statistics are to be distrusted, not whether people think so. The noble Lord simply said, "People don't trust them and I think that they're right", but he did not give any evidence for that assertion. People ought to trust statistics; I think that they are trustworthy. I am prepared to debate that issue at far greater length than I have available.
The third element in the debate was criticism of particular statistical issues. I am happy to respond to those, but I shall not take them in the order in which they arose. I shall deal first with pension contributions. David Willetts drew blood; there is no doubt about it. There had to be very significant revisions of the estimates of pension contributions. It is common ground that pension contributions are difficult to measure. Successive legislation made the pension industry more complicated—products changed, but old products remain in the market. There is no consistent accounting in companies themselves. After all, the information comes from companies; it is not collected from the public sector. There is no consistent way in which group personal pensions are regarded as company products by some insurers and as personal pensions by others.
The problem is enormously difficult, and the Office for National Statistics had to withdraw the figures for a considerable period, which is an embarrassment. The questions then have to be asked, "Does that matter? Has it actually made any difference to public policy?". Throughout the passage of the then Pensions Bill through Parliament, I did not hear any suggestion that the volume of pension contributions had affected policy in the area.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, I have a question before the Minister leaves pensions. I also raised with him how government Ministers used statistics in a way that was not consistent with their underlying worth at the time, as noted by the ONS. The issue was how politics and statistics were pulled together. Will the Minister say something on that?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that is not the subject matter of the debate. I shall come to the point with particular reference to health, but I shall press on to road maintenance, which was referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Northbrook and Lord Oakeshott.
Let me assure the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, straightaway that the initiative was that of the ONS. It identified a double count in the current expenditure. That is due to the difference between resource accounting and the national accounting frameworks. Before the
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change the national accounts had included both a depreciation charge, calculated by the perpetual inventory model, and the capital maintenance charge, as reported in the Highways Agency's accounts. You could not have both, so one had to be left as revenue. and the other had to be converted to capital. That will all be explained in a document to be published on 28 February. I am sorry that it is not possible to alter the publication of ONS documents to suit the convenience of this House. Even if we were able to influence the ONS—we are not, because it is independent—we would not seek to do so.
In any case, the double counting had to be remedied. It is a matter for the Office for National Statistics. The press release in which it described it has been published, and a website is available, but I certainly cannot read it out. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook. that everything is entirely transparent. The role of the Treasury in the matter was only as the provider of data for the reanalysis, not in either instigating or influencing how the inquiry was carried out. I noticed that he quoted last Saturday's Financial Times; he will find a much more perceptive article in the Financial Times today that explains the matter.
I move on to health statistics and public sector productivity. I have said on many occasions from this Dispatch Box roughly what the Health Secretary said and was criticised for saying by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. The method is rubbish; not only that, it is counter to what common sense would tell us. The example that I have always given is that, if you reduce class sizes and have better quality information, it shows up as no change in a school's output and therefore as reduced productivity. All in-patient hospital procedures had equal weight so, whether the problem was an ingrowing toenail or a heart and lung transplant, they counted the same. If you take steps to keep elderly people in their own homes with a better standard of life, that showed up as reduced productivity compared with putting them in expensive residential care.
The method was always rubbish, and is rubbish now. That is why we have appointed Sir Tony Atkinson to look at it. His report came out on 31 January. It is on that that we should rest our case. The noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, is entirely right to quote Sir Tony's conclusions, but I am sorry to say that the conclusions drawn by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, are way wide of the mark. We have been doing exactly the right thing with something that is simply no good.
Oddly enough, the paucity of examples of bad statistics has been a feature of the debate, so I shall conclude by saying something about the necessity for an independent Office for National Statistics, and the fact that it has to disagree from time to time with the Government and the National Audit Office. Such a disagreement is not a criticism either of the Office for National Statistics or of the National Audit Office. Above all, the role of the Office for National Statistics is to reconcile what data we have with international accounts. Those international accounts are, in turn, influenced by international accounting conventions. They follow well documented standards used by the IMF, the OECD and the European Union, and they

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are compiled on a legal basis following the 1996 regulation from the Council of the European Union. That is why there are differences between statistics produced by departments for different purposes. On occasion, there are differences between the statistics produced by the Treasury for its own purposes, but there is nothing sinister about that. It simply means that the national statistics, which are the function of the Office for National Statistics, are a peculiarly difficult but very worthwhile area.
I have to say that if this was a Conservative debate in the run-up to a general election, it has not drawn blood.
7.50 p.m.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is disappointed with the debate. I am not entirely surprised because, after all, we tend to look to the reality of the world and try to form policies that fit it. Of course, as the noble Lord said several times, with his interest in surveys he represents a party which tries to do everything through focus groups. We are going rather wider. I hope that tonight we have had the opportunity to put the Government on notice that we are fairly dissatisfied with their making of statistics and we shall draw attention both to that and to other relevant factors in the poor governance which results from time to time. Meanwhile, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Climate Change (EUC Report)
7.52 p.m.
Lord Renton of Mount Harryrose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on The EU and Climate Change (30th Report, Session 2003–04, HL Paper 179).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, there are many things that one does out of duty, even in the House of Lords, that do not give one very much pleasure. But chairing Sub-Committee D, which produced the report that we are debating tonight, did nothing but give me absolute pleasure. I had marvellous colleagues with whom to work, most of whom knew a great deal more about the subject before we started than I did. We had a very good Clerk in Nicolas Besly, and I thank him and our specialist adviser. Fiona Mullins.
I think that frankly we all learnt a great deal more about the subject as we moved along. We ended up a great deal more expert and rather more pessimistic, but it was a very interesting and well timed exercise. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, who I see sitting on the Benches opposite. He was willing to be a co-opted member of the committee and, with his great scientific knowledge, was of huge help to us. Indeed, just the other day he
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sent me the Houston Chronicle of 6 February, which includes an article by him with the good title "Fiddling While the Earth Melts".
I said that I thought our timing was very good because obviously the controversy continues. Only on Wednesday last in London, the chairman of ExxonMobil, Mr Raymond, with no apologia at all, said very firmly that the combination of economic growth and population increases alone would mean a rise in primary energy demand of 50 per cent by 2030. That equals 100 million barrels a day of oil equivalent, or 10 times the current output of Saudi Arabia. Two days later, Dr Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a worldwide expert, said that the marine temperature had risen by an average of 0.5 degrees centigrade over the past 40 years. He added:
"The debate is not have we got a clear global warming signal—the debate is what are we going to do about it".
Our committee took the view from the start that climate change was happening and that it was very largely man-made. We took that as given. We accepted that CO2 emissions were rapidly rising but we reckoned that, despite the presence of those like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, it was not for us to make a judgment of by how much temperatures were rising or how many more parts per million of CO2 were now in the atmosphere. We simply took it that there was a substantial man-made problem.
As I mentioned just now, the view of the committee became progressively more pessimistic as we took evidence from February until June last year. Our view overall as an EU committee had to be that we could not take the whole global view, much as we were tempted to do so at times; we had to continue to ask what the EU was doing about climate change and what more could or should we in the European Union be doing. I think that our headmistress report on the EU at this relatively early stage would be: good start; promising ideas; ahead of the field; should co-ordinate European research into clean technologies; but can and must do even better if we are to survive into the 22nd century.
I shall deal with just a few of the major points in our report and I turn, first, to the question of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. With regard to that, we had no doubt that the EU deserves our praise for forward-thinking and leadership. It is a central element in the EU's programme. At present, it applies only to industrial sectors. It currently applies only to carbon dioxide, but other gases may be included from 2008. The scheme covers all the biggest point source CO2 emitters, and those account for approximately 46 per cent of EU emissions. It makes companies and not member states responsible for reductions. There is no UK register yet. The only country that has a register is Denmark. and that means that at present all the deals are in forward contracts rather than spot contracts. It is a bold scheme—the first multinational scheme of its type—covering 23 of the 28 countries which Kyoto caps.
One of our witnesses from the bank that has set itself up specially to deal in carbon trading/climate change capital called the scheme as good an example as one could have of backing rhetoric with real decisive action.

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I think that it is a striking example of effective action being taken at the Community level when 25 separate countries' programmes could not have the same effect. It must be extended globally to include other major developing countries. However, it depends on national allocation plans as the basis. Here, there is a surprising development so far as concerns the UK. Having submitted the national allocation plan some months ago, the Secretary of State at Defra withdrew it and has resubmitted it with a 3 per cent increase. That is now being considered by the Commission. Frankly, I think it is very disappointing that we, having been one of the first to make a submission, should have withdrawn it and come back with an increase which, not unexpectedly, has been very badly received both by the Commission and by other countries.
We emphasised the wish to have stronger co-operation with third countries to promote enhanced technology transfer. That, in brief, is covered by the linking directive at paragraph 38 of our report, and it is also dealt with in Box 2 on page 16. This is a complicated matter and it is only just beginning. But the point behind it is that it allows credits representing emission reductions in, let us say, the developing world to be set against debits in the developed world. If, for example, a German power company persuaded China to build a new electric power station with very low CO2 emissions, that would give the German company credits on its contract which could be offset against carbon dioxide emissions in its German manufacture. It is very complicated and ambitious. A lot of working it out lies ahead, but it emphasises that, potentially, we are looking at an emissions trading scheme that should be global in effect and which would, one hopes, embrace the large developing countries such as China, Brazil and India.
Transport is dealt with on pages 28 to 42 of our report. We emphasise that transport contributes about 25 per cent of United Kingdom CO2 emissions and that road transport contributes about 85 per cent of that. Therefore, it is self-evident that we say that more should be done to develop low emission vehicles.
Aviation accounts for about 11 per cent of the UK's total climate impact and that will rise sharply. A mistake was made in some of the figures that BAA gave us and in many copies of the report, the reference is that aviation accounts for 4.6 per cent. That is a mistake and has been corrected in the copy of our report that is on the web. As we all know, the UK Government, like those of other members states, are pursuing the growth in air travel capacity very hard. I live close to Gatwick and I am well aware of the plans greatly to increase the throughput of Gatwick in the years ahead.
There is a paradox: at the same time that the Government are building more airports and encouraging more cheap air traffic, they are saying that they intend to make the question of climate change and the reduction of the carbon emissions one of their key debating points this year when they are in the G8 and head of the EU.
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Aviation emissions is the fastest growing source of emission and will be a major contributor to future climate change. It is interesting that it is judged that the impact of aviation emissions is 2.7 times that of carbon dioxide alone. Unsurprisingly, we came down very strongly on a recommendation that emissions from intra-EU flights should be brought into the European Union ETS as soon as possible. That appears to be a measure that is supported by the Government.
Alternative energy sources are covered in pages 43 and 44 of our report. Our research into them was, it must be said, not deep. We encouraged the EU to look into research into nuclear fusion and encouraged accelerated research into alternative energy sources away from carbon fuels. We did not look deeply at the question of nuclear power, but my own view, and not necessarily that of the committee, is that we will have to revisit the question of building new nuclear reactors in this country. France produces 75 to 80 per cent of her electricity from nuclear power. It seems to me that it is going to be very difficult to meet our targets for CO2 reductions without doing that.
Finally, we considered how to get the public involved in this—this is a matter always in the mind of the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, who I am delighted to see in her seat today. How do we engage the public in worries about CO2 emissions and what is likely to happen to them, their children or their grandchildren? The historian in me sometimes looks back to the very obvious example of climate change, which is Genesis Chapters VI and VII and the floods that covered the mountaintops. As noble Lords will remember:
"The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot"—
a delightful expression. I wonder what message Jonah received that he managed to get two of every animal and bird into the Ark with him before the flood started.
Noble Lords: Noah!
Lord Renton of Mount Harry: Noah! My Lords, I am sorry: Noah managed to do that. What was his secret? Goodness, we need it now. This is the big unresolved question. How do we—politicians, scientists, editors and the media—put over to the public the potential dangers ahead and advise them about what they can do to minimise the damage and to use human inventiveness, the inventiveness of mankind, to overcome it? That is the unanswered question that lies ahead of us.
Moved, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on The EU and Climate Change (30th Report, Session 2003–04, HL Paper 179).—(Lord Renton of Mount Harry.)
8.5 p.m.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-Ie-Fylde: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, and his colleagues on the committee for their report and for giving us the opportunity to discuss it this evening. I look forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Haworth. I am also delighted to see in her place my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone,

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whose colleagues at the Environment Agency do far more than ever gets recognised. They do an important job in the area that we are debating this evening.
This is an excellent report. It is in the best traditions of this House. The committee gathered the facts and interviewed many experts. Having gathered the facts, the committee analysed them and reached judgments, which are put across in a readable way. Maybe a tabloid edition of the report might be one way of getting the public more involved. I found the report to be one of the most readable documents on climate change that I have seen in a long time. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, had something to do with that.
I shall address the issue that the noble Lord spent a few moments on: the EU emissions trading scheme that appears on page 27 of the report. It deals with phase 1, which came in this year. Aviation is covered in that section of the report. The noble Lord spent a few moments talking about the growth of aviation and the growth in emissions that will come from it. This committee has been very wise in the way it has approached it. There are too many people who think that the way to deal with it is to shut aviation down, stop it growing and put punitive taxes on it. That would be severely damaging to the country economically. The way to deal with it is to have a very strict adherence to the European emissions trading scheme, which I welcome and which I hope will become global. For it to work, it is essential for it to become global. We can do what we can in Europe and lead by example, but it has to extend globally. It is also an effective way.
I gather that British Airways is the only airline that joined the scheme at the beginning. I congratulate the Government on the work that they have done in this area. BA says that between 1990 and 2010 it will cut fuel emissions by something like 30 per cent and save about 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Those are very positive steps, which we need to extend considerably.
The Government have made a very welcome statement that in their period of presidency of the EU they will put aviation and the European emissions trading scheme within their agenda. It is a very positive move; I think it is a very brave one.
Part of the problem we have to deal with is very clearly set out on table 22—or is it page 22?—of the report which lists all the nations covered. The European emissions trading scheme has to cover the whole of aviation throughout Europe. Nations have to be included in it; they have to be part of it; and they have to meet the targets which we need to set.
I end this short contribution by saying that at the moment about £1 billion is raised through airport tax, which is paid by people who use aviation. I believe that we are a bit different from Europe—we are an island. Over a third of all our exports by value go by air. So, we have to be careful what we do that will affect our economy. The way to deal with it comes back to this
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point about emissions trading. It goes to the heart of the issue and actually forces the industries involved to address the issue.
The report is an extremely constructive contribution to the debate. We are struggling to have a difficult debate, which too many people would prefer was not there and would wish to ignore. But, I must say that something as concise as this is a contribution to the debate. I am delighted that the Government have indicated that they are going to pick up the parts of the report on the emissions trading scheme.
8.10 p.m.
Lord Lewis of Newnham: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, for his excellent and very effective chairmanship of Sub-Committee D. It was a pleasure to be a member of such a committee and I agree that the report, which was primarily due to his efforts, has turned out to be very successful.
Perhaps I may also say that I very much look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, give his maiden speech.
I should like to comment on two areas that have not been covered or brought into the emissions trading scheme within the UK, which are principally concerned with the electrical industries. These are transport and buildings. John Cridland, deputy director-general of the CBI, has pointed out that UK industry cut carbon emissions by 6 per cent between 1990 and 2003. During that period house emissions rose by more than 10 per cent and emissions from transport rose by 4.6 per cent.
Transport emissions have virtually doubled since 1970 to 2002. That is the greatest increase from any source of emissions. Transport emissions clearly include aviation, which has been discussed by previous speakers.
In the transport sector there have been encouraging signs of addressing the problem, but these have been mainly for new motor cars with the introduction of a fuel economy labelling scheme and attempts to reduce the carbon emissions by engine design by 25 per cent of the 1995 figure by 2008. In addition, there has been the development—and very much welcomed idea—of the hybrid technology car and the use of biofuels as a carbon-neutral energy source.
However, considering the magnitude of the problem—with over 20 million cars in the UK and approximately 1 million of these being new cars—each year a major programme needs to be mounted to even begin to face the problem. A difficult feature is that much of the pollution occurs from older cars, which often have long half-lives and so present a long-term problem, which at the moment does not appear to be being addressed.
In the case of diesel engines, which often have a life of about 1 million miles, we are looking at the technology of over 25 years ago. Whereas the present engine is relatively benign, the older ones are major pollution problems.

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The situation with aviation is even more difficult, as the international nature of much of the business makes it difficult for a single country to legislate for any form of fuel tax. I agree completely with the noble Baroness that taxation is not the answer to this particular problem. That was recognised very early on in the Chicago convention in 1944. Any consideration of emissions from aircraft was ignored. That was also considered but excluded in the Kyoto protocol. Nevertheless, as we discussed, this is a very significant global polluter. In addition to carbon dioxide emissions, water, which is relatively benign on the ground, becomes a major problem when one is dealing with things in the stratosphere, as this then provides a cloud formation which increases global warming considerably.
This topic has been raised on many occasions in this House and in the other place. I was very pleased indeed to see in the Government's response to the report that they have agreed to take this on board during their present presidency of the European Union. I think that this is a very commendable act on their part.
Finally, may I turn briefly to the energy loss from buildings? The Building Research Establishment has recently pointed out the important potential that the present and proposed new building regulations coming from the EU have in providing energy-efficient buildings. They claim that the use of energy in buildings accounts for half of the carbon dioxide emissions in this country. Considering the large housing programme that the Government have under consideration, the incentive to reduce the energy consumption in homes must be great.
The BRE has also reported, in the testing of new houses by air permeability tests, that almost one third of new houses failed to achieve the level required. In many instances there was criticism of the effectiveness of the inspection of the properties and the competence of the building profession. Although it is the local authority that is responsible for the implementation of regulation, the building inspectors themselves have warned that the workload—particularly with the new regulations—will provide them with great staffing problems. It is absolutely paramount that something is done in order to help them in this very difficult situation.
In addition, of course, there remain the problems of the older houses, and older houses represent a significant proportion. They are one third of the total building stock of houses built before 1940. For houses of this nature, techniques have been developed and are being developed, and it is important that we consider these as a significant factor in our energy reduction.
The committee generally accepted the EU approach to the problem of global warming and indeed, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, commended them on the leadership role they have played. With the acceptance of the Kyoto protocol, the EU has, to my mind, provided a good lead in implementing a regime that will allow for control of emissions throughout the Union and will doubtless provide a model that can be employed by other
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countries. However, we are at the beginning of this story and I feel that there are many problems which still await solution.
8.17 p.m.
Lord Haworth: My Lords, I rise to make this short contribution to the debate on climate change with some trepidation. When the Minister, the noble Lord. Lord Whitty, was General Secretary of the Labour Party, he was my boss. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, the Government Deputy Chief Whip, was my predecessor in my previous post. He relieved me somewhat by leaving at the start of the debate, giving me what I hope was a cheery nod.
I have come here after working for the Labour Party for nearly 30 years, down the corridor in the other place and, for the past 12, as Secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
I should also like to thank, as is traditional, those staff and officers of the House who have kindly helped me find my way around this end of the building and have been welcoming.
Whenever I can, I like to be in the mountains. Perhaps I should mention, in my maiden speech, that I believe that I am the first Member of your Lordships' House ever to have climbed all the Scottish Munros. For me, mountaineering and hill-walking are the best ways of recharging the batteries and refreshing the soul. This may help to explain why I chose Fisherfield in Ross and Cromarty as the territorial designation in my title.
Fisherfield Forest, which contains six of the most remote Munros, is one of the last great wildernesses in Britain and is maintained and cherished as such by Mr Paul van Vlissingen, who owns it. I sincerely thank him for raising no objection to my impertinence in wishing to have this in my title.
In many years of walking in the mountains—not just in Britain but in the Himalayas, the Pyrenees and the Alps—the enormity of glacial melting has become increasingly evident to me. Of course there are no glaciers in Britain, but we did have a small amount of permanent snow throughout the last century, high in Garbh Choire Mor of Braeriach. Two or three years ago, it finally melted—completely. In the Alps and the Pyrenees, the glaciers are in rapid retreat and, in some cases, have disappeared altogether. The guide books are well out of date within 10 years.
However, the most dramatic example for me came in 2002, when I went to Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus to climb Mount Elbrus. Our party spent a couple of days acclimatising by walking up the Bezingi Glacier, which is the longest in Europe. On the lower glacier at least we were following in the footsteps of the 1958 British Caucasus Expedition, led by Sir John Hunt, later Lord Hunt, a Member of this House. The Bezingi Glacier is described in the Hunt expedition account as,
"flowing for four miles from a high pass on the border with Georgia, before making a right-angle turn towards the north and continuing for another six miles".

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It was indeed 10 miles long in 1958. Three years ago, it measured about nine-and-a-half miles, a retreat of 800 yards in 44 years. The local evidence was that the pace of its retreat was speeding up.
A month after our return from the region, there was a catastrophic event in nearby North Ossetia when the Kolka glacier collapsed, killing 140 people. The subsequent technical investigation showed that the Kolka incident was both unprecedented in its scale and of considerable wider significance. There is no doubt that the glaciers are melting and that they are doing so at an alarming and accelerating rate.
I welcome the report. It is a mine of information and a model of lucidity. It deserves to be more widely read. I welcome the Government's commitment to putting climate change at the top of the agenda of the G8. I applaud our target of producing 10 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and the aspiration to double that by 2020.
I should have liked to say more about of renewables, especially wind farms, but the shortage of time suggests that I should leave that for another occasion, because I want to say something about the importance of nuclear power. Paragraphs 139 and 140 of the report are relevant here. They state the obvious succinctly:
"nuclear power generates no carbon dioxide emissions … though there are serious arguments about the disposal of waste".
As the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, pointed out, the report notes that French nuclear power stations generate about 75 per cent of their electricity needs, as opposed to our 20 per cent. It concludes with this sentence:
"The question of further investment in nuclear power should attract more attention in the EU, as worries about climate change increase".
I agree. Indeed it should.
In 2020, even if the 20 per cent renewables aspiration can be achieved, which many doubt, where will the other 80 per cent come from? Our existing nuclear stations will be increasingly decommissioned. We cannot have another dash for gas; and surely we will not be building great new coal or oil-fired stations.
Taking the crucial decision to restart the nuclear programme is, I believe, the issue that faces the Government—any government. I hope that this Government will face it bravely and soon.
8.22 p.m.
The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to rise to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, of Fisherfield, on his maiden speech in your Lordships' House, especially because, as a Lancastrian, he has had the breadth of mind to claim a connection with Scotland in his title, which is situated in Ross and Cromarty.
He has a history of long and distinguished service to the Labour Party, of which he gave your Lordships some description, and he also has a reputation for his enthusiasm for mountaineering. Not so long ago, my family owned a Munro—not a very big one, but it has
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always been a popular walk. If I say that it is a landmark celebrated by Robbie Burns, perhaps the noble Lord will know the one that I mean. The debate this evening has proved a good moment for the noble Lord to express his convictions in several fields that he lists as being his main interests and we look forward very much to hearing him many more times in the House.
I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Renton and the whole of his committee on an extremely comprehensive report that will serve as a good framework for any discussion on how we progress our contribution to the consideration of climate change. My interest, to which I own up, is largely as a farmer and landowner.
The report is especially useful as it highlights the difference between the Kyoto treaty targets, the European Community proposals and the Government's aspirations. The fact that the Kyoto treaty has finally been ratified obviously means that the targets under the first two, for which any shortfall would trigger sanctions, have a much greater chance of being achieved.
I note from Hansard of 22 February that in his Answer to a Written Question from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, the Minister seems confident in our ability comfortably to achieve the 2012 target on greenhouse gas emissions although his phraseology is not quite so confident when it comes to the domestic target for CO2.
Our discussion today of the report is unfortunately somewhat hampered by the fact that it has taken so long to come before the House. This is a rapidly progressing field and a great deal has happened since the committee submitted its findings to print. Events have taken place in the past couple of weeks which have taken matters forward considerably. The report sensibly recommended the precautionary approach based on the publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001. As my noble friend Lord Renton mentioned, that has certainly been vindicated by the reports last week of a presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Dr Tim Barnett. Noble Lords who saw those reports will have noted that to date most predictions have been based on observations of air temperature whereas the Scripps Institution of Oceanography report required the interpretation of over 7 million observations of water temperature in the oceans around the world. The fact that it identified an average rise of 0.5 degrees centigrade represents a far greater accumulation of thermal energy than would have been expected from simply measuring increases in air temperature. Those findings are about to be published in a peer-review journal. Among the conclusions offered—and this in some ways ties in with what the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, spoke about—was that climate warming will alter the snow levels in the American mountains and precipitate a water crisis in the western United States within 20 years. That, along with the other studies on the melting of polar ice caps, is bound to offer an opportunity for the United States to reconsider its stance on Kyoto. As the Prime Minister is making such a focus on climate change

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while chairman of the G8, can the Minister give any indication of what approaches the Government are likely to make to the US in that regard?
The nuts and bolts of all these proposals represent an area where there will be many complications. The situation has not been helped by the fact, as pointed out by my noble friend Lord Renton, that the Government have fallen out with the EU on our right to revise the national allocation plan which we submitted last April. It is perhaps not such a good sign that, according to the Times last week, 17 of the 27 EU members have not yet had their plans agreed with Brussels. Part of the quarrel seems to focus around national governments wishing to be too generous to their own industries. Can the Minister tell the House what the reduction target is under phase 1 of the EU environmental trading scheme and whether at present, given the submissions by the countries, it is likely to he reached?
It is interesting to note that some trading in anticipated carbon permits appears already to have taken place in the forward market in European allowances. Trade in the actual allowances is still not possible for our UK industries. It would be good to think that they were not put at a disadvantage by any delay in a way which might affect their underlying economic position. It will be a help to most of those affected by the scheme that the Government published their provisional carbon dioxide emission allowances last week and have stated that any shortfall in the final settlement will affect only the power sector. We are told that the operators have a three-week consultation period to point out any estimated errors. Is the Minister able to say when the allocation of permits will take place; or will the Government feel that final allocation should be delayed until the dispute with Brussels is resolved?
8.29 p.m.
Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, on his maiden speech. As a Welshman I admire anybody who climbs a mountain and glories in it. I found his speech focused and much to the point. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, for his chairmanship of Sub-Committee D of which I am a member and for the drive and focus he gave it to ensure that we got through on time having covered almost every aspect connected with climate change under consideration.
I have only five minutes, which is a short time in which to discuss climate change. The main aspects of the report are the evidence, the cause and the recommendations for action.
Some people—especially in the United States—are in denial about whether there is global warming. The best evidence to the committee came from the Government's chief scientist, Sir David King, who said of climate change that it was,
"the biggest issue for us to face this century".
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He quoted the American writer, Spencer Weart, who said that about 1,000 expert scientists had demonstrated the nature of the problem and the cause and that,
"Our response to the threat of global warming will affect our personal wellbeing and the evolution of man, society and all life on our planet".
Sir David King went on to say that that was not an exaggeration and that it was a major global problem.
Sir David talked about CO2 emissions. For the past 12,000 years, they had been 270 parts per million; now, they stand at 372 parts per million, the highest that the globe has had for the past 420,000 years. He came out with numerous statistics of that kind. No one should think that further proof of global warming is required. If temperatures go up by between 1 and 2 degrees, as is forecast, between 2030 and 2050, we will see a significant increase in the risk of hunger throughout the globe. An extra 1.5 billion people will be at risk of water shortage. There are many such matters.
Over the past 10 years, I have personally observed abnormal events and pollution. On the east coast of the United States, there is a dense fog of pollution up to 10,000 feet. You can see it out the window of the aircraft. In the mid-west, I experienced unseasonally violent storms that held up air traffic for eight hours. That was not in the normal stormy season. In New Zealand, I saw glaciers that had melted and retreated by two miles since the 1950s and heavy rainfall switching from the west coast to the east coast in the summer. In the UK, in my former constituency, floods predicted to happen once in 50 years have occurred three times on the River Wye in the past 10 years. The houses flooded are now uninsurable. In France, in 2003, I experienced temperatures of 45 degrees centigrade in Bordeaux.
I experienced all those things personally. The cause is easily defined, as we know: it is the burning of fossil fuels and the production of CO2, followed by other causes, such as methane. The committee examined some of the mitigating factors in climate change and some of the solutions, including innovation, research and technical development; voluntary action by the public sector, the private sector and individuals to tackle the problem; monitoring of the changes that are taking place and making decisions about them: education and communications; and EU targets and their achievement.
There are many renewables, as we know. The Government have not paid enough attention to renewable sources other than wind, such as tidal lagoons, biofuels and, in particular, combined heat and power. We had evidence on CHP from Allan Jones, the energy services manager at the most environmentally friendly local authority—Woking Borough Council. He was asked what produced the greatest volume of energy from renewable resources. Without hesitation, he said that it was combined heat and power. Thermal energy is produced as well as electrical energy. Seventy per cent of non-transport needs are for thermal energy.
The report contains a lot of information of that kind. In summing up, I would say that we must change our habits. We need not go over the top, as others have

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said. We need a managed transition to maintain a reasonable level of prosperity, while at the same time, taking down emissions to a level that will not damage our own ecology and environment, or that of Europe and the globe.
8.35 p.m.
Lord Bridges: My Lords, the issue is large and difficult, and the basic details of the proposed scheme to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is carefully analysed in the committee's report. We are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, and his colleagues for producing such a clear and comprehensive document.
I shall follow a slightly different line of argument because I want to suggest that it is also important not to lose sight of the broader dimensions of the problem when seen in terms of international politics.
A global problem calls for a global solution, which means that all the main players should participate. The Kyoto Protocol is based on that assumption. The difficulty is that the largest industrial economy in the West—the United States—is opposed to joining. That is hardly surprising since the United States is the largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, which is a consequence of the way in which the American economy has developed.
Rich in natural resources, America has spent them in a profligate manner—notably in the successful development of the motor industry in which America has led the way, creating jobs and wealth for the nation as a whole. The American car—a large, heavy and powerful vehicle—has produced jobs and wealth for the Americans. Those of us who have been lucky enough to live in the United States may have succumbed for a while to the attractions of the American car, which enables you to travel from coast to coast, relaxed in air-conditioned comfort.
The US Administration take the view that participation in Kyoto would be unacceptable to American citizens, and I do not find that at all surprising. But I am somewhat concerned by the possible consequences, since it appears that EU support for Kyoto may also attract the endorsement of eastern Europe, including Russia, while failing to win the approval of the United States.
It is not fanciful, therefore, to foresee a global issue of some importance in world politics. If western and eastern Europe agree with Kyoto while China and the United States remain outside, one may ask whether the differences will remain confined to the single issue of energy and pollution. I rather doubt it.
I draw attention to the Chinese attitude in particular. The recent rapid growth in the Chinese economy has altered the balance in the consumption of energy and key minerals. Chinese economic expansion will surely be matched by a growth in carbon dioxide emissions. China may find it difficult to combine her rate of growth with the discipline of Kyoto. Thus, we might see Russia and western Europe in one camp and China and the United States in the other. There is, of
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course, no certainty in such matters, but it might happen. If it did, the consequences for global politics could be far-reaching and probably unhelpful.
My plea is that our handling of international policies on climate change should be undertaken with great care, and with an eye on the long-term consequences. We shall, after all, be in the chair of the EU at the critical period of negotiation later this year. Participation in Kyoto by the United States is essential for the stability of global politics if we wish to continue the pattern of relationships that we have known since the Second World War.
The partnership between the United States and Europe is in many ways a natural one. We both draw our strength from the tradition of popular democracy. Other partnerships do not have such a lasting natural base and might not survive the particular problem that gave them birth. It could well lead to a less stable structure in international relations.
It is clear that the presidency that we shall have later this year will come at a critical time. We will have an obligation to lead the European Union on the basis of the agreement that we will have reached in the Council of Ministers. But our overriding interest is in global agreement, not a crusade. If we were to indulge ourselves in that direction, it is likely that the American opposition to Kyoto would harden further. I hope therefore that the Government will, as I would expect, adopt a more measured policy and avoid a potentially damaging division of international opinion into two new opposing groups.
8.40 p.m.
Baroness Billingham: My Lords, thanks are indeed due to the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry. for the good-natured way in which he guided a very lively committee through this report: the end product bears his stamp and authority. Perhaps I may also welcome the excellent contribution from my noble friend Lord Haworth. His is indeed a powerful voice that I hope we will hear on many occasions.
The timing of the debate to coincide with the implementation of the Kyoto agreement is to he welcomed. As a member of Sub-Committee D, I must remind your Lordships that our report was constrained by the framework of the European Union directives and deliberations. I make that point because during the process of the inquiry from February 2004, the issue of climate change moved from being a scientific debate to being highly political. The temptation to incorporate that debate into our report was extremely difficult to resist.
In the time allowed it is possible to give only a brief outline of the report, but that in no way reflects the detailed and painstaking evidence in the report. Having looked at the directives, we emphasised the need to raise public awareness of the true nature of climate change, how it affects all our lives and how it can and must be mitigated. We analysed steps taken by the EU and the Government to help that process.

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Our report was enhanced by expert in-House contributions within the committee and also by the calibre and breadth of the witnesses who gave evidence, all of whom were key players in this field. The first chapter sets out in detail definitions and explanations of greenhouse gasses and the principal sources of those pollutants.
With evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicating global temperatures set to rise by between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees centigrade over the next century, we set out the implications of such a change. As has already been referred to, Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, drew our attention to evidence from the Hadley and Tyndall centres where the UK is recognised as a world leader in climate science. His view,
"that climate change is the biggest issue facing us this century",
gave a powerful motivation for our inquiry.
Many witnesses made proposals for mitigating climate change. Margaret Beckett put the difference of approach between the EU and America most succinctly. The former adopts a precautionary approach, putting in place measures to reduce emissions now, while the USA takes the view that innovation and technology will solve the problem when the case is conclusively made. Looking at the Kyoto protocol, applauding the EU for leadership and explaining measures to be taken and funding by the UK Government for a number of significant initiatives were welcomed by us.
A major part of our report is the detailed explanation of the key EU climate change policy, the emissions trading scheme. In brief, currently, that applies only to industrial sectors with member states allocating a tariff of carbon dioxide emission to particular installations. It is quite simply a market mechanism, an example of "cap and trade".
Many of our witnesses welcomed the trading scheme, expressing the view that it could and should form the blueprint for an international trading agreement. The detail of the scheme is complex, but laid out in our report with clarity. I commend that chapter to everyone wishing to understand the detail and the nuances of the scheme.
One of the key factors contributing to climate change is, of course, fuel. Thus, transport formed a crucial part of our inquiry. Brutal factors, such as the 20 per cent increase in emission from cars since 1990, across the whole of Europe, are laid out in the report. Hybrid cars offer considerable hope for future mitigation of climate change. Indeed, the chairman of Shell UK himself said in evidence to us that the case for hybrid cars was so compelling that he was considering buying one and urged other leaders in industry and politics to do the same.
Aviation has yet to he tackled by the EU, as has already been said, although plans are well under way to address this significant polluter. Cross-border aviation is currently under scrutiny and our committee urged the EU to act as a facilitator for international debate to solve an international problem.
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Time does not allow for reporting of the pioneering work done by Woking Borough Council. Suffice to say that the committee was deeply impressed by the actions and outcome of sound environmental measures to reduce pollution and, at the same time, create a genuinely sustainable community.
An important part of our report dealt with the lack of public awareness of the true nature of climate change. We welcomed the UK Government's action in this area, and the Prime Minister's intervention in putting climate change at the top of his agenda for both the G8 and the period of the UK presidency of the European Union was greatly welcomed.
I hope to have conveyed the energy and drive of the committee while drawing up the report. All concerned were clear in their commitment, taking the view that no more urgent issue is with us today.
In conclusion, I must admit to more than a pang of guilt. I wrote the speech beside a pool in West Palm Beach—a speech solely concerned with energy conservation. Yet on one side of the house ran Ocean Boulevard, chock full of every gas-guzzling car imaginable, with a few Harley-Davidsons thrown in for good measure. On the other side were the beach and the Atlantic Ocean, both quite beautiful, if only marred by innumerable motorboats of every size, Lear jets and helicopters buzzing overhead and 747s beginning their descent to Miami airport.
Beyond the beach, some 500 yards away, the aquamarine of the sea suddenly becomes deepest blue—the Gulf Stream itself, bringing us its warmth. yet even that precious thing is under threat as a result of global warming. What better reminder of the stark choices which face the European Union and indeed the world? It was the hope of the committee that this report on climate change would play a part in raising the awareness of the general public and indeed of this House and I very much hope and believe it has succeeded.
8.47 p.m.
Lord Taverne: My Lords, I have no very clear view about climate change. Indeed, I am somewhat worried that many people seem to be so sure. The issue is one of great complexity. There are so many factors that interact and have to be judged over such a long timescale that it makes predictions hazardous. About 75 per cent of experts—most, although not all, as some claim—agree that man-made greenhouse gases are a significant factor in global warning and everyone agrees that global warming is taking place. I feel that I must accept that majority view about the contribution of man-made factors, but how much warming will there be, how soon will it happen, what effect will it have and what should we do about it?
On the one hand, there are Sir David King's persuasive warnings both in his evidence to the committee and in his Zuckerman lecture; then there are reports of the melting of the glaciers—to which the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, referred in his eloquent maiden speech—and the polar ice, the recent findings of the heating of the oceans and the potential changes to the Gulf Stream. All of those suggest that we may

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be facing imminent catastrophe—by imminent, I mean some time in the next 50 to 100 years. Yet, let me list some doubts. The first, the hockey stick model often cited by the IPCC, which shows centuries of no rise in warming with a sudden increase as we started the massive use of fossil fuels has been effectively discredited by Hans Von Storch and others and also by Macintyre and McKitrick who demonstrated that the model was so designed that whatever data is fed into it ends up with a hockey stick curve.
Next, the IPCC's future scenarios are based on economic forecasts. These have been convincingly shown by David Henderson and Ian Castles, two eminent economists, to be flawed. It is likely that they exaggerate future emissions of greenhouse gases. The cavalier dismissal of this careful critique by the panel's president shows him to be a partisan advocate and not an objective chairman. He also likened Lomborg to Hitler. He does not inspire confidence.
An early draft of the IPCC's report stated cautiously that:
"Studies … suggest that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are a substantial contributor to the observed warming, especially over the last 30 years. However, the accuracy of these estimates continues to be limited by uncertainties in estimates of variability, natural and anthropogenic forcing, and the climate response to external forcing".
The final summary report said something slightly different—more definite:
"In the light of new evidence and taking into account remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely"—
that means, by their definition, a 66 per cent to 90 per cent chance—
"to be due to greenhouse gas concentrations".
The document seems to have been sexed up.
Recently, Dr Landsea, the panel's leading hurricane expert, resigned in protest, because the IPCC attributed recent hurricanes to global warming. One year's events were taken as evidence, but, interestingly, barometric fluctuations in Stockholm have shown no systematic change in the frequency and severity of storms since Napoleon's time.
There is evidence that ocean levels in the Maldives are steady and have not risen significantly in the past 1,000 years. There is photographic evidence showing high-water marks in the past higher than those at present.
Next, do we know what percentage of warming is due to solar activity? Some experts say 30 per cent, some say 70 per cent to 80 per cent. What of clouds and aerosols, which can have a cooling effect?
I mention these uncertainties, not because I am a climate change denier, but because we should not be dogmatic. There is a sort of political taboo about the issue. If you express doubts, you must be in the pay of the oil industry or a Bush supporter. There is a slight whiff of eco-McCarthyism about.
I support measures to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, of which the most important would be, first, investment in nuclear energy and then carbon
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sequestration. I do not see it as a mortal sin to question the Kyoto Protocol, which will reduce warming by one-fiftieth of a degree Celsius by 2050, at considerable economic cost. I doubt if its targets will be reached, and there are no sanctions if they are not. I suspect that there will be less costly and more effective ways of dealing with whatever prospects lie ahead than the Kyoto straitjacket.
8.53 p.m.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I am delighted to join all other speakers in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, on the way he introduced the debate. I would like to add my own congratulations to the committee on producing such an excellent report. It contains a clear and positive analysis and endorsement of the climate change control policies that are being developed and adopted by the 25 EU member states. It is a wholly welcome contribution to the debate.
The report is also very clear that, while the science of climate control is unambiguously accepted at EU level, current policy options, such as the EU emissions trading scheme, are the first small, but very necessary, steps on a difficult journey.
I was particularly pleased to see that the committee made a special effort to analyse and comment on the huge growth forecast in UK air transport climate change emissions over the next 30 years. I welcome the statement in paragraph 126, on page 42:
"It is clear that a great deal more action needs to be taken urgently to limit the effects of aviation on climate change".
In this context, I should declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Group on Sustainable Aviation.
The committee was right to recommend that air transport should be included in the developing European emissions trading scheme. It was interesting, on reading the report, to find that airlines such as British Airways and Virgin Atlantic and airport operators such as BAA called for their industry sector to adopt the "polluter pays" principle. So while it makes a refreshing change to see an industry apparently keen and willing to join a scheme involving both rationing and paying more for its vital raw resource, the sector's enthusiasm for emissions trading schemes is perhaps not that surprising. If air transport were included in the European scheme by 2008—itself a very ambitious timetable—it has been estimated by the Aviation Environment Federation, which gave evidence to the committee, that for British Airways the added cost to a single journey could be as little as 33p, or 66p on a return ticket. While such small incremental cost increases might be the way in which to start such schemes, over time a much higher price for CO2 will be needed to drive both supply and demand side changes, perhaps in excess of £90 per tonne.
This is an incredibly complicated area, as the report shows, and the committee is particularly to be congratulated on making relatively simple a concept that is so very complicated. But European policy makers seem to understand that ratcheting down sector allowances and lowering economy-wide CO2

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targets, will also be necessary to hit the kind of 60 per cent reductions in CO2 emissions that are the UK's target for the middle years of this century.
I welcome the fact that the Government have a menu of market-driven approaches to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft, including the possibility of a fuel tax, en route emissions charges and emissions trading, and have won the right to implement that package of measures at least within Europe. But to make a real difference and show that we take climate change reduction responsibilities more seriously, it will be necessary to persuade the International Civil Aviation Organisation that the current worldwide fuel tax exemption must be removed.
Environmental taxation can bring huge benefits; not only does it generate revenue which government can spend on things that they believe to be important, but it can also make a real contribution to tackling the effects of climate change by limiting the future growth of air passenger demand. That might not mean flying less than we do today, but it would mean that some of the more extravagant forecasts of growth in air passenger numbers would be lower than the industry currently forecasts—and it undoubtedly means paying more for our air travel.
There is no doubt that all sectors of our economy must play their part in reducing greenhouse gases as we move towards a low-carbon future. At the moment Defra and the Environment Agency have a campaign called "Doing your bit", which exhorts us all to cut energy use and fight climate change by putting lids on our saucepans whenever we cook, among other suggestions, thus aiding energy efficiency and reducing emissions. All of us may need in future to put a lid on the frequency with which we fly if we are serious about doing our bit to combat climate change.
I commend the committee on producing a significant analytical report that makes a powerful contribution to the climate change debate. We must all do our bit to get global warming under control, starting now.
8.58 p.m.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and his committee on an interesting and readable report. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, to the House to join the small number of mountaineers here. If the trend goes on, we may even get a trip up some time.
I want to take a fairly broad-brush view across the geosciences, although I am conscious that what I am going to try to say in five minutes is what I would have regaled my old A-level students with over a couple of 45-minute periods. I will rush and be broad brush, and I probably will not achieve it anyhow.
The conventional wisdom of all the geophysical sciences comes from two famous geologists from the 18th and 19th centuries, James Hutton and Sir Charles Lyell. They founded the doctrine of uniformitarianism—which, in itself, will have taken me about half a minute to say—based on Hutton's famous slogan:
"The present is the key to the past".
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Current geological processes, occurring at the same rates observed today, and in the same manner, account for all of the Earth's geological features.
The doctrine of gradualism came to replace the biblical doctrine of diluvianism—that it all occurred during the flood when Noah sailed his Ark. Since the noble Lord, Lord Renton, invited us all to remember that time—although even your Lordships' House does not go back quite so far—I have a vision of the noble Lord sailing his new ark up Lewes high street the next time his local town floods, when I think we should all come and join in. That doctrine effectively prevailed for the best part of 150 years, and most other geophysical sciences joined in it. Within biology, there was Charles Darwin's concept of evolution—the idea that lots of little things happening over a long period of time resulted in where we are, and that we can observe those processes happening now. In the science of land forms, or geomorphology, noble Lords who did A-level geography probably remember the "cycle of erosion". I t was probably taught to all as being a fact, but it is really a highly flawed model. I think people now understand that about the work of William Morris Davis.
The alternative to gradualism was thought to be catastrophism—the idea that many of the Earth's features formed as a result of past cataclysmic activity. These are what we now call "natural disasters"—and the fact that we do so is interesting, since that is a human way of looking at them. It is revealing that, as human beings, we say these are disasters—whereas, in practice, the geological, climatological, geomorphological and evolutionary records are actually full of catastrophes, cataclysms and so on. The biblical flood almost certainly occurred; there is much evidence of a major flood between 3000–2000 BC, and lots of geological evidence of major floods in the past. That is something to which we should pay great attention, since we are talking about climatic change that might result iii the melting of lots of land ice.
The complacency which has come from these scientific views has infected everybody, but this extreme gradualism is now being questioned. lt is clear that catastrophic or cataclysmic events have played a normal part in geological, geomorphological, climatic, oceanographic and evolutionary history over the years. The important thing for us as human beings is that for the last few thousand years it has been a period of remarkable stability and calm. Civilisation as we know it has been built upon that stability—with systems of agriculture and the development of stable, sedentary communities who were not just wandering around chasing animals. The material culture. as anthropologists call it, associated with those societies—advanced social systems, civic society, democracy and all its associated freedoms that we as individuals regard as so important—depends upon a degree of stability within the natural environment in which we live. If that stability comes to an end and we enter a period of cataclysmic change, we are obviously put at risk.

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At the moment we have crises which are not of climatic or natural origin—such as the alleged threat from terrorists, where we are being told that some of our basic liberties have to be curtailed because of that threat. Just imagine the situation if the climate of our globe and all its associated systems gets completely out of control, and we have to cope with that. There is a real danger here that catastrophes are going to occur—as they have over geological and geomorphological time. After all, most of this country was covered in ice only 100,000 years ago. The last ice only left the British Isles 10,000 years ago. There have been huge, catastrophic changes in the past. We cannot assume that those changes are not going to occur again. Whether they are occurring because of anthropogenic causes, whether we are the cause of it by churning all this carbon dioxide, methane and so on into the atmosphere, or whether they are occurring for other reasons, or whether it is a mixture of the two in a sense does not matter, because we must learn to cope with it and to live with it. If the worst fears come about—the melting of the west Antarctic ice mass or sufficient melting in Greenland to cock up totally the Gulf Stream—there will be huge changes to come to terms with.
The sceptics on climatic change seem to come in two groups. There are those represented by people such as Dr David Bellamy, who seem to be in denial. Some people are in denial. Then there are those such as professor Bjorn Lomborg, who has had a lot of publicity recently, who are saying, "Yes, it may well be happening; it could happen and perhaps it is definitely happening; but we cannot do anything about it. Therefore we should put all our investment into countering the effects of it". The revolution that is occurring in the geosciences needs to transfer itself to a revolution of thought within the public polity generally—within debate and the decisions that governments make and the way in which we all look at these things. We have to do both. We cannot assume that we are capable of stopping this climatic change, although we must try to stop it. We must do the kind of things that Dr Lomborg is suggesting, as well as trying to stop it. We should not allow the debate to become oppositional. We must say, "Yes, there will be a lot of changes, and there may be catastrophic, cataclysmic changes. We must find a way of coming to terms with them without destroying the very civilisation of which we are part".
9.6 p.m.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: My Lords, I am pleased to be able to be here to talk about this welcome, solid and practical report from the committee. I commend the noble Lord. Lord Renton of Mount Harry, and his committee members on producing it.
I should declare an interest as the chief executive of the Environment Agency. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, for an opportunity that I did not think I would have when I came here tonight. That was the opportunity to hear the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, confess to owning only a small Munro. I shall treasure that concept.
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I also add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, on his excellent maiden speech. I found his account of his personal experience of glaciers melting quite moving. I must admit that, perhaps not in the spirit of responding to maiden speeches, I disagree with him on his call for the resumption of the nuclear programme. In my capacity as being responsible for the management of nuclear waste, I am only too aware that many issues in nuclear waste management are still to be resolved. The most compelling argument for not prematurely re-opening the nuclear programme is that it would simply knock the feet out from any hope of investment in renewable technologies in the future.
It is clear that this report tackled some live issues. That is particularly so because even in the period since it was produced there have been a number of substantial developments. The recent 2005 stabilisation conference at the Hadley Centre made it even more important that we tackle climate change with urgency. The basic message from that conference was that if we see climate change or temperate increases of between one and three degrees, we have a considerably increased risk of damage. If we see anything above three degrees, we will experience large-scale, irreversible system disruption like turning off the Gulf Stream or the destabilisation of the Antarctic ice sheets. Those would be serious and irreversible. We are talking about temperature ranges well within the climate change projections for the next century having those sorts of impacts. It is a serious matter.
There has also always been a considerable debate about the costs of stabilising temperature. The stabilisation conference clearly demonstrated that the costs of actions to stabilise temperature are usually over-estimated, and the costs of not acting are often under-estimated. The stabilisation conference showed that stabilisation is manageable with a portfolio of actions that reduces or manages emissions, provided that it is also aimed at reducing the costs of the actions.
The big problem with the whole threat of climate change is not the economic issues associated with climate change reduction measures, but the political, social and behavioural barriers to implementing mitigation actions. The UK is in a unique position to grapple with some of those issues through its leadership in the presidencies of the G8 and the EU. I commend the Prime Minister's commitment to make climate change a central part of the presidencies.
Globally, there may be a real opportunity to take a different route in international relationships on climate change. There is considerable potential for a partnership between the European Union and China. At the moment, China is planning to introduce treble figures of coal-fired power stations over the next 25 years. An EU-China partnership would seek development of cleaner technologies, light renewables, and energy-efficiency technologies in high standards for vehicles and fuels. It could be a very potent trade and development partnership, bringing together the two big markets of emerging China and the European Union. If that did happen—if our presidency of the G8 could bring that about—the US would have to take notice, and we might find a way to bring the US into a

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much more productive relationship on climate change, through an economic route rather than trying to persuade it through science or moral arguments.
Many speakers have already talked about some of the challenges of the presidency of the European Union. The European Emissions Trading Scheme is one of the big opportunities. We need to make sure that, at the second stage, we see tighter caps for the scheme to ensure substantial CO2 reductions and the development of new technologies. We certainly have to bring aviation into the emissions trading scheme.
Alas, the Prime Minister in the UK can show leadership in the European Union and globally only if there is a solid basis of performance back here at home. Perhaps we could tempt the Minister into telling us how the Government plan to come back from the rather embarrassing debacle of the attempt to raise the national allocation plan under the emissions trading scheme. That threatened to damage the leadership of the presidencies. We simply have to buckle down and accept the national emissions programme. It is a poor pass if industry cannot use its ingenuity and innovation to find ways to rise to that challenge, as it will undoubtedly have to rise to a further challenge if we are to move beyond the 2012 targets to the 60 per cent reduction signalled for 2050.
Back home, we need to see: progress on packages of measures to reverse the 62 per cent increase in carbon dioxide from the growth in vehicle use; more support for domestic energy efficiency, including faster movement on the likes of building regulations and the sustainable buildings code; and increased support for business in its energy-efficiency efforts. It is perfectly possible to see a further 20 per cent in energy efficiency from business over the next few years if we get the right sorts of policy in place. There is a major global opportunity this very year for the UK and Europe, but it needs demonstrable effort and solid performance here at home.
9.13 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I add my congratulations to those of other noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, on his geophysical maiden speech; they seem to come about every five years in this House.
It was a pleasurable and worthwhile experience to work on the European Union Committee's Sub-Committee D and question the conscientious and informative witnesses. I understand that even the most august of them were a bit nervous about the experience. As our forceful but diplomatic chairman the noble Lord, Lord Renton, underlined in his opening speech, the report emphasises the seriousness of the real threat to human health, food, safety and economics from the current climate change developments.
The scientific evidence referred to in the report was reconfirmed in the recent conferences held at Exeter and Houston. One important point was that the trends that we see in global warming are likely to continue for the next 20 or 30 years, even if action is taken. But if we want to enable our grandchildren and future generations to live on an Earth with a more moderate temperature, action must begin now.
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I believe we should be pleased that the UK and the EU see eye to eye on these matters and that the EU is taking the threats so seriously. Last week, I was in the United States. The headline of a student newspaper at Cornell University celebrated the Kyoto victory. Pace the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, that is why the Kyoto Protocol is a great signal, even if its net effects are quite small.
However, the seriousness of the changes is still being challenged, quite rationally, in many quarters. In addition, the changes are still not widely enough understood. Last week the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story on the doubts being raised by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne. I do not necessarily disagree with what he said but I should emphasise to the House that the IPCC, when asked about these questions, responded in a responsible way that any doubts raised will he considered seriously by the IPCC process, as they have been in the past. Obviously I regret it if doubts arc being raised in the process.
There is a continuing need to monitor and issue data on a regular basis. I believe that science is best understood when data are provided on a regular basis, as with the daily weather forecast and as used to be the case with the daily doctor, and it needs to be done often. It also needs to be done in the necessary locality. I believe that we lack information about the climate in every city and in every harbour and every port area. We should be seeing such information. The EU has been very effective with its system of blue beaches, but it should be doing the same for climate change all across Europe, and we should be able to understand the trends. It is only when you understand trends that you can make your own decisions. Different decisions will be taken by different industries. Yesterday I attended a meeting with the insurance industry. It wanted to have specific data which are not easily available to it.
Very damaging consequences for the future of food supply were mentioned in the report. No other noble Lord has referred to that but it is a very serious matter. Climate change and aerosols in the atmosphere have reduced food supply in some areas of China by 15 per cent. Reports by the United States suggest similar reductions in the corn belt. That has enormous implications for food, and I point out that the committee reporting on these issues was a food and agriculture committee.
Key points are made about technology in the report. I do not believe that the Government's response to paragraph 148, which concerned green technology, addressed the important point, reinforced by my noble friend Lady Young, about the so-called portfolio or wedge approach. In other words, many different elements are needed in addressing the question of reducing carbon emissions and finding alternative energies. As one can find from presentations by many unbiased sources, a wide range of conventional, nuclear and renewable is needed. Indeed, programmes across Europe are stimulating all those areas and some of them—perhaps not enough—are dealing with the question of nuclear waste.

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There have been remarkable examples of reductions by individual industries, communities and inventors. Indeed, some of them are even reaching the government target of a 60 per cent reduction. So I always find it difficult to understand why the Government are so hesitant to endorse and praise those who have been outstandingly successful. A notable feature of our deliberations was that the Secretary of State at Defra was unaware of some of these remarkable developments. She had been completely unbriefed about them. Surely they should be seen as best practice, and we emphasise that point in our report.
We also pointed out that we saw wide differences between some of the major companies. But some of the big oil companies expect to reduce their production of oil by 50 per cent by 2050, changing to photovoltaics and hydrogen. The report emphasises the fact that many major industries are welcoming carbon trading. In fact, yesterday evening there was a presentation of new technologies at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Many of them were supported by the IMechE. It was interesting that the big power companies there were very interested in carbon trading. One big power company is already trading millions of pounds a year in that process.
Another important feature—in paragraph 105 of the report—is the linking directive. While we were preparing the report, I was fortunate to visit the Ukraine and Sri Lanka. They are both countries that will benefit from carbon trading because they have low emissions. It is very important that this mechanism is emphasised and used by government. The Government welcome it in their response. It is important that the funds that may be channelled to such countries are used correctly for energy developments. One fears that, if it is not carefully monitored, it could be abused and the whole process could suffer.
Finally, as other noble Lords have mentioned, there is the question of the evidence from Mr Jones of Woking. It is interesting that some of those examples are moving ahead in the climate change agency of the GLA. There will be a Foreign Office seminar of the UK and Germany to ensure that the best methods across Europe are being shared.
Is there any evidence that EU programmes are becoming more user-friendly? The criticism that we heard in the evidence was that it was difficult for communities to get EU funding for these important technological developments. Again, the Secretary of State was unaware of this concern. 1 hope that the Minister will be able to respond.
9.21 p.m.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, I have found the debate this evening absolutely fascinating. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Haworth. on his vivid picture of the reality on the ground of some of the effects of climate change. I remember how struck I was four years ago in the High Atlas—I am ashamed to say, not as a mountaineer—to find that the snow, even in January, was limited to a few streaks of white on the peaks. It
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brought home to me the changes since the time when those mountains were described as being deeply snow-covered for several thousand feet in winter.
This report has been most timely. With perhaps one exception this evening—my noble friend Lord Taverne, who brings a very useful sceptical challenge to our debate—we have agreed that the gravity of climate change must cause us to take urgent action, as individuals, as a nation and as a region. Even if we were to take the thesis of my noble friend Lord Taverne as being true, I do not believe that it would negate any of the efforts that may be made to find alternative fuels to those that are used. Our traditional profligate use of fossil fuels, and that of other nations, is no longer sustainable.
Two different examples were brought home to me by an exhibition I went to in Exeter, where the recent climate change conference was held. The exhibition was held last week and was separate from the conference. It was about different technologies and, in particular. those available to us for our homes now. One of the exhibits was a solar parabolic cooker, which captures the sun's rays and enables people in very hot countries, particularly sub-Saharan countries, to cook without collecting wood from their diminished forests. That was one example of a very different approach. There were also several examples of the very different approaches we need to take in Britain: solar water heating, photovoltaic cells and technologies of that kind. All the examples provide a win-win situation, whether in sub-Saharan Africa, enabling deforestation to stop and replanting, with all its benefits, to happen, or in this country, to lead people out of fuel poverty.
I think that paragraph 42 of the report correctly identities the role that the European Union is playing. It states:
"We commend the EU for showing leadership in drawing up such a comprehensive and relevant set of measures".
I am very pleased the report has made that point because people even in your Lordships' wise House occasionally question the value and purpose of the EU. Here is a very good example of the crucial role it plays.
The EU sets out a very ambitious policy agenda, and, very importantly, it enables domestic governments, if you like, to enable the EU—excuse the pun—to take the heat. It is difficult for domestic governments—we see this with our own Government—to push for the measures needed. This Government have recently caved in somewhat on the targets they set themselves. I hope they return to those targets. If the EU takes action to return to those targets, that is good, but it is also incumbent upon us to make sure that the EU is seen as doing a necessary job. While it may be willing sometimes to play the scapegoat for the greater good, we must defend the reasons it has to do so.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, very eloquently made the points about why these targets should be stuck to. I do not intend to repeat what she said.

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I should like to turn to a couple of issues which I believe this admirable report did not touch on perhaps heavily enough. The first is the effect of the different greenhouse gases. Of course their effects are different. Box 1 of the report helpfully refers to the different gases, mentioning nitrous oxide. But the report does not seem to pick up the crucial points made in the evidence the committee heard—that the effect of nitrous oxide is 310 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. The main source of this gas is from fertiliser use by the non-livestock sector of agriculture.
Within the EU climate change proposals there should be an explicit reference to a strategy for dealing with this. It would be helpful if the report was able to suggest that. There would be various options of using less fertiliser, turning more to organic agriculture and so on, but I think it needs mentioning.
There is a reference to a policy framework to be developed for fluorinated gases, which I welcome. They are another group of gases particularly critical in their effect.
Several noble Lords mentioned transport. Another issue the EU might want to reflect on is how much investment it is putting into its road building programme which encourages long-distance travel by road, and critically freight transport, at the expense of any other solution.
Many noble Lords have mentioned the issues of aviation. That is a critical area that must be tackled. Several of the points this evening were extremely eloquently made.
At an international level, the report stresses that the UK will be in an exceptional position this year as president of the EU and the G8. It makes the point that ambitious and realistic goals must be set. For the post-Kyoto 2012 period, it is not a moment too soon to start setting some groundwork for what those targets should be.
There is also an important role to be played in supporting the actions of governments in countries such as Brazil, where President Lula da Silva has recently taken action to declare a very extensive area—9.3 million acres—of the Amazon as a conservation area. I say that in sadness because it seemed to be a reaction to the recent death of Dorothy Stang—and of course previously Chico Mendez. Both of them knowingly put themselves at risk of murder—a price they did indeed pay—to get action on the forests for the people who live there and, indeed, for the whole world. I believe that we must recognise the sorts of efforts that need to be made in places like Brazil and to commend President da Silva for taking the action that he has.
Last February, the Minister wrote to me in response to a question about what Defra was doing in developing countries. He mentioned research projects in China and India on adaptation to climate change that Defra is funding. I would be very interested if he could tell me—now that those projects are, I believe, completed—what some of the conclusions might be.
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Many noble Lords have mentioned the role of individuals and the fact that we must, as individuals, take responsibility. I think that it was the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, who mentioned the Government's "Do Your Bit" campaign. In terms of the Government doing their bit to raise individuals' awareness, I feel that is what they are doing—just a bit. They really need to do a great deal more in terms of raising public awareness of what can be done.
The Minister will not be taken by surprise, because this was an argument we had over the Energy Bill and I have mentioned it in your Lordships' House subsequently. Energy Advice Centres, which enable the public to know what they could be doing themselves, are, with one or two exceptions, simply backroom offices when they ought to be welcoming shop fronts on the high street.
In reply to my intervention in the debate on climate change on 9 February 2004, the Minister said,
"One of the most important roles is to change consumption of energy in our homes and buildings".—[0fficial Report, 9/2/04; col. 1003.]
That was a point made this evening by the noble Lord, Lord Lewis. It is absolutely right. However, a year has passed and I do not feel that in that year Her Majesty's Government have made anything like sufficient effort to change the attitude, actions and buying habits of the public.
I turn finally to the question of nuclear power, which continues to be a very lively debate in this House. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. There are huge problems yet to be solved regarding the issues of waste. Further, the timescale needed for the building of new nuclear stations, let alone having them come on-stream, is very long. There are many other, very possible, renewable technologies which at present are lacking sufficient Government energy and backing—and here I would quote tidal power as an example. I come back to the very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, that there must be a range of solutions. The Government are very hesitant to embrace all of the possible developments that there are.
I believe that we should go forward in hope. This report gives us a great deal more to build on in terms of debate in this House. It is a very encouraging contribution to the whole question of climate change and how we may tackle it.
9.33 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, like every speaker, I join in thanking my noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry for presenting this report. More particularly, I join in thanking the members of the committee for the immense hard work and study which must have gone into taking the evidence, trying to summarise it and putting it all into a presentable form.
I welcome Lord Haworth. I was fascinated by his speech, never having been a mountaineer—but even I can notice the climate changing in lowland Essex. It is dramatically different now in the middle of winter from what I knew when I was a boy.

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It would be impossible in the time available to try to sum up this debate, and I do not intend to attempt that impossible task. What I do intend to do is to mine one or two bits of information, in particular out of the book of evidence which comes with the report and which is actually far more revealing, intriguing, interesting, and in many ways useful, than the body of the report itself.
There is no doubt—and we can be grateful for this, since there is clearly a mounting problem—that Europe and the United Kingdom in a sense are leading the field globally. A more serious issue is whether we are ahead of the game. I am prompted to ask that question having looked at the evidence of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, who is head of BP. He came up with an interesting and attractive formula which he described as his 50–50–50 formula for the year 2050. As the head of a major oil conglomeration he postulated that having considered all the options, in 2050 it seemed likely that we should be able to get to 50 per cent of our energy carbon dioxide-emissions free. He would include carbon dioxide sequestration within that 50 per cent. But by 2050 he thought that probably the best we could achieve would still involve 50 per cent of the world's energy coming directly from carbon fields and still emitting carbon dioxide.
That would represent a remarkable change and a great improvement on the present situation. It represents real progress. However, if one assumes that the global economy will continue to grow at an average rate of 2.5 per cent and that the growth in the economy is a proxy for the increase in the use of energy—and one is pretty well dependent on the other—after 30 years the use of energy doubles. After 45 years, by 2050. the use of energy would have trebled from today's rate. If one then turns that into carbon dioxide emissions and goes back to the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, in 2050 we shall still be emitting 50 per cent more carbon dioxide than at present, even if we have achieved his 50 per cent reduction. That is why there is a serious question: although we may be leading the field, are we ahead of the game? That is simply an observation which will not require a response from the Minister: it simply states where we are.
I wish to pick up another point from the evidence which I found fascinating. The noble Lords, Lord Livsey of Talgarth and Lord Hunt of Chesterton, touched on it. I refer to the first group to give evidence from the town of Woking. It is remarkable how often one finds good, competent and original work occurring in British local government. With the lifetime of experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, and others in this Chamber, we should not be surprised at that but this aspect is something quite special. They are trying to change the way in which Woking works as regards energy requirements.
Two or three matters arise from that. Perhaps the Minister will answer the question that the Secretary of State was unable to answer when she was giving evidence. Clearly she had not been advised on what Woking was doing. Have the Government any
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thoughts about relaxing the regulatory constrictions which hold back Woking's development? Two specific areas caused problems. Because of the system, it is generating a lot of its own electricity. It is limited on the number of customers it can supply on a private wire and believes that that is an unreasonable constraint. It is also limited in the amount of power it is able to export to the grid. One of the things that has to happen to the grid is that it must become a two-way system. It will increasingly have to take electricity in at the consumer level, as well as feeding it out at consumer level. It is interesting that Woking has run into that practical barrier. I found it infinitely depressing to find that, in getting backing for its projects, the council found central government capital controls a constraint. That is normal in local government, so I will not pay particular attention to it. The council had to get a partner from Denmark to make the system work and set up a public/private company.
The other interesting statistic that has profound implications—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, made the point—is the fact that 70 per cent of domestic energy requirements are thermal. There is lot of work with combined heat and power, but the business of heat recovery is fundamental to energy efficiency. It is not just a matter of condensing boilers and heat recovery in our households; a great amount of waste heat goes out from power stations and major industrial installations. There is no way of tapping it and feeding it into the communities whose main demand is for heat. That is something that needs to be thought about in the context of planning and decisions on how we organise our society.
Reality suggests that power stations should be built in the suburbs, not 50 miles out of a town. They should be built where the energy can be recovered and used. The same applies to incineration plants, and one can turn them into combined heat and power units. However, the facility must be there to feed heat into the domestic market. That is something that we have signally failed to do.
It is a good report. It deals with the wider European issues, particularly emissions trading, which is a welcome system. I do not think that we have done our case any credit by seeking to expand the initial applications that we propose to give industry. That said, the reductions have to be put in place. The targets are statutory and enforceable, and the penalties are considerable.
I am not sure how the penalties work, and I wonder whether the Minister could spend a little time explaining how they work. I see in the report that the penalty is 40 per tonne of carbon dioxide by which the target is exceeded until 2007 and 100 per tonne until 2012. Those are considerable sums, considering the major plants included in the scheme. Do the fines and penalties apply at plant level? Do they apply to a plant that has missed its target even if the nation concerned has met its target because others have exceeded theirs?

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Presumably, the penalties will be paid net of trading. It is notable that the Dutch are already in the market, buying emissions trading certificates while they are cheap. At the moment, there is no real market. One might congratulate the Dutch on their initiative, but that seems to circumvent the purposes for which the scheme was set up. They may be able to sell the certificates that they have bought at a considerable profit later on. That remains to be seen, but that is a form of government intervention that I would not wish to see. I would welcome a hit more explanation from the Minister of how it will work, if he has time.
That is quite enough. I look forward to a full reply from the Minister.
9.45 p.m.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, my thanks to everyone who has taken part in this debate, and especially to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and his committee, for producing such an effective report on which everyone has positively commented, and added to. It is a good example of how effectively our sub-committees can address important problems and engage a wide range of people in the process.
A lot of very interesting points were made, and I pay particular compliment to my noble friend Lord Hawarth who gave a graphic description of the reality of the effects of climate change in a very lonely place, and in a few words. The same effect is happening across the planet, but it is in situations like that which brings it home to most people.
As usual, he chose an iconoclastic approach by not being entirely uncontroversial in his speech in mentioning the issue of nuclear power. I may disagree with him slightly, although possibly not quite as much as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. I have no doubt that we shall debate nuclear power on another occasion, so I do not intend to go into that in too much detail today.
The noble Lord, Lord Renton, made it clear in his report that he accepts there is a real problem with climate change and that much of it is induced by anthropogenic activity. By and large that is accepted by the vast majority of world scientists and everybody who spoke in the debate, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, who provided a welcome and healthy note of dissent from the Liberal Democrat Benches, including from his own colleagues.
I would never in any scientific assessment say that we are absolutely sure that we are right. It is right that such doubts should be expressed. Nevertheless, in view of the evidence and scientific opinion in general, an attitude that is taken by certain governments and organisations of denial or complacency is a much higher and potentially devastating risk than the risk of exaggeration by some scientists and others who espouse the climate change cause.
It is that issue that the committee grappled with, and which we must grapple with as a government and a society. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, said that things have moved on since the report was completed, and some further evidence both at the Exeter
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conference and from Oxford University suggests that the position might be worse, especially in relation to the level of carbon in the atmosphere.
On the other hand, we saw the very welcome bringing into legal effect of the Kyoto Protocol. While it is true that it will deliver global emissions cuts of only about 2 per cent by 2012, which is a minuscule step in achieving the objectives that we shall need to achieve by the middle of this century, it is a faltering, but nevertheless very impressive step that 141 countries have now ratified the treaty and we have the beginnings of a globally agreed strategy and mechanisms to tackle climate change.
It is regrettable that some other countries are not on board, but even that can be rectified in subsequent developments on the international scale, which I shall come to in a moment.
The committee focused on the European climate change programme, and rightly commends the EU's work in this area. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also referred to the support of the Kyoto mechanism and the linking directive, which enables credits from the Kyoto projects to he used in the EU emissions trading scheme itself. Although the overall implementation projects will not come into play under the UN rules until 2008, we are already registering projects under the clean development mechanisms. I note the views of the report on that.
Many people have complimented and supported the Government for making climate change a central priority for our presidency of the EU. We will clearly build on some effective work by the EU. I agree entirely that this demonstrates the importance of acting at EU level, which is now in the world leadership in this process. We, as the presidency in the latter half of this year, and the presidency of the GS for this year, will he in a leadership role.
That is coincidental to the legal coming into effect of the Kyoto agreement, but it also gives an opportunity to focus on what happens beyond Kyoto. Negotiations on the future framework will begin at the first conference of the parties, which Canada has announced it will host in Montreal in November. The UK presidency will play an important role negotiating for the EU at that point.
The committee noted a number of points and gaps where the policy is not yet fully developed, or even identified, to bring certain pressures of growth of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions into a system of control. In particular, it focused on transport. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, my noble friend Lady Billingham, and the noble Lord, Lord Lewis, referred to the importance of getting a grip on the transport situation.
Clearly, as regards road transport, the technology is almost there to make a shift in the replacement fleets. It is not just a question of moving, in the short term, possibly to an increased use of biofuels and hybrid cars and, in the longer term, to hydrogen-based vehicles, it is also a question of use and management on surface transport.

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The same applies to aviation even more substantially because it is by far the fastest-growing sector in terms of carbon emissions. For international competitive reasons, it was excluded from the Kyoto Protocol. It is important that aviation is brought within the mechanisms that we are developing. That is why the Government, while not rejecting fiscal measures in relation to aviation, think that the most effective way to bring aviation into the system would be for it to join the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. We are strongly of the opinion that we ought, with all its difficulties, bring it into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in its second phase in 2008.
Buildings were also emphasised as an area needing more activity. Clearly, in their construction, operation and what is done within them, buildings create about 50 per cent of the UK's carbon emissions. The Government have engaged in a number of measures in the UK to improve energy efficiency in households, including taxation measures such as reduced VAT, support for micro-CHP and developments in building regulations. We need to do more to ensure that new build and, in particular, new large developments are built to the highest sustainable building standards. We also need to improve on the refurbishment of all existing buildings, particularly the very old buildings to which the noble Lord, Lord Lewis, referred. The energy efficiency action programme that the Government announced is addressing that. The fuel poverty programme, while addressing fuel poverty, will also improve the installation of a lot of old buildings. So work is being done, but much more needs to be done in that respect.
Clearly, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme is a very important development, which builds, in part, on the experience that the UK had in its UK emissions scheme. Some of its techniques have been passed on to the member states in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
There has been much focus here and in the press on the UK's own cap and its national allocation plan. I should like to make two or three points about that. First, the UK's revised position on that is probably one of the most robust targets of any of the member states. Although I do no want to be too cynical about it, it is probably true that if the commission and others had seen those figures first, they would have jumped up in the air with glee that the UK could be so ambitious in the targets that it set.
The reason why the UK found it necessary to change those figures is not as is usually reported because of industry pressure, but because the underlying statistics were updated and showed that we were at a higher level of carbon burning in earlier years than we had previously estimated. That means that we will have to look at the figures again to see what is achievable within the timescale of the allocation plan.
As has been said, when the facts change I change my position, what do you do? In fact, compared with the underlying reality, the new figures are a tougher target than the original ones. A bigger cut is required in the
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business as usual figures than in the original ones. We are still in discussion with the Commission as to how we will deal with that and we have made clear that if the Commission insists on the original figures, regrettably some of the cut will have to come in relation to the generators. But we believe that the new UK position is viable and could make a significant contribution to the achievement of the ambitions of the European scheme—certainly, at least as big a contribution as other countries are likely to make.
I do not therefore think that the Government have much to apologise for on that front. Indeed, it is another aspect of our leadership role and of our pitching our ambitions way beyond the Kyoto target to our own 20 per cent domestic target, which is difficult and we are not yet on the trajectory to meet it. However, it remains our ambition and we recognise that further measures will be needed in order for us to achieve that target.
If we look a little outside Europe. because some noble Lords referred to the situation outside Europe, it is important that Europe uses its influence to bring other nations in—as we did very effectively with the EU pressure on Russia and support for Russia, which allowed us to get Russia to ratify the protocol and therefore trigger the legal effects of that. We are also operating in other areas including China and India and those countries that will require some support from Europe, particularly from the UK, both in terms of individual projects—to which the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, referred, and I will let her have an update of where we are on those—and in terms of new technology.
We referred earlier today in response to a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, to carbon capture and carbon storage. If the vast increase in coal-fired power stations in China is to take place, it ought to take place with the cleanest possible coal technology. That involves not only clean coal at the front end but also carbon capture and storage at the back end. That will make a huge difference to what is currently seen as a catastrophic increase in the Chinese contribution to carbon emissions.
That technology transfer is very important at that level. It is also very important at smaller levels, going down to what the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, referred to—parabolic cookers which use virtually no energy and smaller scale community, individual and small-business-based forms of cheap and low carbon energy in Africa and the rest of the developing world.
The Chinese were certainly not hostile to this issue. It is wrong to say that the Chinese are not party to Kyoto: they are signatories. However, the targets in Kyoto all relate to developing countries. We must recognise, as high consumers of carbon and producers of greenhouse gases, it is our responsibility to give a lead. Unless we can deliver that, the Chinas, Indias, Brazils and South Africas will not come on board. They are all interested in this area and are keen to benefit from our technology and experience of market systems such as the trading scheme.

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Of course, the big omission from this is the United States. I am sure that almost everyone in this Chamber regrets that the United States has not participated positively in this matter—such expressions have been made in this debate and in the report. However, all is not lost in the United States. The 10 north-eastern states are currently considering setting up their own emissions trading scheme, which may become compatible with the European scheme. The majority of those states have Republican governors. Of course, in California, where there is a well-known Republican governor, there is a great drive for setting targets for car emissions and for the development of the hydrogen economy.
Corporations within America are also taking a lead, which is not always reported in the European papers. DuPont for example has saved itself over $2 billion and also greatly increased its energy efficiency in the past few years. Other large-scale energy users in the United States are doing the same. Both at the corporate and the political level in America, which regrettably has not yet seriously influenced the Washington administration, there are dramatic moves towards addressing this problem as well.
Of course the underlying American position is that technology will eventually solve these problems. Yes, it will, but only if we give the space and the framework for technology to develop.
We need to support the technology directly and to create the climate where that technology is seen as the future market and the future return both for the owners of businesses and for a better society. It is all forms of technology, many of which have been referred to here. That includes immediately available technologies, such as biomass and many forms of CHP, solar energy, wind power—which is not always popular in this House. though I suspect it might be more popular with the subset of the House here tonight.
That also includes consideration of the future of nuclear power. I would certainly support continuing to invest in the research and development that is needed if we were to see the need for nuclear power. That technology—and a diverse range of technology—is absolutely essential if we are to drive for a low-carbon economy. That includes massive ways of investing in large-scale generation of electricity on a low-carbon basis, through tidal and wind power. That also includes relatively small-scale operations, such as community heating, as in the borough of Woking, which has been cited as a good example by the noble Lord. Lord Dixon-Smith, and others. Indeed, the inhibitions that the development of Woking-type systems have are being addressed by the Government in discussion with Ofgem and the regulators.
There are a whole range of things that need to be done and need to be brought together. None of them will be delivered as fast as is necessary unless we also convince public opinion. Here I greatly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, in introducing this debate, and with the reference of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone—we need to change public opinion.
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Part of that is the responsibility of government. The Government have announced a new £12 million package of funding in order to address this system. We have already seen recently on television both the Energy Saving Trust and the Carbon Trust using the mass media to try and raise consciousness and change behaviour. Past efforts at this have raised awareness, but hardly changed behaviour. We need to perform the trick of changing that higher awareness to changes in individual—personal, household and commercial—behaviour.
If we do that, we can begin to offset the effects of carbon emissions and of climate change on our planet and on our way of life. But we need that support from the general public, not only here and not only in America, but also in China, India and Brazil. To answer the point of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, yes, we are, here in the UK and in the EU, leading the field on this issue, but we are not vet ahead of the game.
The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, do the Government have a view on what the timescale for these carbon emission permits will be?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, that is a complicated question. Do you mean under the European Emissions Trading Scheme?
The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, I mean national allocations.
Lord Whitty: Yes, my Lords. We were aiming that that would take place this year, but of course the discussion about the allocation ceiling—for us arid for certain other member states—puts that back a bit. It would probably be sensible if I set out the totality of the immediate position on that, including what I have said about the cap itself, and write to the noble Duke and, indeed, other noble Lords.
10.4 p.m.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry: My Lords, obviously the Minister's reply has opened many interesting doors, all of which we might wish to walk through at some time, but it is not going to be tonight. I thank all those who have taken part in this debate, on all sides of the House and on all the Front Benches, for their extremely interesting and wide-ranging contributions.
I particularly enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Haworth. He said that, in his personal experience of mountaineering, he could see the glaciers melting around him, which was a vivid reminder to him of climate change. I also enjoyed those remarks because my father-in-law, a native of Ayrshire, also climbed all the Scottish Munros, and my wife climbed a lot of them with him. We were not married then, but she told me that she found that the best moment at which to have a good discussion with her father was when they were getting near the top of a Scottish Munro. He was singularly eloquent and thoughtful at that moment.

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I know that my colleagues in Sub-Committee D who have been here tonight and who spoke, including the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, and the noble Lords, Lord Lewis, Lord Hunt and Lord Livsey, will have appreciated the comments made by so many noble Lords about the conciseness of our report. We tried to put over complicated problems relatively simply, and we thank noble Lords very much for that.
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However, I know that the climate in this House can change very quickly, and I do not want it to go from enjoyment to exhaustion. So I shall end there, with a reminder of the last words of the noble Lord. Lord Lewis, that this is a problem that will not go away. We shall certainly go back to it.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at six minutes past ten o'clock.