Sitting of 27 January 2004

Preamble
The House met at half-past Eleven o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
  The Secretary of State was asked—
  FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

    European Constitution
    Mr. Andrew Rosindell: What discussions he has had with the Slovak Government about prospects for a referendum in Slovakia on a European constitution; and if he will make a statement. [150687]
    Mr. Peter Viggers: What discussions he has had with the Slovene Government about prospects for a referendum in Slovenia on a proposed European constitution; And if he will make a statement. [150696]
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw): I spoke to the Foreign Ministers of Slovakia and Slovenia yesterday. They confirmed to me that neither country is planning referendums on a European Union constitution.
    Mr. Rosindell: I thank the Foreign Secretary for his reply, but does he agree that although an overwhelming majority of people in Slovakia voted to join the European Union, that does not automatically mean that they are willing to accept the imposition of a European constitution? If other countries in Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Spain, Denmark, Luxembourg and Portugal, are willing to have a referendum, does he not believe that all EU countries should give their people the right to make the decision?
    Mr. Straw: I am sorry that I gave the hon. Gentleman a disappointing answer, but a fundamental rule of cross-examination is that before one asks a question, it is a good idea to anticipate the answer. I offer that as friendly advice.
    The position of Slovakia and Slovenia is consistent with that of the United Kingdom. A Labour Government gave the country a referendum on whether we should stay in or leave the EU, but, like Slovakia and Slovenia and the majority of other EU member states, we do not judge that any likely content of the
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    constitutional treaty will affect the fundamental relationship between our country and the European Union.
    Mr. Viggers: The constitutional treaty completely changes the position. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the serpent of the European constitution is not dead but merely sleeping? Does he genuinely believe that his explanation is sufficient reason to deny public opinion, which is clearly in favour of a referendum?
    Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman asked me about Slovenia and obviously thought of it as a paradigm for the United Kingdom. Slovenia had a referendum on whether to join the EU, as we did in 1975.
    Ann Winterton: How did you vote?
    Mr. Straw: I voted no.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady should not shout across the Floor.
    Ann Winterton: I apologise, Mr. Speaker.
    Mr. Straw: Slovenia, like us, has judged that there are no grounds for a referendum, given what we believe will be in the draft constitutional treaty.
    Keith Vaz: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that, rather than being obsessed with the European constitution, as Conservative Members are, the Government and people of Slovenia and Slovakia look forward to EU enlargement on 1 May and the continued agenda for reform? How many points for reform that were mentioned in the letter sent by the Prime Minister and Chancellor Schröder on 25 February 2002 has the European Commission ticked off?
    Mr. Straw: I thank my hon. Friend for that question; I shall write to him. I have a lot of information and statistics in my head, but I do not have an immediate answer to that specific question.
    Mr. John Bercow: Disgraceful!
    Mr. Straw: I accept the disapproval of the House. However, my hon. Friend is right to say that as well as discussing the important draft constitutional treaty, we need to ensure that the EU delivers on its core functions of greater prosperity, better growth, better investment and, where it can be agreed, a more effective common foreign policy.

    EU Presidency
    Mr. Mark Hendrick: What discussions his Department has had with the Irish Government about their plans for the EU presidency. [150688]
    The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane): My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary discussed Ireland's presidency plans with the Irish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister during his trip to Dublin on 16

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    December. He also spoke by telephone to the Irish Foreign Minister on 20 January. He and I met the Irish Foreign Minister and the Minister with responsibility for Europe yesterday in Brussels. Our officials are involved in frequent dialogue with their Irish counterparts.
    Mr. Hendrick: What will the Irish presidency do to pursue the Lisbon agenda to turn Europe into the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010? Does my hon. Friend agree that there has been little progress on that since the Lisbon summit?
    Mr. MacShane: Ireland is an exemplar nation for the rest of Europe in economic growth, job creation and social partnership. It is committed to making economic growth a key issue for its presidency. That was discussed here yesterday at the productivity summit, which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer chaired. The Government attach the highest importance to it.
    Mr. Richard Spring: Does the Minister agree with the Irish Prime Minister—in contrast with what the Prime Minister has indicated—that any understandings on so-called red lines reached in December are now irrelevant?
    Mr. MacShane: The Taoiseach gave a very interesting interview to Le Monde on 31 December, in which he underlined Ireland's determination to maintain unanimity in regard to, for instance, tax, which is an important British consideration. I think that, in general, Ireland will be found to be very much in line with the thinking of Britain and other European member states that unanimity in a number of key areas is an essential part of progress on the European constitutional treaty issue.
    Donald Anderson: Does my hon. Friend agree that no country is better fitted to take forward the constitution than Ireland, not least because the Taoiseach himself is extremely skilled in negotiation owing to his ministerial experience? Is there not some urgency, in that the longer the debates on the constitution last, the more difficult it will be to maintain the major advances that our Government made in December?
    Mr. MacShane: I wish the Taoiseach well in his consultations with the 24 other European Union states to establish whether we can make progress. I agree with my right hon. Friend that the Taoiseach's European and national experience as an extremely skilled negotiator makes him perhaps the best of our Heads of Government to assume the presidency at this crucial time of discussions on the future of Europe.
    John Barrett: One of the major failings of the European Union is the ineffectiveness of its overseas development aid. Does the Minister agree that all possible encouragement should be given to the Irish Government to deal with this important issue during their presidency?
    Mr. MacShane: The hon. Gentleman is quite right. That was one of the themes discussed yesterday at the
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    European General Affairs and External Relations Council, when the Government were represented by the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas). I think we have worked not just with the Irish Government but with a range of Irish non-Governmental and other organisations, including those connected with churches, to make development and a more sensible European approach to it a core issue for the presidency.
    Andrew Mackinlayrose—
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. Mackinlay.
    Andrew Mackinlay: I just wanted the windows opened, Mr. Speaker.

    Iran
    Sir Teddy Taylor: If he will make a statement on relations with Iran. [150689]
    David Taylor: What assessment he has made of the progress of political reform in Iran; and if he will make a statement. [150697]
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw): Our policy towards Iran is one of constructive engagement. Through it, we seek to support reform in Iran while maintaining a robust dialogue on matters of concern, including human rights and religious freedom.
    Following my visit to Teheran in late October with my French and German counterparts, and the agreement that we secured on nuclear matters, Iran signed the additional protocol to the non-proliferation treaty on 19 December. A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency's director general will be considered by its board of governors in mid-March.
    Sir Teddy Taylor: I thank the Foreign Secretary for that excellent reply. Does he agree that as Iran has a strong basic democracy and had the courage to oppose Saddam Hussein at a time when Britain and America were allied to him, that great country has a unique role to play in resolving the problems of the middle east, and should have the full support and understanding of Her Majesty's Government?
    Mr. Straw: I have great affection for Iran. It is of huge strategic importance. I have visited Teheran five times, and I met President Khatami and Foreign Minister Kharrazi on Wednesday in Davos. I maintain a constant dialogue with them. There are, however, important issues on which we look to Iran to make progress. One, self-evidently, is the issue of its nuclear programmes: I look forward to full compliance with IAEA requirements. Another is the establishment of a full democracy. Yesterday, the European Union Foreign Ministers Council issued a call for free and fair elections, without restrictions on candidates, in next month's elections for the Majlis, the Iranian Parliament.
    David Taylor: This week sees the second anniversary of President Bush's "axis of evil" address, in which he justified Iran's inclusion on the basis of the unelected few who were repressing the Iranian people's hopes for freedom. Against the bleak backdrop of that speech, does the Foreign Secretary agree that we should redouble diplomatic efforts to secure free and fair elections next month, to win the battle for democracy and thus to avoid the catastrophe that might otherwise await Iran in the light of the policies of the hair-trigger and bellicose American Administration?
    Mr. Straw: It has hardly been a secret that our approach to relationships with Iran has been different from that of the United States. My predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), re-established full diplomatic relations; and I am pleased to say that as a result of various international pressures, including the co-ordination of work done by my French and German counterparts and myself early in the summer, we have been able to secure agreement from Iran in respect of areas in which it was plainly not complying with its own obligations under the nonproliferation treaty.
    As I said to the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir Teddy Taylor), we look to Iran to co-operate fully with the IAEA and the resolution passed by its board of governors on 26 November.
    Hugh Robertson: How close is the relationship between hardliners in Iran and the militant Shi'a in the south of Iraq? Does the Foreign Secretary agree that any tie-up between the two would pose a grave threat to western interests in the area?
    Mr. Straw: Iran is a complex country, and there are many strands of opinion. It is, to interesting extent, democratic, but a high degree of power continues to be exercised by an unelected religious authority, and there is a constant tension between the two elements. That said, our analysis so far suggests that the Iranian Government as a whole have played a constructive role in respect of Iraq, as they have in respect of Afghanistan; but obviously, we continue to monitor the situation.
    Mr. Stephen McCabe: How concerned is my right hon. Friend about the recent reported comment of the Palestinian Prime Minister that elements in the Iranian regime seek to undermine his leadership, and are directly responsible for the sponsoring of terrorism in Israel? What impact will that have on our relations with Iran?
    Mr. Straw: I have not read those remarks, but a constant item for discussion with the Iranians is our concern about their support for rejectionist terrorist groups working in Israel and the occupied territories, and causing mayhem and death on a significant scale. Another is our profound concern that the Iranians' so-called policy on Israel's right to exist—or, in this case, not to exist—runs counter to United Nations resolutions, and to any prospect of a serious peace process getting on the move there. That is an important issue. We believe that Iran needs to resolve it, and cease to support the terrorists.

    EU Enlargement
    Miss Anne McIntosh: If he will make a statement on progress towards enlargement of the European Union on 1 May. [150690]
    The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane): The EU is on track for a successful and historic enlargement on 1 May, setting the seal on the end of the cold war divisions in Europe.
    Miss McIntosh: The Minister will know of my close interest in enlargement. I particularly welcome the application of central and eastern European countries to return to the bosom of the European family. Will the Minister explain why Britain is one of the few countries not to allow the normal seven-year transition period for the free movement of workers? Does he think that the national health service, in particular, will be able to cope with a potentially big influx from 1 May? Would it not have been wiser to wait for the full seven years?
    Mr. MacShane: That was fully discussed when we debated the European Union (Accessions) Bill. On Second Reading, the House voted by 490 votes to zero to support the policy—a Second Reading vote that I hope might be matched later today. It is, however, important for us to send a clear signal of welcome.
    After 1 May, all EU citizens—the 350 million existing citizens and the 70-odd million who are coming in—will be able to travel freely and live where they want. In Britain, where we have a labour shortage, we have said that Polish nurses, Hungarian doctors and Czech plumbers are welcome to come and find a job, if they can find one. Countries with high unemployment, such as Germany and France, have adopted a different policy. Our policy is good and the European Union (Accessions) Act 1994 had the full backing of the Conservative party at all stages of its passage through the House. I hope that we maintain that united front of welcome to our new friends from east Europe.
    Andrew Mackinlay: May I take this "window of opportunity" to ask the Minister whether he will announce a package of celebrations for 1 May? Long after we have debated today's issues, the lasting legacy of this Government will be the widening of Europe and the admission of millions of people who have been subjugated for the best part of 200 years into the club of free nations. We should celebrate that achievement, and I look to the Government to proclaim it.
    Mr. MacShane: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's dedication, especially to building links between this House and the British people, and the Polish Sejm and the Polish people. I have celebrated May day on and off all my life, but I especially look forward to this one. Many events are planned: some will contain high pomp, while I hope that others will be popular and full of fun. I invite all hon. Members to take part and will make sure that my hon. Friend has an invitation to each and every event.
    Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory: Since Britain is the only large member state to permit an unrestricted number of people from those countries to come and live here and seek work from 1 May, do the Government stand by their earlier estimate that only between 5,000 and 13,000 people a year will avail themselves of that right? If so, why have they confirmed that they are taking out advertisements in the Czech Republic to persuade the Romana Gypsy population not to take up the right to live and seek work in this country, which they would otherwise be permitted to do after 1 May?
    Mr. MacShane: The right hon. Gentleman should recall that the Government have reserved powers that could be used to introduce controls on applications for work. He makes a mistake when he refers to "Romana" or Romanian people entering Britain. Of course, the only famous Romanian family that we know about is that of the Conservative party leader, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). If rancid hate campaigns such as those that the tabloid press have recently been conducting against our east European friends had been applied in the 1930s, the position would be very different. Let me repeat again for the sake of clarity that every single European citizen will be able to travel freely in France, Germany and anywhere else. The United Kingdom and a number of other successful economies in Europe say that plumbers, doctors, teachers, cleaners and agricultural workers from the enlargement countries are welcome. The House voted unanimously in favour of that policy, and I hope that we do not follow some of the hate campaigns against our new partners and friends from eastern Europe.
    Mr. Bill Tynan: I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that enlargement offers wonderful opportunities to the UK and all other countries involved in it. However, I have a note of caution: I hope that discussion is taking place between Papadopoulos in southern Cyprus and Denktash in northern Cyprus. What progress is being made to ensure that Cyprus becomes a member of the European Union as a united island?
    Mr. MacShane: At the beginning of the year, I paid a three-day visit to Turkey to discuss that issue with the Turkish Government, and I found a distinct new mood. Mr. Erdogan, the Prime Minister, presented his thinking to the UN Secretary-General on Sunday in Davos, and he will discuss the matter with President Bush tomorrow—I know that the American Administration are taking a keen interest in a settlement in Cyprus.
    We urge all sides to seize the opportunity in the next two and a half months to allow a united Cyprus to enter the EU. Turkey has made remarkable strides given where she was even a year ago. It is now up to the Greek Cypriot Government to indicate clearly and unequivocally that they will start negotiations; that they will seek to finish them by 1 May; and that they will put the results to a referendum—as should the Turkish Cypriots in northern Cyprus. The Government's
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    message is that speed and urgency are necessary and that both sides should take this historic opportunity to allow a united Cyprus to enter a united European Union.
    Ann Winterton: Notwithstanding previous replies given by the Minister or the vote on the principle of widening membership of the European Union, the British taxpayer is extremely concerned that numbers of people may come to this country and use our services without having contributed to them. I ask again why the Government did not apply for the derogation that would have prevented that situation.
    Mr. MacShane: Anyone who comes to this country may be eligible for benefits after a certain period of employment—we call it the habitual residence test—like any British citizen who travels anywhere in the European Union. I repeat that we welcome the fact that our new friends and partners—the citizens of Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and the others—will be able to come here. If they can find work, they will make a positive contribution to our economy. I hope that the Conservative party, which took a principled position on the issue of enlargement and voted consistently and unanimously with all the other parties in the House to send that positive message to our friends, will not now resile from that and start using the language of hate against our friends from eastern Europe that we have seen in some of the tabloid papers recently.

    Israel
    Mr. Michael Connarty: What assessment he has made of restrictions announced by the Government of Israel on the right to travel to Palestinian-controlled areas from Israel. [150692]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): We are seriously concerned by the possible impact of new regulations on media, humanitarian organisations and civil society groups operating in the occupied territories. We have raised our concerns with the Israeli Government directly, and are exploring with our EU partners further avenues for doing so.
    Mr. Connarty: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. It is clear that the Israeli state is trying to obliterate any sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority. I was an observer, on behalf of the EU, at the elections for the Palestinian Authority and it was clear that in certain areas there was, theoretically, a Palestinian state in the making. Will my hon. Friend step up the pressure—together with the EU, which has raised the matter already—to have the restrictions withdrawn? They apply not only to voluntary organisations but to EU officials and, I presume, representatives of this Government and Parliament.
    Mr. Rammell: I fully understand my hon. Friend's strength of feeling on the issue. Baroness Symons, who made a three-day visit to the occupied territories last week, has been lobbying the Israeli Government vigorously on the issue and spoke to the Israeli ambassador yesterday evening. It is worth noting that

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    our understanding at present is that the new regulations are not being applied on the ground at Ben Gurion airport. However, it is worrying that such restrictions exist and that information leaflets are being distributed. We shall certainly continue strongly to urge Israel to lift the restrictions as soon as possible.
    Mr. Gary Streeter: While I understand the Israelis' need for security against the daily threat of suicide bombings, the controversial fence, 63 checkpoints and 34 road gates bring intolerable disruption to the lives of many Palestinians going about their ordinary, peaceful business. Does the Minister accept that one possible benefit of the Israeli Government completing their security partition—as they are determined to do—would be the removal of many, if not all, of the roadblocks on the east side of the partition? Will he urge them to do that as quickly as possible?
    Mr. Rammell: We understand the legitimate security concerns of the Israeli state, but the issue is that several of those measures are not only a concern in themselves but are counterproductive to the interests of the Israeli Government and their people. The fence is a retrograde step; it is unlawfully positioned on the occupied territory and it threatens the two-state solution. I urge all parties on both sides to go back to the negotiating table and to implement the roadmap, which is the only feasible way forward in the circumstances.
    Richard Burden: I welcome what my hon. Friend has said about the new movement restrictions. It is important that British Members of Parliament are able to see the situation over there for themselves. For example, over Christmas I met a disabled Palestinian boy who has to take a £20-a-day taxi ride to reach his special school and his father cannot go with him because he does not have the right permit. Does my hon. Friend agree that such movement restrictions are not only unlawful but immoral? No country, including Israel, should stop parliamentarians from this country or anywhere else seeing matters for themselves and making the appropriate representations.
    Mr. Rammell: I fully understand the views that my hon. Friend puts forward. There is a genuine concern that the restrictions will have serious consequences for those who attempt to work in or report from the occupied territories. More importantly, the restrictions could seriously disrupt the supply of essential emergency provisions for the most vulnerable people in the Palestinian territories. We will continue to put forward those views vigorously.
    Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: Given the high priority attached by President Bush and the Prime Minister to the middle east peace process in the run up to the conflict in Iraq, what precisely is now being done to draw the two sides together to attempt to reach a real solution?
    Mr. Rammell: We continue to urge both parties to go back to the table and to fulfil their responsibilities in terms of phase one of the road map. If the road map process did not exist, we would have to invent a similar
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    process. It is the only way forward, and the US, the UK and the other Quartet partners continue to make that argument forcibly.
    Mr. Parmjit Dhanda: As someone who was fortunate enough to see the area at close quarters last week, I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware of the situation in Kalkilya, a Palestinian town that is now surrounded by the security fence, barbed wire and a concrete wall. There is only one entrance and exit, and even that was closed for part of last week. Will my hon. Friend make representations to ensure that that does not happen again?
    Mr. Rammell: We shall certainly continue to make representations to the Israeli Government on the issue of the fence. My hon. Friend's description underlines the serious impact that the fence has on those Palestinian people who are cut off from their livelihoods. It is an issue of real concern and, as I said earlier, it is counterproductive to the interests of the Israeli Government and people, because a settlement cannot be reached while opinion remains so polarised and divided.

    Zimbabwe
    Norman Lamb: If he will make a statement on Zimbabwe. [150693]
    Mr Andrew Mackay: If he will make a statement on relations with the Government of Zimbabwe. [150700]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Chris Mullin): The political, economic and humanitarian outlook in Zimbabwe remains bleak. There has been no recent progress in the dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition. The treason trial of the opposition leader has resumed, and the independent press continues to be harassed. Approximately 6 million Zimbabweans will be dependent on international food aid before the next harvest in April.
    Norman Lamb: I thank the Minister. Does he agree that given the dire and worsening humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, the total disregard of the rule of law and the denial of individual rights and liberties, it would be entirely inappropriate for the England and Wales Cricket Board to continue with its tour of Zimbabwe?
    Mr. Mullin: The Government would prefer that the England cricket team did not go to Zimbabwe, but at the end of the day it is up to the cricket board. I understand that it is meeting later this week, and we await the outcome of its deliberations with interest.
    Mr. Mackay: I hope the Minister will excuse me if I have no confidence whatever in Present Mbeki's latest proposals for talks between the Government of Zimbabwe and the Opposition, because he has singularly failed so far. Does that not mean that we have an even greater responsibility? May I just return to sanctions, and specifically the very sharp sanctions that

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    so many people in Zimbabwe want introduced? They would penalise those who are funding the regime in Zimbabwe, but they are not being fully implemented at the moment by us, our European colleagues or our American allies.
    Mr. Mullin: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the EU sanctions come up for renewal towards the end of next month. We are looking for ways to strengthen them, but of course we have to do that in line with the international community. We are discussing with our partners in Europe how we can make them more effective without inflicting greater suffering on the people of Zimbabwe.
    Mr. Tom Clarke: In view of the information made available last week, that during the past year thousands of people in Zimbabwe have died of malnutrition, does my hon. Friend agree that his Department should continue to work with the Department for International Development and the United Nations food programme to ensure that ordinary people do not suffer from the terrible nature of the regime?
    Mr. Mullin: That has been our policy from the outset. We are one of the largest donors of humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe. As I said in my first answer, we estimate that about 6 million Zimbabweans will be dependent on international food aid before the next harvest and we shall be making, as we have done in the past, a major contribution.
    David Winnick: Is not the decision to be made this week by the cricket board much the same as that made, for over a third of a century, about playing in apartheid South Africa? Are not the principles the same? If it was wrong, as Labour MPs argued at the time, for any such cricket tour to take place in apartheid South Africa, how could the proposed tour be justified when the rule of law has been totally destroyed by Mugabe and his fellow gangsters?
    Mr. Mullin: As I made clear in my first answer, the Government would prefer the cricket team not to go, but at the end of the day it is a matter for the cricket board and it must make the decision. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary wrote to the ECB last week, making the Government's position very clear—that it is a decision for the board, at the end of the day.
    Rev. Martin Smyth: When the Minister speaks of the 6 million who may be in danger of malnutrition before the next harvest, is he aware of the pressure on some farmers, who have been told now to sack their workers, pay them redundancy and then re-engage them? When one went to the bank to try to obtain help for those workers, he found that the banks could not help him. Can the Minister give us an assurance that the Mugabe regime will not siphon off the international aid to their supporters and miss the people who really need it?
    Mr. Mullin: The distribution of humanitarian aid is very strictly monitored, but we are well aware that the disastrous policies of the Mugabe Government have
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    collapsed much of the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe. As the hon. Gentleman says, some who have suffered worst are the workers who were employed on the farms of some of the bigger landowners.
    Mr. Michael Ancram: I have heard what the Minister has had to say about the cricket tour, but he knows that Mr. Des Wilson of the cricket board wrote to the Foreign Secretary on 15 January, asking a very simple question,
    "whether in present circumstances the Government believes that such a tour would be wise".
    The board was looking for a clear answer. The Minister described the Foreign Secretary's answer as clear. I will tell the House what the Foreign Secretary said. He described the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe and talked about the sanctions, which we all know are ineffectual. He ended with these words:
    "You may wish to consider whether a high profile England cricket tour at this time is consistent with that approach".
    When will he realise that the ECB is looking not for weasel words, but for clear, unequivocal guidance? Will he now come off the fence and repeat after me these very simple words: not only would this tour be unwise, it would be morally wrong and should be called off?
    Mr. Mullin: This gets increasingly pathetic, if I may say so. We receive rather a lot of letters from the right hon. and learned Gentleman about Zimbabwe, and some of them appear to be written in green ink. Does he write them himself, or is there some teenage scribbler in his office? However, the fact is that the Government have made—[Interruption.] He is quite right; it is a serious issue and I wish Opposition Members would treat it seriously, instead of playing these—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the Minister reply.
    Mr. Mullin: Instead of playing these foolish and pathetic word games.
    My right hon. Friend—[Interruption.] Opposition Members' indignation is entirely synthetic. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary wrote to the cricket board last week. He answered its questions about the situation in Zimbabwe very clearly. We are in close contact with the cricket board, but at the end of the day it is for it to make a decision.
    Incidentally, we are a free country. The Government do not have the power to ban people from going to Zimbabwe, as the Government with whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman was once associated found out when they tried to ban people from going to the Moscow Olympics. His former hon. Friend, Sebastian Coe, went there and won a gold medal.

    Iraq
    Mr. Harry Barnes: What advice he has given to the governing council of Iraq on the setting up and operation of the Iraqi special tribunal for crimes against humanity. [150694]
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw): The statute of the special tribunal was promulgated on 10 December. The United Kingdom provided comments on the draft through the office of the UK special representative for Iraq and the coalition provisional authority's Office of Human Rights and Transitional Justice. Our comments were focused mainly on the application of international law and the scope of the tribunal, but we also raised concerns about the application of the death penalty. We are actively discussing what further assistance we can give to ensure that the tribunal operates to internationally accepted standards.
    Mr. Barnes: Before the Iraqi people can build their own future, they may need to come to terms with the horrors of their past under Saddam Hussein. Is not the special tribunal one of the means by which this can be done within Iraq? How do the occupying forces facilitate such developments in Iraq without being seen to dictate the outcome?
    Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend is entirely right in the first part of his question. As for the second, this must in the end be a decision made initially by the Iraqi governing council, but then, following the transfer of power on, we hope, 30 June, by a sovereign Iraqi transitional authority. It is the role of the coalition provisional authority and, separately, of the United Kingdom to give advice to the Iraqis, but the decision must be theirs. I have every confidence that they ensure that this tribunal operates to high and internationally recognised standards.
    Sir Menzies Campbell: The Foreign Secretary will know that it is not just the terms of the statute that matter but the way in which it is implemented. Will he undertake that Her Majesty's Government will advise those responsible that there should be no hint of revenge in the proceedings of this tribunal; that if it is to enjoy international confidence, it certainly needs a substantial international component in the form of judges or even prosecutors; and that all are entitled to a fair trial irrespective of the heinous nature of the accusations made against them? In particular, will he maintain the Government's opposition to any question of the imposition of the death penalty?
    Mr. Straw: On the final point, yes we will, and that is the agreed policy of this Parliament. However, I also have to say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that in the end that is a matter for decision by the Iraqi sovereign Government and there are a great many countries around the world, including the United States and the People's Republic of China, with whom we have good relations but who operate, against our opinion, the death penalty.
    Of course, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right about the need for high standards to be maintained and operated by this tribunal. Together with the advice we have already given about the drafting of the statute, we are, as I said in my first answer, actively considering what further operational assistance we can give to the running of the tribunal.
    Ann Clwyd: What will my right hon. Friend say first, to allay the fears of those who say that the Iraqi judiciary is corrupt; and secondly, to allay the fears of those who say that the Iraqis have no experience of dealing with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide?
    Mr. Straw: The adjective that comes to my mind about many people in the Iraqi judiciary is how brave they are. Quite a number of Iraqi judges and jurists have already been assassinated for seeking to uphold the rule of law in Iraq. One striking thing about Iraq, which my hon. Friend knows better than I, is that notwithstanding the terror of Saddam there are some basic principles of human rights and the application of the rule of law that are deeper than the memory of Saddam, and I have every confidence that the judiciary will uphold those.
    Mr. Michael Ancram: The Foreign Secretary referred to the dangers and risks to judges. Has he, or will he discuss with the governing council the security requirements that will be necessary for a tribunal of the sort that we are discussing to operate effectively? Given the briefings from Downing street over the weekend that the Prime Minister still believes that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is he comfortable with the prospect of a tribunal being held to try Saddam Hussein with such weapons possibly in the sort of hands that led the Prime Minister on 18 March last year even to describe them as a real and present danger to Britain and its national security? Does he agree with the Prime Minister on that, or does he take the view of the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, that it is now an open question whether Iraq had any stocks of WMD? They cannot both be right, so who does the right hon. Gentleman back?
    Mr. Straw: On this occasion, I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on his ingenuity in working into a question about the Iraqi special tribunal a question about other, if related, matters. As to the protection and security of Iraqi courts, it will form part of the wider questions that the new transitional national assembly and the Government formed under it will have to address when, as we hope, they take sovereignty after 30 June.

    South/Central America
    Mr. Mark Simmonds: If he will make a statement on the current state of the United Kingdom relationships with south and central American countries. [150695]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): We enjoy good relations with all the countries in south and central America, and we value those relationships. We are pursuing a strategy to promote and support reform in Latin America, partly operating in conjunction with Spain.
    Mr. Simmonds: I thank the Minister for that answer, but is he aware of the enormous concern of many Latin

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    and central American countries, which believe that the Government are disinterested and disengaged in their continent? The closure last year of several embassies, the transfer of much-needed aid from that area to Iraq and the potential further downgrading of diplomatic ties can only further harm not only vital economic and trade relationships, but essential cultural and social links. What will the Minister do to address that deteriorating position?
    Mr. Rammell: I refute the accusation that the position is deteriorating. In the 14 months that I have held this ministerial portfolio, I have regularly visited Latin America. I gained the sense that the people there feel that we are engaged with them, particularly in respect of the Latin American reform programme that we are pressing forward. This Government, net of post closures, have increased their diplomatic representation by a figure of 10 since 1997, but we have to respond to changing strategic international priorities, especially regarding international terrorism and international crime. We are not abandoning those countries, which are continuing to be represented, albeit in different forms. A balance has to be struck. In the face of the proposed public expenditure cuts that Conservative Members advocate—
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    Hugh Bayley: Does my hon. Friend agree with the Secretary of State for International Development that our aid should be used to help poor people in poor countries—in other words, that poverty alleviation rather than the pursuit of foreign policy aims should be the goal? Would it not be a terrible step backwards if we were to reinvent the Pergau dam, which the Conservatives used to divert moneys from the aid budget to support an arms deal in pursuit of foreign policy?
    Mr. Rammell: There are certainly no proposals to reinvent the legislative framework within which the Pergau dam issue was pursued, but my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head in respect of aid to Latin America. The vast majority of countries there are middle-income countries, and the key challenge that they have to face is the extraordinary disparity between the very rich and the very poor. I know that many of them are seeking to deal with that.
    Sir Nicholas Winterton: I am sure that the Minister would agree that Chile has been a good friend to the UK in times of crisis, especially in respect of trade, and is an extremely well administered country in an area where that is often not the order of the day. What policies do the Government have to increase trade and contact with that important country in south America?
    Mr. Rammell: I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of Chile. When I visited the country just before Christmas, I was struck by the extraordinary degree of economic success that is being pursued there—under, I have to say, a left-of-centre Government.

    European Constitution
    Mr. Julian Brazier: What the status is of the United Kingdom's red lines in the current intergovernmental conference on the proposed constitution for Europe. [150698]
    The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane): My right hon. Friend said to the House immediately after the European Council in December last year that
    "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed … If it"—
    the intergovernmental conference—
    "proceeds on the basis outlined by Prime Minister Berlusconi, tax, EU finance, social security and criminal law will all remain in the province of the nation state".—[Official Report, 15 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1320.]
    Mr. Brazier: Will the Minister reconsider his rather complacent answer in the light of the draft provisions on asylum, which refer to the
    "uniform status of asylum for nationals of third countries, valid throughout the Union"
    and to an absence of internal border controls, even for foreigners and non-EU citizens? Does the Minister really want our asylum policy handed over to the European Union? Will he reconsider his answer?
    Mr. MacShane: I hesitate to acknowledge that my answer was complacent, given that I was quoting the Prime Minister. As the hon. Gentleman knows full well, our border controls will remain in place, but it is important to co-operate on the question of asylum. The singular achievement of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and his opposite number, the French Interior Minister Mr. Sarkozy, in shutting down Sangatte is exactly the way forward. This side of the House believes in co-operation with our European partners, as opposed to the policy of isolation and detaching Britain from the EU which is pursued by the Conservatives.
    Dr. Vincent Cable: I welcome the Government's reassurance that taxation and social security remain areas of national competence, but can the Minister confirm that energy resources and their taxation are red-line matters?
    Mr. MacShane: Had the hon. Gentleman been present at debates in the House or the IGC Standing Committee, he would have heard the assurances that he seeks. Hon. Members from both sides of the House raised those issues and they were dealt with successfully. As of the middle of December, satisfaction was expressed that the energy issues had been adequately dealt with.

    Iran
    Julie Morgan: What discussions he has had with the European Union about the barring of reformist candidates by the Council of Guardians in Iran. [150699]
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw): Iran was discussed at yesterday's Foreign Ministers Council in Brussels,

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    which I attended. A unanimous statement was issued, calling for free and fair elections in Iran. I also discussed the matter with President Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi when I met them both in Davos last Wednesday.
    Julie Morgan: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is essential for the bar on reformist candidates to be lifted before the February elections to ensure that they are free and fair? What can he do to aid the reformists in Iran?
    Mr. Straw: In the end, the issue has to be resolved internally within Iran. We can do what we did yesterday at the Foreign Ministers Council of the EU, and I hope that a message will go out from both sides of the House today to those who are holding back progress in Iran. The message is that Iran will not be able to meet the expectations of its people unless it becomes a properly functioning democracy, which is not possible while the Guardian Council continues to prohibit a wide range of perfectly decent but reformist candidates.
    Mr. John Bercow: In his discussions with the Iranian President, did the right hon. Gentleman inquire, as he could legitimately have done, why among the 3,500 candidates disbarred from standing for election was the President's own brother?
    Mr. Straw: We took that as read, but it demonstrates the gulf that exists between the majority of elected parliamentarians and office holders, including President Khatami, and the unelected individuals running the entirely non-democratic Guardian Council.

    Iraq
    Ian Lucas: What recent discussions he has had with representatives of the United Nations concerning its future role in Iraq. [150701]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): We are in regular discussion with representatives of the United Nations, at ministerial and official level, concerning its future involvement in the reconstruction of Iraq. On 19 January, there was a meeting between the Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UN, and members of the Iraqi governing council, at which Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK special representative to Iraq, was present. We continue to support the UN having a vital role in the reconstruction of Iraq.
    Ian Lucas: I thank the Minister for his reply, but does he agree that to achieve the sort of legitimacy that will create the environment for free and fair elections, the United Nations must have a leading role within Iraq? Only then can elections take place and the Iraqi people have some confidence in the governing structures.
    Mr. Rammell: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that the involvement of the United Nations will increase confidence among the Iraqi people. He will be aware of the meeting on 19 January, during, which there was a request to the UN for assistance in clarifying the
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    political process leading to the transition to the Iraqi authority on 1 July. As of this morning, the Secretary-General announced that he is sending a team of experts in electoral processes to Iraq to provide an independent assessment of the best means of developing a representative transitional process, which is something that we certainly welcome.
    Ms Julia Drown: Would the United Nations be able to help with the current difficulties that are being raised in Iraq over the possible involvement of sharia law there? Islam does not need to conflict with women's rights, but there are real concerns that sharia law might be introduced. Could the United Nations help to ensure that women's rights will be protected in any future administration arrangement in Iraq?
    Mr. Rammell: I fully understand my hon. Friend's concern, but there is undoubtedly a difficult balance to be struck between upholding our view of what is right and respecting the fact that the Iraqi people must arrive at a settlement that is appropriate and in their interest. She will be aware that different kinds of sharia law exist throughout the world. We will continue to maintain our strong concerns about the most extreme interpretation of sharia law, especially with regard to the interests of women.

    Roma Citizens
    Bob Russell: What representations he has made in the past three months to applicant nations to the European Union on the human rights of their Roma citizens. [150702]
    The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane): As I have already informed the hon. Gentleman, we regularly raise the importance of equal rights for Roma and other minority groups with EU accession and candidate countries.
    Bob Russell: I thank the Minister for that answer and his earlier answer about what I can describe only as the irresponsible, hysterical and misleading media reports about Roma, especially those from the Slovak and Czech Republics. Will he give an assurance that he is satisfied that the Governments of those two countries, either by deliberate act or omission, are encouraging Roma citizens to depart from the Slovak and Czech Republics?
    Mr. MacShane: No. There is no doubt that the issue is sensitive, despite the rather unpleasant language used in some of our press. I had the pleasure of visiting a DFID-sponsored project in Bulgaria recently where Roma children were helped by a bilingual kindergarten—the project was dear to our embassy staff there. Our embassies in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have been active, and we have tried to support projects to defend the housing rights of Roma people and, for example, to train the Czech police to deal with minorities. That shows the experience that we can bring.
    The problem is real, but I urge the House not to use language about Roma or any other minority such as that which shamed Britain in the 1930s when it was

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    applied to Jews. There are Roma communities all over the existing European Union, and we must work with the applicant and candidate countries so that the Roma people may find their way inside the countries of which they are citizens.
    Mr. Andrew Miller: Will my hon. Friend specifically congratulate our friends in the Hungarian Government on the work that they have undertaken on poverty alleviation among their Roma communities?
    Mr. MacShane: There has been an awakening of conscience about the issue which was frozen during the Communist era. The European Union maintains that respect for minority rights is an absolute condition of being a EU member state. We have helped in Budapest with a programme on Roma rights that was paid for by the Foreign Office called "Training the Trainers". There is also a Foreign Office-financed programme on Roma school desegregation, so we are not only talking about the matter, but actively trying to help. Again, I make an appeal that Roma minority rights must be respected. We must reject language such as that used in one tabloid paper when it referred to a "murderous mob" waiting to come here. Such unacceptable language is unworthy of British journalism and the House should have nothing to do with it.

    Iraq
    Mr. Desmond Swayne: What discussions he has had with his United States counterpart regarding the possibility of early elections in Iraq. [150703]
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw): I have frequent and regular conversations with the United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, at which all aspects of policy relating to Iraq are discussed, including how best to establish a transitional Government.
    Mr. Swayne: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that Ayatollah Sistani is held in great respect by the vast majority of the Shi'a community and that he has hitherto been supportive of the coalition? Does he agree that the last thing that we want is to find ourselves at odds with the principal beneficiaries of our liberation?
    Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct to say that Ayatollah Ali Sistani is held in the highest possible respect by the vast majority of Shi'a. Of course we try to work collaboratively with him and his representatives, but we obviously must also take account of the interests of the Sunni and the Kurds.

Power Supply (Compensation for Erroneous Transfer)
12.30 pm
David Cairns: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require electricity and gas suppliers to compensate customers whose supplier is erroneously transferred; and for connected purposes.
May I begin by making the joke that is customary on these occasions and say how pleased I am that so many hon. Members have turned out for this important debate? I thank in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) for doing a terrific job in getting such a good turnout for me—those e-mails certainly worked.
Up and down the country, tens of thousands of people have had their gas or electricity switched from one company to another either without their consent, or after strong-arm or blatantly dishonest sales techniques on the doorstep. It is extraordinary that that ongoing outrage does not generate the sort of media coverage or political interest that certain other matters do. Perhaps that is because many of the worst victims of that mis-selling are among our elderly constituents, or it might be because most people simply do not pay that much attention to the details of their gas and electricity bills.
By means of comparison, I ask hon. Members to reflect for a moment on how they would feel if, for example, they opened their front door one day to find that during the night, Nissan had come along, taken away their Ford and left a Nissan in its place? How would they feel if they were to switch on their mobile phone to find that T-Mobile had switched their Orange service to them without so much as a by-your-leave? Even worse, how would my hon. Friends feel if they woke up one morning to discover that the Liberal Democrats had switched their party membership to that party without their consent? Parliament would be recalled! However, thousands of our constituents endure such distressing experiences each month.
Energy-watch, the consumer watchdog, is currently recording around 500 monthly complaints. However, hon. Members should be under no illusion, because that is just the tip of the iceberg: the problem is far greater. I am sure that all Members have heard about the matter in their constituency surgeries. One case was that of an 80-year-old lady in Greenock who specifically told a nice young woman on her doorstep that she was perfectly happy with her electricity and that she did not want to switch. "Not to worry," she was told. "Can you just sign this bit of paper telling my boss that I've explained the benefits to you, that's all?" My constituent signed—she was trying to be helpful—and, needless to say, her supply was switched.
That case is at the shallow end of the pool. At the extremes, we have heard of cases of forged signatures, salespeople entering homes under completely false premises and people being told blatant lies about potential benefits. Some companies have even been caught forging the signatures of the recently dead so that the electricity supply could be changed before a new owner moved into the home.
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Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I fully accept that the deregulation of the market has by and large been good for the consumer, and that changing one's supplier can deliver lower fuel bills. I also accept that people generally do not go out to shop for a new gas or electricity supplier; they need to have it sold to them. The industry maintains that the most effective way to communicate the advantages of switching supplier is by doorstep selling. Well, that may be so, but the industry needs to understand that aggressive—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to some fairness. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] All those who say, "Hear, hear" should be quiet. That is the best thing.
David Cairns: I am indebted to you, Mr. Speaker.
The industry needs to understand that aggressive and fraudulent behaviour by its doorstep agents is completely unacceptable and must be stamped out. There have been recent welcome moves to end to such practices. An industry-wide code of conduct has been adopted, which aims to
"provide a clear framework within which responsible companies will conduct their face to face activities".
A great deal of credit for that important development must go to my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), who, as the Minister for Energy and Construction, did so much to force the industry to face up to its obligations.
In addition, the regulator, Ofgem, has begun to flex its muscles and has levied some massive fines on the worst miscreants. Most recently, London Electricity has had to stump up a fine of £2 million. To its credit, the company has responded with some reforms to its selling practices. That is a very welcome move. However, the money generated from such fines currently goes directly into the Consolidated Fund. Let me say right away that I have every confidence in the ability of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to spend that money wisely—not least because he is sitting two rows in front of me—but let me also say that I have every confidence in the ability of the Great British consumer to spend their own money wisely too.
My Bill would ensure that those who suffer the distress, inconvenience and uncertainty of having their supply switched should be the ones who benefit from the fines. Therefore, I propose that anyone who has their power supply switched against their wishes or without their knowledge should be awarded £100 in compensation. It is only right that those who suffer are the ones who gain. They would be up-front fines, and they would not be deferred or related to the ability to pay.
Obviously, in the compensation culture in which we live, companies will need safeguards to protect them against frivolous claims. An easy way to do that would be to require a positive confirmation by the customer that they wished to switch supplier. So an individual would simply have to confirm to the company—perhaps a week or so after the doorstep agreement—over the phone or in writing, that they wished to move to it. At a stroke, that would protect companies from frivolous claims. It would ensure that contracts signed under false premises were not acted upon and give peace of mind to

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the consumer that the final decision is up to them, and them alone. Good companies that practise respectable selling techniques would have absolutely nothing to fear from that. In fact, the opposite is true. I believe that they would welcome the opportunity to show that not all gas and electricity suppliers resort to hoodwinking elderly citizens on their own doorsteps to win new business.
It is vital that we bolster customer confidence in the domestic energy market, and to do so, I propose one further reform. Energywatch currently compiles a league table of complaints against each company. I would compel every power company to print that table on every quarterly bill that they send to every customer. I, for one, want to be reassured that my power supplier is not guilty of inflicting distress upon some of the most vulnerable and elderly members of our society.
I will draw my remarks to a close, as I understand that there may be other items of interest on the agenda today, but it remains, quite simply, a disgrace that thousands of people have had, and continue to have, their power supply switched against their will or without their consent. It is a stain on the industry that needs to be removed. If the industry cannot or will not do that, the House must take a stand. My Bill would force companies that cause distress to make amends. It would compensate those who have been affected. It would offer protection for business against frivolous claims. It would allow all consumers to monitor the behaviour of their own supplier. It would bolster confidence in the domestic energy market, and I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by David Cairns, Kevin Brennan, Mrs. Irene Adams, Mrs. Lorna Fitzsimons, Mr. Mark Lazarowicz, Laura Moffatt, Mr. Russell Brown, Siobhain McDonagh, Kali Mountford, Rob Marris and Sandra Osborne.

POWER SUPPLY (COMPENSATION FOR ERRONEOUS TRANSFER)
David Cairns accordingly presented a Bill to require electricity and gas suppliers to compensate customers whose supplier is erroneously transferred; and for connected purpose: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 18 June, and to be printed [Bill 45].

Points of Order
12.41 pm
Mr. Simon Thomas: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I refer to the report that has been delivered to 10 Downing street, as shown on our television screens. If that report—we Back Benchers will know about it tomorrow—says that the Prime Minister, any Minister or any hon. Member has in some way misled the House or lied, I seek your ruling on how we can respond to that report, either in debate or on a statement—
Mr. Speaker: Order. There is a saying in Scotland, "The cares of tomorrow are for a day still to come."
Pete Wishart: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, I received a letter from No. 10 that states that only two Opposition parties will have early access to the Hutton report. The Conservatives and the Liberals will see the Hutton report some six hours before publication, yet that privilege will not be extended to all the parties in the House. What can you do to ensure equality for all Opposition parties in the House?
Mr. Speaker: I tell the hon. Gentleman that the leader of his party wrote to me, and I responded. Perhaps he should get in touch with the leader of his party.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On any day, let alone this day, is there anything whatever that you can do to protect us from bogus points of order by creeps? [Laughter.]
Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman's point of order was bogus in a sense.

Orders of the Day

  Higher Education Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Mr. Speaker: I inform the House that it is not a day for Back Benchers to come to the Chair to ask where they are in the list, and also on the question of applications to speak that there is a limit of eight minutes on Back-Bench speeches. I also inform the House that I have not selected either of the reasoned amendments on the Order Paper.
  The Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Charles Clarke): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  A year ago, the Government published the White Paper on the future of higher education. It set out a wide range of proposals and, today, we reach the point of decision on those proposals. Our decision today in the House—the vote of every single Member of Parliament of every party—will determine the future of our universities and so determine the future ability of this country to prosper in the increasingly competitive global economy. In that world economy, the existence of the high-level intellectual and skilled talents of all our people will be decisive. Our success in that economy will determine the economic strength of this country. That was the reason for the White Paper, that is the reason for the Bill; and, despite all the entertainment of all the different forms of political speculation, we should all acknowledge today that the outcome of the debate will be real and substantial for this country's universities and for the future welfare of this country.
  Let me begin with some aspects of the Bill that have received less attention but are nevertheless important. The Bill will create an arts and humanities research council—the first new research council since 1994 and a major step forward for the arts and humanities community, giving those disciplines their proper status. Some might call that measure the revenge of the mediaeval historians.
  The Bill gives statutory underpinning to the office of the independent adjudicator, and thus provides a common and transparent means of redress for student complaints, in place of the often archaic arrangements with so-called visitors and other mechanisms—more appropriate to the novels of C.P. Snow than to modern university life.
  The Bill transfers to the National Assembly for Wales student support for students living in Wales, wherever they study in the United Kingdom, from the academic year 2006–07 onwards, together with higher education fee levels for higher education institutions in Wales. That will enable the National Assembly for Wales to create a consistent structure of policy to govern higher education in Wales.
  The Bill will simplify current arrangements for applications for higher education by enabling relevant information about student support to be shared between relevant institutions.
  The Bill has three aspects of even greater substance, which I shall now address in turn: first, increasing levels of funding for universities; secondly, the establishment of an Office for Fair Access; and, thirdly, the creation of a fairer system of student support.
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  I shall deal first with university funding, and begin with the facts. Since 1980, academic salaries have increased by an average of only 20 per cent. compared with a rise in average earnings of 60 per cent. and of average graduate earnings by still more. The average salary of a professor or head of department is well below comparable salaries in both the public and the private sectors. At the same time, university student-staff ratios have worsened, from 10:1 in 1983 to 17:1 in 2001. Similar stories can be told in respect of books, equipment and other essentials for academic excellence. Between 1989 and 1997 under the Conservatives, planned public funding per student fell in real terms by more than 36 per cent. By comparison, the United States spends 2.3 per cent of its gross domestic product on tertiary education institutions, whereas we spend just 1.1 per cent.
  We need to take account of the fact that many of the countries with which we need to compete in the global economy have significantly higher levels of participation in higher education than we do here. I cite Australia with 65 per cent., Finland with 72 per cent., Netherlands with 54 per cent., Norway with 62 per cent., Sweden with 69 per cent., and so on. The OECD average of 47 per cent is higher than the figure here. I put it to the House as strongly as I can that it is our bounden duty to do what we can to address that state of affairs. We cannot simply let it continue.
  Through general public spending, we have already made great steps. From 1997–98 to 2005–06, we have increased publicy planned spending on universities by a total of about £2.9 billion. For the current spending period of 2002–03 to 2005–06, we have increased unit funding by 7 per cent. in real terms. In the same period, capital funding for teaching and learning is increasing by 185 per cent., and research capital funding by 77 per cent.
  We have given and will continue to give substantial resources, particularly to modern universities, to widen access. For example, Manchester Metropolitan has received £7.5 million; London Metropolitan, £7.5 million; Leeds Metropolitan, £5.9 million; and so on. Continued access is important and we shall continue to address funding by that route.
  Although the lion's share of spending will always come from the public purse—at least under Labour, though not I think under the Conservatives—that will not be enough. We cannot continue to rely on the taxpayer alone to solve these matters. The reason is clear. There are and always will be strongly competing demands for public resources. The annual cost of a nursery place for a three to four-year-old is about £1,775, or about £3,550 for a four-year-old. The annual cost of a secondary pupil is about £4,000; £4,200 for a further education student; and about £5,000 for a university student. Those are striking figures, and I contend that any Secretary of State looking at those figures is bound to say that if extra resources are available for investment, it should be directed at the under-fives and primary level. That is the area where we must target resources.
  Mr. David Rendel: If the Secretary of State really feels that such resources as are available to the public sector should be spent in areas other than higher education, surely what will happen in the near

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  future is that the extra funding that is coming in from tuition fees will be removed by the Government from the Government grant and spent on the things that the Government apparently think should receive a higher priority.
  Mr. Charles Clarke: I have said on many occasions that is simply not the case. Extra resources are needed for the reasons that I have given. The Liberal Democrats have difficulty allocating the product of their 50 per cent. tax rate in so many different ways. What would they do for under-fives education? What would they do for primary education? They would have no resources left. If the Liberal Democrats were honest, they would face up to that fact and say that more resources are needed.
  Simon Hughes: In that case, will the Secretary of State tell the House what has fundamentally changed since three years ago, when the Labour party said that it would not introduce top-up fees? What makes universities' funding needs so significantly different? What makes the unacceptable level of tens of thousands of pounds of debt so much more acceptable to a Labour Government now?
  Mr. Clarke: The short answer to that question is the very rapid pace of change in the global economy and the impact of a large number of universities working very directly in that context.
  I conclude from those facts that it is fair to ask students, when they have graduated, to make a contribution to the cost of the university education from which they benefit. For example, I believe that that is just because the labour force survey suggests that individuals with higher education qualifications currently earn on average about 50 per cent. more than those without. I expect the fee regime that the Bill will put in place to provide at least £1 billion a year to universities—a significant sum and one that would allow an increase of about 30 per cent. in the funding of teachers.
  I put it to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, but particularly to Conservative Members that one of the most significant implications of the Bill being defeated today would be that universities would be stripped of the resources that they need to address the challenges of the future. Moreover, if the Conservative proposals were ever to be put in place, all the income currently generated from fees would be lost—as well as that from any increase. One Tory Front Bencher is reported as saying. "We want all universities to be largely financially independent and some completely financially independent." That can only mean the complete removal of public financial support, which would utterly destroy our universities and take hundreds of thousands of student places away from our universities and from people who aspire to go to university.
  Llew Smith: Will the Secretary of State explain how it is that we can always find moneys to go to war—including the £7 billion to go to war with Iraq-and that we—can always find moneys
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  to spend on nuclear weapons of mass destruction but we cannot find money to provide and support a system of free higher education?
  Mr. Clarke: I am of the view that the national security of this country is important and that international threats such as terrorism must be dealt with and addressed. I acknowledge that takes resources, but it is a false choice to suggest that there is a straight trade-off in the way that my hon. Friend implies.
  I believe that our proposals for university funding meet the needs of the country. I report with pride the verdict of the OECD, published earlier this week, that the UK graduate contribution scheme could be a role model for other countries in Europe that may also have to consider the adequacy of their higher education systems in a modern knowledge-driven economy.
  Mr. Graham Allen: From the studies made by my right hon. Friend, what conclusions has he reached in respect of the reduction in the number of students that would occur if the Conservative proposals were adopted? Does my right hon. Friend agree with Universities UK that 410,000 fewer students would attend university?
  Mr. Clarke: I do accept those estimates. The fundamental fact that the Conservatives have not been prepared to face up to is that the result of their policies would be a massive reduction in numbers, certainly of the order of hundreds of thousands of students. The political strategy set out by the Leader of the Opposition is to stop the Bill today to create space to introduce that policy.
  I said that the first main feature of the Bill deals with the need to get increased resources for universities. The second major feature is the establishment of the Office for Fair Access.
  Lynne Jones: Universities UK says that there is a shortfall of £2 billion a year in higher education funding. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the measures will raise £950 million for the universities, but will cost the Treasury £1 billion in terms of up-front money for loans. How will the measures fund the universities in future? How will they solve the funding crisis in the long term?
  Mr. Clarke: We are putting more money in from the taxpayer and the Exchequer, courtesy of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, and will continue to do so. We are putting more money in through the fee regime, which we have described. I acknowledge, and have always done so, that that does not completely fill the gap that my hon. Friend spoke about. But the question that she must answer is how taking out an income stream enables us to reach any solution whatever? If she decides to vote against the Bill tonight, she must face the consequences—there will not be any more money for universities beyond what we have already allocated to meet those needs.
  Mr. James Paice: On the subject of the money that all the right hon. Gentleman's concessions will cost the taxpayer, he is already on record as saying that that will have to come

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  out of the education budget. Can he tell the House clearly whether or not that money will be taken from money that would otherwise be going in grant in aid to universities?
  Mr. Clarke: Yes I can. No, it will not, as I have told Conservative spokesmen on a number of significant occasions.
  I turn to the Office for Fair Access, which is a significant development in the Bill. We need to be candid about the reality of the situation facing our universities. It remains the case that one in four working-class young people who achieve eight good GCSE passes do not go on to higher education. It remains the case that 19 per cent. of young people from the lower socio-economic groups enter higher education, compared with 50 per cent. of young people from middle and upper groups. That has not changed over the decades. In 1960, 27 per cent. of upper groups went to university, but only 4 per cent. of working-class students. There has been an expansion of numbers in the meantime, but the key issue is the fact that the massive, vicious class differential in our higher education system has remained consistent. We must attack that.
  Mr. Gerald Kaufman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Father Connolly of the Society of African Missions in my constituency wrote to me yesterday? He said:
  "Poor families should not be deprived of the opportunity of a university education. But should they be responsible in financial terms for those who can afford it? The plan put forward by Mr. Blair is one to help everyone. It may not be perfect but it is a step in the right direction."
  Father Connolly is an independent man who knows about poverty in Africa. He said—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I must hear what the African missionary said.
  Mr. Kaufman: Father Connolly said:
  "It is a matter of justice, a principle."
  Mr. Clarke: First, my right hon. Friend is quite correct. Secondly, the hilarity among Opposition Members about poverty and access to higher education has been a characteristic of their conduct in government and opposition. I urge my hon. Friends to take the opportunity provided by the Bill to ensure that the appalling obscenity of the deep class difference that affects people who go to our universities is addressed and attacked. the Office for Fair Access is about.
  David Taylor: Does my right hon. Friend not agree that an access regulator with fewer teeth than a Glasgow granny, as well as a financial package for the working class that is broadly neutral in relation to the present position, are not great incentives if we are to remedy the deplorable position to which he rightly drew attention on working-class participation in higher education, particularly in the Russell group of universities?
  Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend is right. We have discussed the fact that getting high-quality schools for
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  those communities is essential. He is right that we need financial packages such as the education maintenance allowance. He is right that we need a student support package of the kind that we are introducing in the Bill to encourage people from working-class families to go to university. However, above and beyond that, we need an Office for Fair Access with teeth, specifically to address the unacceptable disparity between social classes in applications to our greatest universities. I am not surprised that the Tories laugh, because for the first time in history we have decided to stifle the old approach. It is critical to end that disparity, and we are determined to do so.
  Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: As I understand it, under the proposals that the right hon. Gentleman is putting before the House today, in a few years' time there may be a position in which two people who, having graduated from university, are on exactly the same income but pay different levels of taxation. Where is the justice in that?
  Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is wrong, but I am happy to discuss the matter with him in Committee—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not want the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) to shout at the top of his voice. I do not want him to shout at all.
  Mr. Clarke: The whole purpose of the package is to link repayment to the ability to pay. That is the nature of our proposals, which are an improvement on the current state of affairs.
  Rev. Martin Smyth: I understand universities' need. In Northern Ireland, they have been underfunded by 30 per cent. compared with English universities. However, our universities have a higher proportion of people from lower-paid families who, with others, have written to us because they are concerned about the imposition that the legislation will make on them.
  Mr. Clarke: Our proposals will help universities in Ireland and elsewhere. The hon. Gentleman is right that there are different cultures in Northern Ireland and Scotland concerning universities and their development. There is greater working-class access and participation in some parts of the country, but our proposals will help across the range.
  Turning to our proposals on student support, the first key point is one that Members on both sides of the House must weigh very carefully indeed. Our proposals will eliminate up-front fees, which are currently a clear barrier to people going to university. At the moment, students and their parents must find £1,125 a year, which would increase to £1,200 a year by 2006, just to be able to get access to the campus. There is no doubt whatsoever that those up-front fees are unpopular—[Interruption.] They are unpopular, and they are the precise reason why we rightly decided to review the policy. The Opposition parties should acknowledge the fact that if they vote against the Bill today they will be voting to keep up-front fees. That is their decision. The opinions that they have just expressed are simply

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  crocodile tears. The only way to get rid of up-front fees is to vote for the Bill. Every vote against is a vote to keep up-front fees, and every elector will know it.
  Mr. James Gray: Will the Secretary of State apologise for having brought in upfront fees in the first place?
  Mr. Clarke: I made that point one second ago.
  Mr. George Howarth: Does my right hon. Friend accept that those of us who chose to judge these measures according to whether they made it easier for able working-class kids to go to university are now satisfied that he has addressed that issue fully? Will he go a little further and promise that in any future review, when he looks at the costs and the repayment regimes that will kick in, housing costs will be taken into account?
  Mr. Clarke: Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. The review process that we are describing will take those factors into account.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Clarke: Before I give way, I shall make a little progress.
  The second important aspect of student support is the establishment of a £3,000 package for all students from working-class families going into higher education. In my statement to the House on 8 January I set out a minimum £3,000 support package for students from the poorest backgrounds attending the most expensive courses, which was made up of £2,700 from the Government and a minimum £300 bursary from universities. This £3,000 package will ensure that no student qualifying for the higher education grant will be any worse off as a result of variable fees, and many will be better off.
  Many universities are beginning to develop and announce bursary proposals that go far beyond those minimum requirements. We already have £4,000 bursary packages for a number of universities, such as Imperial college, Cambridge university and Essex university—substantial bursary packages that lead to students getting support of up to £6,700 a year to go to some of our elite universities. That is a significant development.
  I also told the House that I was minded to combine the fee remission and the higher education grant into a single combined grant. Last week I published a discussion paper setting out the details of how making a single up-front cash payment of up to £2,700 from the Government to go with the £300 bursary from the university might work. My officials have been addressing the practical and financial implications of merging the two grants, and I can tell the House that from 2006 we will be offering all students from low-income backgrounds a single grant of up to £2,700. I intend that the detail of that should be discussed in Committee.
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  About 30 per cent. of students will be eligible for the full grant and a further 20 to 25 per cent., where the family income is up to £33,500, will be eligible for partial grant. That will give students real choice about how they manage their finances and will provide more cash up front to support them while they are studying.
  Andy King: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the commitment that he has made to open up access to those from the poorest sections in our society. That is real progress. Some of us have had some difficulties in relation to the variability aspect, and also with the possibility of the poorest students being forced into the poorest universities and the gulf widening. Can my right hon. Friend assure us that the aspect of variability will be looked at in the review?
  Mr. Clarke: I can give my hon. Friend that assurance, as I will describe in a moment.
  Hugh Bayley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that York university is the only one of the top 10 universities in Britain that fully meets the Government's targets on access? The vice-chancellor of York university, Professor Brian Cantor, has written to me to say:
  "Overall we support the Government Bill. It is an acceptable compromise and the best option on offer."
  Does my right hon. Friend recognise that if the grants he is proposing are not brought in—if the Bill is defeated—fewer working-class kids will get to the best universities, like York?
  Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend is correct and I appreciate the support from him and from his vice-chancellor. Again I must make a political point. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Yes, listen to it. This package establishes a £3,000 package for students from working-class families going to university. That is the package that will operate if the Bill is supported today. Those who vote against will be voting against such a package, against grants and against the kind of opportunities for people from working-class families that are so critically important.
  Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that people with wealthy parents will not be affected, because those parents will not allow their children to get into debt and they will pay the fees? Of course, children from the very poorest families will not be affected, because they will get the advantage of the bursaries that the right hon. Gentleman is enlarging upon to try to get a majority for his Bill. It is the ordinary student from the ordinary family who just fails to qualify for that help who will carry the burden of tens of thousands of pounds-worth of debt in the first years after they graduate. Does he seriously expect that that will have no effect at all on the willingness of such people to go in for the more expensive courses in higher education?
  Mr. Clarke: I must say, this is the first time I have known the right hon. and learned Gentleman stand up as Mr. Ordinary. I always thought he was rather exceptional.

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  For the ordinary student, we are removing the up-front fee. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman votes against tonight, he will be voting to keep the up-front fee. For the ordinary student, we are increasing the threshold of repayment after graduation from £10,000 a year to £15,000 a year, which is a direct reduction in the amount per year that all students have to pay. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman votes against the Bill today, he will be voting to keep the threshold at £10,000, rather than £15,000, so the ordinary students in his constituency will find themselves in a far worse position than they otherwise would be.
  Finally, for the ordinary students in his constituency, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman votes for the Bill tonight, he will vote for a 25-year cap so that beyond that time, all debts will be written off. If he votes against, he will be voting to keep that debt going on for ever for the ordinary students in his constituency. So the ordinary students have a lot to gain from the Bill, too.
  Tom Levitt: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for explaining how the level of support will be far higher than the maximum fees that will be charged. Will he confirm for the record that had universities been charging £15,000 or £20,000 a year in fees, there is no way that a similar package of support to cover those fees could have been considered, and it is that anarchy in universities that we legislated against when we said that we were abolishing top-up fees in the past?
  Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend is correct. It is important to acknowledge that, although the Opposition will find that difficult. I shall come to points about variability for the future. Precisely because of the package that we have today, including the Office for Fair Access, major universities in this country, including the university that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) attended when he was young and fancy-free, are able to offer bursaries of £4,000 a year on top of what the state is offering for working-class children from his constituency.
  Ian Lucas: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the recent discussions that have taken place with me and my colleagues. On variability, is it not sensible to weigh the evidence before making the decision in principle to introduce variability? Would not a sensible way forward be to hold a review to investigate the adverse effects of variability before the decision is made in principle? If my right hon. Friend were to give me that assurance, I could undertake to give him my support.
  Mr. Clarke: I shall have a word or two to say about variability in a moment, but I am afraid I cannot entirely meet the generous invitation from my hon. Friend.
  Claire Ward: Does my right hon. Friend agree that as Members go through the Lobby tonight, they need to remember one simple fact: if we agree that universities require more money, either we raise it through general taxation and ask those—the majority—who do not go to university to subsidise to a greater extent those who gain the benefit of a university
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  education, or we ask those who are gaining personally from that university education to make some contribution to that benefit?
  Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend is entirely correct in what she says. That is the choice that is faced, and our proposals are widely recognised as fair, in that students make some contribution when they have graduated to the cost of their education.
  I now turn to variability, which has been a key element in the proposals.
  Mr. Robert Jackson: One of my colleagues has spoken up for middle England. Will the Secretary of State not agree that the interest of middle England in universities is that they should be of good quality, and that is what this Government are taking steps to deliver?
  Mr. Clarke: I am grateful for that comment. At the risk of being invidious, I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, as he has had the courage to face up to the logic of the situation which we are trying to address. He has avoided the blind opportunism that has informed the policies of the Leader of the Opposition and his Front-Bench team, who are not prepared to face the real issues, whereas he is.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Clarke: I am going to make progress on the question of variability. Much concern has been expressed by Labour Members, and, on one or two aspects, by Opposition Members, about the future of variability. People see calls for fees of £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000 a year, and say that although they can accept the £3,000 fee cap, they are concerned that in the future some new regime could be established that could undermine that approach. I want to set out clearly our approach on this matter, which is important.
  The maximum level of tuition fees will be set at £3,000 in real terms. That figure will need the approval of the House in an affirmative resolution on Royal Assent to this Bill. As I said, many colleagues have expressed the fear that this is a prelude to fee levels rising much higher in later years. I assure the House that fees at that level form no part of the Government's agenda, and I can provide a threefold assurance that fee rises on that scale will not happen.
  First, the £3,000 cap in real terms will apply for the whole of the next Parliament, and lest there be any doubt, we shall bring forward an amendment in Committee which ensures that no vote to raise the maximum level of tuition fees over and above inflation can take place until 2010 at the earliest. Secondly, the ability to raise the fee beyond that level will, under clause 24, require an affirmative resolution. I have given previously and repeat this afternoon the undertaking that that debate will take place on the Floor of the House, enabling every Member to participate publicly and openly in the vote. Thirdly, before any vote takes place, there will be a review by an independent commission, reporting to Parliament directly on the impact of the new fee regime three years after implementation.

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  Yesterday, in a written ministerial statement, I set out for discussion the draft scope of that review, and the exact terms of reference will be the subject of discussion in Committee. Clearly, if as a result of the review by the commission significant changes were to be made, legislation might be needed.
  Angela Eagle: I thank my right hon. Friend for the way in which he has listened to those of us who have difficulties with variability and the prospect of a cap that goes up as well as down, and for the way in which he has listened to ways of screwing down that cap for the whole of the next Parliament. Will he confirm that an amendment will be included in the Bill to make certain that that £3,000 level cannot rise without a further resort to primary legislation?
  Mr. Clarke: I can confirm that that is the case. Were there to be a proposal that the fee should rise beyond £3,000 in real terms during the next Parliament, primary legislation would be required to change that. May I say that I respect the way in which my hon. Friend has pursued that discussion?
  Kate Hoey: Perhaps my right hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong, but if we cannot keep our manifesto commitment, how can we commit the next Parliament to something that has happened in this Parliament? We cannot do it.
  Mr. Clarke: We can do it simply by including in the Bill a commitment that no order to raise the fee can be made, so that there can be no change without primary legislation.
  Richard Burden: Clearly, my right hon. Friend is aware that many Members are concerned that the variable element of the fee will be the thin end of wedge the thickness of which we do not yet see. Can he confirm again that if there were proposals to change that situation, primary legislation would be required?
  Mr. Clarke: I can confirm explicitly that if there were a proposal in the next Parliament to make a change in the situation, primary legislation would be required.
  Mr. Michael Connarty: In front of other witnesses, the vice-chancellor of Essex university, who is writing on behalf of UK universities, said to me that he will charge £3,000 for every course, that he wants £5,000 and needs £5,000 now, and that he will be looking for further increases in the future. Is not the Secretary of State setting up a major conflict, with the universities demanding more funding which he has said he will not give them for at least two Parliaments?
  Mr. Clarke: That is not the case. My expectation is that almost all universities will charge around £3,000 for at least one of their courses, and that almost all universities will have courses for which they do not
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  charge £3,000. The variation will vary from university to university, as the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge, and that will be the state of affairs.
  Mr. Quentin Davies: The right hon. Gentleman is coming towards the end of his speech. Is not the most striking aspect of that speech the fact that there has been no sense of apology whatever by the Government for having clearly deceived the British public at the last election about their intentions in this matter?
  Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is well known as an intellectual among Conservative Members. I am therefore slightly surprised that he has not taken the opportunity of his intellect to think more carefully about the future of our universities than Opposition Front Benchers have done.
  A further concern that has been raised throughout the process has been the question of the future of our professions.
  Mrs. Anne Campbell: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the way in which he has conducted negotiations with Back Benchers over the past few weeks. Can he tell me what assessment he has made of the effect on students of the variable fee, and whether some students might be put off going to more expensive universities and taking more expensive courses because of the variability?
  Mr. Clarke: My assessment is that that will not happen. The terms of reference of the commission to which I referred, and which I set out yesterday, include the impact of the new arrangements on students and prospective students—looking in particular at overall levels of application, participation in higher education, choice of institution and course, levels of debt and so on—precisely to test the fear of my hon. Friend and colleagues like her that there might be such an effect. I do not believe that there will be such an effect, but the concern that she expresses is legitimate, and it is right for us to make a serious analysis of it, as I have set out.
  There is an additional question, however, in relation to recruitment to the professions. I set out in our White Paper last year the importance that the Government attach to continuing to attract high-quality recruits to the public sector and the professions. We said that Government would have to consider carefully how best to maintain our success in recruiting able students and graduates to public service. I know that that is a particular concern of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown), because I have discussed it with him. He is concerned that students who do not qualify for the full £3,000 support package should still be able to have, in his words, a gateway into the professions.
  I am commissioning a report next year to examine gateways into the professions, which will look particularly at the position of students who do not qualify for the full £3,000 support package, taking into account the starting points for repayment and the taper. It will examine recruitment of graduates to the public services under the new student finance system.

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  The Government are already spending more than £700 million every year to support the recruitment and retention of teachers, doctors and dentists, nurses, midwives, social workers and other health professionals. Other employers in both the public and private sectors will no doubt want to consider schemes to ensure that they, too, can bring through the graduates they need. Obviously, the proposals of the report will be considered in the context of the next comprehensive spending review so that full account can be taken of the concerns that my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend has expressed throughout the course of this discussion.
  I conclude by saying that this Bill genuinely poses a choice for every Member of this House. Members can vote for the Bill, which provides more resource for universities, an end to up-front fees, a student support package of £3,000 a year for the poorest students, an increase in the threshold at which one repays, and a 25-year cap on the loan being written off. Alternatively, they can decide to vote against it, but if they do so, they should be clear that they will be voting against more money for the universities, voting to keep up-front fees, voting for a system that discriminates against working class communities, voting against grants and voting for higher repayments afterwards. That is the choice facing the House. I commend the Bill to the House.
  1.26 pm
  Mr. Tim Yeo: This is one of the most important debates that we will have during this Parliament, and I very much regret that neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor of the Exchequer intend to remain for it. In view of the disreputable way in which the Government's policy has emerged, it may be that they do not wish to listen to what the Opposition have to say.
  The debate started in extraordinary circumstances. Not only was the publication of the Bill delayed for several weeks, but in the two and a half weeks since it was published, the goalposts have been moved again, most recently this very morning. Late last night, the Secretary of State made a written statement describing the commission that will review the impact of variable tuition fees. This morning, further concessions on the workings of the commission have been made following discussions—from which the Secretary of State was apparently excluded—between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown).
  In his statement, the Secretary of State said:
  "Work to establish baseline data for the review will begin in the 2004–05 academic year."—[Official Report, 26 January 2004; Vol. 417, c. 6WS.]
  If that is when the baseline data begin to be established, how on earth can the commission draw any conclusions about anything in one year's time, as opposed to the three years that the Secretary of State said last night would be needed for its work to be completed? Furthermore, the review is supposed to consider the impact of the new policy, but variable fees do not start until 2006, so what conclusions can the commission draw in 2005? If that is the concession that persuaded
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  the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend to give up his opposition to the Bill, he is not the man he was as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
  Claire Ward: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Yeo: Presently.
  The issues that the Bill tries to address are profoundly important for the future of our universities, which have been underfunded by successive Governments for many years and, as a result, are at risk of losing talent and status. Restoring adequate funding in a fair and sustainable way is one of the most urgent challenges facing the Government.
  Claire Ward rose—
  James Purnell rose—
  Mr. Yeo: I shall give way in a moment.
  The Bill is crucial for students. It will have a deep impact on their lives, not only while they study, but for many years afterwards; and it will affect whether some young men and women who are qualified to go to university feel able to do so.
  James Purnell rose—
  Mr Yeo: The hon Gentleman should not be over eager—I shall give way to him presently.
  What matters about this debate and the vote that follows is not how it leaves the standing of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State or the Labour Government. A more important issue is at stake—how we are to shape higher education and our investment in the human capital of the nation. Unfortunately, it has become clear in the past month that the Bill is deeply flawed. We are opposed to it because it attacks university independence, damages students, and fails to solve the long-term funding needs of universities. It does, however, confirm yet again to the British people that they cannot trust this Government.
  James Purnell: Did the hon. Gentleman, like me, hear the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) say on "Question Time" that under Tory plans fewer people would go to university? How many fewer would it be—100,000, 200,000, 300,000, or perhaps even 400,000?
  Mr. Yeo: I did not have the pleasure of hearing my hon. Friend on "Question Time", but I am delighted to deal with the hon. Gentleman's query. Conservative Members are indeed concerned about the numbers of people going to university. That is why yesterday's written answer by the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education is so relevant. He said, in relation to those pupils who are qualified to go to university by achieving two A-level passes, that one of the main reasons why they do not go is the expected costs involved. That is the evidence from the research that was commissioned by the Government, but, unfortunately they ignored it, because the Bill will raise the costs of going to university for those very pupils who

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  are qualified to go, but are deterred by the costs. The result of the Bill will be to threaten the numbers who go to university in future.
  Let us trace the history of the Government's approach to funding higher education.[Interruption.] I am not surprised that Labour Members do not want to hear this part. Let me remind them of what the Prime Minister said during the 1997 general election campaign:
  "Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education".
  One year later, the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 introduced tuition fees for the first time. In 2001, the Labour general election manifesto said:
  "We will not introduce top-up fees and have legislated to prevent them".
  On 22 January 2003, the Government published their White Paper, which broke all those promises.
  Claire Ward: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Yeo: I shall give way presently.
  A couple of weeks ago, on 14 January, the Prime Minister spoke to the Institute of Public Policy Research about his new policy of top-up fees. He said:
  "These changes are imperative for Britain's future".
  He went on to say:
  "They are in tune with Labour values"
  and that they
  "are a prime example of the modern path to social justice".
  That is quite a shift from the election manifesto that promised that those same changes would never be made. I doubt whether the Prime Minister's words will be much help to Labour Members of Parliament when they are on the doorsteps seeking re-election and trying to explain to their voters why they went back on their word. It is no surprise that many people inside the Labour party resent being accused of betrayal when they refuse to break their election pledges.
  Mr. James Plaskitt: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how many vice-chancellors support his party's stance?
  Mr. Yeo: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on reading out the Whips' hand-out.
  Hon. Members: Answer.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The House listened with respect to the Secretary of State, and it should do the same for the spokesman for the Opposition.
  Mr. Yeo: Of course, many vice-chancellors—
  Claire Ward: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Yeo: I shall deal first with the intervention made by the hon. Lady's colleague.
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  Many vice-chancellors want the Bill to be given a Second Reading today, because they know that it will unlock the door to top-up fees not of £3,000 but of £6,000, £10,000 or £15,000. I shall quote one of the many vice-chancellors who have made this point. Richard Sykes of Imperial college has said:
  "I think this is a good start but it can't stay at £3,000 if we really are going to have world class universities in this country".
  The vice-chancellors want the Bill because they want fees—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Hon. Members who are seeking to catch the eye of the hon. Gentleman who is speaking must not remain standing for any length of time if it is obvious that he is not going to give way. We cannot have Members standing up all over the Chamber.
  Mr. Yeo: Let me remind the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt) that, for every vice-chancellor who supports the Bill, there are thousands of students at his or her university who oppose it. Thousands of members of staff in higher education also oppose it, including 111 in the Secretary of State's own constituency who wrote to the Eastern Daily Press last Friday to say so. I wish the hon. Gentleman luck on the doorstep when he explains to voters that his reason for breaking his promises to them was that he was so impressed by an advertisement placed in The Guardian by the vice-chancellors. I would prefer to be in the position of the Conservative candidate who will oppose him, who will be able to say that we listened to the thousands of students and staff, and that that is why we are keeping our promises.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Yeo: I shall give way in a moment.
  Before I examine the Higher Education Bill in more detail. I want to dispose of one of the Secretary of State's more bizarre assertions, namely that there is no plan B. The number of changes that he has made to his own policy in the two months since the Queen's Speech shows that, far from there being no plan B, the Government are already on about plan F. Last night, with the announcement of the independent review, they finally admitted that there were indeed alternatives to their own policy. They have finally conceded that the principle of variability is up for grabs. At least, that is what they have told their own rebels; we shall find out in due course whether they have said the same thing to the universities. I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward).
  Hon. Members: Hooray!
  Claire Ward: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I know that he has a rather burdensome work load, being shadow Secretary of State for Health and Education. Has the extent of his portfolio meant that he has been unable to formulate an alternative policy on these issues? So far, I have not heard any alternative proposals. I have heard his opposition, but I have no idea what his policy is.
  Mr. Yeo: Well, that was a pretty pathetic effort from someone who is on the Government's payroll. Let me

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  remind the hon. Lady that it is the Government's Higher Education Bill that we are debating today. I certainly look forward to debating with her and other hon. Members the Conservative policy on higher education in the Second Reading debate of the higher education Bill that the next Conservative Government will introduce early in the next Parliament. The big difference between that Bill and this one will be that—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that I shall not have to keep getting to my feet. There is a great deal of interest in this very important matter, not only in the Chamber but in the country outside, and hon. Members should be aware that the nation is watching not only the debate but their behaviour in the House of Commons this afternoon. I shall intervene if I have to, but I hope that I do not have to do so again.
  Mr. Yeo: The big difference between this Bill and the one that will be introduced by the next Conservative Government is that ours will honour the pledges in our manifesto. That is in contrast to the Bill that we are debating today, which breaks the pledges in the Labour manifesto.
  Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman is quite right to criticise the Labour party, as many others in the country have done, for saying at the general election that it would do one thing and now doing something that takes it in the opposite direction. On the specific issue of top-up fees, can he give the House a pledge today that, if elected at the next election, his party would neither support nor introduce standard top-up fees or variable top-up fees during the first Parliament when it is in government?
  Mr. Yeo: Yes, I can.
  I turn now to the detail of the Bill. It creates a new regulatory structure—[Interruption.]Do Labour Members want to hear about the Bill or not? It creates a new regulatory structure which removes, for the first time, the freedom of universities to decide which students they should admit. It imposes huge new burdens on the vast majority of students, which, in many cases, will affect their families too. Let us be clear: we still do not know how much, if any, of the money that students will pay in top-up fees will represent a net increase in funding for universities.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Yeo: I shall give way in a moment.
  If fees average £2,500 a year, about £1 billion will be paid to universities by students in top-up fees. Of that £1 billion, at least 10 per cent. will have to be paid out by the universities in bursaries to students from poorer families. The Secretary of State would like us to believe that that will leave about £900 million in the hands of the universities. However, the Bill and all the last-minute changes that the Government have announced to try to bolster their support will also impose costs, including £635 million a year to cover the cost of subsidising the new loans. Another £450 million a year will be required for student grants, along with £30 million a year to cover the cost of writing off loans that have not been repaid
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  within 25 years. Those costs exceed £1.1 billion, although it is unclear whether the further announcements made in the Secretary of State's speech today have added still further to that total.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Yeo: In a moment. I have not finished this point yet.
  On 15 January, the Secretary of State told the House that those costs would be met from within the existing higher education budget. If he wants to tell us that that is not the case, and that extra money will be available, now is the moment for him to do so. The House, the universities and the nation will see his refusal to deny that point. If he sticks by what he told the House, universities will find the cash that they thought they had been promised as hard to lay hands on as weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert.
  Michael Driscoll, the chairman of the group of mainstream universities and vice-chancellor of Middlesex university, warned in The Times Higher Educational Supplement the day after the Bill was published:
  "The devil will be in the detail. The government duped us last time by taking the amount we gained in fees straight out of the teaching grant."
  The Government did indeed dupe them last time. Last year, funding per student was less in real terms than it was in 1997–98, the year in which tuition fees were introduced. All the income from tuition fees has been clawed back by the Treasury. Whether universities receive a penny of extra money as a result of this Bill and all the other announcements still depends entirely on whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer agrees to increase the total spending limit of the Department for Education and Skills. That is something that he has conspicuously refused to say that he will do. If he were here now, we could ask him about that ourselves. His absence from the House, like his refusal to be a sponsor of the Bill, does not bode well for the universities. Of course, one reason why he may be so reluctant to cough up the cash is that he can see just what a disastrous deal that would be for the taxpayer if he did so.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Yeo: I will give way in a moment. If enough extra money is given to the Department for Education and Skills to cover all the new costs that the policy will impose, for every —1 received by the universities the Chancellor would have to sting taxpayers for £1.20. Let me remind the House that all those calculations were done before account was taken of the extra £1 billion a year that the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates will be required to fund the costs of meeting the Prime Minister's arbitrary target of sending half of young people to university.
  Mr. Clive Soley: We really have to try, but I am grateful for small mercies. The hon. Gentleman is talking about the finances, so may I put a question to him? This is the answer that my party and this Parliament want to hear

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  from the Conservative party. Do the Conservatives intend to cap the number of people who can go to university, regardless of what qualifications they have, or are they saying that they will pay all the money that he says is needed through the taxpayer? We need an answer. What is the cap? If there is no cap, where will the money come from?
  Mr. Yeo:: It is not our intention to cap the number of people going to university. As I have just pointed out at some length, Government policy—through the Bill and the associated announcements—does not contribute a single penny either to meeting the costs of increasing the number of students or even to addressing the shortfall that universities say they suffer from. In fact, it is under Labour that we have seen a fall in funding per student—
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There is little point in Members standing to seek to intervene when the Member addressing the House is still responding to a previous intervention.
  Mr. Yeo: I am not surprised that Labour Members are reluctant to hear these facts, because they expose the flaws at the very heart of Government policy. They expose more clearly than we have been able to achieve until this morning the extent to which the Government have misled universities. They have tried to persuade vice-chancellors that the Bill addresses their funding needs. It does not. They have tried to persuade students and their families that the Bill might finance an increase in the number of people going to university. It will not. It has a number of other flaws, which I shall explain. First, I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor).
  Mr. Ian Taylor: My hon. Friend is right to probe the Government on what their legislation actually means, but can he offer some clarification? Given that he has made it clear that there is a genuine funding gap—vice-chancellors are very concerned about the finances of universities—and that the Conservative party apparently will not ask the students to make any contribution under its policy, are we therefore to conclude that all the burden of the underfunding that the Conservatives would have to remove will fall on the taxpayer?
  Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend will have to contain himself a little longer, because it is a curious constitutional doctrine that says that an Opposition cannot oppose a Bill as deeply flawed as this before they have laid out their alternative policy in every detail. He was with me in the House in 1988 when the Bill that introduced the poll tax was being considered. I do not remember the Labour Opposition explaining in every detail how they would finance local government when they fought against the poll tax.
  Mr. McLoughlin: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because I want to go back to the point about the number of students at university. Will he take time
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  to remind the House of, or pass comment on, the fact that in 1979 when the Labour Government left office, the position in this country was that one person in eight went to university? During the 18 years of Conservative government, that came down to one in three. We have a record to be proud of on university access.
  Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has quoted statistics correctly, but I further point out to him that the fastest expansion in the number of students from social class groups III M, IV and V going to university occurred in that period.
  Mr. Robert Jackson: My hon. Friend is arguing that if private funding is introduced alongside public funding, the public funding will always be clawed back, so that there will be no point in the exercise. That is an argument against any form of mixed funding. Mixed funding regimes operate successfully in many countries around the world. Why cannot they be made to work properly in this country? After all, most of us know that is the direction in which we will eventually have to go to fund our public services.
  Mr. Yeo: The answer to my hon. Friend is simple: such regimes could be made to work if they were introduced by a Government who knew what they were doing and were honest with students, universities and taxpayers. This is not a question of argument with him, as I have quoted the facts. In the last five years—since the introduction of tuition fees—the Government have clawed back every penny of the extra income that universities thought they were going to receive. That is exactly what will happen again.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Yeo: I will give way presently, but I must make some progress.
  The principles of university independence and academic freedom are fundamental to Conservative Members, but they are threatened by the establishment of a regulator whose role is to manipulate university admissions policy. The Government claim that the regulator's job is to widen the mix of backgrounds from which students come. No one, least of all Conservative Members, will argue with that goal; as I have just explained, no party has done more than the Conservative party to widen access to universities.
  We believe passionately in equality of opportunity, but we have a different vision from the Government of how to achieve it. The answer lies in raising the achievements and aspirations of pupils while they are still at school. It lies in firing the ambitions of teachers at schools that historically have not sent many pupils to university. That is where Government energy should be directed, but, as always, Ministers prefer to regulate.
  Mr. Allen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Yeo: Presently. The establishment of the new university regulator, referred to in the Bill as the Director of Fair Access to higher education, is central to Government policy. No university will be able to charge a penny in top-up fees without the regulator's say so. As

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  the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education told the House on 15 January, in a comment that revealed which universities the Government are particularly gunning for:
  "The simple fact is that none of the Russell Group universities will be able to charge anything above £1,125 ‖ unless they satisfy the access regulator that they are doing everything they possibly can to encourage youngsters from non-traditional backgrounds‖to come to their university." —[Official Report, 15 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 955.]
  Instead of selecting students on the basis of academic merit and potential, university admissions policies will have to reflect the prejudices of Ministers—another example of how this Government constantly interfere with and overrule the judgment of qualified professional people on how to do their jobs.
  Mr. Allen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Yeo: Presently.
  Mr. Michael Fallon: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Yeo: Yes.
  Mr. Fallon: For the benefit of the House, will my hon. Friend confirm that under clause 30 the director of fair access is not to be an independent person, but must follow the guidance issued by the Secretary of State? He will be a creature of Ministers.
  Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend anticipates the passage of my speech that I am just coming to. That is a very important point, because part 3 sets out how the burden of regulations from which universities already suffer will be increased. As the explanatory notes explain, universities cannot charge top-up fees until
  "they have in force a plan‖approved by the relevant authority."
  In other words, that means the regulator. Governing bodies will have to show how they are attracting applications from prospective students who are members of groups that are under-represented in higher education, regardless of whether such applicants are qualified to study at their universities.
  Unfortunately, getting the plan approved by the regulator is not the end of the story. Clause 35 gives the regulator the power to fine any university that he considers is not doing what he wants by ordering the Higher Education Funding Council to cut its grants. Universities will have no right of appeal. Given that the Secretary of State appoints the regulator and fixes his salary, that the regulator reports directly to the Secretary of State, not Parliament, and that the Secretary of State outlines the matters on which the regulator must report, it is clear that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) said, the regulator is a creature of the Secretary of State. The regulations that tell the regulator how to do his job will also be made by the Secretary of State, although he has refused to let Parliament see them in time for the debate.
  The Bill gives Ministers the power to decide who goes to which university and to take money away from a university that does not do what it is told. Let nobody fantasise that the Bill opens a door to more
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  independence for universities; it does precisely the opposite. It brings all universities under tighter political control than ever before. It will inflict damage on our universities, including those that aspire to be world class.
  Mr. John Bercow: Given the importance of the United Kingdom research base, will my hon. Friend hazard a guess about why the first 10 clauses focus exclusively on arts and humanities, duties on public bodies and the powers of the Secretary of State but are silent about the wider pursuit of necessary commercial sponsorship?
  Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend makes an important point about support for science, especially scientific research. I hope that the Government will pay more attention to that; indeed, Committee proceedings may provide an opportunity to explore the answer to my hon. Friend's extremely penetrating question.
  Mr. Allen: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that 65 per cent. of families in my constituency have disposable incomes of less than £15,000? That is one reason why we have the fewest people going to university of any constituency. The figures mean that people who get the necessary A-levels will receive a full grant of £2,700 plus a university bursary of £3,000. How can the hon. Gentleman talk at the Dispatch Box about access when he will lead his colleagues—but hopefully, none of mine—through the Lobby tonight to do away with a £3,000 grant that would allow those kids to go to university?
  Mr. Yeo: It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman makes that point—I believe that he was a member of the Government when tuition fees were introduced. I presume that, at that time, the concerns of his poorer constituents were not at the forefront of his mind.
  Let us consider the effect of the measure on students. In every walk of life from industry to science and from medicine to the media, graduates contribute to our national life. Britain's long-term competitiveness, our standing in the world and the quality of our public services depend on our educational system and our universities' ability to produced well-qualified and motivated graduates. Those men and women are already starting their working lives with average debts of £8,000 to £10,000 and the Bill trebles that burden of debt. It will inevitably affect the choices that students and their families make.
  Only a Government who neither understand nor care about the anxieties of many young people and their families about debt could introduce such a Bill. Or perhaps Ministers have simply stopped listening. In May last year, a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report concluded:
  "Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are often deterred"—
  I am sorry that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) is not listening because it relates directly to his point. The report stated:
  "Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are often deterred from both entering full-time education in the first place and from continuing within higher education long enough to reach their full academic potential because of the economic hardships they suffer, in particular debt."

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  Last year, a survey for the Higher Education Funding Council and Universities UK found that respondents from lower social groups were more likely than those from higher social groups to hold debt-averse views. However, the Bill will force the majority of students to borrow unprecedentedly large amounts of money.
  Let us consider the case of a student whose parents' total income is only £33,500. Perhaps the father is a firefighter and the mother, a classroom assistant. If the student wants to go to a university in London that charges the full £3,000 fee, he or she will rack up debts of £27,000. If he or she achieves a starting salary of £20,000 and enjoys annual pay increases of 5 per cent., the loan will not be repaid for more than 20 years. The Government claim that such debts will not deter prospective students.
  Tim Loughton: Does my hon. Friend share my special concern about the effects on the national health service? The British Medical Association has calculated that doctors training in London could start their careers with £64,000 of debt. Doctors take six years to train and cannot take holiday and evening jobs to subsidise their training because of its nature. At a time when we are desperately short of doctors and have not achieved the numbers that the Government admit we need, how on earth will the measure do anything other than deter people from training as doctors?
  Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend is right. The Bill will almost certainly adversely affect the supply of students to study medicine. In Canada, where higher tuition fees were introduced, evidence shows that the number of medical students from low-income families has fallen.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Yeo: I must make progress. In the document entitled "Higher Education Funding, the Government stated:
  "International experience suggests that higher variable fees can be introduced without adversely affecting the participation of students from less well-off families."
  Yet a survey for the Australian Education Department pointed out only last month that students from disadvantaged backgrounds make up a smaller proportion of all Australian students now than in 1991. In the United States, a congressional advisory committee pointed out that almost half of qualified school leavers from low-income households are prevented by financial barriers from taking four-year degree courses. Almost a quarter are prevented from going to university.
  Nobody knows how many British school leavers the Bill will deter from going to university, but the Secretary of State admitted that the level of fees that universities charge has a direct impact. On 3 December, he said that more students could be attracted to study physics if the relevant university charged a zero fee. If he believes that a zero fee will encourage students to study, how many students will be discouraged by fees of £9,000 over three years?
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  Even the £3,000 cap is unlikely to stay for long; nobody in the university world believes that it will. Last week, Professor Michael Stirling, chairman of the Russell Group and vice-chancellor of Birmingham university told The Daily Telegraph:
  "It's a step in the right direction, though no-one is pretending it's enough to cap top-up fees at £3,000."
  Professor Nick Barr, an economist at the London School of Economics and one of the architects of the Government's policy said on 7 January:
  "The cap that is proposed will have to rise."
  It is no good the Secretary of State saying that the Government will enshrine the cap in primary legislation.
  In 2001, voters were told that the Government had legislated to prevent top-up fees, but that did not stop them introducing them two years later. Every hon. Member who supports the Bill will open the door to top-up fees, not of £3,000 but £6,000 and £10,000. At that point, the gap between universities that can charge such fees and those that cannot will get bigger. When fees reach those levels, it cannot be disputed that cost will affect students' behaviour. The student at a London university whose parental income is £33,500 or more will face a debt of £36,000 when fees are £6,000 and £48,000 when they rise to £10,000. The Secretary of State hilariously told "Newsnight" that he would bet his mortgage that the £3,000 limit would be in place in 10 years. Does he really think that a single student will believe him, after he has broken every other promise he made on this subject?
  The Secretary of State should count himself lucky to have a mortgage at all. Graduates who start their working lives with debts that take 20 years to pay off, and on which outgoings will rise to £240 a month, will find the size of any mortgage they can take out severely curtailed. At the very time when we should be encouraging a culture of saving, the Bill will saddle them with debt. It will erode the savings of those who are in or near retirement as they struggle to support the next generation.
  There is a considerable stake in this evening's vote, but not much of it has anything to do with the dire warnings that the Government Whips have been issuing as they go about their arm-twisting on behalf of the Prime Minister. I urge Members of all parties, especially those on the Government Back Benches, to reflect very carefully on the consequences of their votes—the consequences for students, for their families, for universities and, indeed, for themselves. No one will remember the circumstances in which this vote took place when suffering the effects of the Bill.
  Approving this Bill will force future generations of students heavily into debt just when they should be encouraged to save. Approving this Bill opens the door to the making of access to university dependent on ability to pay, not ability to learn. Approving this Bill increases the burden of regulation on all universities; and approving this Bill does not give universities a single penny of extra income.
  Members of all parties fought the last general election on the basis of pledges that they would not introduce top-up fees. At the next general election, some Members will be able to look voters in the eye and say that they

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  honoured that pledge. I am proud to be one of them. I gave that pledge, I meant to give it, I wish to keep it, and I urge every other Member to join me in rejecting the Bill.
  2.7 pm
  Mr. Nicholas Brown: It was kind of the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) to remind the House of the three happy years that we spent arguing about agriculture policy across the Dispatch Boxes. I recall that he went out of his way to be helpful to me then, and I hope that I shall be able to say something later in my speech that will be helpful to him.
  I do not want to concentrate on the good things in the Bill, some of which we knew about from the beginning, because I think the Secretary of State has already made his case very well. I want to concentrate on my well-known objections to the Bill, and on how far the Government have moved to meet them. I had four objections: the increase in the level of debt for graduates; the difficulties with regard to the current proposals for meeting the universities' funding gap, as it is said to be; and the two issues of principle—the manifesto pledge and, most significant for me, the potential introduction of a marketplace in higher education.
  I worry about debt. I am not talking about the debt and the financial burden that affects those from the very poorest backgrounds, for I think that the Government set out to do a lot for youngsters in that position. My fear is for the next poorest, particularly those who wish to make a career in the professions and public service and are therefore likely to incur above-average expenses while studying. I also worry about the amount of debt with which youngsters in their early twenties will be encumbered. That will apply especially to a young person who meets someone at university with whom he or she wants to set up home. Those young people will have to manage a joint debt at precisely the time when they might be thinking of taking out a mortgage.
  The Government have gone a long way towards meeting that point, with the establishment of an independent commission to examine the impact on youngsters in the position I have described, the offer of an interim report, and the concession that in the spending review moneys will be set aside for the purpose of whatever recommendations are produced by the interim commission. I must tell my right hon. Friend that he is probably the only Secretary of State, now, to have that "nod and a wink" arrangement with the Treasury in regard to the spending review. If I helped him towards that, and if there is anything that I—along with my friends on the Back Benches—can do to underpin it, we stand ready. As is famously known in this place, the Secretary of State is not the only friend I have who might be influential in these matters.
  Mr. Gordon Prentice: May I ask who will select the members of the independent commission?
  Mr. Brown: I am happy for my hon. Friend to do that, but I suspect that the Government will appoint someone
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  of national standing and independent character, so that the independent commission can consider the issues and we all have an opportunity to put our views to it—including the National Union of Students.
  I think I can say something that will genuinely help the hon. Member for South Suffolk. I agree with him that inherent in the proposals as currently structured is a failure to meet what the funding gap is said to be. There is clearly an issue involving moneys for the universities. I do not think that the flawed market mechanism that the Government are introducing will deal with the gap without compromising fairness. It is essential to examine alternatives, and I agree with the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) that it is perfectly reasonable to consider mixed funding. There is no reason why that proposal should not be at least considered, for it is entirely rational. I also think it reasonable to consider alternatives proposed by the Opposition in general. [HON. MEMBERS: "What are they?"] Even given my reduced circumstances, it is not for me to say what the Opposition's proposals are. I respectfully suggest that it is for the Opposition to say what they are. Perhaps, having identified the funding gap, they could present their proposals for dealing with it. After all, a funding gap must be filled with money, and the money must come from somewhere.
  Mr. Patrick Hall: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Brown: If I remember the new rules correctly, only two goes are allowed—but I will give way.
  Mr. Hall: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the £1 billion a year that it is estimated will be raised by variable fees will represent 68 per cent. of the revenue shortfall identified for English universities? Is that not a significant contribution?
  Mr. Brown: It is a significant contribution, but much depends on who we listen to. There is indeed a shortfall, as everyone accepts. According to some, it is a significant shortfall. The shortfall will have to be dealt with, but I think it wrong that the market-based solution was sold to the universities as the only solution on offer. There are other ideas, good ideas, that are worth exploring—and now at least we have the opportunity to do that.
  Let me make myself perfectly plain. I favour a graduate contribution based on earnings—the earnings of a youngster who has benefited from higher education—rather than on the financial position of that youngster's mum and dad. That is my view, and it is comparable with what is in the Labour party manifesto. I do not think there is anything wrong with continuing to argue for it, and there will be an opportunity for those of us who hold it to put it to the commission.
  Of course I realise that that is a double-edged sword. As with any argument, it will be perfectly possible to lose this argument—don't I know it? But at least we have a chance to make the case again. Indeed, there are

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  elements of just such a scheme in the Government's current proposals. We are not as far apart as it may seem.
  Lembit Öpik: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Brown: You will put me right on this, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Am I allowed to take a further intervention?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Whether or not the right hon. Gentleman takes an intervention is entirely a matter for him.
  Mr. Brown: I am relatively new to this. Despite all the things I have done in this place, the experience of being a Government Back Bencher is entirely new to me—although I think I am getting the hang of it. I can tell the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) that his intervention would take time from my speech, and that he will be able to make his own speech later. I cannot take any more interventions.
  On the question of how we treat our manifesto pledges, there is the separate issue—although this point is, of course, addressed to the whole House, it particularly concerns my hon. Friends—of how we treat our party. The issues that we are discussing today should have been discussed in the Labour party policy forum. We would be in better shape—and so would the proposals—had we gone through that exercise first to test the ideas in front of our hon. Friends and colleagues whom we expect to support us before rallying behind the agreed proposals. Instead, the proposals were presented to us first, there was a demand that we should agree with them and we put up a fight to try to amend them so that they could be agreed. One of the concessions is to put the commission's work through the party's policy-making process, which will allow us in the Labour party an opportunity to argue our points of view.
  The heart of my objection to the original proposals, which have now been circumscribed, is the remorseless march towards the market. I passionately believe that the "marketisation" of higher education is wrong—for me it is a matter of not only economics and funding but social justice and social cohesion. I shall treat the House to a quote from the "University College Record" by Lord Butler of Brockwell in October 2003:
  "We have also to think about the disincentive‖But £5,000 or £7,000 or even more does not look intolerable when it is borne in mind that private secondary education may be costing parents £20,000 per year."
  That argument is perfectly logical if it is taken in its own terms, but some of my constituents do not earn £20,000 a year, and we must stand up for them.
  I want universities to soar, but if they are to do so our people must come with them. These proposals box in the cap and the move towards the market, and I take the Secretary of State at his word when he says that this is not a transitional move to a marketplace and that the proposals are as they stand.
  2.17 pm
  Mr. Phil Willis: We took the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister at their word when they said in their last manifesto that they would not introduce top-up fees—sadly, top-up fees are being introduced. I was looking forward to a principled debate, but we have had a shabby charade. Labour Member after Labour Member will line up tonight to go into the Aye Lobby to support a Thatcherite policy in direct opposition to what they said during the general election campaign, betraying the principles on which the Labour party is built.
  It is no surprise that the British Market Research Bureau, which conducted the latest opinion poll on the issue, says that 70 per cent. of the public are against top-up fees. The general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, Sally Hunt, described top-up fees as
  "the most unpopular policy under this government".
  The grand old Duke of York, the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown), led his troops to the hill, and we have seen him lead them back down again—what a shabby performance!
  Dr. Nick Palmer: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Willis: No, I will not.
  The Bill is bad for students, bad for families, bad for lecturers, bad for universities, bad for taxpayers and bad for the country. It is not bad for the Liberal Democrats, because at the next general election we will remind voters of the promises and what should have happened.
  The sadness is that the debate about the future of higher education should be one of the most engaging that this House has ever had. It should be about how we tackle the current inequities between academic and vocational pathways into higher education. The Secretary of State did not mention the unacceptable fact that 45 per cent. of young people who obtain vocational qualifications at level 3 do not end up in university, yet 92 per cent. of those with two A-levels do. That inequity should be debated and tackled. We should debate how we could offer a climbing frame of opportunity to attain higher skills and higher education throughout life, rather than just for students with two A-levels.
  Instead, the debate has become little more than a sordid trade-off, with the Secretary of State acting more like Del Boy in "Only Fools and Horses" as he tries to sell dodgy goods to his own Back Benchers. We all know that the Bill is not simply about higher education—the Prime Minister has been at pains to point that out. It is about changing the way in which this country pays for its public services. That is at the heart of it. The Bill is stage one of a process that will see responsibility for paying for child care, transport, and health and social care shift from general taxation to the individual. If hon. Members do not believe me, they should read the Institute for Public Policy Research report when it is published tomorrow. It describes Government policy and thinking on the issue.
  Hon. Members should not be fooled into thinking that the Bill is only about higher education: it is not. Why else would we have seen in the past few days

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  Labour Whips running around Westminster threatening to hand out redundancy notices? They have cajoled and even offered dinner with Cabinet members to ensure that sufficient MPs break their promise to the people of Britain. In an act of sheer desperation, the Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee even resorted to sending out pictures of the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) in brown paper envelopes to recalcitrant MPs to frighten them into submission. How desperate is that?
  Hugh Bayley: The hon. Gentleman made the point that students in further education have poorer opportunities than those in higher education. Those in further education face variable fees. Why does he not propose getting rid of variable fees in further education, and why does he propose to spend on universities all the Liberal Democrats' tax increase, rather than spending it on further education?
  Mr. Willis: I shall come to the second point that the hon. Gentleman raises—I consider him as more than just a political neighbour—later in my speech, and I assure the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) that I will not do so too late. On the first point, I agree, and our policy is to achieve that objective. It is unacceptable for students in further education to be burdened with differential fees at a time when the whole debate in this House is about higher education. I remind the hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) that the Bill is about higher education. The Secretary of State makes no proposals to tackle any of the issues that the hon. Gentleman feels so strongly about. As Labour Members seem so keen on reviews, I suggest that he ask Ministers to set up another review to consider those important issues.
  James Purnell: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws)—his colleague—did not support the Child Trust Funds Bill because he thought that the priority for funding should be children under five, not children at 18? Given that the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) could fund only one education pledge, why would it all go on those aged over 18?
  Mr. Willis: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman takes such an interest in our policy—and the consistency of it. My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) is right. The Government intend to spend up to £350 million giving people such as my hon. Friend baby bonds when they have children, but we would prefer that money to be spent on early-years education. It is a tough choice, but mature political parties have to make tough choices.
  I have no doubt that the Secretary of State and the Minister for Lifelong Learning. Further and Higher Education are sincere in their desire to put forward their proposals. I congratulate them both sincerely on their willingness to debate those proposals and to be challenged on them. However, when the Bill is lost tonight, I urge the Secretary of State not to throw his toys out of the pram and say that there is no plan B or C. Plenty of other ideas and devices are available.
  Mr. Clive Betts Mr. Clive Betts (Sheffield, Attercliffe) (Lab) rose—
  Mr. Willis: I should like to make some progress, because many hon. Members want to speak.
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  As for the Bill, I have to tell the Secretary of State that it contains elements that are worthy of retention. We applaud the moving of higher education and student support for students in Wales to the Welsh Assembly. That is absolutely right. We support the establishment of an arts and humanities council that will raise the profile of both in higher education. Indeed, that is in stark contrast to the comments that the Secretary of State made earlier about the classics and ancient literature having no great place in higher education.
  The proposal for an independent adjudication system is welcome, but I hope that the Secretary of State will seek to widen that so that we have an education ombudsman dealing not only with higher education students, but with further and higher education students and staffing in those two sectors as well. That is overdue, and I hope that the Secretary of State will support it.
  Mr. Betts rose—
  Mr. Willis: How can resist?
  Mr. Betts: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I should like to be clear as to where the Liberal Democrats stand when they talk about tough choices. When the hon. Gentleman's party has paid for its extra long-term care for the elderly, its extra for pensioners, its extra for the police, its extra for schools and now extra for further education, how will it fund this higher education policy? Can he be explicit about that, so that we all understand where the Liberal Democrats are coming from?
  Mr. Willis: Unlike the hon. Gentleman when he was running Sheffield council, when nobody knew where money was coming from or going to, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy), the leader of my party, has made absolutely clear what our priorities are for a 50p rate. He has made it clear in the House and in a letter to the Prime Minister. If the hon. Gentleman would like a copy of that letter, I shall make sure that he receives one, because I would not like him to be left out.
  Although there are good elements in the Bill, they are not sufficient reasons to support it on Second Reading. Despite the so-called concessions, it fails to meet the primary objectives set by the Government in 2001: to bridge the funding gap in our universities, to widen access and to remove the fear of debt for future students.
  We accept the need to resolve the funding crisis in our universities after two decades of chronic under-funding. The question is: will the introduction of a market, supported by variable fees and a cap, resolve the funding gap?
  Mrs. Alice Mahon: I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument very carefully, and I think he will find that I agree with it. Twenty-three years ago, I went as a mature student to Bradford university with a full grant and with tuition fees paid. My eldest son went to Oxford. Today, however, I would not face this kind of debt, and my eldest son would certainly have been looking for a cheaper university.
  Mr. Willis: The right hon. Lady—the hon. Lady; she should be a right hon. Lady—is absolutely correct. I

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  recently attended, as did the Secretary of State, the student of the year awards, which the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance presented at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre. Much to my surprise, I met there a girl I had taught nearly 30 years ago in my first A-level group. She came from a very poor home in Chapeltown, Leeds. Her son was one of the students who received an award. She came down to London specifically to tell me that she would never have got to university without the support that she received. Certainly, her son would not have received the award without that support. We should never forget that.
  Simon Hughes: Like many of my colleagues, I have a sheaf of letters and e-mails from students, many of them medical and dental students. They already have debts of £20,000, £25,000 or £30,000 under the present regime. What is my hon. Friend's information as to the likely average debt if the proposals go through? Is it morally acceptable to send people off into life after education with that amount of debt round their necks?
  Mr. Willis: The evidence that the British Medical Association presented this week of medical students with debts of £50,000 to £60,000 gives a flavour of what we shall see in the United Kingdom.
  A better example is to take a student who is basically on a £3,000 fee course for three years. Barclays bank estimates that by 2010 that debt will have risen to £33.700. That is a staggering amount for any student to go into the world with. If we are talking about students having to set up pensions—
  The Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education (Alan Johnson): Those figures are wrong.
  Mr. Willis: The right hon. Gentleman should take that up with Barclays bank, which prepared those figures and which is a fairly reputable institution.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Willis: I am moving on.
  The issue that I want to tackle is that of whether the market, supported by variable fees with a cap, will resolve the funding gap in our universities.
  Mr. Allen rose—
  Mr. Willis: I want to develop the point, and then if the hon. Gentleman still wishes to intervene he may.
  The answer is patently "No". It will be 2009 before the universities receive the £1.1 billion promised from the package. That is the truth—2009. By then, the gap will have increased to a point at which increases in fees will be needed. If the universities are saying that they need £1 billion to £2 billion now, in five years' time what will that gap be? It will certainly not have been bridged by the uprated tuition fees, the top-up fees. The House has to understand that no Government will ever return to plugging that gap purely from taxpayers' money.
  Mr. Allen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Willis: Please let me finish the point.
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  When Members vote tonight, they must forget all the promises that the Secretary of State has made. The reality is that by 2009 it will not be possible to go back to a system of state funding our universities with flat-rate fees. That is the truth of what we are talking about.
  The right hon. Gentleman's latest concession—to put the matter in the Bill in order to have an inquiry in 2009—is an act of desperation. When before has a Secretary of State had to put something into a Bill just to persuade his own Back Benchers that he is not lying? That is the situation that we have got into.
  Although I am vehemently opposed to both the flat rate and variable fees, I recognise that the only way in which a market in higher education based on variable fee income can work is to allow that market to determine the fee level. That is the truth, and it is the point that the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) made honestly and fairly. It is the only logical outcome of the policy proposed today. That is why we as a party—every one of our Members, 54 of us—will be going into the Lobby against the Bill tonight on that issue of principle.
  Labour MPs who support the Bill tonight must realise that the cap is not sustainable after 2009 because of the injection of funds that would be needed, and we must also realise that by 2014, the year in which the Secretary of State promised Mr. Paxman—and bet his house on it—that the cap on university fees would be no higher than it is now, the higher education system would be in utter and total chaos without the supporting funds.
  The prospect of annual fees in excess of £15,000, as proposed by Richard Sykes of Imperial college, is not fanciful. It is not fiction; it is the reality of what we will actually see, because it is the reality in America. How can any Labour Back Bencher be seduced into thinking that such a policy would assist in broadening access for underrepresented groups, and how could it possibly prevent the establishment of a two-tier university system, where students choose both course and university on the basis of cost? The Prime Minister, of course, claims that that will not be the case.
  Lynne Jones: We already have a de facto two-tier system. Universities UK's own research shows that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately represented at the modern universities and not represented at the prestigious universities. Is not the problem that the measures proposed today will exacerbate that already bad situation?
  Mr. Willis: The hon. Lady is absolutely right, but there are two sides to that coin. Our recent research looking at major cities—Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Nottingham—has shown that, on average, roughly 45 per cent. of students studying in higher education go locally for their education, and that that percentage is increasing very quickly indeed. In Newcastle, nearly 70 per cent. of students leaving the Bluecoat school, which is a very high quality, high achieving school, study locally.
  Mr. Allen rose—
  Peter Bradley rose—
  Mr. Willis: Please let me finish my answer to the previous intervention.

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  The other side of that coin—it is a very serious issue—is that we must drive up the quality of what is offered locally, to match whatever there is across the country. We must be able to tell young people, "You have a genuine choice between going local and going away", and it should not be a choice made on the basis of price. That is the point—if the new universities are in the 25 per cent. that do not charge top-up fees and all the rest do, we will create a two-tier system by default, purely on the basis of price. That is something that I do not want.
  Mr. Allen: I had almost forgotten what I was going to say—but it was not "I will see the hon. Gentleman in the Lobby tonight". Would the hon. Gentleman consider the question of the market? He seems to be implying that there is not a market already and that there is no variability already. That strikes at the heart of many of the concerns that colleagues on this side of the House have too. There is a market, but it is rigged. It works against the interests of working-class kids who actually get the right A-levels. Will the hon. Gentleman address the question of how, by using social policy, we make a deeply imperfect market a better one for all those who are qualified to go to university?
  Mr. Willis: I have a lot of respect for the hon. Gentleman and the way he fights for his constituency, but I do not think that it is possible to tackle inequality simply by creating other inequalities. We must tackle inequality, and I agree wholeheartedly with the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary with responsibility for skills and vocational education that we must tackle it much lower down. We have to ensure that from 14 onwards there is an aspiration for all our young people to go into higher education through a vocational or academic route or a mixture of those, and that is the big issue that we must tackle. However, I do not want young people to find suddenly, when they go up those routes and get their level 3 qualifications, that there is a financial barrier that prevents them from taking the next route. That is the issue that I am interested in, and that is why I shall vote against the Bill tonight.
  As I was saying before those useful interventions, the Prime Minister, I think rather disingenuously, has said that there is no evidence from abroad—from Australia, Canada and the United States—that countries that have introduced contribution costs limit access. That is absolute nonsense. It is impossible to find any research—other than research written in Australia by the man who introduced the fees in the first place, whom the Secretary of State quotes in his evidence—to show that that has not happened. In Australia fee levels have risen by 25 per cent. since 1996, when variable fees were introduced. In America, with its Ivy league, which is reputed to have the Cambridge-style bursary system, only 4.7 per cent. of students from the lowest socio-economic groups go to Harvard and the figure is roughly the same for the other Ivy league universities. In the United States, money counts and money buys you into the best universities. That may be the Secretary of State's vision, but it is not my mine, and it is certainly not the vision I spent my life in education defending and promoting.
  I realise that the Secretary of State has tried to mitigate the worst effects of the system, but the Office for Fair Access is a classic fudge. If any Back Benchers have
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  bought that, naivety is not the word to describe them. What will OFFA actually do? The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) was right to say that it is a bureaucratic irrelevance and a sop to its critics, and that it will burden universities with meaningless plans. At the end of the day, it has absolutely no powers. It has no powers over admissions, which is surely the key if we are to tackle issues of inequality. It has no powers over what goes into the plans—the Secretary of State has all the powers there—and it has no powers to impose penalties. So what is this guy getting £100,000 for? I would like that job—[Interruption.] He must have two children with fees to pay.
  One measure that we welcome is the move away from up-front fees, though it was the present Government who imposed them. Few Members present in the House at the time will have forgotten the promise given by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), now the Home Secretary. He said in 1997 that
  "the entire objective in taking our difficult decisions has been to put higher education on a firm footing for two decades."—[Official Report, 23 July 1997; Vol. 298, c. 958.]

  That is why tuition fees were introduced in the first place. My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) and I said at the time that that was the thin end of the wedge, which is exactly what it has been. The policy is going ahead by stealth, whether we like it or not. It was designed somewhere in the bowels of the No. 10 policy unit.
  Has anyone objectively analysed the new arrangement from the position of a student from a poor background, or even one from a modest income background? For poorer students, there will be a new grant of up to £3,000, but the benefit will come only if the student attends the cheapest course at the cheapest university. That would make the student £1,500 better off. If students go to a good university on a £3,000 course, they will receive £3,000 up front and be left with a fee of £3,000 to pay. Will hon. Members explain how a student is better off on that account, because I simply do not understand it? If, by contrast, students go to a university that charges the £1,200 fee, they will have £1,500 of disposable income to spend. They will not get the bursary, but they will not have to pay the full fee.
  Geraint Davies: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the introduction of a time limit on repayment means that low-paid graduates—someone on £17,000, for example—would, over 25 years, have to pay £4,500, which is 9 per cent. of the money earned over £15,000? Graduates would have to pay that £4,500 irrespective of the level of fees—whether they were £9,000, £18,000 or £20,000—so payment is linked to earnings rather than fee levels. Furthermore, in the British Medical Association example, where a student faces paying £63,000, he would, if earning £30,000, only have to pay half the fees. It is misleading the House to imply that they have to pay all the fees, because what they have to pay is linked to what they earn, which is progressive.
  Mr. Willis: I was hoping that the hon. Gentleman was going to explain something. All he has done is confuse the House even more. so I leave hon. Members to reach their own conclusions.

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  It is no use the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister talking about debt as an investment for families for whom debt is a daily nightmare. The Secretary of State should look no further than the research for the Department for Education and Skills that was conducted by Professor Callendar of South Bank university. She said:
  "Debt aversion has the greatest impact on the participation of the very group the government most wants to attract into"
  higher education. She concluded by saying:
  "Top up fees of £3,000 will put even more poor students off university".
  That is the Government's own research.
  Debt, and the fear of debt, will affect not only applications to universities, but the courses that students will choose and their future life plans. A recent MORI-Unite poll shows that two out of five students who are currently in higher education would have chosen a different university or course if fees of £3,000 were charged. That is the view of real students in real universities.
  The principle that students access the universities and courses of their choice on merit must be the only criterion for access to higher education—it is the Robbins principle of access to higher education. The Bill will break that principle, which has been the hallmark of Britain's higher education system for the past 40 years, and Labour Back Benchers will troop into the Aye Lobby tonight to support that.
  The Government say that there is no plan B, but they are wrong.
  Mr. Soley: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Willis: I am getting on to plan B.
  We have a plan B. It is fully costed and meets the Government's objective of putting more money into universities. It would broaden and deepen participation and ensure that graduates who gain a lot financially from their degrees pay back more towards the cost of higher education. What is more, our figures have been analysed by the Higher Education Policy Institute, and its director agrees with them. Our proposals are not difficult to understand. We would abolish fees, abandon any plans for top-up fees, and reintroduce proper maintenance grants of up to £2,000 a year for students from the least-well-off backgrounds. Crucially, we would invest an additional £1 billion—matching the Government's money—in our universities from 2005, not from 2009 when the full impact of the top-up fees policy will happen. There would be more money with less bureaucracy for universities and less debt for students. There would be a saving to the Treasury of at least £450 million for each £1 billion put in to service the debt.
  We would pay for our proposals with a concept that has been sadly missing from new Labour ever since it came to power in 1997: fair progressive taxation. We would not use general taxation to find more money for higher education, as the Prime Minister tries to pretend, because we would have a higher tax band for incomes of more than £100,000 a year. Let me remind Labour Back
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  Benchers that our proposal would impose an extra tax burden on the wealthiest 1 per cent. of the population. However, those on the Labour Front Bench oppose the idea that the wealthiest 1 per cent. should pay a bit more tax. In reply to the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward), who is no longer in the Chamber, 82 per cent. of those people are graduates who, like the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, were given a free higher education when they were students and the country was less affluent.
  Mr. Adrian Bailey: During the hon. Gentleman's earlier comments, he made great play of the fact that Labour's plans for tuition fees would not meet the escalating costs that might develop over the next five or 10 years. Will he assure me that the current proposal of the Liberal Democrats for a 50 per cent. taxation rate on incomes greater than £100,000 a year would fully fund the scary figures that he projected without prejudicing any of their myriad other spending commitments?
  Mr. Willis: I was with the hon. Gentleman until his last comment. He should go to bed with a book rather than a Millbank handout—it does not affect one's health in the same way.
  The first part of the hon. Gentleman's question is very genuine, and it is something that all political parties have to answer. My argument is that the Secretary of State certainly does not agree with all that the universities ask for—nor do we as a party—and I am pretty sure that those on the Conservative Front Bench would not agree either. Much of the expansion in resources that they want is for capital projects; some of it is for research, some for teaching. We would have to disaggregate that. The Secretary of State has reached the conclusion that £1 billion is about the right sum to raise from differential fees to put into the universities. We broadly agree with his assessment. The difference between us is that the universities need that money now. Under our proposals, they will get that money in 2005; they do not have to wait until 2006, 2007, 2008 or 2009—four or five years later. By that time, we will have put £5.5 billion extra into the universities to plug that gap.
  The Prime Minister argues, in true right-wing style, that a 50p rate would drive high earners out of the country and that all the evidence supports that. Well, it does not. The Prime Minister cannot find a single piece of evidence from a reputable economist—other than one in the United States in 1974—who can, in fact, support that view. Richard Adams, writing in The Guardian last Friday, said:
  "The wealthiest potential payers probably live in tax havens like Sark and would not be affected".
  There is not a serious economic commentator who claims that a 50p rate would have a major impact on tax avoidance. Rather than worrying about losing our richest people, we should be worrying about losing our best graduates. We should be worried about who will do a PhD under the new proposals. Who, when saddled with debts of £20,000 to £30,000, will take on a low-paid research post? Those are the issues with which we should be concerned.
  I tell the Secretary of State that we will vote against the proposals tonight not because we are against the thrust of what the Government want to do or against

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  their broad analysis, but because they are wrong in principle. The Liberal Democrats said so at the last election. We keep our manifesto promises; they break them.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that there is an eight-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.
  2.52 pm
  Jim Dowd: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I recognise that far more hon. Members want to speak than we have time to fit in, so I will not take any interventions and will just make a couple of points.
  First, I congratulate my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Education and Skills and the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education on the way in which they have engaged in this process, which involves what is undeniably one of the most difficult and contentious issues with which we have had to deal since the Government came to power on that glorious day in 1997. I sincerely hope that that process of engagement, of listening, of concession—call it what you like—has not reached a conclusion; that, as we gain a Second Reading for the Bill this evening and as it progresses through its other stages in Parliament, we are able to improve it; and that my right hon. Friends recognise that it can still accommodate improvement.
  One of the differences that we have been grappling with this afternoon is that we are talking about equity and opportunity. It strikes me, coming from a very working-class part of inner London, that the gravest inequity is between the higher education sector, which seems to exercise people disproportionately, and the further education sector, largely because the FE sector is almost overwhelmingly working class and does not have the HE sector's clout or influence. I speak as a member of the majority of people in this country who did not have the benefit and advantage of a university education. However, in the House, I am in a singular minority. Even though I have not done the precise calculations, I suggest that the number of hon. Members who have been through higher education is about the reverse of the national figure of 80 per cent. who have not, so I shall consider what the proposals mean for people in my part of south-east London. I am not sure what the Tories propose, but it seems that they want to retain elitism, have no cap and find all the money from public funds in the fullness of time. If student numbers fall, it is patently obvious that it will not be middle-class kids who go without: it will be the working-class kids who we are trying to get into university who will miss out yet again, and higher education will remain the divisive and elitist institution that it has been for far too long.
  The famous Liberal Democrat proposal of a 50 per cent. tax rate on salaries of more than £100,000 is a replacement for their magic penny in the last Parliament, which was supposed to fund everything; it is a marvellous commodity because they can spend it time and time again. Even as the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) was speaking, he added another pledge. He blithely said that, as he
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  wanted equality between higher and further education, he would abolish all FE fees. Does the hon. Gentleman have any idea how much that would cost? Would that be paid for by the Liberal Democrats' magic 50 per cent. tax rate? He nods. I heard him on the radio this morning trying to argue that his party's special tax device was not general taxation.
  Mr. Barry Sheerman: But that was this morning.
  Jim Dowd: Indeed. It just seems so long ago.
  Of course it would be general taxation. If the economic illiteracy displayed this morning is any reflection of the rest of the Liberal Democrats' plans, it is small wonder that nobody believes them and that they will never be in a position to implement their policies.
  If there are additional priorities for public money, I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—as I am sure do most of my right hon. and hon. Friends—that money should go into the early-years, primary and secondary school sectors, where the building blocks of education and progress are created.
  The big issue in my part of the world—which I am sure is shared in urban and working-class communities elsewhere—is not young people being fearful of debt or its consequences in later life but getting working-class kids even to think that they can get into university. A couple of weeks ago I was privileged to visit Forest Hill school in my constituency to see the Aim Higher roadshow, which opens the eyes of kids in south-east London by saying, "If you want to do this, you do not have to be intimidated and think it is something that only kids better off than you can do."
  If all the Government were doing today was introducing top-up or variable fees, even I would have great difficulty giving that my support. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State because the Bill goes way beyond that by realigning the whole system of student support across the country. I shall support that balancing act this evening because it will change the prospects for many thousands of young people in my constituency by giving them an opportunity that they have previously been denied.
  I particularly welcome the abolition of up-front fees, which are a bar to students from families on lower incomes, and the reintroduction of maintenance grants. I also welcome my right hon. Friend's acknowledgement today that fee remission will be bundled up to provide an even bigger incentive. The 25-year cap will mean that debt will not be for life, with repayments reflecting earnings over that time.
  The Liberal Democrats say that 82 per cent. of people who earn more than £100,000 a year went to university, so it is fair that they should pay. What about the other 18 per cent. who did not go to university? And if 82 per cent. of high salary earners went through higher education, that shows what a good investment it is, with incomes considerably uprated as a consequence.
  Mention of debt aversion really irritates me. It is old fashioned, patronising and condescending: the assumption seems to be, "Working class people don't really know how to handle money. That's why they've got so little." They know how to handle money all right. And they know a bargain when they see one. Higher

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  education is a bargain. I fully support this package in the round, and hope that every one of my colleagues on the Labour Benches will do the same.
  2.59 pm
  Mr. William Hague: I am grateful for the chance to take part in this debate, in which the Education Secretary made a number of detailed points and my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) made some powerful points of detail.
  Throughout today and before it, it has been fascinating to watch negotiations and concessions unfold; and I have no doubt that that has been as fascinating for the Education Secretary as it has for the rest of us. It is not unusual for a Minister to make concessions when he has said he will not make concessions—that is part of the normal negotiating process of politics; it is quite unusual for a Minister to make concessions he did not wish to make; and it is wholly extraordinary for a Minister to make concessions that he was not aware he was making. That is what appears to have happened in the negotiations—the joviality of the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown) rather confirms that that has happened—between him and the Chancellor. Whether those concessions amount to anything is a matter for debate, but one thing is not really a matter of dispute, and it is the central point on the basis of which I am opposed to the legislation. We all said—the entire House of Commons said—that we would not introduce such legislation. It is not just something the governing party said it would not do; it is not just something the Labour party said it would not do; extraordinarily and most unusually, the manifestos of the three main political parties said that they would not introduce such a measure—[Interruption.] And, indeed, other political parties such as Plaid Cymru. With the agreement of my colleagues, I wrote in the Conservative manifesto:
  "we will not introduce top-up fees".
  The Liberal Democrats made an even grander claim, as parties do when they are more distant from office. "All fees will be abolished," they said grandly. The Labour party said:
  "We will not introduce 'top-up' fees and have legislated to prevent them."
  What an extraordinarily categoric and emphatic thing to say. It is most unusual for the same promise to be made by all parties. Normally, manifestos contain contrasting promises for the electorate to choose from. But this was the same from every political party, and by my calculation it means that 635 or more of the 659 Members of Parliament stood on a platform of not introducing top-up fees.
  Mr. McLoughlin: When the Secretary of State was asked about that, he said that things had changed since the election. Can my right hon. Friend think what those things are?
  Mr. Hague: That was one of the weaker parts of the Secretary of state's speech. When asked, he said that the
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  pace of economic growth was unexpected—something that did not amuse the Chancellor, who was sitting three places away from him at the time. The Secretary of State appeared to have no faith in the Chancellor, whereas the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend only has faith in the Chancellor and, extraordinarily, the two have come together in support of the legislation. What happened in the intervening period—the two and a half years of economic growth that the Chancellor predicted—to take the Secretary of State so much by surprise that he had to break a manifesto commitment was not adequately explained in his opening speech.
  It is not just the Government who are breaking faith with the electorate—the body politic is breaching their faith. We all go to schools and universities and say, "Politics matters, and your vote matters." We are all ashamed in the House, or we jolly well should be, that only 59 per cent. of people voted in the general election. We tell people that their participation counts, but what are we supposed to say if we pass legislation that the entire House of Commons said it would not pass—if within two and a half years of the election it is passed through the House of Commons in direct defiance of all those pledges? I went to a primary school the other week to talk to the children about Westminster and what MPs do. An 11-year-old put up their hand and said, "But Mr. Hague how do we know, if you are going there for five years, that you are going to do what you said you would?" I said, "We all try." In fact, in that rare spirit of cross-party generosity that comes across us all when we talk to people who do not have a vote for another seven years, I even said, "Mr. Blair tries. We all try. Sometimes it doesn't work, aspirations are unfulfilled, targets aren't met, but we try to keep the promises that we made to the people." What will we say in future?
  Mr. Allen rose—
  Mr. Hague: Will the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) be able to say that the Labour party kept its election commitment?
  Mr. Allen: I shall say it in my speech, if I am lucky enough to catch the Deputy Speaker's eye. Does the right hon. Gentleman know what the Conservative policy is on the issue? If so, would he tell all the parties present and all those who are watching his entertaining speech at home?
  Mr. Hague: The hon. Gentleman knows that the great virtue of being an ex-leader of a party is that one does not have to explain the policies for the future. I am responsible for the past, not for the future. My hon. Friends will explain their policy before the general election, and it will then be the job of every Member of Parliament elected to support that future Conservative Government and every Member of Parliament elected to any party to hold them to account when they are in office to keep whatever commitment they make at that general election. That should be the job of all Members of Parliament in the House.
  That is why, even though the Prime Minister has looked them in the eye and asked, "Are you going to be loyal?", it would be better for the health of our democracy if Labour Members were loyal to the voters, kept faith with the country and were true to their word

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  than if they were loyal to a transient Prime Minister. I have always said that people regard the Prime Minister first with fascination, then with admiration, then with disillusionment, and then with contempt. We are well down that process now. As the waves of contempt close over him in the future, we will still want a healthy democracy. We will still want people to believe that their vote counts, and that what Members of the House of Commons say they will do is what they will do in practice.
  Let us not try to claim in the House that none of us has ever made a U-turn or changed a policy. Usually when any party changes a policy, it is because circumstances have changed in some way—there has been a war, there has been a recession, or some new information has come to light. There is nothing that we know now about the state of our universities that we did not know two and a half years ago. There is a serious problem in our universities with academic salaries. There are many serious problems in our universities, but we knew all that at the time of the last general election and we all knew it when we wrote our manifestos.
  We did not write those manifestos casually. We are not talking about something that was slipped in by some junior official who went to the printers while the leaders of the parties were not looking. Our commitment went into the manifesto because in each party we had a meeting about it. I was leader of the party when we wrote it into our manifesto, and we had a meeting about it. We asked, "Is everyone responsible for this policy sure that this is right—that this is what we are happy to do if we win the election?" We knew that was an unlikely event, but we still took it seriously. Presumably the same thing took place in the party of Government, which did expect to win the election.
  That was a premeditated promise, a categoric commitment, and it is a shameless and ruthless breach of that commitment that the Government are engaged in today. That is why it is a bad day for our democracy if the Bill goes through. It may be a bad day for higher education, or it may be a good one. I do not think it is, but even if it were, it is an overriding argument that when the entire House of Commons has pledged itself to a particular policy, it should do its utmost to keep faith with the country, rather than breach faith with the country.
  I know it might be advantageous in a narrow party sense—I am talking about my party—for the Bill to be passed by a small majority tonight, or to be passed by any majority. Then the great agony of negotiating, deciding and voting on it on Report and so on will begin. The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend will continue to make his trips to the Treasury and will become an even more central and powerful figure in the Labour party, and what an awful process that will be for so many of his colleagues. All these things will go on, and Labour Members will parade around at the next election as though they had a placard round their neck that read, "These people do not keep their word." In many ways we are happy for them to parade around with that placard, but it is not good for our democracy or our democratic values.
  There are many other objections to the Bill. Although it is presented as a way of escaping further increases in taxation, it is tantamount to an increase in taxation, and
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  a particularly harsh, arbitrary and unfair increase in taxation, because it will particularly hit people on middle incomes who have bright children. The man who said to me a few weeks ago—[Interruption.] I will not give way again because I only have 28 seconds left. As for the man who said to me the other day, "I've saved a bit, I'm not going to get any help, I've got three bright children, and I want them all to go to university," what will the Government say to him? Are they sure that the third child is not going to be discriminated against because they are the third child wishing to go to university? It is a bad policy that is bad for democracy in this country and it should be rejected.
  3.10 pm
  Mr. Barry Sheerman: I follow an entertaining speech, but the former leader of the Conservative party is trying to reinvent the British constitution. I always understood that the parliamentary constitution of this country meant that a manifesto commitment lasted for one Parliament and did not bind the next Parliament. We can agree to disagree on that.
  I want to speak briefly on what the challenges of this Bill mean for higher education and for the future of our country. The House should bear two things in mind, one of which is that this country will not survive as a competitive nation unless it uses all the skills of all its people and releases the potential of every child and adult in this country to the fullest extent.
  Simon Hughes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Sheerman: No.
  As Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee, which has conducted four inquiries into higher education in the very recent past, I can speak with some authority, as some of the leading experts in the country have given evidence to us. There is no doubt that if we examine our education system, we will all recognise one clear underperformance: the underachievement of many people who come from poorer backgrounds, and the inability of our education system, over 150 years of public education, to deliver the full potential, in terms of educational opportunity, of all our children, however clever they may be. If we examine the graph showing bright working-class children and average middle-class children at two and a half years of age, we find that by the age of six they have crossed over in terms of academic performance. Such a failure is a disgrace to all of us.
  I do not agree with everything in this Bill, but I believe that we should support it. I do agree, however, that in 1997, for the first time in the history of this country, a Prime Minister ran—this is a manifesto commitment—on "Education, education, education," as our Government's priority. That was what they were going to deliver, and they renewed that commitment in the following election. That is what mattered. I do not remember a stirring commitment from any Conservative Member.
  I remind the House that since 1997 the Government have poured money into those areas in which policy evidence suggests that it is most effective: early years, sure start and the preparation of young children; free

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  nursery education for four-year-olds and now three-year-olds; an 80 per cent. increase for school buildings; a 60 per cent. increase for junior schools; and a 35 per cent. increase throughout secondary education. We never had such spending previously in the history of this country. That is something of which I, as a Labour Member of Parliament, am proud to put before an electorate. In addition, the provision of education maintenance allowance at 16 is keeping young people from working-class backgrounds in education from 16 to 18—the time at which they can drop out.
  That is what we have achieved, and I put this Bill in that context of great achievement. I remember that cheap jibe from the Leader of the Opposition recently—that he was a grammar school boy talking to a public school boy. No one is responsible for the school to which he or she is sent, but we have every responsibility for the school to which we send our children. That is our responsibility as individuals. I have always used and supported. as have most of my Labour colleagues, state schools—we have not preached about the public sector and sent our children to the private sector.
  In terms of the context of the Bill, I want to comment on why it is important to invest in higher education and find diverse resources to invest. The Government are wrong if they do not believe that there will be a greater call on the taxpayer over the coming years to invest in a higher education system that really competes with the best in the world. However much money we get from this new form of variable fee, which I support, it will not be enough to make our university sector the most competitive in the world, so more taxpayers' money will be required.
  Some of my hon. Friends talk complacently about a two-tier system. Do they realise how many opportunities a child who is sent to the private sector, or to a selective school or grammar school, has in terms of getting to the best universities compared with the ordinary child who goes through the comprehensive system? The system is still rigged in favour of the privileged. The Bill will make a remarkable step towards opening up our universities to all the talents. I am an unashamed elitist, but I want the kind of elitism that is based on a person's potential and grades, not on whom they know, how well connected they are, and whether they are given the best opportunity to get the best A-levels and to peak at 18. I want every child of talent to be able to walk through the doors of every first-class institution in this country.
  Mr. Allen: Does my hon. Friend agree that restoring a grant, particularly at the level of £3,000, will be seen as one of this Government's greatest achievements in education? He said that no more money is available for this package, but has he considered the zero rate of interest that will be charged on the loan to pay the fees? That is a Government-preferred rate that could save several hundred million pounds, which could go into making the grant even higher—it might end up going from a standing start to more than £3,000 for people on the lowest incomes.
  Mr. Sheerman: My hon. Friend tempts me on to interesting territory. As he knows, the Select Committee
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  on Education and Skills recommended that the zero interest subsidy for middle class families—amounting to £1.2 billion —could have been taken away and used for other purposes, but the Government did not accept that, for reasons that I understand.
  Overall, my hon. Friend is right. The package before the House will build on our other reforms to open up educational opportunities in the educational system. As politicians, we should always admit it when we are wrong. I was wrong—and my Select Committee agreed with me—when I came out against the Office for Fair Access. On reflection over the months, I decided that I, personally, was wrong about that. OFA will be part of the process of prising open the system and providing the necessary leverage to ensure that the most talented people can get into any institution into which their talent drives them. In other words, it will do something that universities are loth to do. That is not a criticism. Universities started to talk about top-up fees because they had had 18 years of the Conservatives screwing them into the ground, with more students, fewer resources, appalling pay for lecturers, and no opportunity to do anything about it. In frustration, many said, "We've got to have top-up fees—we need £10,000 or £15,000 to make this a world-class competitive higher education sector."
  That is the background. Now, the Bill is introducing the fees policy. It is a good Bill which opens up educational opportunity and delivers in a way that was never possible in the past. Our future economic prosperity depends on investment in higher education. The good life for all our constituents depends on how much we pile into that, and on retaining in our country people with higher education. I recommend the Bill; I am unashamedly in favour of it.
  3.20 pm
  Mrs. Gillian Shephard: I draw the attention of the House to the fact that for the past three years I have been a member of the governing council of the university of Oxford, which is an unpaid position.
  A year ago, the Government published their White Paper on higher education, which identified a number of problems in the higher education sector. They were primarily that the sector needs to expand—up to a participation rate of 50 per cent.—that it needs more funds, and that participation should widen across socio-economic groups. The House is entitled to ask whether the Bill will solve those problems and, if it will not, to reject it. In the brief time that I have for my speech, I hope to address those questions and to raise one or two others.
  The Government's White Paper presents some interesting contrasts with its predecessor: the Dearing inquiry that was proposed to the House in February 1996. In 1996, the number of young people in higher education, after a very rapid expansion, was approaching one in three; at present, about 43 per cent. of people aged between 18 and 30 are involved. In 1996, the UK was spending more on higher education than any country in the western industrialised world. A third of all first degrees were in science, mathematics and engineering. Last year, a third of all first-time graduates had studied business and administration, creative arts and design or social studies.

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  Like its successor, the Dearing inquiry was concerned with the growth of knowledge, technological advance, international competition, the need for professional flexibility and for updating and upskilling. It, too, had to consider the implications of increasing student numbers; the number of first-time graduates had more than doubled between 1979 and 1996. Unlike its successor, however, the Dearing committee was not asked to assume that a growth in numbers was desirable for its own sake; rather, the inquiry was asked to make recommendations on
  "how the shape, structure, size and funding of higher education, including support for students, should develop to meet the needs of the UK over the next 20 years."—[Official Report, 19 February 1996; Vol. 272, c. 22.]
  By contrast, the Government's White Paper sets a 50 per cent. target for participation in higher education. The basis for that target is, in essence, a political aspiration—that is okay—based on what the Government believe is economically and sociologically desirable. Their justification for that figure is vague; it does not seem to be linked to the requirements of the jobs market. Indeed, the Association of Graduate Recruiters has reported that the majority of its member companies, which include KPMG, Unilever, JP Morgan and, notably, the national health service, finds that the UK already produces too many graduates.
  Mr. Robert Jackson: During my right hon. Friend's visits to Oxford, has she encountered the Higher Education Policy Institute, which has produced papers showing that a reasonable projection is that student numbers will rise to 50 per cent. by the end of this decade? That is a projection, not a target, and it flows from the fact that all Governments—like our own party—are committed to the idea that all qualified young people who wish to enter higher education will be able do so.
  Mrs. Shephard: That happens to have been my position. I am perfectly well aware of the existence of the institute and indeed have been in touch with it.
  My point is that the Government have a perfect right to aspire to a 50 per cent. participation rate in higher education, but they do not have the right to convey the impression that there is an objective justification for such a target, nor to assume that without such justification they will necessarily carry the day with those who have to foot the bill or, in other ways, accept the consequences. The Government must also accept that since that 50 per cent. expansion is part of the higher education funding crisis—in their terms—they must be able to justify it and persuade others of the rightness of their arguments.
  Jonathan Shaw: In the light of the comments of the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson), will the right hon. Lady tell the queue of parents whose children have two or more A-levels that they will not have a university place?
  Mrs. Shephard: My point is that admission to university should be based on merit and capability, not on targets set by the Government according to what is politically desirable. That point is shared by many academics, including Professor Alan Smithers of Liverpool university, who has said:
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  "Higher education has been expanded as a superior form of youth training to keep down unemployment. There are a lot of courses which don't lead to a good understanding of the world or equip students for a job."
  Those are his words, not mine.
  Alan Howarth: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Shephard: No, I shall not give way again.
  What will the Bill do to address the second problem—that of underfunding—bearing in mind that the Government are in part the author of their own misfortunes? Will its proposals improve the funding position of the universities? Professor Michael Sterling, the chairman of the Russell Group, thinks not. In The Times on 8 January this year, he said:
  "We have all got ourselves into a mode of belief that what is in the Bill will solve the problem. Everybody knows that it won't, including Charles Clarke."
  It is true that he made those remarks on 8 January, and that 26 or 27 concessions have been made since then, but the principle is still a good one.
  The cost of the proposals in the Bill will be more than£1 billion, as the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown) has confirmed. That cost will have to be met from the higher education budget, because top-up fees will raise less than £1 billion, once the cost of bursaries has been taken into account, not to mention the cost of any further concessions. There could be another one tonight: who can say? The reference by the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend to the nods and winks from the Treasury was most revealing. Perhaps we shall see more concessions based on such nods and winks. What a pity that the representatives of the Treasury are not in the House this afternoon.
  The third problem that the White Paper identifies is the low participation rate in higher education among the three lowest socio-economic groups. On this, the Government have to confront their own broken promises. They broke the promise made in the 1997 general election campaign that tuition fees would not be introduced, when they revealed in their response to the Dearing report that they planned to introduced such fees and that, for good measure, they would abolish maintenance grants. In 2001, they promised not to introduce top-up fees, yet the Bill introduces them.
  At the same time, graduate student debt is increasing dramatically. A recent MORI poll published in The Daily Telegraph last week found that student debt had risen by 74 per cent. over the past four years, with the average graduate debt standing at £8,000. Quite what kind of blow the Government believe the Bill will strike for higher participation from the three lowest socio-economic groups is not clear, but whatever their belief, it is not shared by university teachers and students. As the president of the National Union of Students has said:
  "We must question why the Government refuse to recognise the deterrent that debt is for students from the poorest backgrounds."
  The Bill cannot achieve what the Government said in their White Paper needed to be done. That alone should be enough to persuade any right-minded person to vote against it, but there are other, more fundamental

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  objections. Not least is the fact that the Government, having trumpeted their intention to give universities and colleges more independence, are introducing a Bill that will, unprecedentedly, impose financial penalties on institutions that fail to introduce approved admission criteria. This extraordinary control-freakery in pursuit of a social, rather than an academic, agenda has never been seen in this country before. It is to be expected, however, from a Government who have shown time and again, today and during the wider debate, that they regard universities, in part, as instruments of social policy, while ignoring their real role, which is to create and disseminate new knowledge and to preserve and transmit to future generations a body of knowledge inherited from the work of earlier generations.
  I accept that universities should, and almost always do, make every effort to disseminate what they can offer to students, provide outreach programmes and preparation courses, and sell their wares across the country. However, if they are to remain the guardians of academic excellence and freedom, they must be allowed to admit on merit alone.
  James Purnell: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Shephard: No. The Government are the authors of their own misfortunes. The electorate are repelled by their cynical ditching of their election pledges—not once, but twice. The electorate can see that these proposals will help neither students nor higher education and that they will deter, not encourage, young people from less well off homes to enter higher education. They will also strike a fundamental blow at the independence of universities.
  Finally, the Government's inability, despite a majority of 164, to handle their own affairs will not be lost on the voters. The Bill should be opposed.
  3.30 pm
  Alan Howarth: In the early 1990s, as higher education Minister, I thought hard about how to retrieve the universities from what was already a gathering financial crisis. I concluded that we should move towards top-up fees. I was indeed edging in that direction when my Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), genially kicked top-up fees right out of play. It is true that they were not practical politics then. The new student maintenance loans were still controversial and the Inland Revenue refused to have anything to do with administering repayments by graduates. Now, more than a decade later, I very much welcome the Bill, as well as the package of student support and funding for the universities, introduced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
  The Government's policy is fair to students. Up-front fees will go and students from low-income households will be vastly better supported by grant, fee remission and bursary. Loans for maintenance will be increased to match average student expenditure on essentials. That means that no one will be unable to afford to go to university.
  The loans will carry no real rate of interest. Critics who worry about debt aversion and graduates being locked into additional debt should acknowledge that the
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  Government are not plunging students into mortgage-type debt, credit card debt or loan shark debt. There is nothing for students to be scared of in these changes. While graduates are earning less than £15,000 or not earning at all, no repayments will be required. On earnings of £20,000, graduates will repay annually only half what they presently repay. Outstanding debts will be written off after 25 years. It is a very good deal indeed.
  Mr. Tim Boswell: The right hon. Gentleman, who shared responsibilities with me at the time he refers to, has mentioned a repayment threshold of£15,000. Would he care to speculate as to what the starting point would be under the mortgage-type loans, which he traduces but which he and I administered under the Conservative Government? Would it not already be more than£20,000?
  Alan Howarth: We can certainly say that raising the threshold is a substantial improvement and that the important thing to do is to work towards creating better conditions—more propitious conditions—for people to go to university.
  The Government are being fair to students in holding down the maximum annual repayable fee to £3,000. If in due course it is proposed that the maximum fee should be raised in real terms, we will all need to think very carefully indeed in considering graduates' income and expenditure patterns. People need to save more for their pensions while shouldering prodigious mortgage costs, bringing up children and, possibly, caring for elderly relatives. They will have to repay university fees as well as student loans. I hope, for the sake of universities, that the £3,000 maximum fee is eventually increased somewhat, but it must be affordable for graduates.
  Mr. Allen: Will my right hon. Friend make it clear in terms of repayment of fees that no student and no parent, rich or poor, will pay anything? Graduates will repay the fees, and do so at the rate of £5.25 a week when they are on £18,000 a year and at only £25 a week when they are on £30,000 a year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Jim Dowd) said, on an interest-free loan, everybody can realise what a great deal that is.
  Alan Howarth: I am greatly looking forward to my hon. Friend's speech.
  Variable fees are fairer to students than flat-rate fees. This infamous marketisation will mean, within the strict limit that the Government are imposing, a dynamic of accountability that will help to ensure the responsiveness of university departments to their students. It would plainly be unfair if the Department for Education and Skills, like so many "Gosplanners", were to impose a single tariff for every university course whatever its academic level, quality, cost, popularity and value in the marketplace. I welcome the new powers for the Welsh Assembly, but I urge my Assembly Member colleagues to reconsider their position on variable fees.
  I am pleased that my right hon. Friend intends to move towards abolishing the means-testing of student loans. That, too, will be fair to students because it will confer on them financial independence from their

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  parents and therefore treat them as young adults, like their peers who left school and went more or less straight into paid employment.
  The policy is fair to taxpayers as well as students. Everyone gains from excellent universities, which are the trustees of our civilisation and inherit, transmit and develop our culture. They ensure that we continue to have a worthwhile life of the mind. Whitehall, in its obsessive materialism and instrumentalism, often ignores that. Whitehall validly recognises, however, that, without more university education, we will be less prosperous. Universities are therefore a public good and the Government are right to plan to increase expenditure on higher education and envisage that five sixths of funding for universities should derive from general taxation. The income from top-up fees will be only one sixteenth of the amount that the taxpayer will provide. That contrast has not been sufficiently noted.
  Equally, it is right that taxpayers should not be required to pay for all the increase in funding for universities. Graduates enjoy a large personal benefit culturally and materially from their higher education. Eighty-two per cent. of taxpayers have not been to university. I cannot ask my constituents in disadvantaged wards of Newport, East to foot the bill for all the private and personal gain of university students.
  Mr. Rendel: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Alan Howarth: No. Any extra revenue from taxation available for education should go towards improving education from infancy onwards. Precisely because we want more people from disadvantaged backgrounds to our priority for public expenditure must be pre-university education so that we raise aspirations.
  My right hon. Friend's policies are fair, too, to the universities. The Government are providing significant financial relief. Top-up fees may bring in £1 billion; a £3,000 fee is a 30 per cent. increase in funding per student; and £1 billion represents 10 per cent. of planned public expenditure on the universities—a significant proportional increase.
  The financial plight of the universities as it is, even after the Government's important improvements in funding since 1997, remains dire. Libraries and laboratories are miserably and stupidly underfunded, buildings are dilapidating, staff-student ratios have drastically deteriorated, the findings of the latest research assessment exercise were not honoured and, most unjustly and foolishly of all, academic salaries have become a pittance.
  The extra £1 billion from top-up fees comes, of course, on top of the Government's commitment to increase public spending on higher education by 6 per cent. a year in real terms over the next three years, rising to £10 billion in 2005–06. Although that increase falls short of the £10 billion over three years for which Universities UK has—reasonably enough—bid, it will make a big difference. And it is only fair. Universities trebled student numbers in 20 years while maintaining standards in teaching; in 20 years, too, funding per student fell by 40 per cent.; research ratings improved while funding failed to keep pace; academic salaries all
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  but stood still while average earnings in the United Kingdom rose by almost half. No group of workers has increased its productivity more or been so poorly rewarded. Against that record, some of my right hon. Friends should be wary of castigating the universities for poor management.
  Top-up fees also have the virtue that they bring a small enhancement of independence to universities. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State should aim further to increase their independence. The White Paper spoke of the desirability of new endowments. While the Conservatives can dream their dreams, the Government should at least lay the foundation for the long-term creation of endowments. We cannot revert to the vision of that brief moment in the history of the universities—the 25 years between the Robbins report of 1963 and the Education Reform Act 1988—of a fully state-funded system, underwriting students to live and study away from home. We know, too, however, that even as the state has withdrawn from that commitment, it has multiplied its intrusions into the affairs of universities, with a change to the legal status of tenure, the Secretary of State's ever more detailed and prescriptive letters of guidance to the Further Education Funding Council and bureaucratic Pelion piled on Ossa.
  Now the Bill creates an Office for Fair Access. Its purpose is unexceptionable; the state has legitimate claims to make, but I find the notion of a regulator for universities disquieting. I hope that my right hon. Friend ensures that OFFA operates with the lightest touch and, that as the Government increase the financial independence of universities, they will become less dirigiste, trust the universities more and allow them scope as free centres of knowledge, thought and teaching.
  3.39 pm
  Mr. Michael Jack: I find it somewhat odd to speak in a debate in which the Government of the day include two former presidents of the National Union of Students who, when they stood on those conference platforms and made their speeches defending the interests of students, would not have dared for one moment to advance proposals such as those that have found their way into this Bill. It seems in a way that they have sold out for a mess of pottage, which I find deeply distasteful and disappointing.
  In their White Paper "The Future of Higher Education", the Government rightly say
  "Our economy is becoming even more knowledge-based and we are increasingly making our living through selling high-value services…A comprehensive review of the academic literature suggests there is compelling evidence that education increases productivity."
  I agree with those two sentences.
  Mr. Allen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not a convention that when a Member names or implies the name of another, the Member in question is allowed to respond to an accusation made in that way?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for speaking on the basis of his long experience of procedural matters, but I have not as yet observed a breach of the convention to which

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  he refers. The right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) was engaged in a quotation. The convention is certainly correct, but it is up to him whether to observe it in due course.
  Mr.Jack: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  In answer to a parliamentary question that I asked about the rate of return to the United Kingdom in respect of investment in higher education, the Minister for Children, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) said that the social rate of return on higher education for men and women entering at 18 was between 9 and 11 per cent. That is a superb rate of return.
  The White Paper points out that the more that is put in, the more the nation gains. That is why investing in its brightest and best is the right thing for the nation to do, and why it is wrong to do as the Bill does and put barriers in the way of access to higher education for talented young people.
  Mrs. Lorna Fitzsimons: After being named, I had given up hope.
  As one of, in fact, six former presidents of the NUS present in the Chamber, all of whom support the Government's proposals, I can safely say that I am on record as supporting a graduate tax when I was president.
  Mr. Jack: The two former presidents to whom I was referring are the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who, unlike the hon. Lady, were of my vintage.
  Let me say a little more about the rate of return to the nation. The House of Commons Library has calculated for me that graduates who, by definition, are earning more are paying more in taxes. There is already a tax differential of some £2000 a year between what a graduate pays in tax and what a non-graduate pays. On that basis, the nation is earning a very good rate of return on its investment in graduates.
  I believe that, as a point of principle, it is right for the nation to invest in its brightest and best for all our good. The young lady who tackled the Prime Minister on "Newsnight" asked whether the dustman would not be glad that she, a doctor-to-be, had used her skills and talents to provide the cure that he needed without being deterred from entering the profession—like many graduates who wish to become medical students—by talk of £60,000 of debt.
  Jim Sheridan: Some of the lowest earners in the country—certainly in my constituency—are paying taxes so that people can be educated in public services, only for them to take their skills abroad. The taxpayer gains no benefit from his investment in education.
  Mr. Jack: One would hope that anyone financed by public funds would give something back to the United Kingdom. I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but an economy that is driven increasingly by cerebral activity
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  must invest in its brightest and best. I do not think that variable fees are the best way of proceeding with that agenda.
  If the Government were not worried that the increased cost of higher education would put people off, why have they set a level of £15,000 below which they will fund and above which they will not? If the cliff edge is £15,000, a family with an income of £20,000 would face a difficult situation. We have discussed large debts, and in my judgment they will put people off. The magazine "Public Finance" surveyed finance directors of major companies and found that 85 per cent. of them believe that the increased cost of higher education will put people off, which is the reverse of the objective of Government policy.
  I am the father of two young men who graduated last year, one as an economist from Loughborough university, the other, after six years of study, as a doctor. I calculate that with top-up fees it would have cost the doctor approximately £50,000 and the graduate economist approximately £25,000. Whatever anybody says, such debt or cost levels are bound to affect people's university choices.
  The vice-chancellor of the university of Central Lancashire explained his worries to me about the effect that the advent of variable fees will have on the choices that people make about education, and he definitely anticipates the introduction of a two-tier system. I would not like a bright potential doctor from a low-income background to examine the debt repayments that they would face and decide that they would not necessarily go into medicine and would look for a cheaper alternative. That is not the best way to harvest the human skills in this country.
  Alternative sources of funding have not been discussed so far in this debate. The House of Commons Library analysis of the resources of higher education institutions produced some interesting information. In 2000–01, for example, the Oxbridge group of universities achieved 10.6 per cent. of their income from endowments and investments while the totality of universities achieved only 2.2 per cent. from such sources. The same data shows that while the Oxbridge group of universities achieved 33.4 per cent. of its income from research and development through research grants and contracts, the totality of universities achieved the low figure of 16.4 per cent. from such sources. If one considers the income from research and development and endowments as well as the possibility of former university students paying money back to their colleges, it is clear that there are alternative ways to bring in substantial sums of money to assist the universities and make them less dependent on an effectively limited sum of money from general taxation.
  We must think carefully about the different ways in which higher education can be gained. The Open university is a remarkable institution. I tabled a parliamentary question that illustrated that under the current arrangements the cost to a graduate of the Open university is £4,400. I know that all young people want to go away and establish their independence—it is a wonderful experience and I am privileged enough to have had a university education. However, in the times in which we live we may have to examine other methods. We should carefully examine expanding both the Open

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  university and vocational degrees, which the Government are currently developing, and consider ways to increase access to higher education via extended learning. We should look at reducing the costs of higher education for some people to try to get us off the treadmill that the only way to acquire a university degree is by the conventional route into our current institutions of higher education.
  There are inconsistencies. The son of a family friend graduated two years ago from Leeds university with a geography degree. He examined the world of work and decided that by going to his local college of further education and retraining for a plumbing qualification at effectively no extra cost to him he can enhance his salary from what he could have earned as a graduate.
  Such inconsistencies point back to an issue that has already been raised by right hon. and hon. Members in this debate: the real key to educational opportunity in the United Kingdom lies in improving the output of our secondary education sector. That is how more doors can be opened to the brightest and best in our society to go forward to higher education. We need innovative and lower cost ways of obtaining that education, but above all we must maintain a high level of public investment in our higher education—our universities—to maximise for Britain the potential in humankind. Investing in people is a national responsibility: it should be something to which we are all proud to contribute, for the collective benefit of the country.
  3.50 pm
  Mrs. Anne Campbell: I speak as a longstanding opponent of variable top-up fees. Indeed, I put my opposition on record as early as 1997. However, we now have a different proposition from the one that came from the universities in 1997, before the election in that year. The proposals are for capped fees and include considerable help for poorer students. I shall come back to that point because although the changes do not satisfy my concerns completely, the present proposals are much better than the original ones, which would have allowed the universities to raise unlimited sums from fees.
  The money has to come from somewhere. That recognition is sadly lacking on the other side of the Chamber. Reducing student numbers or trying to constrain how many people can go to university cannot possibly be the answer. To tell a young person with two good A-levels that they cannot go to university because the Government cannot fund enough places would be cruel and unnecessary. It would also lead to poorer economic performance in the long term. The Liberal Democrat proposals to fund higher education completely from taxation are dishonest. If we considered the totality of taxation raised, we would find many other areas that were more important to social equality than higher education.
  Dr. John Pugh: The hon. Lady uses the word "dishonest". Is she not simply saying that we have different priorities? The fact that we have different
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  priorities from you does not make our proposal dishonest. Will she elaborate on what she means by dishonest?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must use the correct parliamentary language.
  Mrs. Campbell: I shall elaborate on what I meant when I described the Liberal Democrats' proposals as dishonest. They pretend that everything can be funded by a small increase in taxation. It is easy to talk about 1p on the general tax rate, or increasing top-rate tax to 50 per cent., but they do not say how that would fund all the different promises that they have made or how much those promises would cost.
  Lembit Öpik: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Campbell: No, I shall not give way again. I have answered the point.
  Because of my opposition to variable fees, but also because I recognise the good aspects of the Bill, I decided to ask my constituents what they thought and I conducted a survey by several different means. The Cambridge Evening News helpfully published one of my consultation survey forms. I also distributed paper copies to schools and asked them to ensure that pupils from year 11 upwards answered my questions. I had an online consultation on my website, and the Cambridge university students union conducted a very similar one on its website.
  I found that I received very different answers from different segments of the population. From the Cambridge Evening News, from the hard copies and from my website, which had around 650 responses, the results were as follows: 36 per cent. would prefer to retain the status quo; 29 per cent. thought that I should support the Government; and 36 per cent. were undecided. I also received some very good comments as a result of those surveys, and I shall return to those later.
  The Cambridge university students union survey received 835 responses, showing very different results: 73 per cent. were in favour of the status quo, compared with 18 per cent. who wanted me to support the Government; and 9 per cent. were undecided.
  Lembit Öpik rose—
  Dr. Palmer rose—
  Mrs. Campbell: I give way to my hon. Friend.
  Dr. Palmer: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, not just for giving way but for giving me permission to conduct the same survey on the Broxtowe website. I confirm that her results were not a flash in the pan. In Broxtowe, more than three times as many favoured the Government's proposal as favoured the status quo.
  Mrs. Campbell: I am conscious that the students union ran a big campaign to try to get people to pressure me into voting against the Government on this matter. The students concerns must be taken notice of. In the past 24 hours, I have gone back to both students union presidents, Ross Tuckley at Anglia polytechnic

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  university and Ben Brinded at Cambridge university, to discuss with them in more detail exactly what their objections are. They both told me that their principal objections concern variability—the variable fees—and fall into roughly three categories.
  The first is the cap, and fears about raising the cap. I appreciate the promises that have been made and the fact that there are constraints in the Bill. I know that it will take a vote on the Floor of both Houses to raise the cap, and that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made an undertaking, which is very much appreciated, that the cap will not be raised until the election after next. However, as one student put it to me, we would be letting the genie out of the bottle. Whether the cap goes up in 10 years' time or 12 years' time, or whenever it is, that will still lead to a far greater degree of variability between courses than exists at present.
  I understand that a possible amendment has been discussed with my right hon. Friend, who is not inclined to accept it at the moment. I would certainly support an amendment in Committee or on Report to limit the raising of the cap to inflation increases. I hope that we shall be able to discuss this matter during the Bill's passage.
  The second objection is that variability will lead to a two-tier university system, with cheaper courses leading to an inevitable decline in quality at some universities. My right hon. Friend has written to me about this. I received the letter just a few hours ago, and I am grateful to him for it. He tells me that the Higher Education Funding Council is conducting a review of the way in which it allocates funding for university teaching. That could lead to the possibility of a greater Government subsidy for universities that might be disadvantaged because they cannot attract the same fee. I hope that that is so, because it would be a very positive move.
  The third objection is that students will choose their university according to cost, rather than opting for the one that best matches their attitudes and abilities. I am delighted that an independent commission will examine the effects of the new funding regime. It is important that that be done as soon as there is any evidence that there is a basis for this objection. It is a real concern.
  My difficulty is that, although I have considerable concerns about variability, I do not want to lose those aspects of the Bill that end up-front fees, reintroduce grants, and produce a higher rate of loans—so that students do not have to take out commercial bank loans—and easier debt repayment.
  One of the reasons why I intend to abstain instead of voting with the Opposition tonight is because of two e-mails that I have received from constituents as part of the survey. Both are from Cambridge university students. One, who is the first in his family to enter higher education, having attended a comprehensive school in the north-west of England, says:
  "I believe the Government's proposals are the only viable way forward for the future of university funding. After discussing these matters with my family, we all came to the conclusion that I would have been in a much better position had I gone to university under the system as outlined in the Government's proposals."
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  Another student, who is quite active in the students union, says:
  "I work voluntarily at a youth"
  club on one of my council estates in Cambridge,
  "and meet many kids who will probably never go to university, but this is not because of fees; this is because of their nursery education, their primary education, their poor nutrition, their lack of after-school clubs. I grew up on a council estate and under the Tory party my family were so poor that there were times when the only meal I got was"—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
  4.1 pm
  Mr. Simon Thomas: I want to explain why I and my colleagues will vote against the Bill tonight, and why we will do so on the basis of the Bill as we see it and read it, not on the basis of hidden promises—letters being sent to Back Benchers on all sorts of deals that are being stitched up here, there and everywhere. We need to debate the Bill and the effect that it will have on the current higher education sector. I hope that the Bill does not pass into Committee, but if it does, we shall be able to see how it may be improved.
  The problem of funding higher education is shared across England and Wales. The leadership of Welsh universities, however, holds a different view of the Bill from that of Universities UK. Two thirds of Welsh vice-chancellors have said that they oppose the Bill—so some vice-chancellors do oppose it. In the past couple of weeks, I have had the benefit of being part of a Royal Society exchange programme with a scientist at the university of Wales in Aberystwyth, and I have learned through discussions with him and his colleagues just how deep is the crisis in our research institutions—in funding and so on.
  Pete Wishart: My hon. Friend is probably aware, too, that almost all the academic community in Scotland opposes the Government's plans for tuition fees. Is it not therefore extraordinary that Scottish Members are prepared to go through the Lobby as voting fodder for the Government tonight, instead of backing the Scottish interest and ensuring that it is protected?
  Mr. Thomas: I agree with my hon. Friend. It is clear that the Bill affects Scotland as much as it does Wales, England and Northern Ireland. Given that students move from all parts of the United Kingdom to other parts of the United Kingdom to pursue their higher education, we must address how best to tackle the issues for all students, whichever funding mechanism arrives in those countries.
  Lembit Öpik: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Thomas: In a minute.
  Yesterday, I met Aberystwyth students on their protest against the Bill, and today I met Lampeter students who were here to lobby me. I have also met members of the Association of University Teachers in the universities in my constituency, so I have come to realise the extent of the salary difficulties currently confronting so many higher education staff.

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  However, the debate is not just about the funding gap that exists in higher education; it is also about the aspiration gap that holds many young, bright people back and prevents them from entering higher education. We already know that poorer students are 45 per cent. deeper in debt than their richer counterparts. Let me put it like this: if someone whose parents earn £20,000 a year goes into higher education, under the present arrangement they will come out with debts of about £10,000, but if someone whose parents earn £30,000 a year goes into higher education, they will come out with debts of about £7,000. An incredible gap already exists, which puts off poorer students.
  I do not accept the idea that it is somehow patronising to think that students from poorer backgrounds are put off by debt aversion. That problem is there in all the facts, all the statistics, and all the work commissioned by the Department itself. It is clear in Claire Callendar's work and in the Rees report commissioned for Wales. Debt, or the fear of debt, is the single most influential factor in putting off students from poorer backgrounds from entering higher education. Indeed, it is cited as the No. 1 factor by three quarters of the respondents to any survey that has been undertaken, in England and in Wales. The Rees report made that point very strongly in the Welsh context.
  We must assess whether the Bill deals with the two main obstacles: the funding gap for higher education, and the aspiration gap for many of our brightest and best. For a start, the Bill barely supplies 10, 11 or 12 per cent. of the funding gap—£1 billion out of £8 billion, £9 billion or £10 billion, depending on how we look at it. The Bill is flawed even in respect of what it is trying to achieve, irrespective of whether we agree with the principles. It means that we must still turn to general taxation to meet the rest of the funding gap, which poses the question why, if general taxation is good for £7 billion, it cannot be used for £1 billion. But there we are; the Government have set their hearts against that.
  The Bill also poses the question of a return to polytechnics or to two-tier universities in which some are only teaching institutions and the cream do the research. The Bill can only exacerbate the debts already suffered by many students.
  Lembit Öpik: I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the crisis that the Bill will cause in Wales if it is passed. On the return to the binary divide, does he agree that it is wholly contradictory for former NUS presidents who fought hard to abolish the binary divide now to support a Bill that will reintroduce it? If there is any lack of honesty, surely it is pretending that somehow the Bill is equitable, when all the evidence suggests that it is not—certainly not for Welsh students.
  Mr. Thomas: I tend to agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the real disgrace is stating clearly in the manifesto that something will not be done—indeed, that it will be outlawed—and then doing it. That is even more disgraceful than the changing position of NUS presidents. We all know what sort of positions NUS presidents have adopted over the years to get where they are.
  In those two respects, the Bill is bad enough, but there is a final principle that I strongly oppose. It would be enough to drive me through the No Lobby tonight even
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  if it were not for the rest of the Bill and the dog's breakfast that it will introduce into higher education. I mean the introduction of market forces and variability into our higher education system. I cannot believe that Labour Members, having watched 18 years of what market forces did to the communities that they represented when they were in opposition, are so slow witted that they cannot deduce what market forces will do to higher education. The cap will not keep tuition fees down; it will not work.
  Have market forces ever been capped in respect of anything that has been privatised in this country? Have market forces ever addressed the real needs of poorer people? It has never happened. We heard from the right hon. Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) where the idea came from—straight from the Conservatives into No. 10 think-tanks. I will oppose that in principle.
  Mr. Parmjit Dhanda rose—
  Mr. Thomas: I regret that I shall not give way again, because I do not have much time left and I have already given way twice.
  Capping variable fees is rather like trying to be a little bit pregnant: it will grow out of all proportion and all sizes. The Secretary of State, will not be able to stake his mortgage by controlling variable fees. The principle has been yielded and the principle will out.
  It is wholly honourable to say that one wants fully to embrace variable tuition fees in higher education. I disagree with it fundamentally, but it is honourable for people to say that that is what they want. What is a disgrace, however, is trying to hide behind reviews, commissions and all sorts of sticking plasters—they are not yet in the Bill, but we are told that they will be introduced in Committee—and pretend that the principle of variability and market forces running through our higher education institutions is somehow not there. It is as if the Cheshire cat was there and now only the grin is left—but the grin is a nasty snarl and grimace in what it means for higher education.
  I now want to discuss the fact that the Bill devolves power to Wales. One might expect any Plaid Cymru Member to vote for any form of devolution, but the principle that market forces will exist throughout our higher education system is more important to me than devolution. I do not accept that the Bill is the only opportunity that we will have to devolve powers on higher education to Wales. The Richards commission will report at the end of March, so that is the appropriate time to consider the panoply of powers for the Welsh Assembly and, hopefully, to make it a proper Parliament for Wales. Let us consider what the Bill means in the Welsh context.
  Mr. Jon Owen Jones: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Thomas: I regret not, although I hope that the hon. Gentleman gets an opportunity to speak. He will know that 45 per cent. of Welsh students study in England and that more than half the students studying in Wales are from England. In that context, the Bill makes no sense whatever. The devolution of power to

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  the National Assembly is a bit of a nonsense and a sop, because if the Assembly does not have powers on taxation or full legislative powers, it will not be able to address the matter. I would not oppose the measure if it were all that was in the Bill, but given that the Bill will introduce variability and market forces, my hon. Friends and I will oppose it. Moreover, the Secretary of State for Wales, Jane Davidson, the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning in Wales and, now, the right hon. Member for Newport, East have accepted that top-up tuition fees will inevitably come to Wales at some stage.
  I shall tell the House what Plaid Cymru as a party believes in. We strongly believe that the taxation system is the best way of addressing national needs, and higher education is a crucial national need. What is more, it is even more acceptable to fund higher education through taxation when the Government want 50 per cent. of young people to go to university than it was when 25 per cent., 33 per cent. or even 8 per cent. of young people went. The taxation system can, and should, be used to pay for the tuition of students in Wales, England, Northern Ireland and, indeed, Scotland, because that is the best and fairest system.
  I conclude with a story from ancient history about the Greek colony of Locri. According to Gibbon, a
  "Lochrian who proposed any new law stood with a cord around his neck and if the law was rejected the innovator was instantly strangled".
  I am not saying for a moment that the Secretary of State for Education and Skills should be strangled, but the Bill should be killed off at birth. It is the wrong Bill for the wrong time, and it will not help the education sector of this country.
  4.12 pm
  Mrs. Lorna Fitzsimons: It is interesting to be a member of a rare species in the House of Commons—an ex-president of the National Union of Students. It is even more interesting that Opposition Members claim to know what I used to stand for. It is amusing sport because all six ex-presidents stand firmly in the Government's camp on the proposals—[Interruption.] I used to spar with the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) during student politics, and I shall take joy in reminiscing in order to show how absolute overt political opportunism is driving the Opposition parties. I remember negotiating wit0h them when I was president of the NUS, and I have been lobbying people—primarily those on the Conservative Benches—on higher education since 1986.
  I was the first person in my family to go on to higher education. I am from a constituency with, historically, appalling representation in higher education. I am dyslexic and I have only two O-levels. When I went on to higher education at a college of art, the Conservative party tried to shut it. When I became president of the NUS, it tried to shut that, too. It failed on both counts, which suggests to me that it will fail again tonight. It will fail due to simple reasons of principle on which all six ex-presidents stand together and are clear.
  We all support the idea that more students should access higher education. When I was accepted by Loughborough college of art and design, four equally
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  qualified young people were not. They had exactly the same qualifications as me, so our admission was decided by the luck of the draw. That system squandered the nation's talents. It will not surprise many people outside the House to find that naked snobbery is at play in this place because the only people who would benefit from Conservative Members' blatant opportunism would be those who have always been in this country's elite and have always held the majority of power through knowing the benefits of higher education.
  Lembit Öpik: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Fitzsimons: No, the hon. Gentleman sought to tell us about the policy of getting rid of the binary divide. Most people outside will not have a clue that the binary divide was the notional divide between the old universities and red brick universities and polytechnics. I was the president of the NUS who happened to think that I was the luckiest girl alive when the binary divide went and we naively thought that there would be a level playing field in higher education. What a silly girl I was! The reality was that there were research universities, universities of research and teaching and teaching universities, and that the quality was stratified because the funding system was stratified and because of the disproportionate benefit of getting research funding into universities. That has given years and decades of privilege in British higher education, so somehow to claim all of a sudden that we are creating a two-tier system is totally and utterly to negate the evidence. I am one at least who is honest enough, having fought and won a campaign, to admit that we were deluded in what the outcome would be. That brings me to the manifesto.
  Lembit Öpik: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Fitzsimons: I will not; I will continue.
  One of the things that I certainly wanted, and still want, from a Government—sadly, we did not get it in the 18 years of the Conservative party being in power— is a Government who are big enough to say, "Sorry, we made a mistake." The most dangerous thing in politics is someone who knows that they made a mistake, regardless of the rights and wrongs, and is not courageous and big enough to admit to it. I, for one, think that the future of our country's higher education system and constituents' opportunities are big enough for us and the Prime Minister to say, "We made a mistake", because that makes for a healthy democracy.
  Lembit Öpik: Let me stress that I enjoy sparring with hon. Lady—I may hate the sin, but I still love the sinner. My concern is that she now admits that the manifesto was erroneous. Is she also saying that she and every Labour NUS president that I knew who opposed this kind of funding proposal for students also made a mistake? Is she saying that she made a mistake when she was president of the NUS, and, if so, why should anyone trust the student Labour movement again?
  Mrs. Fitzsimons: Because our top priority was the reintroduction of maintenance grants, which is what the Bill will do. The Conservative Government presided over a massacre of the student grant. They introduced the Student Loans Company, which was so costly in its

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  administration that it was cheaper to give students the money. I do not support any offering from the Conservative party that says that it has any of the interests at heart of any NUS president. I have spoken to 12 of my predecessors, who all support what the Government are doing because they are bringing back for the first time in living memory a decent grant that will help people who are disproportionately disbenefited by the fact that they are not now represented in higher education. Even when we had a full grant, no more than 20 per cent. of the participants in higher education came from the lower socio-economic backgrounds. So this is not all about money.
  Mr. Boswell: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I detect a certain degree of rewriting history, given our exchanges when I was a Minister and she came to see me. Will she tell the House whether the real value of the maintenance grant that is now on offer will be greater than the real value of the maintenance grant that was on offer under Conservative Governments some 10 or 12 years ago?
  Mrs. Fitzsimons: Absolutely and utterly, and I had the debts when I left university to prove it—£4,500. The bottom line in those days was that we had to have three jobs to make ends meet. I come from a background where both of my parents were unemployed for long periods in their lives, and to claim that there was any panacea or great thing in the past is to rewrite history, as the hon. Gentleman suggests. The reality is that I am proud of this package because it recognises the historic disbenefits to the working classes in terms of representation in higher education.
  Lynne Jones: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mrs. Fitzsimons: No, I will not; I have given way enough.
  The proposals will also get rid of the historic discrepancy between part-time students, FE students, mature students and overseas students, whereby they have always experienced variable fees. We will now ensure that there is a level playing field. For once and for all, we realise that those in the protected group of three-year undergraduates are not the only people in higher education and that those courses are not the only vehicle for studying in higher education. Ensuring a progression from the early years right the way through is the only way that we can capitalise on people's true potential.
  Half a person's brain capacity is developed by the age of six, yet more money is spent on educating undergraduates. That is absolutely and utterly untenable. Having lobbied Parliament on higher education since 1986, I cannot remember such a heated debate about the historical lack of funding for the under-sixes. We need to examine our consciences because vested interests are at play much of the time. I admit that we used the fact that many university towns were marginal seats to win campaigns, but that does not make good policy. I would defend the Bill anywhere because it benefits the vast majority of the constituencies that we represent and it is about honest politics.
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  As to the binary divide and two-tier system, when I was on the national executive of the National Union of Students polytechnics had to compete for 10 per cent. of the funding council's formula. We thought that meant doom—that the poorest in terms of quality and money would go through the floor and the rich would get better and better. That did not happen. There has been variability in the funding formula—such as the top-up given to Oxbridge and the 10 per cent. for the old Polytechnics—from time immemorial, but it has not distorted the market.
  The UK has one of the most highly scrutinised higher education systems in the world, although it can go still further in terms of quality. At the time of the debates on Robbins, only 6 per cent. of the population entered higher education. Opponents of the proposed expansion to 8 per cent. said that degrees would not be worth the paper they were written on. I urge caution by those of my hon. Friends who seek to argue that because more people are achieving degrees, they are not worth as much. Media studies have become a euphemism for something that is not a genuine degree course, but the correlation between such courses and employment is sometimes greater than with courses that some people would eulogise as being purely academic. That was the case when I was lucky enough to be an undergraduate. In those days, the Conservative party was trying to close our colleges on the pretext that fine art or textile graduates could not obtain employment. We proved that they did.
  This Bill marks a huge, historic move in the advancement and representation of people who have not had the benefit of higher education.
  4.23 pm
  Mr. Robert Jackson: I intend to vote with the Government tonight. As I agree with the arguments made by the Secretary of State, I will not repeat them. Instead, I will say a few words about the two main arguments adopted by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo). I use the word "adopted" advisedly.
  My view of the so-called access regulator is that it is an unnecessary development but may be desirable. I rather share the view of the right hon. Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth), who hinted at improvements to be made in Committee and in the other place. An access regulator is unnecessary because anyone who is familiar with our universities knows that there is no question of their exercising class discrimination in their admissions policy—either consciously or unconsciously. However, a regulator may be desirable because, as the Chairman of the Education and Skills Select Committee pointed out, there is certainly a problem of relatively low demand for university places among young people from underprivileged backgrounds. I believe the reason is the poverty of academic ambitions and attainments in all too many state schools. The regulator may turn out to have a positive role as a useful source of pressure on such schools to raise their game.
  The view of my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk, on the other hand, is that the access regulator represents a serious breach of the fundamental principle

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  that universities should be completely free to determine their own admissions policies. I agree that there should be no political interference in university admissions.
  Mr. Fallon: Surely the distinction is that regulators introduced by statute or Parliament are independent of the Department or Secretary of State who establishes them. The regulator established by the Bill "must" follow the guidance of the Secretary of State.
  Mr. Jackson: My hon. Friend has made a good point, which I hope will be pursued in Committee.
  I would like to return to the point of principle raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk. I agree that there should be no political interference in university admissions, but he has deliberately exaggerated—and I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) has too—the threat posed by the regulator to make a debating point against the Bill.
  If my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk was genuinely concerned about university independence, he would show a better understanding of the implications of abolishing fees, forbidding universities to charge them and leaving universities wholly dependent on the state for funding. I wonder whether he and other colleagues have ever thought seriously about why Conservatives favour lower taxes. We do so not for the indulgence of greed, nor because lower taxes promote faster economic growth. Why, after all, is economic growth desirable? We favour lower taxes because there is a fundamental connection between financial independence and moral and political independence. Tories believe that individuals and civil institutions alike flourish best in conditions of economic and moral freedom. In opposing this important and valuable legislation, Opposition Front Benchers are failing to make that essential connection, which goes to the heart of the Conservative tradition. I do not believe that a concern for university independence and freedoms that fails to make that connection is genuine.
  My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk also argued that the universities would be financially better off without the new fees. He takes advantage of the fact that, if the Bill is passed, its first year of operation will inevitably fall outside the Government's financial planning horizon. We therefore cannot know—the Government cannot tell us, except perhaps in nods and winks—what the total sum provided by the Government for higher education in that year will be, although there have been welcome assurances that they will continue to stand by the universities.
  There is an obvious sense in which my hon. Friend is right. If money is spent on A it cannot also be spent on B. If we spend money on financial support for students from poor families, we cannot also spend it on funding universities.
  Clare Short: I follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. but does he think that proposals for a graduate tax would prevent the up-front debt that puts people off going to university? Individual
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  students would, however, make a lifelong commitment to pay something extra for the privileges that they will get. Is that not a better solution?
  Mr. Jackson: No it is not, because a graduate tax would be paid to the Treasury and would be part of the general funding that goes to the Government. It would not provide the financial independence, leverage and margin for manoeuvre that is necessary to secure the universities' independence.
  To return to my hon. Friend's argument, it is true that if we spend money on A we cannot also spend it on B. That, however, begs a question. To take an example from another field, if we spend money on the Navy we cannot spend it on the Air Force. However, we need both a Navy and an Air Force. By the same token, we need funding both for universities and for students. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk shed a substantial number of crocodile tears on account of the possible deterrent effect of higher fees on students from poor families. At the same time, he denounced, both explicitly and implicitly, the measures that the Government propose to introduce to address the problem. Would he therefore not take any measures to support poorer students? Would he withdraw the maintenance grant? Would he cancel the interest rate subsidy on student loans? Students and their parents ought to be told. Is he serious about these issues, or is he once again just making a debating point to oppose this important legislation?
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) spoke about an endowment policy. I am glad that has made an appearance. It was the Conservative party's commitment in its last election manifesto, referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). Endowment is a fine thing, but are my colleagues, my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde included, aware that an endowment fund constructed on the model of the Wellcome Foundation, the foremost education charity in the country, would require capital of some £30 billion simply to match the additional income generated by the fees introduced by the Government?
  Where will money on that scale come from? Nobody knows. I certainly do not think my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks knows. Let me tell my colleagues something—donors will not give serious money to what they see as state institutions. Why should I give money to compensate for the abolition of fees, which most of those who benefit from a university education are perfectly able to pay?
  Funding universities is not rocket science. Looking around the world, it is obvious that there are only two ways to go. I leave aside the idea of an endowment fund, which is more of a fantasy than a policy. One option is that the taxpayer pays the lot and fails to pay enough. That is the European system, which has resulted in the decline of what were once the finest universities in the world, in Berlin, Paris and Heidelberg. Where are they now? This is the path that we, too, have been treading over the past three decades, with the same dismal consequences staring us all in the face.
  The other option is mixed funding, whereby taxpayer funding is topped up by student fees. That is the basis of the immensely successful American university system. It

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  has been introduced successfully in Australia and is being debated and developed in many other countries. This is the option that the Government are proposing and which the Opposition will be voting against tonight.
  I will go into the Lobby with the Government with my head held high. The time will soon come when the electorate will ask whether the Conservative party is once again a serious party of Government. I must tell my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench that when that time comes, I believe that the way they have chosen to handle this issue will be remembered and will be held against them.
  4.32 pm
  Dr. Alan Whitehead: The Bill gives us a once in a generation opportunity to deal significantly with the future of higher education. If we are to sustain widening access to higher education, it is important that we underpin it with firm foundations and firm principles that make that access work. As the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) pointed out, 50 per cent. of young people going into higher education by 2010 is not an arbitrary target plucked out of thin air. It represents roughly the number of young people who will in principle have achieved the educational qualifications to apply to take a course of study by that date.
  In the 1990s, the number of people who were qualified to take a course of higher education rose dramatically, and the numbers in higher education rose dramatically, as commentators of the time described it, "as if by accident". That was essentially a response to market incentives to expand, but with no long-term underwriting of those results. As we heard, funding per head of students fell by 36 per cent. during that period.
  We heard today from the Opposition that they propose not to have a top-up fee and not to cap the number of students going into higher education. I am not sure what they do propose. All hon. Members in the Chamber are equally puzzled. The only explanation that I can come up with from what we have heard today is that the proposal from the Opposition might return us to the 1990s, with market incentives for institutions to expand: money goes per student. but we do not have the fundamental foundation that is needed to ensure that money for teaching expands, and that the universities have the money in their forward resource accounting to make sure that they can take the numbers that they require and ensure that they are taught and that the degrees are worth it after those students have gone through the university system.
  What should this opportunity consist of? It should make a reality of the rhetoric of access. It should ensure that the teaching of a wide access regime in higher education is buttressed by proper funding. If we are to require some of that funding to come from fees, it should ensure that the effect of the fees does not cancel out the gain of access.
  Access to higher education, of course, should mean access to all courses in all universities, for all those who are able to take advantage of them, not access to some universities for the members of elite families who traditionally send their children into higher education, and not access to newer universities and new degrees only for those who are making up the 50 per cent. figure. It seems to me that market variability in fees is inimical
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  to those principles. It may mean that if colleges can charge what they like and access has been secured, a new burden in the shape of price, not qualification, arises for the student wishing to undertake the course for which they are qualified. It seems to me that the proposals for this Bill before Christmas did not make clear how that problem was to be overcome.
  That issue is much clearer now, however, because of the £3,000 up-front grant for students going into higher education—money in pocket. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) did not explain why there is a fundamental difference between fee remission and money up front. Money up front is money in one's pocket to go to university—to marshal one's resources to get to university and to overcome the problem that many students from poorer backgrounds face, of being unable to contemplate how to get to university let alone how to get through it. That is a fundamental change.
  Mr. McLoughlin: Suppose that two people do the same job and earn the same money. It is possible that one of them will have to pay back the fee while the other will not have to pay anything back. If the proposal is supposed to be based on what the student earns later, will the hon. Gentleman explain the fairness in that?
  Dr. Whitehead: The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood fundamentally what is entailed in moving from fee remission to up-front grants, whereby the poorer student pays the fee and has a grant to undertake activities at university when they go there. The fee repayment is therefore identical for all students, and people will pay the same, as far as fees are concerned, when they are sitting next to each other in the workplace. The difference will be that the student who has gained access as a result of having money up front will be able to navigate their way into and through university and to gain their life chances as a result of that up-front money.
  Mr. James Clappison: Is it not the Government's case that that money is meant to represent the £3,000 towards the fees, and that part of those fees is being paid already? Is it not unfair to the person who is in the same position later in life that the repayment is based on past income?
  Dr. Whitehead: With great respect, I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is also wrong. Under the new proposals confirmed today, all students would pay the same fee later in life, the difference being that a number of students would have a grant to navigate their way through university—quite a different process.
  We heard from the Liberal Democrats that they would fund all this from taxation. I heard from the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough the interesting proposition that for every £1 billion that is put in under the Liberal Democrat proposals, we will save £450 million. As £450 million, under the Government's current proposals, is the resource accounting budget difference between what we put into universities at the front and what we hope to collect— the money that we lose—it is a wonderful concept that by not collecting the money at all we save £450 million. If that is the basis of the Liberal Democrats' calculations, we do not set much store by them.

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  The other key point that concerned me when the Bill was first published is whether its provisions would rapidly degenerate into a truly market-variable regime, with the effects on access that I described. My understanding of the original pledge on top-up fees was not that fees would never rise, but that we should prevent a free-for-all whereby universities would charge what they thought the market could bear. The £3,000 cap on fees appears to do just that. The Bill does not propose a market in variable fees—if a market in variable fees means that fees go up as well as down—but, in essence, a fixed fee with discounts.
  The crux of the debate is this: are the Government about to cut loose and unleash market variables? People may well have been concerned about that before Christmas, but they must surely change their minds given that there will now be a review of the system after three years and a vote on the Floors of both Houses in the next Parliament on any proposals to lift the cap. It is not possible, as some hon. Members suggest, to slip a raising of the cap through under the negative procedure during an afternoon sitting involving a dozen Members.
  These changes should reassure all but the most determinedly distrustful of critics. We have to make a choice on whether we throw away this opportunity to move decisively towards an era in higher education where, although we have not solved the entire problem of funding, we have moved a long way towards ensuring that the teaching of students, the pay of lecturers, the circumstances in which students are taught, and conditions and salaries in universities are catered for through a real increase in provision per student over the years ahead. Moreover, we have achieved a breakthrough in terms of maintenance for students from poorer backgrounds, thereby improving their ability to navigate the system.
  Do we throw away those gains because of our belief that the Government might resile from what they have said about the way in which the fee will work in future years? This is not an equation that anybody with the interests of higher education at heart can easily balance without concluding that it is right and important to give the Bill a Second Reading, examine it closely in Committee and ensure that it provides the gains that we have heard about, which are important for the future of access to higher education.
  4.43 pm
  Paul Holmes: When I made my maiden speech in this Chamber on 21 June 2001, standing on this spot, one of my subjects was my opposition to tuition fees, which I explained by reference to a couple of examples based on my experience.
  I was the first member of my family, a family living on a large council estate, ever to go to university. In 1975, with an unemployed father and a mother who was a part-time home help, I could not have considered going to university under the existing tuition fees system. Before being elected in 2001, I worked as a head of sixth form. The hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Jim Dowd) said that he is irritated by the
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  patronising and old-fashioned view that debt deters students from lower-income families from going into higher education. I do not know what job the hon. Gentleman did before he was elected, but I was a teacher for 22 years.
  Jim Dowd: I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that I was an electronics engineer.
  Mr. George Foulkes: And a good one, as well.
  Paul Holmes: Well, for 22 years, I was a teacher—a head of sixth form in the 12 years prior to my election. So I do not believe that my views are old-fashioned, out-of-date or patronising. As a head of sixth form, I taught and advised year 10, 11, 12 and 13 students, trying to persuade the bright working-class kids, first, to stay on to do A-levels or advanced GNVQs, then to consider going on to higher education.
  From the point at which the Conservative Government started to reduce the value of the grant, when grants and loans were 50:50, and from 1997, when the Labour Government introduced tuition fees, I saw increasing difficulty, year by year by year, in getting children from that background to consider staying on and going into higher education.
  In my maiden speech, I did not talk about variable fees. There had just been a general election and the Government who won it had given a cast-iron guarantee in their manifesto that they would ensure that variable fees were never introduced. There was no small print saying "just for the next year or two"; it was a cast-iron guarantee. For the past two and a half years, I have been a member of the Select Committee on Education and Skills. We have published two reports—in 2002 and 2003—on higher education, funding and related issues. During our hearings and while we were drawing up those reports, I repeatedly made the points from my maiden speech to which I have just referred, but I was told by some of the Labour Members on the Committee that it was anecdotal evidence and could not be taken into account. They said that there was no hard evidence of debt aversion among students from non-traditionally academic families and low-income families.
  That puzzled me, as the Select Committee had taken evidence from Scotland—the Cubie report—which referred to that problem and led the Scottish Parliament to abolish tuition fees and reintroduce grants. We took evidence from the Rees report from Wales, which convinced the Welsh Assembly—where, as in the Scottish Parliament, there is a Labour majority—to reintroduce grants and to state that, if it had the power, which London has not given it, it would have abolished tuition fees.
  Last year, even more recently, we took evidence from Professor Claire Callendar, about whom we have already heard in the debate. In work commissioned by the Government, she said that there was crystal-clear evidence of debt aversion and fear of debt in relation to the loans that the Government have introduced. We have seen a lot of hard evidence, yet the Government continue to say that there is no proof.
  The Government are saying, although they do not use these words, "We accept that we made an abysmal mess of the system in 1997. We introduced tuition fees. We

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  scrapped grants, even though the Dearing report said specifically that they should not be scrapped. We made an abysmal mess and we are going to undo it by removing the up-front element of the fees and restoring grants". The Government expect to be praised for undoing the complete mess that they created six years ago. On top of that, being new Labour, they plan to create a new mess by introducing variable fees.
  Variable fees will inevitably increase debt. When the Secretary of State introduced that proposal, he said that the average student attending a university charging fees of £3,000 a year would leave with a debt of about £24,000. We heard earlier that Barclays bank estimates that the debt would be £30,000. Whether the debt is £24,000 or £30,000, it is a huge deterrent to the people identified as fearful of debt in the Cubie, Rees and Callendar reports.
  Variable fees will deter low-income students. Even more important, as many Members have said, variable fees will mean that students who go to university will not make choices based on their academic ability—as they should—but on their ability to pay. They will attend the cheaper universities.
  Will variable fees be the thin end of the wedge? Of course they will. When the proposals were announced, the chairman of the Russell group said that they were too little, too late. The vice-chancellor of Brunel university said that universities needed to make increases of more than £3,000. The vice-chancellor of Imperial college said that the college needed to charge £20,000 for medical students and £10,000 a year for other students. Scores of vice-chancellors have made similar comments. There will be vast pressure to increase the fees beyond £3,000.
  The Secretary of State tells us not to worry because there will be an independent review three years down the line. In the Select Committee on 14 January, I asked the Secretary of State whether he was saying that there was no alternative to the proposals, and no way, other than through variable fees, of funding higher education to the level needed. In effect, he was telling us to take it or leave it—there was no pick-and-mix approach and if we voted the wrong way the whole Bill would fall. I asked why, if there was no alternative at present, there would be an alternative three years down the line if the independent commission said that the system was a disaster and we should get rid of it. The Secretary of State answered: "I do not believe the review will come to that view".
  An independent commission will look into something to which there is no alternative, and the Secretary of State has already decided that it will not come to an adverse decision about the experiment on which the Government are embarking. So what is the point of an independent commission?
  We are told to look overseas for examples. Last week, the Education and Skills Committee went to California—not for the beach and the sunshine, as it is winter. We spent a long time in meetings with academics, business men and people from Californian schools. They agreed unanimously that one reason why California, which has a smaller population than Britain, was the fifth largest economy in the world was the massive investment that has been put into higher education since world war two and, especially, since the 1960s. The Conservative party should note that the
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  Californian business men, far from saying that they needed a small, elitist higher education system, were saying that, even though about 60 per cent. of people go into higher education, they wanted more to do so. That is because their economy, one of the most successful in the world, needs more highly educated people, not fewer, as has been suggested by one party.
  We were given evidence of variable fees across America. California has the lowest fees in the USA. We were also shown comparative graphs illustrating the numbers of students from low-income families going to university in the different states. We can predict what those graphs showed—although the Secretary of State appears not to agree—which was that, in the states with the highest fees, the lowest number of students from low-income families went to university. Similarly, the states with the lowest fees, such as California, attracted the highest number of such students.
  Jonathan Shaw: Was this not also about investment elsewhere in the educational system, including nursery schools, primary schools and secondary schools? Simply to talk about the fees in California and elsewhere is inaccurate. We have to examine the whole picture to understand what determines entry into higher education there.
  Paul Holmes: The hon. Gentleman is quite right. He was with us on that trip; he sat in the same meetings and heard the same evidence. He is right to say that the academics, educationists, universities and businesses were all emphasising the massive investment in education across the board, all the way through from early years. They were not suggesting robbing higher education to put money elsewhere; they were saying that they needed money at every level. They did not distinguish, as this Government are now seeking to do, between higher education as something that students should pay for and the other levels of education as something that the taxpayer should pay for.
  The hon. Gentleman was in the same room as us when we heard evidence that if, for example, the fees that the "Governator" of California is now proposing were introduced, 100,000 people would immediately drop out of the community colleges—the equivalent of further education—as a result. We heard similar evidence about higher education.
  Australia is another overseas example that we should consider, because the Government are copying its fee system. We have already heard that, since variable fees were introduced there, the number of students from low-income families going to university has fallen. What we did not hear earlier is that the state contribution to higher education in Australia has fallen from 90 per cent. in 1996 to 50 per cent. now. In other words, when fees are introduced, students get into debt but the universities are no better off. The students are certainly no better off.
  Tonight I shall vote for part of the Labour party manifesto: the part that says that there should be no variable fees or top-up fees at all. I hope that enough Labour Members will come with me to vote not only for their manifesto but for the Liberal Democrat principle that education should be paid for from progressive taxation, not by placing a debt burden on students.
  4.53 pm
  Dr. Ian Gibson: One of the pleasures of speaking at this time of the evening is that there is no need to be repetitive, because I have heard enough to be able to find new angles, and I am keen to do that. I declare an interest, in that I have spent quite a bit of my life in universities, both in this country and in the United States. I find the people who work here a better class of people in general than the academics I had to mix with, although the backstabbing is just as vehement in both fields. That prepared me very well for working here.
  Jonathan Shaw: That is why you are standing sideways.
  Dr. Gibson: That is absolutely right.
  I feel privileged to be taking part in this debate because this is a very important issue, as Members on both sides of the House have pointed out. It is important that we take this on and do something about higher education, and realise its great value to the economy and for the education not only of young people but of mature students, who represent an ever-increasing force and who contribute greatly to this country. We encourage that with lifelong learning.
  I pay tribute to all my colleagues who have been active over the last 10 months in pressurising, sticking together, putting forward arguments on this issue and moving us to where we are today. We are a long way down the line from where we started, and I think that we should congratulate ourselves on having achieved that in a comradely spirit.
  Tonight, a lot of people will be taking a position and voting accordingly because they are worried about variable fees. Most of the people I have talked to find variable fees the least attractive of all the issues that have come up in relation to this policy. I want to say something about that, because it has not been exposed to proper debate. Although I do not have time to do that fully, I shall try to do something about it.
  Of course we know that there are variable fees in other aspects of the higher education system, but we must ask this question: by extending them to another sector of higher education, will we increase marketisation, market forces and so on to the point where we start to lose the purpose of what education and higher education are all about? That is true with creeping marketisation in any industry or in any aspect of human activity. People can go too far, and if they do not watch out they can end up selling out the purpose. The financial markets take over; they direct the policies. Many people see that, and it was the subject of a debate at No. 11 last week in which many other people of great eminence—economists from across the country—were arguing that one has to be careful about taking a step too far.
  People were also worried that this policy was not part of our radical election manifesto—they are sincere about that. For many, it does not sit with traditional Labour values and principles, and I am sure that people still feel that. I want to encourage them to carry on feeling it, in the sense that these are the values that we were brought up in. There is no reason at all to sacrifice them in terms of the debate. We must carry on and fight for them.
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  What really upset me was that we were told the policy is non-negotiable. I thought that everything in life is negotiable. I have been taught all my life that people should argue and negotiate. In doing that, people come to some solution or compromise.
  Members may think that there is a strong or incontrovertible argument for establishing the variability principle, but I have been hard pressed over the months to find out what it is. We might have hoped that Ministers would spell out the likely consequences of establishing this extension of the financial market in higher education, but it beats me what they are. Of course, I can ask the Minister tonight to try to convert people, but I doubt whether that will happen after all this time.
  Clare Short: The 10 months have gone by, all the arguments have taken place and the concessions have been made. Does my hon. Friend think that it is notable that the Government will not concede on variability, which is the core concern among Labour Members? That suggests that there is a determination to get variability in, come what may.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the hon. Gentleman resumes, may I gently remind him that he should be addressing the Chair?
  Dr. Gibson: I am watching my back, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Thank you very much for that. Yes. On the problem of variability, that word has come to mean something magical. People use it and float it about, but what it means in the structure and financing of universities, as well as the setting up of courses and so on, has never really been defined. People have argued that we might be able to use a zero fee to develop courses that are unpopular or that cover shortage areas such as science and engineering. To me, that is absolute madness. Where is the evidence that subject choice can be manipulated by tinkering with fees? Why should students be dissuaded from following their interests and aptitudes by financial penalties?
  The exact costs of teaching in universities are unknown. Believe me—I have sat through millions of meetings where people have tried to calculate how much of our money was spent on a course. They added in the cost of technicians and all the other things, as well as students jumping about from course to course, but they never came up with any magic formula. All I can say is that that figure is much more than £3,000.
  Science and engineering, for example, are extremely expensive to teach. They need special laboratories and equipment. Compare them with under-fives education: magnetic resonance scanners are not used in primary schools, although perhaps they should be. That is a big expense in higher education, so I am not amazed that the figures are different.
  Lower fees will not reflect the real cost, and what we will get in the university structure is cross-subject subsidisation, so all those academics will waste hour after hour arguing about why science gets all the money and all the equipment while those poor arts people, who can charge great sums for creative writing courses, see nothing for that.
  Geraint Davies: Does my hon. Friend accept that somebody who faces high variable fees and becomes a

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  low-income graduate earner will not have to pay them, whereas someone who becomes a high-income graduate earner will have to pay back the money? Surely that is a fair way for universities to tax higher earners and cross-subsidise back into research.
  Dr. Gibson: I thank my hon. Friend for his comment. If I had enough trust in university management and believed that the sort of thing that he outlined would happen, I would agree with him. However, it will not necessarily happen; there is no guarantee that the money will be moved in that direction.
  Mr. Allen: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the way in which he has campaigned. Nobody doubts his sincerity and we respect his views. People, for example my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley), can be stereotyped as both rebels and loyalists. Will my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) acknowledge that he has gained tremendously through the campaign? He has probably got 80 per cent. of what he and his colleagues—in whose number I include myself—were after. Will he therefore consider taking the battle into Committee rather than going into the opposite Lobby from his colleagues tonight?
  Dr. Gibson: Perhaps my hon. Friend will ask me that question when I have finished. I give him a 2.1 for his attempt, but it is not yet first class.
  The Royal Society examined the crisis in science education. Sir Alistair MacFarlane, chair of its education committee, warned that the introduction of variable top-up fees could especially put off students enrolling on some undergraduate courses in science, engineering and technology. There is therefore deep anxiety about the use of top-up fees.
  The chair of the Russell group wants to charge maximum rates to attract better staff from other universities by paying higher salaries. It sounds as if national pay bargaining will go through the window. The transfer market is based solely on research: people are recruited to get higher research assessment ratings in different universities. The best researchers do not necessarily make the best teachers, and the best teachers are not always the best researchers. It is lucky if both qualities coincide. I believe that the money will go to research but not teaching—that is a problem when we are considering providing support for undergraduates. One has to know the structures of universities and how they operate. I therefore do not believe that students will get much extra value.
  An eminent vice-chancellor said that variability was good because it happens in the United States of America—but so do the death penalty and equal curriculum time for creationist teaching. My goodness, let us adopt it all! There are genuine problems. It has been said that difficulties have been experienced in Australia with variability and delivering for people from lower socio-economic groups. I do not know how one compares courses in different departments and universities. Every one appears valuable to me.
  The problems that have been flagged up suggest that we should not accept the Bill, but vote against it.
  5.3 pm
  Mr. Jeffrey M. Donaldson: We recognise that the proposals will not apply immediately in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, the Bill will have a significant effect on higher education in our region. The Democratic Unionists do not disagree with the basic argument that because individual graduates obviously benefit from a university education, they should contribute to the cost of their courses. However, society and the national economy derive a discernible benefit from producing quality graduates and the country must therefore invest in university education.
  There is a problem in Northern Ireland. Our two universities—Queen's university in Belfast and the university of Ulster—recognise that there is a significant funding gap for higher education, and Northern Ireland falls well behind the rest of the United Kingdom in university funding. We feel that that should be addressed.
  No matter what the Government say about the reintroduction of the maintenance grant for students from lower-income families and the end of up-front fees, the fact is that the spectre of higher university charges will deter a sizeable number of prospective students, regardless of when and how the fees must be paid. The imposition of additional fees amounting to up to £3,000 a year represents an increase of nearly £2,000 on current levels for Northern Ireland students. I cannot imagine that a 200 per cent. price hike would increase uptake of any product.
  Fees are not, of course, the whole problem. Living costs are just as much of a deterrent, whatever the level at which they are set. It is a source of shame that according to a university of Ulster study, only 1.8 per cent. of the male student population in Northern Ireland come from a Protestant working-class background. The Government need to address that as well.
  Those students emanate from precisely the sort of area that is poisoned by paramilitary influence, and they are exactly the kind of people whom we want to encourage to go to university. I fear that top-up tuition fees may only serve to alienate further people from deprived communities in many parts of Northern Ireland, and will deter them from seeking a university education.
  Northern Ireland's two universities are over-achievers when it comes to expanding access. Queen's university Belfast is the best university in the United Kingdom in terms of attracting students from working-class backgrounds, with the university of Ulster close behind in fourth place. I do not want a system that could cause both those universities to lose their hard-earned status as universities open to all.
  The DUP has a number of proposals that it believes can deal with some of the issues I have raised. We think that the Government are wrong to set arbitrary targets such as the one involving 50 per cent. of school leavers entering higher education. We agree with the rationale of the policy—indeed, more people from working-class and lower-middle-class backgrounds should be given access to university and to advantages long denied to them—but the Government are driven by artificial targets that distract them from the crux of the issue, which is the need to deal with the university funding crisis in a meaningful way.

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  We think that business, for example, should he encouraged to contribute to university funding more meaningfully. Business benefits from the creation of excellent graduates. Digby Jones of the CBI has said:
  "It's only right that people who have benefited from higher education should pay back a bit more"
  He was talking about graduates, but we feel that just as companies engaged in qualifying research and development are given a 150 per cent. tax exemption for R and D expenditure, a 150 to 200 per cent. exemption should be given to businesses that make donations directly to universities. We need to give them an incentive to contribute more to our universities, because they benefit from them. If we are to tax students because they benefit from the universities, businesses should be encouraged to make their contribution too.
  Children from lower-middle-class homes clearly suffer the most debt when studying, because their families cannot afford to pay any extra money and they are forced to take loans to fund their education.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: What is the general attitude in Northern Ireland? In 1989, when the original Education (Student Loans) Bill was introduced, a speech from the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) suggested that there was opposition across the board, from Sinn Fein to the DUP and other groups. Everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet. Is that still the case?
  Mr. Donaldson: I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that all the main political parties in Northern Ireland oppose the Government proposals, as do students and their families. There is deep opposition right across civil society in Northern Ireland. We want our education system to be supported properly, but the Government proposals are not the best way forward.
  One of our proposals would introduce a tax break for middle-income families who find it difficult to fund their children's education. The Government should consider introducing a tax credit directly to benefit lower and middle-income households at the most important time—when the student is actually at university.
  The Government proposals are deeply flawed. They will have a significant impact on our universities in Northern Ireland and will increase the funding gap between universities in Northern Ireland and those in the rest of the United Kingdom. They will make it more difficult for students from Northern Ireland, especially those from lower and middle-income family backgrounds, to gain places at universities on the mainland, which will mean fewer students from lower-income backgrounds gaining access to university education, which we must prevent from happening. In Northern Ireland, we want to encourage, not discourage, those people to gain access to university education. We must provide incentives, not disincentives, to encourage people to access further and higher education.
  The vice-chancellor of Queen's university Belfast, Professor Sir George Bain, says:
  "Both universities in Northern Ireland are already under-funded compared to their counterparts in Great Britain. A further funding gap will be disastrous for Northern Ireland. This is the
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  critical issue for the region in light of the impending Westminster vote. Northern Ireland must not be allowed to fall further behind."
  The vice-chancellor and president of the university of Ulster, Professor Gerry McKenna, says that the Government proposals
  "would dismantle a UK-wide system of higher education, something that has been a great strength and a global brand leader. It was also introduce a two-tier, market-driven system of higher education, would perpetuate social exclusion and would play England against Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland".
  The Government must consider that seriously.
  In conclusion, the proposals are flawed. They will certainly have a negative impact upon students in Northern Ireland, especially those from lower and middle-income family backgrounds. For those reasons, we will vote against the Government proposals.
  5.12 pm
  James Purnell: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) is not present, because I owe him an apology. About 15 years ago, I participated in a demonstration when I was a scruffy student at Oxford university at which someone threw an egg at him.
  Mr. Willis: Shame on you.
  James Purnell: I take collective, but not individual responsibility, for the incident, and I want to apologise after all these years.
  I also want to apologise because at the time I thought that his proposals were not motivated by a desire to increase access to university. Anyone who listened to his speech today could see that his intentions were extremely well motivated. I only wish that Conservative Front Benchers had had the courage to carry through what he started in the 1980s. The Conservative Government undertook the task of increasing access, and when parties that we do not agree with the rest of the time do something that is correct, we should have the courage to say so. In turn, I wish that the Tories had had the courage to say today that they agree with the Government—agreement was clearly written across the faces of many Conservative Members when the hon. Member for Wantage was speaking.
  Unfortunately, after making a start on increasing access, the Conservative Government decided to cap numbers entering higher education, and the right hon. Members for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) and for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo) decided to cut off the money that was necessary to increase access. The cap stayed at around one third of pupils until this Government took power.
  I am extremely proud of the fact that we have increased access and of the fact that access has risen to 42 per cent. I would be even prouder if we got it up to 50 per cent.
  I want to nail one dishonesty that has been put about in the debate—that this is not about meritocracy. If anyone says that this is about social engineering rather than meritocracy, he or she cannot have looked at research by the Sutton Trust and others showing that of two children of equal academic ability, with equal results at A-level, one from a working class family and

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  one from a middle class family, the working class child is less likely to go to university. What is fair about that? What is meritocratic about that? Giving children the grants that they need to go to university is the only thing that can make that meritocracy real.
  We on this side of the Chamber should never agree that we are not being meritocratic. We are doing what is fair. It is not social engineering; it is giving people the right to go to university when they get the A-levels required.
  Mr. Jon Owen Jones: If it is true—and I accept that it may well be—that giving grants is a great help for working class people to get into university, why was that not part of the Bill initially?
  James Purnell: Grants were part of the Bill. Thanks to the work that has been done by people on this side of the House, the Bill is even better than when it was launched; and it was better than the White Paper then. This is much better than the original proposal. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborouh (Mr. Willis) said that it had come from the bowels of Downing street. I know that he thinks that the proposal is a load of excrement, but I find that an over-harsh description. The proposal is significantly better than before the last manifesto. One thing that my colleagues have achieved is to ensure that the lesson has been learnt. The Government clearly recognise that proposals must be consulted upon and have to go through the party. We never want to get into this mess again.
  Mr. Barnes: As the Bill has been significantly improved, is it possible that it could be still further significantly improved? I propose a debt holiday after graduation to last during a difficult time for all graduates, when they are starting families and obtaining mortgages. If we could knock off payment for a number of years, that would be a distinct advantage over the present proposal.
  James Purnell: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister was listening carefully to what my hon. Friend said. It is not for me to say whether it will be possible.
  if we vote the Bill down tonight, what am I supposed to say to the children in my constituency who are obtaining better results? I think of Ashley high school, where the results leapt by 17 per cent. this summer, and of Hyde technology school, where 70 per cent. are achieving five good GCSEs—for the Bangladeshi community the figure is over 70 per cent., which is hugely better than the national average. The results have gone through the roof in the last two years. What am I supposed to say if we decide to put a cap back on university numbers?
  I shall have to say to those pupils "Yes, the results have got better. Yes, those schools have got better. But you will not be able to go to university. Ten years ago you would have been able to get there with these A-level results, but now you won't." That would not be fair to my constituents. The only people that it would help are those who come from leafy suburbs, who go to schools that are already over-funded and are represented on the Opposition side of the House.
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  I should like to look quickly at the worries of hon. Members on the Government side of the House about the Bill. I know that some are worried that it will increase inequality. I think that it will reduce inequality, by helping more people to go to higher education.
  First, will people be frightened of debt? Of course, if the debt attracted mortgage interest rates or credit card interest rates, that would be a consideration. If people had to pay it back whatever their income, that would be a consideration. If, as a Liberal Democrat Member said, our system was like the American system, that would be a consideration. But in America, people are taking on debts of $40,000 every year; the annual fee is $40,000. It is no wonder that no one from a poor background goes to Harvard. That fee is what we are legislating against today.
  Dr. Pugh: The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Bangladeshi community. He is now talking about the Americans. The Bangladeshis are very different from the Americans. They are very debt-averse. Does not the hon. Gentleman recognise that there are cultural differences?
  James Purnell: My point is that the difference between a $40,000 annual fee and a £3,000 annual fee makes the systems completely different. When a loan is income-contingent. when it has to be repaid only after one earns £15,000, that is reasonable. If Porsches were on sale in my constituency on an income-contingent basis, so that one did not have to repay anything if one earned less than £15,000, there would be an awful lot of Porsches in Stalybridge and Hyde.
  Secondly, should we oppose variable fees in principle? If the fee could vary upwards and it was unlimited, and there was nothing that we could do to prevent higher education institutions from increasing it to £20,000, £30,000 or £40,000 a year, as they do in America, of course we should oppose variable fees, but the Bill would cap fees at £3,000. Should we therefore say that everyone should pay £3,000? If we vote down variability, who suffers? The only people who suffer are those who would otherwise have paid £500, £1,000 or £2,000. If the Bill falls and the Government want to increase the fee, they can do so, but then everyone would pay £3,000. The people who are helped by variability are the very people who come from poorer backgrounds who may be able to get on to a course that costs less. That helps equality; it does not increase inequality.
  Mr. Patrick Hall: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  James Purnell: I have already taken three interventions.
  Thirdly, does the Bill marketise the system? The point of the Bill is to make the market work better. We already have a market in higher education, as we must accept, but at the moment it is grossly unfair. People have to pay a fee up front. When I was going around my constituency during the 2001 election campaign I met a mother in Newton who was desperate for her kids to go to university. She said that she was having great difficulty in finding the necessary £1,100. The Bill will mean that she will never have to find a similar sum for her younger children. It means that those children will

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  pay the bill only when they are earning enough money to be able to do so. In my constituency, about 50 per cent. of people earn less than £18,000 a year. Therefore, broadly, in my constituency, only ex-students who are in the top half of earners will have to pay anything back, and at about £18,000 year it will be about £5 a week. I think that that is affordable and fair.
  I was wrong about the motivation of the hon. Member for Wantage in the 1980s; I do recognise that he was trying to increase access. However, I think that the Conservatives made one mistake, and that was getting rid of grants. I got a grant. I got to go to Oxford, the first person in my family ever to do so, because I had a grant, and I am immensely proud that the Bill will bring back grants so that people from poorer backgrounds can go to university. I urge my colleagues to vote with the Government tonight. If we do not get the Bill, we shall lose the grants; we shall have to campaign on up-front fees at the next election and we shall lose the increased access to higher education. The people who will suffer will be those in our constituencies; those who will benefit will be the people on the Opposition Benches, who do not want their children to have greater competition for university places. As the results in schools in our areas improve, we must give those children the chance to enter higher education, and that is what the Bill delivers tonight.
  5.22 pm
  Mr. John Maples: One of the abiding memories of today's debate will be the vision of Government Back Benchers queueing up to disavow not just their manifesto and their principles but the rebellion that they were apparently threatening until a few hours ago. It seems that the Secretary of State's powers of persuasion are as formidable as he is in person. I do not know whether he is aware of the fact that last Sunday was the day on which the Church celebrates the conversion of St. Paul, but he certainly seems to have learned some lessons from it and performed a similar feat.
  We are on common ground over the fact that universities are short of money and that the fall in unit funding has had a dramatic effect. I should like to illustrate one of those effects. The other day, one of our, dare I say it, two greatest universities privately commissioned a study to see where it ranked in the world order of universities, and it concluded that it was about 14th. That may surprise us—it surprised me—but what is even more surprising is that every one of the 13 universities that ranked above it was in the United States. There must be a lesson to be drawn from that. Part of it is that the funding, certainly in Ivy League universities, is probably about three times per pupil what it is in a United Kingdom university, but we should be careful before we disavow the American model.
  If we think that universities need more money, where is it going to come from? Well, people may say that it can come from the Government. For the taxpayer to pay for 50 per cent. of the population to go to university is probably not a realistic objective. I say that with some reluctance because, like many others who have spoken, I went to university on a full maintenance grant, with all my tuition paid for, and I like to think that that
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  education has benefited not only me, but the people that I have worked for and with, both inside and outside the House. The idea of public benefit certainly applies to people who become doctors or judges, for example, because we all benefit from them. I view that as a strong argument for public funding, though not perhaps strong enough to say that everyone who goes to university should have all their costs paid.
  Parents are another source of income and the Government's proposals will milk them further. Only a small percentage of parents earn enough to be able to dispose of large or significant sums of money in that way. Only 10 per cent. of the working population of this country earns more than £40,000 a year, and only about 20 per cent. earn more than £30,000—the cut-off for support under the Government's arrangements. The ability of parents to cough up much more is pretty limited, so we are left looking at students.
  It is sometimes argued that graduates earn more money, but that means they pay more tax and if they earn £400,000 more over a lifetime, they will pay somewhere between £100,000 and £150,000 in extra tax anyway, making it a pretty good investment from the state's point of view. However, if we are looking to students to pay a greater contribution to their education, they can pay up front, pay a graduate tax or pay in arrears. the Government introduced upfront fees and I believe that there are serious objections to them. Personally, I do not like the idea of a graduate tax, because it removes a link or any choice on the student's part between how much they pay and where they go.
  One aspect of the Government's proposals that I like is the introduction of some variety into educational provision. It may be that studying law at Cambridge will take three years at £3,000 a year, but some other university may be able to do it in two years. Buckingham university does degrees in two years and there is no reason why a typical undergraduate degree could not be done in two years. Something would be lost, but the student would end up owing much less money. The idea of making students pay a specific fee in arrears is probably the right way to proceed.
  What I dislike about the Government's proposals is that, having done that, they further involve the means-testing of parents in financing the student's education. That seems to me to be fundamentally wrong. Why should a relatively poor parent of a child who became a partner in Goldman Sachs have subsidised the education of a child from a wealthy home who became a teacher? Even more appositely, why should parents on £31,000 a year have subsidised the education of a child of parents on £29,000 a year? One of my two objections to the Government's proposals is that if we are to have fees in arrears, they should be left entirely to the student and the parents' means should have nothing to do with it.
  Peter Bradley; The hon. Gentleman must have read a different Bill, or certainly heard a statement that was different from that made today. The point of the Bill is to make repayments of tuition fees entirely income-

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  contingent. It is the graduate who pays them. They have no connection or association with the income of parents before the school leaver attends university.
  Mr. Maples: I chose my words carefully. I said that the parent over the limit would have subsidised the education of the child of parents below the limit. I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but he should acknowledge that there is also a means test of parents, which affects who pays for which child's education. Under a fees-in-arrears system, I do not believe that that should be so.
  However good the idea of students paying fees in arrears, it has been almost totally undermined by the Government's concessions in order to stave off—they hope—the rebellion. As I understand it, the concessions will amount to a greater cost to the Treasury than the benefits that the universities will gain from them. The Government have undermined their own proposals in those two respects.
  My second fundamental objection to the Bill is about the access regulator. It is an awful proposal, which smacks of the worst sort of social engineering. Are universities to select people by postcode, as happens for hospital waiting lists? Are people to be selected according to the type of school they attended or their social class? I fully accept that the people who go to our best universities should be those who will benefit most, which means that it should be those who are going to get the best degrees.
  It may be—some vice-chancellor s have argued it—that A-levels are not a good predictor of what sort of degree students achieve, in which case we need a better predictor. The United States uses SATs, a system in operation for 50 years, which brings considerable benefits. We could invite the universities to set a different sort of A-level examination that would be a better predictor. However, making crude adjustment to A-level results on the basis of the school or the postcode or parents' income will not help us to get the best people into university. What we need is an objective and transparent system of deciding which 18-year-olds go to university and which do not. It must be transparent, objective and it must be seen to be fair. I accept that that system might well not be A-levels as they presently exist, but it should certainly not be A-levels that are adjusted by some political appointee looking at postcodes.
  David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman says—I am paraphrasing—that he cannot conceive of an acceptable or workable system that would steer students to specific universities on the basis of postcode, income or education. However, surely we have that system at the moment, especially for those who attend Russell group universities. Are we not just trying to balance that up?
  Mr. Maples: I accept that A-levels might not be the best criterion to decide who should go to a Russell group university. However, using A-levels that were adjusted by an arbitrary political criterion would be even worse. If A-levels are unsatisfactory, let us have an alternative system, but let it be objective and transparent so that people who apply to universities understand what they must do, what hurdles they must pass and whom they must beat to get in. They should not be told that their exam results and hard work will be arbitrarily adjusted
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  because their parents happen to be middle class or to live in a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, but that seems to be the Government's intention. I am bothered that the regulator will be politically motivated because he will report to, and take instructions from, the Secretary of State.
  I shall try to wrap my two or three points into a quick conclusion. Universities need more money. Although I hope that I can be persuaded that that could be funded by public funds, I suspect that I will reluctantly be persuaded that a greater contribution from students will be needed. However, they should pay in arrears and there should be no cross-subsidies between wealthier and poorer parents—or less poor and more poor parents, which is what the scheme will amount to if the cut-off is set at £30,000 a year. The system should be based entirely on what a graduate earns at the end of the day, and there should be no access regulator because that will create a problem.
  I understand that the Government's proposals will result in universities collectively receiving just under £1 billion more—I think that the figure is about £910 million—and that the cost to the Treasury of all the grants, loans, subsidies and write-offs will be about £1.1 billion. It seems to me that there is an alternative to the Government's proposal. The Secretary of State could have saved himself from an awful lot of trouble, from today's debate, and from having to make half his colleagues ideologically stand on their heads in the Chamber by simply giving £1 billion directly to the universities, not having the fees and saving himself and the Treasury £200 million in the process.
  5.32 pm
  Clare Short: As has been said in the Chamber before today, asking Labour Members to vote against the manifesto on which each of us was elected to the House is a serious matter. It is a breach of trust with the electorate and a breach of a solemn promise. It is also politically foolish. People are more and more cynical about politics and politicians, and these events will increase that cynicism and undermine the public's confidence in our party and its promises in a serious and troubling manner.
  We must ask what is the reason for such a serious breach of our promise. Why must we rush through the Bill even though it will not take effect until after the next election? We are told that we need more resources for higher education—that is agreed across the House—so that we may reach the Government's target of 50 per cent. of young people going to university. However, facts outlining the progress that we have made during recent years and the increased resources that the Government have made available for higher education show that the case for rushing, in a manner that will breach our manifesto commitment, completely falls.
  The figures show that during the years of the Tory Government there was considerable progress on the number of young people going to university. The proportion went up from 12 per cent. of the age group in 1979 to 34 per cent. in 1997. Last year, after continuing progress under our Government, the figure reached 43 per cent. There is no need to panic about the 50 per cent. target because we are making good progress toward that objective.

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  We are told that universities are desperately short of money. It is true that they need more money and that they suffered badly during the Tory years, as did most of our public services. Between 1989 and 1997, the universities suffered a drop in funding of 36 per cent. per student. So that enormous expansion in participation was paid for by the universities, and they did not get enough investment to reward that very important expansion. But the downward trend was reversed in 2001, and the Government have committed more money to higher education.
  Spending on higher education will rise from a total of £7.5 billion in 2002–03 to almost £10 billion in 2005–06—a real-terms increase of 6 per cent. a year. So it seems to me that, yes, we have got an issue to solve, because of course we want every young person in our country who wants to go to university, and is capable of doing so, to be able to do so. I am sure that we will go beyond the 50 per cent. target in time, as our country develops and there is more and more access to quality education. But we have not got a short-term crisis, and all this proposal, which is such a serious breach of our manifesto commitment, will bring in is less than £1 billion, which will not solve the long-term funding needs of the higher education sector.
  This seems to be really questionable and incompetent policy making, and we have to ask where it has come from. I am afraid, as I said in my speech when I resigned from the Government, that we have seen in our second term a pattern of very surprising proposals. I do not know whether they come from the bowels of No. 10, or some of the advisers that circulate around No. 10, but they are not consulted on or publicly discussed, and they are then driven through the House with appeals to the loyalty of Labour Members to vote against things that they know to be right. We have seen that over and again, and it leads to bad policy making. If we are to have a more presidential style of government, we must have a more independent Parliament that can say, yes, we are loyal to our Government and our party, but we will vote them down when they are wrong. Surely that is the right way to proceed if we are not consulted.
  Jonathan Shaw: Of course my right hon. Friend voted for up-front fees and cuts in single-parent benefits. Tonight, will she support the Bill, which will introduce grants at the end of the year for poorer students?
  Clare Short: That is not a very sensible intervention. Obviously, I will say before the end of my speech what I will do tonight. I will make that point in my own time if my hon. Friend will allow me.
  I believe that the only logic in the Bill is that of the Russell group—a move to a market in higher education—but what has happened is that, because Labour Members have been brave and the rebellion has been strong, concession after concession has been made. Those concessions are welcome and good, but they are an attempt to try to squeak through a deeply flawed Bill, whose logic will drive us forward, as soon as it can be attained, to variable top-up fees and a market in higher education that will have lots of destructive effects. Young people will have more and more debt. All hon.
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  Members must have had many letters and e-mails with anguished stories of families currently burdened by debt and who are troubled by their debts.
  Mr. McLoughlin: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Clare Short: Let me get on a little further.
  The logic of that change will be that young people will start to decide which subjects to study, where to study and, even more significantly, to decide their career and profession on the basis of debt, money and cost. Surely we do not want to live in that kind of country. Surely we want access to higher education to include people who want to do mediaeval history, poetry or philosophy. Yes, we all know that investment in higher education is of benefit to the economy, but it is also of value in itself. Surely we do not want people's decisions in their lives to be distorted by those differential costs in higher education—most certainly, I do not. I fear that that change will downgrade the commitment of young people to choose a vocation and public service in their lives because, as they are saddled with debt, they will start to look for the jobs that give a high salary, rather than the jobs that represent a dedication to public service. We will diminish those values in our society to our great cost.
  All honour to the leaders of the rebellion for prising out of the Government all sorts of beneficial commitments. It is good that young people should not have to pay up-front fees. It is good that there are to be maintenance grants—though the cut-off point will be a big problem for many families. Some desirable elements, which could have been put in another package, have been introduced to persuade certain Labour Members to vote against the party manifesto on which we stood and against the principles of a good system of higher education funding. A free vote would not carry this Bill in the parliamentary Labour party.
  The right course would be a review of how to get more money into higher education, then include in our next manifesto a commitment to introduce a new system. I am highly attracted to the idea of a graduate tax, which could easily be paid over to the Higher Education Funding Council. It could be set down in legislation that the Treasury could not vary the amount, and so on. Thorough discussion, more detail and costings are needed to find the answer—and we should try to achieve national consensus because this matter will affect generations of young people to come.
  Mr. Connarty: Is it not indicative that the principal of the university of Essex told me that universities want £5,000, but £3,000 is all that they are allowed? They see the funding gap as being much greater. Is there not a conflict in the Bill between a market in which people want more for their courses and a Government who will not give that to them?
  Clare Short: I agree absolutely. The Russell group logic is the logic in the Bill. The concessions have now pushed the other way, but that logic will still break through over time—which would be destructive to the quality of higher education. The elite universities are not

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  the best at everything. Undergraduates should not have to fund all the research. We should have leading-edge, world-class universities to undertake good research, but we must find a way of distributing funding according to ability—not create a market based on snobbery and elitism.
  I appeal to all right hon. and hon. Members to vote down this deeply flawed Bill, then urgently discuss how to achieve better long-term funding of higher education. Each party should fight the next general election on manifesto commitments about the right way of doing things. That would be the honourable way through. The measure being proposed today is deeply dishonourable and will increase cynicism about politics and damage the reputation of our party.
  5.42 pm
  Mr. Ian Taylor: I particularly noted two speeches in this interesting debate. One was by the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson)—whom I respect and with whom I served on the Science and Technology Select Committee in the last Parliament—who advocated arguments against the Bill. The other was by my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson), with whom I find myself very much at one, who indicated that the Bill was moving in the right direction.
  The best oratory in the debate came from my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). He made a powerful speech but was particularly unwise to base it on the fact that Conservative Members should observe what was in their last election manifesto. There are fewer of us on this side of the House because we did observe our last manifesto. [Laughter.]
  I have no problem in saying that because the facts have changed, I have begun to rethink my approach to this policy. Universities are in a crisis that is getting worse and we must do something about it. As the last science and technology Minister in the previous Conservative Government, I wrestled with a lot of problems but did not manage to persuade my Chancellor of the Exchequer to put as much money into research and development within universities as the current Chancellor has done. I give the Government credit for that.
  Research is a vital area. More money should be put into research infrastructure—not just into research. Academics are seriously underfunded and many of our best academics are again beginning to look abroad for their future. Given that situation, everybody should rise above party politics to some extent and start thinking about what can be done to plug the gaps in the university system. Nobody who goes to university will benefit from such a situation. If standards are declining because of the pressures on universities, students will suffer, whatever their background.
  Access is a problem, and we should do our best to widen it. However, we should not talk about it as if the universities themselves are not seeking talent. In many cases, if they identify the talent they do not have enough resources for bursaries to encourage it.
  Lynne Jones: Is the hon. Gentleman not concerned about the future of science departments after the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education told the Education and Skills Committee that it is
  "a near racing certainty that chemistry and physics, where they have high infrastructure costs but they need the volume, will charge nothing, or next to nothing, to attract students"?
  Is not the viability of those departments at risk?
  Mr. Taylor: I am not sure that the hon. Lady is right. I have a letter from the University of Surrey, which says that it will make sure that scholarships on academic merit will be given in particular to students studying subjects such as science, engineering and technology. The freedom gained by the small move towards connecting students with the university costs will help to ensure that there is an attempt to draw students into subjects that the universities regard as extremely important.
  Government Members have not fully articulated the fact that it is not the universities' fault that in many cases academic standards are not satisfactory. Only a quarter of our school pupils get two decent A-levels. Our debate needs to focus on the whole school spectrum, from primary schools to sixth forms. A qualification equivalent to an A-level, such as a baccalaureate, may need to be introduced, as something has to be done to raise standards. The previous rector of Imperial college said that such was the problem that even its best applicants were not achieving a satisfactory standard in mathematics, and increasingly the first year of its mathematics course taught things that student should have done at A-level. We therefore need to widen the debate, and should not try to pretend that everything will be wonderful if an access regulator is introduced. We need to work much harder if we are to understand what has to be done to broaden access to university.
  We need to make sure that the universities themselves work harder. Some of them are excellent, and provide a benchmark for others. Many, however, are not good enough. An interesting letter in The Times from Stephen Day, a constituent of mine, points out that it is often difficult to get universities to raise funds privately to boost their resources. However, there is no question but that there is a role for endowments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage pointed out, it is almost unimaginable that, from a standing start, a university endowment will make a difference. Yale's endowment can sustain an income of £330 million or £30,000 per student, while Imperial college London's sustainable income from endowment is £2.4 million or £240 per student. The idea sometimes voiced by Conservative Members that everything will be all right if we endow a few universities is moonshine.
  Endowments are part of the solution, but they are not the whole solution. Industry sponsorship, other ways of working together and proposals in the Lambert report are important means of getting money into universities. Alumni may start to contribute if they think that they can connect with and influence their university, and if they believe that there are benefits from putting money from a successful career back into the university. It cannot be argued that students themselves should not contribute. Disturbingly, in that belief I find that I am closer to the Government Front Bench than my own. It

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  is inconceivable that at the next election, far from what my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) said, students will not have any costs at all. It is important that we connect the student with the university. If the proposal is that students should pay one sixth of the running costs of their tuition, that seems reasonable. One could argue that it should be slightly more or slightly less, but the principle of connection and co-payment is important.
  There should be no up-front fees. That is something that I have always worried about. Views change. The Bill establishes that there will not be up-front fees and there will be payment subsequently only by those earning over —15,000 a year. In effect, there is no interest on those loans: interest will be only at the rate of inflation. Those are signal achievements.
  Given that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) knows that those are achievements and that if the Bill were to fail, there would be nothing in its place, however intellectually interesting that might be, I am astonished that she is recommending that her colleagues vote against the concessions that she and her colleagues have pressured the Government into giving. I do not understand that principle.
  Clare Short: It is possible to put together a different long-term funding package for higher education that includes some of the desirable elements. The Government are saying, "You have to take this thing you don't want, and we'll give you a couple of things you do want." That is no way to make policy. It is incoherent and breaches promises made to the electorate.
  Mr. Taylor: The right hon. Lady was in government long enough to know that government is largely incoherent. It is not just the Labour Government. I was a member of a Government myself. The point is that there has been dramatic change. I do not like some of the changes, but that is irrelevant. The package should not be lost, because there is nothing else to put in its place.
  Let me tell the right hon. Lady that if the Bill fell, the universities would be in a vacuum. Some of them would go independent and others would concentrate on attracting overseas students where there are variable fees. That would diminish the number of places at our best universities for domestic students. By voting against the Bill, the right hon. Lady will be acting against the interests of the very people she is attempting to protect.
  The Government should sort out their arguments and argue with their own Back Benchers. I shall abstain tonight because I refuse to go through the Lobby with those like the right hon. Lady, with whose attitude I totally disagree. Her approach is negative, wrong and unconstructive. I am sad that too many of my colleagues will follow Members like the right hon. Lady through the Division Lobby. There must be change, and the Bill represents a bit of progress. We need to build on it and get a sensible system for our higher education. If we do not, the whole country will suffer, not just the students to whom we are trying to give greater access to our university system.
  5.52 pm
  Mr. Frank Cook: It is always a pleasure, though a rare experience, to follow the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor). His comments are always measured and clearly analytical. I do not agree with everything he said, but his speech was informative and provocative, and I thank him through you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
  Eight minutes is not long to cover the range of aspects that we need to consider tonight. Perhaps I ought to start by saying that I have maintained a position of opposition right from the outset, and I am rather happy that I did. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) for leading the group that so effectively opposed the measures over such a long period. It is only through that determination that we have managed to wring from the Government a number of concessions, which have been more than welcome. We have been assisted in that by the somewhat cynical and unprincipled opportunism of the main Opposition party and perhaps some of the others. Nevertheless, they have done us a favour in that regard. We must be careful not to allow them to exploit it too far tonight.
  I shall not rehearse the whole range of my concerns about the Bill. A principal worry is the fact that I have two universities associated with my constituency to consider. One is the Queen's campus of Durham university at Stockton, and the other is the university of Teesside. The vice-chancellor of Durham university is very much in favour of the Bill, as a member of the Russell group—the Ivy league. His students, however, are very much opposed to it, save for two. I received dozens of faxes, e-mails and letters, but two from Durham stand out. One says:
  "Dear Mr Cook, Please vote against the top up fees. I can't say that I feel passionately against the proposals, however, it would be good to see Tony Blair taken down a peg. Maybe he won't be so arrogant in the future."
  I wonder how prevalent that specific attitude might be. The other one from Durham says:
  "I am a student but nowadays people want everything but they don't want to pay for it. I am at Durham and trust me 90 per cent. of the students who will e-mail you urging you to vote no are spoilt rich kids like myself who can afford to pay way more to subsidise those who cannot. Stick to your guns and vote yes"—
  actually, I never said that I was going to do so—
  "if you are still undecided come down to the car park at the halls of residence and take a look."
  We are in a difficult situation, are we not?
  That was Durham. As for the university of Teesside, the vice-chancellor, Graham Henderson, and his predecessor, Derek Fraser, were adamantly opposed to the Bill. Indeed, when I had an argument with the Under-Secretary, he said that he would persuade Graham Henderson to change his attitude. I told the Under-Secretary that he did not have to go that far— all he had to do to guarantee my vote this evening was to promise me an aircraft carrier to build on the River Tees—[Laughter.] I am expecting to receive it shortly.
  The university of Teesside did alter its stance, however, and it gave a full catalogue of the concessions that it needed, which we have rehearsed tonight. That has borne heavily on me. Bearing in mind that this is a

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  Second Reading, which would only commit the Bill to a Committee in which we can study it line by line, as we ought to do with every piece of legislation, I am more disposed to vote for the legislation, on condition that we get further concessions, which may be in the offing—we have had them as late as today. At least that gives us a chance.
  For anyone to use this exercise as a means of venting some spleen or seeking retribution against the Prime Minister would be totally wrong. If one wants to do that—I suppose that it can be a legitimate tactic in some people's minds—the time to do it is on Third Reading or on Report. It is not proper to abuse the parliamentary system by doing it tonight.
  We have heard suggestions today that this is a matter of the Prime Minister's survival. We should consider these matters in a more mature and rational atmosphere, but that is the tactic that has been used. I can go along with that, but I must say this to those on the Treasury Bench: they have played that card today, but they can only play it once. On Third Reading, they will not be able to play it again.
  Debt aversion was a major consideration, as I thought that it must be terrifying for students to be so threatened by debt. En passant, I discussed the matter with a professional gentleman, an immigrant from Burma, who said, "This would be a very good idea, because it is almost guaranteed if the students are good enough to get into university. They only have to pay for it afterwards." I thought about that, then I realised that here I am, a bit longer in the tooth than I was when I first came into this House, having lived in debt for 50 years, with the probability that I shall go to my death in debt. When I worked at the brewery, an old man asked me why I was terrified of the bank manager. I said, "Because I've got an overdraft." He said, "So you owe him money?" I said yes. He said, "Don't you worry about that—let him worry about it."
  6 pm
  Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: We all acknowledge that historically universities have been underfunded by successive Governments and we recognise that the tuition fees paid by British students do not cover a university's costs. Indeed, I would suggest that the true discrepancy between what a student pays and the cost of that student to the university is disguised by the fact that so many academic salaries are so extraordinarily poor as to be a disgrace to successive Governments. Nor is there any dissent from the view that a better educated society is a richer society; we all want more people from all backgrounds to be in higher and further education provided that they can benefit from it.
  Indeed, so widespread is the acceptance both of the problem that faces us and the agreement that action needs to be taken that I find it extraordinary that this Government, who have a majority of 164, have failed to bring forward a Bill that has widespread support throughout the House. There are several reasons why it has lacked support. It lacks logic, and I shall go on to explain why. It will fail adequately to fund universities even after—or particularly after—all the concessions that have been made in the past 24 hours. It will continue to exclude many who would otherwise benefit
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  from continued education. It is inflexible, centralist, and will act as a disincentive to many to go to university. It owes more to the Prime Minister's own brand of fuzzy logic and the Chancellor's inclination for control by diktat.
  I mentioned flawed logic, and I shall give some evidence for that. Student A and student B go to the same school, leave school with the same A-levels, and go to the same university, where they take the same course, get the same degree, and go into the same job and earn the same salary. But because student—now graduate—A's mother and father had a combined income of £34,000, while graduate B's parents had an income of £20.000, graduate A's debt will be far greater than that of graduate B.
  Alan Johnson: That has now been repeated three times. Let me make it absolutely clear—we are rolling up fee remission with grant and paying it all up front as grant. That means that there is no longer any fee remission, so student A and student B would pay exactly the same.
  Mr. Sayeed: I am sorry, but either both I and a vast number of the Minister's colleagues have read the Bill wrong, or he does not understand his own Bill. The fact is simple: a student at university whose parents earn more than £34,000 will not receive the same grants or benefits as a student whose parents earn less than £20,000 and will, consequently, incur a greater debt. When graduate A and graduate B are in employment, earning the same salary, graduate A will have a larger debt than graduate B. The debt will not be based on his ability to pay, which is exactly the same as graduate B's. The debt will be greater because he has inherited not wealth but an obligation, simply because his parents had a bigger income than the parents of graduate B. That seems to be a recipe for legal challenge some time in the future.
  Dr. Palmer: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Sayeed: No, I shall not be giving way as a number of my colleagues want to speak and time is limited.
  There are two ways in which many of those who could benefit will be excluded from university. First, the Bill institutionalises, legitimises and promotes debt. I make no bones about the fact that I belong to the Micawber school of financial management—I believe that saddling students with debt, or the potential for debt, will act as a considerable disincentive. Secondly, because the Bill perpetuates the straitjacket of academically based courses lasting for two or three years, it fails to recognise that many students would be better served by a different basis for learning.
  The Bill could have offered high quality, vocationally based education, as well as academically based education, but it has not done so. The Bill should have offered students greater flexibility—possibly through modular courses—so that they could move between work, education and other pursuits. That might mean that it takes them longer to gain their degree or other qualification, but at least they could ensure that they fund it properly. What the Bill could have done, but fails to do, would be to encourage some students, especially

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  those following modular courses, to take a place at a university or further education college closer to their home. In that case, not only would it be easier for them to find part-time work, they could also control their living costs more effectively.
  We all know that historically universities have been underfunded. We recognise that the situation has worsened due to the rapid expansion of student numbers. The problem is demonstrated by the increasing class sizes in universities and the decline, in real terms, in academic pay. Furthermore, as anyone who visits a university can see, it is shown by the declining infrastructure of universities. There is no doubt that universities, colleges of further education and other places of education require more money, but it is extraordinary that a Government who are not even funding higher education at the OECD average are looking to change the whole basis of that funding so that it will put off the very people who are least likely to go into higher education at present.
  Governments should start with schools—to give the Government their due, they have done that—but they should ensure that the aspirations of school children push them to go to university if they can benefit from it. Governments should not be ensuring that those who are most frightened by debt will be put off university. The Government have failed to bring a good Bill to the House and they deserve to be defeated.
  6.9 pm
  Mr. Gordon Marsden: People inevitably bring their own life experiences to a debate such as this, and mine are varied. I spent 20 years working as an Open university tutor, during which time I was involved in adult education and observed the particular needs of adult students. I also spent 12 years working as the editor of a history magazine, where, on a week-by-week basis, I saw a snapshot of the problems faced by contributors from a range of universities. I was also a member of the Select Committee that produced two reports on student access and retention, which brought many of the issues being discussed here to the fore for the first time. And, yes, like many people here today, I was the first person in my family to go to university.
  I suppose that is why I was so moved by Neil Kinnock's famous speech, in which he asked why he was the first person in his family to go to university. He talked about standing on a platform, saying that those people who had not been to university had no platform to stand on. But what does not having a platform to stand on mean, as far as university education is concerned? It means not having a decent functioning higher educational system or social equity in relation to access if universities do not have decent facilities, decent ratios in regard to tuition, a proper career path to ensure the quality of the younger lecturers and tutors coming through, the ability to compete in the international marketplace or the ability to regenerate in the regions in which they are so important. Those are the issues affecting the present situation.
  The grinding decline in units of resource under the Conservatives has produced the situation that exists in university education today. The Select Committee
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  reports told us about that in 2001 and subsequently. We have to grasp the nettle and make hard decisions now. Those decisions cannot be left until the end of the decade, and they certainly cannot be left until the Conservatives have made up their mind about what they believe in.
  There would be no guarantee of the success of a graduate tax, because it would not be ring-fenced. Furthermore, the top-rate income tax that the Liberal Democrats talk about has already rightly been dismissed as loaves and fishes politics. There are no guarantees on secure funding. Nothing is for ever. No Labour Government are for ever. [HON. MEMBERS: " Shame!"] Sadly. In the light of all that, we need to find a system that will ring-fence and structure the funding of higher education.
  Mr. Barnes: My hon. Friend mentioned that he had been involved in adult education. How would he feel about an adult student who had been earning between £20,000 and £30,000 a year before deciding to study full time at university in order to change their aspirations and approach, if that student ended up getting a job worth £20,000 to £30,000 afterwards but also had a student debt, having sacrificed three years to complete their studies?
  Mr. Marsden: I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned valiantly on these issues on behalf of adult students. I would say to him that, for the first time, we have a Bill that contains support for adult students—the majority of whom still study part-time—in the form of fees and grants. Those are issues of detail in relation to adult students—particularly students of the Open university and Birkbeck college—which can and should be addressed in Committee.
  I understand the concerns about how variability might operate, and about how higher education might be viewed as a commodity, but we must look at the whole package of the Bill. We also need to consider the reality of 21st century education. There was never a golden age of grants. When I went to university in the 1970s, my parents still had to pay one third of my grant, although my father was an ordinary working-class engineer. There is no golden age—past, present or future—of flat-rate lees or grants. When I was an Open university tutor, part-time students paid variable fees, and that is the reality now. As Universities UK has reminded us, universities already charge variable fees for the majority of their courses for part-time, international and postgraduate students.
  There are other issues that have not been properly addressed in this debate. One is that of adult and further education. Listen to the reality of 21st century higher education, not from me, but from the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, which rightly says that
  "part-timers…represent more than 40 per cent. of all students in HE.
  The sooner HE stops being seen as a finishing school for a minority and starts to be recognised as a lifelong and recurrent source of…personal development for the majority, the sooner"
  we will move
  "towards a culture of lifelong learning."

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  For my constituents in Blackpool and for many others up and down the country, more and more higher education is being delivered via further education. The narrow focus of most Opposition speakers, and I regret to say of one or two Labour Members, diminishes and threatens them.
  Mr. Wayne David: Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be aiming for equity between full-time and part-time students?
  Mr. Marsden: I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend on that, which is why I said to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) that we ought to explore that issue in Committee. However, we must not lose sight of the needs of those adult students.
  I opened an adult learning centre at Burton's in my constituency a few weeks ago. I talked to people, particularly women in their 30s and 40s, who were being given that platform of further and higher education for the first time. The Bill, for the first time, will give them grants and fees. As we have heard today, higher education is not only about what happens between the ages of 18 and 21 but about life chances later in life.
  We must also consider the life chances of even younger people. That is why the Select Committee, when examining that issue, talked about the need to improve access and to improve aspiration in respect of university and school at the ages of 12, 13 and 14. It is also why the education maintenance allowance, which this Government introduced, is key—the continuation of that principle in the grants that are now on offer is so important. Up-front fees have been abolished, which will relieve the fears and concerns of many of the middle-class parents about whom we have heard. Up-front grants will, for the first time, be given to working-class students.
  I do not believe that variable fees are a universal panacea, but the way that the Government have proceeded and responded—to the legitimate concerns of Labour Members in particular—will curb some laziness and the wilder fantasies of some Russell group vice-chancellors. The review gives us guarantees, which will be in the Bill, but it also gives us time to consider other mechanisms. We have heard some useful comments, not least from the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), on how we might do that.
  We must remember that the Bill is not just about variable fees. We must consider the whole package—the arts and humanities research council, an independent negotiator and the Office for Fair Access. All those will be lost if the Bill is voted down tonight.
  I do not need to tell my hon. Friends that the genesis of the Bill had its flaws. Some points that have been made about consultation within our party need to be taken on board by all concerned, but there has been tireless work and engagement—I pay tribute to that—by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education in engaging with and discussing those issues.
  Many of the issues that we had concerns about have been addressed. I beg colleagues to focus laser-like on the alternatives to the Bill. Are hon. Members prepared to put higher education in a funding deep freeze until the
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  end of the decade? [HON. MEMBERS: "Come on!"] Oh yes. That would allow some of the privatising vultures on the Opposition Benches to gather. Are they prepared to collude in the outdated vision of universities that many Conservative Members have? That would be a slight on and would adversely affect some of the opportunities for those groups about whom we are most concerned. They would lose out.
  Earlier, I talked about Neil Kinnock's vision—a vision of quality, access and social justice. We will not achieve that if we cut off at the knees the socially progressive programme of grants and alternatives that the Bill contains.
  6.20 pm
  Mr. Tim Boswell: As the last Back-Bench speaker, I begin on a note of minor agreement. I find aspects of the Bill acceptable, notably the provisions for the arts and humanities research council and for the independent adjudicator. However, although they are important, they are subsidiary to the main event.
  Two speakers—the right hon. Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson)—have shared with me the experience of being a Minister with responsibility for higher education in a Conservative Government. At that time, none of us arranged or connived at charging a tuition fee. We paid maintenance grants and the position was different. I am at odds with my former colleagues because tonight, I shall vote against the measure whereas they, for their own and somewhat different—though doubtless sincerely held—reasons, will vote for it.
  I accept that universities will need more resources per unit of student funding in future.
  Ms Dari Taylor: The hon. Gentleman says that universities are short of funding. Does he accept that 12 inner-city universities are not only short of funding but will close unless we reach an urgent and necessary financial agreement in the House tonight?
  Mr. Boswell: Perhaps that poses an unnecessary ultimatum, but of course I acknowledge that there are pressures, including on many modern universities with which I have considerable personal sympathy.
  Partly through a combination of our Government's reluctance to interfere with the sector's autonomy and the logic of the policy to switch to fees, there was perhaps an over-rapid expansion, beyond the expectations of Ministers, in the early 1990s. We have been coping with the consequences ever since. I do not believe that the Government's proposals will ameliorate those consequences; indeed, they may make them worse. We need a much more imaginative examination than the Government have undertaken so far of incentivisation and stimulation of other means of bringing in money from public trusts, employers and graduates, not so much new graduates but alumni in their mature careers.
  We must also remember the huge cost of the rate of interest on the student loan book and the difference between that and commercial rates of interest. The

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  proposal will massively inflate the disparity, which may become unsustainable for more than a few years. If we add to that the expansion to 50 per cent, to which the Government are already committed, we have a recipe for an unsustainable policy and yet another that the Government will reverse in a short time.
  The essence of the Government's case was tersely summarised in last week's edition of The Economist, under the description "pay or decay". With respect to that excellent publication, there is a logical fallacy—the law of the undistributed middle—in its case. The proposals could mean that students and probably their parents pay while universities decay.
  My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) showed that contributions that may flow from the Bill will be offset in full by the cost of the douceurs that the Government have been forced to give away to get the consent of their Back Benchers. There will be significant consequences for debt among students, as Professor Callendar and others have been cited as saying.
  The Bill will bear particularly hard on mature students and those on long courses who are not receiving state-financed bursaries. I am thinking not just of doctors but of vets and architects, who will be directly hit. I do not think any attention has been paid today to the special position and needs of disabled students. In fact, I find very few students who are likely to benefit from the overall package.
  The irony of all this is that universities will not benefit either. I was impressed by the comments of Dr. Peter Knight of the University of Central England, who said in evidence to the Select Committee last year:
  "I do not think there is a vice-chancellor in the country who believes there will not be a deduction in relation to our public grant when the new fees are available and I assume that everybody is planning on the basis that there will be, the only question is how much".
  So the money will not come through in extra funding. Interestingly, under the Government's own proposals it will not even come through in the great variability of fees, because the way in which they have set up the system means that most vice-chancellors will charge the full £3,000 for most of the courses they offer.
  Even if, miraculously, the Chancellor relents and abandons his stand-off, and takes on the chin the additional cost of support for the higher-education budget in the public expenditure survey, we know from what has been said by Ministers only today that the drip-feeding of slightly—perhaps—additional funds for universities will be limited for six years. It would be a great deal longer if some Labour Back Benchers had their way. Moreover, this minor amelioration, if it actually happens, will be secured only at a heavy price in additional interference. We are familiar with the Government's habit of promising a light touch in regulation, and then bringing in a bludgeon of additional regulation. Nor has there been any mention today of the compliance costs that the universities will face in fulfilling the requirements of the access regulator.
  Let me summarise my position. Let me come to the substantive issue, and the vote to which I am looking forward. The Bill is a charter for higher costs for students, no material extra income for universities and a
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  ratcheting up, a step change, in the scale of interference in universities' academic autonomy and detailed running. It will not stem the alleged decline in their funding, any more than Labour's claims at the time of its 1998 introduction of tuition fees—reiterated in a very positive statement in its 2001 manifesto. It said, in effect, that there was no problem; but that will not stop any decline that is taking place, and pressure will be put on additional funding,
  It may well be that clustered around the thin and austere figure of the Secretary of State as he rises, or returns, to the podium will be a few vice-chancellors who have congregated to listen—as he waves a copy of the Bill at the public—to his thin voice saying, "Cash in our time". But within two years, mark my words, this will all have to be replaced by the policies of a new Conservative Government.
  6.28 pm
  Mr. Tim Collins: In 30 minutes we shall vote on a Bill which the Labour manifesto specifically and categorically pledged not to introduce. That is the most unequivocal and important fact before us, as was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short).
  Today sections of the Government have offered concessions of which other sections apparently know nothing. The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown) told television viewers earlier today that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had made new concessions this morning. He spoke about those concessions in part in this afternoon's debate, and said that they were why he was switching his vote. However, the press office at the Department for Education and Skills has denied that any new concessions have been made. Indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), appeared on the BBC earlier today to reply to the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend, and said not once, not twice, but three times that no new concessions have been made. Someone, somewhere is being conned. It is clear that the Bill remains deeply flawed and is being sold on a false prospectus.
  Mike Gapes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Collins: In a moment. The Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) both said that the Government are proud to propose the abolition of up-front fees, but who introduced up-front fees? They did.
  Mike Gapes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. While we are discussing people being conned and empty vessels, will he tell us his party's policy for funding higher education?
  Mr. Collins: I must say to the hon. Gentleman that it is a little bit rich for someone who speaks on behalf of a party whose Secretary of State did not know at 10 o'clock this morning what the Government's policy was going to be at 11 o'clock to ask for clarification from anyone else. I will tell him one other thing: the policies

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  that we will fight the next election on will be in our manifesto and they will be kept and will not be broken, like those made by his party.
  The Bill and the strategy behind it were sold as being essential for our economy, but the Institute of Directors and the British Chambers of Commerce disagree. It was sold as being good for our professions and public services, but the British Medical Association opposes it, as does the Royal Society—as the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) pointed out. It was sold as being good for students, but although the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mrs. Fitzsimons), a former president of the National Union of Students, supports it, today's NUS is emphatically against it. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) and the hon. Members for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) and for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) all pointed out that people of high ability but ordinary income will be deterred from choosing university courses.
  The Bill was sold as fixing fees at no more than £3,000 a year, and the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) said that he believes those assurances. The Secretary of State has proposed what he calls "truth proofing", in other words, a guarantee that primary legislation would be needed to break that promise. However, we are debating primary legislation designed to break a promise—how does that get us anywhere?
  The Bill has been sold as being good for universities, but the representatives of those who work in universities, the Association of University Teachers and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, are against it.
  Dr. Palmer: A Conservative Member told me a few days ago that he believes that the Bill is in the national interest, but his party has told him that he must vote against it because party interests come first. What is the hon. Gentleman's advice for that Conservative Member?
  Mr. Collins: If the hon. Gentleman is proposing a free vote for all hon. Members, I have no doubt whatsoever that on conscience the Bill would go down, and that it would go down crashingly—as he well knows.
  Today, the Secretary of State once again failed to deny that the money raised by fees would be clawed back by the Treasury. The concessions announced by the Government will cost more than the total amount raised by fees. Although higher education needs more money, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) rightly said, there is a real chance that universities will not be a penny better off even if this Bill passes. A lot of pain, perhaps for no gain at all.
  The Bill will be very bad for academic freedom, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) pointed out. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) said that his Select Committee had opposed the Office for Fair Access, but he had changed his mind. I gently suggest to him that he was right the first time.
  The right hon. Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) said that he was troubled by the creation of OFFA and hoped that it would operate with a light
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  touch. But that is not what is proposed, for the Secretary of State said that he wants an OFFA "with teeth", not without them. That sounds the death knell for academic freedom.
  The hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) said something extremely important, that he understood that some on the Opposition Benches were being instructed that the issue was now one about the survival of the Prime Minister. Let me make this very clear: it is not at all. The issue tonight is not whether the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State will still be in their jobs tomorrow morning. They have both said that they will not stand down whatever the result of this vote, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has made it clear that we would not use defeat of the Bill as a reason to call for resignations.
  The issue, rather, is what attitude the Prime Minister will take from now on. The right hon. Gentleman has led Labour Members into a war they did not want, arm-twisted them into voting for foundation hospitals in which they do not believe, and now says that they will be guilty of betrayal if they do not vote for the very top-up fees he told them to promise to block.
  Whatever happens, the present Prime Minister wakes up tomorrow morning in Downing street. But does he wake up a chastened man, ready to listen more to his party and his people, or a man filled even more with a fervent belief that he is always right and that his critics do not have the same courage as his? If the Government win tonight, do Labour Members think Downing street will brief reporters that the Prime Minister has learned a lesson and is resolved to listen more carefully in future, or that he has once again faced down his critics?
  This is not a motion of confidence in Her Majesty's Government, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said. it is an issue of confidence in the word of Members of Parliament. Both the Labour and Conservative manifestos, on which the vast majority of Members of this House stood in 2001, contained six unequivocal words. Labour said and we said:
  "We will not introduce top-up fees".
  This side of the House will stand by its pledge and vote accordingly. Will Labour hon. Members, many of whom genuinely take their pledged word seriously, do the same? Let Labour Members ask themselves this final question when it comes to justifying their conduct before their voters and in their own consciences: "Which will carry greater weight, that we stood by Tony or stood by our word?"
  I urge hon. Members in all parts of the House to show that firm and unequivocal promises still have meaning in British public life and vote down the Bill.
  6.38 pm
  The Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education (Alan Johnson): By and large, this has been a calm and measured debate, reflecting the seriousness of the issue and of the decision that we are about to take.
  Before I came here mid-morning, I thought that the major questions that we would address in this very important debate were as follows: do we need investment in higher education? Do we need expansion?

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  Should graduates contribute, and if so how? And—the issue regarded on the Labour Benches as crucial— should it be a fixed or a variable fee?
  Listening to the debate, I have come to the conclusion that there is one other question: what on earth is the policy of Her Majesty's official Opposition? We are now at the first anniversary of the publication of the very important White Paper.
  Bob Russell: Do not kick the dog. [Interruption.]
  Alan Johnson: I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that postmen are always very nice to dogs.
  The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) accused us of not having a plan B. I never heard a plan A from those on the Conservative Benches. If one looks back to last January, one sees that they have changed their policy on higher education more frequently than they have changed their leader, and that is a lot of changes. I can only conclude that it reminded me of being back in my flares and tank tops in the 1970s, watching the programme that Hughie Green used to front—opportunism knocks.
  There were however some very important contributions, and some very interesting and thoughtful speeches, by Opposition Members. I particularly enjoyed the speech by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague)—he would not want to be confused with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) at the moment. I also enjoyed the contributions by the hon. Members for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples), for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) and for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), because they really did have a thoughtful approach to resolving this problem.
  I start by asking: do we need investment? There seemed to be agreement on both sides of the House that our higher education sector needs investment. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), who asked why we need it now, that a lot has changed since the turn of the century. [Interruption.] Well, I shall come to the past two years in a second, but this is an important point. There were 5 million higher education students in China in 2001; that figure has tripled in three years. India is churning out 1 million graduates a year and is recruiting our researchers, lecturers and postgraduates.
  Dearing identified a funding gap of £8 billion. Some hon. Members have said, "Yes, we need investment, but this will not bridge the gap," so it is important for me to make this absolutely clear. I remind hon. Members that we have been putting in £2.9 billion of public money since Dearing published his report. We have £800 million from existing fees and we shall raise about £1 billion from these new proposals. That is almost £5 billion. The £8 billion funding gap is not an annual amount: it is a total amount in the infrastructure. We shall make enormous progress towards bridging that funding gap.
  Mr. Rendel: Will the Minister give way?
  Alan Johnson: No, I will give way later.
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  I think it was the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) who said that, once we have introduced these proposals—once we have introduced our extra support for students—there will be no money left for universities. The £1,500 grant announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 8 January—which will now be £2,700 up front—the 25-year cap and the increase in the loan do not affect by one iota the money from this package that goes to universities. We pay the student support, and that is what we should do as a matter of public policy. The universities will still get the £1 billion to £1.4 billion from this package that we originally envisaged.
  Mr. Rendel rose—
  Mr. Yeo rose—
  Alan Johnson: I give way to the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo).
  Mr. Yeo: The Minister has just reached an absolutely crucial point in the argument, and I hope that he will weigh his answer very carefully. Is he saying that the money that will now be used to subsidise the extra loans, to pay for the maintenance grants and to write off the loans that will not be repaid after 25 years, will be provided to the Department for Education and Skills by the Chancellor through an increase in its spending total or not? if the answer is that it will not, we know what happened last time—all the money from tuition fees was clawed back from the universities by a cut in the Higher Education Funding Council grant.
  Alan Johnson: The money for deferring up-front fees, introducing a deferred system with a huge cost because we shall apply no real rate of interest, the money for the £1,000 grant, the money for the higher threshold, and the money to provide support to part-time students—for the first time ever in this country—will all come from the Chancellor. What we have found from within the higher education budget is the money for the extra on the maintenance grant, the 25-year cap and the increased loan.
  Mr. Rendel: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way a second time. If he were to introduce an extra tax on the highest paid, would he accept that he could give the money to the universities now, as he said, whereas under his own policy it will not be coming in until the year 2009?
  Alan Johnson: I shall come on to that precise point in a few moments.
  Do we need investment? Yes, and quickly. The Bill will provide the investment, combined with investment from the taxpayer, which is quite proper. We are asking for a £1 graduate contribution for every £14 that the taxpayer contributes.
  Do we need expansion? Yes, again. I heard the concerns of the right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Sheppard) about pushing towards the 50 per cent. target. In fact, we need the investment whether we expand or not, but I believe that it is important to expand higher education towards 50 per cent.

  267
  participation. We have one of the lowest drop-out rates in the world. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says that graduates in this country get a better return than graduates anywhere else. The Council for Industry and Higher Education, which completely supports the drive to 50 per cent., points out that 90 per cent. of this country's graduates gain employment in which they use their degree.
  I am not a graduate myself, but they say that graduates are more tolerant, healthier, less involved in crime and more involved in their communities, which is certainly my experience of the graduates in their places around the Chamber.
  The third crucial question is whether graduates should make a contribution. I say to Conservative Members—particularly to the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, who led the Conservative party when the Dearing report was published—that Dearing was a national committee of inquiry. The report was a seminal work. Everyone says that Dearing did a thorough job. There are 20 volumes and God knows how many pages.
  The Dearing report was unanimous in saying—and this is the answer to the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel)—that we are fooling ourselves if we believe that we can fund higher education at 40 and 50 per cent. participation rates purely from the taxpayer in the same way as we did when university education was the preserve of a tiny elite—only 6 per cent. in the early 1960s. It was Dearing who said—the previous Government commissioned Dearing—that graduates should make a contribution.
  I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood that Dearing was first minded to go for a graduate tax. He did not do so because he felt that the graduate contribution scheme that we are introducing through the Bill was superior, for two basic reasons. The first was that graduates paid their contribution towards their education and did not continue to pay for the rest of their lives. The second was that lump sums can be paid up front under a graduate contribution scheme to get the money paid off quickly. Dearing said that the graduate contribution scheme was income contingent, as with the graduate tax; that it was paid through the Inland Revenue, as with the graduate tax; and that if earnings fell below a certain level, the graduate would cease to pay, as with the graduate tax. That is why I believe that the Dearing report is at the nub of the debate.
  Paul Farrelly: Can my hon. Friend help me on the subject of Dearing and grants? There was a slick operation going on this morning, with a list of concessions on offer, but my right hon. Friend's speech did not live up to it. Outside this place, the media are talking of no concessions being made. Can the Minister be precise? As a result of what has been said today, what extra maintenance grant will the children of a postman on an average income of £18,624 receive, when the wife earns perhaps another £5,000?
  Alan Johnson: I will gladly come to that very point and answer my hon. Friend, but I want to stay with the logic of our important debate. Should graduates contribute? Yes, they should. We have had the Dearing
  268
  national committee of inquiry and, after devolution, the Cubie commission was established in Scotland and the Rees commission in Wales. Cubie was even more vehement than Dearing about graduates paying a contribution, and the Cubie report fully supported graduate contributions.
  I have considerable personal respect for the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), but he cannot come here simon-pure in his principle that graduates must never make a contribution, when in Scotland the Liberal Democrats are part of a coalition Government and every graduate makes a contribution of just over £2,000 through the graduate endowment scheme. How can the Liberals take a principled stance against graduate contributions while supporting—they are right to support it—that system in Scotland?
  Mrs. Anne Campbell: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the real disadvantages of the Government's scheme compared with a graduate tax is the fact that someone who earns a lot may pay off their money quickly, but it might take a person on a low to average income 25 years before the amount is written off?
  Alan Johnson: If my hon. Friend has those precise concerns, I believe that she should read the Dearing report. Dearing set out six reasons why a graduate contribution scheme was superior to a graduate tax. We have had this debate within the parliamentary Labour party and I think that we should take it further. I sincerely believe that this option is much better.
  We now get on to the really important question of whether there should be a fixed fee or a variable fee.
  Richard Burden: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the problem that several of us have concerns the cap and that I asked my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary a question about that during his opening remarks. Will he clarify one thing for me? He has guaranteed that the cap will not rise during the course of the next Parliament and that it would require primary legislation to raise it within that time. It has also been said that if the commission recommended significant changes thereafter, it would be likely that primary legislation would be required. Would an increase in the rate of variability count as a significant change?
  Alan Johnson: Yes, it undoubtedly would.
  May I address the very issue about which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) spoke to me only last evening: the question of fixed versus variable fees? We heard important contributions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown) and my hon. Friends the Members for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell), for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) and for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson). I accept completely the concerns of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend about variability. From our point of view, we understood right from the start—since the first early-day motion was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge—that the primary concern was about poor students.

  269
  We now have a situation in which we are putting forward a £2,700 grant—this relates to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly). A £4,000 bursary is being offered at Cambridge, Imperial and Exeter, and I am sure that that is soon to be offered by many other universities. There will be access to a £3,555 loan. That is £10,250 a year of support—those studying physics, incidentally, will get an extra £1,000 on top.
  We also have a situation in which 16 and 17-year-olds from poor backgrounds will, from this summer, get £1,500 a year to stay in school. If we do not keep them in school, we cannot get them to do two decent A-levels so that they can get to university. There will be a sum of £11,100 over a five-year period, which represents the kind of package that has never before been seen to help poorer students. However, I accept that my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend and others still have concerns about variability. Our view was simply that going to a fixed fee of £2,500, as has been suggested, or £3,000 with absolute rigidity and no ability to charge less, would be wrong. However, after three years of the scheme's operation, an independent commission will look at it and report straight to the House—not to the Government—after examining the concerns expressed by my right hon. and hon. Friends. It is important that we do that because that point will be the prime time at which to consider the question of fixed versus variable and to decide whether we should switch from one to the other.
  Simon Hughes: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Alan Johnson: No, I am not giving way.
  Another concern has been expressed about the effect of the package on modern universities. I hope that hon. Members have seen something today from what used to be called the Coalition of Modern Universities, but which has helpfully changed its name in the last week to Campaigning for Mainstream Universities. It says to all hon. Members:
  "We are leading the delivery of the government's aim of widening participation…If you support what we are doing and you wish to ensure that we can continue to make our essential contribution in the future, it is important that the Bill passes its Second Reading tomorrow"—
  this was issued yesterday.
  "If the Bill falls, many of those with the greatest need will be denied the transforming opportunity of a quality university education."
  Those are the very universities that Labour Members, quite understandably, have concerns about, and it is very significant that CMU has issued that quote today.
  We now have a situation where a £2,700 grant is available from the Government. Significant grants are available from those universities that need to widen participation—they accept that they need to do so; there is no argument between those universities and us. The threshold for repayment will now increase from £10,000 to £15,000. As a result, with people's concern about debt—watching the debate, as we speak—graduates are paying back £8.60 a week if they are on £15,000 a year.
  270
  When the proposal comes in, that drops to nothing. They pay nothing at £15,000 a year. Graduates on £18,000 a year, which is the average starting pay of a graduate, are currently paying £13.85. With our proposal, that drops to £5.19, immediately. That goes right up the scale to people who earn as much as £40,000 a year. It is not what people owe; it what they earn that determines their payment.
  On the 25-year cap, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Geraint Davies) was right in pointing out that if, for whatever reason, someone joins the Church, works for a charity, or decides to become an MP—so never earns much money—and only earns the equivalent of £17,000 a year for their whole lifetime, they will only pay back a grand sum, loan plus fee, of £4,500.
  Mr. Barnes: Could we be clear beyond peradventure that the change that I am seeking has not been accepted? Instead of the debt disappearing after 25 years, we should take it off the front end, so that there is a holiday from debt. That would affect perceptions considerably, and it would be an advance in the direction that many of us want to go.
  Alan Johnson: I very much appreciate the fact that this is not the first time that my hon. Friend has raised that, and I sincerely hope that it will not be the last, because I should love to debate it in Committee.
  Other issues have been raised about devolved Administrations. I just want to say that, with the anomalies that occur, it is very important to us that the cross-border situation that might arise with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales is thought through considerably and that we discuss it at the JULC.—Joint Union Liaison Committee.
  Mr. Jon Owen Jones: May I ask for my right hon. Friend's assurance that he will look carefully into the anomaly that will exist if the Welsh Assembly's policies go into place, whereby a Russell group university—Cardiff—will charge students who go there £6,000 less than any other Russell group institution, so there will be a flood of English students into Cardiff university?
  Alan Johnson: I will examine my hon. Friend's point.
  A major thrust of attacks—particularly by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks—was that we have broken a manifesto commitment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) was clear in the late 1990s in introducing legislation, and very clear about the definition of top-up fees—the Government place a charge and universities can top it up to whatever they like. We will never do that now. We will not legislate for that in the future.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 316, Noes 311.
  Division No. 38] [6:59 pm

  AYES

  Adams, Irene (Paisley N)

  Anderson, rh Donald (Swansea E)

  Anger, Nick

  Anderson, Janet (Rossendale &Darwen)

  Ainsworth, Bob (Cov'try NE)

  Alexander, Douglas

  Armstrong, rh Ms Hilary

  Allen, Graham

  Atherton, Ms Candy

  271

  Atkins, Charlotte

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Bailey, Adrian

  Doran, Frank

  Baird, Vera

  Dowd, Jim (Lewisham W)

  Banks, Tony

  Drown, Ms Julia

  Barron, rh Kevin

  Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)

  Battle, John

  Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)

  Bayley, Hugh

  Edwards, Huw

  Beard, Nigel

  Efford, Clive

  Beckett, rh Margaret

  Ellman, Mrs Louise

  Begg, Miss Anne

  Field, rh Frank (Birkenhead)

  Bell, Sir Stuart

  Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna

  Benn, rh Hilary

  Flint, Caroline

  Benton, Joe (Bootle)

  Follett, Barbara

  Betts, Clive

  Foster, rh Derek

  Blackman, Liz

  Foster, Michael (Worcester)

  Blair, rh Tony

  Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings & Rye)

  Blears, Ms Hazel

  Blizzard, Bob

  Foulkes, rh George

  Blunkett, rh David

  Francis, Dr. Hywel

  Boateng, rh Paul

  Gapes, Mike (Ilford S)

  Borrow, David

  Gardiner, Barry

  Bradley, rh Keith (Withington)

  George, rh. Bruce (Walsall S)

  Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)

  Gilroy, Linda

  Bradshaw, Ben

  Goggins, Paul

  Brennan, Kevin

  Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)

  Brown, rh Gordon (Dunfermline E)

  Griffiths. Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Brown, rh Nicholas (Newcastle E Wallsend)

  Hain, rh Peter

  Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)

  Brown, Russell (Dumfries)

  Hall, Patrick (Bedford)

  Browne, Desmond

  Hamilton, David (Midlothian)

  Bryant, Chris

  Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)

  Buck, Ms Karen

  Hanson, David

  Burden, Richard

  Harman, rh Ms Harriet

  Burnham, Andy

  Harris, Tom (Glasgow Cathcart)

  Byers, rh Stephen

  Healey, John

  Caborn, rh Richard

  Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)

  Cairns, David

  Hendrick, Mark

  Campbell, Alan (Tynemouth)

  Hepburn, Stephen

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Heppell, John

  Caplin, Ivor

  Hesford, stephen

  Casale, Roger

  Hewitt, rh Ms Patricia

  Cawsey, Ian (Brigg)

  Heyes, David

  Challen, Colin

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)

  Hodge, Margaret

  Chaytor, David

  Hood,Jimmy (Clydesdale)

  Clark, Dr. Lynda (Edinburgh Pentlands)

  Hoon, rh Geoffrey

  Hope, Phil (Corby)

  Clark, Paul (Gillingham)

  Howarth, rh Alan (Newport E)

  Clarke, rh Charles (Norwich S)

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N & Sefton E)

  Clarke, rh Tom (Coatbridge & Chryston)

  Howells, Dr. Kim

  Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

  Hughes, Beverley (Stretford & Urmston)

  Clelland, David

  Clwyd, Ann (Cynon V)

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Coaker, Vernon

  Hurst, Alan (Braintree)

  Coffey, Ms Ann

  Hutton, rh John

  Coleman, Iain

  Ingram, rh Adam

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Irranca-Davies, Huw

  Cooper, Yvette

  Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)

  Corston, Jean

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Cranston, Ross

  Jamieson, David

  Cummings, John

  Johnson, Alan (Hull W)

  Cunningham, rh Dr. Jack (Copeland)

  Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Cunningham, Jim (Coventry S)

  Jones, Kavan (N Durham)

  Cunningham, Tony (Workington)

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S)

  Curtis-Thomas, Mrs Claire

  Jowell, rh Tessa

  Darling, rh Alistair

  Joyce, Eric (Falkirk W)

  David, Wayne

  Kaufman, rh Gerald

  Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)

  Keeble, Ms Sally

  Dawson, Hilton

  Keen, Alan (Feltham)

  Dean, Mrs Janet

  Keen, Ann (Brentford)

  Denham, rh John

  Kelly, Ruth (Bolton W)

  Dhanda, Parmjit

  Kemp, Fraser

  Dismore, Andrew

  Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree)

  272

  Khabra, Piara S.

  Pike, Peter (Burnley)

  Kidney, David

  Plaskitt, James

  King, Andy (Rugby)

  Pollard, Kerry

  King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green & Bow)

  Pond, Chris (Gravesham)

  Pope, Greg (Hyndburn)

  Knight, Jim (S Dorset)

  Pound, Stephen

  Kumar, Dr. Ashok

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)

  Ladyman, Dr. Stephen

  Lammy, David

  Prescott, rh John

  Lawrence, Mrs Jackie

  Primarolo, rh Dawn

  Laxton, Bob (Derby N)

  Prosser, Gwyn

  Lazarowicz, Mark

  Purchase, Ken

  Leslie, Christopher

  Purnell, James

  Levitt, Tom (High Peak)

  Quin, rh Joyce

  Lewis, Ivan (Bury S)

  Quinn, Lawrie

  Liddell, rh Mrs Helen

  Rammell, Bill

  Linton, Martin

  Rapson, Syd (Portsmouth N)

  Love, Andrew

  Raynsford, rh Nick

  Lyons, John (Strathkelvin)

  Reed, Andy (Loughborough)

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Reid, rh Dr. John (Hamilton N & Bellshill)

  McCabe, Stephen

  McCartney, rh Ian

  Robertson, John (Glasgow Anniesland)

  McDonagh, Siobhain

  MacDonald, Calum

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry NW)

  MacDougall, John

  McFall, John

  Roche, Mrs Barbara

  McGuire, Mrs Anne

  Rooney, Terry

  McIsaac, Shona

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  McKechin, Ann

  Roy, Frank (Motherwell)

  McKenna, Rosemary

  Ruane, Chris

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Ruddock, Joan

  McNulty, Tony

  Russell, Ms Christine (City of Chester)

  MacShane, Denis

  Mactaggart, Fiona

  Salter, Martin

  McWalter, Tony

  Sarwar, Mohammad

  McWilliam, John

  Sawford, Phil

  Mahmood, Khalid

  Shaw, Jonathan

  Mallaber, Judy

  Sheerman, Barry

  Mandelson, rh Peter

  Sheridan, Jim

  Mann, John (Bassetlaw)

  Shipley, Ms Debra

  Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)

  Simon, Siôn (B'ham Erdington)

  Marshall, David (Glasgow Shettleston)

  Singh, Marsha

  Smith, rh Andrew (Oxford E)

  Martlew, Eric

  Smith, Angela (Basildon)

  Merron, Gillian

  Smith, rh Chris (Islington S & Finsbury)

  Michael, rh Alun

  Milburn, rh Alan

  Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

  Miliband, David

  Smith, John (Glamorgan)

  Miller, Andrew

  Soley, Clive

  Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

  Southworth, Helen

  Moffatt, Laura

  Spellar, rh John

  Mole, Chris

  Squire, Rachel

  Moonie, Dr. Lewis

  Starkey, Dr. Phyllis

  Moran, Margaret

  Stewart, David (Inverness E & Lochaber)

  Morley, Elliot

  Morris, rh Estelle

  Stewart, Ian (Eccles)

  Mountford, Kali

  Stinchcombe, Paul

  Mullin, Chris

  Stoate, Dr. Howard

  Munn, Ms Meg

  Straw, rh Jack

  Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)

  Stringer, Graham

  Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)

  Stuart, Ms Gisela

  Murphy, rh Paul (Torfaen)

  Sutcliffe, Gerry

  Naysmith, Dr. Doug

  Tami, Mark (Alyn)

  Norris, Dan (Wansdyke)

  Taylor, rh Ann (Dewsbury)

  O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)

  Taylor, Dari (Stockton S)

  O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  O'Hara, Edward

  Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)

  Olner, Bill

  Thomas, Gareth (Harrow W)

  O'Neill, Martin

  Timms, Stephen

  Organ, Diana

  Tipping, Paddy

  Osborne, Sandra (Ayr)

  Todd, Mark (S Derbyshire)

  Palmer, Dr. Nick

  Touhig, Don (Islwyn)

  Pearson, Ian

  Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE)

  Perham, Linda

  Turner, Neil (Wigan)

  Picking, Anne

  Twigg, Derek (Halton)

  Pickthall, Colin

  Twigg, Stephen (Enfield)

  273

  Tynan, Bill (Hamilton S)

  Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)

  Vaz, Keith (Leicester E)

  Walley, Ms Joan

  Woodward, Shaun

  Ward, Claire

  Woolas, Phil

  Watson, Tom (W Bromwich E)

  Worthington, Tony

  Watts,David

  Wright, Anthony D. (Gt Yarmouth)

  White, Brian

  Whitehead, Dr. Alan

  Wright, David (Telford)

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Wright, Tony (Cannock)

  Williams, Betty (Conwy)

  Wyatt, Derek

  Wills, Michael

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Wilson, Brian

  Jim Fitzpatrick and

  Winnick, David

  Joan Ryan

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

  Cohen, Harry

  Allan, Richard

  Collins, Tim

  Amess, David

  Colman, Tony

  Ancram, rh Michael

  Connarty, Michael

  Arbuthnot, rh James

  Conway, Derek

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  Austin, John

  Cotter, Brian

  Bacon, Richard

  Cousins, Jim

  Baker, Norman

  Cran, James (Beverley)

  Baldry, Tony

  Crausby, David

  Barker, Gregory

  Cruddas, Jon

  Barnes, Harry

  Cryer, John (Hornchurch)

  Baron, John (Billericay)

  Curry, rh David

  Barrett, John

  Dalyell, Tam

  Beggs, Roy (E Antrim)

  Davey, Edward (Kingston)

  Beith, rh A. J.

  Davidson, Ian

  Bellingham, Henry

  Davies, rh Denzil (Llanelli)

  Bennett, Andrew

  Davies, Quentin (Grantham & Stamford)

  Bercow, John

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Davis, rh David (Haltemprice & Howden)

  Berry, Roger

  Best, Harold

  Djanogly, Jonathan

  Blunt, Crispin

  Dobbin, Jim (Heywood)

  Boswell, Tim

  Dobson, rh Frank

  Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)

  Dodds, Nigel

  Bottomley, rh Virginia (SW Surrey)

  Donaldson, Jeffrey M.

  Dorrell, rh Stephen

  Brady, Graham

  Doughty, Sue

  Brake, Tom (Carshalton)

  Duncan, Alan (Rutland)

  Brazier, Julian

  Duncan Smith, rh lain

  Breed, Colin

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Brooke, Mrs Annette L.

  Etherington, Bill

  Browning, Mrs Angela

  Evans, Nigel

  Bruce, Malcolm

  Ewing, Annabelle

  Burgon, Colin

  Fabricant, Michael

  Burnett, John

  Fallon, Michael

  Burns, Simon

  Farrelly, Paul

  Burnside, David

  Field, Mark (Cities of London & Westminster)

  Burstow, Paul

  Burt, Alistair

  Fisher, Mark

  Butterfill, Sir John

  Flight, Howard

  Cable, Dr. Vincent

  Flook, Adrian

  Calton, Mrs Patsy

  Flynn, Paul (Newport W)

  Cameron, David

  Forth, rh Eric

  Campbell, Gregory (E Lond'y)

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Campbell, rh Sir Menzies (NE Fife)

  Fox, Dr. Liam

  Francois, Mark

  Carmichael, Alistair

  Gale, Roger (N Thanet)

  Cash, William

  Galloway, George

  Caton, Martin

  Garnier, Edward

  Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)

  George, Andrew (St. Ives)

  Gerrard, Neil

  Chidgey, David

  Gibb, Nick (Bognor Regis)

  Chope, Christopher

  Gibson, Dr. Ian

  Clapham, Michael

  Gidley, Sandra

  Clappison, James

  Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

  Clark, Mrs Helen (Peterborough)

  Godsiff, Roger

  Clarke, rh Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Goodman, Paul

  274

  Gray, James (N Wilts)

  Maclean, rh David

  Grayling, Chris

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Green, Damian (Ashford)

  McNamara, Kevin

  Green, Matthew (Ludlow)

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Greenway, John

  Malins, Humfrey

  Grieve, Dominic

  Mallon, Seamus

  Grogan, John

  Maples, John

  Gummer, rh John

  Marris, Rob (Wolverh'ton SW)

  Hague, rh William

  Marsden, Paul (Shrewsbury & Atcham)

  Hammond, Philip

  Hancock, Mike

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Harris, Dr. Evan (Oxford W & Abingdon)

  Marshall-Andrews, Robert

  Mates, Michael

  Harvey, Nick

  Maude, rh Francis

  Havard, Dai (Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney)

  Mawhinney, rh Sir Brian

  May, Mrs Theresa

  Hawkins, Nick

  Meacher, rh Michael

  Hayes, John (S Holland)

  Mercer, Patrick

  Heald, Oliver

  Mitchell, Andrew (Sutton Coldfield)

  Heath, David

  Heathcoat-Amory, rh David

  Moore, Michael

  Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)

  Morgan, Julie

  Hendry, Charles

  Moss, Malcolm

  Hermon, Lady

  Mudie, George

  Hoban, Mark (Fareham)

  Murrison, Dr. Andrew

  Hoey, Kate (Vauxhall)

  Norman, Archie

  Hogg, rh Douglas

  Oaten, Mark (Winchester)

  Holmes, Paul

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  Hopkins, Kelvin

  Öpik, Lembit

  Horam, John (Orpington)

  Osborne, George (Tatton)

  Howard, rh Michael

  Ottaway, Richard

  Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)

  Owen, Albert

  Hoyle, Lindsay

  Page, Richard

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark N)

  Paice, James

  Humble, Mrs Joan

  Paisley, Rev. Ian

  Hume, John (Foyle)

  Paterson, Owen

  Hunter, Andrew

  Pickles, Eric

  Illsley, Eric

  Portillo, rh Michael

  Jack, rh Michael

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Jackson, Glenda (Hampstead & Highgate)

  Price, Adam (E Carmarthen & Dinefwr)

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Prisk, Mark (Hertford)

  Johnson, Boris (Henley)

  Pugh, Dr. John

  Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

  Randall, John

  Jones, Lynne (Selly Oak)

  Redwood, rh John

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Reid, Alan (Argyll & Bute)

  Keetch, Paul

  Rendel, David

  Kennedy, rh Charles (Rosy Skye & Inverness)

  Robathan, Andrew

  Robertson, Angus (Moray)

  Key, Robert (Salisbury)

  Robertson, Hugh (Faversham & M-Kent)

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Kirkbride, Miss Julie

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Kirkwood, Sir Archy

  Robinson, Mrs Iris (Strangford)

  Knight, rh Greg (E Yorkshire)

  Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

  Laing, Mrs Eleanor

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Rosindell, Andrew

  Lamb, Norman

  Ruffley, David

  Lansley, Andrew

  Russell, Bob (Colchester)

  Laws, David (Yeovil)

  Salmond, Alex

  Leigh, Edward

  Sanders, Adrian

  Letwin, rh Oliver

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Lewis, Dr. Julian (New Forest E)

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Lewis, Terry (Worsley)

  Selous, Andrew

  Liddell-Grainger, Ian

  Shephard, rh Mrs Gillian

  Lidington, David

  Shepherd, Richard

  Lilley, rh Peter

  Short, rh Clare

  Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)

  Simmonds, Mark

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)

  Loughton, Tim

  Simpson, Keith (M-Norfolk)

  Lucas, Ian (Wrexham)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Luke, lain (Dundee E)

  Smith, Geraldine (Morecambe & Lunesdale)

  McCafferty, Chris

  McDonnell, John

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  McGrady, Eddie

  Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns & Kincardine)

  McIntosh, Miss Anne

  Mackay, rh Andrew

  Smyth, Rev. Martin (Belfast S)

  275

  Soames, Nicholas

  Turner, Dr Desmond (Brighton Kemptown)

  Spelman, Mrs Caroline

  Spicer, Sir Michael

  Tyler, Paul (N Cornwall)

  Spink, Bob (Castle Point)

  Tyrie, Andrew

  Spring, Richard

  Viggers, Peter

  Stanley, rh Sir John

  Vis, Dr. Rudi

  Steen, Anthony

  Walter, Robert

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Strang, rh Dr. Gavin

  Waterson, Nigel

  Streeter, Gary

  Watkinson, Angela

  Stunell, Andrew

  Webb, Steve (Northavon)

  Swayne, Desmond

  Weir, Michael

  Swire, Hugo (E Devon)

  Whittingdale, John

  Syms, Robert

  Wiggin, Bill

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Wilkinson, John

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  Willetts, David

  Taylor, John (Solihull)

  Williams, Hywel (Caernarfon)

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Williams, Roger (Brecon)

  Taylor, Dr. Richard (Wyre F)

  Willis, Phil

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Winterton, Ann (Congleton)

  Teather, Sarah

  Winterton, Sir Nicholas (Macclesfield)

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Thurso, John

  Wishart, Pete

  Tonge, Dr. Jenny

  Wood, Mike (Batley)

  Tredinnick, David

  Young, rh Sir George

  Trend, Michael

  Younger-Ross, Richard

  Trickett, Jon

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Trimble, rh David

  Mr. David Wilshire and

  Turner, Andrew (Isle of Wight)

  Mr. Peter Luff

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Mr. Tim Yeo: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. After this utter humiliation for the Government, do you agree that it is completely wrong that a Bill that imposes higher charges on students attending English universities should be carried by this House only by using the votes of Scottish Members of Parliament, given that students attending universities in the constituents of those Scottish Members do not have pay those higher charges?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The House has decided on this matter, and that is the end of it.
  Mr. Alex Salmond rose—
  Mr. Speaker: I hope that this is a proper point of order, Mr. Salmond. [Interruption.]Order. Allow me to hear the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Salmond: Can the Speaker clarify that there was nothing in the terms of order that required the single Scottish Tory MP to sit on his hands and do nothing while Scottish interests were put to the sword by Scottish Labour MPs?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We now come to the programme motion.

  HIGHER EDUCATION BILL (PROGRAMME)
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Orders [28 June 2001 and 6 November 2003],
  That the following provisions shall apply to the Higher Education Bill:

  Committal
  1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.

  Proceedings in Standing Committee
  2. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 26th February 2004.
  3. The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

  Consideration and Third Reading
  4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
  5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
  6. Sessional Order B (programming committees) made on 28th June 2001 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.

  Programming of proceedings
  7. All other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Paul Clark.]
  The House divided:Ayes 361, Noes 231.
  Division No. 39] [7:21 pm

  AYES

  Adams, Irene (Paisley N)

  Burgon, Colin

  Ainger, Nick

  Burnham, Andy

  Ainsworth, Bob Cov'try NE)

  Byers, rh Stephen

  Alexander, Douglas

  Caborn, rh Richard

  Allen, Graham

  Cairns, David

  Anderson, rh Donald (Swansea E)

  Campbell, Alan (Tynemouth)

  Anderson, Janet (Rossendale & Darwen)

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Armstrong, rh Ms Hilary

  Caplin, Ivor

  Atherton, Ms Candy

  Casale, Roger

  Atkins, Charlotte

  Caton, Martin

  Austin, John

  Cawsey, Ian (Brigg)

  Bailey, Adrian

  Challen, Colin

  Baird, Vera

  Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)

  Banks, Tony

  Chaytor, David

  Barron, rh Kevin

  Clark, Dr. Lynda (Edinburgh Pentlands)

  Battle, John

  Bayley, Hugh

  Clark, Paul (Gillingham)

  Beard, Nigel

  Clarke, rh Charles (Norwich S)

  Beckett, rh Margaret

  Clarke, rh Tom (Coatbridge & Chryston)

  Begg, Miss Anne

  Bell, Sir Stuart

  Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

  Benn, rh Hilary

  Clelland, David

  Bennett, Andrew

  Clwyd, Ann (Cynon V)

  Benton, Joe (Bootle)

  Coaker, Vernon

  Best, Harold

  Coffey, Ms Ann

  Betts, Clive

  Coleman, Iain

  Blackman, Liz

  Connarty, Michael

  Blears, Ms Hazel

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Blizzard, Bob

  Cook, rh Robin (Livingston)

  Blunkett, rh David

  Cooper, Yvette

  Boateng, rh Paul

  Corston, Jean

  Borrow, David

  Cousins, Jim

  Bradley, rh Keith (Withington)

  Cranston, Ross

  Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)

  Crausby, David

  Bradshaw, Ben

  Cruddas, Jon

  Brennan, Kevin

  Cryer, Ann (Keighley)

  Brown, rh Nicholas (Newcastle E Wallsend)

  Cryer, John (Hornchurch)

  Cummings, John

  Brown, Russell (Dumfries)

  Cunningham, rh Dr. Jack (Copeland)

  Browne, Desmond

  Bryant, Chris

  Cunningham, Jim (Coventry S)

  Buck, Ms Karen

  Cunningham, Tony (Workington)

  Burden, Richard

  Curtis-Thomas, Mrs Claire

  277

  Darling, rh Alistair

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N & Sefton E)

  David, Wayne

  Davidson, Ian

  Howells, Dr. Kim

  Davies, rh Denzil (Llanelli)

  Hughes, Beverley (Stretford & Urmston)

  Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)

  Dawson, Hilton

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Dean, Mrs Janet

  Humble, Mrs Joan

  Denham, rh John

  Hurst, Alan (Braintree)

  Dhanda, Parmjit

  Hutton, rh John

  Dismore, Andrew

  Iddon, Dr. Brian

  Dobbin, Jim (Heywood)

  Illsley, Eric

  Dobson, rh Frank

  Ingram, rh Adam

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Irranca-Davies, Huw

  Doran, Frank

  Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)

  Dowd, Jim (Lewisham W)

  Jamieson, David

  Drew, David (Stroud)

  Johnson, Alan (Hull W)

  Drown, Ms Julia

  Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)

  Jones, Helen (Warrington N)

  Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)

  Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

  Edwards, Huw

  Jones, Kevan (N Durham)

  Efford, Clive

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S)

  Ellman, Mrs Louise

  Jowell, rh Tessa

  Ennis, Jeff (Barnsley E)

  Joyce, Eric (Falkirk W)

  Etherington, Bill

  Kaufman, rh Gerald

  Farrelly, Paul

  Keeble, Ms Sally

  Field, rh Frank (Birkenhead)

  Keen, Alan (Feltham)

  Fisher, Mark

  Keen, Ann (Brentford)

  Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna

  Kelly, Ruth (Bolton W)

  Flint, Caroline

  Kemp, Fraser

  Flynn, Paul (Newport W)

  Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree)

  Follett, Barbara

  Khabra, Piara S.

  Foster, rh Derek

  Kidney, David

  Foster, Michael (Worcester)

  King, Andy (Rugby)

  Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings & Rye)

  King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green & Bow)

  Foulkes, rh George

  Knight, Jim (S Dorset)

  Francis, Dr. Hywel

  Kumar, Dr. Ashok

  Ladyman, Dr. Stephen

  Gapes, Mike (Ilford S)

  Lammy, David

  Gardiner, Barry

  Lawrence, Mrs Jackie

  George, rh Bruce (Walsall S)

  Laxton, Bob (Derby N)

  Gerrard, Neil

  Lazarowicz, Mark

  Gilroy, Linda

  Lepper, David

  Goggins, Paul

  Leslie, ChristopherLevitt, Tom (High Peak)

  Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)

  Lewis, Ivan (Bury S)

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Liddell, rh Mrs Helen

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Linton, Martin

  Hain, rh Peter

  Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)

  Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)

  Love, Andrew

  Hall, Patrick (Bedford)

  Lucas, Ian (Wrexham)

  Hamilton, David (Midlothian)

  Luke, lain (Dundee E)

  Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)

  Lyons, John (Strathkelvin)

  Hanson, David

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Harman, rh Ms Harriet

  McCabe, Stephen

  Harris, Tom (Glasgow Cathcart)

  McCafferty, Chris

  Havard, Dai (Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney)

  McCartney, rh Ian

  McDonagh, Siobhain

  Healey, John

  MacDonald, Calum

  Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)

  MacDougall, John

  Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)

  McFall, John

  Hendrick, Mark

  McGuire, Mrs Anne

  Hepburn, Stephen

  McIsaac, Shona

  Heppell, John

  McKechin, Ann

  Hesford, Stephen

  McKenna, Rosemary

  Hewitt. rh Ms Patricia

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Heyes, David

  McNulty, TonyDenis, MacShane

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Mactaggart, Fiona

  Hodge, Margaret

  McWalter, Tony

  Hoey, Kate (Vauxhall)

  McWilliam, John

  Hood, Jimmy (Clydesdale)

  Mahmood, Khalid

  Hoon, rh Geoffrey

  Mallaber, Judy

  Hope, Phil (Corby)

  Mendelson, rh Peter

  Howarth, rh Alan (Newport E)

  Mann, John (Bassetlaw)

  278

  Marris, Rob (Wolverh'ton SW)

  Sawford, Phil

  Marsden, Gordon (Blakpool S)

  Shaw, Jonathan

  Marshall, David (Glasgow Shettleston)

  Sheerman, Barry

  Sheridan, Jim

  Martlew, Eric

  Simon, Siôn (B'ham Erdington)

  Meacher, rh Michael

  Singh, Marsha

  Merron, Gillian

  Skinner, Dennis

  Michael, rh Alun

  Smith, rh Andrew (Oxford E)

  Milburn, rh Alan

  Smith, Angela (Basildon)

  Miliband, David

  Smith, rh Chris (Islington S & Finsbury)

  Miller, Andrew

  Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

  Smith, Geraldine (Morecambe & Lunesdale)

  Moffatt, Laura

  Mole, Chris

  Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

  Moonie, Dr. Lewis

  Smith, John (Glamorgan)

  Moran, Margaret

  Soley, Clive

  Morgan, Julie

  Southworth, Helen

  Morley, Elliot

  Spellar, rh John

  Morris, rh Estelle

  Squire, Rachel

  Mountford, Kali

  Starkey, Dr. Phyllis

  Mullin, Chris

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Munn, Ms Meg

  Stewart, David (Inverness E & Lochaber)

  Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)

  Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)

  Stewart, Ian (Eccles)

  Murphy, rh Paul (Torfaen)

  Stinchcombe, Paul

  Naysmith, Dr. Doug

  Stoate, Dr. Howard

  Norris, Dan (Wansdyke)

  Strang, rh Dr. Gavin

  O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)

  Straw, rh Jack

  O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

  Stringer, Graham

  O'Hara, Edward

  Stuart, Ms Gisela

  Olner, Bill

  Sutcliffe, Gerry

  O'Neill, Martin

  Tami, Mark (Alyn)

  Organ, Diana

  Taylor, rh Ann (Dewsbury)

  Osborne, Sandra (Ayr)

  Taylor, Dari (Stockton S)

  Owen, Albert

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  Palmer, Dr. Nick

  Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)

  Pearson, Ian

  Thomas, Gareth (Harrow W)

  Perham, Linda

  Timms, Stephen

  Picking, Anne

  Tipping, Paddy

  Pickthall, Colin

  Todd, Mark (S Derbyshire)

  Pike, Peter (Burnley)

  Touhig, Don (lslwyn)

  Plaskitt, James

  Trickett, Jon

  Pollard, Kerry

  Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE)

  Pond, Chris (Gravesham)

  Turner, Neil (Wigan)

  Pope, Greg (Hyndburn)

  Twigg, Derek (Halton)

  Pound, Stephen

  Twigg, Stephen (Enfield)

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)

  Tynan, Bill (Hamilton S)

  Vaz, Keith (Leicester E)

  Prescott, rh John

  Vis, Dr. Rudi

  Primarolo, rh Dawn

  Walley, Ms Joan

  Prosser, Gwyn

  Ward, Claire

  Purchase, Ken

  Watson, Tom (W Bromwich E)

  Purnell, James

  Quin, rh Joyce

  Watts, David

  Quinn, Lawrie

  White, Brian

  Rammell, Bill

  Whitehead, Dr. Alan

  Rapson, Syd (Portsmouth N)

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Raynsford, rh Nick

  Williams, rh Alan (Swansea W)

  Reed, Andy (Loughborough)

  Williams, Betty (Conwy)

  Reid, rh Dr. John (Hamilton N & Bellshill)

  Wills, Michael

  Wilson, Brian

  Robertson, John (Glasgow Anniesland)

  Winnick, David

  Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry NW)

  Woodward, Shaun

  Roche, Mrs Barbara

  Woolas, Phil

  Rooney, Terry

  Worthington, Tony

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Wright, Anthony D (Gt Yarmouth)

  Roy, Frank (Motherwell)

  Ruane, Chris

  Wright, David (Telford)

  Ruddock, Joan

  Wright, Tony (Cannock)

  Russell, Ms Christine (City of Chester)

  Wyatt, Derek

  Salter, Martin

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Sarwar, Mohammad

  Jim Fitzpatrick and

  Savidge, Malcolm

  Joan Ryan

  279

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Forth, rh Eric

  Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Allan, Richard

  Gale, Roger (N Thanet)

  Amess, David

  Garnier, Edward

  Ancram, rh Michael

  George, Andrew (St. Ives)

  Arbuthnot, rh James

  Gibb, Nick (Bognor Regis)

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

  Gidley, Sandra

  Bacon, Richard

  Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

  Baker, Norman

  Goodman, Paul

  Baldry, Tony

  Gray, James (N Wilts)

  Baron, John (Billericay)

  Grayling, Chris

  Barrett, John

  Green, Damian (Ashford)

  Beggs, Roy (E Antrim)

  Green, Matthew (Ludlow)

  Beith, rh A. J.

  Greenway, John

  Bellingham, Henry

  Grieve, Dominic

  Bercow, John

  Gummer, rh John

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Hague, rh william

  Blunt, Crispin

  Hammond Philip

  Boswell, Tim

  Hancock, Mike

  Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)

  Harris, Dr. Evan (Oxford W & Abingdon)

  Bottomley, rh Virginia (SW Surrey)

  Hawkins, Nick

  Brady, Graham

  Hayes, John (S Holland)

  Brake, Tom (Carshalton)

  Heald, Oliver

  Brazier, Julian

  Heath, David

  Breed, Colin

  Hendry, Charles

  Brooke, Mrs Annette L.

  Hermon, Lady

  Browning, Mrs Angela

  Hoban, Mark (Fareham)

  Bruce, Malcolm

  Hogg, rh Douglas

  Burnett, John

  Holmes, Paul

  Burns, Simon

  Horam, John (Orpington)

  Burnside, David

  Howard, rh Michael

  Burstow, Paul

  Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)

  Burt, Alistair

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark N)

  Butterfill, Sir John

  Hunter, Andrew

  Cable, Dr. Vincent

  Jack, rh Michael

  Calton, Mrs Patsy

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Cameron, David

  Johnson, Boris (Henley)

  Campbell, Gregory (E Lond'y)

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Campbell, rh Sir Menzies (NE Fife)

  Keetch, Paul

  Kennedy, rh Charles (Ross Skye & Inverness)

  Carmichael, Alistair

  Cash, William

  Key, Robert (Salisbury)

  Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)

  Kirkbride, Miss Julie

  Kirkwood, Sir Archy

  Chope, Christopher

  Knight, rh Greg (E Yorkshire)

  Clappison, James

  Laing, Mrs Eleanor

  Clark, Mrs Helen (Peterborough)

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Clarke, rh Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Lamb, Norman

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Lansley, Andrew

  Conway, Derek

  Laws, David (Yeovil)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Leigh, Edward

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  Letwin, rh Oliver

  Cotter, Brian

  Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)

  Curry, rh David

  Liddell-Grainger, Ian

  Davey, Edward (Kingston)

  Lidington, David

  Davies, Quentin (Grantham & Stamford)

  Lilley, rh Peter

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Davis, rh David (Haltemprice & Howden)

  Loughton, Tim

  Luff, Peter (M-Worcs)

  Djanogly, Jonathan

  McDonnell, John

  Dodds, Nigel

  McIntosh, Miss Anne

  Donaldson, Jeffrey M.

  Mackay, rh Andrew

  Dorrell, rh Stephen

  Maclean, rh David

  Doughty, Sue

  McLouglin, Patrick

  Duncan, Alan (Rutland)

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Duncan Smith, rh lain

  Malins, Humfrey

  Evans, Nigel

  Maples, John

  Ewing, Annabelle

  Mates, Michael

  Fabricant, Michael

  Maude, rh Francis

  Fallon, Michael

  Mawhinney, rh Sir Brian

  Field, Mark (Cities of London & Westminster)

  May, Mrs Theresa

  Mercer, Patrick

  Flight, Howard

  Mitchell, Andrew (Sutton Coldfield)

  Flook, Adrian

  280

  Moore, Michael

  Spring, Richard

  Moss, Malcolm

  Stanley, rh Sir John

  Murrison, Dr. Andrew

  Steen, Anthony

  Norman, Archie

  Streeter, Gary

  Oaten, Mark (Winchester)

  Stunell, Andrew

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  Swayne, Desmond

  Öpik, Lembit

  Swire, Hugo (E Devon)

  Osborne, George (Tatton)

  Syms, Robert

  Ottaway, Richard

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Page, Richard

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Paice, James

  Taylor, John (Solihull)

  Paisley, Rev. Ian

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Paterson, Owen

  Taylor, Dr. Richard (Wyre F)

  Pickles, Eric

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Portillo, rh Michael

  Teather, Sarah

  Price, Adam (E Carmarthen & Dinefwr)

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Thurso, John

  Prisk, Mark (Hertford)

  Tonge, Dr. Jenny

  Pugh, Dr. John

  Tredinnick, David

  Randall, John

  Trend, Michael

  Redwood, rh John

  Trimble, rh David

  Reid, Alan (Argyll & Bute)

  Turner, Andrew (Isle of Wight)

  Rendel, David

  Tyler, Paul (N Cornwall)

  Robathan, Andrew

  Tyrie, Andrew

  Robertson, Angus (Moray)

  Viggers, Peter

  Robertson, Hugh (Faversham & M-Kent)

  Walter, Robert

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Waterson, Nigel

  Robinson, Mrs Iris (Strangford)

  Watkinson, Angela

  Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

  Webb, Steve (Northavon)

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Weir, Michael

  Rosindell, Andrew

  Whittingdale, John

  Ruffley, David

  Widdecombe, rh Miss Ann

  Russell, Bob (Colchester)

  Wiggin, Bill

  Salmond, Alex

  Wilkinson, John

  Sanders, Adrian

  Willetts, David

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Williams, Hywel (Caernarfon)

  Selous, Andrew

  Williams, Roger (Brecon)

  Shephard, rh Mrs Gillian

  Wilshire, David

  Shepherd, Richard

  Winterton, Ann (Congleton)

  Simmonds, Mark

  Winterton, Sir Nicholas (Macclesfield)

  Simpson, Keith (M-Norfolk)

  Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns & Kincardine)

  Wishart, Pete

  Young, rh Sir George

  Smyth, Rev. Martin (Belfast S)

  Younger-Ross, Richard

  Soames, Nicholas

  Spelman, Mrs Caroline

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Spicer, Sir Michael

  Mr. Peter Atkinson and

  Spink, Bob (Castle Point)

  Gregory Barker

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  7.34 pm
  Mr. Douglas Hogg: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The question that will now arise is on the formation of the Standing Committee. Normally, as you know well, the committee of nomination would select the Standing Committee in accordance with party composition. However, you will know from page 693 of "Erskine May" that it is a rule of the House that the strength of opinion as expressed in any Division on Second Reading is properly to be reflected on the Standing Committee. The Government obtained a majority of five on Second Reading. May I suggest that they are therefore entitled to a majority of only one on the Standing Committee; otherwise, the rule in "Erskine May" will not be respected?
  Mr. Oliver Heald: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I join in the remarks made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg)? Clearly, in such a case the support to be

  281
  considered is that on the respective Benches in this place. It is clear that, on this occasion, those on the Opposition Benches almost prevailed. It would be quite wrong if the membership of the Committee did not reflect the fact that the vote was very close—the majority on the Committee should be no more than one.
  Mr. Eric Forth: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Following on from the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, I hope that you, in your wisdom and after your deliberations, will feel free to give guidance to the Committee of Selection so that there can be no doubt in its mind as to the wish of the House, as expressed through the Division that we have just had. We must also bear in mind the fact that the guidance in "Erskine May" must be followed on this occasion by the Committee of Selection. It would be an insult to the House were that Committee, for any reason, to decide to compose the Standing Committee so that it has anything other than a very even balance that reflects the vote in the House.
  Mr. Speaker: I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) for giving notice of his point of order. It is the duty of the Committee of Selection, under Standing Order No. 86, to
  "have regard to the qualifications of those Members nominated and to the composition of the House".

  HIGHER EDUCATION BILL [MONEY]
  Queen's recommendation having been signified—
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
  That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Higher Education Bill, it is expedient to authorise—

  (1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

  (a) any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State by virtue of the Act, and

  (b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums which by virtue of any other Act are payable out of money provided by Parliament;

  (2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—[Gillian Merron.]

  Question agreed to.

  SITTINGS IN WESTMINSTER HALL
  Ordered,
  That, on Wednesday 28th January, the sitting in Westminster Hall shall be suspended from half-past Eleven o'clock until Four o'clock, and may then continue for a further two and a half hours (exclusive of any period of suspension owing to a division being called in the House or a Committee of the whole House).[Gillian Merron.]
  Mr. Forth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Does not the fact that we have passed that motion show that Westminster Hall is indeed a triviality and an appendage to the House? We have casually swept aside its
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  proceedings to suit some convenience—we know not what. As we were unable to debate the motion, we do not know why it appeared on the Order Paper; we can only guess. Does not this show very clearly—and set a precedent to the effect that—proceedings in Westminster Hall can now be casually set aside by the House to suit the convenience of who knows who?
  Mr. Speaker: We have changed the time; the proceedings have not been put aside.
  Sir Nicholas Winterton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I raise a related matter? Will you protect the rights of those in the House who help to administer the House and make it work? I refer to those additional Deputy Speakers who serve in Westminster Hall, who are also senior members of your Chairmen's Panel. I have consulted the Chairman who would be in Westminster Hall tomorrow, and he was in no way consulted before the motion was tabled to enable this change to take place.
  Do you think, Sir, that it is unreasonable that a Chairman, who might have other—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. First, let me say that we have to be careful here. This is a nod-or-nothing motion. My clear understanding is that I have declared that the Ayes have it, so we are not going to debate a motion that the House has already agreed to. For the benefit of the hon. Gentleman, who is a Chairman in Westminster Hall, I say this: this is not a matter for the Chair, as this is a piece of Government business. If there was no consultation, that is no fault of the Chair. The motion was tabled to benefit the Member who has that Westminster Hall Adjournment debate and who clearly wants to show an interest in what might be happening in the Chamber at that time.
  Mrs. Angela Browning: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will know that I had the half-hour Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall at 3.30 pm tomorrow. I understand that it will now take place at 5.30 pm. I simply want to thank everyone concerned.
  Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Lady.
  Jim Dowd: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) is well rehearsed in such matters and if he genuinely wanted to make a point, he could have objected to the motion, which would have rendered it redundant. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) is an esteemed Chairman of proceedings in Westminster Hall. The proceedings have not been thrown aside; there is a debate in which I particularly want to speak, if I get the chance. I presented a petition on a similar matter on Monday evening. The business has simply been moved for the greater convenience of the House. We should all have regard to our primary purpose here.
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. As the prime beneficiary of the motion that the House has just accepted, I express my gratitude because it will enable

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  those who want to participate in the debate in my name on an important subject to attend the Prime Minister's statement on Hutton as well as debating important matters in Westminster Hall.
  Mr. John Gummer rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We have laboured the point; we have really hammered it home. That is not bad for a nod or nothing—we have taken about five points of order on it.

  Information Technology/Retail Crime
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Gillian Merron.]
  7.40 pm
  Mr. Tom Watson: My heart went out to my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) this afternoon when 600 hon. Members filled the Chamber for his ten-minute Bill. I can hear the sound of 600 hon. Members scurrying away from my Adjournment debate. Nevertheless, I am pleased to have secured a debate on IT and retail crime.
  I want to make several points that are of growing concern to many thousands of people outside the House. The Government and our party are currently engaged in a big conversation, and I have been holding a big conversation on my weblog—www.tomwatson.co.uk. The issues raised in that online conversation are different from those that arise in our constituency surgeries and public meetings. Webloggers around the world have raised a specific point about the new wireless technology, which is known as radio frequency identification—RFID.
  I want to begin by thanking several weblogs for alerting me to RFID technology and its uses in Britain and abroad, notably, reeengage.co.uk, notags.co.uk and CASPIAN—Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering. The latter is an American pressure group that advises groups in the United Kingdom.
  Radio frequency identification tags are tiny microchips, little bigger than a grain of sand, which can contain information from the price of goods in a shop to a person's entire medical records. They have been proclaimed as the global successor to the 30-year-old barcode, but they are much more sophisticated. They can not only store much more data, such as a product's expiry date, colour, packaging, origin and destination, but transmit it through the airwaves. Crucial to their operation is a microscopic antenna, invisible to the naked eye, which allows the chip to be read by a scanning device.
  A barcode label can be read only with the customer's knowledge and co-operation, but with a scanner next to the product, active RFID tags can be scanned remotely, without the customer knowing. Most scanners are currently in the range of around 5 ft to 20 ft, but more powerful devices, which can read smart tags at a wider range, already exist and could conceivably become more commonly used.
  Although the technology has existed since the 1960s, its use has become more widespread only through recent advances. As the technology gets smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper, it is increasingly used under our noses, with most UK citizens completely oblivious to it. It is not surprising that the tags have become known in some circles as Big Brother-style "spy chips."
  Supermarket chains are already testing the extent to which British consumers are willing to accept those discreet invasions of our privacy. Stores, including Marks and Spencer and Tesco, have been using them in their warehouses to keep track of stock for some time.

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  However, last summer, the tags strayed outside the storeroom and were tested for the first time on the shop floor. Tesco and Gillette created a so-called smart shelf to house their razor blades—one of the most commonly shoplifted items. In Tesco's Cambridge store each packet of blades bore an RFID tag, and the shelf contained a tag reader and a small CCTV camera. Every time someone picked up a packet from the shelf the tag triggered the camera, which took a picture. Photographs were also taken when the blades were taken to the till. By combining the information, Tesco could, in a small number of cases, pass to the police photographs of shoplifters and other criminals—people who had taken the razor blades from the shelf, but had not been to the till to pay for them.
  Perhaps understandably, there was a significant consumer outcry once people began to realise just what was happening in the store where the trials were taking place. Protests outside ultimately led to the suspension of the Tesco tests. However, British retailers continue to test the technology, although for the moment closed-circuit television cameras are not being tested after the initial test. Only yesterday, Philips and IBM announced a deal for joint development of RFID technology for shops, with Philips manufacturing the chips and IBM developing the computer systems.
  Mark Tami: Many of these developments, like CCTV. can be very positive in picking up crime. Does my hon. Friend know whether any of the companies making the devices or any of the shops using them have had any discussions with Government to establish how they could be introduced in a way that would not infringe on civil liberties, and would have a positive effect rather than amounting to a snoopers' charter?
  Mr. Watson: They have discussions with the Government, and I am sure that the Minister will answer my hon. Friend's question more fully. What I am trying to do is sound a note of caution, and perhaps persuade the industry, along with consumers and Government, to examine the issue more closely.
  Earlier this month, Tesco announced that it was forming a European working group with Intel, Carrefour and the Metro Group to accelerate the adoption of this technology. Last year, Safeway ran an RFID pilot with Unilever involving 40,000 cases of deodorant, which were tracked from the factory and through the shelves of three of its stores. Safeway's own chief information officer, Mr. Ric Francis, has been so impressed with the trials that he believes RFID is key to the future of the retail sector, especially as costs continue to fall. In an interview with the website silicon.com only last week, he said:
  "If these things end up being a penny a go, which I'm sure they will be at some point in time, then that will be a route to implement in a ubiquitous nature."
  The tags could be used on billions if not trillions of items, tracking them from manufacturer to warehouse to retailer to customer, into the home and into the dustbin.
  To his credit, however, Mr. Francis also recognised that people's worries and unease about their use must be addressed and common standards must be introduced
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  before RFID tests can or indeed should be permitted to become as widespread as the barcode. That brings me to some specific concerns.
  Like so much modern technology, RFID has the potential to be exploited in both a positive and a negative way. It can indeed be a force for good, helping stock control, tracking supplies, even tracing animals on a farm. It can help to clamp down on shoplifting and retail crime. The industry is right to want to do that: after all, the cost of retail crime to businesses, and ultimately to consumers, is—according to a recent British Retail Consortium report—some £2.25 billion a year. It is also increasingly linked to violence against shop staff, an issue that the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and I have raised a number of times. Indeed, I have raised it in the House.
  The Home Office has invested £5.5 million in pilot projects in the "chipping of goods" initiative as part of the Government's continuing efforts to combat property crime. Can the Minister tell me what other initiatives involving this technology are being undertaken or planned by the Government in partnership with industry? I should be very interested in the outcomes of such trials. Perhaps the Minister will be able to give the House some early feedback on their effectiveness. However, the technology can just as easily be exploited to track our purchases and, in the worst case scenario, our every move, in a way that was previously the preserve of science fiction and Hollywood movies such as "Enemy of the State". As Kevin Ashton, a former executive director of the Auto-ID Center who was involved in the development of the technology, has said:
  "One day, and not this decade, it's not impossible that everything in the global supply chain, almost every manufactured object, could contain a tiny wireless computer. So the computers that we use to manage this supply chain will know where everything is, all the time."
  The risk is that with billions of active tags on every conceivable item and hundreds of thousands of scanners, a permanent surveillance will be established. Katherine Albrecht, the founder of CASPIAN, told The Guardian this weekend:
  "Fast-forward 10 years and a person could be going into a store, or even a government building or bank, and scanners could pick up the Electronic Product Code of everything in that person's purse. It's like an automatic profiling—an electronic frisk without even being aware of it."
  Customers must therefore be made fully aware of the use of RFID and retailers must be completely open and transparent about what they are doing and what any information they collect will be used for, especially if the tags are used in conjunction with CCTV cameras or other surveillance devices. There should be no hidden tags and no hidden readers. We must not allow the technology to be used without any regulation. Before we know it, RFID could become ubiquitous in the retail sector—and not only to prevent theft.
  Without guidelines, the potential for retailers to use RFID to monitor closely who purchases what, why, where and when is very real. Not only our buying habits but our browsing behaviour could be monitored. In the British Retail Consortium's November 2003 newsletter, Ruth Carpenter noted:

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  "While the retail world currently uses source tags mainly for inventory help and crime prevention, the move into marketing is a logical progression."
  It is also a dangerous progression. My shopping habits could be analysed by marketing departments. For example, I might pick up product A or B before choosing product C. Should supermarkets be allowed to collect such data? Linking together different databases or combining information with credit cards and store cards that also contain tags would be a huge invasion of customers' privacy, which British consumers simply will not tolerate.
  Liberty has warned that RFID could allow retailers to build ever more personal and more sophisticated profiles of their customers for specific, targeted marketing campaigns. I do not always see eye to eye with that organisation, but on this occasion it has rightly kept a close watch on developments with a new unit to monitor the use of the technology in supermarkets and big chain stores.
  Can the Minister give assurances that the data protection legislation can provide adequate safeguards? If not, what new legislation is needed? What steps has the Information Commissioner taken to ensure that existing laws have not already been broken?
  Major concerns also arise about whether and how tags are deactivated at the point of sale. There are currently no guarantees to ensure that the tags will be removed or switched off when customers leave the shop or that they will not be tracked. Tesco have used RFID tags on DVDs at its Sandhurst store in Berkshire, but the tags were not deactivated when the customer paid at the checkout. As "Channel 4 News" demonstrated last year in a report entitled "Chips with Everything", the tags could still be read remotely.
  Even if retailers have a policy of always deactivating the tags, which at present does not appear to be the case, that needs to be followed through by staff in every instance. Many people have had the embarrassment of setting off an alarm in a library or a shop after they have borrowed books or purchased goods, because busy staff had not successfully switched off security tags attached to them. With RFID tags, which are not intended to trigger loud alarms and cannot necessarily be seen by the naked eye, it would be even easier for staff to forget to deactivate them. However, the consequences could be more serious than a few seconds of red faces and beeping alarms.
  The tags could be active forever and people would leave an electronic trail wherever they went. That is particularly worrying in the case of clothing, which could be tagged without people's knowledge. Marks and Spencer has been keen to trial the technology on the clothes in some of its UK stores and Benetton floated the idea of embedding tags inside the clothes themselves, only abandoning the plan after a public backlash.
  Tags in credit cards, cheque books and even bank notes have also been proposed. They could prevent counterfeiting and forgery, but they also present further opportunities for the tracking of what we spend and where we spend it.
  Will my hon. Friend the Minister therefore consider a code of conduct and common standards for the industry, to prevent the information collected from being abused? Strict guidelines are needed to reassure
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  people that RFID cannot be misused and to protect people's privacy and rights. If the industry cannot police itself, it is up to the Government and my hon. Friend's colleagues in other Departments to lay down the law. Does the Home Office, for example, have a view on the relative benefits and dangers of using RFID technology in banknotes and credit cards?
  In the absence of any enthusiasm on the part of retailers for informing customers about their increasing use of RFID, could the Government insist that where RFID is used in consumer goods, it must be done in a clear and open manner, with appropriate labelling?
  Regulations on the use of RFID technology would go some way to addressing people's fears. However, more work also needs to be done to prevent the data falling into the hands of hackers and to protect tags from being intercepted over the airwaves and read by eavesdroppers. Clearly, wherever this technology is used, adequate safeguards and data encryption must be put in place.
  RFID is not the only technological advance that is being used to combat retail crime. Birmingham's 800-strong retail crime reduction partnership, for example, makes use of a shared database of digital photographs. Once an offender has been banned from one shop, he or she can be banned from every store in the scheme. The Birmingham retail crime operation has helped to reduce crime in the city centre, and is helping to make the new Bull Ring a safe place for people in the Midlands to work and shop.
  For the first time ever, thanks to state-of-the-art technology, retailers, pubs and clubs, the business community, car park attendants, street wardens, the police and British Waterways patrols right across the city will all be working on the same radio network for the purpose of crime prevention, and will have the ability to communicate with each other at the press of a button.
  The so-called AB trunked radio system also allows its users to make group calls or one-to-one calls to individual users. Using the radios to warn each other of known thieves who are approaching, retailers have been able to save thousands of pounds every year.
  A sophisticated computer database that is being used in as many as 250 town centres—the business intelligence crime system, or BICS—collects, disseminates and uses intelligence about retail crime in a new way to allow crime analysis by type of store attacked, type of merchandise stolen and its value, particulars of the offender's modus operandi and other factors. Police or CCTV photographs are also circulated along with any previous retail crime history.
  The key difference between systems like those and RFID technology is that, although they can both help tackle retail crime, the latter is more discreet and can be misused by big businesses to get information about shoppers, rather than just shoplifters. So regulation and common standards are required. RFID should be used to target criminals, not customers.
  I am grateful to have had this opportunity to raise the use of RFID technology in the House for what I believe is the first time. I hope that this will in some way help to open up a wider debate in the country, and indeed in Parliament.

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  New technology has always presented us with both challenges and opportunities in tackling crime, and RFID is no exception. However, if we do not stay ahead of the game and regulate its use, we could find that the negatives soon outweigh the positive benefits.
  Public confidence in the use of RFID for entirely honourable reasons could easily be shattered—and nobody will benefit from that. By the end of the decade RFID could become a multi-billion-pound industry, as much a part of everyday life as the internet or mobile phones have become over the last 10 years: unavoidable, wherever we go, whatever we do.
  The House has an opportunity to take an early lead, before it is too late, by taking firm action against the dangers and invasions of privacy that RFID can lead to, while harnessing the technology for the fight against retail crime and for the wider public good.
  7.59 pm
  The Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (Mr. Stephen Timms): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson) on securing the debate and introducing this important subject. I pay tribute to him for engaging a large part of the technology community worldwide with the business of the House through his remarkable and widely renowned weblog.
  My hon. Friend rightly referred to the scale of retail crime—over £2 billion in 2002. The British Retail Consortium annual retail crime survey, to which he referred, tells us that some 300,000 customer thefts accounted for 44 per cent. of that, staff theft accounted for 37 per cent., and a variety of kinds of fraud accounted for the balance.
  The subject that my hon. Friend has raised is important, and we are working closely with the retail sector and others to tackle it. I want to take the limited time that I have to highlight some of the activities that we have in hand in this area.
  The business-led retail strategy group announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at the British Retail Consortium in October 2002 has identified crime as one of the five key issues for the sector and recognised the role that technology can play in reducing it. There is a host of local and national initiatives. My Department is responsible for the management of information— MI—and next wave programmes. The Home Office has led a number of programmes, including the highly successful chipping of goods programme, which my hon. Friend mentioned.
  The MI programme was established in 1998 in response to the Foresight-initiated fraud liaison awareness and research exploration project, which showed a strong interest in combating retail fraud in a collaborative way. That project has a budget of £7.8 million from public sources, including the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office and others, matched with equal funding from the private sector. There have been three calls for proposals under that programme and a total of 15 projects. It addresses fraud prevention, privacy and security, principally in the retail sector, using a variety of technologies. One project,
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  which my hon. Friend mentioned, the business information crime system, has attracted particular attention and is being evaluated.
  The Home Office launched the chipping of goods initiative in March 2000 to show how property crime could be reduced throughout the retail supply chain using the radio frequency identification technology that my hon. Friend has spoken about. A range of stakeholders are involved in that initiative. As he said, £5.5 million of Government funding has been more than matched by investment from other partners to establish eight world-class demonstrator projects, showing the effectiveness of chipping in combating crime. It is widely expected that that technology can help in assessing whether goods have been stolen, providing proof of ownership of goods and providing an audit trail to show where goods have been and who was involved in handling them during their life cycle.
  In technological terms, the initiative has been a resounding success. Given a little more time, I could tell my hon. Friend about a number of projects that have been taken forward under that initiative, including several that he mentioned, such as that advanced jointly by Unilever and Safeway. The British Marine Federation has worked on a boat identity scheme based on RFID. TRI-MEX International is working with Nokia and DHL to combat mobile phone theft. Argos is working in conjunction with Integrated Product Intelligence on a system to track and trace jewellery. Woolworth's, EMI Distribution, Dell Computers and others have been involved. That initiative is now closed, but the Home Office and DTI are working to ensure that the best practice that has been identified is made available to the wider retail and supply community through business support networks.
  The next wave programme is a DTI initiative that seeks to advance pervasive computing—an environment in which billions of programmable or pre-programmed devices are around us in a networked environment. The areas potentially affected are vast, and clearly the monitoring and tracking of assets, RFID and other services in the retail and transport sectors could be a very important part of that programme. Activities are organised into virtual centres, one of which caters for information on the move and is hosted by IPI Ltd. "Project Inform" within it is based on an intelligent shelf—my hon. Friend mentioned Tesco tagging razors, but this is a slightly different initiative involving DVDs. "Project Fabric" within the programme has been testing the feasibility of individual garments being equipped with a unique electronic identity.
  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Auto-ID centre has prompted much speculation about where "the internet of things" is taking us. It envisages a world in which all products carry an RFID tag, uniquely identifying the item. The tags will contain an electronic pointer to a server where data on the item and its history captured during its manufacture and distribution can be accessed. Immediate information of any item's location and condition would be useful to businesses in supply chains and retail, but that raises the question whether tags should remain active outside the supply chain.
  In theory, it would be possible for a suitably equipped individual or agency to identify any item anywhere on the planet, which raises a host of privacy issues. It is

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  worth making the point, however, that read ranges are limited to a few metres and even in the light of possible future enhancements, there are some tight restrictions.
  We are probably at least two decades away from anything resembling that "internet of things". Current technology cannot do it: it does not have the necessary network coverage or the capacity, and we do not have the capacity to process the information that might arise from it. RFID tags are falling in price to the extent that item-level tagging is becoming a possibility, but it would have to be an order of magnitude cheaper to make a convincing business case. A tag costing a penny, which has not yet been achieved, on a DVD worth £10 makes some sense, but not on a can of beans costing 30p.
  Some have argued that there may never be a business case for using electronic product code technology on commoditised retail items, but EPC is being developed into a standard and is the basis for systems being specified by the US Department of Defence, WalMart and Tesco. It continues to raise questions and to fuel speculation. What the recent speculation has done is to identify the perceived risks to civil liberties from wider use of RFID, particularly relating to intrusive selling techniques and privacy issues.
  Those issues are under discussion between the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, and various industry forums. The National Consumer Council is hosting a forum on the use of RFID technology in February. My Department will be represented, as it is important for us to understand and address the perceived risks if business is to benefit from the improved productivity and supply chain efficiency potentially available and, indeed, the reduced levels of crime.
  Best practice examples are already emerging in the introduction of new technologies. Marks and Spencer, to which my hon. Friend referred, went to great lengths to explain to staff and customers what the trial of RFID tags on garments was about. All the tags were clearly identified and removed at the point of sale. Where the tag was attached to a wrapped item, customers were offered an alternative bag before leaving the premises. The tags could be read only with a Marks and Spencer reader.
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  Marks and Spencer also met with Consumers against Supermarket Privacy Invasion—the pressure group that my hon. Friend mentioned—to explain what it was doing. CASPIAN remains fundamentally opposed to the technology, but I understand that it was satisfied at least with Marks and Spencer's intentions on the initiative. The M&S approach worked well in comparison with the experience of other retailers such as WalMart, Proctor and Gamble, Prada and Benetton, where less well-communicated objectives resulted in lost customer confidence and, in some cases, protests.
  No one, least of all in retailing, wants negative responses from customers. That affords some confidence that retailers will not want to risk giving rise to the sort of fears that my hon. Friend mentioned. There has been one protest here, against the "Inform" project at Tesco. It was attended by four people—three adults and a child—suggesting that the great majority of customers recognise that the technology is being used to improve stock management rather than something more nefarious.
  Some individuals object to the wider use of IT in principle. More constructively, Liberty is intelligently articulating the civil rights issues and is already airing them in industry forums and with the Government. I welcome such intervention, as we all need to address the concerns, as we have done with other technologies. Not to do so would deprive businesses of the means significantly to improve efficiency for themselves, improve choice and availability for customers and reduce crime and the opportunity for crime.
  We will continue to foster links between retailers, technology providers and the science base. The UK has strengths in technology and it is no coincidence that the intellectual property from MIT's Auto-ID centre has been assigned to the UK-based e-centre for commercialisation. We will continue to support the development of innovative technologies that address crime, reduce the threat of crime and promote competitiveness and productivity. We will also help cultivate and capture best practice and ensure that it is widely disseminated. That will benefit both business and citizens, and position the UK favourably—
  The motion having been made after Seven o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at eleven minutes past Eight o'clock.

Preamble
[MR. JOHN MCWILLIAM in the Chair]

Homelessness
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Ainger.]
9.30 am
Chris Grayling: I am delighted to have secured this important debate on a subject that is of deep concern to every single constituency Member of Parliament. We confront it all too regularly. It is one of many examples of matters in which the Government have failed to live up to their rhetoric.
In many ways homelessness was an issue that demarcated the differences between the Conservative party and the Labour party in the mid 1990s. It was an area on which then Opposition MPs were constantly attacking the Government's record, and grand promises were made—not least by the current Prime Minister, who promised a society where we would not spend millions of pounds on bed-and-breakfast accommodation for families, but would spend it on housing those people.
In fact, since 1997 the number of households in bed-and-breakfast accommodation has trebled. Every time I walk past a Big Issue seller I remember that Opposition rhetoric against the previous Government and think of the irony in the fact that, six years after Labour came to power, the sellers are still there, selling the same publication on the street corner to raise awareness of the same issue, and I ask myself, what went wrong?
Homelessness is a huge issue but in many cases it is invisible. It is not just a matter of the relatively small, albeit still disturbing, number of rough sleepers on our streets. The real problem is very much like an iceberg—we often see just the tip but beneath the surface there is a huge additional problem. It is the problem of those who lose their home for different reasons—the problem of those who seek help and end up in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, out of sight of most of us, with very little hope and very little chance of an easy way back into good long-term accommodation.
I find that one of the most difficult of our many tasks as constituency Members of Parliament is that of dealing with families—people who are deserving cases—who need housing and need a new option for housing, but for whom I know, especially given the realities of the constituency that I represent, there is very little hope of their achieving that. This is definitely an area where the Government should feel utterly ashamed of their lamentable record.
The scale of the problem is huge. The detailed figures are stark. In 1997, 102,000 households were found to be unintentionally homeless and in priority need. By 2002, that figure had risen to 125,000. There was an even bigger jump in the number of households intentionally
2WH
homeless and in priority need—from 4,900 to 9,400. That is a huge jump; later I shall mention some of the circumstances that contributed to that.
Mr. Andrew Love: I apologise to you, Mr. McWilliam, for arriving just after the commencement of speeches. Does the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) think that the 1.5 million affordable homes sold under the right to buy over the 18 years of Conservative Government were a major contributory factor to the problems that he is highlighting?
Chris Grayling: Actually, no I do not. I shall discuss the supply of affordable households in a moment, because there is no matter in this whole issue where the Government have more to be ashamed of than the provision of affordable housing, where, since 1997, the provision of new housing has dropped at a startling rate.
There are some particularly problematic issues within those overall figures of which the House should be aware and should have at the back of its mind as we debate the subject. Some groups suffer disproportionately from homelessness. Although, given the balance of the population, most people affected are white, the rise in homelessness among some of our ethnic groups has been particularly startling. In 1997, 6,900 Afro-Caribbean homeless households in priority need were accepted by local authorities. In 2002, the figure had risen to 12,000—a 100 per cent. increase in five years. Other ethnic groups witnessed a 50 per cent. increase in the same period, from 5,000 households to 9,000. If asked, groups that specialise in this issue and represent homeless people will say that today, particularly in London, this problem disproportionately affects our ethnic minorities; we should be mindful of that when we address the issue.
Another stark piece of information that I found when reading the background statistics was that the causes of homelessness, and the suffering from homelessness, tie in very closely with some of the most vulnerable groups in our society. Again I refer to the figures for the past five years. In 1997, local authorities accepted 5,220 homeless households in priority need that contained a household member vulnerable through physical handicap; in 2002, that figure was 6,890. In 1997, authorities accepted 6,910 homeless households in priority need that contained a household member vulnerable through mental illness; in 2002, it was 10,680. In the same period, acceptances of homeless households in priority need that contained a young person increased from 3,100 to 6,900. Therefore the people who are affected, and who are being affected on a greater scale year by year, are vulnerable groups—the mentally ill, the physically handicapped, and young people who have run into family problems. We need to really understand the problem and we need to tackle the problem particularly for those vulnerable groups, because they are the least capable of dealing with the situation.
Those patterns reflect a real social challenge. This is not just an issue about availability of housing; it is actually about social breakdown and real challenges that exist in our society. The homelessness problem will not be addressed simply by building houses; it can only be addressed by far broader policies, especially those that focus on the family.

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To pick up on the remarks of the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love), the provision of housing, the infrastructure of housing and the real shortage of housing lie at the heart of the problem. He mentioned affordable housing. In fact, the construction of affordable housing is one of the present Government's great failings. They have made plenty of announcements but matched them with precious little action. Yesterday I did a search on the website of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to see what it said about affordable housing. I discovered that since June 1992, the Government have made 43 different news announcements about affordable housing. The search engine did not allow me to search further back, but if one extrapolates on that basis, Labour Governments have probably made the best part of 150 to 200 announcements over the past five years about their plans on affordable housing. That is impressive stuff; there is lots of interest in the subject.
We constantly see big news stories about the Deputy Prime Minister's vision for solving the housing crisis. In the past 12 months alone there has been a series of announcements and big stories. I did a search for newspaper headlines on the subject in the last 12 months. They included, "Prescott says homes plan will need 'phenomenal' cash amount"; "Prescott makes promise of 200,000 homes, but maintains green belt will be safeguarded"; "Prescott plan for 200,000 homes"; "Taskforce aims to boost supply of low-cost homes", and even the rather endearing, "Four-homes Prescott mocks Middle England".
However, the reality is stark and clear and it is a definitive example of where this Government are all talk and precious little action, because between 1992 and 1997 we built 326,983 affordable homes, reaching a peak of 70,000 a year, but after 1997 the level of new build plummeted. Between 1997 and 2002, that 326,000 figure under the previous Parliament had fallen to a total of 188,760. In 2002—03, only 31,000 new affordable homes were built, compared with almost double that number in the run-up to the last general election.
Mr. Love: According to the interim report on the review of housing supply, the right to buy is a contributory factor to the problems that I mentioned. The report also displays a graph, showing that in 1979 local councils were building about 120,000 homes a year, but by 1994 they were building none. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that that is a contributory factor to the shortage of affordable accommodation?
Chris Grayling: In view of the party that the hon. Gentleman represents, I am surprised that he has the brazen gall to stand up and use such an example, when his Government have presided over a halving of the construction of affordable homes in the affordable home sector in the past five years. The hon. Gentleman is right to use the analogy of local authorities, but what the Conservative Government did was to move responsibility for the provision of affordable housing from local authorities to new bodies such as housing associations. I do not know about the hon. Gentleman, but I certainly believe that the housing associations operating in my constituency are good, specialist organisations that deliver within the limitations placed
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on them by central Government and the financial constraints that they face. Generally speaking, they do a good job for the people they look after and provide homes for. I have nothing to be ashamed of in the creation of an affordable housing sector comprising specialist housing organisations that do a good job for people. The hon. Gentleman has every reason to be ashamed of the record of his Government, who are associated with such a lamentable performance in the provision of affordable housing.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is outrageous of Labour Members to blame the current homelessness problems on us when the Government have had nearly eight years to sort out the problem? If the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love) thought it wrong to build no new houses in the council house sector, his Government have had more than seven years to sort the problem out. Why have they done nothing about it?
Chris Grayling: It is yet another example of what we saw before and after the 1997 election—all talk and no action.
Tony Baldry: Is it not a matter of concern that, apart from the Parliamentary Private Secretary, the only Labour Member present is the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love)? Is it not also a matter of concern that only the Labour Members who are adhering to the Whips' brief are being allowed out today? I believe that inquiries should be made to ascertain whether the other Labour Members have been locked up somewhere to keep them away from the Palace of Westminster.
Mr. John McWilliam (in the Chair): Order. We are supposed to be debating homelessness.
Chris Grayling: Thank you for that reminder, Mr. McWilliam. I have great admiration for the hon. Member for Edmonton for having the nerve to come and defend his case here.
Mr. Love: I understand that the Housing Bill is in Committee this morning, which will occupy the time of a considerable number of Labour Members who are interested in the subject. May I return to the graph in the review, which shows clearly that in 1997 housing associations were building fewer than 20,000 affordable homes a year? Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the failure to replace council house building with housing association building in those 18 years was a major contributory factor to the failures of today?
Chris Grayling: I am always reluctant to correct a parliamentary colleague, even one on the other side of the political fence, but I simply draw his attention to the written answers provided by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister last week. They show that in 1996—97, 53,840 affordable houses were built by registered social landlords, in comparison with 2001—02, when only 30,605 were built. Those are official Government figures, which were provided last week.
What of the immediate future? A pretty stark picture is painted by the housing charity, Shelter, which suggests that all the plans in place for the current

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financial year allow about £1.4 billion to be spent on the provision of new affordable housing. However, Shelter believes that total output will be about 46,000 affordable homes this year at most—still fewer than the number provided pre-1997. Despite all the Government rhetoric of recent months, they are still not matching levels of construction achieved by the previous Government. It beggars belief that a party that makes so much noise about the need to provide affordable homes in this country has such a terrible record in government.
What are the Government doing? I was enlightened by looking through the Government's strategy for homelessness document, "More than a Roof". For me, it summed up everything that is wrong about the Government's philosophical and practical approach to a whole range of activities, not just this particular problem. Let me cite that document.
"A radical change that will be brought about by the Homelessness Act is the new requirement for every local authority to review its homelessness problem and develop a homelessness strategy for its area. Addressing all forms of homelessness, these strategies should be in place within a year of the Act coming into force and renewed…every five years…
The Homelessness Act will require housing authorities to take local homelessness strategies into account in carrying out their functions. In practice, homelessness strategies need to be closely allied to, or included within, authorities' housing strategies. In addition, it will place a new duty on social services to work with housing authorities in formulating a homelessness strategy"—
presumably another homelessness strategy. It continues:
"There also needs to be closer co-operation between housing associations and local authorities on tackling homelessness. The Housing Corporation, Local Government Association and National Housing Federation have agreed to work together to improve this as outlined in their 'Framework for Partnership'."
It also states:
"'Homelessness strategies: a good practice handbook' produced by Randall and Brown includes advice on conducting reviews and developing strategies. Local authorities should consult with other relevant public bodies, voluntary organisations, homeless people and others, and include action that they expect them to take in their strategy."
In other words, it is gobbledegook. All the Government seem able to do in response to a problem is to require local authorities to have a strategy and to create all sorts of tiers of bureaucracy, meetings, debates and documents. Throughout government, one can find endless debates, discussions and committee meetings; seldom can one find genuine tangible action that makes a difference.
Mr. Edward Davey: I agree with much that the hon. Gentleman is saying. However, on the homelessness strategy, I attended a meeting in Kingston Guildhall where the draft homes strategy of the borough was discussed. I was delighted to see a range of people taking part, offering all sorts of new ideas as the strategy was formed. I take the hon. Gentleman's point about resources and the dearth of affordable homes being built, but he should not decry the positive role that a homelessness strategy can play.
Chris Grayling: Before I became a Member of Parliament, I was a local councillor. My experience then and from observing local councils subsequently suggests that far too much effort is put into the creation of
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strategy documents across a range of policy areas, but they are seldom of any real practical benefit in delivering services on the ground. The Government's plans for more strategy documents must be assessed in comparison with the actual delivery record. On the basis of statistics on the provision of affordable housing, it seems to me that there is a woeful gap. What emerge from the central Government are great initiatives, but little tangible action.
That point is reinforced by the annual residential development in London report, carried out by London Residential Research. It says that determining the key players in London's affordable housing policy is complicated by "rampant initiativitis". I am afraid that that is all too often the problem in preventing delivery. Ultimately, the focus is on various initiatives to set out complicated strategies, but the reality of what is needed on the ground is simple, clear and understandable action.
Mr. Davey: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us which initiatives he would speak against because he wants them to be discontinued?
Chris Grayling: My experience in my own constituency—I am coming on to that, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me—suggests that some Government decisions that affect the housing corporations are in practical terms detached from the realities on the ground. In some cases, they can obstruct those realities. I have had several conversations with the housing associations in my own area. The hon. Gentleman will be aware—he has the next-door seat—that one of the recent big issues for them has been the rapid rise in the price of land.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: My hon. Friend has identified the kernel of the problem. Does he agree that the problem is twofold? The first problem is the Government's policy of rent restructuring, which deliberately holds down rent in the public sector, and the second problem is the rapidly rising price of houses, which means that the funding gap for public sector bodies—whether they are registered social landlords or any other housing provider—makes it much more difficult for them to provide social housing units.
Chris Grayling: Absolutely. I concur with what my hon. Friend says, and no doubt he will wish to amplify those issues during his concluding remarks.
The problem of rising land values drives at the heart of question about initiatives asked by the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey). As the system requires bidding and the submission of complicated proposals in many parts of the sector, the price of land has gone up by the time that people have gone through the bureaucracy of getting money. Registered social landlords in my constituency found on several occasions that the price that they expected to pay for land jumped massively simply because of the time that it took them to go over the hurdles that central Government placed in their path before they could buy the land. we simply allocated grant to RSLs and gave them discretion to use their own initiative and do the best job for the people of

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their area, we might well find that that delivered a much better result. All too often the Government "know best" and set hurdles for RSLs, but RSLs in my constituency have not been able to build some of the housing that they could have built simply because of the slow and complicated process through which they must go to secure funding.
The other problem faced by RSLs is the fact that Housing Corporation rules on the formulae applied to land values are sometimes too constrained to recognise the price of land in the south-east, especially on the fringes of London. RSLs in my area have faced enormous problems when trying to buy land on which to build because the rules and the formulae with which they must deal do not take account of their local situation. Such problems should not arise.
Mr. Love: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one of the other problems faced by registered social landlords is the policy of his Front-Bench team of turning the right to acquire into the right to buy and thereby throwing their finances into bedlam?
Chris Grayling: I fundamentally disagree, and I shall not take up too much time on the hon. Gentleman's intervention because I want to give other hon. Members the chance to speak.
I conclude my remarks by highlighting three issues that the Government should address. First, their asylum policy must recognise this country's housing pressures. Most people involved in homelessness say that the number of people coming into this country exacerbates the problem. That matter does not sit on the Minister's desk, but he should talk about it with his colleagues elsewhere in government. This country's housing stock cannot continue to absorb the number of new people who come here every year.
Secondly, if we were to reinvest money secured from extending the right to buy for the provision of more affordable housing, it would deliver a strong additional dimension to the capital that we could spend on affordable housing. I have no qualms whatever about defending that.
Thirdly, there is clearly a huge social dimension to homelessness. I am talking about not only families who find themselves in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, but people who end up as rough sleepers on the streets. Statistics show clearly that the breakdown of families is a key factor behind that. The Government's policy must address family breakdown. There is only a limited amount that they can do, but they should do what they can to turn the tide in the other direction.
It is the duty of us all to tackle the problem. There are not necessarily easy answers, but solutions must be found. The Government did not accelerate work to tackle the problem after 1997; they decelerated work, and now they are paying the price. They raise huge amounts in tax, but fewer affordable houses are being built on the ground than in 1997. More and more people do not have a permanent roof over their heads. On housing, as on so many things, all that the Government are doing is taxing, spending and failing.
9.54 am
Mr. Paul Burstow: I congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on selecting the topic of the debate because the House should spend more time considering such an important issue. He talked about how we tend to view only the tip of the iceberg, and I shall focus my remarks on older homelessness in this country, which is often overlooked and neglected. I note that the one statistic that the hon. Gentleman did not give during his detailed contribution was the number of people who are accepted as homeless on the grounds of age.
Three words best sum up the older homeless: invisible, hidden and isolated. Those words are encapsulated in the tragic story of Alexander Fallon. Mr. Fallon died in 1987 at Kings Cross on that fateful night when fire engulfed the underground station. He was 72 years old when he died. He was homeless and had probably been begging for the price of a drink or a packet of cigarettes. For 16 years, Mr. Fallon was known simply as body No. 115. Behind that number is a story that finds echoes in the stories of many other homeless older people in this country.
Mr. Fallon's world fell apart in 1974 when his wife died of cancer. He sold his home because of the memories that it generated and moved to London where he eventually ended up on the streets due to a range of circumstances. The journey from people having a roof over their heads to being roofless may take many years—research suggests that it takes up to nine years to complete the passage from having a stable relationship and accommodation to homelessness. There are nine years in which to pick up the warning signs and act, so clearly more could be done upstream to prevent homelessness from occurring.
Sleeping rough may not be a lifestyle choice that many of us would consciously make, but, at some level, it seems that those who are on the streets or unofficially homeless are escaping something in their lives that is, for them, even worse. For some, the root cause of homelessness may be traced back to a broken and disturbed childhood, and for others it comes from the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, as in the case of Mr. Fallon, or the break up of a long-term relationship. Stressful events in adulthood, low income, mental health issues and alcoholism can all be factors that trigger that journey from home to street.
Over the past few years I have taken an interest in, and supported the initiatives of, the UK coalition on older homelessness. A visit to its website gives some of the key facts and figures about the scale of homelessness among older people. Official statistics record that in 2002, 4,390 people were accepted as homeless on the grounds of old age. In the same year, as has already been said, 10,680 were accepted on the grounds of mental health. Unfortunately, we do not know how many of those who were accepted on the grounds of mental health were older people. We do not have a reliable figure for those who were accepted on grounds of age because although guidance is given on the age that should be used to count such people, there is no guarantee that that is the basis that each local authority uses—some use the age of 50, and others use the age of 60. Nevertheless, based on figures from the Department's website for the first three

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quarters of 2003, the trend remains upward for registrations of homelessness on the grounds of both old age and mental health.
The vast majority of older homeless people are hidden. According to a study by Dr. Maureen Crane of the Sheffield institute for studies on ageing, as many as seven out of 10 of those who sleep rough stay in isolated or hidden spots. Other research shows that 834 people aged 50 years or over, including 43 people aged 70 years or over, slept rough in London at some time between April 1999 and March 2000—the Minister will note that March 2000 is the second part of the period of the study. One of the depressing things that I found when examining the matter is the dearth of data and research—both official and otherwise—to help us to understand the extent of the problem.
Many older people sleep rough for a longer time than others. A survey carried out in 1996 found that 65 per cent. of people sleeping rough who were aged over 50 had been doing so for more than five years, while 25 per cent. of younger people had spent a similar period of time on the streets. It is estimated that up to 21,000 older people are living in short-stay hostels throughout England. Many older people self-refer to bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Again, research by the Sheffield institute found that as many as 26,900 older people live in bed and breakfast. In all, 48,000 older people are living in inappropriate accommodation. They are hidden out of sight and out of mind—one could call them the unofficial homeless.
Official statistics are in short supply. Is it really good enough that the only official statistic on older homelessness is the number of people accepted as homeless on the grounds of age? What plans does the Minister have to audit the number of older people living in hostels and other temporary accommodation, and to improve generally data collection on the issue?
If the studies are right, homelessness will not simply disappear because we build more affordable housing—even the right sort of housing. We have to understand and work on the psycho-social causes of homelessness. According to the report, "Lessons from Lancefield Street", which looked at the experience of an outreach centre run by St. Mungo's in west London, various needs come together, often masking one another. Not surprisingly, rough sleeping can accelerate the normal ageing process, so older homeless people in their 50s have health problems associated with much older people. The study found that the most immediate need of older homeless people was help with their physical health problems, such as bronchitis, mobility difficulties and scabies. Physical health complaints, which were more prevalent in men than women, were closely followed by mental health problems, with women suffering more than men. Heavy drinking also featured highly, particularly among men.
In preparing for the debate, I was grateful to St. Mungo's for sending me details of its outer London older people's outreach service, which started in January 2003. The outreach service has found that many agencies—from housing and mental health to support services—do not consider that it is their responsibility to deal with rough sleepers, partly because those agencies traditionally have little to do with rough sleepers and no experience in how to work with them and partly because of the fact that rough sleepers can be difficult, costly and
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very time consuming to work with. Virtually all services, particularly in outer London and elsewhere away from central London, are geared towards those who are already in housing. That lack of experience is a particular concern when homeless older people are admitted to hospital.
Will the Minister say what steps are being taken by his Department and the Department of Health to ensure that the right resettlement and care solutions are put in place, as part of the single assessment process before a person's discharge? In particular, will he outline how the supporting people initiatives will link into the arrangements for hospital discharge, to ensure that vulnerable older people with multiple needs get access to the right housing and care? Older homelessness is in great part a health issue but not yet a health priority. Will the Minister say what discussions his Department has had with the Department of Health about access to mental health services for older people, particularly counselling and psychological support?
It is not surprising that many older rough sleepers, who may have tried in the past to get a service from their local authority and failed, believe that they are wasting their time and give up. Indeed, the outreach service told me about a 74-year-old who had been to his local homeless persons unit 41 times to try to secure accommodation and had been fobbed off or ignored, or he simply got fed up with waiting all day and had left.
I hope that, in responding to the debate today, the Minister will say how the Government are tackling homelessness among older people. What assessment has been made of the local authority homelessness strategies that were referred to earlier to find out whether they are adequately addressing the needs of older people? Although I entirely take the point made by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell that strategies can be a substitute for action and not deliver results, it is important that we ensure that the strategies that are produced do not miss the point and that, in fact, they galvanise people into action and deliver real improvements to services and housing across the board. Will the Minister therefore consider giving further advice, support and guidance to help local authorities to develop services and practice for that particularly vulnerable group?
I began with the case of Mr. Fallon. For 16 years, Mr. Fallon was a just a number. His family did not know where he had gone. The truth is that there are many thousands of homeless elderly people on the streets and in inappropriate accommodation across the country who do not even register on the radar, even as a number.
10.3 am
Tony Baldry: Oxfordshire is not all dreaming spires, market towns and leafy lanes. Oxfordshire has real social problems. One such problem is homelessness, which can happen to anyone and at any age.
I understand that the charity, Crisis, believes that the cause of 80 per cent. of people becoming homeless is either that they split from their partners or that they are thrown out of their homes by parents or step-parents. Clearly, that is just as likely to happen in a shire county, such as Oxfordshire, as in inner London or one of the other inner-city areas, yet funds for the homeless are

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frequently focused on the inner cities. I suspect that that is almost certainly because of visibility: walk down almost any street in London and one might see rough sleepers; walk down the high streets of Bicester or Banbury and one is far less likely to see someone sleeping rough.
Rough sleeping is only part of the homelessness challenge and, as such, all Government initiatives, from the Homelessness Act 2002 to the more recent communities plan, recognise that the two problems must be tackled separately. Yet in spite of that recognition, north Oxfordshire's homelessness strategy is not being matched by central Government moneys. That is manifested in different, often indirect, ways. Consider the Government's 2002 strategy paper entitled, "More than a Roof". It stated that one of the primary reasons for homelessness is
"the overall supply of affordable housing…in some parts of the country demand is pushing prices up beyond the reach of a larger proportion of the population…causing more people to apply for social housing".
Of course it is welcome that Ministers recognise the importance of affordable housing as a means to tackle homelessness, but somehow north Oxfordshire has been left out of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's calculations of affordable housing allocations. The Deputy Prime Minister needs to do his maths again.
There cannot he many other counties in the south-east that are experiencing, to paraphrase Ministers, housing demands that are pushing prices up beyond the reach of local people. Every three months, it seems that the Halifax and other property price surveyors point to Oxfordshire for having house prices that are rising disproportionately higher than those in London—30 per cent. faster in some months—leaving the average house price in Oxfordshire at about £180,000. That is far more than many local people's purses can stretch to. It makes many of them dependent on affordable housing, yet the ODPM has forgotten much of north Oxfordshire when allocating such housing.
Banbury, for instance, is not seen as a growth area by the Government and not a single house will be built in the town from the £22 billion allocated last year for affordable housing by the Deputy Prime Minister. Cherwell district council is losing its £2.5 million subsidy for accommodation over the next three years. That brings us to the specific funding concerns for local authorities.
I note that in answer to a parliamentary question in November of last year, the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), explained:
"Local authorities also receive funding for their homelessness responsibilities through the local government finance settlement. The funding is paid as general grant and it is for local authorities to decide on their spending priorities taking into account their statutory responsibilities".—[Official Report, 17 November 2003; Vol. 413, c. 534W.]
Local government funding is already stretched, especially in south-east counties, such as Oxfordshire. I am sure that hon. Members will have heard colleagues who represent south-east constituencies outline the atrocious unfairness of local government funding in that
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part of the country. The plain fact remains that counties such as Oxfordshire get a raw deal from the Government.
Oxfordshire witnessed a 13 per cent. rise in council tax last year, and the rise will probably be half as much again next year—all in an attempt to match funding lost from south-east counties to authorities in the north of England. The Audit Commission recently judged that there is a fundamental flaw in local government grant system and that grant redistribution has left the south with lower grant increases and higher council tax rises, while those in the midlands and the north had higher grant increases and lower council tax rises. The Audit Commission has also asserted that there is a clear association between Government grants and the level of council tax.
Local authorities are simply unable to provide further funding to help the homeless. Cherwell district council is already under intolerable pressure to meet the targets of the Homelessness Act 2002. Furthermore, there is little scope for the district council to address the wider problems of homelessness beyond actually finding accommodation for those in need. The 2002 Act asked all local authorities to devise a strategy to tackle the problem in their areas. Cherwell district council has come up with an excellent strategy which focuses primarily on temporary accommodation for single homeless people. That we are talking about single people in separate properties is worth remembering, given the substantial rise in the cost of buying or renting a house in Oxfordshire. The district council has received about £122,000 to implement that strategy.
Given the request of the 2002 Act that strategies should be submitted, however, something strange is happening with the way in which the local authority is receiving that money. I understand that, in the first instance, Cherwell was asked by the Government to bid for funding, but its bid had to be submitted before its homelessness strategy. That places a question mark over how closely the ODPM's directorate is examining each authority's specific strategies. In 2003, despite the ODPM homelessness strategy, no bids were requested. Instead, local authorities were given the same sums as in the previous year. That funding was of course welcome, but what is happening to the homelessness strategies that the 2002 Act demanded? Cherwell submitted a bid for next year but has been allocated one third less money than it needs. I suspect that more money has been given to inner city authorities—which is doubly frustrating in light of the comparative underfunding of Cherwell through local government grants.
What will happen after 2005 is a mystery. Ministers have made no announcement and, to the best of my knowledge, no funding for local authorities has been earmarked. Many homelessness projects depend on stability. Homeless people need stability, but without stable funding such stability is a chimera.
Two excellent projects in north Oxfordshire benefit from around £80,000 of local authority investment. The 24/7 scheme run by the Banbury Young Homeless Project has six houses for young people and is an impressive initiative run by someone who previously did similar work in south London. When I last met that project's co-ordinator, I did not get the impression that the needs of the young homeless in north Oxfordshire were any less than of those in south London.

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Figures on the rising number of homeless people under 25 are particularly dispiriting, so it is imperative that funding increase. As a first step, Ministers should give reassurances as to what will happen from 2005 in respect of the strategies that they have requested. The Foyer project, also funded by Banbury district council in conjunction with Banbury Homes Housing Association, houses the young homeless from age 16 to 25. That project brings together a wide range of public and voluntary organisations and draws on the resources of local businesses in offering basic training in abilities often taken for granted—such as literacy, numeracy and computer skills. Those opportunities are especially important to young people because the district council's remaining money is used to fund preventive measures. I am especially impressed by BYHP's school projects, which provide 16-year-olds with briefings about the reality of homelessness to help to raise awareness.
Preventing homelessness must be balanced by more resources to help persons who, for reasons invariably beyond their control, find themselves without a home, as part of a move to deal more with people rather than just places. Much of the Government's attention seems directed at making sure that local authorities simply provide houses. There is a danger of overlooking wider needs. I recently met two people on the 24/7 project. Both struck me as bright and able. One had a clear idea of what he wanted to do next and was shortly to start an apprenticeship with a local employer. BYHP had helped him considerably to achieve that goal.
The other individual was a young girl whom BYHP is also helping, but she was not so clear about her future. There will come a time when she will have to seek help from other organisations. It would be better if those bodies could be involved from the start. It is difficult for many 17-year-olds to decide what they want to do later in life, but that would be far easier with a support base of all the agencies. Shelter's 2003 survey of local authority homelessness strategies not only reported a lack of resources but emphasised the importance of each agency locally communicating effectively and understanding fully what needs to be done. Likewise, the Audit Commission concluded that links should be made, to make sure that services are co-ordinated—including between learning and skills councils, child and young people partnerships, primary care group and trust plans and health improvement programmes. Those are just some of more than 20 agencies that need to work together effectively and efficiently in preventing homelessness and giving every opportunity to those who are homeless.
The Minister will no doubt allude to the vast-sounding sums that the Government have produced for the communities plan. That money is a start, but attention needs to be paid to process. The Chartered Institute of Housing, Crisis, Shelter, Local Government Association and Audit Commission are on record as saying that Government funding is inadequate to meet the demands of the 2002 Act—which is another example of the Government putting new legislation on the statute book but not following up the rhetoric with funds. The money available is also inadequate to address the needs of rural communities, which are increasingly overlooked by Government grants because of the misconception that all is leafy in Oxfordshire. There should also be a change in process to meet long
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term needs—especially of the young homeless, whose numbers are increasing throughout the country—and to tackle homelessness comprehensively.
10.16 am
Mr. Edward Davey: I congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on securing this important debate. The first half of his speech made a valuable contribution to setting out the extent of the problem. I agree with his pessimistic picture. Although the Government have had some success in the past year or so in respect of bed-and-breakfast numbers, since 1997 the statistics show a large increase. I am sure the Minister agrees that the figure is still far too high.
The hon. Gentleman, however, skirted round the statistic of most concern in my constituency and no doubt in his—the number of people in temporary accommodation. That is the real crisis in homelessness and the true measure of the Government's failure. Government measures are beginning to have some impact on bed-and-breakfast figures, but the number of people in temporary accommodation is alarming. The figure from Shelter for today's debate is 93,900—the highest ever. The Minister cannot be proud of that shocking statistic—and that is without addressing overcrowding, the homeless at home and other forms of hidden homelessness, particularly among the elderly, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) referred. I hope that the Minister will not deny that the massive problem of homelessness has not got much better. Some figures suggest that it has got worse. We need to begin an educated debate about how to tackle that issue.
The Government have a mixed record. Some of their initiatives have been really good. One still sees people sleeping rough on the streets of London and occasionally in my constituency, but their numbers have reduced.
Chris Grayling: Will the hon. Gentleman join me in paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) who, as a member of the last Conservative Government, was responsible for the rough sleepers initiative?
Mr. Davey: I did not know that, but I am certainly happy to pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, who is one of the more—I choose my words carefully—constructive Conservative Members, even if he does not admit to his mistakes over privatisation. It is true that the rough sleepers initiative has been boosted under the present Government, even beyond the extent thought possible by the right hon. member for North-West Hampshire.
We can congratulate the Government also on having a lot of vision. It would be welcome if part of that vision comes true. There is much needed building in the Thames gateway, and other plans, such as those for Milton Keynes, are welcome. However, the Government are weak on practical issues, and the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell spent a long time analysing their failure to build affordable new homes. He was right to do so, as that is the core of the Government's failure. They have put a lot of money into

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renovating homes and introducing the decent homes standard, but in making sure that accommodation is better for people who have homes they have prevented the industry from building homes for homeless people. They made a deliberate political choice, and they should admit its consequences.
Action has been slow in other areas, including the problem of empty homes. The fact that the Chancellor set up the Barker review six and a half years after the Government came to power to ask what we should do about the supply of homes says it all. The Government came to office without a clear idea about how they would tackle the housing shortage and the homelessness problem. They introduced a few eye-catching initiatives, but they did not make a fundamental analysis of what was wrong. I welcome the Barker review—the interim report was a challenging interpretation of the problem, and I very much look forward to the final report, in which recommendations which will doubtless appear alongside a proposed budget. I hope that Kate Barker will be given a free remit, and will not be restrained by Her Majesty's Treasury or the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister from making courageous proposals. A new tax break system has been suggested as a way of encouraging institutional investment in the private rented sector, and many people accept the merit of such a proposal. However, if that is all that the review amounts to, it would be a waste, given the work that Kate Barker has done. Her study is urgently needed, so I hope that she will come up with same radical proposals.
Some of the Government's other initiatives have not been effective. Unlike the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, I shall criticise one specific initiative. The starter homes initiative was supposed to help key workers. In the last Parliament my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam and I came to Westminster Hall with many of our colleagues to talk to the Government about key workers' housing problems in London and the south-east. We did not, however, expect the Government to introduce a policy that promoted demand. We all accept that the problem is with supply, but there is not a problem with demand. There is a lot of demand for housing, and it does not need to be stimulated. We have to deal with the problem of supply. The failure of the starter homes initiative shows the poor analysis of the problem. There has been a lack of take-up because the initiative makes almost no difference. A few thousand pounds here or there may help a little, but only at the margins, and it does not enable us to grapple with the main problem.
I agree that there is no point in having a confetti of initiatives if the analysis of the problem is wrong. The Barker review is important, because hopefully it will focus effort on getting more houses. If we do not do so, we will—I shall refrain from using a colloquial phrase—not make progress. We all feel passionately about the issue because we deal with the problems in our surgeries. I hold two surgeries a week, and there is not one at which I do not see someone with a housing problem, often a homelessness problem. They come for many reasons—the family may have been split up; parents do not want their grown-up children to live with them any more; they may have rent arrears; or the landlord is selling up. On Monday, I dealt with a case in my surgery in which a
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lady was facing eviction by a registered social landlord because she has two cats. The tenancy agreement says that she should not have cats without written permission, but other tenants in those blocks of flats in Tolworth have cats and dogs, for which they have written permission. However, she has been unable to get such permission, although I hope to intercede, either to secure it or make sure that any eviction process is suspended. There are therefore a plethora of reasons for people being homeless, and in our surgeries we must tackle those many problems.
I am slightly critical of the analysis of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell of the origins of the problem, and am more supportive of the Government's view. The causes of homelessness in the past few years are different from the causes of homelessness a decade or more ago, when the housing market was in freefall. There were repossessions, people lost their homes and were thrown out on the street because they could not meet the mortgage repayments as a result of high interest rates under the Conservative Administration. That is not the root cause of the current problem. The economy has been ticking over quite nicely, so land and house prices are high. In a way, our homelessness problem is a problem not of failure but of success, and can be seen in many other successful economies. California, for example, has a massive homelessness problem—people who are not in work or do not have highly paid jobs cannot afford housing because the price of land and houses in a successful economy is high. The problem is therefore different now, so we may need to think of different solutions.
I shall rattle through the rest of my speech to make sure that I give other hon. Members a chance to contribute to our debate. We need to examine positive options. For example, we need to look far more urgently than the Government are currently doing at the option of using empty homes. They have produced a consultation paper about empty home management orders, but they are not moving quickly enough. They have not, for example, used the Housing Bill that Parliament is currently considering to introduce those orders. I recommend that the Minister read the 2003 annual review produced by the Empty Homes Agency. The section on statistics at the end shows that 82 per cent. of people think that local authorities should be given the power to lease and bring back to life empty properties that are currently inhabitable. There is great support for action to deal with empty homes, which are, and are perceived to be, a scandal.
Using the private rented sector much more is the right approach, as Kate Barker has intimated. There are two groups of people in housing need who could be assisted by the private rented sector. The first group consists mainly of younger people in their 20s and 30s who are starting their working lives and careers. They are not yet sufficiently established to be able to buy a home, but want high-quality housing. Such housing, which I sometimes call it condominium-type accommodation, could be provided by the private rented sector, but private developers tend not to go into that area. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has done some interesting work near York and shown that properties can be built for that group. The landlord and developer can get a commercial return from affordable rented accommodation for such people, and tenants can use it

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as a stepping stone as they move forward in their career. Not enough of that property is being built, which is why the Barker review and the tax proposals on institutional investment may offer a way forward.
The second group consists of people who are unlikely ever to be able to afford a home, even under the right-to-buy scheme. There is a lack of Government subsidy for Government or council schemes to build homes for that social sector, and the Government need to take a far more active approach. The planning system could be used to deal with the problem. Planning authorities tend to be reactive, but we want councils to be proactive and designate land as housing zones. If a developer wants to build the housing that is needed, they should give his proposals a fair wind. Local authorities should be encouraged to give a lead, because if they took a more proactive approach—some already do, but there are far too few of them—there would be a major leap forward.
I want to conclude my remarks on the changing analysis of homeless by raising an issue with which I am currently trying to grapple and on which I should be grateful for the benefit of the Minister's thoughts. There is a certain type of homelessness that, on one level, we welcome. Antisocial tenants may have created such mayhem that their landlord, whether a social landlord or a private landlord, eventually feels that he has to evict them. We are debating in other places and at other times the need to crack down on antisocial tenants. My concern is how we do it. I carried out a four-hour filibuster in a Committee considering a private Member's Bill to stop the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) pushing forward a proposal to withdraw housing benefit from antisocial tenants.
Mr. John McWilliam (in the Chair):Order. Confession may be good for the soul, but the word "filibuster" does not exist in any "Erskine May" that I have ever read.
Mr. Davey: Thank you for that instruction, Mr. McWilliam. I shall try to keep this confession short.
The problem with the approach taken by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead is that the sanction would be random and would hurt people who were not behaving in an antisocial way. As the Government were considering implementing it, it would apply to offenders coming out of prison who, as we all know, are much more likely to reoffend if they are homeless and without jobs. The Government's approach to housing benefit sanctions would have made severe social problems even worse. I am glad the proposal has been dropped.
We still have to face the question of how to deal with matters when tenants need to be evicted because of their antisocial behaviour. I am trying to grapple with the issue myself. I believe the Government should put in place, with the Housing Corporation and others, much stronger guidance to make sure that through earlier intervention, antisocial behaviour is prevented from getting out of hand so that it does not reach the eviction stage. When eviction is necessary, as part of the cure and to shake up someone whose behaviour has got out of hand, other options should be available post eviction so that the underlying causes of the antisocial behaviour are dealt with.
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It is in no one's interest that the eviction of antisocial tenants should lead to more antisocial behaviour, making the problem worse and making the whole community suffer even more. This aspect of homelessness is not often debated, but we need to get our heads round it and develop policy to deal with it. It is a tough issue, but we should not avoid it.
10.32 am
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to be able to wind up the debate on behalf of the official Opposition. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on securing the debate. The sad fact is that this is but one in a series of debates in the five years that I have been Front-Bench spokesman on housing, and while we discuss the problem in the Chamber, the problem is getting worse. I hope that the Government will not just talk about it but get a grip of it and see what can done.
For every homeless person, every homeless family, every homeless child, there is a story of human misery involved, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) so aptly reminded us, particularly those of us who represent a constituency with a high proportion of elderly people, as I do and as I assume the hon. Gentleman does. Of all the constituencies in the country, Cotswold has the third highest number of over-85-year-olds.
I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who has taken an overnight flight to be present. His speech reminded us that even in constituencies that one would assume to be relatively prosperous, such as his and mine, there are pockets of hidden homelessness that are problems of human tragedy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell went through the figures in detail. They are undoubtedly getting worse: 36,260 households were accepted for housing by a local authority. That is 8 per cent. higher than a year ago and translates into 145,000 homeless people in this country, which is a tragedy and a scandal for a modern advanced country such as ours. My hon. Friend was right to point to the fact that hidden in those figures is a disproportionately high number of black and ethnic people—some 23 per cent. of that figure—and as my hon. Friend noted, the proportion is rising fast.
Although the Minister will no doubt trumpet the fact that the number of people sleeping rough on our streets has dropped and the number of people in bed and breakfasts has dropped marginally in the past year, there is still an increasing homelessness problem. Whether the homeless sleep rough on our streets, or whether they sleep in bed and breakfasts, hostels or unsuitable accommodation, the problem is getting worse, particularly in the capital. It is estimated that half a million Londoners live in overcrowded conditions and again, the situation is getting worse because London is one of the few areas where the population is growing.
The number of households in the capital—this is one of the most dreadful statistics—increased by 184,000 or more than 6 per cent., yet over the same period we built only 58,000 extra houses. The number of households, and especially the number of households with children, is increasing, yet the number of houses that we are building is not keeping up with that growth. This failure

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was recognised in the recent report by the Labour-dominated Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning and Local Government Committee, which reached a damning verdict on the Government's affordable housing record. According to the Committee,
"more and more people cannot afford to buy or rent a home."
The Institute for Public Policy Research, the think-tank not notably supportive of the Opposition but supportive of the Government, admitted recently that
"housing poverty is not the most extreme form of social inequality in Britain".
We all received a brief from Shelter for this debate. One of the most damning statistics in the brief is that more than 100,000 children in England become homeless every year. If that is not a tragic statistic, I do now know what is. Half a million households are officially overcrowded, including 300,000 families with children. We must do something about those figures. I have not come just to berate the Government and read out these dreadful figures. I have a few suggestions for the Government. Some are old chestnuts and some are new ideas that I have come up with in the course of the debate.
Mr. David Watts: We can't wait.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Don't be cynical. Even if one of these ideas helps one those poor homeless families, the debate will have achieved something. I hope we will not play politics with such a serious subject.
The administration of housing benefit and council tax benefit has recently been transferred from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to the Department for Work and Pensions—about time too, as it was dreadfully administered under ODPM. There was almost one change a week. I am alarmed that the Government are trialling a new method of housing benefit called social housing allowance, which will take an entire area and designate the rent for a particular house in it. I posed a series of questions about that. I believe that it will cause some people to move out of their house because they will not be able to afford the rent. We need to look carefully at how we administer housing benefit and council tax benefit. We should not keep changing it, as that creates difficulties for those who administer it and who are desperately trying to help the poorest and most needy in our country.
Mr. Edward Davey: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Briefly, as I do not have much time left.
Mr. Davey: Can the hon. Gentleman explain that? I thought the Department for Work and Pensions was administering the benefits and it was just an accounting change that had taken place recently as a result of the recent local government settlement.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The hon. Gentleman is right. The benefits used to form part of the rate support grant administered by the ODPM. It will now form a separate budget line in the Department for Work and Pensions.
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The second old chestnut in such debates is the use of brownfield land. There are huge quantities of brownfield land out there. The Government will no doubt proudly recount the fact that they are meeting the 60 per cent. target. The only reason they are meeting the target is that they are not building enough houses. I call on them with urgent vigour to consider acquiring more brownfield land, to examine the grant regime, to consider bringing back the reclamation grant, and to look at where they lost the European gap funding. I know that English Partnerships is doing some useful work in the Thames gateway. Perhaps the Minister will tell us something about that.
Mention has been made of empty homes, of which there are 729,000—down a little on the figure a year ago. More could be done, but not by compulsory leasing, as the Government trumpet. That is not the way to deal with empty homes. People should be encouraged to let them. There are a huge number of flats above shops. If we had some proper regeneration schemes to regenerate town centres, people would want to live in those flats above shops. If we come up with fiscal and other incentives for institutions to let their flats above shops, we might be doing some good.
We need to encourage the private rented sector—half a million people live in the private rented sector in this country. The problem is that every time housing legislation is introduced, it becomes more expensive for private landlords. Much of that legislation may be worthy in itself, but we need to examine the risk and reward.
We need to examine the working of the Housing Corporation. I do not believe that it is providing particularly good value for money—we need to consider the ratio between affordability and the capital cost. Above all, however, we need to look at how effective the Housing Corporation is at levering in private sector finance. We need to be more imaginative with our key worker strategies. We need to come up with better partequity ownership schemes, and perhaps we should consider subsidised mortgage schemes, which would give those key workers portability to other local authority areas.
The starter homes initiative, as has been mentioned, has been a spectacular failure. Surely we can beef that up. There are huge amounts of public land in this country. It is unacceptable that some health authorities have public land near hospitals and yet they cannot attract the nurses and auxiliary workers that they need. Surely we can build key worker housing on some of that land. Many other Departments, such as the Ministry of Defence, have huge public land banks. We need to be more imaginative in how we use that land. Much of that land is brownfield anyway, so if we cannot encourage the public sector to release and get brownfield land into a proper state so that is ready for development, I do not know what we can do in the private sector.
We need to consider urgent research into safe, modern building methods. I have been sceptical about some modern building methods, but if the Government were to do some proper research and assure us about some of those modern building methods, which are used effectively in other parts of the world, we could build a large number of houses more cheaply and quickly.

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Of course, we need to look at good design—for too long we have built poorly designed houses. It is not acceptable to build public sector housing for a 30-year life. As for density, the trouble with the Government's proposals is that they are prescriptive. In certain areas, we could build much denser housing—Kensington and Chelsea probably has densities of about 70 or 80 houses per hectare, whereas the Government's density target is only 30 per hectare. In my constituency, however, 30 per hectare is far too dense—perhaps that should be per acre.
We need to address skills shortages in the construction industry. We need much more training in the construction industry, and we may need to consider bringing in limited skills from some of the countries aspiring to join the EU. They will come here anyway, so let us control it and make sure that we get the skills that we want.
The Government have begun to tackle the problem of planning gain. The problem is that they think of the developer as a milch cow that will go on providing ever more resources. We need to use those resources more effectively and more consistently from one council to another. It is possible to commute the section 106 payment for provision of social housing. In most cases, we should require the developer either to build those houses on the development that he is building at present, or to build the social housing elsewhere. After all, the developer can build social housing far more cheaply than anybody else, particularly when he has an incentive to do so.
We need to look at mobility schemes to free up social housing and encourage people to move. The average tenancy in London is 20 years and rising—of course, that is because the rent is subsidised and people cannot easily move. We need mobility schemes, however, to encourage people who want to and can move out of the public sector, or who want to move to a bigger or smaller house as their life circumstances change, to do so.
We should encourage local authorities to be more inventive with their reserves from large-scale voluntary transfer. My suggestion to my local authority the other day that it should build some houses outside the local authority's area was met with a howl that that would not be possible. Why not? If there is a shortage of housing in Cherwell or Cotswold, why not build a few houses in Swindon, and let the key workers live in Swindon and work in Cirencester if there is a shortage of nurses and teachers?
Finally, on the right to buy, we hear an awful lot of nonsense. Those 1.5 million houses that were mentioned in today's political football did not disappear—they were over and above the housing stock that we have now. We will change the rules when we extend the right to buy so that all the proceeds are ploughed back into building more social housing. The Government are going the opposite way. They are stopping the right to buy with their changes, and they are not explaining where the funds will come from for the shortfall in resources to build more social housing. As I said, the average tenancy in London is 20 years, so there is little mobility in social housing anyway. It is much better to get a public capital sum and use it effectively to build more houses. As I have explained previously, by extending the right to buy we can sell off about 30,000
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houses and build 15,000 additional social housing units. In relation to the figures that were given, that represents a large percentage of what the Government are building today.
I have had my time in this debate—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Phil Hope): Good.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The Minister says, "Good", but he should listen and perhaps adopt one or two suggestions instead of making cheap political points at the expense of those poor people who suffer the misery of homelessness and sleeping on the streets. He sits here making cheap, snide comments—he should be ashamed of himself. I hope that when he speaks he will have more positive ideas than his predecessors about how to solve the problem.
10.46 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Phil Hope): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for introducing this important debate on homelessness. Both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative spokesmen were on the Front Bench in last night's debate on the fire brigade, and I regret that the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) is in no better humour than he was when we left the House last night.
We have heard some interesting points in this debate, and I welcome the opportunity to respond for the Government. I regret that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell decided to launch his speech with a hectoring and highly critical attack of Government policy. That is a bit rich for a member of the party that, when in office, took this country to its peak of homelessness in 1990 with 145,800 homeless households. That is the truth, and we have been dealing with that legacy ever since.
The facts are that when the Conservatives were in power, half a million homes were repossessed between 1990 and 1997, when mortgage rates averaged 11 per cent. In 1992, 1.2 million houses suffered from negative equity, and the Conservatives left this Labour Government a backlog of repairs to local authority housing amounting to no less than £19 billion. Under the Tories, there was a year-on-year decrease in housing investment, and they spent more than —40 billion on subsidising the right to buy, which prevented local authorities from reinvesting those capital receipts to repair council homes. As we have heard this morning, they want to extend the right to buy to housing associations. How on earth that will help solve the housing shortage—it will cost more than £330 million per year—I simply do not understand.
Chris Grayling Chris Grayling rose—
Phil Hope: I want to move on.
Across the country, more and more people are seeking and receiving assistance from local authorities under our homelessness legislation. It is not just a London problem, although it is often painted as such by the popular press. It seems odd that increases in homelessness have been recorded in all regions in recent

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years. Some of those increases are the result of us strengthening legislation on the rights of homeless people—more people are being helped now who might not have been given priority need in the past. That does not account for all the growth in the numbers, however.
The question of homelessness among black and ethnic minority groups has been raised. We know that those groups are three times more likely to be homeless than those from other communities, and we are not shying away from that difficult problem. We have published a policy briefing on the issue and have commissioned a new research project to help us to understand why that is happening and to identify best practice. We will report soon on tackling that issue.
I could provide, as other Members have done, a litany of statistics. The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) spoke about younger people, and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) focused on older people, in relation to the dilemmas and problems that we face. The important thing, though, is what we are going to do about the problem, and we want to tackle it head on. We have a good track record. We have introduced legislation to strengthen the safety net for homeless people by, for the first time, requiring local authorities to take a strategic approach to tackling and preventing the problem; and every local authority now has a homelessness strategy in place. It was foolish of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell to suggest that such strategies are irrelevant, unnecessary or bureaucratic, and that they do not achieve anything. The hon. Member for Banbury gave the lie to that when he said that his council, Cherwell, was feeling the pressure of the homelessness legislation forcing it into dealing with the problems of young, single homeless in his constituency. If the Conservatives—were they ever to get back into power—were to abolish the obligation on local authorities to tackle homelessness, that would be a devastating blow to the needs of many vulnerable people in our communities.
The Government have extended the priority need groups, ensuring that more vulnerable people will get the help that they need from local authorities. We have reduced rough sleeping to well below two thirds of 1998 levels. We are on target to ensure that no family with children has to live in a bed-and-breakfast hotel for longer than six weeks, with numbers reduced by more than 50 per cent. over the past year alone. We have provided significant additional funding for local authorities and voluntary sector agencies to support delivery of these homelessness strategies, doubling previous spending plans. We shall spend £5 billion on more affordable housing, which is double the level of investment that we inherited in 1997.
Chris Grayling: If the Government have maintained the building of affordable housing at 1997 levels, does that mean that since then we have built more new affordable homes than the total number of homeless families?
Phil Hope: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about affordable housing, to which I shall turn in a few moments. Conservative Members continue to moan about the Government's so-called concreting over of the
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countryside, yet it is authorities' refusal to meet their obligations under the planning system to revive land and homes for people to live in that causes demand to outstrip supply. The hon. Gentleman should ask some of his colleagues to consider why affordable homes are not being built at the rate that they should be.
We are spending £5 billion more on affordable housing, and we shall spend £22 billion on communities and housing during the next three years—an increase of 40 per cent. on current figures.
The hon. Member for Banbury bemoaned the fact that his local authorities were underfunded. Since 1997, in general terms, Government grant to local authorities has gone up by no less than 30 per cent. in real terms. That contrasts starkly with the 7 per cent. cut in central Government funding for local government in the last four years of the Conservative Administration. More specifically, he alleged that north Oxfordshire has been ignored in terms of housing capital allocation. Of the three authorities in north Oxfordshire, two—Cherwell, which he mentioned, and West Oxfordshire—volunteered to give their allocations to the Housing Corporation. If he does not agree with that decision, perhaps he would like to go back to his district council to discuss it. The third. Oxford, has been allocated increased housing funding for the next financial year. In 2003—04, Oxford received more than £2.5 million, which will rise to £2.9 million in 2004—05. I hope that that deals with the hon. Gentleman's point.
In the course of listing alternative action points that the Conservatives would implement, the hon. Member for Cotswold made several interesting Conservative spending commitments, which we are looking forward to costing. Of course, he did not say that he would match the £22 billion sustainable communities plan that we have published, nor that he would match the £5 billion of affordable housing. We shall have to see how his sums add up in the end.
I am pleased to say that we have had real success in tackling rough sleeping. Some of us remember that a Conservative Secretary of State bemoaned the fact that he had to step over rough sleepers when he came out of the opera in London. Instead of stepping over the problem, we tackled it. Towns, cities and boroughs such as Brighton, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds and Camden have all seen the number of people sleeping out on their streets plummet through the work of multi-agency partnerships led by the local authorities. We still want to make sustained reductions in some areas, and we are bearing down on that problem.
We have made much progress towards our bed-and-breakfast target, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) was good enough to acknowledge. In 2002, we decided, alongside a number of wider measures, to tackle the pernicious feature of homelessness that is families with children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. We were determined quickly to bring an end to the scandal of children being forced to spend long periods in cramped bed-and-breakfast hotels, having to share washing and cooking facilities with strangers and with no room to play or do homework. I am pleased to say that local authorities across the country are reporting good progress towards our target that, by March 2004, no families with children should be in B and B accommodation for longer than six weeks. As hon. Members will know, we

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have moved to outlaw its use, except for short periods, from 1 April, empowering homeless households and ensuring that we put an end to that scandal once and for all.
I turn to prevention. As I said, the figures on homelessness are increasing. We have embarked on a programme to ensure that the causes of homelessness are recognised and understood at a local level. The problem is as much about social exclusion as about the availability of affordable housing. We need to understand the personal factors that can lead to homelessness. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam referred to older people and to those with mental health problems. Other factors include drug and alcohol abuse, debt, family relationship breakdowns or domestic violence. We need to help people rebuild their relationships with family or friends, to stay in education or to take up training or employment. As the hon. Member for Cotswold said, multiple factors contribute to the problem of homelessness.
Mr. Burstow: Does the Minister agree that there should be adequate working between the health service, especially mental health services, and local authorities in drawing up their homelessness strategies?
Phil Hope: The homelessness legislation provides an important safety net for vulnerable people who are homeless, including the elderly. There is no set age—the critical factor is whether they are vulnerable. For the homelessness statistics we collect information on reasons for being accepted as homeless, including old age, but we recognise that people may be vulnerable for more than one reason. Last year, we consulted on ways in which to improve data collection, and some changes will be made to the next quarterly statistics. We need to know the causes of homelessness. Age may come into it, but there are often multiple factors. Under the initiative on homelessness and the mentally ill, several high-care hostels have been built with Government capital funding. The initiative focuses on homeless people who
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are vulnerable due to mental ill-health, including older people, and revenue costs are met 75 per cent. by central Government and 25 per cent. by local authorities. That may not deal with all the problems, but I hope that it demonstrates that we recognise the concerns mentioned by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam about such people being hidden and isolated. We expect local authorities, with the help of central Government, to address their needs.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Banbury on mentioning the difficulties that are faced by young people and the projects in his constituency that are doing good work to try to tackle them.
As the hon. Members for Epsom and Ewell and for Cotswold said, any attempts to prevent and tackle homelessness have to be part of a wider effort to improve the supply of good-quality, affordable housing. Funding for the Housing Corporation's development programme has risen to around £1.5 billion to provide homes for rent and low-cost home ownership—an increase of £0.5 billion on last year—and £300 million of that has been top-sliced for a challenge fund to produce more than 8,000 new homes in London and south-east England. I shall be interested to know whether the Conservatives will ever match that pledge.
In total, we are investing £5 billion in more affordable housing, including £1 billion for key worker housing. I have to say to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton that I regret the Liberal Democrat's decision to abandon that scheme if they were ever to get into power. We believe that it provides important support for young key workers to get into housing for the first time.
We are tackling the issue of empty homes and dealing with the question of building of affordable housing. We have had a lot of success in tackling the worst manifestations of homelessness—rough sleeping and families with children living in bed-and-breakfast—but our prevention agenda is beginning to show results. We are building more affordable housing and setting the right agenda for reducing levels of homelessness in future.

National Botanic Garden of Wales
11 am
Hywel Williams: I am pleased to have this opportunity to debate national lottery funding and the future of our national botanic garden of Wales, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price).
The national botanic garden opened in May 2000 and was the first such garden to be opened in Britain for about 200 years. It is located in the south-west of Wales, in what some people call the garden of Wales, in my hon. Friend's constituency and it is indeed a national institution, which is one of the themes that I want to pick up in the debate. The garden way given the status of a national institution by the former Secretary of State, now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and it was praised by the First Minister of the National Assembly Government for Wales—at least when it suited him.
The garden has many virtues; for example, in terms of its academic work. On Friday, I visited a community garden in the village of Deiniolen in my constituency, which is being established and supported by the horticultural college at Llaneurgain. I was told that the college sees the national botanic garden at Llanarthne as a vital resource and support, ever though Llaneurgain, more commonly known as Northop, is at the other end of the country. The college is almost as far away as one can possibly get from our national botanic garden, yet it sees the garden as a national resource.
The garden has an important role in conservation, doing vital work in protecting and preserving the biodiversity of our planet, which is now under such threat, that some projections estimate that many tens of thousands of species will be lost over the next 20 to 30 years. The garden studies and conserves plants from all over the world, including trees. It also has an important role as a public garden of beauty and interest to be enjoyed not only by people from all over Wales but by people from all over the world. There are visitors from many countries, including England. It is the third-largest paid-for visitor attraction in Wales, drawing in more than 200,000 visitors in 2000–01 and about 142,000 in 2002–03. It is in no way unpopular, but a significant attraction in its own right.
The garden has historical significance, as the garden of a great house that was demolished and rebuilt over the centuries. The present garden is, in some ways, a revival of the 18th-century garden that was left when the house was demolished in that period. It also has significance in respect of the medicinal plants grown there. Many Welsh people know of the famous doctors of Myddfai, which is close to the garden. The Meddygon Myddfai were for generations medical practitioners in the south-west of Wales and used the medicinal plants of the area; those plants are reflected in the collection at the national botanic garden.
Lastly, and not insignificantly, the garden contributes greatly to the local economy in south-west Wales. The Institute of Welsh Affairs estimates that the garden's contribution to the local economy is about £4 million per annum. Other estimates put the figure much higher, for example, at £8 million, but clearly the garden
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contributes greatly to the local economy by drawing in visitors from all over the world and from Wales and England.
The garden is a national institution in a country which has few such institutions, compared to Scotland, for example, and those that we have, such as the national university of Wales have been hard won. It is relevant to the funding of the garden, and indeed to discussions to be held elsewhere in Parliament today, that the university of Wales was originally funded in part by contributions from the mass of the people of Wales—quarrymen, miners, farm workers and their families—who were prepared to forgo a small part of their income to contribute to the fund to set up university colleges at Bangor and Aberystwyth. That might be seen as an early example of a lottery, or as a proto-income tax. The so-called ordinary people of Wales were prepared to make voluntary contributions that were clearly intended to fund an institution from which they might not derive direct benefit themselves, although their children might have done so. It was a proto-income tax raised and spent for the national good. That is an important principle whose virtue should be self-evident to any socialist Government—perhaps even to the present Government.
The garden is a national institution and was set up at a cost of £42 million, half of which came from lottery funds. It is highly significant that such an amount came from the heritage fund; the garden was a millennium project. The other half was raised from various bodies, including the Welsh Assembly Government and private sources. In that respect, the project was a very good model.
As a national institution, the garden is alongside other institutions such as the national library at Aberystwyth and the national museum, which has various locations, including one in my constituency. Entry to the national museum is free to the public. There is no charge for entry either to the national museum of the slate industry in my constituency or to the national museum of Welsh life at St. Fagans just outside Cardiff. There is clearly a contrast with the national garden, as it charges for entry. Other national institutions are the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government.
The botanical garden is in some financial trouble, although I do not intend to go into the fine details of those problems this morning, but I understand that it needs a sum of about £3 million to secure its medium-term future to 2009. It is estimated that the garden needs about £500,000 per annum, so given its current financial problems, how does the Minister for the Arts see the role and the responsibilities of the original funders being discharged now and in the future? The garden is a large public investment—£21 million from the millennium fund alone—and there is no little danger that the value of the garden will be lost to Wales and indeed to the world. How does the Minister see the original funders as discharging their responsibilities? Does she see herself as having any responsibility to safeguard that public investment, or is it merely a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government?
How does the Minister view the future funding of the botanic garden, as compared, for example, to funding for the millennium dome? The dome was of course set up at the cost of many hundreds of millions of pounds of

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public money and now lies almost idle—some would say idle and useless—yet I understand that it is still being funded, to the tune of about £50 million so far. An end may be in sight, but it is quite far away and a large amount of public money is still going into the dome. How does that compare with the botanic garden? Indeed, how does the dome compare to a garden of great public and academic value—a living thing? Apparently, the Welsh Assembly Government do not even rate the garden at £3 million. What does the Minister think?
It is ironic that I as a Welsh Member and, indeed, as a Welsh nationalist, have to seek answers on those issues in this place, but I understand that the Welsh Assembly Government have refused to discuss the matter further in Cardiff. That is, of course, entirely a matter for them. How does the Minister view the responsibility and power of this place—if any—in respect of the national botanic garden of Wales? There seems to me to be a crack in the constitutional floorboards, and responsibility for the national botanic garden—set up in part with UK money—seems to be slipping through.
May I ask the Minister another question that the Welsh Assembly might well have pondered, given the fact that the garden was set up by a UK body? There are similar institutions in the UK; I understand that there is a botanic garden in Scotland and there is, of course, the garden at Kew. I understand that the garden at Kew is funded by the Government in London to the tune of —21 million. May I ask the Minister whether there is a Barnett consequential to that sum? If so, the sum in Wales would be —1.2 million, which would be more than enough to tide the garden over. It would also complement the lottery funding that I have already mentioned, and the funding from private sources and from the Welsh Assembly Government. Is there a Barnett consequential? If not, why not? If there were a Barnett consequential, that —1.2 million would, of course, have been sent on to Cardiff. There are also serious questions for the Welsh Assembly Government about how the moneys involved were disposed of, and my Friends in the National Assembly will be assiduous in pursuing that matter.
I have tried to confine my enthusiasm to asking questions directly relating to the responsibility of this place for financial matters relating to the Barnett formula. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr is keen to make a contribution to this debate—with your permission, Mr. McWilliam—as he has a constituency interest in the matter. However, I would like briefly to finish by making one slightly broader point about how we value institutions such as the national botanic garden. Is it a national institution that has value beyond being a visitor attraction? What is now being proposed appears to be to do with it being a visitor attraction and nothing else. Are we prepared to risk the future of such a great institution by relying on the whim of an extra visitor who might be drawn in by an attraction, or do we value the place for what it is: a national garden of academic, historical and local interest, as well as of value to tourism? I would be interested to hear the Minister's philosophical take on this question. Should we allow the markets to rule what happens to the garden, or should either the Westminster or the Welsh Assembly Government intervene? There is
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not a great deal of funding at stake here; £3 million is not a great deal. I am sure that that money should be found if we value the best things that our country has to offer.
We have seen acts of great philistinism in Wales over the years. I remember, as a young student, seeing the destruction of the Triangle in Merthyr Tydfil—a fine example of 19th century working-class architecture—which was razed to provide extra parking space for a factory. Recently, we have also seen the destruction of the Dunlop factory in Brynmawr. That amazing example of modernist architecture at the top of an industrial valley was razed to the ground to provide space for a shopping centre. Shopping centres are all very well and good, but we need to stand against this tide of philistinism and ensure that the national botanic garden of Wales does not go the same way.
11.13 am
Adam Price: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) for allowing me to make a brief contribution to this debate. As he said, it is not with any great alacrity that we, as Welsh nationalists, stand here urging the Westminster Government to intervene where the Welsh Assembly Government have so far walked away from their responsibilities and washed their hands of the problems of the national botanic garden of Wales. It is ironic that, 100 years ago, when Wales did not have home rule and was a good deal poorer than it is today, it was able to create a national university with five university colleges, a national library and a national museum, yet is now unable to create a national institution despite having democratic devolution.
The national botanic garden was meant to be a great national institution— a Welsh Kew, a botanic garden of world-class quality. Unfortunately, however, the eyes of the world are now being focused on Wales for all the wrong reasons, with the crisis that is still going on at the national botanic garden. However, in this case, some responsibility does lie with the Government here at Westminster. One of the benefits of devolution is that we are allowed to make our own mistakes, and I fully accept that we have to take on the responsibility that comes with that. The Welsh Assembly Government do have some responsibility for this matter, but there are also questions that need to be asked at Westminster.
Much of the funding for the garden has come through routes that involved ministerial responsibility, including £22.6 million from the Millennium Commission to date, and a further £6 million from the European regional development fund, which was at the time the responsibility of the Department of Trade and Industry here in Whitehall. Prior to the creation of the National Assembly, the then Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), declared Middleton to be a national botanic garden, with all that that entails in terms of its scientific and educational work. The location was chosen by the Secretary of State and the Wales Office, and the Wales Office signed off the business plan, which clearly stated that the garden would need ongoing public funding for its scientific and educational work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Caernarfon has pointed out that the garden is quite successful as a visitor attraction. It is the third most successful paid-

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visitor attraction in Wales; the figure of 150,000 visitors a year in a location in Carmarthenshire that has not been a traditional tourist destination represents a success.
In the brief time that I have, I would like to concentrate on the areas of responsibility of the Minister for the Arts. Questions need to be asked about the millennium fund award. In July last year, a further supplementary grant of £600,000 was made available to the national botanic garden for the creation of the walled garden. It now appears that the Welsh Assembly Government had already made the decision at that time not to fund the garden after the end of September last year. Will the Minister tell us whether the Millennium Commission was informed by the Welsh Assembly Government of their decision to pull the plug on the national botanic garden of Wales? If it was not informed, was that grant a defensible use of public money? Should not the commission have been clearly told by the Welsh Assembly Government that they were effectively going to force the garden into voluntary liquidation?
Is the Minister also aware that the trustees of the national botanic garden of Wales are claiming that the Welsh Assembly Government are now putting pressure on the garden's creditors to force the trust into voluntary liquidation? What would the implications of that be, in terms of the Millennium Commission's investment in the garden? If the garden were forced into voluntary liquidation by the Welsh Assembly Government, would not the commission have to claw back the money that has been invested, in accordance with the conditions attached to the grant?
Is the Minister aware that the Millennium Commission believes that the Welsh Assembly Government have effectively been operating as shadow directors from January to June last year, when the Welsh Assembly Government provided some additional funding with strings attached? They forced the trust to engage in what was described as "blue skies thinking", and the First Minister of Wales asked the trust to produce a paper on what he called the "wow factor". At a time when the trust wanted to stabilise the garden's financial situation, the Welsh Assembly Government—through their First Minister—were forcing it to invest in further speculative projects. The Millennium Commission is of the view that that constituted operating as a shadow director. If the Welsh Assembly Government force the trust into voluntary liquidation, the commission will act to claw back its £22.6 million investment from the Welsh Assembly Government, who have been acting as shadow directors without being prepared to take responsibility in terms of financial accountability.
In relation to some points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caernarfon, substantial money is still going into the millennium dome, which is closed, but it seems that we do not have a Barnett consequential for Wales in terms of the money going in at Kew. The money necessary to save the £22.6 million of lottery funding that has gone into the national botanic gardens, and the £3 million involved to 2009, would be a small public investment compared with the public investment that has gone into other projects.
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Clearly, there would need to be discussion with other Departments, but I ask the Minister whether it would be possible to save this national institution for Wales and to prevent the Millennium Commission from having to claw back that money from the Welsh Assembly Government, who hitherto have not lived up to their responsibilities.
11.21 am
The Minister for the Arts (Estelle Morris): It is good to see you in the Chair again, Mr. McWilliam. First, I must say that this is the most difficult position that I have ever found myself in during an Adjournment debate in terms of my responsibilities. I want to put it on record that I have no problems with answering on behalf of ministerial colleagues here in Westminster. That is proper—I would never seek to hide behind the fact that another Westminster Department, not mine, is involved—but I have genuine, and I think understandable and acceptable, difficulties: I should not answer for the Assembly in Wales, and I want to explain the Government's relationship with the Millennium Commission. This is not how I normally like to answer Adjournment debates, so I almost apologise in advance for being about to opt out of addressing some questions for reasons that are obvious, but which I will put on the record.
I understand the passion with which the hon. Members for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) and for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price) have spoken. If such an institution was in my constituency, I would have felt as optimistic and joyful about having it as they did, and I would feel as pessimistic and sad about possibly losing it. We would all take that parochial and national pride and pleasure in housing a project that could have been, and I hope may still be, so important and so good.
One thing that neither hon. Gentleman said is that Wales was the only country in the United Kingdom that did not have a national botanic garden. I would imagine that when the original allocation was made it was seen as a right and proper thing to do. As the hon. Member for Caernarfon said, the gardens are not just for Wales, but are of international significance. They would have been a place of international research, studying sustainability and conservation. Indeed, I understand that they are the third most popular visitor attraction in Wales and the most visited gardens.
All that stands well, and I understand where people are coming from, so let me explain the relationship with the Millennium Commission, because that is my area of responsibility, for which I stand and answer here today. First, this is an arm's-length relationship. It would be wrong if the Government interfered day by day in the distribution of lottery money. That is not tax money, and we do not have a mandate from the electorate as to how to spend it day by day. The arm's-length principle, which was established when lottery funding began—that is where the Millennium Commission gets its money—is right and proper.
It is my responsibility to safeguard the propriety of that relationship, which is set out in the letters of intent and of instruction. My ongoing relationship with the Millennium Commission is not about seeking to force it to do something different from what it is doing; it is about ensuring that it is standing by the way that it was asked to work when it was set up.

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Having said that, we are discussing an example of an issue that has emerged from Millennium Commission funding in general. I want to touch on that, because it is where, to some extent, I have to rest my case. We should think back to how things were set up: this project is no different from any other that was funded through the Millennium Commission. That has to be made clear. Of the £43 million estimated to be involved in setting up the gardens, roughly half came from the Millennium Commission.
On the face of it, this was an excellent joint initiative supported by a number of admirable Welsh bodies, as well as United Kingdom bodies—we were setting up the Welsh Assembly at that point. Those bodies included the then Welesh Office, Carmarthenshire county council, the Welsh Development Agency, the Wales Tourist Board and the Arts Council of Wales. Again on the face of it, the initiative should have worked. It should have flourished and flown, and we should be having an Adjournment debate on how well it has done, not about the difficulties it is in.
I should put it on the record that the Millennium Commission was committed to finding about £22 million—about half the money—of which £10 million went in the first phase. That has gone, as it was part of the expenditure involved in setting up the gardens. Also, £13 million was available for phase 2; £10.7 million was paid while £1.6 million is being held back due to the lack of match funding.
The issue here is one of revenue, not capital; this is a revenue problem, not a capital problem. The Millennium Commission is acting properly in saying, "We have £1.6 million, but at this point we are not convinced that the match funding is there to enable us to release it." Both hon. Gentlemen properly asked, "Should not the Government act now to secure the Millennium Commission funding that has already gone in?" In a way, that is justification for holding back the £1.6 million of capital that has not gone in so far, so I support the Millennium Commission in the way that it has acted. However, the non-negotiable, non-breakable rule for the commission is that it has never offered revenue funding. It is not involved in that.
The Millennium Commission will get no more money. It will become part of the merged distributor. It does not have a life beyond the duration of the millennium projects. I want to put this as carefully as I can: I need to put it on the record that the commission funded more than 200 capital projects on 3,000 sites. Only two have closed—the Big Idea in Irvine and the Millennium Faith Experience in Bradford. Wales received a total grant of £130 million across the commission's grant programmes, involving nine capital projects on 55 sites.
Having said that, the truth is that this is not the only Millennium Commission-funded capital project with revenue problems. There are not a lot of those, but there
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are a few, and some science centres are in exactly the same position. I support the Millennium Commission's decision not to go down the line of saying, "Okay, we'll make an exception with the botanic gardens. We'll come in with revenue." That was never the reason for setting up the commission, and it has not broken that golden rule with any other institution. It is a proper way to safeguard its role in lottery funding and the millennium celebrations to say, "We are not going to down the road of revenue funding."
That deals with my Government accountability and that is my explanation. I am happy with those, but my problem in terms of answering this Adjournment debate arises over the fact that the challenge for the botanic gardens is securing that revenue funding from somewhere so that the Millennium Commission can be confident in releasing the £1.6 million that it has been unable to release so far.
Both hon. Gentlemen were bound to say that the Welsh Assembly could or can, might or will come in with further revenue funding. That is the Assembly's decision. I put it on the record that the Assembly has released £1.6 million in three tranches—£360,000, £1.06 million and £150,000. This is properly a decision for the Welsh Assembly. It is not for me to comment on it or to urge that certain actions be taken. I do not want to tread on the Assembly's toes, and I state for the record that it is not a job of the Westminster Government to second-guess how the Assembly spends its revenue.
The hon. Member for Caernarfon opened the debate very honestly, and there is a problem for Wales in that devolution means inheriting the problems as well as the good things. The botanic gardens project has not yet come to an end, and I hope that in the time left funding is found from somewhere in Wales. I hope also that there is a partnership that can achieve that.
Adam Price: Will the Minister address the issue of claw back?
Estelle Morris: Yes. The Millennium Commission would become a creditor should the botanic gardens close. Without being an expert on that, I understand that there are creditors such as banks and perhaps others that would be ahead of the Millennium Commission in the queue. The hon. Gentlemen were right to say that, if the project folds, the Millennium Commission would obviously seek to regain such money, but I think that their prediction is right in that there would be no way that it could recoup the money invested on a capital basis. I wish them well in their campaign.
11.30 am
Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

Climate Change
2 pm
Mr. David Kidney: It is a pleasure to see such an array of talent here for this debate. I like to think that the quality of those seeking to catch your eye for the debate, Mr. McWilliam, reflects the importance that Parliament as a whole attributes to this issue. It has often been considered here and in the main Chamber, not least in the very full debate on climate change and sustainable development after the publication of the report of the Select Committee on International Development on 5 December 2002—that debate can be found in volume 395 at column 313WH. Since then, there has been a series of Adjournment debates. As recently as last Wednesday, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) was here debating the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's contribution to environmental objectives.
In the few days since it was announced that this debate had been secured, I have received representations from Calor Gas Ltd. about hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants; from the Energy Saving Trust about energy efficiency measures; from the Renewable Power Association about the Department of Trade and Industry's photovoltaic major demonstration programme; and from the Woodland Trust about the contribution that woodlands can make to combating climate change. In addition, WWF provided a comprehensive brief on this subject. I have read the excellent debate pack put together by the House of Commons Library and I recommend it to hon. Members.
I requested the debate after reading Sir David King's article on 9 January in Science, which is described in the media as the in-house magazine for American scientists. In his article, he rehearses what has become the orthodox view of scientists about the recent history of climate change and its causes. He describes the 0.6°C rise in temperature and the 20 cm rise in sea levels in the past century, and reminds us that the 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1991. He goes on to explain that those phenomena cannot be explained simply by natural cycles and disturbances, so he and many other scientists conclude that they are, by and large, caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels for home heating, industrial processes and various modes of transport.
Sir David and many other scientists predict that, without intervention, temperatures will go on increasing, sea levels will carry on rising, polar ice caps will shrink, there will be greater extremes of weather, and flooding will be more frequent. However, in his article he does not dwell on a particular factor that concerns me: the possible effects on biodiversity. A study published on 8 January, which was widely reported in the media that week, indicates that between 15 and 37 per cent. of land species in the area that was studied could face extinction by 2050. Sir David concludes his article by saying:
"In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today. more serious even than the threat of terrorism".
I should add that it is also more serious than higher education funding.
In the same article, Sir David states that the UK is in the vanguard of international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. He also complains that the United
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States of America is not playing its part, and points out that, although it has 4 per cent. of the world's population, it is responsible for more than 20 per cent. of harmful emissions. Sir David therefore calls on the United States to play a leading part.
Will the Minister say what his Department and the Government are doing to reinforce Sir David's message, and what actions are being taken to persuade the US Government to join international efforts to protect the world's environment for future generations? Last week, the hon. Member for Lewes put similar questions to the representative of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who responded to the debate. It is useful for us to keep bringing pressure to bear on all Departments that can influence the US Administration to do so.
Mr. John Gummer: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we have several times asked Ministers whether they have raised these matters with their opposite numbers in the United States? Almost without exception—I say "almost" in case I have forgotten an occasion—they have admitted that the subject has not come up. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it should be on the list of every Minister and civil servant to ask the question each time they meet their American opposite numbers, so that the United States becomes aware of just how seriously we view it, not only in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs but in Departments from which they would not expect it?
Mr. Kidney: The right hon. Gentleman amplifies my message with great power, for which I thank him. In fairness, I should add that in the response to last week's Adjournment debate, which I mentioned, and in the most recent oral questions put to DEFRA, it was confirmed that there were specific points of contact between British Government officials and Ministers and members of the US Administration. The situation may not be quite as woeful as the right hon. Gentleman would portray it, but he and I promote the same message. As well as making the point in this debate, I have written to the Prime Minister to make it at the top of Government.
We in this country are doing our best to contribute at international and local levels. Internationally, the Kyoto protocol has the Deputy Prime Minister's fingerprints all over it. At the talks, our delegation led the negotiations that led to the legally binding agreement to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases. If Russia ratifies the protocol, targets for reductions will become effective, and an emissions trading scheme can begin. Will my hon. Friend the Minister tell us, as far as he understands it, what the Russian Government's current position is on ratification, which would help us to bring the protocol into effect?
In this country, we have already passed primary legislation for the UK's national emissions trading scheme, and we have approved secondary legislation to give effect to the European Union directive on emissions trading throughout the EU. In addition to these efforts, our climate change levy is helping us to meet our obligations under Kyoto.
What scale of reductions do we need? Under the UN framework convention on climate change, we are seeking international commitment to reduce carbon

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dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. In the developed economies, we are seeking to cut emissions by up to 60 per cent. from their 1990 levels by 2050. We also need to engage developing countries and persuade them to make efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. That will be another great challenge—one that was highlighted in a debate on the report published by the International Development Committee and in the brief given to me by WWF.
As a staging post towards that very challenging target for 2050, the EU accepted a legal target under Kyoto of an 8 per cent. reduction in emissions by 2008—12 from a base of 1990 emissions. The UK Government accepted that the UK's share is a national reduction of 12.5 per cent. In addition, Labour in government is aiming for a 20 per cent. reduction by 2010.
At home, we are working to meet these targets. National policy includes reducing energy consumption and increasing the proportion of energy supplied from renewable sources. In his article, Sir David points out that such environmentally friendly policies do not have to interfere with economic well-being, and that our economy grew by 30 per cent. between 1990 and 2000. Employment rose during the same period by 4.8 per cent., yet our greenhouse gas emissions intensity fell by 30 per cent. and our overall emissions fell by 12 per cent. The UK climate impacts programme, funded by DEFRA, helps organisations such as businesses and councils to assess how they might be affected by climate change. Of course the programme's climate change scenarios present us with four possible future climates for the UK based on different levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and the worst-case scenario is quite frightening.
The work by the climate impacts programme is picked up regionally and locally. A regional example from the west midlands is that of Severn Trent Water and the excellent midlands environmental business club. They lead a grouping of businesses that is focusing on how climate change could affect businesses in the west midlands. The aim of their work and that of similar groups around the country is to persuade businesses to adopt environmental management systems for their energy, their transport needs and their waste.
The Government are negotiating the international framework and have published their national policies on energy, transport and waste. I ask the Minister to explain today how the Government are to move on from the policy statement to implementation. What is the Minister's strategy for educating and engaging the public so that all of us take actions that help to combat climate change? By what means shall we persuade more people to think global, act local?
In that context, I ask central Government to engage with local government as powerful partners in the work. Local Agenda 21 was a great start. By the end of 2000, 93 per cent. of local authorities in England and Wales had local Agenda 21 strategies in place. While that activity has been, in effect, voluntary, developed in response to the Rio Earth summit call to arms, it is now arguably a statutory duty.
Under the Local Government Act 2000, local authorities are under a duty to
prepare community strategies for promoting the economic, social and
environmental well-being of their communities and
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contributing to sustainable development. Clearly, local Agenda 21 work should today be mainstream practice for local authorities, as part of the statutory commitment that they now have.
I want to digress slightly to say that we in Stafford have a really good local Agenda 21 team, which is exceptionally active. It has a website and I have brought a copy of its newsletter, Sundial, with a picture of the lead officer, Karen Davies, outside No. 10 Downing street at a recent reception sponsored, I think, by DEFRA.
Last November I attended the national Green Apple awards in the marquee on the terrace. National awards were given for all sorts of activities to voluntary groups, local authorities and businesses with environmental achievements. I was pleased to see that awards would be coming back to Stafford for its farm-school link education pack, its sustainable tourism tool kit "Sustainable Staffordshire", a county council computer recycling scheme and a local business, Talbotts heating, for its thermal recycling equipment.
I think I can claim that Stafford is playing its part already, but what I have outlined shows that enthusiastic individuals with the right kind of support nationally as well as locally can make a difference. I want to encourage the Minister to exploit the best practice that exists around the country, and to engage every local community in the work that we need to undertake if we are to reduce harmful emissions.
Individuals can make a considerable contribution to tackling the serious threat posed by climate change, whether by reducing energy consumption at home and at work, cutting back on the use of the car and other vehicles—converting from petrol to LPG or biofuels would help, too—composting at home or recycling waste at home. On waste and recycling, I want to mention how annoyed people are in my constituency about the amount of packaging still to be found on the goods they buy or have delivered to their homes. That is a particularly strong message from Stafford residents.
Local authorities are well placed to provide their communities with leadership, information and the tools for carrying out the necessary tasks. An obvious example is recycling: those who want to recycle are assisted by councils making kerbside collections.
Many local authorities appreciate that they can make a significant contribution to reducing the national emissions of greenhouse gases. That is why 72 local authorities have so far signed the Nottingham declaration. Last year, the Minister uttered encouraging words when launching that declaration. The declaration commits local authorities to work with the Government and to contribute locally to the delivery of the United Kingdom's climate change programme. I cannot yet directly praise the local authorities in my constituency, but several neighbouring authorities in Staffordshire are among those 72 signatories. Perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity once more to commend that local government initiative and to give it his backing. Perhaps he will say how much the Government welcome the declaration, and express their willingness to develop the relationship between central and local government for the benefit of our environment.

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I know from inquiries that I made of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that a sustainable buildings task group has been established to identify what are called specific cost-effective improvements in the quality and environmental performance of buildings. I understand that the task group will consider the scope for delivering higher standards of environmental performance of new and refurbished buildings in respect of the use of water and energy, timber and other construction materials, and in waste reduction.
I strongly believe that homes ought to be capable of meeting everyone's needs, including the needs of those who are disabled and those who may become disabled through injury, illness or infirmity. Those needs include affordable warmth and the least possible use of energy resources, especially of carbon-based ones. I understand that the task group's work will be fed into the next review of building regulations. I strongly urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take a close interest in that work and ensure that the fight against climate change is alive in that respect also. I know that the matter will be uppermost in my hon. Friend's mind on Friday, because the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) will be moving the Second Reading of his Sustainable and Secure Buildings Bill, which makes much the same point.
Precisely what can be done to modernise housing standards can be seen at BedZED—the zero emissions development at Beddington corner in Hackbridge, which is on the line to Epsom. I visited it at the invitation of the architect Bill Dunster and Sue Venner just before Christmas. It gives a glimpse of what modern design and technology already allows us to do in reducing emissions to zero. However, an awful lot of encouragement and facilitation is needed before that sort of practice can be taken up all over the country.
Mr. Gummer: When the hon. Gentleman visited BedZED did he notice that the real issue is getting sufficient volume—it would not be large—to ensure that the environmentally friendly energy-saving elements of that system are competitive with what those of what one might call traditional building systems? The zero use of energy in such systems can be had at the same price as for conventional building, if not more cheaply, if only it has a sufficient headstart to get its factories tooled up to provide those elements. Would it not be beneficial if the Government helped in doing precisely that, so that we got it under way?
Mr. Kidney: Indeed, I picked up two powerful messages from my visit. The first was that that kind of development is outside the comfort zone of today's construction companies. Secondly, many of the component parts of the BedZED development come from other parts of the world because British industry is not tooled up to provide what is needed. Industry will need a greater market to have sufficient incentive to provide that. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the Government could help by giving support and enthusiastic backing to such developments. I was about
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to ask whether my hon. Friend the Minister has been to BedZED for himself to pick up those messages. If not, will he arrange to do so?
The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): By coincidence, it is in my schedule to go to BedZED tomorrow with the Swedish Environment Minister, as part of the joint UK-Swedish conference that we are hosting on environmental technologies. However, as my hon. Friend will know, it might be difficult for me to get away.
Mr. Kidney: My hon. Friend has just spoiled what I was going to say about how effective these debates must be if I raise the subject today and he visits tomorrow.
Mr. David Drew: I apologise for missing some of my hon. Friend's remarks. Does he agree that the other thing that is so important about BedZED is that it links energy efficiency not only with, I hope. a way of dealing with fuel poverty, but with the cycle to waste? BedZED demonstrates that waste must be central to any energy-saving approach—at least that is what I took away from my visit.
Mr. Kidney: The reason BedZED is so exciting is that is plugs into so many other issues. For a start, it is a partly rented, partly outright owner-occupied and partly shared ownership development, which is a good example to us all. As my hon. Friend says, the project not only features energy efficiency measures, which reduce residents' energy bills, but deals with the waste from the site internally, rather than passing it to somebody else. On top of that, some of the parking spaces for residents have charging points next to them, so that people can use electrical vehicles as well as petrol-driven ones. The whole project is very exciting indeed, but no similar developments are currently on the horizon. That is why the assistance that my hon. Friend the Minister and others can give to the architects with such vision at BedZED is so important.
I should like to turn our attention to the people alive today to whom this debate matters the most—children. The decisions that we politicians take or fail to take today will decide what kind of world they inherit from us tomorrow. Although there are many immediate demands on the minds of our young people, most take a keen interest in what their world will look like. I can give two recent examples of that from my constituency.
First, quite a large number of schools in Stafford have achieved the environmental campaigns category of eco-schools. Indeed, Encams says that Staffordshire has the highest proportion of eco-schools of any part of England. Encouraging youngsters to show an interest in sustainable development is commendable. When I visited schools such as Weston Road high school and received presentations from those on the school council on their eco-activities, it was encouraging to hear them speak with authority not only about matters affecting their local environment, such as litter, but about the national picture, the international picture, greenhouse gases and so on.
Secondly, just last Friday I answered questions from 180 year 8 pupils at King Edward VI high school in Stafford, as part of their citizenship curriculum. A large

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number of the questions asked in the session, which ran for 50 minutes, had an environmental aspect. One pupil asked directly about the ozone layer and two asked separate questions about aspects of flooding policy.
Young people have a keen interest in their environment, unprompted by people such as myself. It is right to involve them in action to tackle climate change, because they have a direct stake in the results. If young people explained why we should get things right for them, that would act as a powerful incentive to adults. I invite the Minister to consider how we can reach out to young people and engage them in the important issue of climate change. The eco-school scheme is an obvious channel. I have asked questions of DEFRA about how we use that channel effectively, but there must be many other ways too.
I realise that my speech has had a broad sweep. I began with international action, then moved on to Government policy nationally, and the actions of businesses, local councils and individuals, and now I have asked the Minister to involve children. That means not that my speech has been unfocused or poorly structured but that it reflects the seriousness of the subject. Like Sir David King, I rather think that saving the world is about as big a picture as it gets.
2.25 pm
Mr. Randall: I congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) on securing the debate. His speech was very good and he need not apologise for it. If anything, it is me who might have to apologise to the acknowledged experts around the Chamber. I shall make my contribution quick and to the point so that we can hear their wise words. In that respect, I am delighted to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), from whose presence we will all benefit. The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) and the Minister also have great expertise on this issue.
Although we hear increasingly about climate change, I am afraid that there is still a degree of scepticism among the general public about whether it exists. In the next few days, as the promised cold snap takes hold, people will say, "What are they talking about? Global warming? What do the experts know?" However, as we all know, it is not an outlandish theory that has been put forward by some academics in an ivory tower. We must all take it seriously.
In The Independent on Sunday, I read a rather worrying article, according to which the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the United States has
"uncovered a change 'of remarkable amplitude' in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic."
Put rather simply, the Gulf stream could, in effect, shut down. As a result—I remember this from my days of geography at school—the UK's climate would become more akin to that of Labrador in Canada, and we would have vast tracts of tundra and winter lows of minus 20°C. Thus, some predictions say that our climate will become increasingly warm while others say that we will enter a new ice age. That is perhaps why the public are sometimes a little sceptical about what experts say. None the less, I take the issue very seriously, as do others who are taking part in the debate.
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Although global warming directly affects all our lives, I want to talk a little about its impact on biodiversity. Climate change is the greatest single threat to wildlife worldwide and might drive a quarter of all land animals and plants to extinction if people do not take drastic measures to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. At least one species—the golden toad in Costa Rica—has already become extinct because of climate change.
The intergovernmental panel on climate change estimates that the earth will warm by a further 1.4°C to 5.8°C in the coming century, disrupting human society, wildlife and the environment on which we all depend. That far outstrips the rate of previous temperature changes, which occurred at an evolutionary pace, giving nature time to adapt. In the 21st century, temperature rises that previously took thousands of years will take place in the span of a human lifetime. That raises the concern that, in many cases, wildlife will struggle to adapt and survive.
There is already evidence of the effects of weather changes on the life-cycle of birds and other wildlife. For 30 years, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has run a UK volunteer network to record trends in nature's calendar. People record annual events such as the budding and leafing of deciduous trees and the first appearance of bluebells, frogspawn and bumble-bees. The network's long-term data show that spring definitely arrives earlier. For instance, swallows now arrive a week earlier than they did in 1970, and butterflies such as the comma and the holly blue are also appearing much earlier. However, leafing trees, the insects that rely on fresh leaves and the birds that rely on those insects have adapted at different rates. Some have shifted out of phase. I understand that nestlings of blue tits and other species on some of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds' reserves have starved because the glut of early spring caterpillars that they rely on has finished before the young have hatched.
As global temperatures increase, local weather patterns will change. In the UK, we may have more storms and the winters will become warmer and wetter. Summers will become warmer and drier, especially in the south-east. Birds will not only respond to the weather, but to the effects of weather on their habitats. Let us take the redshank as an example: a once-widespread breeding wader in the United Kingdom, its habitat has already been harmed by the drainage of land for agriculture. The redshank nests on coastal salt marshes, wet meadows and moorlands. All three of those habitats are threatened by climate change. Hotter summers will dry up moorlands and wet meadows, while rising sea levels and the increasing ferocity of winter storms pounding the coast will erode the salt marshes and flood coastal land. The poor old redshanks will lose out in all ways, and they are not the only ones.
We can map present and future areas with suitable climatic conditions for many species. Warming conditions will require birds to move to areas that resemble their usual climate space. For most species, that will mean expanding their range northwards or upwards in the UK. Birds that now breed only just inside Scotland, such as nuthatches and green woodpeckers, may now extend their range far into Scotland. Some birds that are currently limited to continental Europe could begin to gain a foothold in southern England.

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Such simple adjustments are not enough. The habitat must be suitable as well as the climate and it must contain all the birds' needs, such as food and nest sites. Although it is self-evident that birds can fly—although some species, like the willow tit, are sedentary and seldom fly far—heathland plants, reptiles and other species, such as the minute flora and fauna of the soil on which much other life depends, cannot fly away. They would find the move north more difficult, a problem that would be greatly aggravated because human beings use so much of the land across which they would wish to move.
Species will move at different rates, depending on how near they are to the edge of their ranges. We may lose some of the highland species in the north of Scotland, such as dotterel, ptarmigan and snow bunting, as they are squeezed higher up the hills. Eventually they will cease to breed in the UK, because there will be no suitable habitat.
Only one bird is found in the UK and nowhere else in the world, and that is the Scottish crossbill. It lives in the old Caledonian pine forests in the Scottish highlands. The precise climatic conditions and habitat that it needs will have disappeared in Scotland by the end of the century. The backbone of nature conservation policy worldwide is site based—in other words, it consists of plots of land that are set aside to conserve particular species. That policy will need to be adapted in a situation in which species are likely to move and ecosystems change. There will have to be corridors or stepping stones to permit species movement.
Unfortunately, implementing such measures may be hard in a fragmented landscape. Land use policies, such as the common agricultural policy, must be developed to extend conservation management for climate change across the wider countryside. I am grateful to have had this opportunity to raise a small aspect of the many perils of not taking the problem seriously.
2.34 pm
Mr. David Drew: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) for choosing this debate, even if he did not quite realise the auspicious day on which it would take place.
I shall raise two specific points, as they need to be highlighted. I apologise again for missing some of my hon. Friend's introductory remarks. My points are crucial in providing a mechanism for action on climate change in this country. Let us give the Government credit: we are at the forefront of this subject—no other country can pride itself on having introduced a panoply of measures such as ours.
My first point relates to the apparent lack of co-ordination and the impact that that can have. Given what the Government have tried do in the related areas of energy efficiency and fuel poverty, they ought to have a good story to tell. They should not congratulate themselves—they do not need to do that—but they should receive plaudits from people who have benefited from policies such as Warm Front. It is disappointing that that is not happening as readily as one would like. That is partly because those who are benefiting are confused—the rest of the public certainly are—about
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how the policy is working. That is dangerous because we could find, as we did last year, that the budget is cut. I know that some, particularly Lord Whitty, fought incredibly hard to get the money back, which brought home to some of us how vulnerable the policy was. If we are to make the micro-changes for climate change that we want, we must hold the line on initiatives such as Warm Front that, in the main, affect older people in older properties, and consider big time, for the first time, how we can enable such people to have a quality of life while staying in their properties without burning energy, which is very wasteful.
It will be good to hear from the Minister what measures we can take to ensure that Warm Front gets its proper credit and is not subject to budgetary cuts, and how we can go further. I know that discussions are under way across the parties—we all want to make progress on the issue—but unlike other parts of the budget of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Warm Front is not within the statutory framework, which means that it is always subject to the pressures of budget overspend. I am sure that the Minister gets my drift and will give me some positive news. However, we have to keep the initiative in mind or it could be sacrificed.
My second point relates to the robustness of the system. Like me, the Minister spent many hours on the Waste and Emissions Trading Bill. We probably spent about 95 per cent. of the time on the waste bit; the emissions bit went through not without scrutiny, but without controversy. The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) also spent many hours debating that Bill. It is good to have cross-party agreement, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the matter did not receive much attention because it is complex, and we need to think more about how it works.
Let us consider what happened on the back of the recent collapse of TXU. That had dramatic implications for the energy market, not least the way in which, because of the climate change levy, companies buy and sell to offload the impact of their obligation. For some months, little normal trading has gone on. That has caused some consternation about whether the system can do the things that we want it to do. Will my hon. Friend the Minister consider what has happened as a result of working with the current inadequacies—I know that the Government are addressing them in the Energy Bill that is now in another place—and how we can learn from that and make progress on emissions trading? We must try to ratchet up what we are doing so that we make a real difference in both the macro-economy and the micro-economy.
2.40 pm
Norman Baker: I congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) on securing the debate, the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on offering useful and salient facts about biodiversity, and the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who, in my humble opinion, is very sound on these issues. The hon. Members who have spoken thus far are guilty of false modesty; their contributions have greatly contributed to the debate.
The hon. Member for Stafford began by obliquely referring to the debate in the main Chamber—I was tempted to call it another place. It is sad that what

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should be the main debate—climate change—is taking place here when the important, but transient, subject of student fees is being discussed elsewhere in the glare of much publicity and with the great involvement of Members. What we are discussing is perhaps the most important issue for everyone in the House and beyond.
The public, local authorities, Government and international community must be galvanised so that we can find a way to get to grips with this issue and to agree a strategy that will prevent the worst things that are in line to happen from happening. The hon. Members for Uxbridge and for Stafford rightly referred to the report on biodiversity and the horrendous possibility that up to 37 per cent. of species could disappear in the next 45 years. That we are facing that situation is salutary; it is also an indictment of mankind. What could be more serious than that? There are ethical aspects to the loss of species for ever as a consequence of mankind's behaviour. There are also issues to do with our contribution to that and the implications for human life of the disruption to the natural chain of life that will entail.
This is a serious subject. Although matters such as top-up fees are important, they pale into insignificance in comparison. We need to find a way to bring it to people's attention and to galvanise them to act. We should analyse why they do not act and why the media do not focus on the subject. I am sure that I am not the only hon. Member who speaks to journalists about environmental matters. They reply, "It is not newsworthy. It has been done. We have written the story of the world warming up and species disappearing. Where is the new angle?" It is as if once the story has been written, the importance of the subject is lost. If I want to make flippant comments about Cherie Blair's hairstyle—which I do not—I could get myself copious column inches in many of the tabloids, but if I want to make a serious point about the environment, it is an uphill struggle to get anyone interested enough to find space in their paper.
We must galvanise the Government. I do not want to knock them on climate change. There are other things to knock them for, and they have quite a good record on Kyoto and climate change. They have done some worthwhile things. They are ahead of other Governments in many respects. I want to be fair about that. However, there is a problem: they do not shout about that. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has not made a normal statement on the environment since July 2002, except to mention it at her Department's questions. We do not hear about the subject from the Prime Minister or from anyone apart from the worthy Minister for the Environment, for whom I have tremendous respect, and his predecessor. Where are the Government's announcements on climate change and the environment? It is almost as if they want to do the right thing, but are frightened of saying so in case industry, or someone else, is upset. We must fundamentally understand both the importance of the topic and the willingness of industry and the public at large to embrace it.
If we believe a report in The Independent on Sunday—not the one referred to by the hon. Member for Uxbridge, but a different one that the Minister knows about from this morning's debate on the water
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framework directive—there is a fear that the Prime Minister is trying to cut down the Environment Agency's expenditure on water pollution monitoring to cut bills or appease industry. What a short-term policy that is—if indeed that is the policy.
It is a false economy to think that cutting expenditure on the environment helps the economy. It does not work that way. The evidence shows that the forward-looking economies of the world link the environment and the economy together strongly and give incentives for the development of technology and basic housekeeping matters. A firm that switches off its toilets over the weekend when it is closed is also helping the environment and it sometimes saves substantial sums. We do not make enough of those simple connections. The Government have a role in pushing such things more than they do.
Mr. Kidney: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but will he consider whether the Government are enthusiastic about getting the message to the public? I think that the public have the appetite for the message. Is the complexity of the subject part of the difficulty? We have heard about the questioning of the science on climate change and the difficulties of understanding emissions trading. Does he think that we have an obligation to make the messages understandable so that the media will carry them?
Norman Baker: Yes. It is not simple. There are uncertainties. However, the Government employ a large number of people to make complex messages simple. I will not mention spin doctors, but if they were used for that purpose, I would wholly welcome their activities.
It is worth putting on the record that Sir David King said:
"In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism".
The Prime Minister has rightly been active in dealing with the threat of terrorism, but I am not clear what he has done to deal with this greater threat identified by his chief scientist on climate change. I do not make that point flippantly. For example, have we used our international platforms—whether in the UN, the Commonwealth, or NATO—to push the United States in particular to give a lead? What chance is there of persuading countries such as China or India to behave as we would wish them to if the greatest polluter of them all—the United States—says "We are going to take care of ourselves. We are not really bothered about the world outside. We have this fortress mentality"?
It is worth bearing in mind that this Government and the previous Government, under the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) and others, took steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. We have done that in this country and, by and large, we are doing it across the European Union. However, while that is happening, the idea that the US will cut emissions by 6 per cent. has been knocked on the head. Indeed, from 1990 to 2002 emissions from the US increased by 16 per cent. The US is already responsible for 36 per cent. of carbon emissions across the world. More than one third of those emissions come from the US and they are still increasing like billy-oh. It is difficult. I do not know what the answer is. There must, however, be concerted

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pressure from friends of the United States—we count ourselves as one of those—to try to get that country to adopt a more responsible attitude.
The US is not playing its part. I come back to Sir David King, who says:
"As the world's only remaining superpower, the United States is accustomed to leading internationally co-ordinated action. But at present the US Government is failing to take up the challenge of global warming."
Those are serious words from somebody who is not a politician or a member of a pressure group. Sir David is the Government's chief man in a white coat. He is there to make calm, sensible pronouncements based on fact, and that is what he says. The Government must give us a strategy to address this problem internationally with our partners. We must do more.
The Australians are also refusing to sign up to Kyoto. Then there are the Russians, who are happy because they are in a comfortable situation. Everybody wants them to sign up. No doubt they are trying to extract a price from anyone they can for them to agree to sign up to Kyoto. Kyoto is so important that if we have to pay a price to get them on board, I hope that we do. As flawed as it may be, Kyoto is the only show in town and we need it to work. As the Russians come on board, there is a chance that the Americans—dare I say it, with a different US President—might end up at some point signing up to Kyoto as well. My great fear is not the abstract notion of the treaty, but that unless we tackle this major challenge to the environment internationally, we will face all the problems that our scientists have warned us about, such as the biodiversity problems to which the hon. Member for Uxbridge referred.
We will also face something worse: unless we break our dependency on fossil fuels and have a more sensible energy policy across the world, then we will end up with resource wars, many of them involving water. In 20, 30 or 40 years' time, we could end up deploying military forces to ensure that the basic necessities of life are supplied to us and other countries that have the military might to demand them. That is not a picture of the world I want to see. We must strive hard to avoid it, and I do not see the urgency from the Government which is required.
I am not criticising the Government for not taking action, because they are, but the subject is so urgent that I want the Prime Minister to make a point of raising it. All of us in Parliament should use the opportunities we have to push the issue. When was the last time, Mr McWilliam, that you heard a question on climate change at Prime Minister's questions? I cannot remember one being asked, which is an indictment of us all. We have had very few questions on matters of significant environmental importance in that rather curious auditorium of Prime Minister's questions. We need to do rather better.
On the Government's activities, I shall be brief so that the other two hon. Members have a chance to have their say. I mentioned the targets set at Kyoto and we will, without doubt, meet our EU basket target. The question is whether we meet the Government's brave target of 20 per cent. by 2010. There was some doubt about that. Members may remember a story in the papers in
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December suggesting that the Trade Secretary was attempting to knock the 20 per cent. target down to 15 per cent., and the Environment Secretary was doing her best to resist it. I do not know the truth of that, but last week I noticed a statement saying that the Government were still committed to the 20 per cent. target. If there was a battle, I take it the Environment Secretary won. In any case, the target still exists, and it is important that we hold to it.
We also have to recognise that in some ways the easy work has been done. Coal, which caused so many carbon emissions, is by and large not used in power plants now. There have been easy gains from the switch to gas, which I hope is only a bridge fuel to something more sustainable in the longer term. It is not clear how easy it will be to reduce carbon emissions further without much work.
Industry is clearly doing its bit. Figures from the House of Commons Library show that industry emissions of carbon are diminishing quite rapidly. The domestic sector's emissions are reducing as well, albeit more slowly. However, there has been a doubling in carbon emissions from road transport in the past 30 years. There is no evidence that that increase is going to be curtailed. Indeed, the evidence is that transport generally, including aviation, is going to provide the real challenge for the Government if they want not only to meet their target but to prevent a reverse in the current happy trend of a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
What is the Government's strategy for reducing carbon emissions from transport generally? All the indications are that they have failed in that. The energy White Paper will deliver quite a lot on renewables and energy efficiency, provided that the Government stick to their commitments and put some money into both those things. I see no strategy, however, for dealing with carbon emissions from transport—no strategy that they could deliver, at any rate.
The Government's transport strategy involved road traffic reduction. There was a big campaign on that. Hon. Members will remember that back in 1997–98, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions said that he would reduce the number of journeys. He asked us to hold him to that pledge. Unfortunately, when we try to hold him to it, he seems to have forgotten that he made it. In any case, traffic volume is up 8 per cent. and I am afraid that, by stealth and in bits and pieces, the Government, for short-term political expediency, are resorting to the sort of road-building programme that I thought we had seen the back of, and which was wholly discredited in the 1990s. We are now seeing a return to such programmes, which of course will increase carbon emissions further by disadvantaging parallel public transport alternatives, in particular the railways. There is no strategy in place.
The White Paper on aviation predicted an increase in the number of airports, in runway capacity and in flights. It was close to being simply a supply-and-demand paper, in which the Government predict what will happen and provide for that. Aviation will increase and account for 30 per cent. of carbon emissions by 2030, although I might have that figure wrong. Nevertheless, a huge increase in emissions will come from aviation, an activity that is technically outside Kyoto. I hope that this Government or a future one will not say, "We have met our Kyoto targets," while

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ignoring the contribution that the airlines sector makes to carbon emissions. It would be unfortunate if they did that. We need to find a way to deal with the issue, which is one of the main domestic challenges facing Ministers.
Finally, it is worth remembering the key Departments that are involved. DEFRA has a role, and I have a lot of respect for it; it is the ally of those of us who want climate change to be controlled. We must ensure that the Treasury is on board. We need to establish the link between environmental protection and economic well-being, and for there to be much greater use of economic instruments. I read a recent parliamentary answer in Hansard that suggests that in our country a lower percentage of tax comes from environmental taxation than in virtually any other European country. We must get the Department for Transport on board for the reasons that I gave, and we must ensure that the Department of Trade and Industry sticks to its White Paper. This is a cross-departmental challenge that requires leadership from the Prime Minister.
2.57 pm
Mr. John Gummer: I point hon. Members to my declaration of interests. It is hardly possible to have any interests that are not affected by climate change, and that is a lesson for us.
I hope that what I say will encourage and support the Minister. There is a tradition, which I benefited from in my time and which I hope he benefits from now, of bipartisanship on many of these issues. If there is such a word as "tri-partisan", I am prepared to extend—unusually—an accolade to the Liberals. I know that the Minister often feels himself to be a lonely man, because there is no doubt that the enthusiasms that he manifestly has and the bravery that he has shown in defending them are not always shared by every body else in government. That has always been true.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) on securing this debate. Many of us are amazed that he is still in a position to secure a debate rather than looking after a Ministry. That is one of those mysteries that will one day be explained to me, and I would not be rude enough to list the Ministers who might find a better role elsewhere.
We are bound to be lonely in the battle because we say to the rest of the world, the rest of our parties and the rest of the Government that these issues are crucial. They would prefer the issues to be less crucial because they make demands of a kind that are not easy to satisfy. That is why I, like the hon. Member for Stafford, was particularly pleased that Sir David King wrote his article and made his declaration with such force. It is true that the world can deploy huge resources to deal with something such as terrorism, about the danger of which it is convinced. Indeed, it can provide huge resources to do wholly wrong things such as invade Iraq: it can spend vast sums of money on some things—in my view, entirely wrongly—while to a great extent it ignores the areas where expenditure might make a significant difference and do much to benefit the next generation. The world is willing to get on with a job when it is clear how important it is, yet what we are talking about links into every part of government and life, as I said in my declaration of interest.
I hope the Minister will accept that although I am putting forward a series of things that I think he ought to do, it is not because I think he does not want to do them.
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However, I recognise how hard such things are to do, and that he needs our support. Had the Minister been in the House yesterday, during a debate that was to some long and boring, owing to the nature of the subject—the
details and the technicalities of fire service reform—he would have seen a problem rear its head. For the Government were being elegantly, but none the less powerfully, belaboured for changing their fire reduction target: in 10 months' time, they were supposed to have a target to reduce fires by, I think, 30 per cent. They are clearly not going to do that, so now they have a new target to reduce fires by 10 per cent. in 10 years' time.
That was obviously a matter for questioning, and the Minister concerned, who is another caring and good Minister, said that the real problem was people setting light to abandoned cars: this had led to many more incidents, which had been hard to deal with. I had to ask why those abandoned cars were there. They are there because the Government do not use joined-up thinking and have not properly thought through end-of-life vehicle arrangements. That problem is going to get worse because the Government gave way to the car industry. Instead of saying that the car industry had an immediate responsibility for end-of-life, clapped-out motor cars, they said that for the next seven years the last owners of the vehicles would have that responsibility. Who are the last owners? I will tell the Minister: they are people in his and my constituencies who have to have a motor car to get to work. In my constituency, such people are often on lower than average incomes. That is often the case in rural constituencies. They get landed with a car that no one wants and they have no resources to deal with it. I am afraid that some of them deal with it in the only way they know—they abandon it, and abandoned vehicles cost much more to collect than would have been the case had DEFRA's voice on the right way to deal with ELVs been heard properly.
Doing the right thing environmentally often saves money in the end. The Government are unable to recognise that if money is saved here, it may have to be spent there. They seem unable to do the sums so that the Department that has to spend gets the benefit from the saving. I do not blame this Government for the generality of that; it is true of all Governments. However, I do blame them for their promise to put sustainability at the heart of government when what they have done is push sustainability off to a side of government, to DEFRA. I blame them when they link the environment with woolly animals and the countryside instead of keeping it at the centre of things, as it was under the former Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. It was right to put transport in with the environment—I honour what the Prime Minister did then. However, he went back on the excellence of that decision and gave the Minister fewer levers than one had when one also looked after local authorities and planning, and one could use various mechanisms to carry through what was necessary to deal with climate change.
End-of-life vehicles are a simple example of what we have to do across the board. In that case, the poor old fire service ended up with those vehicles on its bill. The Treasury will not link that with the fact that it made it impossible to do the right thing—to make industry

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progressively responsible for ELVs over seven years or to put in some Government money to ensure that we met the ELV requirements more sensibly.
I suggest to the Minister that the remarks made by the hon. Members for Stafford and for Lewes (Norman Baker) need to be taken seriously into account. The Government must be serious about such matters—on more occasions, more generally and more universally. I shall cite an example from today's newspapers. We are told on very good authority that the Prime Minister will try to scale back the amount of environmental work that is done in connection with water. As the chairman of a water company, I declare a specific interest. I can tell the Government that it is not the water companies that do not want to take such action. We shall get it in the neck whatever we do. If we put up the price to try to take such action, we shall get into trouble. If we do not do it, we shall also get into trouble. I admit that there is no winning line.
I am not talking about pressure from the water industry. We know that such action must be taken. The pressure comes from the unholy alliance of usually poor industrial examples pressing on the worst of Departments, the DTI, which gives way on every occasion to any sort of pressure. The DTI has announced that it refuses to support sensible proposals, even those it could easily support, such as the private Member's Bill that will be introduced on Friday. It will ask for compulsory reporting on environmental and social matters by each of the 350 biggest companies. The DTI's refusal is absolute nonsense. What is it doing? We only want information. It is only natural and reasonable to want to make sure where we are.
Whatever the Minister says and however elegantly he tries to prevent me from driving a wedge between his Department and the DTI, I know, as a matter of fact, that he wants such reporting. His predecessor wanted it. I pay tribute to his predecessor, who did a great deal of work in such matters; he had passion and flare. It was the usual suspects—the Treasury and the DTI—pretending that industry was not ready for it, which refused to take such necessary action. If we do not have proper reporting, we will not be doing what we need to do about climate change because we will not be able to point out to companies that are not reporting properly that they are not taking the right action. I look to the Government to change their mind. I hope that, even at the last moment, the DTI will be sensible about this week's debate.
What about the Government's estate? I have some interest in the matter, but it is an outrage that the Home Office, contrary to what it promised, has hydrofluorocarbons in the air conditioning installed in its new building. Can the Government be listened to if that is how they allow their procurement to operate? One of the reasons I have an interest in such matters is that I keep my ears open: I know what is happening. It is not acceptable for the Government to be in such a position. With each new or refurbished building, the Government should take the necessary steps to combat global warming.
We should ban HFCs and give industry an opportunity. With modern technology, it is perfectly possible for refrigeration and air conditioning to
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operate without the use of HFCs. If we ban them, we could make a major impact on global warming gases. Between now and 2012, 4 per cent. of our global warming gases will come from HFCs. At present, none comes from them because they are not used widely enough and they are not that leaky. The Minister must reduce our global warming gases by 16.5 per cent., not 12.5 per cent., because he must make up for the 4 per cent. extra gases that will come from HFCs.
The Minister could take the lead in Europe. The Austrians are ready to go. as are others in the Europe Union. The Minister could say that we want a date when HFCs will be banned. The motor industry has said that it would like a ban in 2012 on HFCs used for air conditioning in cars. Well, if it can suggest a ban in 2012. we know that it can do it a darn sight earlier than that. Toyota and other motor manufacturers already have the appropriate machinery in place. The Department must ask the Government to impose a ban and not to listen to the little group of people for whom everything is too much, for whom nothing can be done and for whom everything is always a matter of "competitiveness"—a
wonderful word. Britain's competitiveness depends on our being ahead, not behind, on environmental issues. That is what the Minister and the Secretary of State herself believe, so I am not fighting them. I am simply trying to help them fight the real enemies—the people who constantly prevent them from making the necessary choices.
The Government must put their money where their mouth is. Indeed, they do not even need to put any money there; they need only say here and now, in 2004, that no new equipment will be allowed to use HFCs from, let us say, 2008 and that no top-up will be allowed from 2012. The UK could do that on its own, so long as everyone is covered; we need not wait for the European Union. We could then be the clean man of Europe and start leading the rest of Europe. It is a simple matter.
There are other issues. I do not like the war in Iraq, and I voted against it. It is wrong, and I do not understand how we got into that situation. Looking around the Chamber, I know that I am not on my own in that. However, nothing that I hear from Basra suggests that what we are doing to reconstruct Iraq meets the highest environmental standards. When I look at the south and at the American areas, I do not see us taking a distinct course, although we could.
I see the same problem in the Government's dealings with the United States of America. It is true that the United States is changing our climate, and that is a matter of real sovereignty. How can we allow 25 per cent. of the world's pollution—I am afraid that Sir David King underestimated the proportion—to come from 4 per cent. of its population? How can we allow that 4 per cent. to go on changing our climate and that of our children? The European Union is right in that respect, and we should be far more concerned about supporting united EU demands so that the Americans listen to us on this issue.
There are many such steps that we could take and, in my remaining three minutes, I want to tell the Minister what I would like them to be. He can insist that every local authority and Department use their procurement system to advance such general and particular issues. Under European Union rules, he can insist that, when contracts go out to tender, every oil company is asked

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for details of what it is doing about climate change. We need a situation in which Exxon gets no contracts at all because it has had to show that it is undermining the battle against climate change throughout the world. The only thing it cares about is what goes into its pockets, so let us say, "If you want to trade in Britain, you've got to meet the corporate social responsibility standards that we demand." After the Helsinki bus decision in the European Union, we know that such proper demands can be made in the course of procurement.
We also need to reconsider the climate change levy, whose operation was ill thought out and whose effect has been disappointing. The only reason we have not attacked it is that it is difficult to attack something called the climate change levy if one happens to be in favour of doing something about climate change. However, now is the time to reconsider it.
It is also crucial that we understand the cost of not taking the necessary steps. The Minister was kind enough to allow me to see him on Thursday to talk about coastal erosion. I have just looked at maps of my constituency and seen the speed with which erosion has increased as a result of climate change. Five separate parts of my constituency are under threat from the sea, but the Government have rewritten the rules on measuring the need for coastal support and have diverted money from it. The Minister promised last summer that a whole series of things could be done, but, under the new rules, the word "urgency" has been removed from the measurement. One can no longer seek extra help for urgency, which means that all my areas are excluded from help. The Minister must put the urgency component back in. I put it to him that unless the public understand the cost of not doing something about climate change—whether ELVs or coastal erosion—they will never pay the price. The Minister must stand fast and insist that we do pay the cost of not doing something about climate change. That is the only way he will get support for doing something about it.
3.15 pm
The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) on securing the debate and on his excellent and detailed speech. It was so detailed and so well delivered that there is little to add, except on the technical side. I shall use the time to respond to the points raised by hon. Members.
I welcome the debate. I also welcome its tone, as contributions have been excellent. It is not often that we find such agreement on an issue, although some may question how far or how fast we should go and what measures should be applied. We heard some of those questions today, and I shall try to respond.
I warmly agree with my hon. Friend about the remarks of Professor King. The professor has done a great service for us all—indeed, internationally—not only by focusing on the science of climate change but by making a strong and powerful statement that attracted media attention. It is not easy to get such complex issues over to the media.
My hon. Friend asks what we are doing to reinforce Professor King's message to the United States. It is a fair question. We have already heard that the US is the biggest single polluter and that it has a responsibility to
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combat climate change, but is not doing so. There are no two ways about it: it is not pulling its weight. That is not to say that it is not doing anything—I shall touch upon that in a moment—but we are engaging with the US.
We must recognise that the US is a science-based society. It has good scientists, who recognise a good scientific case. We are engaged at all levels of science, putting our case, for which we have overwhelming evidence from such places as the Hadley centre and the Tyndall centre on long-term measurements and the evaluation of global warming. I also see the odd article—not usually from this country, although there was one in the Daily Mail. Indeed, I can see that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) has a copy. In that article, Melanie Phillips denies that such things are happening. She denies the fact that sea levels are rising. The evidence, however, is overwhelming. We have moved away from having to prove the case; we now need to deal with the most appalling consequences. In that, Professor King is absolutely right.
We seek areas of co-operation with countries such as the United States. The Prime Minister raises the matter directly with President Bush at his frequent meetings and face-to-face contacts. Right hon. and hon. Members may recall that he included the need to address climate change in his speech to the US Congress when receiving the Congressional medal. However, it was the only point in that speech that did not receive a standing ovation. Nevertheless, he rightly made it clear that it is one of his priorities.
It is Government policy to raise the matter during all bilateral talks. I was surprised to hear that Ministers are not always in a position to say that they have discussed the matter with the United States. It is certainly true that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is always raising the subject with the US. We have bilateral talks—most recently, a few months ago, at the COP9 meeting on the climate change programme—and we have also spoken to the Americans about a follow on from the Evian action plan for environmental technology. That is one area where the Americans are keen and enthusiastic.
We think that environmental, low-carbon technologies are part of the solution. The mistake would be to think that they are the only solution. Hon. Members are right to think that one must do other things—for example, reduce present outputs—but environmental technologies could have a role. The Americans are prepared to put very large sums of money into them, which is something we should welcome. We have agreed with the Americans that they should take over the next chair of the G8. They want to take forward the Evian action plan on low-carbon technologies. We follow the USA in chairing the G8, and we shall continue in that way. The idea is to keep a continuous theme through the G8, so that we can try to take things forward. That is highly desirable.
Many American states are doing quite good work on combating climate change. Some of the eastern coast states, for example, are involved in cap-and-trade schemes and we are active in a range of meetings with the USA on climate change forecasting and science. However, a political lead from the federal Government is needed. There are sometimes differences between the federal and state governments on those issues. Still, we seek to co-operate with the Americans where we can, to

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push them forward in tackling the dangers of climate change, and where they are doing good and useful things, particularly in environmental technologies, we are prepared to work with them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford asked about the move from policy to strategy and how to raise awareness. That is an important issue. We need to forge partnerships with councils and non-governmental organisations. With the Department of Trade and Industry, we financed the "Are You Doing Your Bit?" campaign, which was very useful. We need to use exhibitions and conferences, and all the various tools available to us as a Government for our communications programmes.
In our bid in the spending review 2004, we are looking at further funding for major awareness-raising campaigns in the coming years, because we recognise that this is important. I agree with my hon. Friend that combating climate change means a range of policies, including those on waste recycling and packaging. Those are serious issues and, because of what local authorities are doing, we are making progress with the impact of the packaging directive and the targets. I am encouraged by what I see, although I am not complacent.
I welcome the Nottingham declaration, and did so at the time, as my hon. Friend acknowledges. We welcome the thinking behind it and its thrust. It is important as part of awareness raising for local authorities to take it seriously. I also agree about building standards. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State joined the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to launch, jointly, the better building campaign and task force, to work on raising standards. I hope that I get the chance to see BedZED tomorrow, but if I do not I shall certainly make arrangements to go to see it later.
I agree too that it is important to engage young people. My hon. Friend may be interested to know that in my role of chairman of the Green Ministers group I have a bilateral arrangement with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who has declared himself the Green Minister for his Department. He takes that very seriously. We want to talk about how we can use our education programmes to raise awareness among young people, which I welcome.
I welcome the speech of the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall). I know of his interest in and experience of ornithology. I confess that when he used the words "Britain's endemic", I thought he was going to talk about the red grouse, which is recognised as an endemic subspecies of willow grouse. However, he is right to say that the Scottish crossbill, which is a subspecies of the parrot crossbill, is recognised as a British bird and is under threat, like a number of species in this country and globally. There are species that, as he said, this country will lose, and although they may continue to breed in other countries—some of the arctic species, for example—they are under threat in those places too.
Everything—plants, mammals, birds and insects—is under threat from global warming, as the article in Nature stated.The extent of the effect goes from the
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greatest—such as the polar bear, which is under serious threat of extinction, because of its life cycle and the changing pattern of ice movements—to the smallest, such as insects. Perhaps species that we do not even know about in this country are affected. The threat is real and present and not to be taken lightly, as I know the hon. Members who have taken the trouble to attend the debate understand.
The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) began by acknowledging that it is difficult to get coverage in the mass media of complicated scientific issues such as climate change, but then criticised the Government for not getting that media coverage. The reasons we do not get coverage are the same. We must keep banging away and it is important to make such points. However, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State got a lot of publicity when she attended the conference of parties to the climate change convention and successfully drove home the Government's message. There was quite a lot of coverage of that in the national press, but we cannot be complacent and I accept that we need to persist with the issue.
We must also engage business more. I was pleased with the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford made, because it is something that, as Environment Minister, I wish to develop further. I have talked about the environment at a number of environmental business clubs and business breakfasts around the country. I have made the important point, which the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal made, that although environmental management is often associated with bureaucracy, red tape and burdens on industry, it can promote efficiency and savings and be good for business. We have groups such as Envirowise, the Energy Saving Trust, the waste and resources action programme and the task force on sustainability that are engaged with business.
We also recognise the need for international action, which was mentioned. Countries such as China and Japan are doing good things, but we need Russia to ratify the convention. I think that Russia will do so in the end, but we should make the case and demonstrate that it is in her economic interests to do so. We are actively engaged in that.
There are of course transport issues, but we are making progress, including tax cuts on LPG and biofuels, support for hydrogen fuel cell public transport, which involves quite expensive experiments, and changes to reduce taxation for cars with smaller engines. Most new cars bought are company cars, so the tax bands have been changed to encourage the purchase of low-emission cars. We have seen some quite big changes with those financial drivers. Companies such as Jaguar have made a big thing about their low emissions and fuel economy. Those things were never associated with Jaguar before, but new Jaguars are now made with light metals, are fuel efficient and have low emissions. That is being driven by some of the financial instruments that we have introduced.
Norman Baker: Will the Minister predict whether emissions from the road transport sector will increase or fall in the next five years?
Mr. Morley: I think that in the short term emissions are likely to increase and I would not want to pretend

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otherwise. We must address that and I believe that we are doing so, through huge investments in rail, for example. We have seen a record number of passengers using the railways, but we have a big job to do and will attempt to attract more people to rail. The need to include aviation in financial instruments was recognised in the aviation White Paper. We shall have to take that forward.
Mr. Gummer: Why did the Government not announce in their aviation policy that they would introduce severe restrictions on internal flights and use the money from that to improve internal rail traffic? Doing so would make a huge difference.
Mr. Morley: I do not rule out that approach, but it is always difficult to take a unilateral approach in a global and European market. It may not be impossible to reach an agreement on aviation or bring it within the carbon-trading scheme at the EU level.
I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's support. He is known for the quality of his contribution to debates on the environment. What he says is important and needs to be listened to. He made a number of points worth pursuing about using procurement policy, which the Government are following, looking at the climate change levy—carbon trading will probably supersede that—and emphasising the costs of climate change. I shall speak in more detail on coastal policy later; suffice it to say that some people claim that the new system benefits coastal defence rather than fluvial defence. We shall go into that in more detail, but the right hon. Gentleman's important point is that the costs of not tackling climate change are huge. People who baulk at some of the restrictions and costs, of which there are many, need to take that into account.

Coventry Airport
3.30 pm
Mr. James Plaskitt: In a way, it is appropriate to finish a debate on climate change and global warming and begin another on airports, which contribute to climate change and global warming. I was anxious to secure a debate on airports to raise my constituents' concerns, and I am very grateful to the Speaker for granting one so quickly.
Coventry airport has been owned and operated by Air Atlantique since 1998. Before that, it belonged to Coventry city council, but it comes under Warwick district council for planning purposes. The Department for Transport's recently published White Paper describes it well:
"Coventry Airport currently serves a specialist role within the region, catering for business aviation, air mail and some freight".
The airport does not have a large-scale passenger operation and has no history of providing one. On the day that the White Paper was published, the airport announced that it had concluded a deal with Thomsonfly, which is part of the TUI group, to launch a budget airline operating from Coventry airport. The airline will use Boeing 737-500s and will fly to 11 European destinations, which will add 8,000 aircraft movements a year to the airport. It will also introduce night flights. The published schedule on Thomsonfly's website shows flights at 2 am, 4 am and 5 am, and no fewer than four flights between 6 am and 7 am.
Mr. Jim Cunningham: Is my hon. Friend aware that, according to press reports, there are serious concerns at Birmingham airport about the flight path at Coventry and Birmingham?
Mr. Plaskitt: I will come to that.
Coventry can offer night flights because it has a 24-hour operating licence, which some other regional airports do not have. Introducing the service will fundamentally change the nature of the airport, which is why I raise the matter, and it is creating understandable alarm and concern among many of my constituents who live extremely close to the airport. The service is due to start in about eight weeks' time and will be at full throttle by May this year.
The airport began its life as a second world war aerodrome. Today, it is a single-runway airport, which is home to several small flight training and freight operations. I should not forget to mention the airport's quaint collection of disused railway carriages and rusting locomotives, which are partly surrounded by a dilapidated chain-link fence that, even today, would hardly deter a handful of passing curious sheep. Yet we are being asked to believe that in a very short space of time, this airport will begin handling 2 million passengers a year and will deal with all that that involves. It is therefore unsurprising that the airport has lodged a planning application for a brand new terminal and associated car parking, but it is very surprising that the service is about to start without them. Indeed, Warwick district council's planning department will not even consider the application until about four weeks before the first jet is due to scream over my constituents

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in Bubbenhall, a village just the other side of the aforementioned fence. All that activity is due to start out of temporary buildings.
I understand the allure of cheap flights to the Mediterranean, and I am sure that many of my constituents make good use of them. I have nothing against Thomsonfly trying to get into the business; I totally understand why it would want to do so. However, it should not do that out of Coventry airport. What was the point of the Government's consultation exercise? What is the point of the White Paper, "The Future of Air Transport", which was supposed to set out a strategy? It clearly says that expansion to meet anticipated increases in demand for that sort of travel in the west midlands should be met at Birmingham and East Midlands airports. The budget airlines already operate from those places, so I am far from persuaded that Thomsonfly needs to start the service out of Coventry airport. I understand that it is also talking to about 20 other regional airports in the UK, none of which is a former second world war aerodrome and all of which are established and have the necessary infrastructure to start a budget airline operation. The only possible reason for starting at Coventry is because it is cheap: it has nothing to do with the Government's air transport strategy and everything to do with quick profit for one company.
I want the Minister to address some specific issues, the first of which is the capacity of Coventry airport. Planning documents show that it currently has a runway of 1,610 m, which is close to the operational minimum required for Boeing 737-500 aeroplanes. Birmingham's proposed short runway is to be 2,000 m. Work is already under way to extend the runway, but there is a serious issue as to whether that is within the airport's permitted development rights. It is trying to add runway-end safety areas. I am told that the airport will submit a report to the aerodrome standards department, which will indicate runway extensions of 90 m, but the recommended length for runway-end safety areas is 240 m. For it to reach that length, major alterations to the runway would be required, for which the airport would need planning permission. That planning permission is not being sought.
The next main issue that I wish to raise with the Minister is that of airspace conflict, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) mentioned. Birmingham's runway is aligned at magnetic bearing 150° 33, whereas Coventry's runway is aligned at 51° 231, which means that they are at right angles to each other. There is crossing air traffic from the two airports and the runways are just 13 miles apart.
In the run-up to publishing the White Paper, the Government consulted on the Rugby option. If that option had been allowed, Birmingham airport would have had to close because of the conflict of air space, yet the Rugby site is 17 miles away, while Coventry airport is just 13 miles away. I accept that the Coventry development is not of the scale that we would have seen had the Rugby option gone ahead, but the fact that airport closures were envisaged in that area during the
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consultation serves to underline how tight the airspace is and, therefore, how serious the potential for airspace conflict.
Coventry airport is beneath the lateral limits of Birmingham's control area, and Birmingham National Air Traffic Services controls the traffic movements in and out of Coventry. There are certain operational freedoms for flights in and out of Coventry up to about 2,000 ft and for a radius of 2 nautical miles. That area goes over about 1,000 homes in my constituency. The fact that the two airports are so close together already leads to delays arising from the airspace conflict. We should remember, in the context of what might be about to happen in Coventry, that Birmingham airport has been cleared to get a second runway. Its passenger volumes are growing at a rate of 10 per cent. a year. If there is air conflict between the airports now, what will it be like if the projected rate of expansion takes place at Birmingham and this budget operation starts to operate out of Coventry?
Mr. Jim Cunningham: In relation to those flight paths, I am sure my hon. Friend is aware that some years ago an aircraft came down on a housing estate in Willenhall in my constituency. Several of the crew were killed. As a result, people are apprehensive about any developments there. In particular, they are concerned about that flight path and whether traffic flow will increase. The flight path is very low.
Mr. Plaskitt:My hon. Friend is right. Many of my constituents recall that accident and it underlines their concerns.
I want to draw other issues to the Minister's attention. Are the instrumentation standards at Coventry airport and the instrument landing system up to par for the introduction of such a service? There are also security issues to do with the airport. What work is the Civil Aviation Authority doing in respect of the proposals, and what is it aware of? Does it have any concerns about the commencement of such an operation from Coventry? Our fears are that once the Thomsonfly operation starts it could expand even further. This is, after all, an airport in search of revenue and it has a 24-hour operational licence.
Andy King: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Plaskitt: I will give way to my hon. Friend, in whose constituency the airport is located.
Andy King: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate, which is important for all constituencies that surround the airport. At least four, and perhaps as many as seven, hon. Members represent constituencies within a mile and a half of the airport site. All our colleagues are extremely alarmed about the way in which Coventry airport has acted. It seems to be behaving without responding to calls for consultation and without involving the communities or Members of Parliament affected. I am concerned about the night flights and the fact that Coventry airport believes that it is under no constraints, so undermining the proper

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development of Birmingham and East Midlands airports as set out in the White Paper. We need the Minister to take appropriate action.
Mr. Plaskitt: My hon. Friend is right. He, I and all other hon. Members whose constituencies border on the airport are besieged by our constituents on the matter. That is why we are so anxious to raise the issue in the presence of the Minister and to seek reassurances.
I think that I speak for all of us when I say that we heaved a collective sigh of relief when the Rugby option was turned down after consultation. However, for my constituents in Bubbenhall, Weston under Wetherley, Cubbington, Radford, Whitnash, Leek Wootton, Hill Wootton, Hunningham, Offchurch, Leamington and Warwick, there is a nearer and far more imminent threat than we ever considered possible when we objected to an international airport at Rugby. What makes it even more galling is that it was not part of the consultation; it was never part of the White Paper strategy. Indeed, it is important to put it on the record that the White Paper says that we should
"not envisage any significant further development"
at Coventry. However, the development, which is imminent, could not be more significant for my constituents and those hon. Members present. As far as I can tell, the TUI group is forging ahead, seemingly regardless of the strategy in the Government White Paper, of local planning decisions and of the quality of life of our constituents.
We cannot leave the matter purely for the planning department of Warwick district council to determine. The issues are far bigger, far wider and extremely important in the context of the Government's overall strategy. It is for that reason that I urge the Minister to intervene fully in the matter and not ask us to leave it merely to the decision of the local planning authority. I ask him to do so on behalf of my constituents, but also because I think that it is important that he defends the strategy outlined in "The Future of Air Transport" and defends my constituents' sanity.
3.45 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Tony McNulty): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt) on having raised some important issues and on having expressed so eloquently the concerns of many of his constituents about the proposed expansion of operations at Coventry airport. I recognise also the contributions and concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham), as I do those of my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Andy King), in whose constituency the airport lies.
In December, my Department published "The Future of Air Transport", the first aviation White Paper since 1985. It is probably the first ever comprehensive, detailed and substantive White Paper—the rest were all just catch-up documents—so it is long overdue. Its purpose is to establish a strategic national policy framework for the development of airports in the United Kingdom over the next 30 years. It will provide the context for future planning decisions and allow the air transport industry to plan and invest with confidence.
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I know, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington has said, that all hon. Members in the area, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth, were mightily relieved that we did not pursue the idea of a new airport between Rugby and Coventry—that was made rather well known to us on the day of publication of the White Paper and subsequently—but it is important to emphasise that the White Paper neither authorises nor precludes any particular development. Planning applications for airport development need to be taken through the town and country planning system in the normal way. The policies set out in the White Paper constitute an important material consideration that will inform the determination of specific planning applications. Paragraph 9.31, to which my hon. Friend alluded, does precisely that in relation to Coventry.
The White Paper concluded that there is a clear need for additional runway capacity to serve the midlands region, and that that need would best be met by an additional runway at Birmingham airport—the airport operator's proposal. That is a refinement of the wide-spaced runway option on which we consulted, and reduces the severity of a number of important impacts for very little cost in capacity. The White Paper also supported the full utilisation of runway capacity at East Midlands airport, but said that any commercial development at other smaller airports in the region should be subject to local consideration and determination.
The White Paper recognises the specialist roles that Coventry airport performs in the west midlands—serving the business aviation, mail and freight sectors in particular. I know that its capability to handle small, just-in-time freight consignments is particularly valuable to the motor industry in the region, and that it has an important role as the international hub for Parcelforce operations. Coventry can continue to perform that role, subject to its existing constraints.
As a long-established commercial airport, Coventry does not require specific planning approval for the operation of a programme of scheduled flights such as that proposed by Thomsonfly. However, the planning position is less clear in respect of the terminal facilities that are required to serve those flights. I understand that services will initially use temporary facilities for the processing of passengers and their baggage, and that the airport operator considers that planning consent is not required for those arrangements, as it has permitted development rights under paragraph 18 of the general permitted development order. It is, in the first instance, for the local planning authority, Warwick district council, to consider whether it agrees with that view.
Mr. Jim Cunningham: I notice that nothing has been said about the potential for major traffic problems, particularly round about Tollbar island. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth and I lobbied the Minister's predecessor because of the traffic problems on the island—safety and so forth. As a result, traffic lights were installed. There could be a major traffic problem for the island and the surrounding villages.
Mr. McNulty: If my hon. Friend will indulge me, I shall return to the broad issue of capacity. Importantly,

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however, security officials from the Department for Transport will wish to be satisfied that the temporary facilities are fit for their intended purpose before operations can commence. They are currently discussing with the airport matters such as the effective segregation of passengers, the screening of passengers and baggage, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington has suggested, perimeter security. Department officials will wish to meet again with both the airport and Thomsonfly, and to carry out further inspections to ensure effective compliance with legal requirements before services can commence—legal requirements above and beyond any unfolding planning processes.
Clearly, if the Thomsonfly operation is to grow to the proposed 2 million passengers per year, more substantial permanent terminal facilities will be required. The midlands consultation document, which the Department published in July 2002, looked at the potential of Coventry as an overspill airport to help accommodate demand should Birmingham remain a single-runway airport. The analysis indicated that if there were no constraints to capacity, Coventry could be capable of attracting between 6 million and 10 million passengers per year. However, that would generate large-scale impacts of land take, noise exposure and surface access difficulties, especially congestion on the A45 and the A46—matters of concern, as my hon. Friend suggested.
The consultation process highlighted the potential issue of airspace interaction between Coventry and Birmingham airports, and responses received showed little support for significant expansion of Coventry and significant opposition from both key stakeholders and local respondees. The White Paper therefore made it clear that, having regard to the potential constraints to the growth of Coventry—surface access, noise and airspace capacity—and the decision to support the expansion of Birmingham airport, the Government do not consider that the significant development of Coventry airport beyond the 2 million passengers per year capacity of the current application would be appropriate.
As my hon. Friend said. however, the current planning application was with Warwick district council while the Government were coming to their decisions on airport capacity. The White Paper is rightly silent on the current scheme, just as I can say nothing today on the merits of the application. That does not imply that the Government have a view either way on the application. It means that we believe it to be a matter for determination by Warwick district council as the local planning authority in the first instance.
Andy King: My hon. Friend may be coming to this, but what concerns residents and Members is the way in which night flights have been introduced. I understand that other airports, such as Birmingham, do not have international night flights for passengers because of their consideration for the local population. Will my hon. Friend say what can be done to constrain night flights?
Mr. McNulty: If this is not what prevails, I shall let my hon. Friends know, but I understand that Birmingham
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is designated by the Department for Transport and that a range of controls therefore come into play—unlike at Coventry and East Midlands airports. I am not anti-Nottingham when I persist in calling it East Midlands airport; it is a name known by everyone and we are still coming to terms with the new name.
As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington, in the first instance, and rather like East Midlands airport, such matters as noise mitigation, night flights and the other elements that are of concern are to be determined locally. If we are not satisfied with what prevails locally as such airports expand, we reserve the right to designate controls as we see fit. Coventry is not yet in that position, and given the plans for some degree of expanded capacity, East Midlands may or may not be. However, a relatively successful local agreement is in place—it is not shared by all—for limited night flights, not least for freight which is clearly important. In the first instance, it is for Warwick district council to determine the application. I cannot comment on that, but should it require advice on technical issues such as possible airspace interactions, it will be for the council to seek advice from National Air Traffic Services Ltd. and the CAA's directorate of airspace policy.
Another technical issue raised by my hon. Friend is whether Coventry's instrument landing system is adequate for the Thomsonfly services. I understand from the Civil Aviation Authority that the airport is replacing its ILS, although the new equipment will still be classified as category 1. That is perfectly acceptable for normal airport operations and is the standard equipment at most of the country's regional airports. Indeed, I am told that fewer than a dozen airports in the UK have equipment of a higher category. The CAA's air traffic services standards section has responsibility for approving and checking ILS equipment used at UK airports.
I am aware that Coventry airport is also seeking to reduce the height of trees in the vicinity of the airport in order to comply with the CAA's obstacle clearance requirements. Concerns have been expressed about the ancient woodland at Willenhall wood. Should the airport operator be unable to reach agreement with the landowners concerned, they would need to apply to the Secretary of State for the grant of powers under section 46 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 to control the height of the trees.
In conclusion, there are a number of important issues associated with the proposed expansion of operations at Coventry airport, and they will clearly be of great concern to the constituents of my hon. Friends who have participated in the debate. The timing of the proposals and the pressing planning application meant that we were unable to address those issues in the air transport White Paper. I have dealt with some of those issues today, but the responsibility for considering the planning aspects of the airport's growth currently lies with Warwick district council.
Mr. Plaskitt: I understand what my hon. Friend says about the issue being for Warwick district council to consider. In a narrow sense that is correct, because there are planning issues that fall within the ambit of the council's authority. However, our concerns run wider than that. I do not think that Warwick district council is the right body to consider, say, air travel and the

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interaction among Coventry airport, Birmingham airport and East Midlands airport, which are in close proximity to one another. The council will consider only the narrow issues that arise over Coventry. We should ask what the right aviation strategy is, as opposed to whether the application meets the planning requirements. We need a different perspective, which I hope could come from my hon. Friend's Department.
Mr. McNulty: In the first instance, due process must prevail with the planning application. That must take account not only of paragraph 9.31 of the White Paper, but of the wider strategic context of the White Paper, as my hon. Friend said.
I should like to make a rapid correction. I thought that I was on shaky ground earlier but went ahead anyway, as is my wont. Birmingham is not designated, although localised controls restrict night flights. I apologise if I inadvertently misled the Chamber.
In conclusion, and to relate as closely as possible to what my hon. Friend has just said, once Warwick district council has dispatched the planning application and I am free to talk more widely, I will happily discuss matters further with my hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington, for Coventry, South and for Rugby and Kenilworth—not least those matters that lie outside the immediate concerns of the application, but which I am not at liberty to discuss in more detail now. With that assurance and, I hope, due dispatch and alacrity from Warwick district council, we can discuss all the issues in the round way beyond the planning application.

Audiology
3.58 pm
Mr. Christopher Chope: The NHS audiology service is in crisis. Although the Government have decided that digital hearing aids should be available to all by April 2005, freely at the point of need, they are manifestly failing to deliver the means necessary to achieve that objective.
I make no apologies for illustrating the depth of the crisis by referring to the situation in Christchurch, east Dorset and Bournemouth. More than 7,000 people are waiting for a hearing aid assessment at the East Dorset audiology centre, which is run by the Bournemouth primary care trust. In the last period for which figures are available, between April 2003 and November 2003, the East Dorset audiology service carried out 177 hearing aid assessments a month and 150 hearing aid fittings a month. Unless something dramatic happens, those who join the waiting list for a hearing aid assessment now will have to wait well over three years before it is conducted. Even the waiting lists for those in greatest need—those aged over 90, those who have no hearing whatever and those who are war pensioners—is one year just for a hearing assessment. There is then a further period of around six months before hearing aids are fitted.
It will not surprise you, Mr. McWilliam, that the primary care trust does not publicise the fact that its current waiting time is between three and four years. It cites instead the length of time that a patient being assessed this week has had to wait. That is currently about 18 months, which is bad enough, but if a person joins the waiting list today their wait will be more than 39 months, unless something dramatic happens as a result of this debate.
I hope that the Minister will confirm that she believes, as does the primary care trust in Bournemouth, that waiting times are unreasonable and excessive. If she does not agree, can she explain the finding of the health service ombudsman in the complaint against Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust that
"it is unacceptable for patients to wait two years for a hearing assessment."
She will be familiar with that case, which is cited in the latest summary of the ombudsman's cases. If it is unacceptable for a patient to wait two years for a hearing assessment, how much more unacceptable is it that they should have to wait more than three years? If she does agree that the current waiting times are unacceptable, I challenge her to tell us what the Government intend to do to address the crisis.
One of my frustrated constituents wrote to the Prime Minister about the situation on 22 May 2003. He received a response three months later from the Department of Health. expressing horror at his hearing problems and appreciating his concern at the length of time that he had had to wait for an audiology appointment. The Department of Health official said:
"Let me assure you that the Government shares your concerns about waiting times. Their vision is to provide patients with fast and convenient access to health care wherever they use the system…Thanks to the continued hard work of staff across the NHS, steady progress has already been made. Maximum waiting times have already been reduced to twenty one weeks for a first outpatient appointment".

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That was totally misleading. The waiting time for audiology services locally is increasing, rather than decreasing, and is now seven or eight times the maximum referred to by that Department of Health official in the name of the Government.
Good hearing is fundamental to the quality of life. Elderly people in particular should not have to wait years to gain access to a service that is immediately available in most high streets, albeit at a price that for many is unaffordable. In audiology, as in so many other policy areas, there is a growing chasm between what the Government have promised and what is actually being delivered. One straightforward way of improving matters would be for the Government to pay for any NHS patient who has not received an out-patient hearing assessment within six months to have the service provided at NHS expense with a registered private practitioner.
In a written parliamentary question, I asked the Minister's colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), about the possibility of that happening, but he did not give me the courtesy of a straight answer. I hope that the Minister will remedy that situation today and will not fall back on the notion that a private sector partnership initiative, conducted by the Bournemouth primary care trust, is sufficient to deal with the backlog. In the past five months alone the backlog for Bournemouth has increased from about 5,000 to 7,000 cases, despite 300 patients benefiting from a private sector partnership. There are plans to provide a further 700 patients with treatment under a private sector arrangement next year, which I welcome, but that will make only a small dent in the backlog.
One of my constituents sent me a copy of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People leaflet for deaf and hard-of-hearing people entitled "A Good Audiology Service: What You Can Expect". Page 5 of that leaflet says that waiting times should not exceed the following:
"From date you are referred to your GP to date of first visit or assessment not more than four weeks. From assessment visit to first hearing and fitting appointment not more than four weeks."
I wrote to the chief executive of the RNID, Dr. John Low, about this. In his charming reply, he said:
"'A Good Audiology Service' outlines what audiology services should work towards, and what patients should be able to expect but does point out that not all services are able to deliver to this level at the current time."
On present trends, the East Dorset audiology service will never be able to meet the RNID aspiration—that is unless the RNID changes its aspiration from four weeks to four years.
I have attempted to ascertain whether the situation in my locality is unique or whether members of the public seeking access to NHS audiology services elsewhere in the country are experiencing similar delays. It appears, however, that the Government refuse to collect any statistics on the subject, despite having been advised most strongly so to do by the Audit Commission in its report "Fully Equipped" of March 2000.
On 5 January, the Minister's colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for South Thanet, assured me that
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"all audiology departments in England will be fitting digital hearing aids routinely by April 2005."—[Official Report, 12 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 593W.]
I then asked him if he would list those audiology departments that do not fit digital hearing aids routinely at present. On 26 January, he replied that the Department of Health does not hold centrally a list of audiology departments in England.
That is bizarre. The Minister's colleague purports to speak for all audiology departments, but when he is pressed he is unable even to list them. Will the Minister undertake to start collecting information about NHS audiology services so that she is able to back up policy assertions with facts?
I share the belief of the RNID that waiting times for audiology services suffer from not being part of the national standards for waiting times. Pressure is put on local health trusts to satisfy national standards for services other than audiology to the inevitable detriment of that service. It is well established that centrally imposed targets distort clinical priorities. Therefore, the target system should either be abandoned or it should embrace audiology. Does the Minister regard NHS audiology services as an issue of national, or only of local, importance?
On 20 January, in a written answer to a question of mine about audiology departments, the Minister's colleague said:
"It is for primary care trusts to plan these services in response to the needs of their local communities."2014;[Official Report, 20 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 1105W.]
Is that the full extent of ministerial involvement?
It is estimated that 8.7 million people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing. Currently, about 2.7 million of them have a hearing aid. The Medical Research Council has estimated that a further 3 million people would benefit from wearing one. If a national health service means anything, surely it should embrace a national plan for responding to the hearing needs of the people?
On 18 December, I asked the Minister's colleague to list, in respect of each primary care trust, the number of people waiting for a hearing assessment and the number waiting for more than six months. He responded:
"there are no targets for waiting times for audiology services".— [Official Report, 5 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 175.]
However, he also felt confident enough to say that the Government are taking action to tackle the causes of longer waits. It is well known that if something cannot be measured, it cannot be controlled. The reality is that the waits are becoming significantly longer rather than shorter.
As with so many other taxpayer-funded services, the Government are quick to brag about the financial inputs but seem far less concerned about the outputs. What is unreasonable about my suggestion that all those waiting for more than six months should be able to elect the private sector option to be paid for by the NHS? What about my suggestion that the NHS should pay for those who obtain digital hearing aids on the continent? The RNID members' magazine includes glowing reports on how UK customers can have their digital hearing aids fitted to a very high standard in Denmark at a cost far lower than in a UK high street and at a time when they need them rather than three or four years later. There is

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much anecdotal evidence that people are organising trips to Denmark so that they can access audiology services, which should be available to them in this country and provided by the NHS.
On 6 February 2003, the then Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), issued a press release entitled "Digital Hearing Aids available to all by April 2005". We may come to regard that headline as one of the most misleading ever issued. His words must have been calculated to fill a million hearts with hope. He raised expectations by saying:
"These digital hearing aids cost the NHS up to £75 per aid and will be free to all NHS patients. Similar products currently cost people purchasing privately around £2.000."
The RNID described the announcement as brilliant news and emphasised that digital hearing aids offer patients a 40 per cent. improvement in hearing and an improved quality of life.
Unless the Minister intervenes, digital hearing aids will only be available to my constituents by April 2005 if they applied in 2002. Does she think that that was what the then Secretary of State had in mind when he issued that press release on 6 February 2003? We must ensure that the reality is changed to match the rhetoric, otherwise the headline "Digital Hearing Aids available to all by April 2005" will remain a cruel deception and an indictment of this Government's integrity.
4.10 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Miss Melanie Johnson): I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) on securing today's debate. I know that he has shown a great deal of interest in this important topic, and the Government share that interest. We are investing £94 million in audiology services in this financial year and the financial year 2004–05, in addition to more than –30 million that has already been invested and that will help us to ensure that by March 2005—as he remarked—every audiology department in England will routinely fit digital hearing aids as part of a modernised audiology service.
The hon. Gentleman raised some important issues, and I hope to put them into the context of the situation in England. The progress on modernisation of hearing aid services is good news for everyone with hearing loss. That is something that will affect most of us as we grow older—if it has not already done so. I am pleased to be able to say that to date more than 140 NHS audiology services have been, or are in the process of being, modernised. Fewer than one third of the services in England still need to be modernised and we are on target to deliver fully modernised audiology services in the whole of England by March 2005. Therefore, I hope the hon. Gentleman will accept that we have a national interest in the matter. He questioned that earlier.
Mr. Chope: How is it that the Minister's Department does not have a list of all the audiology departments in the NHS?
Miss Johnson: I do not have the details of the answer to that question, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that
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the arrangements on this matter are being rolled out through a contract with the RNID, as he knows. We are working with it closely.
Modernisation of hearing aid services is an NHS success story—both for services and for patients, who are getting a better service. Let us not forget that providing an aid is not a simple process. The hon. Gentleman did not talk much about that process, but I think it is worth while bearing it in mind. A first visit in that process involves the following: a hearing test; talking to the person about hearing in everyday situations to help to decide on the appropriate aid; taking a mould of the ear; and discussing attitudes to using an aid. Later, there is a visit for fitting the aid and a further one to check that all is well and to provide training, if necessary, in the use of the aid.
In some respects modernisation makes services a victim of their own success. In areas where digital aids are already available, an increase in demand has often been noted. That, together with the increased time that it takes to assess for arid to train in the use of digital aids, puts pressure on the waiting times. As I have outlined, this is not just about giving a patient a digital hearing aid and hoping for the best. The audiologist needs to spend more time with the patient to ensure that the aid is fitted and programmed properly to meet that particular patient's needs. Therefore, we have been considering ways to increase the capacity in audiology services. I should like to talk about two of those.
The first is the "Hearing Direct" pilot, a partnership with the high street suppliers, Ultravox and Ormerod. "Hearing Direct" is a way to reduce waiting times in and pressure on audiology departments. It is being piloted at four sites throughout the country—in Chester, Exeter, Leicester and Cambridge. Under that scheme, people can use a telephone information line that gives details of local services. Patients receive a telephone call eight to 12 weeks after the fitting to assess their progress and decide whether they need another visit to the audiologist.
The national framework agreement awarded to David Ormerod hearing centres and Ultravox Holdings plc in October 2003 enables them to provide a service as an extension of the modernised NHS service. I emphasise the fact that the NHS remains responsible for the patient's care. So far that agreement involves sites in Shrewsbury, Leeds, Bradford, Bath, east Cheshire and Bournemouth. That partnership is being rolled out nationally and all modernised sites have been invited to apply for funding to implement it.
In terms of capacity, it is important that we recognise that not everyone in England is yet able to access a modernised service and there are, in certain places, pressures on services. Those pressures can best be reduced by capacity-building initiatives, such as those that I have already mentioned. In the longer term, we are addressing the recognised shortage of audiologists by establishing new degree courses.
Perhaps I should now deal with the hon. Gentleman's constituency. Waiting times for hearing aids in East Dorset have historically been longer than anyone would wish, but steps are in place to reduce them. East Dorset was the recipient of one of the second wave modernising hearing aid services in 2002–03. It has been involved in the extended learning pilot of the partnership agreement

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to provide NHS hearing aid services through a high street hearing aid company with an outlet in Bournemouth. Some 300 patients in East Dorset are currently being seen as part of the extended pilot. We expect a further 700 patients to be seen by March this year.
I anticipate that if a service supplying analogue aids to a small number of patients via a GP's surgery wishes to be able to prescribe digital aids, that would be a matter for the surgery and the local primary care trust. There are principles that I would expect the primary care trust to apply when considering whether to support such a development, including whether the service meets the same standards as the mainstream NHS audiology services, whether it unfairly advantages some patients over others, and whether it provides value for money.
The situation in Bournemouth is causing concern, particularly for the hon. Gentleman. I was interested in his remarks on measuring and controlling things. On the one hand he seemed to say that targets are a good idea, but on the other he suggested that we should not have them, and that we are always being told that we have too many targets. However, I think I heard him suggest another target.
Mr. Chope: I drew to the Minister's attention a specific recommendation from the Audit Commission in 2000 that her Department should collect data to inform itself about the state of audiology services. It is obvious from her weak response to the debate that she has manifestly failed to do that.
Miss Johnson: The hon. Gentleman's remarks lead me nicely into my second point on targets. The hon. Gentleman will, on other occasions, say that there is too much bureaucracy and too many demands on people to fill in forms. The only way in which information can be collated is if it is collected locally and sent to the centre. The hon. Gentleman and his party spend much time grossly exaggerating the number of administrators in the NHS, while taking us to task for so-called bureaucracy and administration costs. However, he is again proposing another area in which we have more administration.
The Bournemouth teaching primary care trust is concerned about the unacceptably long waiting times for audiology and is preparing an action plan to reduce those, which will include the following measures: it will ensure that guidelines are serving the modern hearing aid services appropriately and making good sense in their application; it will consider ways to minimise the patient journey time for experienced users in discussion with staff and users; it will continue with its existing programme of overtime working; and it will consider pursuing further the use of public-private partnership initiative action to address the shortfalls in the area.
As I said, there is a history of problems. If we consider the overall success nationally, I remind the hon. Gentleman that more than 140 sites and more than two thirds of NHS audiology departments in England have already been modernised or are in the process of being modernised. That is in distinct contrast to four years ago, when the NHS used 1970s technology to fit
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analogue hearing aids, many of which remained unused. The Department of Health had to intervene to help trusts bring audiology services up to date, which is another clear indication that we accept our national responsibilities while making it very clear through the shifting of the balance of power programme that the responsibilities for delivery at local level lie with local commissioners and local deliverers—namely, the PCTs and those who actually deliver the services.
Mr. Chope: Is the Minister saying she does not believe that she can do anything to reduce the waiting times? I have already told her that patients will have to wait for between three and four years if they apply today for an assessment.
Miss Johnson: It is clear that the Department monitors the performance of commissioners and providers in the NHS through the strategic health authorities. At SHA level and at the level of commissioners, as I have outlined, action is already being taken to address the shortfalls in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and related areas. The action plan to reduce waiting times, which I outlined a moment ago, is being drawn up on that basis.
We have put measures in place to modernise hearing aid services. By March 2005, every audiology department in England will provide the modernised services. To make that possible, the Government have provided central funding for new equipment and to train staff to use it. As I said, training patients to use the new aids incurs additional time costs. We hope that PCTs throughout the country will continue to commission and provide the excellent service that we know is possible.
It is worth briefly mentioning the price of hearing aids. The hon. Gentleman referred to the then Secretary of State's press notice when the digital hearing service was announced. We have driven a hard bargain to reduce significantly the price of digital hearing aids, so that they are now available to the NHS at highly competitive prices. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will accept that in the light of the comparison that he mentioned. Those prices helped us to make it possible to spread the benefits of the hearing aids much more widely and quickly. They will also make it easier for PCTs to fund them after March 2005. After that time, I would not expect anyone to receive an analogue hearing aid, except for clinical reasons. It might be worth mentioning that some people hear better with analogue aids than with digital ones. As the hon. Gentleman remarked, it is true that the aids are provided free of charge to patients.
I mentioned the collaboration with the RNID to modernise the services. Through that collaboration, the Department of Health learned many valuable lessons about working with the voluntary sector. It also showed the Department of Health and other Departments a way of finding solutions to other difficult problems. When we set out to modernise audiology, the RNID might have called itself one of our fiercest critics, yet the project has shown that even our critics can help us to improve the things that we do and to move towards providing services that are much more responsive to the needs of consumers.
Mr. Chope: I am grateful to the Minister, who has been very generous in giving way. I kept my remarks short partly so that we could have this exchange.

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Would the Minister be willing to receive a deputation from the East Dorset audiology centre in my constituency? This is almost a dialogue of the deaf. I keep asking what we are going to do about people who are waiting for between three and four years, and the Minister keeps coming out with a whole load of statistics that have no bearing on the plight of my constituents who are eager to get access to these services. We are talking not only about people who need a hearing aid, but about people who suffer from tinnitus, for example, which is a very disabling condition, as the Minister will know. Would she be willing to experience through a deputation exactly what it is like in east Dorset, and to discuss with local people how the Government and East Dorset might work together to try to achieve a solution that is in the interests of everybody living in the area? Would she also accept that the criticisms that I have voiced are not mine alone? They are shared by the RNID, which is as frustrated as I am on behalf of my constituents. We all want progress.
Miss Johnson: It is not for me to suggest to the hon. Gentleman how he might work with his local services. However, if it were my constituency, I would first address the issues with the primary care trust, looking in detail at its action plan and meeting members of senior management to talk about the issues with them and with users. He might want to pursue that locally. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), has the most direct responsibility for the service. Local issues can only be addressed locally. Given that the majority of funding is now with the PCTs and that extra money is being rolled out through the modernisation programme to support the development of digital hearing aid services, it is not for us to dictate the detail or to direct how the expenditure is deployed.
Mr. Chope: In that case, will the hon. Lady give some advice in her position as a Minister, albeit not the
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Minister with responsibility for audiology? Will she publicly advise all the PCTs that have waiting lists in excess of 18 months that that is totally unacceptable, and tell them that something must be done to reduce them to a reasonable level?
Miss Johnson: We can consider the matter of PCTs with longer waiting lists, but there might be reasons for their being in that position—they might have started from a low base, as was the situation in Dorset, with long waits the norm. There is also the time it will take and the training that personnel will inevitably require in order to implement new services. If the hon. Gentleman has explored all the options locally and believes that there is a role for the Department, I am sure that my colleague will consider carefully any request that he might make for a meeting on such a topic. It is important to recognise that we are not in a position to direct individual PCTs with devolved funding and devolved responsibilities on how best to run their services. Investigating problems locally is the most fruitful way forward—PCTs have both the money and the expertise to decide what to do.
In conclusion, audiology services in the NHS are a success story. We have improved services beyond recognition since the first pilots of digital hearing aids in 20 locations in September 2001. We have initiated degree courses to train new audiologists, we have brought down dramatically the prices of digital hearing aids and we have engaged with the voluntary sector, manufacturers and high street providers. The modernised services that are in place in most of England, and that will cover all of it by March 2005, are good news for everybody with hearing problems. As we get older, it will be good news for all of us.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Four o'clock.

SOLICITOR-GENERAL

  Domestic Violence
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Solicitor-General how many cases the Crown Prosecution Service has prosecuted on Merseyside that concern domestic violence which have been pursued by the police as primary complainant without the corroboration of the individual assaulted. [150145]

  The Solicitor-General
  The Crown Prosecution Service does not routinely collect data that show the nature of the evidence on which a domestic violence case proceeds. CPS Policy Directorate is currently analysing the results of a national snapshot survey of cases finalised in December 2003. This will provide some information about the point raised by the hon. Member with regard to cases finalised in December 2003. Until CPS case-tracking systems are fully computerised, the detailed information requested could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Serious Fraud Office
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Solicitor-General what the overall conviction rate for cases pursued by the Serious Fraud Office was in 2003. [150062]

  The Solicitor-General
  The Serious Fraud Office's (SFO) statistical information is recorded by financial year (5 April to 4 April). Since 5 April 2003, the SFO has convicted 19 out of 29 defendants, a conviction rate of 66 per cent. The conviction rate since the inception of the SFO in April 1988 is 70 per cent. (403 convictions from 575 defendants).

TRANSPORT

  Cycle Lanes
  Mr. Chaytor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what guidance he has issued to local authorities in respect of the width of cycle lanes; and if he will make a statement. [149535]

  Mr. Jamieson
  Advice on the recommended widths of cycle lanes is contained in "Cycle Friendly Infrastructure", published in 1996 by the then Department of Transport in conjunction with the Institution of Highways and Transportation and others.

  Speed Cameras
  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport pursuant to his answer of 6 January 2004,Official Report, column 216W, on speed cameras, how
  244W
  much money was raised in fines by the Essex Safety Camera Partnership for each of the five years prior to 2001–02. [147572]

  Mr. Jamieson
  [holding answer 13 January 2004]The amount raised in fines detected by speed cameras within the area covered by Essex Safety Camera Partnership between 1997 and 2001 was as follows:

  Court proceedings and fixed penalties data for speeding offences detected by cameras1,2 in the Essex police force area, 1997–2001

  Court proceedings

  Fixed penalties

  Number of fines

  Total amount (£)

  Average fine (£)3

  Number of tickets4

  Estimated revenue (£)5

  1997

  880

  93,900

  107

  18,800

  753,700

  1998

  1,700

  227,400

  134

  8,700

  346,600

  1999

  2,100

  357,400

  169

  19,800

  791,400

  2000

  2,800

  317,800

  115

  46,300

  2,007,200

  2001

  6,500

  651,200

  101

  81,900

  4.911,100

  1 Automatic cameras until 1998. All camera types from 1999.

  2 Offences under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and The Motorway Vehicles (Speed Limits on Motorways Regulations 1973).

  3 Includes fines imposed by courts (cases where fixed penalty notices were originally issued but not paid and subsequently referred to court).

  4 Paid i.e. no further action.

  5 Estimate based on £40 fixed penalty charge to October 2000. From November 2000, the fixed penalty was raised to £60.

DEFENCE

  Aircraft Carriers
  Mr. Soames
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether he will meet the March deadline for awarding the full-production contract for the CVF. [147280]

  Mr. Ingram
  The Future Carrier (CVF) programme is currently in Stage 3 of the Assessment Phase, which is due to continue until spring 2004. It is our intention that, at this point, Ministers will consider proposals on the overall CVF programme, and make a decision on when to proceed to the Demonstration and Manufacture Phases of the carriers. The target in-service dates for the carriers remain 2012 and 2015.

  Airfield Support Service Project
  Mr. Clifton-Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what part of his Department's budget the equipment and services to be provided under the Airfield Support Service Project will come from; and what the cost will be. [149058]

  Mr. Ingram
  The estimated cost of the Project is some £1.2 billion over 15 years. It will be funded from within the budgets of the stakeholders involved in the project.

  Body Armour
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many sets of body armour have been issued by the Army since 1989; to which units they have been issued, and in what quantities; how many men served in each of those units; and if he will make a statement. [149655]
  245W
  Mr. Ingram
  I will write to the hon. Member and a copy of my letter will be placed in the Library of the House.

  Foreign Defence Equipment
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many foreign aircraft, and of what makes and type, have been hired by his Department in each of the last five years. [150408]

  Ingram
  This information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Future Rapid Effects Project
  Mr. Gerald Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when he expects to announce the name of the company selected to undertake the assessment phase of the Future Rapid Effects System project; how much has been allocated to fund the assessment; and when FRES is due to enter service with the Army. [149564]

  Mr. Ingram
  I hope to be in a position to make announcements on the way ahead for the FRES programme shortly. We are planning on early variants of the system being introduced into service around the end of the decade.

  Reservists
  Mr. Swayne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many man training days were available to reserve forces in each of the last five years. [R][149407]

  Mr. Caplin
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]The number of man training days available to the volunteer reserves varies by Service, category of reserve, unit role, level of readiness, and individual trade or specialism. In each of the last five years all volunteer reservists have had enough man training days available to qualify for bounty.

  Sea King Helicopters
  Andrew George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether Royal Navy Sea King helicopters engaged in military action in the Gulf in March 2003 were supplied with(a) night vision equipment and (b) night flying aids. [150991]

  Mr. Ingram
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]Night Vision Goggles (NVG) can be operated only in aircraft that have been specifically modified for this role. Naval helicopters are fitted to allow operation with NVG according to their tactical role in operations. Of the 20 Royal Navy Sea King helicopters deployed to the Gulf, the 10 amphibious assault helicopters were fitted with NVG, as their operational role required.

  Aircrews are fully trained to fly at night without NVG under normal operating procedures. Safety is provided by a variety of other aids and by individual action. These include: operating procedures such as, air traffic control, awareness of hazards through radar detection, communications, lighting and lookout.

  Service Personnel (Osteoporosis)
  Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment has been made of the incidence of 246W
  osteoporosis in British Service personnel and military medical auxiliaries who served in (a) the 1991 Gulf War and (b) the invasion of Iraq in Operation Telic in 2003. [149606]

  Mr. Caplin
  The Ministry of Defence has no centralised system for monitoring and recording the health status of Service and ex-Service personnel. However, over 3,220 veterans of the 1990–91 Gulf Conflict have been seen at the Gulf Veterans' Medical Assessment Programme (GVMAP) to date. At the time they were seen, none had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. There are currently no data relating to the incidence of osteoporosis in those who served in Operation Telic.

ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS

  Bovine TB
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what liaison takes place between English Nature and her Department in relation to the potential disease status of badgers targeted for removal and relocation. [150580]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer on 6 January 2004,Official Report, column 249W, and on 20 January 2004, Official Report, column 1186W.

  The Department's Veterinary Endemic Diseases and Zoonoses Division (VEDZD) advise the badger licensing authorities in Defra's Rural Development Service and in English Nature, on potential bovine tuberculosis disease transmission risks associated with badger relocations. No licence is issued without first seeking advice from VEDZD.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the status is of(a) the Independent Science Group and (b) the TB Forum in relation to the control of TB; what requirement there is for her to (i) abide by and (ii) consider the advice of these organisations; and whether these organisations can veto proposals made by her Department. [150543]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB is an advisory NDPB. Its primary objective is to oversee the design and analysis of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. Its complete Terms of Reference can be accessed on the Defra website.

  The TB Forum aims to bring together experts and organisations with an interest in the Government's policy on bovine TB, to consider new measures which might be taken to control the disease in cattle.

  Ministers consider carefully the advice of these bodies in formulating policy. However, there is no requirement for Ministers or the Department to abide by their advice, nor do these bodies have any formal power to veto departmental proposals.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pursuant to her answer of 8 December 2003,Official Report,

  247W
  column 217W, how many closed herds where disease prevention measures have been judged by her officials to be adequate have suffered TB breakdowns in the last 10 years. [150551]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  Defra does not keep a record of which herds are closed and definitions of a 'closed' herd vary. Defra keeps a record of cattle births and deaths, and their movements from known locations in England, Scotland and Wales. Were a 'closed' herd to be very strictly defined, it would be possible to identify closed herds from records of holdings that only register births and deaths, but have no animal movements on. However, this could be done only at disproportionate cost.

  A survey of TB breakdowns (known as 'TB99') is under way and is designed to assess potential risk factors that may predispose herds to TB outbreaks.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pursuant to the answer of 15 December,Official Report, columns 629–30W, on bovine TB, if she will take steps to compensate herd owners for uninsurable consequential losses arising from the TB infection, where there is clear evidence of no culpability. [150846]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  There are no plans to compensate farmers for consequential losses after a TB breakdown.

  Bumble Bees
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment

  £ million

  2003–04

  2004–05

  2005–06

  Total

  Additional money to be made available via grant schemes

  9

  11

  11

  31

  Investment into research and new technology

  1.8

  1.8

  1.8

  5.4

  Development and implementation of new agri-environment and rural development schemes, including IT development costs

  27

  54

  151

  232

  Development and implementation of new Whole Farm Approach to reduce bureaucracy and burden on farmers

  2.7

  7

  8

  17.7

  IT systems to support livestock identification and tracing

  20

  48

  68

  136

  Investment to reduce the likelihood and impact of an animal disease outbreak

  25

  45

  45

  115

  Total

  537.1

  Dairy Farming
  Sir Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of the future economic viability of the dairy industry in the United Kingdom; and if she will make a statement. [148697]

  Alun Michael
  Low farmgate prices for milk have caused considerable problems over the last few years and the dairy sector faces considerable problems in adjusting to the new conditions that will be created by a reformed common agricultural policy. The Government recognise these difficulties, but believe that the UK dairy sector has a sustainable future and will work alongside the industry to facilitate and support its development in 248W
  has been made of the relationship between the size of the bumble bee population and the size of the badger population in England. [150942]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  Badgers are known to excavate and eat the nests of bumble bees and have the potential to exert an influence on the abundance of the bees locally.

  The Department has not commissioned any studies to assess the relationship between the abundance of badgers and bumble bees, nor are we aware of any research specifically examining this topic.

  Commission on Food and Farming
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how her Department's budget for the implementation of the Commission on Food and Farming's recommendations is to be spent in each year of its duration. [148441]

  Alun Michael
  The Government announced a sum of £500 million to implement the Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food as part of the 2002 Spending Review, in addition to existing spending by Defra and other Government Departments which is already being used to deliver aspects of the strategy.

  This sum covers a number of major aspects of the strategy. These include the new Environmental Stewardship Scheme (Entry Level and Higher Level) and the IT system to underpin all the England Rural Development Programme (ERDP) schemes; improvements in livestock traceability and other major animal health and welfare measures; and new food chain initiatives such as the Food Chain Centre and English Farming and Food Partnerships.

  The cost breakdown is shown in the table.

  line with its "Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food". The UK has a comparative advantage in terms of climate, farm efficiency and size over many of its competitors. If the dairy supply chain can work together to maximise this potential and address some of the difficulties it faces, then there is no reason why it should not succeed.

  Departmental Staff
  Mr. Russell Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what percentage of staff employed within her Department are over 55 years of age; and what(a) number and (b) percentage of staff recruited over the last 12 months are over 55 years of age. [145933]
  249W
  Alun Michael
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office (Mr. Alexander) on 20 January 2004,Official Report, column 1130W.

  EU Regulations (Fruit)
  Sir Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate she has made of the impact on imports of bananas from Commonwealth nations in islands around Jamaica arising from the decision of the Law Lords on the EU regulations relating to the shape of bananas. [147013]

  Alun Michael
  The House of Lords judgment in the Asda case has no bearing on imports of bananas. It confirms the validity of UK enforcement powers and has no effect on the EU Marketing Standards, whether for bananas or other fruits and vegetables, which are directly applicable under EU law.

  Fisheries
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what difference there is in mortality rates in round fish escaping through diamond mesh compared with square mesh. [149131]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  Experiments to compare the mortality among fish escaping from diamond mesh codends, square mesh codends and diamond mesh codends fitted with square mesh panels have been inconclusive. This is because the techniques used were at an early stage in development. No significant difference in mortality for cod or any other gadoid was evident between the different gears.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the estimated mortality is in immature cod entrained by commercial trawl nets which escape through the mesh. [149129]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  Experiments conducted by the FRS Marine Laboratory at Aberdeen and other European institutes indicate that the survival of immature cod 25m or more in length escaping from trawl cod-ends is likely to be high (>90 per cent.).

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the primary foods consumed by(a) haddock and (b) cod in the North Sea are; and what food they consume if their primary foods are not available or in short supply. [149132]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  Cod feed opportunistically on many species of invertebrates (e.g. worms, molluscs, brittle stars, crabs, shrimps and prawns) and fish (e.g. whiting, cod, haddock, Norway pout, plaice, dab, sprat, herring, and sandeel). Haddock feed similarly on a wide range of invertebrates and a rather narrower range of fish. In young gadoids, invertebrates predominate, but as fish become older the amount of fish in their diet increases. Diets vary very considerably in detail from one place, season or year to another. Cod and haddock may concentrate on one or two individual prey species when these are very abundant, but when such prey become scarce, cod in particular can move and switch from one species to another.
  250W
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the estimated cod by-catch from the industrial fishing fleet in the North sea was in each of the last five years, broken down by(a) percentage and (b) tonnage. [149138]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The by-catch of cod in industrial fisheries in the North sea comprises a part that is sent for reduction to fishmeal and oil, and a part that is sorted and landed for human consumption. As reported to ICES, these represent less than 1 per cent. of the total quantity of North sea cod landed.

  North sea cod: industrial by-catch, in weight and as a percentage of the total international cod landings (ICES, 2003)

  Reduction

  Human consumption

  Tonnes

  Percentage

  Tonnes

  Percentage

  1998

  400

  0.27

  530

  0.36

  1999

  100

  0.10

  230

  0.24

  2000

  60

  0.08

  200

  0.29

  2001

  100

  0.20

  125

  0.25

  2002

  30

  0.06

  100

  0.19

  Ann Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the scientific expectancy is of fish stock improvement in the North sea following the 10 per cent. cut in the sandeel quota. [146681]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The provisions on North sea sandeels agreed at the December Council of Ministers include not only the reduced quota for 2004 but also new effort regulations to improve management of the stock. Sandeels are short-lived, and the state of the sandeel stock itself is very dependent upon this year's "recruitment" of young. Consequently we welcome both the quota and effort restrictions. We attach importance to the effective management of this fishery, and will continue to seek further improvements.

  However, the sandeel fishery does affect other fisheries. It does this through the by-catch of other commercial fish (such as haddock and whiting), and through the removal of fish which are prey to other larger fish. Some by-catch is allowed for in the agreed quotas, and ICES reports that the remaining by-catch is small. A reduction in the sandeel fishery was also found to have little effect on the availability of prey to other fish. To sum up, the evidence does not suggest that the sandeel restrictions will have a significant effect on our roundfish stocks, but what effect there is should be to their benefit. However, we do not think that this is the last word on the subject and are continuing to undertake research on the effect of sandeel fisheries.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment her Department's scientists have made of the effect on cod fisheries in the North sea of heavy exploitation of sandeels. [149136]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  Exploiting sandeels could potentially affect cod through the food chain, or through the by-catch of cod in the sandeel fishery. Work is still in progress on these questions. On the food chain issue,
  251W
  large scale stomach sampling by ICES shows that cod feed on a wide range of prey species, and that for the North sea as a whole sandeels account for 5–15 per cent. of the diet of cod aged two years and older. At the North sea level, sandeel shortages tend to be short lived, and have not yet been shown to be critical for cod, but the question of more local effects needs further study. On the by-catch issue, small-meshed sandeel fishing occurs in some areas where early stages of cod may settle onto the sea bed, but sampling results officially reported to ICES indicate that the cod by-catch in sandeel landings is very low.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what types of fishing gear are used by the Scottish white fish fleet. [149116]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The main types of demersal fishing gear used by the Scottish whitefish fleet are single boat trawl, pair trawl, pair seine, twin trawl. There are few Scottish vessels operating Scottish seines, gillnets or lines.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how the fishing capacity of a vessel is measured in relation to the effect of different engine power between vessels of similar tonnage. [150900]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The capacity of fishing vessels is measured both in terms of their tonnage and in terms of their engine power. Engine power is recorded as kilowatts. The ceilings on the overall size of the fleets of each EU member state are defined as separate limits on tonnage and engine power.

  For the purpose of licence transfers in the UK the Vessel Capacity Unit is currently used. This is a measure of vessel capacity which is solely related to the physical dimensions of a vessel and its engine power:
  VCU = length (m) x breadth (m) + 0.45 x power (KW)

  It is thus possible that two vessels of the same tonnage could have different capacities when calculated under this method if there are differences in length, breadth or engine power. The Fisheries Departments in the UK are reviewing the present capacity penalty arrangements with the intention of moving to a system based on tonnage and engine power rather than VCUs.

  Common Agricultural Policy
  David Davis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how much money from the Common Agricultural Policy has gone into the Yorkshire and Humber region in each of the past five years. [143305]

  Alun Michael
  The table shows the payments made by the Rural Payments Agency and its predecessors under the Common Agricultural Policy in the Yorkshire and Humber region in each of the past five European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund years—16 October to 15 October. The figures quoted for 1999 relate to the period from 1 March of that year when the Agency introduced its new accounting system.
  252W

  Amount(£)

  1999

  147,906,481.89

  2000

  265,826,830.32

  2001

  265,162,593.53

  2002

  254,428,355.91

  2003

  256,035,777.90

  Foot and Mouth
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what conditions have been imposed by the European Commission in respect of the submission of claims for expenditures incurred and payments made by her Department in relation to foot and mouth disease. [150850]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The European Commission has been very specific with regards to the timing for the submission of the UK claims, and the type of expenditure eligible for re-imbursement from the Community for eradication of FMD in 2001. Eligible expenditure is detailed in Council Decision 90/424/EC (Article 11) and includes compensation for slaughter of animals; the destruction of milk; the cleaning and disinfection of premises; and the transport and destruction of carcasses.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what specific and general requirements are imposed or otherwise demanded by the European Commission in relation to establishing and proving an audit trail for expenditures incurred and payments made by Her Majesty's Government during the foot and mouth epidemic, in respect of sums repayable in whole or in part by the Commission. [150552]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The Commission auditors continue to carry out on the spot checks of the costs incurred during the 2001 FMD outbreak. These checks include the examination of invoices and supporting documentation in line with recognised auditing procedures.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the total value is of the claims made by Her Majesty's Government to the European Commission in respect of costs incurred in dealing with the foot and mouth disease epidemic of 2001; and what the total value is of the payments made by the Commission. [150553]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The total value of the claims made to the European Commission in respect of costs incurred in dealing with the foot and mouth disease epidemic of 2001 was £1,581 million. The maximum rate of reimbursement is 60 per cent. of these costs; so the potential reimbursement is £949 million.

  The Commission's auditors are still auditing the claim and have not indicated when they will complete their audit. To date the Commission has made payments to the United Kingdom of £238 million.
  253W
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (1) what the cost to date is to her Department of(a) auditing and (b) legal fees in respect of (i) investigating claims relating to foot and mouth disease payments, (ii) pursuing and prosecuting alleged or suspected fraudulent claims, and (iii) conducting civil actions; [150556]

  (2) what the total value is of work undertaken by contractors in respect of works commissioned by her Department and its predecessor, carried out in relation to the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001, that remain unpaid by her Department. [150559]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  I refer the hon. Member to the answers I gave to the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Brian Cotter) on 6 January 2004,Official Report, columns 259–62W.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the total payments made to date are to farmers in respect of compensation for animals slaughtered by her Department, and its predecessor, in relation to the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001. [150557]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The total payments to farmers to date in respect of compensation for animals slaughtered, by the Department and its predecessor, in relation to foot and mouth disease is £1,033 million.

  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the total value is of the payments due to farmers in respect of compensation claimed for animals slaughtered by her Department in relation to the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001, that remain unpaid by her Department. [150558]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The total value of the payments due to farmers in respect of compensation claimed for animals slaughtered in relation to the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001 was £1,033 million. All the farmers have been paid the sums due to them.

  Maize Subsidy
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the present subsidy regime is for maize production; and what the total amount spent on subsidising maize production was in the last three financial years. [149638]

  Alun Michael
  Maize is among the crops which are eligible for support under the EU support system for producers of certain arable crops, implemented through the Arable Area Payments Scheme (AAPS). In the last three financial years (2001–02 to 2003–04), payments for maize to AAPS claimants in England after modulation are calculated to be £13.5 million.

  The EU Common Market organisation for cereals also provides for public intervention for maize and export refunds.

  Milk
  Sir Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of the operation of the milk-dairy supply chain. [148693]
  254W
  Alun Michael
  Last year the Milk Development Council commissioned a study by KPMG on "Prices and Profitability in the British Dairy Chain" which highlighted a number of areas where the operation of the dairy supply chain might contribute to low farmgate prices in the UK, including the structure of the UK industry, the low value of the product mix and the low level of product innovation within the UK compared with some member states. The Report also identified a number of areas where supply chain efficiency could be improved, through rationalisation or benchmarking.

  Many of these factors are for the industry itself to address. However, the Government can and has taken action to facilitate industry action in line with its Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food. In particular:
  Lord Whitty has chaired meetings of a Dairy Supply Chain Forum, which has been looking at co-operative solutions to improve supply chain efficiency, as well as other issues;
  Under the auspices of the Forum, the Milk Development Council has initiated an innovations workshop to look at barriers to innovation in the sector and how to overcome them;
  Defra is participating in a further two sub groups of the Forum, which aim to facilitate the long term sustainable development of the dairy supply chain and help it adjust to the new environment created by the reformed CAP;
  The Government has made a grant of nearly £0.5m to the Food Chain Centre to examine how to improve dairy supply chain efficiency; and
  We have established English Food and Farming Partnerships to encourage co-operation and collaboration across all agricultural sectors.

  Sir Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will make a statement on fluctuations in the level of the farm gate price of milk in the last 20 years. [148694]

  Alun Michael
  The fluctuations in the farmgate price of milk over the last 20 years are caused by a number of factors, including the level of supplies, demand on EU and world markets and exchange rates. However, none of these factors are sufficient to explain why UK farmgate prices have been constantly below the EU average with the exception of a few years after deregulation of the milk market in 1994. This question was examined by KPMG in its report on "Prices and Profitability in the GB Supply Chain", which was commissioned by the Milk Development Council and published last year. The Report concluded that low farmgate prices in the UK were largely the product the structure of the UK industry, the low value of the product mix and the low level of product innovation within the UK compared with some Member States. The Report also identified a number of areas where farmgate prices could be improved by increasing supply chain efficiency, through rationalisation or through benchmarking.

  Many of these factors are for the industry to address itself, the Government has taken action in line with its Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food to facilitate industry action. In particular:
  Lord Whitty has chaired meetings of a Dairy Supply Chain Forum, which has been looking at collaborative solutions to improve supply chain efficiency, as well as other issues;

  255W
  Under the auspices of the Forum, the Milk Development Council has initiated an innovations workshop to look at barriers to innovation in the sector and how to overcome them;
  Defra is participating in a further two sub groups of the Forum, which aim to facilitate the long term sustainable development of the dairy supply chain and help it adjust to the new environment created by the reformed CAP;
  The Government have made a grant of nearly £0.5 million to the Food Chain Centre to examine how to improve dairy supply chain efficiency; and
  We have established English Food and Farming Partnerships to encourage co-operation and collaboration across all agricultural sectors.

  Organic Farms
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many organic farms there were in England and Wales(a) in 2000 and (b) on the latest date for which figures are available. [150055]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The figures are as follows:

  August 20001

  March 20032

  England

  1,925

  2,622

  Wales

  401

  618

  1 Source: Defra internal record

  2 Source: Defra statistical notice—Stats Org UK1—issued on 28 July 2003

  Permitted Killing Methods
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the permitted methods are for killing(a) moles and (b) rabbits in their runs and burrows. [150574]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The information requested is as follows.

  (a) Moles

  The permitted methods typically used to kill moles in their runs are:
  Poisoning using worm baits impregnated with strychnine hydrochloride. This can only be used under a specific authority obtained from Defra.
  Poisoning with an approved fumigant (aluminium phosphide)
  Trapping. There are there are two main types in common use, the scissor (pincer) trap or metal half-barrel trap (Duffus).

  Certain other methods are permitted (for example shooting and live capture traps), but these are not widely used in the UK. Further details and advice on the range of available options for managing mole problems are given in the Defra leaflet WM03 "Moles" which is available online at: www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/ vertebrates/leaflets. htm.

  Guidance on how to apply for permission to use strychnine hydrochloride for mole control is available online at: www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/ vertebrates/mole.htm.

  (b) Rabbits

  The permitted methods typically used for killing rabbits in their burrows are:
  Poisoning with an approved fumigant (aluminium phosphide or hydrogen cyanide)
  256W
  Trapping. Traps currently approved by the Spring Traps Approval Order 1995 are the Imbra Trap Mark I and Mark II, Juby Trap, Fenn Rabbit Trap Mark I, Fenn Vermin Trap Mark VI (Multi Purpose), Springer Mark VI (Dual Purpose), Victor Conibear 120–2 and the BMI Magnum 116.

  Further details and advice on the range of available options for managing rabbit problems are given in the following Defra leaflets WMO1, WM16 and WM17 and in Forestry Commission leaflet FCPN002, which are available online at: www.defra.gov.uk/wildlifecountryside/vertebrates/leaflets.htm.

  A full list of approved traps and the relevant conditions of use can be found online at: www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/vertebrates/approved-traps.htm

  Pesticides
  Paul Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what support the Department provides to the Voluntary Initiative on Pesticides website. [151008]

  Alun Michael
  Defra provides no support for the website of the Voluntary Initiative on Pesticides.

  Gummer
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what recent discussions(a) she and (b) her officials have had with the Treasury regarding a tax on pesticides. [150031]

  Alun Michael
  Providing that it is fully implemented, the industry-led voluntary initiative on pesticides should successfully deliver the reduction in adverse environmental impact of pesticide use to which the Government are committed However, Defra and Treasury officials are continuing to consider options for a tax or other economic instrument should the voluntary initiative fail to deliver agreed objectives within a reasonable timescale. Defra and Treasury Ministers have had no recent discussions on a possible pesticides tax.

  Pig Welfare (Poland)
  Mr. Gummer
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what evaluation she has made of the pig welfare regulations in force in Poland; how they will change on accession to the EU; and in what respects they(a) differ now and (b) will differ upon accession from those in force in the UK. [150030]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  We have made no evaluation of the existing pig welfare rules in Poland. Poland is committed to implementing the EU pig welfare rules in full, by 1 May 2004, into its national legislation. The European Commission is responsible for monitoring how each accession state is progressing in preparing to implement Community law (the 'acquis').

  After 1 May 2004, the Commission will continue to monitor Poland's application of the animal welfare acquis, in the same way as it does in existing member states, in order to ensure uniform application of EU legislation.

  Poultry
  Dr. Starkey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what information her Department collates on the(a) quantity and (b) type of (i) therapeutic and (ii) non-therapeutic drugs given to chickens in the UK in the last year. [150218]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD), an executive agency of Defra, collates and publishes data on an annual basis on the UK sales of veterinary antimicrobials. These data are supplied by industry on a voluntary basis.

  In November 2003 the VMD published figures for sales of antimicrobial products used as veterinary medicines, for the year 2002. These indicate that there was a slight decrease in sales of therapeutic antimicrobials indicated for use only in poultry (from 20 tonnes of active ingredient in 2001 to 13 tonnes in 2002). In addition a proportion of the 313 tonnes of active ingredient sold in products authorised for use in more than one species may also have been used in poultry, although it is not possible at this time to quantify this proportion. The figures also show that 250 tonnes of active ingredient of coccidiostats and 27 tonnes of growth promoters were sold. Although these figures have not been broken down by species, the majority of these sales were products authorised only for use in poultry. Full details are available on the VMD's website (www.vmd.gov.uk).

  Defra does not collect on a regular basis data on use of other veterinary medicinal products in poultry.

  Prosecutions
  Mr. Gray
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many prosecutions her Department has initiated in the last 12 months; how many of them resulted in(a) a conviction and (b) an acquittal; and how many were dismissed by the Court on the grounds of an incompetent prosecution. [148920]

  Alun Michael
  The Department has commenced 159 prosecutions in the last 12 months:

  64 have resulted in convictions.

  6 have resulted in acquittals.

  89 prosecutions remain outstanding.

  None of the prosecutions have been dismissed by the Court on the grounds of "an incompetent prosecution".

  US Farm Bill
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what discussions she has had with her counterparts in the United States since the breakdown of the World Trade Organisation ministerial conference in Cancún about the likely impact of the United States' Farm Bill on the(a) economies of and (b) living standards in, developing countries. [149119]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  There is on-going contact between UK and US officials about all aspects of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Round, including on the US Farm Bill. During these discussions we have made clear 258W
  our opinion that the Bill runs counter to our shared goal, as laid down at Doha, of reducing trade-distorting subsidies in the WTO. While it is difficult to make an accurate economic assessment of the impact that the US Farm Bill might have on the economies and living standards of developing countries, World Bank studies estimate that the comprehensive reform of all aspects of agricultural policies in developed countries could raise the incomes of developing countries by up to $100 billion.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Action on Elder Abuse
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will contribute funding to the telephone helpline run by Action on Elder Abuse. [145628]

  Dr. Ladyman
  I have been asked to reply.

  The abuse of vulnerable adults is of great concern to the Government. Since the launch of Action on Elder Abuse in 1993, the Department of Health has used grants to fund both the core functions of the organisation and a variety of specific projects including the telephone helpline. Action on Elder Abuse received just under £160,000 over the three years from 1997–98 to 1999–2000 to help establish and successfully operate the national helpline.

  Bids for section 64 funding are currently being considered and will be announced on the normal way.

  Advertising Expenditure
  David Davis
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the total expenditure on information campaigns and advertising was for his Department for each year since 2001–02. [145696]

  Fiona Mactaggart
  The total amount spent on public information campaigns by the Home Office was:

  £ million

  2001–02

  25.1

  2002–03

  18.3

  This amount includes the cost of Home Office publications and literature, campaign research, creative development and production, as well as the amount spent on advertising media.

  The proportion of these totals spent on advertising media was:

  £ million

  2001–02

  14.4

  2002–03

  9.9

  During 2002–03 our campaigns included the award winning police recruitment campaign an essential part in the successful recruitment of record numbers of police

  259W
  officers. Other campaigns contributed to a reduction in vehicle crime, the national firearms amnesty and advising parents and children on safe use of the internet.

  In 2001–02 our campaigns again focused on police recruitment, vehicle crime and child protection on the internet. We also ran campaigns to support a reduction in drug misuse, and the introduction of postal voting.

  Total expenditure for 2003–04 has yet to be finalised.

  Asylum Seekers
  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) men and (b) women who had entered the United Kingdom from Somalia and who were refused the right to remain were removed from the United Kingdom during 2003. [148069]

  Beverley Hughes
  Information on the total number of people who are removed from the United Kingdom is not available by nationality and gender, except by examination of individual case-files at disproportionate cost.

  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the longest outstanding asylum case still awaiting a final decision is; and if he will make a statement. [148954]

  Beverley Hughes
  Information on individual decisions, up to and including the outcome of all potential appeals, is not readily available and could be obtained only by examination of individual case files. This would incur disproportionate cost.

  29,100 cases were awaiting an initial decision at the end of September 2003, the lowest level for more than a decade; of these 8,500 cases were work in progress i.e. the application had been outstanding for six months or less.

  Provisional data show that 81 per cent. of applications received in the period April to June 2003 had initial decisions reached and served within two months and that 74 per cent. of applications (excluding withdrawals and third country cases1) received in 2002–03 were decided and served within two months. This exceeded the Government's target of 65 per cent. for 2002–03 and was a significant increase on the corresponding figure of 61 per cent. for 2001–02.

  Information on the number of asylum applications awaiting initial decision and the timeliness of initial decisions is published quarterly on the Home Office website at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1.html.
  1 Cases which may be the responsibility of other EU member states under the Dublin Convention.

  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people sought(a) political and (b) religious asylum in the United Kingdom in 2003; how many were granted the right to remain; and how many failed in their applications and were removed. [148955]

  Beverley Hughes
  The number of people applying for asylum in the United Kingdom during 2003 is not currently available. Provisional data for the number of asylum applications made in 2003 will be published as part of the quarterly asylum statistics on 24 February, on 260W
  the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ rds/immigration1.html

  Information on the outcomes of asylum applications made in 2003 will be published in the annual Home Office Statistical bulletin 'Asylum Statistics United Kingdom'. It is planned that the annual publication for 2003 data will be published at the end of August 2004.

  Tony Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the number of people making asylum applications over the next three years. [149338]

  Beverley Hughes
  We have already reduced the number of asylum applications by half since October 2002, meeting the ambitious target set by my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister. Current policy initiatives, such as juxtaposed controls in France and the deployment of detection technology at continental ports, are designed to prevent those who seek to circumvent our controls at specific ports of entry from doing so. Measures in the Asylum and Immigration Bill currently before Parliament—for example, measures aimed at those who deliberately destroy their documents to obstruct the processing of their case—will help deter unfounded claims. Together, these measures will reduce overall numbers still further.

  Tony Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of those seeking asylum he expects to be housed in accommodation centres pending their applications being determined. [149339]

  Beverley Hughes
  Accommodation centres will be introduced on a trial basis with a total capacity of up to 3,000 places during the trial period. We cannot predict what proportion this would constitute of the total number of asylum seekers: this will depend on the average length of stay at an accommodation centre, as well as the number of people claiming asylum and the average period it takes to determine their applications.

  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provision is in place for asylum seekers delayed from leaving the United Kingdom through no fault of their own, under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. [150336]

  Beverley Hughes
  The current legislation requires that, with the exception of families including children under the age of 18, support for asylum seekers whose claims are unsuccessful must end once a final decision is made on the asylum claim. Families continue to receive support until they leave or fail to comply with directions for their removal. Unsuccessful asylum seekers are expected to leave the country but, where this is not possible due to circumstances entirely beyond the person's control, they may be provided with accommodation under section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Generally speaking accommodation will be full board since there is no provision for payment of financial support.

  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what measures are in place to ensure that child asylum seekers are only detained for very short periods prior to removal. [150337]
  261W
  Beverley Hughes
  Unaccompanied minors are not detained other than in one very limited circumstance: where, exceptionally, it is necessary to detain a child while alternative care arrangements are made and, then, normally just overnight.

  Families with children may be detained in the following circumstances: initially, while their identities and basis of claim are established; where there are reasonable grounds for believing that they will fail to comply with the conditions of temporary admission or release; or to effect removal. In addition, families whose asylum claims appear to be capable of being decided quickly may be detained as part of a fast-track process.

  The detention of families with children is subject to rigorous and frequent review by a central unit within the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND). Where detention is for the purpose of effecting the removal of the family concerned its continuation will be authorised only where it is clear that there is a realistic prospect of removal within a reasonable period of time and that satisfactory progress is being made towards removal. If these criteria are not met, further detention is unlikely to be authorised. In the majority of such cases, detention will last for just a few days immediately prior to removal. For those cases where, exceptionally, detention for a longer period is necessary we have introduced a system whereby the detention of any family with children beyond 28 days is subject to Ministerial authority and review. In addition, a senior IND official has been appointed to oversee all detained family cases to ensure that there are no administrative barriers to speedy case progression.

  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress has been made in ensuring consistent standards in removal centres. [150339]

  Beverley Hughes
  It is clearly important for standards across the immigration removal estate to be more consistent and we are working to ensure that this is the case.

  All removal centres are already required to operate under the Detention Centre Rules 2001, which regulate the operation and management of removal centres and the treatment of detained persons.

  In addition, a comprehensive set of Operating Standards are in the process of being developed and issued to all removal centre operators. These Operating Standards set out the minimum requirements expected of operators. It is, of course, open to individual operators to exceed these minimum requirements or, where no single approach is stipulated, to select the most appropriate means of meeting a particular standard in the centre concerned. The individual standards are subject to extensive consultation. To date, Operating Standards have been issued on the following subjects: activities (adults and children); catering; complaints and requests procedures; female detainees; health care; race relations; religion; suicide and self-harm; temporary confinement; and use of force.

  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment is made of the needs of children before they go to detention centres. [149823]
  262W
  Beverley Hughes
  The general needs of children are considered when a decision to detain a family is made and when the family is taken into detention. Once detained, rule 11(3) of the Detention Centre Rules 2001 requires removal centre operators to provide everything reasonably necessary for detained persons' protection, safety and well-being and for the maintenance and care of infants and children.

  Families with children are currently detained at either Dungavel or Tinsley House Removal Centres or Oakington Reception Centre. In all cases they are accommodated in dedicated family rooms within the centre so as to ensure that family members are not separated and, so far as practicable within the constraints of detention, are able to maintain family life. These centres are well equipped and the staff that work there are well qualified to recognise children's needs and where necessary ensure special provision is made.

  At Dungavel, where there is a well-established education provision for school-age children, all children are assessed when they arrive to establish their learning needs. We have recently announced our intention to enhance these assessments and introduce contingency curriculum arrangements for children in longer term detention.

  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provision is made for children to be educated in detention centres. [149825]

  Beverley Hughes
  Removal centres that may hold families with children for anything more than a few days are required to have arrangements in place to provide educational classes to the children concerned. At present, this relates only to Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre and Oakington Reception Centre. The education provision at Dungavel is well established. Classes run every day throughout the week for all school age children. A range of subjects is covered including English, maths, science, food technology and history. Music and art are also provided. The position at Oakington is different in that the need for educational provision has arisen only comparatively recently and is in the process of being developed.

  Correspondence
  Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will reply to the letters from the hon. Member for Manchester, Central dated(a) 19 August 2003 re Mr. N. reference 0/985393 and (b) 28 August 2003 re: Mr. AA, reference PO 13028/3. [148510]

  Beverley Hughes
  [holding answer 19 January 2004]The information is as follows:

  (a) A reply was sent to my hon. Friend on 16 January 2004.

  (b) I wrote to my hon. Friend on 26 January 2004.

  Mr. Salmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he intends to reply to the letter dated 8 December 2003 from the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan regarding asylum seekers in Scotland. [149777]
  263W
  Beverley Hughes
  I wrote to the hon. Member on 23 January 2004.

  Mr. Salmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he intends to reply to the letter dated 31 October 2003 from the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan regarding his constituent, Mr. G Christie of Fordyce. [149779]

  Beverley Hughes
  I wrote to the hon. Member on the 22 January 2004.

  Criminal Justice Board (Gloucestershire)
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the membership of the local Criminal Justice Board in Gloucestershire and indicate the bodies represented. [144017]

  Paul Goggins
  The members of the Gloucestershire Local Criminal Justice Board are:

  Member

  Body represented

  Tim Brain

  Chief Constable (Chair)

  John Carter

  Chief Officer, National Probation Service, Gloucestershire

  Withiel Cole

  Chief Crown Prosecutor

  Alan Davies

  Justices' Chief Executive, Magistrates Courts

  David Gentry

  Group Manager, the Court Service

  Enid Castle

  Representing Gloucestershire Police Authority

  Phil Kendrick

  Gloucestershire County Council Youth Services

  David Chalmers

  Her Majesty's Prison Service

  Drug-related Crime
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the level of drug-related crime in(a) the North West, (b) Lancashire and (c) Chorley; and what the cost of drug-related crime was in each area in each of the last three years. [149966]

  Caroline Flint
  Recorded crime figures include statistics on drugs offences, such as possession, and on acquisitive crimes, such as burglary, but do not record whether the latter are related to an offender's drug habits.

  The NEW-ADAM research programme of interviewing and drug testing those arrested by the police sheds some light on the links between drugs and crime, although the conclusions do not relate specifically to Lancashire and the North West region. Data from eight locations (1999–2000) indicated that more than three-fifths (by value) of acquisitive crime was committed by users of both heroin and cocaine/crack.

  The total number of acquisitive crimes recorded by the police in Lancashire and the North West region in 2002–03 are set out in Table 1 as follows (data are not available for Chorley). Acquisitive crimes are burglary, theft, handling stolen goods and robbery.
  264W

  Table 1: Acquisitive crimes recorded by the police, 2003–03

  Number

  Lancashire

  89,993

  North West

  588,566

  Source:

  "Crime in England and Wales 2002–2003" Home Office Statistical Bulletin 07/03.

  Estimates of the costs of drug-related crime are not available annually or broken down by region. However, a recent study published by the Home Office provides estimates of the total economic and social costs of Class A drug use and puts these in the range of £10.1 to £17.4 billion for the year 2000. These costs include the costs of drug-related crime, which are estimated to fall in the range £8.8 to £15.8 billion. The costs of drug-related crime include victim costs and those accruing to courts, prisons and other parts of the criminal justice system.

  Entry Clearance
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many appeals against refusal of entry clearance from Pakistan by(a) spouses, (b) fiancees, (c) dependent children and (d) dependent elderly relatives are being processed by his Department; what the average time taken in the last 12 months was between receipt of papers from UK Visas and papers being sent to the Independent Appellate Authority; and if he will make a statement. [145402]

  Beverley Hughes
  I regret that the information on the number of appeals against refusal of entry clearance by nationality is not currently available in the form requested. Appeals against refusal of entry clearance are not sent to UK Visas but go directly to the Appeals Processing Centre (APC) and then to the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA). Data on the average time taken between receipt of papers by the APC and being sent to the IAA are not currently available.

  Statistics on the total numbers of refusals of entry clearance are published annually. The latest publication, Control of Immigration: Statistics United Kingdom 2002, is available on the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration 1.html.

  Roma
  Mr. Paice
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the numbers of members of the Roma community who will migrate into the UK from Eastern Europe after enlargement of the EU on 1 May. [150821]

  Beverley Hughes
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]Research conducted by University College London for the Home Office, published in June last year ("The impact of EU enlargement on migration flows", Home Office On-Line Report 25/03), estimates that the numbers of people expected to migrate to the UK from the new member states in the years following enlargement will not be significant. The research corroborates a number of other independent studies, which have been summarised in reports by the European Commission in 2000 and the former Department for Education and Employment in 1999. It is based in part
  265W
  on experience of previous EU enlargements, where the large increases in migration flows predicted before enlargement did not materialise.

  None of this research has been able to predict exact numbers expected from specific countries or ethnic groups to the UK. However, Roma would have been included in the overall numbers.

  Citizens of the new member states who come to the UK will work, contribute to the economy, and pay taxes. The Habitual Residence Test will ensure that no one can simply come here and claim benefits. Powers to deport are available where non-British EU citizens commit offences.

  Enlargement should also improve the quality of life for all citizens in the new member states as their governments must enforce human rights and minority rights, including protection against racial discrimination, to EU standards before accession and subsequently. EU accession should also improve economic prospects in the new member states so reducing the incentive for economic migration.

  If, contrary to the available evidence, there is a large influx of workers posing a real threat to UK jobs, we will be able to re-introduce restrictions. We will of course be monitoring the situation closely.

  Fines
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the reasons for non-collection of fines. [150355]

  Mr. Leslie
  I have been asked to reply.

  There are a number of reasons why, in the past, the collection of fines has not been as effective as it should have been. They include: imposing fines that do not reflect the ability to pay due to lack of information on offenders' income/expenditure; lack of information on offenders' current whereabouts; and a lack of an alternative for those who genuinely cannot pay.

  This is being addressed through the seven point action plan I announced in June last year, the Courts Act 2003 measures, and the overall enforcement programme being taken forward by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. These are specifically designed to tackle the root causes of non-collection and secure sustained improvement in fine enforcement performance.

  Immigration Appeals
  Mr. Malins
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many presenting officers were in post on 1 October in each of the last four years. [143357]

  Beverley Hughes
  The number of presenting officers in post and available to present appeals at adjudicator hearings is shown in the following table:

  Number of officers in post

  13 November 2000

  202

  1 October 2001

  192

  1 October 2002

  233

  1 October 2003

  279

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  A recruitment exercise is currently under way and a further 65 presenting officers will be in post by mid March 2004.

  Medicines (Disposal)
  Ian Lucas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there have been in the last five years for the offence of theft of (a) controlled drugs and (b) time-expired pharmaceuticals from sites disposing of NHS waste. [150440]

  Caroline Flint
  The information collected centrally on court proceedings does not allow the theft of drugs to be distinguished from other thefts, nor are details of the location of thefts collected.

  Penalty Points
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether an individual can receive penalty points in respect of more than one driving offence committed on the same day. [148949]

  Caroline Flint
  Where more than one offence involving obligatory endorsement is committed on the same occasion, the total number of penalty points to be attributed is the number that the most serious offence would attract. Two or more offences committed on the same day but not on the same occasion would attract points separately. It would be for the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and courts to decide whether the different offences amounted to separate incidents or whether they were part of the same continuing incident.

  Police Guidelines
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) whether amendments made by the Association of Chief Police Officers to their media and disciplinary guidelines are publicly available; [143464]

  (2) what amendments have been made, following agreement with the Association of Chief Police Officers, to the media and disciplinary guidelines issued to police forces. [143480]

  (3) whether anonymity will be granted to those accused of sexual offences if they have learning difficulties. [143481]

  Paul Goggins
  This matter was debated during the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

  The Government believe that informed and strengthened guidance to the police and the media is preferable to legislation.

  Following discussions between the Association of Chief Police Officers and officials the updated Media Advisory Group Guidance Notes have given greater prominence to this issue. They underline that suspects should not be named before charge and go on to highlight the possible dangers of doing so. The Guidance Notes are available to the public and can be viewed on the website www.acpo.police.uk.

  Prisons (Foreign Nationals)
  Mrs. Brooke
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what procedures are in place to ensure that the Immigration Service(a) monitors the sentences of foreign national prisoners, with particular reference to those liable to deportation and (b) takes action to ensure repatriation or deportation takes place as soon as a prisoner's sentence has expired. [151082]

  Beverley Hughes
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]HM prisons are instructed to notify the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) of all foreign nationals sentenced to a term of imprisonment, together with their release dates once calculated.

  IND then considers whether a person should be deported or removed and it is our aim, wherever possible, to remove such persons in line with their release from custody.

  There are, however, reasons why this may not happen in a particular case. These may include such factors as the need to consider an appeal or application for leave to remain, the non-availability of travel document, difficulties with travel arrangements or other matters which have to be considered or addressed before the deportation or removal can be effected.

  IND and the Prison Service work closely together and with individual inmates to keep any delays in effecting removal to a minimum.

  Racist Incident Reporting Form
  Mr. Chope
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will place in the Library a copy of the standardised multi-agency racist incident reporting form. [150875]

  Fiona Mactaggart
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]The minimum data content for the standardised multi agency racist incidents reporting form is in the Code of Practice on reporting and recording racist incidents. This is currently in stock in the Library.

  Risk of Sexual Harm Orders
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department for what reasons his Department deems it unnecessary to be required to report to Parliament the numbers of risk of sexual harm orders that are issued on an annual basis. [150126]

  Paul Goggins
  The Home Office will monitor the use of risk of sexual harm orders (RSHOs) but, as was stated in the response to the Home Affairs Committee's report on the Sexual Offences Act 2003, we do not feel that there is any need for the number of such orders to be reported annually to Parliament. In common with the other civil preventative orders in Part 2 of the Act, statistics will be collected on the number of RSHOs taken out each year and this information will be available if requested.

  Terrestrial Trunked Radio
  Mr. Chidgey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which recommendations of the 268W
  National Radiological Protection Board report on health and safety issues of terrestrial trunked radio have been implemented. [149177]

  Ms Blears
  [holding answer 22 January 2004]The Home Office took expert advice from the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) independent Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (AGNIR) on the health aspects of TETRA technology. The AGNIR experts concluded that on the basis of current evidence, it was unlikely that TETRA posed a hazard to health. They also made a number of recommendations for further research on remaining areas of uncertainty. No research on masts was suggested. The AGNIR recommendations have been taken forward by the Mobile Telecommunications Research Programme and by the Home Office. Regularly updated information is available at www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs/tetra.html.

  Terrorism
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to his answer of 15 January 2004,Official Report, column 894W, on the Terrorism Act, if he will break down, by region, the stops and searches carried out since 2001 under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000; what reasons were given for using these powers; and what assessment he has made of the reasons for the increases. [150329]

  Mr. Blunkett
  A breakdown of stop and searches by Police Force area under section 44(1) and section 44(2) of the Terrorism Act 2000 for the financial years 2001–02 and 2002–03 is provided in the table. This is taken from information published in the Home Office Statistical Bulletin.

  Stop and Searches under Section 44(1) or (2) may only be exercised for the purposes of searching for articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism. The decision to authorise use of the powers is made against the background of the current threat level and the assessment of the risk to any designated or whole force area.

  The increase in stops and searches can be attributed to an increase in general security throughout the year following September 11 (2001).

  Stop and Searches of vehicles and occupants under 44(1)

  Stop and Searches of pedestrians under 44(2)

  Police force area

  2001–02

  2002–03

  2001–02

  2002–03

  Avon and Somerset

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Bedfordshire

  8

  31

  —

  —

  Cambridgeshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Cheshire

  385

  302

  2

  18

  Cleveland

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Cumbria

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Derbyshire

  20

  —

  —

  —

  Devon and Cornwall

  129

  —

  —

  —

  Dorset

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Durham

  235

  —

  3

  —

  Essex

  —

  2

  —

  5

  Gloucestershire

  36

  898

  —

  —

  Greater Manchester

  36

  210

  —

  299

  Hampshire

  10

  256

  2

  38

  Hertfordshire

  4

  —

  —

  —

  Humberside

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Kent

  255

  67

  2

  74

  Lancashire

  —

  155

  —

  —

  Leicestershire1

  68

  45

  68

  Lincolnshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

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  Stop and Searches of vehicles and occupants under 44(1)

  Stop and Searches of pedestrians under 44(2)

  Police force area

  2001–02

  2002–03

  2001–02

  2002–03

  London, City of

  3,409

  4,369

  86

  275

  Merseyside

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Metropolitan

  3,598

  19,677

  473

  3,764

  Norfolk

  2

  5

  —

  —

  Northamptonshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Northumbria

  —

  —

  —

  —

  North Yorkshire

  8

  110

  —

  —

  Nottinghamshire

  —.

  —

  —

  —

  South Yorkshire

  263

  105

  —

  —

  Staffordshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Suffolk

  —

  3

  —

  —

  Surrey Sussex

  767

  113

  1

  36

  Thames Valley

  —

  900

  —

  —

  Warwickshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  West Mercia

  5

  —

  —

  —

  West Midlands

  —

  16

  —

  20

  West Yorkshire

  —

  18

  —

  —

  Wiltshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Dyfed Powys

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Gwent

  —

  —

  —

  —

  North Wales

  —

  —

  —

  —

  South Wales

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Total

  9,239

  27,313

  947

  4,774

  1 Stops and searches of vehicles and occupants and pedestrians are not separately available for 2002–03

  Mr. Oaten
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what meetings have been held since 25 June of the pilot group tasked with taking forward the recommendation adopted at the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council in Brussels on 28 and 29 November 2002 in relation to terrorist profiling; and what was discussed at those meetings. [143380]

  Caroline Flint
  The informal pilot group held its second workshop on terrorist profiling at the headquarters of Europol on 24 November 2003, with United Kingdom representation. This meeting was essentially a stock take, as the research needed to inform this long-term and complex project is ongoing.

  Visa Requirement
  Mr. Tynan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce a visa requirement for all non-EEA nationals entering the UK in the course of business, where the prime purpose of that entry is to engage in anti-trade union activities. [149578]

  Beverley Hughes
  We have no plans to introduce a specific visa requirement for those seeking entry to engage in anti- trade union activities. However, the Immigration Rules contain provision for the refusal of entry to a person where it is judged that their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good. This would allow for the refusal of a person where their character, conduct or associations made their entry undesirable.

  Yarl's Wood Removal Centre
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the findings of Mr. Stephen 270W
  Shaw's investigation into the management of Yarl's Wood Removal Centre will be published; and how they will be made available. [150190]

  Beverley Hughes
  The timing of the completion of the inquiry into the allegations of racist behaviour and attitudes among staff at Yarl's Wood Removal Centre is a matter for Stephen Shaw. However, we understand that Stephen Shaw would hope to complete his inquiry and report his findings as soon as possible. The report will be published although the details of exactly how this will done have yet to be determined.

  Youth Justice System
  Mr. David Stewart
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when consolidating legislation to create consistent definitions and terminology within the youth justice system will come into effect. [145173]

  Paul Goggins
  We have no plans to make consolidating legislation on youth justice.

  We published on 8 September a consultative document "Youth Justice—The Next Steps" as a companion document to the main Green Paper "Every Child Matters". In "Youth Justice—The Next Steps" we set out a number of proposals, including clarification of the purpose of sentencing a juvenile, and simplification of sentencing. The consultation period ended on 1 December and we are currently analysing the responses. Some of our proposals, if taken forward, will require legislation. This would be brought forward as soon as Parliamentary time permits.

SCOTLAND

  IRA Terrorism
  Mr. Barnes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland on which dates terrorist incidents ascribed to the IRA have taken place in Scotland since 1973. [142753]

  Mrs. McGuire
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, on 11 December 2003,Official Report, column 618W.

  Post Office/Banking Services
  John Thurso
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what recent discussions he has held with(a) the Royal Bank of Scotland, (b) Halifax Bank of Scotland and (c) Clydesdale Bank concerning the provision of banking services in the Post Office; and if he will make a statement. [150396]

  Mrs. McGuire
  I plan to meet representatives from the Royal Bank of Scotland in the next month to discuss a range of issue affecting the banking sector.

  The three banks mentioned currently allow access to basic bank accounts through the Post Office branch network, but have not agreed to extend this access to other accounts. While the Government would urge all banks to provide their customers with access to their accounts through Post Offices, decisions to do so are commercial ones for individual institutions.
  271W
  John Thurso
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what assessment he has made of the impact on the Scottish rural post office network of three of the major Scottish banks not offering full bank services at the Post Office; and if he will make a statement. [150397]

  Mrs. McGuire
  I have made no such assessment. Decisions on whether to extend access to full banking services at Post Offices are commercial ones for individual institutions.

  Public Expenditure
  Sir Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he last made a needs-based assessment of public expenditure levels in Scotland. [149630]

  Mrs. McGuire
  My right hon. Friend has made no such assessment. The details of the funding arrangements were set out in the "Statement of Funding Policy", published by the Treasury in July 2002. The Government have no plans to change the Barnett formula.

  Sir Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to conduct a needs-based assessment of public expenditure levels in Scotland; and whether he anticipates that such an assessment would conclude that current levels are(a) higher, (b) lower or (c) the same as current needs. [149631]

  Mrs. McGuire
  My right hon. Friend has no plans to conduct an assessment. The details of the funding arrangements were set out in the "Statement of Funding Policy", published by the Treasury in July 2002. The Government have no plans to change the Barnett formula.

  Sewel Motions
  Annabelle Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list Sewel motions passed by the Scottish Parliament since 26 June 2003 that apply to his Department's responsibilities and legislation he has sponsored. [148749]

  Mrs. McGuire
  As part of its responsibility for Scotland's devolution settlement, the Scotland Office is involved as necessary in discussions between Government Departments and the Scottish Executive on the application of the Sewel Convention, providing advice in line with Devolution Guidance Note 10. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has not sponsored any legislation that has been the subject of a Sewel motion.

  Solectron Dunfermline
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what sums have been paid to the Solectron plant in Dunfermline; and whether funds will be offered to Solectron Dunfermline to assist the relocation of work being carried out by Solectron Carrickfergus. [151004]

  Mrs. McGuire
  Issues relating to financial assistance to industry were devolved under the Scotland Act and now fall within the responsibility of the Scottish Executive.
  272W

TREASURY

  Banking Supervision
  Keith Vaz
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many complaints have been received concerning banking supervision in each of the last three years. [151063]

  Ruth Kelly
  The Financial Services Authority is responsible for banking supervision. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 required an arrangement for the investigation of complaints against the FSA to be established. Accordingly, the FSA's Complaints Scheme was introduced with effect from 3 September 2001.

  The following table sets out the number of complaints received under the Financial Services Authority's complaints scheme concerning an alleged failure to supervise deposit taking institutions.

  Complaints received

  3 September to 31 December 2001

  0

  Calendar year 2002

  1

  Calendar year 2003

  2

  Benefit Fraud
  Mr. Webb
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many staff in his Department have been(a) investigated, (b) suspended, (c) dismissed, (d) prosecuted and (e) convicted for involvement in benefit fraud in each of the last six years; and what the amounts involved were in each of these categories listed. [151461]

  Ruth Kelly
  None.

  Economic Survey
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what assessment he has made of the paper, "Economic Survey-United Kingdom 2004", published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. [150884]

  Ruth Kelly
  The OECD's assessment of the UK economy was published on 20 January 2004. The Government welcome the report and notes the positive assessment of the performance of the economy over the past few years.

  Financial Services Authority
  Mr. Flight
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) of 14 January 2004,Official Report, column 8I6W, on the Financial Services Authority, for which firms the Financial Services Authority has reduced fees; by how much; which fees these were; and when. [151090]

  Ruth Kelly
  The Financial Services Authority (FSA) reduces fees for all firms in those areas of business where fines have been levied. It received £100,000 in financial penalties in the financial year 2001–02. This was applied
  273W
  to the benefit of fee-payers in fee block A.7 (fund managers), reducing the fees for all firms in this fee block paid in 2002–03 by 0.5 per cent. of those fees.

  The FSA received £9,169,000 in financial penalties in the financial year 2002–03. It applied this amount to the benefit of fee-payers in six fee blocks. In fee block A.1 (deposit-acceptors) there was a reduction of 1.5 per cent. of the 2003–04 fee, in fee block A.4 (firms conducting insurance activities subject to both prudential and conduct of business regulation) a reduction of 3.1 per cent., in fee block A.7 (fund managers) a reduction of 1.7 per cent., in fee block A.12 (advisory arrangers dealers or brokers (holding or controlling client money and/or assets)) a reduction of 29.0 per cent., in fee block A.13 (advisory arrangers, dealers or brokers (not holding or controlling client money and/or assets)) a reduction of 3.1 per cent., and in fee block A.16 (Pensions Review levy firms) a reduction of 11.6 per cent.

  Public Finances
  Mr. Redwood
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what action the UK is planning to address the Government deficit mentioned in COM (2004) 29. [151490]

  Ruth Kelly
  The projections for the public finances presented in the 2003 pre-Budget report show that the Government remain on track to meet their strict fiscal rules over the economic cycle on the basis of cautious assumptions, with public finances remaining sustainable in the long term.

  Furthermore, the UK continues to meet a prudent interpretation of the Stability and Growth Pact, that takes into account debt and long-term fiscal sustainability more generally, the need for public investment, and the economic cycle.

  Infant Mortality
  Tim Loughton
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many children under the age of one year have died suddenly in each of the last 10 years; and what main reasons have been attributed to those deaths in the most recent of those years. [151094]

  Ruth Kelly
  The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.

  Letter from Mr. John Pullinger to Mr. Tim Loughton, dated 27 January 2004:
  The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your recent question on how many children under the age of one year have died suddenly in each of the last 10 years; and what main reasons have been attributed to those deaths in the most recent years. I am replying in his absence. (151094)
  Information collated at death registration does not generally indicate duration of the conditions leading to death. It is therefore not possible to identify all sudden deaths. However, for any infant death where the certifier mentioned "sudden infant death" or related term e.g. "cot death" or "sudden infant death syndrome", these figures are published as "sudden infant deaths". These figures are shown in the table below. Because of the method used to identify these deaths no further information is available on the reasons attributed to these deaths.
  274W

  Sudden infant deaths—England and Wales 1993–2002

  Numbers

  Rates1

  1993

  458

  0.68

  1994

  454

  0.68

  1995

  398

  0.61

  1996

  424

  0.65

  1997

  393

  0.61

  1998

  289

  0.45

  1999

  280

  0.45

  2000

  246

  0.41

  2001

  240

  0.40

  20022

  187

  0.31

  1 Rate per 1,000 live births.

  2 Provisional.

  Information Technology
  Mr. Allan
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what audit mechanisms are in place to determine whether information technology(a) hardware and (b) software products are being used properly in his Department. [150931]

  Ruth Kelly
  The information requested is as follows:Inland Revenue
  There is a full right of access for audit (including National Audit Office) and security interest across the whole of the Inland Revenue and the IT supplier. This enables the reviewing bodies to fully cover any area of risk as determined by their work planning processes.

  All major new computer projects or enhancements have to provide an audit trail of all computer activity by users. IA monitors activity to detect potential fraud and misuse. There is a standard set of audit checks carried out over these developments in order to ensure compliance with all legal and departmental requirements and IA has a seat on the project steering committee to ensure appropriate consideration is given to audit findings.

  IA has a specialised computer audit team of qualified professionals who carry out a programme of technical audits over the provision of IT services both hardware and software. They use an international computer audit standard (CoBIT) to risk assess the services and to measure provision against a set of detailed controls. All findings are reported to the responsible senior manager and followed up to ensure appropriate action.

  Overall, IA and DSU have a direct reporting line to the Departmental Audit and Security Committee to raise issues that are high risk or that IA/DSU consider are not being addressed adequately by managers.

  As already referred to, National Audit Office also carry out pieces of review activity across the Partnership and often work in joint teams with IA and/or DSU.

  HM Treasury

  The Treasury uses a combination of line management overview and procurement scrutiny to determine whether information technology hardware and software products are being used properly in the Department. These are supported by internal audit and security reviews wherever appropriate. Staff identified as making unacceptable use of IT will be subject to disciplinary procedures.
  275W
  There are two overarching controls over the use of IT in the Treasury: the Departmental IT strategy which sets the tone for the use of IT, and the annual Business Planning and Budget Planning round which subjects all proposals to high-level business scrutiny.

  Further down the line, all IT purchases, whether hardware or software, are required to be supported by a business case to ensure that there is a formal requirement by the Department for the facilities. After implementation, the Treasury has guidelines (promulgated to all staff) on the acceptable use of information technology. Certain rules are enforced (e.g. construct and length of passwords and enforced screen savers) and firewalls are used to protect HMT systems from attack, to protect staff from unwanted correspondence (spam) and to disable unacceptable internet web access.

  In general, line managers are responsible for enforcing the acceptable use of IT facilities provided to their staff. However, they have access to the resources of the departmental internal audit and security teams to investigate specific incidents. There are also more general internal audits of IT themes and running contract arrangements to ensure that processes are sound, efficient and effective. The Department is required to conform to Government security regulations and is subject to security audits to ensure that it remains compliant.

  HM Customs and Excise
  Guidance and standards are published covering the procurement, development and use of IT hardware and software. HM Customs and Excise has developed a single approach to the management of business change—the Business Change Lifecycle. This covers all stages of IT system development and is aligned with the OGC Gateway Review process. It identifies the stages and products that must be produced to comply with the HMCE standards. Once implemented the use of hardware and software is controlled through security standards and acceptable use policy.

  It is the responsibility of all managers to ensure that the IT systems provided to their staff are used in accordance with the guidance and standards, although additional assurance mechanisms are in place. Managers can call upon the services of our Internal Investigation Division to investigate specific incidents. Compliance is also monitored through an internal assurance programme which contributes to the annual Statement of Internal Control. Our Internal Audit Division also provides assurance over the operation of IT systems through their annual programme of audits. Systems are selected for examination based on a risk assessment, and take account of the significance and materiality to achieving the Department's business objectives. In addition, external audit is carried out by the NAO. Their audit programme includes IT security and specific controls for key systems.

  Mr. Allan
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what cost savings have been made in his Department since the introduction of the Information Technology Procurement Centre of Excellence; and how these were calculated. [151044]
  276W
  Mr. Boateng
  A Centre of Excellence was established within HM Treasury, Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise in June 2003 to integrate the essential functions which underpin the successful delivery of all types of acquisition based programmes and projects. As cost benefits will not accrue until improvements start to take effect, it is too early to measure cost savings. All Centres of Excellence are currently developing future plans and as part of this process measurement of savings will be defined.

  Public Bodies
  Keith Vaz
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer who the members of the(a) Financial Services Authority and (b) VAT and Duties Tribunal were on 1 January; what their term of office is in each case; and what their remuneration is. [151459]

  Ruth Kelly
  The information is as follows:

  (a) Financial Services Authority
  As of 1 January 2004. the members of the FSA Board were:

  Member

  Position

  Callum McCarthy

  Chairman

  Stewart Boyd

  Deputy Chairman, Non-executive Director

  John Tiner

  Chief Executive

  Moira Black

  Non-executive Director

  Tom de Swann

  Non-executive Director

  Kyra Hazou

  Non-executive Director

  Michael Foot

  Executive Director

  Deirdre Mutton

  Non-executive Director

  Sir Andrew Large

  Non-executive Director

  Dr. Shamit Saggar

  Non-executive Director

  Steve Thieke

  Non-executive Director

  Clive Wilkinson

  Non-executive Director

  The Chairman is formally appointed to the FSA board for five years and other members for three years. Reappointment is possible for non-executive directors. Executive directors have renewable three year terms of office which coincide with the length of their executive posts at the FSA. Information on the remuneration of board members is published in the FSA annual report. The latest available information is for 2002–03 when the then Chairman received £385,730, Deputy Chairman £45,000, Non-executive directors £20,000 and executive directors between £293,452 to £361,904.

  For a list of members of the VAT and duties tribunal, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer given to him by the Paymaster General on 3 July 2003. The only changes to the membership since then are that Gordon Burnison and Roger Cockfield are no longer members of the panel. Members are appointed for a standard term of five years, at the end of which they may be considered for re-appointment. Members are remunerated a standard fee of £227 for each day sitting.

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

  Heritage Lottery Funding
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how much Heritage Lottery funding
  277W
  has been awarded to each Lancashire district in each of the last five years. [150410]

  Financial year

  Local authority

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  2001–02

  2002–03

  Total for the last five financial years

  Burnley

  11,550

  1,119,000

  99,300

  64,657

  1,294,507

  Chorley

  221,450

  —

  28,500

  926,600

  43,662

  1,220,212

  Fylde

  —

  —

  329,000

  100,000

  36,000

  465,000

  Hynburn

  —

  221,500

  —

  24,000

  —

  245,500

  Lancaster

  —

  153,400

  329,000

  1,746,500

  60,630

  2,289,530

  Pendle

  47300

  250,000

  50,000

  —

  996,000

  1,343,300

  Preston

  90000

  103,548

  149,800

  2,070,500

  485,690

  2,899,538

  Kibble Valley

  —

  156,000

  77,200

  15,400

  —

  248,600

  Rossendale

  248,500

  —

  —

  —

  165,000

  413,500

  West Lancashire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  972,500

  972,500

  Wyre

  28,300

  —

  144,600

  —

  —

  172,900

  Information Technology
  Mr. Allan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what audit mechanisms are in place to determine whether information technology(a) hardware and (b) software products are being used properly in her Department. [150937]

  Mr. Caborn
  The Department has a range of auditing and monitoring systems in place to ensure that hardware and software are used in accordance with the Department's policies. We have inventory management systems in place for both hardware and software and a metering system monitors all software use. The Department is a corporate member of FAST, the Federation Against Software Theft.

  All internet access is logged along with all e-mail. Systems are configured such only authorised software may be installed. All staff sign the Department's Acceptable Use Policy before being allowed access to the Department's IT systems and resign it on an annual basis thereafter. Our procedures are audited both by the Department's own internal audit function and by independent external auditors on a regular basis.

  Mr. Allan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what cost savings have been made in her Department since the introduction of the Information Technology Procurement Centre of Excellence; and how these were calculated. [151053]

  Mr. Caborn
  The Department has established a Centre of Excellence and is working with its sponsored bodies to ensure that IT procurement is effectively managed. It is too early at present to identify any savings that have accrued.

  Royal Family
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what estimate she has made of the contribution to the economy in terms of revenue from tourism generated by the Royal Family in each of the last three years. [150200]

  Mr. Caborn
  We have no rigorous basis on which to estimate the contribution to the economy in terms of revenue from tourism generated by the Royal Family, but that contribution is certainly substantial.
  278W
  Estelle Morris
  Figures by district are not available. The following is the information by local authority:

  Significant recent events include the Golden Jubilee in 2002, which proved to be a big draw for visitors from around the world, and the Royal Tourism Day in June 2003.

  In addition to such contributions, some of Britain's most popular attractions are directly associated with the Royal Family, including Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and most recently Clarence House. The Palace and the Tower of London are named more than any other attractions by overseas visitors to London, with about a third of them planning to visit them. The biggest free attraction is the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace which is a 'must see' on most visitors' itineraries.

  Royal Parks Constabulary
  Chris Grayling
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport when she plans to brief employees of the Royal Parks Constabulary about the details of its proposed merger with the Metropolitan police and the implications for their terms and conditions. [150290]

  Mr. Caborn
  The Government have been unable to find the parliamentary time to bring forward legislation to merge the Royal Parks Constabulary (RPC) with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) during the current parliamentary session. It remains our intention to do so at the earliest possible opportunity. In the meantime we are working closely with the MPS and have provided extra funding to establish from 1 April an MPS Operational Command Unit within the Parks to work alongside the RPC to ensure the Parks continue to be policed effectively. The Chief Executive of The Royal Parks wrote to all RPC staff on 16 January to bring them up-to-date with these plans.

  Stonehenge (Parker Plan)
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what discussions(a) her Department and (b) English Heritage have had with the proposers of the Parker Plan for road construction near Stonehenge. [149882]

  Estelle Morris
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]None. In accordance with paragraph 19(1) and (2) of Schedule 1 to the Highways Act 1980, the Highways
  279W
  Agency on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport published a notice directing that anyone who intended to submit an alternative route to the draft Orders for the A303 Trunk Road (Stonehenge Improvement) should do so by 19 December 2003. An alternative, locally known at the Parker Plan or Parker Route', has been received and will be considered before an independent inspector at the public inquiry.

  UK Sport
  Mr. Hawkins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if she will make a statement on the recent decisions made by UK Sport concerning(a) the departure of leading officials in sports administration and (b) sports funding. [150641]

  Mr. Caborn
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]UK Sport recently made the following announcements:

  (a) Richard Callicott has stood down as Chief Executive. Liz Nicholl was appointed in his place, with effect from December 2003.

  (b) UK Sport recently announced changes in its sport funding arrangements. 10 sports have been agreed across the Sports Councils as being of UK wide significance from participation through to success.

  The aim is to support the 10 sports in the development of a One Plan, providing more effective linkages between their UK and home country governing bodies.

  This approach will provide sports with a simplified funding process and help foster improved co-ordination, communication and consultation between UK and home country governing bodies and their partners.

CABINET OFFICE

  Civil Service Pensions
  Mr. Chope
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he will take action to ensure that payments of civil service pensions by Capita Hartshead to retired civil servants resident in France enjoy the same rate of exchange as payments of the state pension; and if he will make a statement. [150877]

  Mr. Alexander
  The rate of exchange for payments in overseas currency is determined by the UK banks responsible for the conversion. The rates offered on any one day may vary from bank to bank, and within each bank depending on the terms and conditions applicable to each customer. However, in view of the relative volume of payments to state pensioners resident overseas, it is unlikely that any bank would offer exactly the same terms and conditions to an occupational pension scheme as those agreed for the state scheme.

  The bank responsible for converting overseas payments for occupational pension schemes administered by Capita Hartshead regularly monitors its rates against those offered by competitors, including those responsible for converting payments for other occupational pension schemes, to ensure it offers a competitive service.
  280W

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  Angola
  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what representations he has made to the Government of Angola about ensuring(a) greater transparency in the management of oil revenues and (b) that oil revenues are focused on social programmes in that country. [150111]

  Hilary Benn
  The UK Government are active in promoting greater transparency in oil revenue management in Angola, including through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative launched by the Prime Minister at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. We are currently in discussions with the Angolan Ministry of Finance on providing technical support so that Angola can develop and adopt legislation to implement the Initiative.

  The UK is also supporting the World Bank's programme to promote greater transparency in the Angolan oil industry. Specifically, DFID is funding an oil expert to take part in the Bank's Public Expenditure Management and Financial Accountability Review (PEMFAR). The results of this review should help clarify financial relationships between the Government, the Central Bank and the state oil company Sonangol. It will also make recommendations on how Angola can adopt transparent, internationally accepted practices in oil revenue management. Finally, the UK is demonstrating its commitment to strengthening Angolan civil society by supporting a coalition of national NGOs active in advocating on transparency issues including oil revenue management.

  Greater fiscal transparency in Angola is only one element in ensuring that more public resources are spent on reducing poverty. With this in mind, DFID funded an economist to help prepare Angola's first ever three-year macro-economic framework which has since been incorporated into the recently published Angolan draft Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The macro-economic framework income is assisting the Government to plan spending increases in the social sectors.

  The UK will continue to work with the Government and people of Angola to ensure that greater transparency in oil revenue management is converted into tangible programmes for poverty reduction.

  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many Angolan refugees in Zambia he estimates will reject the voluntary repatriation programme; and what assessment he has made of the impact this will have on(a) the humanitarian requirements in Zambia and (b) the humanitarian requirements in Angola. [150108]

  Hilary Benn
  The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimate that at 30 November 2003 there were a total of 167,184 Angolan refugees in Zambia.
  281W
  Under their voluntary repatriation programme, UNHCR estimate that 20,000 Angolans refugees would be repatriated in 2003 and 40,000 in 2004. It is too early to predict how many will reject the voluntary repatriation programme. This will become clearer during the course of 2004, and in the light of UNHCR's discussions with the Government of Zambia over the rights of Angolans to remain in Zambia legally.

  Burundi
  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development pursuant to his answer of 19 January 2004,Official Report, column 929W, on Burundi, what assessment he has made of the levels of cholera in the Cibitoke region of Burundi since December 2003. [150103]

  Hilary Benn
  My previous answer was based on information available at that time from the World Health Organisation (WHO). Since then the WHO in Bujumbura has reported 127 cases of cholera, including four deaths in Cibitoke Province since 5 December 2003. The situation is now under control with only one case reported in the past week.

  WHO has also reported that during the past two weeks there have been 35 reported cases of suspected cholera including one death in the province of Bururi. WHO are assessing the situation.

  Congo
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if his Department will(a) arrange and (b) fund a delegation of senior former Members of Parliament to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to advise on democracy building. [149192]

  Hilary Benn
  We are in discussion with Members of the Congolese Parliament, groups outside Parliament and the Westminster Foundation here, about the best ways in which the UK can support the strengthening of democracy during the transition in the DRC. For example, we are just beginning an important project with the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa to help develop frameworks for political party development and the democratic functioning of the Parliament. We are also currently considering support to the constitutional process, and possible visits by Congolese politicians to other countries to focus on particular issues of interest. We will keep in view whether a visit by senior former Members of Parliament would be a priority activity for democratic development in the DRC during the short transitional period.

  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment he has made of the ability of the Democratic Republic of Congo to hold a general election in 2005; and if he will make a statement. [150109]

  Hilary Benn
  The Electoral Assistance Division of the UN Department of Political Affairs recently completed a feasibility study to assist the transitional Congolese authorities to identify a comprehensive set of options for organising and conducting elections in 2005. The objective is to ensure that the transitional government receives the support necessary to enable it to hold a successful general election at that stage. Experts from 282W
  the European Commission are also advising the government on options, in consultation with the rest of the international community. DFID is participating in these discussions.

  Iraq
  Mr. Swayne
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what amounts were spent by his Department on(a) reconstruction of civilian infrastructure and (b) humanitarian relief in the first 100 days following the end of high intensity military operations in Iraq. [150222]

  Hilary Benn
  In the first 100 days after military operations, DFID pledged £100 million to the United Nations Consolidated Appeal. Of this, £65 million was allocated to specific humanitarian programmes including £16 million to the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure. In the same period, DFID committed £32 million to the Red Cross and £6 million to NGOs for humanitarian relief.

  Mr. Carmichael
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much of the money pledged by the UK Government at the Madrid Conference has been(a) allocated to reconstruction projects in Iraq and (b) remains uncommitted; and how much money his Department plans to spend in Iraq in each of the next five years. [151156]

  Hilary Benn
  To date, DFID has committed £220 million towards humanitarian and reconstruction work in Iraq, £188 million of which has been allocated to specific activities.

  At the Madrid Conference in October, the UK made a total financial pledge towards Iraq's reconstruction of £544 million for the three years from April 2003. That figure included £38 million as our share of projected European Community spending in Iraq.

  In the current financial year, DFID and other Government Department spending is expected to total £312 million, including £23 million as our share of EC spending. Future UK contributions to Iraq reconstruction are expected to be £134 million in 2004–05 and £98 million in 2005–06. Of these figures, the DFID programme for Iraq reconstruction is expected to account for £91 million and £86 million respectively. The balance is made up of the UK share of currently agreed European Community aid, and other UK Government programmes including the Global Conflict Prevention Pool which is jointly managed by DFID, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

  No decisions have yet been taken on spending on Iraq beyond 2005–06.

  Nigeria
  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment he has made of the supplies of anti-retroviral drugs in Nigeria; and what steps he will take to assist in the event of a shortfall. [150113]

  Hilary Benn
  Supplies of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs in Nigeria are critically low. Most hospitals have run out of ARVs over the past months. This is due to delays in
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  the release of Government funds, and because over 14,000 people were started on a treatment programme designed for 10,000.

  In order to address the situation, President Obassanjo recently approved an extra £2 million for ARVs, and a supply contract is currently being awarded. It is expected that the Global Fund will provide £25 million worth of ARVs, and further supplies have been promised by the United States and the World Health Organisation.

  However, ensuring reliable ARV treatment is not just a question of supply, it is also about strengthening the health system. The Nigerian Health Minister has developed an excellent strategy for reform of the health sector' which DFID plans to support. We are in addition providing £1 million to the National Action Committee on AIDS, which is coordinating the national response.

  Preferential Access
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment he has made of the European Commission proposal that the G20 be invited to give preferential access to products from the poorest countries. [146600]

  Mr. Mike O'Brien
  I have been asked to reply.

  All exports from least developed countries (LDCs), with the exception of arms, currently enjoy duty and quota free access to the European Union market under the Everything-but-Arms argument (EBA). Other G8 countries have similar but less extensive arrangements.

  The Government fully supports the commitment by the World Trade Organisation, made in the Doha Declaration in November 2001, to seek an agreement with 'the objective of duty-free, quota-free market access for products originating from LDCs', and the further commitment 'to consider additional measures for progressive improvements in market access for LDCs'. We encourage all members of the World Trade Organisation to deliver on that commitment.

  South Africa
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what measures are in place to provide the poorest families of South Africa with(a) water, (b) power and (c) health facilities. [150343]

  Hilary Benn
  Since the democratic elections in 1994, the South African Government has made extending services to the poor a priority. Their recent review of progress over the last 10 years concludes that much has been achieved while recognising that more remains to be done.

  Since 1994, 8.4 million people have gained access to water, and the government has introduced a Free Basic Water policy under which poor households are entitled to 6,000 litres of water per month free of charge. 3.8 million households have been connected to the electricity grid and the Free Basic Electricity policy entitles poor households to 50 kilowatt hours of electricity per month free of charge. Free access to primary health care has been introduced and investment in health infrastructure has increased significantly.
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  Sunset Clauses
  Mr. David Stewart
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will make a statement on his policy on the use of sunset clauses in legislation; and which Acts containing such clauses relevant to his Department were passed in each year since 1997. [149333]

  Hilary Benn
  The Department for International Development actively promotes the better regulation agenda and the use of sunsetting where appropriate. Two Acts of Parliament have been sponsored by DFID since 1997. They are the Commonwealth Development Corporation Act 1999 and the International Development Act 2002. Neither contained sunset clauses.

  Zimbabwe
  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will make a statement on malaria levels in Zimbabwe. [150107]

  Hilary Benn
  In recent months, reported numbers of malaria cases and malaria deaths have been close to the seasonal average. However, the risk of a serious worsening of the malaria situation is increasing owing to incomplete coverage of routine prevention measures and inadequate stocks of antimalarial drugs as the rainy season progresses and the peak season for malaria approaches.

  The ability of the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to control malaria is currently threatened by lack of staff and lack of access to foreign currency for purchase of insecticides and drugs. Zimbabwe is one of the countries that benefits from a grant of £17.3 million over six years provided by DFID to the Africa Regional Office of the World Health Organisation for the purpose of accelerating action to control malaria and childhood illness.

PRIME MINISTER

  Iraq
  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Prime Minister pursuant to the answer of 21 January 2004,Official Report, column 1319, on Iraq, when he was first informed of the lack of chemical filters on the tanks and armoured vehicles; what action he took as a result, and when; and when he was informed of the inability of tank crews and crews of other armoured vehicles to wear their personal NBC kit when in their tanks and armoured vehicles. [151432]

  The Prime Minister
  In the first instance, issues of this kind are for force commanders in theatre. Troops are trained to operate armoured vehicles wearing their personal NBC equipment, irrespective of whether the vehicle has a collective NBC protection system.

  Parliamentary Questions
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will instruct the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to answer named day questions on the day specified. [150236]
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  The Prime Minister
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer the Under-Secretary of State, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister gave to him on 26 January.

  Vice-chancellor (Buckingham University)
  Mr. Andrew Turner
  To ask the Prime Minister pursuant to his Oral Answer of 21 January to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), if he will(a) name the publication from which or person from whom he sourced the quotation from the vice-chancellor and (b) make a statement on the accuracy of the vice-chancellor's quotation. [151473]

  The Prime Minister
  The quotation was taken from an article published in The Guardian on Friday 12 December 2003. Copies have been placed in the Library in the House.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Iraq
  Laura Moffatt
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress is being made towards democratic elections in Iraq. [150691]

  Mr. Straw
  We are committed to the establishment of a democratic Iraq. On 15 November 2003, the Iraqi Governing Council announced a process for achieving this. This envisages the creation of a sovereign transitional government by 30 June 2004, the holding of direct elections to a Constitutional Convention by March 2005, and, following approval of the constitution, the holding of full democratic elections by the end of 2005. The UN Secretary-General has agreed to consider sending a technical team to Iraq to examine the feasibility of holding elections to the Transitional National Assembly, a move which we welcome.

  A committee of the Governing Council drafted the Statute for the Special Tribunal with assistance from, among others, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Office of Human rights and Transitional Justice. The UK provided comments on the Statute through the UK Special Representative for Iraq's office and the CPA Office of Human Rights and Transitional Justice. Our comments and advice were focused mainly on the application of international law and the scope of the Tribunal. This drew on the experience of our involvement in other Tribunals including the ICTY, ICTR and Sierra Leone. The UK is considering requests for further assistance.

  Mr. Challen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the total value is of(a) contracts so far issued to British companies working on the reconstruction of Iraq and (b) contracts expected to be issued in the next six months. [150608]

  Mr. Mike O'Brien
  British companies have won significant sub-contracts for the reconstruction process in Iraq. However, most of the contracting authorities in Iraq do not publish information on contracts awarded, and companies arc not required to notify HMG of contracts won. I am unable to give a total value for contracts awarded to UK companies.
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  The Program Management Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) will run an open tender process; a number of UK companies are bidding. Subcontracting opportunities are also likely to arise from this process.

  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has(a) to second (i) electoral registration officers and (ii) other officials and (b) to provide resources to enable the Iraqi Governing Council to facilitate free and fair elections; and if he will make a statement. [150216]

  Mr. Rammell
  At a meeting in New York on 19 January between the Iraqi Governing Council and the coalition, Kofi Annan undertook to consider sending a UN technical team to Iraq to look into the feasibility of holding elections. Once we have seen their recommendations, we will consider any requests for assistance.

  Israel
  John Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps he is taking to encourage(a) the Israeli Government to dismantle settlements in the Occupied Territories and(b) the Palestinian Authority to prevent further suicide attacks in Israel. [150704]

  Mr. Rammell
  The Government regularly presses the Israeli Government to freeze settlement activity and dismantle outposts in line with Israel's commitments under the Roadmap.

  We also reiterate at every opportunity the need for the Palestinian Authority to take visible steps to degrade terrorist capabilities. My noble Friend the Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean did so in the Occupied Territories on 21–23 January.

  Richard Burden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the information bulletin being issued to foreign nationals arriving in Israel which informs them that they now require written prior authorisation from the Israeli Government to visit territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority and that failure to obtain such authorisation many result in legal action being taken against them by Israel. [149886]

  Mr. Rammell
  We are aware of the information bulletin, which has been issued to foreign nationals arriving in Israel, and are seriously concerned at the possible impact of such restrictions on media, humanitarian organisations, and civil society groups operating in the Occupied Territories. We have raised our concerns with the Israeli Government, and are exploring with our EU partners further avenues for doing so.

  As Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice makes clear, we still advise against travel to the West Bank and Gaza, along Israel's border with Lebanon, and close to the Israeli side of the Israel/Gaza border.

  Richard Burden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what mechanisms the Israeli Government used to consult the United Kingdom before issuing warnings to British citizens and other foreign nationals arriving in Israel that entry to territories
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  under the control of the Palestinian Authority is now forbidden without written prior authorisation from the Israeli Government and stating that entry to those territories without such written authorisation may result in legal action being taken; and what representations he is making to Israel on the issue. [149935]

  Mr. Rammell
  The Israeli Government did not consult directly with the United Kingdom about the entry changes referred to in warnings to foreign nationals arriving in Israel. We have raised our concerns with the Israeli Government, about the possible impact of such restrictions on media, humanitarian organisations, and civil society groups operating in the Occupied Territories, and are exploring with our EU partners further avenues for doing so.

  Richard Burden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether there are alternative entry points to those controlled by the Israeli military for British passport holders visiting territories under the administration of the Palestinian Authority; and what assessment he has made of the implications for the freedom of movement of British passport holders of the introduction by Israel of regulations forbidding foreign nationals entry to Palestinian territories without written prior authorisation from the Israeli Government and stating that entry to those territories without such written authorisation may result in legal action being taken. [149940]

  Mr. Rammell
  There are no alternative entry points to the Occupied Territories to those covered by the new regulations. We have raised our concerns with the Israeli Government about the possible impact of such restrictions on media, humanitarian organisations, and civil society groups operating in the Occupied Territories, and are exploring with our EU partners further avenues for doing so.

  Richard Burden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he plans to have with his EU counterparts about the introduction by Israel of regulations forbidding foreign nationals entry to territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority without written prior authorisation from the Israeli Government. [150132]

  Mr. Rammell
  The Government have raised the issue of changes to entry regulations for the Occupied Territories with fellow EU members. They share our concerns about the possible impact of such restrictions on media, humanitarian organisations, and civil society groups operating in the area. We have raised our concerns with the Israeli Government and are exploring with our EU partners further avenues for doing so.

  Guantanamo Bay
  Mr. Lazarowicz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress is being made in securing proper judicial process for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. [150706]

  Mr. Mullin
  The focus of the Government's discussions with the United States Administration has been on how to resolve the position of the British nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay. All legal proceedings against the British detainees are currently suspended. The Government have made clear to the 288W
  United States our view that any trial procedure the British detainees may face must be fair and meet generally recognised principles.

  The position on the Government's discussions with the US remains as the Prime Minister explained to the House on 7 January.
  "Talks are continuing on the issue…I hope that we will shortly be able to tell the House how the issue will be handled."

  Hamdi Acikgoz
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the application by Mr. Hamdi Acikgoz, in Istanbul, for a visa to visit the United Kingdom. [150707]

  Mr. Mullin
  As my hon. Friend is aware I cannot disclose details of individual entry clearance cases. I am therefore withholding the information requested under Exemption 5 of Part II of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. I wrote to my hon. Friend about this case on 23 December. I would be happy to discuss it further with him privately.

  Occupied Territories
  Richard Burden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations he has received concerning restrictions on movement within and into the Occupied Palestinian Territories by(a) Palestinians and (b) foreign nationals; and if he will make a statement. [150708]

  Mr. Rammell
  We have received a number of representations from MPs, Peers, non-governmental organisations and members of the public concerning restrictions on movement within and into the Occupied Territories for both Palestinians and foreign nationals. Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nabil Sha'ath, also raised his concerns about the impact of the fence, which contributes to curtailed freedom of movement, with the Foreign Secretary on 8 January.

  We remain deeply concerned about the consequences for freedom of movement into and within the Occupied Territories for Palestinians and foreign nationals resulting from Israeli actions, including the imposition of curfews and closures, construction of the fence and introduction of access controls, including permits. We continue to call on the Government of Israel to do all it can to ease movement restrictions. We have raised the recently introduced entry regulations with the Israeli government and are exploring with our EU partners further avenues for doing so.

  The Netherlands
  Mr. Andrew Turner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with the Dutch Government on prospects for a referendum in the Netherlands on a proposed European Constitution; and if he will make a statement. [150709]

  Mr. MacShane
  I have regular discussions with my EU counterparts on a wide range of aspects of the IGC. The question of whether to hold a referendum on
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  the Constitutional Treaty is a matter for individual governments themselves, according to their constitutional traditions.

  As I have made clear in the House before, we have no plans to hold a referendum.

  Palestinian Authority
  David Cairns
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent discussions he has had with the Palestinian Authority concerning terrorism. [150710]

  Mr. Rammell
  We regularly discuss the security situation with our contacts at all levels in the Palestinian Authority.

  Most recently, my noble Friend the Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean discussed the need for the Palestinian Authority to fulfil its roadmap commitments on security, and intensify its efforts to tackle groups and individuals engaging in terrorist activity when she visited the Occupied Territories on 21–23 January.

  Burma
  Mr. Luke
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the political situation in Burma. [150711]

  Mr. Mike O'Brien
  We remain concerned about the political situation in Burma. Although the Burmese regime's plans for a National Convention are a step forward, the process needs to be inclusive and transparent, involving representatives from the democratic opposition and the ethnic groups. Convention participants must be allowed full freedom of speech, movement and political activity. As a first step Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD colleagues must be fully released and NLD offices re-opened.

  Civil Servants
  Dr. Cable
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much space, expressed in square metres, the Department occupies for the offices of civil servants in(a) central London and (b) Greater London. [150287]

  Mr. Rammell
  The Foreign and Commonwealth Office occupies a total of 54,558 square metres in central London, and 3,116 square metres in Greater London.

  Ethiopia/Eritrea
  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the outcome of the visit by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State to Ethiopia and Eritrea. [150112]

  Mr. Mullin
  I visited Ethiopia and Eritrea from 13 to 19 January. My programme included meetings with President Isaias of Eritrea and Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia. We discussed a range of issues, including the border dispute between the two countries. I stressed the importance of avoiding any return to war, implementing the Boundary Commission decision, and building confidence between the two parties by the establishment of a dialogue.
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  European Constitution
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in what form minutes were taken of the Intergovernmental Conference on the European Constitution; who took them; to whom they are available; and where they are available. [150196]

  Mr. MacShane
  No minutes were taken of any meetings during the Intergovernmental Conference (1GC), although the Italian presidency published revised Treaty texts following some of the meetings. These are available on the Italian presidency website: www.ueitalia.it The European Council Conclusions issued by the Italian presidency are the only formal statement of progress in the IGC to date.

  European Union
  Mr. Spring
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what his Department's position is on the United Kingdom's rebate in the context of the negotiations on the EU's multi-annual financial framework; and if he will make a statement. [150781]

  Mr. MacShane
  Initial discussion of the next financial perspective should begin next month, after the Commission publishes its future financing communication. The current financial perspective expires at the end of 2006, and the Government look forward to the successful negotiation of a new financial perspective, for the period beginning in 2007. The Government believe that the rebate remains fully justified as a fair means of redressing the UK's disproportionate high net contribution to the EC Budget.

  Andrew Selous
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to implement the transitional restrictions which the UK can apply in regard to the nationals of the EU accession countries. [151067]

  Mr. MacShane
  Under the EU Accession Treaty, nationals of Cyprus and Malta have the same rights to work in another member state as are currently enjoyed by nationals of the existing member states. However, nationals of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia ("the eight relevant states" are subject to transitional provisions.

  Under the transitional arrangements, until 30 April 2006 member states are free to apply national measures or bilateral agreements restricting the rights of nationals from the eight relevant states to work in their country. From 1 May 2006, member states must either grant these nationals the right to move freely for the purpose of work in accordance with Community law, or continue to apply national measures or bilateral agreements. Any grant of this right may, however, be subject to suspensions if the member state undergoes or foresees disturbances to its labour market which could seriously threaten the standard of living or level of employment in a particular region or occupation Such suspensions may last, at the latest, until 30 April 2011.
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  In line with its announcement of December 2002, the Government intend to grant citizens of the eight relevant states the right to work freely in the UK labour market from I May 2004. Section 2 of the EU (Accessions) Act 2003 provides a power to make regulations to give effect to this decision. The Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2000 (S.I. 2000/2326), which currently implement Community law rights of European Economic Area (EEA) nationals to enter and reside in the UK, will be applied to nationals of the eight relevant states as they apply to nationals of the EEA.

  From accession the Government will be monitoring the effect of their decision on the UK labour market. In the unexpected event of a large influx of workers to the UK, which seriously threaten the level of employment or standard of living in a particular region or occupation, there are safeguards available to re-impose restrictions on workers. The Government could, in the normal way, re-impose restrictions on some or all of the eight relevant states by repealing or suspending the application of any regulations made under the Act and could exclude nationals of one or more of the eight relevant states from the right to work in the UK under powers contained in the Act.

  Genocide
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps the international community is taking to prevent crimes of genocide. [151157]

  Mr. Rammell
  The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 11 March 2003 is an important step forward by the international community to prevent genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The court has jurisdiction over crimes committed since 1 July 2002. The UK is a strong supporter of the court. Our objective is to work for global ratification of the ICC Statute so that the court enjoys the widest possible remit.

  I am attending the Stockholm Forum on the Prevention of Genocide from 26–28 January 2004, at which more than 30 states will discuss possible measures to prevent genocide. The UK is supporting the Forum Declaration, which seeks to build consensus around how the international community can best carry forward this agenda.

  Gibraltar
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Government policy on Gibraltar. [150432]

  Mr. MacShane
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on 16 December 2003,Official Report, column 1417.

  Information Technology
  Mr. Allan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what audit mechanisms are in place to determine whether information technology(a) hardware and (b) software products are being used properly in his Department. [150933]
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  Mr. Rammell
  The Foreign and Commonwealth Office uses a number of means to determine whether its IT is being used properly. These include:

  constantly monitoring activity on the IT infrastructure system, Firecrest, including access to websites, and following up any unusual activity;

  information systems audits by our internal audit department;

  requiring all IT users to read and complete an annual certificate of compliance with the security operating procedures; and

  checks by IT security advisers that security operating procedures are being followed.

  Post implementation reviews are conducted after a project to deliver new IT has finished, to assess whether the expected benefits are being achieved. The way the system is being used is one aspect of this assessment.

  Mr. Allan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what cost savings have been made in his Department since the introduction of the Information Technology Procurement Centre of Excellence; and how these were calculated. [151050]

  Mr. Rammell
  The Foreign and Commonwealth Office's (FCO) Centre of Excellence was established in June 2003 in accordance with Office of Government Commerce guidelines. It has had a positive impact in improving programme and project management across the FCO, but cost savings cannot be calculated at this early stage.

  International Criminal Court
  Mr. David Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the(a) budget and (b) UK contribution to the budget for the International Criminal Court (i) is for the current year and (ii) will be for each of the next five years; and if he will make a statement. [150219]

  Mr. Rammell
  The total International Criminal Court (ICC) budget for the calendar year 2004 is approximately £39.5 million. The UK is expected to contribute some 11 per cent. of this sum i.e. approximately £4.3 million.

  The ICC budgets for the next five years have yet to be set. The Court has not yet reached its full establishment and its caseload also remains an unknown budgetary factor.

  The United Kingdom nevertheless remains committed to maintaining the strictest possible budgetary control and ensuring the ICC makes the most effective use of the funds at its disposal.

  The United Nations' scales of assessments, on which the UK contribution is based, are recalculated every two years and follow the general principle of capacity to pay. We would not expect great fluctuation in this rate.

  Libya
  Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what new resources he is committing to assist Libya is undertaking the disarmament and dismantling of its weapons of mass destruction and related research and production infrastructure. [147027]
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  Mr. MacShane
  We have made it clear that we are prepared to offer assistance with the dismantlement of Libyan programmes, but at this stage it is impossible to quantify what resources it may be necessary to commit. There are already a number of sources of funding for global co-operative threat reduction programmes. If it is necessary to allocate additional resources in order to assist Libya in the destruction of its weapons programmes we will do so, as we believe that money spent on reducing the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction is money well spent.

  Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when Her Majesty's Government first confirmed that Libya was developing nuclear weapons contrary to its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); when the United Kingdom informed the governments of the two other depository states for the NPT of its knowledge of Libya's breach of its NPT commitments; when the United Kingdom first informed(a) the Director General and (b) board members of the International Atomic Energy Agency of its knowledge of Libya's nuclear programme; and what information he has collated on the suppliers of Libya's nuclear weapons programme. [147029]

  Mr. MacShane
  We have had concerns for some time about Libya's nuclear programme and first raised the matter in the course of discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late 2001, and again in mid 2002. Libya is now in contact with the IAEA and it will be for Libya to make a national declaration providing the full details of its programme to the IAEA. The IAEA will then proceed to verify the extent and nature of Libya's covert nuclear activity. Only the IAEA, acting within its remit can underwrite Libya's commitment to stop this activity. We are working in close co-operation with both the Libyan authorities and the IAEA to move this process forward.

  Overseas Territories
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent communications he has had with the governments of the(a) overseas territories and (b) crown dependencies. [150424]

  Mr. Rammell
  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary addressed and exchanged views with Chief Ministers and Government leaders of the UK Overseas Territories at the annual Overseas Territories Consultative Council meeting in London on 10 December 2003.

  He has had no recent communications with the crown dependencies. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs is responsible for the United Kingdom's relations with the crown dependencies.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how often he communicated with the governments of Britain's overseas territories in the last three years. [150428]

  Mr. Rammell
  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary visited Gibraltar in May 2002, and has been in direct contact with the Chief Minister on several occasions over the last three years. He communicated directly with the governments of the other overseas 294W
  territories when he addressed Chief Ministers and their equivalents at the annual Overseas Territories Consultative Council in London on 10 December 2003.

  I maintain regular contact with the overseas territories as does my hon. Friend the Minister for Europe as Minister of State responsible for Gibraltar. Governors, of course, are in constant contact with the governments of the overseas territories.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the cost of administering Britain's overseas territories is in 2003–04. [150430]

  Mr. Rammell
  According to the published, audited 2002–03 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Resource Accounts, available in the Library of the House, the total cost of supporting the overseas territories in 2002–03 was approximately £21 million (ref: Objective 9, Schedule 57 FCO Resource Accounts). This is the full economic cost of supporting the overseas territories, and represents the cost of the total effort expended at post/missions and in the UK of supporting the overseas territories. The costs in 2003–04 are expected to be about the same.

  It is not possible to quantify the costs to other Government Departments of their role in administering the overseas territories.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to visit overseas territories over the next year. [150431]

  Mr. Rammell
  Overseas engagements for my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and other Ministers are kept under constant review. It is not practice to announce such visits until they are firm. Because of the unpredictable nature of world events, final decisions on overseas visits are often not possible until very shortly before the day of travel.

  I visited Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands in November 2003, and I hope to visit others in the future. My hon. Friend the Minister for Europe visited Gibraltar in July 2003.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with the London office of the governments of(a) the Falkland Islands, (b) Gibraltar and (c) the Cayman Islands during the last 12 months. [150433]

  Mr. Rammell
  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has had no direct discussions with the London offices of the governments of the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar or the Cayman Islands during the last 12 months. The Foreign Secretary addressed the Overseas Territories Consultative Council in December 2003, which the London representatives attended.

  I met the London representatives at the Overseas Territories Consultative Council last December. The London representative of the Falkland Islands Government also attended a meeting between myself and Falkland Island Councillor Richard Cockwell in June 2003. I will have a further opportunity to meet the representatives at a lunch prior to the UK Overseas Territories Association AGM next month.
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  State Visits
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) what plans he has to accompany Her Majesty the Queen on State visits in the next two years; [150387]

  (2) what overseas visits are planned for Her Majesty the Queen during the next two years. [150390]

  Mr. Straw
  Her Majesty The Queen announced in her Gracious Speech at the State Opening of Parliament that she is to make a State Visit to France from 5 to 7 April 2004 to mark the official start of events commemorating the Centenary of the Entente Cordiale. I will accompany her on that visit.

  At the Anglo/French summit on 24 November 2003, Her Majesty was invited by President Chirac of France to attend the 60th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy Landings on 6 June.

  Beyond that, the forward programme of visits by Her Majesty is not yet finalised. In the normal course of events I would accompany Her Majesty on State Visits, as I did on Her Majesty's State visit to Nigeria in December 2003.

  Ukraine
  Harry Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what records(a) his Department has and (b) have been released on the extent to which the Department was aware of the scale of loss of life as a result of Soviet policy in the Ukraine in 1932–33; whether all relevant documentation has been released; and if he will make a statement. [150926]

  Mr. MacShane
  Records relating to Soviet policy in the Ukraine in 1932–33 are contained in the archives of the Foreign Office's then Northern Department. There are approximately 65 files, all of which have long been in the public domain at The National Archives. No papers have been withheld from these files. Indeed, some documents pertaining to the famine were published in the FCO's official series "Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–39" in 1958 (Series II, Volume VII).

  UN Security Council Resolution 1325
  Joan Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what his policy is in relation to UN Security Council Resolution 1325, with particular reference to Iraq and Afghanistan. [150773]

  Mr. Rammell
  The United Kingdom is committed to working towards the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and ensuring that the necessary mechanisms are in place for monitoring progress.

  The situation of Afghan women and girls has developed significantly in the last two years. On 5 March 2003, Afghanistan ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

  23 per cent. of the delegates to the Constitutional Loya Jirga were women from across Afghanistan. Articles 22, 43 and 44 of the new constitution, agreed on 4 January, establish equal rights for men and women, which also
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  reflected many of the recommendations of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women. The Afghan Transitional Administration and international community are committed to providing the security and resources needed to support implementation of the new constitution, and to develop effective mechanisms to tackle continuing human rights violations and abuses, including those against women.

  The UK is working to encourage Afghan women to take their rightful role in the forthcoming elections. This includes ensuring that women and men are included in voter registration programmes, that they develop the capacities to participate as campaigners and officials and that women are empowered to take advantage of their quotas for representation in Parliament.

  We are also supporting the Afghan Judicial Commission in its work to improve access to justice for all Afghan communities, taking into account the special needs of women.

  The UK actively seeks to deploy female British officers to peacekeeping missions and other conflict prevention/ resolution operations. This has included a senior gender expert working with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, We try to ensure that those members of the various UK teams in Iraq, especially those working in or with the CPA, are fully briefed on the gender aspects of their work. The UK's Special Representative, Sir Jeremy Greenstock recently met my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Minister for Women and Equality, a representative group of Iraqi women, and representatives of UK non-governmental organisations, including the Women's National Commission, active in the field.

  Encouraging Iraqi women to participate fully in the reconstruction of their country is a key aim of the Government's conflict prevention strategy for Iraq.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Reinstatement Committees
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry pursuant to the answer of 19 January 2004,Official Report, column 922W, on reinstatement committees, if she will make a statement on the training regime undergone by members of employment tribunals, with particular reference to reinstatement committees. [150208]

  Mr. Sutcliffe
  There is little to add to my previous answer. The chairmen of employment tribunals are trained to research the relevant law as necessary before any hearing and to give guidance to the lay members on the relevant legal principles and their application to any particular case.

  Business Link
  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many Business Link organisations are in operation; and how much money was spent by each of them in each year since their formation. [148197]
  297W
  Nigel Griffiths
  There are 42 Business Link Operators (BLOs) delivering local business support services in 45 sub-regions in England, with three BLOs operating in two areas.

  The following table shows the total expenditure on BL branded activity by sub region including that supported by non-DTI funding, for the last two financial years. The Business Link network was re-engineered and the new BLOs operational from 26 March 2001.

  BLO expenditure 2001–02 and 2002–03

  £

  Expenditure

  BLO sub-region

  2001–02

  2002–03

  North East

  County Durham

  2,652,539

  3,441,153

  Northumberland

  2,300,765

  2,878,904

  Tees Valley

  4,141,342

  5,088,231

  Tyne and Wear

  5,736,800

  9,064,600

  North West

  Cumbria

  22,221,795

  3,859,512

  North and Western Lancashire

  4,192,499

  5,917,278

  East Lancashire

  2,715,866

  4,362,073

  Cheshire and Warrington

  4,978,535

  4,551,754

  Chamber Business Enterprises (Manchester)

  8,492,135

  9,777,677

  North Manchester

  6,891,700

  7,471,532

  Mersey side

  5,736,436

  7,629,197

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  West Yorkshire

  5,637,164

  11,184,242

  South Yorkshire

  8,910,014

  17,458,068

  North Yorkshire

  3,085,540

  4,661,500

  Humberside

  2,575,720

  5,738,901

  East Midlands

  Derbyshire

  4,782,666

  4,697,023

  Leicestershire—Holistico

  4,188,328

  4,875,594

  Lincolnshire and Rutland

  5,313,827

  4,844,585

  Northamptonshire

  2,296,407

  3,043,415

  Nottinghamshire

  5,042,214

  4,005,441

  West Midlands

  Birmingham

  21,286,000

  15,048,000

  Black Country

  6,183,900

  6,854,500

  Coventry and Warwickshire

  7.271,320

  6,115,000

  Herefordshire and Worcestershire

  6,787,260

  8,530,417

  Staffordshire

  5,031,346

  5,744,896

  Shropshire

  7,403,534

  5,564,642

  Eastern

  Bedford and Luton

  2,762,644

  2,899,920

  Cambridgeshire

  2,874,000

  3,315,500

  Essex

  6,515,145

  7,185,428

  Hertfordshire

  7,462,930

  8,191,000

  Norfolk

  3,182,360

  4,441,582

  Suffolk

  3,638,867

  4,149,373

  London

  London

  36,966,000

  38,236,000

  South East

  Berkshire

  4,546,742

  3,970,419

  Milton Keynes, Oxford,

  Buckinghamshire

  5,739,010

  5,741,967

  Sussex

  7,706,000

  6,986,000

  Hampshire

  6,332,070

  6,974,849

  Kent

  9,763,000

  9,532,683

  Surrey

  5,727,780

  6,207,269

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  BLO expenditure 2001–02 and 2002–03

  £

  Expenditure

  BLO sub-region

  2001–02

  2002–03

  South West

  Devon and Cornwall

  21,168,965

  11,280,448

  Dorset

  3,344,765

  3,250,151

  West

  4,894,858

  5,696,502

  Gloucestershire

  4,708,576

  4,001,183

  Somerset

  3,382,154

  3,151,337

  Wiltshire

  3,720,061

  3,472,052

  Based upon quarterly financial returns provided by BLOs to the Small Business Service, DTI.

  Emissions Trading Directive
  Brian Cotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what discussions her Department has had with the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs regarding the EU Emissions Trading Directive. [147603]

  Mr. Timms
  Defra and DTI have a joint public service agreement that commits to moving towards a 20 per cent. reduction in CO2 emissions by 2010. The EU ETS represents a central element in Government plans for reducing emissions. DTI and Defra have worked together very closely, with other Government Departments and the Devolved Administrations, to ensure that the appropriate arrangements are in place for the successful implementation of the EU ETS.

  Brian Cotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what assessment her Department has made of the impact that the EU Emissions Trading Directive will have on the United Kingdom glass industry. [147609]

  Mr. Timms
  The EU Emissions trading scheme (ETS) is a cost-effective approach to ensuring emissions of greenhouse gas fall to target levels. The impact on individual sectors has been considered during work to prepare for the introduction of the EU ETS. A draft National Allocation Plan has been released and sectors will be able to comment on the allocation proposed for them. Analytical work on the competitiveness implications will also be released shortly.

  Insolvency Service
  Keith Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many people are employed by the Insolvency Service; and how many were employed in 1997. [151009]

  Mr. Sutcliffe
  As at 1 January 2004, the full time equivalent number of staff employed by the Insolvency Service was 1,634.

  The number of staff employed in the Insolvency Service in earlier years is published in the agency's Annual Report and Accounts.

  Keith Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what complaints she has received on the operation of the Insolvency Service in the last three years. [151010]
  299W
  Mr. Sutcliffe
  The number of complaints received by the Insolvency Service in the last three years, and the nature of those complaints, is set out in the following table:

  Nature of complaint

  2000–01

  2001–02

  2002–03

  Quality

  350

  400

  342

  Efficiency

  86

  43

  32

  Legislation

  190

  97

  61

  Internet Usage
  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps are being taken to encourage use of the internet by those who have said that a lack of(a) knowledge, (b) confidence and (c) interest was a barrier to use. [146142]

  Mr. Alexander
  I have been asked to reply.

  A network of over 6,000 UK online centres offer free or low cost internet access, especially for those who may need additional support to get online. A December 2003 report on CMF funded centres, found that centres are successfully helping users improve their confidence (79 per cent.) and learn new skills (84 per cent.). The `Get Started' campaign, which promoted the benefits of the internet to disinterested groups, helped drive nearly 37,000 people to UK online centres for a free internet starter session.

  We have recently published guidelines to help employers implement Home Computing Initiatives. HCI schemes promote home computer access and use which can help reach out to individuals who are less confident with technology.

  IT Contracts
  Mr. Sayeed
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will list information technology contracts in her Department with a value of above £20 million in each of the last 10 years; what the inception date for each system was; when it became fully functional; when it became fully debugged; and what the cost of over-runs has been. [146202]

  Mr. Timms
  The Department has directly let one IT contract with a lifetime value of more than £20 million in the last 10 years. This is the ELGAR PFI contract for the provision of IT desktop, application support and development, and business re-engineering services. The contract was awarded on 27 November 1998 and the initial desk top service became operational on 31 March 1999, as planned. System Acceptance testing of the new desk top service was completed on 30 November 1999, and the system became fully functional on 31 March 2000. Following user acceptance testing, the system was accepted by the Department and the system was fully debugged by 15 July 2000. There were no additional costs to the Department for over-runs on this migration.

  A Service for the provision of Electronic Records Management was also supplied under the ELGAR contract. The inception date for this was 30 March 2001, the system became fully functional on 30 November 2001 and it was fully debugged by 30 April 2002. There was no overun on costs.

  Manufacturing Employment
  Mr. Djanogly
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many manufacturing jobs have been(a) created and (b) lost in (i) Cambridgeshire and (ii) Huntingdon in each of the last three years. [146447]

  Ruth Kelly
  The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.

  Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Djanogly, dated 27 January 2004:
  As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question on manufacturing jobs in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon. (146447)
  Figures are not available for jobs created or lost, but the net changes from year to year in numbers of jobs can be determined from the Annual Business Inquiry (ABI). The most recent figures available are set out in the attached table.

  Net annual change in number of manufacturing jobs in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon, 2000–02

  Cambridgeshire

  Huntingdon Local Authority District

  2000

  196

  -322

  2001

  70

  -576

  2002

  -1,299

  -887

  As with any sample survey, estimates from the ABI are subject to sampling variability.

  Market Access
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether it is her policy to seek to extend duty-free and quota-free access for all least developed countries exports into all developed countries as part of a development friendly agreement with the World Trade Organisation. [146642]

  Mr. Mike O'Brien
  All exports from least developed countries (LDCs), with the exception of arms, currently enjoy duty and quota free access to the European Union market under the Everything-but-Arms argument (EBA). Other G8 countries have similar but less extensive arrangements.

  The Government fully support the commitment by the World Trade Organisation, made in the Doha Declaration in November 2001, to seek an agreement with 'the objective of duty-free, quota-free market access for products originating from LDCs', and the further commitment 'to consider additional measures for progressive improvements in market access for LDCs'. We encourage all members of the World Trade Organisation to deliver on that commitment.

  Post Office Account Cards
  Mr. Chope
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will set out the circumstances in which her Department authorises Post Office counter clerks to(a) reject and (b) confiscate Post Office account cards; and on how many occasions this has happened. [150878]

  Mr. Timms
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]The Department of Trade and Industry has no role in the operation of the Post Office card account, which is a
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  commercial matter that falls within the day-to-day responsibility of Post Office Ltd. I have therefore asked the Chief Executive to reply direct to the hon. Member.

  Post Offices
  Sarah Teather
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many post offices have closed in Brent in each year since 1979. [149896]

  Mr. Timms
  Decisions on post office closures are an operational matter for Post Office Ltd. and I have asked the Chief Executive to reply direct to the hon Member.

  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many post offices there were in England and Wales(a) in 1996 and (b) on the latest date for which figures are available. [150053]

  Mr. Timms
  I understand from Post Office Ltd. that as at end September 2003, the latest quarter for which figures are currently available, that the numbers of post offices in England was 12,938 and Wales was 1,318.

  The Department does not have the corresponding historical figures for 1996 and I have asked the Chief Executive of the company to reply direct to the hon. Member.

  Lembit Öpik
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what the outcome was of each of the completed public consultations on proposed post office closures in Wales. [150102]

  £ million

  2001–02

  2002–03

  2003–04

  RDA

  Allocation

  Expenditure

  Allocation

  Expenditure

  Allocation

  Advantage West Midlands

  171

  141

  205

  204

  221

  East of England

  63

  55

  89

  88

  85

  East Midlands

  97

  86

  102

  101

  118

  London

  289

  266

  296

  295

  291

  North West

  277

  270

  275

  274

  318

  ONE North East

  163

  156

  193

  193

  219

  South East

  111

  97

  115

  112

  123

  South West of England

  92

  85

  103

  103

  101

  Yorkshire Forward

  246

  207

  211

  211

  243

  Total

  1,508

  1,363

  1,589

  1,581

  1,719

  Note:

  These figures are the grant paid to Agencies and expenditure funded by grant. The Agencies total income will also include EU grants, receipts from sales of property and rental income.

  DTI's own contribution to the RDAs was £2 million in 1999 –2000, £17 million in 2000 –01, £57 million in 2001 –02, £161 million in 2002 –03 and £177.7 million in 2003 –04.

  Sugar
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether she has received proposals from the European Commission on reform of the sugar regime; and if she will make a statement. [149137]

  Alun Michael
  I have been asked to reply.

  The European Commission published a Communication on reform of the sugar regime in September 2003 outlining three broad options for political debate in preparation for making legislative proposals later this
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  Mr. Timms
  Decisions on post office closure proposals following public consultation are an operational matter for Post Office Ltd. and I have asked the Chief Executive to reply direct to the hon. Member.

  Regional Development Agencies
  Mr. Stephen O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much has been spent by each of the regional development agencies in each year since their formation. [148191]

  Jacqui Smith
  Eight RDAs were established in 1998 and their first full year of operation was in 1999 –2000. The London Development agency was established in 2000–01. The table as follows shows the RDAs grant allocation and expenditure for each of the financial years between 1999–2000 and 2002 –03 and their initial allocations for 2003 –04.

  £ million

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  RDA

  Allocation

  Expenditure

  Allocation

  Expenditure

  Advantage West Midlands

  108

  103

  124

  113

  East of England

  30

  30

  40

  36

  East Midlands

  46

  41

  77

  67

  London

  N/a

  N/a

  268

  235

  North West

  141

  141

  159

  156

  ONE North East

  92

  92

  101

  98

  South East

  64

  63

  75

  73

  South West of England

  43

  43

  63

  62

  Yorkshire Forward

  121

  121

  148

  125

  Total

  645

  636

  1,054

  965

  year. The UK stakeholder consultation on these broad options closed on 16 January 2004 and the Government are currently considering the various responses received.

  Work-Life Balance
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many and what percentage of working parents requesting(a) flexible working and (b) adoption leave since April 2003 were women. [150347]

  Mr. Sutcliffe
  There are no requirements to notify DTI people on the number of men or women who have requested flexible working or adoption leave since April 2003.

  The preliminary findings of the 2003 DTI Work-Life Balance Survey of employees suggest that one in six employees (17 per cent.) had approached their employer

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  (in the previous two years) to make a request to change how they regularly work for a sustained period of time. These requests were most likely to be made by women, mothers, parents whose youngest child was under two-years-old and those in services and sales, and least likely by older employees (45 + years) and full-time workers.

  As part of the Department's monitoring of the new laws for working parents it is collecting evidence from number of sources to build up a picture of the demand and uptake, of flexible working.

  The Department has commissioned questions on the take-up of flexible working which currently appear in the Office for National Statistics Omnibus Survey. The results of these will be available in spring 2004. In addition the Department is working with key intermediaries, such as Working Families and Maternity Alliance who are collating data through member/ support surveys, to obtain qualitative evidence to support the quantitative research under way.

  There are less than 4,000 adoptions a year and given that statutory adoption leave was introduced only in April 2003 it is far too early to make any assessment of take-up.

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

  Council Tax
  Mr. Goodman
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what central guidance is issued by his Department in relation to the display by local councils of the qualifying rules for council tax disability reduction, with particular reference to occupants of Band A properties with disabilities. [150423]

  Mr. Raynsford
  The Council Tax and Non-Domestic Rating (Demand Notices) (England) Regulations 2003 requires the explanatory notes to contain a general indication as to the circumstances in which a person may be eligible for the purposes of the Council Tax (Reductions for Disabilities) Regulations 1992. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has issued no central guidance.

  Nick Harvey
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what account he will take of the Budget Red Book's estimate for the rise in council tax revenues in 2004–05 in determining the level of council tax rises at which he will exercise capping powers. [150209]

  Mr. Raynsford
  In order to consider public expenditure in the round, the Treasury does make projections of council tax yield for future years. These projections are based on a number of assumptions about changes in the council tax rate, the tax base, the collection rate and council tax benefit payments. It would be wrong for the Treasury to make a detailed forecast of council tax rates, as these are set by local authorities, not by the Government. The rate is therefore assumed to rise in line with past trend.

  This does not represent a judgment by the Government on a likely or acceptable level of council tax, and has no effect whatsoever on grant allocations to local authorities.
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  With the significant extra investment the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister put into local government and the scope for efficiency improvements, our view is that local authorities can and should deliver council tax increases in low single figures in 2004–05.

  Local Government Pension Scheme
  Mr. Chope
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister when the review of the Local Government Pension Scheme began; when it will be concluded; and when the conclusions will be published. [151247]

  Phil Hope
  A programme of work to ensure the Local Government Pension scheme in England and Wales continues to provide reasonable pensions at an affordable cost to employers, members and tax payers has been under way since October 2002. Changes to the scheme's current regulatory framework are programmed to take effect in April 2004 and in April 2005, within a strategy framework announced in July 2003. Proposals to ensure the sustainability of the scheme for the longer term will be circulated later this year.

  Cambridgeshire Schools Budget
  Mr. Djanogly
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister on what date he was informed of the intention of the Secretary of State for Education and Skills to direct Cambridgeshire County Council to increase its school budget by £4.5 million. [150834]

  Mr. Raynsford
  The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has regular discussions with the Department for Education and Skills, including on the possible use of the power to set a minimum schools budget for a local authority.

  Fire and Rescue Service
  Mr. Jenkin
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister under what powers he would implement the regionalisation of the Fire Service in Essex without the consent of Essex County Council. [149698]

  Miss Kirkbride
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister under what powers he would implement the regionalisation of the Fire Service in Hereford and Worcester without the consent of Herefordshire and Worcestershire county councils. [149838]

  Mr. Raynsford
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Members for Buckingham, Taunton, North Thanet, North Wiltshire, Runnymede and Weybridge, South-East Cambridgeshire, Brentwood and Ongar, Poole and Spelt home on 22 January 2004,Official Report, column 1458W.

  Miss Kirkbride
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what research he has assessed that indicates that the optimum structure for the Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service is one based on the existing Government Office West Midlands Region. [149834]

  Mr. Jenkin
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister (1) what research relating to Essex he has commissioned to provide the evidential basis for his plans to regionalise the Fire Service; [149701]
  305W
  (2) what research he has assessed that indicates that the optimum structure for the Essex Fire and Rescue Service is one based on the existing Government Office East of England Region. [149694]

  Michael Fabricant
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what research relating to Staffordshire he has commissioned to provide the evidential basis for his plans to regionalise the Fire and Rescue Service. [149849]

  Mr. Raynsford
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Members for Buckingham, Taunton, North Thanet, North Wiltshire, Runnymede and Weybridge, South-East Cambridgeshire, Brentwood and Ongar, Poole and Spelthorne on 22 January 2004,Official Report, column 1453W.

  Miss Kirkbride
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister (1) what estimate he has made of the change in the number of jobs in Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service that will be consequent on the proposed regionalisation of the Fire and Rescue Service; [149836]

  (2) what change in the number of managerial jobs he expects to result from the regionalisation of the Fire Service in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. [149837]

  Mr. Jenkin
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister (1) what estimate he has made of the change in the number of jobs in Essex Fire and Rescue Service that will be consequent on the proposed regionalisation of the Fire and Rescue Service; [149696]

  (2) what change in the number of managerial jobs he expects to result from the regionalisation of the Fire Service in Essex. [149697]

  Mr. Raynsford
  I refer the hon. Members to the answer given to the hon. Members for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), Taunton (Mr. Flook), North Thanet (Mr. Gale), North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), Poole (Mr. Syms) and Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) on 22 January 2004,Official Report, column 1456W.

  Mr. Mark Field
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what discussions he has had with the Greater London Authority on his plans to regionalise the Fire and Rescue Service. [149891]

  Mr. Raynsford
  The London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority already operates on a region wide basis.

  Mr. Djanogly
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister how many retained firefighters were employed by the Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service on 1 January. [149672]

  Mr. Raynsford
  Information provided by the Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service shows that there were 384 retained firefighters employed by them on 15 January 2004 (including 19 volunteers).

  Housing
  Mr. Kidney
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister how many local housing authorities in England have published a housing strategy; and how many of the published strategies contain policies for reducing the incidence of empty homes. [150124]
  306W
  Keith Hill
  All local housing authorities in England have housing strategies. Information on the number which include specific policies on empty homes is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the provision of affordable housing; and what plans he has to improve its availability. [150383]

  Keith Hill
  The Government is acutely aware of the difficulties associated with shortages of good quality housing at an affordable price. A programme of action to address this, and to tackle poor condition housing and low demand and abandonment, was set out in "Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future", launched on 5 February 2003. The programme for affordable housing focuses on: improving the effectiveness of the planning system; the establishment of four growth areas to alleviate the overall housing pressures in London and surrounding areas; and targeted limitations on the right to buy. In addition Kate Barker, a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, is carrying out a review of issues underlying the lack of supply and responsiveness of housing in the UK.

  The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has increased the funding for provision of additional affordable housing through the Housing Corporation's Approved Development Programme to around £5 billion for the three years 2003–04 to 2005–06; £1 billion of this will be spent on housing for key workers. Some £600 million is being made available over the same period to support work in the growth areas which will be used for site assembly/remediation of brownfield land and infrastructure as well as providing additional affordable housing.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what plans he has for the re-development of council-owned housing estates during the next 10 years. [150385]

  Keith Hill
  The Sustainable Communities Plan sets out the policies, resources and partnerships necessary to transform our communities. This includes the steps we are taking to regenerate council-owned housing estates, for example, through the work of the market renewal pathfinders, our decent homes policy and through various liveability initiatives.

  Key among these are:
  £500 million over the next two years to secure transformation of housing markets in stock in nine areas where demand is particularly weak. All of the nine market renewal pathfinder project intervention areas contain a mixture of social and private sector housing. The pathfinder schemes are being designed in such a way as to bring major benefits both in terms of improving demand for housing and reaching decent homes target;
  a commitment to ensuring that all social housing is made decent by 2010. In delivering this commitment, local authorities are encouraged to ensure the outcome is sustainable in the long term by taking a view about the future demand for their council estates. Therefore in some areas delivery may be achieved through a mixture of demolition, re-modelling and refurbishment; and
  £201 million for programmes to create more liveable places and improve the local environment for communities.
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  In addition, the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal is helping to tackle multiple deprivation in the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country with a focus on the five key themes of crime, health, employment, education, and housing and the physical environment. For instance, housing interventions as part of the New Deal for Communities programme include renovating houses, the development of master plans for housing, elimination of vacant and derelict housing and redevelopment projects.

  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the average waiting time is for a person to be re-housed in Chorley for(a) all housing and (b) old age pensioner housing. [150406]

  Keith Hill
  The average waiting time for people to be re-housed by Chorley Borough Council is tabled as follows:

  Average wait to he re-housed (days)

  All housing

  OAP

  Statutory homeless

  2000–01

  245

  402

  67

  2001–02

  244

  425

  43

  2002–03

  270

  377

  89

  2003–04

  244

  331

  135

  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the waiting list figures are in Chorley for(a) all housing and (b) old age pensioner housing for each of the last five years. [150407]

  Keith Hill
  The waiting list figures for Chorley Borough Council in each the last five years are tabled as follows:

  Current waiting list figures (houses)

  QAP

  Others

  Total

  Homeless applications

  Total

  1999–2000

  83

  112

  195

  Unknown

  195

  2000–01

  110

  257

  367

  459

  826

  2001–02

  133

  507

  640

  508

  1,148

  2002–03

  191

  937

  1,128

  493

  1,621

  2003–04

  270

  1,358

  1,655

  434

  2,089

  New Build (Chorley)
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what estimate he has made of the amount of brownfield land available for new build in Chorley. [150016]

  Keith Hill
  The 2002 National Land Use Database of Previously Developed Land shows a reported 310 hectares of previously developed land potentially available for development in Chorley. This includes 188 hectares of vacant or derelict land and buildings, and 122 hectares currently in use with the potential for redevelopment.

  Permitted Development Order Review
  Mrs. Calton
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will list the organisations and individuals consulted in the Permitted Development Order Review England, published in September 2003. [150999]
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  Keith Hill
  The research study into permitted development was commissioned from consultants Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners Ltd. in 2002. A list of those organisations who were consulted by the researchers can be found in Annex 1 of the report which is available on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's website at www.odpm.gov.uk. Copies are also available in the Library of the House.

  Mrs. Calton
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what additional consultation is required before progress can be made with the recommendations of the Permitted Development Order Review England, with respect to railway undertakings and telecommunications masts. [151000]

  Keith Hill
  The research study into permitted development was commissioned from consultants Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners Ltd. in 2002. Informal comments were invited on the recommendations contained in the report on the review of permitted development rights when it was published in September 2003. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister are putting together proposals on which we will conduct a full consultation exercise later this year.

  Regional Assemblies
  Mr. McLoughlin
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the budget of the information campaign, Elected Regional Assembly: Your Say, is(a) in total, (b) for the East Midlands and (c) for West Derbyshire. [150890]

  Mr. Raynsford
  'Your Say' is intended to inform everyone in the North East, the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber who will have a chance later this year to vote in referendums on whether to establish an elected regional assemblies.

  The total budget for this financial year is £500,000.

  It is not intended that the other five English regions should have a referendum this year. Therefore, there is no 'Your Say' budget allocation for the East Midlands or the West Derbyshire sub-region.

EDUCATION AND SKILLS

  British Monarchy Studies
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) how much time secondary school students spent studying the British monarchy in the last period for which figures are available; [150360]

  (2) what provision is made in the national curriculum for (a) primary and (b) secondary education to teach school children the values and history of the British monarchy. [150388]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  The history and development of the British monarchy is a key feature of the statutory programmes of study for National Curriculum History in primary and secondary schools. In addition, through the Citizenship National Curriculum which is a statutory requirement for all pupils aged 11–16, pupils will be taught about the United Kingdom and the institutions which underpin our democracy, including
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  the role of the Queen. There is no information collected on the time school pupils spend studying the British monarchy.

  Child Poverty
  Mr. McLoughlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many children in(a) the East Midlands and (b) West Derbyshire lived in poverty in (i) 2001–02 and (ii) 2002–03. [150924]

  Mr. Pond
  I have been asked to reply.

  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for the City of York (Hugh Bayley) on 8 January 2004, Official Report, column 462W.

  Departmental Staff
  Mr. Russell Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what percentage of staff employed within his Department are over 55 years of age; and what(a) number and (b) percentage of staff recruited over the last 12 months are over 55 years of age. [145934]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Minister for State at the Cabinet Office (Mr. Alexander) on 20 January 2004,Official Report, column 1130W.

  Employer Training Pilots
  Rob Marris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will list, broken down by region, the(a) firms and (b) companies taking part in Employer Training Pilots; and how much public funding each of them has received in (i) 2001–02,(ii) 2002–03 and (iii) 2003. [150008]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  As the Employer Training Pilots did not commence until September 2002, no public funding was given to employers during 2001–02. Since September 2002 over 6,000 employers have signed up for the pilots. Details of funding paid to participating employers is not held centrally, but by the local Learning and Skills Councils operating the pilots, and the information cannot be collated to the level of detail requested without incurring disproportionate cost. I have, however, asked Mark Haysom, the Learning and Skills Council's Chief Executive, to write to the hon. Gentleman with details of the total amounts of public funding paid to or on behalf of participating employers under the Employer Training Pilots in each of the pilot areas, and the names of participating businesses. A copy of his reply will also be placed in the House of Commons Library.

  Rob Marris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the success rate as defined by his Department is for Employer Training Pilots; and if he will make a statement. [150009]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  The Employer Training Pilots were set up in September 2002 and will run until August 2005. They are testing the effectiveness of a range of measures designed to increase employer-based training for low-skilled employees, resulting in the acquisition of basic skills or level 2 qualifications. An evaluation report on 310W
  the first year of the pilots has been produced for DIES by the Institute for Employment Studies. These interim findings show that at the end of August 2003:

  there were over 3,000 employers and 14,000 learners registered as taking part, with more in the process of starting;

  more than two in five employers engaged with the ETPs have had no previous involvement with government agencies such as the Learning and Skills Councils or Business Links;

  ETP learners tend to be aged between 26 and 45, in full-time low-skilled jobs, and earn an average of £6 an hour. Over half of the learners were female;

  both employers and employees were expressing high levels of satisfaction with the programme.

  At this interim stage it is too early to draw any definitive conclusions about the pilots and the second year will be used to explore a number of issues in more depth; these include the numbers achieving qualifications, which elements of the pilots are most attractive to employers and employees, and the longer term impact of the training on both businesses and individuals.

  The first year evaluation report was published in December 2003 and is available on the DfES website. A copy is also being placed in the House of Commons Library.

  Modern Apprenticeships
  Rob Marris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many expressions of interest were received between the start of the advertising campaign in London in 2002 promoting modern apprenticeships and three months after the conclusion of the campaign; and how many of these expressions of interest translated into modern apprenticeship courses started. [150010]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  This is a matter for the Learning and Skills Council. Mark Haysom, the Council's Chief Executive, will write to the hon. Gentleman with this information and a copy of his reply will be placed in the Library.

  Oath of Allegiance
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make provision for school children to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen and the United Kingdom. [150386]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  There are no plans to make provision for school children to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen and the United Kingdom. However, understanding about the rights and duties of citizens of the UK and the role of the Queen in our democracy are part of Citizenship education, now a statutory subject for 11 to 16-year-olds.

  Pupil Exclusions
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on the Government's policy on pupil exclusions. [146665]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  The Government are investing in a wide-ranging programme of measures to improve standards of behaviour and to develop and encourage the use of alternatives to exclusion. But exclusion must
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  continue to be one of the sanctions for serious misbehaviour available to schools. And, when a head excludes for good reasons, that decision should not be overturned. We have therefore reformed the legislation governing exclusion appeal panels to strike a better balance between the interests of the individual pupil and those of the school community as a whole.

  Rural Youth Grant
  Mr. Flook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will list the amount of rural youth grant given to each local authority in the South West since 1997. [148874]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  The Department for Education and Skills does not make rural youth grants to local authorities.

  Schoolbags
  Lady Hermon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what measures are in place in England and Wales to protect children from back injuries sustained through carrying excessively heavy schoolbags to, in and from school; and if he will make a statement. [148812]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  My Department advises local education authorities and schools in England to provide storage facilities and to plan timetables so that pupils need not carry excessively heavy bags to, in or from school. It is for local authorities and schools to assess and manage the health and safety risks of handling heavy loads.

  School Drinking Water
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what provision his Department has made to enable schoolchildren to have access to clean drinking water during the school day. [149862]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  The Education (School Premises) Regulations 1999 requires all schools to have a wholesome supply of water for domestic purposes, including drinking water. Further guidance is available in Building Bulletin 87 (Guidelines for Environmental Design in Schools), which can be viewed on the website: www.teachernet.gov.uk/energy. However, it is for local education authorities, governors and schools to decide how and when drinking water should be made available to pupils.

  University Attendance
  Mr. Hepburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the average public subsidy is for each person attending university in 2003–04. [148444]

  Alan Johnson
  Our latest estimate is that, on average, a student in higher education will benefit from around £5,300 in public subsidy. This estimate includes the average amount that the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) pay the institution as grant for teaching, the economic costs to the Government of issuing a maintenance loan, and any fee remission and other grants.

  University for Industry
  Mr. Willis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how much was spent on the University for Industry in(a) 2002–03 and (b) 2003–04; and what proportion was spent on (i) administration and (ii) staffing. [149991]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  My Department makes grant funding available annually to Ufi which helps to fund Ufi's infrastructure and operating costs including the costs of operating the learndirect information and advice service. Ufi also receives LSC funding indirectly through the sale of learndirect courses and materials to the national network ("hubs") that Ufi has established to deliver learndirect courses.

  In 2002–03, £53.800 million was spent from funding allocated to Ufi directly from my Department. Ufi also received £28 million from the sale of learndirect materials to hubs for learning subsidised with public funds. From this income £12.8 million (15.6 per cent.) was spent on staff related costs and £10.5 million (12.8 per cent.) on other administration costs. We are not able to provide the same information for 2003–04 because the financial year is not complete.

  Mr. Willis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what proportion of funding provided to the University for Industry by his Department was taken up by learners in 2002–03 [149993]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  In the academic year 2002/03, £139.5 million was set aside for Ufi/learndirect provision by the LSC from its "Learning Participation" budget. From this budget £116 million (83.1 per cent.) was taken up by learners. (The grant funding made available annually by my Department to Ufi does not cover learner costs. Figures are not available for the financial year 2002–03.)

  The LSC is currently conducting an audit of the learning undertaken in academic year 2002/03. This audit is expected to be completed in February 2004. The figures provided here are based on interim and pre-audit data and might be subject to subsequent revision.

  Mr. Willis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what proportion of the Learning and Skills Council low priority adult funding budget will go to the University for Industry in each local Learning and Skills Council region in 2004–05. [149994]

  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  On 4 December 2003 the Secretary of State for Education and Skills wrote to the LSC setting out LSC budgets for 2004–05. In this letter £6,311.616 million was set aside for the "Learning Participation Budget". This budget (which supports the delivery of a number of Departmental priorities and is not a "low priority" budget) funds participation and achievement in learning by young people and adults and supports workforce development.

  The LSC will shortly decide how much of this budget to set aside for learndirect provision in England on the basis of 2003–04 performance.

  Mr. Willis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what liaison takes place between local Learning and Skills Councils and the University for Industry; and if he will make a statement. [149995]
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  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  Ufi liaises with the 47 local Learning and Skills Councils to agree targets for the engagement through learndirect of different types of priority learners. This results in contracts between the local Learning and Skills Councils and their local learndirect hubs for the delivery of learndirect provision in their area. In year performance is monitored on a regular basis and a biannual review of hubs is undertaken to optimise the contribution of learndirect to local priorities.

  There are also regular strategic reviews between Ufi Regional Directors and local Learning and Skills Councils (and other key local and regional partners) to assess and optimise the contribution of learndirect to the achievement of local skills development priorities.

  From August 2004, the LSC will contract nationally with Ufi. Provision will, however, continue to be planned locally and local Learning and Skills Councils will monitor performance.

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

  Judicial Review
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs how the Government intend to deal with judicial review of decisions formerly made by the Immigration Appeals Tribunal. [150179]

  Mr. Lammy
  The Government have introduced measures in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill to establish a new single tier Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. This will merge the two current tiers of appeal in asylum and immigration cases. The judicial determinations and decisions made by the new tribunal will be final and can only be challenged in the higher courts on the grounds that a tribunal member has acted in bad faith.

  Court Service
  Ian Lucas
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what guidance his Department gives to the Court Service on political neutrality. [150442]

  Mr. Leslie
  The Civil Service Management Code sets out the standards of conduct and discipline that all civil servants must follow. The Code states:"Civil servants must not take part in any political or public activity which compromises, or might be seen to compromise, their impartial service to the Government of the day or any future Government".

  That is reflected in the Department's Employee Handbook, a copy of which goes to all Court Service employees.

  Ian Lucas
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what guidance his Department gives to the Court Service on appropriate use of its estate. [150443]

  Mr. Leslie
  Under the Government's wider market initiative courts have been encouraged to make commercial use of assets, including estates, to generate income. The Department for Constitutional Affairs has 314W
  issued guidance about undertaking wider markets activities to its agencies, including the Court Service. The guidance includes specific advice about image/ propriety, avoidance of disruption to core services, licensing, insurance, security and the use of in-house equipment when wider market activities are being considered. In addition separate guidance has also been produced by HM Treasury and the Court Service.

  Immigration Appeal Tribunal
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what the criteria are for remittal by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal; and where they are listed. [150182]

  Mr. Lammy
  The President of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal has not issued a Practice Direction relating to the remittal of appeals, and no set criteria are laid down, but the Tribunal will only remit an appeal where there is no practicable alternative. The decision to remit an appeal is made in accordance with the overriding objective of Rule 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Appeals (Procedure) Rules 2003: "to secure the just, timely and effective disposal of appeals and applications in the interests of the parties and in the wider public interest".

  Jury Research
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what progress has been made with the consultation on jury research. [150342]

  Mr. Leslie
  The consultation paper on jury research and investigations into juror impropriety, as announced by the Secretary of State on 11 September 2003, has been delayed so that I could take into account the decision of the Law Lords in the conjoined appeals in Rv. Shabbir AH Mirza and R v. Ben Connor Ashley, Kenneth Rollock.

  The Law Lords returned their decision on 22 January. After I have fully considered how this decision affects it, the consultation paper will then be published.

  When the paper is published, I will ensure that the hon. Member is sent a copy.

  Monarchy
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs if he will make a statement on the future of the monarchy in the UK. [150122]

  Mr. Leslie
  The Government believe that the country should remain a constitutional monarchy in its present form.

  Royal Courts of Justice
  Ian Lucas
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs (1) if he will list the Court Service's dealings with Workham Marketing for the last three years; [150444]

  (2) whether outside bodies are permitted to hold fundraising meetings in the Royal Courts of Justice; [150445]
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  (3) Affairs whether outside bodies are permitted to hold sporting events in the Royal Courts of Justice; [150446]

  (4) whether outside bodies are permitted to hold political meetings in the Royal Courts of Justice; [150447]

  (5) under what circumstances the Court Service hires the Royal Courts of Justice to outside bodies. [150448]

  Mr. Leslie
  The Royal Courts of Justice, through the Wider Markets Initiative, have been hiring out their facilities over the last two years for a range of functions. A booking was taken for a boxing charity fundraiser through the company Workham Marketing. Unfortunately the normal procedures for bookings were not followed in this case. When a senior official examined the detail of the booking it was found that Workham Marketing were representing the Countryside Alliance, a non-charitable campaigning organisation. Since finding this out the booking has been cancelled and all necessary refunds have been made. The only other dealings that the Royal Courts of Justice have had with Workham Marketing are enquiries about the availability of other dates. In operating the Wider Markets Initiative the Court Service is concerned to maintain the independence and neutrality of the courts.

HEALTH

  "Making Amends"
  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he plans to publish responses to the consultation document, Making Amends; and when policy proposals will be published. [149917]

  Ms Rosie Winterton
  [holding answer 22 January 2004]Over 170 responses to the consultation document, Making Amends have been received and we have written to respondents to request permission to publish their comments. We are now in the process of converting comments from those respondents to electronic documents and they will be available on the Department of Health website shortly. A copy will also be placed in the Library in due course.

  Responses to consultation are being assessed and analysed to assist with informing final policy details. The Government's proposals to reform and improve the way the national health service responds to clinical negligence will be announced later this year.

  BSE
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment the Food Standards Agency has made of the arrangements in the USA for(a) testing slaughtered cattle for BSE, (b) surveillance and tracking of BSE in the food chain and (c) controlling the use of rendered by-products; and if he will make a statement. [146345]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  I refer the hon. Member to the response I gave the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Andrew Lansley) today.
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  Mr. Lansley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions he has had with the United States Administration since 22 December 2003 concerning the integrity of the food chain in the US and non-contamination of it by BSE-infected meat. [146717]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The Food Standards Agency advises that the risk to public health in the United Kingdom from BSE in third countries, including the United States, is minimised through the application of existing European Union rules. These require any such country exporting meat or live animals into the Community to have in place controls equivalent to those in the EU.

  Imports of beef and beef products are permitted only if EU rules requiring the removal of specified risk material are met and veterinary certification of this is provided.

  In recent years the UK has imported little beef from the US. This is because of unrelated controls designed to prevent exports from cattle that have been given growth-promoting hormones banned in the EU. Data from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show that, since 2000, the UK has imported only around 80 tonnes of fresh or chilled bovine meat and around 1,800 tonnes of meat and offal preparations. In addition, since 1996 all meat and bone meal (MBM), a by-product of the rendering process, has been banned from use in feeding stuffs for all farmed livestock. It has also been banned as a fertiliser, except where used on non-agricultural land. Any MBM originating from the US could therefore not be used in the UK for this purpose.

  The Food Standards Agency notes the recent introduction of a number of additional public protection safeguards against BSE by the United States Department of Agriculture. The EU is in active discussion with the US authorities about what is being done and I understand will shortly be arranging a technical visit to the US to evaluate the position.

  I have not held any discussions with the US authorities over this issue.

  Building Maintenance
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what percentage of the NHS budget for the current financial year has been allocated to the maintenance of buildings. [150362]

  Mr. Hutton
  Most significant maintenance that improves the condition of national health service buildings is capital-funded.

  The allocation of capital resources to the NHS for the three-year period, 2003–04 to 2005–06, was announced on 8 January 2003. None of the resources allocated were identified specifically for the maintenance of buildings.

  Operational capital is allocated directly to NHS trusts and primary care trusts (PCTs) and is used primarily for maintaining their asset bases and funding other minor investments. For 2003–04, £844 million has been allocated as operational capital, or 29 per cent, of the total public capital budget. It is, however, for local NHS

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  trusts and PCTs to decide how much of this is used to fund building maintenance and how much is allocated to other local priorities.

  By funding the replacement of major assets, the strategic health authorities strategic capital programmes, totalling £684 million in 2003–04 and private finance initiative programme also make a contribution to meeting the NHS's maintenance requirement.

  Cancer
  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what action the Government are taking on the prevention of cancer; and what targets have been set for cancer prevention. [150234]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]The Government funds an extensive health improvement and prevention programme aimed at preventing cancer and coronary heart disease, which are the two main causes of mortality. This includes work on tobacco control and smoking cessation, improving nutrition and diet and increasing levels of physical activity, all of which have an effect on cancer prevention.

  Health improvement and prevention work is also undertaken directly by primary care trusts (PCTs). Since April 2003, 75 per cent., of the national health service budget has been devolved directly to PCTs, allowing them to control the resources to deliver on both national and local priorities, including cancer.

  All the targets we have established for cancer, including those for treatment and reducing smoking rates, will contribute towards prevention.

  Cannabis
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research he has undertaken into links between taking cannabis and schizophrenia. [149821]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The Department commissioned the following research projects as part of the Drug Misuse Policy Research Initiative, which funded £2.4 million research between 2000 and 2003.
  Long term heavy cannabis use patterns and problems. Mr. Niall Coggans, Strathclyde Institute for Biomedical Sciences
  A national epidemiological study of dually diagnosed substance misuse and psychiatric disorders between 1993–1998, using the General Practice Research Database. Dr. Martin Frischer, Keele University.
  Co-morbidity in the National Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys. Dr. Michael Farrell, Dr. Colin Taylor, Institute of Psychiatry.
  Co-morbidity of substance misuse and mental health problems a study of the prevalence and patterns of co-morbidity and the need for services amongst treatment populations. Mr. Tim Weaver, Imperial College School of Medicine.
  Dual Diagnosis in a Primary Care Group (PCG), (100,000 population locality) a step by step epidemiological needs assessment and design of a training and service response model. Dr. Geraldine Strathdee, Oxleas National Health Service Trust.

  The Department also monitors research in this area and has a range of expert advisers to inform policy.

  Colonoscopies
  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of colonoscopies were unsuccessful in each of the last five years. [151254]

  Mr. Hutton
  Information about the proportion of unsuccessful colonoscopies is not held centrally.

  Coronary Disease
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what clinical audit data hospitals and primary care trusts in England have collated that is more than 12 months old covering the information in Milestone 3 on heart failure set out in the National Service Framework on Coronary Heart Disease. [149855]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  This data is not held centrally, as the delivery of the national service framework (NSF) is managed locally. The Department's assessment is that the national health service has made good progress on this issue, as seen in the decline in emergency admissions for heart failure. As the new general medical services contract takes effect and heart failure assumes a higher priority in the central phase of delivery of the NSF, we expect to see further rapid progress on this important group of patients. To support the publication of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence's clinical guidelines that set out recommendations for NHS care of people with chronic heart failure, the Department has published a booklet, "Developing services for heart failure".

  Dentistry
  Sarah Teather
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many dentists' surgeries there are in Brent East constituency. [149904]

  Mr. Hutton
  Figures collected by the Department are by primary care trust (PCT) and not by constituency.

  Brent PCT has 64 dental practices (latest data available as at January 2004).

  These figures can be routinely obtained from the NHS UK web-site at www.nhs.uk.

  Dermatology
  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps the Government are taking to increase the number of general practitioners and nurses who undertake training in dermatology. [151252]

  Mr. Hutton
  The relevant statutory bodies are responsible for setting curricula for health professional training. We do share a commitment with those bodies that all health professionals are trained so that they have the skills and knowledge to deliver a high quality health service to all groups of the population with whom they deal. National health service trusts, primary care trusts and workforce development confederations are responsible for commissioning the training and development across their local health economies that their professionals need.
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  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many(a)general practitioners and (b) nurses have been trained in dermatology in each of the last five years; and what percentage of the total numbers of each this represents.[151253]

  Mr. Hutton
  This information is not collected centrally.

  Erythropoietic Treatments
  Mr. Lansley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many recorded incidences of pure red cell aplasia there were in England and Wales between 1999 and 2002 following treatment using erythropoietic products; [149173]

  (2) if he will list the incidences of pure red cell aplasia occurring after treatment with (a) Epogen, (b) Aranesp, (c) Neorecormon and (d) Eprex since 1999; [149174]

  (3) how many fatalities have been linked to the use of erythropoietic treatments for anaemia; [149175]

  (4) if he will commission studies into the incidence of pure red cell aplasia after erythropoietic treatments for anaemia; and what studies he has assessed into the

  Number of case reports of red cell aplasia received

  1999

  2000

  2001

  2002

  2003

  Epoetin alfa (Eprex) United Kingdom

  4

  4

  9

  21

  6

  England and Wales only

  4

  3

  8

  19

  6

  Epoetin beta (Neorecormon) United Kingdom

  4

  2

  0

  7

  1

  England and Wales only

  4

  1

  0

  7

  1

  The total number of suspected ADR reports received from UK sources between the start of 1999 and the end of 2003 in association with epoetin alfa was 44; the number associated with epoetin beta was 14. Both epoetin alfa and epoetin beta were implicated in 10 reports; therefore the total number of reports of red cell aplasia received in association with all epoetins was 48.

  The cause of death was recorded as red cell aplasia in one case. This patient showed evidence of parvovirus B 19 infection, which is a well-established cause of red cell aplasia. Therefore, there are reasonable grounds to doubt a causal association between the epoetin administered and the red cell aplasia that occurred in this case.

  Two large studies are currently under way to investigate the apparent association between epoetins and red cell aplasia, including the incidence of red cell aplasia in patients treated with epoetins.

  The epoetins available in the UK were authorised on the basis of data, including clinical trial data, that have demonstrated evidence of safety and efficacy in all licensed indications. All studies were assessed for evidence of potential unwanted effects that might be attributable to treatment. The number of patients exposed to treatment prior to grant of a Marketing Authorisation would not normally be large enough to permit the detection of very rare unwanted effects, which would usually only come to light as a result of post-marketing surveillance following the exposure of much larger numbers of patients, as was the case with red cell aplasia in association with epoetins.
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  potentially adverse effects of erythropoietic treatments for anaemia.[149176]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) receive reports of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) submitted by doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and coroners via the Yellow Card Scheme, and there is a legal requirement for companies to report suspected ADRs to their products.

  The table shows the number of suspected ADR reports of red cell aplasia received annually by the MHRA/CSM between 1999 and 2003. These numbers do not necessarily represent all cases that may have occurred, because there is an unquantifiable degree of under-reporting associated with the Yellow Card Scheme, as with all voluntary reporting schemes. Figures are presented for epoetin alfa (Eprex), and epoetin beta (Neorecormon). The MHRA/CSM has received no ADR reports involving red cell aplasia in association with either Aranesp or Epogen during this interval. The product known as Epogen was not marketed in the United Kingdom during the interval in question.

  EU Health Insurance Cards
  Ms Stuart
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his answer of 5 January 2004,Official Report, column 187W, on EU health insurance cards, what the timescale for the scoping study is.[147557]

  Mr. Hutton
  Ministers will shortly conclude their consideration of the options available for implementing the European health insurance cards for United Kingdom residents. We will then consult interested parties.

  Fruit for Schools Scheme
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what evaluation he has undertaken of the effect of the Fruit for Schools pilot schemes on children's health;[149852]

  (2) what central Government funds have been allocated in each of the next three years for the Fruit for Schools scheme; and if he will make a statement. [149859]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables helps to reduce the risk of chronic diseases, like heart disease, stroke and some cancers.

  The National School Fruit Scheme is at present available to schools in London, the East and West Midlands and the North West. 96 per cent. of schools invited have joined the scheme, and an estimated 95 per cent. of children eat the fruit.
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  Following positive results from the region-wide pilots, supported by £42 million from the New Opportunities Fund, the scheme is to be offered to all local education authority schools with children aged four to six by the end of 2004. The Department will provide £77 million over the next two years (£33.5 million has been allocated for 2004–05 and £43.5 million for 2005–06).

  In a preliminary survey, more than a quarter of children and their families reported eating more fruit at home since their children were in the scheme. A large-scale evaluation, with the support of the New Opportunities Fund, is underway. This involves 6,000 children across 100 schools, using a specially developed assessment tool to measure the impact of the scheme on children's diet both at school and home. Data will be collected before and after the scheme starts in the North East in March and again in the autumn 2004 and a report is expected in 2005.

  General Practitioners
  Mr. Barnes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will review Schedule 1, Part 1, paragraph 9 of the NHS (General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 1994 to assess whether the terms of service for doctors need to be revised to give patients better safeguards over having their names removed from general practitioners' lists; and if he will make a statement. [148153]

  Mr. Hutton
  We have already considered this in developing the new general medical services contract. This includes strengthened provisions requiring a practice to have reasonable grounds for removal and to advise the patient and primary care trust of that reason. Patients will be given warnings before such action is taken by a practice.

  Sarah Teather
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioner surgeries there are in Brent East constituency. [149902]

  Mr. Hutton
  Figures collected by the Department are by primary care trust (PCT) and not by constituency.

  Brent PCT has 78 general practitioner surgeries as at January 2004.

  Sarah Teather
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioner surgeries in Brent East constituency closed their list in the last 12 months. [149903]

  Mr. Hutton
  We do not routinely collect information on the number of closed lists.

  Sarah Teather
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients, in the absence of an available general practitioner, have been allocated to a locum doctor in(a) Brent, (b) London and (c) England. [149961]

  Mr. Hutton
  A patient who experiences difficulty in registering to receive primary medical services may be allocated by the primary care trust to the list of a local general practitioner principal or personal medical services provider. Locum doctors, however, do not hold patient lists and patients may not be allocated to such a doctor.
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  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the average cost of running a general practitioner surgery was in the last year for which figures are available.[150366]

  Mr. Hutton
  The average costs incurred by general practitioners in running their practices, based on the latest Inland Revenue Enquiry data for 2001–02, was £106,272.

  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the(a) number and (b) rate of general practitioner vacancies in each (i) strategic health authority and (ii) primary care trust in each year since each was established. [149864]

  Mr. Hutton
  The Department's annual general practitioner (GP) Recruitment and Retention Vacancy survey started in 2000.

  The estimated three month GP vacancy rate for England in 2003 was 3.4 per cent. and 2.7 per cent. in 2002. It is not possible to produce reliable estimates of the vacancy rate at strategic health authority (SHA) level or primary care trust (PCT) level. Estimated three month vacancy rates are not available before 2002.

  Information on the number of GP vacancies for each SHA since 2000 and on the number of GP vacancies in each PCT for 2003, the first year data was collected at PCT level has been placed in the Library. This is a count of all GP vacancies that have occurred during each year. It will include existing posts that doctors have left and also new posts created to increase the workforce, even where they were filled very quickly. Thus, the increase in vacancies in part is a result of there being more posts overall, reflecting the Government's plan to increase the GP workforce.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioner surgeries in Romford receive NHS funding. [150373]

  Mr. Hutton
  There are a total of 17 national health service general practitioner surgeries in Romford and all receive NHS funding.

  Haemoglobinopathies
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the Government plans to increase awareness of sickle cell and thalassaemia. [147894]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  NHS Plan set out a commitment to introduce, by 2004, new and effective screening programmes for women and children, including a new national linked antenatal and neonatal programme for sickle cell and thalassaemia. The sickle cell and thalassaemia screening programme has held a series of workshops throughout the country, with the aim of increasing awareness of the objectives and principles of the programme among general practitioners, practice nurses, midwives, health visitors, laboratory and administrative staff. To support the national rollout of the newborn sickle cell screening, the programme is planning various activities to develop a mass media campaign to improve the visibility of these disorders in communities with the highest prevalence.
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  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the Government plans to increase community support networks and facilities for sickle cell and thalassaemia sufferers and their families. [147895]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Local implementation of the national health service sickle cell and thalassaemia screening programme in England is being supported by a UK National Screening Committee development programme. The programme is being developed in partnership with the key community and voluntary sector stakeholders. A key element of the national work is a community consultation and engagement project to ensure community awareness and acceptance of the screening programme. The screening programme works closely with voluntary groups to ensure that they are well informed about developments.

  The Department is working with professional organisations to consider proposals for clinical networks of services to be developed, allowing patients to be cared for locally.

  Havering
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much money has been allocated to NHS services in the London borough of Havering for financial year 2004–05. [150361]

  Mr. Hutton
  Funding is allocated to primary care trusts (PCTs) on the basis of the relative needs of their populations. Revenue allocations for PCTs covering the period 2003–04 to 2005–06 were announced on 11 December 2002.

  For 2004–05, the revenue allocation for Havering PCT is £234.9 million. Havering PCT is co-terminus with the London borough of Havering.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps he is taking to improve the quality of buildings in which NHS treatment is provided in the London borough of Havering. [150364]

  Mr. Hutton
  The new acute hospital at Oldchurch Park in central Romford, costing £200 million, is already under way and is scheduled for completion in late 2006. This will replace the acute facilities at Oldchurch and Harold Wood Hospitals, part of Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals National Health Service Trust, in purpose-built accommodation and will improve dramatically the quality of buildings available for acute care in Havering.

  From May 2003, Havering primary care trust (PCT), together with neighbouring Barking and Dagenham PCT, local councils and the North-East London Mental Health Trust (NELMHT) have been working in partnership with Primaria to improve local health services and the buildings that house them. This partnership provides a new way of funding the development of modern, efficient community-based services and the buildings that they are in and follows the NHS local investment finance trust (LIFT) initiative. Five health care premises in Havering will be developed initially. The PCT is currently identifying further developments to be undertaken in Havering through LIFT. Havering, Barking and Dagenham PCTs and NELMHT have developed a strategic outline
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  case (SOC), which was approved by the North-East London Strategic Health Authority in September 2003. The SOC establishes the case for investment, and considers options for the reprovision of facilities for all existing services provided at St. George's hospital, Hornchurch, and the Harold Wood and Hornchurch local health clinics.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what percentage of NHS spending in the London borough of Havering was spent on the(a) diagnosis and (b) treatment of sexually transmitted diseases in the last period for which figures are available. [150365]

  Mr. Hutton
  This information is not collected centrally.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much money the Havering NHS Trust was given in the financial year 2003–04. [150375]

  Mr. Hutton
  The data concerning the financial allocation to Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals National Health Service Trust is not collected centrally; NHS trusts receive their funding from contractual relationships with primary care trusts (PCTs).

  The allocation of funding to Havering PCT for 2003–04 was £214.0 million, a 7.2 per cent. increase in real terms and a 9.6 per cent. increase in cash terms.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what the average cost of performing a cataract operation in the NHS was in the London Borough of Havering in 2003; and what the cost was in(a) Barking and (b) Brentwood; [150435]

  (2) how many cataract operations were performed in the London borough of Havering in 2003.[150434]

  Mr. Hutton
  The data regarding the average cost of performing a cataract operation and the number of cataract operations performed, are not collected by London borough but by national health service trust.

  The latest information available is for the financial year 2001–02. In 2001–02, the average cost of performing a cataract operation at Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust was £689.

  In 2001–02, Barking, Havering and Redbridge hospitals carried out a total of 779 cataract extractions with lens implants as day cases.

  Health Service Recovery Plans
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health which(a) NHS, (b) NHS mental health and (c) primary care trusts have financial recovery plans; what period the recovery plans cover; and what the level of (i) recurring and (ii) non-recurring deficit or overspend the plans are intended to recover. [151470]

  Mr. Hutton
  The information is not collected centrally for individual organisations. This is the responsibility of the managing strategic health authority.

  Hepatitis C
  Charles Hendry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether(a) haemophiliacs and (b) non-haemophiliacs will be eligible for compensation under the hepatitis C ex-gratia payment scheme; and when he expects to announce the details of the scheme. [151351]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made to the House on 26 January 2004, Official Report, column 1WS, by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, announcing the details of the scheme which will be open to both haemophiliacs and non-haemophiliacs.

  HIV/AIDS
  Mr. Woodward
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what percentage of rape victims are known consequently to have contracted(a) a sexually transmitted disease, (b) HIV/AIDS, (c) hepatitis B and (d) hepatitis C in each of the last five years. [149906]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Routine surveillance for sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C, conducted by the Health Protection Agency, collects information on routes of transmission of these infections (for example, whether through homosexual or heterosexual sex), but does not record whether or not sex was consensual.

  Mr. Woodward
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people in(a) St. Helens and (b) Merseyside had HIV/AIDS in (i) 2001, (ii) 2002, (iii) 2003 and (iv) the most recent in 2004 for which figures are available. [149910]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The table shows the number of HIV-infected people resident in St. Helen's and Knowsley and Merseyside local authorities who attended national health service services for HIV-related treatment and care in the last five years for which data are available.

  Residence

  Survey year

  St. Helens and Knowsley local authority

  Merseyside local authority1

  1998

  23

  163

  1999

  24

  180

  2000

  27

  208

  2001

  27

  220

  2002

  37

  293

  1Merseyside LAs include Liverpool, Sefton, St. Helens and Knowsley and Wirral

  Source:

  North West HIV/AIDS Monitoring Unit, Liverpool John Moores University.

  Hospital-acquired Infection
  Brian Cotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what action his Department is taking to combat the spread of MRSA within nursing and residential homes. [147605]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  We consider that implementation of our recent report, "Winning Ways— Working together to reduce Healthcare Associated Infection in England1", will reduce infections in both
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  hospital and community settings. This report will raise standards by reinforcing the need to follow existing good practice2.
  1 Available at www.doh.gov.uk/cmo/hai/winningways/pdf.
  2 The Public Health Medicine Environmental Group Guidelines on the Control of Infection in Residential and Nursing homes 1996—National Institute for Clinical Excellence. Infection control: prevention of health care associated infection in primary and community care 2003.

  Tim Loughton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the additional cost to the NHS of hospital acquired infections in each of the last six years; and what methodology he used to calculate that figure. [144148]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Precise data are not available. A commonly used estimate1 is that hospital acquired infection may cost the national health service £1 billion a year.
  1R. Plowman, N. Graves, M. Griffin, J.A. Roberts, A.V. Swan, B. Cookson, L. Taylor. The socio-economic burden of hospital acquired infection. Public Health Laboratory Service 1999

  Hospitals (Durham)
  Mr. Kevan Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the implementation of the Darzi Review recommendations on health care in County Durham. [144868]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The proposals arising from the Darzi Review were referred to Ministers by the former South Durham and Weardale Community Health Council. These were subsequently approved for implementation in September 2002. To support the new model, the two trusts responsible for the management of the hospitals in Co. Durham and Darlington merged to form the County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals National Health Service Trust, with effect from 1 October 2002.

  County Durham and Tees Valley Strategic Health Authority is overseeing the process of implementation of the proposals, which cover a wide range of services. The chief executive of the SHA wrote recently to all local right hon. and hon. Members informing them of progress on the review and a copy of his letter has been placed in the Library.

  Local Government
  Mrs. Calton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the extent to which the recommendations in Circular HSC2001/016:LAC(2001)23 have been met by local authorities; and if he will make a statement. [150098]

  Dr. Ladyman
  We issued the implementation guidance Circular HSC 2001/016: LAC (2001)23 in August 2001. The guidance followed the publication, in March 2001, of the White Paper, 'Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century' (Cm 5086). 'Valuing People' set out our proposals for improving services for people with learning disabilities, their families and carers said that it would take a minimum of five years to make the changes it described.
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  Our first annual report to Parliament on learning disability, 'Making Change Happen' (HC 514), published in April 2003, gave a comprehensive report about the progress made on implementing all of the objectives in the White Paper. A copy of the report is available in the Library and was sent to all English right hon. and hon. Members. The report shows that we have made good progress since 'Valuing People' was published, but that there is much more to do to achieve all its aims. Further progress will be reported in our second annual report in April.

  The Learning Disability Task Force monitors the progress of 'Valuing People' and reports to the Government on this. Its first report, 'Making Things Happen' was published in January 2003 and a second report is due in February.

  Lung Cancer
  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what action the Government are taking to introduce better techniques for diagnosing lung cancer. [151255]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The Department of Health published "Improving Outcomes Guidance on Lung Cancer" in 1998. This guidance provides advice on how lung cancer services in the national health service should be organised to improve outcomes for lung cancer patients. It addresses the diagnosis and staging of lung cancer and recommends that a full range of diagnostic tests should be available within cancer services.

  The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is also preparing clinical guidelines (advice on assessment and treatment of a condition) for the NHS on the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. The guideline will provide guidance on diagnosis including early diagnosis; key symptoms and signs upon which a patient should be referred; factors encouraging patients to present to healthcare services sooner; diagnostic methods; staging and the impact of lung cancer on a patient's activities, as well as the need to be referred to other health professionals if required. The guideline is expected to be published in November 2004.

  In addition, in March 2000, Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer were published by the Department, and sent to all general practitioners in order to help them identify those patients who are most likely to have cancer, so that they can be referred urgently to a specialist. These guidelines include a chapter on lung cancer. NICE is in the process of updating these guidelines and the update is due to be published in February 2005.

  The Department are aware of the potential benefits positron emission tomography (PET) scanning can offer patients with lung cancer, particularly in assessing the stage of the disease. We will be consulting with doctors, voluntary organisations and other stakeholders on a national framework which will set out which tumour groups would benefit from PET scanning, likely future demand, and the implications for the optimal configuration and location of PET scanners for both clinical and research needs.

  The work of the Modernisation Agency's Cancer Services Collaborative 'Improvement Partnership' (CSC'IP') is central to the drive to improve the
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  detection, diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. A specific goal of the CSC'IP' is to promote early diagnosis of lung cancer.

  Mental Health
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the number of people assessed as being elderly mentally infirm. [149792]

  Dr. Ladyman
  Data is not collected on the basis of elderly mentally infirm.

  The research quoted in the older people's national service framework estimates that approximately 600,000 people in the United Kingdom have dementia. It is estimated that about five per cent. of people over 65 have dementia, rising to about 20 per cent. in the population over 80. It is also estimated that at any point in time about 10 to 15 per cent. of the population over 65 will have depression.

  Although the main mental health problems among older people are dementia and depression, there is also a considerable number of older people with other mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia.

  Negative Extrathoracic Pressure
  Phil Sawford
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his answer of 19 January 2004,Official Report, columns 1069–70W, on North Staffordshire Hospital NHS Trust, when he expects to receive the results of the audit of the use of negative extrathoracic pressure at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust. [150593]

  Dr. Ladyman
  The independent follow-up study of continuous negative extrathoracic pressure patients at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire National Health Service Trust is being carried out independently by a research team based at Queens Medical Centre Nottingham University Hospital NHS Trust. This study is expected to be completed by the end of August 2004, but the results will need to be collated before publication.

  NHS Bank
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much was borrowed from the NHS Bank by each strategic health authority in the past 12 months; how much was repaid to the NHS Bank by each strategic health authority in the last 12 months; and how much the NHS Bank forecasts it will lend to each strategic health authority in the next 12 months. [150461]

  Mr. Hutton
  In 2003–04, the NHS Bank made available £152 million special assistance to the following strategic health authorities. Surrey and Sussex (£40 million), Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire (£70 million), Thames Valley (£25 million), and Kent and Medway (£17 million).

  No money was repaid to the NHS Bank by the SHAs in the last 12 months.

  Decisions on special assistance for 2004–05 have not been made.
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  Mr. Lansley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the relationship is between the NHS Bank and the NHS Financing Facility. [147032]

  Mr. Hutton
  NHS Bank and the NHS Foundation Trust Financing Facility carry out two separate functions. NHS Bank provides a service, via strategic health authorities, to National Health Service trusts. The purpose of the NHS Bank is to support NHS organisations in maximising the use of resources across the NHS and across years. The NHS Financing Facility provides a service to NHS foundation trusts. The Financing Facility will assess and agree capital loan applications from NHS foundation trusts on behalf of the Secretary of State.

  NHS Finance
  Sarah Teather
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what money has been allocated to NHS local investment finance trust schemes in each year since the scheme was introduced in(a)Brent, (b)London and(c)England; [149959]

  (2) what uptake there has been of NHS local investment finance trust scheme funding in each year since the scheme was introduced in (a)Brent, (b)London and (c)England. [149960]

  Mr. Hutton
  The table shows the total of allocations made to primary care trusts to help develop local investment finance trust (LIFT) schemes in the Brent, Harrow and Hillingdon LIFT area, London and England since NHS LIFT was first announced.

  £000

  Brent, Harrow and Hillingdon

  London

  England

  2000–01

  0

  0

  1,460

  2001–02

  0

  390

  800

  2002–03

  60

  10,765

  30,127

  2003–04

  4,600

  25,394

  105,860

  Total

  4,660

  36,549

  138,247

  Performance Indicators
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will set out performance indicators and targets set by his Department in each year since May 1997 that concern public health, listing(a) when they were first set, (b) interim milestones or goals, (c) substantive revisions to the content and (d) those that were abandoned, with reasons why they were dropped. [145083]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  All of the targets in the Department of Health Public Service Agreements for 1998, 2000 and 2002, including those related to public health, are listed in Chapter 5 of the 2003 Departmental Report, a copy of which is available in the Library.

  The Department of Health Priorities and Planning Framework Targets (formerly called National Priorities Guidance), relating to the periods 1999–2000 to 2001–02 through to 2003–06, have all been published and are available in the Library. Many of these relate to public health.
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  National Health Service Performance Indicator sets have been published for each year since 1999, initially by the Department and latterly the Commission for Health Improvement. Many of these relate to public health and all are available on the Department of Health's website.

  Public Bodies
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many public bodies were operating in the health service in 1997; how many are operating; what plans he has to review their number and purpose; and if he will make a statement. [150212]

  Mr. Hutton
  The information requested is shown in the table.

  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced to the Health Select Committee on 30 October 2003, his intention to review the Department's executive non-departmental public bodies, special health authorities and executive agencies. We want to ensure that the roles of these bodies are in line with current expectations and that the oversight of front-line health and social services is kept to an acceptable minimum. We expect that the review will reach its conclusions by the middle of this year. National health service trusts, strategic health authorities, primary care trusts and advisory and tribunal non-departmental public bodies will not be part of the review. Executive agencies, of which the Department has four, will be included.

  1 June 1997

  1 January 2004

  Executive NDPBs1

  7

  8

  Advisory NDPBs

  42

  37

  Tribunal NDPBs

  3

  3

  Health authorities2

  100

  n/a

  NHS trusts

  402

  275

  Special health authorities

  13

  22

  Strategic health authorities2

  n/a

  28

  PCTs3

  n/a

  304

  Other NHS bodies

  2

  0

  Total

  569

  677

  1NDPBs = non-departmental public bodies

  2Health authorities were replaced by strategic health authorities from April 2002

  3PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) were introduced from April 2000, most on 1 April 2002, and cover smaller populations than did health authorities.

  Public Health
  Stephen Hesford
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress is being made in the performance management of the public health function; and if he will make a statement. [148609]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The Health and Social Care Act 2003 imposes a duty on the national health service to put and keep in place arrangements for monitoring and improving the quality of health care including the promotion and protection of public health. Strategic health authorities have the role of performance managing primary care trusts (PCTs) and NHS hospital trusts, including their public health responsibilities.

  The targets in the Priorities and Planning Framework, 2003–06, published in October 2002, and the performance indicators for PCTs (for example, those for 2003–04, published by the Commission for

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  Health Improvement in December 2003), include several related to public health. 2003–04 will be the second year for PCT ratings and this represents real progress in the performance management of public health. The Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection will take over responsibility for the ratings process from April 2004.

  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what arrangements have been made to collect and analyse the annual reports of directors of public health; and what guidance he has given to ensure comparability between reports. [144792]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Strategic health authorities are responsible for agreeing local national health service plans informed by these reports. In 2002 the Department of Health commissioned guidance for directors of public health on the production of their Annual Reports, which was published in 2003 by the Faculty of Public Health. We are in discussion with SHAs about ways of assessing the impact of these reports, in their performance management role.

  Raloxifene
  Chris Grayling
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations he has received from(a) patients suffering from osteoporosis and (b) groups representing them about the recent National Institute for Clinical Excellence assessment of Raloxifene; and how many patients have been prescribed the drug in each of the past three years. [150038]

  Dr. Ladyman
  The Department has had no formal representations from patient groups on the subject, but has received a number of letters.

  Information on the number of people who receive medicines, or reasons why a drug was prescribed is not available. Information on how many prescription items of Raloxifene Hydrochloride were dispensed is shown in the table.

  Number of prescription items of Raloxifene Hydrochloride that were dispensed in the community in England from 2000

  Number of prescription items

  2000

  79,944

  2001

  118,950

  2002

  160,716

  20031

  138,841

  1January to September

  Source:

  Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) data from the Prescription Pricing Authority.

  Refusal of GP Referrals (Avon)
  Mr. Webb
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the categories of treatment for which health trusts in the Avon area are refusing to accept referrals from general practitioners; what estimate he has made of the number of patients who have been refused in each case; and if he will make a statement. [149171]

  Ms Rosie Winterton
  [holding answer 19 January 2004]The information requested is not held centrally. It is for primary care trusts to ensure that suitable commissioning arrangements are in place. HSC 2002/007 (Securing 332W
  Service Delivery: Commissioning Freedoms of Primary Care Trusts) and HSC 1998/198 (Commissioning in the new NHS) provide further information.

  Residential Care
  Adam Price
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many people in poor health in England have been located in residential care in each of the last six years; [148924]

  (2) what the (a)total and (b) average amount contributed by people in poor health in England located in residential care was in the last period for which figures are available. [148926]

  Dr. Ladyman
  Information is not held centrally in the form requested. The 2001 census included questions on where people lived and whether they considered themselves to be living with a limiting long-term illness. According to the census, there were 324,192 non-staff residents in care homes, of which 303,908 said they had a limiting long-term illness.

  Information is not available on the total and average amount contributed by people with poor health. Figures are only available showing the absolute levels of sales, fees and charges recorded by local authorities as income against nursing and residential care. The latest available figures are shown in the table.

  Adults under 65 and older people 2001–02

  £000

  Residential care

  Sales fees and charges

  Nursing home placements

  532,642

  Residential care home placements

  1,286,515

  Salt Intake
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps he is taking to limit the public's regular intake of salt. [148833]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  As 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. of salt comes from processed foods, the Department has called on industry to take concerted action in reducing the salt content of processed foods. The Department, in partnership with the Food Standards Agency (FSA), held a salt stakeholders meeting to highlight the role of all sectors, including industry, health and consumer bodies, on 10 November 2003. I have asked the industry to provide plans of action for reducing the salt content of foods by 27 February.

  The Department and the FSA have jointly written to all public procurement bodies to help in achieving the reductions in salt intake as recommended by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition by focussing on the salt content of processed foods as part of their procurement processes.

  The FSA has set salt targets—to reduce average salt intake by 10 per cent., by 2005–06 and in the long term, to reduce the average population intake by a third over the next five years—bringing intakes down to the recommended six grams per day.
  333W
  The Department and the FSA communicate the importance of reducing salt in the diet to the public and health professionals through various channels, including leaflets, websites and through NHS-Direct.

  Sensory Impairment
  Mr. Allan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) for what reason sensory impairment does not feature on the list of priorities for research published on his Department's website; [149704]

  (2) for what reason none of the research and development work on assistive technology listed in his Department's statutory report that was laid before Parliament in November 2003 related to sensory impairment. [149726]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  [holding answer 21 January 2004]The report, published in November 2003, outlines a selection of the research and development activity relating to assistive technology funded by the Government in 2002. Full details of all the work funded are available on the Foundation for Assistive Technology website at www.fastuk.org. The website contains details of some twenty Government-funded projects related to sensory impairment that are current or were completed in 2003.

  The report for 2001 contains sections on navigational aids for people with visual impairments and technologies to assist deaf and hearing-impaired people.

  Table 1: Rates of diagnoses of infectious syphilis (primary and secondary) by sex and age group, GUM clinics, North West England, 1998–2002

  Rates (per 100,000 population)

  Sex

  Region

  13–15

  16–19

  20–24

  25–34

  35–44

  45+

  Total

  1998

  M

  North West

  0.0

  0.0

  0.5

  1.1

  0.4

  0.1

  0.2

  1999

  M

  North West

  0.0

  0.6

  3.8

  2.7

  1.3

  0.1

  0.9

  2000

  M

  North West

  0.0

  0.0

  3.7

  6.5

  4.6

  0.5

  2.0

  2001

  M

  North West

  0.0

  2.9

  18.8

  12.0

  10.0

  1.8

  5.3

  2002

  M

  North West

  0.0

  5.2

  16.7

  17.9

  11.7

  2.2

  6.3

  1998

  F

  North West

  0.0

  0.0

  0.5

  1.6

  0.4

  0.1

  0.2

  1999

  F

  North West

  0.0

  1.2

  2.1

  1.2

  0.0

  0.1

  0.4

  2000

  F

  North West

  0.0

  0.0

  0.5

  0.4

  0.4

  0.1

  0.2

  2001

  F

  North West

  0.0

  0.6

  2.5

  0.4

  0.2

  0.0

  0.3

  2002

  F

  North West

  0.7

  1.2

  1.0

  1.5

  0.2

  0.1

  0.4

  Table 2: Rates of diagnoses of uncomplicated gonococcal infection by sex and age group, GUM clinics, North West England, 1998–2002

  Rates (per 100,000 population)

  Sex

  Region

  13–15

  16–19

  20–24

  25–34

  35–44

  45+

  Total

  1998

  M

  North West

  7

  73

  153

  222

  28

  4

  31

  1999

  M

  North West

  6

  107

  201

  99

  45

  8

  43

  2000

  M

  North West

  5

  167

  285

  140

  57

  10

  58

  2001

  M

  North West

  4

  145

  292

  148

  74

  11

  61

  2002

  M

  North West

  9

  171

  309

  147

  64

  11

  62

  1998

  F

  North West

  9

  95

  73

  50

  4

  0

  12

  1999

  F

  North West

  19

  143

  93

  26

  8

  1

  18

  2000

  F

  North West

  14

  166

  111

  29

  10

  1

  21

  2001

  F

  North West

  18

  156

  122

  32

  13

  0

  22

  2002

  F

  North West

  27

  175

  112

  32

  10

  1

  22

  334W
  Projects relating to sensory impairment will also be highlighted in the report for 2003. This will be laid before Parliament by July 2004.

  The Department's website lists major strategic research developments in key Departmental priority areas, including cancer, mental health and coronary heart disease. In the national health service, research priorities are identified through widespread consultation with those using, delivering and managing services. They take account of the burden of disease, potential benefits and departmental objectives as well as the responsibilities and work of other funders—including the charities. Current projects relating to sensory impairment include a £0.3 million study of the acceptability, benefit and costs of early screening for hearing disability, and a £0.8 million study of interventions for mild to moderate permanent childhood hearing impairments identified by neonatal hearing screening.

  Sexually Transmitted Diseases
  Dr. Pugh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what changes there have been to the rate of sexually transmitted diseases in the Southport and north Sefton area in the last five years. [148488]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The rate of diagnoses of the five principal sexually transmitted infections—infectious syphilis, uncomplicated gonorrhoea, uncomplicated chlamydia, genital herpes-first attack, and genital warts-first attack—by sex and age group from genito-urinary medicine clinics in the North West of England over the last five years (from 1998–2002) are shown in the following tables.
  335W

  Table 3: Rates of diagnoses of uncomplicated genital chlamydial infection by sex and age group, GUM clinics, North West England, 1998–2002"

  Rates (per 100,000 population)

  Sex

  Region

  13–15

  16–19

  20–24

  25–34

  35–44

  45+

  Total

  1998

  M

  North West

  7

  179

  425

  534

  56

  5

  73

  1999

  M

  North West

  14

  248

  597

  239

  73

  7

  98

  2000

  M

  North West

  6

  319

  731

  293

  80

  8

  115

  2001

  M

  North West

  10

  339

  809

  299

  84

  9

  123

  2002

  M

  North West

  9

  460

  994

  348

  99

  11

  152

  1998

  F

  North West

  49

  693

  621

  370

  25

  2

  93

  1999

  F

  North West

  76

  907

  813

  184

  31

  2

  126

  2000

  F

  North West

  76

  1,060

  982

  219

  37

  3

  146

  2001

  F

  North West

  93

  1,214

  1,064

  266

  46

  4

  168

  2002

  F

  North West

  125

  1,442

  1,226

  257

  57

  3

  191

  Table 4: Rates of diagnoses of genital herpes (first attack) by sex and age group, GUM clinics, North West England, 1998–2002

  Rates (per 100,000 population)

  Sex

  Region

  13–15

  16–19

  20–24

  25–34

  35–44

  45+

  Total

  1998

  M

  North West

  1

  24

  72

  135

  29

  5

  19

  1999

  M

  North West

  0

  21

  73

  52

  30

  5

  19

  2000

  M

  North West

  0

  22

  75

  53

  29

  6

  19

  2001

  M

  North West

  0

  24

  82

  65

  28

  7

  22

  2002

  M

  North West

  1

  28

  84

  54

  32

  6

  21

  1998

  F

  North West

  7

  117

  146

  181

  22

  4

  28

  1999

  F

  North West

  7

  141

  151

  64

  29

  4

  30

  2000

  F

  North West

  11

  140

  153

  68

  27

  5

  31

  2001

  F

  North West

  18

  161

  172

  80

  31

  6

  36

  2002

  F

  North West

  15

  150

  181

  74

  30

  5

  35

  Table 5. Rates of diagnoses of genital warts (first attack) by sex and age group, GUM clinics, North West England, 1998–2002

  Rates (per 100,000 population)

  Sex

  Region

  13–15

  16–19

  20–24

  25–34

  35–44

  45+

  Total

  1998

  M

  North West

  12

  267

  815

  973

  112

  20

  138

  1999

  M

  North West

  14

  310

  858

  362

  117

  24

  146

  2000

  M

  North West

  8

  288

  871

  371

  118

  21

  143

  2001

  M

  North West

  5

  322

  867

  392

  128

  21

  149

  2002

  M

  North West

  8

  300

  904

  377

  132

  22

  151

  1998

  F

  North West

  50

  766

  708

  553

  56

  9

  119

  1999

  F

  North West

  72

  748

  762

  201

  66

  10

  124

  2000

  F

  North West

  40

  761

  720

  201

  61

  11

  120

  2001

  F

  North West

  54

  751

  718

  212

  65

  10

  123

  2002

  F

  North West

  47

  757

  649

  193

  67

  12

  119

  Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust (Overspend)
  Mr. Paul Marsden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the forecasted level of overspend is for this financial year for the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. [151463]

  Dr. Ladyman
  I am advised that Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital National Health Service Trust is forecasting a surplus of £4 1 million for the 2003–04 financial year.

  Sir Roy Meadow
  Tim Loughton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions he has held with the General Medical Council about the possibility of accelerating its investigation into the record of Sir Roy Meadow. [151092]

  Mr. Hutton
  [holding answer 26 January 2004]No such discussions have taken place.
  336W

  South Sefton Primary Care Trust
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what the South Sefton Primary Care Trust(a)network and (b)boundaries are; [150143]

  (2) how many (a) diabetologists, (b) senior nurses, (c) paediatric diabetologists, (d) paediatric senior nurses, (e) psychologists, and (f) other diabetes specialist staff there are in South Sefton Primary Care Trust. [150144]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  This information is not collected centrally. However it can be obtained from the following website: http://www.drfoster.co.uk/diabetes/objectlist.aspx?obid = 271&w = l&p =1

  The website can be accessed via www.diabetes.org.uk.
  337W

  Strategic Health Authorities
  Mr. Lansley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he expects to know how many staff were employed by strategic health authorities in September 2003. [149563]

  Mr. Hutton
  Subject to standard data integrity checks, current plans are to publish these figures—as part of the September 2003 national health service workforce census results on the Department's website—in February 2004.

  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the latest financial position of each strategic health authority is, broken down by(a) forecast outturn, (b) financial risk, (c) brokerage required to achieve financial balance and (d) loans taken from the NHS Bank. [150462]

  Mr. Hutton
  Audited information on the strategic health authorities (SHAs) own financial position will be published in their individual annual accounts. This data will be available centrally in the autumn. We have no plans to publish un-audited information.

  We have no plans to publish information on financial risk. It can be subjective, is affected by rapidly changing conditions and management action and as a result could be misleading.

  We have no plans to provide brokerage to SHAs for the purpose of achieving financial balance.

  In 2003–04, the NHS Bank has provided £152 million special assistance to the following SHAs:

  Surrey and Sussex—£40 million

  Avon. Gloucestershire and Wiltshire—£70 million

  Thames Valley—£25 million

  Kent and Medway—£17 million

  Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust
  David Davis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much was spent on travel by directors of Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust in each of the past three years. [143239]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Figures are only available for 2002–03. In this year, £7,122 was spent on travel by the directors of the Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service National Health Service Trust.

  Source:

  Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

  Weston Area Health Trust
  Brian Cotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when his Department will appoint a Director of Infection Control for the Weston Area Health Trust. [147604]

  Number and Percentage of Appeals found in favour of the Appellant by benefit: December 2002 to November 2003

  Benefit Caseload

  Cleared at Hearing

  Found in Favour

  % found in Favour

  Attendance Allowance

  11,358,400

  7,770

  3,525

  45.4%

  Child Benefit/One Parent Benefit

  27,342,400

  510

  80

  15.7%

  Child Support Cases

  3888,300

  ,

  ,

  ,

  Child Support Assessments

  ..

  2,205

  890

  40.4%

  338W
  Miss Melanie Johnson
  Designation of the director of infection prevention and control is a local decision, but I can report that such a director has been designated for the Weston Area Health Trust.

  Working Time Directive
  Tony Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what the value is of bids that have been submitted by NHS hospital trusts for extra resources to respond to the EU Working Time Directive; [149340]

  (2) what request in respect of the EU Working Time Directive he has received from the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust for (a) extra medical staff and (b) extra resources. [149342]

  Mr. Hutton
  This information is not held centrally. Local delivery plans and financing of these plans is a matter for strategic health authorities and local trusts, including planning for implementation of the Working Time Directive for doctors in training.

  Tony Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the action being taken by the Government to help smaller general hospitals respond to the EU Working Time Directive. [149343]

  Mr. Hutton
  A substantial programme of work is currently under way within the national health service to support implementation of the Working Time Directive (WTD). This includes 20 national WTD pilot sites and innovative work locally as part of a larger programme of modernisation and improvement to services.

  Strategic health authorities are currently working with their respective trusts locally on plans to achieve compliance for doctors in training from August 2004.

WORK AND PENSIONS

  Appeals
  Paul Holmes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many appeals against benefit decisions were(a) heard and (b) decided in the appellant's favour in the last 12 months, broken down by benefit; and if he will make a statement. [147814]

  Maria Eagle
  This is a matter Christina Townsend Chief Executive of the Appeals Service. She will reply to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Christina Townsend to Mr. Paul Holmes, dated 27 January 2004:
  The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question regarding how many appeals against benefit decisions were (a) heard and (b) decided in the appellant's favour in the last 12 months broken down by benefit.
  The attached table shows the figures for the period December 2002-November 2003.
  I hope this reply is helpful
  339W

  Number and Percentage of Appeals found in favour of the Appellant by benefit: December 2002 to November 2003

  Benefit Caseload

  Cleared at Hearing

  Found in Favour

  %found in Favour

  Child Support departures appeal

  ..

  960

  345

  35.9%

  Child Support departures referral

  ..

  180

  105

  58.3%

  Child Support Reforms

  ..

  -

  -

  ,

  Child Tax Credit

  44,220,700

  70

  -

  0.0%

  COEG

  ..

  10

  -

  0.0%

  Compensation Recovery Unit

  ..

  1,275

  985

  77.3%

  Council Tax Benefit

  54,657,400

  655

  170

  26.0%

  Disability Living Allowance

  62,526,700

  69,695

  36,975

  53.1%

  Disability Working Allowance

  ..

  5

  —

  0.0%

  Disabled Person's Tax Credit

  ..

  90

  20

  22.2%

  Home Responsibility Protection

  ..

  20

  —

  0.0%

  Housing/Council Tax Benefit

  ..

  2,365

  775

  32,8%

  Housing Benefit

  73,807,700

  2,205

  675

  30.6%

  Incapacity Benefit

  82,400,500

  ,

  ,

  ,

  Incapacity Benefit (Personal Capability Assessment)

  ..

  41,570

  20,130

  48.4%

  Incapacity Benefit (not Personal Capability Assessment)

  ..

  4,685

  1,830

  39.1%

  Personal Capability Assessment (not incapacity benefit)

  ..

  560

  240

  42.9%

  Income Support

  94,015.700

  12,355

  4,260

  34.5%

  Industrial Death Benefit

  1011,900

  5

  —

  0.0%

  Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit

  11343,000

  14,975

  5,825

  38.9%

  Carer's Allowance

  12414,200

  760

  120

  15.8%

  Jobseeker's Allowance

  13911,300

  7,625

  2,175

  28.5%

  Lookalikes

  ..

  5

  5

  100.0%

  Maternity Allowance

  1424,300

  85

  10

  11.8%

  Not Known

  ..

  45

  10

  22.2%

  Others (extinct/rare benefits)

  ..

  835

  180

  21.6%

  State Pension

  1511,266,100

  1,015

  105

  10.3%

  Severe Disablement Allowance

  16315,300

  475

  235

  49.5%

  Social Fund—Funeral Payments

  1770,000

  1,735

  300

  17.3%

  Social Fund—Sure Start Maternity Grants (formerly Maternity Payments)

  18289,000

  510

  55

  10.8%

  Vaccine damage appeals tribunals

  ..

  40

  5

  12.5%

  Widow's Benefit/Bereavement Benefit

  19240,500

  825

  90

  10.9%

  Working Families Tax Credit

  ..

  1,020

  200

  19.6%

  Working Tax Credit

  201,705,500

  10

  —

  0.0%

  Appeals Figures Notes:

  All figures are subject to change as more up to date data becomes available. Figures for the latest months may rise significantly as information feeds through to the Appeals Service.

  Figures are rounded to the nearest five.

  "-" denotes nil or negligible.

  "," Denotes not applicable.

  *Benefit caseload refers to the number of people "on benefit" at the given time in the footnotes for each benefit. Despite this there are footnotes for some benefits such as funeral payments that are one off grants thus are not constantly claimed.

  Source:

  100% download of the Generic Appeals Processing System.

  Benefit Figures Notes:

  Figures are rounded to the nearest hundred, except where noted.

  "," Denotes not applicable.

  ".."Denotes not available.

  Source:

  IAD Information Centre, 5% Samples, except where noted.

  1As of Aug 2003

  2As of Aug 2003. Data supplied is that of No of families Appealing.

  3As of Aug 2003. Total number of live and assessed cases. Up to 200,000 cases are missing due to transferral to new system.

  4As of Oct 2003. 10% sample.

  5As of Aug 2003. 100% sample.

  6As of Aug 2003.

  7As of Aug 2003. 100% sample.

  8As of Aug 2003.

  9As of Aug 2003. Caseload includes both Working Age and Pension Credit claimants.

  10As of Sep 2003. 100% sample.

  11As of Jun 2003. 10% sample.

  12As of Feb 2003. Cases in payment. 100% sample.

  13As of Aug 2003

  14As of Aug 2003

  15As of Mar 2003

  16As of Aug 2003

  17Figures are claims for financial year—April 2002 to March 2003. Claims are expressed to the nearest thousand. Data source: Social Fund Policy, Budget and Management Information System.

  18Figures are claims for financial year—April 2002 to March 2003. Claims are expressed to the nearest thousand. Data Source: Social Fund Policy, Budget and Management Information System.

  19As of Mar 2003.

  20As of Oct 2003. Figures for benefits which no longer exist have been excluded. 10% sample.
  340W 341W

  Child Maintenance
  Vera Baird
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many and what percentage of child support cases are being assessed using the(a)old and (b)new system for calculating child maintenance liability. [144851]

  Mr. Pond
  [holding answer 18 December 2003]The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive, Mr. Doug Smith. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.

  Letter from Doug Smith to Ms Vera Baird dated 27 January 2004:
  In reply to your recent Parliamentary question about the Child Support Agency the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.
  You asked how many and what percentage of child support cases are being assessed using the a)old and b)new system for calculating child maintenance liability.
  As at 30 September the Agency held around 1 million cases within its systems. At that date around 30,500 cases (just over 3%) had calculations made under the new arrangements for calculating child maintenance liability. The balance refers to cases either progressing toward a calculation or assessment or to cases assessed in accordance with the previous arrangements.

  Child Support
  Dr. Stoate
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what progress is being made with transferring individual child support cases which are still subject to the rules of the old system of child support to the new system; and if he will make a statement. [150994]

  Mr. Pond
  I refer the hon. Member to the Written Answer I gave the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) on 18 December 2003,Official Report, column 1092W.

  Plans for transferring the old scheme caseload to the new scheme have yet to be finalised.

  Citizenship Pension
  Ms Atherton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will commission further investigation into the effects of the proposal in the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs' Report, Aspects of the Economics of an Ageing Population, for a citizenship pension based on years of residence. [150395]

  Malcolm Wicks
  We are assessing the implications of the recommendations made by the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs in their report Aspects of the Economics of an Ageing Population and will respond in due course.

  Civil Servants
  Dr. Cable
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much space, expressed in square metres, the Department occupies for the offices of civil servants in(a)Central London and (b)Greater London. [150276]

  Maria Eagle
  At 23 January 2004 the total space occupied by the Department for Work and Pensions in London is 286,569 square metres. This covers all the space we occupy within the London Government Office Region whose external border is the M25.
  342W
  This figure includes space that is used for offices for civil servants and that used to provide public caller facilities.

  The space we occupy is not divided between Central and Greater London but is recorded according to which district it is located in.

  The breakdown of space occupied by district is in the table.

  Breakdown of space occupied by district

  District

  M2

  Brent Harrow and Hillingdon

  28,403

  Central London1

  67,399

  City and East London

  22,061

  Lambeth Southwark and Wandsworth

  44,471

  North East London

  25,102

  North London

  18,683

  South East London

  16,162

  South London

  37,510

  West London

  26,778

  London Government Office Region

  286,569

  1Central London includes the areas covered by the London Boroughs of Islington Camden, City of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea.

  Note:

  The districts are Jobcentre Plus districts. Figures include space occupied by all DWP businesses.

  Departmental Advertising
  Mr. Willetts
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what the total expenditure on(a)information campaigns and (b)advertising was for his Department in each year since 1997; [146015]

  (2) what the total expenditure on information campaigns and advertising was for his Department for each year since 1997. [146007]

  Maria Eagle
  The Department for Work and Pensions was formed in June 2001. Between that date and March 2003, the Department spent a total of £35,031,354 alerting people to their rights, responsibilities and entitlements through information campaigns. Of this sum, £18,788,328 was spent on advertising using television, radio, cinema and press media. Information broken down by year is in the table.

  £

  Total publicity costs

  Advertising costs

  June 2001 to March 2002

  22,727,979

  13,787,594

  April 2002 to March 2003

  12,303,375

  5,000,734

  Totals

  35,031,354

  18,788,328

  Notes:

  1. Machinery of Government changes during the period 1997 to2001 mean that like-for-like figures are not obtainable without disproportionate cost. During this time communications activity was accounted for under different systems in the agencies, Headquarters and the Department for Education and Employment, part of which transferred to the Department for Work and Pensions.

  2. All costs exclude VAT.

  3. Advertising costs are total publicity costs excluding all production costs.

  4. Information campaigns costing under £250,000 have not been included as a disproportionate cost would be incurred in compiling these figures.
  343W

  Departmental Staff
  Mr. Russell Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what percentage of staff employed within his Department are over 55 years of age; and what(a)number and (b)percentage of staff recruited over the last 12 months are over 55 years of age. [145985]

  Maria Eagle
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to him by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office (Mr. Douglas Alexander) on 20 January 2004,Official Report, volume 416, column 1130–34W.

  Departmental Staff Sickness
  Mr. George Osborne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the(a)total number of days lost due to staff sickness and (b)average number of days off sick per member of staff in his Department and each of its executive agencies was in each of the last five years. [148850]

  Maria Eagle
  The information requested is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is in the tables.

  Table 1—Sickness absence information for DWP and the former DSS

  Department

  Year

  Working days lost

  Working days available

  Average number of working days Lost

  DSS

  1999–2000

  1,057,549.2

  22,086,808.8

  12.0

  DSS

  2000–01

  1,085.307.5

  22,024,101.1

  12.3

  DSS

  2001–02

  1,039,208.8

  22,895,495.2

  11.3

  DWP

  2002–03

  1,674,435.3

  34,054,324.0

  12.3

  Table 2—Sickness absence information for the DWP businesses in 2002–03

  Business

  Working Days Lost

  Working Days Available

  Average Number of Working Days Lost

  Child Support Agency

  147,761.9

  2,891,913.6

  12.8

  Disability and Carers Service

  93,163.4

  1,928,378.8

  12.1

  Jobcentre Plus

  1,141,339.7

  21,987,970.3

  13.0

  Pension Service

  139,165.4

  3,504,399.6

  9.9

  Appeals Service

  12,099.3

  237,570.5

  12.7

  Notes:

  1. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was created in June 2001. Due to the migration of businesses into and out of the newly forming Department, and differences in calculation methods, figures for the Department as a whole are only available from April 2002.

  2. The information in table 1 covers the years April 1999 to March2002 relating to the former Department of Social Security (DSS),the main predecessor Department in place prior to the formation of DWP, and for DWP for April 2002 to March 2003.

  3. Figures have been provided for DSS and DWP for each full operational year since 1999. Sickness absence information for the current year, April 2003 to March 2004, will be available in spring 2004.

  4. The information in table 2 relates to the DWP businesses for the period April 2002 to March 2003.

  5. The number of working days lost and working days available recorded for the DWP businesses in table 2 do not match the total figures for DWP in table 1. This is because the figures in table 2relate only to the current DWP businesses.
  344W

  Disability Living Allowance
  John Barrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to his answer of 15 December 2003,Official Report, column 690W, on disability living allowance, how many claimants are aged under 60 years in each case. [147778]

  Maria Eagle
  The numbers of DLA claimants, under 60 years of age in the geographical areas requested, are contained in the tables. Since the earlier answer was given, figures for the quarter ending 31 August 2003 have now become available and are set out in the tables.

  DLA recipients in Edinburgh local authority by age as at 31 August 2003

  Thousands

  All

  Under 60

  60 and over

  All

  18.7

  12.5

  6.2

  Higher rate care and higher rate mobility

  3.0

  1.8

  1.1

  Higher rate care and lower rate mobility

  0.9

  0.9

  —

  Higher rate care only

  *0.3

  *0.2

  *0.1

  Middle rate care and higher rate mobility

  3.1

  1.5

  1.6

  Middle rate care and lower rate mobility

  2.5

  2.3

  *0.2

  Middle rate care only

  0.6

  0.6

  *0.1

  Lower rate care and higher rate mobility

  1.9

  1.2

  0.7

  Lower rate care and lower rate mobility

  0.9

  0.7

  *0.2

  Lower rate care only

  1.2

  1.0

  *0.3

  Higher rate mobility

  3.2

  1.6

  1.7

  Lower rate mobility

  0.9

  0.7

  *0.2

  DLA recipients in Edinburgh, West by age as at 31 August 2003

  Thousands

  All

  Under 60

  60 and over

  All

  2.6

  1.7

  0.9

  Higher rate care and higher rate mobility

  *0.3

  *0.2

  *0.1

  Higher rate care and lower rate mobility

  *0.2

  *0.2

  —

  Higher rate care only

  *0.1

  *0.1

  *0.1

  Middle rate care and higher rate mobility

  *0.4

  *0.2

  *0.2

  Middle rate care and lower rate mobility

  *0.4

  *0.3

  *0.1

  Middle rate care only

  *0.1

  *0.1

  —

  Lower rate care and higher rate mobility

  *0.3

  *0.1

  *0.1

  Lower rate care and lower rate mobility

  *0.2

  *0.1

  *0.1

  Lower rate care only

  *0.2

  *0.2

  —

  Higher rate mobility

  *0.3

  *0.1

  *0.2

  Lower rate mobility

  *0.1

  *0.1

  —

  DLA recipients in Scotland by age as at 31 August 2003

  Thousands

  All

  Under 60

  60 and over

  All

  281.2

  172.0

  109.2

  Higher rate care and higher rate mobility

  45.1

  26.5

  18.6

  Higher rate care and lower rate mobility

  13.2

  11.8

  1.4

  Higher rate care only

  3.7

  3.1

  0.6

  Middle rate care and higher rate mobility

  45.5

  21.9

  23.6

  Middle rate care and lower rate mobility

  34.1

  30.0

  4.1

  Middle rate care only

  8.8

  7.5

  1.3

  Lower rate care and higher rate mobility

  34.9

  18.1

  16.7

  Lower rate care and lower rate mobility

  13.1

  10.7

  2.4

  Lower rate care only

  17.6

  12.4

  5.2

  Higher rate mobility

  54.0

  21.3

  32.7

  Lower rate mobility

  11.1

  8.6

  2.6

  345W

  DLA recipients in Scotland by age as at 31 August 2003

  Thousands

  All

  Under 60

  60 and over

  All

  2,526.7

  1,587.5

  939.2

  Higher rate care and higher rate mobility

  385.4

  227.8

  157.6

  Higher rate care and lower rate mobility

  113.7

  102.5

  11.2

  Higher rate care only

  41.4

  35.8

  5.6

  Middle rate care and higher rate mobility

  372.6

  189.4

  183.2

  Middle rate care and lower rate mobility

  294.2

  263.4

  30.8

  Middle rate care only

  103.7

  90.8

  12.9

  Lower rate care and higher rate mobility

  344.7

  183.8

  160.9

  Lower rate care and lower rate mobility

  110.6

  89.2

  21.4

  Lower rate care only

  190.8

  136.7

  54.2

  Higher rate mobility

  467.5

  188.3

  279.2

  Lower rate mobility

  102.1

  80.0

  22.1

  Source:

  IAD Information Centre.

  Mr. Webb
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the cost would be of increasing the upper age limit on claiming disability living allowance to (i) 70, (ii) 75 and (iii) 80 years; what estimate he has made of the likely number of beneficiaries; and what take-up assumptions are made in this calculation. [150450]

  Maria Eagle
  The requested information is not available. The effect of increasing the upper age limit for claims to Disability Living Allowance would be to enable people aged 65 and over to claim and qualify for the mobility component and the lowest rate care component of the allowance. Entitlement to these and the other components of the allowance can be reliably established after a claim has only been made and the mobility and care needs of the customer assessed. There are no reliable data available on which estimates could be made of the number of people aged 65 and over who might be entitled to either the mobility component or the lowest rate care component of Disability Living Allowance if they were to make a claim. The higher and middle rate care components of Disability Living Allowance have the same entitlement conditions as Attendance Allowance which is available to people aged 65 and over when they claim help with their disability-related extra costs.

  Incapacity Benefit claimants by Diagnosis group in each August quarter

  Thousands

  1997

  1998

  1999

  2000

  2001

  2002

  2003

  All

  2,369.8

  2,301.7

  2,275.3

  2,286.2

  2,337.8

  2.377.0

  2,400.5

  Claimants without any diagnosis code on the system

  11.7

  9.3

  5.4

  10.0

  7.4

  4.9

  5.0

  Certain Infectious and Parasitic Diseases

  16.7

  17.2

  17.2

  17.6

  18.0

  17.6

  18.6

  Neoplasms

  26.1

  26.4

  28.7

  30.1

  32.2

  33.5

  34.6

  Diseases of the Blood and Blood forming organs and certaindiseases involving the immune mechanism

  3.5

  3.7

  3.4

  3.6

  4.0

  3.9

  4.1

  Endocrine, Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases

  43.3

  40.8

  38.9

  36.8

  36.3

  35.6

  35.2

  Mental and Behavioural Disorders

  594.5

  631.2

  676.0

  718.7

  771.8

  833.0

  878.9

  Diseases of the Nervous System

  110.1

  111.2

  111.2

  112.6

  116.4

  122.5

  126.2

  Diseases of the Eye and Adnexa

  14.1

  13.7

  13.7

  13.4

  14.2

  14.7

  14.3

  Diseases of the Ear and Mastoid Process

  9.5

  9.7

  9.3

  8.9

  9.2

  9.9

  10.0

  Diseases of the Circulatory System

  264.0

  235.3

  213.9

  195.9

  187.4

  179.1

  169.0

  Diseases of the Respiratory System

  91.6

  84.1

  77.7

  71.8

  70.4

  66.4

  63.5

  Diseases of the Digestive System

  41.1

  40.4

  39.9

  40.3

  41.2

  40.2

  39.6

  Diseases of the Skin and Subcutaneous System

  16.4

  16.0

  16.1

  15.9

  16.3

  15.4

  13.6

  Diseases of the Musculoskeletal system and Connective Tissue

  595.9

  569.2

  549.1

  536.3

  535.3

  521.2

  508.3

  Diseases of the Genitourinary System

  19.2

  18.5

  18.0

  17.8

  17.9

  17.5

  17.3

  Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Puerperium

  4.7

  4.7

  4.4

  4.1

  4.2

  4.7

  4.4

  Certain Conditions Originating in the Perinatal Period

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Congenital Malformations. Deformations and Chromasomal Abnormalities

  2.4

  2.8

  2.9

  2.9

  2.9

  5.1

  5.6

  EU Enlargement
  Andrew Selous
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what entitlement to pension credit nationals of the EU accession countries will have if they come to live in the United Kingdom. [151069]

  Malcolm Wicks
  Under European law, a national of a member state must generally enjoy the same access to social security benefits as a national of the state of residence. Entitlement to income-related benefits and pension credit is subject to the habitual residence test, which nationals of the EU accession countries would need to satisfy. This acts as a deterrent to benefit tourism.

  Incapacity Benefit
  Mr. Goodman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people claimed incapacity benefit in each year since 1997, broken down by the condition that enables them to claim this benefit; and if he will make a statement on trends in claims. [148639]

  Maria Eagle
  The overall number of people claiming Incapacity Benefit (IB) has risen from 2.37 million in August 1997 to 2.4 million in August 2003; this slight increase reflects a number of factors such as demography and changes in the characteristics of those claiming. The rate at which the caseload is increasing has been reduced dramatically and, in recent years, people with mental health disorders are the only broad category of diagnosis not to see a reduction in the numbers claiming.

  "Pathways to Work—Helping people into employment",published November 2002, set out a strategy for enabling people on 113 to move into work. The first tranche of three pilot areas (Bridgend and Rhondda Cynon Taff; Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, Argyll and Bute; and Derbyshire) went live from October 2003; indications after the first seven weeks are very encouraging, with positive feedback from customers and over 150 people moving back into work. A further tranche of four areas (Gateshead and South Tyneside; Somerset; Essex; and East Lancashire) are on track to go live in April.

  The information is in the table.
  347W

  Incapacity Benefit claimants by Diagnosis group in each August quarter

  Thousands

  1997

  1998

  1999

  2000

  2001

  2002

  2003

  Symptoms, Signs and Abnormal Clinical and Laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified:

  332.9

  300.4

  281.9

  274.7

  274.8

  272.0

  270.8

  Injury, Poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes

  148.6

  141.3

  142.8

  147.9

  149.5

  150.2

  149.5

  Factors influencing Health Status and Contact with Health Services

  23.5

  25.8

  24.8

  27.0

  28.4

  29.5

  30.1

  Notes:

  1. Numbers are rounded to the nearest hundred and are expressed in thousands. Totals may not sum due to founding.

  2. Numbers are based on 5 per cent. samples, and are therefore subject to a degree of sampling variation.

  3. All diagnoses are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition, published by the World Health Organisation.

  Source:

  DWP—IAD Information Centre 5 per cent. Samples.

  Leak Inquiries
  Richard Ottaway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will list occasions on which his Department has conducted an inquiry into alleged leaks from members of staff since 1997; and if he will list the occasions on which the names of those persons accused of leaking information from his Department have been made public(a)by the Government and (b)by way of another source. [147191]

  Maria Eagle
  Since April 1997, the Department has conducted an investigation into a suspected leak of sensitive information on 31 occasions.

  In line with exemptions 1(a) and 7(b) set out in Part II of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information, it has been the practice of successive governments not to comment on the outcome of such inquiries in order to safeguard security and investigative arrangements. However, I can confirm that the Department has not made public the name of any individual under investigation. I am not aware of any disclosure by other sources.

  Low-income Households
  Hugh Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many children(a)in England and (b)in each English region there were in households with income below half of the national average (i) before housing costs and (ii) after housing costs in each year since 1994–95. [148810]

  Mr. Pond
  The latest available information relating to the financial year 2001–02 can be found in the publication 'Households Below Average Income 1994–05 to 2001–02', a copy of which is available in the Library.

  Year-on-year comparisons of this information at a regional level are not advisable as changes are likely to be small in relation to sampling variation. Results for English regions are presented as percentages of children, not numbers; this is because the data does not provide robust estimates of numbers at this level.

  Pension Credit
  John Thurso
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many pensioners were in recept of pension credit in Scotland as at(a)31 October 2003, (b)30th November 2003 and (c)31 December 2003. [150399]
  348W
  Malcolm Wicks
  The information requested is not available for 31 October. The information for 17 October, 30 November and 31 December is given in the table.

  Recipients of Pension Credit, Scotland, October—December 2003

  17 October 2003

  30 November 2003

  31 December 2003

  Households

  Individuals

  Households

  Individuals

  Households

  Individuals

  201,555

  234,835

  217,065

  255,575

  223,060

  263,290

  Notes:

  1.Figher have been round to the nearest five.

  2.Figher related to the Geographical government office Region (GOR) of scotland.

  Pensioner Couples
  Mr. Flook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many pensioners who receive the basic state pension live together as man and wife but claim two single pension entitlements; what estimate he has made of the additional cost to the Exchequer of such claims compared with the cost if such people claimed only the married persons' entitlement; and if he will make a statement. [150602]

  Malcolm Wicks
  An individual's entitlement to state pension depends on the national insurance contributions paid during his or her working life. however, for married couples, provision is made for a spouse to become entitled to a state pension based on the other spouse's national insurance contributions. There is no such thing as married persons' entitlements. Therefore, we are unable to provide the information requested.

  Pensions
  Mr. Webb
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will estimate the annual cost of increasing the state pension in line with the usual UK uprating for UK citizens who reside in countries where their UK state pension is frozen. [150455]

  Malcolm Wicks
  To bring everyone up to the current rate of State Pension they would receive if they had remained in the UK, but not to pay arrears, could cost around 400 million in 2003–04.

  Note:

  Costs have been calculated using March 2003 Retirement Pension administrative data and the latest HMT Economic Assumptions.

  Procurement (Outsourcing)
  Norman Lamb
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement on his
  349W
  Department's procurement policy with regard to offshore IT and call centre outsourcing; whether his Department is outsourcing IT and call centre jobs to offshore companies; to which countries his Department has outsourced these jobs; how much his Department has spent on this outsourcing in each of the last two years; and how much has been budgeted for this purpose for the next two years. [147591]

  Mr. Browne
  The Department has no plans to outsource to countries abroad work performed by DWP call centre staff. The Department contracts for IT delivery work with IT providers, many of whom are worldwide organisations. There have been no specific IT contracts targeted offshore.

  Progress2Work
  Mr. George Osborne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) what proportion of the £40 million allocated to Progress2Work has been spent; [147910]

  (2)what the average cost is of each Progress2Work participant who has been found sustained employment; [147912]

  (3)what percentage of participants in Progress2Work have been placed in sustained employment. [147913]

  Mr. Browne
  In April 2001, £40 million was allocated to enable Jobcentre Plus to develop Progress2Work provision. To date approximately 22.5 per cent. of this budget has been spent.

  7,797 people had started Progress2Work by the end of November 2003. Of these 1,402 people had been helped into work; 968 were still receiving in work support from their provider and a further 434 were in sustained employment. This represents 5.6 per cent. of the total participants.

  Progress2Work is an evolving programme, phased in over 3 stages, with over 50 per cent. of participants joining in the last 6 months. The final phase contracts are still being put in place. The cost of a job and sustained job outcome will continue to drop as more participants move into employment. Currently costs per job outcome come out at £7,229 and at £23,136 per sustainable job.

  Progress2Work has been effective at helping this very disadvantaged group back into employment. The proportion of current participants who are in supported job outcomes is approximately 20 per cent. Additionally there is also a consistent increase in the numbers moving from Progress2Work into employment. Costs and outcomes for Progress2Work have not yet stabilised as the programme is still developing.

  Transfer Payments
  Mr. Flight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the cost of transfer payments, including social security benefits and tax credits directed at children and at people of working age, was in each year since 1991–92; and what projections have been made for the cost in(a)2003–04 and (b)future years. [147377]
  350W
  Mr. Pond
  The information for social security benefits administered by the Department for Work and Pensions is shown in the table, and is consistent with forecasts published in the pre-Budget Report on 10 December 2003.

  The information is drawn from DWP's Benefit Expenditure Table 5 (Benefit expenditure by age-based client group, Great Britain, 1991–92 to 2005–06), which may be found on the Department for Work and Pensions website at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd4/ expenditure, asp. Forecasts of expenditure will next be updated at Budget 2004.

  Tax credit expenditure and forecasts, and child benefit expenditure and forecasts from 2003–04 onwards, are the responsibility of the Inland Revenue.

  £ million

  Children1

  People of working age

  Outturn

  1991–92

  8,411

  22,342

  1992–93

  9,767

  26,727

  1993–94

  10,676

  30,035

  1994–95

  10,827

  31,251

  1995–96

  11,277

  32,913

  1996–97

  11,659

  33,640

  1997–98

  11,816

  32,791

  1998–99

  12,105

  32,685

  1999–2000

  13,129

  31,989

  2000–01

  13,144

  31,215

  2001–02

  13,729

  31,827

  Estimated outturn

  2002;–03

  14,386

  32,421

  Plans

  2003;–04

  5,410

  33,251

  2004–05

  4,022

  34,296

  2005–06

  1,802

  35,515

  1Spending on children drops in 2003–04 as a result of the transfer of child benefit to the Inland Revenue; during 2003–04 and 2004–05, spending on children is also reduced by the transfer of child elements of income support and income-based jobseekers allowance to child tax credit.

  War Disablement Pensioners
  Mr. Chaytor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when the £10 earnings disregard for war disablement pensioners applying for income-related benefits was last uprated; what the value of the disregard would be on 1 April had it been uprated in line with the Rossi Index; and how many war disablement pensioners are benefiting from the £10 earnings disregard. [149536]

  Malcolm Wicks
  There is no specific earnings disregard for people receiving a war pension, although they can benefit from the standard disregards available to anyone claiming undertaking part-time work while claiming an income-related benefit.

  However, in recognition of the special nature of war disablement pension, there is a disregard of these payments when assessing entitlement to income-related benefits. This was set at £5 when income support was introduced in April 1988, and would currently stand at £8.15 had it been uprated in line with the Rossi index; it was increased to its current level of £10 in April 1990, and carried over at the same level for the new pension credit when it was introduced in October 2003.
  351W
  In the case of housing benefit and council tax benefit, most local authorities disregard war pensions in full and all but two disregard more than the statutory £10; from April this year, local authorities will get extra subsidy of up to 75 per cent. for any local discretionary scheme they operate.

  The most recent figures show that 8,800 income support recipients benefit from the £10 disregard; the number of people receiving jobseekers allowance (income based) who benefit from this disregard is nil or negligible. Figures are not yet available for pension credit.

  Note:

  Figures have been rounded to the nearest hundred and are based on a 5 per cent. sample so are subject to a degree of sampling variation.

  Source:

  DWP Information Centre, 5 per cent. sample

  Winter Fuel Payments
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many households in(a)England, (b)Scotland, (c)Wales and (d)Northern Ireland
  352W
  qualify for the winter fuel payment; how many individuals in each receives a winter fuel payment; and what the estimated expenditure on winter fuel payment was in each country in 2003–04. [150291]

  Malcolm Wicks
  Full information about payments made this winter will not be available until after 30 March, the final date for submitting claims. It is not possible to say how many households will qualify for the Winter Fuel Payment, or how many individuals will receive a Winter Fuel Payment for winter 2003 –04.

  However based on the figures for 2002–03 we estimate the expenditure on Winter Fuel Payments for winter 2003–04 to be as follows:

  Forecast expenditure on Winter Fuel Payments for 2003–04

  £ million

  Country

  Forecast Expenditure

  England

  1,610

  Wales

  100

  Scotland

  170

  Northern Ireland

  50

  Note:

  Costs rounded to the nearest £10 million.

TRANSPORT

  Highways Agency
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson)
  The Highways Agency Annual Report and Accounts for 2002–03 has been laid before the House today under Section 7 of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000. Copies of the report have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

WORK AND PENSIONS

  Disability and Carers Service
  The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. Andrew Smith)
  I am today announcing that the disability and carers service (DCS), the organisation responsible for delivering disability and carers benefits within the Department for Work and Pensions, will be assigned formal executive agency status with a chief executive appointed by open competition.

  The DCS is a substantial business, employing over 7,000 staff and paying out in excess of £11 billion a year in disability living allowance, attendance allowance and carers allowance to just under 4.5 million people. The customers are some of the most disadvantaged in society and the benefits require specialist assessment of care and mobility needs.

  In April 2002, my Department established Jobcentre Plus and The Pension Service as executive agencies to provide services to people of working age and pensioners. However, extra cost disability and carers benefits continued to be administered by an organisation with non-executive status. Since 2002, without formal agency status, the DCS has made substantial improvements in the speed and quality of decision-making. The new agency will keep up the momentum, actively building on these achievements. Agency status will improve efficiency and customer service, allowing the organisation to agree clear goals with me and then having the clear accountability for delivery.

  As work to set up the agency progresses, my Department will consult with groups representing disabled people to ensure that the new organisation is designed in a way that best suits the needs of its customers.

  The process of establishing the agency and selection of the chief executive by open competition will now commence. I have not yet set a date for launching the agency. It is important to ensure smooth transition with the minimum disruption to business delivery. I am, however, confident that these changes will sharpen
  8WS
  accountabilities and improve services significantly for the millions of disabled people and their carers receiving these benefits.

  Northampton Borough Council
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Chris Pond)
  On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the benefit fraud inspectorate (BFI) follow-up inspection report on Northampton Borough Council was published today and copies of the report have been placed in the Library.

  Following the housing Green Paper "Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All", published in April 2000, the Department for Work and Pensions developed a performance framework for housing benefits. The performance standards for housing benefits allow local authorities to make a comprehensive self-assessment of whether they deliver benefit effectively and securely. They are the standards that the Department for Work and Pensions expects local authorities to aspire to and achieve in time.

  The BFI inspected Northampton Borough Council against the performances standards for housing benefits. The report finds that the council is not at standard for any of the seven functional areas of the performance standards—strategic management. customer services, processing of claims, working with landlords, internal security, counter-fraud, and overpayments.

  However, the report finds that the council has made significant improvements in the areas of counter-fraud and working with landlords, since the first BFI inspection report published in April 2000. Weaknesses remain in claims processing and overpayment performance.

  The council's management information is very limited across all areas of its benefits administration and as a result, there is little awareness of the issues affecting performance. In particular, the lack of effective management controls and checks in claims processing and the overpayment process has hampered the council's ability to improve claims processing and recover overpaid benefits.

  There were significant backlogs of work, with new housing benefits claims taking an average of 62 days to clear compared with the national target of 36 days.

  The report finds good practices in the council's benefits service including quality training of its fraud investigators, clearly set out benefit claim forms and good working relations with key stakeholders.

  In 2002–03, Northampton Borough Council administered some £46.7 million in housing benefits, about 39 per cent. of its gross revenue expenditure.

  The report makes recommendations to help the council address weaknesses and to further improve the administration of housing benefit and council tax benefit, as well as counter-fraud activities.

  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is now considering the report and will be asking the council for its proposals in response to the BFI's findings and recommendations.

  Housing Benefit
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Chris Pond)
  The outcome of the consultation on housing benefit sanctions for anti-social behaviour was published today. An analysis of the responses has been placed in the Library and also a copy put on the DWP website at http://www.dwp.gov.uk/consultations/2003/index.asp.

  Tackling anti-social behaviour is a priority for the Government. It blights communities and can undermine the regeneration of the most disadvantaged areas, creating an environment where crime takes hold.

  When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions consulted on a housing benefit sanction between May and August 2003, he received 487 responses from a wide range of organisations and members of the public. One of the responses included a petition from the constituents of Paisley, South. If the signatories are counted as individual responses the final number of responses was 698. Everyone who responded agreed that anti-social behaviour must be stopped. Victims and local people in particular were supportive of the proposed measures, though concerns were expressed by a large number of respondents about whether the measures would be workable or effective.

  In the light of these concerns, particularly from local authorities, who play a key role in preventing and dealing with anti-social behaviour and also both private and registered social landlords, we have decided not to proceed with a housing benefit sanction at this time.

  There is already a wide range of tools to deal with the types of behaviour that makes people's daily lives a misery; for example, anti-social behaviour orders and acceptable behaviour contracts. The Government has recently strengthened these existing powers with further measures in the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 and new proposals in the Housing Bill currently before Parliament. On 14 October, the Home Office published an action plan "Together: Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour". This action plan will help improve the response to tackling anti-social behaviour. This includes funding for every area of England and Wales, a new "together" action line, website and academy to provide help and support to practitioners and a range of projects to tackle nuisance families, begging and environmental crime. We want to make full use of the range of powers
  10WS
  available before introducing a new measure. But we do not rule out other means, in the future as we learn from experience and establish what works.

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

  Arson Control Forum Implementation Fund
  The Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire (Mr. Nick Raynsford)
  I have today announced the outcome of the Arson Control Forum Implementation Fund launched on 20 August 2003.

  We plan to pay grants totalling over £9.3 million over the period to March 2006 to support 66 local arson prevention initiatives throughout England and Wales. This demonstrates clearly the Government's commitment to tackling arson and doing more to prevent fires, as set out in the draft Fire and Rescue National Framework published on 11 December 2003. Our substantial investment in the efforts of the police and fire and rescue services, in partnership with others, will help to reduce the number of deliberate fires. The additional funding will also assist the Government's wider neighbourhood renewal plans and complements the Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan launched by the Prime Minister in October 2003. Copies of a table summarising the payments we plan to make to local partnerships are available in the Libraries of both Houses.

DEFENCE

  Race Equality Scheme
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Ivor Caplin)
  In accordance with undertakings in its Race Equality Scheme, the Ministry of Defence has produced a progress report, a copy of which is being place today in the Library of the House. The report shows that across the Department and the Armed Forces we are continuing to build on past experience and initiatives to eradicate harassment and unlawful discrimination and to develop a more proactive approach to race relations as part of our diversity programme. Good progress has been made but we recognise that more needs to be done. The report describes the steps that the Ministry of Defence will be pursuing to further its vision.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Manchester.

The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Falconer of Thoroton): My Lords, before business begins, may I take the opportunity to inform the House that I will be undertaking a ministerial visit to Birmingham on Thursday 29 January? Accordingly, I trust that the House will grant me leave of absence.

Speed Cameras
2.36 p.m.
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu Lord Montagu of Beaulieu asked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they are taking to ensure that road and police authorities follow the guidelines that speed cameras are employed conspicuously only on dangerous stretches of road.
Lord Triesman: My Lords, speeding is dangerous. Driving too fast often results in crashes, deaths and injuries. The purpose of safety cameras is to encourage compliance with speed limits and thus reduce the number of people killed and injured on our roads. Guidance to safety camera partnerships about the deployment and operation of the cameras is issued by the Department for Transport and is based on this requirement. The department ensures that the performance of the partnerships is monitored with particular regard to casualty reduction. The results are published annually.
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Is he aware that such steps would do a great deal more to dispel the myth and dispel the feeling of motorists that they are the victims of a persecution to raise money? Is the noble Lord aware that a complaint was made yesterday in another place and that the Minister said that a lot of the speed cameras already in position would be removed?
Will he write to me or publish by 1 April the reduction that has been brought about by this policy? Does he also agree that the old adage of "keep your eyes on the road when you are driving" should not become "keep one eye on the speedometer and one on the camera"?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I am not sure that I will be able to recall all the points that have been made, but I shall identify one or two that are of some significance. The most recent research shows that over the last
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couple of years there has been about a 35 per cent reduction in deaths and serious injuries on those stretches of road on which there are speed cameras. I entirely accept, as do the Government, that it is important that speed cameras should be deployed, against a set of criteria, where they are most effective. That is to do with reducing casualties. It is nothing to do with increasing revenues. The aim is road safety.
Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the guidelines are now set at such a high level that it is almost impossible to deploy a speed camera? In fact, in the county that I represent, only one speed camera site has been identified in the past year. In view of the fact that at the same time road casualties rose to 65 from 37 the year before, will the Government please do something effective and announce a road safety policy that will deal with these road deaths?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I think that we all know that a significant number of cameras were put up before the criteria were introduced, and some of those cameras are being withdrawn because they do not meet the terms of the criteria. None the less, we still have some cameras in what I would describe as legacy situations. In some cases, the number of deaths and injuries has been reduced, thank God, and in those cases it would probably be sensible to continue to deploy cameras to ensure that the number stayed on the low side, rather than went up again.
In some cases, we find that local head teachers make a special plea to the police to install a camera temporarily, in order to look after the children for whom they are responsible. They see that there are real threats and dangers. I assure the noble Lord that it is important to make sure that we use cameras in a way that secures people's safety.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the policy of the chief constable of Durham constabulary is not to use fixed speed cameras and, in fact, there has been no measurable increase in road deaths?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I have read about that point in newspaper articles. Chief police officers, in this case acting through the chief constable of Thames Valley—who I think, in a general sense, has overall responsibility for this—made the point that the reduction by 35 per cent—the figure that I quoted just a while ago—is a very significant change. I cannot tell whether there are specific factors at work in Durham that might buck this trend. A 35 per cent change seems to be a huge gain—think of the lives saved and the injuries that are not occasioned, particularly to children.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, of course, I always obey the instructions of policemen, even former policemen. Is the Minister aware that new SPECS speed cameras have recently been introduced on the M6? The noble Lord will know that they automatically register the average speed of a car travelling between two points.

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If that car is travelling at over 78 miles per hour, they automatically issue a ticket, without any form of human intervention to the driver. As these new cameras are now hidden in the electronic signs on the M6, how do they comply with the Government's guidelines?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I shall certainly look at the issue of the extent to which compliance or non-compliance occurs. It is plainly policy, and I accept the point that cameras should be visible. That itself is conducive to greater safety. If people are complaining that they are being caught driving far too fast—by cameras, or any other efficient and more scientific means—they should perhaps think that there is no ancient English right to speed and kill people.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, given the very impressive 35 per cent reduction in accidents that has been achieved by the use of cameras, according to my noble friend, will he confirm that cameras are more effective than road humps at slowing down traffic and improving safety? Is it possible for local authorities to use cameras rather than road humps in the interests of ambulances and other emergency service vehicles, which find the humps difficult to cope with?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I thank my noble friend. I was almost tempted to comment on the road humps in the area where I live and their baleful effect on my car, but I shall forbear. I am not aware of differential statistical evidence on the efficacy of the different means of traffic calming, as it is called these days; it probably would be worth looking at it. But I suppose—it is no more than a supposition—that road humps are often deployed at frequent intervals on roads where it would not be particularly effective, or perhaps possible in some cases, to site cameras, so the comparisons may not be the best scientifically. None the less, it must be right to test the different methods applied and to ensure that the most effective methods to increase security and safety are available and used.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, in his reply to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, the Minister referred to some cameras still being in legacy situations. If that is so and they do not adhere to the guidelines, would not the answer be simply to disarm them and not to insert a film?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I cannot say how many legacy cameras contain films at present. But, where anybody believes that cameras are in use that do not comply with the criteria, I simply appeal to them to present that evidence so that it can be acted upon.
Lord Davies of Coity: My Lords, I recognise that reducing speed will obviously reduce the number of accidents, but is there any evidence of accidents occurring when drivers brake sharply when approaching a camera?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I am not aware of research that shows that. I have seen some research
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evidence that, where you get streams of cars passing cameras, every driver tends to slow down to the same average speed. I do not think that there is research on drivers braking sharply and causing accidents. I suspect that if there were any significant incidence of that, there would have been significant research to investigate it. That is my hunch, but I shall make further investigations of the research literature to see whether that hunch is true.
Lord Berkeley: My Lords, why should anybody worry about speed cameras if they are not breaking the law? Surely the answer is to have more speed cameras to catch those who break the law.
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I am sure that that is absolutely right. The aim must be to get people to drive in a serious and sensible way within speed limits and with some consciousness of their obligations to the rest of the community.

Ofsted: Schools in Special Measures
2.46 p.m.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have any explanation for the rise in the number of schools placed in special measures by Ofsted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Baroness Ashton of Upholland): My Lords, following extensive consultations, Ofsted introduced a new inspection framework last September. It is more precise and gives inspectors clearer guidance. The downward trend in special measures since 1997 was reversed last term. That may not be a permanent change but is possibly caused by the increased precision in inspection under the new framework. None the less, special measures judgments represent only about 2 per cent of all inspections.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. She has identified the issue of the introduction of the new inspection framework. The difficulty for schools is that, the rules having changed, they are now confronted with being judged by a different set of rules, and comparisons cannot be made. Does the Minister not feel that it is tough for schools previously regarded as having special weaknesses that have done their best to remedy them and would have moved out of that position under the old rules, but which are now hit by being put into special measures? Is it not a great disincentive to such schools to improve their performance?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, as I said in my Answer, Ofsted carried out extensive consultation before introducing the new framework, so it came as no surprise to schools to see the new framework in operation. I am delighted that the amount of time that

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schools spend in special measures is decreasing. The amount of time has decreased substantially for both secondary schools and primary schools. It is clear that if you wish to ensure standards you need a solid and precise inspection framework, and I believe that this provides that.
Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, is the Minister aware that some schools that have been awarded beacon status or made specialist colleges by the Government have been put in special measures by Ofsted? Either the Government are wrong about the quality of a school in that position, or Ofsted is. Which is it?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, it is not a question of either being wrong. When you introduce a more robust framework, it is possible that schools that previously would not have been in special measures would be now. A school may now go into special measures, for example, if it has around 10 per cent of unsatisfactory teaching compared with 20 per cent in the past. Equally, there are higher expectations of school leadership and management, all designed to raise standards for children and all to be welcomed.
Lord Dearing: My Lords, in view of the importance of good inspection to the well-being of education and in the light of what her colleague has said about the Green Paper proposing further substantial changes to the framework of inspection, will the noble Baroness consult the usual offices to see whether we might debate that Green Paper on the Floor of the House?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, it is always open to noble Lords to table a Motion for debate. Perhaps I may suggest that the noble Lord would be doing the House a kindness were he to do so in order that we might debate the issue.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, can the Minister assure us that the cause of these seeming failures is not inadequacies in school budgets? What link is there between schools going into special measures and local authorities which have been particularly hard hit by the funding problems last year? Can the Minister give an assurance that the increasingly tight budgets being imposed on local authorities resulting in staffing cutbacks will not cause another rush of schools going into special measures?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, we have seen no geographical or any other kind of trend here, and we are working on the basis of evidence gathered over one term. We have no evidence that this is related to school funding levels or staffing shortages. We shall reflect on the impact of any changes as we watch to see whether or not a trend does unfold.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, does the Minister agree with the view expressed by Professor Joe Elliott, chair of educational psychology at the University of Sunderland, that UK pupils are
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probably the worst behaved in the world? If she thinks that there is any truth in the statement, will she say what needs to be done to ensure that good teaching gets across to pupils rather than being deterred by bad behaviour?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I do not know the work of Professor Elliott and I am not sure what to say about the supposition that we have the worst behaved pupils in the world. That is not my experience as an education Minister. We have debated before in your Lordships' House the issue of behaviour in schools and it is extremely important, but I believe that the vast majority of pupils behave well and that the vast majority of teachers teach extremely well. It is important to ensure, within the Ofsted framework, that we have strong leadership and high quality teaching, and that we address issues of bad behaviour where they are evident in schools.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that what lies behind the question put by my noble friend Lady Howe is that perhaps there is room to offer more help to parents to ensure that their children are supported in school, that they come into school ready to be educated and that while there they are supported and encouraged?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, we are slightly wide of the Question, but I would be delighted to debate at any point in your Lordships' House issues surrounding parenting, about which I know that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, are very passionate—with good reason. It is important that we support parents and that is why a key element of the Sure Start programme is to support the parents of young children, as well as ensuring that schools engage with communities and with the parents of their pupils.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, does not the Minister agree that there must be something significant about the fact that she was not able to respond with a lusty and firm denial to the point put to her by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, there is nothing significant about that whatsoever.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, is the Minister right to say that we have evidence from only one term on this issue? Figures cited in the Times Educational Supplement relate to the whole year of 2002–03 and show a very sharp upturn in the number of schools being put into special measures compared with the downward trend of the preceding five years.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am relating the inspection regime that has been brought in with the rate of increase. Between 1997 and 2002–03 the numbers decreased from 557 to 347. However, we are looking specifically at the new framework and at

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the rise in the number of schools going into special measures to see whether there is a causal or correlative effect.
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, once schools have been designated, why are they now spending less time in special measures?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am delighted to say that it is because of the impact of the work done with schools to ensure that they are given the kind of resources and support to enable them to turn around. I would cite initiatives such as the Leadership Incentive Grant which are used to support schools in their teaching, leadership and management, enabling them to raise their standards as quickly as possible.
Lord Tombs: My Lords, is the Minister aware that schools are very concerned about the inconsistency in inspection standards, whereby a school which is given a good report for one year and has steadily improving results may be abruptly placed into special measures with a limited explanation? Security is an essential part of developing a school and I would suggest that the inspection service is not adequately providing that security. Perhaps the Minister would like to consider establishing an inspectorate for the inspectors.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, if a registered inspector judges that special measures are needed in a school, Her Majesty's Inspectorate always inspects again to ratify the judgment to ensure that it was correct.

European Union: UK Veto
2.55 p.m.
Lord Howell of Guildford Lord Howell of Guildford asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the "red lines", as described by the Prime Minister, maintaining the veto in European Union procedures on specified areas of vital national interest, have been agreed with other member states.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said last December in another place that in an IGC,
"nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".—[Official Report, Commons, 15/12/03; col. 1320.]
On 10 December I said in this House that,
"there has been no formal agreement on any single point of the draft treaty. That is for heads of state or governments by common accord at the European Council".—[Official Report, 10/12/03; col. 821.]
It is now for the Irish presidency to build on the progress made under the Italians.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that reply. Does she recall that the Prime Minister also said that:
"The truth of the matter is that there is nearly a consensus on those issues in favour of the British position".—[Official Report, Commons, 15/12/03; col. 1327.]?
On what did he base that? Has not Mr Ahern said since that nothing has been agreed, or was it just a question of reassurances given by Mr Berlusconi at the IGC meeting? Now that the constitution is about to be resurrected and retabled, which I along with many others in all parties regard as a huge mistake, is it not important to have the truth and accuracy of this statement nailed down so that we know where we stand and from where we are starting?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we know where we stand. The noble Lord will recollect that on 10 December last we had a long debate in your Lordships' House. I, too, said very clearly that until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed. During the course of discussions near consensus was reached on a number of points, but that is not a final agreement. I am sure that the noble Lord will recall from his own days in office that during the course of negotiations there will be points at which near consensus is reached, but that within the overall framework it is understood by everyone that until the final point of agreement is reached, nothing is finally agreed.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that the principle of "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" has always been the basis on which international treaty negotiations take place? There is nothing new in that. Does she further agree that if we really want to make a major contribution to the issues of substance, this House should fully support the issues on which the Prime Minister had expressed his "red lines" because they include a number of matters regarded as fundamental to this country, including the right to negotiate international treaties and, among other important issues, questions of national taxation?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, of course I can agree with my noble friend. He has expressed the point I sought to put to the noble Lord opposite whose memory seems a little short on these points. There is nothing different about the way this is being negotiated. It is how the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty were negotiated; that is the nature of international negotiations.
On the question of the "red lines", the Prime Minister has made it clear that the United Kingdom will continue to pursue the draft treaty—if the Irish are able to bring it back; which is a matter to be decided at the March meeting—and that the "red lines" will still be in place.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, may I proffer to the Minister the wisdom of an old Scottish saying? I do so as a generalisation and with no personal imputation: "Fools and bairns should not see half-done work". Does

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she agree with my view that the vital national interest of this country and that of all other participating countries would be met by acknowledging that no great departure from the draft treaty agreed by the convention should be advanced?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, as regards the noble Lord's last point, that is a matter for the Irish Government to pursue. I understand that they are taking soundings at the moment. Some preliminary soundings were made yesterday. The formal position is that they will return with a report on the outcome of those soundings at the meeting due to take place towards the end of March.
With respect to the old Scottish saying, as a good Welsh woman I take note of it but am bound to observe that we proceed now on the basis of giving as much exposure as we reasonably can to the negotiations. Your Lordships have appreciated the way in which we have been able to consult fairly openly on what has been happening during the negotiations.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, in view of the Minister's statement that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed", can she explain the words in the Italian presidency's final declaration on the outcome of the IGC, when it was said that the IGC has "resulted in a text which will henceforth be considered as a negotiating acquis not open to further discussion"?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the question of the status of the text has now passed into the ambit of the discussions that the Irish are having. I have made clear to your Lordships that soundings are being taken on that at the moment. The fact is that by common consensus in dealing with treaties for many years, this treaty is being treated no differently. Until the ink is dry and the final agreement is reached, nothing is formally and finally agreed. That has been stated over and over again. The Prime Minister has stated it. We had a lengthy debate in your Lordships' House. I believe that we will have the pleasure of another lengthy debate very shortly. I am sure that the same points will be reached and the same answer will be given.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, does the Minister recognise that while many of us fully accept that our key British interests have to be defended in this text, we would be very happy to hear the Government talking more broadly about European interests as well as British interests? Did the Minister see in yesterday's Financial Times, Philip Stephens's comment that President Chirac was thought to have suspected our Prime Minister of wanting to take over the leadership of Europe? Some of us rather wish that he would wish to do so.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, when I see these wonderful speculative articles about who might have said what to whom in our press, particularly on matters European, my eyes tend to slide rapidly down the page. However, the Prime Minister has made it clear that the "red lines" are
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there, but, as we know, that some good issues have come out of the discussions that we have had so far. We remain in good heart and hope that our friends in the Irish presidency will be able to take the issue forward. What matters is what happens between the countries of the European Union, not the speculation in our newspapers about the particular ambitions of particular leaders.
Lord Renton: My Lords, having been for three years Recorder of Guildford and second citizen, perhaps I may do the hat trick by asking whether the Prime Minister will bear in mind that it is not merely specified areas of the United Kingdom that are of vital national interest, but the whole country?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, of course the whole country is a matter of vital national interest. We are looking at the specific areas around retaining unanimity for treaty change and other areas, such as tax, social security, defence and criminal procedure law. The Prime Minister has pinpointed those as being the areas of vital national interest for which we will wish to maintain unanimity in the context of our European negotiations.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I have to add energy to the vital national interests that the Minister has just enunciated. Of course, I accept that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" in normal negotiations. I think that it is important to have this on the record: is the Minister reassuring us that the "red lines" issues—the four that she has mentioned and the one that I have added, and there may be others—have been generally agreed or are nearly at consensus, and that, therefore, there will be no more argument or attempt to breach them by any member state? Is that what she is saying?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: No, my Lords, that is not what I am saying. Try as the noble Lord may to get me ensnared in this particular point, that is not what I am saying. I do not honestly believe that, although it was a very good try, the noble Lord thinks that that was what I was saying.

Social Security Benefits
3.4 p.m.
Lord Higgins Lord Higgins asked Her Majesty's Government:
What contingency plans exist to ensure that tax credits and other social security benefits are paid on time in the event of industrial action by the officials responsible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Hollis of Heigham): My Lords, our priority is to maintain services to our clients. We are confident that we can run a near-normal service and that payments will be

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issued as usual for benefits, pension credit and child support. Payments of tax credits are made by the Inland Revenue and would not be affected.
Lord Higgins: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that Answer and for confirming that tax credits and the Inland Revenue are not affected. However, is it not the case that the transfer of responsibility for some payments to the Inland Revenue is already causing problems? The Inland Revenue has always been rather better at collecting money than paying it out. Having paid out too much money, it is now clawing it back with excessive enthusiasm and causing considerable distress.
As regards the areas affected by the proposed industrial action, which I understand include benefit offices, pension offices and so forth, people may manage for a day or two, but what plans do the Government have to ensure that payments are made if industrial action were to take place over a matter of, say, weeks rather than days?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, if the House will allow me, it may be worth mentioning those who could not be affected by virtue of payment methods. First, it is worth emphasising that more than 55 per cent of those receiving benefit payments—around 20 million benefit payments are made each week—are on direct payment. Therefore, they are paid automatically into their bank accounts and will not be affected. A further third—mainly pensioners—receive order books that are rolled out automatically and, therefore, are not affected. Of the remaining one-fifth or thereabouts—mostly people on JSA and paid by giro—if they cannot sign on, they will be paid as though they had signed on.
My understanding is that the only people who could be affected in the event of sustained industrial action, which I very much hope will not occur, would be those brand new clients seeking jobseeker's allowance for the first time: that is, a client may turn up at his or her local office, and it is closed, and the management are not be able to put in alternative staff, and the office is in a sufficiently isolated rural area where the client could not go to an alternative office. That scenario is very unlikely. We had industrial action between September 2002 and April 2003. Not one local office was closed and all benefit payments were maintained.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the Minister's objectives are unobjectionable. But what information does she have on the amount of suffering and hardship that may be caused to a claimant by two days' loss of benefit?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, the only people who could have a two-day loss of benefit—over and beyond the usual arrangements that we would make for bank holidays, Christmas, snow, or whatever—are those that I identified in isolated rural areas in the event of closure of an office and there being no alternative office for them to go to. Clients in hardship, with dependants or, say, former prisoners,
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and so forth, could go to the local social services department for emergency payments. That is the fallback. However, I must say that when we had sustained industrial action over six months, that situation did not arise.

Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
3.8 p.m.
The Minister of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Lord Rooker): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Rooker.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Clause 16 [Local development documents]:
Baroness Maddock Baroness Maddock moved Amendment No. 91A:
Page 9, line 28, at end insert—
"( ) a strategic planning statement;"
The noble Baroness said: This amendment to Clause 16 concerns local development documents. The aim of the amendment is to formalise the link between the local development framework and the regional spatial strategy, and to ensure that the local development framework takes account of transport, minerals and waste planning functions, which will be carried out by only the higher tier authorities. We believe that it is absolutely essential that local development frameworks bridge the gap between local and strategic planning by preparing a strategic planning statement. This statement should seek to integrate the strategic policies within the regional spatial strategy with the needs and the aspirations of the local community.
This issue was discussed in another place. When countering a similar amendment there, the Minister referred to the core planning strategy, which will be one of the statutory documents that will make up the development plan. The status of this document is not clear. Guidance and secondary legislation are quite likely to be the chosen ways to introduce this strategy. Many people, including the CPRE and other such groups, are concerned that this strategy will not address the need to bridge the gap between the regional spatial strategy and the local development framework. We would like to see a planning statement. We believe it is essential and that should be given a statutory footing to ensure that it has the status as a key tool in bridging the local and the regional planning issues.
Given that higher tier authorities are responsible for minerals and waste planning, it is vital that these matters are fully integrated into the local development framework, and that they are not carried out in

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isolation. I hope the Minister will be convinced at this stage of the need to have this important matter in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Hanningfield: Our names are added to this amendment. We have discussed the link between these strategies several times during the course of the Bill, and we are going to discuss the issue again. I would like to add our support to what the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, has just said.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, said she hoped I had been convinced by her argument. I am not convinced, sadly from her point of view. As I see it, the amendment would add a strategic planning statement as one of the documents that must be specified in the local development scheme as a local development document. The effect of this would be to require every local planning authority to produce a specific statement regarding strategic planning in their area. We think that is unnecessary. It will be covered by requirement that every local planning authority should have a core strategy. This will be set down in Part 2. We do not think that we should require every local planning authority to produce yet another planning document, especially if it is unnecessary. In this case it clearly is unnecessary.
As the noble Baroness anticipated, the core strategy will set out the strategic objectives and the key elements of the planning framework for its area. After all, the core strategy is the central document in providing a link with the strategic regional policy set out in the regional spatial strategy and local planning policies. It is a requirement that the core strategy, along with other local development documents, should be in general conformity with the regional spatial strategy. The core strategy, in providing the key strategic link at local level with the regional spatial strategy, will also need to take account of the needs and aspirations of the local community. That is one reason why local planning authorities will have to have regard to the community strategy in preparing its LDDs.
It is also important that due account is taken of local transport plans. That is why I am proposing local development documents. Local planning authorities will be required to have regard to local transport plans under the regulations made under Part 2. We do not see a value in requiring yet another document when the Bill and regulations will ensure that local planning authorities set out their strategy in a DPD and that the link with the strategic policies in the regional spatial strategy is already there and has been created.
It is not an essential document; it will not add anything, and in any event this issue can be more and better finessed in the regulations to be made under Part 2. I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment having heard that.
3.15 p.m.
Baroness Maddock: I am somewhat confused by the Minister's logic on this. On the one hand he is saying that the Government do not want an extra document;
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on the other hand he is saying that this document will actually be there and it will be called the core planning strategy, which is what I talked about in my opening statement.
The whole point of what I was saying is to make sure that it is on the face of the Bill. The Minister has just argued for not having a document which, as far as I can see, local authorities will have to have in any event. I listened to what he said and at this stage of the Bill I beg leave to withdraw the amendment but I am sure we will return to this.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 91B:
Page 9, line 33, leave out "(however expressed)"
The noble Baroness said: This takes us to an expression which we have already debated: the term "however expressed" as applied in this case to the authorities' policies in Clause 16(3). This was tabled before we debated another amendment in the context of regional spatial strategies, but it seemed to me helpful to ask one or two more questions about it.
When we debated what the term means earlier in the Bill, the Minister confirmed that it did not mean—I think I use his words correctly—"policy by mouth". He described the limitations in the context of Part 1, which deals with regional spatial strategies. Reading his explanation, it seems that it was more about what is meant by "spatial" than what is meant by the term "however expressed".
The Minister in the Commons said on the same amendment:
"the phrase … is necessary to get beyond the land use development and control elements of the documents and to gain the wider spatial dimension".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee G, 16/1/03; col. 218.]
I wonder if the Minister could expand on that, because I am not entirely sure that I understand it. I can see that Mr McNulty might have had a point, but how one gets from there to "however expressed" I still find a little difficult. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm what this means and what it does not mean in the context of this part of the Bill.
I wonder too whether he can confirm the precedent that was referred to in our earlier debate, which Hansard records, as paragraph 17(3) of Schedule 2, part 2, to the 1990 Act. I do not think that that can be correct—or perhaps it was too late and I was not seeing straight when I tried to find the words in that part of the 1990 Act. I beg to move.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I do not think that there is much more I can add to what was said when we debated this on Clause 1. I do not see too much point in repeating the arguments. This expression is not uncommon in legislation. The noble Baroness said that she could not find it. She should be looking at

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paragraph 17(3) of part 2 of Schedule 2 to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. I think the noble Baroness said Schedule 3.
Baroness Hamwee: Part 2.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: Part 2, Schedule 2. My noble friend Lord Rooker tells me that the noble Baroness said part 3. That is where it is found. It is not an uncommon expression in legislation. Our view is that deleting it, as the amendment suggests—and I do not think the noble Baroness wants it deleted—would limit the scope of local development documents to those traditional policies delivered through the planning permissions process.
I thought that we had clarified that for the noble Baroness. Regrettably, it appears that that is not the case. There is nothing else to be said. I thought that I had made our position clear.
Lord Avebury: As, apparently, it causes difficulty to look up the provision in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, will the Minister kindly tell the Committee the context in which the words were used in that provision? Will he simply read out the provisions of paragraph 17(3) of the schedule that he has just mentioned? That would be helpful.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I would love to be able to do exactly as the noble Lord asks, but I have not got the context with me. I shall probably have to drop the noble Lord a note, which I shall share with both opposition Front Benches or anybody else who is particularly concerned about that issue or the words as they are printed in the Bill.
Lord Tordoff: It may well be common usage in legislation, but we have still not heard from the noble Lord what it means.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I made it plain at the outset that we gave an interpretation in our previous debate. I do not see much point in going over old ground. I am sorry that the noble Lord will not be happy with that answer, but that is the case.
Baroness Hamwee: I wonder whether I should weary the Committee with paragraph 17(3), which, as I read it, says:
"This paragraph shall not be construed as enabling any objections to be made to any part of a unitary development plan which consists of provisions of a local plan that are not subject to alterations as mentioned in sub-paragraph (1)".
I am not trying to undo what is here; I am genuinely trying to answer the question that my noble friend Lord Tordoff put. I would welcome more assistance after this stage. If I may say so on a point that has been made and, I am sure, will continue to be made, whatever precedents there are, if the term bears explanation and bears fleshing out in the legislation, it will make the legislation easier to follow. I am not suggesting that it is the only precedent that can be
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found, but it is the only precedent quoted. The fact that it is buried in a schedule to the 1990 Act makes my point for me.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: Is the noble Baroness concerned that the expression is loose and woolly and enables things to be made up as one goes along? If it is, I am sure that we could clarify the point for the noble Baroness with a note. If that is the worry, I am sure that we can get to the root of it quite simply.
Baroness Hamwee: I think that I said in the previous debate that I was not sure whether we were talking about policies "however expressed" or "wherever expressed". The clause says:
"The local development documents must … set out the authority's policies".
That is a very broad term. I know that we have talked about having regard—if that is the right term—to the community strategy and so on, but any local authority will have an enormous set of policies, and the authority's policies "however expressed" are to be taken as read into the development documents. It is both issues. What makes up a policy? What document does it need to be a policy? I accept that it should not be policy by word of mouth. What document incorporates the policies? Are we talking about an authority's policies in the round with regard to all its functions and activities?
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I shall try to clarify. We are talking about documented policies and the policies that are set out in the local development document. That is about as clear as we can be, and I hope that that helps the noble Baroness. If there is still a problem, we will produce a note that expresses the situation more perfectly.
Baroness Hamwee: The precedent would be helpful. I shall not pursue the point this afternoon. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 91C not moved.]
Lord Lucas Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 92:
Page 9, line 34, at end insert—
"( ) All the local development documents taken together are to be regarded as the "development plan" for the purposes of section 54A of the principal Act."
The noble Lord said: The thing about Committee stage is that one can start with the answer and move on to questions as necessary. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: That is a nice precedent, and I am happy to comply with it.
Amendment No. 92 raises two important points. The first is whether local planning will be more effective if local planning authorities are restricted to preparing local development documents that are part of the development plan. The second is what the legislation for the development plan and the plan-led system will be under the new arrangements.

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We think that our approach to the new planning arrangements is a practical one. It maintains the plan-led system, and it will ensure that the most important policies, including any site allocations, are in a development plan document and are, therefore, part of the development plan. It is also useful, as I said in an earlier debate, for local planning authorities to be able to prepare local development documents that are not part of the development plan. The official title of such documents is "supplementary planning documents". They will be able to expand on the policies in the development plan documents that established the initial policy framework. The supplementary planning documents will be faster to produce, and the procedures will be simpler. The difference is that there will be no independent examination. That was the key distinction between the two, as I explained with regard to another amendment.
We hope that local planning authorities will be able to respond more quickly to local needs and changes, via the supplementary planning documents, and fill in the finer points for action in smaller areas already identified in the development plan documents. They will cover diverse issues and can be in different formats, as the local planning authority wants. They could be, for example, practical advice notes, design briefs and other details on policy to assist developers and the community; they could be that kind of explanatory note. It is unrealistic to think that a local planning authority will not produce material beyond the development plan, the one that has been subject to independent examination. It will want to produce other "daughter documents", if you like, by way of explanation. They will be supplementary planning documents.
Everything must be clear and understandable, as the documents are there to help the public. The whole thing could be packaged together in the same loose-leaf folder-type arrangement, with two documents—the development plan and the supplementary planning documents. That is why I ask the noble Lord not to pursue the amendment. It will assist planning authorities to have the capacity to produce those other documents.
Lord Lucas: I found that immensely helpful. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 93 had been retabled as Amendment No.91C.]
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 93A:
Page 10, line 3, leave out subsection (7).
The noble Baroness said: I shall neither speak to nor move Amendment No. 93B. Amendment No. 93A would leave out subsection (7), which is another reference to regulations. The purpose of the amendment is not to oppose regulations, but we suggest that the definition of local development documents that are local plan documents and details of their form, content and production should be in the
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Bill, not in secondary legislation. At any rate, I wish to understand better than I have been able to so far what is meant by subsection (7).
At the moment, each local planning authority has a single development plan. In the future, we are looking at a package that will differ between authorities. Not every item will have the status of a development plan document. In Committee in the Commons, the Minister said that it was essential for the Secretary of State to have the power to make regulations to define which local development documents were local development plans to get a common standard among local authorities on form, content and timing. I have tabled the amendment to tease that out. I am unclear about what is meant by "content". It cannot mean the detail of the content—otherwise one would have exactly the same planning system across the whole country, and that would be a nonsense. In committee in the other place, the Minister, Mr McNulty, said:
"'Form and content' means the formal shape that the documents should take and what should be included in them and it covers headings and sub-headings".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee G, 16/1/03; col. 219.]
That seems to be more about form than content. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me a little more on that point. I beg to move.
3.30 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara): I should point out to the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments Nos. 93AA or 93B.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I will describe what the amendments seek to achieve, which I hope will satisfy some of the noble Baroness's curiosity.
Amendment No. 93A would have the effect of removing the Secretary of State's power to prescribe in regulations which development documents are development plan documents, the form and content of local development documents, and the time at which steps must be taken to prepare those documents. The effect of Amendment No. 93B would be similar. The amendments would remove an important power for the Secretary of State to prescribe in regulation details associated with the identification and preparation of local development documents. In our view, development plan documents need to be separately distinguished. They are local development documents, which need to be independently examined before they are adopted by the local planning authority.
In order to allow for flexibility in the new system and to meet the need for clear policies, development plan documents may take different forms. Regulations may prescribe which development documents are development plan documents. Each authority must have a core strategy covering 10 or more years. There will be a proposals map, showing which land is to be developed or conserved. Authorities may choose to have one or more area action plan, perhaps showing in greater detail what will happen in areas where there will be much change or which are to be kept as they are.

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Those will be development plan documents, which, together with the regional spatial strategy for the area, will form the development plan.
We ask how, without clear criteria, people will know what documents will be examined and what documents will be part of the development plan. For example, we have made it clear that documents dealing with the allocation of land will be development plan documents. It is right that documents that affect property rights should be independently tested.
Authorities will also be able to set out more details of their main policies or their policies on accessibility or design. The documents to which that provision will apply will not be development plan documents. In the draft regulations we have called them supplementary planning documents, or SPDs. They will not require independent testing. To ensure that those elements are put in place within a reasonable time, each authority will have to prepare and stick to a project plan, setting out what documents it will prepare and a timetable for their preparation. That will be known as a local development scheme.
The point of having these provisions in the form of regulations is to make clear exactly what is required. Having them in regulations will also ensure that, in the light of experience, we can amend them and provide flexibility. We aim for a light touch in these matters and to provide local authorities with flexibility in creating local development documents. However, it is right, of course, that everyone should know what to expect and that provisions are contained in the Bill to cater exactly for those aims. A good example of that is to make clear what documents are development plan documents.
In our view, these provisions are necessary for a clear understanding of the new system. Having heard that explanation, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Avebury: I suggest to the Minister that because many of the phrases that are said to occur in the regulations do not appear in the parent Act, it would be helpful to have a glossary of terms. In that case, anyone who is unsure as to exactly where the action plans fit into the general scheme could look up the terms in a separate list, instead of having to scrabble through the Bill while the Minister is speaking, only to find that his phraseology does not even appear there because it is in the regulations. I personally would find a glossary very useful.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: On this occasion I am instantly persuaded, not least because in reading through the Bill I have from time to time lost myself in the miasma of the terminology, as I am sure other Members of the Committee have. I shall consider the noble Lord's suggestion with a view to providing a glossary of terms, which I think would be very useful.
Baroness Hamwee: I am grateful to my noble friend. At a previous stage I asked whether the Government would consider engaging someone who knows nothing
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or next to nothing about the subject to check through whatever is eventually to be made available for the public. A guide to the terminology would be extremely useful. It is not adequate for it to be implied to us, or said to professionals or others outside the House, "If you tried harder, you would be able to understand it".
The Minister has quite reasonably commented on my amendment. It is my fault that the amendment does not make clearer what troubles me. I shall, of course, read what the Minister has said. I am not sure that it answers my questions. However, I shall not pursue the matter today and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 93AA:
Page 10, line 4, leave out paragraph (a).
The noble Baroness said: As our discussion has developed, it has become clear that whereas we used to have plain, straightforward documentation within the unitary development plan, and perhaps the accompanying documents, we have a complete mess in relation to development plans and development documents. The Minister has rightly said that we shall need a glossary of terms for the miasma that we are now encountering, which is quite extraordinary. The more questions that we raise about these development plans and documents, the greater the confusion that arises.
Under this clause I have tabled an amendment—it is not entirely the same as that proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—to leave out paragraph (a), which potentially would cut out a loophole that exists in this legislation. Without this amendment, there is a danger that local authorities' policies set out in their local development documents will be disregarded in the regional spatial strategy or spatial development strategy.
We have had a good deal of discussion about regulations, and an enormous amount seems to be left to regulations. We will accept those, as long as they describe the form and content of the local development documents and perhaps the timing of the steps and the preparation of such documents. However, we are not willing to accept that the Secretary of State should have the power to decide which local development documents should be included as development plan documents.
The Secretary of State must make clear on the face of the Bill which documents will make up part of the development plan. As the development plan documents are either the regional spatial strategy or the spatial development strategy, depending on which is being considered, and as the Secretary of State has the power to decide which of the local development documents go to make up the development plan documents, there exists a possibility that the Secretary of State could decide not to include any of the local development documents and thereby discount the policies of the local authority altogether. If the position is as I have described it—I do not say that it

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is, but it could be—it would be entirely unsatisfactory, and I therefore look forward to the Minister's explanation. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: If the only reason for the amendment is to ensure that the Secretary of State may prescribe none of the documents as local development documents, I may as well sit down. That would be a nonsense. It is not a remote possibility.
I have referred to the kinds of documents that should be covered in regulations. It is important to classify them as local development plan documents because they will be subject to independent examination. So there can be no equivocation about what is and is not subject to independent examination. What will not be subject to independent examination are the supplementary planning documents to which I referred in the debate on the previous amendment.
We want to cover the issue in regulations—which is the purpose of this part of the clause—to enable us to deal with changing circumstances and to adapt to them in the light of experience if that is sensible. I had hoped that the explanation given in the notes on clauses would have been satisfactory. There is no prospect of allowing the Secretary of State to pick and choose which local development plans will be the development plan documents; the regulations will set out the categories in advance. That is referred to in subsection (7).
The Secretary of State will not be allowed to pick and choose but it is important that we should classify the kinds of documents which will be subject to independent examination. If in the light of experience and circumstances we need to change that, it can be done by regulations without having to come back to primary legislation. That is the only purpose for this provision. Honestly, there is no hidden agenda to avoid classifying any of them as development plan documents.
Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for that reply. I still believe that there is a problem in not having the local development documents on the face of the Bill. If the regulations are to prescribe or indicate what the Secretary of State believes, presumably there could be the potential for more and more documents to be included under regulations. That means that this will not be the end of the story. One has to question the complexity of what we will end up with.
Baroness Hamwee: I wonder whether it is pertinent—or perhaps impertinent—to ask what documents the Government have considered as likely candidates but not included in their draft regulations.
Lord Rooker: Is that a question for me? I am looking at subsection (7). My speaking note on the amendment covers about 100 words in total. The amendment is very active and seeks to remove the Secretary of State's power to prescribe in regulations the kinds of local development documents that must be development plan documents. It is important that he should have that power in order to make them subject to
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independent examination. I have already covered the principle and benefit of having supplementary planning documents that are not covered by the requirement for independent examination.
We are covering the issue by regulation—that is all this little clause is about. Well, it is not such a little clause. I realise that. It does not go to the heart of the Bill in many ways. If experience shows that we need to move quickly by regulation to change the classification of certain documents, it gives us the flexibility to do so. That is all this is about.
I cannot embellish on it—although I am about to, having been handed a note. This sets out our policy on what documents the local planning authority should have. This is in the Green Paper and policy statement regulations that gave effect to that policy. I do not understand that. I shall stick to my original speaking note.
All we are talking about is having the facility and capability to change by regulation the definition of which documents should be covered by the classification of development plan documents and therefore require independent examination. Supplementary planning documents will not be covered by that requirement. They will deal with other matters. Over time, it might be thought more appropriate that issues raised in some supplementary documents should be subject to independent examination. They would therefore be reclassified as development plan documents. That would be carried out under subsection (7)(a), which the noble Baroness seeks to remove. I hope that I have made the case for retaining it.
Baroness Hanham: All we are asking the Government to do is to ensure that the documents that are to be included are on the face of the Bill. The Minister has said that the documents will be included in regulations and so, at some stage, people may decide to stir things up and have another go at what is or is not a development document and what will or will not go to an independent inspector. We shall come back to the issue of the independent inspector later. We are a million miles apart.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Avebury: Is it not clear that any document which concerns the development or use of land has to be a development document? As the Minister said, it is only documents that deal with the generality of planning policy and do not directly affect the use or development of land that can be supplementary documents. Having asked the noble Barnoess whether that is her undertstanding of the difference between the two, would it not be helpful if the Minister could at some point—not in answer to the amendment—give examples of the different categories of documents?
Barnoess Hanham: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention but it serves only to add to my perplexity about this. As I understand it, documents can be recategorised under regulations. The reason for having them included in regulations is in order that the

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Minister can recategorise them at will and probably without further consultation. As I said, we are a million miles apart on this. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 93B not moved.]
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 94:
Page 10, line 12, at end insert "or"
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 94 seeks to make it clear that a document is a local development document either if it is adopted by resolution of the local planning authority or if it is approved by the Secretary of State. By this means it would be not necessary to obtain the Secretary of State's approval for a document if it had already been passed by a local planning authority. The Bill as it stands is ambiguous as to whether both the Secretary of State's approval and a resolution of a local planning authority are necessary, or only one of these.
I understand that the Minister in another place undertook to consider this matter further. I hope as a consequence that the amendment will be accepted. It would be absurd if the Secretary of State had to agree to every local development document. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister would be swamped with paper and, far from increasing speed and efficiency, the planning system would grind to a halt. It would be centralisation at its worst, with the Government sticking their nose into highly localised issues of which they have little knowledge.
Surely if a document has been adopted by resolution of a local planning authority as a local plan of development, that is enough unless it decides that it wishes it to be approved by the Secretary of State. I beg to move.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I understand that the amendment has been debated once, perhaps twice, in another place—first in Committee and then on recommitment in the Commons.
It seeks to insert the word "or" between paragraphs (a) and (b) of Clause 16(8). We believe that it is unnecessary. If Clause 16(8) is read together with Clause 22, which deals with the adoption of local development documents, and Clauses 20 and 26, which deal with the Secretary of State's powers of intervention and default, it is clear that paragraphs (a) and (b) of Clause 16(8) are not cumulative but alternatives. The provision simply states that there are two routes by which a document can become a local development document in its final form—it can be adopted by the local authority or, in the case of development plan documents only, approval must be given by the Secretary of State. Only one can apply to any local development document or part of such a document at any one time. Far from it being excessively onerous or bureaucratic, we contend that the process is clear. It is about alternatives not the accumulation of a position. There is possibly a
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misunderstanding, but I hope that that explanation provides some necessary clarity for the noble Baroness and that she will be able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hanham: There are potentially two words missing from the clause. The Minister said that "or" is understood, but "and" could also be understood. Neither word is in the Bill. I cannot see any reason at all why the Minister is not leaping up and down to accept my amendment so that it is made abundantly clear that "or" is included. That is clearly what the clause means, and if that is so, why cannot we include the word? The clause could perfectly well be read as including "and". There are two paragraphs; (a) and (b), but it could also read (a) or (b)—the clause does not say which. I would have thought that, in the interests of clarity, it would be much more sensible to do as my amendment suggests and include the word "or". That would make it beyond peradventure so that people would not have to go rummaging through the rest of the Bill to find out what the clause means.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: If it helps, we will have another look at the drafting.
Baroness Hanham: On that basis, I will wait to see what the Minister comes up with, but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 95 not moved.]
Clause 16 agreed to.
Clause 17 [Statement of community involvement]
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 95A:
Page 10, line 16, at end insert "and shall consult during its preparation persons who appear to the authority to have an interest in matters relating to—

(a) the use of land;

(b) development; or

(c) the community strategy,

in their area"
The noble Baroness said: Grouped with this amendment are Amendments Nos. 95B, 99A and 99B. Amendment No. 95A would include consultation provisions that an authority should observe in the preparation of its "statement of community involvement". I am suggesting that authorities should consult people who have an interest in the use of land, development, or the community strategy. I became increasingly confused about whether the statement of community involvement was a development plan document or was one for only limited purposes and whether it was subject to independent examination. Clearly, if it is not—although draft PPS 12 says that it will be subject to examination—there is more need for consultation in its preparation. There is clearly a need for consultation anyway.
The terminology in the amendment,
"the use of land; development",
takes us back to our debate on the first day of Committee and on to Amendment No. 95B, which deals with the difficulty that some of us had about whether

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development in the context of this Bill was the same as that defined in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990—the Minister said that it was. Section 55 of that Act states that development includes,
"material change in the use of any buildings or other land",
which could mean other buildings or other land.
Amendment No. 99A would make it clear—clearer than I am managing—that the statement of community involvement should be the subject of independent examination. Amendment No. 99B would leave out subsections (4) and (5) of Clause 17. The amendment probes whether subsection (5) refers only to the statement of community involvement. The clause states:
"But in section 19(5)(a)—
(a) the reference to section 18 must be construed as if it does not include a reference to subsection (2)",
and—or perhaps that should be "or"—
"(b) the reference to section 23(1) must be ignored".
I once had a client who had a very difficult meeting with one of my colleagues. When he got back to his office he sent my colleague a bottle of aspirin. I feel that aspirin should have been dispensed by the Government before they got us into all this. I know that drafting sometimes has to be complex in order to be correct and precise, but many of us are left with our heads spinning. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: We have moved on to a slightly different issue in Clause 17, so it may be useful if I make a few general points before commenting on the amendments. Community involvement in planning is crucial. It is one of the new elements in the Bill. The statement of community involvement is an innovation—there is no question about that. We want an accessible and transparent planning system in which people can participate at the beginning, not wait until something turns up on their doorsteps. We genuinely believe that community involvement will lead to a better outcome. There is no doubt that communities can get wound up and invigorated and thereby create better decisions.
I want to make it abundantly clear that the purpose of community involvement is not to stop development. It is of course a challenge in that respect but we think that the investment is worth it. The best local authorities and developers recognise that it is a much better and more efficient way of going about development. Our approach is based on people having access to information and being able to express their ideas or participate in the process of developing the local documents. We do not simply want a checklist approach that encourages the minimum compliance.
There must be boundaries to the process, because we do not want consultation to be used as a reason for putting off decisions. The local authority is the decision maker at the end the day. Although they may not always like it, local councillors are the ones making the decisions. They sometimes like to be able to say, "We would rather turn this down, let it go to appeal and let the Minister decide", because that would make it easier to face the local community. However, they would be likely to take that view only if there had not been a genuine community involvement in which people
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understood the issues. There is a requirement on local authorities and councillors to show leadership in this process.
We are developing several principles to underpin our approach to the statement of community involvement. It must be fit for the purpose of making arrangements for the different levels of planning. We want to create early participation so that the system is front-end loaded. We want to recognise differing needs, especially those of hard-to-reach groups in the community. People must be kept involved, so the statement should not be a snapshot. It must also ensure that people know when they can participate and when is the appropriate time for their participation to be effective. There must be proper planning of the community involvement process. It is a key innovation.
The statement of community involvement is a statement of the local planning authority's policy for involving interested parties. It will describe how the local planning authority will implement the minimum standards in regulations and will include any extra measures that the local authority intends to adopt. Of course there will be an independent examination of the statement of community involvement. Certain benchmarks would be looked for in a sound statement of community involvement. It should show that the local authority is meeting its legal requirements, so that we can avoid any unfortunate disputes. It should set out the strategy and how it links to other initiatives. It should identify the groups of people who need to be involved and the mechanism for getting them involved. It should show how the results of the consultation and the involvement have fed into the process for preparing the local development documents; that is a valuable point.
Now that I have made those general points, I shall deal with the amendments. Amendment No. 95A requires the local authority to consult interested parties on the statement of community involvement while it is in preparation. We agree on the need for involvement. There is no difference between us on that. This will happen because the statement of community involvement is a local development document and therefore subject to the consultation procedures, which are in the draft regulations and guidance. It is also subject to statutory independent examination, as we have described earlier. Therefore, the consultation requirement is not needed on the face of the Bill. It will happen. It is implicit in the process that we have set up.
The consultation arrangements in the regulations include consultation with specific bodies and the opportunity for anyone to make representations when the statement is submitted for examination. The Bill provides the opportunity for anyone who has made representations to be heard at examination. There is plenty of scope for involvement.
Amendment No. 95B adds a few words to Clause 17(2). I understand the point made by the noble Baroness and, while we do not think we need the words suggested, I shall look at this and come back to her. She makes a fair point.

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Amendments Nos. 99A and 99B come from the Benches opposite, although they have not spoken to them. They would mean that the statement of community involvement was not subject to public examination. I am not casting aspersions on a probing amendment but we cannot exclude the statement of community involvement from the examination process. It is very important to test it, to make sure that it is sound and to allow representations to be heard. It is not intended to put extra burdens on the local authority. However, it is right that a policy on community involvement is subject to testing in front of the community. I hope that there is general agreement that this innovation is a good idea. I have given a general view of how we intend to operate this part of the new policy. I hope that colleagues find this explanation helpful.
4 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: The Government should issue a Minister to give an explanation with every copy of the Bill that is sold. It would be much easier than reading the clause.
I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation and, in particular, for his comments on Amendment No. 95B, which pick up a point initially raised by my noble friend Lord Greaves. The general description of the objectives and nature of the statement of community involvement made my point for me on Amendment No. 95A. I think that I have followed the process which ought to require that what I am suggesting happens anyway. I am grateful for the Minister's response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 95B not moved.]
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 96:
Page 10, line 21, at end insert—
"(2A) A statement of community involvement shall not seek to impose any greater obligation upon an applicant for planning permission than that contained in or made under the planning Acts, or support the refusal of planning permission because of a failure by an applicant to comply with any such obligation."
The noble Baroness said: This amendment is designed to prevent a statement of community involvement imposing additional obligations on applicants for planning permission or the refusal of planning permission because a developer has failed to carry out non-statutory consultation. Does the statement of community involvement impose consultation obligations upon developers? Do they have to have a consultation on each development or is it just the local authorities? I see the Minister shaking his head but he may like to respond to that.
On the whole, we are highly supportive of involving communities in the planning process. Indeed, my own local authority already undertakes considerable consultation on individual applications and on its strategies; the statement of community involvement will be an add-on. We recognise that the involvement
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of the local community and those affected by developments may not be universally as well provided and we understand the Minister's requirement for a statement of community involvement.
However, it is important that we also keep an eye on the burdens that such statutory consultation will create. We must ensure that the costs of producing a statement of community involvement do not grow to such a level that they outweigh the benefits. In this context, given the amount of documents that will go to independent scrutiny or to independent inspectors to be looked at, presumably there will be a vast increase in the bureaucracy in the appeals section in order to deal with the mammoth amount of paperwork. That is an aside to the amendment, but I could not resist raising it at some stage. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: The noble Baroness has raised an important point and it is fair to get it on the record. We attach great importance to community involvement in applications. Local authorities and developers must work closely with communities on planning applications. Effective community involvement at the early stages can increase the quality of the decision. That takes time, but it is better to get decisions right, rather than having them dragged out to appeal.
The point I must make is that the statement of community involvement is a statement of the local authority's policy. That is what it is about—the local authority's policy. The provisions of the Bill do not place any direct obligations on developers or other persons who wish to take part in the planning process. It is not a backdoor route to placing unnecessary burdens on those interested in the planning process. It is not intended to do that. The Town and Country Planning Act and the general development procedure order set requirements on a local authority to publicise planning applications and to take into account representations received. There are different publicity requirements for different types of application.
I hope that I have said enough to show that we are not making extra burdens. So far as appeals are concerned I cannot speak for the Planning Inspectorate, but I understand that it has great aims to increase vastly its productivity.
Baroness Hanham: Well, there is a thing—to increase the Planning Inspectorate's productivity over and above what it does already and to get its decisions out even more quickly. That would be even more excellent.
I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation of this as there has been some concern that there would be a statutory requirement on developers to provide a statement of community involvement before each major development. That is what one expects them to do, to ensure that they have some support from people round about; but, of course, that does not always happen. It is reassuring to know that this is not what is expected with this. It is quite clear from what the Minister has said that the statement of community involvement is a policy statement on how consultation

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on planning applications by a local authority will take place. With that explanation, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 96A:
Page 10, line 21, at end insert—
"(2B) Persons shall include town and parish councils, businesses and business organisations and residents, amenity and environmental groups in their area, whether or not incorporated."
The noble Baroness said: We have touched on this matter already; the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned it. I shall outline some slightly different groups from those that she included.
The proposed amendment sets on the face of the Bill a list of the groups that should be included in the preparation of a statement of community involvement. Clause 17(2) says that the statement of community involvement should be a statement of the authority's policy to,
"persons who appear to the authority to have an interest in matters relating to development in their area".
It is an extremely broad definition. Clause 17 would benefit from this amendment, which would clearly set out the groups that must be covered at a minimum. That would include town and parish councils, businesses, business organisations, residents' amenity associations and environmental groups in their area regardless of whether they are incorporated. Any statement of involvement that failed to incorporate the views of these groups would necessarily be incomplete. It is important that the Bill emphasises that a diversity of soundings must be taken. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves: Amendment No. 96B, which is in the same group as Amendment No. 96A, covers very similar ground. I shall therefore be extremely brief in speaking to it. It would be extremely helpful if the Minister could make it absolutely clear who is included as persons thought "to have an interest" in the matter. I look forward to his reply.
Lord Rooker: I think that I can satisfy the Committee on both the generality and the specifics. In the draft regulations we have covered many of the bodies that would be specific consultation bodies; there is a list on page 5 of the regulations. As I said, the statement of community involvement is a statement of the local authority's policy on involving people. We have made it clear that local authorities would be expected to tailor their statement of community involvement to the specific needs and character of their areas. That applies to development of the statement itself. It has to be fit for purpose and, as I said, it should identify the groups relevant to the local area that should be involved.
We think it impractical to list on the face of the Bill the groups that may lay a claim to having an interest. Obviously the statement has to meet the legal requirements. One needs to look at the statement of community involvement alongside the legal requirements in our draft regulations for consultation
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on local development documents. Specific and general bodies must be consulted. "Specific bodies" include relevant authorities, which includes parish councils as well as other authorities; general bodies including bodies representing the voluntary sector; business; bodies representing the interests of disabled people; ethnic, racial or national groups; and religious groups. It is a fairly comprehensive list.
Any person can make representations on a local development document. So the statement of community involvement must show how the local authority intends to consult with the bodies listed. On the other hand, even if a body is not specifically listed, it can still make representations on the document. The statement has to show how that can take place even if it is for an individual.
There are consultation and notification arrangements for planning applications in the general development procedure order. Parish councils are among those who must be notified. Of course, they can make representations under these arrangements. We are not changing the position at all.
Finally, I remind the Committee that the statement of community involvement has to be tested at the public examination. So if an interest group thought that it should have been included with the statement of community involvement but had been omitted from the draft, it could make representations to that effect. So there is a process for ensuring that you get on the list. If you are not on it to start with, you can still make representations.
Baroness Hanham: I think that that is an eminently sensible reply. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 96B not moved.]
4.15 p.m.
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 96C:
Page 10, line 21, at end insert—
"(2C) An enterprise zone authority, urban development corporation, housing action trust or the urban regeneration agency shall prepare a statement of community involvement with respect to any functions falling within subsection (2) which it has power to exercise."
The noble Baroness said: I have tabled these amendments to make sure that where there are urban development corporations, and in fact any other bodies with development control powers, they should also have to prepare statements of community involvement. I had a quite interesting experience the other day when someone pointed out to me that the electricity companies have development powers in the Energy Bill. I presume that that applies also to other—I was going to say statutory undertakers, but that is no longer correct—people who provide energy. The Minister may like to respond to the point. If so, however, those also would be included in my amendment. I can see no reason why anyone with development control powers should be excluded from making a statement of community involvement.

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Why should a council have to prepare such a statement and any urban development corporation or anyone else with development powers not have to do so? Community involvement is a vital exercise when developing local plans. In keeping with the Government's overarching desire to have a transparent and fair planning system, will the Minister concede that that is a reasonable revision—or perhaps tell the Committee that the Government have no plan to disapply this clause for urban development corporations? The point is even more important when one considers all the development that will take place under the sustainable communities plan which affects vast swathes of the country. Moreover, as I said, the electricity companies will also have development powers in the Energy Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I make no apology for agreeing that we need to have strengthened delivery methods for delivering our objectives in the growth areas. The issue is selecting the right type of vehicle and ensuring that each one fits the need. We absolutely agree that there must be consultation on proposals. We consulted fully on proposals for the Thurrock UDC, and we are now consulting on proposals for the London Thames Gateway, Milton Keynes and west Northamptonshire.
The amendment would require an enterprise zone authority, urban development corporation, housing action trust or the urban regeneration agency to prepare a statement of community involvement where it has the power to exercise any function under Clause 17(2). Those functions are preparing local development documents and determining planning applications. It is only fair to say that, as they stand, the amendments would not work. As I think we have discussed, for the purposes of the process of preparation, a statement of community involvement is treated as a local development document. So it would have to allow those bodies to prepare local development documents in order for them to prepare a statement of community involvement. However, I accept the noble Baroness's point of principle. It is very important, but it is not so much a matter of the technical drafting of the amendments.
The bodies in question can be given powers to determine planning applications. They would have to determine the application in accordance with the development plan drawn up by the relevant local authority unless there were other material considerations. So the framework within which the delivery vehicle operated would have been subject to the involvement processes that have already been discussed.
Perhaps I may take each of the delivery vehicles in turn. A local authority can be invited by the Secretary of State to prepare a scheme for an enterprise zone under Schedule 32 to the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980. Where an enterprise zone scheme is adopted, planning permission is granted
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automatically for development specified in the scheme. So an enterprise zone scheme is actually owned by the local authority.
As far as the process of consultation goes, the critical point is when the scheme is proposed. It is inconceivable that a proposal for a scheme would not be considered in a local development document. The statement of community involvement covers that process. Indeed, Clause 25 of the Bill requires local authorities to revise relevant local development documents if an enterprise zone scheme is designated. Secondly, the legislation for enterprise zones contains requirements for draft schemes to be publicised and for representations to be made and properly considered.
If an urban development corporation is given the powers to determine applications as a local planning authority, then it also follows that the requirements placed on a local planning authority in respect of procedures to follow when determining the application apply also to the UDC. As we have already discussed, there are requirements for publicity, the notification of planning applications and enabling representations to be made. Those will apply also to a UDC. UDCs also have to draw up a code of conduct for consultation with the relevant local authorities in their area.
We are quite clear that community involvement is key to the successful operation of UDCs and we agree with the view that UDCs must ensure that local community thinking is put at the heart of UDC programmes. We will ensure that UDC guidance and targets reflect that. Thurrock Council, for example, will be fully consulted on the guidance.
The Urban Regeneration Agency is now part of English Partnerships and we are consulting on a proposal to make an order to give the URA planning powers in respect of an urban development area in the Milton Keynes growth area. As with a UDC, if the URA is the local planning authority for the purposes of determining planning applications, it will have to meet the requirements for consultation. Again, notwithstanding the legal requirements, we are emphasising absolutely the need for that delivery vehicle to involve the community. English Partnerships already has a strong track record on the matter.
The existing housing action trusts were set up in 1992 to 1993 and have well established arrangements for consulting their tenants and stakeholders. Indeed, one could argue that they would not operate effectively without such arrangements. Therefore, any proposals to make them prepare formal statements of community involvement would be addressing a problem that does not exist. Furthermore no HATs have been given planning powers and we have no plans to do so. The noble Baroness has raised an important point of principle, even if the amendment does not work. But I reiterate our absolute commitment to ensuring that the delivery vehicles meet the spirit of the statement of community involvement philosophy for community involvement, even though the existing

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arrangements are more than sufficient to ensure that we do all that we can to import the full SCI process into the legal framework under which they operate.
So, I am grateful for the amendment. It has given us a useful opportunity to make a statement of our policy and intent and to clarify some of the confusion that the noble Baroness may have had about our approach. She asked about electricity companies having development powers. Utility companies cannot make decisions, but they may have permitted development rights for operational works. I do not think that their scope for development goes any further than that.
Baroness Hanham: I am grateful for the detail of the Minister's reply, which I shall read and ensure that it covers all the points that have been raised. I would be grateful if he could take my point about the electricity companies a little further, because my reading of that clause in the Energy Bill was that they did have development powers. If they did, and it were specific to the electricity companies, they would need to be encompassed somewhere in the general points that the Minister has described.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: That is an interesting point. My understanding is that they have limited permission rights which are essentially there for operational reasons. However, if the reading by the noble Baroness of that clause is right, we might well want to look at what the electricity companies might have to do to ensure that there is adequate community consultation. She made a useful point which I will happily pursue and respond to.
Baroness Hanham: On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 97 to 99B not moved.]
Clause 17 agreed to.
Clause 18 [Preparation of local development documents]:
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 99C:
Page 10. line 41, leave out paragraphs (b) and (c).
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 99C, which is another probing amendment, would leave out from Clause 18, which deals with the preparation of development documents, subsection (2)(b) and (c). I do not really wish for that, but merely seek to understand how the reference lies with a later part of the Bill. Subsection (2) states:
"In preparing a local development document the local planning authority must have regard to … the RSS for the region … if the area is outside London; [or] the spatial development strategy if the authority are a London borough or if any part of the authority's area adjoins Greater London".
We find that in Clause 23(1) and (2) the local development documents have to be "in general conformity" with the RSS and the spatial development strategy. Clause 23(2) requires opinions to be requested about conformity. I am not seriously suggesting that the planning authority should not have regard to the RSS of the spatial development strategy,
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but can the Minister help us with the nice distinction between the processes that a planning authority has to go through to be "in general conformity" as distinct from "having regard to"? I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: I accept, as the noble Baroness said, that this is a probing amendment. It would remove the requirement for local planning authorities to have regard to the regional spatial strategy or spatial development strategy for any part of its area when preparing the local development documents.
The planning system is based on a framework of national policies, the regional spatial strategies and the local development documents. Each level in that structure needs to have regard to the strategic levels above. That provides for sensible vertical integration within the system. We need to ensure that local planning authorities consider all the relevant strategies and policies affecting development in their areas; and they need to ensure effective links between local and regional planning to ensure the best planning outcomes. Spatial strategy is all about that integrated approach.
The use, development and planning of land at local level cannot, or should not, occur in a vacuum. To achieve sustainable spatial results the local development documents must have regard to the relevant regional strategies and policies. Planning policy statement 11, which we discussed earlier, ensures that the regional spatial strategy should set out sufficiently clear sub-regional objectives and policies to enable those people preparing the local development documents to consider any key strategic sub-regional implications of proposed development. For example, transport issues in the local development documents should be consistent with, and informed by, the regional transport strategy, which will be an integral part of the regional spatial strategy.
Therefore, the amendment would severely weaken good planning for the local authority's area. It would also weaken the regional spatial strategy, if that was not taken into account at local level. The amendment contradicts what has been said about the need to strengthen regional planning.
The general conformity provides a link between the regional and local level. It ensures, for example, that the regional spatial strategy, or, as appropriate, the mayor's spatial development strategy, is properly translated into policies at the local level. Without a general conformity requirement which exists at present in relation to the strategic—
Hang on a minute. I have an acronym in my notes which I refuse to read out.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Rooker: I have not done that once, yet, and I am not going to now. I apologise. I shall have to get around this. The acronym must refer to the—
Baroness Hanham: Have a break.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Rooker: I cannot. There has to be a test of a general conformity. Without that, the strategic planning cannot be effectively delivered. We need that test in any effect.
Once the ground rules have been set, the local planning authority can prepare its own policies and proposals reflecting its community involvement and appraisal of sustainability—it will of course need to do that—provided that the local development document remains in general conformity with it. That is a test of general, not detailed, conformity. We shall make it clear in the final version of planning policy statement 12 that the Government's policy is that only where a local development document would cause significant harm to the implementation of the regional spatial strategy should the local development document be considered not to be in general conformity.
I shall read out the final paragraph of my briefing anyway. The chain of conformity between the local development document set out in the draft regulations simplifies the application of the test of general conformity. The core strategy should generally conform with the spatial vision and strategy in the regional spatial strategy or the spatial development strategy. As we move down the chain of local development documents, we would expect fewer interventions in respect of general conformity.
Having put all that on record, I expect a lot fewer amendments on Report. I am sorry about the hiatus, but I was faced at short notice with an acronym that I did not like. I hope that I have given a satisfactory explanation of why it would be dangerous to remove the need for local planning authorities, in preparing the local development documents, to have regard to the spatial development strategy or the regional spatial strategy for any part of their areas. The tiered levels need to be linked.
Lord Avebury: Having listened carefully to the Minister's explanation, I am none the wiser. My noble friend asked him what I thought was a perfectly simple question, which was why, if we have the provision in Clause 18(2), we also need that in Clause 23(1). If the local authority has done what it is told to do in Clause 18(2)—if it has had regard to "national policies and advice" and,
"the RSS for the region"—
surely that means that it must be in conformity with the RSS. Surely that must be so unless what the Minister said means in effect that, having had regard to the RSS, the local authority has decided to ignore it, so that the development documents that it produces are not in conformity with it. I do not know whether that meaning can be ascribed to "have regard to".
Lord Rooker: I will be happy to give more detail on Clause 23 when we get to it, but there is a test of general conformity. Obviously the amendments are probing—I do not say any more than that—and colleagues may be opposed to the principle of the test of general conformity. However, I do not think that they are. The
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general conformity test provides an important link between the regional and local level. That link may be considered unsatisfactory.
I have said that it is a test of general conformity, not detailed conformity. We will make it clear in the final version of planning policy statement 12 that the Government's policy is that only where a local development document would cause significant harm to the implementation of the spatial development strategy or the regional spatial strategy should the local development document be considered not to be in general conformity.
In Clause 18(2), there is a need to have regard to that as part of the process of preparation. In Clause 23, conformity is when the document is prepared, so it is a check at the end of the process. That is the best explanation that I can give at the moment, but if there is more to be done on the matter I can deal with it when we come to Clause 23.
Baroness Hamwee: I would put it the other way round from my noble friend. If there has to be general conformity—we are certainly not suggesting that there should not be—what does "have regard to" add? I cannot help thinking that if Clause 18(2)(b) and (c) were not there, and if we had tabled an amendment to include that on the way to general conformity the local planning authority should have regard to those items, we would have been told that that provision was unnecessary. The Minister clearly has some sympathy with that point of view.
My serious point is to understand whether the local planning authority needs to do something particular at the relevant stage that complying with Clause 23 does not of itself provide. The Minister was quite right, of course—it was a probing amendment—and in the absence of any more paper winging its way to him I had better beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 99D:
Page 11, line 3, at end insert—
"( ) the local transport plan for their area;"
The noble Baroness said: I shall move the amendment, but I think that I recall the Minister explaining the situation a bit earlier, so forgive me if I am covering repeat ground. When preparing local development documents, local authorities should have regard to,
"the local transport plan for their area".
That is what the amendment suggests formally. I think that I remember the Minister talking about that.
In reality, authorities will take transport plans into account, but there may be some reluctance to include them where a document might have been prepared by a county council. I do not know whether there is any sensitivity about that. Surely the county council's strategies on transport, education, housing, health, employment and major investment would all be worth "having regard to". I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: As the noble Baroness said, I have covered the matter previously. We agree with the intention behind the amendment, but we do not think it necessary. The nature of the relevant documents can alter, even in the space of a few years. I am told, for example—I was not aware of it precisely—that local transport plans did not exist until 1998. It is better to set out only a broad framework in the legislation, because the Secretary of State has the power in Clause 18(2)(j) to prescribe other matters to which authorities must have regard.
Annexe B of draft planning policy statement 12 also makes it clear that, under the new planning system, the integration of transport and spatial planning is central to the development and delivery of effective local development frameworks. To deliver integration, local development documents should be consistent with the local transport planning policies for their areas.
We agree with the intention, and that intention will be carried out in practice, but it is not necessary to put it in the Bill in such a way.
Baroness Hanham: I appreciate that the Minister had covered the ground earlier, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Maddock Baroness Maddock moved Amendment No. 100:
Page 11, line 7, at end insert—
"( ) the housing strategy prepared by the authority under the Local Government Act 2003 (c. 26);"
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 100, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 101 and 102. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in whose name Amendment No. 101 is tabled, is not in his place, so it might be appropriate for me to keep my comments to myself; I do not know.
I may get a similar answer to the answer to the previous amendment. The purpose of my amendment is to ensure that the local authority has regard to its own housing strategies in drawing up the local development document. The content of local housing strategies and local plans overlap. The local housing strategy is underpinned by local assessment of housing needs, and local plans deal with the amount and location of new housing for private sales and affordable housing. Unfortunately, housing planning departments are often inconsistent, and sometimes we see conflict. I hope that this amendment will create a strong incentive for authorities to reconcile their planning and housing policies.
If there is improved clarity for authorities and their stakeholders, there will be fewer disputes. This is especially important in respect of planning applications for housing developments. We know, from the Minister's statements on many occasions, the importance of addressing the shortage of housing in this country. That is why I am so keen to get this in the Bill. We also need a culture of positive planning for housing. We need to reinforce the mutual importance of planning and housing in achieving sustainable development.
There are various reasons why this is important. Most of us believe that areas with a good mix of housing types, affordable rented, shared ownership, and owner occupier, create more stable neighbourhoods. Often when housing developments come forward, a combination of public and private funding is needed to create affordable homes. Local plans that consider local housing need to create a better basis for local authorities, housing associations and private developers to reach agreement. The Government want to see that.
Lots of reasons have been given for the problem of delivering local housing, and many believe that the delivery of affordable housing is being hampered by inconsistencies between the local plans and the housing strategy. This gives the opportunity for all sorts of appeals against decisions. The choice and range of affordable housing could be managed much more successfully if housing and planning strategies were put together. I hope that the Minister will understand and at least agree with the sentiments behind Amendment No. 100.
I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is trying to achieve in Amendment No. 101, and I have a great deal of sympathy with it. Often, we build affordable housing, and it quickly becomes unaffordable after a period of a few years. There are one or two schemes around the country where people have tried to do something about it. It is an issue that must be dealt with. However, it is not an issue that can be dealt with in this Bill. Planning authorities do not really have the main role in determining the price of property, but the noble Lord raises an important issue. Local authorities often do not provide the new housing, and again it is therefore difficult for them to control the price of property.
I agree with Amendment No. 102 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best. The noble Lord has a lot of experience in these matters. If my own amendment were accepted, because housing need assessments are part of local housing strategies and they underpin them, the matter would be covered by Amendment No. 100. I will listen with interest to what both noble Lords say about those amendments. I beg to move.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Lucas: I was waiting for the noble Lord, Lord Best. My amendment does not have the same practical applications as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Maddox—at least not at the moment. It follows on from my own research and from Kate Barker's interim report. She has effectively demonstrated the economic disadvantages that flow from increasing housing prices. If I remember the figure correctly, GDP is £10 billion less than it would have been if we had not had that phenomenon. We all know that the Chancellor is concerned with the effect that the dynamics of our housing market have on our possible entry into the euro, that it is something that is now big enough and difficult enough to affect the way in which our economy flows. Perhaps people are starting to get obsessed with housing as the right place

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to put their money because they are not as confident as we would like them to be in financial investments and in the stock market.
These are real economic disadvantages. Investing in housing and relying on an increase in the value of housing is not an economic good—it is speculation. At the end of the day, it must end. We have somehow convinced ourselves that rising house prices are beneficial. Over the past 20 years the result has been that the average household has been able to afford a house 20 per cent smaller than used to be the case. It is a lot more valuable, but it is smaller. We ought to see housing as something that we use, rather than as an investment.
The people who are winning out of this are the landowners, the people who are selling their land into the market, and the people who in other ways are involved in land speculation. It is nice that some people are winning out of this, but it is not where we should be trying to direct economic benefit. We are also in the business of transferring wealth from the young to the old. We are putting ever-increasing burdens on young people, who are trying to build up their interest in property with an expanding family, or just wanting to live better. They are finding it harder and harder to afford the sort of house that they would like.
The people who are benefiting are those who are downsizing. We are transferring wealth from the young to the old. For many in this House, that may be a good idea, but it is not a good idea for the economy as a whole. As Kate Barker develops her ideas and they gain support from the Treasury and from other branches of the Government, we will see some determination to do something about this, to try to find a way of ending this endless spiral of house prices.
In this amendment I propose that the benchmark that we should aim at is retail price inflation. That way, with us all doing, with any luck, slightly better than retail price inflation over the years, we can look forward to being able to afford bigger, better, nicer houses, rather than being able to afford smaller houses, which is what is happening at the moment. It would have many economic benefits too, as Kate Barker has demonstrated.
How are we to achieve this? We cannot achieve it, as the Chancellor is finding, through operating the big levers of state. The property market is not responsive to that—it is only part of the economy anyway. So many other influences come to bear. He cannot stick up stamp duty forever; he only has some blunt instruments. What is needed is something that bears on the supply of property. Demand is essentially generated by people and is, to some extent, out of the Chancellor's control. Government and local government have a substantial effect on supply. It is planning policies that determine how much, and where, land is available for development and how much gets developed. If we can have some lever on supply, we have some hope of maintaining over time a reasonably steady house price. Obviously, many influences, demands and considerations come to bear on whether planning permission should be given in any
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individual case. However, if you include an objective alongside those such as design and sustainability that house prices should remain steady, and if that is held to over time, people will not pay high prices for their houses. If you say, "Today is the bench-mark date. We will not allow, by and large, house prices to run far ahead of inflation", why should someone pay a price 20 per cent above that bench-mark? They know that if they do they will lose money in 10 years and that the planning authority will probably take action to reduce the price. People will not be inclined to chase house prices in the knowledge that they will lose money.
By that demonstrative action, the Government could have a very calming effect on people's expectations of the return that they will get from investment in housing. Without having to pull vast levers and shift vast amounts of money around, one will alter people's belief and understanding of what investment in property is supposed to entail. I do not expect the Government to make any motions on that today, but it is a direction and a subject that I hope to have the opportunity to explore over the next couple of years, until we get around to doing something about the Barker review and its consequences. I shall be delighted to hear what the Minister says on the matter today. If he is entirely opposed to the proposal, at least it will stop me wasting my time.
Lord Best: I speak in complete support of the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Amendment No. 102, tabled in my name, would amend Clause 18 to require the local planning authority, when preparing a local development document, to have regard to "meeting housing needs". That is a slightly broader approach to that taken by Amendment No. 100, but it shares that amendment's aim of putting housing on the face of the Bill.
Why should housing receive such attention? The reason that the amendment is necessary flows from the importance in the planning system of meeting housing need. That is one of the key purposes for which we have a planning system and is one of the key reasons for the Government to seek to reform that system through this Bill.
I underline points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, about the necessity for easing housing shortages, which is a core motive behind the Government's desire to reduce the delays and hassles that often characterise UK planning at present.
I welcome hugely the Government's commitment to address the dramatic decline in housing supply at a time of growing housing demand. As Kate Barker of the Bank of England shows in her brilliant interim report for the Treasury, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, referred, there is a gap, growing by about 39,000 homes each year, between the number of new homes built and the number of new households formed each year. UK housing output is now back to the levels of the 1920s, yet household formation, caused principally by all of us living longer; the growth of single-person households, comprising those who have not married or who have divorced; and international migration, particularly for jobs in

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London, remains on its upward path. The resulting shortages create economic and social problems: acute house price inflation and volatility in all areas of high demand; the worsening phenomenon of the two-hour commuter journey, so ruinous to family life for many in the south of England; the impossibility of recruiting teachers, nurses and other key people needed in many parts of the south east and west; the pricing-out of local people from many rural areas; and homelessness and overcrowding back to record levels.
The gap between housing supply and demand is destined to keep growing unless the barriers to supply are successfully addressed. Planning is not the only reason for housing output falling so far behind, but it represents a significant ingredient. Achieving housing objectives is utterly dependent on the planning system, yet this Bill does not mention the meeting of housing needs as a key consideration for any of the participants.
By making "meeting housing needs" formally a consideration in statutory forward plans, my amendment would ensure the connection between housing and planning. It would underpin the Government's good intentions for,
"a step change in housing supply"
as set out in its excellent Sustainable Communities Plan of last year.
The amendment does not create a legal obligation on local planning authorities that could be enforced in the courts, but it represents a foot in the planners' door for housing champions, not least those in local authorities who must draw up the local housing strategy, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, and the subject of Amendment No. 100. My amendment would mean that planners would have to consult housing colleagues, providing a chance for joining up those strategic objectives.
The amendment is not just about affordable housing, although I hope to return to that subject later in the Committee's deliberations; it is about identifying and addressing shortages in the whole housing market—requirements for owner occupation, rented housing and housing such as shared ownership in between. A full housing market assessment would be an essential part of the pre-production strategy of the local development framework.
There are precedents for requiring planning authorities to have regard to specific issues. The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requires consideration, and thereby draws attention to,
"the conservation of the natural beauty and amenity of the land".
The Environment Act 1995 specifies wildlife and cultural heritage and,
"opportunities for … enjoyment of the special qualities of certain areas".
The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill will require, in Clause 38, that anyone exercising a planning function shall take on board the sustainable development agenda.
The Minister may argue that planning guidance can cover all that. However, even in draft planning policy statement 12, the guidance that covers local
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development frameworks, there is no reference to linking housing and the local housing strategy to local development documents. That would buttress the PPG3 guidance on affordable housing and the PPG7 guidance on rural issues, which covers housing. Planning policy statement 12 mentions issues relating to the community strategy to which the plans should have regard. The list includes transport, education, health and waste management but, to my surprise, it excludes housing.
By putting "meeting housing need" on the face of the Bill, the amendment would fill a gap, sending out a strong signal that planning is as much about housing as anything else, and that those with planning and housing responsibilities need to work together. It represents a unique chance to join up policies in the huge task of ensuring, at the very least, that the growing deficit between the number of new households that want a home and the number of homes built does not rise inexorably at its present alarming rate.
Lord Monson: I wish to comment on Amendment No. 101, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which is interesting. This time last year I would have supported wholeheartedly the noble Lord's proposition that, in an ideal world, house prices should rise no faster than the rate of inflation. However, a few months ago, several noble Lords were discussing, as people do, the horrendous rise in house prices in London, not on the Floor of the House but at the long table. The noble Lord's colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, forcefully made the point that it was illogical to expect house prices to rise no faster than inflation: rather, one would expect them to rise in line with average earnings. Most of us conceded that the noble Baroness was talking good sense. After all, as people become gradually richer in real terms over the years, they naturally want to spend more of their money on their homes and can afford to do so. Over a 25-year period, one expects average real earnings to double at least. But I would refine the noble Baroness's assertion by substituting post tax earnings for earnings pure and simple.
It is easy to forget that 25 years ago, in January 1979, the top rate of tax on earned income was 83 per cent. Most merchant bankers, bond dealers, City of London solicitors, captains of industry and so on paid tax at 83 per cent, or at least 75 per cent. Now, as we all know, thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, the top rate is no more than 40 per cent. That, together with the internationalisation of London—tens of thousands of people, most of them wealthy, pouring into London and settling here—explains why house prices in the more desirable parts of London, and even some of the less desirable parts, have not merely doubled or trebled, but at least quintupled in real terms.
I agree with the proposition that one should discourage people speculating on ever-rising house prices. It makes life intolerable for younger people. Those of us with children and grandchildren will be well aware of this. However, I think the noble Lord is being over-ambitious in trying to link house prices to

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the RPT. He might possibly come back at Report stage with an amended version of the amendment, substituting the average earnings index for the retail prices index.
5 p.m.
Lord Rooker: I do not wish to be discourteous, but this is the longest debate that we have had this afternoon, and I could give the shortest possible answer to it. It is in the last paragraph of my speaking notes. However, it does not fully cover the points of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I appreciate that his amendment is in a different league from the other two.
The Bill already gives noble Lords what they want. Under Clause 18(2)(a), the local planning authority must have regard to national policies, and so would have to have regard to planning policy guidance 3 policies on housing, and to any policies on planning change. There is a requirement on the face of the Bill for the local authority to have regard to national policies, including housing policy in the broadest sense, where such policy statements exist. That is a positive point. It would be discourteous if I did not give more detail on that matter.
There are some key issues to be discussed. I was in Bedfordshire today, discussing with local authorities in the Milton Keynes/South Midlands growth area some of the issues relating to growth. We need to grow in a planned, sustainable way in order to meet many of the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, and the noble Lord, Lord Best. The list covers policy documents and strategies that may impact on local planning policies. Clause 18(2) covers a number of matters to which the local authority should have regard.
Amendment No. 100 would require the local planning authority to have specific regard to housing strategy prepared under Section 87 of the Local Government Act 2003. We agree that the local authority should consider its housing and planning strategies together as a matter of course. They must do so. Our new planning arrangements would strengthen the links between housing and planning, as well as with other important strategies and policies.
The effective integration of strategy is a key objective of the new system. The local planning authority must take into account other relevant policies and strategies at local and regional level. We now have regional housing policies through the work of regional housing boards. Planning has a key role in contributing towards us achieving the successful, thriving and inclusive communities that we want. We must learn the lessons from the past, when we built what were sometimes unsustainable communities.
We have just finished consultation on updates to planning for housing guidance set out in planning policy guidance 3. There were entitled Supporting the Delivery of New Housing and Influencing the Size, Type and Affordability of Housing Consultation has now been closed, and we hope to publish a final policy statement this summer. Planning policy guidance 3
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already places great emphasis on the links between strategies, and this has been strengthened in the updated version.
I do not wish to fob off noble Lords—I would not dream of doing that—but we are going to get a fairly large housing Bill later in the Session, so we are going to be able to debate some of the key issues relating to housing. This planning legislation is not the most appropriate mechanism for listing all the local strategies. If we were to do that, the legislation would become difficult to change; the nature of the documents could change as well. We have set out only a broad framework in the legislation, describing the relevant documents in general terms, and leaving it to the policy statements of good practice guidance for specific documents.
This deals with all the issues raised, except possibly the specific point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I understand why he has raised it, but I admit that I do not have an answer for him today.
The reference to community strategy in the clause is an exception to the rule. It is a statement of an authority's strategic vision for the area and the context of all the subject-based strategies, policies and programmes. Our draft guidance on local development frameworks in planning policy statement 12 proposes various strategies to be considered. I will ensure that the final version of the document includes appropriate references to housing strategy. That is an important point. Under Clause 18(2)(j), the Secretary of State has powers to prescribe regulations, matters which authorities must have regard to. We have been consulting on these regulations.
The clause deliberately does not specify policy objectives such as those set out in Amendments Nos. 101 and 102. Policy objectives can be transient, although in this case they are not. We are setting out broad principles. It would cause problems if we had to change primary legislation every time we wanted to change a policy objective.
What noble Lords are asking for is in the Bill. Local authorities must have regard to national policies, and those national policies on housing are being set up now. They are being updated and consulted on. In the department's general guidance there are the policies that relate to the sustainable communities plan, and these may apply both to the wider growth areas of the south-east and the market renewable pathfinder areas of the north. I will have more to say about that matter in a few days. National policies will then be enunciated on how we intend to implement them.
As the clause is drafted, local authorities must have regard to those national policies. Therefore, what is required by the amendments is covered in the Bill, although not in the specific terms.
Baroness Maddock: I thank the Minister for his reply. Very often, delivery of housing takes a long time. People dispute decisions. I shall read carefully what the Minister has said. I hope that that will reassure me that developers will not be able to appeal because the local authorities are not clear enough in what they are doing.

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I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he will "beef up" the guidance to ensure that housing strategies are mentioned. The noble Lord, Lord Best, did not disappoint me when he too raised that issue. It is important to ensure that local authorities get the message that their plans must be consistent. If they are not, we shall encounter the same problems of delivery on the ground and many appeals by developers.
I shall read carefully what the Minister has said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 100 A to 102 not moved]
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 102ZA:
Page 11, line 12, at end insert—
"(2A) For the purpose of the exercise of its functions in this section, a district council in an area where there is a county council must seek the advice of that authority.
(2B) The authority must give the district council advice as to the exercise of the function."
The noble Baroness said: This is a small amendment which seeks to achieve the opposite of what was agreed by the Minister earlier. County councils should be able to pass their views upwards. We seek here to ensure that the district council is in a position to advise the county council so that the district council's plans are taken into account in structure plans, or whatever ultimately is done by the county council, to be sure that, as far down the line as possible, the views of the authorities are reflected in the regional spatial strategy and all the plans which go with it. I beg to move.
Lord Hanningfield: I rise to add a word to what has just been said by my noble friend Lady Hanham. This amendment has been sponsored by the County Councils Network and is, I repeat, in line with the Government's own amendment providing that the counties will now have to advise on the regional spatial plan. It is only right that county councils should also reach downwards and advise on district plans. It is obvious that the Government should accept the amendment because it is totally in line with their own earlier amendment which is now part of the Bill.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: The amendment is not completely in line with what we have agreed. We have set out our position on this. Amendment No. 109H would in effect make county councils in whose areas there are district councils local planning authorities for the purposes of Part 2 of the Bill. I do not know whether that was the intention of noble Lords opposite, but that is what the amendment would achieve. Amendment No. 102ZA would require district councils to seek advice from county councils when preparing their local development documents, and in turn it would require county councils to give that advice. So the amendment is a little more of a straitjacket.
We have made clear our views on the role of county councils. Obviously it is sensible that county councils and other authorities with strategic planning expertise should make available to the principal planning
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authority their advice on strategic issues, but to have the same requirement for preparing local development documents is not as sensible. District councils have long experience of preparing local plans without a statutory requirement to seek advice from county councils. No doubt district councils will benefit from information provided by county councils through their survey functions, and regulations will require county councils to make that information available to district councils as the local planning authority.
County councils will be involved with every local development document as part of the statutory consultation process, and can form a joint committee with one or more of the district councils in their locality to prepare local development documents in partnership.
Given all that, it is difficult to see what constructive purpose might be served by Amendment No. 109H. Part 2 makes it clear that local planning authorities are responsible for preparing local development documents. Specifying that county councils are to be local planning authorities would cut right across that and for that reason is not acceptable.
While we want to see a constructive relationship between the two levels of local government, we cannot have the situation outlined in one of the amendments whereby, in effect, we would have two local planning authorities. That is not tenable and I am sure was not the intention of noble Lords opposite.
5.15 p.m.
Baroness Hanham: I hear the Minister's reply. What we sought was to ensure that county councils seek advice from district councils. However, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply which I shall read in Hansard I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 102A:
Page 11, line 17, after "must" insert ", in addition to complying with section 38,"
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 102A would provide that the local planning authority should cross-refer Clause 18(5) with Clause 38, covering the general overarching duty towards sustainability. We shall discuss that clause in detail later today. I am sure that sustainability will require more than an appraisal. We want to see it being "mainstreamed" into all that is done by a local planning authority and so I wonder whether appraisal is enough. When one details certain mechanisms, there is a risk that sometimes they will be regarded as the only ones required.
I have tabled the amendment in part to understand whether, under the provisions of Clause 19, the inspector undertaking the independent examination is required to consider the sustainability appraisal which the local planning authority must carry out. I do not suggest that appraisal is not a good thing, but stressing the importance of observing sustainability principles

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in everything one does in the same way that, by analogy, local authorities mainstream qualities issues is the way one wants to go. I beg to move.
Lord Cobbold: I do not support this amendment because I have problems with the concept of sustainability. However, I intend to raise those when we reach Clause 38.
Lord Rooker: There is an easy answer to this amendment: it is not necessary. It seeks to make explicit something which is already implicit in how the legislation will operate. Clause 38 places a duty on those responsible for preparing local development documents and therefore applies to local authorities. In exercising their functions, Clause 38 provides that local authorities must consider how the policies and plans set out in the documents they prepare under Clause 18 contribute to the achievement of sustainable development; that is, they must prepare them with a view to contributing to the achievement of sustainable development.
Local planning authorities must comply with Clause 38 in preparing their local development documents. There is no argument about that. Should one want further clarification, a reading even of Clause 36 covering interpretation makes it clear. A local authority development scheme,
"must be construed in accordance with section 14",
covering the local development strategy. Moreover, subsection (2) states that local development documents,
"must be construed in accordance with section 16".
In other words, there are cross references throughout the Bill. In preparing the documents, local authorities must comply with Clause 38, the sustainable development clause.
Under Clause 18(5), to which the amendment seeks to add the wording, the proposals in every local development document will be subject to a sustainability appraisal and a report of the findings will be prepared. What that provides is a process to test draft policies against the achievement of sustainable development. We intend to publish draft guidance on this for consultation in March. I cannot say whether it will be in early or late March.
The amendment is well intentioned. However, I hope that I have demonstrated that the amendment seeks to add unnecessary words to the Bill. The process will operate as implied in the Bill as drafted.
Lord Avebury: With great respect to the Minister, he did not address my noble friend's question on how Clause 38 would read back into the independent examination of the local authority's activities in producing the development plan documents. In every case, the development plan document has to be subjected to an examination. That is provided for in Clause 19. However, Clause 38 is in a separate part of the Bill. My noble friend asked whether the examination has to cover the local authority's responsibilities under Clause 38 or is limited to
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whether it has complied with the obligation in this clause to conduct an appraisal. That is somewhat less onerous.
Lord Rooker: Perhaps I may answer that although I am not a lawyer. The provision may be in a different part of the Bill, Part 3, but the clause reads:
"This section applies to any person who or body which exercises any function … under Part 1 in relation to a regional spatial strategy; … under Part 2 in relation to local development documents; … under Part 6 in relation to the Wales Spatial Plan".
It is implied that the local development documents will be subject to independent examination. Therefore, the independent examination has to take account of Clause 38, the sustainable development clause.
With respect, although the provision is in a different part of the Bill there is a direct link back to Part 2 of the Bill.
Baroness Hamwee: The purpose of the independent examination, as described in Clause 19(5), does not refer to Clause 38. However, like the Minister, I had understood Clause 38 to apply over the whole because it is expressed as being necessary in order to do almost anything under the Bill.
My question related to whether the Government expected the independent examination to extend to the appraisal process. The Minister may well tell me that it is a matter for the inspector to assess whether Clause 38 has been complied with. We shall see as we gain experience of the legislation—perhaps. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, expresses a little scepticism. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 18 agreed to.
Clause 19 [Independent examination]:
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 102B:
Page 11, line 31, at beginning insert "they consider"
The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I speak also to Amendments Nos. 102C to 102G and Amendment No. 102DA standing in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham.
The purpose of the independent examination is expressed in Clause 19(5): to determine whether each document satisfies certain requirements and is sound. Amendment No. 102B proposes that the authority must not submit a document unless it has not only complied, but thinks that it has complied, with certain requirements. I can hear the Minister responding that the authority would not submit a document stating that it had complied unless it believed that it had done so.
However, I became a little puzzled—it must again have been late at night—about the purpose of Clause 19(2). Could the regulations referred to in Clause 19(2) in any way override Clause 19(5)? Can any regulations override what Clause 19(5) sets out to do?
Amendment No. 102C provides that the Secretary of State will decide whether the examination is to be in the form of a public inquiry or an informal hearing.

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Clause 19 does not spell out the nature of the examination. I seek clarification. Is it for the inspector to determine the form of the inquiry; or is it for the Secretary of State perhaps in regulations to do so?
In future, a range of documents will be covered. Some may believe that a full public inquiry is required rather than an informal hearing. Given the importance of some of the documents, one could say that there is a strong case for subjecting them to the full inquiry process. We are all aware of the implications for all stakeholders (I hate that word)—the owners of property, those who propose to develop, and those who have an interest in any area.
On Amendment No. 102D, I am sure we shall be told that if someone is appointed to carry out an independent examination, it is implicit that that examiner is independent of the Secretary of State. I should like to explore that a little. The examination is independent. I do not want it thought that by deleting the adjective which applies to examination I oppose such independence. However, it seems to me that the carrying out of the examination cannot be independent unless the person carrying it out is also independent. I do not know whether the Government have anything to say about that. The Minister may already have said today that he cannot comment on the planning inspectorate—which moves us out into another pigeon-hole.
Amendment No. 102E proposes that the examination under Clause 19(5) should be sound "in all material respects". I am not sure whether the term sound is used elsewhere in legislation. If it is not, experience and precedence will grow up as to what is meant by sound. Of course, the term "material" is well understood in the planning world. Although it might seem frivolous to suggest that it does not matter if a document is unsound in a respect that is not material, because of the importance of the subject matter, it is important to be as clear as possible in the Bill.
Amendment No. 102F proposes that examinations should also look at whether the documents include "achievable mechanisms for implementation"; I know that that is not very elegant wording. I am sure that all Members of the Committee with experience of planning would have swiftly come up against the reality that however great one's policies, unless there are mechanisms to implement them, they are fine words but no more than that. It is appropriate to ask an inspector to look at whether the policies and proposals can be implemented.
Finally, adding to the criteria that the examinations should address, Amendment No. 102G proposes that the development plan document should also be "robust". I have in mind here that there should be resources to carry that out. A policy or proposal is all very fine, but it may be pie in the sky without resources, and should not be taken forward in a serious fashion. Perhaps I should say that the aspiration should be there to carry it out, but that it needs examination as to whether the local planning authority is being realistic in its proposals. I am delighted to be able to leave the last amendment in the group to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. I beg to move.
5.30 p.m.
Baroness Hanham: I have tabled one amendment in the group, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, touched on. Amendment No. 102DA questions the meaning of the phrase, "it is sound". That is a very novel use of the phrase, which gives no guidance to the examiners about what ought to be taken into account. I am not sure whether it has any legal connotation; I wonder whether it has appeared in legislation in the past. Perhaps the Minister would kindly give us examples of what might be classified as a sound or an unsound development plan document. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has identified, Clause 19 is flawed in many ways. I cannot see that this particular aspect brings anything to the subject at all; it just adds a degree of vagueness and ambiguity.
Lord Rooker: I look forward to getting to the answer to the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. We have moved on to an important clause relating to independent examination. As drafted, Clause 19(2)(a) provides that local planning authorities must not submit a development policy document for independent examination unless they have complied with the regulations under Part 2 of the Bill. Amendment No. 102B would allow planning authorities to submit a document if "they consider" that they have complied.
All authorities must comply with the regulations as a mandatory requirement. We are confident that local planning authorities will be able to satisfy themselves that they have complied with the regulations. That should not be a matter of opinion, so it would not be sensible to add those words to the Bill.
Amendment No. 102C would expressly require the person appointed by the Secretary of State to hold the examination to decide whether the examination will be in the form of a public inquiry or an informal hearing. As drafted, the Bill effectively provides for that. It is not necessary and it would be too prescriptive to state it explicitly. We have published the draft guide to procedures and code of practice, which sets out what the available options for hearing representations will be.
The options that the inspector will have to choose from will be informal hearings, "round table" discussions, and formal inquiry sessions. When a person wishes to appear at the examination, the draft guide also sets out the criteria that the inspector will take into account when deciding the process to be followed.
We expect that the guidance in the final code of practice will be sufficient to provide the necessary level of certainty and clarity to the process. We do not think that rules and regulations in this area will be needed. It is necessary to retain the flexibility to take account of evolving best practice that guidance provides.
Amendment No. 102D would expressly require the person appointed by the Secretary of State to be independent of him. That is already an implicit requirement: Clause 19 provides for an independent examination. The person appointed to hold the examination will be an inspector employed by the

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Planning Inspectorate who is experienced and trained in dealing with the independent examination of planning matters.
Amendment No. 102DA would remove the test of whether the development plan document is sound. That would limit the purpose of the independent examination to assessing whether the development plan document satisfies the procedural requirements of the Bill. The test of soundness is a central principle in the new system. To remove it would undermine much of the ethos of the Bill. It is entirely unnecessary to do so.
I do not know whether the term "sound" has been used before in legislation. That is not to say that I do not know, but that I am checking: I have just been told that I do not know. I do not want to leave colleagues wondering whether I will receive another note: we do not know whether the term "sound" has been used before.
Under the current system, the primary role of the public local inquiry is to consider objections made to draft local plans or unitary development plans. Other parts of the draft, which are not the subject of objections, are outside the remit of the inquiry. However, the fact that a policy or proposal has not been objected to does not always mean that it is not deficient in some way.
Clause 19 provides for the scope of the independent examination to be wider than at present. The inspector will look at how the document has been prepared having regard to the regulations, guidance and the statement of community involvement. He—often it will be a she—will consider all the representations made on the entire document, and not just those parts on which representations have been made. That is, the document will be looked at in the round. Is it fit for the purpose? Is it a sound document? Even though there are areas where there have been no objections, the inspector is still entitled to test the entire document.
Amendments Nos. 102E, 102F and 102G seek to amplify what an inspector should consider in examining whether a development plan is sound. Paragraph 4.4.8 of draft planning policy statement 12 sets out what the test of soundness involves. The amendments do not add to these. We see no reason why we should add to the Bill in any way. The inspector must of course act reasonably at all times, so if something is trivial or irrelevant it need not be considered. Adding the words, "in all material respects", "and includes achievable mechanisms for implementation" or "and robust" to Clause 19 is unnecessary. The requirement that plans should be robust and have clear mechanisms for implementation is already set out in planning policy statement 12.
To sum up, there is a definition in paragraph 4.4.8 of planning policy statement 12 (on page 28) that sets out the criteria for soundness. Planning policy statement 12 also makes clear that the examination into the soundness of the plan includes whether the proper procedures have been carried out, including the sustainability appraisal and the strategic
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environmental assessment that is required under the European directive on strategic environmental assessment.
As regards the specific question that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked me, the reference to regulations in Clause 19(2)(a) is to the regulations covering the procedure for preparing the development policy document. The examination could find under 19(5)(a) that the authority had not complied with these regulations. I hope that is a helpful explanation and a good and sound answer to her original question.
Baroness Hamwee: The issue of whether the term has been used in legislation before is an important one. We have been referred to precedents in other debates on this Bill and I am not sure that I am entirely comfortable—I do not mean today—having to leave the matter hanging. It may perhaps be difficult to confirm a negative. I appreciate that. But it would be more comfortable if one were clear on this matter.
Lord Rooker: I am obviously uncomfortable: I have given an unsound answer. I will cause a search to be made for Parliamentary Counsel—that is the person who I need to ask about this matter regarding where this term has been used before. It is a fairly simple question to which there should be a straightforward answer.
Baroness Hamwee: The Minister is robust and has mechanisms for implementation! I thank him for his response and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 102C to 102G not moved.]
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 102GA:
Page 12, line 7, at end insert "and reasons"
The noble Baroness said: I am two pages ahead of myself. In moving this amendment I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 103D, 108ZZB and 113C. All these amendments refer to the publishing of reasons.
Amendment No. 102GA requires the local authority to publish the reasons for the recommendation of an independent examiner; Amendment No. 103D requires a local planning authority to publish reasons for withdrawing a document; Amendment No. 108ZZB requires a planning authority to publish its reasons for making a request or a revocation; and Amendment No. 113C requires the Secretary of State to provide reasons.
As the Bill stands, the person appointed to carry out the examinations must make recommendations and give reasons for the recommendations, but the local authority need only publish the recommendations and not the reasons. It is consistently seen throughout much of the Bill that anything that is done in the form of recommendations should be published and the reasons given. Generally there is much to be gained from giving and publishing reasons: it makes the decision-making procedure much more open and predictable, and that logic certainly applies here. I beg to move.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: There are four amendments in this group. The short reply would be, in terms of the amendments: yes, no, no, yes. I had better explain why. We are happy to accept the spirit of Amendment No. 102G and give it reasonable consideration because it was our intention to do so. We do not think Amendment No. 103D is necessary. Regulations will require authorities to publish a statement whenever a local development document is withdrawn. We would expect authorities to explain their reasons for withdrawing the statement. We will emphasise that in the guidance.
We reject Amendment No. 108ZZB simply because we expect it will rarely be necessary for the Secretary of State to use the power of revocation. In those circumstances we do not consider it necessary to require local planning authorities to publish their reasons for requesting revocation. However, where the reason is not obvious it is a matter of good practice that we would expect the local planning authority to make clear why the local development document is to be revoked. That is something we can clarify when we revise draft planning policy statement 12.
Amendment No. 113C follows on from the first amendment and, as I have made clear, we are quite content to accept the spirit of that amendment and bring something back having given it more consideration.
The Bill, with its regulations and guidance taken together, will in our view provide transparent and robust arrangements for the regional local plan process. We want to ensure there is more of that transparency in the Bill, so I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for moving the amendments. We are working in comity on this one, with a measure of agreement. If the noble Baroness is happy to withdraw the amendments today, we will come back having considered how we can perfect Amendments Nos. 102GA and 113C, though we may find that we do not have to do very much more to them.
Baroness Hanham: I am always nervous when the Minister is at his most conciliatory, but I will quit while I am winning. His reply suggested that the Government will bring back amendments. If the Minister would be kind enough to let me know what decisions have been made about putting them into regulations or introducing amendments, I would be most grateful.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: Just to help the noble Baroness, perhaps in bringing back our own amendments we should ensure that she has an early draft so that it is understood what we are trying to achieve and that we achieve the same objective as is sought in her amendments.
Baroness Hanham: I am definitely quitting while I am winning. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 19 agreed to.
Clause 20 [Intervention by Secretary of State]:
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 102GB:
Page 12, line 9, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
"(1) If it appears to the Secretary of State that it is expedient to do so for the purpose of avoiding—

(a) any inconsistency with current national policies or the RSS, or

(b) any detriment to the interests of an area outside the area of the local planning authority,

he may at any time before the document is adopted under section 22 direct the local planning authority to modify the document in accordance with the direction."
The noble Baroness said: In moving these amendments I would like to make it clear that I shall not move Amendment No. 103B but I will move Amendments Nos. 102GB and 103C. Amendment No, 102GB in this group is tabled to provide some clarity. We believe that the Secretary of State should be given some parameters when deciding whether to have a local authority modify its local development documents. Contained within this amendment are all the necessary reasons for the Secretary of State to give a direction.
Subsection (1) is too loosely phrased. Local authorities, when preparing their documents, need to know exactly what factors the Secretary of State would consider unsatisfactory. If the Minister is not content with this amendment, then maybe he can identify other circumstances in which the Secretary of State would wish to direct a local authority.
I have tabled Amendment No. 103C because it is not necessary to include subsections (7) and (8). The Minister will know that, in such circumstances, the Secretary of State is obliged, as a matter of public law, to consider relevant matters.
I would also like, if I may, to use the amendment to voice my concern at some of the woolly language in the Bill. We discussed that with regard to previous amendments. In subsection (7), I think, the word "thinks" slips in. I am sure that nobody should be allowed to think in legislation; they might be allowed to "believe", but I am sure that thinking is beyond them. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Turner of Camden): If the amendment is carried, I cannot call Amendment No. 102H, owing to pre-emption.
Lord Rooker: The noble Baroness might get an answer to the amendment that she did not move. The way that the notes are drafted means that they are inclusive. Sometimes, it is easier if the amendments are grouped.
I do not know why the word "thinks" is in subsection (7). I shall find out if there is a previous example of the word "think" being used in primary legislation. As the noble Baroness has raised the matter, she deserves an answer.
Amendment No. 102GB would enable the Secretary of State to direct a modification of a local development document only when that was needed to avoid any

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inconsistency with current national policies or the regional spatial strategy or any detriment to the interests of an area outside the local planning authority's area. He would not be able to direct changes, if he thought the document unsatisfactory. It is a well established principle, enshrined in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990—the principal Act—that the Secretary of State should have powers to intervene in local planning.
The powers in Clause 20 are modelled on the Secretary of State's current powers in Section 18 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The amendment would unacceptably constrain the Secretary of State. Along with Amendment No. 103C, which I shall address later, it would dilute the Secretary of State's intervention powers, and there is a risk that they might prove to be inadequate. The Secretary of State needs to be able to direct a change to a local development document, not just on the grounds of inconsistency with national policies or the regional spatial strategy. A spatial policy document may, for example, be worded opaquely, so that no one would be able to agree how to implement it. A development policy document might not be sound, or the local planning authority might not have met the statutory requirements in Clause 19(5)(a). The power is an important safeguard in a system with binding inspectors' reports.
Amendment No. 103B would mean that, if the Secretary of State had called in a development plan document for his approval, he may further direct that the document was to have no effect until he had approved it. A document may be called in because there were problems with it, and they need to be solved before it becomes part of the development plan. The Secretary of State needs to be able to call in all or part of a development plan document, if the local planning authority has not complied with a direction to modify. That is the main circumstance in which we see the power under Clause 20(4) being used.
If the decision has been taken that a document or part of a document must be called in for the Secretary of State to approve, the document should have no effect, until it is finally approved by the Secretary of State. That should be an automatic consequence of a call-in, rather than the onus being on the Secretary of State to direct that a document may continue to have an effect.
Amendment No. 103C will probably not be moved. The Secretary of State may need to call in a development plan document because the local planning authority has failed to take account of all relevant matters. It would be wrong to require the Secretary of State to make the same mistake, in fact. We need the safeguard that the Secretary of State can consider all matters, regardless of whether the local planning authority has done so.
I hope that that is a satisfactory explanation of why the powers are in the Bill. As I said, they are modelled on powers in the principal legislation.
Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for that reply. He raised the question that we will probably
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now move on to in other amendments about the binding nature of the inspector's powers. I thank him for his explanation, particularly about the factors included in the Town and Country Planning Act. That matter had escaped me, but I am grateful for his reply, and I shall read Hansard. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 102H and 103 not moved.]
Baroness Maddock Baroness Maddock moved Amendment No. 103A:
Page 12, line 33, leave out paragraph (d) and insert—
"(d) the document may be taken into account for the purposes of development control by the authority until the Secretary of State has approved, modified or rejected the document or (if the direction relates to only part of the document) part of the document"
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 103A would enable development plan documents that have been agreed by a local planning authority but are still subject to a direction by the Secretary of State to be treated as material considerations for development control purposes, while someone is waiting for the final decision by the Secretary of State on the document.
Any development plan document agreed by a local planning authority should reflect the authority's intention for the area covered by the document. The only obstacle to its adoption is the intervention of the Secretary of State. The outcome of the direction may be modification of the document. In the interim, it would be reasonable for the local planning authority to use it as a basis for development control decisions. If nothing else, it would encourage the Secretary of State to proceed speedily with his intention in the matter. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: If this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 103B, owing to pre-emption.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, explained perfectly the effect of her amendment. It would allow planning applications, for example, to be considered against policies that the Secretary of State then finds so flawed as to warrant rejection. It could create considerable chaos. To our way of thinking, that is unacceptable.
We expect that, in common with the current system, draft local development documents may be material considerations in development control decisions. The weight to be attached to them in decision making may increase, the further they proceed towards adoption. That is right because the closer that a document gets to adoption, the more the likelihood of it changing decreases. However, that general position should not apply to development plan documents that the Secretary of State has called in. A document will be called in only if the Secretary of State considers that it warrants it and thinks that it should not proceed to adoption without further consideration.

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The Secretary of State may approve, approve with modifications or reject a called-in document. He may decide to approve a document without further modifications, but that cannot, obviously, be known in advance. It is important that development control decisions are based on sound policies. The power of call-in should not be used lightly, and I assure the Committee that the Secretary of State will exercise the power only in exceptional circumstances. Because of that, we do not think that it would be sensible to allow documents that have been called in to be taken into account in what can be sensitive development control matters.
For those reasons, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Maddock: I hope that the Minister is right and that the Secretary of State will not call in lots of documents. If that is to be the case, there is less need for the amendment. My noble friend and I will ponder what the Minister said, but, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 103 B and 103C not moved.]
Clause 20 agreed to.
Clause 21 [Withdrawal of local development document]:
[Amendment No. 103D not moved.]
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 103E:
Page 13, line 7, leave out subsection (2).
The noble Baroness said: With the other amendments, we begin to move into the question of the binding nature of inspectors' decisions. Amendment No. 103E deals with why a local authority, even after it has submitted its development plan, should not be allowed to withdraw it again if for some reason it believes that it needs to be modified or contains some measure that it does not like. I appreciate that it can do that at any time until the moment it lodges the document. However, it cannot do so once the inspector has begun to consider the document. My amendment would ensure that it could withdraw that document at any time.
Amendment No. 103F seeks to leave out,
"(other than a development plan document)",
because it does not seem to make sense. A local planning authority may adopt a local development document other than a development plan document. I should welcome the Minister's explanation of the difference between the two.
Amendment No. 104 replicates an amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee; namely, to insert a sub-paragraph (c) to allow a local planning authority to take account of any recommendations made by the person appointed to carry out the independent examination of the document.
Amendment No. 106, which seeks to leave out subsections (2) to (4), brings us to the question why a local planning authority can only adopt a development plan document if it has effectively been authorised by the inspector.
There is a great deal of concern that local development plans will be constructed by local authorities on the basis of consultation and will then go forward to an inquiry. As matters stand at the moment, the inspector's recommendations are for a unitary development plan. With this situation, the inspector's recommendations are binding. That begs the question why the views of the local authority and those of the local community should be overridden by the inspector and that he should be able to insist on the developments and on the recommendations being made after he has put them forward.
Amendment No. 106ZA is a major amendment, which seeks to challenge the position of the binding recommendations. The amendment proposes that where the inspector has made a decision, it should not in certain circumstances be absolutely final and that there should be an opportunity for the local authority in effect to appeal those decisions and have a number of factors re-examined. The essential point is that these development plans are put together for local consumption, for local development control, after consultation with local people and the statement of community involvement has been lodged, and that there should be at least some route whereby local authorities can go back to the inspector with questions and obtain a redetermination of what has been said. I beg to move.
6 p.m.
Lord Rooker: The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has asked some important questions on this group of amendments. I therefore hope that she will forgive the length of my reply.
As the noble Baroness said, Amendment No. 103E would extend an authority's ability to withdraw a development planning document after its submission for independent examination. It would also remove the power of the Secretary of State to direct that the development planning document be withdrawn after its submission for examination. Our view is that no authority should need to withdraw a development planning document once the examination has started, provided that it has done its job properly. The development planning document should be submitted in the form in which the local planning authority wants to see it adopted.
As the pre-submission processes are expected to be thorough, each authority should have sufficient scope to address any difficult issues and prepare a sound plan. The withdrawal of a development planning document by an authority during or after the examination would undermine the investment that it had made in the preparation of the document. It would also be a waste of community investment and effort in the plan-making process. The withdrawal of a development planning document after submission for examination will, of course, slow the process. That is why the power to do it is restricted to the inspector and the Secretary of State.
However, the Bill caters for situations in which a withdrawal is necessary. As presently drafted, subsection (2)(a) allows the independent inspector to recommend a

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withdrawal. Representations could highlight, for example, serious defects in the development planning document that the examination and the inspector's recommendations may not be able to rectify. It is right that in such a situation there should be a mechanism for withdrawing the document. That is the ultimate purpose of the Secretary of State's power under Clause 21 (2)(b)to direct a withdrawal, although it is likely to be exercised following a request from a local planning authority.
There should be no scope for a local planning authority to be able to withdraw a development planning document, after its submission for examination, in an attempt to avoid recommendations emerging from the examination. I am not suggesting that local planning authorities would do that, but we do not believe that there should be any scope for them to be able to do it. The Secretary of State will not use that power without serious consideration. He is obviously under a general duty to act reasonably and will consult local people and organisations before directing that the document be withdrawn.
Amendments Nos. 105, 106 and 106ZA raise the issue of whether inspectors' reports should be binding on local planning authorities. Taken together with our other reforms, inspectors' binding reports are a key to speeding up the plan-making system and enhancing community involvement in it. Binding reports will cut out the stage at the end of the process following the inquiry, referred to as the modification stage. If a further inquiry into a modification is needed, that process can take six months or longer.
The new approach for authorities and interested parties is that we want all the options and ideas that could form part of the final document to be clear for everyone to see at the outset. There is an incentive for early discussion and decisions, rather than leaving key matters to be settled right at the end of the process. Binding reports will not mean that local communities will have fewer opportunities than they currently have to influence the content of the document. Under our new approach, the community will be involved in preparing the documents from the start of the process. Authorities will no longer be able to fail to act on an inspector's recommendations that are soundly based on an independent examination and representations made.
Concern has been expressed that an inspector may make changes to a development plan document that had not been considered at the examination. However, the inspector will be able to recommend a substantive change to a development plan document only if people have had an opportunity to make representations on it, or it has been considered at the examination itself and the representations or debate support it. If the inspector believes that a development plan document should be changed significantly in some other way, that could happen only if the examination is reconvened to consider the matter; otherwise, the matter would have to be dealt with by referring the development plan document to the local planning authority for further consideration.
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Our key concern is having up-to-date plans. This is best for communities and has been the policy that we have clearly set out from the beginning. Amendment No. 106ZA would add a new stage to the process. It would give the authority a power to ask the inspector to reconsider any of his recommendations or the need for further changes. The authority would be able to do this if it considered that circumstances had changed; if the inspector had made an error of fact; if, in interpreting a policy, there was a legal error in a recommendation or the reasons for it; if the proper procedure for the examination had not been followed; or if a recommendation was unclear.
The inspector would have a duty to reconsider whatever the authority requested. He would have the power to make further recommendations, revise or expand on his reasons and, indeed, reopen the examination or invite further representations. So if a problem is raised there should always be a way of addressing it. There is no question about that. We believe that serious mistakes will rarely happen but, if they do, we have put in place a number of safeguards.
If people believe that an inspector has made a simple error of fact or omission, they can ask the local planning authority to bring the matter to the attention of the planning inspectorate, which will obtain the inspector's views. If necessary, the inspector will issue an addendum report to correct the error or omission.
Under Clause 20, the Secretary of State will have the power to direct changes to a development plan document or call in the document before it is adopted and make modifications to it if needed. If a local planning authority felt that the inspector's recommendations were unreasonable it could ask the Secretary of State to consider using these powers.
Finally, any person who is aggrieved by the adoption of a development plan document will be able to challenge the document under Clause 109 on the ground that it is not within the powers of the Bill or that a procedural step has not been complied with. We believe that these safeguards cover the ground and minimise the risk that they will be used to frustrate the delay in the plan-making process.
I have given a long explanation but this is an important issue. As with one or two other provisions, it is an innovative part of the Bill. It is a part of the new process that the inspector's report shall be binding. I hope therefore that my explanation has been satisfactory.
Lord Greaves: The Minister rightly says that this is an important part of the Bill. It introduces a substantial change in the balance of power between central government, as represented by the inspector, and local government, as represented by the local planning authority.
At the moment, in existing local plans the inspector's recommendations are simply recommendations; they are not binding on the local authority. The local authority considers the inspector's report and his recommendations and decides what to do about them. The Minister said that this causes a delay, on average, of

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six months. But if a local authority is forced to accept changes that it believes to be fundamentally wrong, the delays involved later—when planning applications are made and so on—may have to compensate for that saving of six months.
But, putting that on one side, the Minister is saying that, for the sake of saving six months in the system, local authorities—elected local councils—are to be deprived of the right to say that they do not agree with the recommendations of the inspector. At the moment, as I understand it, the inspector's report is to the local authority and the local authority then decides what to do with it. This is similar to other aspects of the Bill where inspector's reports are to the Secretary of State. There will be occasions when the Secretary of State will not agree with an inspector's report on a compulsory purchase order or a planning application and so on.
This is a fundamental issue. It is a fundamental removal of the powers that a local council has at the moment but which it will not have in the future. So my first question is whether the Minister really believes that this centralisation of power is justified?
Secondly, does he not understand that local communities which are told what has to happen—which are told, for example, how a particular piece of land has to be zoned and so on—in one of the new documents will be very angry indeed that such decisions are taken by one man, the appointed inspector? They will have no influence over him, other than making representations, as opposed to the local authority that represents them, whether or not they agree with it.
Thirdly, why does the Minister continue to use the word "recommend" in relation to the decision of the inspector when he will no longer be making recommendations to the local council but instructing it? Why does not the Bill include the word "instruct" rather than "recommend" in the convoluted way in which compulsion is set out in the wording of the Bill?
Finally, what will be the situation if, having received the inspector's report, the local authority says that some of the matters in it are so wrong that it is not going to adopt the local plan? Clause 22 states three times that the local planning authority "may" adopt a local development document. It then states that it must not adopt a development plan document unless it does so in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).
The clause does not state that a local planning authority "must" adopt the document. So if compulsion is involved, why does it not state "must"? What will happen if the local authority resolves to reject the inspector's report and the whole local development document, lock, stock and barrel, because of some of the recommendations made by the inspector?
6.15 p.m.
Viscount Ullswater: I tend to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. We started off by saying that regional planning guidance would now become the regional spatial strategy and we are moving in exactly the same direction on this issue—the reports of
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inspectors will become mandatory in the same way that regional planning guidance was in the first instance. Does the Minister believe that the balance is right between what will now be statutory and the implementation of the inspector's report on what is a locally agreed document?
Lord Rooker: By and large, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has got the message. I did not try to sugar coat it. I explained that this was an innovative part of the process. He has got me absolutely bang to rights—there will be a change. We do not seek to gloss over that.
However, I take exception to one matter that he described. I do not see that there will be a gladiatorial contest, as the noble Lord put it, and that the inspector is there to represent central government. That is not the case legally. That is not how the inspectors are appointed or trained to function. They simply do not have the role, as he put it, that they are there to produce a binding report on behalf of central government and to knock out our friends in local government; therefore it is the end of democracy as we have come to know and love it. That is an exaggeration—although it is my exaggeration and not that of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves.
But, yes, there will be a fundamental change. It is not being made simply to save six months. There is, however, one point that I did not raise—mainly because it stated "if needed" in my brief and I thought that I would wait and see; it is rather a long speaking note. I do not—as I understood the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Viscount, Lord Ullswater, to say—call into question the sincerity or competence of the inspectors, but problems with inspectors' reports on development plans are rare under the present system. Of 15 complaints about either the conduct of the development plan inquiries or the contents of the inspectors' reports over the past two years, only one was found to be justified. So it is quite rare.
Lord Avebury: How was it found to be justified?
Lord Rooker: Let me put it this way, we have inspectors watching the inspectors. They are not called that, but inspectors employed on development plan inquiries are very experienced, regularly trained and closely monitored by the advisory panel on standards. There is a panel of people. I met them when I was planning Minister and they brought one of their reports to me. They inspect the inspectors. They report to the ODPM and we publish the reports. Indeed, we publish everything. There is therefore a check. There is a method of complaining.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market: Does the Minister accept that there is every difference in the world in the way in which one deals with what might be called a rogue planning decision—and I accept, after 14 years' involvement in planning, that they are rare? I think that my noble friend Lord Greaves was referring to this when he mentioned centralisation. In the creation of its plan, a local authority will of course

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have regard to national policy, but its prime focus and locus will be its locality and what it sees as best. That decision will be informed by the views of the local people whom it represents. However, the processes that planning inspectors will go through will be guided by government guidance—by national policies. Therefore, they will not be so cognisant of what is happening locally.
It is intriguing that, in the debate on an earlier set of amendments, the Minister made a rather scathing reference. He said that we all know local authorities that do not want to make a decision locally so they pass the buck to the inspector. However, it is precisely because that is not the case that we have more value in the current system. In the end, the buck stops very firmly with the elected local authority.
Lord Rooker: With respect, I must say that it is precisely the case. The noble Baroness said that that is not the case, but it is. It does happen. As I said, councils must give leadership. Planning officers and councillors must give leadership on this matter. They take decisions about planning matters close to their localities. Members of Parliament do not do that, so there is a lot more pressure on councillors to give a lead. Sometimes, that can be burdensome. One way of dealing with that is to refuse the decision, let it go to appeal and then complain saying, "It's nothing to do with me Guv. It was the inspector and the Secretary of State". The noble Baroness has a lot more experience in local government than I have, but I know that that has happened.
However, the point that I was making was that such problems relate to the inspectors' report on development plans. They are very rare. I do not think that this is a matter of centralisation. Inspectors must follow a set of rules. They must follow the guidelines, look at national policy and look at this legislation as we have gone through it. They must act reasonably in that process. In the most extreme cases, if a decision is perverse and the Secretary of State has not been involved, it is always open to a local authority to seek a judicial review of an inspector's decision, even though it might be reluctant to do that. I realise that that is the nuclear option, but it is always there. Therefore, I do not accept that this is over-centralisation. It is an innovation in the planning process, designed, as we have said all along, to get faster decisions but to be no less fair.
Lord Greaves: Does the Minister understand that there is a very real difference between these situations? An inspector may behave unprofessionally or incompetently or not carry out the due process of the inquiry process. Perhaps he does things wrong technically and people are not allowed properly to put their views forward or present their case. That situation would therefore fall into the 1 per cent of cases.
On the other hand, issues about the use of land are often, when it comes down to it, a matter of opinion. All the factors may have been considered, government advice and the views of local people taken and so forth,
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but ultimately, many decisions come down to opinion. They are 50:50 cases in which a decision has to be made one way or the other. Under those circumstances, it is not a question of the inspector being wrong or incompetent: it is a matter of principle. Should the elected local authority responsible to local people—and responsible for the provision of jobs as well as the use of land—be the final arbiter, as it is now? Or, should the decision be in the hands of one man or woman who may or may not represent central government? Whoever they represent, they do not represent the electors of that area. The Minister is not facing that fundamental principle.
Lord Rooker: I have faced it. The answer is that the decision should be independent. It rests with the inspector.
Lord Greaves: We fundamentally disagree about that, and we may return to the matter. However, will the Minister answer my question? What happens if the local authority is so incensed or believes that the inspector's decision is so wrong that it refuses to adopt the local planning document?
Lord Rooker: I will take advice and return to the matter later, but, off the top of my head, I suspect that, as the decision is binding and mandatory, there is no choice in the matter. An independent decision has been arrived at. If there is no legal challenge to it, local authorities can be incensed, but it would stand.
Lord Greaves: Where in the Bill does it say that the decision is binding and mandatory?
Lord Rooker: We have just been debating that. Surely, the noble Lord has been on his feet complaining about the inspectors' reports being binding. That is what he has been complaining about for the past 10 minutes.
Lord Greaves: The Minister said that it was binding, but as far as I can see, Clause 22 uses the phrase,
"may adopt a development plan document",
three times. That does not sound binding. Therefore, I am far from clear about what this legislation means in practice, should the nuclear option be reached.
Lord Rooker: I direct the noble Lord to Clause 26, which will answer his question. The Secretary of State should be able to approve a development plan document after the examination of the binding report. I will put a couple of paragraphs on the record because there is a power in Clause 26. There may be times when, after due process of examination, an inspector recommends in his binding report a change that the authority does not want to implement. If the authority decides not to adopt the development plan document, the Secretary of State has the default power in Clause 20(9) to approve the document. Without that power, all the work put into the document by the authority, the inspector and those involved in its preparation and examination would be wasted, and the area would not

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have an up-to-date plan. The report is binding. There is a default power and it is tough, but it is a much better system than the one we have at the moment.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market: Does the Minister stand by his earlier comments that this is not a centralising measure?
Lord Rooker: I absolutely stand by those comments.
Lord Greaves: I am grateful for that explanation. I am sorry that: I have not memorised clauses that we have not yet discussed. I have read them, but clearly have not understood everything in great detail. It is clear that, should it come to the nuclear option, there is a centralisation of power, with central government and the Secretary of State taking the decision as opposed to the local authority, which holds the power the moment. However the Minister protests, he cannot get away from that.
Lord Rooker: I am not buying that at all. We have spent most of the day going over how these documents are put together, with the statements of community involvement, and much greater involvement by the community than ever before—from the very beginning, not the end. Therefore, I will not accept or leave unchallenged the charge that the system is being centralised, that local communities are not involved and that there is no consultation. Indeed, some would argue that this part of the Bill has "consultationitis". I do not accept that this is centralising the system.
Baroness Hanham: My amendments have generated a hive of activity. This matter may raise its head again at a later stage. The Minister said several things that caused me great concern. He rightly pointed out that local authorities and those who run them have a power of leadership. The changes that the Government made to the management of local authorities—changing the structure into cabinets—gave greater responsibility to councillors and made it their duty to undertake precisely that role of community leadership. Once we have been through this process of discussion about the plans, the community leadership role has been invoked by the local council, and it has agreed that it now has a local plan that is right, having had that scrutiny. Is the Minister listening? This is not terribly exciting, and he can read it tomorrow, but I shall say it anyway.
Having had the scrutiny of the local community, the local plan should, we believe, include an inspector's view as regards the unitary development plan. However, unlike the arrangements for the unitary development plan, the inspector will make the final decision that that is a final document. The local authority will finally have to adopt a document as amended, changed and recommended by the inspector. The Minister says that that is to speed up the process. If taking local responsibility away is the price for speeding up development plans, then the Government have got it wrong. We have to try to build back into the Bill the right of the local authority to have the final say in its development plans.
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The Minister has been discussing the consultation process and how wonderful it will be with a statement of community involvement. However, no amount of statements of community involvement will have the slightest effect if there is not a proper process of consultation. As I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, will remember, consultation was one of the matters that held up the unitary development plans. One of the fundamental parts of the unitary development plan was the requirement for local consultation and local involvement. Indeed, I have sat deep into the night at many a unitary development plan meeting ensuring that the local residents—all four of them—had a proper and constructive role in developing the local development plan.
The other point is that the inspectors do not always get it right. They do not have the local knowledge. However hard one tries, there are always complaints about inspectors, even in the planning applications appeals process. They wander in and make completely off-the-wall decisions that bear no relation to what is going on. I have received many such examples, but I shall give only one. The local planning inspector for Birmingham City Council recently recommended that the unitary development plan should remove key employment sites from the plan. That was contrary to both the current and the emerging regional planning guidance. Key development sites are fundamental. They are part and parcel of what ought to be known. To have a recommendation that they be taken out shows a rank disengagement, if nothing else, with the process. There are all kinds of examples that I could quote and I am sure that I shall quote them next time we come to this matter because they are there.
The Local Government Association does not have many reservations because it has had a lot of input into the Bill. However, this aspect, a binding inspector's recommendation, rattles everybody in local government. I hear what the Minister says, I do not agree with him and we shall return to this matter at a later stage. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 21 agreed to.
Clause 22 [Adoption of local development documents]:
[Amendments Nos. 103F to 106ZA not moved.]
Clause 22 agreed to.
6.30 p.m.
Clause 23 [Conformity with regional strategy]:
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 106ZB:
Page 13, line 31, leave out "local development" and insert "development plan"
The noble Baroness said: There are a number of amendments in four groupings that relating to Clause 23. It will therefore come as no surprise to the Minister that we have concerns about Clause 23. We particularly want to go into detail with this Clause to prevent local development documents having to be in general conformity with the regional strategy. We have

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had a lot of discussion on regional strategies and on the current and future role of regional planning guidance. As things currently stand, local authorities are not required to follow the Secretary of State's policy. The planning guidance is guidance. The new policies lead us into areas where again there is no choice whether a local authority or a planning authority follows guidance: it has to take account of it and it has to be part of the regional strategy.
The first group of amendments, Amendments Nos. 106ZB to 106ZN, confines the duty to be in general conformity only to development plan documents, not to all local plan documents; that is the duty to comply. Development plan documents are defined in Clause 36(3) and at present the obligations of general conformity apply between development plan documents, structure plans and local plans. Our view is that it is unnecessary to apply the obligation to other local development documents. The relative unimportance of general conformity of non-development plan documents is shown by Clause 23(2)(b) and Clause 23(4)(b) where there is discretion whether the local planning authority asks the regional planning body or the mayor for an opinion on conformity. That is the first group for Clause 23. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: As the noble Baroness said, we have reached another clause about which there is some concern. I have a longer note for the beginning of the group than for the others, which I hope puts the clause in context. I shall address the issue of general conformity as a concept and why we think it is important.
General conformity provides an important link between the regional and local levels. It ensures that the regional spatial strategy or the mayor's spatial development strategy, as appropriate, is properly translated into policies and proposals at the local level. Without a general conformity requirement, as exists at present in relation to the spatial development strategy, strategic planning cannot be delivered effectively. Once the ground rules have been set in the regional spatial strategy, the local planning authority can prepare its own policies reflecting its community involvement and appraisal of sustainability, provided that the local development document remains in general conformity with it that is, the regional spatial strategy. As I said in response to an earlier amendment, this is a test of general, not detailed, conformity.
We shall make it clear in the final version of planning policy statement 12 that it is the Government's policy that it is only where a local development document would cause significant harm to the implementation of the regional spatial strategy that the local development document should be considered not to be in general conformity.
The chain of conformity between local development documents set out in the draft regulations simplifies the application of the test of general conformity. The core strategy should generally conform with the spatial vision and strategy in the regional spatial strategy. As
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we move down the chain of local development documents we would expect few interventions in respect of general conformity.
Other development plan documents must be in conformity with the core strategy. Supplementary planning documents, which we have referred to several times, are dependent on the parent development plan documents. They depend on them and are supplementary to them. So, provided that a core strategy is in general conformity with the regional spatial strategy, the other development plan documents and the supplementary planning documents are likely to be in general conformity too.
It is important to provide that the supplementary planning documents—that is, those that do not go to independent examination—should be in general conformity as a safeguard in case the chain of conformity to which I have referred does not work. Although supplementary planning documents should not allocate land, it can contain policies as well as the guidance, examples of which I gave earlier.
We have provided in draft regulation 13 that the policies in a supplementary planning document should be in conformity with the policies in the core strategy and with the policies in any other development plan document. Although that is fairly clear, I will read it again. We have provided in draft regulation 13—on which we have been consulting—that the policies in a supplementary planning document should be in conformity with the policies in the core strategy and with the policies in any other development plan document. Otherwise it would hardly be supplementary. It is a daughter document to the main document.
That requirement may not be a sufficient safeguard in every case against a local planning authority trying to slip policies into a supplementary planning document to get round the constraint of the development plan document policies having to be in general conformity with the regional spatial strategy. Although that will be construed as an attack on local government, it is not. I really mean that. Nevertheless, because of the new system, we need to have this safeguard against any local planning authority trying to slip policies into part of a document that does not conform with the general regional spatial strategy.
We have to check whether that is the case. To help do so, the clause requires the local planning authority to request the written opinion of the regional planning body, or the mayor if appropriate, if the document is a development plan document, and it enables the authority to do so if the document is a supplementary planning document. That is an entirely sensible arrangement and I can see no benefit in deleting those powers. The arrangement is straightforward and not centralist. It is not an attack on local democracy. With that explanation, I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham: The more I hear the Minister say that the arrangement is not centralist the more I know that it is. Anyway, I think that the word is "centralising"; at least that is the word that I would use.

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Although I hear what the Minister says, this is yet another area where local government is being stitched up one way or another. This whole system of plans and their relationship to the regional spatial strategy is of the greatest concern, particularly now that the Minister says that part of it is intended to stop local government slipping—slipping!—policies into daughter documents. Now there is a thing. Who would think that anyone would do that? If the whole of this paraphernalia is to prevent that, then I think we have a tower of Babel that we may need to knock down at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham Moved Amendment No. 106ZC:
Page 13, line 32, leave out paragraph (a).
The noble Baroness said: I am in some difficulty about this amendment which I shall state quite frankly. The amendment relates specifically to Clause 37—on which I should like to have a discussion at the appropriate time. It is all about the relationship of the London development plan to the development plans of London boroughs. The amendments in this group remove the requirement for local development documents to be in general conformity with the regional spatial strategy. As a result, it leaves unaltered London's position with regard to a spatial development strategy. I will not be any more enigmatic than that; we will reach that provision later. The Minister's reply may be helpful, but I needed to pick up the point now. The purpose of the amendments is to leave the London position unchanged. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: If this amendment is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 106ZD because of pre-emption.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Rooker: I shall attempt to reply to the point now although I am quite happy to return to it when, as the noble Baroness says, we reach the other clause. My notes do not deal with every amendment, but I hope that she will get the general gist of the position when she reads Hansard tomorrow. I will try not to repeat the general points that I made on the first group.
Amendment No. 106ZE seeks to remove the requirement that the local planning authorities outside London must request the written opinion of the regional planning body on the general conformity of a development planning document within the regional spatial strategy and the requirement that it may seek this opinion in respect of a spatial planning document. It also seeks to remove the regional planning body's duty to provide this opinion to the Secretary of State and the local planning authority. As I said, that is an entirely sensible arrangement to help assess whether the development planning documents are in general conformity.
Amendment No. 106ZL would give a power to the mayor and the regional planning body to give an opinion on the general conformity of a local
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development document, irrespective of whether the local planning authority asks for it. That is unnecessary as it is already provided for by Clause23(5).
As to Amendment No. 106ZB, where a regional planning body expresses an opinion that a development plan document is not in conformity, it is right for that to be taken as a representation seeking a change to the document. That ensures that the regional planning body may appear at the independent examination.
Because I want to help the noble Baroness, and particularly because she will be returning to the issue, I shall put on record a question and answer in my notes which she and her advisers can consider before deciding how to proceed. The question is as follows. Why does the Bill not allow for the local development document to be treated as being in general conformity with a submitted regional spatial strategy revision or an altered or modified spatial development strategy as the Greater London Authority Act provides for in relation to a spatial development strategy at present? I understand that that is known as the "permitted assumption".
We did give that serious consideration. I appreciate the concern raised about what happens when two levels of planning are out of sequence. However, to give undue weight to a submitted regional spatial strategy revision before it had been subject to examination could prejudge that examination. It could also call into question the role of the examination in checking the soundness of the draft revision, including whether it had been prepared on a sufficiently inclusive basis and subject to adequate participation.
As the noble Baroness says that she wants to return to the issue when we reach Clause 37, I hope that those comments are helpful when they are read in conjunction with my comments on the other amendments.
Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for his reply, and I apologise—I think I have caused a lot of confusion in my own mind as well as his. As a result I shall not move the other amendments to Clause 23. I think that we will be able later to refer to both aspects. Clause 23(1)(b) is linked to Clause 37(2). I will deal later with Clause 37(2), and we can try then to untangle this spider's web. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 106ZD to 106ZR not moved.]
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 106A:
Page 14, line 20, leave out subsection (8).
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 106A, which is grouped with Amendment No. 106B, would leave out subsection (8) of Clause 23, which covers ground that we may have already touched. Leaving out subsection (8) would remove the Secretary of State's power of intervention in relation to the

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conformity of local development documents with their regional spatial strategies. I did not write the following words. They come from the Law Society:
"That power is both superfluous and will only serve to undermine the co-operative relationship between regional planning bodies and local planning authorities".
That puts a slightly different cast on the issues that my noble friends have dealt with. It directs that it is not necessary for the document to be in general conformity, which I assume is what is meant by subsection (8), because the provisions that it has to be in conformity can be ignored. This is in danger of giving all of us migraines. Is it something to do with the independent examination? Is it in the Government's mind that the inspectors should give appropriate weight to those different criteria? I hope that the Minister's speaking note will help us.
Amendment No. 106B would leave out subsection (9), which provides that if there is not a regional planning body, its functions must be exercised by the Secretary of State. That takes us back to the fifth minute of the debate on the first amendment on day one. I would almost say "QED", but I look forward to the Minister's defence of the devolution that is contained in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: I think that I can give the noble Baroness a satisfactory answer on the two amendments. Amendment No. 106A would remove the Secretary of State's power to direct that the opinion of the regional planning body on the general conformity of local development documents be ignored. Amendment No. 106B would remove the duty of the Secretary of State to give an opinion on general conformity if there is no recognised planning body.
I hope that there will not be a case where a regional planning body acts irresponsibly in its consideration of general conformity. But there could be cases where it tries to tie down the local planning authority to too great a detail of conformity, perhaps to the letter of some out-of-date policy which has not yet been amended by revision of the regional spatial strategy.
In such instances, Clause 23 allows the Secretary of State to override the opinion of the regional planning body, or to exercise the function of determining general conformity where there is no recognised regional planning body. That provides an important safeguard for local planning authorities in the preparation of a local development document. We fervently hope that it will not happen, but suppose there is a regional planning body which excluded its non-elected members and thereby lost recognition from the Secretary of State. If there was not that provision, there would be a vacuum and the local planning authority would be left in doubt over whether its development planning document was in general conformity.
That is the only example I have. I realise that I am now a hostage to fortune, having said that. The minute I said that I knew, because questions were asked about regional planning bodies and "non-elected" members.
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They are so called because they are elected not to local authorities but to other bodies. So they are legitimate but not the same as local government people. I have to say that the example I have given is not a good one, because it is raising issues with which I have been uncomfortable this afternoon.
So, just in case a regional planning body for some reason lost its recognition, we would need such powers to support the local planning authority. I hope that helps to explain such matters, which we will return to at another time.
Lord Avebury: The Minister gave the example that the Secretary of State thinks that the RPB has said, perhaps unnecessarily, that the document is not in conformity with the RSS, because it has been looking at an out-of-date document. Would it not be simpler to have a procedure whereby the Secretary of State could just refer the matter back to the RPB, instead of saying that he could ignore what it says? If one wants the RPB to have a useful function, the Secretary of State should not be able to cross out its decisions.
Lord Rooker: Yes, but one of my opening sentences was:
"I hope there will not be a case where the regional planning body acts irresponsibly in consideration of general conformity".
"Acting irresponsibly" would probably only apply if the matter had been referred back and the body refused to change, listen to or take account of the issue. In other words, it is a long stop. It is not the first port of call in trying to deal with the problem. I am sure that that is the case. If it is not, I shall certainly come back to the House at another stage and make the matter clear. It is a long stop. It is not the first thing that would happen. Naturally, if there is an issue, referring it back—asking the body to look at the matter again—ought to be the sensible thing to do. It is only if they act irresponsibly and refuse to take notice that there is a problem that we would use the powers. However, I am happy to have a look at the matter—it seems a sensible way to proceed.
Baroness Hamwee: I had not thought about a body becoming unrecognised or undesignated. How bad does it have to be? Clause 23(3)(a) is ignored in that situation. That says that the regional planning body has to send its opinion to the Secretary of State. But what happens to Clause 23(3)(b), under which the regional planning body sends its views to the local planning authority? Perhaps those are the last vestiges of some function left with the regional planning body in its relationship with the local planning authority, because the Secretary of State would rather not have that dialogue. I am sure that I am missing something, because the argument is hard to follow. It is not immediately obvious why the whole of Clause 23(3) is not ignored in the situation that the Minister has

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described. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said that we are to return the whole clause at a later date. I am hesitating in case the Minister wishes to comment.
Lord Rooker: I have probably made the dangerous mistake of reading the Bill. Clause 23(3), as I understand it, is effectively a time-limit mechanism. It says:
"Not later than the end of the period prescribed for the purposes of this section the RPB must send its opinion to",
those two bodies. So there will be a period prescribed for the purposes; that is, body regulation—so subsection (3) imposes a time factor. It is a time limit in which the RPB has to do something.
Baroness Hamwee: My query was that Clause 23(3) is to be ignored if there is no recognised regional planning body. That relates not to the whole of Clause 23(3), but to only a part of it. That was what was confusing me. I think that hot towels need to be prescribed for the next round. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7 p.m.
[Amendments Nos. 106AA and 106B not moved.]
Clause 23 agreed to.
Clause 24 [Revocation of local development document]:
[Amendment No. 107 not moved.]
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 107A:
Page 14, line 27, after "the" insert "reasonable"
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 107A, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 108BA, 108ZZAand 108ZB. The amendments are designed to firm up the woolly language of Clauses 24 and 26. Amendments Nos. 107A and 108ZZA refer to Clause 24 on revocation of local development documents. Amendment No. 107A adds a reasonableness test to a request by a local authority to the Secretary of State to revoke a local development document. That provides for an objective test so that a local planning authority cannot arbitrarily or without good reason request the revocation of a local development document.
Amendment No. 108ZZA is a drafting amendment which simply replaces "document" in line 29 with "documents". With that amendment, Clause 24(b) would state that the Secretary of State,
"may prescribe descriptions of local development documents which may be revoked by the authority themselves".
That makes grammatical sense and tallies with Clause 16, which is entitled, "Local development documents".
Amendments Nos. 108ZB and 108BA refer to Clause 26 on the Secretary of State's default power. Amendment No. 108ZB ensures that before the Secretary of State holds an independent examination, he must think that a local planning authority is significantly failing or omitting to do anything necessary for it to do. That would act as a bulwark
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against unnecessary Secretary of State interference—something that we have all been trying to prevent all evening—if there were only a minor failure or omission on the part of the local planning authority.
Amendment No. 108BA adds another reasonableness test. This time, a local authority would have to reimburse the Secretary of State only for any reasonable expenditure that he incurs under the clause. It would seem sensible to have that safety net added in the Bill, not only to put a limit on the amount that a local authority will be liable to pay to the Secretary of State, but so that the Secretary of State is aware of the need to keep a cap on the costs generated in that way. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: The noble Baroness talked about making the Bill more grammatical, but I am not so sure that the central purpose of the Bill is to be grammatical. I know that that will count as an attack on parliamentary counsel, but it is not. Bills should be clear and understandable.
It is a glib cliché that Ministers trot out, and I always resented it when I heard it in the past, but it is true that all authorities are under a duty to act reasonably. That is a legal duty, and there is no need to specify it in the Bill. Amendment No. 108ZB would restrict the Secretary of State's power to prepare or revise a development plan document to cases when he thought that a local planning authority was significantly failing or omitting to do something that it needed to do in connection with preparing, revising or adopting a development plan document.
The advice that I have is that, in view of the duty to act reasonably, it is quite unnecessary to qualify the reference in Clause 26 with "significantly". The Secretary of State would not prepare a development plan document himself because the local planning authority had failed in some insignificant way.
Amendment No. 108ZZA would alter the Secretary of State's power to prescribe descriptions of local development document which may be revoked by the authority itself to apply to documents. The amendment is unnecessary, as in legislation the singular includes the plural. I never knew that before, although I knew about gender—that "he" means "she", which is very difficult to explain to people outside.
Amendment No. 108BA would require Clause 26(5) to state expressly that any expenditure that the local planning authority must reimburse to the Secretary of State was to be "reasonable". That is in respect of the Secretary of State exercising his default power. Where the local planning authority fails in its duties to prepare, revise or adopt a development plan document, it is essential that the Secretary of State should have a power to step in and carry out those functions. Where he exercises that power, it is only reasonable that he should be able to charge the local planning authority for the work that he has to do. There is nothing new in that principle. Therefore there is no need for Amendment No. 108BA. The Secretary of State must always act reasonably.

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The amendments are therefore unnecessary, and I hope that they will be withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham: We learn something every day. Plural for singular and singular for plural—so long as that is in legislation, it is fine. I am sorry that we cannot make the reference to "documents", which would make more sense, but there we are.
It will not have escaped the Minister's notice that we are all struggling to get the Secretary of State out of the whole equation. I thought that I would state that plainly. Every time one sees the Secretary of State doing something, we are all going to try to get rid of it one way or another. On the whole question of reasonableness, I am sure that a number of my colleagues have stood at the Front Bench with amendments to take "reasonable" out, so I have to be careful.
Lord Rooker: This is a point that I should not make, because I am only causing trouble for myself. I simply invite the noble Baroness and all her researchers to have a look at how many times my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister—the Secretary of State referred to in the Bill, but not by name—has been taken to court and found to act unreasonably. Then she should compare that with the record of the present Leader of the Opposition.
Baroness Hanham: I am sure that it is extremely important that a Secretary of State act reasonably under all circumstances.
The whole point of the clause concerns the Secretary of State's intervention when a local authority is refusing to make or has not made a development plan, which I guess is probably quite unusual. That has to be carried out only if there is a significant failure to act, which would presumably be only after an enormous amount of effort to get an authority to do so. "Significant" is a word that I would quite like to see in the Bill, but I hear the Minister's response. I will think about it further but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 108 to 108ZZB not moved.]
Clause 24 agreed to.
Clause 25 [Revision of local development documents]:
[Amendment No. 108ZA not moved.]
Clause 25 agreed to.
Clause 26 [Secretary of State's default power]:
[Amendment No. 108ZB not moved]
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 108A:
Page 15, line 21, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Baroness said: The amendment was grouped with Amendment No. 102H, which I did not move. Given that this is another filleting amendment, I feel that I would not have done the job if I did not at least move Amendment No. 108A and also speak to Amendment No. 108B, which are a further provision
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in the Secretary of State's default power set out in Clause 26. I apologise, because I hoped that it would not cause mayhem if I did not move Amendment No. 102H. I was rightly stopped, because I was not moving it. I should have sent a note around.
Amendment No. 108 A allows the Secretary of State to prepare or revise a development plan document, or in a generous mood, approve a development plan document. I assume that that is the document that is referred to in Clause 26(4)(a), because it is the document that is referred to in Clause 26(1). Clause 26(4)(a) does not say that all of this is dependent on the Secretary of State taking the view that a local planning authority is not doing what is necessary. The Minister will say that that must be the case, because it would be daft for the Secretary of State to intervene if that were not so.
I am sure that we will come back to this area, but I would at least like an assurance that the powers given to the Secretary of State in Clause 26(4)(a) are dependent on him taking a view that the local planning authority is failing or omitting within Clause 26(1). If it is not dependent on that, the Secretary of State could take the view that he does not like what the local planning authority is doing, that he does not agree with their approach or policies, and that for reasons that he does not have to justify, he does not want to support them.
Unless the clause is read as a whole, it does not say—I am sorry, it does say the section applies if he thinks that—perhaps I am going wrong in this. The Minister will tell me off. It is another power given to the Secretary of State, in circumstances that we are all making entirely clear that we are not comfortable with.
There is a financial penalty attached. That is distasteful, and slightly odd in a local government finance regime, where most of the money comes from the Secretary of State in the first place. If he thinks that the local authority is not doing the job properly, it may well say that it cannot afford to employ enough planning officers. It must reimburse him in connection with what he does in preparing or revising the document. There are references to reimbursement, or payment between authorities, elsewhere in the Bill. For a local planning authority to have to dig into its little coffers to pay the Secretary of State, who has rather more at his disposal, seems odd in the least.
I apologise for that rather confused introduction of these two amendments. I did not even have any notes, because when I put these amendments down it was so obvious to me that these were appalling provisions that should be taken out. I thought that the justification would come to me the moment that I stood up. I beg to move.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Rooker: The two amendments that the noble Baroness has spoken to, Amendments Nos. 108A and 108B, would remove Clauses 26(4) and 26(5). These are the Secretary of State's powers to prepare or revise a development plan document and to charge the local planning authority for the work. The devolved power

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in Clause 26 is similar to the power under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It is hoped that the Secretary of State will not have to use it. The Secretary of State has not acted in place of a local planning authority in this way in recent years.
Where the local planning authority fails in its duties to prepare, revise or adopt a development plan document, it is essential that the Secretary of State should have a power to step in and carry out these functions. When he exercises this power, it is only reasonable that he should be able to charge the local planning authority for the work that he must do. There is nothing new in this principle, and I cannot for the life of me see why it is being objected to. If the local authority has refused to do the work, it still must be done and paid for. Otherwise, it would be a way for local government to offload its financial duties back to central government.
The development planning document will form part of the development plan under Clause 37. Development must take place in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Without the safeguard of the Secretary of State being able to prepare, revise and approve the development plan document, a local authority might be left without an up to date development plan. This causes uncertainty for everyone, communities and developers alike. We do not expect that the Secretary of State will need to use these powers very often, if at all. They are most likely to apply where an authority does not, and has no plans to, prepare or revise a development plan document, even though the authority's existing policies are significantly out of date.
I have no examples, because I cannot conceive of authorities acting so irresponsibly. They are default powers, similar to those in the principal Act, namely the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. They are not new, they are not a precedent, and, with respect, it is wholly reasonable that if the work has to be done by the Secretary of State, it must be paid for.
Baroness Hamwee: My concern is more fundamental than the knock-on effect of payment. There are other places in the Bill where, "if such and such, then such and such" and we do not have the interposition of either the local planning authority or the Secretary of State thinking that they are "such and such". Obviously, he must take a view as to whether the local planning authority fails or omits to do anything. He must be reasonable in that. However, this default power is dependent on his judgment. I remain uncomfortable at the prospect of a local planning authority having to seek judicial review of that decision. That is what this would boil down to, if it did not want him to intervene.
Lord Rooker: The noble Baroness said that if after a local government annual settlement, when local authorities have had their due amount of money under the revenue support arrangements to carry out the functions that they are supposed to carry out, and they refuse for some reason to carry out a function that
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must be done, the Secretary of State must make sure that that is carried out but that he is not entitled to charge for it. Surely she does not mean that. The local authorities have been paid to do it. They will have their grant money to carry out their functions; therefore, I cannot see what is so unreasonable about a default power in the most extreme circumstances, if that must be done. Someone must pay for it. In effect, the local authority has already paid for it through its revenue support settlement.
Baroness Hamwee: We all know full well that the Secretary of State would just withhold it the following year. We have all been there, have we not? We will return to the issue of the Secretary of State's powers. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 108B and 108BA not moved.]
Clause 26 agreed to.
Clause 27 [Joint local development documents]:
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 108C:
Page 16, line 4, leave out subsections (6) to (9).
The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 108D, which is grouped with Amendment No. 108C. Amendment No. 108C would leave out subsections (6) to (9) of Clause 27, and Amendment No. 108D would leave out subsection (11).
My point is not unrelated to the previous few exchanges. Clause 27 relates to local planning authorities coming together to prepare joint documents. That may be a fine thing, but I am not challenging that, as it is not the issue. If local authorities are given the power to agree to prepare joint documents, is it necessary to spell out in legislation what will happen if the agreement falls to bits? Subsections (7) to (9) apply if a local planning authority withdraws from an agreement. Is it not up to the parties to any agreement to work out what to do in a series of circumstances?
Does the Secretary of State so fear that local planning authorities will get into a mess that he must prescribe for such a situation in the Bill and make regulations on a corresponding joint local development—another great phrase that is ripe for acronymisation? We have been told often enough that we should not include more than is reasonable on the face of the Bill. My point relates to local authority autonomy. If they are big enough and capable enough to agree to write joint plans, I suggest that they can reach an appropriate agreement without help. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: Clause 27 enables two or more local planning authorities to agree to prepare one or more joint development documents. Sometimes agreements about joint working will break down. I realise that joint working between local authorities happens at present. I do not know what happens in planning, but in my first couple of years as Food Safety Minister I

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was gratified by the enormous amount of co-operation and joint working in environmental health and protection, of which, as a big-city boy, I had not been aware. It worked extremely well in many parts of the country.
However, sometimes joint agreements break down. Amendments Nos. 108C and 108D would remove the provisions that cater for that. The clause provides that, if that happens while the joint document is being prepared, any steps taken in preparation of the joint document can count as steps taken towards the preparation of a corresponding document prepared by an authority or authorities party to the joint agreement. Regulations will define a corresponding document as one that does not relate to the area of an authority that has withdrawn from the agreement, and that has substantially the same effect on the areas of the authorities remaining in the agreement as the original document. That seems sensible; otherwise authorities would be throwing away all the work that had been done.
Amendment No. 108D removes the Secretary of State's power to make regulations in which a corresponding document is defined. The clause requires any independent examination into a joint document, under way when a joint agreement breaks down, to be suspended. However, the clause, together with the draft regulations, provides that an authority that was party to the joint agreement can, within three months of its suspension, ask the Secretary of State to direct that the examination be resumed in relation to a corresponding document. It is important to ensure that work undertaken on a joint document is not wasted unnecessarily if an agreement breaks down. If work had been done between two authorities and then one pulled out for various reasons, it would be ludicrous if the other authority could not proceed on the positive basis of work that had already being done. That would be a waste of expertise, local government resources and public money.
The amendments would prevent a reasonable course of action. Therefore, they are not acceptable. I hope that they will not be pursued.
Baroness Hamwee: I think that I can accept that argument in respect of subsection (9). But my main point remains: if planning authorities come together to work as the Minister described, they ought to be trusted to make arrangements for getting out of their agreement. After all, that is always a consideration before entering an agreement. However, having made the point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Rooker: I beg to move that the House do now resume. In doing so, I suggest that the Committee stage begin again not before 8.30 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (Common Electoral Principles) Order 2004
7.28 p.m.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting Lord Evans of Temple Guiting rose to move. That the draft order laid before the House on 11 December 2003 be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee.]
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this order specifies that a decision of the Council of the European Union is to be regarded as a treaty for the purposes of the European Communities Act 1972. The decision in question is that of 25 June and 23 September 2002, which makes changes to an earlier 1976 Act of the European Parliament concerning the election of the representatives of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage.
I should explain at the outset that the 1976 Act, to which I shall refer throughout, is not an Act of the UK Parliament. It was an Act proposed by the European Parliament, made by the Council of the European Communities, now termed the Council of the European Union. The Council is the European Union's legislative body. The 1976 Act laid down a number of principles to be followed by member states in elections to the European Parliament. Those principles were adopted into UK law and first applied to the European parliamentary elections in 1979. That was the first occasion that representatives were elected to the European Parliament, and they have since been in force in all subsequent European elections.
The reason for this order is that the Government need to adopt the 2002 Council decision into UK law as the 1976 Act was previously. The changes to the 1976 Act, which the decision makes, were developed from proposals originating in the European Parliament in 1998, which were taken up by the Council of the European Union. The decision updates and revises the 1976 Act to take account of developments since 1976. It needs the unanimous agreement of member states of the Council. This was obtained after long discussion in which the UK was, of course, heavily involved.
The Department for Constitutional Affairs has submitted a note to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments to explain why, for the purposes of adoption of the Council decision, the Government are regarding the decision as a treaty. Once this order is approved and made, the Government will be able to sign an instrument of adoption, which will complete our adoption procedures. We will also make regulations under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, to ensure that references in domestic law are up to date.
I will comment on the substantive provisions of the decision. The decision aims to ensure that Members of the European Parliament are elected in accordance with certain principles common to all member states, while leaving member states free to apply their national provisions in respect of aspects not covered

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by the decision. We believe that this is a sensible and balanced approach, and I hope that noble Lords will agree with us.
The decision is made up of four articles.
Article 1 of the decision forms the major part of the decision. It contains a number of amendments to the provisions of the 1976 Act about elections to the European Parliament. Most of these changes are minor, already in force in the UK or do not apply, and I do not propose to go into those. But there is a substantive change that I should mention.
The decision deals with persons who hold office both as an MEP and a as member of a national parliament, commonly referred to as "dual mandates". For noble Lords who want to follow this, it is Article 6 of the 1976 Act, and is dealt with in paragraph 7 of Article 1 of the decision. This states that:
"From the European Parliament elections in 2004, the office of Member of the European Parliament shall be incompatible with that of a member of a national parliament".
"National parliament" refers to the Westminster parliament, and therefore provisions do not apply to the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I commend this measure to the House. Members of the Westminster Parliament and Members of the European Parliament should have clear mandates, and they should be able to concentrate on doing their jobs without dividing themselves between two bodies. The majority of European colleagues regard the job of MEP as a full-time post, and the Government agree. The provision preventing dual mandates is therefore a welcome, positive step.
However, in their discussions on the decision, the Government were aware that there are currently two Members of the other House, the honourable Members for Foyle and North Antrim, and three Members of this House, the noble Baronesses, Lady Ludford and Lady Nicholson and the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, who are also Members of the European Parliament. We therefore considered that it was fair and reasonable for this change to be phased in for these honourable Members and noble Lords.
The United Kingdom Government therefore negotiated a derogation from the dual mandates provision. Under this derogation, Members of the United Kingdom Parliament who were also Members of the European Parliament during the five year term preceding election to the European Parliament in 2004 may have a dual mandate until the 2009 parliament elections.
There are some minor changes that I should mention. The decision deals with other offices, in addition to representatives of a national parliament, that are incompatible with the office of MEP. These offices now include members of the board of directors of the European Central Bank, and the Ombudsman of the European Community.
In European elections, states are now able to count the votes at any time before the close of polling in the member state whose electors are the last to vote. For the UK, where voting takes place on Thursday, this
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means that we will be able to count votes before the last polling stations close in the European Union on Sunday evening. However, the results must be kept secret until after that time. This greater flexibility and timing in the counting of votes will be reflected in regulations that we are preparing for the UK European elections.
The decision also provides for Members of the European Parliament to be elected on the basis of proportional representation. This requires no change in our procedures. Since the last European parliamentary elections in 1999, UK MEPs are elected by proportional representation. States may establish constituencies for elections to the European Parliament. The UK is divided up into 12 electoral regions for the European elections.
The decision allows, but does not compel, states, first, to set a minimum threshold to the allocation of seats, and, secondly, to set a limit on candidates' campaign expenses.
Your Lordships will wish to note that, unlike the practice of some other European states, we have no plans to specify a minimum threshold for votes in the allocation of seats in the UK. Individual candidates and political parties are already limited in their level of campaign expenses. The decision re-states that MEPs are elected for a five-year term. It is still the case that no-one may vote more than once in any election to the European Parliament.
The decision addresses procedures for filling any vacancies that might arise during the five-year term of the European Parliament. Each member state must have procedures for filling any seat that falls vacant during the five year term of Parliament. Such procedures are already in place in the UK.
Article 2 of the Council decision simply re-numbers the provisions of the 1976 Act, as amended by the decision. Annexed to the decision is a table showing the new numbering of the articles in the Act, which is designed to improve the Act's readability.
Article 3 governs the coming into force of the decision's provisions.
Article 4 explains that the decision shall be published in the official journal of the European Community, which duly occurred.
This order will enable the Government to complete our adoption procedures in respect of the Council decision. This order ensures that we are fulfilling our obligations in respect of elections to the European Parliament, and I commend it your Lordships.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 11 December be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Evans of Temple Guiting.)
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very detailed explanation of this order.
With regard to the issue of dual mandates, the order will, as the Minister, said, result in those members of the national parliament—namely, Westminster— being unable to be both a member and an MEP.
However, the electorate will not understand why someone can be a Member of the Scottish Parliament or an Assembly Member as well as a Member of the

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European Parliament. Are the Government suggesting that they have more spare time than those based here? Surely it is as difficult for a person from those bodies to be an effective MEP as it is for Members of the Westminster Parliament.
With regard to the forthcoming elections in June, the Minister mentioned that the Government will be producing regulations. Can he assure the House that the regulations will come before a committee of both Houses for scrutiny?
On the electoral system being adopted, Members on these Benches would prefer to return to a constituency link and first past the post. One reason for the low turnouts in European elections is the lack of links with MEPs and the European Parliament. Will Her Majesty's Government conduct an investigation and report on the process post the June election? If the turnout worsens, will the Government consider changing the system back to first past the post to encourage the electorate to take their democratic right seriously?
Although we are sceptical about a number of areas, we shall not oppose this order. I look forward to the Minister's response to the issues I have raised.
Lord Rennard: My Lords, I too thank the Minister for his full and careful explanation of the order. Overall I have to say that it is welcome to see these common principles in relation to how member states elect their representatives to the European Parliament. Many noble Lords on these Benches thought it disgraceful that Britain was able to get away with ignoring the principles for so long, making our representation at the European Parliament so unrepresentative of British voters for so many years.
I want to ask the Minister about a couple of areas in the order where there is concern. He has already referred to the particular issue affecting Members of this House. The common principles fail to recognise the current and very special position of Members of the House of Lords. It is acceptable to set out in a principle that there should be no dual mandate, that one should not be able to sit in the European Parliament and a state legislature at the same time, but that makes the assumption that people have a choice about where their priorities lie. That is a false assumption for Members of this House who currently have no provision for resignation. That is probably unique among the legislatures of the 25 member states that will shortly comprise the European Union.
While the Minister said that there is a temporary derogation for the United Kingdom in relation to the situation until 2009, should there not be a permanent derogation for the House of Lords in particular, one that would recognise the difficulty facing Members of this House who at present cannot resign from it? Or will the Government make it clear that whatever may happen in future reforms of this House, they will themselves instigate or fully support a measure that would release Members here from a lifetime commitment, preferably by allowing replacements to
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whatever part of the House they come from if they choose to exercise that option? That is an important principle; we should allow the common principles for the European Parliament to be changed in this way.
It does seem to me that it is potentially a fundamental breach of the rights of those three Members of this House also serving as MEPs, or any other Member who in the future may wish to stand for the European Parliament, if they are not able to do so.
Will the Minister respond to this point and clarify the position in relation to the counting of the votes in these elections? I understand that the order will provide for the counting of votes to begin before the last votes have been cast in countries voting at a later point. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Mr Christopher Leslie, indicated in another place that the returning officers will be able to count the votes in secret without announcing results either publicly or to candidates.
Is that not unprecedented in our system and quite wrong not to allow the traditional supervision over the counting of votes? For example, how would a party and a group of candidates know whether a recount would be necessary if they had not witnessed the original count and the degree of care taken to see whether the totals are correct? Those of us who, over the years, have witnessed a number of recounts at local council or parliamentary elections know that sometimes the totals can vary considerably between the original count and recounts. We have seen different degrees of accuracy once the votes have been counted. It is important, therefore, to provide for adequate supervision by candidates and their representatives to see that the count is conducted properly. However, providing for that would create a problem over maintaining the secrecy of the ballot.
Counting votes in secret has been something we have expected of fraudulent dictators when they try to rig the system and prevent people from seeing what is going on rather than what is done in a democracy. Perhaps the Minister could address in a little more detail the process by which it may be possible to examine the counting of the votes while maintaining the principle of secrecy before other votes in the Union are cast and counted.
7.45 p.m.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Astor of Hever and Lord Rennard, for their contribution to this short debate. I shall deal first with the questions put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Astor.
On dual mandates, I am sure that most would agree that, as a basic principle, a member of a national parliament should not be an MEP as well. The two jobs have such weight that I argue that one person cannot do justice to both at the same time. But I do not think that anyone would argue that someone could not be an MEP and, say, a parish councillor. The question is: where should the line be drawn?
Lord Norton of Louth: My Lords, would the noble Lord be good enough to give way to take a question on

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that point? I see the argument that in practice it is very difficult to be both a member of a national parliament and a Member of the European Parliament, but actually to ban it is to place a fundamental restriction on the freedom of the electors. It is for electors to choose who they want. If they choose someone who happens to be a member of another legislature, that is for them. This strikes me as completely unacceptable in principle because it limits the freedom of electors.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I think some confusion has arisen here. I am not talking about the freedom of electors. I am putting the point on behalf of the Government that it is not possible—this is open for discussion—for someone to be an effective MEP and a member of another legislature. We can discuss whether that is an infringement of the rights of the individual, but I do not think that it is a matter for the electorate.
The question, I was saying, is where the line should be drawn. We think that the line is correctly drawn at the national parliament level. We are not concerned here with the wide range of representative bodies that exist in member states below their national parliaments. That is why the provision does not apply to the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The noble Lord also asked about European Parliament regulations. I can confirm that the European parliamentary election regulations are required by statute to be approved only after debates in both Houses of Parliament. We intend to lay these regulations before Parliament very shortly.
On the question of proportional representation—
Lord Roper: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Before he leaves the question of dual mandate, will he say something about the very special position of Members of this House who, unlike the members of any other legislature across the whole of the European Union, are unable to free themselves from membership of this House to stand for the European Parliament? Can he indicate whether the Government will include a provision which would enable a Member of this House to free themselves from such membership in the legislation intended to reform this House? If it were not included in the legislation, would they accept such an amendment if it were moved?
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for his intervention. I was about to come to that matter because it was a question put to me by his noble friend Lord Rennard. I shall turn to it in a moment.
On the question of proportional representation and first past the post, I am aware of the opposition of the noble Lord and his party to the proportional system, but I am not sure that the reason for low turnouts at European elections can be wholly laid at the door of proportional representation. I see the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, nodding in vigorous assent. Although our manifesto committed us to review the operation of
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the various proportional representation systems in the UK alongside the report prepared by the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead to see whether a proportional system might be adopted for Westminster, we have not decided on the structure or timing of any review.
However, it will not come as a surprise to noble Lords if I say that we have no intention of abandoning proportional representation for European elections. We have agreed with our European partners that European elections in all states should be by a proportional system. Indeed, the Council decision gives effect to that agreement.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked two questions. First, is it fair for someone to be denied this right of being a member of two legislatures where they cannot resign from the House of Lords? The consultation paper on reform of the House of Lords proposes that Members will be able to resign in the future. We anticipate that, whatever delays there are in implementing House of Lords reform, by 2009 we shall have agreement. I enjoyed his comment—I am sure it was unintentional— about Members of this House being released to be MEPs if they so wish. I can confirm that it is the Government's intention to introduce the ability for Members to join other legislatures.
On the counting of votes and the anonymity of results, candidates and agents will be able to attend the count, and any recount whenever it is held, as well as any announcement of the result, so it will be like any other election. The counting of votes will be allowed at any time after the close of poll on Thursday night but there will be no announcement of any result until after the close of polls across Europe on Sunday night; and no announcement will be made to candidates or anyone else before that announcement on Sunday evening.
I hope that that answers all the points made. I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Astor and Lord Rennard, for their interesting comments. I commend the order.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

European Parliamentary Elections (Combined Region and Campaign Expenditure) (United Kingdom and Gibraltar) Order 2004
7.52 p.m.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting Lord Evans of Temple Guiting rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 15 January be approved [5 th Report from the Joint Committee.]
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the draft order. The order has two key purposes that I wish the House to consider. The first is to establish the combined electoral region which will bring the south-west and Gibraltar together so that the people of Gibraltar can vote in European parliamentary elections. The second is as a result of this combination to extend, with amendments as necessary, the

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provisions of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 so that they apply to Gibraltar in so far as possible in the same way as they apply to the rest of the combined region.
This order is necessary and desirable to ensure that we fulfil our obligation to enable the people of Gibraltar to vote in the European Parliament elections. This follows the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in 1999 which ruled that the European Parliament formed a part of Gibraltar's legislature. The European Parliament Representation Act 2003 enables the establishment of the combined region. As the average electorate in the electoral region in the UK is 3.7 million and the size of the electorate in Gibraltar is around only 20,000, it was agreed by Parliament that Gibraltar should become part of an existing UK electoral region and as such would be represented by MEPs for that region.
The Electoral Commission was required by the same Act to consider and recommend to the Lord Chancellor which UK electoral region Gibraltar should be combined with. On 28 August last year, following a wide consultation process in the UK and Gibraltar, the commission announced in a report its recommendation that Gibraltar should be combined with the south-west region. This announcement was welcomed generally. The report making this recommendation has been laid before Parliament. Article 2 of this order specifies the south-west region.
The European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 contains the basic provisions for the running of European parliamentary elections in the UK, including defining electoral regions; and Article 3 of this order amends that Act to take into account the inclusion of Gibraltar in the European parliamentary election process.
In framing the primary legislation to enable Gibraltar to vote at European parliamentary elections, our guiding principle—it is one shared by the Government of Gibraltar, this House and another place—was that as far as possible the main corpus of electoral law that applies to the UK for European parliamentary elections should also apply to Gibraltar. This is being achieved by means of a number of pieces of secondary legislation. First, the European parliamentary elections regulations which are to be laid before Parliament shortly will cover for the United Kingdom and Gibraltar such matters as entitlement to register to vote and the mechanisms of the conduct of the election.
The Government of Gibraltar, too, will be making a substantive contribution by making an ordinance which will, among other things, provide for the maintenance of the electoral register and the regulation of party political broadcasts in Gibraltar.
The order which we consider today contributes to this by extending to Gibraltar the provisions of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. That Act provides a regulatory framework for political parties wishing to participate in elections, for the reporting of donations and election campaign expenditure.
The order does a number of things in relation to the registration of political parties. Article 5 amends the Registration of Political Parties (Prohibited Words and Expressions) Order 2000 so that UK parties are prevented from registering as, for example, the Gibraltar Conservative and Unionist party. However, the order provides for the possibility of a Gibraltar party registering under such a name.
The order also deals with the question of donations to parties. There may be a concern in the House, rightly, that this would allow additional sources of money not otherwise permitted to flood into UK-based political parties. The order guards against this. The approach we have taken is to limit the amount of money that comes in from particular sources and ensure that it is not more than that which the party could use for European Parliament elections. Political parties based in both the UK and Gibraltar will be able to participate in the elections. An existing UK party which has already registered with the Electoral Commission will not need to register again; but if that UK party wishes to receive donations from a Gibraltar source, it will need to make a statement to the Electoral Commission that it proposes to contest the European Parliament election in the combined region, the south-west. That party will then be able to receive donations from a Gibraltarian source but only during the four month campaign period—in the case of the 2004 elections, from 10 February to 10 June.
UK parties will be subject to further constraints where the aggregate value of Gibraltarian donations received during the four month period exceeds the campaign expenditure limit for the combined region as set out in the 2000 Act, being about £315,000. The excess donations are to be returned to the donor in the same way as if they were impermissible donations by three months after the date of the poll. This will ensure that any one party cannot receive any more than it can use during the election period and provides a clear limit for donations from Gibraltar linked to expenditure in the combined region for these elections.
A further restriction is made in that a Gibraltarian will not be able to donate to individual members of United Kingdom political parties for the purpose of their political activities. However, he or she would be able to donate to an MEP for the combined region, regardless of which party they represented. That is a fair provision, given that all the MEPs in the combined region will represent not only the electorate of the south-west, but also the people of Gibraltar.
The draft order also provides for Gibraltarians to register as recognised third parties to ensure that non-party organisations in Gibraltar have the same opportunities as other non-party organisations in the rest of the combined region to support a particular party's campaign. The amount of campaign expenditure that recognised third parties can spend in Gibraltar will be limited, as suggested by the Electoral Commission, to £16,000. That is 10 per cent of the limit applying to other recognised third parties, which is calculated to allow for campaigning on a national basis.
The provisions will work effectively within the existing regulatory framework. At the same time, and just as importantly, it will allow the people and parties of Gibraltar to participate fully in the European parliamentary elections.
Article 6 of the draft order enables Gibraltar lawyers to have rights of audience and to conduct litigation in the England and Wales courts. That provision enables the people of Gibraltar to be represented by a legal representative from Gibraltar itself should proceedings be held in the UK. An amendment made to the 2000 Act by paragraph 7 of the schedule to the order means that the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation is included in the lists of broadcasters prohibited from carrying party political broadcasts other than by registered parties where such broadcasts relate to European parliamentary elections. The Government of Gibraltar are making the necessary further regulatory provisions on broadcasting to mirror those in the UK in their forthcoming ordinance.
Following a recommendation from the Electoral Commission, the order also amends the more general provision relating to European parliamentary elections. The definition of campaign expenditure in paragraph 2 of Schedule 8 to the 2000 Act excludes any expenses in respect of newsletters or similar publications issued by the party, elected representatives or candidates. In other elections, such expenses would be regarded as election expenses incurred by candidates. But for European parliamentary elections, the control of expenditure by parties is by way of a limit on their campaign expenditure rather than election expenses. Without the amendment in Article 7, such expenditure would fall outside the definition of campaign expenditure.
The House will note that the Electoral Commission has been consulted on the order. The commission gave its overall support to the order and made a few minor and helpful comments that we have incorporated. In addition, and for the record, I should add that the Government consider the order fully compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The order ensures that we are fulfilling our obligations following a European Court of Human Rights decision that the people of Gibraltar are entitled to vote in the European parliamentary election, as it forms part of their legislature. The order gives effect to Part 2 of the European Parliament (Representation) Act 2003, creating the combined region and extending certain areas of UK electoral law to Gibraltar. I commend the order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 15 January be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Evans of Temple Gutting.)
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, again, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the order. I have only a few brief comments on the details, since other related issues were discussed with the previous order. Clause 2 of the order proposes that Gibraltar will join, for electoral purposes, the south-west electoral region of the United Kingdom. While we very much welcome the addition of Gibraltar, could the Minister elaborate on what
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consultations were held with the people of Gibraltar about the choice of the electoral region? Did the Electoral Commission suggest other constituencies? If so, why were they thought unsuitable?
The Minister mentioned the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which I understand controls campaign expenditure. Will the Minister comment on what impact that Act is expected to make on the campaign for the first European elections in Gibraltar? I understand that the franchise and entitlement for voters in Gibraltar is similar to existing provisions in the United Kingdom.
Since these will be the first elections in Gibraltar, can the Minister tell the House what additional steps are to be taken to ensure that no electoral fraud occurs? Finally, linking this order to the other order, what will be the rules on dual mandate if, for example, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar decides to stand as an MEP? I look forward to the Minister's answers to my questions.
Lord Rennard: My Lords, I think that many noble Lords across the House have welcomed the fact that Gibraltarians will be able to exercise their right to vote in the elections to the European Parliament, together with their fellow citizens in the European Union. As the Minister has highlighted, bringing this about is somewhat complicated by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. Of course, the complexity of that legislation is something that many of us regretted at the time. Now we are seeing some of the problems of trying to bring this about according to that legislation of three years ago.
There is one technical area on which I should like the Minister to share his thinking with us and perhaps undertake to review should there be a problem in the future; namely, the amount of financial support that may come from Gibraltar sources towards these elections. My understanding is that if the south-west combined region has seven MEPs, £45,000 multiplied by seven—that is, £315,000—would be the limit that Gibraltarian individuals and parties could give over a four-month period prior to the June election. Anything more than that amount would have to be returned. It seems to me that that is a very large amount to say could come from Gibraltar sources, because it amounts to the total permitted expenditure across the whole of the combined south-west region.
Would it be right to say that Gibraltar sources could pay for 100 per cent of the costs of a party across the whole of the combined region? Might it not be more appropriate to say that a proportion of the costs would be reasonable? If so much money could be given from Gibraltar sources towards these elections, Gibraltarians may not just be getting a vote in these elections, but, with a great deal of financial support, may even be exercising undue influence. Would that be something that, if it is not reviewed now, might be reviewed in future if, when

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we look back after the elections, we consider that an undue proportion of the money in these elections has come from Gibraltar sources?
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, again I thank the noble Lords, Lord Astor of Hever and Lord Rennard, for their comments which I will attempt to answer.
The first point made by the noble Lord, Lord Astor, was about consultation and why the south-west region was chosen. As required by the European Parliament (Representation) Act 2003, the Electoral Commission consulted the Governor and Chief Minister of Gibraltar and the leader of each political party in Gibraltar's House of Assembly. In addition to the statutory consultee, the commission consulted widely over a two-month period in both Gibraltar and the UK. It did this through a public consultation paper, a media campaign and a public meeting in Gibraltar. I have in my hands the recommendation concerning the south-west, Gibraltar and the European Parliament. The first two and a half pages are devoted to an extremely detailed analysis of why the south-west was chosen.
Briefly, the commission made an assessment of several criteria which it believed would ensure that the chosen region would provide effective representation for the people of Gibraltar. Its initial consultation paper suggested that there was a stronger case for combining Gibraltar with either London or the south-west than with any other region in England and Wales. The consultation confirmed a high level of support in Gibraltar and the UK for the south-west. As well as historical and maritime links, many felt that MEPs representing the south-west's diverse communities and interests could be best placed to take on board the distinct concerns of Gibraltar. Consultees were more ambivalent about London in this role.
The noble Lord, Lord Astor, asked what impact the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act would make on the campaign for the first European parliamentary elections in Gibraltar. As I have explained, the guiding principle behind the application of UK electoral law—including the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000—is that it should apply as far as possible in the same way in Gibraltar as in the rest of the combined region. The Government of Gibraltar are already actively preparing for the elections, and I therefore see no reason why the election in the Gibraltar part of the combined region should be any less successful than in the rest of the region.
The noble Lord, Lord Astor, is concerned about fraud. This has been a matter of some concern and that is why it was dealt with so thoroughly in my opening speech. I have already made clear that the whole body of electoral law as it applies to European parliamentary elections in the UK, will as far as possible apply to the running of elections in Gibraltar. Therefore there is no reason why it should be necessary to take additional steps to ensure that no electoral fraud occurs in Gibraltar.
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The noble Lord's final question was what the rules on dual mandate will be if the Chief Minister of Gibraltar decides to stand as an MEP. The prohibition on dual mandates applies to members of national parliaments, as I have explained. While it is for the European Parliament to decide what bodies this covers, it is our view that the House of Assembly would not be classified as a national parliament for this purpose.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was concerned about the amount of financial support from Gibraltar. The people of Gibraltar should be able to participate by giving donations to parties. To limit this amount to less than the limit for the region as a whole would in our opinion be unfair. However, I will take that question back and give the noble Lord a more comprehensive answer later.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.30 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 8.14 to 8.30 p.m.]

Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
House again in Committee on Clause 27.
Clause 27 agreed to.
Clause 28 [Joint committees]:
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 108DA:
Page 16, line 27, after "council" insert ", or if an RPB makes a proposal in relation to any part of its region,"
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 108DA, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 108DB, 109ZA, 109AA, 109AB and 109AC.
The amendments refer to Clauses 28 to 30 and the establishment of joint committees. Experience of joint committees on unitary authorities shows that there tends to be—or there can be—the problem of the lowest common denominator; that is, where there is one council that is not prepared to co-operate, the success of the scheme is ruined. That may be the case even though all the others are willing and enthusiastic to participate. Unfortunately, the Bill does nothing to solve that problem.
The Bill does not give the regional planning body a say in establishing the joint committee, even if there is majority agreement that such a committee would be the best way of developing the sub-regional spatial strategy that the RPB wants. The Bill would allow any such arrangements to be undermined by an individual local authority that did not wish to participate.
The amendments would allow a joint committee to be established on a proposal from the regional planning body. That would introduce a way of ensuring that the necessary sub-regional spatial strategies were delivered—something that the Bill fails

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to do. Given the importance of sub-regional strategies, particularly in the larger regions, this is a key series of amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee: Amendments Nos. 108E, 108F and 109A to 109D in the group are ours, but they make a similar point. Most are consequential on the first amendment.
Amendment No. 108E arises from the question of whether what is contained in Clause 28(2) to (5) should be left to the local authorities. We have heard the Minister say several times that not everything can go into the Bill. Even if we have differences about what should be in the Bill rather than in regulations, that statement is incontrovertible. However, the provisions are extremely detailed.
I made the point on an amendment just before the break that, if local planning authorities were to come together to agree how to deal with such issues, they should be able to agree the procedures that follow from them and implement their agreement. I was puzzled by how much of the Bill was taken up by that sort of prescriptive detail, even if it is intended benignly to be helpful.
The other amendments are consequential, save for Amendment No. 109D, which would leave out Clause 30(7). Although that is not a consequential amendment, the point is that all of it ought to be a matter for the authorities concerned.
Lord Rooker: This is an important group of amendments, touching on the matters that we debated before the break in respect of joint committees. In this case, Clauses 28 to 30 deal with joint committees of county councils and district councils.
Amendments Nos. 108DA, 108DB, 109ZA, 109AA, 109AB and 109AC propose a role for regional planning bodies in relation to whether a joint committee should be established, the area and matters that it should cover, both from the start and if expanding its remit, and its dissolution. We are absolutely certain that regional planning bodies will have views on those issues. A regional planning body will be able to suggest to county and district councils that working as a joint committee under Clause 28 would be valuable. It would be free to suggest what area and matters such a committee might cover and that a joint committee, once set up, should be dissolved.
We would expect county and district councils to take very seriously any suggestions made by a regional planning body. We therefore do not believe that the Bill needs expressly to provide for the regional planning body to make proposals about those issues. It can do, and there is nothing to stop it from doing so. If the idea is that a proposal from a regional planning body should be mandatory, of course, we cannot agree to that. A joint committee would require close working relationships. That can only be based on a voluntary agreement and co-operation now in local government. If there is goodwill for a joint committee, that is fine, but forcing a joint committee between two authorities
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will not work. It may seem as though the regional planning board would be like the third party holding the ring, but we do not think that it is likely to speed up the process and lead to effective plan making.
Amendment No. 108E removes the provisions for the Secretary of State to constitute such a committee and apply appropriate legislation to it by order. The other amendments are consequential. The joint committees need to be constituted by order because county councils do not have the functions under Part 2 of the Bill that these committees will exercise. That is the reality of the matter. Such orders may apply to these joint committees legislation that applies to local authorities. That is obviously necessary because they are constituted by order rather than formed under Section 102 of the Local Government Act. They may otherwise not be bound by important local government legislation—for example, not to be covered by the local government ombudsman. Such orders may also make provision for any matters that the Secretary of State thinks are necessary to facilitate the workings of a joint committee; matters such as expenses and disqualification from membership of joint committees are bound to be dealt with. The Secretary of State's order-making role is only an enabling mechanism. Without it, joint county and district committees could not prepare local development documents. He will make or revoke such orders only at the request of the county and district councils concerned.
Amendment No. 109D would remove the Secretary of State's power to make regulations defining a corresponding document. I dealt with that matter in a previous group of amendments. That power is an important element of the provision to ensure that if a joint committee breaks down, it does not necessarily mean that the work has to be started again from scratch. It is important that authorities can carry on with documents that the joint committee was preparing without again having to go through all the steps taken previously. But this should be possible only when the remaining or individual authorities can own the documents. By a new definition, Clause 30 refers to such documents as corresponding documents.
Draft regulations provide that to qualify as a corresponding document, the policies and proposals contained in it must not relate to the authority that withdraws from the joint committee—a matter of common sense, but it needs to be stated—and that they must have substantially the same effect on the areas of the remaining or individual authorities as the original document. One would not want to waste the work. On the other hand, however, one would not want the documents to contain proposals on which work had not been done. Policies and proposals which can still work can be taken forward, but where the situation has substantially changed the previous work will not be relevant and the authority will have to begin again.
A fair point is whether a joint committee should be able unilaterally to extend its remit. I cannot be certain whether that question has been alluded to. This would be a practical solution to the situation where the constituent authorities to a joint committee agree that

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the committee arrangement works well and want to expand the remit of the committee to prepare other local development documents. We see no reason why they should be required to seek a new order from the Secretary of State to allow that. So there is a degree of flexibility. Obviously, if they are working well together they are hardly likely to need the Secretary of State's involvement.
I hope that I have given a fair explanation of the purposes of this part of the Bill and that the amendments will be withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham: It is clear that you cannot force together two unwilling partners. On the other hand, sometimes deals and negotiations are helpful. The amendment seeks to give the regional planning body a role in saying that there should be a joint committee; presumably people would listen to it. There was no intention of giving it a mandatory role; you could not possibly do that. I hear what the Minister says, that the regional planning body would be able to do so in any event. I shall read what he said in Hansard. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 108DB to 109 not moved.]
Clause 28 agreed to.
Clause 29 [Joint committees: additional functions]:
[Amendments Nos. 109ZA to 109AB not moved.]
Clause 29 agreed to.
Clause 30 [Dissolution of joint committee]:
[Amendments Nos. 109AC to 109D not moved.]
Clause 30 agreed to.
Clause 31 agreed to.
Clause 32 [Urban development corporations]:
[Amendment No. 109DA not moved.]
Clause 32 agreed to.
Clause 33 agreed to.
Clause 34 [Annual monitoring report]:
Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham had given notice of her intention to move Amendment No. 109DB:
Page 19, line 14, at end insert—
"(c) the costs incurred by the local planning authority in complying with Part 2 of this Act."
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 109DB seeks to remove from the list of areas that the Secretary of State may, by regulations, make provisions for monitoring the exercise by local planning authorities of their functions under Part 2. This will have the effect of cutting back the powers of the Secretary of State to constantly oversee all the work done by local planning authorities rather than creating a system whereby the Secretary of State is constantly monitoring powers.
I am sorry. If the Committee will forgive me, I shall not move the amendment. It makes no sense whatever.
[Amendment No. 109DB not moved.]
Clause 34 agreed to.
Clause 35 [Regulations]:
[Amendments Nos. 109E, 109Fand 109G not moved.]
Clause 35 agreed to.
Clause 36 [Interpretation]:
[Amendment No. 109H not moved.]
Clause 36 agreed to.
Clause 37 [Development plan]:
8.45 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 109J:
Page 20, line 28, at end insert—
"( ) For the purposes of any area in Greater London, the development plan prior to the publication by the Mayor of London of alterations of the spatial development strategy or a new spatial development strategy in accordance with section 341 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (c. 29) (alteration or replacement) is the unitary development plan adopted in accordance with the principal Act."
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I will speak also to Amendment No. 110A, which is grouped with Amendments Nos. 110, 110B, 111 and 111ZA. My reason for moving this amendment is more than just that it would be unpopular to bring the Committee back, not move a series of amendments and then go home.
Clause 37 deals with the development plan. It is an important provision. The amendments relate to London in particular. I have declared an interest in this connection already, but I have not previously declared that I am co-president, with the noble Lords, Lord Graham of Edmonton and Lord Jenkin of Roding, of the Association of London Government— the London boroughs' association.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, asked me earlier today to pass on his apologies for missing this debate. The amendment in his name, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, will no doubt speak, would remove Clause 37(2) because of concerns that I suspect are the same as ours—we are simply approaching the matter differently—about the implications of introducing the provisions when the spatial development strategy is at its current stage. Removing subsection (2) would create a vacuum, so my drafting—which is rather cottage industry and homemade—proposes that the development plan, before alterations to the spatial development strategy have been made or a replacement published, is the unitary development plan adopted under the 1990 Act. Amendment No. 110A would have a similar effect.
I do not believe that this is in any way a party-political issue, but many London boroughs are concerned about the implications of introducing this provision at a relatively early date. I have not detected that they are opposed to the spatial development strategy becoming the development plan as the longer-term objective. However, there is concern about changing the status of what is not yet a finalised plan—although we had all hoped to see it in its final form by now—which would involve changing matters part way through its development process. For the purposes of this debate, I shall refer to it as the present draft. Although that may not technically be the right word,

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it has gone through almost the whole of its development by way of public consultation and examination, the inspectors' report and the response to that report, which is now with the Secretary of State. If I call it a draft in non-technical language, noble Lords will understand what I mean.
The present draft was produced under different legislation. I do not believe that it was intended that it would be the statutory plan to which Section 54A of the planning Act would apply. It is therefore not written in a style that makes clear what is or is not policy—some of these notes were made before the examination in public, but they are nevertheless quite fair. At that time the draft ran to 400 pages and it has been said that almost any part of it could be used to justify a development proposal. It does not accord with the draft guidance for regional spatial strategies.
There is concern that the draft could be used to justify minor proposals and that as a result the Mayor could become involved in detailed debates on minor issues. The Green Paper that preceded the Bill specifically said that there would be no change to the role of the Mayor of London, and public consultation on the draft took place on the basis that it was not a statutory plan. I am also told that comments from boroughs would have been different if they had seen further ahead and known what was coming. They are also concerned that consideration of planning applications will become more complex and costly.
Obviously, that is not what the Government want; it is diametrically opposed to what the Government want to see. Development control officers would need to consider the contents of the spatial development strategy, the London plan and the relevant unitary development plan before they made a recommendation, thereby adding to the workload. In other words, there will be cost, confusion and delay.
I believe that the Association of London Government has commented to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on the draft of PPS12. What it said about that draft is relevant to the primary legislation as well as to the guidance and regulations. The association made the point that consultees at the draft stages of the London plan did not regard it as part of the development plan and that it contained significant and detailed policies. As I said, I am making these points because they are as relevant to the primary legislation as to the planning policy statement.
The association is also urging that the final version of PPS12 should make it clear that "general conformity" should be strategic and not detailed; that justified local variation from strategic policies is entirely appropriate; that by having general conformity, there is an acceptance that there will be areas of non-conformity; and that where a decision or recommendation on general conformity issues has been made at a development plan document inquiry, it should be binding on the Mayor and on the spatial development strategy. The association also refers to the need for a dispute procedure in case of problems.
What this boils down to, I think, is that we have got out of synch on all of this. As a Member of the London Assembly considering the Mayor's representations to
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the boroughs on their unitary development plans—of which these are modified examples—I have seen how the Government should be cheered by the way in which the boroughs have approached the next stages of their unitary development plans as if the Bill were in force. They have been taking the sort of view that the Government are encouraging. It certainly makes those documents more accessible, and that is cheering. However, if the borough's planning documents and the Mayor's documents do not properly mesh, there will be a lot of scope for confusion and difficulty. There will also be serious implications for individual applicants.
My attempt at a solution is to suggest that application of the provision be postponed. The amendment to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, will speak proposes removing the provision entirely. I beg to move.
Baroness Hanham: This is the matter to which I promised to return when we were considering Clause 23 and I put the cart before the horse.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, the Bill proposes a change to the status of the Mayor of London's spatial development strategy, which is known as the London plan, so that the situation in London will be consistent with the Government's proposals for England. Under the Bill, the London plan will have to be a formal part of each borough's unitary development plan, whereas previously the unitary development plan would have had only to be in general conformity with the London plan. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee said, that is the Government's proposal despite their announcing in the 2001 planning Green Paper that they do not propose any change to the Mayor's role in the arrangements for planning in London.
We believe that it is wrong for the Government to argue that the change in London is necessary for the sake of consistency. The situation in London is unique, and that makes it unsuited to the planning system that the Government are establishing for the rest of England. There will be no regional spatial strategy in London, which will instead have the very much more detailed draft London plan prepared by the Mayor. It is a highly prescriptive document which will inevitably conflict at times with the unitary development plan or the local development plan when that exists.
We have been told by all the London boroughs that when a conflict does arise between boroughs' plans and the London plan, the more recent document will have greater weight. That will mean that a carefully considered unitary development plan which is the result of months—the Minister may say years—of consultation with local communities can be overridden by the London plan. Moreover, there is every chance that processing planning applications will become more complicated and take more time—the very reverse of the Government's objectives. Each planning application will have to be considered in relation to both the local development plan and the relevant policies in the London plan. Any appeal procedure as the result of refusing a planning application will also be more complex. The appeal inspector will have to weigh up the relative weight of policies in both the local development plan and the London plan.

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These amendments are intended to retain the present relationship between the spatial development strategy and the unitary development plan in London boroughs. Under present arrangements, unitary development plans have to be in general conformity with the Mayor's spatial strategy. Section 344 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 amends the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to reflect the setting up of the revised administrative arrangements for Greater London. Section 344(2) states that part of the unitary development plans should be,
"in general conformity with the spatial development strategy for the time being in force".
It also states that Part II of unitary development plans should be,
"in general conformity with Part I … and, in the case of a London borough council, with the spatial development strategy".
Clause 23(1)(b) of the Bill—this is where we go backwards; we have dwelt on this briefly—states:
"The local development documents must be in general conformity with … the spatial development strategy (if the local planning authority are a London borough)".
By deleting Clause 32(2)(a) we return to the situation approved by the Greater London Authority Act 1999 and are thus in accordance with Clause 23(1)(b) of the Bill.
Amendment No. 111ZA takes us away from London, but means that a regional spatial strategy will not be part of a development. Together with the other amendments, it goes beyond London and would mean that both the regional spatial strategy and the spatial development strategy do not form part of a development plan. Consequently, only one subsection would be needed, if that was agreed, rather than both subsections (2) and (3).
Lord Rooker: I shall do my best to satisfy the noble Baroness over the points she raised. Amendment No. 109J would amend Clause 37 to provide expressly that the definition of the development plan in London was the borough's unitary development plans until such time as the Mayor's spatial development strategy is published. The amendment is unnecessary for two reasons: we are confident that the final version of the spatial development strategy will be published before commencement of the Bill—or Act; even it were not, the effect would be the same as the amendment envisages—that the London boroughs' unitary development plans would be the development plan for London until the final version of the spatial development strategy was published.
Amendment No. 110 would amend Clause 37 so that the Mayor of London's spatial development strategy did not become part of the development plan. Amendment No. 111ZA does the same for regional spatial strategies. Making regional plans across the country a part of the development plan is an important part of strengthening the strategic planning role. It is just as applicable to the Mayor's strategy as it is to a regional strategy.
If we want effective regional planning then it must have sufficient status for both delivery through local planning and providing a regional context for major
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development. The current status of the regional planning guidance means, for example, that an out-of-date but statutory structure plan, inconsistent with up-to-date regional planning guidance could, depending on the circumstances, carry more weight in relation to local plans and planning applications. That is a point that I made on day one of the Bill at Second Reading.
We are committed to a plan-led system—a system with fewer plans, but where those plans really bite. We have to be up to date and reduce ambiguity and uncertainty. Revisions of regional spatial strategies will be subject to extensive involvement, consultation and a public examination, where the Secretary of State decides that that is appropriate. It would be quite wrong to diminish the status of a document that had been through such a rigorous process by not making it part of the development plan. By making the spatial development strategy part of the development plan we are not fundamentally altering the existing relationship between it and unitary development plans.
Under the current arrangements, the spatial development strategy can still be a "material consideration" when a London borough considers a planning application. The Mayor has powers to direct the refusal of a planning application of potential strategic importance and the policies in the strategy are likely to be a significant factor in that consideration.
Amendment No. 110A complements Amendment No. 109J. It simply amends Clause 37 to clarify that only after the publication of the spatial development strategy will that form part of the development plan in Greater London. Amendment No. 11OB is consequential. I have already explained why Amendment No. 109J is unnecessary; if it is not needed, these amendments do not stand on their own.
I shall comment on some of the points that were raised. Originally, we were told that consultees did not expect the spatial development strategy to be part of the development plan, so different comments were made. The relationship has not changed much, the procedures for spatial development strategy are eventually the same as those for regional spatial strategy, including examination in public, and the Bill was published in December 2002.
By making the spatial development strategy part of the development plan, we are not fundamentally altering the relationship between it and the unitary development plan. Under the current arrangements, the strategy can still be a material consideration when the borough considers a planning application. That should not be a problem. It is not the case that the Mayor's strategy will, under the Bill, replace part one of the unitary development plans. The scope and content of the strategy is not affected by the Bill. New local development frameworks for London will be every bit as strategic as part one of the old unitary development plans. In fact, we want the strategic element of a local development framework to be more effective than the "part ones" are at present.
Nor has the Mayor's spatial development strategy been drafted in a way that makes it incompatible with its role as part of the development plan. The Mayor's

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draft strategy contains strategic development control policies relevant to determining the acceptability of development proposals, such as policies that set out criteria that the boroughs should have regard to in assessing planning applications, which will further help the strategy set out in the spatial development strategy.
The final amendment, to which I have not referred—Amendment No. 111—is consequential on Amendment No. 110. It ensures that the development plan documents for each London borough are not also excluded from being part of the development plan. Again, it has no meaning separate from Amendment No. 110, and I hope that I have covered that already.
I know that we are dealing with a complex area on which there was concern, but I hope that I have addressed the issues adequately. If I have not, I have no doubt that I shall find out on Report.
Baroness Hamwee: I am not sure that my amendment has had the effect that I intended. To say that the final version of the spatial development strategy will be published before commencement of the Act does not answer the points that I was trying to make. My amendment talked in terms not of the publication of the spatial development strategy, but of publications of alterations to it or a new spatial development strategy.
I may have picked the wrong terminology, but I was trying to postpone the application of this part of the Bill to the point where the spatial development strategy had gone through its first round and had its examination in public. The London boroughs were making their comments at the time that all that was happening. They were taking part in that process as well, but were still making such comments. I sought to postpone the application until we got into round two of the spatial development strategy.
It would obviously be appropriate for those who feel particularly concerned about how the provisions will bite to have the opportunity to read the Minister's comments. They seemed quite contradictory to the observations made to us on these Benches, and to the Conservatives, as part of the process of discussion with the boroughs. The Minister is looking at something; I do not know whether he wants to say something before I withdraw the amendment.
Lord Rooker: No, I do not propose to say anything else, although I have no doubt that I will on Report.
Baroness Hamwee: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 110 to 111ZA not moved.]
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 111ZB:
Page 20, line 39, at end insert "and until such local development plan is adopted or approved, the development plan for that area shall be the unitary development plan, structure plan or local plan (as defined in the principal Act) last adopted or approved for the area"
The noble Baroness said: This amendment provides that until the local development plan referred to is adopted or approved, the development plan shall be the UDP, structure plan or local plan last adopted or approved. This is in order to ensure that while a local development plan is being prepared, there is a development plan for the purposes of development control.
In the provisions relating to Wales, there is; a fall back provision to cover any lacuna, but in England there are transitional—I beg your Lordships' pardon, I am getting this the wrong way round. There is an omission in the Bill as it applies to Wales, in that there is no fall back development plan. There are detailed transitional provisions for England, as I discovered when I was looking for how a county structure plan was dealt with. It took me two hours to find it. This amendment is aimed at covering the interim position in Wales. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: The noble Baroness nearly got me there. I thought, "Hang on a minute, all this is about Wales". That is what Clause 37(4) is about. She made the point in the end that this is adding on for Wales something for England, rather than the other way around, as she started off. This amendment adds to Clause 37, so that set out in existing development plans for Wales will remain the development plans until such time as a new local development plan is adopted or approved.
The proposed amendment would introduce provisions relating to the transition from the present system of development plans in Wales to the new local development plans set out in Part 6, which I shall come to at another time.
While the need for such transitional provisions is not in dispute, the best way to deal with them in relation to Wales is not by including them in the Bill, but by leaving them to be dealt with by secondary legislation made by the National Assembly for Wales. The Assembly's power to make such legislation arises under Clause 117(3), which empowers the Assembly to make provision by order in relation to the coming into force of Part 6, and Clause 118(3)(b), which makes it clear that such an order may contain saving and transitional provisions. The Assembly has already begun to consider the content of the necessary transitional arrangements. I hope that the system is able to cope with this. The Assembly is on board, so we do not need to make this amendment.
Baroness Hamwee: As with other amendments, it would be only proper to reflect on what the Minister has said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hamwee Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No.] 11ZC:
Page 21, line 4, at end insert—
"( ) If to any extent a policy contained in a development plan for an area conflicts with a policy in the regional spatial strategy for the region, the conflict shall be resolved in favour of the policy in the regional spatial strategy."
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I will speak also to Amendments Nos. 111ZD and 111ZE. Amendment No. 111ZC seeks to provide a means of resolving conflict between local development plans and regional spatial strategies. Clause 37(5) provides the procedure for dealing with conflicts between policies in the development plan. This is to suggest that provision is made for conflicts between the two documents.
This was debated in Committee in the Commons on 21 January 2003, when the Minister said at col. 254 that it would be wrong for the regional spatial strategy to predominate, when it might have been published up to five years before. The Minister said that the Government were not immediately convinced by the amendment, which was suggested to us by the Law Society, as drafted at that stage. He said that the amendment said that,
"RSSs reign in perpetuity űber alles, no matter whether they were published last year or five years ago … There has to be a degree of temporal hierarchy".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee G, 21/1/03; Cols 254–55.]
German and Latin in one paragraph. But what about the practice? Should not the Bill prescribe the hierarchy—the Minister will know how little I like prescription—in order to avoid difficulty if there is a conflict? Mr Wilshire said that his headmaster had told him that there was no substitute for common sense. I wish that statute law worked to the same rules as his headmaster. Can the Minister help me? I beg to move.
9.15 p.m.
Baroness Hanham: Amendment No. 111ZE, which is tabled in my name, is grouped with Amendment No. 111ZC. Clause 37(1) states:
"A reference to the development plan in any enactment mentioned in subsection (7) must be construed in accordance with subsections (2) to (5)".
Subsection (7) lists the relevant enactments, which include this Bill, the planning Acts, the Land Compensation Act 1961 and the Highways Act 1980. In addition, paragraph (c), which this amendment would remove, lists,
"any other enactment relating to town and country planning".
What are the other enactments? The list seems comprehensive, and it seems unnecessary to add paragraph (c), which is open to very broad interpretation. If some Acts are to be listed, why not list the other possible enactments? Moreover, do all the enactments referring to development plans necessarily relate to town and country planning?
Lord Rooker: I have before me a wonderful paragraph, but, as I have just said to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, I could not possibly read it out, as it would never make sense in Hansard. I shall respond first to Amendment No. 111ZE and then deal with the amendments in reverse order. The short answer to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, is that in addition to the Bill, the planning Acts, the Land Compensation Act 1961 and the Highways Act 1980 are some examples. We cannot see what purpose
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Amendment No. 111ZE would serve. It would mean that if a piece of town and country planning legislation slipped through the net, despite our best efforts, all references in it to a development plan would have a different meaning from that in other legislation. That would not help anybody; it would cause confusion.
I do not know who dreamt up Amendment No. 111ZD, which would replace "shall" for "must". What is the difference?
Baroness Hamwee: I should have explained that. Section 54A, which was introduced by the 1991 Act, uses the terminology that I sought to import through the amendment. It is a lawyers' point. If there is a difference, let us know what it is, and if there is not, let us have the same provision so that there is no doubt.
Lord Rooker: Oh well, I shot myself there. This is not an argument about "shall" and "may"; it is about "shall" and "must". If there is an inconsistency that needs to be put right, we will have a look at it. I am sorry for my disparaging remarks or thoughts about that amendment.
Amendment No. 111ZC is not acceptable for the simple reason that it could require a conflict to be resolved in accordance with an older policy. Newer, more up-to-date policy would be overwritten by older policy in some instances. The existing wording of Clause 37(5) ensures that, where regard is to be had to the development plan in making the planning decision, that decision will be made in line with the most recent part of the development plan unless material considerations dictate otherwise. That is entirely consistent with one of the key aims of our reforms: tackling the problems caused by plans that are out of date.
If there is a concern to preserve the strategic importance of the regional spatial strategy, or revisions to it, this is already safeguarded by the Bill. Any local development documents, including development plan documents, must be in general conformity with the regional spatial strategy. If there is any difference between a development plan document and a regional spatial strategy, that difference will have to be tested through the independent examination, which is a very useful tool. There will have to be good reasons for that.
I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw the amendment. I will look at Amendment No. 111ZC to make sure that we have got that matter right.
Baroness Hanham: I do not want to be difficult. I am never difficult. But I would like an answer to the following point.
Subsection (c) refers to:
"any other enactment relating to town and country planning".

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What would those enactments be?
So far, there is a list that includes "this Act" and the "planning Acts". That is clear. What would "any other enactment" be?
Lord Rooker: I gave examples when I stood up. The Land Compensation Act 1961 and the Highways Act 1980. Is that not a good enough answer? I do not have another answer.
Baroness Hanham: That is a rotten answer. When I introduced it, I pointed out that the list already included the Highways Act and the Land Compensation Act. The Minister then throws those back at me. I want to know what the "other enactments" are. If anyone has any idea of what those might be, it would be enormously helpful.
Baroness Hamwee: Perhaps I may explain to the Minister what I regard as a practical issue regarding this matter. These days one often uses a computer to search for information. If the legislation that is affected is not listed in terms, it will not be found. A very diligent lawyer may work out that this is the effect, but the average "cooking solicitor" may not.
Lord Rooker: I apologise. I am guilty of not having done my homework. I have it in my notes, but I had not actually read subsection (7). I realise that what I just said is already there for the noble Baroness to read. My noble friend Lord Bassam had said that I did not have to read it out because the noble Baroness has done it.
194
I am reliably informed that subsection (7)(c) is a catch-all to cover everything. On thinking about it, that is quite unsatisfactory because we ought to know what the other enactments are. I shall take advice on this in time for the next stage to see whether we can be more precise than,
"any other enactment relating to town and country planning".
There could be obscure legislation, but to be frank, the draftsmen working on these Bills go through everything. Rarely is anything missed out. Once again, I apologise for the flippant way I dealt with this
Baroness Hamwee: We are all at the same point of exhaustion. I thank the Minister for his various responses. I think that we should look at Amendment No. 111ZC when we feel a little recovered. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 111ZD and 111ZE not moved.]
Clause 37 agreed to.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past nine o'clock.

Official Report of the Grand Committee on the

  Energy Bill [H.L.]
  Tuesday, 27 January 2004.
  (Fourth Day)
  The Committee met at half past three of the clock.
  [The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Allenby of Megiddo) in the Chair.]
  The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Allenby of Megiddo): Before we start the proceedings, I should announce that the next Grand Committee day on this Bill will take place in the Moses Room. I apologise if noble Lords are slightly overcrowded for today's proceedings. I also have to tell the Committee that Schedule 5 has not been amended.
  Schedule 5 [Supplementary provisions about nuclear transfer schemes]:
  Lord Jenkin of Roding Lord Jenkin of Roding moved Amendment No. 74:
  Page 141, line 26, after "scheme" insert "and any information or assistance provided pursuant to section 45 shall be provided"
  The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 74,1 shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 75 and 77. When we ended our proceedings last week and the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, had moved an amendment relating to Clause 35, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, gave what seemed to me to be a very sensible exposition of the policy behind Clause 35. Although the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, suggested that he may want to return to this matter later, I found that exposition reasonably convincing.
  However, Clause 35 does not stand alone because it refers to Schedule 5, which has subsidiary provisions relating to Clause 35. We come to the schedule after having dealt with Clause 35 last week. I believe I can deal with this point extremely briefly. I understood that most of the property that will be transferred under the transfer schemes, for which Clause 35 makes provision, are likely to be incorporeal. It is intellectual property rights and things of that nature that will go. I notice the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, nodding wisely and therefore I hope that I have that right.
  If that is the case, there appears to be a gap in the Bill. Clause 45 makes provision for the Secretary of State to give information to assist the transfer. These three amendments simply seek to ensure that, if the transferor has received such assistance and information from the Secretary of State, those will be transferred as well. It seems to me ridiculous that they would not be transferred. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister says. However, I believe that at present there is a gap in the provisions of Schedule 5. Amendments Nos. 74, 75
  GC 68
  and 77 are intended to fill that gap and make certain that, when the transfer takes place with the intellectual property rights and other—what I believe are sometimes called—incorporeal hereditaments, the information and assistance are transferred as well. I beg to move.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Whitty): These three amendments seem to deal with what is perceived as the hypothetical risk that BNFL and UKAEA could face claims for damages from third parties as a result of information being provided for a nuclear transfer scheme. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has clarified such a situation where that may arise. Indeed, the formulation here on transfers relates very much to the formula that has pertained for other forms of privatisation in a number of Acts. However, as I understand the amendments, the purpose would be to extinguish such claims and, instead, to provide third parties with statutory rights of compensation for their extinguished schemes.
  Unless we can pin down how that hypothetical question will arise, it is difficult to see why that would be necessary. Officials at our departments have spoken to BNFL and UKAEA and recognise that there is an anxiety in the background, but they can come up with no specific situation where such a claim from a third party is likely to arise in practice. It would be difficult to justify a statutory measure without being clear of the kind of situation in which it could possibly arise.
  The transfer powers permit contracts with BNFL, including an confidentiality provisions in BNFL's contracts, to be transferred to another person and for references in those contracts to BNFL to have effect as though they were references to the transferee. Therefore, such confidentiality provisions can be protected and third parties would not have a case against BNFL or the transferee company. I fail to see that that is necessary and it is certainly not provided for in equivalent legislation in other circumstances.
  Lord Jenkin of Roding: I have listened to what the noble Lord has said. Clearly, I shall want to study his words carefully and perhaps discuss them with the two organisations that he mentioned. It has been made clear to me that they see some difficulty in this matter, unless the information and assistance is included in the transfer process. That is what we are trying to achieve. However, the noble Lord has said that he cannot see any point in the amendment. We cannot press it today, so we shall consider what he has said. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 75 not moved.]
  Lord Jenkin of Roding Lord Jenkin of Roding moved Amendment No. 76:
  Page 141, line 34, after "enactment" insert ", rule of law"
  The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 76 amends paragraph 2(3) of Schedule 5. The point of this amendment is simple. I do not find this part of the Bill

  GC 69
  the easiest to understand and it would be helpful if the Minister could go a little wider than the amendment and explain precisely what is intended.
  My short point is that the United Kingdom is the country that invented the concept of the rule of law; that is not necessarily the law resting on statute but also resting on judge-made law in the courts, which binds the citizens of this country as much as though it had appeared in an Act of Parliament or in regulations. It is the law until it is changed by further decision in the courts. Therefore, it seems to me that if paragraph 2(3) refers to "enactment or agreement", it should also refer to rights or obligations that are established by the rule of law. I believe that that should be inserted in the Bill so that it is absolutely clear what is intended. I beg to move.
  Lord Triesman: We carefully considered all those forms of words. I am inclined to agree that there is a degree of complexity that is probably unavoidable in a piece of legislation that is designed in every respect to cover all eventualities that can be imagined. It is difficult to do that in terms that are a great deal simpler. That is probably unfortunate, but it is the nature of the beast. What is intended here is that the wording that is currently in the Bill,
  "under an enactment or agreement or otherwise",
  includes the concept of the rule of law. I understand perfectly well the distinction that the noble Lord made between enactments and matters that may result from decisions taken in the courts. However, enactments and the interpretation of enactments are in essence one and the same thing. The word "otherwise" probably covers the matter in any case. We and the lawyers believe that the framing of these words absolutely covers the intentions that the noble Lord expressed in moving the amendment. Therefore, we suggest that the amendment is withdrawn.
  Lord Jenkin of Roding: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his assurances on this point. He conceded the point that this is pretty complex legislation. I remember once, as a very young barrister's pupil, sitting in court and the judge leaning over to the counsel on the other side and saying, "I am afraid that I do not understand your argument and therefore I think it must be wrong". I am not sure that I understand this clause but a clause in a Bill that becomes a section in an Act of Parliament cannot be wrong until it has been so held by the courts. However, the assurance that the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, gave to the Grand Committee seems to meet the case. In those circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 77 not moved.]
  Schedule 5 agreed to.
  Clause 36 agreed to.
  Schedule 6 [Structure etc. of transferee companies]:
  Baroness Byford Baroness Byford moved Amendment No. 77A:
  Page 152, line 40, leave out paragraph (b).
  The noble Baroness said: I rise to move Amendment No. 77A and to speak also to Amendments Nos. 77B, 77C, 77D and 77E. Amendment No. 77A is a probing amendment. As I understand it, Schedule 6 governs the transfer to a publicly owned company—the transferee company—under a nuclear transfer scheme of property rights and liabilities from a company acquired under that scheme. Once the transfer has been made, the transferee company has to issue securities to the Secretary of State of a nominal value decreed by him fully paid in such amounts as he demands. The Treasury or a Minister may buy securities in the transferee company using money supplied by Parliament. A Minister may in either case dispose of securities acquired from the transferee company provided he has the consent of the Treasury. My question is, what is intended here? Why would the Treasury buy securities that can apparently be obtained quite legally for free? Why would a Minister dispose of such securities, and in this context would "dispose" always mean sell? If it does not, what would it mean? I was very confused by the paragraph.
  I turn to Amendment No. 77B. Clause 22 is quite clear. Subsection (3) of Clause 22 states:
  "The NDA must pay to the Secretary of State all sums received by it"
  that are not grants from the Secretary of State. I refer to line 44 of page 21 of the Bill. Subsection (4) of Clause 22 states:
  "The Secretary of State must pay sums received by him…into the Consolidated Fund".
  Subsection (2) of Clause 5—at line 1 of page 5—opens the possibility that an installation designated as an NDA responsibility may be required to make payments to the Secretary of State. Subsection (8) of Clause 5 is unequivocal that the Secretary of State must pay all the sums received by him into the Consolidated Fund. Clause 39 allows for the transfer to the Secretary of State of the nuclear liabilities investment portfolio from BNFL. The clause also specifies that the cash from all other forms of income transferred in this way must be paid by the Secretary of State into the Consolidated Fund.
  In the Explanatory Notes at page 32, note 159 states:
  "At 31 March 2003, the NLIP had a total value of £3.84 billion made up of around £2.34 billion in cash and Government gilts and £1.5 billion in short term fund-managed investments".
  One way or another, that is a lot of money going in to the Consolidated Fund. We accept that the Bill sets up a system of recording what is owed to nuclear decommissioning activities. However, that is not the same thing as putting the moneys in a segregated fund that can be used only for nuclear decommissioning, unless the whole subject is debated and cleared by both Houses in the form of a new Bill.
  On Amendment No. 77C, it is possible to accept that if the Secretary of State is making the loan, he should call the tune on when repayments must be made and how each shall be made. However, there must be an element of discussion and agreement. Moreover, the company in receipt of the loan should be aware of those factors when the loan commences. The fact that

  GC 71
  recipients of such loans will be publicly controlled companies does not mean that they need or can make do with less control over their fortunes than private companies, most of which would be reluctant to enter a loan agreement without some idea of repayment terms. Will the Minister explain what is intended by the provision and whether in practice guidance would be binding on both the company and the Secretary of State?
  On Amendment No. 77D, as with Amendment No. 77, any company in receipt of a loan needs to be confident that changes to the repayment terms will be negotiated, not simply imposed. Will the Minister give examples of existing government loans to publicly controlled companies where the terms include changes to rates or repayment times as may be directed? Also, are such terms frequently used or only in abnormal circumstances?
  Lastly, I turn to Amendment No. 77E, which is another probing amendment. Schedule 7, paragraph 7(1) makes it possible for the transferee company to confer on the Minister the right to restrict the power of another company in the group to which the transferee company belongs to borrow money. That seems to imply that, for example, should one of our larger companies decide to allow a subsidiary to enter the nuclear decommissioning business, its own business freedom may be severely restricted. Will the Minister confirm whether that is possible? If so, will he explain the reasons behind the provision and the circumstances in which it may be used? I beg to move.
  3.45 p.m.
  Lord Triesman: In dealing with this group of amendments, perhaps I can speak to their general purpose taken together and hope to answer the specific questions as best I can in the course of so doing. I think it is more helpful at least to start by setting out the thematic links across the whole piece.
  The amendments all relate to technical provisions in Schedules 6 and 7 on the structure, finances and accounts of transferee companies—that is so say, those companies to be formed from BNFL and UKAEA. I assure the Committee that the schedules' provisions follow well established legislative precedents in the field. The Electricity Act 1989 is an example of a precise model in this case, as is the Atomic Energy Authority Act 1995, which covers the matters that we are considering. I turn to the amendments. I shall deal with them thematically, against the background of there being well established precedents.
  On Amendment No. 77A, the purpose of paragraph 3 of Schedule 6 is to permit the Government to invest in transferee companies. For example—and I was asked to give examples—the Government may invest in debt securities and so on. The paragraph permits investment before privatisation. If there were a PPP scheme for part of BNFL, that would be another example of when the provision would operate. The standards set in doing that are the standards that have been set in past privatisations and are being followed here as a model pretty exactly.
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  Amendment No. 77A removes the requirement for the Treasury to consent for the disposal of securities or rights of a transferee company. That is a standard provision, reflecting the Treasury's legitimate interest in the disposal of government assets. As a guardian of the Government's finances, it would be difficult to argue that the Treasury should not be involved in such a transaction. I must be candid in saying that I do not believe that there would be much prospect of persuading our colleagues in the Treasury that they should vary their practice in that regard. Indeed, I would not relish the idea of having a chat along those lines with my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They are legitimate interests, in which the Treasury would continue to insist that its interest should be represented, as it has in the past and with this Bill.
  Amendment No. 77B would require sums received from the payment of dividends from transferee companies, or from disposal of rights or securities in some companies, to be paid into a segregated fund. I assume that the fund to which Members of the Committee refer was the one originally discussed under Amendment No. 16 some while ago. The Government did not support the proposal to establish a segregated fund. Even if that were to be included in the Bill, it would not be appropriate to earmark all such revenues for the NDA. Some parts of BNFL would be outwith the responsibility of the NDA and transferred to a new holding company. It would not necessarily be right that the sums gained from the future disposal of securities in such companies should then all be allocated to the NDA. The normal arrangement for such disposals is to pay the resulting sums into the consolidated fund. I have mentioned the precedents. The Government see no reason to depart from those standard provisions in that area and in those circumstances.
  Amendments Nos. 77C and 77D would require the Secretary of State and Treasury to secure the transferee company's agreement before amending the repayment terms of a loan to the transferee company. I hope that I have understood the intention of what is proposed. The amendments would go against all the precedents in privatisation. The terms of any loan, including the repayment terms on any loan, would be clear at the point at which the transferee company accepted the loan. The ability of the Government to change the repayment terms on the loan would accordingly be clear at the outset, before anyone entered into an agreement. That power is not unlike a bank reserving the right unilaterally to change the interest rate on a mortgage. Once again, the Bill's provisions reflect well established practice in circumstances where the changes were taking place. Everyone from the outset would know what the terms were and would understand that variations in a bank or a mortgage might be events that would occur.
  Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 77E, which would reduce the discretion of the Secretary of State to restrict the sums of money that transferee companies can borrow or raise. Paragraph 7(2) limits the restrictions on the discretion of the Secretary of State to the national interest. For example, it removes the potential for

  GC 73
  arguments that a particular exercise of the discretion of the Secretary of State unfairly prejudices minority shareholders. In short, they must be considerations that the Secretary of State would have in mind. The general rules of good governance would dictate that there are a broader set of concepts that would need to be thought about in the circumstances.
  I should point out to the Grand Committee that the power to restrict borrowing set out in paragraph 7 of Schedule 7 applies only where the articles of association of a transferee company confer such a power on the Secretary of State. That can be conferred only when a transferee company is wholly publicly owned.
  Should a private investor subsequently acquire a shareholding in such a company, paragraph 7(2) would prevent such a shareholder from complaining about the exercise of such a power by the Secretary of State in the national interest. For example, it would prevent the shareholder complaining that the Government's conduct was unfairly prejudicial to his shareholding. When entering into the contract he would have known from the outset that those were the terms upon which he was trading.
  We feel that this is not unreasonable. I apologise for the length, but there are some very important detailed issues at stake. This is exercisable only in the national interest. As I said, a private shareholder would be aware of the Secretary of State's powers in this regard at the point of acquiring the shareholding. There would be no surprises; it would be transparent throughout.
  The provisions on transferee companies are necessarily complicated and, as I said in an earlier response, need to cater for a fairly wide range of eventualities. In drafting them, the Government have drawn on well established precedents and, in particular, the Atomic Energy Authority Act 1995, which I mentioned a few moments ago, and which applied to the UKAEA. That approach has proved successful in the past. It is well tried and well tested. Accordingly, I hope that Members of the Committee will consider further before pressing the amendments.
  Baroness Byford: I am very grateful to the Minister for giving me such a full explanation. As I said, two or three of them are probing amendments. I was going to apologise but I do not believe that one should apologise for tabling probing amendments. This is a fairly technical area. I should like to read Hansard tomorrow and go through the explanation carefully to see whether I have any more queries. Certainly I believe that this highlights how difficult it is when new legislation is introduced and impinges on older, prior legislation. Some of us have not been dealing with the matter as it has gone through. Therefore, I am very grateful to the Minister for his full explanation. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 77 B not moved.]
  Schedule 6 agreed to.
  Clause 37 [Transfers with the consent of the transferor]:
  On Question, Whether Clause 37 shall stand part of the Bill?
  Baroness Byford: I rise to oppose the Question whether Clause 37 shall stand part of the Bill. Again, I seek to probe the Government on this matter but, from what the Minister has just said, the issue may well already be covered. However, perhaps I may still go through it.
  The use of the word "transfer" implies something that is not a straight sale; in other words, it is taken on. Can the Minister tell us what kind of company would be transferred in those circumstances? Would there be any form of compensation, if that were necessary, and in what circumstances? Would the employees be covered by the TUPE regulations and, if not, what other safeguards would there be for either staff or the owner? The Explanatory Notes refer to,
  "reasons of public safety or in order to minimise costs to the taxpayer".
  I am not quite satisfied that the owner of a private company would be sufficiently impressed by the second reason to hand his company over without some form of recompense. Can the Minister give me some more information on the type of circumstances which he believes may operate in order for an individual to hand over his company?
  4 p.m.
  Lord Triesman: Whether or not the Motion is of a probing nature, I am sure that it is useful and I appreciate it. It is always better be as clear as we possibly can.
  Let me start with one straightforward answer and then again try to deal with the big issues thematically, as I described it earlier. The transfer of undertakings issue has been mentioned in discussion of several amendments. My noble friends and I have been able to give assurances that the transfer of undertakings regulations would apply to employees of the relevant companies—indeed, with greater security than has been previously expressed in a legislative sense. I start with that because it is an important issue that deserves highlighting, and shall now set it on one side for the moment.
  Clause 37 is a really important part of the Bill. It provides for the transfer by scheme of shares in, or the property rights and liabilities of, a nuclear company in the private sector to either a publicly owned company or the NDA. In practice, that is to enable the Government to transfer responsibility for securing the clean up of private sector sites to the NDA.
  There are two important points to note from the outset. First, such transfers may only be made where the private sector company concerned has consented. It must have consented. That provision cannot be used against the interests of private companies. Secondly, that does not necessarily entail the NDA taking on financial responsibility for the decommissioning or cleaning up of

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  private sector installations, sites or facilities. It in no sense undermines the principle, which has been expressed on a few occasions in Committee, that the polluter pays.
  The provision is designed to deal with circumstances where, for reasons of public safety or in order to minimise costs to the taxpayer, it is decided that the Government should take responsibility for arranging clean up. The NDA, as the public sector expert, would be the obvious body to arrange for any such responsibilities to be discharged.
  As we have discussed on other amendments, that does not mean that the NDA will assume financial responsibility for private sector clean up. Decisions on who pays for clean up will depend on individual circumstances; the ability of the private sector operator to meet the costs; and the need to meet the regulatory requirements for the site, installation or facility in respect of safety, security and protection of the environment.
  A transfer scheme offers an efficient way of handling such an eventuality. It would avoid the potentially cumbersome private law procedures that would otherwise need to be followed to transfer the necessary property rights and liabilities. That could prove very useful in the nuclear field, where strong regulatory imperatives demand prompt action. It would help achieve the end goal much more quickly.
  In case I misled anyone on the issue of TUPE at the beginning—although I tried to express the provision clearly—I have been asked to clarify that pension protection is not part of TUPE, nor would those employees fall under the protection of Schedule 8, as they are not part of the NDA workforce. However, in other respects, I think I am right to say that TUPE regulations apply to the appropriate people.
  I hope that by describing the general purpose of the clause I have made it clear. Employees cannot be disadvantaged—I hope that I have explained why— and, given the protection afforded to private companies, they cannot be disadvantaged. I hope that I have made clear that they are in no sense even possibly in the firing line.
  Baroness Byford: I am grateful to the Minister for another full response. Having read the Bill carefully, anxieties were raised about the position of existing employees of the company. I again thank the Minister for having clarified that transfer would occur only when consent had been given; and that the will of the company would be not be overridden in any way.
  I shall read what he said, but I do not think that there is a problem, so I shall not oppose the Motion.
  Clause 37 agreed to.
  Clauses 38 and 39 agreed to.
  Clause 40 [Undertakings given by the Secretary of State]:
  On Question, Whether Clause 40 shall stand part of the Bill?
  Baroness Byford: It is conceivable that a publicly owned company might be due some form of grant and might also be in receipt of services from the NDA. My
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  concern is whether the cancelling of the grant is correct. Clause 21 states quite clearly that the NDA is responsible for all the costs of clean up provided that the publicly owned company was wholly owned on 4 July 2002 and still is.
  Will the Minister explain why a grant that is not due to the NDA should be offset against NDA work? In what way would the financial responsibilities of the NDA make it unnecessary for the sums involved to be paid?
  Lord Whitty: I hope that I can clarify the matter. Although Clause 40 is drafted in general terms its purpose is to allow the Secretary of State to extinguish what is called the "Magnox Undertaking". When the Magnox stations were transferred to BNFL in 1998 at the time of privatisation of the more modern nuclear power stations—the AGRs and Sizewell—which are now operated by British Energy, the Government undertook to support the decommissioning liabilities of the stations that had accrued before the transfer. The "Magnox Undertaking" was an agreed schedule of payments to BNFL running for over 100 years from 2008.
  Now that we are setting up the NDA to secure and finance decommissioning and clean up of sites, including the Magnox sites, it is appropriate that the NDA rather than BNFL becomes the beneficiary of the Government's commitment to finance Magnox decommissioning and clean up. That would be undertaken by the NDA. It would not be appropriate, therefore, for BNFL to receive that money as it is no longer liable. The obligation to pay BNFL is unnecessary under subsection (l)(b) of Clause 40.
  In determining the starting balance for the NDFA, we shall credit to the account the value of existing provisions for decommissioning and clean up. As well as BNFL's own provisions in the shape of the nuclear liabilities investment portfolio—the subject of Clause 39— it will also include the discounted value of the so-called "Magnox Undertaking", which at the end of the previous financial year stood at £4.8 billion. The balance of that account will obviously attract interest as provided for in Clause 28(4)(d) so that the NDFA will, over time, record the full value of the undertaking. However, it would be due to NDA rather than BNFL.
  If we were to delete Clause 40, we would not only not fund the role of the NDA under the new structure, but we would also in a slightly bizarre fashion leave the Government with a huge commitment to fund BNFL for liabilities that it no longer carries.
  Baroness Noakes: I completely understand the Magnox Undertaking and not paying it out when it is no longer necessary because of the restructuring. Why, then, is the clause drafted in this oblique way as though it is trying to catch all kinds of things? Why cannot it be drafted to deal directly with the Magnox undertaking? I should have thought that reference

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  could be made to that specific arrangement. Then we would not have this ambiguity regarding what else Clause 40 applies to.
  Lord Whitty: It is true that the Magnox undertaking is the only significant undertaking that may be caught by the clause, but others may arise in the course of time. The situation described in subsection (l)(b), where,
  "the financial responsibilities of the NDA",
  make the previous undertaking unnecessary, would cover other such contingencies were they to arise. However, that is very heavily qualified by the requirement that the original undertaking is no longer necessary. That clearly covers the Magnox situation, but it could over time cover other situations in which commitments had been made to fund other bodies, responsibility for which was being taken over by the NDA.
  Baroness Byford: I am grateful to my noble friend for her question to the Minister, but I am slightly intrigued by his reply. It suggests that Henry VIII powers will be sitting there, which might be used in future in some undefined way. Could I persuade him, although not now, to consider my noble friend's comments and see if it would be possible to address the issue more directly? In that way, the Government might cover what they mean to cover, rather than leaving us with an open-ended goal, into which the Secretary of State, whoever he might be, could put in whatever he wished.
  Lord Whitty: I do not believe that the provision is open-ended or in that sense Henry VIII, because it is so heavily qualified by the "no longer necessary" provision. As to defining it, it is conceivable that the various undertakings made to British Energy might fall under the clause at some point, were those responsibilities to be transferred elsewhere when decommissioning came into play. There are other possibilities even than can be envisaged at present that might come under the clause. However, it is a heavy hurdle, which would mean that the clause is not open-ended or a Henry VIII clause in the normal use of the term.
  Baroness Noakes: I do not want to detain the Committee too long, but can the Minister explain the point about British Energy, as I cannot see what particular arrangements involving that company would come within Clause 40?
  Lord Whitty: There may be possibilities of underwriting or providing finances to British Energy in the course of decommissioning, which might in the longer term be taken over by the NDA.
  Baroness Noakes: Does the Minister refer to arrangements that have not yet been made with British Energy, which the Government might choose to make in future, which may come within the terms of the clause? My noble friend's point is right in that the provision has a Henry VIII quality about it, although
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  it is not strictly what we would call a Henry VIII clause. It is dealing with things that are completely in the future, rather than things in the here and now. Whereas we can all understand what the Magnox undertaking is about, it is the rest that we do not understand.
  Baroness Byford: In addition to my noble friend's comments, I ask who decides what is necessary and what is not necessary? I urge the Minister to consider the matter. I can do no more at this stage, although it is a matter that we shall probably return to. I hope that the Government will think about it, although I am not making any objections with regard to the Magnox undertaking, which is obviously there. The Minister mentioned Sizewell B, which happens to have very close connections to my heart, as he knows. I am not happy with the provision as it stands, but perhaps we shall return to it on Report.
  Clause 40 agreed to.
  Clause 41 agreed to.
  Schedule 7 [Finances and accounts of transferee companies]:
  [Amendments Nos. 77C to 77E not moved.]
  Schedule 7 agreed to.
  Clause 42 agreed to.
  Schedule 8 [Pensions]:
  4.15 p.m.
  Baroness Byford Baroness Byford moved Amendment No. 77F:
  Page 162, line 21, leave out sub-paragraph (2).
  The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 77G. Amendment No. 77F is a probing amendment. Having read through the paragraph, I am not sure what is proposed. The wording does not seem to make sense. It may be that a word or phrase is missing from it—I am not sure. The paragraph says:
  "For the purposes of this Schedule the transfer scheme or transfer arrangements by means of which a person's employment is transferred is or are for NDA purposes"—
  and then it goes straight to "if his employment". Is there something missing after "purposes"? I have tabled the amendment because I could not follow the logic of the paragraph. Am I reading into the provision something which does not exist? I may simply have misunderstood.
  Amendment No. 77G is self-evident. The section allows the NDA to modify a pension scheme, but not if it deprives a scheme member to any extent of the rights that have accrued to him before the modification takes effect.
  The modification will be made to the scheme. I am not here talking about an individual's pension transfer value as it is commonly calculated when an employee moves to another scheme. Will the Minister give examples of what "to any extent" means? Would it be

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  1 per cent, 5 per cent or 10 per cent of the accrued value? Would it perhaps involve rounding entitlements down to the nearest full year? I beg to move.
  Lord Gray of Contin: I support the amendments. One of the key factors for the NDA in reaching its objectives must lie in the ability to retain key employees in the decommissioning and clean-up market. Pensions are of vital importance to any employee in any industry.
  The White Paper, Managing the Nuclear Legacy—A Strategy for Action, stated clearly:
  "The Government recognises the key role that current employees play in the safe operation of nuclear sites and is concerned to avoid unnecessary changes to terms and conditions".
  Membership of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority scheme is open only to employees of named organisations. The White Paper stated that provision will therefore be made in the Bill for membership to be extended to staff who transfer to a different employer but who remain within the public sector.
  The Explanatory Notes clearly state on page 34:
  "to ensure that in the event of employees being transferred for NDA purposes to the private sector, or within the private sector, and, as a consequence, having to leave their current pension scheme, they have the option of joining a new scheme which (taken as a whole) confers benefits which are no less favourable than those offered by their original pension scheme".
  The Bill does not appear to deliver on that. Will the Minister give us a counter argument to it? We will have an opportunity of discussing the matter later, but perhaps he could consider that point now.
  Lord Ezra: I, too, want to refer to the phrase "to any extent". I find it difficult to understand what it means and it appears to have a threatening tone. That is hardly in the interests of retaining staff who are properly and adequately motivated. I would have thought it highly desirable to leave out that unfortunate phrase.
  Lord Whitty: Part of the problem is that we need to clarify which workers are dealt with by the schedule and which are not. Broadly speaking, there are three sets of workers. There are those who are currently employed in public-sector undertakings who would be transferred into the NDA and possibly beyond into contractors for the NDA. For them, the protection in the Bill is very substantial: it is more substantial than any other statutory-based protection we have given in any form of privatisation or change of employment. That would transfer into the private sector.
  There are other employees of BNFL who would not be transferred into the NDA—what has been called "new BNFL"—who are not dealt with by the Bill and are therefore not included. However, the normal protections would be provided by the Government in the event of any problem arising on that front.
  Then there are those who are new starters to the NDA workforce, probably employed by a private contractor. The provision and understanding there is that the contractor would be required by the terms of the contract to provide one of three options which would be a nuclear clean-up industry-wide scheme—
  GC 80
  that is, the NDA would establish that scheme; or there would be a contribution from the industry—that is, contractors within the industry; or the contractor individually would provide a pension. The position of those joining new would be somewhat different from the entirely protected position of those who are already public-sector workers in the nuclear industry who will be transferred to or via the NDA.
  I am not sure I followed the noble Baroness's view that Amendment No. 77F did not make sense. It may be a case of breathing in the sense of a slightly complex sentence, but it is made clear that we are talking about existing employees who immediately after the transfer takes effect are either in employment with the NDA or a subsidiary of it or is employed by a contractor on an NDA site. This is part of the definition of protection for existing NDA workers. If we deleted the clause, the statutory-based protection would be expanded to new employees. We are providing a level of statutory protection that has not been provided elsewhere—it goes beyond the usual government practice to follow government guidance on such issues—and it would make it statutory.
  However, the same argument for protecting existing workers in BNFL and UKAEA does not apply beyond the NDA's workforce. To accept the amendment proposed would create an unhelpful precedent. Subsection (2) provides protection for the NDA but limits the NDA staff—or those who will become NDA staff—but would also limit that protection to those who are already employed by the NDA. By removing the restriction to apply protection only to the NDA workforce, there would be completely open-ended obligations on the public sector that would undoubtedly carry a financial burden whose costs and effect on the pensions scheme would be difficult to estimate. That is why, in terms of new employees coming on site through the contractor, we have a separate provision under the contractual arrangements.
  Amendment No. 77G deals with the "to any extent" issue and I am not sure why we would delete the phrase. Clearly, it is intended to give effect to the commitment that there would be no less favourable treatment. Precisely how that worked out would be an actuarial issue on which we would have standards set by the actuaries. The intention is that we ensure that the NDA would not be entitled to alter the entitlements, through accrued pensions or any other former pension entitlement, of the currently existing staff of BNFL or UKAEA. Therefore, there would be no question of the NDA interfering with the accrued rights of any such pension scheme.
  That would deal with the intention behind Amendment No. 78, which attempts to add reference to,
  "services rendered, contributions paid".

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  I am not sure what that adds—
  Baroness Byford: I did not know that we had got to Amendment No. 78.
  Lord Whitty: My understanding is that Amendment No. 78 is included in the group.
  Baroness Byford: I apologise: it is.
  Lord Whitty: In particular, the inclusion of the phrase,
  "or any other things done",
  creating a pensions entitlement, is pretty open-ended and not one which would be found in any other pensions law provisions. I do not see the point of it here and I would resist that amendment in particular.
  On Amendment No. 80A, I am also unclear about what it provides—
  Baroness Byford: It was my mistake. I spoke to the other amendments but not to Amendment No. 80A. Would it help the Committee if I speak quickly to it, and then the noble Lord, Lord Lea, can speak to his Amendment No. 78? We got out of sequence, for which I apologise.
  Lord Whitty: Yes.
  Baroness Byford: Amendment No. 80A is tabled to ascertain the full meaning of "participate". Would it, for example, mean that an employee could no longer opt for a frozen pension instead of transferring the accrued assets to his new employer's scheme? If that were to be the case, it would not be long before the employees would be leaving in droves before the employers lost their publicly controlled status. Can the Minister explain exactly what is meant by the meaning of "participate" and exactly what the ban would imply for the employees?
  Lord Lea of Crondall: It might be convenient if I reserve my remarks to the next two groupings.
  Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Can the Minister tell me three things? He referred to sub-paragraph (2) on page 162 as being comprehensible. I am bound to say that I agree with my noble friend; it is a pretty odd sentence. I suggest that a couple of commas might be in order. I shall not try to punctuate here, but in line 22 a comma would assist. That is all that is required.
  As regards paragraph 2(2) on page 163, my noble friend suggested that the phrase "to any extent" might be omitted. I believe that if employees are not to lose any of their advantages, which is what the Minister said, that phrase could be omitted and he should think most seriously about that. "To any extent" would fill me with trepidation if I were an employee, so I do not think we will let him get away with that.
  Thirdly, the Minister mentioned three groups of employees, but the second group was not even included in the Bill. Can he tell us why?
  4.30 p.m.
  Lord Whitty: On the last question of the noble Baroness, the Committee will be aware that there are substantial discussions going on about the future generally of BNFL. We are concerned only about those employees of BNFL who are transferred into the NDA. The Bill does not deal with the general future of BNFL. Therefore, issues that relate to it are not relevant to the Bill as it stands.
  On the question of the words "to any extent", I shall take further advice. However, the indications are that when we talk about preserving rights to the entitlements of pensioners against any less favourable treatment, clearly if there were an alteration, one would have to balance one part of the scheme against another. That is why the phrase is in the Bill, but it is not intended to dilute the commitment in any way and no less favourable treatment will be given to those employees.
  As for Amendment No. 80A, the Bill does not allow the NDA to interfere in any way with accrued benefits. So if people want to freeze their accrued benefits, there is no bar on that. Employees can freeze their accrued benefits and become deferred pensioners, as they can at present. The paragraph as it stands allows them to do that. The change suggested by the noble Baroness would not make that any more or less of a protection. The words "participate in" include participation in their current entitlements, which includes the ability to freeze their pensions.
  Baroness Byford: I am grateful for that explanation although, following the very good contribution made by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, I got slightly worried when the Minister said it was a matter of balance but that whatever was going to happen, the commitment would not get diluted. I need to read very carefully his response.
  I am seriously not very happy on Amendment No. 77G. I cannot understand why the Bill needs to contain the three words "to any extent". If the Government are serious about their commitment to make sure that the pension rights will not be diluted in any way, I do not think the words are necessary. I urge the Minister to consider the issue again between now and Report. Members of the Committee have raised some very good points today. I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Gray and Lady Carnegy and the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, for having raised the issue.
  On Amendment No. 80A, if the Minister is saying that the words "participate in" mean "contribute to", that, in my humble view—unless it is the normal legal language used for Bills—I should have thought would be more sensible and readily understood by the general public. Perhaps the Minister will come back to me on that issue.
  I thank the Minister for explaining who is and who is not being considered by this particular section. Perhaps I may repeat what I understood him to say— that the second group of people who would not be included in the question of pensions were BNFL employees who are not going to be involved and

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  transferred across to the NDA. Otherwise, everyone else who is will be included. Both Ministers are nodding their heads so I assume that I am right.
  I highlight the comments made by my noble friend Lord Gray. I think all noble Lords are concerned that the pension arrangements are seen to be as good—if not better—than those currently being enjoyed by people involved in the industry. Pension provision for the future will be a huge problem, as we all know. The one section of benefits that has been attacked—I have to say—by the Government has been pensions. So, the Minister will not be very surprised that with regard to pension rights we are trying to ensure that people already working within the industry will not be losers when they get transferred to the NDA. I am grateful to my noble friend for reinforcing what I was trying to convey.
  At this stage I urge the Government to think about the words "to any extent", before we return on Report. In the same way, I should be grateful if the Minister could drop me a line about why they think the words "participate in" rather than "contribute in" add to the Bill. If that is the normal legal language used in every Bill, obviously I shall quite happily accept it. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendments Nos. 77G to 78 not moved.]
  Lord Lea of Crondall Lord Lea of Crondall moved Amendment No. 79:
  Page 163, line 20, at end insert—
  "(a)"
  The noble Lord said: We now take two groups of amendments together, which stand in my name and that of other noble Lords. They are Amendments Nos. 79, 80, 85, 86 and 87 and Amendments Nos. 81, 82, 83 and 84. As I shall be speaking to them all, it may be of convenience to the Committee if the Minister responds to them all, unless Members of the Committee have difficulty with that.
  By the time a Bill is published and reaches this stage there have been extensive discussions with the industry, including trade unions, on the practical issues which we are largely discussing today. We are not discussing these matters in an ivory tower. So in our briefing we have accounts of the outcome of such discussions between the industry and different groupings, including trades unions and Ministers. We have submissions that some of these understandings are not fully reflected in the Bill. I shall speak to three aspects of Schedule 8 that are dealt with in the various amendments.
  I hardly need add that Schedule 8 is the most detailed exposition of the pension arrangements. We have already had some discussions on Clause 8. But there are three core objectives in the minds of workers' representatives and in these amendments, all of which are intended to ensure that the understandings between the unions and Ministers are actually implemented.
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  First, there is the need for a statutory right to consultation with regard to any actions taken under the Act in respect of pension schemes. Amendment No. 80 to page 163, line 21, and Amendments Nos. 85, 86 and 87 to page 170 would bring this objective into effect. While they clearly do not provide any guarantees in respect of the outcomes of consultation, they do at least provide an assurance to staff and their representatives that the due processes will be followed and that there will always be a route through which concerns can be properly considered.
  The second core objective is to try to secure broad comparability of pension schemes. Dangling potential improvements elsewhere in the employment package should not be allowed to compensate for worse pension provision. Amendment No. 82 to page 168, line 23, and Amendment No. 84 to page 169, line 35, seek to ensure true comparability of pensions. They are—and this is a very important point which will emerge more and more in such discussions— consistent both with the Government's fair deal policy and the Local Government Act 2003.
  The third core objective is to try to secure protection for transfer of accrued rights. The wording of Amendment No. 78 to page 163, line 18, is the same as that which appears in this context in the Superannuation Act 1972. Amendment No. 81 to page 168, line 19, and Amendment No. 83 to page 169, line 32, also seek to ensure transfer terms. The wording used is the same as that in the fair deal policy. So the amendment seeks to do something which clearly is already government policy, at least in respect of employees who were originally public sector staff.
  I know the Minister has differentiated three groups of workers. We may have to return to that point in discussions at a later stage. We are also aware that we are talking about a matter that is outside the scope of TUPE. We have an evolving formula to deal with pensions in these other sets of principles, such as the fair deal policy. It is hard to underestimate the importance, as my noble friend will be aware, to the staff concerned of ensuring that there is some understanding about how these matters are being dealt with. I beg to move.
  Lord Whitty: The objectives that my noble friend seeks are already government policy. They are not, by and large reflected in statute, although there are some statutory responsibilities on consultation. For the most part they are the procedures which the Government enter into concerning pension schemes when there is a change of employment for people who are public sector workers.
  There is already a significant protection built into statute in relation to current employees who are transferred into the private sector principally to the onsite contractors via the NDA. To put other aspects of both the consultation and the determination of pension entitlements in statute would go significantly further than has ever been the case. It may have been pressed for but it has never been agreed between the public sector and the unions representing the members involved.

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  In this particular case where we are dealing with the NDA, we are developing an overall stakeholder engagement programme, which will obviously include a significant part of the consultation with employees. That degree of consultation will be laid down in that document, as it generally is in agreements and procedures in all these cases. I do not therefore think that we need to lay down more in terms of the consultation than is already provided for by existing statute and by the normal approach of government to these matters.
  The main concern on what was the second group of amendments relates to where we have to transfer into the new licensees—the new contractors on site—and the protection of the terms of those schemes. There is already some significant protection, and we have written that in. The amendments would have the unhelpful effect of defining very clearly how the comparability was to be measured rather than dealing with no less favourable terms. That would mean that there would be a constraint on alternative—but equally or more favourable to the employees—types of schemes being introduced. The policy is clearly to protect the real value of existing employees' pensions. There are well established standards and precedents for doing that which do not need particular statutory reference in order for them to be observed.
  On the consultation issue, clearly the NDA would wish to consult with representatives of its own employees and so on, but the terminology could open the door to disputes over who represents potential employees or the employees of the new contractors coming on site. So the NDA Has an obligation, which is reflected in its normal procedure and in the framework document, to consult with the representatives of its employees. But the terminology about employees who could be affected by the modification obviously goes wider and could involve other organisations beyond those which would normally negotiate that employer's pensions. That seems to be unhelpful both to the recognised unions and to the employer.
  I recognise what my noble friend seeks to do, but it is either unnecessary or could be restrictive in providing an equivalent pensions package. It is not a question of trading pensions against other benefits; we are talking about equivalent, at least favourable, pension packages. There are different ways to ensure that that happens and different actuarial assessments, which may be constrained if we took literally the amendment proposed by my noble friend.
  4.45 p.m.
  Baroness Miller of Hendon: My noble friend Lady Byford in moving Amendment No. 77F and speaking to Amendments Nos. 77G and 80A, my noble friend Lord Gray of Contin, and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Lea, in moving this present group of amendments, have made some very important points. One advantage of just sitting and listening while having the experts in one's team moving various amendment, is that it is possible to reflect on them and reach a conclusion.
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  I believe that my noble friend Lord Gray of Contin referred to the White Paper, Managing the Nuclear Legacy—A Strategy for Action. It states:
  "The Government recognises the key role that current employees play in the safe operation of nuclear sites and is concerned to avoid unnecessary changes to terms and conditions."
  The White Paper clearly gives an undertaking to protect the pension rights of all BNFL employees. That most definitely is not reflected in the Bill. My noble friend asked the question: is it divided? The Minister said, "Well, no, certain ones who are not transferred to the NDA will not be covered by these". The White Paper clearly says they will. It is not reflected in the Bill and it certainly has not been reflected in what I have listened to this afternoon.
  Under those circumstances I should like to ask the Minister: when was this changed? Who was told? How has this happened?
  Lord Maclennan of Rogart: The broad arguments have been well put by earlier contributors to the debate on this and on the previous group of amendments. I should like to add something simply by way of a footnote. Having heard the Minister's response, it does not seem that the Government may have reflected sufficiently on the degree of disquiet and unhappiness that there has been on sites hitherto. Contractorisation has been extended and has led to considerable differences in the terms and conditions of service between the work force engaged on the same job. In many cases that is because it is employed by, on the one hand, contractors and on the other by the authority, or perhaps also BNFL.
  I had understood that what was sought was some greater reassurance, particularly in respect to pension rights, that those who were working on a project on a new agency's site would not be afflicted with such problems of comparability or differences in the rights to which they were entitled.
  I acknowledge that this may mark out new ground and that there is no precedent for some of the proposals contained in these amendments. But I think that it would be fair to acknowledge that the reason for that is that existing precedents are not entirely happy. There is a case for reconsidering whether there should be comparability and transferability, regardless of whether it is a public sector owner or a private contractor doing the work at any given point in the process.
  From the Minister's first answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, I infer that the amendment regarding consultation is not necessary because it would be provided for in another way. That seems to be an acceptance of the principle. However, if, as he said—and I noted it—it merely reflected government policy, one must say that government policy has been known to change. It has been known to change whether or not there has been a change of government. I think that it is reasonable to ask the Minister to look again at these matters as in my mind these issues reflect what has been a continuing source of discontent on the

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  sites in question, and one which it would be open to us to address and perhaps to remove in some manner comparable to that proposed.
  Baroness Byford: In following the noble Lord, perhaps I can bring the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, back to the difficulty he had to face in the amalgamation of Defra and the old DETR. They were brought together to form a new organisation. There were different rates of pay, although I do not know about the pensions. It has been difficult. In setting up an new organisation, which is what we are doing today, perhaps it would be more sensible to reflect on the many contributions that have been made in this and in earlier debates we have had. I would urge the Minister to look at the issue again and perhaps to return to the matter again.
  My noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon was quite right in her remarks. I have exactly the same briefing as her. I am sorry that it had not crossed my path when speaking to my previous amendments or I would have raised the matter then. It is not as though we are starting with something that is already established, it is a new whole business that is being created. It seems a little unreasonable not to reflect on comments made by various noble Lords about their apprehensions on what is set down in the Bill. I support the amendment in that way.
  Lord Whitty: I am not sure that anything has been said in this last round that is not already provided for. There have obviously been substantial discussions with the representatives of the current employees. It is the current employees who have—fairly uniquely—a statutory protection when these matters are normally dealt with by negotiated agreements and general good practice.
  The employees referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan—and I accept that there were anxieties on this front—are protected through their transfer to the NDA or any transfer from the NDA to the private sector and the contractors. Their pension entitlement, whether it is ongoing pension benefit or accrued rights, is protected—statutorily in this case. Because of the anxiety that has been expressed, we were persuaded that it was sensible to put the matter in statute.
  Members of the Committee have queried whether the provision is in statute. It is absolutely there, and it is there in a way which few employees of any private or public sector have previously received. So, I really think that some of the anxieties are exaggerated.
  I turn to the question on who the provision covers, because both the White Paper and the Bill concern managing the nuclear legacy and are not about the totality of BNFL's activity. Clearly, the general approach to BNFL's staff, were there to be a change in their employment, is that the general policy of the Government would continue to apply. The Bill deals with transfer into the NDA. The White Paper and the Bill deal with the people we need to maintain and develop in order to clean up and decommission the nuclear sites. They are all protected through this process of changing employers. That is a very
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  important aspect of the matter and one that clearly has not been fully appreciated by Members of the Committee. The provision is an important and probably unique protection.
  I turn to the accrued rights, how they are transferred and the day-to-day definition proposed by my noble friend Lord Lea in that group of amendments. When we transfer into a different scheme—the fair deal policy says this—it would require a bulk transfer agreement to be reached which the government actuaries would certify as fair and reasonable, protecting the interests and giving no less favourable treatment to the employees concerned.
  If one tried to enshrine that in legislation, it would be difficult because that assessment can be different in terms of what within the pension scheme is broadly no less favourable. In some cases it would be a straight forward read-across and in others parts of the change would be actuarially assessed as being equivalent or better than equivalent. But to lay that down in legislation would be difficult and unprecedented. In my judgment, we are providing substantial protection in statute for the group of employees to whose anxieties the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, refers.
  Lord Lea of Crondall: It has been an interesting run around this particular racetrack.
  Baroness Miller of Hendon: Perhaps I may intervene only because I suspect the noble Lord might withdraw his amendment in one moment. The Minister made it clear that the point I raised was not in the Bill. I raised it because answers were given to questions asked by other noble Lords which contradict something that is in the White Paper preceding the Bill.
  In the circumstances, I can understand why the Minister feels that he does not need to give me an answer to my question—according to him, what I asked has nothing to do with the Bill. However, I hope that as I have asked the question, as there is a change from what is in the White Paper, and as a result of other questions asked, the Minister will be kind enough to write to me and place a copy in the Library. All noble Lords will then be able to see what the current position now is and when it changed from what is written in the White Paper.
  Lord Whitty: I am sorry, there has been no change from what was written in the White Paper. The White Paper dealt with a nuclear legacy and referred to the people who would be required for that. They are dealt with by the transfer to the NDA in this Bill. There are other people employed by BNFL to whom general government policy will continue to protect them and ensure that they have no less favourable treatment should there be a restructuring or transfer out of BNFL. So not only is there no change in what the White Paper says, which deals with exactly the group of workers we are talking about here, but the general policy would apply to BNFL staff as it would to other

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  public sector staff. There is nothing before us in the Bill in that respect, but there has been no change either from the White Paper or general government policy.
  Lord Lea of Crondall: I thank all noble Lords who have contributed in the past half an hour or so. One larger issue which appears is that industrial relations principles in this field are half in and half out of statute law. The Minister is right to draw attention to that, but it does not get us out of the difficulty. During the past 20 years, the trend has been to lead to such a situation. I agree with him that, whereas in the old days we had an umbrella agreement either in the Civil Service or the nationalised industries, and so on, and there were not all the jigsaw puzzle problems on which we now seem to spend a great deal of time, there is now a degree of fragmentation and a perception of, as the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, said, some anxiety.
  Having said that, it is very helpful to have on the record how the Government are currently interpreting these matters. I am not clear how far the Minister's response has met the points raised, but I am sure that we shall all, to use the time-honoured words, wish to study Hansard carefully, as will people who are not Members of this House. Then, I am sure that we shall all decide how best to pursue the matter on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendments Nos. 80 to 87 not moved.]
  Schedule 8 agreed to.
  Clause 43 agreed to.
  Schedule 9 [Taxation provisions relating to nuclear transfer schemes]:
  5 p.m.
  Baroness Noakes Baroness Noakes moved Amendment No. 87A:
  Page 172, line 2, leave out paragraph 3.
  The noble Baroness said: We now return to the subject of taxation, which we discussed briefly on our previous day in Grand Committee. When we discussed the amendments that I tabled in relation to the earlier tax position, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, whom I am sorry to see I frightened off, said:
  "We believe that, because of the complexity of the situation, we do not have Clause 27 or, indeed, Clause 43 … right".—[Official Report, 22/1/04; col. GC 412.]
  I assume that on that occasion he was talking about Schedule 9 because Clause 43 merely refers to Schedule 9.
  The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, managed to convey that these tax clauses were under consideration but he also managed to convey absolutely no information about what precisely was under consideration. Therefore, I feel obliged to take a little of the Committee's time to explain Amendments Nos. 87A and 87B in the hope that I may be able to elicit a little more information on what precisely is being considered in relation to the tax clauses. I hope that I shall at least receive confirmation that these issues are still being considered with the intention of producing something on Report.
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  Amendment No. 87A seeks to delete paragraph 3 of Schedule 9 on a probing basis. Paragraph 3 states that where there is a transfer of an asset under a Clause 36 transfer scheme, that will result in no gain or loss on disposal for capital gains purposes. Clause 36 allows a transfer of the assets of BNFL and UKAEA and some other companies to the NDA or a subsidiary.
  The activities of those transferors will basically be taxable, but paragraph 3 allows the transferors to avoid paying any tax on capital gains when the transfers to the NDA take place. However, as likely as not, the transferor will obtain value for those transfers if only because the liabilities will also be transferred under the transfer scheme.
  Therefore, my first question to the Minister is a simple one. Why should the transferor not pay tax on any gains and what is the public policy consideration behind that? My second question is rather more technical. Is the effect of paragraph 3 that the transferor also avoids a charge to taxable capital gains which have been rolled over or held over into the chargeable assets which are then the subject of a transfer scheme?
  The Minister may be aware that the rollover relief and held-over relief provisions in the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 allow gains to be rolled over into chargeable assets from different companies in a group and from different trades in the same company or group. Therefore, if a transferor has rolled over or held over gains from other trades or other group companies, perhaps to the full extent of its capital gains-based cost, it would allow the transferor to avoid paying tax on those capital gains for all time.
  Perhaps I may illustrate that. Let us suppose that several years ago a transferor spent £10 million on an asset and that, at that time, it had made a chargeable gain of, say, £8 million on an asset in another part of the group or another trade. It would roll over that gain into the £10 million acquisition cost of the new asset. Normally, when that asset is eventually sold, tax is paid on the gain when one finally realises the proceeds and does not reinvest them—with held-over relief, that comes in after 10 years.
  As I understand it, if paragraph 3 means that the asset is disposed of so that there is no gain and no loss, the transferor in this case would escape paying capital gains on the £8 million rolled over capital gains for all time. That seems to me to offer great scope for tax planning, to use a neutral term, in the run-up to a transfer scheme. I wonder whether that is what the Government intended when introducing this provision.
  I turn briefly to Amendment No. 87B, which, again, is a probing amendment. Paragraph 4, which the amendment deletes on a probing basis, states that where the NDA has acquired a capital gains asset under the nuclear transfer scheme and then disposes of it, it will receive no deduction for acquisition or enhancement costs. Thus, in effect, leaving aside incidental costs of disposal, it will pay tax on the full amount of the disposal proceeds. Therefore, whether or not the NDA has given value for the transfer, it will be treated as having given no

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  value on the transfer and, whether or not the asset is used in an exempt activity, which would otherwise not be subject to tax. all the proceeds will come within the bracket of charge to tax. I am struggling with the logic of that.
  The Explanatory Notes talk about avoiding record keeping, but I have never ever seen that cited as a rational basis for taxation principles. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be able to be a little more persuasive on the need for, and intent behind, this paragraph. I beg to move.
  Lord Triesman: Noble Lords can see why my noble friend Lord Davies is today accompanying Her Majesty the Queen. I do not believe that this was the only reason; he wanted to do that in any case because it was going to be enjoyable. However, when he gets back, I shall tell him that he will not have enjoyed himself half so much as I am about to do.
  On our previous day in Grand Committee, I observed, as, indeed, did my noble friend Lord Davies, the considerable expertise of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in this area. Like my noble friend Lord Davies, I cannot match that. I simply hope that one day she will take me up on building algorithms in economics, where I suspect I should have more of a sporting chance.
  However, I shall try to deal with some of the key issues and respond to one of the points on what we might expect on Report. As the noble Baroness said, the amendments are concerned with the provisions of the Bill that deal with the tax consequences of the nuclear transfer schemes. The broad aim of Clause 43 and Schedule 9 is to ensure that tax charges or tax reliefs are not triggered by the transfer. That is the aim. In other words, we want the transfers under the nuclear transfer schemes, as the noble Baroness was good enough to acknowledge, to be tax neutral so that both the transferee and the recipient are not penalised and do not receive a windfall gain in tax terms.
  I hope that most of the technical detail in the clause achieves that objective, although I want to go on to what we might need to do about it. I emphasise that there is no intention of allowing a tax windfall. We shall return to these detailed provisions on Report, and I hope that we shall be able to answer the question more fully then.
  The detail of Schedule 9 is necessarily complex—I am again saying that things are necessarily complex; I hope that noble Lords will forgive me—because it attempts to cater for the flexibility of the various transfer scheme arrangements. As my noble friend Lord Davies said last week, we are looking to table amendments to the tax clauses on Report. I was asked for that assurance and we intend that that should happen. We want to deal with those matters and work is ongoing on the detail of the various contractual arrangements that will exist between the NDA and other parties.
  I believe that I can deal with some specific points relating to these two amendments. Amendment No. 87A would remove the provision that allows for assets to be
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  transferred at a value for tax purposes that would give no gain and no loss. The provision ensures that the transferor will not face a tax charge on any chargeable gains as a result of the transfer. I believe we all agree about that.
  This is a standard tax provision in Bills that are concerned with public reorganisation and transfers. We are simply legislating to provide for the public sector the equivalent facility that exists under the normal tax rules for groups of companies. Under the normal tax rules, intra-group transfers are deemed to take place at a value that gives no gain and no loss. That is what we are attempting to replicate here.
  Perhaps I may emphasise that point. For this purpose—I believe this was one of the questions that the noble Baroness asked; if I am wrong, she will of course tell me—a group must have as its head a company and not the Crown. Therefore, BNFL and its subsidiaries form a group but BNFL and the NDA do not, even though they are both effectively owned by the Crown. None the less, in this sense, they are not a group. Therefore, we need tax provisions in Schedule 9 to allow for tax-neutral transfers because of those group arrangements. I hope that, in general terms, the aim of trying to ensure that we do in the public sector what would be regarded as good tax practice in the private sector is acceptable to the Committee.
  Amendment No. 87B would remove a pragmatic computational provision concerning the calculation of any tax on chargeable gains for the NDA. It may well not have been the custom to think of doing things more simply and in ways which do not require over-elaboration in dealing with tax matters. This may be a desirable first, but I believe that that is the specific aim.
  The computational provision is included to reduce the disproportionate effort and cost that the NDA would otherwise incur. Without this provision, it would be necessary to maintain registers and associated base costs of assets through potentially numerous nuclear transfer schemes—one after another and over lengthy periods of time as the events that we are trying to cover in this legislation will cover very lengthy periods.
  Accordingly, we cannot accept the amendment and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw it. But, in doing so, I understand that she is probing to ensure that, when we return on Report, these issues will be thoroughly addressed. I hope that I have at least been able to outline the principles that will guide the way in which we address the issues, even if, at present, we are still in the process of doing so.
  5.15 p.m.
  Baroness Noakes: I thank the Minister for that reply. I shall read carefully what he has said. I understand that the intended legislation may be trying to replicate the group transfers that exist in the private sector, although I am not sure that that has always been followed in the past. But here we are rolling into tax-exempt areas and are therefore not providing for continuity of tax history. Indeed, paragraph 4, which has just been explained in some pragmatic sense, goes against that because, the tax

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  history having been passed over, it is then completely ignored. Paragraph 4 says, "We'll ignore all this past tax history which is being passed on because it is all too complicated".
  That is an interesting proposition. I believe that many private sector companies will wish to use it against the Inland Revenue in taking no hostages when it comes to record keeping. I remind noble Lords that companies have been keeping very detailed and extensive records over generations in relation to their chargeable assets, and that is required in every other part of enterprise and commercial activity. There are no excuses there, and I am still struggling a little to see why the computational difficulty forces one into this particular method here.
  I shall not labour the point now because I look forward to seeing what amendments are tabled on Report. However, I remind the Minister that I made a point about hold-over relief and rollover relief. I did so in a genuine effort to find out whether the Government intended that to happen because I would find it surprising in the circumstances that we have here. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 87B not moved.]
  Schedule 9 agreed to.
  Clause 44 [Supplementary powers of the Secretary of State, the NDA and the UKAEA]:
  Baroness Byford Baroness Byford moved Amendment No. 87C:
  Page 39, line 1, leave out "or the UKAEA" and insert ", the UKAEA or the NDA"
  The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 87C, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 87D. Under subsection (2) of this clause, the NDA and UKAEA each have the power to enter into agreements concerning nuclear transfer schemes. Under subsection (3), the NDA and UKAEA have the power to facilitate a transfer using any method they consider appropriate.
  Why is it not, apparently, necessary for the NDA to have the consent of the Treasury and the Secretary of State to enter into an agreement in the exercise of those powers when such consents are required by UKAEA? That is a very simple question. I beg to move.
  Lord Triesman: As ever, it is the questions that are described as "simple" that hide the greatest complexity. I hope to be able to explain how this element of the Bill works. The amendments would make the NDA subject to the same consent procedures as UKAEA—that has been explained to us—before it could exercise the powers provided for it in Clause 44 to enter into agreements relating to nuclear transfer schemes. The Government's intention is to allow agreements which accept or impose contractual obligations, as outlined in Clause 44(1) and (2), to be entered into in relation to transfer schemes under the Bill. It is modelled very directly on the transfer scheme provisions in the Atomic Energy Authority Act 1995,
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  which apply to the UKAEA. Those provide for Treasury and Secretary of State consent to be necessary before the exercise of the power.
  In applying the 1995 Act provisions in the context of the NDA, we concluded that it was not necessary or appropriate to impose the powers of the Treasury and the Secretary of State's control on the NDA itself. The NDA's job is different in this respect. It is to provide strategic management and direction to the UK's clean-up programme. The making of transfer schemes by the Secretary of State and agreements associated with such schemes will be a central part of the NDA's execution of that responsibility in that this process could, inter alia, set up the framework for the NDA to promote effective competition for contracts to manage the new site licensees established by the transfer scheme.
  The NDA's strategy and annual plan are subject to ministerial oversight and control through the approval process set out in Schedules 2 and 3. We consider that to be a sufficient and appropriate level of control and we do not want to burden the NDA with an additional requirement to secure consent in this regard. On that basis, the Government decided that it was right to omit the NDA from the provisions of subsections (5) and (6) of Clause 44.
  For the UKAEA, the Bill makes no change to the consents required. The making of agreements with respect to transfer schemes will not be a central function of the UKAEA as it would be for the NDA. While it would need the power to conclude agreements to give effect to such transfers by way of imposing or accepting contractual obligations, it is appropriate that this is subject to ministerial control in the way that we have proposed. The UKAEA should not enter into such agreements other than at the behest of the NDA and with the agreement of the Ministers, and that is where the agreement facility at that level comes in.
  Baroness Byford: I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. However, I do not know that I am fully happy with it. From what I understand of his response, he is saying that it is not necessary to have the same restraints between the two organisations. Obviously I understand that they have different jobs and different roles. The Minister suggested that it is enough of a check in itself for the strategy and annual plan to have to come back to Parliament. Therefore, was it ever considered whether the UKAEA should be given exactly the same freedom? Why continue to restrict the UKAEA in the way that it was restricted previously? Was that considered or was such a restriction simply carried over willy-nilly because it was not thought that it was necessary to make a change? It seems slightly strange that two different rules apply to the two businesses. I do not know whether the Minister wishes to comment on that.
  Lord Triesman: I shall try to comment on it. The noble Baroness has just made the point that there is a degree of supervision in relation to Parliament. Perhaps I may add that it is also the case that the NDA's strategy and annual plan will be subject to ministerial oversight. Therefore, there will be direct ministerial oversight and control through the approval processes.

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  I was trying to indicate that the differences are, in major part, due to the relationship between the NDA and UKAEA. It is because of the nature of the relationship that they are subject to different provisions. As I said, the UKAEA should not enter into an agreement, other than at the behest of the NDA and with the agreement of Ministers. Therefore, at the first level in relation to the NDA, where the agreement of Ministers is required, the UKAEA must act on the basis of that having been done. In short, as one goes through the layers, one finds all the controls and consents that the noble Baroness has asked about. I believe that it would probably be something of a burden to insert a further level of control into such a process.
  Baroness Byford: The Minister is reasonably new to this brief and he handles it extremely well. I am not criticising him on that. However, I am saying that, whereas one matter is under ministerial control, the one that we are discussing is laid down in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is shaking his head. But we try to ensure, whenever we can, that if there is a need for provisions, they are written in the Bill. I would rather see them on the face of the Bill than in regulations or subject to ministerial approval. That is the difference that lies between us.
  That is the point I am explaining; not that he is inadequately coping with his responses to us; he is coping extremely well. I would like to look at his response and at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 87D not moved.]
  Clause 44 agreed to.
  Clause 45 [Duty to assist the Secretary of State]:
  Lord Jenkin of Roding Lord Jenkin of Roding moved Amendment No. 88:
  Page 39, line 40, at end insert—
  "(2A) In any case in which subsection (2) would require the transferor to disclose to the Secretary of State information the disclosure of which (otherwise than under any enactment) would constitute a breach of confidence actionable by any person—

  (a) the Secretary of State shall consider, having regard to any representations made by the transferor during the period referred to in subsection (2), whether the provision of the information is strictly necessary for the purposes of, or in connection with, the making of the scheme and shall require the provision of the information only if it is strictly necessary; and

  (b) the transferor shall have no duty to disclose the information to the Secretary of State unless or until the Secretary of State has agreed to be bound by confidentiality obligations in substantially the same terms as the confidentiality obligations which are binding on the transferor in relation to the information."

  The noble Lord said: I had some doubt as to whether the enforced absence of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, was due to the fact that he had escaped having to deal with tax or whether he has escaped having to deal with another amendment concerned with disclosure. It is no secret that the noble Lord felt himself in some difficulty in both the previous debates we had on the subject of disclosure. We wish him well with Her Majesty the Queen, but I
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  also wish the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, well in seeing whether he will be able better to satisfy the Committee about the disclosure of confidential commercial information.
  Clause 45 is a short but direct clause. Where the Secretary of State proposes to make a nuclear transfer scheme,
  "The transferor shall have a duty … to provide the Secretary of State … with all such information and other assistance as the Secretary of State may require for the purposes of, or in connection with, the making of the scheme".
  It then goes on to state that that is enforceable by civil proceedings. I shall not try to deal with Section 45 of the Court of Session Act because I know nothing about it.
  Nothing could be more direct than that. The Secretary of State can require the transferor to provide all such information and other assistance as he may require. When we have previously discussed the disclosure of commercial information, we have done so in the context of, first, the publication of reports and, secondly, the publication of the NDA's plans and strategy. In those cases, we were talking about the possibility of disclosing information to the public.
  One can understand that, in those circumstances, on the first occasion references were made to the Freedom of Information Act. However, for the life of me, I am still unable to understand why that Act, which will come into effect and be enforceable at the time when this legislation takes effect, has to have different rules. I gained the impression that the Minister's colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, was not sure either.
  On the second occasion, he changed his tack and said that it all had to be dealt with by agreement under the contracts which were to be signed between the NDA and the contractors. We are not dealing with that one here. We are dealing with a very much more direct and, if I may say so, a more dangerous question of disclosure of sensitive commercial information.
  This matter concerns the NDA requiring a transfer. The Secretary of State will be invited to make such a transfer from a company which is currently undertaking a decommissioning business to a competitor company which has been more successful. One has to postulate a particular case. Supposing BNFL on one of its sites incurs the displeasure of the NDA for whatever reason, and the NDA has decided that perhaps it would be better to bring in a foreign competitor; and suppose it goes out to tender and a foreign competitor wins. The Secretary of State will make the transfer order and, under Clause 45, will require BNFL to transfer—again I quote the words—
  "all such information and other assistance as the Secretary of State may require".
  Suppose the transferee is one of the companies that has been advising the NDA or the Secretary of State. The company whose name I have heard mentioned most frequently in that context is the very well known and greatly respected American consulting contractor,

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  Bechtel, which has done enormously valuable work all over the world. If, at the end of the initial two years, it is decided to transfer a BNFL site to Bechtel, Clause 45, as it stands, can require the Secretary of State to demand of BNFL that it hands over all the information referred to in the section to a company that has hitherto been seen as its competitor.
  That cannot possibly be right. The purpose of Amendment No. 88 is to provide the Minister with a way out of that dilemma in a way that he may find difficult not to accept. By adding a new subsection (2A) to apply wherever there is a requirement on the transferor to disclose information,
  "the disclosure of which (otherwise than under any enactment)"—
  we have seen that phrase before—
  "would constitute a breach of confidence actionable by any person—
  (a) the Secretary of State shall consider, having regard to any representations … whether the provision of the information is strictly necessary for the purposes of … the scheme and shall require the provision of the information only if it is strictly necessary".
  That imposes one test. There cannot be a general fishing expedition; the process has to be regarded as strictly necessary. The amendment then states:
  "(b) the transferor shall have no duty to disclose the information to the Secretary of State unless or until the Secretary of State has agreed to be bound by confidentiality obligations insubstantially the same terms as… are binding on the transferor".
  It is a two-stage process: the first is to impose on the Secretary of State an obligation to decide, in the light of the representations made to him, whether or not it is necessary; and, secondly, if he considers it is necessary, he has to require that the information does not have to be disclosed unless the Secretary of State is prepared to subject himself to the same obligations of confidentiality as those that are binding on the transferor.
  By those who find themselves in such a position, the matter is considered as an enormously important protection for what can be extremely valuable confidential commercial invitations. The Secretary of State must not take powers simply to require a firm that may have built up extremely useful and valuable information over many years to hand it over to a successor in the circumstances of Clause 45.
  I do not want to go over the matter again as we covered it when dealing with earlier amendments, but this amendment relates to a different context and a different procedure is set out. There is, first, the requirement of necessity and, secondly, the requirement of similar obligations being undertaken.
  I believe that the Government would be wise to recognise the sensitivity of this matter and to accept that something, whether on these lines—I never claim to draft amendments correctly—or something similar, would be a valuable reassurance to those who are to participate, as the Minister has said, over a very long period of time, during the course of which there may be many such transfers. I beg to move.
  5.30 p.m.
  Baroness Miller of Hendon: As noble Lords will know, my noble friend has tabled a series of amendments to protect confidentiality. With this amendment we are trying to protect commercial confidentiality of companies that have dealings with the NDA.
  In the ordinary world of commerce, when two companies have dealings with each other, it is possible for one party to protect its industrial secrets by contract. However, when dealing with the NDA, the parties do not negotiate on equal terms. In some cases, the NDA has power to demand information or co-operation and, in all cases, the NDA is the only source of business and may deal with competitors at the same time. The party having to disclose confidential information to the NDA is entitled to have that confidentiality respected. That is the very least that should be done. I hope that the Minister will treat this serious problem carefully.
  Lord Whitty: Although noble Lords suggest that all issues of confidentiality are the same, they can be very different. The example quoted of decommissioning and cleaning up a nuclear site deals with the transfer of responsibility. Different issues arise from those that we discussed earlier.
  The amendment has two parts. First, it requires that the Secretary of State shall give consideration to whether confidential information is strictly necessary. The second part, to which I have some objection, enables a transferor to refuse to disclose information unless the Secretary of State agrees to be bound by the confidentiality obligations that exist for the transferor.
  On the first part, it is difficult to object to a provision stating that the Secretary of State must determine that something is necessary. If it were not necessary, it would be unreasonable. The Secretary of State must operate with care and diligence and must act reasonably within the powers. Certainly in areas of very sensitive information and commercial confidentiality, the general requirements on actions taken by the Secretary of State apply very acutely and do not, therefore, need to be repeated in statute. I agree that one would accept the objective of ensuring that the Secretary of State takes seriously whether it is necessary or not that such information be disclosed to her.
  However, the amendment goes further and gives rights to a transferor to deny the Secretary of State information, which, if disclosed,
  "would constitute a breach of confidence actionable by any person".
  Clearly, on disclosure in the first instance to the Secretary of State, the Government act sensitively in relation to commercial activity. So, as a general principle, the Secretary of State is under an obligation not to use or disclose information to anyone pursuant to statutory powers and only to use information for proper statutory purposes.
  Of course, it is for Ministers to judge how to determine that it is necessary to disclose confidential information in such circumstances. When dealing with the operation of a decommissioning site, certain information would be available. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, mentioned in his example, BNFL, in

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  beginning to clean up and decommission the site, would have taken certain measures which would have involved the use of certain materials and labour, and certain costs would have been incurred. Certain contractual arrangements would have been entered into with subcontractors and others on what would be a potentially seriously dangerous site.
  It is reasonable that the Secretary of State and the NDA should have information about what has been done and the commitments that have been made in order for a transfer to take place. Otherwise, one would be bringing in a new contractor, presumably following a fairly rigorous competitive process, to a potentially highly dangerous site where he would act without full information. In relation, particularly, to the management and decommissioning of nuclear sites, there is an argument that the Secretary of State should have the ability to demand the information and pass it on to whoever takes over the responsibility. It is a power that would have to be exercised reasonably and judiciously, but it is one that statute should not deny to the Secretary of State.
  In addition, the provision about making transfers follows fairly well established precedents in that privatisation legislation in general has used transfer schemes to give effect to new organisational structures. That has involved disclosure of some information that had previously been with a previous operator, which, in most cases, was the public sector operator. The Electricity Act 1989, for example, contains a similar provision. The basic principle is that all clean-up-related intellectual property and other similar information is ultimately the NDA's and the NDA should be able to allow the contractors to use its intellectual property rights for clean-up purposes without cost to them.
  The treatment and ownership of any such property that is generated while working on an NDA contract should be specified in the contract, but it is transferable. The aim is to ensure that we do not get into a situation where for safety and procedural reasons the new contractor is deprived of vital information on what has already happened on the site or where the taxpayers are faced with a double cost in the event of a transfer.
  The other issue relating to the example raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is that there was a slightly erroneous assessment of the situation with BNFL. If we talk about BNFL as a site licensee, site licensees will remain in place throughout the process and their position will be competed for but not on a competitive basis. Therefore, it is right that the person taking over the transferred responsibility should be properly informed and should be able to operate. I do not believe that the situation will be quite as the noble Lord suggested. Nevertheless, it is right that ultimately the responsibility should be on the Secretary of State, involving judgments and reasonable behaviour. The basic principle is that the Secretary of State should have the option not only to require the information to be disclosed but also to be able to pass on that information to the transferee company.
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  I accept that there will be anxieties about that and I accept that reassurance needs to be given, but I do not believe that, in effect, a veto being given to the transferor company is the way to achieve such reassurance. After all, the new contractor may well be in the same situation in a few years' time and may have to face the same problems.
  5.45 p.m.
  Lord Dixon-Smith: Perhaps I can explore the point further with the Minister. If the transferring company has embarked on a clean-up process, I completely understand the need of the NDA to know what that company has been doing on the site. That is a sine qua non situation. However, I do not understand whether the transferor would need to disclose the method by which he had undertaken the clean up. That is a slightly different point.
  Let us suppose that he had devised a novel method of deactivating a reactor that no one had ever used before, and it worked. That would be a piece of intellectual property of very real value. I understand the need for the NDA to know what has been done, but I do not yet understand the need for the transferring company to disclose how it has done what it has done. That is a slightly different point. There may be a necessity—I do not know. Someone may develop something which is a piece of intellectual property that has real commercial worth. I believe that that point needs to be explored further.
  Lord Whitty: There are two issues here. To start with, in most cases when talking about intellectual property, the NDA will own that intellectual property relating to clean-up technology and not the contract or. The contractor will be operating on behalf of the NDA. However, in the example indicated by the noble Lord, the contractor may have a novel way of dealing with the material that he would not wish to disclose to a competitor or someone taking over responsibility for the site. When dealing with nuclear material, it is important to know what method has been employed and what are the possible effects.
  One can envisage circumstances where, if a different method were applied to complete the task or the next task, serious mistakes could be made if one did not know what had been done with the material at an earlier stage. One could argue that one does not have to know every last detail of the process, but one would need to have a good idea of how fissile material had been dealt with under the previous contract. That would require the method to be available and disclosable, should that be necessary. I am not saying that in all circumstances it should be disclosed, but it would be wrong for statute to prohibit the ability of the Secretary of State to require such disclosure.
  Lord Dixon-Smith: The joy of a Grand Committee is that one has some flexibility to speak again. I believe that we are in danger of discussing two separate points. If someone is under contract to the NDA, I entirely understand that the rights to a particular piece of intellectual technology would belong with the NDA. I

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  take that out of the equation. However, we are discussing someone who originally had no arrangements at all with the NDA. Let us suppose that such a person devises a piece of intellectual property and that it is absolutely necessary for the NDA to know exactly what has been done. He may have devised a different and novel method of dealing with the material, which is an improvement. The issue concerns the commercial worth of the new technology that was devised before the NDA was involved. How far is it necessary to disclose that at the point at which one is beginning negotiations with the NDA or when the NDA is beginning negotiations with the company? That bothers me.
  Lord Jenkin of Roding: I am grateful to my noble friends who have spoken in support of the amendment. It seems that we are leaving out of account one very crucial aspect, which is that anything that a site licensee does on the site, or that he requires his contractors to do, will have to be approved by the regulator—the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. It maintains the closest watch over what is done.
  I hark back to when my noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon and I were in Harwell. We saw what the UKAEA had done with its sites, which, for the most part, were far smaller than a large power station. We asked, "Do you have the regulators, as it were, peering over your shoulder?" The answer was, "Absolutely— all the time. They are resident on the site. They have to approve everything we do". So it is not as though safety is in jeopardy.
  If a regulator says, "You cannot make the transfer unless you transfer this information", clearly that is a matter that the Secretary of State would have to take into account. It may well be that processes are in place or that discoveries have been made, approved by the NII, concerning the best way to handle material, whatever it might be. It may say, "That is one way of doing it; there may be other ways". In those circumstances, it would be unduly harsh to require the information to be passed on automatically.
  Looking further ahead, the Minister is quite right to say that there will be a whole series of other contractors—but not BNFL—who have been successful and who, in their turn, will need to pass on the information. This kind of clause might be more acceptable to the Minister and to the department if there were a clear requirement—this provision may require some redrafting on Report—that safety should at all times be one of the paramount considerations in deciding whether or not something is necessary. If that were the case, one would have to accept that it was necessary. We shall need to think about this matter but, to my mind, it is clear beyond peradventure that something needs to be done.
  I am grateful to the Minister because he recognised that there is a problem here. I believe that we can deal with this matter when we return to it on Report. Meanwhile, I think that both parties should brood on the matter. Perhaps there should be more negotiations. All I can say to the noble Lord is that it has been impressed on me that this is a matter of great
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  importance to those who will be participating in the processes set up under the Bill. I do not believe we should just let the matter go; we shall need to return to it and try to satisfy ourselves that there is a workable way of protecting valuable commercial property while ensuring the integrity and safety of the systems used.
  Lord Tombs: Perhaps I can help a little on the subject. It is not of course a new problem. It applies throughout manufacturing industry. The problem lies with paragraph (b), which is rather extreme. It includes the possibility of not transferring the information. The absolving of that duty goes a long way. In order to operate the system, the new company will need access to previous practice and technology. I believe that the solution lies in restricting the access for that purpose and not for commercial exploitation. Perhaps that route might be explored.
  Lord Jenkin of Roding: That is a valuable suggestion. If the Minister wants to respond to it, I shall not withdraw the amendment at this point. As I well know—I have referred to it on previous occasions—the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, has vast experience in this field. We should listen carefully to his suggestions.
  Lord Whitty: I am happy to take away some of the points made in the debate. In responding to the noble Lord's amendment, I particularly resisted mentioning the clause to which the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, referred, which effectively concerns the right of the transferor, without serious qualification, to deny the information. There are issues here and we may well return to them.
  The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, used the term "automatically allow disclosure". The provision does not automatically allow disclosure; it is only when it is necessary for the Secretary of State to require it that the information goes to her. Another hurdle then arises when the Secretary of State must decide whether it is necessary for that information to be passed on to the incoming company. Those are both substantial hurdles which already exist either by the terminology of the Bill or by the general requirement on the Secretary of State to act reasonably in these circumstances.
  There are issues here and I suspect that we shall return to them. We may have a discussion in the interim to which the noble Lords, Lord Jenkin and Lord Tombs, may wish to contribute.
  Lord Jenkin of Roding: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Perhaps the key words in it were "in effect". I remain to be satisfied that they would be there without being stated on the Bill. We have all recognised that a problem exists that needs to be dealt with. No doubt we shall wish to consult widely and I have no doubt that those outside will wish to continue their consultations in order to provide what must ultimately be an acceptable solution. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Clause 45 agreed to.
  Clauses 46 and 47 agreed to.
  Schedule 10 [The Civil Nuclear Police Authority]:
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 89:
  Page 181, line 38, at end insert "at least four of whom shall be representatives of the civil nuclear industry"
  The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 89, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 90 and 91. We now reach that part of the Bill which creates a new nuclear civil police authority to oversee a reconstituted nuclear constabulary which will be directly accountable to the Secretary of State. It might be helpful if I briefly set out our approach to this part of the Bill. It may save time in avoiding later repetition and it gives the new team time to settle in their place to advise the Minister.
  As my noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon made clear at Second Reading, at col. 840, we believe that it would be more appropriate for the Secretary of State concerned to be the Home Secretary who is accountable to Parliament for the vast majority of police forces in the UK. But that aside, we support the thrust of the provisions for setting up the new police authority.
  My amendment has been tabled to ask the Government to put on the record the reason behind their drafting of these proposals. It is not tabled with any hostile intent—at least, not at this stage—because, as ever, there may be hidden dangers in the Government's proposals that come to light during our debate. I hope not, but we shall wait and see.
  I would in particular like to thank the DTI officials who took time to meet me about 10 days ago to discuss this part of the Bill. That was most helpful. I would also like at this early stage to put on record my appreciation of the dedication and expertise of those who have worked heretofore as special constables and UKAEA constabulary and who as the consequence of the Bill will now become constables with the appropriate powers. It is important that the provisions of the Bill enable their important work to continue seamlessly and safely into the new structures imposed by the Bill.
  It is true to say that little, if any, attention has been paid to this part of the Bill by outside organisations, so I felt it important to give the Government the opportunity to state clearly on the record why the non-departmental public body structure they have adopted is considered to be the most effective and, indeed, why they have chosen this particular model of NDPB.
  I had a look at the reports that followed the Quinquennial Review and it is apparent that other models had been considered previously and subsequently rejected. For example, the first report on the review on the DTI website refers to one option being the use of local Home Office and Scottish Executive forces.
  Among other options, the second report introduces the idea of an independent force along the lines of that in the Bill. Clause 41 and Schedule 10 between them establish the Civil Nuclear Police Authority as a corporate body, and Schedule 10 sets out the rules
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  governing the appointment of the members of the authority and the good governance provisions for its operation.
  Paragraph 172 of the Explanatory Notes states:
  "The Government intends that the rules on appointment set out by the Office of the Commissioner of Public Appointments",
  and that,
  "the membership will consist of independent members and representatives of the civil nuclear industry".
  The amendments have been tabled specifically to ask the Government to put on record their view of how the balance of representation on the authority should be achieved. The Explanatory Notes acknowledge that the Bill does not prescribe the detailed composition of the authority. However, it is more usual for a Bill to give at least some indication of the proportion of the total number of members who are to come from a particular area of expertise.
  I call to mind the Courts Act 2003, which described the minimum number of members with particular expertise to become members of the Courts Board created by that Act. Do the Government intend to ensure that the majority of members of the authority will come from the civil nuclear industry itself? What kind of skills will the independent members be expected to bring to the authority? How will the Secretary of State make those decisions in the first place? Importantly, how will Scottish interests be covered? Will the Secretary of State consult Scottish Ministers? What will be the procedure?
  Throughout the Explanatory Notes and Home Office press releases, there are repeated reassurances that the provisions of this part mirror those for other Home Office police forces. We need to know from the Government just how closely they mirror them: when they copy them exactly and when the provisions deviate from those that cover other Home Office forces.
  The Bill ensures that members can be reappointed over and over again without restriction once their initial term has expired. Does the Minister agree that that can have both useful and limiting consequences for good governance? Of course, one needs and values experience, so it is unwise to fail to reappoint a member or chairman as a matter of course. On the other hand, it can be unwise to reappoint someone for several terms who ceases to have the direct experience of the civil nuclear or security industry that made him the right appointee in the first place.
  Turning briefly to the text of the amendments, Amendment No. 89 would ensure that at least four members of the authority would be representatives of the civil nuclear industry. Amendments Nos. 90 and 91 would ensure that the members of the authority could serve for a maximum of 10 years. What kind of member would the Government expect to serve for more than 10 years? I beg to move.
  6 p.m.
  Lord Bradshaw: In speaking to the amendment, I must declare an interest as a member of the Thames Valley Police Authority who has served for 11 years,

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  which perhaps deals with the final point raised by the noble Baroness. I may be incompetent; I freely recognise that.
  I fully support the proposition that in this specialist police force, we need people with knowledge of the industry, as we do in the case of the British Transport Police, which we dealt with not long ago. The amendment provides that there should be representatives of the industry. However, I doubt whether, if the number appointed is as low as seven, as it may be under the Bill, we should appoint four people from the industry, because that would be more than half and over-representation, not allowing for representatives from Scotland, and so on. I support the proposition that there should be representatives from the industry; but not that they should form a majority.
  On Amendments Nos. 90 and 91, there is no good reason for not appointing a competent person for more than 10 years. From my experience, it takes nearly three years really to understand how an authority works. Such authorities are complicated organisations, because they derive their funding from other sources and have complex budgets. It takes a long time for someone who is not bred in the police world to understand exactly what the force is about and to begin to exercise some sort of control over the chief constable, so far as he is able—for example, over the budget. It takes many years to gain the experience necessary to exercise that control.
  Otherwise, I generally support the idea behind the amendments, but not the majority of membership nor Amendment No. 91, which sets a period of 10 years as the maximum.
  Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Reference was made by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to the Scottish interest. In the operation of the new police authority across the United Kingdom, there is bound to be interaction with local people and services—I do not know the extent to which there will be interaction with local police. It is clear that the authority, which will decide on what the constabulary does, on its conditions of service, and so on, must be sensitive to all parts of the United Kingdom.
  At the least, the Government should provide that the Secretary of State should consult Scottish Ministers before deciding whom to appoint. Perhaps there should be a member who is based in Scotland; I do not know. I should have thought that the Secretary of State should consult Scottish Ministers before appointing the chairman. Those people must be acceptable. It would be interesting to know what my noble friend Lord Gray of Contin, who has experience of how the nuclear industry works in Scotland, thinks about that. To leave Scotland out completely may be a great mistake.
  When we reach Clause 59, there are other questions on the same point; we have tabled an amendment, but I put it to the Minister now in passing.
  Lord Gray of Contin: I support my noble friend's amendments. They are probing amendments; I am sure that she is not adamant about having four members from the industry. That could be flexible. The amendments have been tabled more to find out a little more about the Government's thinking. My noble friend Lady Carnegy mentioned the relationship between local police and the UKAEA police. As far as I am aware—certainly during the years when I represented Ross and Cromarty in the Commons— there were no occasions when there was any difficulty or friction whatever. The forces always worked well together.
  More than 40 years ago, I was chairman of a police committee in local government. That was before Dounreay was the great nuclear power development that it became. Local police committees are sensitive bodies. They are highly aware of their own responsibility. Sometimes one might wonder whether they would work well with a similar body elsewhere. But in answer to the question of my noble friend Lady Carnegy, I have certainly never heard of any difficulty whatever.
  We all want the new police authority to continue where the existing one left off, carry on in much the same way and try to maintain the good relationships that it will inherit all over the country where it operates, so far as I am aware. We all wish the new body well. My noble friend was wise to table the amendment to give us a chance to hear a little more about the Government's thinking on the matter.
  Lord Whitty: First, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Gray, about the work of the constabulary hitherto: it has been exemplary both internally and in its relationships with outside bodies. It is important that the benefits of that inheritance are assumed by the new body. The provision concerns the status and powers of the body; it does not make any significant change in its function or role.
  The Government's objective for the authority was set out in the White Paper, Managing the Nuclear Legacy. The intention is to achieve a balanced membership with an independent chairman, which is new, while retaining the expertise of the site licensees whose sites are covered by the constabulary.
  The Bill provides for a minimum of seven and a maximum of 13 members, all of whom are to be appointed by the Secretary of State. As for Scotland, although the authority will be a UK body and will be the responsibility of UK Ministers, we would expect them to take account of the views of Scottish Ministers in deciding on appointments. However, at the end of the day, there will not be a joint appointment or separate appointment for Scotland or Wales. The rules for appointments will be covered by the public appointments' code of practice.
  The Bill does not stipulate the detailed membership. Let us assume that we have seven members on formation. We then intend to have an independent chair and two other independent members, one of whom will need to be an expert advisor on policing matters. We envisage that the main licensed site

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  operators would appoint the remaining four members. That would run into the objection of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, because they would form a majority, but it more or less mirrors the existing structure of the board, where the industry provides the chair and four of the seven other members. The change concerns the chair.
  The site operators should have significant representation on the authority. They are responsible for the safety and security of their sites and have a critical interest in the constabulary's performance. They also meet 100 per cent of the cost. The relationship between the constabulary and the general public is much more limited—in fact, almost non-existent—because they operate only within and around sites.
  The amendment would stipulate that in all circumstances we should have a minimum of four members appointed from the industry. The reason why I am unhappy with that, albeit that the intention would be to establish a membership such as I described, is that we require flexibility here.
  Without wanting to impugn the motives or expectations of the site operators, one can envisage circumstances in which having the site operators in a majority or significant position of influence over the board could go wrong. Although there are other safeguards built into the Bill, one is to be able to vary the structure of and number of appointees to the board, which could dilute the site operators' influence. I do not believe that that facility will be necessary, because we are discussing responsible organisations, but statute should not prohibit it being available to the Secretary of State, should it prove necessary or desirable. The amendment would constrain the ability of the Secretary of State to vary the membership in certain respects.
  As for the number of appointments, I am not sure whether the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, was designed to convince us all that we did or did not need a prohibition on anyone serving more than 10 years. I suppose I should consult the Thames Valley Police on that.
  The noble Lord is right: expertise and continuity are important. There are safeguards in the code. As I said, we will observe the code. Any appointment beyond 10 years would require the agreement of the commissioner—it would be referred to her and she would have to agree that in those exceptional circumstances, she would allow an extension beyond the 10-year limit. Normally, that would be subject to full and open competition. In other words, the person could reapply for the job beyond 10 years but would not automatically be reappointed.
  Likewise, on the possibility of being reappointed more than once, a third term in office is recognised as rare, but in exceptional circumstances that could apply to members as well as to the chair. We would need to take account of those exceptional circumstances.
  So I regret that I am not prepared to let the detailed amendments tabled by the noble Baroness on to the statute book. That would reduce flexibility and be
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  more stringent than the code currently provides. As for the industry's representation on the board, again we need to retain a degree of flexibility.
  6.15 p.m.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Carnegy of Lour and Lord Gray of Contin for their support, and also for the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. The noble Lord was absolutely right to say that I am not wedded to the drafting of the amendments. They were intended as a peg on which to hang some questions. However, my objective, the principle behind them, is serious. I was trying to obtain the beginning of a picture of what this new animal, this new police authority, would be.
  I was also seeking the assurance described by my noble friend Lord Gray: that there will be a seamless transfer; that the new authority will be able not only to continue the work but maintain the good relationships that have been established. When one looks at the bare bones of the provisions in the Bill, it is difficult to see the thinking behind that structure. We have begun to put some flesh on the bones in the Bill.
  As ever, the Minister puts forth the argument of governments down the centuries: that one wants flexibility in any Bill. As ever, we in the Opposition say, "Flexible? How far? Is it so far that we break the back of the organisation we are trying to create?". The Government have helpfully started to give us a picture of how that flexibility should be for the benefit of the authority and its operation. We will need to test that further.
  I was interested in the Minister's comments about the make-up of the board—especially the membership of the operators themselves. I had chosen the number four specifically to go over the 50 per cent mark to spur the kind of response made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. As the Minister said, the operation will be funded by the operators. That is rather different from a normal police authority, so they would expect to have a greater part to play than would be the case in other police authorities.
  We had interesting responses from the Minister-nothing to which I initially object, but I will want to pursue further how Scotland will be consulted. I noticed that he said that Ministers would take account of the views of Scottish Ministers but that appointments would naturally be made by the Secretary of State herself. We will need to tease that out as we examine the clauses. In his contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, seemed to assume that Scotland would be represented. Not in the Bill, it is not; nor is Wales. We must consider more closely what kind of representation is to be provided and whether it is likely to be effective. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendments Nos. 90 and 91 not moved.]
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 92:
  Page 184, line 3, leave out "appear to him to" and insert "he has reason to believe"
  The noble Baroness said: I am of course aware that earlier the Committee debated Schedule 8 and amendments to it concerning UKAEA pensions, but my amendments cover slightly different territory.
  Part 3 of Schedule 10 empowers the police authority to employ people and set out their employment and pensions conditions. The Explanatory Notes tell us that the Government's,
  "intention is that employees of the Police Authority will be eligible for membership of the UKAEA pension scheme, but there is also power for the Authority, with the Secretary of State's consent, to set up a new pension scheme for its employees".
  Paragraph 7 deals with the UKAEA pensions for employees of the authority, and stipulates that before giving a direction under the paragraph, the Secretary of State must consult the UKAEA, the police authority, the Treasury and,
  "such persons as appear to him to represent the employees likely to be affected by the direction".
  My amendment is simple. It questions the Secretary of State's right to choose the consultees by the subjective test of those that "appear to him" to represent employees. Why have not the Government used the objective test in my amendment: those who he "has reason to believe" represent the interests of employees? Which organisations do the Government have in mind at present to be consulted under the provision? I beg to move.
  Lord Bradshaw: In his reply, will the Minister tell us whether the pension scheme is to be fully funded, unlike those that we administer outside which are funded from the police authority's budget? The employees make a contribution but there is no employers' contribution, which is leading to a catastrophic future for police pension funds. I should like some sort of guarantee that the nuclear industry will make a contribution to the pension equal to that of employees, so that it is funded, not like that of the Fire Service and police nationally, which is not.
  I assume that,
  "such persons as he has reason to believe represent the employees",
  will actually be people from the federation of the UKAEA police force.
  Lord Triesman: Let me deal with the issues in the order in which they arose. First, I understand why words such as, "appears to him", rather than, "has reason to believe", may be thought to imply a relatively subjective test, but that is the standard phrase that is used in legislation and a test is applied to it: that is, whether the method used by the Secretary of State is reasonable. The Secretary must act reasonably in the application of that test.
  I am not 100 per cent certain that I have understood the full purpose of the amendments, but I would like to try and explore that, if I may. Paragraph 7 of Schedule 10 makes provision for the future pension
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  arrangements of the members of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and other employees of the police authority.
  Baroness Byford: If I may help the Minister, I think he said that he would refer to "amendments" in the plural. My understanding is that we are debating the amendment on its own. I made that mistake earlier; it is easily done. We are discussing only Amendment No. 92.
  Lord Triesman: "Contributions" was my plural word, I think.
  Baroness Byford: I shall read Hansard.
  Lord Triesman: I shall make sure that Hansard reports me as I assert. I was trying to deal with the fact that there are two contributions.
  As I said, Paragraph 7 makes provision for future pension arrangements for members of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and other employees of the police authority.
  The White Paper, Managing the Nuclear Legacy, made clear that the Government's intention was that staff terms and conditions should be fully protected on transfer of the UKAEA Constabulary to the new statutory police authority, precisely in accordance with the TUPE regulations. It also gave assurances that existing staff would retain their membership of the UKAEA pension scheme and that present and future employees of the police authority would continue to be eligible for the UKAEA combined pension scheme. That remains the case. I am happy to confirm that commitment, which stands.
  I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness that staff terms and conditions will be fully protected during the change. For the first time, there will be a statutory obligation on the police authority to implement any relevant Police Act regulations that address conditions of service for other police officers, unless differences for the constabulary are justified. The Bill will also make statutory provision for a police federation to provide representation for members of the constabulary on matters of welfare and efficiency. Those arrangements mirror those for other statutory police forces.
  I know that the Police Federation for the UKAEA has been involved in discussions on these provisions of the Bill and would be involved in future. It is an independent part of the Police Federation as a whole. Therefore, there are links across policing as a whole and there is some chance of ensuring that, as things move forward for one group of police officers, they may move forward for others. That body will be the appropriate one to consult. I hope that that answers the noble Lord's question. The UKAEA pension scheme is a contributory, publicly funded scheme. That is how it will remain; that is the intention.
  Paragraph 7 also provides for the Secretary of State to issue directions to UKAEA to modify its pension scheme, should that prove necessary. It requires consultation to be undertaken before a direction under

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  the paragraph is given. The intention is to take account of the views of all those affected before issuing such a direction.
  Reading the amendment—this is why I said that I was not 100 per cent clear that I had understood it—it does not substantively change the meaning of the paragraph or the duty of the Secretary of State to consult. As I said at the start, the Secretary of State will have to act reasonably when deciding which persons represent affected employees and therefore need to be consulted. I hope that I have given the most straightforward explanation of who will be consulted: the appropriate body that currently represents that group of employees. The wording is consistent with that used elsewhere in the Bill and it achieves the intended policy objective. On that basis, I hope that I have dealt with the questions raised in the two contributions. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
  Lord Skelmersdale: Before my noble friend responds to that invitation, perhaps the Minister would clarify something for me. The words "appear to him" are in the Bill. Does that mean that, if he gets it wrong, that would be open to judicial review?
  Lord Triesman: As I understand the test applied in judicial review, it is a test of reasonableness in the administration of legislation. If unreasonableness were demonstrable or arguable, I guess that that test would be applied by judicial review in the courts.
  Lord Skelmersdale: Thank you.
  Baroness Miller of Hendon: The Minister mentioned Paragraph 7(2), which states:
  "The Secretary of State may, by direction, require the UKAEA to make such modifications of a UKAEA pension scheme as the Secretary of State considers appropriate in respect of the participation of persons in such a scheme by virtue of this paragraph". Will the Minister explain what sort of things the Secretary of State might think appropriate to modify in a pension scheme in such a way? Would it have anything to do with the amount of money—whether it was fully funded—or the number of people involved? What does that mean, because the power is wide?
  Lord Triesman: Modification of the scheme, should it prove necessary—which, I hope, was how I expressed it—would cover several possibilities. I do not want to be too speculative about that, but I could probably identify one or two possibilities. Perhaps in correspondence I could go into greater detail.
  Legislative changes in pension schemes and how they operate may make it necessary to ensure that a scheme was modified to meet those requirements. These days, there may be changes to ensure that the scheme can fully meet all its commitments. It may need to be modified in that sense. The best way to deal with the matter may be for me to ensure that the examples of ways in which I know some pension schemes have been modified, because it has proved necessary to do so, are precisely what is intended here. That is my understanding.
  6.30 p.m.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I am grateful to the Minister for assisting us and addressing some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, regarding funding of the scheme. I note that the Minister was puzzled about why I tabled the amendment as in his view it adds nothing and places no burden upon the Secretary of State regarding making a decision. The Minister said that the terminology used in the Bill is in general use. It may be used in the Bill but it is not used in other Bills. My experience is of Home Office Bills and social security Bills. In those Bills it is more usual to refer to the Secretary of State having to have a reason to believe something or reasonable grounds for believing.
  I was very grateful indeed to my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale for asking the Minister whether the Government's drafting enabled someone to apply for judicial review. I was reassured when the Minister said yes. However, I still have a difficulty. If one applies for judicial review it may be more difficult to prove one's case if the Secretary of State simply has to say, "It appeared to me" rather than, "I had reasonable grounds for believing and these are the grounds upon which I reached that decision".
  This is what I call a "bread-and-butter amendment", as in discussing Bills one always considers how the Secretary of State reaches a particular decision. I wish to reflect a little further on the matter and I may return to it when I have had a chance properly to consider the Government's responses to other amendments. I shall consider the drafting of Amendment No. 92 in the context of the generality of what the Government are trying to achieve. I shall withdraw the amendment at this stage, as, indeed, one must do in Grand Committee anyway. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 93:
  Page 186, line 4, after "determining" insert "or varying a determination of"
  The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 93, I wish to speak also to Amendment No. 94.
  We now move on to Part 4 that sets out the financial arrangements and responsibilities of the police authority. It sets a borrowing limit and allows the Secretary of State to guarantee loans, make grants and determine the financial duties of the police authority.
  My amendments refer to paragraph 11 which gives the Secretary of State the power to determine the financial duties of the authority. Subparagraph (2) requires the Secretary of State to consult the authority before she determines any financial duties.
  Amendment No. 93 would ensure that she consulted the authority not just when she first determined the financial duties but also when she varied them at a future date. Do the Government expect this requirement for consultation to be covered by the existing drafting of paragraph 11, and, if so, how?
  Amendment No. 94 would require the Secretary of State to take account of the recommendations made to her by the police authority as a result of her consultation

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  with it. Presumably the Government expect the Secretary of State to take account of their recommendations, so why not make it clear on the face of the Bill? I beg to move.
  Lord Bradshaw: It is wise to support what the noble Baroness has just said. I am afraid that a police authority is often called upon to carry out what I call conflicting duties. At present Mr Blunkett's strictures force one to direct one's resources at the priorities of the day, be they burglary, street robbery, drug trafficking or whatever. At the same time the authority can be beratedwe shall discuss inspection later—and called to account for the fact that it is not addressing certain other issues. The Secretary of State can give an authority insufficient resources to carry out the functions that he has placed upon it. That leads to all kinds of dissatisfaction.
  If, as a result of these amendments or some other provision, the police authority were no longer simply the subject of consultation—which I am afraid often consists of being told what to do—and were able to answer back in a more forthright way, that might be an improvement. The examples I have drawn upon apply to any government. I remember when Mr Howard was Home Secretary, he visited the Thames Valley force and told us to lose 200 officers. We have had huge difficulty in replacing those officers and it has taken a long time. Secretaries of State can sometimes be quite unreasonable.
  Lord Skelmersdale: At the risk of infuriating my noble friend, will the Minister say whether the words "determining any financial duties" mean any financial duties at the same time or whether it includes redetermination?
  Lord Triesman: I thought that the noble Baroness would be tempted to reply to that.
  Baroness Aneiay of St Johns: I merely commented sot to voce that that was a question I should have asked.
  Lord Triesman: I shall do my best to answer it. I start by saying to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that I ought not to get drawn into a discussion regarding the decisions that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has taken on policing or rehearse the arguments regarding the record numbers of police now in post and so on, as I fear that I would try everyone's patience. The noble Lord will not be wholly surprised to hear that his analysis of the current burdens on the police and possible conflict in that regard do not correspond with my impression of the situation, but there we are.
  I agree with what I take to be the intention of the noble Baroness's amendment that the police authority should be consulted if there is a proposal to vary a determination of its financial duties under paragraph 11 of Schedule 10. We would, of course, consult the police authority prior to such a variation taking place.
  My understanding is that varying a determination of financial duties by adding to or changing the duties would in effect be a fresh determination of financial
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  duties—I hope that answers the question that was raised—and therefore the Bill already provides for the circumstances that the noble Baroness's amendment is intended to cover.
  While I therefore have no objection in principle to the noble Baroness's amendment for exactly that reason—the provision is in the Bill and is intended to deal with the issue of a fresh determination of financial duties—the current draft already achieves the outcome that she seeks to achieve. On that basis I hope that the amendment can be withdrawn.
  Again I have no objection in principle to Amendment No. 94. A consultation duty would be meaningless if the views of those consulted did not have to be taken into account. Such a process would have no value. It is therefore unnecessary for the Bill to spell this out. I am familiar with the argument that attention is not always paid to views expressed in consultation. Often people who are consulted feel that more strongly than those who read the outcomes of the consultation process. None the less, the fact is that consultation is, and has to be, a serious process in which those who are consulted are able to put forward views to which serious attention is given. The current draft already achieves that outcome. I believe that is precisely what the noble Baroness seeks. On that basis, I hope that she will feel able to withdraw Amendment No. 94.
  It is, of course, always possible to regard any consultation process in a wholly cynical light. However, I do not think that we can write the consequences of cynicism into legislation. Surely we must try to ensure that provisions of this kind are fully and properly exercised.
  Baroness Byford: Before my noble friend responds, I wish to say a few words. While I agree with the Minister's latter sentiments, I wish that it always occurred in practice. I do not think that it does. I hope that we do not make the Minister more cynical the longer he stays in this House. Certainly my experience is that the Government consult on many occasions, but the consultation does not always take into account the recommendations. Someone has to make a decision along the way. If the Minister is sympathetic to my noble friend's argument—I think that is the case—and understands where she is coming from, I urge him to accept the amendment. It is important.
  One of the matters that is doing politics and Parliament a great deal of harm at the moment is the cynicism towards them felt by the general public. The public feel that consultation is held but people's views are not taken into account, or if they are, those views are accorded very low priority. It is important to include a provision such as the one we are discussing on the face of the Bill.
  The Minister may hope that legislation is interpreted appropriately but I believe cynically that sometimes that process percolates down to the lower levels at a rather slower rate than he would wish. I support my noble

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  friend's amendment. I urge the Minister—and perhaps my noble friend if she is not satisfied with the Minister's response—to return to the matter at a later stage.
  Baroness Miller of Hendon: I very much agree with what my noble friend Lady Byford said. I have never looked up the word "consult" in a dictionary. However, I shall do so after the debate this evening. I shall check to see whether the definition of the word "consult" includes the phrase, "and must take into account". However, I do not think that it does. It is all very well to say that "consult" means you will take note of what is said, but I do not think that is always the case. I make that point gently.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I am grateful for the support of my noble friends Lady Byford and Lady Miller of Hendon and of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, got to the nub of what I am concerned about; that is, the potential for financial direction to lead to conflict within a police force regarding how it uses its resources. It may consider that resources are being diverted away from what it considers to be its core function.
  One of the issues that we shall need to consider is the interface between the new Civil Nuclear Police Authority, the other Home Office police forces and the Met. I should be grateful if the Minister would tell us what the Government envisage would happen if the Civil Nuclear Police Authority were asked to use its resources and its police officers to assist Home Office forces.
  I was made aware of the existence of a national policing protocol through the kind assistance of the officials. They even gave me the relevant website to consult. Unfortunately, I was either barred from getting into that website or it had been moved. I did a complete search of the Home Office website and was given more information about anti-social behaviour orders than I ever wanted to see. The DTI website was the same. I tried every which way but failed to find the relevant text. Some clear, easy answer is probably winging its way to the Minister at the moment. He will know that concern has been expressed by the UKAEA police authority—that body has done sterling work— regarding what happens if it is required to use its forces to assist Home Office forces. Will there be such a requirement, and, if so, where is it stated in the Bill and where is it stated in the policing protocol? If the Minister is able to respond to that point now, that is fine. If that is not the case, I can return to the point in about two groups of amendments from now. I hope that will give the officials the opportunity to think the matter through. Clarification is wanted regarding whether or not the police will be required to give assistance to other forces, and, if there is such a requirement, how it would work. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, certainly opened up the can of worms that I was going to leave until a little later. We shall return to that.
  With regard to Amendment No. 94, my noble friends are absolutely right. This is another matter to which I may well wish to return. I am sure that the
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  Minister was absolutely sincere when he said that he was not cynical about consultation and that it is taken seriously. As he said, what is the point of consultation if one then ignores the views expressed in it? The response from these Benches is always to say that we shall not always have the current Secretary of State. She may be a model of good behaviour in the way that she operates—I am sure that she is a model of good behaviour—but one can never guarantee that misbehaviour will not occur in the future. We are trying to get the Bill right for now and the very long period over which it will apply to the new police authority and to the industry.
  I assure the Minister that it is common practice in other Bills regarding the matter of consultation to include the "sting in the tail"; namely, that the Secretary of State should either take account of, or have regard to, the responses and information that are received. As always, I shall read very carefully what the Minister said and try to subdue my cynicism about consultation. However, I may have to return to the matter. I wonder whether the Minister has been handed a response to the question about the requirement on police forces to assist Home Office forces.
  6.45 p.m.
  Lord Triesman: I am happy to tell the noble Baroness that her remarks did not come as a complete surprise to me. Therefore, I am able to answer her question.
  The constabulary that we are discussing is focused entirely on the protection of nuclear materials, the sites and the immediately adjacent area. I believe that later amendments address the issue of what is an adjacent area. It will not have the resources to engage in a wider policing function. Indeed, as I understand it, the geographical circumscription of what this force will be able to do will not in any case put it in the same position as the constabulary in general working under the Home Office that has a capacity to operate over very much wider areas and in some senses almost without restriction. There is no requirement in the Bill in that regard as we shall not require the relevant force to undertake the tasks that have been mentioned. We expect people to talk to one another and make sure that everyone is up to speed when a problem arises; that is unquestionably desirable. However, as I say, there is no requirement in the regard that has been mentioned due to the detailed circumscription of the function of this particular police force.
  I make one further comment on Amendment No. 94. I have been consulted on various matters from time to time and have sometimes—although not always-found the process somewhat frustrating. When we have been consulted and when we consult others, we are all aware of the fact that a completely homogeneous set of views is not always presented. There are often differences and variations and you have to pick your way through them. In those circumstances of course there needs to be proper regard for all of the arguments and the most effective phraseology in which to express them. I do not deny

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  that for a second. However, none the less, one has to arrive at the best judgment possible. The people whose views did not come to the surface sometimes feel that they were not properly consulted.
  I am not trying to make a commonplace point here other than that I suspect we have all experienced that at one time or another. I ask the Committee to take the Bill at face value. Of course there should in practice be a proper regard for everything that is said by those who are consulted, but we should understand the nature of the process that is involved in arriving at that point. I conclude what I hope is not an overlong answer on this matter by saying that I believe the current wording of the Bill meets the objectives that I have tried to describe. I hope that on that basis the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendments.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I believe that I would cause everyone present to suffer a heart attack if I refused to withdraw the amendment. That would be a first. I am very grateful for the Minister's "postscript". Certainly there is no requirement in the Bill regarding the circumstances that I described. I shall read the Minister's comments carefully but the implication is that there would be no requirement upon forces to assist in the circumstances that I described. The Minister will be aware that police forces could be actively engaged in the transport of material from one site to another. As the constables of the relevant force are constables in the full sense of the word, members of the public will view them as constables. They could find themselves in an interesting situation. I shall reconsider the matter carefully. I shall also consult and take account of the consultation.
  I may wish to reconsider Amendment No. 94 simply because, as I said, I believe that we need to get the Bill right in the first place. We need to give consultation proper weight in the first place. However, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 94 not moved.]
  Schedule 10 agreed to.
  Clause 48 [The Civil Nuclear Constabulary]:
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 95:
  Page 41, line 22, leave out "appears to it to be likely to" and insert "it has reason to believe will"
  The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 95 relates to the provisions of Clause 48. The Explanatory Notes tell us that it places an obligation on the Civil Nuclear Police Authority. The obligation is to secure the maintenance of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. Subsection (6) gives the police authority the power to,
  "do anything which appears to it to be likely to facilitate the carrying out of its functions, or to be incidental to carrying them out".
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  The objective of my amendment is threefold. First, it would require the police authority to make a decision about what it should do in an objective rather than a subjective manner—back to the same old subject again. The Government's drafting says that it can do anything which appears to it to make it easier for it to do its job. My drafting requires it to take such action as it has reason to believe will make it easier to do that work. Does the Bill's wording follow exactly the wording of Section 6 of the Police Act 1996? I hasten to assure the Minister that I do not seek to return to the earlier debate on judicial review and differences in wording. I simply ask whether the Bill's wording follows exactly the wording of Section 6 of the Police Act 1996? If it does not, what are the differences and why?
  Secondly, I wish to probe what the Government consider may prove to be the incidental activities that the new police authority may wish to carry out. Thirdly, I am trying to probe just how independent of the Secretary of State the police authority is likely to be. I beg to move.
  Lord Bradshaw: Will the Minister in replying to the amendment remind us exactly what power these constables have? I believe that the British Transport Police legislation established that the British Transport Police could, at the request of a chief constable of an adjacent force come, as it were, off the railway to pursue people and to conduct investigations. However, we must be aware that most chief constables are in the process of designating police powers to certain people who are in fact civilians. Chief constables will naturally turn to other police forces for help in policing football matches, for example, when they require extra resources. No doubt if there were demonstrations outside a nuclear power station, they would want to bring in constables in from elsewhere and to deploy them. I hope that the Minister will clarify the extent to which the people whom we are discussing may assist the civil police.
  Lord Whitty: The role of the new constabulary will be the same as that of the old constabulary and will be focused on civil nuclear security. As my noble friend said in answer to an earlier amendment, there is no requirement on the constabulary to act in support of other police requirements. No doubt in particular situations there will be co-operation that will involve joint exercises, but there is no statutory requirement on the constabulary to provide resources to help the local or any other police force in that activity. The situation may well work the other way as well.
  On the issue of independence, Clause 48 gives the police authority sufficient independence to allocate functions to the constabulary within the constraints of its role, while ensuring that the Secretary of State can fulfil her accountability to Parliament for the activities of the new authority as a non-departmental public body and her responsibilities for civil nuclear security. It is not a detailed hands-on role for the Secretary of State; it provides parliamentary accountability for a

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  non-departmental public body which is subject to far fewer ministerial constraints than some other NDPBs. The issue of independence is sufficiently covered.
  I have written down a third point but I cannot read it.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: Perhaps it refers to the drafting of Section 6 of the Police Act 1996.
  Lord Whitty: I am not sure whether we have found the Police Reform Act 2002, but my notes tell me that this clause is in a similar form to Section 10(6) of the Police Reform Act 2002, although it is not quite an equivalent provision. I had better undertake to write to the noble Baroness about that.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I welcome that. It is a technical point. As ever, when there is a reference in the Explanatory Notes to something being similar one wonders why the Government are trying not to make it exactly the same. Often there are extremely innocent and worthwhile reasons. I shall look forward to the letter. I am grateful for the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. I am concerned that the new police authority should not be stretched beyond the core activities to which its energies should relate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Clause 48 agreed to.
  Clause 49 agreed to.
  Schedule 11 agreed to.
  Clauses 50 and 51 agreed to.
  Clause 52 [Jurisdiction of Constabulary]:
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 96:
  Page 43, line 6, leave out "5" and insert "24"
  The noble Baroness said: Clause 52 sets out the jurisdiction of members of the constabulary. The Explanatory Notes tell us that that,
  "in terms is similar to that set out in section 76 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001".
  The notes state that there are two minor changes and my amendment probes the reason for one of those changes. I can easily understand and support the first change, which is that the Bill removes the constabulary's jurisdiction on premises that are not nuclear sites but that are in the possession or under the control of UKAEA. It seems right that there should no longer be any need for the constabulary to protect premises that do not hold nuclear material. They have to be protected but I appreciate that there are others ways of doing that.
  However, I do not follow the second change. I am sure it is me. As I explained to the officials when we met, I found the Bill and the Explanatory Notes somewhat opaque. The Explanatory Notes say that the second change,
  "will remove the Constabulary's jurisdiction to exercise police powers in respect of the property of UKAEA or certain nuclear operators within a 15 mile radius of their premises".
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  We are told that that is no longer relevant to the force's core duties. Can the Minister tell the Committee why that is considered to be the case? How does that fit in with the drafting of subsection (l)(b), which provides that the members of the constabulary,
  "shall have the powers and privileges of a constable",
  but that the radius is reduced to 5 kilometres from the existing 24 kilometres? My amendment would simply restore the radius to the original 24 kilometres to get that explanation from the Minister. How does that provision compare with the powers of those responsible for the security at MoD premises? I beg to move.
  7 p.m.
  Lord Bradshaw: I support the amendment because it seems to me that it is often necessary for material to leave a site and go on a journey somewhere. Usually it is transhipped or on the railway. It would be wrong if the escorting of such things was a duty that could be transferred to the civil police, because they are heavily burdened as it is and are not always available at the time that the nuclear authority may wish to move something. I seek some assurance that the boundary on the police force is not unduly restrictive, that account has been taken of all the things that may have to go on in connection with nuclear power, and that the jurisdiction of the police extends that far.
  Lord Skelmersdale: It is even worse than that. Subsection (4) refers to the constabulary having,
  "the powers and privileges of a constable at every place where it appears to him expedient to be in order to pursue or to detain a person whom he reasonably believes"—
  and this is the important point—
  "to have unlawfully removed",
  the material. Therefore, the material might be anywhere in the country.
  I would ask a question that goes rather further than the one asked by my noble friend. I do not ask why 5 kilometres or why 24—I ask why not anywhere?
  Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: When a local authority is responsible for the emergency planning of its county—in undertaking that duty it would need to call on the constabulary to give it advice—would the constabulary be very much part of the emergency planning system? If the matter was outside its geographical jurisdiction, would it hand over that section of responsibility to someone else to liase with the local authority as regards emergency planning, because it was an authority outside its jurisdiction?
  Lord Whitty: As the noble Baroness knows, special provisions relate to the emergency planning situation more generally. If an emergency involved or potentially involved a nuclear site, the whole management of that nuclear site would need to be involved in the emergency and contingency planning for emergency. That would include the constabulary, but the constabulary would not have any additional powers. Clearly, however, it would be part of any emergency provision to cover the Sellafield site and Cumbria's responsibilities for

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  emergency contingencies in Cumbria. That does not affect the powers of the constabulary as such, because everyone carrying responsibility within that site would almost certainly have a role in those contingencies.
  As for the question of 5 or 24 kilometres, there is a distinction here. The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 increased the constabulary's jurisdiction to include the area within 5 kilometres of a civil licensed site. That is because to secure the site that it protects, the constabulary needs to be able to patrol the area, deter possible intruders and check on and counter the activities of those who pose a threat. The constabulary clearly needs police powers within the perimeter area to undertake the task effectively. There is not such an equivalent security basis for a further extension in the general jurisdiction up to 24 kilometres, which is why that figure no longer appears. However, when the matter relates to stolen or interfered-with nuclear material, or attempts to steal, interfere with or otherwise dispose of nuclear material, the jurisdiction is unlimited.
  In those circumstances, for hot pursuit of people who have taken nuclear material from one of the sites, there is no limit to the jurisdiction of the civil nuclear constabulary. It has a limit of 5 kilometres for the recovery of stolen property, whereas previously a limit of 24 kilometres was established for that purpose. The core task of the constabulary no longer covers that area; its core task is to protect the nuclear sites and materials. When it requires UK-wide jurisdiction and the ability to pursue supposed criminals over the whole of the UK in relation stolen nuclear material, it has that power. It does not have a general police power that it is necessary to exercise to the limit of 24 kilometres solely to protect the site itself—instead, there is the immediate 5-kilometre penumbra.
  Lord Skelmersdale: If the nuclear material goes AWOL and the nuclear police are chasing it all around the country, where in the Bill are they given that extension of licence to chase?
  Lord Whitty: They already have that power.
  Lord Skelmersdale: Under what?
  Lord Whitty: I shall have to write to the noble Lord about that. I suspect that it is a power that is cross-referred to here, but it is in the earlier atomic energy Act that established the constabulary in the first place, and any amendment thereof. But that is different from having general police powers within 24 kilometres.
  Lord Skelmersdale: It is a totally different situation. I accept that.
  Lord Dixon-Smith: Would it not be better to introduce the word "normally", in restricting the limit to 5 kilometres? Then, in any special circumstances, away they go!
  Lord Whitty: Clause 52(4) refers to the power mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, but it is based on the previous legislation.
  Lord Bradshaw: We are discussing a place where a consignment of nuclear material in transit is transhipped or stored. We can think of taking nuclear materials from Barrow-in-Furness to Sellafield, for example. Does the jurisdiction of the force that we are discussing extend not only over the transhipment site, as it obviously does, and Sellafield, but also to the bit in the corridor in between? Sometimes it may be a different corridor from other times, as the routes of the transhipments are varied for security reasons. I would like to be assured that the route to the transhipment centre is included within the radius in which the force can operate.
  Lord Whitty: The noble Lord is referring to having a moveable 5-kilometre jurisdiction, but the jurisdiction that is implied in that case is to pursue any criminal intent, whereas the general power relates to pursuit of those who might attempt to interfere with or steal nuclear material. The corridor for the transhipment does not require the constabulary to have general police powers of 5 kilometres on either side of it, but only to ensure that people cannot interfere with nuclear materials.
  Lord Bradshaw: I was talking not about theft, but about the possibility of people attacking flasks in transit, and that sort of thing—which they do. It is not a figment of my imagination. The 24 kilometres would almost certainly cover most of the distance that we are talking about, whereas the transhipment sites are often more than 5 kilometres away from the nuclear site. I want to make sure that the jurisdiction is wide enough to cover eventualities.
  Lord Whitty: We are still confusing two issues. If there is transhipment and there is criminal or potential criminal interference with that transhipment, the jurisdiction is unlimited. In that situation, neither the five nor the 24-kilometre limit is relevant, so the corridor is protected in that sense.
  Lord Skelmersdale: Did I mishear the Minister? In answer to my question about the nuclear police searching the whole country for missing nuclear material, did he refer to Clause 54(2) of the Bill? If he did, I cannot see that it has anything to do with the matter at all.
  Lord Whitty: No, Clause 52(4) was the reference.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I am grateful to all Members of the Committee who took part in the debate. It has opened up the important issue of what comprises the jurisdiction of the constabulary in particular circumstances. I can see why the Government have constructed the clause as they have, because they are trying to build up a picture of how the constabulary will operate according to the requirements of its core function. The difficulty was that it was unclear what the differences were and how it would operate in protecting a site or dealing with someone who has stolen goods, or tried to steal goods from that site, as against what happens when it is protecting something at a transhipment site or when the material is actually being transhipped.

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  The Minister has taken us a considerable way. I shall need to consider his remarks carefully before Report stage, because there may be one or two issues to tease out to make it clear that we all have the assurances that we want about the security of items that are being protected by the constabulary and the fact that the constabulary has sufficient room for manoeuvre. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Clause 52 agreed to.
  Clauses 53 to 57 agreed to.
  Schedule 12 [Planning and reports about Constabulary]:
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 97:
  Page 193, line 23, leave out from "which" to end and insert "would, if disclosed, endanger national security
  The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 97, I shall speak to Amendment No. 98.
  Schedule 12 makes provisions about planning and reporting. The Explanatory Notes state that the schedule is based on provisions in Section 16 of the Police Act 1996, differing only where necessary to meet the specific needs of the Civil Nuclear Police Authority. I return to a similar theme to that which we have discussed previously. Can the minister explain where the provisions do differ, and why? Are the differences related only to matters of security? If not, what else is different?
  Amendment No. 97 provides the basis for that and other questions. I have simply amended subsection (3), whose intent is to ensure that information that should not be in the public domain for security reasons could be excluded from published reports. My amendment would ensure that information could be excluded if it might endanger national security. I make it clear that the amendment is crude and that I am not wedded to its wording; it is simply there to hang my questions on it.
  Amendment No. 98 would ask the Government to explain the process by which the Police Authority's annual report is published. Sub-paragraph (4) requires the Government to lay it before Parliament and arrange for it to be published in whatever manner the Secretary of State thinks appropriate. My amendment adds an element of urgency about all that laying of information. I require the Secretary of State to lay it before Parliament as soon as is reasonably practicable. I believe that that is a reasonably cautious and good practice measure, which has been in Home Office and LCD Bills, so I wait to see whether the DTI follows that good practice. I beg to move.
  7.15 p.m.
  Lord Bradshaw: I make very little comment on Amendment No. 97. On Amendment No. 98, I believe that while the annual report of any police authority can hardly be described as riveting bedtime reading,
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  there should be some provision for it to be put in front of some scrutinising body. It is difficult to think who it could come before except before Parliament.
  Lord Whitty: If the anxiety is about delay in the provision of the report, there is also a requirement to act reasonably. Acting reasonably in providing reports to Parliament is part of the duties. The paragraph merely follows the practice of how the provision is expressed in other legislation and in this Bill with regard to other non-departmental public bodies. We do not need to change that; indeed, the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness would not significantly change the requirement.
  The clause to which Amendment No. 97 applies sets out the grounds on which the Chief Constable of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary can request the Police Authority to refer to the Secretary of State any requirement the authority has imposed on him to submit a report. In the event that the Chief Constable makes such a request, the report would have to be provided only to the extent confirmed by the Secretary of State.
  The amendment would have the effect of changing the public interest test in paragraph 6(3)(a) to one of endangering national security. The public interest test is a standard one in police legislation, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is familiar with it. There is an equivalent provision in Section 22(5) of the Police Act 1996, for example. A similar provision also appears in the transport police legislation of 2003. The public interest test of course includes consideration of national security, but it is not exclusive to national security.
  There are likely to be cases in which the Chief Constable of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary is of the view that it would not be in the public interest for certain information to be disclosed, even though it might be stretching it, to say the least, to say that it is a matter of national security. An example might be information about criminal investigations dealing with nuclear material; that might not be directly a matter of national security, but it is certainly one that we would not particularly want to have in an annual report or any other publicly available report. I do not see why we should have a different requirement on the Civil Nuclear Police than we have on other police authorities with regard to public interest.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: The Minister took us a little further with regard to what might be considered within the public interest test in the special circumstances of this new police authority. I am grateful to him. My intention has always been to make it clear that I accept that there are circumstances in which information should not be released because it would be unhelpful to national public interest. That is always a fine line for a government to tread, when they are putting through legislation that could restrict the publication of information. There are those who say that all information should go before the public. However, as the Minister rightly says, with a criminal investigation regarding the theft of nuclear material, it

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  may not be appropriate to release all the information at that time, particularly if the investigation goes on for some time. One does not want to alert other people, not only to the information but also to the techniques being used to track down those who may be culpable. I thank the Minister and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 98 not moved.]
  Schedule 12 agreed to.
  Clause 58 [Inspection]:
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 99:
  Page 46, line 5, leave out "from time to time" and insert "at least once every three years"
  The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak to Amendment No. 100, which is grouped with it.
  I turn now to the issue of the inspection of the new constabulary. At the moment, the UKAEA Constabulary is subject to a voluntary inspection by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary. Clause 58 puts that onto a mandatory, statutory basis. Subsection (1) provides that the HMIC must inspect the constabulary from "time to time". Amendment No. 99 would introduce a minimum requirement of an inspection at least every three years.
  Other Members of the Committee who have the advantage of better sight than I have can see what is happening on the monitor.
  Noble Lords: They won by five!
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I return to more mundane matters—although they are absolutely vital for the Civil Nuclear Police Authority.
  I tabled Amendment No. 99 to ask the Minister to explain to the Committee what the Government's intention is—first, with regard to the funding of the HMIC to cover this statutory work. Will there be any change in funding now that the work is on a mandatory basis? If so, what? If not, why not? Secondly, how often do they anticipate that such inspections should be made? What is the current expectation with regard to the UKAEA Constabulary? How does that compare with other police forces under Home Office responsibility? Do the Government anticipate that there will be an early report after the transformation to assist the constabulary in its transition into the new statutory force? Do they consider that an early report might hinder rather than assist that transitional period?
  Amendment No. 100 refers to the report that is made by the HMIC after the inspection. It requires the report to be laid before Parliament after the Secretary of State has received it and before it is published. Does that follow the pattern of what happens to reports on other police forces and, if not, how do they differ? How do the Government anticipate that the HMIC should deal with a report on inspections of operations that
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  have a sensitive defence implication? What will in fact be published? That slightly goes back to the previous amendment.
  I am not sure that the passage of this Bill will have quite the attention that the passage of the Bill in another place is evoking elsewhere, but I beg to move.
  Lord Bradshaw: I certainly very much support the first of the amendments. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has, as I am sure that the Minister is aware, become much more active in the way it inspects constabularies. It does not simply go around looking at shiny shoes and whitewashed coal any more; it goes around looking for best value, and it is very much in the forefront of the Government's initiatives to achieve best value and spread best practice between police forces. Therefore, it would be important for no more than three years to elapse between each full inspection.
  I am well aware that the HMIC undertakes thematic inspections, inspecting constabularies to look at just one thing, such as firearms. However, once every three years, the police force would benefit from the wisdom that the inspectors garner from the inspections that they carry out throughout the country, improving the efficiency of the force.
  Lord Triesman: I am sorry to interrupt the excitement of the Division result in the other place with something so mundane as a response to the amendments.
  Both the amendments relate to the inspection arrangements that will be in place for the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. The noble Baroness has already made the point that the UKAEA Constabulary is currently the subject of voluntary inspections by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary—the HMIC. They take place about every three years. The clause puts those inspection arrangements on a mandatory, statutory footing for the first time. In doing so, it follows the precedent of the Police Act 1996, the Ministry of Defence Police Act 1987 and the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, which established the British Transport Police. None of those Acts sought to constrain the HMIC in deciding the frequency of its inspections of a particular force.
  I can reassure the noble Baroness that it is the intention of the HMIC to continue to undertake regular reviews of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, but specifying a minimum period in legislation is unnecessary and overly restrictive. The constabulary is very keen to establish its own programme, to use its professional judgment and to rely on its professional competence in establishing that programme—and, of course, inevitably to be judged on the basis of what it decides.
  One reason why I emphasise that point is that it is certainly the policy intention for the HMIC to continue to review matters regularly. There are also examples of inspectors moving to a system of baseline assessments, followed by reviews of selected areas of performance, in most years—not just every three years. The aim is to

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  cover all aspects of the force over the period of years to ensure that all parts of the force's activities are properly covered.
  Clause 58(2) also gives the Secretary of State the power to require an inspection at any time should that prove necessary. Therefore, there is a pretty foolproof way to ensure that, were the HMIC to be negligent in doing the things that I have described as its intention, the Secretary of State has a direct way in which to make sure that it does what is expected of them. However, I would believe, so long as there is a balance between the good sense of regular inspection and the frequency of inspections, that the new patterns are likely to be much more useful.
  As for Amendment No. 100, my understanding is that while the annual report of Her Majesty's Inspectorate is laid before Parliament, that is not the case for individual reports. A good deal of the best practice comparisons, which the noble Lord suggested would be a valuable part of the use of all the reports, is done by getting a synthesis into a report that looks across all of them. The arrangements for making public the reports of the HMIC on the Civil Nuclear Constabulary mirror those for Home Office forces, the Ministry of Defence Police and the British Transport Police. None of those require the equivalent HMIC reports to be laid before Parliament. Of course, it is very important to ensure that the report that draws together everything learnt by the HMIC is before Parliament, so that all the proper judgments can be made.
  In the light of what I have said, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendments. Having a good inspection regime, in which the people responsible for it take absolute responsibility for ensuring that the programme is serious and that lessons are learnt in the reports that come to Parliament, are desirable aims that are covered by the Bill as it is.
  Lord Bradshaw: I feel fairly strongly about this issue. The fact is that the police are a venerable institution. This force may not be as venerable as others, but it does need a pair of very keen eyes watching what it is doing and how it is deploying resources, given that they are very expensive. The requirement that there should be an inspection every three years is valuable.
  I am well aware of the thematic inspections that happen into all sorts of matters, such as firearms, motor vehicles, forensic science and so on. Many valuable lessons come from them, but I do not believe that any police authority can do without having a proper inspection at least every three years. I hope that the noble Baroness will consider returning to this issue at Report stage, as at the moment I would be minded to support it.
  7.30 p.m.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I am grateful for the second intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and I assure him that I shall look at the matter carefully again between now and the Report stage. I shall consider it against the broader background of other inspections.
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  We are going from a voluntary to a mandatory system and he is right that inspection is always vital. It is always taken extremely seriously by the HMIC.
  I understand what the Minister says about intervals not being prescribed in all other legislation, but one needs to get in good practice from the beginning. I want to consider the matter further but at this stage I shall be asking leave to withdraw the amendment in a moment.
  I notice that the time is 7.30. However, it has been put to me that I should complete the last two groups of amendments to take us unusually beyond the 7.30 cut-off time in Grand Committee. I have agreed to do so, but only because I appreciate that there would be a cost: to taxpayers and the time of the officials involved if they were to be brought back only for this section of the Bill. They would not necessarily be involved in other parts. Although my Chief Whip may have words to say to me for being so compliant with the Government, I now beg leave to withdraw Amendment No. 99 with the expectation of having to move the next.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 100 not moved.]
  Clause 58 agreed to.
  On Question, Whether Clause 59 shall stand part of the Bill?
  Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Perhaps I may briefly ask the Minister whether he is content that Clause 59, which relates to the Secretary of State's supervision of the nuclear police, should not include the consultation or involvement of the Lord Advocate, to whom the police answer in Scotland.
  In the case of the inspectorate, Her Majesty's inspector will consult Scottish inspectors before undertaking any inspections relating to Scotland. Clause 59 lists the ways in which the Secretary of State will supervise the nuclear police. The Minister has already said that there will be some interaction here and there with the local police and local people and has said that they will be kept up to speed and so forth. However, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will be directing the police in Scotland when a member of another Government, the Lord Advocate, who is the person to whom the Scottish police are answerable, without reference and I wonder whether the Minister could look at that. I have not tabled an amendment because it occurred to me only as we went through the Bill today.
  There may well be a gap there and we must remember that the Scottish Parliament may have a different political complexion from the Westminster Government. The Lord Advocate is a Member of the Scottish Parliament and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will be a Member of a different Parliament. It may be that there is a trap and I wonder whether the Minister could look at it before the Report stage.
  Lord Whitty: I do not believe that there is a direct responsibility for any Scottish Minister, but I will undertake to look at whether we need to do anything to ensure that Scottish authorities are informed.
  Clause 59 agreed to.
  Schedule 13 [Directions by Secretary of State about Constabulary]:
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 101:
  Page 195, line 41, at end insert—
  "( ) that practices and procedures are followed that properly secure the nuclear sites that the Constabulary is to protect, including the deployment of the appropriate number of constables;
  ( ) that practices and procedures are followed which provide the appropriate level of training, special operations and exercises;"
  The noble Baroness said: Schedule 13 gives the Secretary of State the power to issue the Police Authority with directions setting out objectives covering such matters as its activities and conditions of service. The Explanatory Notes state that the main purposes of these powers will include ensuring that the Police Authority and the constabulary should implement the security standards, guidelines and procedures set out by the Secretary of State.
  The text of my amendments has been taken from the explanation in paragraph 193 of the Explanatory Notes. I found it quite difficult to tie in the provisions of paragraph 2 of Schedule 13 with the explanation in the Explanatory Notes.
  I therefore tabled this amendment to ask the Government the following questions. First, will the Minister clarify what kind of guidelines and procedures will be set by the Secretary of State? Does the Minister agree with me that it will be important for the future of the new constabulary that they are given every opportunity to have the training and standards of other police forces—Home Office police forces and the Met? And if he does agree with me, what measures will be in place to ensure that this happens? I understand that currently the special constables have the same training as the Met. Can the Minister confirm that this is the case?
  Thirdly, will the Minister reassure the Committee that the Government will ensure that the Police Authority is allowed to recruit a sufficient number of constables—I can hear the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, in the wings— to carry out its work effectively? What is the current strength of the UKAEA constabulary? What do the Government intend the number of constables should be by the end of the transitional period and by the end of years one, two and three of operation?
  Amendment No. 102 was tabled as a result of the publication by the Government of the Written Ministerial Statement on police weapons on 3 December. That appears at col. 61WS in Commons Hansard. The Home Secretary announced that he had laid before Parliament a code of practice on the police use of firearms and less lethal weapons. He is required to do this as a result of an amendment inserted by the Police Reform Act 2002 under Section 39A of the Police Act 1996.
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  The code sets out the principles for the selection, testing, acquisition and use of firearms and less lethal weapons by the police. It also sets standards for the way in which these principles should be implemented.
  The Home Secretary said at that time that by providing a statement on the standards of competence and accreditation, the code aims to ensure that all officers involved in operations involving firearms and less lethal weapons are trained to a high standard. He said that he also intends that the code should encourage the sharing of best practice between police forces on operations involving firearms and less lethal weapons.
  What weapons does the UKAEA constabulary have the right to use now? Is there any difference between the UKAEA and the MoD in this respect? How will the code of practice announced in the Home Secretary's Written Statement apply, if at all, to the new Civil Nuclear Constabulary?
  How will the new constabulary be brought within the sharing of good practice within police forces that are under the Home Secretary's departmental responsibilities as against the new constabulary in the Bill that is responsible to the DTI? I beg to move.
  Lord Triesman: The noble Baroness asked a number of specific questions and I shall try to deal with as many of them as possible in this response. Where it is not possible to give the whole of the answer, I shall ensure that it is provided to her.
  The amendments specify particular types of directions that the Secretary of State should be able to give to the Police Authority. Paragraph 2 provides for the Secretary of State to be able to direct the Police Authority on a quite wide range of matters relating to the activities of the constabulary. It is required principally to preserve the existing arrangements where the Office for Civil Nuclear Security, acting on the Secretary of State's behalf, specifies and inspects compliance with the security standards, guidelines and procedures that are to be followed by the UKAEA.
  These can currently be specified by the Secretary of State in directions made under Section 3 of the Atomic Energy Act 1954. That is the kind of range of direction about which we are talking. The direction-making powers in this paragraph and elsewhere in the schedule also allow the Secretary of State to intervene in the affairs of the constabulary should that be necessary.
  These amendments highlight specific purposes for which the Secretary of State should be able to issue directions. I have no real objection to the intent behind the amendments, but I am advised that they are already within the scope of the powers of Schedule 13. For many years, for example, the UKAEA constabulary has had the capacity to provide an armed response to a terrorist threat. In doing so, it adopts the code of practice on the police use of firearms and the manual of guidance on the police use of firearms drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers. These arrangements were last

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  reviewed by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary in 2003—quite recently—and the inspection found the constabulary to have a very effective armed capability effectively and appropriately deployed.
  I am sorry that I cannot today say what range of weaponry they use, but I shall find out. I can tell Members of the Committee that it is likely to be the same range of weaponry that is available to other police services—not least because of the commonality of training. It would be extremely difficult to do that were there not to be commonality of the implements with which the forces are trained. I hope that that answers the basic question.
  It is important to underline a couple of answers to other detailed questions that the noble Baroness asked. Members of the constabulary receive the same training as other police; that will continue. We intend that that should continue and be funded. There will be roughly 550 constables and there be no significant change due to the transition.
  I hope that, given those assurances, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment. She has raised several key points and understandably has pressed them. They relate to the guidelines and procedures, particularly in relation to firearms; training and standards, on which I have been able to comment; what measures will be in place to ensure that special constables are trained on the same basis as full constables; and that there will be enough of them. I have tried to touch on all those matters in my answer, but I know that there were a number of other detailed questions. I shall endeavour to ensure that she receives an answer to those that I have missed. I believe that some reasonable inferences can be drawn from my point about commonality of training.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: As ever, I am grateful to the Minister. I am certainly grateful for his offer to write to me with details about the range of weaponry available.
  He referred to his anticipation that the range will be much the same as that available to other Home Office forces. I asked a question specifically about how their weaponry will compare with that of the MoD and I hope that in writing to me he will take that inquiry into consideration and provide the information.
  It is the expectation and wish of all that training should be to a like standard as that of Home Office forces. Although throughout one is referring to lethal and less lethal weapons, less lethal weapons can sometimes, when deployed, also be lethal. Training is therefore important. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  [Amendment No. 102 not moved.]
  Schedule 13 agreed to.
  Clauses 60 to 65 agreed to.
  Schedule 14 agreed to.
  Clause 66 [Nuclear transfer scheme for UKAEA Constabulary]:
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 103:
  Page 52, line 14, at end insert—
  "(6) The Secretary of State must make a payment by way of a grant to the Police Authority to pay for all the costs of the nuclear transfer scheme and related transitional costs."
  The noble Baroness said: It will be important to get the transitional arrangements for the Civil Nuclear constabulary right from the beginning. It is important that there should be a seamless and safe transfer of its activities into the new statutory force. It is important not only for the safety of the nuclear establishment and society at large, but also for the morale of the Constabulary. It has been clear that all Members of the Committee have that morale at the forefront of their considerations today.
  Clause 66 lays the ground for the transition from UKAEA to statutory force. My amendment probes the Government's intentions about how the transitional costs should be borne. I was pleased to read the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in winding up the Second Reading debate. He said that UKAEA, BNFL and URENCO,
  "will not have to meet the costs of the transitional arrangements".—[Official Report, 11/12/03; col. 921.]
  That was in response to an inquiry made by my noble friend Lady Miller. Can the Minister tell the Committee what the Government estimate those costs will be? What kind of transitional arrangements will be covered? Will all the costs come from the DTI budget? Finally, at what stage do the Government expect to start committing expenditure to these transitional arrangements? I beg to move.
  7.45 p.m.
  Lord Triesman: The Government have already given a commitment to the companies concerned that they will not have to meet the transition costs of the separation of the constabulary from the UKAEA. My noble friend Lord Whitty repeated the assurance in responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Hendon, when she asked a question on this point during Second Reading. There is no intention of going back on that assurance and I restate it here today. However, it need not be enshrined in law because a commitment is being given openly and publicly. I hope that that will do something for the morale of all of those involved today.
  The proposed amendment also has the effect of requiring the cost to be reimbursed to the Civil Nuclear Police Authority, which will be incurred by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. The UKAEA already receives a considerable amount of money in grant from the Government each year to fund its activities, of which those transition costs will be part.
  On the basis of the assurances I have given, I hope that the amendment is no longer pressed, but can say what the costs will be. The estimate—inevitably it is to some extent an estimate—is £1.1 million over two

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  years. We believe that that is what will be incurred; that is the figure about which the assurances have been given. Costs relate to additional staff and members of the police authority. Those staff are needed to ensure that the whole process goes as smoothly and properly as can be achieved.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I thank the noble Lord for repeating the assurances given by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that the transition costs will be covered. Will they come from the DTI budget as currently structured?
  Lord Triesman: It is a direct grant from the DTI. If I am wrong about that, I will ensure that it is corrected in writing.
  Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I thank the noble Lord for that answer. The question had been put to me. I
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  shall consider carefully what the Minister has said. I appreciate the fact that the Government have tried to give reassurances on these matters, but they will be aware that uncertainty remains outwith this House with regard to that matter. I shall consult and have regard to any representations made to me before the Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Clause 66 agreed to.
  Clauses 67 to 71 agreed to.
  Schedule 15 agreed to.
  Clauses 72 and 73 agreed to.
  Lord Triesman: This might be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until next Tuesday at 3.30 p.m.
  The Committee adjourned at twelve minutes before eight o'clock.

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  Ministry of Defence: Race Equality Scheme
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach)
  My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ivor Caplin) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
  WS 8
  In accordance with undertakings in its Race Equality Scheme, the Ministry of Defence has produced a progress report, a copy of which is being placed today in the Library of the House. The report shows that across the department and the Armed Forces we are continuing to build on past experience and initiatives to eradicate harassment and unlawful discrimination and to develop a more proactive approach to race relations as part of our diversity programme. Good progress has been made but we recognise that more needs to be done. The report describes the steps that the Ministry of Defence will be pursuing to further its vision.