Sitting of 13 September 2004

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT
  The Secretary of State was asked—
  CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

    Swimming Pools
    Chris Bryant: How many 50-metre swimming pools there are. [187891]
    The Minister for Sport and Tourism (Mr. Richard Caborn): Before I answer the question, Mr. Speaker, may I congratulate all our Olympians, who performed incredibly well? We also send our best wishes to our competitors in the Paralympics, which starts next week.
    There are currently 20 50-metre swimming pools in the UK.
    Chris Bryant: I am sure that all hon. Members congratulate our two Olympic swimming medallists, David Davies and Stephen Parry. It is unfair on our swimmers that only 20 50-metre pools exist in this country, when Germany has 92 and France has 90. Wales contains only one such pool and London has only two, despite the fact that Paris, another capital city, has 19. We should invest more in swimming and build more 50-metre pools, so that people who swim the 1,500 m do not have to do excessive numbers of tumble-turns.
    Mr. Caborn: Sport England is committed to eight new 50-metre pools. We currently have 3,648 swimming pools and 1,134 25-metre pools. Since 1995, one sixth of all lottery money, some £279 million, has been invested in swimming. I accept that we must do more for elite swimmers, and we are discussing facilities for our elite athletes with swimming's governing body, but swimming has received major investment in the recent past.
    Mr. Hugo Swire: I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. Building more swimming pools up and down the country is surely to be encouraged, but it is not so much a question of size as a question of usage. The villagers of Membury in my constituency know that size is not everything: they have a community swimming pool, which the school uses, and they have an enormous problem with insurance. Last year, the premiums
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    rocketed up, and cover cannot be obtained at all this year, so local people will not be able to use the pool. I contacted the Financial Secretary, who passed the matter on to the Home Office, from which I am yet to hear. Will the Minister indicate how public swimming pools owned by local communities can be insured, so that local people can use them?
    Mr. Caborn: I do not know the exact detail of the case raised by the hon. Gentleman, but insurance for sport is a serious issue. In particular, extreme sports find that they cannot get instructors, who allow young people to participate in those sports, because they cannot get insurance. The Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the industry are examining the problem, and we have also discussed a private Member's Bill on the subject. The issue is being taken seriously, and it concerns not only swimming, but the whole spectrum of sport. If we do not get it right, it will be to the detriment of many young people who want to participate in sport.
    Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the Minister aware that if there are eight Sport England swimming pools, we will settle for one in Bolsover? We lost our baths because of subsidence, and, as he knows, we have being trying to replace them for a few years. We do not need a 50-metre pool—we will settle for less—and we will not worry his pretty head about insurance, because we will deal with that. He knows that a hiatus has occurred because of Sport England's refusal to obtain lottery money for us—all that money has gone to the City of London and elsewhere. Will he meet the people of Bolsover to get the show back on the road?
    Mr. Caborn: I have been called many things, but never "pretty". The hon. Gentleman knows that I have met Bolsover council, the strategic health authority and the primary care trust to try to find a funding mechanism for that major community facility. I assure my hon. Friend that we will continue those discussions and will hopefully find a funding package for a swimming baths in his constituency, although I do not think that it will be a 50-metre pool.
    Angela Watkinson: Will the Minister agree to have a close look at the conditions attached to lottery grants? In my constituency, we are about to open a brand new swimming pool, which we are delighted to have, paid for by lottery funding. Unfortunately, however, there are no 50-metre competition-sized pools in the whole of Greater London. This would have been a wonderful opportunity to have one in my constituency, but the strings attached to the lottery grant meant that the sum had to be dissipated on other ancillary provision; as a result, we must have a six-lane pool with the same water space as the old one. Has not a wonderful opportunity been lost; and would not it have been better to focus the entire funding on providing an eight-lane 50-metre pool?
    Mr. Caborn: If we are successful with the Olympics, London could have three 50-metre pools. Construction is already taking place on an aquatic centre where there will be one 50-metre pool; if we are successful with the Olympics, there will be two; and we are discussing with Crystal Palace a major refurbishment that could include a third.

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    One has to be careful in relation to 50-metre pools. I have one in my own constituency which is used as a 50-metre pool for only a few hours every year because it is split into three community pools by moving booms and lifting the floors. A few very important elite athletes need access to 50-metre pools. We are discussing with the Swimming Association how we can bring the elite together, as we have done in many other sports. Kelly Holmes is a classic example. She will put her success in gaining silver in Paris and gold in Athens down to the training and physiotherapy that she received at the English Institute of Sport. We have to bring the centres of excellence together. We are doing that through the new funding arrangements and by liaising with the governing bodies and providing facilities. We need to reflect on how 50-metre pools are used by the community and by the elite
    Hugh Robertson: I am sure that we all share the shadow Minister's enthusiasm for swimming—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I mean the Minister's enthusiasm: it is easy to tell it is my first day. However, will he undertake to review the decision taken by two Government bodies—the Institute of Sport and Recreation Management and the Health and Safety Executive—to ban women from taking more than two children under the age of eight into a swimming pool at any one time? Its introduction on 1 May this year, at the start of summer, could not have been worse timed. It deprives young families of vital bonding time and means that young children cannot take the very type of exercise that the Government are encouraging.
    Mr. Caborn: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the post of shadow Minister for Sport and congratulate him on his question—because the answer to it is not in my briefing notes.
    I do have concerns about that recommendation—it was only a recommendation, not a statute. It has to be dealt with using common sense. On the one hand we must consider the effects on insurance policies and try to protect young people, but on the other we want to ensure that bonding in our swimming facilities is maximised. I think that the recommendation came from the right motives. A lot of pressure has been put on those bodies to consider the whole question of safety, and they are taking into account the best interests of the children. We will revisit their decision, however, because if it is imposed rigorously it could be counterproductive.

    BBC Charter
    Mr. Harold Best: What principles will guide the Government in their review of the BBC charter. [187892]
    The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell): The principle guiding the review of the BBC charter is that the outcome will be a strong BBC, independent of Government. The review process is thorough and extensive. We have already undertaken large-scale consultations with industry and the public, and the process will continue to be characterised by vigorous and open debate.
    Mr. Best: I am delighted to hear the Minister use the words "independent" and "vigorous", because that is exactly what we need from a public service broadcasting body. Will we get a guarantee that that means that there will be no commercially funded element that may make the BBC dependent on commercial interests?
    Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He probably knows that the BBC is currently undertaking a review of its commercial services and is bound by strict fair trade rules. The governors are obliged to ensure that they are complied with. My hon. Friend's question will be addressed in the course of charter review. The BBC have already preempted that to some extent by taking steps to review the role and extent of commercial services.
    Michael Fabricant: I welcome the Secretary of State's commitment to a strong and independent BBC. However, does she acknowledge that one of the functions of independence is political neutrality? What steps will she take to ensure that, in the run-up to the by-election in Hartlepool, during which the Labour party conference will be taking place, there is equal coverage of all the parties—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. That has nothing to do with the renewal of the charter.
    Mr. Derek Wyatt: Does the Secretary of State agree that in 2017, we shall still have a national health service, primary schools and secondary schools and a BBC? Given that we are considering switching from analogue to digital by 2012, is there any sense in having a charter? If so, is there any sense in having it for 10 more years?
    Tessa Jowell: That is an important question, which is, in a sense, most relevant during the current charter review because we expect the switch-off of the analogue signal during the period that the next charter covers. A further 10-year charter is likely, but not certain. The independent panel, under the chairmanship of Lord Burns, which is advising me on charter review is considering the matter specifically.
    Mr. Simon Thomas: What is the Secretary of State's vision of that digital future? Does she agree with the BBC's statement of values for the charter when it states that it wants everyone in the United Kingdom to have equal access to digital services? How will she achieve that? There are worrying stories that she has abandoned SwitchCo and the source of money that is necessary to achieve the digital switch-over. Which parts of the UK will go first and which will go last?
    Tessa Jowell: With great respect, that question was nonsense. There is no question of abandoning SwitchCo or walking away from the money. The broadcasters are considering the timetable and costs of converting the transmission network from analogue to digital. The Government are clear that digital switch-over will take place on a basis that guarantees universal access to people who currently receive analogue. We expect the principal technology to be through digital terrestrial

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    television, but satellite and cable will also have an important role. We expect the broadcasters to bear the major costs, principally of upgrading the transmission network, of achieving the switch-over.
    Mr. John Grogan: Does my right hon. Friend agree that an increased commitment to the nations and regions should he an important principle that guides the Government when they review the BBC charter, possibly with the relocation of production facilities and channels—for example, Radio 5 Live or BBC 3—to the north of England?
    Tessa Jowell: I agree with my hon. Friend. In the past few weeks, the BBC has made some encouraging statements about its intention for substantial relocation of staff and functions out of London. The BBC must reflect the identities and characteristics of the whole UK. It cannot do that if it is principally an operation that broadcasts from London.
    Mr. John Whittingdale: Will the Secretary of State accept that one of the fundamental principles that must be upheld in the charter review is that the BBC must be politically impartial and balanced in its coverage? Is not the decision to call a by-election in the middle of the conference season—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I have already ruled on that matter.

    Female Athletics
    Mr. Jim Cunningham: What action her Department has taken to promote female professional athletics in the United Kingdom. [187893]
    The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell): I would like to begin by joining the Minister for Sport and Tourism, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), in taking this opportunity to thank all our Olympians, men and women, who performed so magnificently at the Athens Olympics. They inspired and moved us all, and redoubled our determination to try to bring the Olympic games to London in 2012. In addition to thanking and congratulating our athletes, I would also like to thank Team GB and the scores of support staff who made those performances possible. My right hon. Friend and I will also be supporting our athletes at the Paralympics, which start this weekend.
    The Olympics have clearly focused our pride on our women athletes, who won four of our five track and field medals in Athens. For the future, UK Athletics is fully committed to implementing what it has described as a new equality standard. In practice, that will mean ensuring that girls and boys, and men and women, have a chance to do well and to compete on an equal basis, whatever the sport.
    Mr. Cunningham: I associate myself with my right hon. Friend's remarks, but I would also like to ask her what proportion of the resources allocated to the
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    Olympics will be allocated to females athletes, so that we can maintain the high standards that we have seen at the recent Olympics?
    Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The equality standard to which I referred will be applied by the governing bodies, and will be one of the conditions against which decisions to fund governing bodies will be taken. It is a lever with which the Government can influence the behaviour of those bodies, to ensure that they take seriously the ambitions of women in sport as well as those of men.
    Mr. Don Foster: May I associate the Liberal Democrats with the Secretary of State's congratulations to Team GB and all its support staff at the Olympics? We also wish our team well in the forthcoming Paralympic games. May I remind her, however, that under this Government, female participation in athletics and sport has declined? Does she agree that this is not helped when television sports coverage of women's sports is only 5 per cent. of the total coverage, and less than 3 per cent. in our tabloid newspapers? Will she therefore lobby the newspapers and broadcasting companies to ensure that they start to give our women a fair deal?
    Tessa Jowell: Yes, yes and yes.
    Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Is the Secretary of State aware that, in Crewe, we have a special team of young people who are taking part in the Paralympics, of whom we are inordinately proud and who have produced some very good results in the past? Will she make a special effort not only to encourage these children but to find ways of financing the work that they do, which is tremendously important to them and which needs to be encouraged at every level?
    Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend very much for her question. This is one of the reasons why my right hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and Tourism and I want to go to Athens, to provide the support that our Paralympic athletes deserve.
    Mr. Andy Reed: I am sure that all hon. Members here would like to congratulate the British Olympic team and the Paralympians, and, if so, that they would also like to sign my early-day motion 1602. I hope that they will do so, to double the number who have already signed it. The problem for women's sport in particular is the massive drop-off rate during the teenage years. By the time young women get to the age of 17, the number participating in sport has reduced dramatically. What work is my right hon. Friend doing with the Department for Education and Skills to ensure that girls continue with sports at school, and what role models can those girls look up to when, as the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) rightly said, there is inadequate media coverage of women's sports? Let us hope that we can use Kelly Holmes and others to ensure that in future more women will want to participate.
    Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. Many of our female athletes—Kelly Holmes in particular—take their responsibilities as role models very seriously. Long before their recent Olympic fame, they were in schools providing exactly the kind of leadership that my hon. Friend is talking about. We are very concerned to address the issue that he describes, and the school sport partnerships that are now covering nearly 50 per cent. of schools place a special focus on presenting sport to girls in a way that they can engage with. We recognise the issue, we are determined to tackle it, and we will be judged by our success in doing so.

    Millennium Commission Projects
    Kevin Brennan: If she will allow sponsors' names to be used in the titles of Millennium Commission projects. [187895]
    The Minister for the Arts (Estelle Morris): The Government do not control the identity of projects supported by the national lottery. The Millennium Commission's grant agreements specify that any change in the name of a project that it funds must be agreed by the commission.
    Kevin Brennan: I thank the Minister for that answer. But is it not crazy to fetter the future of some wonderful projects such as the Millennium stadium in Cardiff, which many Members have had the opportunity to visit, and which many more may visit in future, particularly when Wales play England at football next year, by not allowing them to maximise the commercial opportunities in the long term by having a sponsor's name in the title of the project? Will she and her colleagues consider this issue with a view to assisting the long-term future of those important projects?
    Estelle Morris: First, may I share my hon. Friend's enthusiasm for the Millennium stadium? I reiterate, however, that this is a matter not for the Government but for the Millennium Commission. I know, however, that the Millennium Commission is in discussions, and has made it clear that it will consider any proposal that is put to it. That is right. It has also said that when there is lottery money involved a project, that must be made clear to the public and to people who buy lottery tickets. That is why, whatever the title is, it must continue to use the word "Millennium". If my hon. Friend looks a bit further, he will see that the Millennium Commission has allowed naming rights in other projects, such as the Donald Gordon theatre, as part of a much wider project. I do not know what the commission will decide, but it has certainly not said no to considering naming rights. That will be a matter for it and the stadium in the weeks and months to come.
    Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: Bearing in mind the fact that the Millennium Commission gets its money from the lottery, what action are the Government taking to ensure that undesirable people are not allowed to buy lottery tickets? The Secretary of State referred to one such case during the summer recess.
    Estelle Morris: First, I understand the hon. Gentleman's comments. Over the summer, people were aghast at the fact that someone who was not able to repay money to victims suddenly came into millions of pounds. To state the obvious, one of the elements of the lottery is chance: there are no criteria in relation to worthy, deserving or non-deserving winners of the lottery. As far as what might happen in the future is concerned, we have no intention of introducing criteria on who should win. If it is legal for someone to buy a ticket, it must be legal for them to take the winnings. The Home Office is considering further what action it may need to take as to the criteria that it decides to impose on who may or may not buy lottery tickets. The gatekeeper is the person who buys the lottery ticket, and there cannot be decisions taken retrospectively when people have bought tickets and won prizes.

    Gambling Laws
    Mr Andrew Mackay: When she intends to introduce legislation to reform gambling laws. [187896]
    The Minister for Sport and Tourism (Mr. Richard Caborn): We plan to introduce the gambling Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows. The Bill will modernise the law and provide stronger safeguards. We are considering the second report of the Joint Scrutiny Committee that examined our draft Bill. It made 24 recommendations on regional casinos, and we will consider all those and give our views in the near future.
    Mr. Mackay: "As time allows" is very vague, and I am delighted at that. Is the Minister aware that many of us believe that the American-style hard-gambling sheds that will be placed on the edge of towns will adversely affect our communities? We would be strongly opposed to that element of the legislation.
    Mr. Caborn: That means that we have cross-party support on that issue. Let me make it perfectly clear: we have been driven into this review, which, as many Members know, goes back to Budd, because of the development of new technology in relation to gambling. Many people are being exposed to online gambling who were not exposed to gambling previously. Let us make no mistake about it: the priority of the Bill is "protection, protection, protection." The world has moved on since the 1960s.
    May I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway), who chaired the Joint Scrutiny Committee? He and his colleagues took a realistic view, with deregulation and modernisation on the one hand, and protection on the other. Having examined the impact of gambling in Australia, I note that in a very short period, once the cap had been taken off, it was very difficult to put it back on. All those whom I spoke to in Australia said that they wished that they had moved more proportionately and carefully in their deregulation. We learned a lot from that, and we will make sure that this Bill is informed by some of their experiences.
    Mr. Peter Pike: My right hon. Friend, who visited Burnley football club last week, will know that we all think the gambling laws need to be reformed. We have no problem with casinos in places like Blackpool, but as my right hon. Friend will appreciate, there is some anxiety about football clubs, churches and other organisations for which lotteries and other forms of gambling are the main source of income. Does my right hon. Friend think that the reformed laws will ensure that those sources of income are protected for worthy causes?
    Mr. Caborn: We have been increasing the limits on charitable lotteries, and have done everything we can for the community. Some of the relaxations in the laws that have already taken place are intended to ensure that any surpluses and profits from that type of gambling are returned to the community. We have just been discussing the protection of the lottery. It is ring-fenced, and in that sense it is a private monopoly; but it is ring-fenced in order to help good causes.
    It seems from what I read in the papers that every football club in the country is to have a casino. We shall have to wait for the Bill, but I can assure my hon. Friend that casinos will not be springing up at every corner as they did in the 1960s. At that time they were commonly used for purposes of crime and money-laundering, but in this instance there will be protection and strong adherence to the law.
    Mr. John Greenway: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his earlier remarks, but does he agree with the Joint Scrutiny Committee's recommendation that without a reforming Bill, gambling of doubtful legality would continue to increase?
    Does the right hon. Gentleman welcome the code of practice jointly adopted last week by his Department and the betting exchanges? That area of gambling is currently not regulated. Is it not the case that without reform we shall not be able to introduce strong new powers through a new gambling commission, strengthen consumer interests, or reinforce the fight against problem gambling by means of greater social responsibility?
    Mr. Caborn: Obviously I welcome all the steps that have been taken, including what has happened with the Jockey Club and the exchanges on the memorandum of understanding that was signed only a few weeks ago. It appears that in the last few weeks cheating has been looked at very carefully in that part of the industry. We need to go much further, though, and I think that the new gambling commission—which will have far more teeth than the Gaming Board currently has—will ensure that the police and other authorities can move in, in a concerted and effective way, to control problem gambling. We want to prevent crime, and also to ensure that vulnerable people, including children, are protected.
    Mr. Kelvin Hopkins: My right hon. Friend will know of the research that was presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which concluded that 2 per cent. of the British population are already addicted to gambling and that
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    simply liberalising the laws will make things worse. Will he take account of that research in pursuing his legislation?
    Mr. Caborn: A good many reports have been produced, and I do not accept the findings of that one. In fact, the figure is 2 per cent. in Australia and marginally under 1 per cent. here. Nevertheless, the issue is important, which is why Budd recommended the setting up of the Gambling Trust. He wanted us to think not just about how we could mitigate the worst effects, but about some of the causes, and he therefore asked for the establishment of a £3 million fund. The industry has responded effectively to date, and I hope that we shall continue to look at both cause and effect.
    As with any other deregulation, there are some who will behave sensibly. People should be able to gamble sensibly, just as they should be able to drink sensibly without indulging in binge drinking. We must introduce laws that protect without stifling.
    Mr. Malcolm Moss: Few Bills could have undergone greater or closer scrutiny than the Gambling Bill, under the expert chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). I am grateful to the Minister for mentioning that. The Government's report has elicited almost universal support for the Committee's findings. Given the desire of more or less all involved in the industry for the Bill to be introduced as soon as possible, what reasons can the Government have for delaying it?
    Mr. Caborn: The reason is parliamentary time. As a seasoned Member of Parliament, the hon. Gentleman will know that such matters are within the gift not of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport but of those who order the business of the House—in which regard, I look to the Whips to my left. However, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that we have been pressing very hard on this issue.

    Sport England Database
    Ms Meg Munn: If she will make a statement on the launch of Sport England's Active Places online database. [187897]
    The Minister for Sport and Tourism (Mr. Richard Caborn): Active Places is a free-to-use, comprehensive online database of sports facilities in England. It provides details of more than 10,000 facilities, including swimming pools, synthetic pitches, health and fitness centres and ski slopes. Active Places was officially launched on 11 July, and I invited every Member of the House to attend a demonstration of it at Room C at 1 Parliament Street between 10.30 am and 1.30 pm on 14 July. A flyer was also produced, telling Members how to access the database on their constituents' behalf. So every Member was informed, but unfortunately only a few could attend the demonstration. Doubtless it was pressing parliamentary business that prevented them from attending, but I have no doubt that Sport England will set up other demonstrations for any Member who requires one.
    Ms Munn: This is an excellent database that provides lots of information, but as it is developed, can consideration be given to asking providers of sports facilities to clarify the cost of such facilities, because cost is often a key factor in families, children and young people deciding whether they want to access them?
    Mr. Caborn: Very much so, and we shall obviously act on any such constructive suggestions. As I have said, the number of facilities listed on the database—involving some 10,000 locations—is limited, but the database will be continuously updated and we shall add further locations.
    There has been debate about the closure of playing fields and various facilities, and this database will show for the first time ever what facilities we have, where the hot spots are and where we need to invest. In fact, all Governments have previously been investing in a strategic vacuum, because we have lacked the basic data that show where we really need to invest in sports facilities. This database will be one of the tools to give us that up-to-date information, so that we can make informed decisions on such investment.
    Jim Knight: I, too, have visited the website. It is excellent in as far as it goes, but it misses out certain key sports—in particular, those that are actively pursued in my constituency. The Minister has visited the skateboarding centre in Weymouth and the sailing centre. Indeed, sailing is the Olympic sport in which we were most successful, and I am lucky enough to represent four of this year's medallists. Is there any prospect of sailing, windsurfing and skateboarding being included on the website?
    Mr. Caborn: I thought that my hon. Friend was going to talk about Olympic sailing centres—I think that they are on the website—but he refrained from doing so; nevertheless, I take his point. This is the first attempt to compile a Domesday Book of sporting facilities, so that we know what we have and where it is. We will continue to expand the website, and if any Member wants to write to Sport England explaining where, in their view, there are information deficiencies, please do so. This is a partnership, and we want to ensure that everyone in England has access to all the facilities and to up-to-date information, particularly through the website. Constructive comments and criticism will be welcomed.
    Miss Anne McIntosh: What the implications for North Yorkshire will be of London's Olympic bid. [187899]
    The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell): The hon. Lady will be aware that Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, encouraged the Government to back the bid for the 2012 Olympics. We will work with it and with RDAs throughout the country to ensure that North Yorkshire and the whole UK will benefit.
    Miss McIntosh: I am very grateful to the right hon. Lady for that reply. The constituency of her colleague the Minister for Sport and Tourism is going to get some magnificent facilities, and I wonder what lies in store for North Yorkshire. Can we look forward to a 50 m pool
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    or an athletics track in Thirsk, Bedale, Boroughbridge, Easingwold or perhaps Poppleton? Otherwise, we will have to travel a remarkably long distance: to Sheffield, or indeed to London.
    Tessa Jowell: I thank the hon. Lady and I know that there will be an effort, conducted under the auspices of Yorkshire Forward, to bring the whole region together and ensure that it is proactive in marketing its benefits, perhaps attracting holding camps and other facilities for visiting teams. The opportunity for initiative is there to be taken across the whole of the UK. I would urge regional development agencies throughout the UK to take the initiative as Yorkshire Forward has done.
    Lawrie Quinn: I remind my right hon. Friend that in Euro 1996, during the successful football championships, North Yorkshire was used to house some of the competitors. I urge her to ensure that the RDA and tourism bodies learn the lessons from that particular experience, bearing it in mind that some of the best hotels and facilities are located on the Yorkshire coast.
    Tessa Jowell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there are opportunities for hosting preparation camps, and enormous wider tourism opportunities, already demonstrated in respect of the north-west on the back of the Commonwealth games. There will be something like 10,000 full-time equivalent jobs generated by the Olympics, and the opportunity extends to firms across the country to tender for that work. The opportunities are there: the important thing, once we know that we have won the bid, is to seed them.
    Mr. Boris Johnson: Much as I applaud the lottery funding of athletes in North Yorkshire, may I ask the Secretary of State if she agrees that it is amazing and a disgrace that, here in London, the National Gallery's fantastic east wing project is currently being funded almost entirely by non-UK nationals, while £2.6 billion of unspent cash—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is miles away.
    John Barrett: If she will make a statement on the London bid to host the 2012 Olympic games. [187900]
    The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell): London's presentation to the International Olympic Committee during the games in Athens went very well, and our Prime Minister was the only Head of Government of the 2012 candidate cities to be there. The bid is making excellent progress with planning permission granted last Thursday for the Olympic park in the lower Lea valley. The Olympic applications are some of the largest ever to have been considered in the country, but it took just eight months from the submission time, which is an incredible

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    achievement and an excellent boost for our efforts internationally to sell the case for bringing the games to London.
    John Barrett: One problem about the London bid identified by the International Olympic Committee is the lack of enthusiasm in the nations and regions about it. What will the Secretary of State do to ensure that the far-flung nations and regions do not suffer as parts of Greece suffered this year? It was a particularly bad tourist season because people believed that Athens was overbooked, overpriced and overheated.
    Tessa Jowell: The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. The bid team has addressed the importance of engaging people right across the UK through the establishment—under the leadership of Charles Allen, who made such a success of the Manchester games—of a nations and regions committee that will do just that. We need to spread the benefits of the bid all around the UK.
    This is one of the rare issues where cross-party support is crucial, and we hope that it continues—we will be damaged without it—because we all recognise the fantastic benefits that the bid could bring to our country. Every single Member in the House can be an ambassador for our bid—in our constituencies, selling it to people young and old and to those who have never even turned on the television to watch sport before. Everyone has a fresh memory of the inspiration, created even by sitting and watching the television, that the Olympic games uniquely bring.
    I sat in Athens to witness the opening ceremony, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and Tourism witnessed the closing ceremony. The Greeks' sense of celebration and pride in their city was palpable. It was wonderful to be part of it and I could not help imagining what it would be like if we had the games in London. That is what we have to strive for and, if we work together to achieve it, it is within our grasp.
    Dr. Phyllis Starkey: Does my right hon. Friend agree that London's bid would be immeasurably strengthened if we highlighted successful world championship events that have been held here in Britain? I draw her attention to the sterling efforts of the Badminton Association of England in rescheduling the world championships last year in Birmingham because of the SARS epidemic. The association demonstrated that even in such inauspicious circumstances a British sporting authority can run a world championship to great applause from everyone who participates, and especially those from countries in Asia. Will she use that example to strengthen our Olympic bid?
    Tessa Jowell: I absolutely agree, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the particular efforts that she made to secure those world championships. It is exactly that kind of self-confidence that we need. We are a country whose towns and cities are able to stage world-class sporting events and make them a great success. She is right to say that bringing the badminton world championships here strengthened the prospects of our London bid.

  The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—
  CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

    Clergy
    Mr. Ben Chapman: What discussions the Church Commissioners have held recently with the Department of Trade and Industry with regard to the terms of employment of members of the clergy. [187911]
    Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Stuart Bell): Church of England representatives have played a full part in meetings with the DTI to discuss aspects of the employment status of clergy.
    Mr. Chapman: While the establishment of the clergy working group with the DTI is very much to be welcomed, I have personally campaigned on this issue for seven years now, and that is far too long. I urge my hon. Friend to encourage the working group to reach speedy, equitable, early and fair conclusions.
    Sir Stuart Bell: I am sure that when my hon. Friend is dead—but not forgotten—the words "Employment Relations Act 1999, section 23" will be found engraved on his heart. We welcome the way in which he has pushed this issue, as has the Church, for more than seven years. As he knows, the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small, and we are looking for legislation on the matter during 2005.
    David Taylor: I, too, albeit more intermittently, have raised this issue from time to time since 1997. Does my hon. Friend agree that the present status of parish priests is equivalent to self-employed, and as such they have significantly weaker employment rights than do people who are legally employed? Should not we move much more quickly to protect parish priests and others from the vulnerability to which they are currently exposed?
    Sir Stuart Bell: As my hon. Friend will know, the clergy terms of service review group, chaired by Professor David McClean, recommended that clergy should have the employment rights conferred by section 23 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, including protection against unfair dismissal and a new form of tenure for those without freehold. On the issue of employment rights per se, the clergy will retain their offices as officeholders within the terms of the clergy terms of service regulations.
    Sir Patrick Cormack: Is not the real problem the erosion of the freehold? Can the hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that it is no part of the policy of the Church Commissioners to erode the freehold further?
    Sir Stuart Bell: The hon. Gentleman puts a pertinent question. The second report that is being prepared on the basis of the first report by Professor David McClean will develop some of the issues that are in the first report,

    977
    including the possible application of common tenure to clergy with the freehold. It will also address some of the questions that have been raised during the consultation on the first report.

  ELECTORAL COMMISSION COMMITTEE
  The hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—
  ELECTORAL COMMISSION COMMITTEE

    All-postal Ballots
    17. Michael Fabricant: If he will make a statement on the future of all-postal ballots following the most recent report of the Electoral Commission. [187914]
    Mr. Peter Viggers: The commission has produced reports on each of the four all-postal ballots held in June this year, as required by the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Act 2004, and also a separate report that looks more widely at the future use of postal voting across Great Britain. It is now for the Government to respond, and of course for others to comment—including honourable colleagues.
    Michael Fabricant: I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. He will be aware that the Electoral Commission said that the trials were marred by complex voting methods, logistical problems and fear of abuse, damaging public confidence. Although the whole House will welcome greater engagement by the electorate in elections—the number of people voting rose by 5 per cent.—does he not feel that the commission may be unwise to say that it is too late to cancel the all-postal election in the north-east?
    Mr. Viggers: The commission has certainly recommended that voters be offered greater choice in how they receive and cast their vote, but it does not believe that there are sufficient grounds to stop the referendum in the north-east at this stage, when the formal referendum period has already begun, Parliament has agreed to the referendum proceeding and preparations are under way. The commission has also pointed to the fact that campaigning has begun and that there is public expectation that the vote will go ahead. For future elections and referendums, however, it has made it clear that it would not support the use of all-postal voting.
    Mr. David Heath: In this instance, it is difficult not to say to Ministers, "We told you so." Having read the Electoral Commission's pertinent comments, which deal not only with all-postal voting but with postal voting in normal elections, it seems to me that there are some excellent suggestions for changes in primary legislation to deal with new offences, the dispatch of papers, post-election audits and, most important, the declaration of identity. The Electoral Commission says:
    "All legislation pertaining to an election … should be in place in time to allow the implementation of proper and robust procurement process."
    978
    As we are moving towards a general election period, is the commission in discussion with the Government about introducing primary legislation in the next Session to secure its sensible passage, unlike the rushed and unfortunate process that we went through a few months ago?
    Mr. Viggers: Yes, the commission took the view in July 2003, on the basis of three series of pilots at local elections, that all-postal voting could be recommended for use in local elections, subject to certain stated conditions. However, following the extensive pilot in June 2004, which also included European parliamentary elections, it has moved to the view that all-postal voting does not provide the best basis for moving forward. Its intention is to develop proposals for what it calls a foundation model for multi-channel elections, as indicated in its recent report, "Delivering Democracy", and to report on a recommended approach before 31 March 2005. The model is expected to build on the benefits of all-postal voting while retaining the use of polling stations. The commission will consult interested individuals, including Members of Parliament and political parties, as the development work gets under way later this year, but it takes the view that it is necessary to do that careful preliminary work before legislation is introduced.

  The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—
  CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

    Parish Priests
    Miss Anne McIntosh: Pursuant to his oral answer of 28 June, Official Report, columns 18–19, on parish priests, how vocations day contributes to the recruitment of rural parish priests. [187915]
    Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Stuart Bell): As an aside, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, as the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) is still in the Chamber, may I say how much we shall miss him in our part of Question Time? John Keats wrote the line,
    "Just for a handful of silver he left us"—
    Sir Patrick Cormack: It was Browning.
    Sir Stuart Bell: I am very grateful for that correction. Hansard will also be grateful. We miss the hon. Member for Lichfield in relation to Lichfield cathedral and other Church matters, and hope that he will soon be back among us.
    On the question put by the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), vocations Sunday gives the Church the opportunity to encourage everyone to reflect and discover their God-given call, and resources are provided for dioceses to help in that process.
    Miss McIntosh: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that reply. I know that he shares my concern about the number of rural priests who are approaching retirement. Has he given any more thought to that problem? Mindful of the fact that we have had a particularly harsh summer, with bad weather affecting rural farmers, which has put more pressure on parish priests, how can vocations Sunday help and what specific emphasis are the priests giving?
    May I also ask the hon. Gentleman to join me in congratulating the Archbishop of York in giving such a magnificent lead, in proposing to return to what should be the ultimate ministry—rural parish priesthood?
    Sir Stuart Bell: The Archbishop of York has rendered a signal service to the Church over many years. He will be sadly missed in his role as archbishop, but I am sure that his continued search for the salvation of souls through the parish church is most welcome.
    On the hon. Lady's point about the number of parish priests in rural areas, she will be aware that the majority of clergy now entering the stipendiary ministry have had previous careers. They are therefore likely to have family commitments and limits on their mobility. In addition, they may wish to minister in a setting that is similar to that from which they have come. That is, of course, a broad generalisation, but it helps to explain why rural dioceses sometimes find it more difficult than others to attract stipendiary clergy.
    On the hon. Lady's first question, the recent feedback suggests that, following the initiatives that I have announced, a number of men and women have been encouraged to explore a call to ordination in rural parishes and elsewhere with their local clergy, vocation advisers and diocesan directors of ordinance.

    Ordinands
    Chris Bryant: How many (a) women and (b) men are in training for ordination. [187916]
    Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Stuart Bell): For the year 2003–04, there were 641 women and 659 men in training for ordination.
    Chris Bryant: Bearing in mind the fact that the number of women in ordination training is now almost catching up with the number of men, is it not about time that the Church of England woke up to the fact that there are women who are performing very good jobs in cathedrals and parishes up and down the land, and that it is time we had some on the Bench of Bishops as well?
    Sir Stuart Bell: I am always grateful to my hon. Friend for his questions, and I did, of course, anticipate that one. He will be happy to know that I recently enjoyed a midday service at the Trinity church in New York and an eventide service at Westminster abbey—both were officiated at by women priests, and I enjoyed them both immensely.
    On my hon. Friend's latter point, he will be aware that a working group, chaired by the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, has been giving serious consideration to the question of women in the
    980
    episcopate and to the theology behind such a question. We must wait for the group to report to the General Synod before drawing conclusions, but my hon. Friend's voice will be heard.

  ELECTORAL COMMISSION COMMITTEE
  The hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—
  ELECTORAL COMMISSION COMMITTEE

    General Election Turnout
    Mr. Graham Allen: What steps the Electoral Commission is taking to improve turnout at general elections; and if he will make a statement. [187918]
    Mr. Viggers: Under section 13 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, the Electoral Commission is responsible for promoting public awareness of electoral and democratic systems. It does so through programmes of education and information. The commission aims, through that activity, to contribute to increased electoral participation over time.
    Mr. Allen: Will the hon. Gentleman pass on to the Electoral Commission the congratulations of many hon. Members on the campaign that it mounted before the European elections to publicise people's rights to get involved in politics and participate in elections? Many of us have a sense of embarrassment at the number of people who failed to vote, even in our own constituencies. Will he request the Electoral Commission to consider the possibility of running pilot schemes in the constituencies of Members of all parties to try to discover why people do not vote and what steps we can all take to improve participation in our democracy?
    Mr. Viggers: Indeed, evidence seems to indicate that the Electoral Commission's campaigns have had considerable effect, and the hon. Gentleman has taken a keen interest in the subject—and indeed met the chairman of the Electoral Commission this morning.
    You know, Mr. Speaker, that the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission has no direct responsibility in these fields, and to that extent, as the spokesman of the Speaker's Committee, I am merely the drone target against whom hon. Members can essay their flights of wit and wisdom. However, hon. Members who have a view on postal voting and other matters have two opportunities to contribute this week: first, the Minister for Local and Regional Government hopes to catch your eye to make a statement later this afternoon, Mr. Speaker; and secondly, on Thursday in Westminster Hall there will be a debate on the report from the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on postal voting, which will give an opportunity to all hon. Members to contribute to the discussion.
    Mr. Simon Thomas: Is the Electoral Commission considering the issue of Thursdays? We in

    981
    the United Kingdom have a tradition of voting only on Thursdays and for one day only. Many other countries achieve higher participation in their general elections by voting on more than one day, and in particular at weekends. What consideration is being given to those moves?
    Mr. Viggers: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Electoral Commission has an open mind on the issue and believes that it requires further study.
    Mr. David Kidney: Regarding what the hon. Gentleman said about links with education, does he know—if not, will he arrange for a letter to be
    982
    sent to me afterwards—whether the Electoral Commission has links with curriculum co-ordinators who are responsible for delivering the citizenship curriculum in schools? One role of citizenship lessons in schools is to develop political literacy among young people, and of course young voters are the ones who stay at home the most.
    Mr. Viggers: I have no doubt that that is exactly the kind of matter on which the Electoral Commission is active. Rather than attempting to respond at this point, I am sure that the commission would welcome the opportunity to write to the hon. Gentleman with further information.

Business of the House
3.30 pm
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Phil Woolas): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a short business statement.
The business for Thursday 16 September will now be consideration of Lords amendments to the Employment Relations Bill, followed by a debate on HIV/AIDS in the developing world on a motion for the Adjournment of the House. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will of course make his usual business statement on Thursday.
Mr. Oliver Heald: I thank the Deputy Leader of the House for the business statement, but does he recall that last Thursday I asked for extra time to be allowed so that hon. Members on both sides of the House could put forward motions under section 2 of the Parliament Act to accompany the Hunting Bill to the other place? It is most unsatisfactory that we have a highly draconian procedural motion on the Order Paper today that will not only guillotine the business of this House, but provide for the Parliament Act to be used on the other place. Given that the two outstanding issues of compensation and the breadth of the offence were never properly debated or tackled in this House and that the business on Thursday has now gone, surely it would be possible for us to deal with the Hunting Bill properly on Thursday.
Mr. Woolas: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. It might assist the House if I explain the background to the statement. As hon. Members will know, last Thursday my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House announced that the Second Reading of the Civil Partnership Bill was due to take place this Thursday. Since then, hon. Members have asked for that date to be changed to accommodate the needs of those who wish to participate in the Northern Ireland talks that are due to take place at Leeds castle in Kent this Thursday—I am sure that the whole House agrees that we want those talks and negotiations to be successful. As ever, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House wishes to ensure that all views in the House are protected and that all hon. Members with strong points of view on matters of principle and conscience regarding the Civil Partnership Bill have the opportunity to raise them in the debate.
On the Hunting Bill, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has ensured that the moment of interruption will be put back. The House has debated the matter on five occasions and we have been generous in allocating time for the business motion. [HON. MEMBERS: "Too generous."] My hon. Friends say that we have been too generous in allocating time for the motion, Second Reading and the amendments. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will ensure that there is sufficient good debate on Wednesday for us to take a decision.
Mr. Andrew Stunell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for the amplification of his statement, which makes it clear that the change was due to a request from those who will participate in the Leeds castle
984
talks—we certainly would not want to stand in the way of that. Does he accept that it is a constant puzzle to hon. Members that business is immutable and inflexible on occasions when the Government do not want it to be flexible, and highly flexible when they do want that? Will he convey to the Leader of the House the concern among Liberal Democrats that such flexibility should not be shown exclusively in favour of the Government?
Mr. Woolas: That is slightly unfair if one considers the matter from the business managers' point of view. The postponement of Second Reading at this stage in the Session makes our job more difficult, not less. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept my assurance that our intention in suggesting the change is entirely honourable.
Sir Gerald Kaufman: Is not what the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) is complaining about something called "being in power", which will never trouble his party?
Mr. Woolas: As ever, I concur with my right hon. and senior Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). Of course, the time available for debate under any system during this Parliament is finite, and somebody has to decide. Thank goodness, it is not the Liberal Democrats and nor, I imagine, will that ever be the case again. If it were, I imagine that we would have 24/7 Parliament and no decisions would be made.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: But can the Minister tell us how long the Government have known about the meeting at Leeds castle? How committed are they to these September sittings? We found out last week that we were only sitting for three days when we were supposed to be sitting for four, and the new business for Thursday is technically an Adjournment debate. Twenty-five per cent. of the September recall will therefore be taken up with our dealing with insubstantial matters. Does the Deputy Leader of the House wish to comment on that?
Mr. Woolas: I would say to all hon. Members that a debate on HIV/AIDS in the developing world is hardly insubstantial. I point out to the hon. Gentleman that the September sittings will encompass two Second Readings—I am sure that he appreciates that that is important core business for the House—the Lords amendments that I have just announced and which the other place asked us to consider, and important matters such as the prevalence of HIV in the developing world. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not like the September sittings, but as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has announced, the House can make a decision on them in the new year.
Chris Grayling: But it seems to me that the Minister is avoiding the core point. Over the past couple of years, every time that there has been a major issue on the table for the Government, and on which large numbers of hon. Members have wanted to have a say, debate is curtailed. Why, then, do the Government manage to find time for full-day Adjournment debates?
Mr. Woolas: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's premise. The Government business managers and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House have to ensure, and they do, that all parts of the House have their fair share of debates. My right hon. Friend has to ensure that time is allocated to debates on Select Committee reports, Second Readings, amendments, Report stages and Third Readings, and he does so. The charge that insufficient time is provided is negated by the facts, as reported to the Procedure and Modernisation Committees, that prove that, under the current regime, more time is devoted to scrutiny than was the case in previous Parliaments.
Chris Bryant: Will the Minister confirm none the less that the delayed Second Reading of the Civil Partnership Bill does not mean that the Government are withdrawing their commitment to a measure that they want to reform into a proper shape after the Lords tried to dismantle it earlier this year? In fact, carry-over time is allowed for it, so it does not have to complete its passage this Session.
Mr. Woolas: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He has made an important point—the Civil Partnership Bill is part of our legislative programme, and is a flagship Bill. It helps to build the case for equality in this country, and ensures that many citizens will be given rights that at present they do not have. As my hon. Friend has suggested, our decision should not be taken in any way to mean a diminution in its priority.
Mr. Peter Luff: It would be churlish not to welcome flexibility by the Government whenever they are prepared to show it, but could I encourage the Minister to exercise that flexibility rather differently? It is true that the Hunting Bill has been scrutinised extensively in the House, but not in its
986
current form, and many issues concerning its practicality, its enforceability and intellectual consistency deserve greater scrutiny. The Government should at least have a chance to put the answers that we have not heard. Perhaps an extra day for that Bill is the best way forward.
Mr. Woolas: I disagree. We have taken a decision and believe that we have allocated generous time on Wednesday to deal with the motion, Second Reading and any amendments that might be proposed. We have put back the moment of interruption, with your permission, Mr. Speaker. It is time to take a decision. If the hon. Gentleman does not want to take that decision, but prefers to continue to delay it, he can make that point on Wednesday.
Mr. Douglas Hogg: May I reinforce the points made by my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House? No one can suppose that generous provision has been made for discussion of the Hunting Bill: it is five hours for Second Reading, inclusive of the procedure motion. Surely we have another day available. We should use that second day to discuss in Committee the detail of the Bill and to debate further the use of the Parliament Act. We have a right to discuss those matters, because the Bill is an intolerant, illiberal measure. We have the time to debate it further, and we should do so.
Mr. Woolas: I am beginning to feel that we are preempting Wednesday's debate. The points that have been raised are ones for the debate on the Hunting Bill. I emphasise that Lords amendments to the Employment Relations Bill—a Bill to which a commitment was made in the Employment Relations Act 1999, in response to a request from Conservative Members—have to be debated within this Session, and Thursday seems to provide a good opportunity to do so.

Regional Referendums
3.41 pm
The Minister for Local and Regional Government (Mr. Nick Raynsford): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement to the House on regional and local referendums in the north-east, north-west, and Yorkshire and the Humber. Before doing so, I offer the House apologies on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister for his absence today, as he has to attend a funeral.
Today's statement follows one I made in July in which I referred to the differences of view in the House about whether we should go ahead with referendums in the north-west, and in Yorkshire and the Humber. I explained the Government's decision to reschedule the referendums in those areas and confirmed, against a strong confidence in postal voting in the north-east, our decision to proceed with the referendum in that region. Hon. Members will recall that Parliament approved the orders enabling that referendum to take place.
In July, I also gave the House two assurances. First, I said that the Government would not proceed with the referendum in the north-east on the basis proposed if the Electoral Commission produced convincing evidence that it would be unsafe to do so. Secondly, I said that, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I would make a further statement in September on how we intended to proceed with the referendums in the north-west and in Yorkshire and the Humber, having had the opportunity to consider the Electoral Commission's evaluation report of the June electoral pilots. Today's statement follows on from those two assurances.
The Electoral Commission published its report on 27 August. In parallel, it published a statement setting out its view of the implications of its report for the regional and local referendums in the north-east. That report concludes that successful elections were delivered in the four pilot regions. The commission states that, to date, it is not aware of any evidence to suggest any widespread abuse of postal voting either within or beyond the pilot regions. Moreover, from an extensive public opinion survey, the commission found that people in the pilot regions were satisfied with all-postal voting by a margin of two to one—59 per cent. against 29 per cent.
Nevertheless, the commission concludes that the all-postal pilots raise a number of important issues that need to be addressed in relation to the future development of voting methods in Britain. It makes a range of recommendations designed to make voting more convenient, to increase the administrative capacity to run elections, and to build greater public confidence in voting arrangements. Above all, the commission identifies in its report the strong public support for electors to have choice in how to vote—a demand for choice that the commission is clear that all-postal voting does not meet. Accordingly, it has withdrawn its previous recommendation that all-postal voting should become the norm in local government elections.
In its place, the commission proposes to develop a new foundation model of voting as a basis for future multi-channel elections. The commission undertakes to work with Government, electoral administrators, political parties, and experts in access and security to
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design that new approach to voting, which must be capable of offering electors both choice and security. It is against that background of findings and recommendations that the commission has drawn up its statement about the conduct of regional and local referendums.
The commission has unambiguously concluded that the north-east referendum, which the House has approved for 4 November, should proceed as an all-postal ballot without changes to the process. Central to the commission reaching that conclusion is its recognition that the referendum process is already under way, and its judgment that there would be far greater risk to the process if significant changes were made now than if the referendum continued as planned.
The commission recognises that the system for the north-east referendum is an improvement over that piloted in June, particularly as there is no requirement for a witness to sign a security statement and because we have required considerably more assistance and delivery points at which voters can receive help and vote in privacy. The commission also recognises that there have been no allegations of fraud in the north-east, that there is extensive experience of all-postal voting in that region, and that there is greater public support for all-postal voting there than in any other region.
Accordingly, the commission explicitly states that it is not making any recommendations for change to the orders already made in relation to the conduct of the north-east referendums. The commission undertakes to work with the chief counting officer and the Government to encourage and promote good practice within the framework of the existing order.
There are therefore no grounds for not proceeding with the north-east referendums. They will go ahead as planned on 4 November. The Government welcome the commission's undertaking to work with others to encourage and promote good practice, and we stand ready to play our part.
As for the referendums in the north-west and in Yorkshire and the Humber, in its statement, the commission states that given the recommendations in its evaluation report, it could not support any future referendums on the all-postal basis now being used for the north-east. We welcome the commission's commitment to multi-channel elections—the form of elections that has consistently been the long-term aim of the Government's electoral modernisation strategy. We are ready to work with the commission on developing its proposed new foundation model of voting and we will discuss with the commission how that will be taken forward. We hope that all key stakeholders will join us. We share the commission's belief about the importance of securing a degree of public and political consensus in favour of significant changes to the electoral process before moving forward. We note that the commission aims to report on the new model in March 2005.
Against that background, it would be wrong now to reach final conclusions on the precise timing and form of the referendums in the north-west and in Yorkshire and the Humber. Over the coming months we, and others, will want to see how work progresses on the new foundation model, and to consider and analyse more deeply the full range of the commission's recommendations. We will then be better placed to take

989
final decisions about the form and timing of those referendums. I would, however, reiterate what I said in July: the Government are absolutely committed to the referendums going ahead.
It is important that the people of the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber should have their opportunity to express their view for or against an elected regional assembly and the associated local government reorganisation. I understand the concerns that have been voiced about delay leading to uncertainty about the future structure of local government in Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire and North Yorkshire. We recognise that concern, and we take it very seriously, but we want to make sure that the referendums are held against a background of confidence in the voting system. We will of course aim to minimise the delay. In all events, given the need for primary legislation following a yes vote in one referendum to allow elected regional assemblies to be established and the associated local government reorganisation to take place, there is no reason why this revised timetable for the referendums should cause significant delay to the overall local government reorganisation timetable.
The extensive electoral pilots last June have much to teach us all. Already they have led the commission to revise some of its key conclusions about all-postal voting, which it had drawn from earlier, smaller pilots. The way is now clear for the people of the north-east to make their choice on an elected regional assembly for their region, and the people of the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber can be confident that they, too, will be able to exercise their choice before too long.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin: I thank the Minister for sending me a copy of his statement well in advance. I am bound to say that it contained no surprises and raised a wry smile on my face. The Electoral Commission report is clear on several points that the Government have hitherto denied. Turnout in the all-postal voting regions was only five percentage points higher than elsewhere, and not 50 per cent. up as the Government falsely claimed. The public do not trust all-postal voting, and major reforms are required to increase the security of postal voting, even if it is postal voting on demand.
Of course the report's key recommendation is to abandon all-postal voting for all future statutory elections and referendums.
The Electoral Commission has delivered the most astonishing and courageous snub to the Government on this policy. The Minister's statement is simply the latest lurch in the Government's conduct of policy on all-postal voting. First, in January they included the north-west and Yorkshire in the June postal pilots, against the advice of the Electoral Commission. Then the Government forced them through the House of Lords, ignoring all the warnings about the tight timetables and lack of public confidence. They insisted there were no problems, as the elections proceeded in an atmosphere of utter chaos. Ballot packs were misprinted. There were panic reprints. Ballot packs were lost in the post or delivered to the wrong voters. Some voters got no ballot packs at all; some got more ballot packs than they bargained for.
990
Most important, when ballot papers are distributed willy-nilly to thousands of people who have no intention of voting, all-postal voting allows almost unlimited scope for electoral fraud. So why, after the June elections, did the Government still insist that all-postal voting was "a success"? I notice the Minister is still using the word "successful" in relation to the pilots, If one has tested a system to destruction and to the satisfaction of everybody that it is an unsound system, I suppose that is a kind of success.
Only when Labour Back Benchers lined up against the Government to denounce all-postal ballots did they abandon all-postal referendums in Yorkshire and the north-west. Now, the whole system of all-postal voting has been roundly condemned by the Electoral Commission out of hand. Since those of us who issued warnings to the Government have been utterly vindicated, will the Minister now abandon all-postal voting in the north-east referendum? Will he confirm that the Electoral Commission is not calling for change? The only reason it is not calling for change is that Parliament approved the orders back in July. Of course it is not for the Electoral Commission to second-guess decisions of the House. It is for Parliament to revisit those decisions.
Has the Minister forgotten, incidentally, that back in July the commission opposed the Government laying the orders for the north-east referendum in the first place? So why did the Minister not quote the commission's disclaimer on the north-east referendum, which states:
"Nothing in this statement"—
supporting the north-east referendum—
"should be interpreted as offering reassurance that … the referendum process in the North East will be risk free or secure a high degree of public support"?
If that is not the commission washing its hands of the problem, I do not know what is. It does not want to be responsible for the Government's irresponsible intransigence.
The Minister has no answer to the following question: if it is wrong to go ahead in Yorkshire or the north-west, why should the people of the north-east have to use a discredited voting system in their referendum? May I suggest to the Minister what he should do? Why not abandon all-postal voting in the referendum and ask Parliament for the necessary powers to revert to the tried and tested ballot box? I note the point that the Electoral Commission makes about the far greater risk of changing the system now, but I do not quite understand the point that it makes.
Even if the Prime Minister wanted a general election on 4 November, are we to take the Electoral Commission's advice and let it tell us that there is far too great a risk for the Prime Minister to call a general election before Christmas? That is totally unreasonable. The Government have just moved a writ for the Hartlepool by-election on 30 September. Did I hear the Electoral Commission tell us that there is much too much risk to call a by-election at such short notice? If there is time to call a general election by 4 November, there is time to revert to a tried and tested voting system in the north-east—a voting system that the people of the north-east can trust. As was recommended by my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) in his

991
private Member's Bill before the recess, surely the people of the north-east deserve the best voting system that we can provide for them.
The Minister is an honourable man. He would do much for his reputation and for the House if he admitted that the Government got it wrong. They are still getting the matter wrong. The right hon. Gentleman is carrying out his political masters' wish for all-postal voting because they hope to disguise the apathy towards Labour's unwanted elected regional assembly in the north-east. Labour's determination to carry on regardless clearly demonstrates that it puts self-interest before public interest and party before principle, and that it has no respect for the integrity of the constitution, which it should be Labour's duty to defend.
Mr. Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman showed his mastery of selective quoting in trying to support his point. He conveniently chose to ignore all evidence from the Electoral Commission that does not agree with his point of view. That reminds me of the position that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) took in an earlier debate, in which he said that he did not care about the Electoral Commission's views, which indicates the seriousness of the Opposition when it comes to important matters of election procedure and probity.
The hon. Gentleman's first point was that the Electoral Commission had proved that the Government's claim that all-postal voting had doubled turnout was wrong. I shall quote paragraph 4.19, page 29 of the Electoral Commission report:
"While turnout more than doubled in pilot regions, it increased by only half that amount in non-pilot areas."
The report states that, compared with the previous European election, the increase in the pilot areas was 109.46 per cent. and in the non-pilot regions it was 53.38 per cent. Most people with the slightest smattering of mathematics would say that the result in the pilot areas was double that in the non-pilot areas. It is astonishing that the hon. Gentleman should try to use a technical point about percentage points casuistically to claim that the Government have got the matter wrong, and I suggest that he read the report more carefully.
The hon. Gentleman went on to say that we held the all-postal pilots in June this year against the Electoral Commission's advice, but that is not true, because we consulted it at great length. The Electoral Commission recommended two regions as particularly suited to all-postal voting and four other regions as potentially suited to all-postal voting. We had previously asked the Electoral Commission to recommend three regions as suitable for all-postal voting and one region as suitable for an electronic pilot. In the event, the Commission did not recommend an electronic pilot, and we did not hold one. When we decided which regions should have all-postal pilots, we took the two regions that the Electoral Commission recommended as eminently suitable and two of the four regions that it recommended as potentially suitable. The hon. Gentleman's argument that we ignored the Electoral Commission's advice is simply untenable.
The hon. Gentleman repeated the exaggerated claims of problems associated with the pilots in June. If he examines page 50, paragraph 4.104 of the Electoral
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Commission report, he will read the following, which he might wish to ponder before he makes any rash allegations:
"In summary, we are not aware of any evidence to date to suggest any widespread abuse of postal voting, either in or beyond the pilot regions."
Those are the words of the Electoral Commission.
The hon. Gentleman suggests that we should abandon the north-east referendum, against the advice of the Electoral Commission, which says that we should proceed. He quoted the Electoral Commission saying that it would not be safe, so I shall tell him what the Electoral Commission actually said:
"There is presently no evidence on which to conclude that an all-postal referendum in the North East would be unsafe in terms of fraud or malpractice. To the Commission's knowledge, no allegations of electoral fraud made in the North East in relation to the June all-postal pilot scheme have led to formal prosecutions".
Those are the Electoral Commission's conclusions, and the hon. Gentleman does himself and his party no service by trying to ignore them.
The hon. Gentleman discussed the possibility of the referendum in the north-east being conducted by conventional means, against the clear advice of the Electoral Commission, which states that changing the basis of the referendum at this late stage would be risky. He also shows contempt for the views of people in the north-east, who have consistently shown their support for all-postal voting. The Opposition's position is simply not credible.
Mr. Edward Davey: I thank the Minister for his statement and for his usual courtesy in providing an advance copy.
As we are the only party to have consistently supported the recommendations of the Electoral Commission, no matter what they are, we very much welcome its total rejection of all-postal ballots for council elections. That is a huge victory for voters and for democracy, and a real setback for the Government. But why did not the Minister clarify whether he is accepting the recommendation unambiguously? Will he confirm that there will be no all-postal ballots in council elections in future and that that means that voters will be able to vote at their local polling station as now? The provision of the odd extra assistance and delivery point will not suffice and will not represent a true shift away from all-postal votes. The Minister may say that the position depends on the Electoral Commission's recommendation for the new foundation model of voting, but surely he can clarify what no all-postal voting means.
On the north-east referendum, the Minister is right and Conservative Front Benchers are wrong, because the Electoral Commission said in no uncertain terms that that vote could go ahead safely. Does he agree that the Conservatives' approach smacks of desperation, especially as only a few weeks ago they had U-turned and were in favour of the vote going ahead?
In the light of the Electoral Commission's report, does the Minister recognise that special care is needed to ensure that there are sufficient assistance and delivery points in rural areas in the north-east region?

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Will the Minister say a little more about the timing of the referendums for the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber regional assemblies? Does he agree that it would be wrong to give any impression that they will be deferred for long? Can he at least confirm that they will take place before the end of next year?
Will the Minister confirm—perhaps this is the final embarrassment for the Deputy Prime Minister—that the Electoral Commission is arguing that responsibility for every aspect of all elections be given to the Department for Constitutional Affairs and taken away from the ODPM once and for all?
Mr. Raynsford: I have got used to Liberal Democrats not being consistent, but I was somewhat taken aback by the confidence with which the hon. Gentleman began his remarks. He stated that his party was the only party to have consistently supported the Electoral Commission's recommendations, then went on to say that he welcomes its rejection of all-postal voting in its latest report. He has obviously forgotten that in its report into the 2003 pilots, the commission recommended that all-postal voting should become the norm for all local elections. If, as he claims, the Liberal Democrats have consistently supported the Electoral Commission's recommendations, they have clearly just about-turned on their previous position. If they agreed with that recommendation, they cannot now say that they are opposed to it yet have always been consistent. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has been let down.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the north-east. It is right to proceed with that referendum, and, as he rightly said, the Electoral Commission has stated that there is no sound basis whatever for postponing or cancelling it.
The hon. Gentleman raised an important point about assistance and delivery points. We have made provision for there to be more of those than in the pilots, with a minimum of one for each 50,000 of the population and the returning officer able to agree more in appropriate cases. We certainly support that and will work closely with the chief counting officer, who is the chief executive of Sunderland council, and the Electoral Commission to ensure that there is a good supply of assistance and delivery points where people can vote in person and in privacy if they choose to do so.
On the timetable for the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber, it would not be appropriate to take a decision until we have had an opportunity to see the work that the Electoral Commission has developed on the foundation model. We expect its report to be available in March next year, and we will then be in a better position to reach a decision.
As for pulling together the responsibilities of two Departments, I did not notice in the Electoral Commission's report a recommendation as to which Department should take responsibility. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman read a different report from the one that I read. He should be a bit careful before drawing such inferences.
Mr. Gordon Prentice: I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on his decision not to rush ahead prematurely with a referendum on a regional assembly in the north-west, which some Labour Members believe that it would be very difficult to win. Given that there is uncertainty in councils across the north-west and, indeed, in Yorkshire and the Humber, is my right hon. Friend minded to decouple any proposals for local government reform from the principal question of whether to establish regional assemblies?
Mr. Raynsford: I thank my hon. Friend for his comments on the Government's decision to proceed in the north-east and postpone the referendums in the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber. I made it clear in my statement that we accepted that there was some uncertainty about local government reorganisation and that we wanted to press ahead as soon as possible. However, it has always been our position that there must be a link between a vote in favour of an elected regional assembly and the creation of a streamlined, unitary local government structure to avoid a proliferation of tiers of government and to ensure a streamlined and efficient administration. That remains the Government's policy.
Sir Paul Beresford: Despite the Minister's brave words on fraud and postal voting, he must accept that considerable concern remains. In the run-up to all-postal voting, New Zealand was used as a positive example. The mayor of Auckland informed me that he estimates that at least 50 per cent. of the increased turnout is down to fraud, and Auckland has had a little more practice than here. In the light of those concerns, does the Minister accept that a yes vote in the north-east should carry a substantial majority? What would he accept as the minimum figures for both a yes and a no vote?
Mr. Raynsford: I agree about the importance of turnout. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not jump to the conclusion that a substantial increase in turnout is associated with fraud. All the evidence of the Electoral Commission's work in the pilots that were conducted in 2000, 2002, 2003 and again this year shows no substantial fraud in postal voting in the pilot areas or elsewhere. That is the Electoral Commission's considered judgment. All-postal pilots have resulted in a substantial increase in the number of participants in elections. That is a serious matter. No party can afford to ignore a decline in participation in the democratic process. We must be serious in trying to engage people and use sensible ways of doing that.
However, I agree about the importance of confidence in the voting system. That is why we have greatly welcomed the Electoral Commission's proposals on the way forward through exploring a foundation model that would contain the benefits of increased convenience—and therefore the likelihood of higher turnout, which came with all-postal voting—and also choice for the electorate who want to vote in person, in the traditional way. That is the right way forward and we shall work closely with the Electoral Commission on developing that model.
Mr. Doug Henderson: People in the north-east will greatly welcome my right hon. Friend's decision to proceed with the referendum. They will also welcome the decision not to have the bureaucratic witness system with postal voting. One of my constituents described it to me as "Something daft that them down south thought up." The effect of the witness system was not to deal with fraud—in fact, it encouraged some people to commit fraud as witnesses—but to deter many people, who found it too bureaucratic, from voting. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that adequate publicity is given to the change well in advance of 4 November?
Mr. Raynsford: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words about our decision to press ahead in the north-east. He knows that there is absolute support throughout the north-east for conducting the referendum and for using all-postal ballots. As the Electoral Commission points out, the north-east has had greater experience, from 2000 onwards, of all-postal ballots, and its survey shows greater public confidence in all-postal voting in the north-east than in any other region. We are therefore convinced that it is right to proceed.
My hon. Friend mentioned the problem with the witness statements in June. He may be interested to know that a council by-election has subsequently been held, using all-postal votes but without a witness statement, in Darlington. It was held at the end of August and the turnout was some five percentage points higher than in June, when witness statements were used. That is interesting evidence that should be taken into account. [Interruption.] Before Opposition Members laugh, they should remember that, before the pilots that the Government initiated in 2000, it had sadly become common for turnout in local council by-elections to fall to derisory levels of 10 per cent. or thereabouts. In Darlington, the turnout was 38.9 per cent. for a council by-election in August.
That is an indication that all-postal voting has been able to reverse the trend of decline and has made it possible for more people to vote, which is not something that we should lightly disregard.
Mr. Damian Green: The Minister will be aware that, behind some of the knockabout in which he has been indulging, the serious issue is whether he is going to set up a referendum that will have the shadow of fraud over it, which would mean that the cloud of fraud would hang over all elections conducted in this way. I am sure that he would want to avoid that. If the only difference between the pilots and the referendum is to be the removal of the witness statements, perhaps because of a bureaucratic problem, that would mean that the amount of checks against fraud would be reduced. The shadow of fraud would therefore be greater in the referendum than it was in the pilots. Does the Minister acknowledge that it is not enough simply to talk about turnout? People need to be confident that it is not only the number of votes that has increased, but the number of voters as well, and that the increased turnout is not due to fraud. The Minister is reducing the protection against fraud under this new system.
Mr. Raynsford: The Electoral Commission quite clearly says in its statement:
"There is presently no evidence on which to conclude that an all-postal referendum in the north-east would be unsafe in terms of fraud or malpractice."
That is the considered view of the commission, and the hon. Gentleman should pay attention to that. He is incorrect to say that the only change between the June pilot and the November referendum will be the removal of the witness statement. The other very significant change, to which the commission referred in its report, is the availability of far more extensive advice and delivery points, at which people will be able to vote in person, in privacy, if they wish to do so. That is a further significant change, in response to the genuine concerns voiced by people who want the opportunity to vote in person. We are therefore proceeding on the basis of the informed view of the Electoral Commission, and of the evidence that the north-east has consistently been able to achieve higher levels of participation and turnout as a result of all-postal voting without any evidence of a serious problem of fraud or malpractice.
Mr. Peter Pike: Many people in the north-west will, like the Government, very much regret the fact that this issue has been deferred in our region. They will, however, understand the announcement that my right hon. Friend has made today. They support the Government's wish to give more democratic accountability on regional strategic and financial issues, and they want to see that done as soon as possible. They also believe that unitary authorities, to which the Labour Government are committed, provide better local government. I hope that, as soon as the foundation voting system is established, we can go ahead with the referendum in the north-west as soon as possible. I still hope to see that happen before I retire at the next general election, which need not be until 2006.
Mr. Raynsford: I note and entirely support my hon. Friend's concern to see that the people of the north-west are given the opportunity to vote on an elected regional assembly in a referendum at the earliest opportunity. He will understand that, given the various other factors that might come into play next year, I cannot give him an absolute assurance of the kind that he seeks. I have said, however, that we will give serious consideration to the Electoral Commission's proposed foundation model as soon as we see it, and we shall be working with the commission as it develops it. I hope to be able to make a statement—at the very least—on our decision in relation to the north-west and to Yorkshire and the Humber while my hon. Friend is still a Member of the House.
Mr. Andrew Stunell: Does the Minister agree that a strong, independently elected regional assembly for the north-west would be a strong bulwark against arbitrary central Government decisions such as the cancellation of funding for the Metrolink tram in Greater Manchester, and his own Department's decision to refuse the Ikea application in Stockport? Will he therefore give the House a strong assurance that the fastest possible progress will be made on implementing this very important proposal?
Mr. Raynsford: We share the hon. Gentleman's view that there should be greater devolution to the regions, and we believe that decisions should be taken on matters affecting regional economic development and regional planning at regional level wherever possible.
That is right and proper. I do not accept his view on Metrolink, on which the issue is under consideration, but I share his view entirely on the benefits of devolution. Our commitment is to allow people in the English regions the opportunity to have effective, elected regional assemblies, which are able to take decisions on matters that affect their region and to improve the economic performance and quality of life of their people.
Mr. Andrew Mackay: Now that even the Minister appears to have followed the Electoral Commission in realising that all-postal votes are wrong, and he is talking about the electorate rightly having a choice as to how they vote in future, can we assume that the referendum in the north-east will be the very last all-postal ballot?
Mr. Raynsford: Before the right hon. Gentleman tries to rewrite history, let me remind him that a year ago, the Electoral Commission reported on the 2003 pilots, and recommended that all-postal voting should become the norm in local government elections. That was not the Government's recommendation but the Electoral Commission's. We did not accept that recommendation; we believed that it was right to continue with pilots. We have done so, and we have learned a great deal from further pilots. We believe that that has helped to inform progress towards what has always been our objective: multi-channel elections, which allow people the opportunity and choice to vote by means that they find most convenient. We have not reached a final decision on the Electoral Commission's report and recommendations, but I have indicated clearly our sympathy and support for the concept of the multi-channel foundation model that it is working up, which is entirely consistent with our approach, which we have enunciated for several years.
Mr. Graham Brady: The Government accept that support for regional government in the north-west and in Yorkshire and the Humber is less than in the north-east. If the north-east votes no, or if the turnout is derisory, will the Minister undertake not to proceed with costly and time-wasting referendums in those regions? Will he also give an answer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), and give a percentage for what he thinks is an acceptable majority and a derisory turnout?
Mr. Raynsford: It is a slightly odd argument that people in the hon. Gentleman's region and in Yorkshire
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and the Humber should not be allowed an opportunity to express their view, which may differ from the view expressed in the north-east. The whole basis of the Government's policy is choice: each region will be given a choice. It would be wrong to cancel arbitrarily that opportunity simply because another region had voted in a particular way. That is not democracy or common sense.
On the issue of thresholds, the hon. Gentleman will know the perverse consequences that come when an arbitrary threshold is set, and when a referendum or other election is not valid unless a particular turnout is achieved. That crippled the move towards devolution in Scotland in the late 1970s—an arbitrary 40 per cent. threshold was set even though the people of Scotland voted in favour of devolution. Because that threshold was not met, they could not proceed, and were deeply unhappy about that decision for 20 years. His party's annihilation from the Scottish electoral scene is in no small measure due to its failure to understand the anger of the Scots about the failure of this Parliament to allow them the opportunity for devolution.
Apart from that, the other issue is the perverse incentive that if a threshold is set, those who believe that they cannot beat their opponents and win the argument by voting can try to do so simply by not voting. That should not be welcome in a democracy. We want to encourage turnout, that is what we are doing, and that is why we are pursuing measures designed to increase participation in both local government elections and referendums.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: The Minister's Department, I believe, is signed up to the Plain English Campaign. Can he tell us what is meant by
"a basis for future multi-channel elections to develop a new foundation model of voting"?
Mr. Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman has, I hope, been listening to the debate, and will know that the Electoral Commission has set out its proposals for a new model that would include provision for people to vote by post, in person and electronically. That is multi-channel. I have referred to that several times, and most people who have followed the debate understand it.
I entirely accept that the language used by the commission in the passage quoted by the hon. Gentleman is not necessarily the kind of language in which he would talk to his constituents in the Dog and Duck, but I assure him that our objective is increasing participation and giving people choice, so that they can vote by a means that is practical and convenient to them. That will give us the best chance of increasing turnout, and ensuring that the sad decline in electoral participation that poses a real threat to the health of our democracy is reversed.

Points of Order
4.20 pm
Chris Grayling: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You may not be aware of a serious security lapse at Buckingham Palace this afternoon, when protesters gained access to the balcony used by the royal family. In the light of what is an extremely alarming development in the current security situation, Mr. Speaker, have you any information on whether the Home Secretary plans to make a statement to the House this afternoon or this evening?
Mr. Speaker: I was not aware of the incident, because I have been in the Chair. Nor am I aware of whether a statement is to be made.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Deputy Leader of the House confirmed today that we would be returning regularly in September as part of the programme of Government business. I wonder if you have had time to look at the staircase leading from just outside the Tea Room to the lower ground floor, and to establish whether it is safe.
A good deal of the building has been cordoned off on health and safety grounds. Anyone visiting a building site in a similar condition to some parts of the Palace of Westminster would be issued with a hard hat. As far as I know, most Members have not been issued with such a hat.
Mr. Speaker: I make no mention of the House's decision to come back for a fortnight; that is up to the House. However, I take the hon. Gentleman's point. I am concerned about the fact that some parts of the Palace of Westminster leave a lot to be desired in terms of health and safety. It is not only the safety of Members with which I concern myself, but that of staff and visitors to the House—and, indeed, those who are working in this environment. I shall therefore invite my officers who are responsible to ask for a health and safety report on the situation around the Palace. I am certainly not happy that the situation exists, and I do not think that this is a good environment to invite people to enter. I look forward to answers to many of the questions that Members have raised.

Orders of the Day

  Children Bill [Lords]
  Order for Second Reading read.
  4.23 pm
  The Minister for Children (Margaret Hodge): I feel very proud and privileged to present the Bill to the House. It is a year since we published our Green Paper "Every Child Matters", in which time we have engaged in extensive discussion and consultation on our proposals. We have listened carefully, and in some instances we have amended our plans to reflect people's views and concerns. I am delighted that our determination to place children and young people at the heart of our programmes has been so clearly demonstrated by the fact that 3,000 of the 4,500 responses that we received to the consultation came from children themselves.
  In the past year, we have also embarked on a wide range of programmes and activities to proceed with the programme of change. This is not about a quick political fix for the short term; it is a programme of fundamental reform involving the transformation of children's services, which will take time to deliver. If we are to succeed in our ambition, we need legislation to facilitate and underpin our reforms.
  The Bill provides the legislative spine for a hugely ambitious agenda. By itself it is not enough, but without it we will not succeed in the pursuit of our ambition to enable every child to realise their potential, or in our determination to secure a step change in how we safeguard and protect children. Our aim is to maximise opportunity and to minimise risk; to respond better to the additional needs of some children by ensuring that all our universal services respond better to the individual needs of every child; and to raise the importance of children and families on the political and public policy agenda by prioritising their needs and aspirations at Government, local government and community level.
  The reform agenda is driven by the outcomes that children themselves told us matter. We consulted them widely and they told us that they want to be healthy, to stay safe, to enjoy themselves and to achieve, to make a positive contribution to society and to achieve economic well-being. The centrality of these aspirations is reflected by their inclusion in clause 7. Those are broad and general aspirations, and translating them into objectives and priorities for action is critical, but we have started that work by developing public service agreement targets for the next spending review period across many Government Departments; by developing comprehensive performance assessment targets for local government; and through the national service framework for children's health services, which we will shortly launch with our colleagues in the Department of Health.
  I should point out how delighted I am that my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for community, from the Department of Health, will wind up today's debate, and that my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins), from the Home Office, is also here to support it. That makes it

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  transparent to the House that we are joining up across Government Departments to achieve our agenda for change for children.
  Mr. Hilton Dawson: I join my right hon. Friend in praising the array of talent on the Front Bench, but regret that a Minister from the Department for Constitutional Affairs is not present. Will she assure me that the radical policies that this Government are putting in place—particularly those on schools and the devolution of power to them—in no way clash with the co-operative agenda that we are trying to establish to ensure that children's services are integrated and work well across the board?
  Margaret Hodge: That issue was raised during the summer by a number of interested parties. Independence and interdependence are two key drivers of our reform programme, and the fact that the Minister for School Standards is here today, and that he and I have together written recently to all chief executive directors of education and of social services, demonstrates our determination to get schools strongly engaged in the agenda.
  Mr. Andrew Turner: The right hon. Lady referred a moment ago to the aspirations contained in clause 7. Does she accept that they are best delivered and supported when children have access to both parents, even if those parents have chosen to live apart? What steps is she taking in this Bill to prevent one parent from unilaterally preventing their children from accessing the other parent?
  Margaret Hodge: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have always said that in the tragic circumstances where parents separate, it is generally in the children's interests to maintain contact with both parents where it is safe for them to do so. That principle underpinned the Green Paper, published just before the summer recess, on these very difficult issues. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will respond to that consultation process, and once we have consulted we hope to produce some clear propositions—both in legislation and in policy—to advance the agenda set out in the Green Paper.
  Two key policy principles underpin our approach in this Bill and in all else that we do. We want to reconfigure services around the needs of children rather than in the interests of traditional professional hierarchies, and we want to shift our effort to prevention and early intervention while at the same time strengthening child protection in all the services that touch children's lives. Nobody can disagree with our desire to refocus services in that way. We also know that those changes make sense in children's lives.
  We are beginning to garner strong evidence from some of the Government's most successful and innovative programmes to affirm our approach. For instance, evidence from local Sure Start programmes is beginning to tell a powerful story of how early intervention with services joined up around the needs of a child and their family can make a profound difference. In a Sheffield Sure Start, we have seen a 27 per cent. increase in breastfeeding rates among mothers. In a Sure
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  Start in Whitehaven in Cumbria, 25 per cent. of known smokers stopped smoking during their pregnancy. In Scunthorpe, 56 people were helped into work in one year alone, while in the Sure Start in Church street, Westminster, library membership increased by 11.5 per cent. In Corby, the number of children starting school with a special educational need was reduced by 10 per cent., while in east Hailsham child protection re-registration rates are down from 8 per cent. of 0 to 3-year-olds to 3 per cent.
  Achieving that radical, whole-system reform of our services is, however, a mammoth endeavour. It requires genuine partnership across professional boundaries and a fundamental cultural change, which can be facilitated and encouraged through legislation, hence the Bill, and also depends on us employing a broad range of levers—from investing in training to promoting new leadership skills, from joining up funding at local authority level to joining up policies at central Government level and from being clear about the accountabilities and responsibilities of all those who work in the children's work force to being clear about the outcomes that we expect from all the services that we fund.
  Reforming children's services means that we must work in partnership. That lies at the heart of the Bill: we want to join up people around the needs of the child by making multi-disciplinary working the norm and reinforcing it through co-location and common skills and training.
  Jonathan Shaw: I agree with my right hon. Friend about the importance of partnership and co-operation, but some concern has been expressed that the Youth Justice Board is not included on the list of organisations that should promote welfare. We know about the tragic circumstances of the deaths in prison of Adam Rickwood and Joseph Scholes, and it is the Youth Justice Board that decides where to place youngsters. Why is it not included?
  Margaret Hodge: The Youth Justice Board, as with other organisations such as schools—someone is likely to raise the issue of general practitioners later in the debate—will have to work in partnership with other professions and agencies to secure the outcomes for children that we want. Simply placing a legal obligation on such bodies is not always the best means of achieving that objective. That is why I am talking now about the other levers. The outcomes that we want, the targets that we set, the training that we do and the leadership skills that we try to engender are crucial to ensuring joint working. I reassure my hon. Friend that I have regular and frequent meetings not just with the appropriate Minister of State and Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, but with the Youth Justice Board itself to ensure integration. It is working with us very closely at the local level in the development of children's trusts and other partnership arrangements.
  As well as joining up people, we want to join up processes around the needs of the child by developing a common assessment and a common inspection framework and by developing new ways to enable professionals to share information.

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  We want to join up the systems around the needs of the child, by integrated commissioning, supported by pooled resources in children's trusts. We want to join up strategies around the needs of the child by developing partnerships and accountability that reflect all that has gone before. We shall get that all right only if we make sure that children and young people's voices lie at the heart of our endeavour.
  Miss Julie Kirkbride: The Minister will know that the Opposition share many of the Bill's objectives, but she will be aware that Government Departments have not always been able to get the best out of computer technology. She describes a multi-agency approach, but will she clarify whether every single child in the country will be included in the register, or will it be only children who are deemed to be at risk in some way?
  Margaret Hodge: The hon. Lady is right to remind the House of the poor record of Government over many decades of launching and managing complex information systems. That is why the first rule in developing this system has been to keep it simple. We are also undertaking a long period of testing the feasibility of our propositions before taking the final decision on how to proceed.
  The system will include every child, for three reasons. First, we want every child to be able to access all the universal services to which they are entitled. Secondly, we want to shift the emphasis to prevention and early intervention. It is too late to put children on the list after their needs have been identified. That would run counter to the whole emphasis on the drive towards early intervention, which can only be achieved if we know about every child. Thirdly, the children who have additional needs do not necessarily need child protection measures or safeguards. Some 3 million out of the 11 million children in this country are in that position, and if we really want to identify them it makes sense to have a fuller register. I will deal with some of the concerns that have been expressed on that point, in the other place and elsewhere, later in my speech.
  Tim Loughton: The Minister has just said that she wants to keep matters simple with regard to IT, and I wholly concur with that. Therefore, instead of trying to place all 11 million children in England on a single database, which the Information Commissioner has said would lead us towards a surveillance society, would it not be much more sensible to concentrate on the most vulnerable children—about whom we are all most concerned—and do a proper job for them?
  Margaret Hodge: I have two points to make to the hon. Gentleman. First, the shift towards prevention means that we would need to define who would be placed on that database, and that would assume that we had already identified the additional needs of the children involved. We would be able to effect that sensibly only if we had knowledge of how every child responded to the universal services that are on offer. The assumption behind a more limited list is that someone somewhere else has made a decision about the additional needs of the child without the conversations
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  that that we want to take place between professionals. We hope that the new system will enable such conversations to take place.
  Secondly, there is no way in which the Bill will increase surveillance, as the Information Commissioner suggests. We stand by the data protection regulations. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that we have to strike a balance between privacy for individuals and their families and safeguarding and protecting children. In the light of the many reports we have had on child deaths, it is critical that we grasp this opportunity to put right the failure of professionals to communicate with each other at an early enough stage about the needs of the child—a problem identified in all the reports—which then leads to things going wrong in the life of that child.
  Hywel Williams: The Minister talked of "this country" earlier. Does she mean England, England and Wales or England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland? Given the nature of the Bill, it would clarify matters if she could explain what she means by those words.
  Margaret Hodge: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman welcomes, as I do, the fact that many clauses specifically relate to children in Wales and, indeed, involve the devolution of further powers on children's issues to the Welsh Assembly. When I talk about children, I speak about children in the round, but specifically about children in England where matters have been devolved to the Welsh Assembly. Where there are non-devolved issues, clearly I have responsibility for children whether they live in Wales or in any of the other countries of the UK.
  On our consultation with children and young people, I am delighted that we have set up the children and youth board to work with us. It will help us to find out the views of children and young people and reflect them in our work. Beyond that, however, we are creating an independent national voice in England: the children's commissioner, who will be a strong, independent champion for children. The children and youth board will play a key role in the appointment of the commissioner.
  I know that the principle of establishing such a commissioner has been widely welcomed but that some concerns remain about the detailed powers and functions. I shall deal with those. First, the Government are proud to have adopted the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. We have reflected its importance by accepting an amendment that the commissioner "must have regard" to the UNCRC.
  We have also strengthened the independence of the commissioner by promoting changes that will enable the commissioner to initiate inquiries into issues raised by individual cases where they are of wider significance and where existing mechanisms are inadequate or inappropriate. However, I firmly believe that an entirely rights-based commissioner will not best serve the interests of children in England. We do not want the commissioner to get bogged down with individual complaints; we want the commissioner to have time to get involved, from the perspective of children, in the many issues that affect their lives—from the way in which the media portray young people to the way in

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  which the Government promote healthy eating, and from how we tackle bullying to how we decide the rules on contact and access for separated parents.
  We must not set the commissioner up to fail. With the changes that we were planning in the other place, I believe we got the balance right, so we look to the House to restore that balance.
  Mr. Phil Willis: I apologise for arriving late—the Great North Eastern Railway was running late today.
  We genuinely welcome the Minister's proposals, but is not there a contradiction in having an independent commissioner, with the Secretary of State retaining some powers, but ordering the commissioner to hold inquiries as to the Government's wishes?
  Margaret Hodge: I do not believe that contradiction exists. Over time, there will inevitably be some individual cases of such importance and wide significance—although we hope not—that they warrant detailed inquiry and investigation. In those circumstances, I have no doubt that both the commissioner and the Government will agree that the individual case warrants such an inquiry. However, it is obvious to me that the person or office to undertake such an inquiry must be the children's commissioner, as children's interests will be at the heart of his or her responsibility, so we have taken that power in the Bill. After discourse between the commissioner and the Government, should the commissioner not want to pursue a particular inquiry, due to particular circumstances, I do not believe that the Government will be unreasonable in listening to the argument.
  Mrs. Anne Campbell: I should like to draw my right hon. Friend's attention to an excellent briefing from Women's Aid which expresses concern about the courts continuing to enforce contact with estranged parents even in cases where that parent has been convicted of violent offences against the parent with custody. Will the commissioner have any role in such things? Will any change to those provisions be made in the Bill?
  Margaret Hodge: The commissioner will certainly have a role in commenting on the Government's proposals to deal with the extremely complex and difficult issues of access and contact between children and their separated parents, but the propositions that we included in the Green Paper that we published just before the summer recess go a long way to try to ameliorate the difficulties that people face. By trying to take more cases out of litigation and introduce earlier conciliation and mediation, we hope to make it easier for children to maintain contact with both their parents. Where mothers may have concerns about domestic violence, we propose to give the courts additional powers, so that they can consider how and whether access and contact should be maintained.
  Tim Loughton: In response to the question from the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr.
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  Willis), will the Minister confirm whether she intends to overturn new clause 2, which was proposed in the upper House with cross-party support?
  Margaret Hodge: I confirm that I intend to propose amendments that would return us to the position that applied before the amendments were endorsed by the upper House.
  The other unresolved issue concerns the commissioner's role in relation to non-devolved issues. I am aware of the Welsh Affairs Committee report, and I have been involved in much work on this issue over the past year. It must be right that the new commissioner should report to this Parliament on non-devolved issues. However, there has never been any question of the Bill overriding the existing powers of the other commissioners. Our amendments in Committee will make it even clearer that we want to provide an additional direct route of influence in reporting to Parliament on the issues that affect children across the whole UK. On a day-to-day basis, we want children in other parts of the UK to be clear about the process. I believe that that can best be achieved by the commissioners working together, and we will legislate to remove any unnecessary barriers that stop that happening.
  The Bill will make a big difference to the lives of children and young people in Wales. Nearly a third of the Bill is specifically given over to that purpose. I have worked with my counterparts in Government and in the National Assembly to ensure that the Bill provides what the Welsh Assembly needs for everyone in Wales to continue to improve and achieve better outcomes for children in their unique context. In particular, the Bill will take an important step by transferring to the Assembly responsibility for the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service in Wales. That is a significant increase in the devolution of children's services and reflects the absolute dedication that exists in the Assembly Government to providing the best possible support to their children and young people.
  Hywel Williams: I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way a second time. As a matter of curiosity, will she tell the House what the commissioner will be called? Will he or she be the English commissioner, the English/Wales commissioner, the Wales/English commissioner, or perhaps the UK commissioner present in England, but not in Wales? I am sure that hon. Members would like to hear.
  Margaret Hodge: If the hon. Gentleman is seeking to suggest that the commissioner's title will create confusion, I am sure that he and I can have discourse in Committee to ensure that that does not take place; it is not our intention, and we will certainly listen to common sense on that argument.
  Julie Morgan: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on introducing the children's commissioner. I think that the whole House is pleased about that. Will there be one point of contact in Wales for all children in Wales to go to, whatever issue is raised?
  Margaret Hodge: I know that many hon. Members think that that is how the commissioner should work,

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  but I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that the best practical way to ensure that children in Wales are not confused is for the commissioners to agree how they should operate through a memorandum of understanding or another mechanism. All hon. Members agree, as will be reflected in this debate and elsewhere, that we do not want Welsh children to be confused, but the way in which that happens in practice should be devolved to the commissioners themselves.
  Mr. Andrew Turner: Will the Minister tell me something about the appointment process and those who will be consulted? We know that the Secretary of State will appoint the independent commissioner, but Megan Thomas, the youth MP for Isle of Wight, has asked me why the children's commissioner cannot be elected by children.
  Margaret Hodge: I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would like a postal ballot to be used for that election. We clearly want to engage and involve children and young people in the appointment, so the board is being established as a mechanism for doing that; I have made several statements on that. I doubt that an election would be the best way of involving children and young people, but I do not think that there is a difference of principle between the hon. Gentleman and me. If the children's commissioner is to be a powerful voice working on behalf of children, she or he will need the support of children themselves, so we need to find appropriate ways of achieving such support.
  Mr. Simon Thomas: I listened to the Minister's reply to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) and thought that she was making a point against elections. The Children's Commissioner for Wales was interviewed for his job by children, so would that not be the best way to take the process forward in England?
  Margaret Hodge: The Children's Commissioner for Wales was interviewed by not only children, but other people. We are considering the mechanisms that were used in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and elsewhere to determine the most positive way in which we can engage children and young people in the process.
  I have already said that we want professionals to work better together. That is why we are creating directors of children's services, introducing an integrated inspection of children's services in every local authority area and enabling professionals to pool resources and budgets—that is all in the Bill. However, we want to go further. We want to reduce the bureaucratic burden on local authorities and stimulate better integrated planning and delivery of children's services. We will bring together planning arrangements, including education plans, into a single children and young people's plan to achieve that. I will table an amendment to that effect in Committee and we will review the need for a statutory plan after the first new plans have been prepared.
  Over the summer, some people argued that we should place legal duties on both schools and general practitioners to co-operate with other services, but I believe that that would be unnecessary and bureaucratic. GPs work under contract to primary care trusts and PCTs will be covered by appropriate duties.
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  They will, no doubt, wish to use the contracts to bring GPs on board. There are those who fear that some schools will want to opt out of their responsibilities for all children, including the most vulnerable, but I think that such fears are unfounded. Higher educational achievement and the wider concept of well-being go hand in hand with achieving better outcomes for children.
  Tim Loughton: We are also worried about the accountability of GPs, people with other health functions and schools. How will what the Minister said apply to independent medical practitioners and independent schools, for example?
  Margaret Hodge: In both instances, it is not just through legal requirements that we will ensure the engagement of other professionals and institutions in children's well-being. As a result of the outcomes that we have set out, the inspection regime and other mechanisms including training and the common core skills that we expect all professionals to hold, we will ensure that all professionals and institutions will play their part in promoting the well-being and educational achievement of children and young people.
  Jonathan Shaw: In 2000, the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health published "The Education of Children and Young People in Public Care", which proposed that all schools should have a designated teacher responsible for children in public care. How does the Minister reconcile that guidance with the report produced by the social exclusion unit in 2003, which said that the success of the designated teacher scheme was mixed or variable? Some schools are proactive and operate the scheme, but others do not. We should draw a line under current arrangements and say that all schools need to promote children's welfare by having a designated teacher—there should not be any that are separate from the scheme.
  Margaret Hodge: By drawing attention to that issue my hon. Friend has shown that trying to provide a universal prescription for dealing with difficult problems through legislation or regulation does not achieve the objective of better outcomes for children. I genuinely believe that getting the integrated inspection framework right, setting the outcomes appropriately, stimulating a new style of leadership that promotes multi-agency working and providing training and education for professionals so that they can achieve common core skills are at the root of transforming the culture and will make inclusion and educational achievement the twin pillars of the Department for Education and Skills.
  Mr. Willis:
  How will it be possible to inspect against the background of a non-statutory or non-existent framework?
  Margaret Hodge: In the current negotiations on Ofsted's new inspection framework we aim to ensure that the five outcomes in the Bill are a key area for inspection of the way in which education and other

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  services are delivered to children in school. As that work progresses, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be comforted that we will achieve our common objective.
  Mrs. Annette L. Brooke: How frequent will inspections be? If they take place every four years, it will take a long time to pick up any problems.
  Margaret Hodge: I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that we do not want to make the burden of inspection unnecessarily heavy and bureaucratic in cases where we know that services for children are well delivered. Our review of Ofsted's new phase of inspection will put greater emphasis on more frequent inspection in cases where children's services or educational services in schools are not as good as they should be and less inspection in schools that are performing well in the delivery of traditional educational services and the wider services incorporated in the Bill. The principle of inspection in inverse proportion to success is employed and it has underpinned much of the work that we have done since coming to power in 1997.
  When we talk about planning arrangements and legal duties, it is easy to give the impression that achieving better outcomes for children is all about statutory services. Far from it—some of the most innovative and effective practice can be found in the voluntary and community sector. The voluntary sector has often shown both how we can deliver better, joined-up services that work and how we can shift to a more effective preventive set of interventions. Most of us have seen evidence of that in our constituencies, for example, in projects funded by the children's fund. We want to build on that.
  The Bill represents a strong vote of confidence in local government, but it is vital that we also create a framework and environment in which voluntary and community organisations can be at the heart of partnership working, so we are removing the barriers to the sector's greater involvement in service delivery. We want to ensure that the sector is fully involved in the planning and commissioning of services. We are developing with the sector a strategy for what we need to do at the centre to make things work both at national and at local level, and we are considering how we can support effective engagement at local level, build the sector's capacity in every local authority area and create better funding arrangements and communication processes.
  I have emphasised our desire to shift to prevention, but we also want to legislate to strengthen the way in which we protect children. We aim to create a duty on relevant professionals to safeguard children so that we learn the lessons of the countless tragedies and implement Lord Laming's recommendations. We want to create statutory local safeguarding children boards, so that people really do work together and produce appropriate practical solutions to safeguard children from harm. We want to strengthen the private fostering notification scheme, which is why we have said that we will create a statutory registration scheme, without further legislation, if the voluntary route fails better to protect that especially vulnerable group of children.
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  We need to provide professionals with appropriate tools and support to work more effectively across agencies. We cannot legislate for culture change, but we can legislate to put the right support in place. That is why we are working, for example, on a common assessment framework to stop children and families having to tell and retell their story to every professional they meet; and why, drawing on what we have learned from our trailblazer authorities, clause 9 will enable us to put in place information databases—not as an end in themselves, but as a means and an effective tool to enable professionals better to work together. Time and again, I have seen reports on child deaths in which someone says, "If only I'd known others were working with the child, I'd have done things differently." We want to make things easier, although I accept that striking the right balance between the right to privacy and the rights of a child to be protected and safeguarded is a complex matter.
  Miss Kirkbride: I think that I just heard the Minister say that the Government are still not minded to create a statutory duty to register private fostering arrangements, but remain willing to go down the voluntary route. What degree of success or lack thereof will she use to judge that approach? Surely it would be more straightforward simply to create a duty to register such an arrangement. In that way, we could monitor whether those involved are fit and proper persons to act as parents.
  Margaret Hodge: Some make that argument, but we believe that we have to give a final push to the voluntary approach. Where we get local authorities to engage seriously in the effort, there is a massive increase in registration. If we adopt the other approach, we might create new ways whereby people slip through the net. In the Victoria Climbié tragedy, her aunt purported to be her mother; in such a context it is difficult to tell how anyone would have revealed anything that would have brought the child to the authorities' attention and put her name on a private fostering registration scheme, thus enabling action to be taken to ensure her safety in the home. Such issues are not easy to deal with. We fear that we will drive people underground if we do not use a voluntary approach.
  Mr. Dawson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the system of registering child minders has corrected a markedly similar situation, in which all sorts of abuses were going on? The registration scheme has been widely accepted and upheld with almost no problems. What is the difference? What is the difficulty with private fostering?
  Margaret Hodge: I have to say that even having a statutory registration scheme for child minding still has not brought into the open all the illegal child minding that continues to exist. That is one of our concerns, but there are other issues, which I hope we will discuss in Committee. We always have to balance the need to safeguard children against the desire to over-regulate. We have to think about the difference in the regulatory framework for private fostering and for other carers. There are complex issues around that, such as who is covered by the scheme and whether, for example, young

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  people who come here aged 13 to 16 to go to a language school for a long period should be covered by a private fostering scheme. Those are not easy issues, and I hope that we can tease some of them out in Committee so that there is a greater understanding of what we are doing.
  Peter Bottomley: The Minister is right to say that Committee discussion will be worth while, and the whole House will be able to be involved in trying to decide whether the balance has been struck appropriately when we come back on Report. There is no ideology behind this question; it is a straightforward point about practicality. How, and how soon, do the Government plan to notice the reduction in avoidable disadvantage, distress and handicap that is supposed to follow from the Bill, and how do they intend to monitor the improvement in well-being, wealth and welfare of children? Or will there just be action and no real measurement?
  Margaret Hodge: Absolutely not. We want clear measurement of progress as we develop our reform agenda. The targets that we have set ourselves in Government were published alongside the comprehensive spending review in the summer and, together with the targets that we are currently negotiating in the public service agreement with local government and the relationship that we are developing with the voluntary and community sector, will enable us to start to flesh out in a real and practical way measures of improvement on which we hope to measure our success in pursuing our reform.
  Clause 9 will enable us to put in place information databases, not as an end in itself, but as a tool to enable professionals to work together. Striking the balance between the right to privacy and the right of a child to be protected is complex. We have said—I again give the House this assurance—that we will consult widely. We listened to concerns expressed in the House of Lords and amended the Bill to show clearly what information will be collected and that case details will not feature on databases. Our purpose is to make sure that children access all the services to which they are entitled and that professionals are put in touch with each other at an early stage.
  We all know that the most important people in children's lives are their parents. All our understanding confirms that parenting in the home is more important than anything else in influencing a child's outcomes. We are working to develop much better support for parents in that most difficult task of bringing up their children. Our efforts may be derided by some as nannying, but I challenge that. Parents want support, particularly at key transitions in their children's lives, such as when they come home from hospital or when they first go to nursery, and so on into the teenage years and beyond. However, I do not believe that it would be right to interfere and to criminalise parents for smacking, which is why we shall continue to resist a free vote on any amendment that would create a new offence.
  Mr. David Hinchliffe: In two days' time, I suspect, this Chamber will be a bit busier with hon. Members than it is now, because we will be discussing fox hunting. Can the Minister explain to me
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  the logic of our being allowed a free vote on fox hunting but not on something like the physical punishment of children? Surely, if anything is a conscience issue, that is.
  Margaret Hodge: I know that my hon. Friend has fought long and hard on the issue and feels passionately about it, as do many other hon. Members in the Chamber. However, the Government have taken the view that, if we were to move to a total ban on smacking, that would create a new offence, which would not in any way support all the policies with which I prefaced my contribution, and through which we are trying to support positive and better parenting. Because we do not want to create a new offence, we felt that the amendments tabled by some Members in another place would have been an inappropriate issue for a free vote.
  Peter Bottomley: I agree with the Minister on smacking, but I also agree with the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe). Why cannot the right hon. Lady trust her Back Benchers with a free vote, to be convinced by the arguments?
  Margaret Hodge: I assure all hon. Members that we shall continue to listen to the debate and, as in the House of Lords, we shall consider when and whether a free vote on particular amendments is appropriate. But the Government have taken a pretty clear view that in this contentious area we do not want to create a new offence, which we think will not support our determination to give parents better support in parenting their children in the home.
  Mr. Hinchliffe: I appreciate my right hon. Friend's giving way again. Bearing it in mind that a total of 12 European countries have managed to deal with the issue of removing the defence of reasonable chastisement, outlawing punishment and giving children equal treatment against assault, why is it so difficult for this country to do exactly the same thing?
  Margaret Hodge: Interestingly enough, I met representatives from some of the countries that have completely banned smacking. Most recently, my hon. Friend brought somebody from Germany and somebody from Sweden to talk to me. The representative of one of the countries—Sweden, I think—told us that there was a long and slow process of reform, so I hope that the amendment moved by Lord Lester in the House of Lords, which takes us further in ensuring that the defence is not used in such a way as to give succour to people who believe that any form of abuse is allowable, is a welcome first step as we build a consensus. If my hon. Friend wishes to make progress, he needs to work with others to build a consensus in the wider community around a very contentious issue, which is seen to be an interference in the privacy of family life.
  Julie Morgan: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the campaign in support of getting rid of the defence of reasonable chastisement is probably the biggest coalition of voluntary bodies that there has ever been? It has the support of the Catholic Church, the Association

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  of Directors of Social Services, the United Reformed Church—the list is endless. Does she agree that there is already a good deal of consensus?
  Margaret Hodge: I accept entirely that there is a powerful coalition on the issue, but it is a coalition of professionals. We need to move beyond the professional consensus to an acceptance by parents, which I do not believe yet exists around such a complicated issue.
  Mr. Dawson: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Margaret Hodge: One final time.
  Mr. Dawson: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Would she please look further into the situation in Sweden? It is my information that way back in 1957 the Swedish Government removed at a stroke the equivalent defence of reasonable chastisement, and thereafter the smacking of children was criminalised.
  Margaret Hodge: I will not do anything by strokes, but I will undertake to look further into the matter. The information that we were given suggested that Sweden adopted a gradualist approach leading to that reform.
  I said at the beginning of the debate that I am proud to bring the Bill to the Commons. In the Lords, it earned its deserved tag as the small Bill with a large heart. I am proud to be creating a children's commissioner for England, taking forward the most radical reform in children's services for a generation and laying the groundwork that will make it easier for professionals to work together in support of children, young people and families.
  The Bill is not the first step in achieving better things for children, because hard-working and dedicated people such as professionals and voluntary groups, parents, children and young people have already taken the first steps, but it represents a further unique and important step towards a long-term change that will give us better children's services, and I am delighted to move it on Second Reading.
  5.15 pm
  Tim Loughton: On behalf of the Opposition, I welcome the Bill. Since the announcement of Lord Laming's inquiry into the tragic death of Victoria Climbié, we have been calling for many of the measures that the Bill contains. When Lord Laming reported last year, we offered strong support for urgent measures and welcomed many of the proposals in the Green Paper "Every Child Matters", although we expressed concern about much of the missing detail.
  Hon. Members on both sides of the House are familiar enough with the horrific events surrounding the death of Victoria Climbié, and we must not forget the 80 or so other cruel or unnecessary deaths of children each year at the hands of carers or parents that do not provoke the same publicity as the Climbié case. It is for Victoria Climbié and all the other victims of abuse—fatal or otherwise—and in the hope of preventing their numbers from being swelled in the future that we continue to give our support and co-operation.
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  Herbert Laming made it clear in his report, which followed a succession of other depressingly familiar reports dealing with the deaths of children who had been failed by system, that this time things must be different, and that his recommendations could not, as he put it, be referred "to some bright tomorrow". Not one of the agencies empowered by Parliament to protect children such as Victoria Climbié emerged from the inquiry with much credit. As Herbert Laming put it, bad practice can be expensive.
  The Bill is an opportunity to put that right, to join up all the agencies and individuals responsible for the welfare of children and, hopefully, to reverse many tarnished reputations and to give renewed hope to all the professionals in child care, social services and child protection who do their best for vulnerable children, often in spite of, rather than with the help of, the system.
  The Bill has made great progress in the Lords, and we welcome the constructive way in which the noble Baroness Ashton of Upholland responded to and accepted amendments from both sides of the House—although we hear that some of those amendments may now be overturned. I hope that that spirit of co-operation and flexibility from Ministers will endure throughout the Bill's passage through the House, in pursuit of our shared greater ambitions for children.
  Baroness Ashton introduced the Bill as
  "our vision to improve life chances for all children and young people, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable, including those who are disabled; those who are cared for by the local authority or are otherwise outside their immediate families; those who have experienced changes in their family circumstances, perhaps through bereavement; or those at risk of abuse or violence … We want to focus on better prevention so that support can be offered early, when it is needed, in a way that responds to the needs of children and their parents and carers."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. 1208.]
  We concur with those aims.
  My noble Friend Lord Howe agreed that the Bill represents a fantastic opportunity:
  "This is a Bill which is, at heart, about finding better ways of doing what we already do."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. 1214.]
  That is true, and it is essential that we get the Bill right. Some of the more radical changes that the Government propose must be accompanied by as much detail as possible in the Bill itself, and their workability must be properly thought through so that as many people as possible who are involved in the area are taken along with them.
  We will table a number of constructive amendments in Committee in an attempt to add clarity to the Bill and to tease out the Government's thinking, not least on data sharing, on which their proposals are, at best, muddled and incomplete, and in relation to which we will introduce our own models.
  In welcoming the Bill, I also welcome the opportunity to debate issues concerning vulnerable children. I remind the Minister that this is our first opportunity to debate this important subject in this Chamber, in Government time, during this Parliament, despite the welcome creation of her role as Minister for Children. The joined-up approach in the Bill seems particularly important as we read today's headlines. The front page of The Guardian features an article about the deterioration in the mental health of our young people

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  and children. The Sun carries a headline about the "sex time bomb" and discusses the considerable problems involved in sexually transmitted diseases and responsible sex education. Those issues must be considered in combination with the obvious cases of vulnerable children that the Bill primarily addresses.
  Miss Kirkbride: One thing that was missing from the Minister's remarks about providing better services for children was the fact that they are often let down because social workers are undervalued and change jobs so frequently that there is no continuity of service among the departments in which they work. If vulnerable children are not readily seen by the same people, the simple fact is that no matter what institutions and mechanisms are put in place, they will not be caught by the Bill. I shall be interested to see what my hon. Friends and the Minister say about that in Committee.
  Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is an aspect that we will certainly address and to which I shall turn later in my speech. We have many very good social workers. Although they are often the first people to have the finger of blame pointed at them, many do a fine job in very difficult circumstances. Because many vacancies have to be covered by agency staff, there is not the continuity of care towards cases for which one would wish. In every case I sat in on when I spent the morning in a family court in London recently, I found that the social worker involved was not the social worker who had initiated the case. Interestingly, every single one was Australian. Although exceedingly impressive, they will not be over here for long enough to see many of those cases through. That is part of the problem. We can change the structure and create new committees and titles, but that will not make a difference where it matters unless we have the people on the ground.
  The Conservatives take this issue very seriously. That is why over the past few years we have devoted official Opposition debating time to the subject of vulnerable children; have organised children's summits on the subject at Westminster; and have tackled related subjects such as the abuse of the internet by child abusers and paedophiles and the inadequate arrangements for promoting equal parenting as between resident and non-resident parents in the interests of their children. We are continuing to engage in wide-ranging dialogues and policy formulation with a large number of children's organisations.
  Before highlighting some of our concerns about what is in the Bill—or what remains outside it—I shall set out the guiding principles that we will apply in proposing our amendments. First, we echo the sentiments of the noble Baroness Ashton when she assured the upper House on Second Reading that the Government would be
  "prescriptive only where we believe that this is necessary to ensure accountability or to protect children's welfare."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. 1209.]
  It is surely right that, where possible, local authorities that are already doing good work in improving child protection should be able to continue to do so according to local structures and local circumstances. Local authorities are already bogged down by ill-thought-out
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  and usually ill-financed Government diktats and do not need more of the same just for the sake of it. We welcome Government assurances that partnership working is at the heart of their reforms and hope that that will be borne out in practice. I give a particularly warm welcome to the Government's success in encouraging participation in this exercise by children and young people, who gave an impressive number of responses to the consultation.
  Our second guiding principle in assessing the Bill will be the basis on which it adds to quality outcomes. We can appoint as many children's commissioners or children's tsars as we can shake a stick at—apparently the Liberal Democrats want a children's commissioner for every region of England—and set up as many new committees and structures as there are bureaucrats to organise the paperwork for them, but in the end the Bill must be about protecting as many children as possible from abuse, and ultimately death, and promoting the life chances of as many vulnerable children as possible.
  This is not about ticking boxes to register the number of new officials who are given titles or the number of committees that they set up or meetings that they hold.
  Mr. Dawson: Would the hon. Gentleman include children in custody in the category of vulnerable children that he mentioned? If so, what would he do to prevent them from dying there?
  Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, for once without having a go at me, which is welcome. I am sure that that will come later. We shall discuss children in prison and in the penal system and table amendments on the subject. Recent developments in court cases have left a deal of confusion as between the responsibility of social services and that of the prison system for the welfare of children in custody. The Bill provides an opportunity for greater clarification, for which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will push in Committee should he be involved in those proceedings.
  My third point is that none of what we are considering can be achieved unless there are skilled professionals on the ground to knock on doors, investigate abuse and work with others to root it out. I fear that that is currently far from the case. Social worker vacancies remain worryingly high, especially in London and the south-east of England. Recruitment for social services staff has not been nearly as high a priority as that for doctors and nurses. The recruitment campaign launched by the then Secretary of State for Health—who miraculously reappeared in a Cabinet position last week—was not followed through, and we have yet to perceive any great results from it.
  A Unison survey of social services departments revealed a heavy reliance on agency staff and a high staff turnover, with 60 per cent. of departments saying that even if all the vacant posts were filled there would still not be enough social workers to manage the current case loads—before the additional work and responsibilities for which the Bill provides are introduced.
  Have some local authorities taken notice of events in the past few years? Last week, we read the worrying stories about Haringey, where it was discovered that 18 people employed by the social services department had criminal records. When the records appeared in

  1017
  Criminal Records Bureau checks, they were ignored in some cases and the people were still employed by Haringey social services department. Evidence has now come to light showing that one of those people was a convicted paedophile, who was given a job working with children with learning difficulties.
  Despite all the hot air and the supposed extra regulation from Government, the abuses continue. More worryingly, some authorities appear not to take them seriously. I hope the Minister will examine in particular the case I have mentioned, and will respond urgently to the parliamentary questions that I have tabled.
  We are also concerned that, although the Bill deals primarily with introducing new procedures and partnership working to protect vulnerable children, the media coverage—to wake the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) up—has focused entirely on the emotive subject of smacking, which this afternoon has threatened to lengthen considerably the Minister's opening speech. The Bill did not begin as a measure to legislate against smacking, and I hope that it will not be hijacked in this House as it was in their lordships' House. There are too many important issues at stake in the original measure. We shall doubtless be subject to a tight timetable—I hope that the Bill will not be derailed altogether by the latest posturing about fox hunting—and we should not allow valuable time to be diverted to debating smacking, rather than the wider issues of child abuse. I trust that hon. Members will adhere to that in Committee and during our doubtless limited time on Report.
  Mr. Hinchliffe: I think the hon. Gentleman was deliberately provoking me to intervene and I shall not disappoint him. He must be aware that at least one child a week in this country dies at the hands of parents or carers. That is at least 80 a year. It is a disgraceful figure and I do not apologise for concentrating on an issue—physical punishment—which, having been involved in child protection, I believe relates directly to the number of child deaths in this country.
  Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman and I agree on the solutions that need to be introduced in the Bill to attack child abuse. My point is that, although smacking may be part of that problem, it is an issue that threatens to overwhelm the whole of the Bill, and that we could lose valuable time which we desperately need to discuss some of the other details that need to be improved. The hon. Gentleman knows that, from the fact that there were virtually no media reports on the Children Bill until the amendments on smacking were discussed in the House of Lords. It would be unfortunate if that were to happen, as it would undermine much of the good work that needs to be done on the rest of the Bill. I need not talk about this issue at great length, because the Conservative party will quite rightly allow my colleagues a free vote on it, as we did in their lordships' House.
  Jonathan Shaw: What about the Adoption and Children Bill?
  Tim Loughton: Well, we are talking about the Children Bill, and that is all I need say on the subject of
  1018
  smacking, other than to express my amused fascination at the way in which the Government propose to repeat their practice of allowing a free vote only on their favoured option—or, more bizarrely still, at the Liberal Democrats, whose policy is to criminalise smacking by parents but whose peers voted for another Liberal Democrat amendment on a so-called middle way.
  Peter Bottomley: As Labour Members know, I supported the free vote option, but said to its organisers that I would not necessarily vote for the criminalising of smacking. When I said that I did not want ordinary parents criminalised for doing reasonably ordinary things, I was told that the Director of Public Prosecutions would ensure that there would not be any prosecutions. It therefore seems slightly odd to be pushing to incorporate such a measure in the Bill.
  Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend may well think that, but I could not possibly comment. We shall invite contributions on the matter on Report, but I repeat my hope that it will not overwhelm the rest of the Bill.
  I should like to outline some of the specific changes that we want to make to the Bill. We support the establishment of a children's commissioner for England, and will therefore defend the new clause 2—we have now made it clear that we shall have to—which was passed in the upper House and which rightly seeks to give the commissioner proper teeth, rather than creating the feeble poodle that the Government originally sought to create and now seek to recreate.
  As I have said, the jury will be out on the creation of the children's commissioners until they have shown that they can have a real, positive effect on quality outcomes, but if we are going to the trouble of setting up such an office, for goodness' sake let us give its holder the proper powers to do the job properly, in an open and accountable way and independently of the Government. Under the original wording of clause 2, that would not have happened.
  The Children's Society has stated that the changes made in the Lords mean that we are now
  "much closer to having a credible and effective children's champion, independent of Government, as promised in the Green Paper … England's commissioner must not be the poor relation in all of the other three parts of the UK who have strong investigatory powers and duties to protect and promote the rights of children and young people."
  One young respondent to the consultation exercise asked:
  "What is the point in having a children's commissioner if they can't do their job properly?",
  and one Member of the upper House voiced a similar concern that the commissioner should not be "castrated". We shall therefore defend new clause 2, which I guess will take up quite a lot of the early deliberations in Committee.
  We also want to clarify the relationship between England's commissioner and those in the rest of the United Kingdom. We want to establish a reporting mechanism to Parliament that is independent of the Secretary of State and has clear procedures for producing meaningful responses by the Government and other relevant parties. We shall also table amendments to clarify who is responsible for children

  1019
  normally resident in England but who receive education or medical treatment in, say, Wales—or vice versa. Cross-border responsibilities are far from clear in the Bill and, as Lord Laming made clear, it is imperative that the question of where those responsibilities lie and where the buck stops should be quite open.
  In relation to part 2 of the Bill, under the heading "Co-operation to improve well-being", we are concerned about the particular problems of children in care outside the responsible authority's area. The Minister has not touched on that point, and it did not really come up in the other place. Many hon. Members will be aware of the problems being caused by some errant young people being placed in small private children's homes far from their natural homes.
  Nationally, there has been an explosion of private children's homes. In 2002–03, 1,172 such homes were registered, according to the Government's figures. By the following year, that figure had leapt by two thirds, to 1,956. They are mostly small, containing six or fewer people—which allows them to get round the planning regulations—and many offer a good service. In my constituency, in Worthing, however, the chief inspector of police has told me that earlier this year, 23 per cent. of one month's crime figures were down to a handful of youths from private children's homes in our town.
  For example, one child in care in one of those private children's homes was supposedly responsible, over a period of between three and four years, for 66 calls to Sussex police regarding his activities, 38 recorded calls to Worthing police directly, had 12 recorded arrests in the town, was recorded as a missing person seven times, and since 2000, when he was aged 11—he is now aged 15—has committed one offence against the person, four offences against property, three theft and kindred offences, two public disorder offences, one offence relating to police and courts, and three miscellaneous offences. He also has a number of impending prosecutions. I fully acknowledge that that is probably at the upper end of the extremities in this regard, but it is very worrying.
  West Sussex calculates—it has no way of doing so officially, because there is no duty to notify when placing people in the care of another authority—that about 200 children are placed by other authorities in our county. That one individual to whom I referred has been a mini crime wave on his own. That is not to suggest that the vast majority of those children will go down that slippery slope, but some of them are doing so.
  The problem—which we need to see addressed—is the responsibility of the placing authority being properly recognised. It should be the responsibility of the placing authority, however distant it may be, to take responsibility for such children. In our case, however, which has been repeated up and down the country, it has fallen in the lap of the local police, the local magistrates court and the local social services, even though they have no duty of care or responsibility over that child. There is a problem with the line of accountability and where the buck stops—the issues that are dealt with in Lord Laming's report. The Commission for Social Care Inspection has at last been made aware of that problem, and we will table amendments urging the Government to adopt legislation to address it and to tackle the issue urgently, as it threatens to get out of hand in certain places.
  1020
  Under arrangements to safeguard and promote welfare, we want greater clarification on involving schools, as has been mentioned and presaged by the Minister for Children, as they are not named explicitly in the Bill. We would query the absence of explicit reference to schools and educational facilities in clauses 7 and 8. As the Local Government Association has said:
  "School staff are closer to children's social, emotional and educational development than any other professionals. Schools are best placed to provide hubs for the co-ordination of all services for children."
  We will also address, as the Minister again foretold, the problem with including practitioners of health authorities—because we do not feel that it is sufficient to say that a legal obligation is not the be-all and end-all, as she has said—and other health care professionals outside of normal trusts, given the increasing amount of health care provided by autonomous trusts and bodies. We also believe that the immigration service at ports of entry should sign up to that responsibility, particularly when dealing with the increasing problems of unaccompanied child asylum seekers and child trafficking, about which we are all concerned.
  The subject of databases will be one of the most problematic areas in the Bill. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, we believe that databases are necessary if the reforms are to be meaningful, but they are contentious and fraught with problems, and too much detail is still missing from the Bill. We welcome improvements instigated by my noble Friend Earl Howe in the upper House about standard criteria for how long information can be shared, and making sure that the information is accurate, for example. Currently, however, the Government are still leaving too much to as yet undetermined regulations.
  The Minister answered a query earlier in relation to whether there will be a national database to include all 11 million-plus children; whether it will be in place on day one, or how they will come to be included, we do not know. I fear, however, that she confuses appearing on a database or list with being able to monitor and address properly those children's needs. Again, I fear that it smacks—not a good word to use—of the tick-box approach.
  Who will have access to the databases, national or local? Will there be common thresholds for all relevant professionals to trigger a reference to a database? What on earth does the woolly reference to "any cause for concern" in clause 9(4)(g) mean, and what basis has it in law? That question has been raised by a great many bodies.
  When will the Government be in a position to give fuller details of how the databases will work, given that many of the trailblazers are only part of the way through their assessments? Many, indeed, are in the middle of applying for second-wave funding, including mine in West Sussex. We are being asked, potentially, to write the Government a blank cheque on a highly significant issue within the next few weeks. Barnardo's has queried that, saying:
  "The clause as currently drafted may lead to the establishment of information sharing systems that fail to contribute to better outcomes for children and young people, and potentially leave vulnerable children at risk."
  It also says:

  1021
  The breadth of drafting of the clause may well lead to an overwhelming quantity of poor quality data, with professionals unable to identify those children in need of support."
  As I have said, there are particular problems involving the role of GPs and other health professionals contributing to databases in the light of confidentiality considerations. The Minister is well aware of that. The British Medical Association has said:
  "It would be a shame if, as a result of the provisions in this bill, vulnerable children were dissuaded from using vital health and social care services because they no longer felt that doctors and other health professionals could protect their confidentiality."
  Let alone all the other pressures on GPs, there are serious question marks over how they will fit into the whole mechanism.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr. Stephen Ladyman): Are not the issues the hon. Gentleman has raised just as significant whether we have a database listing only children at risk or a universal database?
  Tim Loughton: No, because they will be replicated from an initial database that could consist of the 61,000 looked-after children, plus some others, in another requiring up-to-date information relating to more than 11 million children. Doctors will be required to give further details about their child patients, even if they are not concerned about child abuse or anything like that—simply because they change their address, for instance. I am alarmed that the Minister thinks that that could lead to anything other than an enormous multiplication of the amount of work that will be required of GPs, let alone everyone else.
  Jonathan Shaw: In his response to my hon. Friend the Minister, the hon. Gentleman demonstrated how much ambiguity there could be if we referred to a particular group of children. He referred to children in care. We know about those children. The point is the children whom we do not know about. We cannot have any ambiguity if we are to do what the hon. Gentleman spoke of in his opening remarks, and not make the mistakes of the past.
  Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman fails to acknowledge that putting the names—and perhaps addresses and national insurance numbers: I gather that the Government may be thinking along those lines—on a database does not necessarily make the children any safer, unless means exist to bring about action for those who are genuinely vulnerable. It is the tick-box mentality that worries me most. Making a list does not protect children; concentrating on those who are likely to be most vulnerable, for a whole range of reasons, is much more manageable and practical if they are to be given the attention, care and protection that the Bill is surely all about.
  Margaret Hodge: I was trying to avoid intervening, because many other Members wish to contribute, but there is a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of the database. The database is merely a tool that will make it easier for professionals to take the action that they need to take. In no way does this constitute an action in itself.
  1022
  What will be shown on the database is this. If a professional has a particular concern about a particular child—we will discuss this in Committee—the concern itself will not appear on the database, but the fact that the professional has a concern will. If another professional were to have a concern as well, all that would be facilitated would be the two professionals speaking to each other and then taking the appropriate action to safeguard, protect and promote better outcomes for children.
  Tim Loughton: The Minister has proved my point. It is the children who have triggered a cause for concern—as she puts it—and it is the mechanism by which that cause for concern is triggered that we need to concentrate on, instead of putting all children on a national database, which will do nothing to enhance the prospects of getting care for those in respect of whom a cause of concern has been triggered. This clearly shows that the Government have yet to decide on a great deal of the detail, and we and many of the relevant bodies are enormously confused about what this provision actually amounts to. I appreciate that the Government still have a lot of work to do, but we are being asked to write a blank cheque in the next few weeks for what is a significant and important measure.
  I shall not go into great detail now—I shall do so in Committee—but we envisage two models, the first of which concerns the local hub. If the relevant professionals—the general practitioner, the social worker, the teacher, the police officer and so on—have cause for concern about a particular child, they should be able to flag it up directly with the office of the director of children's services, and the information should be kept on a database. Where several professionals—or even just one—provide such information, it should be up to the office of the director of children's services to decide whether action is required. There would be a reporting mechanism, the practicalities of which we can talk about.
  Secondly, a national database is needed to deal with the transient child who, for example, leaves Dagenham and ends up in Worthing, where no data exist showing that there were suspicions that they were being abused, or being subjected to violence by someone in the domestic environment, or by others who were in charge. But that database need not automatically contain all 11 million children. It needs to be a mutual reference, so that when the child turns up in Worthing and comes into contact with social services, the police or the education authorities, those organisations can refer to the database if they have a particular concern. They could then be told that some information is available on that child, and that they need to speak to the director of social services in Dagenham, Barking or wherever it may be.
  We do not see why, in trying to concentrate on the most vulnerable children, it is necessary to clog up the system with all 11 million children. I look forward to debating in Committee the relative merits of our system and of the Minister's yet-to-be-formulated system. On the face of it, she is trying to create a surrogate identity card scheme. The suggestion of using national insurance numbers also gives cause for concern. That system is

  1023
  already greatly discredited—we have substantially more national insurance numbers than citizens in this country.
  Mr. Dawson rose—
  Tim Loughton: I shall very generously—and perhaps for the last time, so that he can speak later—give way to the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Dawson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Is he not trying to create a system with holes in it? It relies on far too many subjective definitions and hardly caters at all for those who want to evade it and to hide the child's identity. Is he not being massively inconsistent in drawing attention—rightly—to the role that the immigration authorities should play in such a system, but then saying that the vast majority of children should play no part in it?
  Tim Loughton: There is no reason why such a system should contain more holes than one that simply lists everyone who happens to be a child. We will need to continue this debate on Report, because I remain unconvinced. I began by saying that we support the idea of a database, but it needs to work and to benefit the people whom it is supposed to benefit. We should not simply create another database that involves sleepwalking into a surveillance society, as Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, has put it. Setting up such a comprehensive national system would also lead to all sorts of problems with data protection; and key questions remain about security and who would have access to the system.
  I want to consider a final point on databases that the Bill has totally ignored. The system is completely one-sided and we will be looking to set up an appeals procedure. There seems to be no mechanism whereby a perfectly good parent or a professional against whom concerns have, for whatever reason, been wrongfully expressed can challenge the inclusion of information relating to the person on the database. Circumstances can change and vexatious complaints can be initiated by professionals against individuals. In the vast majority of cases I hope that that will not happen, but there are no checks and balances for the few cases where it will.
  I look forward to hearing the Minister's assurances that our suggestion for proper checks and balances may not be necessary. However, I suspect that they will be—certainly they were in setting up the potential leviathan of the Financial Services Authority, which deals with all sorts of professional bodies. On the face of it, checks and balances are missing from the Bill, so we will propose amendments to rectify the difficulty. There should be a procedure whereby people giving rise to "cause for concern", in the Government's own terminology, should be able to challenge the veracity or continued relevance of the complaints rather than risk being fingered indefinitely.
  We will also propose some technical amendments about the running of the local safeguarding children boards. On the inspection framework, there is surely a greater role for children's services authorities in overseeing nurseries, particularly in view of recent revelations about abuses and the failure of the Ofsted
  1024
  inspectorate on its unannounced inspections. That is particularly important given the likely proliferation of such places in the future.
  On the duty of local authorities to promote educational achievement, set out in clause 44, it has to be said that the current circumstances are a scandal. I wholeheartedly concur with the intentions behind this part of the Bill. It is a scandal that only 44 per cent. of young people leaving care had gained at least one GCSE or GNVQ compared with 96 per cent. of all year 11 children at large. It is a scandal that as few as 1 per cent. of young people leaving care go on to university and that fewer than 6 per cent. go on to any form of further education—let alone all the other problems that they are likely to face by having to move schools more often than non-looked-after children and all the additional health problems that they are likely to suffer. Surely the placing authorities—social services departments—should be much more mindful of the desirability of stability and continuity in the school of an individual in care. All that is, indeed, a scandal.
  Too much of the existing guidance—on designated teachers and governors and proper educational plans for looked-after children—has been and is being ignored. There is no excuse for the social workers who are responsible for individual children in care not to attend parent evenings at school. They should be placed on the same basis as other parents who, to the great embarrassment of the rest of us, fail to attend such evenings.
  I also recognise that there are problems with admissions policies, but arrangements for accessing schools must not prejudice other children living with birth parents. The clause should deal with that problem. There must be equality of opportunity in education—the key to helping many vulnerable children.
  Jonathan Shaw: Does the hon. Gentleman think that it is right for the adjudicator to say to admissions authorities—independent or local authority schools—that children should be number one when it comes to the oversubscribed criteria? Is that right?
  Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I do not necessarily agree with that. The mechanics of how to advantage looked-after children within the school system need to be thoroughly debated. I want to bring about a system in which looked-after children are greatly advantaged within schools. We must ensure that they receive the equality of opportunity within education that I spoke about earlier. I realise that that has been greatly abused and is likely to be even further abused in view of the greater independence that schools have for their admissions policies. [Interruption.] The potential is absolutely there. We have to find a balance between recognising the independence and autonomy of schools and ensuring that looked-after children are not left behind. It is not a straightforward matter.
  A child who lives with his birth parents could live next door to a foster child who lives with foster parents. If both applied to an oversubscribed school it might be more appropriate, for whatever reason, for the child with birth parents to attend it. Is it right to be discriminated against in order to promote the

  1025
  educational advances of the child in foster care? [Interruption.] That is precisely the sort of problem that the issue raises. I am not suggesting that I have the model solution to the problem, but we will need to debate the issue properly in Committee. It risks producing a considerable amount of prejudice among parents whose children miss out in relation to the looked-after children whom we desperately need to help to make educational advances. It is a contentious argument and, as the Bill stands now, we need to go into far more detail about how the policy will be carried out in practice. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) has admitted that many schools do not follow the procedures, so we must secure more consistency in that respect.
  Finally, the Bill does not make sufficient reference to the specific needs of disabled children and it makes no provision to ensure an assumption of reasonable contact between siblings who may be in care separately. Given that the Bill is about children, we will take the earliest opportunity to insert amendments to give non-resident parents a legal presumption of equal parenting rights, unless there is a particular threat to the welfare of child. Clearly, it must be in the child's best interests. Following our recent summit, Conservative proposals for the next election will—in contrast to the Minister's fudge in her Green Paper—deal with that scandal. Perhaps she will intervene to explain herself.
  Margaret Hodge: I was bewildered by the later part of the hon. Gentleman's speech. Is he saying that the Opposition believe that the interests of the child should not be paramount in decisions taken about access or contact, or is he saying that the interests of parents—in equal parenting—should have priority over the interests of the child? The two cannot go together. The hon. Gentleman has to choose between the one or the other principle.
  Tim Loughton: That is complete rubbish, and the Minister knows it. There are no implications here for the welfare of the child being paramount, as she admitted herself at the beginning of her speech when she said that what is in the best interests of the child is to have the love and attention of both parents. At the moment, no legal right is enshrined for parents who are unfairly excluded from being able to be good and loving parents. That is the injustice that we want the Bill to deal with. The Minister has singularly failed on that with her ill-thought-out, half-fudged and half-baked Green Paper on the subject—it has been around for far too long—even though she was chased out of her burrow by our Westminster summit on the subject back in July.
  How will the Children Bill fit in with the long overdue national services framework for children, which I gather may be produced on Wednesday? On the subject of private fostering, we do not believe that the proposals are strong enough. One last voluntary push is necessary, according to the Minister, but how many last pushes do we need before we properly deal with those people who are cocking a snook at the law in private fostering arrangements? My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) mentioned that earlier.
  1026
  What account will the Bill take of the use of expert witnesses in care cases? The Government announced a review at the beginning of the year in the light of the Canning judgment, so how will the legislation impact on the qualifications of expert witnesses and their preparedness to come forward? We also have reservations about the timetable and accountability of children's trusts, on which the Government place so much expectation. As the National Children's Bureau queried, who will be accountable for the children's trusts? If children's services authorities are the governing bodies, how will clinical governance over health staff and their professional development be addressed?
  The timetable for children's trusts also seems to be getting pushed back. As last week's Children Now survey showed, fewer than two thirds of councils are working to meet the 2006 deadline to set up their children's trusts and 56 per cent. of councils have not yet started recruiting for a director of children's services. As one director put it, there has been an overemphasis on structural change, because it is the bit that people can get their heads around.
  Surely the preparedness of children's trusts and the close integration that they represent is key to the effective implementation of the Bill, and we will look for assurances on that point from the Minister.
  How will many of the Bill's provisions be funded, given the severe confusion and ensuing chaos over the funding of the many accomplished and relevant projects by the children's fund earlier this year? Many voluntary groups and projects operating on a shoestring are still worried about their future sustainability.
  As I said at the outset, we strongly support the Bill, but we think that it can be greatly improved to make it work better. We will seek to raise many of the issues that I have mentioned, and others, in Committee, and we will do so constructively, positively and flexibly. We hope that the Government will respond accordingly, as the urgent goals that we all wish to achieve on behalf of vulnerable children are too great to miss because of parliamentary niceties.
  6 pm
  Mr. Win Griffiths: This wide-ranging Bill will be a landmark in the improvement of services, opportunities and protection for children. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister on introducing it, and the whole Government team who have worked hard on it.
  The first issue I wish to consider is the role of the commissioner for children. I rejoice that the Government have at last agreed to a children's commissioner in England. We have had one in Wales since April 2001 and I like to think that it was the work done in the Welsh Office from 1997 that enabled the National Assembly to push forward with the agenda for a Children's Commissioner for Wales.
  Julie Morgan: Does my hon. Friend agree that he was in fact the first ever children's Minister?
  Mr. Griffiths: Well, I have to agree with that. I would even say that I am elated by the progress that we have made. Nevertheless, I remain worried about one or two

  1027
  aspects of the role of the children's commissioner. I am relaxed about how clause 2 has come to us from the other place. I concede the need for some fine tuning, but I would much rather have clause 2 as it is now than as it was when the Bill was first published. I hope that we will have an opportunity in Committee to make clear the role of the children's commissioner in England in respect of his or her responsibilities in Wales on non-devolved issues and how that will work with the Children's Commissioner for Wales.
  It is interesting that responsibility for CAFCASS has been devolved to the Children's Commissioner for Wales. If I were being cynical, I might think that that was because of all the difficulties that arose from the creation of CAFCASS and that the opportunity was taken to give someone else the responsibility of making it work properly, at least in Wales. I would dearly love to think that the commissioner in England would have the same powers—on matters relating to England—that the Children's Commissioner for Wales has on devolved matters. As for those issues that are not devolved and will therefore be the responsibility of the commissioner established by the Bill, there should be clear working arrangements to enable the Children's Commissioner for Wales to act as the representative of the commissioner created by this Bill, so that children in Wales will have a one-stop shop for their concerns. We should do everything possible to ensure that the commissioner for England will have an excellent working relationship with the Children's Commissioner for Wales.
  Hywel Williams: The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the concerns of the Children's Commissioner for Wales that his role is different from that proposed for the commissioner in England, whatever that commissioner will be called. How would the hon. Gentleman address the point about the credibility of the Welsh commissioner being undermined by a perceived lack of independence from the English children's commissioner?
  Mr. Griffiths: We do not need to worry about the standing and the independence of the Children's Commissioner for Wales on devolved issues. I want to ensure that, when the process is complete, the commissioner in England, who will have responsibility for some non-devolved issues in Wales, has a similar role to that of the commissioner in Wales on devolved issues. For example, Government Departments in England should have the duty to respond within three months to commissioner recommendations, as happens in Wales. We will need to address such points in Committee and on Report. I hope that we will not see any diminution of the powers of the commissioner, as already expressed in the Bill. Indeed, perhaps the work of the commissioner in England and in other parts of the United Kingdom could be improved and strengthened.
  Mrs. Betty WilliamsIf that does not happen, does my hon. Friend agree that—as the Welsh Affairs Committee said in its report—linguistic issues or other non-devolved issues might not be resolved in
  1028
  respect of a child from Wales who is in an institution in England? If that happens, the only person to suffer will be the child.
  Mr. Griffiths: Yes, and we must ensure that such issues are fully resolved in the Bill and that any commitments made by the Minister to issue guidance are met.
  The protections given in clause 8 should include refugee and asylum-seeker children. We should not stand by the reservation that we have to the convention on the rights of the child, because those children are already disadvantaged enough. We should ensure that they do not suffer further disadvantage while they—either on their own or with their parents—seek refuge in the United Kingdom.
  I may annoy the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) by discussing whether the smacking issue will hijack the Bill, but it has been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe). I do not think that it will, and the issue should not be discussed in those terms. I believe that the issue of whether children should have equal protection to that which adults enjoy is fundamental to the issues that the Bill is designed to tackle. The whole problem of child abuse can be traced back to the way in which we have deeply embedded in our culture the right for parents and carers to smack their children.
  Mr. Andrew Turner: Rubbish.
  Mr. Griffiths: The hon. Gentleman says that that is rubbish, but the whole situation is Dickensian. The basis of the law on which we are acting goes back to 1860, a time when it was considered normal to beat children until they bled. We have come a long way since then, but the right to smack is still deeply embedded in our psyche.
  I take that issue very seriously. The clause 49 compromise in the other place is inadequate.
  Mr. Turner: On consideration, does the hon. Gentleman not think that his description diminishes the suffering of some of the children whom the Bill is designed to protect? The suggestion that, for example, Victoria Climbiés suffering was something to do with legislation on smacking children is completely absurd.
  Mr. Griffiths: It is not completely absurd. Because of the defence of reasonable chastisement, smacking has been too easy. There was even a court case in which beating a child with the bough of a tree was considered reasonable chastisement in the circumstances. The important thing is that we give children equal protection with adults and that we outlaw smacking. That will begin to attack the idea that parents can smack children in such ways. Only a minority may do so, but none the less 80 or more children are killed every year in circumstances that relate to our allowing ourselves to think that it is okay for parents and carers to smack children.
  We do not think that it is okay for parents and carers to smack adults in comparable circumstances; that would be brawling, affray or grievous bodily harm.

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  When adults knock each other about, there is a gamut of offences to deal with it, yet under our current law children can be hit.
  Mr. Dawson: Does my hon. Friend recall the chilling words of Carl Manning, the murderer of Victoria Climbié? He was reported as saying that she could take a beating like anything.
  Mr. Griffiths: We need to keep reminding ourselves of such awful things, because children are legally being hit. A recent Government-sponsored survey showed that more than 90 per cent. of children were being hit regularly—nearly half were being hit weekly and 35 per cent. were being punished in a manner that their parents or carers thought severe. It is incredible to think that 75 per cent. of the mothers interviewed for that survey had smacked their baby in the first year of its life. Those are terrible things and we need to act positively to get rid of them.
  Jonathan Shaw: Does my hon. Friend agree that quoting Manning's words—as our hon. Friend the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) did just now—in the horrendous case of the abuse of Victoria Climbié and making a comparison between that and a gentle tap on the back of the legs of a two-year-old just will not chime with the general public?
  Mr. Griffiths: I shall come to that point shortly. I agree that there is a huge difference, but perhaps we are afraid to face up to the facts, and we need to do so. I have already mentioned that our law is based on an archaic judgment made in 1860. We must also remember that there are specific human rights obligations to which we must adhere; for example, we have signed up to the UN convention on the rights of the child. On several occasions, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has put it to our Government that we need to amend our law, as we are not treating children properly. Not only international bodies, but almost everybody involved in child protection and the care and promotion of children's rights, whether professionals, voluntary bodies or others with an interest in children—more than 350 organisations—backs equal protection for children. We need a legal framework to change our culture of hitting children.
  My right hon. Friend the Minister referred to the fact that such changes had taken place in Sweden over a long period. When the Swedes made it illegal to hit children the majority of people surveyed at the time were against the law, yet now only 6 per cent. of parents still want the right to smack their children. That shows how important it is to get the legal framework right. We need that cultural change.
  We must also give much greater priority to provisions for positive parenting. Many parents have already come to the conclusion that it is wrong to smack their children and have found other ways of disciplining them. By getting rid of the defence of reasonable chastisement, we would be taking a major step forward in the push for positive parenting.
  We know that such reforms work. A dozen states already have commissioners and there has been a huge improvement in the situation in Sweden, where the legal
  1030
  framework has existed for the longest time. We should draw something positive from that and take steps today. Sensationalising in papers such as The Sun should not fool us. Recent opinion polls suggest that people will support equal protection for children—more than 70 per cent. in a MORI poll. It was interesting that 76 per cent. of under-24-year-olds wanted equal protection; for women, the figure was 73 per cent., while for parents it was 74 per cent. The Government have a sound basis for making such provisions. A Populus poll showed that a majority of young people wanted equal protection for children.
  We should support an amendment to give equal protection because it is right. I was a bit chilled to be told that we would not be allowed a free vote on that issue. As a parent, I made the decision many years ago not to chastise our children physically and managed to keep to it. Both my children are well into their 30s and neither can recollect ever being hit—although they can remember times when I exploded. However, we managed and we can all manage. As a child, I received some hefty beatings and some people may see that as a good reason to abolish physical punishment. Although I do not feel permanently scarred by that process I still believe that giving equal protection is far better.
  Finally, I turn to some issues to which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham alluded—personnel and finance. If the Bill is to work properly, substantial extra finance will be needed and much will have to be done to encourage people to move into work relating to children. Such workers have taken so many knocks recently that it will not be an easy job.
  I wish the Bill well. I shall not be able to support every aspect of it. From the sound of things, I shall not be able to support some of the amendments that the Government will table, but I am fairly sure that whatever the state of the measure at the end of the process it will be far better than what we have at present. I shall be happy to support it in that context, although I hope that what I have spoken about today will come to pass so that I can be deliriously happy when the Bill receives Royal Assent.
  6.19 pm
  Mrs. Annette L. Brooke: I congratulate the Members of the other place on their assiduous work on the Bill. They certainly spent many a long hour on it. I particularly mention those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—Baroness Walmsley and her team. As I read the lengthy passages in the Lords Hansard that cover the deliberations on the Bill in the other place, I was struck by the thoughtfulness and responsiveness of the Minister there throughout, so I am disappointed that the Minister is missing from the Chamber now. The cross-party approach on many aspects of the Bill is to be highly commended and has resulted in great improvements in the Bill. I hope that we will work cross-party throughout the Committee to improve it further.
  Although the Government may feel that the time spent on the Bill in the other place provides an excuse for allocating such a short time for the House to scrutinise it, the Liberal Democrats believe that a wide range of important issues still require detailed debate, especially if another 15 years pass before there is further major

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  legislation on this issue. We support the Government's aim in introducing the Bill, and look forward to making positive contributions to ensure that the legislation will indeed improve children's lives and help to enhance services and support for all young people. Indeed, I hope that we achieve what the Minister outlined: a true transformation in services—over time, of course.
  We strongly endorse the aim of achieving the five outcomes for children, as outlined in "Every Child Matters": being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and economic well-being. It is interesting to see how those outcomes were expressed on Second Reading in the other place and how they have been amended. Education and training did not seem to match with enjoying and achieving, and we welcome the inclusion of recreation.
  We also welcome the inclusion of emotional well-being, along with social and economic well-being. Staying safe, of course, involves a proactive, preventive agenda, as some hon. Members have mentioned today. However, we share the Children's Society's concern about how the achievement of those outcomes will be measured. We also believe that equality of opportunity should be considered within the outcome framework and hope that the Government will address that issue. Gaining access to important services is likely to be far more difficult for those with specialist needs.
  It is heartening that clause 45, on ascertaining children's wishes, was introduced on Report in the other place, but it is worrying that it was not at the heart of Government thought and included earlier. Even so, despite the Minister's words, insufficient emphasis seems to have been given in the Bill to listening to children and taking on board their views and experiences, which must be seen as important in the context of evaluating the outcomes and, of course, in all the processes. That reminds us that no one appeared to ask Victoria Climbié her views and feelings about her situation.
  I recall that, long ago in the Fred West case, early clues were missed because children were not fully listened to. That has happened time and again. We have missed vital clues and we need to put more emphasis in the Bill on that aspect of listening to children. The Children's Society calls on the Government to take the opportunity of the Bill to place a new duty on local authorities actively to seek the wishes and feelings of all children about whom there are child protection concerns. I hope that, when the Minister returns, we will have some idea about whether that is being considered.
  A strong, independent champion of children's rights was needed and we particularly welcome the establishment of the children's commissioner. That was a proposal in the Liberal Democrats' general election manifesto for 2001, so we are delighted that, yet again, the Government will implement one of our policies. Of course, we acknowledge that Wales has had a children's commissioner since 2001, and we are lagging behind Scotland and Northern Ireland.
  We read the first proposals put before the other House with great disappointment. The cross-party approach there resulted in the now proposed commissioner for England. At least that bit has been endorsed today, and while I am pleased about that, what I am really pleased about is the fact that the
  1032
  commissioner will be firmly based on the rights of the child and reflect the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. We certainly would strongly oppose any move by the Government to reverse any of those key changes. We have heard some strong hints today that there will be attempts at reversal. I accept that further clarification is probably needed with regard to the interaction between the four commissioners in the different parts of the UK and look forward to debating that in Committee.
  We should like some further amendments to be made, particularly in relation to the Secretary of State's power to direct the commissioner to hold an inquiry. We think it important that the children's commissioner is truly independent of the Government. Of course, the commissioner can always consider a request, but it is important that the commissioner has discretion. A cynic might feel that the Secretary of State—a future one, of course, I am sure—might keep the commissioner so tied down with directed inquiries that the commissioner would have little time left for the priorities, perhaps set by children.
  On Third Reading in the other place, the Minister indicated that there might well be a Government amendment relating to the requirement on the Government or others to respond to the commissioner's recommendations. We would greatly welcome that. A requirement for some longer-term monitoring on whether action has taken place and its effectiveness would also be positive. A few other issues were not fully answered during that debate and we shall return to them in Committee.
  Concern continues to be raised that schools have not been included in the list of partners who will have a duty to make arrangements to co-operate and to improve children's well-being under clause 7, which is about strategic functions. I can understand the argument for including only local education authorities, but independent schools, city academies and city technology colleges have very limited relationships with current LEAs and the new funding arrangements currently under discussion will further reduce links between schools and LEAs. That issue must be revisited, although we must also be mindful of the extra duties placed on schools. We welcome the proposals on extended schools because they will provide vital further opportunities to support children and families.
  As other hon. Members have said, it is important that all children who live in this country are eligible for the same rights. The children of refugees and asylum seekers should have the basic human rights afforded to all children in this country.
  Mr. Andrew Turner: The hon. Lady referred to extended schools, and there are certainly some imaginative proposals. She says that she supports those proposals, but does she think that local or national taxpayers should pay for them?
  Mrs. Brooke: I see schools in the context of the LEAs, and I will look in great detail at where the funding streams will come through to LEAs, but we favour local decision making in implementation.
  Refugee children were identified as those in greatest need in "Every Child Matters", yet amendments proposed in the other place were resisted. We certainly

  1033
  wish to revisit some of the discussion. We welcome the fact that, under clause 8, the relevant agencies that provide services to children will have a duty to make arrangements to safeguard and promote welfare, but we feel that the relevant agencies must include those responsible for immigration detention centres where children are held, the National Asylum Support Service and those who deal with refugee children at ports. That is urgent, given the concerns about trafficking and the rise in the number of refugee children being detained.
  The detention of children will always raise serious child protection concerns. In 2002, the view of the inspector of prisons was that
  "the positive development of children was compromised by the secure nature of the facility"—
  Dungavel—
  "and the uncertainty surrounding the length of stay".
  She made various recommendations on immigration removal centres, with further recommendations in 2003. What progress has been made on their implementation? In a reply to a recent parliamentary question, I was told:
  "The Immigration Service does not routinely collect data on children arriving in the United Kingdom."—[Official Report, 19 July 2004; Vol. 424, c. 74W.]
  I know that several measures have been introduced recently to ensure that such children at risk are identified, but surely we must have comprehensive data on children who enter the country because, if we do not, the situation will not fit with the other proposals in the Bill.
  I welcome the fact that youth offending teams and governors of prisons and secure training centres are included under the new duty to safeguard and promote welfare, but it is clear from the number of tragic suicides of young people in custody. Between 1990 and the present day, there were 186 self-inflicted deaths among under-21s in prison. How does that make us feel about our society and the system?
  Recent statistics show that the number of children assessed as vulnerable and remanded in, or sentenced to, Prison Service custody in 2003–04 was 3,337, which represents a massive increase from 2000–01 when there were only 432 such cases. The recent death in custody of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood highlights the tragic situation that can result from that. I know that the Government have indicated their intention to legislate on youth justice sentencing in "Youth Justice—The Next Steps" and "Every Child Matters: The Next Steps", but the new safeguarding framework in the Bill offers us the opportunity to address concerns about vulnerable children who are sentenced to, or remanded in, custody now—before more of them die.
  The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children raises the important point that the Bill does not adequately address the educational attainment of children in prisons. We know that children in the secure estate have low educational attainment because recent research shows that such children of school age have literacy and numeracy levels below those of children aged 11 and that more than a quarter have a level equivalent to that of an average child aged seven or younger. We also know that educational standards have an impact on reoffending rates, so addressing that matter in the Bill would be a positive step.
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  Tackling housing need is central to the welfare of children. Shelter calls for the Bill to go further in two key respects by suggesting that
  "Housing need should be included among the key factors to be considered in promoting a child's well being; and … Action should be taken to ensure that children's services authorities … fulfil their responsibilities to homeless children under the Children Act."
  I have long been worried about how well councils—especially when different councils, such as county and district councils, are involved—ensure that housing and social services work together. I know that there are excellent examples of good practice, but it is easy for things to go wrong if those services do not work well together. Is the Minister considering issuing supporting guidance on housing?
  We welcome the additional detail that is now provided in clause 9 because we could not have supported the original clause 8 given that its total lack of detail made it a blank cheque. We support the principle of a simple database with objective data. In the case of Victoria Climbié, a simple database would have shown that she was not attending a school. We appreciate that achievements can be made, but we need to know more about the details. Will the database be local, regional or national and will it have a relationship with existing databases?
  There remain questions about the proposed flags of concerns on a child's record in the proposed database. The suggestion in the other place of finding an alternative name for those does not overcome our fundamental objections. Different professionals will have different thresholds of concern and, despite the probing amendments moved in the other place, the Government have not produced a more detailed definition of a "cause for concern". Confusion could result from different interpretations of the term. It is possible that those who work with children will tend to flag every minor concern rather than risk accusations of negligence. If the system constantly delivers alerts for trivial issues, any urgent intervention required might be obscured because people cannot see the wood for the trees. Children already at risk of harm might be overlooked.
  It is important for different agencies to communicate clearly with each other and to take effective action. The database may be a tool, but it will not be a substitute for professional work. It is estimated that there is currently a shortage of some 2,000 children's social workers, but we must have well-trained social workers. I am aware that funding is available for training at present, but will the Minister assure me that funding streams will continue year on year to ensure that social workers and partners receive support for professional development and multi-agency work in all areas of child protection? All too often, the Government start something and do not continue it. At the moment, local authorities have money for training, but what will the situation be in five years' time? We must plan ahead.
  One thing that could be useful would be if sufficient funding were provided for outreach work to access vulnerable families, rather than waiting for vulnerable families to access services: that would mean that people did not become aware of their social services only when they were in difficulty. People involved in the trailblazer

  1035
  pilots made it clear to me that knowledge about, and confidence in, the levels and types of data that may be shared under existing legislation was important. We share the worries of several organisations about the implications for children of having service contact details on their records if the nature of the services that they have accessed automatically infers private and confidential details about their personal situations. Such an inference could be drawn from children accessing HIV, sexual health or abortion clinics, or drugs services. It is critical to ensure that there are tighter access restrictions on details about such sensitive services, because neither parents nor children must be deterred from seeking help or advice. Clarification is needed on how risks to children caused by inappropriate access to data will be prevented.
  We are told that consultation is taking place on such matters, and that guidance will be published in due course, but we need more details before the Committee stage. Who will see the database? Who will update the data? Who will remove data when they are out of date, and for how long should they be kept? Where will responsibility lie? And how will common standards be met throughout the country? There are matters relating to voluntary sector organisations now. They are signing service level agreements with local authorities now, and given that there is an assumption that everything in the Bill will go through, they need to know what will happen regarding the data.
  I welcome many aspects of the Bill. I am pleased that there is confidence on both sides of the argument that we can change the structure of integrated services while maintaining sufficient accountability. There are questions about how the money will work out for children's trusts and how health priorities will match up with other priorities. A point has been raised with me about the ring-fencing of money for children's services. In my part of the country and throughout the south-west, money invariably has to be poached from adult social services to prop up the children's services budget, so what will happen when insufficient money is available owing to the ring-fencing of money for children's services? Given that the problem is widespread, that is an important consideration.
  On private fostering, there is widespread agreement among interested organisations that proposals to amend the existing notification requirements do not address the failings of the current system. Rigorous standards apply to children in day care and to children accommodated by local authorities. However, the system for private fostering only requires the local authority to be notified of the arrangement, and does not require its approval. Once again, we must ask why there is not a compulsory registration scheme, as there have long been concerns about the system of notification. A register of suitable private foster parents would enable the designated local authority official to provide information to parents about the suitability of a prospective private foster carer based on a minimum set of standards, including the question of whether they had been police-checked or had had any of their own children placed in local authority care. Privately fostered children and their parents must be afforded the same standard of safeguarding as children who are looked after by child minders or accommodated by the local authority.
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  Looked-after children are a particularly vulnerable group and, as we have heard, the current guidance requires schools to take certain action. The Government's own reports, however, show that the impact of the designated teacher scheme is mixed. Some schools allow non-contact time for designated teachers to liaise with other agencies and to attend planning and review meetings, but others do not. It is more appropriate to place a statutory duty on schools and governing bodies than to rely on further guidance. As an aside, Baroness Ashton, the Under-Secretary for Education and Skills, said in a debate in the other place:
  "If children do not have a supportive environment with opportunities to learn and to use computer equipment … they can be disadvantaged."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 July 2004; Vol. 663, c. 1490–91.]
  It has recently been drawn to my attention that a grant available for a two-year period that has enabled councils to purchase computer equipment for looked-after children has come to an end, and does not appear to have been replaced with other funding. I would be grateful for clarification on that important matter—I am sure that no one in the House wishes to cut back on significant support at a time when we are saying that we will give more support to vulnerable children.
  I am anxious about unreasonable chastisement and, although I welcome the Bill overall, I believe that it should be amended to give children the same protection in their homes as adults are afforded under the law on assault. I believe that the amendment introduced on Report by Lord Lester attempts a legal definition of ways in which children can continue to be assaulted, which sends a dangerous message to society about the acceptability of violence towards children. Children who witness or are recipients of violence are likely to repeat that behaviour at other times and in different settings. There is obviously a lack of clarity about what is acceptable: some people bruise more easily, for example. There is also the problem of different coloured skins and the concern raised by a child protection police officer that regular physical punishment may not leave obvious signs on a child's body. Constant severe punishment may be a great cause for concern, but it is not covered by the amendment if it does not leave a mark on the child's body. I accept that the amendment deals with mental harm, but how on earth do we measure such harm or judge its severity?
  Mr. Adrian Flook: Is the hon. Lady speaking about that provision in a personal capacity or as a party spokesman? If Lord Lester's amendment were before the House of Commons, would she support it?
  Mrs. Brooke: Obviously, I am speaking as party spokesman. Personally, I believe that a great strength of the Lords is the opportunity that it provides for genuine discussion and debate of different ideas—whereas Members of the main parties in the Commons may prefer not to engage fully in the democratic process, and that is particularly true if a free vote is not allowed on this issue.
  Removing the defence of reasonable chastisement would send a clear message to the effect that children are equal in law, and it would make it easier for children to identify abusive behaviour towards them. We have an opportunity to initiate a change in culture. We would

  1037
  expect attitudes and behaviour to change slowly over time, as happened in Germany. We should certainly welcome the chance to introduce more family support services, more positive parenting messages, the promotion of non-violent discipline and a cultural shift in child-adult relationships. If we think that nothing should change in our attitudes, why—and I am delighted that this should be the case—is it that domestic violence is no longer acceptable? Attitudes change, and I remind the House that I spent a lot of time trying to prevent a kiss between two 13-year-olds from being viewed in a criminal context. However, it was decided for the greater good that that provision should remain in the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
  Finally, I re-emphasise the fundamental importance to the Bill of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, as it sets a clear, critical standard for the way in which children should be understood, respected and treated. The United Kingdom has been a signatory state to the convention for well over 10 years, and it should be applied throughout the Bill, covering everything from the duties of the children's commissioner to the disciplining of children. Both local and national Government should be accountable, and all Government Departments should comply with the convention, especially when new legislation and policy are introduced. Why cannot child impact statements be produced for all legislation? If we comply without reservation with the UN convention on the rights of the child, all children will matter in our country.
  6.47 pm
  Mr. David Hinchliffe: I strongly welcome the broad thrust of the Bill, which has been introduced in the wake of Lord Laming's important report on the tragic case of Victoria Climbié. Interestingly, that report made it clear that the basic statutory framework of children's provisions in the Children Act 1989 serves this country well. I was proud of that assessment, because I served on the Standing Committee that considered that Act, and I pay tribute to the previous Government for listening to Members of all parties to ensure that it was a positive piece of legislation. I hope that the present Government will listen to Members from all parties, including their own, to improve one or two parts of the Bill.
  The Bill needs to be seen in the wider context of Government policy on children and families. I praise the steps that, for example, the Government have taken to address child poverty. Their measures to address levels of child benefit have been crucial in tackling serious poverty among children and families in various parts of the country. I hope that they will learn the lesson that the concept of universality is relevant to other policy areas such as the pensions system, where universal benefits and clawback through the tax system will help us to address poverty, which we are not doing sufficiently at the moment—[Hon. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I hope that I will hear "Hear, hear" from Labour Members as well as Liberal Democrat Members.
  Mr. Dawson: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Hinchliffe: I thank my hon. Friend.
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  I commend the Government on their development of preventive measures in child care. One of my worries about the 1989 Act is that its provisions on prevention are, for various reasons, not as effective as its other provisions. I very much welcome the Government's emphasis on Sure Start.
  I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley), a former Secretary of State for Health, who was involved in Home Start, which had and continues to have a major impact in my constituency. Sure Start has built on many of the positive outcomes of the Home Start experiment. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) said that we have to see the legislation in the context of positive parenting. Clause 49 is crucial in that respect.
  I commend the Government on their attempts to achieve joined-up thinking. In the week when the national service framework is to be published, I thank Al Aynsley-Green, who has led the work on the NSF, for his inclusive approach. He has listened to a range of people voicing views from a range of perspectives. I am sure that the outcome will be positive.
  The improvements that we have achieved in opportunities and attainment in the education system relate strongly to disadvantaged youngsters. I see that in my constituency. It is especially welcome that the Bill creates a duty to promote educational achievement among looked-after children. When, some years ago, the Health Committee carried out an inquiry into looked-after children, all of us were surprised to learn that the most common concerns felt by the children in the care system from whom we took evidence were not about the care system, but about the education system and their experience in schools. Especially since the creation of a more competitive environment in education, in which schools look to league tables and results, disadvantaged youngsters are often regarded as holding schools back. I therefore welcome the provision in the Bill. My only concern is that perhaps the duty should be placed on schools rather than only on local education authorities, given that it was at the level of schools that the children in question expressed that concern to us.
  I welcome the proposals on structural change, improved accountability and communication, and joint working. The integration of children's services is common sense, but I am concerned that the model adopted might vary from area to area. People who are involved in child protection and who need to contact colleagues in other parts of the country might find that difficult if the structures adopted elsewhere are different from the model in their own area, with which they are familiar.
  The Government are right to put local safeguarding children boards on a statutory footing. I was surprised to learn that area child protection committees are not a statutory requirement; they apply in my area and in others and I had assumed that they were required by law.
  I welcome the proposed framework for registration of private fostering, but I remain frustrated, because it seems that we have not yet got a grip on that issue. I share some of the concerns raised by colleagues and hope that, in Committee, we will consider a serious approach to the matter, which has been the cause of

  1039
  immense concern for many years. Successive Governments have failed to act in as positive a fashion as they should.
  The introduction of a children's commissioner is of fundamental importance and long overdue. I do not wish to contradict the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), most of whose comments I agreed with, but the first party commitment on the introduction of a children's commissioner came from the Labour party at least 10 years ago. I know because I wrote, or at least I was responsible for, the policy document that included the commitment. However, I welcome the fact that the Liberal Democrats picked up on it and that the Government are now doing something about it.
  As I said, the measure is long overdue. The Health Committee has recommended the establishment of a children's commissioner in two separate inquiries. I welcome the way in which the Lords have strengthened the provision, and I will be concerned if in Committee or on Report the Government row back on what appear to me to be very sensible amendments made in the other place, especially the requirement that the commissioner must have regard to the UN convention on the rights of the child. I remind colleagues that the Conservative Government signed up to the UN convention, presumably in the knowledge that doing so had implications for key areas of policy in this country such as reasonable chastisement. We were all well aware of that at the time. I am therefore concerned that the Conservatives do not appear to be getting a grip on the issue as I hoped they would. As the party that, rightly, signed Britain up to the convention, the Conservatives seem to me to have a vested interest in ensuring that we deliver what the convention requires. I am sorry that they are finding the question of reasonable chastisement rather difficult.
  I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend. He spoke with passion and great common sense and I entirely agree with every word he said. The Bill as amended in the Lords keeps Britain on a collision course with the UN committee—it resolves absolutely nothing. My hon. Friend pointed out that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child had referred to the matter. In October 2002—not long ago—the committee reminded the UK of previous recommendations to remove the defence of reasonable chastisement, stating:
  "The committee deeply regrets that the state party persists in retaining the defence of 'reasonable chastisement' and has taken no significant action towards prohibiting all corporal punishment of children in the family."
  The committee criticised the proposals to limit the defence that we see in the Bill, having been introduced by Lord Lester. The committee called, first, for the prohibition of all corporal punishment; and, secondly, for the promotion of positive non-violent forms of discipline.
  I echo my hon. Friend's comments on positive parenting. Those of us who believe passionately that the law must be changed accept entirely that a programme of positive parenting must accompany the change in the law. We have to help people to deal with the most difficult job that any of us do—bringing up our children. Speaking as a parent, it is a standing joke to me that I was taught nothing about parenting. I saw a half-hour
  1040
  video in a maternity hospital shortly before my wife gave birth to our first child; it told me where it had gone in and where it came out, and that was it. It told me nothing about what I should do when I had got the little thing home and the problems started—when it was screaming in the middle of the night, or it would not go to sleep. We all need help, whatever our social background.
  Mr. Dawson: Is my hon. Friend aware of cutting-edge research into the way in which social interactions and parents' behaviour can have physical effects on the brains of very young children that affect the way in which they behave throughout their lives? Is it not therefore incredibly important that we reach out to the parents of very young children and help them to manage their children appropriately?
  Mr. Hinchliffe: I have not seen the research, but I am sure that my hon. Friend will let me have a look at it. He reinforces the point that I was making.
  Other than the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the present UK position has been criticised by the European Court of Human rights, by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Health Committee—both all-party Committees—and by every child protection agency in the country. We should listen to bodies that are in the front line of child protection every day.
  I thank my right hon. Friends the Minister for Children, who is no longer in her place, and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills for the time that they have taken to listen to me and many of my colleagues on the question of reasonable chastisement. We have engaged in lots of dialogue over a long period and I genuinely hope that that dialogue will continue. I appreciate that media attitudes make the issue a difficult one for any Government, but clause 49 as amended is full of holes, which worries me very much. The briefing note sent to hon. Members by Save the Children says that clause 49
  "will lead to greater legal ambiguity, professional uncertainty and parental confusion about what is, and is not, acceptable".
  I am not a lawyer, but I spent a long time in child protection, and in my view the clause is naive, totally impractical and frankly dangerous. We have to do something about it.
  Clause 49 relies on "wounding" and "bodily harm" in defining an offence against a child. In practice, though, as one or two of my colleagues know who have had experience in child protection, it is frequently difficult to prove whether such bodily harm has occurred when children are injured, sometimes quite seriously. Indeed, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole referred to the fact that people mark in different ways. In another place, on the Lester amendment, the point was rightly made that there are clear ethnic differences about what may be visible on a child's body.
  Invisible injuries are often the most painful and dangerous. I spent 20 years playing rugby league, and I speak with feeling about some of my injuries. The worst was to a rib cartilage: there was nothing to see, but the doctor told me it was worse than having broken ribs. I could not move for around six months without acute pain. Nothing could be seen: there was no bruising or

  1041
  anything else to see, but that was a serious and painful injury. On several occasions, I certainly had head injuries when there was no visible sign but when the fact that I was seeing double or treble indicated that something was rather wrong.
  The clause, as amended, does not address the practical reality of the situations with which social workers, the police and child protection agencies will deal with day to day. It will be helpful to the lawyers, who will laugh all the way to the bank. Frankly, though, it will not help the child victims of serious assault.
  When the Children Act 1989 went through the House, I served on the Committee and moved an amendment to remove reasonable chastisement as a defence. We failed to do that, and we were perhaps before our time; I have frequently been before my time but I hope it will come. We were defeated, I suspect, because we did not have the evidence at that stage of what had happened with our policy in other countries. Now, as I said when I intervened on the Minister, 12 European countries have prohibited all physical punishment, and we can see from their research the positive impact of what they have done. If anyone wants to read some of the detailed research, I can let them have copies. Latvia and Romania are the most recent, and I mention Romania because it is only 10 years since I was there with a voluntary organisation, helping the Romanians to construct a child care system. Since then, they have gone past us in their advanced thinking on child protection and have taken the commonsense measure of giving children equal protection in law against assault.
  I hope that we can continue to have the dialogue that the Minister for Children indicated she was willing to hold. Eighty children die each year in the United Kingdom at the hands of their parents or carers.
  Mr. Win Griffiths: We have heard before the figure of 80 children dying, which is terrible. We also need to remember, though, that thousands of children are physically abused all over the United Kingdom every year.
  Mr. Hinchliffe: I entirely agree. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children told me not long ago that at least one child in every classroom in the country is being seriously assaulted, and that is a worrying figure.
  To have any credibility on child protection, the Bill has to ensure that children have the same protection in law as adults. We have time to put that right, and I genuinely hope that we will manage to do it before we get the Bill into law.
  7.4 pm
  Mr. James Clappison: I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate, which is on a subject of the highest importance and on which we probably do not spend enough time. Like my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), I support the aims of the Bill and the Bill itself, and I welcome the tone that he took. When the Bill goes into Committee, I hope that the Government will respond in kind to his constructive approach and to
  1042
  constructive comments from Members on both sides of the House. I believe that there are still some improvements to be made.
  I approach this matter in the spirit of the Laming report on the Victoria Climbié case, which, in many respects, forms a vital part of the background to the Bill. I interpret the spirit of that report, at least in part, as being the fullest and widest acceptance of responsibility for the welfare of children, especially those who are the most vulnerable. In the case of those children who are most at risk, front-line social workers, who have all the burden of face to face contact with children and families and who are in receipt, no doubt, of a less than princely reward for doing so, should not be left to shoulder all the responsibility when things go wrong. In saying that, I am mindful of the view explicitly expressed by Lord Laming:
  "Having considered all the evidence, it is not to the hapless front-line staff that I direct most criticism for the failure to protect Victoria Climbié."
  He found that the greatest failures lay elsewhere, higher up the chain of command. In the spirit of his report, we need to ensure that there is an appropriate acceptance of responsibility at all levels, up to the highest levels of local authorities, and beyond to this House and Ministers.
  With that in mind, I welcome the Bill's principal provision for focusing minds on the welfare of children—the creation of a children's commissioner. The Bill has been very much improved as a result of debates in the other place, so it was with some disappointment that I heard the Minister say that the Government plan to overturn clause 2 as it stands and to go back to the original form of clause 2. Having studied it, I think that the current clause 2 is an improvement, and I hope that that will be fully considered in Committee.
  There are other respects in which the Bill could be further improved, and those will need detailed consideration. Concerns remain about the independence of the commissioner, which is a key point if we are to have effective provision. When the Bill was published, the commissioner looked too much like a champion of the Government rather than a champion of children. In the other place, Lord Northbourne graphically referred to a "castrated children's commissioner". The provisions have been improved, but further improvements could make the commissioner much more clearly independent of Government. As the Bill stands, even in its improved form, and by contrast with the position in Wales, the children's commissioner is to be appointed by the Secretary of State and to be eligible for reappointment at the end of his or her five-year term entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State. That is hardly a configuration suggesting the presence of the attributes that Lord Northbourne suggested might be lacking in the children's commissioner.
  What is the flavour of the relationship suggested by clause 5(1), which provides that the Secretary of State can direct the commissioner to hold an inquiry? The word used is "direct" as opposed to "request". Again, that contrasts with the independence granted to other children's commissioners in that regard.
  The Bill has been much improved since it was first published, when there was a widespread perception that the commissioner needed to be made more independent,

  1043
  but still more needs to be done to buttress the independence and the effectiveness of the commissioner. I hope we will hear from the Government in due course, in Committee, what more they propose should happen, for example, as a result of the reports from the commissioner—something that they have undertaken to do. We must ensure that the commissioner's work is effective and that it is listened to and responded to.
  It must be right to encourage co-operation and closer working between different services. We wait to see how much progress is made towards the creation of children's trusts. Surely we should aim to measure children's trusts by looking for demonstrable improvements in the care of children—improvements that are commensurate with the scale and cost of the administrative reorganisation that will be necessary to create such trusts. It is not enough for Ministers to reel off long lists of new names and new bodies. It must be demonstrated that there have been tangible and commensurate improvements as a result of the investments being made.
  I welcome the provisions in clause 9 relating to information databases, although my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham made some important points in that regard. The matter needs to be further debated. There has been a constructive debate so far, but I demur from the views expressed by the Liberal Democrats. The data-sharing provisions are a step forward. I make a plea to Ministers that, in the detail of the provisions, we ensure that the overriding considerations are the welfare and safety of children, and that those come before any other concerns. If there is a conflict between the safety of a child and the technicalities of data protection, let us avoid a situation in which those charged with a child's safety are afraid to act because they are worried about the data protection provisions. Let the safety of the child come first, and let it be the overriding consideration. It may be the intention of clause 9(11) to make that clear. I hope it will be made crystal clear when the matter is debated in Committee.
  I also welcome the provisions relating to the educational achievement of children in care and the spelling out of a duty on local authorities to promote the child's educational achievements, although I note that that appears in the miscellaneous provisions in part 5. In my view, it is far more important than that. I welcome the fact that the educational performance and well-being of children being looked after by local authorities has been mentioned today from all parts of the House.
  I accept that other work is being done on this topic, and rightly so. As has been observed from all sides, children in care lag behind other children in educational achievement. The statistics for children being looked after have already been given: only 8 per cent. of young people in year 11 who had spent at least one year in care gained five or more GCSEs graded A to C, compared with 50 per cent. of all young people. Only 1 per cent. of them go on to university. If a school were producing such results, it would be soon be put into special measures, if not closed down altogether. We cannot allow a situation to persist in which children in care lag so far behind other children in an area as crucial as educational achievement, with their life prospects so badly hindered as a result.
  1044
  Another issue that should have received greater prominence in the Bill is the role of parents, with which I shall deal in a moment in another context. The importance of the role of parents is dealt with in a rather perfunctory way in the Bill as it stands. It is dealt with in three lines in clause 7(3)—three lines in a 44-page Bill. I would welcome hearing rather more about parents.
  That brings me to the aspect of the Bill that has brought parental rights into the sharpest focus: the issue of chastisement of children. My hon. Friend was right to make a plea that we should not allow that to overshadow the rest of the Bill, but we cannot avoid a debate on it because for many people it is an important subject. It may surprise Members in some quarters of the House that my approach to the matter is rather coloured by my personal view that physical chastisement is a wholly ineffective way of administering the discipline that children sometimes need. My own observations lead me to the view that smacking, and certainly the use of an implement such as a cane, does no good whatever, and could conceivably do some harm.
  The case has been somewhat overstated from the Labour Benches, particularly by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths), who made a sincere speech about his strongly held views. The case of Victoria Climbié, which has been prayed in aid in this context, is not the right example. The injuries in that case went way beyond anything that could have fallen within the ambit of reasonable chastisement. I remember that the pathologist said that they were the worst injuries he had ever encountered and the worst he had ever heard of. That is way beyond the subject of today's debate.
  There is an issue, however, in the case of the repeated use of moderate chastisement, which would fall outside the ambit of clause 49. I have some concerns about the long-term effect of the repeated use of physical chastisement on a child.
  Mr. Dawson: Bearing in mind his views, will the hon. Gentleman study the reports of other child abuse inquiries, going back even to Maria Colwell, and note the number of times a parent's predilection for using physical punishment, coupled with a child's apparent imperviousness to that physical punishment, has resulted in over-chastisement to the dreadful point where the child dies?
  Mr. Clappison: That brings me to my next point, from which the hon. Gentleman may draw some comfort. The issue calls for further research and a careful examination of all the evidence. I am the first to confess that I have not yet done sufficient research into all the evidence from previous cases to lead me to a concluded view.
  There are other facts that I would have to set against that if there were a free vote on the matter, which there will not be. The issue that should exercise the conscience of all of us, and which I set against my worries about harm to children—this is my personal view as a parent—is whether it would be right for me to impose my view in this regard on other parents, and whether it would be right for the House, and in effect the state, to limit the decisions of parents. I would have to weigh that in the balance.
  I have great hesitation in circumscribing the actions that other parents, contrary to my own views, feel could be taken and would improve their care of their child.

  1045
  Other parents may take a different view from mine, and I have some hesitation in circumscribing their rights. As I said a moment ago, not only in the Bill but in the wider debate, we do not pay sufficient attention to the rights of parents. It is the parents in the first instance who provide the care that we hope our children will receive.
  Ms Sally Keeble: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whose speech I am listening to with great interest. As he is a lawyer, what would he say about the view that children should have equal status before the law and equal protection from assault and battery?
  Mr. Clappison: Since 1860 the defence of reasonable chastisement has taken children out of what would otherwise be the provisions of the law. Carried out against an adult, the sort of actions that we are considering would probably fall within the offence of assault. Those actions do not fall within the offence of assault because of the defence of reasonable chastisement, and we must examine the matter, taking into account the facts that I just elucidated.
  Under clause 49, a prosecution for assault, which is the relevant part of our criminal code, could still take place, subject to the provisions of reasonable chastisement. Clause 49 will need careful consideration in Committee, particularly on the question whether it changes the law and risks creating new loopholes. Today, the law allows parents to administer the discipline that they feel is appropriate in the case of their child through reasonable chastisement.
  We must primarily look to parents. We are trying to achieve what we can through legislation, but we must recognise the limit on what legislation can achieve. I suspect that many children today have not received the same quality of emotional experience as children in previous generations, because of a range of factors that it is beyond our power to control. We must do what we can to control things, particularly in the case of those children—this is a minority of cases, but it is a substantial minority—who are most at risk of abuse and neglect. We must do everything that we possibly can through legislation to protect those children, and I hope that the Bill is subject to detailed consideration to make sure that it is as effective as it can be for that purpose.
  7.21 pm
  Jonathan Shaw: I am delighted to participate in this debate. The Government have made successive commitments to children through the use of their legislative time. We have seen the Care Standards Act 2000, the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and the Adoption and Children Act 2002, and now we have the Children Bill. No previous Government have included so much children's legislation in their agenda over a seven-year period.
  This is not just about legislation, but about backing up legislation with resources. The Government have attacked child poverty, provided more nursery places and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) said, increased child benefit. We know the benefits that children and their families derive from
  1046
  investment in nursery education because we can see them in all our constituencies. The Government have also invested in the Sure Start programme, which I want extended. When one talks to parents about Sure Start's impact, it is apparent that it provides considerable assistance in bringing up children.
  The Government's record is considerable and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for her work over a number of years. She has had her critics, particularly when she was appointed, but she has delivered with this Bill. She has listened to the various agencies and to hon. Members and delivered a Bill of which the Government can be proud.
  The Government have put in money, too. The vulnerable children's grant will provide an additional £252 million in 2003 to 2006, which includes £113 million to improve care placements. Many hon. Members have spoken about children in care, to whom I shall return later in my remarks.
  It is important that individual cases do not bog down the commissioner. The commissioner must be independent, and they will retain that independence, which is a point that does not need to be on the face of the Bill. Consider the chief inspector of schools at Ofsted, who is independent. Certain previous chief inspectors could not be accused of lacking independence, although in some cases the line between policy and politics became blurred. The personality of the individual who is appointed is important and we cannot put that on the face of the Bill.
  On the appointment, we want a powerful advocate to examine children's issues. My right hon. Friend mentioned the issues that she wants the commissioner to examine, and I hope that the commissioner will examine issues such as children in custody and the secure estate, because in many instances, the record on protecting those vulnerable individuals is appalling.
  Private fostering was debated in the parliamentary stages of all the legislation to which I referred and we need proper regulation to come into effect sooner rather than later. I welcome the Conservatives' conversion to regulation. Conservative Front Benchers often discuss regulation, but I do not know whether the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has consulted the shadow Secretary of State for deregulation.
  Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman knows that throughout the entire course of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, I supported the greater regulation of private fostering as part of official policy, and I produced a Private Member's Bill on the subject just last year. A conversion has not occurred, and Conservative policy has been entirely consistent. We will continue to press for greater regulation when it means greater safety for vulnerable children.
  Jonathan Shaw: The conversion occurred after the Care Standards Act 2000, on which the hon. Gentleman led for the Conservatives.
  Tim Loughton indicated dissent.
  Jonathan Shaw: The Conservative spokesperson on the Care Standards Act 2000 and the Children (Leaving

  1047
  Care) Act 2000 did not agree with me and my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson). I am delighted that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has caught up, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister catches up before another four years elapse.
  The database is important. We must put every child on it, otherwise ambiguities will occur and we will lose children but we will probably lose children anyway. Will we have another inquiry like the Victoria Climbié inquiry? Yes, we will, in which case we must be able to put our hands on our hearts and say that we did everything that we possibly could. We must close loopholes such as private fostering and ensure that we have information on children.
  We should obtain information on all 11 million children in the country. Problems will undoubtedly occur and it is down to us to ensure that we get the legislation right, and down to the Government to order the correct software to build the right kind of database. Appeals were mentioned earlier, and the issue is undoubtedly a can of worms. However, if we step back from it, we will not be able to put our hands on our hearts and say that we could not have done anything else if another case occurs. We should not put appeals in the tray marked, "too difficult", but grasp the problem and get it right.
  On chastisement, given my background in child protection and social work, it may surprise some of my hon. Friends that I am not persuaded that we should take a position on parental rights. I share much of the hesitation articulated by the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison)—the measure is a step too far and a step too soon. Daily mild physical punishment, which may have an impact on a child, has been referred to, but what about daily emotional abuse, which can be equally painful?
  We want to move to a situation in which we provide parents with support through parenting information. The children's fund has done good work in assisting parents to find new solutions to bring up children in difficult circumstances. I am not convinced that we should take away control from parents.
  It is unhelpful for hon. Members to use the very emotive case of Victoria Climbié to make a comparison with a tap on the back of the legs. The general public will not recognise that comparison but will be offended by it. I ask my hon. Friends to exercise caution instead of letting their desire to amend the Bill run away with them.
  On schools, I welcome the extensions proposed by the Government, but I am not yet convinced that schools should not have a duty to co-operate to improve well-being. Some schools see themselves as part of the local authority family with all agencies working together, but many are isolated. Schools should be part of promoting well-being and have nothing to fear from it. There should be no ambiguity on that score.
  We have heard about the number of children who leave care having gained qualifications. We all share the despair that as few as 6 per cent. of those children—56,000—leave school with five or more good GCSEs, with only 1 per cent. going to university. We need to do far more work in relation to designated teachers, as the Government's own research said that the situation is mixed at best. Mixed is not good enough: it needs to be
  1048
  much better. In this context, the state is the child's parent, and a parent wants their child to go to the very best school. That is where I would challenge the Conservatives. It is all very well to list the statistics, as many of us do, but we need to ensure that there is a mechanism whereby children in care—looked-after children—can get into the very best schools. That is why I welcome admissions arrangements by the adjudicator whereby children in public care should be treated as No. 1, before anyone else, where there are oversubscribed places. Without that provision, I fail to see how that can happen. It is like saying, "We feel your pain. We're very sorry about this, and something should happen, but we're not going to do anything about it."
  Mr. Andrew Turner: We discussed this at some length in the Select Committee on Education and Skills before our report on admissions. The failure lies neither with schools nor with the parents of children who would be displaced were other children to have priority on admissions, but with the children's homes that are meant to be looking after these looked-after children. I have yet to hear an explanation of why those displaced children should suffer.
  Jonathan Shaw: Of the 60,000 children in care, 56,000 are with foster carers, so very few are in children's homes, whether failing or not. The point is this: does a school make a difference in terms of a child's educational opportunity and attainment? Of course it does. Therefore, given that such a small number of children have such a huge impact on society in terms of the number who are in prison or involved in crime, drugs and so on, should not we intervene to provide them with the best opportunities? This is perhaps an ideological difference. I happen to think that, if there is a mechanism whereby we can intervene to assist a child in care who has been abused and has had absolutely nothing in the way of a good start in life, we should do so.
  Tim Loughton rose—
  Jonathan Shaw: If the hon. Gentleman disagrees, that indicates a perfectly reasonable ideological difference. I am prepared to make my argument, and the electorate can make the choice.
  Tim Loughton: Neither I nor my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) dispute the end that the hon. Gentleman is trying to achieve, but he has not addressed an important point. In an area where there are five children living with foster parents or in children's homes and five children who are living with their birth parents and who may have siblings at a school or live very close to it, the hon. Gentleman suggests that, if that school was oversubscribed, the five children in care should receive preference, while the five children living with their birth parents, through no fault of their own, would not. That is the consequence that he does not address.
  Jonathan Shaw: The hon. Gentleman cites an extreme example to advance his argument.
  Tim Loughton indicated dissent.
  Jonathan Shaw: It is extreme. The hon. Gentleman suggests that there might be five children living in care

  1049
  surrounding the most popular school. I have never known that situation in 10 years of working with children in care.
  Ms Meg Munn: Twenty years.
  Jonathan Shaw: Yes—20 years. The situation that the hon. Gentleman describes is unlikely to arise, so it is not a good argument for him to advance.
  Tim Loughton rose—
  Jonathan Shaw: Let me try to respond to his point before he jumps up again. I know why he is struggling: it is because the Conservatives' admissions policy is all over the place. For example, they would not have any proximity requirements. It is perfectly reasonable that, if a child in care is on the waiting list to go to a very popular school, the corporate parent should exercise that responsibility and choice. It is not a question of displacing others, but of parents—in this case, the state—doing the best for their child. We all, as parents, want to do the best for our child. We have not done enough in the past—the statistics showing so few such children leaving school with educational qualifications tell us that. We should make that intervention and be more robust, as the state parent, in ensuring that our children get a better deal than they have before.
  Tim Loughton: We will have a great deal of interesting debate on this in Committee, and rightly so. I am not disagreeing with the hon. Gentleman. We certainly need state intervention and state preference to do everything possible to promote the educational achievement of those children at school through a whole range of measures, some of which the hon. Gentleman touched on.
  I am surprised that that the hon. Gentleman described my example as extreme, because I am faced with highly oversubscribed schools all the time. In the case of two such schools in my constituency last year, one was oversubscribed by 76, and 67 appeals were heard, while another was oversubscribed by 21, all of whom had siblings at the same school. Like it or not, adding a preference on admission will add yet another complication. It is not an extreme example—it happens in practice—and the hon. Gentleman has not squared the disbenefit that his approach would inevitably bring to other children through no fault of their own. That is what we need to address.
  Jonathan Shaw: Such children are in care through no fault of their own and we need to decide whether we want to intervene to provide them with the best schools and the best opportunities. The hon. Gentleman is saying, "This has lots of problems, it's too difficult, and we're not going to do anything about it."
  I am conscious that I have spent a lot of time on that issue and I want to conclude with a few points about children in secure accommodation. Currently, 3,135 children are locked up, compared with 2,590 in 1997. Nine out of 10 have mental health problems. Black
  1050
  youngsters are over-represented. Twenty-five per cent. of male offenders are fathers and 39 per cent. of female offenders are mothers. We need to find better ways of ensuring that children are placed appropriately. One tragic case was that of Adam Rickwood, a 14-year-old who was placed 100 miles away from his family and took his own life.
  We know that it is vital for individuals who are locked up to have family support. That is why I intervened on my right hon. Friend the Minister to suggest that the Youth Justice Board should promote welfare. If it makes decisions to place children 100 miles away from their family, it would be difficult to argue that it promoted welfare. That organisation needs to be on the list.
  Mr. Dawson: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Jonathan Shaw: I am going to curtail my remarks. I wanted to say many other things but I got bogged down in admissions. I have been bogged down in the Select Committee's admissions inquiry for the past six months and that has continued this evening.
  Overall, I welcome the Bill. If I am selected to serve on the Committee, I should like to take up some issues, but the measure is a testament to my right hon. Friend's hard work in getting it to the House of Commons. There have been compromises and changes, and that is right. As I said previously, we need to do our very best to get it right. In any future inquiry, we would have to put our hands on our hearts and ask ourselves, "Did the House of Commons, when it debated the Children Bill in 2004, do the right thing?" Let us hope that we do.
  7.41 pm
  Mr. Andrew Turner: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), who referred to the independence of which inspectors and commissioners are capable. The best advocate for children in the past few years was the one to whom the hon. Gentleman referred without naming him—Chris Woodhead, Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools. He advocated with energy and enthusiasm his perception of children's needs. The then Secretary of State appointed him, and I have no doubt that it would be possible to find an equivalent advocate for children in the form of the commissioner.
  I hope that, in appointing a commissioner, the Minister will take seriously children's views and those of their representatives—I do not mean bodies, however important or worthy, but children. I suggest that she at least consult the United Kingdom Youth Parliament, and perhaps gives it a shortlist from which it could make the appointment.
  It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison), who adopted a tone of realistic modesty about our responsibilities as hon. Members. It is important that we do not diminish parents' efforts by appearing to know best. It is easy to stand here and say what we think should happen and give the impression that we know better, because we do not necessarily know better. Many parents struggle valiantly to do a good job in the best way that they know how. It would be a great error for us to take from parents the weapons and support systems that they

  1051
  already have. That is one reason why I would vote against removal of the defence of reasonable chastisement from parents, who undertake the difficult task of bringing up children.
  The Bill has some good aspects. I am particularly impressed by the proposal for joined-up inspection, and we have spoken about the need for effective education of cared-for children—I shall not take up any more of the House's time on that—but there are also some questionable points. I am worried about the database and the amount of involvement and intervention in people's private lives that is implicit in maintaining it for every single child. I note that the Government have made a reservation. They said that they believe that it is a proportionate action to prevent a greater ill. That is their understandable opinion, but I am concerned about what might feature on the database.
  The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) said that not attending a school might be a cause for concern. I am not sure whether she meant that not being registered at a school was a cause for concern. Parents in this country have the right—indeed, the duty—to educate their children. They have the right not to register their children at a school, and to educate them at home. Many parents take advantage of that, and it is not right for us automatically to assume that that is a cause for concern. It would be wrong if professionals referred to some database and took account of it as a cause for elevating the case of a child.
  Mrs. Brooke: Does the hon. Gentleman concede that a local authority has to know the full arrangements for educating at home, and that there is a form of inspection?
  Mr. Turner: Of course there is some sort of inspection, but that does not mean that there is a cause for concern. It is wrong to interpret as a cause for concern a parent's legitimate choice about the way in which to bring up a child. Yet the hon. Lady suggested that in the context of the database.
  We have briefly discussed parental contact and access. One of the reasons for the Bill's importance is that there is no doubt that having two loving parents is a privilege that many enjoy and too many do not, yet some Labour Members have in the past suggested that it should be possible to deny a child's access to one parent because of that parent's treatment of the other parent. We should focus on whom we deprive when and if that happens. It is suggested that the courts should make some of those decisions but too many are taken unilaterally by an individual parent who flouts a court order, which was made with the paramount interests of his or her children in mind.
  Except in exceptional circumstances, the courts seem unable to do anything to prevent the flouting of their orders. The result is not the deprivation of another parent—although, of course, he or she is deprived—but that of a child. A child is being deprived of access to a parent's love and care. I welcome the fact that the Government published proposals on 21 July, but we need to take steps as quickly as possible to give the courts and other authorities the necessary powers to ensure that children are not so deprived. That is fundamentally important.
  Mr. Dawson: The hon. Gentleman has spoken eloquently about the need to consult children. Has he
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  taken any of the opportunities that Women's Aid has provided in the House to meet children who have been in situations of domestic violence? Has he studied any of the literature that clearly links domestic violence and child abuse?
  Mr. Turner: I have consulted Women's Aid in my constituency and I have met children in that situation. I was not referring only to children who have witnessed domestic violence, although they form one group—that for which it is suggested that we make formal arrangements to prevent access to one of their parents. I was speaking more of those for whom one parent makes the unilateral decision that they shall not meet or have access to their other parent.
  We should also consider sibling contact—the right of one child to have access to his or her siblings. I have a sad case in my constituency of a child who was taken for adoption without the interests of the other child in the family being taken into account by the courts, which had in mind the paramount interests of the first child. Of course I understand that, but I find it difficult to see how one child's interests should be paramount over those of another. There have been cases in which local authorities have not known which parent's views to take into account, when the parents give conflicting preferences for schools. That needs to be sorted out. There can also be clashes between magistrates imposing an order against harassment and a court's decision that a child should have access to both parents. I suspect that that is the kind of case to which the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) was referring. I can assure him that no physical violence was involved in the case that I have in mind, although there was justification, in the eyes of the magistrates, for a non-harassment order.
  We should take this opportunity to deal with these matters. It is not sufficient to say that we will deal with them in due course, because childhood is short and we need to give as many children as possible access to both their parents through the opportunities afforded by the Bill, when that is what the court has decided. That is why I support the presumption of equal parenting—I believe that it was merely a presumption that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) put forward. That should be the position from which the courts start when making a decision about the paramount interests of the child.
  I am glad that the Government have come forward with proposals on combining inspection, but the proposals to he made by Her Majesty's chief inspector must be very clear, sharp and simple. If we are not careful, there will be a multiplicity of inspections and of hoops through which all sorts of providers will have to jump. That would not be to the benefit of children.
  On child protection, I am concerned about the implementation of the decisions of the Bichard inquiry. Of course I understand the need for adolescents to be afforded privacy, but the Bichard inquiry found that Ian Huntley had abused a number of young women, some just above and some just below the statutory age of consent, and that their cases had not been reported appropriately to the police. I corresponded with a director of social services on this subject and asked what measures were being put in place to implement the recommendations of the Bichard inquiry that all such

  1053
  contacts should be brought to the attention of the police. I got the distinct feeling that the matter was being kicked into the long grass. I am sure that that is not the Government's intention—I do not know whether it was the intention of the director concerned—but I felt that there was a move to say, "Hang on. In some cases, these contacts should not be brought to the attention of the police."
  Another issue related to child protection is that of how the child protection rules deter volunteers from helping in voluntary organisations. I have been told that the Red Cross has found it difficult to maintain its young people's organisation, and I have seen examples in my constituency of sports organisations finding it difficult to keep sufficient adults on board to provide the wide range of sports and training that they have provided in the past. When Yvonne Baxter addressed the children's services committee of my local council, she said:
  "Child protection in sports is an issue. Children in a group need a chaperone or someone to drive them. We know it is for child protection but people are opting out because of these rules, such as vetting. It is a double-edged sword, for example, the driver cannot be alone in a car with just one young person."
  That might be a misinterpretation of the rules, but it is a widespread understanding of them, and it is leading people to refuse to take part in training or to come forward as scout or guide leaders, school governors or assistants in schools. I hope that we can take this opportunity to look again at the Criminal Records Bureau, and at the way in which it does its job and the amount of information that it needs to approve someone for one of those posts.
  The Bill has great potential to do good for children, but there are some aspects, to which I have referred, that could be improved. I hope that we shall take the opportunity to improve them in Committee.
  7.55 pm
  Mr. Hilton Dawson: Like the hon. Members who have spoken before me, I am privileged to take part in this debate. Some will not even regard this as the most important Bill that we discuss this week, but I believe that it is the most significant one in a long list of tremendous legislation that the Government have introduced in the past seven years. It sits firmly in the framework of measures to improve the situation of children in this country. Frankly, in 1997, I would not have believed that the Government could have achieved as much as they have done. Saying that will entitle me to be extremely critical later, but I want to start by being extremely positive.
  We should be positive about children—perhaps more so than we have been so far today. We have a degree of self-interest in this regard, because the children we are talking about will run the world when we are in our old age. It is therefore in our interest to treat them well. If we get the Bill right, it could transform the prospects of children throughout the UK and provide firm ground for a generational and cultural change that could go far beyond any policy or law that any single Government could enact. Above all, we should enjoy and celebrate our children. Every parent knows that nothing matters as much as their children. The first rule of social work with children is to ask, "Would what I am about to do
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  be good enough for my own child?" That should be the first rule of being an MP as well, and of children's policy making.
  On the way to this Bill, the Government have made a profound statement about this country's best resource. The very title of the Green Paper—"Every Child Matters"—recognises children's significance but also sets out a challenge and a means by which all of us—the Government and everyone taking part in this debate—can be judged. The Laming inquiry, the Green Paper and the Bill were prompted by the brutal murder of Victoria Climbié following a period of atrocious abuse. Much change was immediately implemented following the recommendations of Lord Laming but, terribly, over the summer, things began to get worse.
  Many hon. Members have mentioned the death of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood, who was found hanged on 9 August at Hassockfield secure training centre. That was an appalling tragedy in itself, but its awful significance is increased by the fact that Adam was the youngest child to die in custody in modern penal history. What are we doing to allow such a young child to become so desperate, locked up among strangers, miles from his home? The deaths of 15 children in the custody of the state since 1997, of more than 20 children during contact visits at the hands of violent parents since the early 1990s, and of one or two children every week at the hands of parents or care givers in this so civilised country should shame us all. They should make us determined not to leave our work on the Bill until the situation has radically improved.
  Every child matters, not just most of them, and not just every child apart from those who misbehave, those who have entered the country from abroad, those whose special needs are complex and difficult to meet, or those whose voices are lost in the selfish clamour from adults. Every child matters.
  I am delighted that we have this Bill. Lots of us have laid a claim on the children's commissioner, but when my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children introduced the Bill today, she was the first person to move for a children's commissioner in England since I did so in a private Member's Bill on 16 April 2001. During discussions at that time, I was told by one Minister, an excellent colleague, that we would never get one. Things change, and sometimes we should just enjoy our little victories.
  Since I was persuaded of this idea by a young woman called Suraya Patel, at a conference of young people in care in Lancashire in 1987, I have firmly believed that the establishment of a children's rights commissioner, independent of government, answerable to children and young people, able to go where he or she wills, investigate what he or she wishes, and freely inquire and report, working in accordance with the UN convention on the rights of the child, is a necessary—although not sufficient—condition for the fundamental improvement of the lives of all children.
  At the heart of it, children are ignored, overlooked, neglected, abused, and sometimes die, because they have no power. Yet children are this country's greatest asset by far—by a million miles—and they know more than we do about what it is like to be them, and about many other things, too. They have good, practical ideas, which are often better than ours, and can often communicate

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  with other children far better than us. We should allow them to vote at 16. More importantly, at every level, in every aspect of their lives, we should ensure that we listen to them, enable them to participate, and sometimes allow them to lead. We should encourage their own organisations, such as the UK Youth Parliament, A National Voice, and Article 12, and we should back them with a bold, fearless, relentless, principled advocate, who is steeped in good communication with children, and who will build an enduring network to ensure that their voices are heard and their rights upheld wherever and whoever they are.
  The state of children across England and the UK must improve. Government and Parliament should welcome the prospect of challenge, resource it properly and assure its independence in the knowledge that well-meaning adults need an uncomfortable ally if real change is to come.
  There will be a great deal of debate about the commissioner during the Bill. At the moment, thanks to the Hansard society, there is a good online debate taking place among young people from schools across the whole country about what they see as the issues, what sort of person they want, and how they want the commissioner to communicate with them. Every hon. Member can take part in that debate by logging on to www.headsup.org.uk, and we can ensure that our work is improved by using the excellent ideas from there in our discussions in the House.
  Some of the views expressed included the following. Someone said that the children's commissioner should be of a similar age to young people, someone whom they could trust, and not someone who would be like one of those politicians who do whatever they like. Someone said that the commissioner should be relaxed, and someone with whom one can have a laugh, as well as taking things seriously. The commissioner should take on important issues such as curfews, drugs, bullying and racism, and, as someone said eloquently, children's fears. I cannot possibly do justice to the hundreds of entries in this short time. However, I strongly and sincerely recommend that all Members look at the consultation, take part in it, and talk to young people from across the country.
  As someone who wants a 100 per cent. elected second Chamber, I regret to say that, with one grotesque exception, the other place has done a good job in scrutinising and improving the Bill. We should think carefully before rejecting the wisdom that has come from the earlier debate.
  Unfortunately, the Bill contains clause 49. We should recognise that early in the 21st century, countries across the world, not just in Europe, are abolishing what for us is the Victorian concept of reasonable chastisement. Sensible, ordinary parents decide increasingly that there are far more consistent, effective ways to manage their children, and to allow that it may be reasonable to hurt them keeps our tolerance of child abuse high and helps no one but the abuser anxious to cover their tracks. Progress is inexorable in this matter. The country is moving ahead of this House. The reputation of one formerly eminent human rights lawyer is in shreds thanks to his introduction of such a ridiculous and pathetic amendment. In the future, people will look
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  back on our debates on this issue, and laugh and gape at the attitudes of those who want to remain so far in the past, and so far behind the progressive world.
  One change made by the other place that will undoubtedly remain in the Bill will be the requirement that the commissioner must have regard to the UN convention on the rights of the child. That is all very well. However, the UN convention on the rights of the child is the most accepted human rights document in the world because it is so eminently reasonable. It sets out sound principles for children and their parents. It is a matter for international criticism that this country maintains two reservations in respect of children involved in criminal justice and immigration, with the result that our policies in those two areas are an absolute disgrace. We must go much further than what is in clause 2(8), fulfil our obligations to spread knowledge and understanding of the UN convention and ensure that every child, every parent, everyone working with children and every Member of Parliament has the opportunity to become a children's rights advocate too.
  Our Prime Minister recognises that
  "our children are everything to us: our hopes, our ambitions, our future. Our children are cherished and loved."
  It must therefore be time that we all stopped being afraid of the R-word, and stopped trying to pretend that one can avoid criticism or obligation by ignoring parts of the convention. It must be time that we embraced and employed the UN convention on the rights of the child as a fundamental tool to raise standards and inspire thousands more to work in children's services, and give all children the opportunities that they should enjoy.
  We need thousands more to work in children's services. We need people to be better paid and to be recognised for their skills, and we need the same lessons to be applied to the nursing and teaching professions to be applied to the social work profession, to keep able people on the front line.
  There is a great deal in this Bill to be welcomed. I welcome the focus on outcomes, salute the establishment of children's services authorities and the new duty of co-operation, and look forward to children's trusts. Having worked for 15 years in social work with children, I am absolutely certain that the drive to centre services around the needs and voices of children, to integrate services, to break down the barriers between authorities, organisations, professions and institutions is of fundamental importance. It will be extremely difficult, however. It goes much further than just appointing someone to run bits of education and social services together. It requires a re-framing of issues. For example, the safety of children on school buses is seen in the House and in local authorities as a transport issue. It is not; it is a children's issue. In fact, given the number of deaths and accidents, the whole question of road safety is a major child protection issue.
  The cultural transformation that must be achieved will be difficult and will need to be hard fought on the ground. One thing attracting me away from the House at the next general election is the knowledge that a crucial battle over the best opportunity to transform the lives of children that any of us are likely to see in our working lifetimes will not be fought out here. It will be fought out on the ground.
  I welcome the establishment of local safeguarding children's boards and know from discussions that I have had with senior officials in my local authority that they

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  will be taken up with alacrity. However, one strong message from the front line is that staff would benefit from early dissemination of the regulations, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to take that on board.
  While I am on the subject of Lancashire county council, although I accept all the strictures about the disadvantages and delay brought by structural change, there is not the slightest hope of the children of Lancashire benefiting from a first-class children's service from a children's services authority extending across 11 districts and eight primary care trust boundaries without significant devolution.
  I welcome the prospect of joint area reviews, but I do not think that too much should be left to the inspectors.
  As well as Climbié and Laming, we have had Bristol Royal infirmary and Kennedy. As well as the Bill, we are shortly to have a national service framework. As well as an increased departmental budget for children's services, we have an increased NHS budget. It is vital for that money to be well spent. We must have really effective work across Government as well as at local level. It is a pleasure to see the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), here to wind up the debate. He has a splendid record of support for the social work profession—and I am happy to tell him that I am the first Member of Parliament to obtain registration as a general social care counsellor.
  The proposals relating to private fostering would be greatly improved by the deletion of the wholly inadequate notification scheme. No one knows how many privately fostered children there are, and we need a registration scheme. Africans Unite Against Child Abuse will tell us that there are thousands more than the official records suggest. Victoria Climbié was a privately fostered child, and we should serve her memory well by insisting on the obligations of private foster carers. We should also serve 60,000 looked-after children better, and recruit more local authority foster carers with a national system of allowances.
  No one should leave the Bill content without considering the duty of the state to care for the child who was locked away and dying last month while most others were enjoying their school holidays. Adam Rickwood, 14, Gavin Myatt, 15, Joseph Scholes, 16, and 12 other children dead in our child prisons while many of us have been in Parliament would have been better served by the raising of the age of criminal responsibility, the abolition of prison for children and, above all, being seen as the desperately needy children they were. We should not dream of passing a Children Bill in this Parliament without trying to ensure that no other child dies locked up by the state.
  It is a good thing that we have a Minister responsible for children, young people and families to take through a Bill devoted to children; but it is a colossal mistake that the Department responsible for police and prisons still retains so much responsibility for them. My right hon. Friend has a huge task, but she is doing an excellent job. If we made her job even bigger and gave her responsibility for all children, the Government would
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  have a much better chance of delivering on the pledge that every child matters. We can make every child matter much more if we develop and improve this Bill.
  8.12 pm
  Hywel Williams: My party welcomes large parts of the Bill, certainly the parts relating to Wales. We join in the universal welcome for the proposals for CAFCASS—the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service—in Wales. I know from discussions with its officers of the difficulties it has experienced. It has taken a long time to extract decisions from the centre, and there have been problems with gaining access to the management structure at the appropriate level. The changes that the Government have seen fit to introduce can only be for the good of Welsh children. Would that power had been allocated as appropriately in other parts of the Bill—but more of that later.
  I want to register my party's opposition to clause 49, as amended in the other place, and our commitment to equal protection. We support the "Children are Unbeatable!" campaign, and I want that to be a matter of record. I note that the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) is no longer present, but I commend the comments he made earlier, and the passion with which he made them. Nevertheless, my party has serious reservations about parts of the Bill.
  The proposals for the children's commissioner, for example, give the distinct impression that the arrangements for Wales were tagged on as an afterthought. How could I have reached that conclusion? Let us look at some simple pointers provided by the Government's apparent underlying assumptions. As far as I can see, Wales is mentioned just twice in the Green Paper "Every Child Matters": on page 16, which deals with the proportion of juvenile males cautioned in England and Wales—that handy little phrase which almost seems like a single word—and on page 95, where Wales appears in a long list along with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is an even longer word!
  The Green Paper refers to
  "accountability and integration—locally, regionally and nationally".
  Those levels are not defined. Perhaps the authors found them unproblematic, and they might well have been as far as they were concerned, but the real world is rather more complicated. This is not a nationalist whinge; I just want the Government to realise that circumstances are different in Wales as well as in Northern Ireland and Scotland. This is, in fact, a plea for the Government, in the specific case of the children's commissioner, to recognise that good government now requires a recognition of the reality of devolution.
  I am inevitably reminded of the infamous entry in the index of a 19th-century encyclopaedia: "For Wales see England". Every example in the Green Paper is from England. That would be fine if the Green Paper were only about arrangements in England, which apparently it is not. England has no monopoly in good practice, and of course I do not allege that the Green Paper's authors thought as much. That simple fact merely confirms my underlying supposition that this was a Green Paper for England, and that Wales was tagged on some time later.

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  There is, in fact, a reference to the establishment of a children's commissioner on page 79, but there is no reference to that person's being a commissioner for England, for the United Kingdom or for England and Wales. I asked the Minister about that earlier. As far as I can see, the remit is assumed to be for England. If that is so, the Green Paper is faulty, given that much of what it contains applies to Wales. If the whole document is supposed to be about England and Wales, it is faulty because it gives only part of the story—the English part.
  As I said earlier, the Minister could clear a little of the fog by answering a simple question: what will the commissioner's title be? I think we are sophisticated enough to realise that names mean something. Establishing the commissioner's title will give a clear indication of what the commissioner is likely to do—the commissioner in England, that is. Are we to have a commissioner for England, for England and Wales, or for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland? I should be happy to give way to the Minister if she wishes to intervene, as she has had some time to think about the answer to my question. Unfortunately, it appears that she does not wish to intervene. This is not a frivolous point: for many people, the answer would define what the commissioner is about.
  The Welsh Affairs Committee conducted two investigations, into the empowerment of children and young people in Wales and the powers of the Children's Commissioner for Wales. Both reached conclusions that were the opposite of those reached by the Government. I was fortunate enough to join the Committee as a new member earlier this year, and had an enlightening opportunity to join questioning of the Minister about the Bill and, in particular, the powers of the commissioner. Both questions and answers were very revealing, and can be read in a document snappily entitled "The Powers of the Children's Commissioner for Wales". It makes interesting reading.
  The Minister told us that 4,000 had been consulted, but was unable to assure us that they included children from Wales. She did say that she thought some members of the Funky Dragon, the Welsh young people's parliament, might have been involved when the United Kingdom Youth Parliament was consulted.
  In that regard, she rather makes my point for me. Pre-devolution, it might have seemed quite reasonable for the few representatives from Wales on UK bodies to represent the views of people from Wales. However, we are now beyond that—as a result of the Government, of devolution and of the setting up of the Welsh Assembly.
  The proper way to consult people in Wales is to talk to them and to the appropriate Welsh body. In this case, it seems that the Government either failed to consult properly, or assumed that others were consulting on their behalf. The Minister mentioned the Welsh Assembly, but rightly or wrongly it is she, not Mr. Rhodri Morgan, who is facing me across the Floor of the House today. Whatever the situation, even if the Welsh Assembly did not consult, it is the Minister's and her Department's responsibility to consult properly. The position eventually arrived at—of not much consultation going on, apparently—is unacceptable when framing legislation for Welsh children. The resulting controversy surrounding the commissioner rather confirms that. He is not controversial himself, and nor are any of these proposals particularly
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  controversial; indeed, I am sure that we could get over the problems. Rather, we are unhappy with the lack of consultation.
  We now know that the Children's Commissioner for Wales, the children's commissioner for Scotland and the children's commissioner for Northern Ireland were not consulted. Inevitably and perhaps unfairly, some people draw the conclusion that in terms of consultation, "every child matters" but some matter more than others. In fact, I asked the Minister seven times and in various ways about consultation with children in Wales. Eventually, I got an answer by letter. She said:
  "The Committee questioned me about whether children in Wales had been consulted on the proposals in the Green Paper … I answered that, to the best of my knowledge, my Department had not carried out any specific consultation exercises with children in Wales, and I can now confirm that this is indeed the case."
  I turn to another vexed question—a problem that taxes us in Wales frequently: the role of the Welsh language. It is a vexed question not because of anything to do with the Welsh language itself, but because the Government have given it insufficient consideration, if any at all. Here, there is a contrast with the establishment of the Children's Commissioner for Wales. He runs a proper bilingual service—it was planned from the very first day, rather than after extensive consultation with the Welsh Language Board—and there is proper financing. Provision of service by the commissioner in Welsh or in English is not a problem, therefore; it is entirely normal. As such, it is a model of good language planning.
  By contrast, so far as I can tell from the Minister's replies, the Government's proposals ignore the Welsh language at this point, and they seem certain to mire this much-needed Bill in language controversy. At a fundamental level, the reality of bilingualism in Wales requires the planning of services with both languages in mind. Sadly, in her evidence to the Committee the Minister did not give the impression that she has any real idea of the amount of Welsh spoken in Wales. Certainly in my constituency, the language is central to Welsh life, both public and private. Nor, regrettably, was any understanding shown of the Welsh language's legal status under Welsh language legislation of 1983 when compared with other UK languages—apart, of course, from English. The Minister helpfully referred to the 160 languages spoken in her constituency; the Welsh language's status is somewhat different.
  We know that the Government intend that the new commissioner will not be involved in individual cases, although I cannot see why, given that the Welsh commissioner does so very successfully and gleans a great deal of information from such contacts. I shall give the House a simple example of the potential pitfalls of working in a bilingual context with only a monolingual mindset. One child says, "Mae fy llysdad yn fy ngharu", and another says, "Mae fy llysdad yn fy nhuro". There is a difference of only two letters, and the two sentences sound similar. However, one child is saying, "My stepfather loves me", and the other is saying, "My stepfather beats me." I have long experience of trying to persuade English colleagues that they cannot work successfully with children in Wales without an appreciation of such subtleties. Indeed, sometimes such differences are not so subtle.

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  To the dismay of the Committee, the Minister also revealed that she had no contact with the Welsh Language Board, had not considered the Welsh language scheme and had no information on how a service—bilingual or otherwise—for Welsh children would be provided in practice. Significantly, she was also wholly unclear as to the financial resources available to provide a proper bilingual service.
  Unfortunately, there is a widespread perception that the English commissioner will not be as independent as the Children's Commissioner for Wales, the children's commissioner for Scotland or the children's commissioner for Northern Ireland. There is an argument to be had on this issue—I do not want to enter into it—but that is the perception. Of course, the Children's Commissioner for Wales can inquire into cases as he sees fit. He has produced work on this issue, and he can require an answer from the Government within three months. He has the power to review proposed legislation and policy for the National Assembly, to consider its potential effects on children, and so on. As I said, the current commissioner has made the direct involvement of children and young people pivotal to the work of his office.
  The European network of ombudsmen for children is also concerned about the establishment of a commissioner in England and Wales. They have said that the powers are the weakest available to any existing commissioner in the European network, and they have suggested that the new commissioner would be unable to join the network because of the lack of autonomy. That is not rabble-rousing Opposition politicians speaking; it is the European network of ombudsmen for children. I am afraid that, rightly or wrongly, this perception will hamper the commissioner's work, whether he is working in England or in Wales.
  This is not an argument about devolution, as the Minister alleged in her evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee. Indeed, the Prime Minister said as much to me in a letter, after I wrote to him expressing my concern that this worthwhile legislation was likely to be mired in controversy. If I may, I shall briefly quote the words of Earl Howe in the other place:
  "it is odd, to put it at its kindest, that the lines of accountability that the Government are proposing for these two commissioners appear to put legalistic considerations ahead of common sense. Children do not understand devolved and non-devolved powers; they want a simple system. They need to be able to access a single commissioner whom they regard as the champion of their interests across the board."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 May 2004; Vol. 660, c. 1066.]
  I put it more bluntly—or, as some might have said, more obscurely—when I said that if the Children's Commissioner for Wales acted as a proxy for the English children's commissioner, he would then be wearing two hats, each of which would be invisible to the children he was facing, and that his position would be undermined if the lack of independence was real.
  I could cite several other quotes from the other place. For example, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Prys-Davis made similar comments. I will end, however, with a quote from a Scottish colleague, Professor Marshall, who said in giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee:
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  "I think it is a question of whether you fit the children into devolution or whether you fit the government structures to meet the needs of children."
  As an ex-social worker, I, too, start with the client—the children. That is where the emphasis should be: we should fit the system to the way that children see the world and how they organise their lives. We do not need two commissioners for children in Wales: we need one with proper powers. We already have a Comisiynydd Plant Cymru—and he is quite good enough for me.
  8.30 pm
  Mr. David Kidney: I start by emphasising the importance of having regard to the interests of all children. In the United Kingdom, that means 14 million individuals—11 million in England—which is more than one fifth of the entire population. I say that not because children are entitled to a due proportion of our time befitting the proportion of the population that they represent, but for the good reasons enumerated by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson).
  Children matter in so many different ways. They matter because they need others to enable them to have their say and be listened to and for actions to follow. Because of their special vulnerability, they need others to ensure that they are protected. I believe that they need people like us to ensure that we give free rein to the talents, ambitions and optimism that they have for the future of the society that they will take over from us.
  It is therefore right to begin by looking at the overall protection and promotion of children and their interests. For example, when the Government set a target to eradicate childhood poverty within a generation, it benefits every child and all parts of our society. When the Government divert greater resources towards early years provision—free nursery places, Sure Start centres, children's centres in every town and city—that, too, benefits all children and all parts of society.
  It is also important to consider parents and support what parents do. The first lesson of life for all of us ought to be that children's rate of learning—their capacity to learn and their speed of learning—is greatest between the years nought and three, long before any formal education such as Sure Start takes place. Every parent is not only a creator, provider and protector of children, but their first teacher. That may sound simple and obvious, but when I spoke to home start volunteers about the sort of families they supported in their own time for free, they described the homes that they went into as having no books at all. They described going into book shops to buy books with their own money to take into those homes. That brings home to us the fact that not everyone has yet got that important starting message.
  It is the same when we think about what parents are for. It seems so simple and everyone says that they know it, but my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) mentioned how, when he became a parent, he had not the slightest idea about where to start. The starting point should be the message that if all children were brought up in the sure knowledge that they were loved and wanted, many of the social problems that we witness today would be matters of history within a generation.

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  Every parent matters as well as every child, so it is important to have universal services for parents. When they need information, advice or even greater support through parenting programmes, those services should be available to them when and how they want them. I am not talking about a nanny state stepping in, because I am talking about parents who ask for help and it is right that it should be there when they need it.
  The same goes for detecting abuse and neglect. Clearly, not every child is a victim of abuse and neglect, but I believe that the range of risks is out there among all children. That is why, when the Government talk about having a database that is broad and not narrow, they are right and their opponents are wrong.
  There are dangers in setting up large databases and we might end up subject to the law of unintended consequences. Children's confidentiality might be breached and, as hon. Members have pointed out, another danger is that, if professionals can log vague expressions of concern, an important piece of information might be lost among the verbiage when it is logged. Another danger is mentioned in the Women's Aid briefing—an excellent briefing that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) drew to the House's attention. If a wider range of people are allowed access to the database, abusers might be able to use it to track down their victims. That is a serious concern.
  I join other hon. Members in praising the Bill in its present form on the appointment of a children's commissioner for England. All the points that I have just made about all children in all parts of society would form part of the role of the children's commissioner. It follows, therefore, that I approve of the broader role given to the commissioner by the amendments in the House of Lords rather than that envisaged by the Government. That will create challenges later, when we come to vote.
  I have talked about all children, but I shall move on to the issue of some children—those without parents to care for them, perhaps because of death, mental illness, abuse or many other reasons. Some people would say that it is the job of local authorities to step in and that the children should become looked after. However, I ask everybody to stop and think about the rest of the family. Other family members such as grandparents should be asked whether they could care for children whose parents cannot care for them. It is in the checklist in the Children Act 1989 that grandparents should be considered, but that does not always happen. Indeed, in practice, obstacles are often set up—legal and financial—that stop the people who would do the best job being the carers for children. I hope that we will have the time to consider that point in the passage of the Bill.
  When children are looked after by local authorities, it is not necessarily in children's homes. The majority are looked after by foster carers and we need to support foster carers who do fantastic work. Some 50 per cent. receive less than the recommended amounts in allowances for the cost of looking after children. In cases of private foster care—and Victoria Climbié was in such care—I see no difficulty in a system of registration to aid parents in choosing safe foster carers. After all, we already have a registration system for childminders who look after children for shorter periods than do foster carers.
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  Local authorities are directly responsible for looking after some 59,000 children in England. The Bill rightly places councils at the heart of the new arrangements for safeguarding and protecting children's interests in the future. I welcome, as many hon. Members have already done, the duty that will be imposed on councils to promote the educational achievement of looked-after children. We might have some interesting debates during the progress of the Bill about how to ensure that local authorities and schools work in partnership to raise the academic achievements of children in care.
  I also wish to consider the situation of those children whose parents part. I do not know the numbers in cases where the parents are unmarried, although I praise the change in the law last year that enabled both parents to attend to register the birth of a child and thereby acquire parental responsibility. That has made an important difference, as I heard when I visited the local registration officer in Stafford recently.
  A huge number of married parents separate and divorce—about 150,000 a year—and dependent children are affected in more than two thirds of those divorces.
  Apart from cases where continuing contact is impossible, due to death, or problematic, due to abuse, the welfare of the child usually means that separating parents should co-operate to maintain contact of both parents with their children. Most parents achieve that without outside intervention, but we must ensure that all parents understand the importance of contact. In cases where parents continue not to co-operate about contact, we must intervene early and nip problems in the bud.
  In the Green Paper published in July, the Government turned their attention to what more needed to be done in the smaller number of cases involving a small group of obdurate parents, as Mrs. Justice Bracewell described them in the case of V v. V in May 2004. In that case, Mrs. Justice Bracewell made public in open court her concerns about the difficulty for the courts in ensuring that contact takes place. As she said, there is limited room for procedural change in court practice to assist; what is needed is new legislation. Bleakly, The Daily Telegraph report of her comments ended:
  "No such legislation is being brought forward".
  That conclusion is probably unkind, given the consultation paper, and it is probably too much to think that the Bill could incorporate the type of legislation that the judge wanted. However, I hope that, during the Bill's passage, the Government can give us a commitment that the legislation that has been shown to be necessary, both by the judge's comments and by the responses to the Green Paper, will be put on to the statute book.
  Finally, I echo the comments made by many Members about the UN convention on the rights of the child and the aspects in which this country is not compliant. The convention sets out reasonable standards to which most decent people would sign up. Indeed, a previous British Government signed up to the convention. We are, however, still deficient on the treatment of young children in the criminal justice system and in nationality and immigration issues and on the defence of reasonable chastisement. The 10th report in the 2002–03 Session of the Joint Committee on

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  Human Rights was on the UN convention, and I recommend that we look at the report and the Committee's comments on those three matters.
  The report recommended a children's commissioner for England. The Bill provides that and I hope that, by the time it reaches the statute book, it will meet the other recommendations in the report.
  8.42 pm
  Mr. Adrian Flook: The aim of the Bill is twofold: to raise national standards, which is vital, and to right the wrongs so ably expressed by Lord Laming.
  It is worrying that 30,000 children nationally are registered as at risk of abuse. To put that at the level of the House, there are 50 such children in each constituency. Each week, at least one child will die as a result of cruelty. It is especially chilling that a quarter of all rape victims are children.
  I welcome the Bill and the enabling tone of the legislation. It is very positive indeed. I have two main concerns, however. First, as we have heard, far too much of the detail about the information-sharing schemes is still missing. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, the database seems to be about ticking boxes—as though merely to appear on it will address the child's needs. That is obviously not the case. Barnardo's has picked up that concern and has said that the clause means that the database will
  "fail to contribute to better outcomes".
  Secondly, where will the staff to implement the Bill's provisions come from? Who will knock on doors to investigate the abuse of children and work with others to root out that abuse? As we are probably all aware, social work staff are on low pay; they are poorly trained, opportunities are few and far between; and they suffer from inadequate resources. It would appear that those staff are in a worse position than the average housing officer, and it is lamentable that they will be the vanguard for many of the young children who will be looked after, we hope, under the Bill.
  The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) mentioned how impressed he is with Sure Start, and the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) also said that parents must have a say, but neither of them picked up the fact that that already exists in a charity called Home-Start—not Sure Start, but Home-Start—which is volunteer driven and professionally organised. I have met the local Home-Start team in my constituency, and the lady who runs it, managing 30 or so volunteers, was previously a social worker. She said that she had initially been extremely sceptical about Home-Start, but she experienced a conversion to its importance because she could see that it was about prevention rather than cure. She said that today's social workers are striving and moving from crisis to crisis. That cannot be right: we cannot allow social workers to do what needs to be done under the Bill if that is what is happening to them.
  To put it starkly, with £1,000 a year, Home-Start can deliver what is needed during a child's life to help parents be good parents. For those families, £1,000 a
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  year can probably mean safeguarding spending the £1,000 a week that it would cost if that child went into care. So there are real lessons. The whole of Home-Start in Taunton costs £60,000 a year—admittedly, some of that is funded by Sure Start, but that sum represents the cost of looking after one child in care in Taunton. That is a very powerful, stark statistic.
  In Somerset, probably as in every area, the education authority and social services are undertaking a big review, but I get the impression from speaking to David Taylor, the officer in charge who has been tasked with putting together a plan for Somerset, that the Government just want to wave a wand and make everything happen in all those areas. Things probably will not just happen.
  The emphasis that those in Somerset have to place on a reform agenda to put children at the heart of their policies, protecting children at risk and those with needs, will create huge ructions in my constituency and the other constituencies in Somerset. They are intensely aware of the need to make improvements in other areas where children are involved, such as children's mental health care, which is currently being poorly delivered in Somerset, even on their own admission. They hope to remove the barriers to achievement, but they have to be mindful that they do not go too far in pushing the principle of inclusion. So there are concerns in Somerset—very much so—in trying to implement such a Bill.
  The possible costs have hardly been touched on in the debate. It has cost Hertfordshire more than £7 million to implement such proposals, and I am told that those involved are considering change again. In Somerset, the first year of full implementation is expected to cost £1 million, with another £1 million in year two. To put that into perspective, we are looking at a budget of about £60 million.
  Engaging schools will be very difficult. That is obvious and important, but it will not be particularly easy to get school governors to take up this issue, with all its complexity, and their efforts will go into all the other bits of paper that they finally have to get round to looking at. The pace of change is therefore at some risk. Somerset will want to implement the Bill by 2006, but the impression I get is that it has until 2008, and it will not be a huge problem if it has to take that time. I do not think that is what Lord Laming envisaged when he suggested that these things should be implemented quickly, within two years of the date of his inquiry report.
  There are problems involved with linking the Bill to the health agenda. There is no requirement for a health authority to do anything whatever. We will not be able to rely on Action for Somerset Health, which is made up of representatives of the county council and other individuals interested in health getting together, to push things forward, because it seems to lack teeth at the moment, as do the patient forums—perhaps because they have not been around for long enough. However, we expect them to take up cudgels under the Bill and work with social services and the education authority. I

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  am told that the national service framework contains no specific targets for children, so it is extremely difficult to know how we will measure progress.
  Dr. Ladyman: I cannot let the hon. Gentleman get away with that. The national service framework for children will be mandatory on the national health service in its entirely throughout the 10-year life span.
  Mr. Flook: I thank the Minister for his intervention, but I am only reporting the way in which senior officers in a well respected county council perceive the situation. They think that there are currently no targets for children, so they do not know how to plan how they will go forward next year.
  There will be a complex process of change in even a reasonably small authority such as Somerset county council, and it will not be easy to point 700 staff in the right direction. After the niggling worries about the children's fund earlier this year, when budgets could be set yet slashed in the future, a lot of people who were once bitten will be twice shy. That means that change could be delayed beyond "as soon as possible"—although that is what we all want—which would be a shame and a pity not only for the way in which people regard the laws that we make but for the children who will suffer as a consequence.
  8.51 pm
  Mr. Martin Caton: I shall be brief because I know that several hon. Members wish to contribute to this important debate. I shall focus the main thrust of my remarks on the Bill's impact on Wales and Welsh children, but before I do so I must mention other issues that have been raised in the debate.
  I welcome the Bill, which comes as a direct result of the horrifying treatment and tragic death of Victoria Climbié. The approach in large parts of the Bill is exactly right because it tries to establish integrated children's services; extends the duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children; improves information sharing within and among responsible agencies; provides for better regulation of private fostering; and introduces a new duty on local authorities to promote the educational attainment of looked-after children. All that good stuff is important.
  Like other hon. Members, however, I believe that there are gaps in the Bill, and areas of policy on which we are not going far enough. I, too, received the briefing on the Bill from the Refugee Children's Consortium, which makes a powerful case for specific provisions to ensure that refugee children are better protected. Like the consortium and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths), I do not know of a good reason to omit agencies with responsibility for immigration and asylum from the list of agencies in clause 8 with a duty to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children when discharging their normal functions. If we really mean that every child matters, surely those who are responsible for immigration removal centres, the National Asylum Support Service and those who deal with refugee children at ports of entry should be included on the list.
  Despite Lord Lester's amendment in the other place, the Bill does not take the opportunity that we should grasp to deal with the physical punishment of children.
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  If we start with the knowledge that physical punishment is an ineffective and counterproductive method of disciplining children, as we should; consider research from Save the Children and others showing the physical and emotional damage to children that such punishment causes; recognise, as we all can, the essential inequality of letting only one group of human beings—the most vulnerable group, which is our children—be beaten; consider our international responsibilities, especially under the UN convention on the rights of the child, which protects children from all forms of physical violence; and examine the actual experience of European countries that have removed the legal defence for the physical chastisement of children, we must conclude that now is the right time to do the right thing and completely abolish the 1860 defence of reasonable chastisement.
  Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), I believe that we should have a free vote on this issue.
  I am worried about how well the new children's commissioner for England will be able to function. While her or his powers have been improved as a result of Lords amendments, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children made it clear that she wants to take a different approach to the commissioner from the one adopted in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and will seek to reverse the changes made by the Lords. If she maintains that approach, there is a serious danger that the children of England will get a second-class service from their commissioner. As I represent a Welsh constituency, perhaps I should leave it to Members representing English constituencies to explore the issue further.
  I shall concentrate on the ramifications for Wales and Welsh children if the role of the children's commissioner for England is established as the Government intend. First, however, I accept that most of the Bill—which, as my right hon. Friend the Minister pointed out, includes many provisions that apply to Wales—is very good and deserves our support. I particularly welcome the transfer of responsibilities from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service to the National Assembly for Wales, which is sensible and will facilitate joined-up government on children's policy and services in Wales.
  The position of the new commissioner is a little unclear. In the original Bill, she or he was meant to encourage people engaged in children's activities to take account of children's views, advise the Secretary of State on those views, consider and research the operation of complaints procedures affecting children and any other matters relating to the interests of children. They would not initiate their own investigations, but could be required to undertake such investigations by the Secretary of State. In the other place, the commissioner's powers were beefed up so that they could initiate inquiries. Even if that power is allowed to remain, the commissioner can still be directed by the Secretary of State, which raises a serious question about their independence. In the original Bill, the English commissioner was intended to act as UK commissioner on non-devolved matters, but an amendment was accepted in the other place to remove that responsibility. Amendments to extend the existing powers of the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland commissioners to

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  cover non-devolved matters, however, were not accepted. We are therefore in limbo, but I assume from my right hon. Friend's opening remarks that the Government intend to introduce an amendment to reinstate their original position so that the English commissioner will have a UK-wide remit on non-devolved matters.
  I hope that the Government can be persuaded not to introduce such an amendment, and will take the alternative route of extending the powers of the other commissioners to cover all matters affecting children in their country. The problem with the Government's approach, especially for us in Wales, is that it will lead to confusion for our children, and will threaten the independence of the Welsh commissioner, which was a central tenet in the creation of that post. How will children know which commissioner is responsible for which policy area in Wales? The Government want to provide the English commissioner with a role in Wales on non-devolved matters, but they do not intend to establish an office there. It has been suggested again today that the Welsh commissioner should act as an agent for the English commissioner on non-devolved matters, and a memorandum of understanding was mentioned by my right hon. Friend. Leaving aside the question of independence, to which I shall return in a minute, even if that were achievable, the situation remains confused. On some matters, the Welsh commissioner could act on a child's behalf, but on others they could not do so unless the English commissioner thought that the child's problem had a wider significance.
  One consequence was spelled out by Peter Clarke, the Children's Commissioner for Wales, who gave the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs a telling example:
  "Not all children are able to receive an equal service from the Children's Commissioner for Wales despite similar circumstances. This may even be the case where they are receiving services from the same provider. For example, two children from the same street, but resident in Hillside secure accommodation in Neath, might be affected by this anomaly. One might be placed by the local authority, and the other via the youth justice system. The [Welsh] Commissioner has extensive powers in respect of the child placed by the local authority, but only the power to make representations via the National Assembly in respect of the other child. The establishment of the new 'UK' Children's Commissioner as set out in Part 1 of the Bill offers such a child or young person no greater support or protection than at present, because of the role's limited powers."
  Surely the simple, straightforward way to eliminate that differential treatment is to extend the powers of the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland commissioners to non-devolved matters.
  The other main reason for doing that is to honour the determination of this Parliament and of the National Assembly for Wales to have a completely independent Children's Commissioner for Wales. I cannot see how that is possible if the Welsh commissioner ends up acting as a sort of agent for the English commissioner on non-devolved matters. As has been pointed out, the English commissioner can be directed by the Secretary of State for Education and Skills to undertake inquiries. The result will be the Welsh commissioner, previously wholly independent of any political direction, including that of the Welsh Assembly, doing the bidding of the
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  British Government. We do not have to do it that way. It would be much better and much more straightforward and understandable for the children who our commissioners are created to champion simply to make each commissioner in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland responsible for all policy areas that have an impact on children.
  The Bill is a valuable and important measure. Let us use the next stages of its consideration to make it even better.
  9.1 pm
  Virginia Bottomley: I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I offer profuse apologies to the Minister for Children—I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), will pass them on to her—and to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for my late arrival as a result of an unavoidable commitment, of which I had informed Mr. Speaker. I thank my office team for recording faithfully every comment made by the right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend, so that I could have the benefit of their wise words.
  I pay tribute to the army of extraordinarily impressive charities that we have in this country that are concerned with children. I am thinking of the quality of their briefings, their campaigns and their commitment to improving the well-being of children. It is a privilege to work with them. I should declare my interest as one who spends her time bringing talented people in to run public services and many of our leading charities, so that the policy that we debate here can be turned into the reality of change on the ground. When talking about the Climbié case and the need for change, Herbert Laming did not quarrel with the basic elements of the legislation to which the hon. Member—I almost said my hon. Friend—for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) referred, the Children Act 1989, which I had the privilege to implement and which established the paramountcy of the welfare of the child. Lord Laming focused on the tragedy, the horror, and the lack of proper management and leadership and of effective implementation in the Climbié case. That was shameful for all of us.
  I was the Minister who signed the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, so I have enjoyed the many comments about it in the debate. At the time, I was agnostic about the role of a children's commissioner and whether it was the right time to introduce one, but I am delighted that the Bill contains a commitment to establish a children's commissioner for England. I share with others the strong belief that the Government should hold true to the principles established in another place. I give particular credit to my noble Friend Earl Howe, but many others worked with him to ensure that the changes were made.
  The deliberate killing of or cruelty to a child is an obscene and disgraceful event. I speak not only of Victoria Climbié, but of the hundreds of children killed during the appalling events in Beslan in Russia last week. However, we should not let our minds be clouded to the enormity of the suffering of many other children who are neglected, but whose cases do not give rise to sensational public headlines or shock us to such an

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  extent. Millions of children are dying in Darfur in Sudan, but closer to home we must face the appalling fact of 80 children each year being killed by their parents or carers, and almost 200 children each year being killed in road traffic accidents.
  The point of real concern, which many here will share with me, is that around 200 children each year take their own lives. I welcome the comment there has been about the disgraceful state of affairs in our young offender institutions. If I had to be frank, I would say that the only time during my 20 years in this place when I was unhappy about the steps taken by my party and my Government was when we introduced secure training centres. My disappointment when Labour came to power in 1997 was that the Government accelerated that programme rather than reversing it. I do not think it right that a prison institution and its officers should care for children. I am deeply concerned about the state of the criminal justice system, and we should do much more through this Bill and in many other ways to rectify the balance.
  The greatest threat to the health of our generation, according to the World Health Organisation, is adolescent mental health. We cannot debate the Bill without taking more seriously what is happening to the emotional and mental health of our adolescents. Only today, a preliminary report of an article to be produced in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry—a journal in which I published a number of articles long ago when I had a proper job—describes the deteriorating mental health of many of our adolescents. Holland has not seen that deterioration, and in the United States it was arrested. Here, we have seen, year after year, numbers of children with nervous disorders—not just suicide and self-harm but a great range of conditions.
  I ask the Under-Secretary of State for Health to say what he is doing to ensure that child and adolescent mental health services are given the proper priority and recognition by primary care trusts. We all appreciate what has happened in the health service: if a thing is not targeted, it does not count; if it is not a waiting time or one of the key priorities, it is of pretty peripheral significance. How will the Minister ensure that, at a time when only 5 per cent. of spending on mental health services is on children, we can make a reality of the aims and aspirations of the Bill? How will he deliver that on the ground and in practice?
  There is similar concern about the challenges and dilemma of parenting. I am delighted that so many hon. Members have referred to Home-Start. The late Lord Joseph made his original speech about the cycle of deprivation at a pre-school playgroup annual meeting in about 1973. I was there as the Child Poverty Action Group representative, I am pleased to say. Lord Joseph was the great champion of Home-Start as an organisation to befriend vulnerable parents. I ask Members to think about the dilemma that parents face. They are supposed now almost to be techno-managers. They, too, have the target culture as they ask whether their children will survive tests at school and achieve under all the different criteria. Is there space, still, just for nurture and parenting?
  The Government speak much about the steps that they have taken to promote children and family life. They stand accused of behaving aggressively in their
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  early years in government towards mothers who wished to stay at home. Single mothers may have an awful lot to contend with, but, almost coercively, they were expected to go out to work, and that caused a great deal of distress and worry in many groups who believe that parenting should be valued, difficult as it is and unsuccessful as many of us have been in surviving the task, without having had to deal with the workplace.
  I should like to speak briefly about the progress that Surrey has made in taking forward its policies. The director of education there has become the director of children's services. He is one of the most highly regarded officers in that county council. How delighted I am that he has taken that step.
  What steps will Ministers take to monitor the quality of people who take over as directors of children's services? Surrey has a particularly impressive record, both in education and in social service delivery, and I am impressed with the decision that the council has made, but I am concerned that in authorities where the director of social services is appointed, and where the educational support services and psychological services support the director of children's services, there may be a greater polarity between the culture of testing attainment in schools and the more nurturing culture in social services and social care.
  The House should be under no illusion about the clash of cultures between the social care models, the education models, the health model and the criminal justice models. Professionals in all those areas have trained separately and work separately. Often, their budgets are separate. We can speak fine words about collaboration and co-ordination, but it is extremely difficult to achieve. I do not seek to undermine the aims and objectives of the Bill, but simply describing a structure is not sufficient to ensure that we get the psychology and the relationships right to deliver the change for which we are all hoping.
  Perhaps the Minister can tell us what has happened to the chief nursing officer's review of the health visiting, nursing and midwifery contribution to this crucial work. For a young family, one of the most acceptable professionals on the doorstep is the health visitor. The health visitor has licence to see the child with no clothes on, and licence to ask all sorts of personal questions. Would that the training of health visitors included a little more on the emotional and relationship side. Nevertheless, health visitors are a crucial element. I am sure the Minister has taken to heart the concern about shortages of social work staff and many others.
  Will the Minister also respond briefly to last week's report by Baroness Helena Kennedy about paediatric pathologists? Tragically, parents do kill their children, but it is equally appalling wrongly to accuse parents of damaging their children. The evidence is that there are fewer and fewer expert paediatricians who want to be expert witnesses, and a real lack of paediatric pathologists as a result of the present circumstances.
  There are all manner of other points that I should have liked to address, but there is no time if my hon. Friends are to make a contribution. On reasonable chastisement, I apologise to my children and grandchildren if, on occasions, I have unreasonably chastised them. I do not want to translate into law a measure that might criminalise my hon. Friend the

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  Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) or, while she lasts, the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey. I can only say to my children and grandchildren—all four of them—in mitigation for the moments of unreasonable chastisement that sometimes a smack is preferable to cruel, harsh words. When one hears the lengths that parents who never smack their children sometimes go to, one feels that a smack would be less cruel than the ongoing programme of rebuke and humiliation. I may be persuaded otherwise as the years go by, perhaps in time for my great-grandchildren.
  The Bill is important. There are a great number of matters to be discussed in Committee and I wish it well. We have the lowest birth rate that we have ever had in this country. We owe it to those fewer children to do our very best to protect and safeguard them.
  9.14 pm
  Liz Blackman: I shall be brief. Like every other hon. Member, I congratulate the Government on introducing the Bill which, by putting the needs of children at its heart, represents a step change. Its timing should be set in context. It builds upon a huge commitment to meet children's needs, both through the amount of investment and funding that my Government have put into children's services and support services since 1997, and through innovative programmes that are admired on both sides of the House, such as Sure Start and quality protects.
  The Bill builds on structures at a local level and provides for new ways of working and for changing cultures. Many gaps still exist, so the legislation is timely. The Bill creates a statutory framework of co-operation between local authorities and relevant partners, so that universal and specialist services can work together.
  I was extremely pleased by the wideness of the consultation, which included at its heart not only statutory and voluntary bodies, but children themselves. It is also worth noting, as many hon. Members have, that when the Bill was in the other place, both sides adopted a spirit of co-operation, which explains the extent to which the Bill was amended before it came here.
  I welcome the commissioner's role, which is a huge strategic position promoting and safeguarding the rights and interests of children and representing their views. I am pleased that the commissioner's focus of accountability to Parliament is set against outcomes, which is crucial, and am also pleased that the commissioner will be free to engage with all sectors and to investigate and report on all areas of children's lives.
  Like many hon. Members, I believe that the commissioner's role should not be investigative or casework-based, which would detract from the commissioner's opportunities to listen to children, but to ensure that services are responsive and acceptable and to influence policy making accordingly. That model will be far more effective than an investigative approach. A Lords amendment means that the commissioner can investigate cases that raise wider issues of public policy, and I look forward with interest to the amendments to clause 2.
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  On clause 7, which concerns co-operation to improve well-being, it is logical that the local authority is the lead body with responsibility for promoting co-operation between itself and its partners. Clause 7 also promotes the development of children's trusts. That will put decision making in the hands of local partnerships, which will be able to commission services. Crucially, it will also enable budgets to be pooled, creating flexibility to meet local needs.
  On clause 8, I am concerned that schools and general practitioners are not included on the face of the Bill. I look forward to the Minister explaining how schools can be drawn into that chain of responsibility and accountability without their being included in the Bill.
  Clause 9 provoked much debate in the other place and many hon. Members have stressed that it is crucial for all children, because it will help professionals identify those children who do not access appropriate services. It is not intended exclusively to support children at risk of harm, which is right because other children in the system, such as children with disabilities, trauma or learning difficulties, also need to be picked up. Clause 9 is central to protecting children from harm, and the Local Government Association, the NHS Confederation and the Association of Directors of Social Services—social services are often at the sharp end of criticism on child protection—fully support it.
  All the cases that I know of child abuse that resulted in murder are characterised by professionals holding some information but not sharing it. In the Victoria Climbié case, two housing departments, four social services departments, two child protection teams from the Met, a specialist centre run by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and two hospitals, where she was admitted and harm was suspected, were involved, but did not share the information.
  Three years ago, Chelsea Brown, a two-year-old girl in my constituency, was murdered by her father. Information was held by social services and by health services, but it was not shared.
  I agree with the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) that it is crucial that the clause allow us to reach a conclusion on who has access to the database. I am pleased that the Lords accepted the amendment on what information is to go on to the database. The issue is going out to consultation and there will be affirmation in Parliament once the guidance is presented. It is crucial to share information, because in all these dreadful cases the evidence is there to see. Although it is not a substitute for action, it will enhance and make robust the system, save lives, and support children.
  Sharing information is a good thing. However, as chair of the all-party group on autism, I want to point out, as has the National Autistic Society, that some behaviours associated with autism can lead professionals, especially those with a low awareness of autism, mistakenly to believe that a child is showing signs of abuse. Indeed, until the 1960s autism was known as refrigerator mother syndrome. I thank the Minister for assuring me that regulations relating to the database will be carefully scrutinised and that the Department will continue to be alert to ensure that such misdiagnosis is avoided.

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  On clause 14, the director of children's services is a key role and I agree with the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley) that it is essential that directors' performance be properly monitored. The appointment of such key people should be made as open as possible in terms of criteria, job specification and reasons for choice, as well as follow-up monitoring. The lead council member for children is important in ensuring a high profile at political level. I note that most directors will be in place by 2006 and a few more by 2008. Why will it take two extra years to put the final pegs in the hole?
  I shall finish to allow other Members to have their say. This is an excellent Bill that offers us huge opportunities to do things better, but it is not a substitute for good professional judgment and practice or for high-quality management and the continued development of capacity and services. We must do both. Bills do not replace people; it is talented, committed professionals who will, together with the provisions in the Bill, make a difference to children's lives.
  9.24 pm
  Mr. Roger Williams: I shall be brief. I support the general thrust of the Bill, but I urge the Minister to take account of the amendments that were made in another place, which I believe add to the measure and make it more effective.
  I want to comment on the Children's Commissioner for Wales. The Minister is putting legislation before Welsh children's interests. Much has been said about children's interests being paramount, but I agree with Baroness Finlay, who said:
  "I must ask whether the bureaucracy of the devolution settlement is getting in the way of the arrangements that would serve children best."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. 1245.]
  Let me give one example. As I understand the Bill, the children's commissioner in England would not have the ability to take up individual cases brought by children but could only deal with the wider national interest. Let us imagine the position of a child who, believing that he or she had suffered an injustice, would have to consider first whether the matter was devolved or reserved, and secondly whether it affected them as an individual or had a wider national interest. All that would be at a time when the child was under great stress because of the injustice that he or she believed had been suffered.
  The only way out is to do as the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Caton) suggested and use the opportunity that the Bill affords to extend the powers of the Children's Commissioner for Wales, the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People and the Commissioner for Children and Young People in Scotland.
  I make one last comment as the Minister returns to her seat. She has done what I believed was impossible: she has united the body politic in Wales on this matter. All Welsh Members of Parliament, all Assembly Members and all local authorities and nongovernmental organisations believe that the power of the Children's Commissioner for Wales should be extended. I hope that the Minister can do that.
  9.26 pm
  Julie Morgan: I shall be brief. I want to make three points. I congratulate the Government on introducing the Bill, which is an excellent measure. I especially welcome some of the proposals for Wales. It is excellent that the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service is being devolved to Wales. It is right that it is under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Children in England, and it should be under that of the Minister with responsibility for children in Wales. It has always been difficult for CAFCASS Cymru and some of the issues that relate to Wales to be understood in London. That body's devolution to Wales means that it will be possible to examine the issues that are relevant to Wales, especially the Welsh language, and that the voices of children in Wales will be heard more clearly in CAFCASS. I strongly support that provision.
  Secondly, I want to consider the children's commissioner, about whom we have had many discussions. The Children's Commissioner for Wales has had a strong impact. He was appointed as a result of the Waterhouse inquiry, which showed that children in Wales had no rights and no proper complaints system. Children in Wales were seen and not heard. The office of the Children's Commissioner for Wales has given authority, credibility and recognition to children's rights in Wales. It has made a huge difference. The commissioner has published two full annual reports. One was on child poverty, which had implications in the Assembly and led to its establishing an action programme. The second report, which has been mentioned today, was on child and adolescent services. Consequently, there is more funding from the Welsh Assembly Government for such work.
  There is no doubt that the Children's Commissioner for Wales has substantially influenced policy in the Assembly. Although he is funded by the Assembly, he and his office are totally independent and able to be very critical. They have been critical of the Welsh Assembly Government and of Westminster. We should welcome that, because we want an independent body that can be critical. Some elements of the post of English children's commissioner need to be considered because it is essential that the Secretary of State should not have power of direction over the commissioner.
  I regret that there was not more consultation with the Children's Commissioner for Wales before the Bill was framed because we could have learned a lot from each other. The importance of devolution is that sometimes we do things differently but it is vital to learn from the experiences in the devolved bodies. I therefore regret that there was not more consultation, but I am pleased that the Government accepted the amendment that provided for the children's commissioner in England to take account of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. I hope that that will be maintained.
  The Children's Commissioner in Wales takes up individual cases. That is important, because if we are to be open to the voices of children in Wales, we need to be able to take up the cases that those children bring to us. I am also pleased that children will be involved in the appointment of the English children's commissioner. That happened in Wales, and it is important to involve

  1077
  children from all parts of society, including disabled children and children from ethnic minorities, in these appointments.
  We must also resolve the issue of non-devolved matters and how they are dealt with. It is important that there should be one voice in Wales, and the easiest and most effective solution to this issue is for the Children's Commissioner in Wales to have the power to take up the non-devolved matters. I know that that is what the commissioner himself is suggesting, with the support of the commissioners in Scotland and Northern Ireland. That would be the most sensible and effective way forward, and it would ensure that the voice of the children would clearly be heard. For those reasons, I believe that the Bill should be amended.
  On the physical punishment of children, I believe that they should have the same protection from assault as adults do. It would be a terrible shame if the Bill went through without our having taken this issue forward. I do not support clause 49, which was passed in another place. In fact, I think that it would make the situation worse. We would be better off without it, because it appears to condone some form of physical punishment. I do not see how we can support the idea of a fully grown adult hitting a small child, and it is essential that we do something about this issue.
  Mrs. Betty Williams: Can my hon. Friend give me one good reason why we cannot have a piece of legislation in this country similar to the ones that have proved themselves in countries such as Sweden for many years?
  Julie Morgan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have heard today about the examples of other countries that have gone forward in this way, and we should do so as well. I am dismayed that the Government are not going to give Members a free vote on this important issue of conscience. I hope that, by the time we reach Report and Third Reading, they will at least agree that we should be able to exercise our conscience on an issue on which we would traditionally expect to have a free vote. I feel strongly that we should have a free vote, and I hope that the Government will reconsider this issue and think about their duty to children, the most vulnerable members of our society, and get rid of the defence of reasonable chastisement.
  9.32 pm
  Ms Sally Keeble: I very much welcome the Bill, and I just want to make a few remarks on one specific point relating to housing on which it is unclear. Clause 7(2)(a) to (e) contains five categories that are supposed to cover all the needs of a child. There is specific reference to health and education, but no explicit reference to housing. It is assumed that the Children Act 1989 contains an obligation on social services to ensure that the housing needs of children are met, but this has recently been interpreted by the courts as ensuring that the housing needs of children in an area are met generally, rather than ensuring that the specific needs of an individual child are met. That is a whole different ball game. Homeless families are therefore told that they can go to social services, but that their children might be taken into care. This virtually takes us back to
  1078
  "Cathy Come Home", and it illustrates the need to tackle homelessness, to keep families together and to house children with their parents when that is appropriate for them.
  The importance of housing for children was well recognised in "Every Child Matters", in which homelessness was identified as the factor second most closely associated with poor outcomes for children. Unfortunately, this recognition was not carried through to the various structures and procedures needed to overcome the risks involved. The Green Paper was not explicit about that; nor is the Bill. That will leave a major gap in the services needed to protect the welfare of children. I have discussed this a number of times with my right hon. Friend the Minister, along with some of the cases that I have dealt with in my constituency that have resulted in children living in appalling conditions, including that of a woman with three small children who was the victim of domestic violence. She was rejected for housing, declared intentionally homeless and has had to live in two tiny rooms in a refuge for more than 15 months.
  There is clear evidence that the number of families being turned down for housing on the grounds of being intentionally homeless is on the increase. Intentionality was cited as a reason for refusing housing in 5,000 cases in 1997–98. In March this year, the figure leapt to 13,000, and in my region, the figures almost trebled from 250 to 700 over the same period. Clearly, something needs to happen for families to be refused such housing, be it antisocial behaviour or rent arrears. There is a clear desire not to drive a coach and horses through local authorities' housing powers, but the fact is that those families do not go away, and some way must be found to protect children from the consequences of their parents' homelessness, other than taking them into care.
  I therefore ask my right hon. Friend to consider three issues. First, will she make sure that priority is given to homelessness as a risk to the well-being of children; that "Every Child Matters" is made a reality in the legislation; and that she considers some of the proposals to do that, including those that have come forward from Shelter? Secondly, will she work with colleagues across government to ensure that there is provision, possibly in the form of special accommodation, and possibly through support services, to enable antisocial families to rehabilitate themselves and sustain independent tenancies, as in the special projects in Dundee, Manchester and north Wales? Thirdly, will she make sure that the possibly unintended consequences for children of other aspects of Government policy are fully understood, so that if more families are being declared intentionally homeless, or evicted from their accommodation, careful consideration is given to what happens to the children? Perhaps when there are two parents in the family, and when one parent works, they have more options. It seems likely, however, that single parents, who have less income and fewer options, will end up in a complete housing dead end, with devastating consequences for their children.
  The provision of decent-quality, secure housing is one of the basics for the welfare of children. In many of the appalling child abuse scandals that we have seen, insecure housing has been a factor. As I said, the role of housing is well recognised in the Green Paper, but many children still do not have the housing protection that

  1079
  they need, unless they are taken away from their parents and placed in care, when the outcomes for them are often worse. The legislation will not introduce the measures that are needed to get to grips with that, and I ask my right hon. Friend to make sure that the opportunities provided by this legislation are taken to put that right for children.
  9.37 pm
  Mrs. Eleanor Laing: This has been a good-natured and amicable debate, most unusually. We have a general consensus that, as the Minister said at the beginning of her remarks, every child matters. We all agree on that, and it has been instructive to listen to contributions from both sides of the House this evening. I pay tribute to Lord Laming, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Barnado's, Women's Aid and many other excellent voluntary organisations, whose work, not only recently but for a long time, has informed our debate. We welcome all the help and support that they gave us on practical matters.
  We agree with the two principles that the Minister expressed in her speech—the importance of putting children first and the essential necessity of early intervention. Our arguments have been constructive and designed to improve the Bill, which I hope that the Minister will appreciate. I have never doubted that her intentions are good. As we examine the practicalities, however, we will suggest some better ways of proceeding, all with the very best of intentions, and putting every child first.
  The hon. Members for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) and for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) and various other Members have given us the benefit of their valuable experience in Wales, which already has a Children's Commissioner. I am certain that we will all pay attention to their contributions when we discuss these matters in Committee.
  The Minister for School Standards (Mr. David Miliband): The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) is watching you!
  Mrs. Laing: I do not care if he is. That is all right with me.
  The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) made wide-ranging points about many aspects of children's lives, but I should say to her that it is essential for us now to concentrate on the key aims that the Bill can achieve. We must not dilute it by looking too widely.
  Not for the first time, the hon. Members for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) and for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) spoke at length about Sure Start. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford will be disappointed to hear me say that he is absolutely right. Many aspects of Sure Start are working well, and we will build on them when we return to government.
  Jonathan Shaw: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning my remarks about Sure Start. I have challenged her on past occasions by asking why, given her praise for Sure Start—which I welcome—she did not vote for the money that pays for it.
  Mrs. Laing: We have guaranteed the funding of Sure Start. I know that the hon. Gentleman will be
  1080
  disappointed to hear me say that, because he wants to paint me as the wicked witch who does not care about children, but I am afraid that I do care about them. I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but I hope I am not disappointing my hon. Friends.
  The hon. Member for Wakefield will, I hope, forgive me for having left the Chamber during his speech. Just as he was saying—quite rightly—that the most important influence on a child's development was his or her home life with his or her parents, I realised that it was 3 minutes to 7 and that my own three-year-old son was about to go to bed, which he could not happily do until I had phoned to say good night. I hope I shall be forgiven for my absence from the Chamber for what I consider to be my most important duty.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) is right to defend clause 2 in its present form. To be effective, a commissioner must be independent, responsible not to a politically partisan Secretary of State but to Parliament.
  Both my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) and the hon. Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman) spoke about the database. I share my hon. Friend's concern. If a database is overloaded with the names of some 11 million children, the vast majority of whom are not at risk, it is likely that the relevant names of those who actually are at risk will be overlooked. It is a bit like trying to find the relevant e-mails among all the spam that comes to all of us every day. I hope that "spam" is parliamentary language, Mr. Speaker.
  The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) made his usual thoughtful speech. I pay tribute to him for his many years' experience in this area. Amazingly, I agree with him on two important points. The first rule for an MP should indeed be to ask himself, "Is what we are about to do good enough for my own child?" The answer to that question must always be yes, if the measure deserves to be passed by the House. I also agree that this is the most important Bill that the House will consider this week. That is not what the media will say—they prefer foxhunting—but those of us who are here this evening know that it is on what happens to families and children that the future of our society depends, not on the sporting habits of part of the population.
  The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) is right about separated parents. The welfare of a child is usually best served by the maintaining of contact with both parents. Only in unusual circumstances—where criminal or unreasonable behaviour has occurred—is that not the case. I take issue with the Minister when she says that it is not possible to have a rebuttable presumption of equal parenting while also putting the child first. Of course it is possible to do both those things—indeed, we must do so in order to preserve the coherence and importance of families. In fact, is not only possible; it is also right.
  The Minister's mistake is that she is concerned with rights—with the view, "This is mine; this is what I want"—rather than with duties and responsibilities. Rights exist only if there are corresponding duties and responsibilities to give those rights. Parents have responsibilities to their children before they have rights

  1081
  over them. This is about not a conflict of rights, but a sharing of responsibilities that we should try to achieve for future generations.
  Mr. Dawson: Does the hon. Lady not accept that it was her colleague, the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley), who abolished the concept of parental rights in 1989?
  Mrs. Laing: No.
  I understand that while we have been debating this important Bill, a man dressed as Batman has climbed on to Buckingham palace. [Interruption.] I agree that that seems to be a security breach. The man appears to represent a group called Fathers 4 Justice, but he is doing no service to the many separated fathers who are trying to do their best for their children. Unfortunately, his irresponsible behaviour tarnishes the reputation of the many organisations that are well meaning and responsible in their efforts to achieve equal parenting for children, where that is the right thing to do.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Flook) spoke with passion, as ever, about the lessons from his own constituency. The hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Caton) is absolutely right to demand a free vote on the defence of reasonable chastisement and the whole issue of smacking. I do not want tabloid coverage of the key aims of this vital Bill to be swept away by an over-concentration on the issue of smacking. But the very fact that we are discussing this issue tonight will itself help to open up the public debate and raise awareness of the problems arising from physical chastisement.
  What our society and vulnerable children in particular need is not changes to the criminal law, fine words and more rules and regulations imposed from above. Rather, what is needed is a complete change in attitude, which can come about only through a consensus of public opinion and a change from within. So let us hope that the newspapers are right about this issue, but not in a jocular, silly or oppressive way. We need to say that physical chastisement is never the best way to exert discipline on a child. A small amount might sometimes be justified, but we have to draw the line at a very low threshold. The right way to do that is not by changing the criminal law.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley) made a very important contribution to the debate, and I pay tribute to the many achievements for which she was responsible when in government. I agree with what the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) said about homelessness and the need for housing. I hope that we will be able to discuss these matters in greater detail in Committee, and I can assure the Minister that when we do, we will co-operate to the best of our ability. We commend the Bill and thoroughly support it, and we are glad to see it at last before this House.
  9.49 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr. Stephen Ladyman): We have heard, as I expected we would, about a number of cases in which
  1082
  children were let down, sometimes with terrible consequences. It is crucial that we learn the lessons of those cases. The Government and all their partners, including the voluntary, community and private sectors, have a responsibility to work together and with children and families to do so. We must ensure that we provide services for children and young people that are built around a proper understanding of their needs. It is particularly important for the most vulnerable that services focus on prevention and that there are clear lines of accountability.
  The Bill will play a key role in achieving that. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children said, the legislative measures that we are debating today are only a small part of our wider programme of change for children, building on the vision set out in "Every Child Matters". They are vitally important none the less.
  One of the things that we must all work on is more effective joint working between different disciplines at every level of the system, including central Government, which is why a Health Minister is winding up the debate. The Department of Health continues to have responsibility for children's health. That means that my right hon. Friend and I have to work very closely and set an example from the top.
  At the centre of the programme for change are the outcomes set out in "Every Child Matters"—being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and economic well-being. The outcomes are derived from extensive consultation with children and young people themselves. Central to our agenda is ensuring that the outcomes, rather than process or the bureaucracy, become the focus of policy making, planning, commissioning and delivery of all children's services.
  Good health in its fullest sense is essential to well-being. It is crucial that we ensure that health agencies and professionals work with their colleagues in education, social care, youth justice agencies and those in the private and voluntary sectors. There must be shared understanding and effective multi-disciplinary working at every level, and we must ensure that the legal framework and the messages sent out from central Government support that process. That means that the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills must be jointly responsible for ensuring that the children's trust approach works. That approach encourages health agencies and their local partners to find new and innovative ways to improve services for children, including preventive services.
  The Government are continuing to drive the development of good practice in this area, with provision being built around the needs of children and their families. Measures in the Bill will enable and incentivise partnership and integration. In particular, the Bill requires local agencies, including health partners, to co-operate to improve well-being and remove barriers to the pooling of budgets and resources. It will also strengthen safeguarding arrangements and ensure that they are properly co-ordinated across local agencies.
  Let me emphasise at this point that health services will not be allowed to stand remote from this agenda. For many children, general practitioners provide the entry point into children's service provision. They are a

  1083
  universal service with the potential to impact on the well-being of all children registered with them. GPs and other primary care professionals operate under contract to primary care trusts. PCTs are subject to the duties in the Bill to co-operate to improve the well-being of children and to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote their welfare.
  Virginia Bottomley: Will the Minister give way?
  Dr. Ladyman: I am afraid I will not. If I do not make progress, I will not be able to answer the right hon. Lady's points.
  We are working with PCTs, GPs and the key national representative organisations to ensure that GPs are appropriately tied into these arrangements. However, what is perhaps more crucial is to ensure that GPs are supported in engaging in child-focused, multi-agency or co-located working arrangements and effective sharing of information, where appropriate.
  My right hon. Friend and I have also been working closely together on the preparation of the national service framework for children, young people and maternity services, which will be published this week. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) in congratulating Professor Aynsley-Green on his inclusive approach to producing the new national service framework. The NSF will establish national standards for children's health and social care for the first time in this country—and, to the best of my belief, for the first time in any country. During the 10-year span of the NSF, we will see a step-change in service quality for children. It will play an important role in driving cultural change within health services for children and young people at all levels. At its heart is a fundamental change in the way we think. It will promote a move towards services that are designed around the needs of children and their families, not organisations.
  I turn to some of the comments made in the debate, and I shall start with those made by the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Taunton (Mr. Flook) and, in a similar vein, by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson). I very much enjoyed the speech by my hon. Friend, as I normally do, and I can tell him that he will be sadly missed when he leaves this place. All three mentioned the importance of social workers and the need to recruit them. I am happy to say that there are signs that the number of applications for social work training is increasing, but I spotted an important difference between my hon. Friend and the Opposition Members I mentioned. All three willed the ends, but only my hon. Friend joins the Government in willing the means. It is only by increasing the budgets for social services that we will increase the recruitment of social workers. The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) said that the Conservatives would preserve spending on Sure Start, but the shadow Chancellor has committed his party only to preserving spending on schools and health, not on social care or social services.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) and the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley) mentioned the importance of parents. As someone who lost his father a fortnight ago, I know the benefits of having great
  1084
  parents. Sometimes we take them for granted, but it is only when everybody has great parents that we will start to achieve the changes that we are looking for. That means providing parents with the support that they need. The right hon. Lady asked specific questions about expert witnesses and the report that came out last week. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Children and I pre-empted that report by asking the chief medical officer to review the recruitment and training of expert witnesses. We hope that that review will lead to a way forward. The right hon. Lady also asked about the chief nursing officer's report, and I confirm that that was published on 10 August.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) was alone in raising the important issue of housing and homelessness, and I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend has heard what she said. Several hon. Members, including those for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) and for East Worthing and Shoreham, and my hon. Friends the Members for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths), for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) and for Gower (Mr. Caton), mentioned the Lords amendments to clause 2. We do not believe that the current wording would help the commissioner to discharge the strategic role that we intend and we will table amendments in Committee to reverse most of the changes introduced by the amendments made in the Lords. We believe that the commissioner's role should be a strategic one. He should have the opportunity to investigate issues widely and we do not want him to become bogged down in individual cases, as other commissioners sometimes have. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre made the point that transport is a children's issue, and I agree. The commissioner that we intend to introduce would be able to write a strategic report about the impact of transport on children because he would not get bogged down in day-to-day issues. The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) mentioned the fact that the Children's Commissioner for Wales has written two reports. I make no criticism of that commissioner, but had he not put most of his resources into individual cases and then taken the more strategic approach that we propose, he might have been able to produce more than two such reports.
  The hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham, for Taunton and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), and my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman), raised the issue of engaging schools. It will not be possible to deliver on our aim to provide coherent support for children unless we get schools playing a central role. We have many good examples of how extended schools are working well with local partners to do that already and many have been the inspiration for what we are doing. We intend to ensure that schools play a full part.
  Unfortunately, time will not allow me to address all the points that were raised in the debate. However, let me just say that the Bill is one part of the major infrastructure that we are putting in place for children. It will dramatically improve the quality of care for children and I commend it to the House.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.

  CHILDREN BILL [LORDS] (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 Children Bill [Lords]:
  Committal
  The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
  Proceedings in Standing Committee
  Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 21st October 2004.
  The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
  Consideration and Third Reading
  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.
  Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
  Sessional Order B (programming committees) made by the House on 28th June 2001 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
  Other proceedings
  Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further message from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Mr. Watson.]
  The House divided: Ayes 241, Noes 72.

  Division No. 241]

  [9: 59 pm

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Cox, Tom (Tooting)

  Ainger, Nick

  Crausby, David

  Ainsworth, Bob (Cov'try NE)

  Cruddas, Jon

  Alexander, Douglas

  Cryer, Ann (Keighley)

  Allen, Graham

  Cryer, John (Hornchurch)

  Anderson, rh Donald (Swansea E)

  Cunningham, Jim (Coventry S)

  Armstrong, rh Ms Hilary

  Cunningham, Tony (Workington)

  Atherton, Ms Candy

  Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)

  Atkins, Charlotte

  David, Wayne

  Battle, John

  Davidson, Ian

  Bayley, Hugh

  Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)

  Beard, Nigel

  Dawson, Hilton

  Bell, Sir Stuart

  Dean, Mrs Janet

  Betts, Clive

  Denham, rh John

  Blackman, Liz

  Dobbin, Jim (Heywood)

  Blears, Ms Hazel

  Dowd, Jim (Lewisham W)

  Blizzard, Bob

  Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)

  Blunkett, rh David

  Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)

  Bradley, rh Keith (Withington)

  Ellman, Mrs Louise

  Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)

  Farrelly, Paul

  Bradshaw, Ben

  Field, rh Frank (Birkenhead)

  Bryant, Chris

  Fisher, Mark

  Burnham, Andy

  Fitzpatrick, Jim

  Cairns, David

  Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Flint, Caroline

  Casale, Roger

  Flynn, Paul (Newport W)

  Caton, Martin

  Foster, rh Derek

  Challen, Colin

  Foster, Michael (Worcester)

  Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)

  Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings

  Clark, Mrs Helen (Peterborough)

  & Rye

  Clark, Dr. Lynda (Edinburgh

  Francis, Dr. Hywel

  Pentlands)

  Gapes, Mike (Ilford S)

  Clark, Paul (Gillingham)

  George, rh Bruce (Walsall S)

  Clarke, rh Charles (Norwich S)

  Gerrard, Neil

  Clarke, rh Tom (Coatbridge &

  Gilroy, Linda

  Chryston)

  Goggins, Paul

  Clelland, David

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Coaker, Vernon

  Grogan, John

  Cohen, Harry

  Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)

  Cook, rh Robin (Livingston)

  Hall, Patrick (Bedford)

  1086

  Hanson, David

  Meale, Alan (Mansfield)

  Harris, Tom (Glasgow Cathcart)

  Michael, rh Alun

  Havard, Dai (Merthyr Tydfil &

  Milburn, rh Alan

  Rhymney)

  Miliband, David

  Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)

  Miller, Andrew

  Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)

  Moffatt, Laura

  Hendrick, Mark

  Moran, Margaret

  Hesford, Stephen

  Morgan, Julie

  Hewitt, rh Ms Patricia

  Morley, Elliot

  Heyes, David

  Morris, rh Estelle

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Munn, Ms Meg

  Hinchliffe, David

  Naysmith, Dr. Doug

  Hodge, Margaret

  O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

  Hoey, Kate (Vauxhall)

  O'Hara, Edward

  Hope, Phil (Corby)

  Olner, Bill

  Hopkins, Kelvin

  O'Neill, Martin

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N &

  Osborne, Sandra (Ayr)

  Sefton E)

  Owen, Albert

  Howells, Dr. Kim

  Palmer, Dr. Nick

  Hoyle, Lindsay

  Perham, Linda

  Hughes, Beverley (Stretford &

  Picking, Anne

  Urmston)

  Pickthall, Colin

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Pike, Peter (Burnley)

  Hurst Alan (Braintree)

  Plaskitt, James

  Hutton, rh John

  Pond, Chris (Gravesham)

  Iddon, Dr. Brian

  Pope, Greg (Hyndburn)

  Illsley, Eric

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham

  Irranca-Davies, Huw

  E)

  Jamieson, David

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Jenkins, Brian

  Prosser, Gwyn

  Johnson, Alan (Hull W)

  Purchase, Ken

  Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn

  Purnell, James

  Hatfield)

  Quinn, Lawrie

  Joyce, Eric (Falkirk W)

  Rapson, Syd (Portsmouth N)

  Kaufman, rh Sir Gerald

  Raynsford, rh Nick

  Keeble, Ms Sally

  Reed, Andy (Loughborough)

  Keen, Alan (Feltham)

  Reid, rh Dr. John (Hamilton N &

  Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree)

  Bellshill)

  Khabra, Piara S.

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry

  Kidney, David

  NW)

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Knight, Jim (S Dorset)

  Ruddock, Joan

  Kumar, Dr. Ashok

  Salter, Martin

  Ladyman, Dr. Stephen

  Savidge, Malcolm

  Lammy, David

  Shaw, Jonathan

  Lawrence, Mrs Jackie

  Sheerman, Barry

  Laxton, Bob (Derby N)

  Sheridan, Jim

  Lepper, David

  Simon, Siôn (B'ham Erdington)

  Leslie, Christopher

  Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)

  Levitt, Tom (High Peak)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Lewis, Ivan (Bury S)

  Smith, rh Andrew (Oxford E)

  Linton, Martin

  Smith, rh Chris (Islington S &

  Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)

  Finsbury)

  Love, Andrew

  Smith, Geraldine (Morecambe &

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Lunesdale)

  McCabe, Stephen

  Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

  McCafferty, Chris

  Smith, John (Glamorgan)

  McDonagh, Siobhain

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  MacDonald, Calum

  Soley, Clive

  MacDougall, John

  Southworth, Helen

  McFall, rh John

  Squire, Rachel

  McGuire, Mrs Anne

  Starkey, Dr. Phyllis

  McIsaac, Shona

  Stewart, David (Inverness E &

  McKechin, Ann

  Lochaber)

  McKenna, Rosemary

  Stringer, Graham

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Stuart, Ms Gisela

  McNulty, Tony

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  MacShane, Denis

  Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)

  Mactaggart, Fiona

  Thomas, Gareth (Harrow W)

  McWalter, Tony

  Timms, Stephen

  McWilliam, John

  Touhig, Don (Islwyn)

  Mahmood, Khalid

  Trickett, Jon

  Mallaber, Judy

  Truswell, Paul

  Mann, John (Bassetlaw)

  Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE)

  Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)

  Turner, Dr. Desmond (Brighton

  Marshall David (Glasgow

  Kemptown)

  Shettleston)

  Turner, Neil (Wigan)

  Marshall-Andrews, Robert

  Twigg, Derek (Halton)

  Martlew, Eric

  Vaz, Keith (Leicester E)

  Meacher, rh Michael

  Vis, Dr. Rudi

  1087

  Walley, Ms Joan

  Woolas, Phil

  Ward, Claire

  Wright, Anthony D. (Gt

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Yarmouth)

  Watson, Tom (W Bromwich E)

  Wright, David (Telford)

  Watts, David

  Wyatt, Derek

  White, Brian

  Whitehead, Dr. Alan

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Williams, Betty (Conwy)

  Gillian Merron and

  Wills, Michael

  Mr. John Heppell

  Winnick, David

  Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster

  C)

  NOES

  Amess, David

  Laing, Mrs Eleanor

  Arbuthnot, rh James

  Lamb, Norman

  Bacon, Richard

  Lansley, Andrew

  Barker, Gregory

  Liddell-Grainger, Ian

  Beith, rh A. J.

  Lilley, rh Peter

  Bellingham, Henry

  Loughton, Tim

  Boswell, Tim

  Luff, Peter (M-Worcs)

  Bottomley, rh Virginia (SW

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Surrey)

  Mitchell, Andrew (Sutton

  Brooke, Mrs Annette L.

  Coldfield)

  Browning, Mrs Angela

  Moss, Malcolm

  Burt, Alistair

  Norman, Archie

  Calton, Mrs Patsy

  Oaten, Mark (Winchester)

  Campbell, rh Sir Menzies (NE

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  Fife)

  Ottaway, Richard

  Carmichael, Alistair

  Prisk, Mark (Hertford)

  Chope, Christopher

  Pugh, Dr. John

  Clappison, James

  Redwood, rh John

  Clarke, rh Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Rendel, David

  Davis, rh David (Haltemprice &

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Howden)

  Russell, Bob (Colchester)

  Field, Mark (Cities of London &

  Simpson, Keith (M-Norfolk)

  Westminster)

  Spink, Bob (Castle Point)

  Flook, Adrian

  Stanley, rh Sir John

  George, Andrew (St. Ives)

  Steen, Anthony

  Gidley, Sandra

  Streeter, Gary

  Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

  Stunell, Andrew

  Green, Damian (Ashford)

  Swayne, Desmond

  Greenway, John

  Syms, Robert

  Heath, David

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Heathcoat-Amory, rh David

  Teather, Sarah

  Hogg, rh Douglas

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Thurso, John

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Turner, Andrew (Isle of Wight)

  1088

  Tyler, Paul (N Cornwall)

  Willis, Phil

  Tyrie, Andrew

  Young, rh Sir George

  Watkinson, Angela

  Webb, Steve (Northavon)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Whittingdale, John

  Mr. Hugo Swire and

  Williams, Hywel (Caernarfon)

  Mr. David Ruifley

  Williams, Roger (Brecon)

  Question accordingly agreed to.

  CHILDREN BILL [LORDS] [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 Children Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise 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 payable out of money so provided under any other Act.—[Mr. Watson.]

  Question agreed to

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

  ESTABLISHMENT OF A COMMUNITY FISHERIES CONTROL AGENCY
  That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 9149/04 and Addendum 1, draft Council Regulation establishing a Community Fisheries Control Agency and amending Regulation (EC) No. 2847/93 establishing a control system applicable to the Common Fisheries Policy; takes note of the Government's welcome of the proposal and supports the Government's objective of playing a constructive part in detailed discussion of the proposal whilst seeking to ensure that the role of the Agency will not undermine the control and enforcement responsibilities of individual Member States or cut across the policy aim of increased regionalisation of the Common Fisheries Policy.—[Mr. Watson.]
  Question agreed to.

  Buckingham Palace (Security Breach)
  10.15 pm
  The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement to the House on the incident earlier today at Buckingham Palace. Following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, I authorised a review of external security at the main royal palaces, which was conducted by the Security Service, MI5. The work resulted in an extensive new alarm and camera system outside and inside the palace and the strengthening of the palace perimeter.
  As the House will be aware, a separate review of the internal security of the royal households also took place earlier this year, but it is not relevant to today's events. The facts as set out to me tonight by the commissioner and deputy commissioner are as follows. At about 2.20 pm this afternoon, three men erected a ladder outside the palace walls. Their presence directly outside the palace triggered an alarm, and police both inside and outside the building took immediate steps to protect the integrity of the palace. An armed police officer on the other side of the railings confronted the intruders as they approached the colonnade. Within minutes, the external perimeter of the palace had been sealed and armed police had secured the palace from within. One of the men moved quickly along the roof of the colonnade adjacent to Constitution hill. Police officers took the entirely correct decision that that individual was a protester not a terrorist. That judgement was made easier by the fact that no members of the royal family were present. The palace, as the House will know, is open to the public at this time of year. It will also be aware that the Metropolitan police have now arrested the protester and one accomplice.
  Sir John Stevens has stated quite clearly tonight that, if the individual had been assessed as a threat, he would have been shot before he could have entered the building. I am also clear that the alarm and camera systems installed over the past three years worked and that the police acted correctly in assessing the threat that he posed. Nevertheless, the speed with which the intruders were able to scale the wall is of concern and the Metropolitan police and my officials are urgently reviewing with the royal household any further measures required. However, it is worth bearing it in mind—this has been true for many years—that the royal family have always wanted the palace to remain accessible to the people of the United Kingdom and tourists from around the world, as it is; they do not want it to become a fortress. I share that view.
  We live in a time of a heightened terrorist threat, when our police and security services are fully stretched in protecting our safety and way of life. While today's protest showed that the alarm and camera system worked, the protester could have been killed and the Metropolitan police have once again been diverted from protecting the public from terrorism by the need to deal with a public stunt. I hope that people who support such action will reflect on that and recognise that it is not just themselves they put at risk by their actions. That is why
  1090
  we treat such incidents with the seriousness they deserve. They should be treated seriously, but they need to be put in their proper context as well.
  David Davis: I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement and I commend him on coming straight to the House to make it this evening. That at least is exemplary, but it is the only part of this sorry business that is.
  This is the fifth or sixth breach of royal palace security since June last year, following security breaches at Buckingham palace, Windsor castle and the Palace of Westminster. At a time when the terrorist threat has never been so real or so great, the latest episode is extremely serious. The Home Secretary said that the security commission report on a previous breach of security at Buckingham palace is not relevant. I beg to differ. I quote:
  "the most likely source of … threat to the Royal Family are from the press and individuals seeking to 'test' security measures or cause embarrassment. But any weakness which can be exploited by these groups can also be exploited by terrorists."
  After the penetration of Windsor castle by Aaron Barschak dressed as Osama bin Laden, the Home Secretary said:
  "I am determined that lessons should be learned from this incident."—[Official Report, 24 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 868.]
  Then, five months later, after the breach of Buckingham palace's security, the right hon. Gentleman made a statement to the House in which he said,
  "It is important to be clear that we … learned the lessons of Windsor."—[Official Report, 19 November 2003; Vol. 413, c. 777.]
  Nevertheless, the Home Secretary admits today that the speed with which the intruder was able to scale the wall is of concern. He does not point out that the intruder got a further 30 m and climbed another wall. The right hon. Gentleman quotes Sir John Stevens saying that if the intruder had been assessed as a terrorist, he would have been shot. Will the Home Secretary tell us how anyone can ever be sure that such an incident is a prank, and not a terrorist masquerading as a prankster? In the terrible logic of these events, the terrorist has only to be lucky once. We have to be lucky every time.
  In the hours since the protest, has the Home Secretary been able to establish the following aspects of what went wrong today? Were procedures not followed and the failure therefore operational, or were the recommendations inadequate and the failure therefore one of policy? Does he accept that today's irresponsible action advertises weaknesses in our security and that the long series of security failures could itself encourage terrorist attempts? Will he tell the House tonight how many times Members of this House, the British public and the royal family will have to tolerate such scandalous incompetence?
  Mr. Blunkett: I am deeply sorry that the shadow Home Secretary has adopted the tone he has tonight—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. As has already been stated, I always encourage Ministers to come to the House to

  1091
  give statements. This the Home Secretary has done. It does not help when hon. Members barrack a Minister who has been good enough to come to the House.
  Mr. Blunkett: The point that I was about to make, Mr. Speaker, is that there is a perfectly legitimate and reasonable role for Opposition parties in holding Ministers to account for their failings. However, an Opposition who aspire to Government have to address issues in the way that they feel they would were they in government. The question raised tonight might have been about whether we had done enough to ensure that the alarm and camera systems worked. The answer to that question is yes, we did so on the recommendation of the Security Service, and we had put new and enhanced measures in place since 2001. I spelled that out. Following the incident at Windsor, having learned the lessons, we massively enhanced the system there.
  Whenever there has been an incursion into a palace, lessons have been learned. They were learned twice in 1992, when there were two incidents at the palace. They were learned again in 1994, and again in 1995, when my predecessors had to deal with similar incursions. We will take any action necessary to ensure that, and we will do so with the royal household—because we are dealing with its palaces, not our own property—in a way that is acceptable to it.
  The cameras worked, the electronic alarms worked and the armed police were in place and secured the palace inside and out. The police also ensured that the individual could move no further and the accomplice was ordered down at gunpoint from the palisade, but subsequently attempted to escape. All those things worked.
  The judgment to which Sir John Stevens referred was whether the police should take pre-emptive action by firing on the individuals concerned. Is that what Opposition Members are advocating? If there are—no matter how good security is, there are and always will be—people who will attempt to breach security, the police have to make a judgment about the level of armed force that they use. They do that day in and day out when any major incident takes place, particularly where there is a threat to life. They did it today, and I commend them for it. The proportionality of their response was in keeping with their judgment. The way they handled the incident ensured that it was dealt with so that people were taken down safely without loss of life or limb.
  Someone engaged today in a publicity stunt and it was a foolish, silly thing to do that has harmed a very reasonable cause. Let me make it clear that if anyone in the House believes that they would have had greater wisdom than the security services, the Metropolitan Police, Ministers and my officials, let him or her get up and say so. Let them not criticise what was done, but say what might have happened had the police not acted in the way that they did to secure the palace and the lives of those involved. The police did not overreact in circumstances that would have led to fatality. In that case, I would have been answering very different questions tonight, and I would have been deeply concerned if I had had to do so.
  Mr. Mark Oaten: I thank the Home Secretary for advance notice of his statement and
  1092
  for coming to the House so quickly after this afternoon's events. This is a serious issue, made worse by the fact that we have faced similar breaches of security in the past. I hope that he understands that this is at best highly embarrassing and at worst could have had terrible consequences.
  I agree with the Home Secretary's concerns about the activities of the protesters. Not only do they endanger their own lives but, at a time of heightened terror alert, they make the work of the police even harder.
  The Home Secretary welcomed the fact that the alarm and camera systems worked, but they largely concern detection. Should we not have a system in place that makes the perimeter fence itself physically harder to climb in the first place? When the security commission reported earlier in the year, it found that the existing framework for dealing with security for the royal family was considered sound. Is the Home Secretary still confident about that statement?
  Can the Home Secretary confirm who has responsibility for security in the royal household grounds? Is it the police, the Home Office or the new royal director of security? Does he acknowledge that with three organisations in charge of royal security, there will always be problems with communication and lines of accountability? Will he confirm how many of the commission's recommendations have been put in place? Will he tell the House whether the agreed annual plan on security at the palace has yet been agreed?
  I hope that the Home Secretary will acknowledge that there are only so many times that lessons can be learned and actions promised before the public lose confidence in the security systems that we have at both Buckingham Palace and the House of Commons.
  Mr. Blunkett: Of course it is embarrassing when such incidents take place. That is self-evident and it is important to learn from it. The hon. Gentleman mentioned different incidents, and we have to be clear about who is responsible. Inside the Palace of Westminster, it is the House authorities. Inside Buckingham palace, it is the royal family and the new director of security, Brigadier Cook. All the recommendations of the Butler-Sloss commission have been put in place. Security outside the palace and security for the palace itself is the responsibility of the Metropolitan police, and they took that responsibility today, as I spelled out.
  The hon. Gentleman asked about securing the outside fence. We are talking about two fences and a wall. A judgment was made, and nobody raised any objection when we put it in place after 11 September 2001, that the external view of the palace and its environment outside should be maintained as reasonably as possible. Of course it is possible to secure any building in the capital by making it impossible for anyone to get anywhere near that building or monument. That does not take a genius. It just takes great lumps of concrete and a terrible environment that ruins the capital city of our country and ensures that people cannot enjoy walking about and seeing monuments and palaces in a reasonable fashion.
  The royal family do not want that, and I agree with them. We must therefore ensure proportionally that security protects life, while reasonableness secures an environment in which to live, walk and have our social

  1093
  life—an environment that is not destroyed by the terrorists putting us in such fear that we cannot get anywhere near such buildings, including this building, which is the heart of our democracy. It is that proportionality that all of us seek to maintain.
  Sir Stuart Bell: The House will welcome the Home Secretary being with us tonight and his reasonable response. Is it not a fact that for centuries in this country we have lived under the rule of law? No matter what the grievance, we must respect the decisions of the courts. Nothing, therefore, justifies taking the law into one's own hands.
  The Home Secretary mentioned proportionality on at least two occasions. While it is right and proper that there be a proportionate response, those who conspire to breach the rule of law should be severely dealt with. Is it not a fact that the conspirators were on television giving interviews for their cause even before their arrest? If we believe in the rule of law, proper sentencing and proper deterrence, will that not deter the publicity stunt?
  Mr. Blunkett: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend about the rule of law. The individuals and their group do a reasonable cause great ill. I agree that action needs to be clear and decisive. I have made it clear that the biggest threat to those individuals was the potential for a misjudgement to be made about their intentions. Had that happened, one or more of them might well be dead tonight. To those who think about carrying out similar stunts in future, I say that the more the tension rises and the greater the cry for action, the more likely it is that those who seek to protect us and the royal family will make a judgment at that moment that could lead to loss of life. That is why the incident was so serious.
  Mr. James Arbuthnot: What action did the Home Secretary personally take to ensure that this sort of thing did not happen?
  Mr. Blunkett: I have held regular meetings with the Metropolitan police. Last week, I held a meeting with Sir Ian Blair, the deputy commissioner, and with the head of SO 13 precisely to review progress in respect of the royal palaces. Had I not been holding regular meetings, and had I not been holding to account last week those who have operational responsibility, I would have been much more sheepish in entering the House for a statement this evening.
  Tom Levitt: Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who seek to publicise what appears to be a responsible cause in such an irresponsible and high-risk manner do that political cause no good at all, not least when seeking to influence Members of the House? In fact, their actions today will have a negative effect on the cause that they were seeking to promote.
  Mr. Blunkett: I very much regret that that will be the case. Any judgment about the responsibility of those who seek to act as role models for their own children and to promote a decent, genuine cause concerning the
  1094
  rights of fathers must be that these people do tremendous harm to themselves and to their cause. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend.
  Mr. Douglas Hogg: Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that he should not be making a statement tonight, because it only gives publicity to people whose views we do not respect? Does he also understand that, when he discusses shooting individuals, he should make it plain that one should consider that course of action only if the threat to third parties is urgent and immediate, which was clearly not present in this case?
  Mr. Blunkett: If you will forgive my introducing a lighter note, Mr. Speaker, I have just won a pound, because I bet someone earlier this evening that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would make such an intervention. If I had not made a statement tonight, an urgent question would undoubtedly have been tabled tomorrow, and the question why I was not holding myself to account to the House would have been raised.
  The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right on his substantive point, which is why the armed police officers present made a judgment. Police officers make a judgment on whether people who are armed or who threaten to take life in some other way are likely to carry out that threat, which is why the police officers involved today made that judgment.
  Mr. Keith Simpson: In a perverse way, the activities of a number of individuals—whether they tried to get into Windsor castle, the Palace of Westminster or, indeed, Buckingham palace—have highlighted weaknesses within those palaces' security systems. To pick up one point that the Home Secretary touched on, is he satisfied that the obvious overlapping authority, rather than seamless authority, between those palaces and the Metropolitan police should continue, or, like a number of hon. Members, does he think that one individual should be appointed with the authority to deal with security both inside and outside all royal palaces?
  Mr. Blunkett: This is my difficulty in answering that question how I want to: this House, not me, determines the line between security inside and outside the Palace of Westminster. In Buckingham palace—this is, of course, true of other palaces—the decision where the line between the royal household's authority and the Metropolitan police's authority lies is for the royal household. Following the Butler-Sloss report, we agreed a particular approach to the running of the royal household and the internal appointment of a director. It was agreed then that a clear division should be made, by which the Metropolitan police continued to act and to have authority on the palace's external protection. It is not for this House or me to determine tonight any change in that direction, but we must constantly examine whether we can ensure that the meeting of those two different franchises works effectively, and that is our challenge.
  Bob Spink: What information has the Home Secretary got for us tonight on the third man who was directly involved in the incident? Will he

  1095
  tell the House how many royal security breaches are allowable before a ministerial resignation is appropriate?
  Mr. Blunkett: Obviously not two, otherwise the current Leader of the Opposition would have resigned in 1995. The question is very silly and unworthy of what has been a perfectly reasonable process of questioning and accountability. It is not difficult for the police to identify the third individual involved—after all, television cameras were mysteriously present from the beginning of the incident. Even though the level of apprehending those who commit crimes ill our country is less desirable than I would wish, I am sure that we will have him by tomorrow.
  Gregory Barker: Does the Home Secretary think that it has been a satisfactory and efficient use of taxpayers' money for him to authorise the spending of hundreds of thousands of pounds on new cameras and alarm systems if the response to those systems is inadequate to prevent intruders from gaining access to the roof and then on to the front of the palace? What is the point of such equipment if the response is too slow?
  Mr. Blunkett: The first armed officer's response was rapid. One of the individuals, who was dressed as Robin, gave an interview describing how he was ordered down and was told that he would be shot if he did not do so. That particular individual was apprehended almost immediately. [Interruption.]
  Well, I described in my statement how the danger was sealed off inside the palace and externally. In my view, that is a rapid response. The issue that we have addressed tonight is whether we can put anything in place to distance people around the palace from being able to mount the colonnade in future. That must be discussed with the royal family because of its impact on the palace.

  Lisbon Agenda
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Watson.]
  10.40 pm
  Keith Vaz: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to raise in this House the very important topic of economic reform of the European Union. The House has never before held an Adjournment debate on the Lisbon agenda. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary is here. I congratulate him on his recent return to the powerhouse of the Government's economic policy, which is so different from post office closures. I am also delighted to see my hon. Friend the Minister for Europe.
  After the Lisbon summit on 24 March 2000, the Prime Minister said in his statement to the House:
  "The Lisbon European Council represents a turning point in Europe's approach to economic and social policy. With a sound macro-economic framework in place and the euro safely introduced, the concrete actions agreed at the Council should help to deliver an increase in the European Union employment rate over the next 10 years."—[Official Report, 27 March 2000; Vol. 347, c. 22.]
  That was a bold and impressive commitment by the Prime Minister to the economic reform agenda.
  We are now rapidly approaching the mid-term of the Lisbon agreement, and I value the opportunity to debate Britain's position and what needs to be done to move the agenda forward.
  At the Lisbon European Council, the member states agreed to put economic and social development at the very top of the political agenda in order to create a European Union that would position itself in the lead of the international financial markets. The Lisbon summit committed all national governments to a 10-year programme of reform that was going to make the EU
  "the most dynamic knowledge based economy in the world by 2010".
  I had the privilege of being at the Lisbon Council as the then Minister for Europe. Lisbon was different because it set out a series of benchmarks. Its language was not the usual Eurospeak whereby everybody congratulates everybody about the success of a summit, but a clear and precise list of achievable objectives.
  The key targets and objectives of the Lisbon agenda were employment; research and innovation; the single market; social cohesion; and sustainable development and the environment. The main benchmark on employment was to reach, by 2010, an overall employment rate of 70 per cent. of the EU population. The female employment rate was to rise to 60 per cent., and the employment rate for older workers was to rise to 50 per cent. of the EU population. The Lisbon agenda also set out to increase the retirement age by five years and to reduce the number of 18 to 24-year-olds with only basic secondary education by 50 per cent.
  The benchmarks for research and innovation would see spending on research and development approach 3 per cent. of gross domestic product by 2010 and 100 per cent. of schools connected to the internet by 2002.
  In terms of the development and progress of the single market, the Lisbon agenda stated that we would see full implementation of the risk capital action plan by 2003,

  1097
  and of the financial services action plan in 2005. We were to have a transposition rate of 98.5 per cent. for internal market directives. No internal market directives were to be more than two years overdue in their transposition.
  The energy markets were to open for business by 2004 and for domestic users subsequently. Finally, the single market goals set out the prospect of a single European sky by 2004.
  As for social cohesion, Lisbon was meant to halve the number of school leavers not continuing in further education, and reduce the numbers living at risk of poverty by 2010.
  On sustainable development and the environment, visible progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions was suggested. Lisbon set a clear target for electricity generated from renewable resources as well as ending the loss in biodiversity. Lisbon agreed to recycle 55 per cent. of all waste by 2008.
  The United States is the main economic challenge to the European Union. The current EU, at 25, has a single market of approximately 450 million consumers compared with approximately 380 million in the US. At Lisbon, we were informed that the US managed to create 10 million jobs in the 10 previous years, whereas the EU created only 1 million.
  That is why, in my view, it is vital that all member states adopt the euro. Only with the same currency and the minimising of trade barriers can the EU catch up with the US. We have to encourage the citizens of Europe to spend their money in the eurozone instead of elsewhere.
  The Lisbon agenda set out ambitious goals and, although progress has been made, much more needs to be done. It is important is to see the Lisbon agenda as a clear strategy forward for Europe. Only by setting the targets at a high level will we progress in the way that is necessary for the stability and the future of the European Union.
  The mid-term review of the Lisbon agenda, which is due in March 2005, is intended to give an indication of how Europe is doing, and also to consider how the Lisbon goals can be best met by 2010, especially in the light of enlargement and the new member states.
  Although the European Council reaffirms that the process and goals remain valid, a change of pace of reform is needed to achieve the targets by 2010. I want to know from the Financial Secretary the Government's view of the way forward. Overall, a north-south divide has emerged between the relatively good achievers—Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom—and the Mediterranean's less successful countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The employment rate has grown, but not substantially.
  Productivity growth remains low, and substantial weaknesses remain in competitiveness and the development of the internal market. Only last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer demanded a new sense of urgency from Brussels, and rightly said that the so-called Eurocrats must drop their inward-looking mindset and tackle the growth problem immediately.
  1098
  My constituents in Leicester, East need the Lisbon agenda to succeed. So many businesses in Leicester trade with the rest of Europe, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer noted when he recently visited the city. The main problem that they experience is the over-regulated way in which some other EU countries operate. More jobs will be created in Leicester if the goals set out in the Lisbon agenda are met. That applies not only to the textile industry, which has been the bedrock of the city, but the new service industries and engineering.
  As a city, we are ideally placed in the heart of England, with major road networks all around us. We can succeed if the economic climate is right in Europe and we can become a powerhouse of financial prosperity. We are already a Premiership city as far as trade is concerned. Although the Foxes have left the Premiership, they will be back next season, following their splendid victory over the Minister for Europe's football team on Saturday.
  As hon. Members know, in addition to the mid-term review, the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Wim Kok, is heading a high-level group, which has been commissioned to carry out an independent review of the achievements on the Lisbon agenda so far. The decision to set up that group was made by the European Council in March 2003. The high-level group is composed of several highly qualified individuals who are able to reflect the views of all stakeholders. Among those represented are Mr. Will Hutton, chief executive of the Work Foundation, and Mr. Naill Fitzgerald, chairman of Unilever. The remit of that high level group is to make proposals to the Commission to give new stimulus to the Lisbon strategy and improve delivery.
  The report is due to be presented to the Commission by November 2004, and will identify the measures that have been taken so far in the member states' economies to achieve the Lisbon objectives and targets.
  One of the key factors in achieving the goals set out in the Lisbon agenda and creating the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world is accessibility to broadband. The online newspaper, euobserver.com, recently reported that the new member states are set to overtake the old EU 15 in broadband internet penetration rates by 2010. They are set for a rapid catching-up process that could see them forging ahead in the next few years. This is the enthusiasm and willingness on which the whole of the EU must build. All member states must be equally excited about strengthening their own standing, and thereby that of the whole EU. Equal commitment from the individual member states is the only recipe for success in the long term.
  The enlargement of the European Union, increasing the number of member states from 15 to 25, was an extraordinary success, and Europe is now set to go forward in building on unity, strength and co-operation. A union of 25 member states has the possibility and capability to be a strong—indeed, the strongest—player in the world arena, but it needs structure and leadership in order to build on its strengths. The unique combination of diverse skills and cultural richness that defines Europe gives it every opportunity to achieve the goals that have been set out.
  In just 33 days, on 1 November, the new President of the European Commission will start his term of office, and he has given a clear indication that he wants his

  1099
  Commission to be strong and united. Mr Barosso has stated that he intends to boost the Lisbon agenda and has promised that economic reforms will be at the heart of his five-year tenure. He will chair a group of Commissioners who will seek to enhance the reform process and give new impetus to Europe's economy. He has said:
  "The goal of becoming the most competitive economy in the world is one we can achieve, and we should not feel discouraged".
  Mr. Wayne David: Does my hon. Friend agree that one issue that has to be tackled by the Commission and the European Council is the fact that so many nations agree to the directives that make up the Lisbon agenda but fail to transpose them into their own national law? My understanding is that, according to a report to the European Council produced in the spring, two northern European countries, France and Germany, were at the bottom of the league table in that regard, along with Greece.
  Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That area needs to be looked at if we are to make the progress on the Lisbon agenda that I have asked for, and I hope that the new Commission will ensure that that happens. Given the quality of the people who have been appointed to it, I think that it can be achieved. I want to congratulate Peter Mandelson on his appointment as the EU Commissioner for the United Kingdom, with responsibility for the trade portfolio. Both he and the Spanish Commissioner will play an important part in ensuring that this agenda is furthered.
  The EU is falling further behind the United States in terms of gross domestic product per head, and the growth has been below the target of 3 per cent. More labour needs to be employed more productively in the member states to generate growth. This requires an increase in both the employment rate and in investment which can only come about if we start taking the structural reforms seriously by relocating resources from declining to growing sectors. We have to give fiscal and structural policy a chance to put Europe back on the path of sustainable growth.
  The responsibility for the success of the Lisbon agenda lies with all member states and their willingness to implement the targets. The Commission has few powers on national employment laws, social welfare legislation, tax rates and education and research policies, or any other tools to enhance EU competitiveness. The role of the Commission, therefore, is to assist the national Governments in finding the right policies and setting a framework for economic reform.
  Intrinsically linked to the development of the economic union is the development of the political union. At the Brussels summit on 18 June, all member states agreed to the wording and contents of the draft treaty of the European Union. The ratification of that treaty is a unique development in the relationship of the member states. The EU constitution will finally give Europe stability and strength, after two decades of constant negotiating of new treaties. For all the reasons put out by the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe, it will consolidate the treaties that have gone before. In Britain, this means winning the referendum on the constitution over the next few months.
  1100
  My view is that we are not lacking the political will to put our country at the heart of Europe. That has been the Government's agenda since 1997. What we need to do is to ensure that that political will is understood by the British people. That means that all Ministers must heed the words of the Prime Minister by making the positive case for Europe, so that people can form their opinions on the basis of what their elected leaders say. And the Government must explain precisely what they intend to do.
  We have great challenges ahead, but Europe is the reality in which we live and work, and Britain needs strong leadership and guidance in the important period that lies ahead. Next year will be crucial: we will take over the presidency of the European Union, and in July we will host the G8 summit in Scotland. That will put Britain at the centre of attention and action, and many countries in the EU will look to Britain for guidance.
  To remain a strong international player, Britain must adopt the constitution, implement the euro, and look to its partners in the G8 to work towards sustainable development and fair trade. I call on the Government to go out and make that case for Europe. I know that the Minister for Europe and the Financial Secretary will do so in the months that lie ahead.
  As the Chancellor has said, there must be a speedier implementation of EU agreements and policy making at national level to create sustainable growth and more and better jobs. Higher employment rates are critical to achieving growth and to further social inclusion. On Lisbon, it must be our Government, who are so much in the forefront of pursuing the reform agenda through the excellent work of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor and the Minister for Europe, who hold Europe to account. It is our agenda: let us make it work for the people of Britain and for all of Europe.
  10.56 pm
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Stephen Timms): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) on securing this debate, and I am grateful to him for his kind remarks. I welcome the early opportunity that he has provided for me to respond to the issues that he has raised.
  We are strong advocates, as my hon. Friend said, of economic reform in Europe. Europe can only meet the challenges of globalisation by increasing the pace of reform. It has not been quick enough to date, as he has rightly pointed out. To realise the gains of globalisation, Europe needs to become more flexible, more open and more outward-looking.
  In the past three years, cumulative economic growth has been 3 per cent. in Europe but 5.5 per cent. in the US and 6 per cent. in the UK. Living standards in Europe are a third lower than in the US. Eighteen million people in the European Union are out of work. US productivity is more than 14 per cent. higher. We need to speed up the pace of reform.
  We are very pleased that, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, Wim Kok is chairing the high-level group on the mid-term review of Lisbon. We want to see that deliver a step change in the pace of reform. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor published the UK

  1101
  submission to Wim Kok's group, setting out proposals for sharpening the focus of the Lisbon programme and increasing the incentives for reform.
  At this weekend's European Finance Ministers meeting in the Netherlands, there was unanimity that the Lisbon programme is getting more important, not less. The challenges of globalisation are coming faster—developing countries accounted for 5 per cent. of world manufacturing exports a few years ago, and will soon account for nearly 50 per cent. I was in China last week, and saw something of the pace of development there.
  The challenge for Europe is to combine economic growth while retaining the priority on social inclusion that sets us apart from the United States. Raising employment is the critical link that will allow us to achieve that balance. As Wim Kok said at the weekend, there is no option of economic security without change. We all need to make labour markets more flexible and adaptable, and reform our tax and benefit system so that it pays to have a job.
  The Lisbon programme has been expanded over the past few years, diluting its original aims. The International Monetary Fund suggests that there are now 102 Lisbon benchmarks. We need to prioritise. We need a renewed focus on the objective: long-term growth, through increased employment and productivity.
  We need to benchmark member states' performance. We should introduce annual Lisbon score cards at spring council meetings to rank members states' progress with economic reform, and enable Europe's leaders to set out specific plans for reform in the year ahead. We need to do more to sell the benefits of reform to European's citizens, and explain the costs of inaction.
  The goal of long-term growth demands, in our view, progress in five areas as a priority. The first is further regulatory reform, building on the four-presidency initiative of January this year to reduce the burden of new and existing legislation on enterprising and innovative businesses. The second is urgent reform of labour markets, with all member states implementing the November 2003 European Employment Taskforce report. The third is the taking of further steps to create a competitive single market, liberalising services and developing a more effective competition policy. The fourth is promoting innovation and enterprise, improving the regulatory environment, swift agreement on the Community patent and improved access to finance for fast-growing firms. The fifth is trade and investment liberalisation, with EU leadership in world trade negotiations and a stronger transatlantic economic relationship. Let me say a little about each of those.
  Good regulation underpins effective markets. Proportionate, clear rules make it easier to deal with market failures, such as monopolies that raise prices and reduce choice; but badly designed or excessive regulation can have a heavy cost. It can discourage enterprise, markets can be made less dynamic, and competition can be stifled. There is persuasive evidence that regulation in Europe is dragging down growth. In the United Kingdom as much as 50 per cent. of new legislation originates in Brussels, so improving the
  1102
  regulatory climate means taking action at European level. That is why, with the Dutch, Irish and Luxembourg Governments, we launched our four-presidency initiative for regulatory reform, spanning this year and next year. It was endorsed by all 25 Heads of State and Government at the spring European Council. In addition, the Dutch and Irish presidencies have launched a major simplification exercise, requesting priority areas from member states. Some 20 Governments responded over the summer.
  As we look towards the EU presidency, we remain committed both to implementing the measures we have already set out and to developing further proposals to improve regulation in Europe. That is a key pillar of our strategy for economic reform.
  As for labour market reforms, Europe—as my hon. Friend said—is in real danger of missing the 2010 employment targets, particularly the one he mentioned relating to older workers. We cannot rely on smaller nations such as the Netherlands and Scandinavia to do well enough to allow us to achieve our goals; all of us need to reform. Unless we are much more successful in moving people from economic inactivity to productive work, we will not have the work force that we need. It is right to create flexible labour markets, and to equip people to cope with change—through investment in skills and training, through the best transitional help for people moving between jobs, and through policies to make work pay.
  Member states need to act urgently to modernise the public employment services, using active job search to reduce long-term unemployment; to reform tax and benefit systems to tackle the disincentives to taking jobs; to ensure that we make work pay through targeted tax and benefit policies; and to invest in human capital to increase skills and lifelong learning. That approach has been successful in the UK, and needs to be taken up very widely.
  The single market has been a big success story for Europe. It has allowed countries and regions to specialise in their strengths, and allowed companies to consolidate and become more efficient. It promotes the flow of ideas, and strengthens competition. It is estimated that since 1992 the single market has generated an extra £4,000 for every household in the European Union. Costs have fallen, and quality and choice have increased. But substantial barriers remain. Price differences suggest that competition is still not as open and fair as it should be. Too often Governments try to undermine market opening by building up national champions and protecting short-term interests.
  So we have identified a number of priorities for extending the single market. Europe needs to stick to the deadlines and targets that it set itself in sectors such as telecoms and energy, which I know well from my previous work, as my hon. Friend mentioned. Political commitments that everybody signs up to need to be delivered. Moreover, competition policy at every level should be proactive and independent. The European competition authorities should not just respond to cases; they should be proactive in investigating markets and sectors. We need to reduce unnecessary, overly complex regulation, thereby cutting costs to businesses and employees and helping to make markets more open

  1103
  and dynamic. We also need to remove unproductive, old-style industrial subsidies, while allowing innovative approaches to tackling market failure.
  Fourthly, enterprise and innovation are very important drivers of progress. To compete effectively in an integrated global economy, Europe needs to improve its capacity to innovate, and to build an entrepreneurial culture. Some member states stand out as strong performers, but as a whole Europe continues to underperform compared with major international competitors. For example, it lags behind the United States in 10 out of 11 European Commission innovation performance indicators, and rates of entrepreneurial activity are about half those in the US.
  Europe needs to become a more attractive place in which to invest in research and development by improving the regulatory environment and the sustainability of research funding, and by achieving speedy agreement on the Community patent. It needs to continue to improve access to finance for new and fast-growing businesses—those that we need most to generate new jobs and to boost productivity. We have also proposed that the EU introduce a new competition for a city of enterprise, so that, just as we compete to become the capital of culture, we will compete to find the most enterprising town or city in Europe.
  The last of the five areas concerns an outward-looking Europe. Greater external openness to trade and investment reinforces the drivers of productivity and growth. Structural reforms and more open global markets need to be pursued together. We need to turn away from an inward-looking trade bloc model of Europe and instead be outward looking and globally competitive. Concluding a successful and liberalising multilateral trade round is a priority. Following achievement of the World Trade Organisation framework agreement in July, Europe needs to maintain its commitment and flexibility, particularly on agriculture, to make real progress by the next ministerial meeting in December 2005. Protectionism is hurting our economies and those of developing countries. Global income could be boosted by $500 billion a year—two
  1104
  thirds of which would go to developing countries—by a good, liberalising, pro-development conclusion to the Doha round.
  We need to deepen co-operation with the US, which is our biggest trade and investment partner. The EU and the US should work together to eliminate the most difficult behind-the-border barriers, and to reduce the costs for business and consumers arising from duplicated regulatory systems. We welcome the call at June's EU-US summit for the consulting of business and others on the future of EU-US economic co-operation, leading to a road map for enhanced co-operation at next year's summit. The study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on the economic benefits of transatlantic liberalisation that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and the US Treasury Secretary have called for will provide an important evidence base for that work.
  Accelerating the pace of economic reform is vital if Europe's economies are to become more flexible, dynamic, competitive and outward looking, and if we are to create a truly global Europe. That requires making progress in dealing with reform of the common agricultural policy. Some progress has been made, but we need a great deal more. Work needs to be done on the EU state aid regime, in respect of which a number of difficulties remain. There is also a good deal of work to be done on the future financing framework. In our view, the current Commission proposals do not meet the demands and challenges that need to be faced.
  We will continue to work with other member states on the priorities that I have set out: further regulatory reform; urgent reform of labour markets; further steps to create a dynamic and competitive single market; promoting innovation and enterprise; and trade and investment liberalisation. I very much welcome my hon. Friend's reminding the House of the importance to us all of making progress on the priorities set out—
  The motion having been made after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at ten minutes past Eleven o'clock.

TRANSPORT

  A3
  Virginia Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what estimate he has made of the date of completion of the A3 safety measures at Thursley. [188241]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The A3 Junction Improvement is expected to be completed and open to traffic at the end of December 2004, six months ahead of the original target date of June 2005.

  Virginia Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects to receive the Inspector's report following the public inquiry on the A3 Hindhead tunnel proposal. [188242]

  Mr. Jamieson
  It is too soon to say when the Inspector's report might be received, as this is dependent on when the inquiry actually finishes and the complexity of the evidence the Inspector needs to consider before concluding his report.

  Ambulances
  Lembit Öpik
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many ambulances have been involved in road traffic accidents in the last two years in England; and if he will make a statement. [188375]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The number of ambulances involved in road traffic accidents in England in the last two years available is shown below. Information for 2003 is not yet available.

  Number of ambulances1 involved in road accidents: England: 2001–2002

  Year

  Number Vehicles

  2001

  307

  2002

  295

  1Vehicles with body type "ambulance". Body type is only known for 70–80 per cent. of the vehicle records in the Road Accidents Database.

  Bicycles (Railways)
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish the advice offered to rail companies on the facility for cyclists to take their bicycles on the train. [188417]

  Mr. McNulty
  The franchise agreements by which passenger rail services are procured require franchised train operators to:"so far as reasonably practicable and subject to the availability of appropriate space on its rolling stock, ensure that facilities for the transport of bicycles on trains are made available, at reasonable charges (if any), to passengers using or intending to use the Passenger Service."
  1390W
  The Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) encourages all train operating companies to tailor their provisions for the carriage of cycles on trains to the demand on particular routes while recognising that cycle provision cannot be considered in isolation but must have regard to the needs of all other rail users. The SRA has recently carried out a consultation of cycle policy and will be publishing a detailed cycle policy in due course. Copies of their Cycle Policy Consultation Document are available in the Libraries of the House.

  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many train companies place restrictions on cyclists taking bicycles on trains. [188418]

  Mr. McNulty
  Of the 25 franchised train operators, three carry bicycles on all services without requiring prior reservation, six carry bicycles on all their services but do require prior reservation, one does not require prior reservation but restricts bicycles to off-peak times only and the remaining 15 require both prior reservation and restrict bicycles to off-peak times only. All franchised train operators have a maximum number of cycles which can be carried on any particular train.

  c2c LTS
  Bob Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) what recent research he has conducted on the number of passengers on the c2c LTS route who do not get a seat; and if he will make a statement; [188435]

  (2) what representations he has had on the recent Rail Passenger's Committee Eastern England research findings on the number of passengers who do not get a seat on the c2c LTS route. [188437]

  Mr. McNulty
  The Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) collects annual Passengers in Excess of Capacity (PiXC) census data every autumn for all London Commuter Train Operating Companies. Last year's figures for c2c indicate an overall PiXC figure of 1 per cent. (morning plus evening combined) against the threshold of 4.5 per cent.. This was the lowest of the 10 London Commuter TOCs, for which the total was 2.7 per cent.

  I have received no representations on the Rail Passenger's Committee Eastern England research.

  Bob Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make it his policy to ensure that a refund is given to passengers with season tickets when standing reaches a predetermined level; and if he will make a statement. [188436]

  Mr. McNulty
  The Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) is reviewing its crowding policy. The SRA plans to consider whether there is a case for Train Operating Companies to face additional incentives to manage overcrowding.

  Bob Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what recent discussions he has had with c2c on the redeployment of four 4-Coach Class 357 trains; and if he will make a statement. [188438]

  Mr. McNulty
  None. The redeployment of rolling stock was agreed by the Strategic Rail Authority to cover a potential shortfall in rolling stock which was identified elsewhere on the network as a result of the West Coast Route Modernisation programme. The
  1391W
  redeployment is not permanent and it is envisaged that the rolling stock will return to c2c once new trains have entered service on the West Coast Main Line.

  Car Noise
  Chris Grayling
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what his policy is on maximum noise levels from straight-through car exhausts on customised cars. [187389]

  Mr. Jamieson
  Only new cars are subject to maximum noise limits. However, Regulation 54 of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 does set minimum requirements for the maintenance of exhaust systems and silencers for cars, and other vehicles, in use. This requires that they be fitted with a silencer, that the silencer is maintained in good and efficient working order and has not been altered so as to increase noise. The Regulations also make it an offence to use a car in such a manner as to cause excessive noise that could have been avoided by the exercise of reasonable care on the part of the driver. It is likely that a straight-through exhaust, whether used on a customised car or any other vehicle, would be in breach of this requirement. Enforcement, however, is a matter for the police.

  Crossrail
  Mr. Yeo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much has been spent on consultation by the Crossrail development programme to date. [186733]

  Mr. McNulty
  Cross London Rail Links Ltd (CLRL), a joint venture company currently owned by Transport for London and the Strategic Rail Authority, was set up to develop and promote the Crossrail project.

  Total expenditure to date on consultation by CLRL is £3,466,500. £2,170,500 was spent on the first round of consultation (September 2003 to January 2004) that I asked CLRL to undertake to explain to the public in more detail their proposed scheme, and to canvass views on their route proposals. The remaining £1,296,000 is the cost to date of the second round of consultation, on CLRL's preferred route, which began in August 2004, following my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State's Statement to the House on 20 July announcing the decision to introduce a hybrid Bill for Crossrail at the earliest opportunity. The costs include salary costs of CLRL staff.

  Mr. Keith Bradley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much money has been allocated in his departmental budget for the Crossrail project for(a) 2004–05, (b) 2005–06 and (c) 2006–07. [188083]

  Mr. McNulty
  In May 2001, Cross London Rail Links (CLRL) was provided with ring-fenced funding of £154 million for the purposes of developing Crossrail. CLRL has spent £62.5 million to the end of financial year 2003–04, with a further £42.5 million budgeted for the current year. This would leave £49 million of the original £154 million available for developing the scheme after March 2005.

  Cycleways
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what powers(a) he has and (b) are vested in local authorities to prevent motorised vehicles from blocking cycleways including those on the highway; and what plans he has to ensure that cycleways are not blocked by motorised vehicles. [188379]

  Mr. McNulty
  Parking enforcement is a matter for the police or, where local authorities have acquired decriminalised parking enforcement powers, those authorities.

  It is an offence under section 21 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to park a motor vehicle wholly or partly on a track provided for use by pedal cyclists. Parking in a cycle lane marked on a carriageway for the use of cyclists may be prohibited by means of a traffic regulation order made under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. The restriction would be indicated by yellow lines and may operate 24 hours a day or for a more limited period. It is an offence under sections 5 or 8 of the 1984 Act to contravene such an order.

  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether provision of cycleways was part of the safer city project in Gloucester [188380]

  Mr. Jamieson
  Gloucester Safer City Project addressed safety issues on the roads in Gloucester and implemented measures to improve safety for cyclists along approximately 15 km of the carriageway. Off road cycleways were not part of the project. However, cycle lanes were provide in Elmbridge Road, Finlay Road, Cheltenham Road, Stroud Road and Bristol Road. In addition, on the Stroud Road the cycle lane was taken on to the footway for part of its route and in Metz Way the off-road cycle route was improved.

  EU Emissions Trading System
  Norman Baker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what(a) research he has commissioned and (b) steps he has initiated to facilitate the incorporation of aviation in the EU Emissions Trading System. [188754]

  Mr. McNulty
  The information requested is as follows:

  (a) There is a growing body of research on emissions trading, some of it funded or part funded by the Department for Transport. Recent examples include projects by (i) ICF Consulting for the ICAO Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (ii) OXERA for BAA plc and (iii) The Institute of Applied Ecology for the German Environment Agency. The European Commission is also in the process of letting a major research contract to consider the incorporation of aviation into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

  (b) The Department is having discussions with stakeholders and other EU States to gather support for the UK's initiative and seek views on potential answers to some of the difficult design issues.

  M40
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what estimate he has made of the accident rate per number of vehicles on the M40 between
  1393W
  junctions 3 and 6 in the last year for which figures are available; and what the average accident rate for motorways was in the same period. [188051]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The Highways Agency publishes accident rates per million vehicle kilometres travelled. On this basis, the accident rates in 2003 for the section of the M40 between junctions 3 and 6 are as follows:

  Junctions

  Accident rate

  3 to 4

  0.187

  4 to 5

  0.033

  5 to 6

  0.087

  The national accident rate for a three-lane motorway is 0.089.

  Motorcycling
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many fatalities there were of(a) motor cycle riders and (b) pillion passengers in each of the last five years for which figures are available, broken down by police authority area. [188396]

  Mr. Jamieson
  Numbers of fatalities of two wheeled motor vehicle riders and pillion passengers by police authority area for 1999 to 2003 are given in the following table.

  TWMV riders and passenger fatalities by police authority area: GB 1999–2003

  Fatalities Polite force

  Casualty type

  1999

  2000

  2001

  2002

  2003

  Metropolitan police

  Riders

  54

  53

  70

  62

  61

  Passengers

  1

  3

  0

  4

  2

  Cumbria

  Riders

  5

  9

  7

  8

  7

  Passengers

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  Lancashire

  Riders

  15

  15

  8

  13

  18

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  Merseyside

  Riders

  4

  14

  7

  12

  6

  Passengers

  0

  2

  1

  3

  0

  Greater Manchester

  Riders

  10

  9

  6

  8

  15

  Passengers

  0

  2

  0

  0

  0

  Cheshire

  Riders

  14

  13

  14

  11

  17

  Passengers

  2

  1

  1

  1

  0

  Northumbria

  Riders

  6

  7

  8

  10

  11

  Passengers

  0

  0

  2

  0

  1

  Durham

  Riders

  2

  4

  4

  4

  8

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  North Yorkshire

  Riders

  12

  17

  12

  22

  26

  Passengers

  0

  0

  1

  1

  2

  West Yorkshire

  Riders

  15

  19

  18

  14

  17

  Passengers

  1

  0

  1

  1

  2

  South Yorkshire

  Riders

  7

  15

  7

  12

  10

  Passengers

  0

  1

  0

  0

  2

  Humberside

  Riders

  13

  6

  7

  5

  7

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  0

  3

  Cleveland

  Riders

  2

  4

  1

  1

  2

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  0

  I

  West Midlands

  Riders

  16

  8

  9

  11

  21

  Passengers

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  Staffordshire

  Riders

  7

  12

  7

  13

  15

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  West Mercia

  Riders

  22

  22

  16

  6

  15

  Passengers

  0

  1

  1

  1

  0

  Warwickshire

  Riders

  6

  10

  5

  6

  11

  Passengers

  1

  1

  0

  0

  1

  Derbyshire

  Riders

  15

  15

  11

  15

  16

  Passengers

  1

  0

  1

  2

  0

  Nottinghamshire

  Riders

  12

  8

  22

  13

  14

  Passengers

  0

  1

  3

  0

  0

  Lincolnshire

  Riders

  17

  12

  13

  11

  14

  Passengers

  0

  2

  0

  1

  0

  1394W

  Leicestershire

  Riders

  17

  7

  12

  16

  9

  Passengers

  2

  1

  3

  0

  1

  Northamptonshire

  Riders

  12

  9

  7

  7

  13

  Passengers

  2

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Cambridgeshire

  Riders

  5

  11

  7

  8

  9

  Passengers

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Norfolk

  Riders

  10

  17

  9

  10

  14

  Passengers

  0

  3

  0

  1

  0

  Suffolk

  Riders

  9

  7

  5

  5

  10

  Passengers

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  Bedfordshire

  Riders

  5

  7

  10

  7

  4

  Passengers

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Hertfordshire

  Riders

  7

  8

  10

  10

  10

  Passengers

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Essex

  Riders

  16

  16

  30

  20

  24

  Passengers

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  Thames Valley

  Riders

  23

  28

  25

  33

  36

  Passengers

  2

  0

  2

  0

  0

  Hampshire

  Riders

  17

  17

  13

  19

  30

  Passengers

  1

  2

  1

  2

  1

  Surrey

  Riders

  16

  12

  11

  16

  11

  Passengers

  1

  0

  1

  1

  0

  Kent

  Riders

  19

  26

  12

  24

  19

  Passengers

  0

  1

  2

  3

  0

  Sussex

  Riders

  9

  12

  17

  21

  18

  Passengers

  1

  3

  0

  1

  3

  City of London

  Riders

  1

  1

  2

  1

  0

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Devon and

  Riders

  14

  20

  15

  21

  17

  Cornwall

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  Avon and Somerset

  Riders

  13

  13

  19

  15

  11

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  Gloucestershire

  Riders

  4

  7

  6

  7

  8

  Passengers

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  Wiltshire

  Riders

  9

  9

  7

  6

  9

  Passengers

  0

  0

  2

  0

  0

  Dorset

  Riders

  9

  10

  4

  6

  13

  Passengers

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  North Wales

  Riders

  10

  9

  10

  7

  17

  Passengers

  1

  2

  0

  0

  1

  Gwent

  Riders

  2

  4

  4

  1

  1

  Passengers

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  South Wales

  Riders

  10

  7

  4

  9

  6

  Passengers

  1

  0

  2

  1

  0

  Dyfed-Powys

  Riders

  5

  6

  15

  8

  17

  Passengers

  0

  0

  1

  1

  0

  Northern

  Riders

  1

  11

  6

  2

  9

  Passengers

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Grampian

  Riders

  6

  6

  13

  11

  6

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Tayside

  Riders

  2

  2

  3

  4

  3

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  Fife

  Riders

  1

  2

  3

  5

  5

  Passengers

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Lothian and

  Riders

  4

  5

  4

  6

  8

  Borders

  Passengers

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Central

  Riders

  2

  2

  1

  6

  3

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Strathclyde

  Riders

  12

  10

  15

  10

  12

  Passengers

  0

  0

  1

  0

  1

  Dumfries and

  Riders

  1

  0

  3

  2

  2

  Galloway

  Passengers

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Great Britain

  Riders

  525

  573

  554

  580

  665

  Passengers

  22

  32

  29

  29

  28

  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions he has had with the main motor cyclist associations on accident prevention. [188397]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The Advisory Group on Motorcycling, which I Chaired, discussed motorcycling safety in considerable depth, among other issues. The Group included the British Motorcyclists Federation, the Motorcycle Action Group, the Motorcycle Industry
  1395W
  Association, the Motorcycle Retailers Association, the Motorcycle Rider Training Association and the Despatch Association.

  The "Advisory Group on Motorcycling: Final Report to Government" was published in August and is available in the House Library. It makes 16 suggestions and 38 recommendations to Government. A number of these concern improving safety and helping to prevent accidents. We are considering them carefully in the context of preparing a national strategy for motorcycling, which we hope to have developed before the end of the year.

  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions he has had with interested parties on banning the carriage of child pillion passengers on motorcycles. [188398]

  Mr. Jamieson
  I have had no such discussions. Regulations are already in place to ensure that passengers of any age or size can be carried safely, when they are complied with. These include a requirement for passengers to wear a securely fastened safety helmet and to sit astride a properly fixed seat, with their feet reaching suitable supports or rests. Only motorcyclists who have passed a motorcycle test may carry passengers.

  Mr. Kidney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of the final report of the Advisory Group on Motorcycling; and if he will make a statement in response to its recommendations. [188448]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The Government welcomes this Report. It concludes the work of the Advisory Group on Motorcycling set up by my Department, which was established to consider the role of motorcycling within an integrated transport policy, including important issues such as safety and environmental impact.

  The Report contains 38 recommendations and 16 suggestions covering a range of issues. These are designed to make motorcycling safer and to improve the motorcycling experience. The Government are considering them carefully in the context of preparing a national strategy for motorcycling, which we hope to have developed before the end of the year.

  Quad Bikes
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he has carried out an investigation into the number of quad bike accidents reported affecting British residents while on holiday abroad; and if he will list the resorts which have had the worst accident record in 2004. [188399]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The information requested is not available.

  Road Kill
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what estimate he has made of the number of(a) dogs, (b) cats, (c) badgers, (d) deer, (e) foxes, (f) hedgehogs, (g) rabbits and (h) squirrels killed as a result of road traffic accidents in the last year for which figures are available; and how many of each were recorded. [188381]
  1396W
  Mr. Jamieson
  The information requested is not available.

  Road Safety
  Mr. Yeo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many of the(a) deaths and (b) serious injuries on roads were attributable to speed in the last year for which figures are available. [186763]

  Mr. Darling
  Routine statistics do not record the primary cause of a r oad accident. However, under a pilot scheme, 15 police forces in Great Britain have provided information on contributory factors to accidents since 1999. In 2003 this information was available for about a third of all reported injury accidents in Great Britain. Among these, 30 per cent. of fatalities and 20 per cent. of serious casualties were in accidents where 'excessive speed' was a factor.

  If the results from the pilot scheme were representative of the whole country, it would mean that over 1,000 deaths and about 6,600 serious injuries in Great Britain in 2003 were sustained in accidents where `excessive speed' was a contributory factor.

  The contributory factor data are based on the opinions of police officers. In the case of accidents reported by a member of the public at a police station, these factors have to be determined from their description of the accident.

  The true extent of the influence of speed as a contributory factor in road traffic accidents may be greater than suggested by the single factor 'excessive speed', as some other factors—such as 'following too close'—may also be associated with inappropriate speed. My Department is undertaking further analysis of the pilot contributory factor data and will publish an article later in the year.

  Starting in January 2005 this pilot scheme will be replaced by a new set of questions on contributory factors, which will henceforward form an integral part of the road accident reporting system and will be collected by all police forces for accidents reported at scene by a police officer.

  Mr. Gray
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when his review of speed limits will be published; when he commissioned his review of speed limits; and how long he originally expected that his review of speed limits would take. [188459]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The Road Safety Strategy, published in March 2000 gave a commitment to revise and update our guidance to local authorities on the setting of local speed limits, currently in the form of Circular Roads 1/93. We will shortly issue a consultation draft of a revised Circular for comment, and we expect to finalise and publish the Circular early in 2005. In January this year we published a Ti affic Advisory Leaflet on village speed limits, recommending that the speed limit should usually be 30 miles per hour.

  Mr. Hurst
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what estimate he has made of the number of accidents which were due to motorists failing to comply with recommended stopping distances in each of the last five years. [188559]
  1397W
  Mr. Jamieson
  The information requested is not available.

  Transport Bodies (Costs)
  Mr. Damian Green
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what the(a) cost or recruitment was and (b) total cumulative salary bill has been for (i) the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency and (ii) the Chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport and (iii) the Chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority.

  Mr. McNulty
  The total cost of recruitment including advertising costs for the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency in 2003 was £53,977. Details of the remuneration paid to the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency can be found n the Agency's Annual Reports.

  For the Chairman of the UK Commission for Integrated Transport, the recruitment costs specifically attributable to this post are not held separately. The most recent Chair appointment was in March 2002. The remuneration for the post is £30,000 pa with the Chair expected to work five days per month.

  Full details of the payments made to the Chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority can be found in the Authority's Annual Reports. The recruitment costs specifically attributable to this post are not held separately.

  US Visas
  Mr. Carmichael
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what representations the Government have made to United States authorities regarding the decision to abolish the crew list visa scheme. [188432]

  Mr. Jamieson
  The Government made representations to the US authorities on two occasions, in co-operation with a number of other governments, in response to the proposals to abolish the crew list visa scheme.

WORK AND PENSIONS

  Children in Poverty
  Mr. Woodward
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate the Government have made of the number of children living in poverty who lived outside the 20 per cent. most deprived wards in each year since 1997. [187369]

  Mr. Pond
  The Government's figures for children in low income households are available in "Households Below Average Income 1994–95 to 2002–03". This information is not available below regional level. The report is available in the Library.

  Mr. Woodward
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether the Government(a) expect to meet and (b) have met their target for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the first quarter of 2004; and if he will make a statement. [186805]
  1398W
  Mr. Pond
  The Government have a PSA target to reduce the number of children in low-income households by at least a quarter by 2004, as a contribution towards the broader target of halving child poverty by 2010 and eradicating it by 2020.

  Between the baseline year of 1998–99 and 2002–03, the number of children in low income households has fallen by 500,000 before housing costs and 600,000 after housing costs. We will report on the target in spring 2006 when the data for 2004–05 become available.

  The latest available data (2002–03) do not reflect the introduction of new tax credits in April 2003 or the increase in the child element of the child tax credit in April 2004. We are broadly on course to meet the PSA target.

  Pensions
  Mr. Anthony D. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the average weekly pension in Great Yarmouth in each year since 1997 if pensions had been linked to earnings. [186701]

  Malcolm Wicks
  The information is not available in the format requested. However, such information as is available is in the table.

  £

  As at April each year

  Average State Pension in Great Yarmouth

  Average State Pension in Great Yarmouth with basic State Pension uprated by earnings

  1999

  68.90

  70.55

  2000

  69.95

  73.65

  2001

  75.60

  77.35

  2002

  78.65

  81.15

  2003

  81.30

  84.70

  Notes:

  1. The change in the overall rate of basic State Pension for any given year is estimated by comparing the actual maximum rate of basic State Pension for that year with the rate if earnings uprating had been in place. The average recorded basic State Pension in Great Yarmouth for each individual year is then increased proportionately to reflect the difference.

  2. It is assumed that basic State Pension was uprated by earnings from 1998 onwards. It is assumed that additional State Pension would still be uprated in line with prices. The average additional State Pension in Great Yarmouth each year is then added to the adjusted average basic amount to provide the total average State Pension.

  3. Figures for actual State Pension amounts are taken from 5 per cent. sample of September's DWP administrative data for the year shown and are therefore subject to a high degree of sampling variation.

  4. Figures for individual parliamentary constituencies are not available prior to 1999.

  5. The figures shown in the table are weekly amounts rounded to the nearest 5p.

  Mr. Denham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of the additional costs in(a) 2015, (b) 2025, (c) 2035 and (d) 2045 of having a state second pension accrual rate that would guarantee all workers with 40 years of full-time employment sufficient pension to make them ineligible at (i) age 75 and (ii) retirement for the guarantee part of the pension credit if the basic state

  1399W
  pension were to be uprated in line with (A) prices, (B) earnings and (C) the average of earnings and prices [186851]

  Malcolm Wicks
  It is estimated that for a single person retiring in 2045, in order for the combined value of basic State Pension (BSP) and State Second Pension (S2P) to exceed the level of the Guarantee Credit, the additional spending on state pension required is as follows.

  (A) Under price uprating of the basic State Pension

  £ billion

  2015

  2025

  2035

  2045

  (i) At age 75

  S2P

  0.8

  3.5

  9.2

  19.6

  (ii) At retirement

  S2P

  0.3

  1.5

  3.9

  8.2

  BSP

  —

  —

  —

  —

  (B) Under earnings uprating of the basic State Pension

  £ billion

  2015

  2025

  2035

  2045

  () At age 75

  S2P

  (ii) At retirement

  S2P

  BSP

  9.6

  23.7

  45.8

  69.3

  Note:

  No change to S2P accrual or spending would be required under part B.

  (C) Under average of earnings and price uprating of the basic State Pension

  £ billion

  2015

  2025

  2035

  2045

  (i) At age 75

  S2P

  0.4

  1.5

  3.9

  8.3

  (ii) At retirement

  S2P

  —

  —

  —

  —

  BSP

  4.1

  9.3

  17.1

  24.4

  Notes:

  1. No change to S2P accrual or spending would be required under part C ii.

  2. Figures are costs for GB and Overseas in 2004–05 price terms, using the GDP deflator index, rounded to the nearest £100 million.

  3. Costs are for additional spending on Basic and State Second Pension and do not include any increased income tax revenue or savings in income related benefits. Costs are estimated by the Government Actuary's Department and are consistent with Budget 2004 assumptions and use 2002 based population projections. Accrual rates were calculated by the Department.

  4. Except where stated, current policy on calculation and uprating of benefits is assumed to continue and long-term assumptions are in line with those for budget 2004. The guarantee credit is therefore increased in line with average earnings.

  5. Increasing basic State Pension by more than prices as in parts B and C of this question will result in additional spending on basic State Pension.

  6. Costs also exclude any changes that might occur to contracting out rebates.

  Mr. Willetts
  To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the assumptions are for the number and percentage of eligible pensioners taking tip pension credit that underlie his pensioner benefit expenditure projections for(a) 2003–04, (b) 2013–14, (c) 2023–24, (d) 2033–34, (e) 2043–44 and (f) 2053–54. [187352]

  Malcolm Wicks
  The Government do not currently produce long-term projections of the pension credit caseload. In the interests of fiscal propriety they do issue long-term expenditure projections. Tabled are the caseloads underlying the projected expenditure.
  1400W
  Numbers of pensioner households claiming pension credit underlying the long-term projections of pensioner benefit expenditure art as follows:

  Number

  2010

  3,300,000

  2020

  3,900,000

  2030

  5,000,000

  2040

  5,900,000

  2050

  6,100,000

  These figures represent take-up of around 75 per cent., corresponding to the achievement of the PSA target of 3,000,000 pension credit households by 2006.

  Estimates have been rounded to the nearest 100,000 cases, are subject to a wide margin of error and should be used only as broad indications of the likely caseload.

  The methodology behind the long-term projections was described in more detail in "The Pension Credit: Long-term Projections", published by the Department in January 2002. A projected growth rate in pension credit spending is derived by applying income growth assumptions and demography projections to the sample pensioner population in the Department's Policy Simulation Model. This growth rate is applied to the medium-term forecast of pension credit expenditure.

  "The Pension Credit: Long-term Projections" (ref: DWP-PCP-2) is available in the Library and can be found on the internet at: www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/2002/pencred/pencred.pdf

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Antisocial Behaviour
  Mr. Wiggin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what research his Department has commissioned regarding the number of times reported criminal activity relating to antisocial behaviour has resulted in suspects being(a) charged and (b) convicted. [186820]

  Ms Blears
  The Home Office has commissioned a survey of young people which will give a measure of the percentage of antisocial young people who have had contact with the criminal justice system and the Youth Justice Board are commissioning research to look at the use of antisocial behaviour orders. Results are not yet available from either of these studies.

  Ash lum Seekers
  Mr. Battle
  To ask Ill; Secretary of State for the Home Department what evidence he has received regarding estimated asylum applications from(a) Darfur, (b) South Sudan and (e) other parts of Sudan; and if he will make a statement. [186723]

  Mr. Browne
  Applications for asylum in the UK are collated and published by nationality, and are made in the UK rather than from abroad. The available data do
  1401W
  not include breakdowns by region within countries of origin, which would not necessarily be reliable even if it were possible to record such information. The latest published figures show a 13 per cent. rise in asylum applications from 265 in Ql 2004 to 300 in Q2 2004 from Sudanese nationals compared with an 11 per cent. fall for total applications (all nationalities) over the same period.

  Information on asylum applications is published in quarterly web pages and in the annual statistical bulletin "Asylum Statistics United Kingdom". Copies of these publications and others relating to general immigration to the UK are available from the Library of the House and from the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1.html.

  Mr. Liddell-Grainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many failed asylum seekers have been removed from the United Kingdom in each year since 1997. [186553]

  Mr. Browne
  The available information is in the table.

  Removals and voluntary1 departures of asylum applicants, 1997 to 20032,3

  Principal applicants

  Dependants

  Total

  1997

  7,165

  n/a

  n/a

  1998

  6,990

  n/a

  n/a

  1999

  7,665

  n/a

  n/a

  2000

  8,980

  n/a

  n/a

  2001

  9,285

  41,495

  10,780

  2002

  10,740

  3,170

  13,910

  20035

  13,005

  4,890

  17,895

  n/a=not available

  1Includes persons departing "voluntarily" after enforcement action had been initiated against them, persons leaving under Assisted Voluntary Return Programmes run by the International Organisation for Migration, and removals on safe third country grounds.

  2 Figures rounded to the nearest five and may not sum to total due to rounding.

  3 Data on dependants of asylum seekers removed have only been collected since April 2001.

  4 Excludes January-March 2001.

  5 Provisional figures

  Information on asylum seekers who were removed from the UK in the first half of 2004 can be found on the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1. html

  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many National Asylum Support Service-supported cases in the City of Newcastle have ended with the withdrawal of benefits on grounds of refusal of the case; and how many(a) women and (b) children have been affected by such withdrawals. [186844]

  Mr. Browne
  A total of 45,120 cases had support ceased in 2003 compared with 45.185 in 2002 and 14,195 in 2001. A breakdown of this information by reason for cessation, by area of the UK, by age or by gender is unavailable and could be produced only at a1402W
  disproportionate cost. The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) only supports children if they are dependants of a principal applicant; NASS does not support unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASCs).

  Failed asylum seekers with dependent children currently receive NASS support until such time as they leave the UK or fail to comply with a removal direction. When section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 is implemented NASS support will cease if the Secretary of State certifies that, in his opinion, such a person has failed without reasonable excuse to take reasonable steps to leave the UK voluntarily or place himself in a position in which he is able to leave the UK voluntarily.

  As at the end of June 2004 the number of asylum seekers (including dependants) supported in Newcastle in NASS accommodation was 1,575 and 50 were in receipt of subsistence-only support. Figures are rounded to the nearest five and cases which have had their support terminated are excluded from this figure.

  Information on the number of asylum seekers supported by NASS is published quarterly, and information on the number of cases with support ceased is published annually in the annual Home Office Statistical bulletin, Asylum Statistics United Kingdom, available on the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at http:// www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1.html.

  Charities
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make it his policy to issue a definition of public benefit in relation to the activities of charities; and if he will make a statement. [187493]

  Fiona Mactaggart
  The draft Charities Bill was published on 27 May 2004. It takes forward a number of the recommendations of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, which made its report 'Private Action; Public Benefit' in September 2002. Copies of both documents are available in the Library.

  At the heart of the draft Charities Bill is a new statutory definition of charity, based on a list of charitable purposes, and the principle of charities providing public benefit. This will make clear exactly what a charity is.

  The Strategy Unit thoroughly reviewed the pros and cons of putting a definition of public benefit onto the face of the Bill. It concluded, and the Government agrees, that the future development of charity will be better served by keeping the current, flexible, non-statutory definition of public benefit.

  The draft Bill is the subject of pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses, which is expected to publish its recommendations by 30 September 2004. The Government will publish their response to the Committee's recommendations.
  1403W

  Children Trafficking
  Mr. Laurence Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the trafficking of children within the UK; and what steps he is taking to counter this. [185120]

  Mr. Browne
  The Government are strongly committed to combating child trafficking. We recognise that it is a complex problem and are determined to address every aspect of it, whether in countries of origin, en route to the UK, or on arrival. We have put in place a number of measures to do so, and constantly keep them under review.

  We are working with source countries to tackle the problem at its root. The UK is one of the strongest supporters of the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) Convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. We have given £70,000 to Anti-Slavery International for raising awareness of the abuses suffered by the victims of trafficking and remedial action in West Africa. We have also given £3 million for the International Labour Organisation's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) programme in the Greater Mekong region. This involves a number of inter-linked interventions to raise awareness and prevent trafficking, and to withdraw women and children from labour exploitation and reintegrate them back into their own or new communities.

  We are also taking action to ensure an effective enforcement response. Since 2000, all operational activity targeted against organised immigration crime, including people trafficking, has been co-ordinated through the multi-agency task force Reflex. Led by the National Crime Squad (NCS), Reflex brings together all the key agencies (including the Immigration Service, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and key police forces), as well as the appropriate Government Departments. Reflex aims to build up the intelligence picture, co-ordinate operations and provide a focal point for the operational response to human trafficking and smuggling.

  The Sexual Offences Act 2003, which came into force in May this year, sets out wide-ranging offences covering trafficking for sexual exploitation with a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment. A new offence covering trafficking for non-sexual purposes, such as forced labour, is included in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004.

  The Government are committed to providing appropriate support to victims of trafficking. Child victims of trafficking are likely to be in need of welfare services. Under the Children Act 1989 local authorities have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in need, by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those needs or arranging for their provision by other agencies. Assistance and support should therefore be provided by local statutory services in response to identified needs, whether directly or though specialist agencies.

  We are also working to raise awareness of child trafficking among key professionals and agencies. The Immigration Service has started specialist child interviewing training for around 600 operational
  1404W
  members of staff nationwide, which will help identify child victims of trafficking as they arrive in the UK. The Government have also published a best practice toolkit as a guide for professionals who are likely to come into contact with victims of trafficking. This includes specific sections on children and young people.

  The Home Office and the Department for Education and Skills are jointly considering the results from the Reflex funded multi-agency operation, Paladin Child. This involved the Metropolitan Police, the Immigration Service, social worker:. from Hillingdon Social Services and secondees from NSPCC. The operation risk assessed children arriving at Heathrow airport without their parents or legal guardians and social services followed up those considered to be at risk. The operation did not uncover any evidence of child trafficking. However, the report did make a number of recommendations related to child protection.

  Correspondence
  David Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the hon. Member for Walsall, North will receive a re ply to his letter of 10 August on behalf of a constituent, reference P09259/4. [188009]

  Mr. Browne
  I replied to my hon. Friend on 8 September 2004.

  Data Protection
  Harry Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with whom consultation has been held on(a) the range of data items which are to be stored in the database of registered facts and (b) the potential for subsequent use and disclosure of personal data from the database of registered facts; and if he will make a statement. [185960]

  Mr. Browne
  The Government published a draft Identity Cards Bill oil 26 April 2004 setting out the legislative framework for a national identity cards scheme. A 12-week consultation was held in accordance with the Cabinet Office's Code of Practice on Consultation.

  Over 3,000 copies of the consultation paper have been distributed including to all Members of Parliament, all the representative organisations that had commented on the earlier consultation and acquisition libraries across the UK. The consultation also appeared on the identity cards website (www.identitycards.gov.uk) and invited comments from individuals and organisations.

  We are now carefully analysing all the responses received. The Government will take account of these comments on the draft Bill before it introduces substantive legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.

  The House of Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs is undertaking a formal scrutiny of the draft Bill and will be publishing a report.

  Gosport War Memorial Hospital
  Mr. Viggers
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) when he expects inquiries into medical and nursing practices at Gosport War Memorial Hospital to be concluded; [186616]
  1405W
  (2) how many man hours have been expended by staff at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in responding to inquiries about medical and nursing practices at the hospital. [186617]

  Paul Goggins
  I can confirm that the investigation by Hampshire Police is ongoing. To date over 90 cases have been examined by a panel of experts and some of these have in turn been identified as requiring more detailed scrutiny. The investigation of the first four of these cases should be concluded by September 2004, but it is likely that the inquiry will stretch into 2005. Every effort has been made to ensure that the families and other interested parties are aware of the timescales involved.

  Information is not available centrally on the amount of time which hospital staff haw used in responding to police inquiries.

  Hate Crime
  Mr. Woodward
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what further proposals the Government have to extend the powers of the criminal justice system to prevent hate crimes. [186872]

  Fiona Mactaggart
  My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced in his speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research Institute on 7 July that as soon as the legislative opportunity arose the Government proposed extending the existing incitement to racial hatred laws, contained in the Public Order Act 1986, by creating a new offence of incitement to religious hatred.

  Identity Cards
  Chris Grayling
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the technological potential to combine identity cards with passports containing electronic data. [187388]

  Mr. Browne
  As part of the work to set the requirements for identity cards, the level of compatibility with technical standards proposed for electronic passports is being examined. However, no decision has been made on whether to combine technical standards for identity cards with any other documents.

  The UK Passport Service is already committed to introducing a biometric passport containing electronic data in 2005.

  Immigration
  Mr. Liddell-Grainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to monitor the level of illegal immigration into the United Kingdom. [186554]

  Mr. Browne
  By definition, illegal immigrants fall outside of official statistics and are therefore difficult to measure. Official estimates of the numbers of illegal entrants to the UK or estimates of the size of the illegally resident population in the UK do not exist. The Government have commissioned research into the methods used in other countries to estimate the size of the illegal population in order to define methods appropriate for the UK.
  1406W
  We are committed to maintaining robust pre and on entry controls to prevent illegal immigration into the United Kingdom and there are many strands of work currently being undertaken to ensure the integrity of UK Border Controls. These include:
  The increasing involvement of organised crime in illegal immigration led to the creation in 2000 of Reflex, the multi-agency forum which brings together key law enforcement players including the Immigration Service, as well as relevant government Departments and the Security Services, under the chair of the National Crime Squad.
  As part of a longer-term strategy, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) manages an expanding network of Immigration Liaison Officers (currently 12) in key overseas posts who work closely with local law enforcement agencies to combat illegal migratory flows.
  A network of Airline Liaison Officers working closely with airline staff at key locations worldwide, who offer advice to carriers on the admissibility of passengers seeking to travel to the UK.
  Working closely with UK Visas to put in place visa fraud officers at a number of our missions overseas to enhance further the quality of visa issues.
  Introduction of a range of initiatives designed to reduce the numbers of those who arrive without adequate documentation or concealed in vehicles. Such measures include the roll out of New Detection Technology to search vehicles for would be clandestine entrants prior to embarkation for the UK, and the introduction of juxtaposed controls at strategic locations overseas to pre-assess eligibility for entry.

  Mr. Oaten
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the joint work of immigration officers and British Transport Police in London in identifying illegal immigrants; and how many individuals have been(a) questioned and (b) arrested as part of the operation. [187059]

  Mr. Browne
  Over the past 15 months the UK Immigration Service (UKIS) has participated in a variety of joint multi-agency street crime operations in London, initiated by both the Metropolitan and British Transport Police (BTP). Focusing on crime hotspots, the Immigration Service has been invited to attend where an immigration offence is expected. The deployment of immigration officers in public places is a legitimate activity within the spectrum of our mandate of enforcing immigration laws.

  While immigration officers do not have the same powers as the police to stop and search individuals in public places, they may legitimately question people to determine their immigration status where there is reasonable suspicion that a person is an immigration offender.

  Records of (a) the number of people questioned or (b) the number of people arrested as part of the police-led crime reduction operations are not kept centrally. However, locally collated provisional information indicates that between May 2003 to July 2004 the UKIS participated in approximately 235 such operations which resulted in the arrest of around 1,000 immigration offenders, including 717 failed asylum seekers.

  While officers routinely record the details of persons questioned in their individual notebooks, these data are not collated centrally.
  1407W
  The Government have made it clear that they are taking a robust and determined approach to tackling illegal immigration, and removing from the UK those who no longer have a legal right to be here.

  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will set out the immigration figures for each of the past 14 months. [184255]

  Mr. Browne
  Latest available figures on international migration are given in the table.

  Total international migration1: United Kingdom, 2001 to 2002 Thousand

  Year and quarter2

  Inflow

  All migration Outflow

  Balance

  2001

  480

  308

  172

  Of which

  March

  100

  60

  40

  June

  113

  65

  48

  September

  178

  103

  75

  December

  89

  81

  8

  2002

  513

  359

  153

  Of which:

  March

  105

  75

  30

  June

  117

  81

  36

  September

  197

  124

  73

  December

  95

  80

  14

  1Figures are estimates derived from the International Passenger Survey and other sources?these are Home Office data on asylum seekers and their dependants and estimates of migration between the UK and the Irish Republic from the Irish Central Statistical Office.

  2 Quarters are labelled by their final month, e.g. March denotes the quarter January to March.

  Source:

  National Statistics (www.statistics.gov.uk).

  Monthly data is not available.

  Italian Identity Cards
  Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment the Government plans to conduct of the new Italian identity card scheme. [183909]

  Mr. Browne
  Identity card schemes have existed in most EU countries for many years.

  Home Office officials have had detailed discussions with colleagues involved in the operation of identity card schemes in Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany and lessons learned have informed the development of policy where appropriate.

  Comprehensive information has been supplied by each of the EU member states on the operation of their card schemes. The results of this work comprise Annex 3 of "Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud: A Consultation" (CM 5557) published in July 2002.

  Home Office officials have met Italian counterparts on two occasions to discuss their experience on the design and implementation of identity cards schemes and we will continue to work closely with colleagues in EU member states.

  Non-EU Students
  Mr. Wiggin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to make it easier for non-EU students to work in the UK after they have graduated provided they have graduated from a UK university, with particular reference to residency criteria. [186817]

  Mr. Browne
  The Science and Engineering Graduate Scheme (SEGS), to be introduced on 29 October 2004, will allow non-EU graduates from UK universities who have graduated in specific science and engineering courses to apply to remain in the UK to seek work.

  Participants on SEGS will be required to show that they have achieved a degree at 2:2 or above in such courses and that they can maintain and accommodate themselves without recourse to public funds. Participants will be granted leave for one year and will be able to live and work in any region of the UK. Participants on the scheme will be allowed to switch, at any time during the year, to other managed migration categories provided they meet the criteria.

  In summer 2005, a further pilot scheme (Fresh Talent: Scotland) should be introduced to allow third country national graduates from Scottish universities to apply to stay in Scotland and look for work for up to two years.

  November 9th Society
  Mr. Dismore
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the activities of the November 9th Society. [186293]

  Fiona Mactaggart
  The Government condemn any individual or group which promotes racism. The Home Office is currently developing a cross-Government community cohesion and race equality strategy, due to be launched later this year, which will among other matters address how we can most effectively respond to the threat from political extremism. It is for the police and Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether to prosecute any alleged offences.

  Mr. Dismore
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will take action to close the website of the November 9th Society; and if he will make a statement. [186294]

  Fiona Mactaggart
  The Government condemn those who use the internet to distribute racist material of this kind. The law on incitement to racial hatred applies to material on the internet which comes within our jurisdiction. It is for the police to investigate complaints and decide whether there is evidence that website operators have committed offences

  The Internet Watch Foundation serves as a central point of contact for those who wish to report examples of inflammatory material on the internet.

  The Government are currently working on an e-crime strategy which will include consideration of racist material on the internet.
  1409W

  Overseas Students
  Chris Grayling
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the cost is to overseas students from(a) new entrant countries in the EU and (b) non-EU countries of registering to work in the UK during their studies. [183795]

  Mr. Browne
  Students from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia who take up employment in the UK and who are subject to the Worker Registration Scheme are required to pay a one-off fee of £50 to register with the Home Office. After 12 months in continuous legal employment in the UK they can work here without registration.

  Students from non-EU countries can legally work part-time alongside their studies, without reporting the details to the Home Office, provided they continue to satisfy the requirements of their stay as students.

  Passports
  Mr. Bill O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when biometric passports will be available to British passport holders to allow entry into the US under the visa waiver scheme; and if he will make a statement. [186367]

  Mr. Browne
  US Congress have recently approved legislation which extends the target date by which participating members of the US visa waiver scheme should be producing biometric passports to October 2005. British citizens will be able to travel to the States under current arrangements until that date provided they hold machine readable passports.

  It is planned to commence the introduction of biometric enabled British Passports in late 2005.

  Regulation of Investigatory, Powers Act
  Harry Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department for what reason he has not acted upon the recommendation by the Chief Surveillance Commissioner that certain NHS bodies should be excluded from Schedule 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000; and if he will make a statement. [185958]

  Caroline Flint
  The conduct of directed surveillance by NHS bodies has been reviewed by the Counter Fraud and Security Management Service (CFSMS), the Special Health Authority responsible for operational matters relating to the prevention, detection and investigation of fraud and corruption and the management of security in the NHS. The review has concluded that the CFSMS should authorise and undertake directed surveillance on behalf of NHS bodies. Consequently the Government will be laying an Order to amend the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, in line with the recommendation of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner.

  speed cameras
  Mr. Love
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many motories were(a) fined and (b) banned from driving as a result of the evidence of
  1410W
  speed cameras in each of the last five years; how much money was raised from fines in each year; and if he will make a statement. [187001]

  Caroline Flint
  Available information for England and Wales on the number of fixed penalties and court fines ordered to be paid and on the number of persons disqualified from driving for the offence of 'speeding detected by camera' in 1998 to 2002 is shown in tables A and B respectively. Data for 2003 will not be available until the autumn.

  Information on the revenue raised from speeding fines is not available centrally.

  Table A: Fines and, fixed penalty data for speeding offences detected by camera1,2, England and Wales, 1998–2002

  Court proceedings3

  Fixed penalties

  Number of fines

  Total amount of fine (£)

  Average fine (£)

  Number of tickets4

  Estimated revenue (£)5

  1998

  25,500

  2,928,000

  115

  338,800

  13,552,000

  1999

  32,300

  3,434,000

  106

  423,000

  16,920,000

  2000

  31,800

  3,400,000

  107

  599,200

  25,965,000

  2001

  40,500

  4.510.000

  111

  877,500

  52,650,000

  2002

  46,300

  4.778,000

  103

  1.135,000

  68,122,000

  1Automatic cameras until 1998, all camera types from 1999.

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

  3 Includes 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 penalty was raised to £60.

  Table B: Number of persons disqualified1 from driving at all courts for speeding offences detected by camera1,3, England and Wales, 1998–2002

  Number

  1998

  1,300

  1999

  1,300

  2000

  1,400

  2001

  2,000

  2002

  1,800

  1 Excludes persons disqualified under s.35 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (penalty points system).

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

  3 Automatic cameras until 1998, all camera types from 1999.

  Terrorism Offences
  Bob Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many deportations have taken place under the Terrorism Act 2000 in each year for which records are available. [187597]

  Mr. Browne
  The Terrorism Act 2000 does not contain any provisions relating to deportation and there is no power under that Act to effect deportation.

ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS

  Abandoned Vehicles
  Chris Ruane
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many abandoned cars were removed by(a) police and (b) local authorities in each local authority area in

  1411W
  England in each of the past 10 years, broken down by region in descending order according to the biggest percentage drop in local authority area. [186099]

  Mr. Morley
  Estimates for numbers of abandoned vehicles removed and destroyed are compiled from the Defra Municipal Waste Management Survey for 2000–01, 2001–02 and 2002–03 and the Defra Abandoned Vehicle Survey for 2002–03. Estimates for vehicles removed by the police are not available. It is not practicable to sort the estimates due to the non-responses in certain years.

  Figures for England broken down by region have been placed in the Library of the House.

  Animal Rights Organisations (Criminal Behaviour)
  Mr. Whittingdale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what measures the Government are taking to prevent criminal behaviour by animal rights organisations against lobster fishermen. [187429]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  Responsibility for dealing with these matters lies with the police authorities to whom all incidences of criminal behaviour or threatened criminal behaviour should be reported.

  Environment Public Bodies
  Joyce Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the budget of(a) the Environment Agency, (b) the Countryside Agency and (c) English Nature in the North East region of England was in each of the last three years. [186431]

  Alun Michael
  The budget for the Environment Agency's North East Region, which comprises the North East Region of England and most of the Yorkshire and Humber Region, was £83.8 million in 2001–02, £95.9 million in 2002–03 and £95.2 million in 2003–04. The Countryside Agency operates on a national rather than a regional basis, and figures for regional expenditure are not readily available. English Nature's budget for the North East Region of England was £1.8 million in 2001–02, £2.2 million in 2002–03 and –2.6 million in 2003–04.

  EU Bycatch Regulation
  Mr. Sanders
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what percentage of fishing effort in UK fisheries identified by the EU Bycatch Regulation is conducted by vessels under 12 metres in length. [184896]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The new Council Regulation to address cetacean bycatch requires the use of `pingers' on vessels of 12 metres and over in ICES divisions VI Id, e, f, g, h and j when using bottom-set gillnets or entangling nets. In ICES Area IV and division IIIa, the pinger requirement applies to vessels of 12 metres and over using bottom-set gillnets or entangling nets where the combination of net lengths used does not exceed 400 metres or where the mesh size used is greater than or equal to 220mm. The data is not available to identify the number of vessels falling in or out of the latter 1412W
  categories; it is only possible to identify the total number of vessels using bottom-set gillnets and entangling nets in the areas concerned.

  Bearing in mind these caveats and using 2003 fishing data, the proportion of UK fishing effort (days at sea) conducted by vessels under 12 metres and exempt from the pinger requirements of the EU bycatch regulation would be approximately 80 per cent.

  Farm Subsidies
  Mr. Liddell-Grainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what decision has been taken by her Department regarding the level of voluntary modulation on agricultural payments. [186558]

  Alun Michael
  In her written statement to the House on 22 July, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State, announced overall modulation rates for England of 5 per cent. and 10 per cent. in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The overall modulation rate comprises two separate elements: compulsory EU-wide modulation, set at 3 per cent. in 2005 and 4 per cent. in 2006; and an additional national element which has been set at 2 per cent. in 2005 and 6 per cent. in 2006.

  Percentage

  EU Rate

  Additional national rate

  Overall rate

  2005

  3.0

  2.0

  5.0

  2006

  4.0

  6.0

  10

  While the compulsory EU modulation rate for 2007 and beyond has been set at 5 per cent., the additional national rate, and hence the overall modulation rate, has yet to be determined.

  The proceeds of modulation in 2005 and 2006 will be match funded by the Exchequer and used principally to finance schemes to deliver environmental enhancement and positive management of our countryside.

  Fast Food and Litter Partnerships
  Chris Ruane
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment. Food and Rural Affairs if she will make a statement on the pilot projects dealing with fast food and litter partnerships; and if she will make a statement. [187571]

  Alun Michael
  In fuly 2002, Defra asked ENCAMS (Environmental Campaigns) to devise a voluntary code of practice for the fay t food industry aimed at improving local environmental quality, and the instances of fast food waste that becomes litter in rural and urban areas.

  In November 2003, McDonald's and the Local Government Association (LGA) formed a pioneer partnership to assist local authorities in improving the quality of local environments and public spaces. The scheme was devised to support the Voluntary Code of Best Environmental Practice for the Fast Food Industry.

  The pilot scheme, covering a mix of rural and urban areas, is currently running in Sheffield, Maidstone, and Taunton and Deane. McDonald's and the LGA

  1413W
  intention is to promote Defra's proposed code within each local authority, targeting all quick service restaurants in the area. The code sets out a framework for joint action between fast food businesses and land managers, and amongst others, encourages "litter patrols", the provision of litter bins and anti-littering signage.

  The work on the pilots has helped to inform our further work on the code in preparation for a formal launch later in the year, with analysis of the scheme's success planned in due course.

  Fly-tipping
  Harry Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how her Department's fly-tipping strategy has affected the residents of Leyton and Wanstead. [187745]

  Mr. Morley
  Defra published a consultation document entitled the Fly-Tipping Strategy in February 2004. It proposed a range of measures that aimed to ensure that enforcement against fly-tipping is as effective as possible. The strategy proposed to move towards dealing with fly-tipping in a more pro-active preventative manner rather than focusing just on expensive clearance.

  The measures proposed in the strategy would give local authorities and the Environment Agency more effective powers for dealing wit a fly-tipping, which should lead to a better response to the blight of illegally dumped waste. Benefits will also extend to local residents by moving towards cleaner, safer, and greener public spaces and reducing the damaging effects of fly-tipping on the environment.

  The Fly-Tipping Strategy responses are currently being analysed and have fed in to development of a further set of options in the current Clean Neighbourhoods consultation.

  Hazardous Waste
  Sue Doughty
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the Environment Agency's(a) procedure and (b) resources will he to ensure that all hazardous waste producers, including those producing small and sporadic quantities of hazardous waste, (i) are aware of and (ii) comply with the requirement to register as a hazardous waste producer. [187173]

  Mr. Morley
  Our proposals for new regulations for hazardous waste, including the proposed requirement for hazardous waste producers to notify their premises to the Environment Agency, were issued for consultation on 30 July. The consultation will run until 29 October and during this time, the Environment Agency will consider both how to make producers aware of their obligations and how to ensure compliance. The consultation paper seeks views on a general coming into force date fcr the regulations of July 2005, with the possibility of sites producing hazardous waste being notified fro n 1 April 2005.
  1414W

  Household Waste
  Mr. Kidney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of the environmental implications of introducing variable charges for the collection of domestic household waste. [187278]

  Mr. Morley
  "Waste not, Want not—A strategy for tackling the waste problem in England" (Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, 27 November 2002) recommended that local authorities which wish to take forward variable charging or household incentive schemes to help reduce waste volumes and increase recycling should be allowed to do so.

  In line with their response to the Strategy Unit report, the Government has undertaken further work, in consultation with local authorities, on the practicalities of operating schemes and how potential disadvantages could be overcome. This work also analysed international experience of such schemes, including their impact on reducing waste and increasing recycling. In light of this work, the Government is reviewing their position.

  Radio Barcodes (Waste Disposal)
  Joan Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what discussions she has had with retailers about the final waste disposal of radio barcodes contained within consumer goods. [187621]

  Mr. Morley
  I have not discussed the final waste disposal of radio barcodes contained within consumer goods with retailers.

  Recycling
  Mr. Simon Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what progress has been made towards meeting recycling targets of 25 per cent. of household waste by 2005. [187011]

  Mr. Morley
  All local authorities in England have been set challenging Statutory Performance Standards for 2003–04 and 2005–06 for the recycling and composting of household waste. Individual local authority targets combine to meet national targets as set out in Waste Strategy 2000 to recycle or compost 17 per cent. of household waste by 2003–04, and 25 per cent. by 2005–06.

  In 2002–03, the household recycling and composting rate for England was 14.5 per cent., a 2 per cent. increase over 2001–02. This percentage rise represents a significant improvement compared with previous annual increases, which had tended to be around 1 per cent. (as measured by the Municipal Waste Management Survey).

  The most recent evidence, offered by local authorities' unaudited Best Value Performance Indicator data for 2003–04, suggests that the 2003–04 national target of 17 per cent. will be met. The national target for 2005–06 remains a significant challenge but an achievable goal if the current rate of progress is maintained.
  1415W
  Mr. Webb
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what steps she is taking to encourage the recycling of plastic; and if she will list those local authorities which operate(a) kerbside and (b) other plastic recycling schemes.

  Mr. Morley
  [holding answer 8 September 2004]: All local authorities in England have been set challenging Statutory Performance Standards for 2003–04 and 2005–06 for the recycling and composting of household waste. The Government do not specify which materials local authorities are required to collect. The Statutory Performance Standards are weight based so initially local authorities are likely to recycle heavier materials. However, as recycling targets become increasingly demanding, local authorities are expected to target lighter materials such as plastics.

  To make the recycling of plastic more economically attractive the Government-funded Waste Resources and Action Programme (WRAP) has developed a programme to expand markets for plastic recyclate. As a result of WRAP activity since 2001 in excess of 35,000 additional tonnes of plastic recycling capacity per year is either operational, under construction or otherwise committed.

  According to the Municipal Waste Management Survey 2002–03 the following local authorities operated (a) a kerbside collection scheme, or (b) other plastic recycling schemes.

  Local authorities operating a kerbside plastic collection scheme in 2002–03

  Adur District Council

  Alnwick District Council

  Arun District Council

  Aylesbury Vale District Council

  Babergh District Council

  Barking and Dagenham LB

  Bath and North East Somerset Council

  Berwick-upon-Tweed Borough Council

  Bexley LB

  Blaby District Council

  Blyth Valley Borough Council

  Bolton MBC

  Bradford City MDC MBC

  Braintree District Council

  Breckland BC

  Bristol City Council

  Bromley LB

  Broxtowe Borough Council

  Castle Morpeth Borough Council

  Charnwood Borough Council

  Chelmsford Borough Council

  Chester City Council

  Chichester District Council

  Colchester Borough Council

  Dacorum BC

  Dartford Borough Council

  Daventry DC

  East Hampshire District Council

  East Lindsey District Council

  1416W

  East Northamptonshii e Council

  Eastleigh Borough Council

  Elmbridge Borough Council

  Exeter City Council

  Fenland District Council

  Gloucester City Council

  Gosport Borough Council

  Gravesham Borough Council

  Hart District Council

  Havant Borough Council

  Hillingdon LB

  Horsham District Council

  Kerrier District Council

  Kings Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council

  Kingston-upon-Thames LB

  Lancaster City Council

  Leeds City Council MBC

  Leicester City Council

  Lewes District Council

  Lichfield District Council

  Lincoln City Council

  London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

  Manchester City Council

  Melton Borough Council

  Mid Bedfordshire District Council

  Mid Devon District Council

  Mid Sussex District Council

  Milton Keynes Council

  New Forest District Council

  Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council

  North Devon District Council

  North Dorset District Council

  North East Lincolnshire Council

  North Kesteven District Council

  North West Leicestershire District Council

  Oadby and Wigston Borough Council

  Oldham MBC

  Pendle Borough Council

  Plymouth City Council

  Poole BC

  Purbeck District Council

  Reading BC

  Redbridge LB

  Rochdale MBC

  Rossendale Borough Council

  Sevenoaks District Council

  South Hams District Council

  South Holland District Council

  South Kesteven DC

  South Norfolk Council

  South Northamptonshire District Council

  South Oxfordshire District Council

  Southend-on-Sea BC

  St. Albans City and District Council

  Stafford BC

  Stroud District Council

  Swale Borough Council

  Teesdale District Council

  1417W

  Teignbridge DC

  Thanet District Council

  Three Rivers District Council

  Torbay Council

  Torridge District Council

  Wellingborough BC

  Weymouth and Portland Borough Council

  Worthing Borough Council

  Wychavon District Council

  Local authorities operating a non-kerbside plastic recycling scheme

  Adur District Council

  Alnwick District Council

  Arun District Council

  Aylesbury Vale District Council

  Babergh District Council

  Barking and Dagenham LB

  Bath and North East Somerset Council

  Berwick-upon-Tweed Borough Council

  Bexley LB

  Blaby District Council

  Blyth Valley Borough Council

  Bolton MBC

  Bradford City MDC MBC

  Braintree District Council

  Breckland BC

  Bristol City Council

  Bromley LB

  Broxtowe Borough Council

  Castle Morpeth Borough Council

  Charnwood Borough Council

  Chelmsford Borough Council

  Chester City Council

  Chichester District Council

  Colchester Borough Council

  Dacorum BC

  Dartford Borough Council

  Daventry DC

  East Hampshire District Council

  East Lindsey District Council

  East Northamptonshire Council

  Eastleigh Borough Council

  Elmbridge Borough Council

  Exeter City Council

  Fenland District Council

  Gloucester City Council

  Gosport Borough Council

  Gravesham Borough Council

  Hart District Council

  Havant Borough Council

  Hillingdon LB

  Horsham District Council

  Kerrier District Council

  Kings Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council

  Kingston-upon-Thames LB

  Lancaster City Council

  Leeds City Council MBC

  Leicester City Council

  1418W

  Lewes District Council

  Lichfield District Council

  Lincoln City Council

  London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

  Manchester City Council

  Melton Borough Council

  Mid Bedfordshire District Council

  Mid Devon District Council

  Mid Sussex District Council

  Milton Keynes Council

  New Forest District Council

  Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council

  North Devon District Council

  North Dorset District Council

  North East Lincolnshire Council

  North Kesteven District Council

  North West Leicestershire District Council

  Oadby and Wigston Borough Council

  Oldham MBC

  Pendle Borough Council

  Plymouth City Council

  Poole BC

  Purbeck District Council

  Reading BC

  Redbridge LB

  Rochdale MBC

  Rossendale Borough Council

  Sevenoaks District Council

  South Hams District Council

  South Holland District Council

  South Kesteven DC

  South Norfolk Council

  South Northamptonshire District Council

  South Oxfordshire District Council

  Southend-on-Sea BC

  St. Albans City and District Council

  Stafford BC

  Stroud District Council

  Swale Borough Council

  Teesdale District Council

  Teignbridge DC

  Thanet District Council

  Three Rivers District Council

  Torbay Council

  Torridge District Council

  Wellingborough BC

  Weymouth and Portland Borough Council

  Worthing Borough Council

  Wychavon District Council

  Shellfish
  Mr. Whittingdale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (1) when she expects to agree a management plan for scallops, crabs and lobsters in the Western Channel; [187425]
  1419W
  (2) what measures she is taking to assess (a) historic shellfish landings that will form the basis of a management plan and (b) current shellfish landings. [187426]

  Mr. Bradshaw
  The European Commission indicated in October 2003 that it would bring forward proposals for a management plan for scallops, lobsters and crabs in the Channel. It has not yet done so and we are not aware that such proposals are imminent.

  Data on shellfish landings by UK vessels and into UK ports are collected annually and published in the United Kingdom Fisheries Statistics series. They are not collected specifically for the purpose of agreeing management plans.

  Environment Agency
  Norman Baker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what back-office improvements will be made within the Environment Agency to achieve the efficiency savings announced in the spending review. [185893]

  Mr. Morley
  The agency is developing an efficiency strategy which builds on its current targets for efficiency savings and addresses operational changes in the organisation. The strategy will reflect the spending review announcement. The key activities that underpin the strategy include:Review of property and facilities owned and leased by the agency;
  Improving procurement: reducing the unit cost of goods and services through aggregation of services;
  Transactional services: ensuring that the handling of inquiries and invoicing is handled in the most efficient way;
  Productive time: examining new ways of working and reducing the scale of support services;
  Implementation of the National Document Imaging Strategy: rationalising photocopiers, printer and fax machines throughout the agency;
  Implementation of the Financial and Human Resources management information system (IBIS): an activity based recording system that will provide management information on the use of agency resources across the business.

  Waste Incineration
  Mr. Simon Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether there are economic disincentives for waste-to-energy incinerators to burn source separated waste.[187069]

  Mr. Morley
  There are no direct economic disincentives for waste-to-energy incinerators to burn source separated waste. Incentives to recycle source separated waste exist and these act as indirect disincentives to burn source separated waste. Examples of these incentives include local authority statutory performance standards for recycling and composting and the recycling targets set out in the European directive on packaging and packaging waste.

  Government announced in Budget 2002 that the case for an economic instrument for incineration would be considered. As there is a range of issues associated with developing an effective waste management and disposal mix, the Government commissioned a study to identify the environmental and health impacts of all
  1420W
  waste management and disposal options (http://www.defra.goy.uk/environment/waste/health-effects/health-report.pdf). A second, related study seeking to identify the economic values of the impacts and pollutants identified in the first study is currently under way.

  The case for using economic instruments for incineration will be considered in light of this work and in consultation with Dther stakeholders.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  AIDS Vaccine Research
  Dr. Tonge
  To Ask the Secretary of State for International Development (1) what resources he plans to commit to AIDS vaccine research in the next 10 years; [187466]

  (2) what recent discussions he has had with the pharmaceutical industry regarding funding and facilities for the production of AIDS vaccine once developed. [187467]

  Hilary Benn
  In line with the recently published DFID Research Funding Strategy, we are committed to the global effort to find a vaccine for AIDS. DFID has committed £14 million in support of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) up to the end of this year and I recently met Dr. Seth Berkeley, who is president and chief executive the of IAVI, to discuss its work. The UK is also committed to work with our G8 colleagues. DFID supports the aims of the Global HIV and AIDS Vaccine Enterprise and are developing areas for UK engagement with the enterprise including potential financial support during the UKS G8 Presidency. Over the coming months DFID will be considering the resource framework for the three years commencing April 2005, including further support for IAVI and support for the Global Vaccine Enterprise.

  In addition to this direct support, the UK has tax relief for investments in research into vaccines and other medicines for HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The Vaccines Reseal ch Relief is effective on expenditure from April 2003. It is too early to report on the success of the Vaccines Research Relief since company tax returns are retrospective in nature. The first claims are not expected until later this year. However, a programme of evaluation will be implemented once data begins to be received. It is important to bear in mind the long-term nature of research decisions and outcomes and the fact that the impact of the relief is likely to appear over the medium to long term.

  DFID officials have been meeting regularly with pharmaceutical companies and business associations as part of our work on increasing access to medicines in developing countries. These meetings have dealt with issues such as the a affordability of existing medicines and other health technologies, and the need for increased research and development into new technologies—including vaccines for diseases disproportionately affecting developing countries.
  1421W

  Beijing + 10
  Joan Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what his plans are for his Department's involvement in the Beijing Platform for Action known as Beijing + 10. [187534]

  Hilary Benn
  The review of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action will he an integral part of the UK Government's work on gender equ day in 2005. The 49th Session of the Commission for the Status for Women (CSW) at the United Nations in March 2005 will review and appraise the implementation of Beijing over the last 10 years. A cross-Whitehall UK Government delegation will actively participate at CSW, working to ensure that the gains achieved at Beijing in 1995 are upheld. DFID has already begun contributing to this process, completing a United Nations questionnaire on progress made in the UK since 1995, which will feed into the UN Secretary-General's report.

  DFID is also working closely with the European Union Gender Group and other donors through the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee's (DAC) Gender Network, to develop a contribution to the review. We are attending regional preparatory meetings and working with civil society organisations. These include the UK Gender and Development Network, to whom DFID has provided support on a study examining the links between the Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

  Gender equality is relevant to the achievement of all the MDGs, not only that specifically aimed at gender equality and the empowerment of women. The review will be an opportunity to underline the continuing relevance of the Beijing Platform for Action to the achievement of gender equality.

  Ref.

  Project title

  Contract issued value (£)

  Value plus any amendments/extensions (£)

  Contract let

  19986930

  Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF): Advice and Guidance on the Build-Operate Train Tran

  426,749

  491,520

  28 April 1999

  19997568

  Construction Adviser

  29,090

  66,290

  10 May 1999

  19997201

  Malawi Haulage Costs Study

  102,590

  110,840

  13 May 1999

  19999064

  Kharkiv Solid Waste Management: Ukraine

  49,947

  49,947

  3 November 1999

  19999310

  Drainage Engineer

  89,495

  89,495

  20 December 1999

  20000009

  World Bank Urban Transport Strategy Review—Review of Experience in Competiton in Urban Public Trans

  29,762

  29,762

  7 January 2000

  20000012

  World Bank Urban Transport Strategy Review—Review of Urban Mass Transit in Developing Countries

  39,987

  39,987

  7 January 2000

  19999349

  Slope Stability/Geotechnical Engineer

  22,780

  22,780

  19 January 2000

  19999283

  Construction of Bhairab Bridge: Phase 2

  2,484,879

  6,103,093

  7 February 2000

  20000182

  Professional Advice and Specialist Human Resources: Transport (Halcrow)

  0

  0

  9 February 2000

  20000203

  Professional Advice and Specialist Human Resources: Energy (Halcrow Gilbert)

  0

  0

  17 February 2000

  20000160

  Provision of Professional Advice and Specialist Human Resources (Halcrow)

  0

  0

  2 March 2000

  20000373

  Kharkiv Solid Waste Management—Ukraine

  7,111

  7,111

  7 March 2000

  19999353

  Philippines National Road Bridges Project

  562,525

  562,525

  16 August 2000

  20001267

  Municipal Utilities Development Programme (MUDP)

  98,921

  98,921

  12 September 2000

  20001218

  Strengthening Capacity in Environmental Project Development

  547,455

  565,510

  3 November 2000

  1422W

  Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how his Department's policy on taking risks of natural and man-made disasters into account will change following the report by his Department's Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department. [186721]

  Hilary Benn
  A reduction in the impact of natural and man-made disasters is an important precondition for poverty reduction in many countries.

  DFID is in the process of reviewing how we might step up our work in this area. A scoping study, commissioned by DFID's Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department and undertaken by the Overseas Development Group, will soon report. The study will examine the relationship between development and disasters so as to help the development community and DFID better understand how we might tackle disasters risk most effectively. It will also consider how to better integrate disaster risk reduction into development. We intend to develop a forward strategy for DFID on disaster reduction in the light of the findings of this study. The findings will be disseminated to interested parties.

  Departmental Contracts
  Ann McKechin
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many contracts were let by his Department and agencies for which he is responsible to Halcrow Group Ltd. for the financial years(a) 2003–04, (b) 2002–03, (c) 2001–02, (d) 2000–01 and (e) 1999–2000; what the value of each contract was; and what the nature of each contract was. [188311]

  Hilary Benn
  DFID's headquarters has issued the following contracts to the Halcrow Group Ltd. since 1999. A small number of low-value contracts may also have issued from DFID's overseas offices, but information on this is not held centrally, and could be provided only by incurring a disproportionate cost.
  1423W

  Ref.

  Project title

  Contract issued value (£)

  Value plus any amendments/extensions (£)

  Contract let

  20001831

  World Bank Toolkits for Privatisation Participation in Water and Sanitation

  10,507

  10,507

  6 November 2000

  20012053

  Integrating Gender, Poverty Reduction and Energy

  21,077

  21,077

  5 January 2001

  20001956

  WB/GEF Project (Rostov): EIA

  274,000

  275,000

  11 January 2001

  20012593

  Guyana Water Sector Programme—Drafting of TORS for a Strategic/Environmental Assessment of the Guy

  1,536

  1,536

  19 April 2001

  20012771

  Municipal Utilities Development Programme

  46,751

  46,751

  17 July 2001

  20013244

  Kosovo—Pristina University Hospital—Assessment Water and Sanitation

  27,080

  27,080

  9 October 2001

  20012518

  Gerald's Park Airstrip Consultancy

  262,641

  458,607

  25 March 2002

  20023903

  Guyana Water: Management Contract—Conflict of Interest

  968

  968

  10 June 2002

  20034599

  Gerald's Park Airstrip Consultancy—Phase 2

  355,081

  477,786

  21 March 2003

  20034654

  Advice to IUDD in the Engineering Sector—Halcrow Group

  0

  0

  31 March 2003

  200304865

  SUSMAQ Output to Purpose Review

  16,370

  17,870

  2 July 2003

  200304923

  Recovery and Infrastructure Group (RIP)

  783,962

  2,512,757

  11 July 2003

  200305075

  Set up of the Coalition Provincial Authority South (CPA-S)

  928,994

  1,611,156

  12 September 2003

  200305122

  Transport Advice to DFID'S Engineering KAR Programme

  29,980

  57,433

  30 September 2003

  200405398

  South East Asia Access for Rural Poor Programme

  132,508

  229,820

  3 March 2004

  Education (Gender Disparity)
  Norman Baker
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment he has made of the impact on girls' school enrolment of increased access to sanitation; and how this is taken into account in the design of the programmes funded by his Department in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goal to eliminate gender disparity in education. [188058]

  Hilary Benn
  DFID's assessment of this relationship is two-fold. First, access to basic facilities such as school toilets, safe drinking water, clean surroundings and information on hygiene all improve the quality of the school environment and result in better learning outcomes for girls. Provision of basic facilities ensures universal basic education and results in increased enrolment of girls in schools. Basic sanitation for girls in particular, can lead to lower dropout rate for girls, especially at puberty. For example, in Bangladesh, a school sanitation and hygiene education programme reported to increase girls' attendance rates by 11 per cent.

  Second, parents are more likely to send girls to school when they have ready access to safe, drinking water and girls are no longer required to collect water from distant water pumps.

  An example of how this assessment has been used in DFID's work is in Sudan. As part of its support for the peace process in Sudan, DFID has provided approximately £2 million to assist the United Nations Children's Fund's (UNICEF) education programmes in the conflict affected areas of the country, providing books and materials to over 2,000 primary schools and supporting the construction of water and sanitation facilities.

  Gaza Strip
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment he has made of the humanitarian situation in the town of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip. [187517]
  1424W
  Hilary Benn
  The Israeli operation "Forward Shield" in Beit Hanoun has led to extensive damage and destruction to property, including agricultural land and infrastructure, in one of Gaza's most important agricultural regions. The levelling of a further 17 per cent. of total arable land in the last two months adds to the debilitating impact on the livelihoods and food security of Palestinians in the area. Over 50 per cent. of total agricultural land in the area has now been uprooted since September 2000. As a result of residential buildings being destroyed, 145 people have been made homeless and another 580 people have had their homes damaged. Damage to public property has led to breaks in the water, power, sewerage and road networks. In addition, 17 privately owned water-wells were destroyed with consequences for access to drinking water and agricultural use. DFID funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency provides support for affected people in the area.

  Sudan
  Mr. Liddell-Grainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent meetings he has had with non-governmental organisations to discuss the humanitarian situation in Darfur, Sudan. [186440]

  Hilary Benn
  During my visit to Sudan in June, I met with representatives from non-governmental organisations in Khartoum and Darfur. Since my return, I have been in correspondence with several NGOs including Oxfam, Amnesty International and Save the Children UK. Officials from the joint FCO/ DFID Sudan Unit hold frequent meetings with NGO representatives in Khartoum and London.

  The Foreign Secretary also met with NGO representatives in Khartoum and Darfur during his visit to Sudan in August. He also met with representatives in London prior to his departure and following his return.

  Mr. Liddell-Grainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent representations he has received about the humanitarian situation in Darfur, Sudan. [186473]
  1425W
  Hilary Benn
  I am gravely concerned about the situation in Darfur, Sudan and am keeping in close contact with developments. I am in regular dialogue about the humanitarian situation in Darfur with UN agencies, and Development Ministers in other donor Governments. I am also in regular correspondence with the NGO community. I receive numerous letters on Darfur from Members of this House, as well as from members of the public.

  Mr. Liddell-Grainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will make a statement on the humanitarian situation in(a) Sudan and (b) the Darfur region. [186478]

  Hilary Benn
  Sudan is a country in the midst of a chronic complex emergency. UN social indicators continue to be among the lowest in the world. Large areas of the country outside the more affluent area of Khartoum continue to need life-saving and life-sustaining assistance. Continuing conflict in many areas has resulted in persistently high levels of poverty as agricultural production is disrupted and land taken out of cultivation due to instability.

  With the expectation of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in the coming months, humanitarian needs are likely to increase as the needs of returning internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees from the conflict between the north and south of Sudan add to those affected by natural disaster.

  In Southern Sudan, 23 years of conflict has created critical food insecurity, an almost total lack of primary health care outside of what is provided by NGOs, and crisis levels of mortality and morbidity across the area. The conflict is estimated to have displaced 4 million people out of a total population of 5 million, some of whom are now refugees and some are IDPs. (A breakdown of this is provided in the table). The critical issue for the humanitarian community in the south is ensuring a stable and sustainable environment to help displaced people to return home. While the Comprehensive Peace Agreement holds out the prospect of peace in Southern Sudan, fighting continues, with an outbreak of militia activity in the Shilluk Kingdom, which has displaced 50,000 people since March 2004.

  Other areas of concern in Sudan include the Red Sea State in Northern Sudan, where the population of 700,00 has suffered persistent drought and repeated crop failures since 1988. The rainfall and predicted agricultural production for 2004 is better than the last few years, but due to the prolonged nature of the crisis, a large proportion of the general population is likely to remain short of food and to require food and nutritional assistance for some time to come.

  Summary of Sudanese IDPs end refugees

  Number

  Source

  IDPs

  Greater Khartoum

  2,000,000

  Norwegian Refugee Council, 2004 and UN OCHA, 2004

  Northern Sudan (not Khartoum or Darfur)

  362,000

  Darfur

  1,000,000+

  Southern Sudan

  750,000+

  Total

  4,112,000

  1426W

  Sudanese refugees

  Uganda

  223,000

  UN High Commissioner for Regugee (UNHCR), 2004

  Chad

  110,000

  Ethiopia

  90,000

  Democratic Republic of the Congo

  70,000

  Kenya

  68,000

  Central African Republic

  36,000

  Egypt

  30,000

  Eritrea

  660

  Total

  627,660

  Refugees in Sudan

  Total from Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and others

  270,000

  UNHCR, 2004

  The humanitarian situation in Darfur remains dire and urgent action is needed on all sides. Over 1.2 million people have been internally displaced in Darfur, and a further 200,000 have fled to Chad. The needs are enormous. Security in the camps has improved, but reports of attacks continue outside the camps, and IDPs, refugees and host communities in Darfur and Eastern Chad remain vulnerable as inter-tribal fighting continues and the levels of banditry and general insecurity remain. IDPs and refugees still lack adequate water and sanitation and many do not have adequate shelter against the rain and extreme conditions. Outbreaks of disease are a serious concern (a hepatitis E outbreak has already been diagnosed in West Darfur). Aid agencies are scaling up delivery of assistance, but capacity constraints remain. The UN estimates that 1,000 international staff are needed to cope with the crisis; 500 are currently working in Darfur. Humanitarian access has however improved and over 45 NGOs are registered, although not all are operational. The rainy season from May to September has also resulted in logistical difficulties, with the World Food Programme (WFP) resorting to airdrops of food in some inaccessible areas. A further constraint is that resources are still limited. The UN has revised its appeal for the crisis in Darfur and now estimates that it needs a total of $530 million for Chad and Darfur, of which $255 million is unmet. The UK is the second largest bilateral donor to the humanitarian response, having allocated $62.5 million since September 2003. DFID is urging other donors to do more.

  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what steps the United Kingdom Government will take(a) to prevent the forced return or relocation of (i) internally displaced people and (ii) refugees in Sudan and (b) to ensure that local Sudanese security forces and police protect the human rights of those who have suffered. [187821]

  Mr. Mullin
  I have been asked to reply.

  The Government of Sudan on 21 August agreed with the International Organisation for Migration that the latter would determine that returns of Internally Displaced Persons or refugees are voluntary and appropriate. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on 30 August noted that the Government of Sudan was

  1427W
  abiding by this commitment. We will continue to press the Government of Sudan to fulfil their obligations to provide proper protection to the civilian population, as called for in UNSCR 1556. We are providing support for the African Union Cease-fire Commission observer mission (£2 million in addition to EU funding of €12 million), and have provided £250,000 to fund eight UN human rights monitors in Darfur.

  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will outline the role the United Kingdom Government intend to play to help peace talks between the warring parties in Darfur to lead to a just and meaningful peace that addresses the root causes of the conflict. [187822]

  Mr. Mullin
  I have been asked to reply.

  Peace talks continue in Abuja, and the parties have drawn up a humanitarian protocol, which will commit them to improved humanitarian access. Discussions are currently focusing on security issues. These talks are key. Only through political negotiation will we be able to find a sustainable solution to the conflict. The UK is offering its full support to the African Union mediators; a UK observer is present in Abuja and we are working with our international partners, including through the UN Security Council, to bring pressure to bear on the parties to the conflict to engage constructively.

  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what action the United Kingdom Government will propose to the UN following the passing of the 30 August deadline imposed by the UN on the Sudanese Government; and what the United Kingdom Government's policy towards the Sudanese Government will be. [187823]

  Mr. Mullin
  I have been asked to reply.

  I refer the hon. Member to the statement my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made to the House on 7 September 2004, Official Report, columns 615–18.

  Locusts
  Mr. Jenkins
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what action he is taking to assist the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in its request for more international aid to help tackle the locust plague in West Africa. [188103]

  Hilary Benn
  The UK committed £1.5 million ($2.7 million at current exchange rate) in August to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) international emergency appeal for the immediate control of the locust swarms. In total the international community has pledged $37 million.

  To date, the FAO has provided about $5 million to six countries and to four regional projects across West and North Africa. There is currently unspent donor money available from the international appeal. As the situation is easing in Morocco and Algeria, their governments are also redeploying resources in the south.

  The Department for International Development continues to monitor the situation closely. In the event that the situation deteriorates rapidly, the UK will
  1428W
  review its response in line with the FAO and in-country logistics capacity given the difficulty of operating in such remote areas.

  Zambia
  Joan Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development pursuant to his answer of 21 June 2004,Official Report, column 1219W, on Zambia, what specific projects have received support in the Milanzi constituency of the Eastern Province of Zambia. [187537]

  Hilary Benn
  To date, one project specific to Milanzi constituency is receiving support. A local NGO called Shade the Shame has just been granted funding of £10,000 from the DFID financed Small Grant Scheme (SGS). Shade the Shame co-ordinates the activities of women's clubs in the district and currently has 22 affiliate clubs with 1,200 members. Each club specialises in a particular income generating activity. DF1D's Grant will help purchase more equipment for the clubs, enhancing their productivity and increasing members' incomes.

  The SGS is managed by the British High Commission, and has a small budget each year. Priority is given to small-scale community enterprises that show an awareness of HIV and AIDS prevention and coping initiatives, and are environmentally sensitive.

  The Eastern Province of Zambia is the main focus for SGS funding this year. DFID is in the process of assessing a large number of applications from the Province, including some more proposals from the Milanzi constituency. Final decisions will be made by the end of September.

TREASURY

  Civil Service Redundancies
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the cost to each Government department of redundancy payments arising from staff reductions announced in the 2004 Spending Review. [187939]

  Mr. Boateng
  Individual departments are responsible for managing any efficiency related workforce changes.

  Honesty Hotline (Newhaven)
  Norman Baker
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many individuals have used the Honesty Hotline installed by HM Customs at Newhaven Port to report occasions where they may have exceeded the duty limit in each month since its installation. [188086]

  John Healey
  Customs does not maintain records on the number of calls of the type described originating at Newhaven.

  Mountain Rescue Teams
  Annabelle Ewing
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will extend the zero rating of VAT to all purchases by mountain rescue teams to other items. [188092]
  1429W
  John Healey
  Under long-standing formal agreements with our European partners, we are not able to extend or add to the current list of zero rates.

  However, as part of the wide range of VAT reliefs available to charities, rescue, or first aid charities may purchase VAT-free the specialised telecommunications, aural, visual, light enhancing or heat detecting equipment which they use. These charities are also able to buy medicines, medical equipment, ambulances and certain vehicles designed to transport disabled people free of VAT.

  Annabelle Ewing
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will introduce an across the board exemption from vehicle tax for dedicated rescue vehicles used by mountain rescue teams. [188093]

  John Healey
  Any changes to taxation policy are made by the Chancellor in the context of his Budget statement after considering relevant economic, social and environmental factors.

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

  Human Rights
  Mr. Djanogly
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs (1) how many claims have been made in UK courts citing breach of the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 in each year since passage of that Act; [188601]

  (2) how many court judgments have found a breach of the claimant's rights under the Human Rights Act 1998 in each year since passage of that Act. [188602]

  Mr. Lammy
  This information is not maintained centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Legal Services Commission
  Mr. Djanogly
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs, if he will break down by type of debt the money owed to the Legal Services Commission. [185950]

  Mr. Lammy
  [pursuant to his reply, 21 July 2004, Official Report, c. 376 W]: I listed in my previous answer the break down by type of debt of the money owed to the Legal Services Commission in 2003–04. This omitted to indicate that these figures were in thousands and the following table now reflects this.

  £000

  Contribution due from funded clients

  29,509

  Costs to be recovered

  25,431

  Statutory charge

  263,896

  Damages

  12,904

  Amounts due from suppliers

  31,718

  Recovery of defence costs orders

  1,722

  Accrued income European social fund

  82

  Prepayments and other accrued income

  404

  Total

  365,666

  1430W

  Magistrates Court Cells (Aberystwyth)
  Mr. Simon Thomas
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what assessment has been made of the health and safety standards in Aberystwyth Magistrates' Court cells. [187075]

  Mr. Leslie
  [holding answer 9 September 2004]: Custody facilities at courthouses are audited by the Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) at regular intervals against current standards of health and safety, decency and security. On 2 June 2004, a PECS audit concluded that the Aberystwyth Magistrates' Court cell complex meets basic health and safety standards.

  However, access to the cell area fails to meet the established security standards because there is no van dock and there is no direct access to the custody area from the courtrooms. In order to reduce risk the number and type of hearings with defendants in custody at the courts has been reduced. This allows the custody officers a greater degree of control over each custodial defendant brought before the Court.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  British Agricultural Products
  Mr. Wiggin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what measures she has taken to promote British agricultural products abroad. [186669]

  Mr. Mike O'Brien
  UK Trade and Investment works closely with Defra to help the British agricultural industry trade internationally. Our primary means is through the International Agriculture and Technology Centre based at Stoneleigh Park, which arranges a series of targeted events, inward and outward missions, and attendance at exhibitions where companies can improve their business prospects through international trade.

  British Energy
  Mr. Bellingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the current Government-backed rescue package for British Energy. [186330]

  Mr. Timms
  The terms of the Government's support for British Energy's restructuring plan were set out in the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on 28 November 2002,Official Report, column 488. The latest position was set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in her statement on 17 June 2004, Official Report, column 48WS.

  Designated Accommodation
  Bob Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many rooms are set aside for(a) the use of smokers, (b) worship, broken down by religion and (c) nursing mothers and pregnant women in each building and set of offices for which her Department is responsible. [187312]
  1431W
  Ms Hewitt
  The Department has 16 rooms set aside for use by smokers and three rooms set aside for worship. Each building has a first aid room that can be used by nursing mothers and pregnant women.

  Foresight Project
  Paul Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry which scientists participated in the scoping workshops that began the Foresight project on Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs in March and April. [187552]

  Ms Hewitt
  Set out as follows, is a list of the scientists who attended the two workshops my Department ran to help decide the focus for the Foresight project on Brain Science Addiction and Drugs.

  Attendee

  Organisation

  Ball, Dr. David

  Institute of Psychiatry

  Barrett, Dr. Geoff

  Dstl

  Cave, Dr. Jonathan

  University of Warwick

  Collingridge, Professor Graham

  University of Bristol

  Cox, Professor Miles

  University of Wales

  Crome, Professor liana

  Keele University

  Curran, Professor Val

  UCL

  Davis, Dr. Paul

  NHS

  Dayan, Professor Peter

  Gatsby Institute, UCL

  Drummond, Professor Colin

  St. Georges Medical School

  Duka, Dr. Theodora

  University of Sussex

  Edwards, Professor Griffith

  Institute of Psychiatry

  Everitt, Professor Barry

  University of Cambridge

  Farrell, Professor Graham

  University of Loughborough

  Godfrey, Professor Christine

  University of York

  Gossop, Professor Michael

  Institute of Psychiatry

  Hammersley, Professor Richard

  University of Essex

  Heather, Professor Nick

  University of Northumbria

  Heffernan, Dr. Dorothy

  Psychoactivate

  Ingram, Professor Colin

  University of Newcastle

  Iversen, Professor Leslie

  University of Oxford

  Iversen, Professor Susan

  University of Oxford

  Kelly, Dr. Paul

  University of Edinburgh

  Killcross, Dr. Simon

  University of Cardiff

  King, Sir David

  Chief Scientific Adviser, OST

  Marsden, Professor Charles

  University of Nottingham

  McKeganey, Professor Neil

  University of Glasgow

  Morton, Dr. Jenny

  University of Cambridge

  Mulkeen, Dr. Declan

  Medical Research Council (MRC)

  Mundy, Dr. Chris

  National Institute of Neurosciences

  Nutt, Professor David

  University of Bristol

  Orford, Professor Jim

  University of Birmingham

  Pearson, Professor Geoffrey

  Goldsmiths College

  Pembrey, Professor Marcus

  University of Bristol

  Plant, Professor Martin

  University of West of England

  Plant, Professor Moira

  University of West of England

  Robbins, Professor Trevor

  University of Cambridge

  Rose, Professor Steven

  Open University

  Rouse, Ms Ros

  ESRC

  Sahakian, Professor Barbara

  University of Cambridge

  Stephens, Professor Dai

  University of Sussex

  Stimson, Professor Gerry

  Imperial College

  Strang, Professor John

  Institute of Psychiatry

  Williams, Dr. John

  Wellcome Trust

  A copy of the key points raised at the workshops and the areas we are seeking to explore is available at www.foresight.gov.uk.
  1432W

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

  Adults with Learning Difficulties (Housing)
  Mr. Keetch
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what plans he has to amend planning guidance to local authorities on the development of residential homes for adults with learning difficulties in rural areas; and if he will make a statement. [188451]

  Keith Hill
  The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister consulted last year on a proposed update to Planning Policy Guidance Note 3: Housing (PPG3), titled "Influencing the Size, Type and Affordability of Housing". The proposed update places more emphasis, than currently in PPG3, on producing a better match between the housing planned and the needs of the community, particularly in terms of the size, type and affordability of housing, both in urban and rural areas. We intend to publish the update in the autumn.

  Local planning authorities should already be assessing the housing needs of specific groups, including adults with learning difficulties, as part of their local housing needs assessment. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is currently revising the guidance to local planning authorities on carrying out such assessments and will be publishing an updated guide by the end of the year.

  Agricultural Land Sales
  Mr. Edwards
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will extend the consultation on planning aspects of the subdivision and sale of agricultural land to include woodlands and meadows. [188080]

  Keith Hill
  The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is not aware that the same concerns over the planning issues that have arisen in the context of subdivision and subsequent sale of agricultural land apply to woodlands and meadows. Accordingly they have not specifically been included in our consideration of possible solutions.

  Brighton (Football Stadium)
  Norman Baker
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will publish the guidelines he is making available to the inspector who will consider the reconvened public inquiry into the application for a football stadium for Brighton and Hole Albion. [188087]

  Keith Hill
  My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister advised the agent to Brighton and Hove Albion FC by letter of 26 July 2004 that he wished to re-open the inquiry concerning this application. The reason given in the letter for doing so was that he wished to be further informed upon the question of the availability and suitability of seven alternative sites. That letter was copied to the main parties to the inquiry and is in the public domain.

  Norman Baker
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister pursuant to his recent announcement reopening the public inquiry into the planning application for a football stadium for Brighton and Hove Albion, whether he has accepted that there is a national need for such a stadium. [1880881]
  1433W
  Keith Hill
  The First Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has not yet reached a view on the proposal for a football stadium at Falmer. Arrangements are currently being made for the inquiry to be re-opened. A decision will be made on the basis of the material planning considerations and all the available evidence, including the report of the re-opened inquiry, once that is submitted to my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister.

  Council Tax
  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the band D council tax precept levied by the Greater London Authority (GLA) is; and how it has changed since the GLA's establishment. [188290]

  Mr. Raynsford
  The information requested is tabled as follows:

  Taxpayers living in the City of London are not required to contribute towards the Metropolitan police because the City provides its own police force. Separate figures are therefore given for the Band D council tax payable by taxpayers in London and the City.

  GLA Band D council tax for London boroughs (£)

  Percentage increase

  GLA Band D council tax for City of London (£)

  Percentage increase

  2000–011

  122.98

  —

  32.03

  —

  2001–02

  150.88

  22.7

  32.03

  0.0

  2002–03

  173.88

  15.2

  43.29

  35.2

  2003–04

  224.40

  29.1

  65.27

  50.8

  2004–05

  241.33

  7.5

  57.25

  -12.3

  1The amounts for 2000–01 were set by cental government rather than by the GLA.

  Disabled Facilities Grant Programme
  Sue Doughty
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what conclusions have resulted from the joint review with the Department of Health in the context of the Spending Review 2004 of the disabled facilities grant programme. [188184]

  Keith Hill
  Following the Spending Review, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is considering how to allocate the total resources between different programmes. The joint review with the Department of Health of the operation of the disabled facilities grant programme is on-going, and its conclusions will be announced in Spring 2005.

  Energy Crops Grant Scheme
  Mr. Gray
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what discussions he has had with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs prior to the publication of Planning Policy Statement 22 about its Energy Crops Grant scheme under the England Rural Development Programme. [188464]

  Keith Hill
  Officials in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were involved in several discussions relating to the contents of Planning Policy Statement 22 (PPS22) prior to its publication. However, as PPS22 is a1434W
  national planning policy statement, and the planting of crops, for whatever purpose, is not a planning matter, the Energy Crops Grant Scheme was not specifically discussed.

  Fly-posting
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what advice(a) the Department and (b) the Environment Agency gives to local authorities on how to deal with illegal fly-posting. [188407]

  Keith Hill
  The Government's advice to local planning authorities on how to deal with fly-posting is set out in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Good Practice Guide "The Control of Fly-Posting" published in 2000. Advice is also given in part V of DOE Circular 5/92 and Welsh Office Circular 14/92.

  Forest of Dean Local Plan
  Mrs. Spelman
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister by what date he will determine whether he will direct the Forest of Dean district council, under section 44(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended), in relation to the adoption of their District Local Plan. [188294]

  Keith Hill
  On 17 August 2004 the Government Office for the South West, on behalf of the Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, directed the Forest of Dean district council not to adopt the Local Plan. This direction will remain in place until it has been decided whether to intervene further. There is no statutory timetable prescribed for action under the provisions of section 44(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended) but my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister is anxious to ensure that the current situation is resolved as quickly as possible.

  High Hedges
  Mrs. Spelman
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister when regulations allowing local authorities to tackle high hedges will come into effect. [188295]

  Keith Hill
  Regulations bringing into force the provisions in part 8 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act, which give local authorities powers to deal with complaints about high hedges, are expected to come into effect towards the end of 2004.

  Highways Maintenance
  Brian Cotter
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the average Standard Spending Assessment/Formula Spending Share funding per head has been for highways maintenance in(a) England and (b) North Somerset in each year since 1997. [188657]

  Mr. Raynsford
  Tabled as follows are the highway maintenance Standard Spending Assessment/Formula Spending Share (SSA/FSS) per head for both England and North Somerset for each year since 1997, as requested.
  1435W

  £ per head

  England

  North Somerset

  1997–98

  35.97

  34.37

  1998–99

  36.00

  33.89

  1999–2000

  36.79

  33.80

  2000–01

  37.55

  34.85

  2001–02

  38.29

  37.00

  2002–03

  39.10

  38.66

  2003–04

  39.74

  37.47

  2004–05

  40.43

  38.74

  Both Standard Spending Assessments and Formula Spending Shares are neither the amount an authority has spent on a particular service nor are they the Government's assessment of how much money should be spent on a particular service by an authority. Additionally they are not grant. They are simply formulae used in the calculation of Revenue Support Grant.

  Listed Buildings
  Bob Russell
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister (1) how many buildings listed for their historic or architectural interest were demolished in each of the last three years for which figures are available(a) as a result of permission of the local planning authority, (b) on appeal to a government planning inspector and (c) without permission; [187989]

  (2) how many owners of buildings listed for their historic or architectural interest were prosecuted in each of the last three years for which figures are available for demolishing the buildings without permission; and if he will make a statement. [187990]

  Keith Hill
  This information is not collected by central Government. However, since the 4 May English Heritage have been logging records of Listed Building Consent applications for total demolition, and by the close of the 2004–05 financial year will be able to provide a report on the number of applications.

  Local Government/Finance
  Bob Russell
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister whether local authorities are required to obtain the best value for land and buildings of which they dispose. [187988]

  Keith Hill
  Local authorities have discretionary powers to dispose of land in any manner they wish under sections 123 and 127 of the Local Government Act 1972. Under these provisions, disposals must be for the best consideration reasonably obtainable, unless the Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister gives his consent to the disposal. The 2003 General Disposal Consent which was issued in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Circular 06/2003 on 4 August 2003, allows authorities, in certain circumstances, to dispose of land at less than market value without having to seek the Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister's specific consent. Where authorities wish to dispose of open space land that is used for public recreation, they must first advertise their intentions in a local newspaper to comply with the statutory requirements of the 1972 Act and consider any objections they receive.
  1436W
  Brian Cotter
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the average Standard Spending Assessment/formula spending share funding per head has been for all services in(a) England and (b) North Somerset in each year since 1997; and if he will estimate the sums that would be available for services in North Somerset if the average SSA/FSS funding per head were the same as the English average. [188658]

  Mr. Raynsford
  Tabled as follows are the total Standard Spending Assessment/Formula Spending Share (SSA/FSS) per head for both England and North Somerset for each year since 1997, as requested.

  £ per head

  England

  North Somerset

  1997–98

  829.45

  660.18

  1998–99

  869.19

  688.86

  1999–2000

  907.66

  713.57

  2000–01

  943.33

  736.84

  2001–02

  980.69

  767.95

  2002–03

  995.30

  779.11

  2003–04

  1,177.45

  953.27

  2004–05

  1,222.22

  954.08

  The England figure covers all services, including police and fire services.

  Police services in the North Somerset area are provided by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary; and fire services are provided by the Avon Fire and Rescue Service. The Police Service is funded directly via Formula Grant throughout the period covered in the table. The Fire Service was also funded directly via Formula Grant in:2004–05; previously the Avon Fire and Rescue Service levied for this service on North Somerset council. North Somerset's FSS data reflect these arrangements i.e. the FSS does not cover police services nor does it cover fire services in 2004–05.

  Both Standard Spending Assessments and Formula Spending Shares art, neither the amount an authority has spent on a particular service nor are they the Government's assessment of how much money should be spent on a particular service by an authority. Additionally they are not grant. They are simply formulae used in the calculation of Revenue Support Grant.

  It is not therefore possible to calculate the amount of Formula Grant that would have been provided to North Somerset if it had received the England average FSS per head.

  Mobile Phone Masts
  Bob Russell
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister how many planning appeals against the refusal of the siting of mobile telephone masts were made in each of the last five years for which figures are available; and of these how many were upheld in favour of the mobile telephone companies. [187987]

  Keith Hill
  No:information is held about appeal decisions for mobile phone masts specifically. The following information therefore relates to appeal decisions about telecommunications development generally.
  1437W

  Number of appeals decided

  Number of appeals allowed

  Number of appeals disallowed

  Percentage allowed

  2000–01

  281

  183

  98

  65.12

  2001–02

  456

  294

  162

  64.47

  2002–03

  830

  531

  299

  63.98

  2003–04

  630

  363

  267

  57.62

  2004–05

  129

  69

  60

  53.49

  Note:

  All figures relate to the period in which the appeal was received, not necessarily the period in which it was decided.

  Satellite and Cable TV Subscriptions
  Mrs. Spelman
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the cost of satellite and cable subscriptions in his Department's buildings was in the last year for which figures are available; and if he wall list the premium channels to which his Department subscribes. [185783]

  Phil Hope
  In 2003–04, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister spent £21,310 inc. VAT on cable and satellite subscriptions. This comprised £1,750 on satellite and £19,560 on cable subscriptions. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister subscribes to the cheapest available business package. This includes no premium channels although until November 2003 it included Sky Sports 1.

  In the London HQ buildings the business of the House and division bells are also delivered over the cable network.

  Although the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has overall responsibility for the buildings occupied by Government Offices, they carry out functions on behalf of 10 Departments.

  Unauthorised Caravanning
  Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will take steps to coordinate policy, law and collection of statistics between the administrations in the common travel area for unauthorised caravanning and encampments. [188236]

  Keith Hill
  Strong links already exist between the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Republic of Ireland's Department of the Environment in respect of Gypsy and Traveller policy. There have been recent official-level discussions on policy, law and data collection as part of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Review of Gypsy and Traveller policy. These discussions will inform the recommendations of the Review.

  Robust laws and guidance are in place in both the UK and the Republic to deal with incidents of unauthorised camping. In addition, statistical data on the nomadic Gypsy and Traveller community is collected and published twice yearly in England. and yearly in the Republic.

DEFENCE

  Designated Accommodation
  Bob Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many rooms are set aside for(a) the use of smokers, (b) worship, broken down by religion and
  1438W
  (c) nursing mothers and pregnant women in each building and set of offices for which his Department is responsible. [187310]

  Mr. Caplin
  The Ministry of Defence is fully committed to providing a safe environment and workplace where all staff are valued and respected irrespective of different background and cultures.

  The provision of dedicated rooms for the areas covered in the question is not a central responsibility, but a matter for each individual Head of Establishment. Records are not held centrally and to gather and collate such information would incur disproportionate costs.

  HMS Daedalus
  Mr. Hoban
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the expressions of interest in HMS Daedalus that he has received. [188144]

  Mr. Caplin
  As a result of English Partnership's 40-day consultation with other Government Departments, two 'Expressions of Interest' have been received as Priority Assessment Reports from the Maritime Coastguard Agency (Department of Transport) and the South-East England Development Agency.

  MOD Estate (Northern Ireland)
  Mr. Dodds
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is the size of the Ministry of Defence estate in Northern Ireland. [187422]

  Mr. Caplin
  The Ministry of Defence estate in Northern Ireland currently consists of:

  2751.643 Ha Freehold

  274.522 Ha Leasehold

  and 566.037 Ha Licensed land.

  Separated Service Recording Systems
  Mr. Keetch
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how much separated service was recorded by the(a) RAF Separated Service Recording System in each year since 2002 and (b) Navy Separated Service Recording System in each year since 2001. [187126]

  Mr. Caplin
  The information is as follows:

  (a) RAF Separated Service

  The following table shows Separated Service recorded by the RAF Separated Service Recording System in each year since 2002.

  Number of personnel spending time on Separated Service

  Number of instance of Separated Service

  Number of days spent on Separated Service

  2002

  35,400

  109,600

  2,205,500

  2003

  35,300

  110.400

  2,236,700

  2004 (up to 30 June)

  27,300

  60,900

  925,100

  Separated service includes deployment, training for deployment and routine tasks and routine training courses.
  1439W
  (b) Navy Separated Service

  A system for recording separated service has been implemented, but data is still being gathered and problems have arisen in transferring data from ships and units to the central systems. The coverage of the data is therefore still insufficient to allow meaningful statistical analysis at this time.

  SERCO-Denholm
  Mr. Webb
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence pursuant to the answer of 16 July 2004,Official Report , columns 1356–57W, on SERCO-Denholm, whether it is his policy that the pension rights of these workers should be equivalent to the pension rights that they would have obtained had they remained in the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme throughout their period of employment with the new employer; and if he will make a statement. [187832]

  Mr. Caplin
  [holding answer 8 September 2004]: The transfer of Ministry of Defence employees to SERCO-Denholm, following the Marine Services Market Test, reflected the accepted practice at that time, namely that the pension scheme would be broadly comparable to the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme at the point of transfer. Subsequently, the policy was changed under the Government's code of practice entitled 'Transfer of Government Staff: A Fair Deal for Pensions', which was issued in 1999 and expanded in June 2004. When Government employees are transferred under the 'Fair Deal' policy, a broadly comparable scheme and bulk transfer terms have to be considered in any second and subsequent generation transfers.

  Strategic Missile Defence
  Mr. Soames
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what discussions he has had with his Danish counterpart on strategic missile defence; and if he will make a statement. [188089]

  Mr. Hoon
  I have had no recent discussions on missile defence with my Danish counterpart. Officials keep in touch with the Danish authorities on matters of common interest relating to missile defence.

  Mr. Soames
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the Government's policy is on stationing strategic missile defence sites on the UK mainland; and if he will make a statement. [188090]

  Mr. Hoon
  The Government have not reached a decision on whether to acquire a strategic ballistic missile defence capability for the United Kingdom. The UK has agreed only to the use of RAF Fylingdales as part of the United States missile defence system.

  Mr. Soames
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what representations he has received from his US counterpart on the proposal for strategic missile defence stations to be situated in Central Europe. [188091]

  Mr. Hoon
  I have received no such representations on the issue of strategic missile defence stations in Central Europe. Officials keep in close touch with the US Administration as well as with NATO allies, on missile defence issues, including the offer by the US to extend missile defences to friends and allies.
  1440W

  Territorial Army (Iraq)
  Mr. Liddell-Grainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what his appraisal is of the role of the Territorial Army in the Iraq war and subsequent peacekeeping operation. [186490]

  Mr. Caplin
  The Territorial Army (TA) has performed, and continues to perform, a vital and active role alongside their regular counterparts, contributing to a wide range of our operations in Iraq. Indeed, the TA currently provides approximately 20 per cent. of our ground forces in Iraq.

  The TA is a highly valued and respected part of our armed forces, and the work of all those who have deployed has been greatly appreciated. The use of Reservists during thus campaign has been entirely in line with the recommendations of the Strategic Defence Review. The roles undertaken by the TA have clearly demonstrated the strategic intent of having more capable, usable and relevant reserve forces, which support their regular counterparts on operations.

WALES

  Council of Ministers
  Sue Doughty
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if he will provide a written ministerial statement outlining the key points on the agenda for each of the Council of Ministers' meetings at which his Department is represented in advance of each meeting; [188216]

  (2) if he will provide a written ministerial statement outlining for each meeting of the Council of Ministers at which his Department is represented as soon as is practicable following that meeting (a) the key items of discussion, (b) the positions of the Government on those items, (c) the key positions taken by other member states that Ministers consider should be noted by hon. Members and (d) any preliminary discussion on the timing and the agenda of the following meeting. [188217]

  Mr. Hain
  I refer a he hon. Member to the answer given to her today by the Foreign Secretary.

  Public Services (Comparative Provision)
  Mr. Wiggin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what research his Department has commissioned regarding comparative levels of public services in England and of Welsh Assembly run public services in Wales, with particular reference to (a) health and (b) education. [186754]

  Mr. Touhig
  None.

  A wide range of information and data on health and education in England and Wales is produced by both the Government and the National Assembly for Wales and is publicly available.

  The Statistical Directorate of the National Assembly for Wales produces statistics related to health and education in Wales. This can be found by accessing the website: www.wales.gsi.gov.uk.
  1441W
  Information on health in England can be obtained from the Department of Health at: www.dh.gov.uk

  Information on education in England can be obtained from the Department for Education and Skills at: www.des.gov.uk

  The Office for National Statistics also produces a large amount of publicly available information, which can be accessed via their website: www.statistics.gov.uk

  Truancy
  Mr. Wiggin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales when he next plans to meet Welsh Assembly secretaries to discuss strategies to deal with crime linked to school truancy in Wales. [186755]

  Mr. Touhig
  My right hon. Friend and I regularly meet Assembly Ministers to discuss matters affecting Wales.

  A number of multi-agency arrangements are employed to tackle truancy in Wales. The police and Community Safety Partnerships are key stakeholders in these initiatives, and programmes are in place to deal with young people showing a significant risk of developing criminal and antisocial behaviour.

SOLICITOR-GENERAL

  Serious Fraud Office
  Mr. Kidney
  To ask the Solicitor-General what recent assessment she has made of the conviction rate achieved by the Serious Fraud Office. [187726]

  The Solicitor-General
  In the year ending 4 April 2004, the conviction rate in SFO cases was 51 per cent. Over the past five years the average conviction rate was 75 per cent.

  At the conclusion of each case the SFO holds a conference to consider what lessons can be learned.

PRIME MINISTER

  Gifts
  Sue Doughty
  To ask the Prime Minister whether he received any gifts from Prime Minister Berlusconi while he was a guest of the Italian Prime Minister during summer 2004. [188111]

  The Prime Minister
  The Government are committed to publishing an annual list of gifts received by Ministers in an official capacity valued at more than £140. The list of gifts for 2004–05 will be published as soon as possible after the end of this Financial Year.

  Honours
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Prime Minister what procedures are in place for the removal of an honour from an individual convicted of it serious crime in this country or abroad. [188409]
  1442W
  The Prime Minister
  Her Majesty the Queen may, on the advice of Ministers, cancel membership of any of the Orders of Knighthood or appointment as Knight Bachelor. Cancellation is considered in cases where the retention of the appointment or award would bring the honours system into disrepute. Proposals for forfeiture are considered on a case-by-case basis.

  Press (Meetings)
  Sue Doughty
  To ask the Prime Minister what meetings he has had with the (a) proprietors and (b) editors of national newspapers in the last 12 months; who instigated each meeting; and what subjects were discussed in each meeting. [188179]

  The Prime Minister
  I have meetings with a wide range of organisations and individuals. As with previous Administrations, it is not the Government's practice to provide details of all such meetings under exemptions 2 and 7 of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information.

ELECTORAL COMMISSION

  All-postal Ballots
  Mr. Robathan
  To ask the hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission if he will make a statement on the recent report of the Electoral Commission on all-postal ballots. [187917]

  Mr. Viggers
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave earlier this afternoon to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant).

  Norman Baker
  To ask the hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission what steps the Committee is taking to determine whether the Electoral Commission is assessing the integrity of the postal ballot in an efficient and effective manner. [187912]

  Mr. Viggers
  The Speaker's Committee has a statutory obligation to satisfy itself that the Electoral Commission's Estimates and Corporate Plans are consistent with the economical, efficient and effective discharge by the Commission of its functions before it lays these before the House. Within that framework, and subject to any statutory directions it may receive from the Government in respect of particular matters, it is for the Commission itself to decide how it discharges its functions.

  On 27 August, in accordance with its statutory obligations under the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Act 2004. the Commission published four regional evaluation reports following the all-postal pilot schemes earlier this year. The reports include assessments as to the integrity of the pilot schemes; a separate report published on the same day also makes recommendations for future improvements in relation to postal voting more generally.
  1443W
  Mr. Betts
  To ask the hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission if he will make a statement on the recent report by the Electoral Commission on all-postal ballots. [187913]

  Mr. Viggers
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave earlier this afternoon to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant).

EDUCATION AND SKILLS

  Competitive Sport
  Andy Burnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what steps he is taking to encourage schools to take part in competitive sports fixtures. [187907]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  The Government are firmly in favour of competitive school sport. The Physical Education (PE) National Curriculum requires that all pupils are taught competitive games throughout their compulsory schooling. Increasing the quality and amount of competitive school sport is also a key aim of the Government's national PE, School Sport and Club Links strategy.

  Spearheading action is the creation of a network of 400 School Sport Partnerships—families of schools—that work together to enhance school sport opportunities. There are already 313 School Sport Partnerships covering 50 per cent. of schools in England, All schools will be within a partnership by 2006. All partnerships deliver a programme of out-of-school hours sports activities, including sports competitions.

  The 2003–04 PE, School Sport and Club Links survey—results were published on 29 April and a copy of the report was placed in the House of Commons Library—found that: 96 per cent. of the 6,500 schools taking part held a sports day, in a typical week 22 per cent. of pupils are involved in intra school sports competitions and during the last academic year 33 per cent. of pupils had taken part in inter school sports competitions.

  Deacon's Academy, Peterborough
  Mrs. Helen Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on the admission criteria for the proposed Deacon's Academy in Peterborough. [187833]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  [holding answer 8 September 2004]: I am currently considering proposals to enter into a funding agreement to establish the Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough. Admissions arrangements form part of these proposals. I hope to reach a decision shortly.
  1444W

  Foreign Language Teaching
  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many maintained secondary schools did not offer study of a modern foreign language to(a) any and (b) all pupils at key stage 4 in the last period for which figures are available. [188038]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  The Department does not collate information on the numbers of maintained secondary schools offering modern foreign languages to(a) any or (b) all of their pupils at key stage 4. However, modern foreign languages remained part of the National Curriculum at key stage 4 until the end of the last academic year and as such the Department would have expected all schools to offer modern foreign languages to all pupils at key stage 4.

  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) how many language assistants are employed in maintained primary schools; [188039]

  (2) what estimate he has made of the percentage of (a) children in maintained schools learning a modern foreign language at Key Stage 2 and (b) maintained primary schools teaching a modern foreign language at Key Stage 2. [188040]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  These data are not collected centrally by the Department. We have commissioned baseline research into modern foreign language teaching and learning at Key Stage 2. This report, which was originally planned to be published earlier in the year, will now be published at the end of September. The report will give an indication of these figures, at the time of the survey in 2003.

  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills when his Department will issue an invitation to tender for the operation of the voluntary recognition system for language skills. [188041]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  Following a tendering exercise, the contract for the operation of the voluntary recognition system for languages was awarded to the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) in February 2004.

  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills when his Department will introduce the voluntary recognition system for language skills; and which languages will be covered. [188042]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  Following a limited pilot in 2004/05, the first suite of external qualifications for the voluntary recognition system for language skills—The Languages Ladder—will be nationally available in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Punjabi, Spanish and Urdu in the academic year 2005/06. A wider range of languages will be on offer from 2006/07 and additional languages will be added to the scheme in subsequent years.

  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what budget his Department has allocated for the voluntary recognition system for language skills for(a) 2004–05, (b) 2005–06 and (c) 2006–07. [188043]
  1445W
  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  £2 million has been allocated for the development and operation of the voluntary recognition system for language skills for each of the years 2004–05 and 2005–06. Until a decision on the allocation of the latest spending r eview settlement is made, it is not possible to say how much funding has been allocated for 2006–07.

  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on the work of the National Director for Languages. [188044]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  Dr. Lid King, previously Director of CILT—The National Centre of Languages, was appointed National Director for Languages in September 2003. Dr. King plays a key role in the implementation of the Government's National Languages Strategy, giving strategic direction, stimulating and co-ordinating action across all sectors, and championing languages in general. He works closely with key stakeholders in primary, secondary, further and higher education, adult learning and business.

  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what budget was available to the National Director for Languages in 2003–04; and what budget will be available to that office for financial years(a) 2004–05 and (b) 2005–06. [188045]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  The National Languages Strategy is supported by dedicated investment which will rise to £10 million per year by 2005–06. In 2003–04, £4 million was available and in the current financial year, 2004–05, £8 million is available.

  Head Teachers
  Mr. Wills
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the average length of time a head teacher spent in post in the(a) primary and (b) secondary sectors was in the latest year for which figures are available. [187752]

  Mr. Miliband
  Information on teachers' length of service is obtained from the Database of Teachers Records which is maintained pi hilarity for pensions administration purposes. This source provides the total amount of service of teachers since they were first appointed but not the length of time spent in a particular post or at a particular grade.

  Table 22 of the School Workforce in England 2003 volume of statistics contains details of the total length of service of current head teachers by phase of education. This publication has been placed in the House of Commons Library or can also be accessed from the following URL: http://www.dres.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/VOL/v000380/index.shtml.

  Primary Class Sizes
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the average number of pupils in primary classes in the London Borough of Havering was in(a) 1997 and (b) 2004; and what the figures are for all other London boroughs. [187733]
  1446W
  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  The information requested is shown in the table.

  Maintained primary schools1: Average size of one teacher classes 1997 and 2004 (provisional v2)—position in January each year—by local education authority

  Local education authority

  1997

  2004

  201

  City of London

  26.0

  2—

  202

  Camden

  27.1

  27.0

  203

  Greenwich

  26.0

  25.7

  204

  Hackney

  26.1

  26.1

  205

  Hammersmith and Fulham

  25.3

  25.2

  206

  Islington

  26.6

  25.7

  207

  Kensington and Chelsea

  25.3

  26.1

  208

  Lambeth

  25.2

  25.8

  209

  Lewisham

  26.1

  25.9

  210

  Southwark

  26.4

  25.7

  211

  Tower Hamlets

  26.2

  26.1

  212

  Wandsworth

  25.8

  26.0

  213

  Westminster

  24.2

  26.0

  301

  Barking and Dagenham

  27.0

  25.8

  302

  Barnet

  26.2

  27.1

  303

  Bexley

  28.8

  27.5

  304

  Brent

  26.5

  27.3

  305

  Bromley

  28.5

  27.2

  306

  Croydon

  28.3

  27.1

  307

  Eating

  27.1

  26.5

  308

  Enfield

  29.1

  27.9

  309

  Haringey

  26.9

  27.5

  310

  Harrow

  27.5

  26.3

  311

  Havering

  27.9

  27.1

  312

  Hillingdon

  27.2

  26.5

  313

  Hounslow

  26.8

  26.1

  314

  Kingston upon Thames

  29.4

  27.0

  315

  Merton

  27.3

  25.5

  316

  Newham

  27.9

  27.4

  317

  Redbridge

  28.4

  27.5

  318

  Richmond upon Thames

  27.2

  26.6

  319

  Sutton

  28.1

  27.6

  320

  Waltham Forest

  26.6

  26.2

  1Includes middle schools as deemed.

  2 Provisional figures not available. Final figures available after 30 September.

  School Building Projects
  Mr. Wills
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the(a) average, (b) shortest and (c) longest length of time taken between 1997 and 2004 to complete a building project to expand capacity in a school was from the start of specifying the project to the opening of the new capacity; [187751]

  (2) what the (a) average, (b) shortest and (c) longest length of time taken between 1997 and 2004 to complete a building project for a new school was from the start of specifying the project to the opening of the new building. [187750]

  Mr. Miliband
  School building projects are procured locally, and we do not normally, therefore, collect information on specific projects.

  With the advent of the Building Schools for the Future programme, however, the Department intends to collect and use such information to improve procurement timeframes across the sector and to embed best practice over the construction life cycle. This drive for efficiency gains will be reinforced through a performance management regime across the Building Schools for the Future programme.
  1447W

  School Music
  John Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on the Government's strategy for music in schools. [187894]

  Mr. Miliband
  Music is a statutory entitlement for all pupils up to the age of 14, and can be taken as an option at Key Stage 4. The music curriculum provides an opportunity for all children to sing and play musical instrument; as well as to listen to, compose and perform music from a range of different cultures and times.

  The Department has also made a commitment, over time, to offer every primary school child the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. For the exceptionally talented, additional opportunities exist through the Music and Dance Scheme, junior conservatoires and the National Youth Music Organisations.

  Our priorities for the future of music education are set out in the Music Manifesto, which was launched on 6 July 2004. They are to:
  provide every young person with first access to a range of music experiences;
  provide more opportunities for young people to deepen and broaden their musical interests and skills;
  identify and nurture our most talented young musicians;
  develop a world class workforce in music education; and
  improve the support structures for young people's music making.

  You can find out more about how the Department will deliver these key objectives by visiting our pledge on the Music Manifesto website at: www.musicmanifesto.co.uk

  School Sports Facilities
  James Purnell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what plans he has to open up schools sports facilities to the wider community out-ofhours. [187904]

  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  We want all schools to be extended schools, making wider use of their facilities, including sports facilities. Our recently published Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners includes our vision for extended schools at both primary and secondary level which focuses on schools making wider use of their facilities and providing a core offer of services, including widespread community use of specialist facilities such as sports halls.

  The Government have made funding available to support local co-ordination and management of extended services in schools, and to create up to 240 full service extended school models, with at least one in each LEA area, by 2006. These schools will provide a prescribed core range of extended services and facilities, including sports and arts facilities.

  School Sports Partnerships
  Angela Watkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many(a) schools and (b) school pupils are not participating in a school sports partnership. [187910]
  1448W
  Mr. Stephen Twigg
  The information requested is not held in the format requested. From September 2004, there are 313 School Sport Partnerships incorporating 50 per cent. of schools in England, this will increase to at least 75 per cent. or schools by 2005. All schools and pupils will be within a School Sport Partnership by 2006.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Beijing + 10
  Joan Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what his plans are for his Department's involvement in the Beijing Platform for Action; known as Beijing + 10. [187533]

  Mr. Rammell
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women gave on 7 September 2004,Official Report , column 937W.

  Butler Report
  Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to paragraph 512 of the Butler Report, HC 898, on what date the Secret Intelligence Service became aware that the validity of the intelligence report on which the 45 minute claim was based had come into question; on what date Government ministers were informed of this; and how many links there were in the reporting chain for the 45 minute claim intelligence report. [187394]

  Mr. Straw
  Government Ministers were informed at the beginning of June about concerns that had arisen in mid-May regarding the validity of the intelligence reporting on which the 45-minute claim was based. Paragraph 399 of the Butler Report explains why it is not possible to set out in full the analysis of main SIS sources whose reporting underpinned JIC assessments, and this applies to details such as the number of links in the reporting chain for specific reports.

  Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to paragraph 442 of the Butler Report, HC 898, for what reasons there was an urgent requirement for intelligence. [187395]

  Mr. Straw
  The urgent need for intelligence was a result of the international community's lack of reliable information as to Iraqi activities in the absence of UN inspectors between December 1998 and November 2002 caused by Iraq's continuing failure to meet its obligations under UN Security Council Resolutions. As the Butler Report itself states, obtaining intelligence on Iraq had been a long-standing high priority throughout the years of Saddam Hussein's regime.

  Chinese Students (Visas)
  Tim Loughton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many Chinese students were refused(a) short stay summer visas and (b) higher education visas in 2004–05. [187951]

  Mr. Mullin
  Applicants for short courses of study in the UK apply in the visitor category and it is not possible to separate them out from other visit visa applications without incurring disproportionate costs.
  1449W
  Students applying for courses in higher education are not recorded separately from other student applications and again to do so would incur disproportionate costs.

  However, I am able to provide the following figures, which relate to all student entry clearance applications submitted in China so far this financial year (1 April to 8 September):

  Applications

  Number

  Percentage

  Received

  21,776

  —

  Issued

  14,624

  67

  Refused

  6,790

  31

  These figures do not add up exactly as applications may be received at the end of the period under review but issued or refused in the next.

  Correspondence
  Sir Gerald Kaufman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he will reply to the letter to him dated 2 August from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton with regard to Mr. Arshad Mahmood Rashad. [188003]

  Mr. Mullin
  My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Rammell) sent an interim reply on 6 September while details of the application were being verified. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary sent a substantive reply on 9 September.

  David Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when the hon. Member for Walsall, North will receive a reply to his letter of 29 July on behalf of a constituent reference 316919/04. [188010]

  Mr. Mullin
  I replied to my hon. Friend's letter on 9 September.

  Council of Ministers
  Sue Doughty
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) if he will provide a written ministerial statement outlining the key points on the agenda for each of the Council of Ministers' meetings at which his Department is represented in advance of each meeting; [188186]

  (2) if he will provide a written ministerial statement outlining for each meeting of the Council of Ministers at which his Department is represented as soon as it is practicable following that meeting (a) the key items of discussion, (b) the positions of i he Government on those items, (c) the key positions taken by other member states that Ministers consider should be noted by Members and (d) any preliminary discussion on the timing and the agenda of the following meeting. [188188]

  Mr. Straw
  This is a useful suggestion and HMG will consider it further in line with its policy of keeping Parliament better informed on EU business.
  1450W

  Cyprus
  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what involvement the British high commissioner for Cyprus is having with(a) the Greek Cypriot and (b) the Turkish Cypriot Mayors of Famagusta in efforts to redevelop the town. [187845]

  Mr. MacShane
  The British high commission, including the high commissioner, maintains contacts with a wide range of individuals and groups on both sides interested in the development of Famagusta.

  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what(a) support from the British Government and (b) financial support from the European Union he will seek to give to the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot Mayors of Famagusta to reopen the port of Famagusta. [187846]

  Mr. MacShane
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to him on 1 September 2004,Official Report , column 680W.

  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he had in his recent meeting with Mr. Mehmet Ali Talat on his willingness to co-operate with the Greek Cypriot Government on seeking to resolve the issue of missing people following the events of 1974 in Cyprus; and if he will make a statement. [187847]

  Mr. MacShane
  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary did not directly address the question of missing persons on Cyprus in his meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Talat on 1 July. But the Government have in the recent past made it clear to Mr. Talat that we applaud his commitment to resolve this longstanding issue.

  As my hon. Friend knows, staff at the British High Commission in Nicosia work closely with the United Nations' Acting Third Member of the Committee on Missing Persons in order to identify areas where the UK can play a helpful role. We welcome the recent resumption of formal meetings of the Committee on Missing Persons and urge both sides to do all they can to resolve this painful humanitarian issue as soon as possible and in the best interest of the families.

  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with the Northern Cyprus Administration to ensure that the land on which property developments are taking place do not belong to Greek Cypriot people who left Northern Cyprus following the events of 1974; and if he will make a statement. [187848]

  Mr. MacShane
  Satisfactorily resolving the issue of property is central to achieving a comprehensive and sustainable settlement in Cyprus. The UN Secretary General's comprehensive proposals set out a way to resolve the property questions, based in part on Greek Cypriot ideas. It is a matter of deep regret that the UN Secretary-General's settlement plan was rejected by the Greek Cypriots on 24 April.
  1451W
  In our contacts with both sides, we have always urged that they avoid any action that might be prejudicial to a settlement. This applies to all aspects of the Cyprus problem, including property.

  Because of the political situation in Cyprus, the Government advises that UK citizens take qualified legal advice before purchasing property anywhere on the island. We also point out that those considering a purchase in the north of Cyprus should be aware that the non-recognition of the 'TRNC' and a future settlement of the Cyprus problem could have implications for their property.

  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he had in his recent meeting in London with Mr. Mehmet Ali Talat on the involvement of the Turkish army in the day-to-day affairs of Northern Cyprus; and what future role he wishes to see the Turkish army have in Cyprus. [187849]

  Mr. MacShane
  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I discussed a wide range of issues with Mr. Talat, including Turkish troops in northern Cyprus.

  An integral element of the UN Secretary General's comprehensive proposals, supported by the UK, was the demilitarisation of the island and progressive withdrawal of foreign troops (both Greek and Turkish)ultimately leaving just 950 Greek and 650 Turkish troops, as sanctioned by the 1960 treaties. As the plan was not accepted by both sides, there is no agreement on early withdrawal of Turkish troops.

  Any steps taken now, however, to reduce existing troop levels by either side would be welcome.

  Tom Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he had in his recent meeting with Mr. Mehmet Ali Talat on the future of Famagusta and of the development of facilities within the town; and if he will make a statement. [187850]

  Mr. MacShane
  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary did not discuss the development of Famagusta town with Mr. Talat during their meeting on 1 July.

  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to him on 1 September 2004, Official Report , column 680W.

  Guantanamo Bay
  Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when complaints made by British citizens held in detention by the United States Government at Camp Delta in Guantanamo in Cuba, in respect of their treatment during questioning and generally while being detained, were made known to him; what investigations he made into the allegations; what consequent actions he took; whether he has examined the allegations made by three British former detainees from Tipton in their collective dossier released in August; and what representations he has made to his United States counterpart on this matter. [187501]

  Mr. Mullin
  British officials have visited British nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay on eight occasions. Following each visit, Ministers have been 1452W
  informed of the details of the visit, including any complaints made by the detainees. Follow-up action has then been taken with the US authorities at all levels, including at Foreign Minister level. We continue to pursue actively with the US authorities our outstanding welfare concerns. We are also examining the recent report issued by the three British former detainees from Tipton.

  Iraq
  Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to the answer of 10 February 2004,Official Report , column 1303W, on Iraq, what methodology was used to assess that there was no new information contained in the quantities of documents that remained to be translated; and whether all the documents that formed the declaration have now been translated. [187392]

  Mr. MacShane
  In the interests of speed, the process of analysing the Iraqi declaration concentrated on identifying key words and passages to which priority translation was given. It quickly became clear that Iraq had not provided information on the outstanding disarmament issues that had been identified by the UN Special Commission in their final report.

  Translation of the declaration was complete by mid-March 2003.

  Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether UNMOVIC and the IAEA decided that parts of the Iraqi declaration of its weapons of mass destruction needed to be excised before it distributed the report to all members of the UN Security Council; and whether all members of the Security Council have now received(a) an unedited and (b) an edited version of the declaration. [187393]

  Mr. MacShane
  Certain passages of the Iraqi declaration relating to Iraq's nuclear programme were excised by UNMOVIC and the IAEA before distribution to non-nuclear weapon states. All members of the Security Council at the time received copies of this edited version. The full version was made available only to the Permanent Members of the Security Council.

  Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when the UK Government became aware that Iraq had 500 tonnes of yellowcake stored at a facility near Tuwaitha, south of Baghdad. [187396]

  Mr. MacShane
  Under UN Security Council resolution 687, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was mandated to investigate and dismantle Iraq's nuclear weapons programmes and to monitor all nuclear-related activity in Iraq. As part of this process, in the early part of the 1990s, the IAEA consolidated Iraq's stockpiles of nuclear materials and other radioactive sources on a single site near Tuwaitha for ease of on-going monitoring. The yellowcake in question was included in this exercise. It was also declared by Iraq as part of their Full, Final and Complete Declaration of nuclear activities and materials submitted to the UN in 1996. All of the materials consolidated at the site were subject to continuous IAEA inspection and verification.
  1453W
  Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to his answer of 22 July,Official Report , column 544W, on Iraq, whether the Leader of the Opposition had access to the same primary intelligence as the Prime Minister relating to (a) the September 2002 dossier, (b) the February 2003 dossier and (c) the threat posed to the UK by Iraq from May 1997 to the commencement of military action against Iraq in March 2003. [187715]

  Mr. Straw
  The details of briefings given on Privy Council terms are confidential.

  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to the oral answer from the Minister for the armed forces of 7 September 2003, Official Report, column 612, on Iraq, what discussions he has had with the Government of Iraq about the banning of al-Jazeera. [188481]

  Mr. Alexander
  The decision to close the al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was made by the Iraqi Interim Government.

  We have repeatedly made clear to the Iraqi Government the importance we attach to media freedom in Iraq and the need to strengthen the institutions established by the Coalition Provisional Authority to ensure this. We will continue to do so.

  North Korea
  Mr. Wiggin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

  Mr. MacShane
  We continue to be concerned about North Korea's nuclear programme, and have been monitoring the six-party talks process aimed at resolving the current impasse.

  My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Rammell) is visiting North Korea from 11 to 14 September. North Korea's nuclear programme will be one of the issues which he intends to raise during his visit.

  Sudan
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what percentage of the aid package for the Sudan announced in July has been spent; and if he will make a statement. [186358]

  Hilary Benn
  In July, the Chancellor announced that the UK would make available an allocation for Sudan of £150 million for the financial years 2005–06 to 2007–08. This is to be disbursed following the conclusion of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

  The signature of six protocols in Naivasha in June represented significant progress towards a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, but negotiations are continuing in order to resolve the remaining outstanding issues, pressing the parties to push on with these negotiations. However, we have made it clear to the Sudanese Government that they will not enjoy a peace dividend from the international community unless there is also progress in Darfur.
  1454W
  The UK is the second largest donor in Darfur. The Department for International Development has allocated £62.5 million for humanitarian assistance between September 2003 and March 2005. Of this total, £36.9 million has been committed to date (to the UN, ICRC and NGOs).

  DFID is also continuing to provide assistance in the rest of the country, this is to meet ongoing humanitarian needs and in support of our goal of helping Sudan to reach a just and lasting peace and to lay foundations for sustained poverty reduction.

  Switzerland
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent action he has taken to ensure that Switzerland abides by its bilateral agreements with the EU on migration and employment of UK and other EU nationals; and if he will make a statement. [187492]

  Mr. MacShane
  A Joint Committee is responsible for the management and proper application of the bilateral agreement between the EU and Switzerland on the Free Movement of Persons, which sets out reciprocal arrangements for migration and employment. To date, the UK has not needed to pursue the issue of Switzerland's compliance.

  Venezuela
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with(a) the Venezuelan Government, (b) the Venezuelan Opposition Parties and (c) the organisers of the petition for a recall referendum on President Chavez regarding this recall referendum; and if he will make a statement. [186389]

  Mr. Rammell
  None. However, our Embassy in Caracas has a regular dialogue with all sides in Venezuela. I refer my hon. Friend to my press statement, issued on 17 August on the outcome of the recall referendum on 15 August. I called on all sides in Venezuela to respect the result of the referendum, as endorsed by the international observers, and work towards national reconciliation. A copy of the statement is available on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website: www.fco.gov.uk/policy/news/press-releases.

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last had discussions with President Chavez of Venezuela about the current unrest in Venezuela; and if he will make a statement. [186390]

  Mr. Rammell
  Neither my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary nor I have held any discussions with President Chavez. We have consistently urged all sides in Venezuela to follow the democratic path, work towards a constitutional resolution to the political unrest and strive for national reconciliation. I made this clear in my press statement, issued on 17 August, on the outcome of the recall referendum on 15 August. A copy of the statement is available on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website: www.fco.gov.uk/policy/ news/press-releases.
  1455W
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether the British Government will play an independent role in monitoring the recall referendum which is due to take place in Venezuela in August; and if he will make a statement. [186415]

  Mr. Rammell
  We did not participate as observers of the recall referendum on 15 August, either independently or otherwise. We fully support the official observers of the referendum, the Organisation of American States and the Carter Centre. 1 commended them in my press statement on 17 August on the outcome of the referendum. I called on all sides in Venezuela to respect the result of the referendum, as endorsed by the international observers, and work towards national reconciliation. A copy of the statement is available on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website: www.fco.gov.uk/policy/news/press-releases.

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

  Television Licence Fees
  Sir Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how much was raised in television licence fees(a) 10 years ago and (b) in the most recent year for which figures are available. [187902]

  Estelle Morris
  £1.65 billion in television licence fee revenue was raised in 1993–94 and £2.8 billion in 2003–04.

  The figure for 2003–04 includes payments of £408 million by the Department for Work and Pensions to the BBC for free television licences for over-75s.

  Broadband Television
  Mr. Flook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the likely penetration of broadband television via the internet over the next 10 years. [187903]

  Tessa Jowell
  The take-up of broadband in the UK is now rapid with a wide range of suppliers in the marketplace and there are now about 50,000 new broadband subscribers every week. BT is now in a position to ensure that over 99 per cent. of all households could acquire a broadband connection if they so wished.

  However, broadband TV remains in its infancy, and it will be many years before it could be regarded as universally available. Because of broadband TV's current small scale and technological limitations Government has not as yet made a specific assessment of where the market for broadband TV will be in the next 10 years, but of course Ofcom and other experts are routinely monitoring changes in technology and in consumer behaviour.

  Domestic Tourism
  Tony Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make a statement on initiatives to promote domestic tourism in summer 2004. [187908]
  1456W
  Mr. Caborn
  Last year Visit Britain launched its domestic marketing strategy to promote tourism in England. Since then Visit Britain has run a number of campaigns including 'City Culture' and 'Waterside England'. Next week sees the launch of the 'Enjoy England' autumn campaign and 'Taste England' campaign. Further campaigns are being planned.

  BBC Worldwide
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what representations she has received concerning the future of BBC Worldwide; and if she will make a statement. [187909]

  Estelle Morris
  My hon. Friend has written about this matter. The future of the BBC's commercial services is a key issue for Charter review and we have received a range of representations in that context. The BBC is currently undertaking its own review of its commercial services, which is due for completion during the autumn. I understand that no decisions have so far been taken concerning BBC Worldwide or any other issue covered by the review.

  Lottery Receipts
  Mr. Illsley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what representations she has received regarding the fair distribution of lottery receipts. [187898]

  Estelle Morris
  The Government wants to see all areas of the country benefiting from the huge success of the national lottery.

  We consulted widely on the lottery and our reforms will provide a more transparent and streamlined application process for applicants?so more communities can benefit from the lottery's success.

  Sport England Database
  Jim Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make a statement on the launch of Sport England's Active Places online database. [187905]

  Mr. Caborn
  Active Places is a free to use, comprehensive on-line database of sports facilities in England. It provides details of more than 10,000 facilities, including swimming pools, synthetic pitches, health and fitness centres and ski slopes.

  Active Places was officially launched on 11 July at the BAA Heathrow London Youth Games by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and Roger Draper, Chief Executive of Sport England.

  The Active Places database can be found on www.activeplaces.com

  Olympics 2012
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what steps the Government is taking to promote the Olympic bid for 2012. [186953]
  1457W
  Tessa Jowell
  The Government wholeheartedly supports the bid and has built a strong alliance with the British Olympic Association, the Mayor of London and the bidding company with the aim of delivering the best ever Games in London 2012.

  This was most recently demonstrated in Athens during the Olympic Games where both the Prime Minister and I took part in the London 2012 Bid presentation to the International Olympic Committee.

  The Government will continue to seek opportunities to support and promote the bid as we believe that hosting the Games in 2012 will bring excellent benefits to sport, our young people and to communities throughout the UK.

  Keith Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what plans she has to involve Cabinet ministers in the promotion of London's Olympic bid; and what plans she has to promote London's Olympic bid nationwide. [187133]

  Tessa Jowell
  The Government wholeheartedly supports the bid and believes that hosting the Games in 2012 will bring excellent benefits to sport, our young people and to communities throughout the UK.

  London 2012 will be making a presentation to the full Cabinet. In addition the Misc 25 Cabinet Committee was set up to consider issues relating to the London 2012 bid.

  I will continue to work with my ministerial colleagues to help to develop and promote a winning UK bid.

  Art Galleries
  Bob Russell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport which planned nw art galleries have been guaranteed Arts Council funding; and for how many years the funding has been guaranteed. [187977]

  Estelle Morris
  Arts Council England has awarded over £14 million of lottery capital funds to new visual arts projects since 1 January 1998. Funds are allocated at the beginning of the project and are drawn down over a period of time until the project is completed.

  Details of new awards guaranteed by Arts Council England are set out in the table.

  Organisation name

  Location

  Arts Council England region

  Approved amount (£)

  Future Factory

  Nottingham and Angel Row

  East Midlands

  5,000,000

  ACME Studios

  London

  London

  2,000,000

  Whitechapel Art Gallery

  London

  London

  500,000

  Waygood Gallery

  Newcastle

  North East

  750,000

  Storey Gallery

  Lancaster

  North West

  693,600

  Newlyn Art Gallery

  Penzance

  South West

  1,200,000

  Sherborne House

  Sherborne

  South West

  288,860

  Centre for

  Wakefield

  Yorkshire

  4,000,000

  Creative Arts

  Note:

  Table supplied by Arts Council England.

  1458W

  BBC Charter
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what recent discussions the Government has had with the BBC regarding plans to renew the Charter. [186859]

  Tessa Jowell
  Officials have conducted extensive discussions with the BBC and others since the launch of Charter review, and I have met the Chairman of the BBC Governors twice recently.

  CSV Lending Time Project
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (1) what assessment she has made of the CSV Lending Time project to develop volunteer involvement in the library services of six local authorities; [187834]

  (2) what assessment she has made of how the lessons learned from the CSV Lending Time pilot projects can be transferred to and adopted by other local authorities; [187835]

  (3) whether she has requested reports on the CSV Lending Time pilot schemes from the local authorities involved; [187836]

  (4) what plans she has to ensure long-term support for the CSV Lending Time pilot projects. [187837]

  Estelle Morris
  The Lending Time project was evaluated by Shared Intelligence who published a final report in June 2004. This report outlines lessons learned from the project and provides a series of key recommendations to develop volunteer involvement with public libraries. All of the pilot projects had an opportunity to contribute to the evaluation so separate reports from each local authority were not requested. The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) will use the lessons learned from this project in the development of a new work programme to establish how libraries can most effectively support civic renewal and engage with communities in shaping and delivering services that meet local needs. Community Service Volunteers who led the Lending Time project will appoint someone to a post, funded by MLA through Framework for the Future, the Government's strategy to improve public libraries, to take this work forward until March 2006.

  The aim of the project was to explore the ways in which volunteering could be involved in libraries' work in a long-term and sustainable manner to enhance the service using existing financial resources. The pilots have now been completed and there is no further central funding for them. It is for the local authorities involved in the project to decide whether or not to continue funding.

  European Culture/Languages
  Keith Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how much the Department is spending in 2004–05 on promoting knowledge of other European cultures and languages in the entertainment sector. [188301]
  1459W
  Estelle Morris
  My Department does not monitor spending in the way this question suggests. However, one example we do know of where Lottery money has been used to promote knowledge of European cultures and languages is the UK Film Council. A total of £2,109,102 has been spent in 2004/05 in the following ways:

  UK Film Council Funding 2004–5

  Scheme

  Detail

  Amount Invested 2004–5 £ million

  Print and Advertising Fund

  Support distribution of Specialised films, including European and Foreign Language films

  1,000,000

  Co-Production

  Lila dit sa (France)-produced last year but paid within period, and for release within period

  400,000

  Co-Production

  Innocense (France) produced last year but paid within period, and for release within period

  397,330

  Co-Production

  Only Human (Spain)

  298,772

  Co-Production Tournament

  Pilot forum between UK and Scandinavia to promote good practise and understanding of national film culture and talent. A huge success, so more planned.

  13,000

  Total:

  2,109,102

  Freeview
  Andrew Selous
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport which areas of the South-West Bedfordshire constituency are unable to receive Freeview; and when she expects all areas in the constituency to be able to receive this service. [188246]

  Estelle Morris
  Ofcom do not hold data on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) coverage in individual constituencies. However, according to Ofcom, Freeview coverage in South-West Bedfordshire is patchy, with coverage from both the Oxford and Sandy Heath Transmitters.

  At present around 73 per cent. of UK households can access DTT services, but the Government are committed to ensuring that at Switchover everyone who can currently get the main public service broadcasting channels in analogue form (BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channel 4/S4C and Channel 5) can receive them on digital systems.

  Much progress has been made in the discussions between the Government, Ofcom and the Public Service Broadcasters and while the broadcasters have not reached a full consensus on the optimum timetable, some—including the BBC—have suggested that 2012 may be the most appropriate date for the completion of Switchover.

  Historic Buildings
  Mr. Bill O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport when she last met the English Heritage Directors to discuss policy on historic buildings being included in the registered list; and if she will make a statement. [188046]
  1460W
  Mr. Caborn
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and other Ministers have regular meetings with the English Heritage Chairman and Chief Executive, most recently on 22 June 2004. Among other things they discussed the Review of Heritage Protection including the new Register of Historic Sites and Buildings in England.

  Licensing Arrangements
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what access (a) local and (b) national temperance societies will have to discussions on licensing when the new licensing arrangements come into operation. [188315]

  Mr. Caborn
  Members of local and national temperance societies have the same rights as any other citizen. The Licensing Act 2003 provides that interested parties, including persons living or involved in a business in the vicinity of a premises or bodies representing them, may make representations about applications for provisional statements and about the grant or variation of premises licences or club premises certificates, except where a simple conversion of an existing licence or certificate is made under the grandfather rights provisions in Schedule 8 of the Act. Interested parties may also apply for the review of a licence or certificate at any time as well as make representations about a review once it has been applied for. Representations must be about the effects of the application on the promotion of the licensing objectives. Members of local and national temperance societies will be able to make representations if they are interested parties under the terms of the Act.

  Regional Broadcasting
  Norman Baker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what guidance she gives to Ofcom relating to regional programming by broadcasting companies. [187901]

  Estelle Morris
  None. The Communications Act 2003 set out clear responsibilities for OFCOM to secure regional programming by broadcasting companies. Ofcom is currently reviewing public service television broadcasting and regional broadcasting forms an integral part of that review.

  Supporters Direct
  Dr. Starkey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how much public funding has been received by Supporters Direct in each financial year since 2000–01. [188062]

  Mr. Caborn
  Supporters Direct has received the following funding:

  £

  Financial year

  England and Wales

  Scotland

  2000–01

  250,000

  —

  2001–02

  250,000

  —

  2002–03

  294,000

  75,000

  2003–04

  325,000

  75,000

  2004–05

  1325,000

  190,000

  1 TBC

  1461W
  Dr. Starkey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what mechanisms are in place to ensure the allocation of public funds to supporter's trusts by Supporters Direct is transparent, equitable and objective. [188063]

  Mr. Caborn
  There are strong mechanisms in place to safeguard the allocation of funding to supporters trusts by Supporters Direct.

  Supporters Direct are regulated by the Financial Services Authority and they evaluate the eligibility of all groups applying for funding according to clear criteria, laid down and enforced by the Supporters Direct Board. Details can be found on the Supporters Direct website at www.supporters-direct.org.

  All grants to Supporters Direct are capped at a maximum reimbursement of 50 per cent. up to a value of £1,000. This is a one-off payment. All expenditure is documented by receipts. All grants are reported to the Board of Supporters Direct and grants are only made to existing supporters trusts.

  Supporters Direct are currently audited by Limehouse and Co.

  Dr. Starkey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what procedures are in place to prevent Supporters Direct's allocation of public funds being influenced by the club interests of current members. [188064]

  Mr. Caborn
  Supporters Direct is an Industrial and Provident Society and has rules approved by and registered at the Financial Services Authority. Those rules were drafted by the official lawyers to the Cooperative Movement.

  Its members are the existing supporters' trusts. Membership of Supporters Direct is subject to the provisions in its rules and the policy on membership agreed by the Board of Supporters Direct. The funding it receives from Sport England and Sport Scotland respectively is related to agreed business plans, and is managed according to policy laid down by the Board of Supporters Direct, which is elected by the members.

  As a body in receipt of public funding, the Board have a clear conflict of interest policy, and a register of board members' interests is maintained. Members with an interest in a particular issue do not debate or vote on the issue, and staff with an interest do not undertake to work on it.

  Television Licences (Tamworth)
  Mr. Jenkins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many old age pensioners in the Tamworth constituency have benefited from the introduction of free television licences. [188115]
  1462W
  Estelle Morris
  TV Licensing, who administer free television licences for people aged 75 or over as agents for the BBC, are not able to provide breakdowns by parliamentary constituency of the number of free licences issued. However, 2001 Census data for Parliamentary constituencies identifies that there are approximately 3,650 people aged 75 or over living in the Tamworth constituency.

  Television Reception
  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what plans she has to seek solutions for those people in the Stroud constituency who can neither receive a digital signal nor access satellite because of signal problems. [188414]

  Estelle Morris
  Ofcom do not hold data on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) or digital satellite coverage in individual constituencies.

  Total core analogue TV coverage for the four main public service channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and Channel 4) stands at 98.5 per cent. of UK households. In addition, according to Ofcom figures, digital satellite is available to between 96 per cent. and 98 per cent. of UK households.

  The Government is committed to ensuring that at Switchover, everyone who can currently get the main public service broadcasting channels in analogue form (BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channel 4/S4C and Channel 5) can receive them on digital systems.

  Much progress has been made in the discussions between the Government, Ofcom and the Public Service Broadcasters. While the broadcasters have not reached a full consensus on the optimum timetable, some—including the BBC—have suggested that 2012 may be the most appropriate date for the completion of Switchover.

  Mr. Drew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what progress is being made on the roll-out of digital television to those areas which have yet to receive it. [188415]

  Estelle Morris
  The Government is committed to ensuring that, at switchover, everyone who can currently receive the public service channels can receive them in digital form, and that digital television is available throughout the country.

  Digital satellite signals can already reach the vast majority of UK homes. Around 73 per cent. of the population can receive digital terrestrial television, but it is not possible to increase reception before switchover, as signals currently have to be transmitted at low power to prevent interference with analogue signals.

  Much progress has been made in the discussions between the Government, Ofcom, and the public service broadcasters. While the broadcasters have not reached a full consensus on the optimum timetable, some—including the BBC—have suggested that 2012 may be the most appropriate date for the completion of switchover.
  1463W

HEALTH

  Government Information (Access)
  Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what response he has made to the comments made by the Parliamentary Ombudsman regarding delays by his Department in responding to complaints under the code of practice on access to Government information made in her review of departmental performance against requirements of the Memorandum of Understanding published on 30 June; what action he is taking to end the delays; and if he will make a statement. [186675]

  Ms Rosie Winterton
  The Government takes any delays in responding to complaints under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information seriously.

  The Government regrets that delays do unavoidably occur in a small minority of complex cases. However, the Ombudsman's review of the first nine months of the Memorandum of Understanding (September 2003—May 2004) shows that in most cases the requirements of the Memorandum of Understanding were met.

  In all cases, Departments endeavour to ensure that the time limit of three weeks for departments to respond to a "statement of complaint" from the Ombudsman is met. In accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding, the Department aims to enter into dialogue with the investigating officer should there be any difficulty in replying by the date set by the Ombudsman.

  Ashworth Hospital
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the budget for Ashworth Hospital has been for each of the last five years. [186831]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The information requested is not available for the last five years. The budget for the Ashworth Special Hospital Authority is only available from 1999–2000 to 2001–02 and is shown in the table.

  Amount (£)

  1999–2000

  51,435,000

  2000–01

  61,169,000

  2001–02

  63,731,000

  Note.

  The Ashworth Special Hospital Authority was dissolved in 31 March 2002, with the majority of its services moving to the Mersey Care National Health Service Trust. The information requested is not collected centrally at individual hospital level.

  Source:

  Summarised accounts of Ashworth Special Hospital Authority 1999–2000 to 2001–02.

  Autism
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much funding has been allocated to(a) improving awareness and education and (b) research regarding autistic spectrum disorders in each of the last five years. [187774]
  1464W
  Dr. Ladyman
  Through grants to the National Autistic Society, the Department has funded a range of projects to increase awareness and understanding of autism. The funding since 1999 is shown in the table. An additional £156,000 grant, over three years, was announced in May 2004.

  £

  1999–2000

  40,000

  2000–01

  40,000

  2001–02

  86,000

  2002–03

  97,000

  2003–04

  100,000

  2004–05

  56,000

  The main agency through which the Government supports medical and clinical research is the Medical Research Council (MRC). The MRC is an independent body, which receives its grant-in-aid from the Office of Science and Technology, part of the Department of Trade and Industry 'Be MRC spend on autism since 1998 is shown in the table.

  £ million

  1998–99

  1.04

  1999–2000

  1.11

  2000–01

  1.18

  2001–02

  1.26

  2002–03

  1.30

  In addition the Department allocated a further £2.5 million to the MRC in 2001–02, earmarked specifically for autism research. The Scottish Executive has given the MRC a further £250,000.

  Breast Cancer
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to encourage women aged 25 to 35 years to undertake breast self-examination. [187301]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  80 per cent. of breast cancers occur in women aged over 50, with less than 2 per cent. occurring in women aged under 35. The Department supports breast awareness, rather than ritualistic monthly self-examination, for which there is little evidence. It is import ant for all women of any age to be breast aware, and report any changes to their doctor. The Department, together with Cancer Research UK, produces a leaflet entitled "Be Breast Aware", which is widely available front primary care surgeries and breast screening units. Around 1.5 million copies of this leaflet are produced each year.

  Cancer (NICE Guidelines)
  Dr. Gibson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the implementation of the revised National Institute for Clinical Excellence Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer will be enforced and monitored; and if he will make a statement. [185849]
  1465W
  Miss Melanie Johnson
  "National Standards, Local Action: Health and Social Care Standards and Planning Framework 2005/06–2007/08" was published on 21 July 2004. This document sets out the new healthcare standards which every English national health service body must take into account and which the Healthcare Commission will take into account in developing their criteria for their reviews of English NHS bodies. Guidance from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is reflected in these standards in two ways.

  Recommendations in "technology appraisal guidance" are included in a "core standard" for the NHS—all NHS bodies should "ensure that they conform to NICE technology appraisals and, where it is available, take into account nationally agreed guidance when planning and delivering treatment and care".

  "Clinical guidelines" form part of the "developmental standards"—standards which the NHS is expected to achieve over time. The standard requires patients to receive effective treatment and care that "conform to nationally agreed best practice, particularly as defined in … NICE guidance".

  The referral guidelines for suspected cancer are currently subject to consultation and do not constitute NICE's formal guidance. The first consultation period ends on 11 August 2004, with the final guidelines expected to be published in March 2005.

  Dr. Gibson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what role he expects the revised National Institute for Clinical Excellence Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer to have in improving the treatment of pre-cancerous skin conditions in primary care. [185850]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is currently consulting on the first draft of the revised referral guidelines for suspected cancer.

  As the guideline recommendations presented are provisional and do not constitute NICE'S formal guidance, it would not be appropriate to comment in detail at this stage. The guidelines, once published, will assist primary healthcare professionals in determining those patients with suspected skin cancer who need to be referred urgently to see a specialist within two weeks, those patients who can be referred for a routine appointment and those who can be safely watched and, where appropriate, treated at a primary care level.

  The revised guidelines are expected to be published in March 2005.

  Cervical Cancer Screening
  Mr. Streeter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what contractual arrangements are in place between the 1466W
  NHS and suppliers of products involved in cervical cancer screening procedures, including notice periods for the termination of such contracts. [186568]

  Ms Rosie Winterton
  There is no national contract for the national health service relating to products used during the current process of preparing cervical samples. However, the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency has just awarded a contract for liquid based cytology, which, over the remaining four years of a national roll out, will replace conventional cytology products.

  Additionally, there is a national framework for gynaecological sundries, which include consumables, which are used in cervical screening such as speculum and a cervical smear. This contract runs until September 2005 and the process of renewal will be starting shortly.

  Other surgical instruments are used during the taking of cervical samples. These products will remain in use following conversion and there is currently a national framework agreement in place for the purchase of reusable surgical instruments. This agreement started on 11 February 2002 and will continue until 10 February 2005, at which time a replacement agreement will commence.

  Chiropody and Podiatry
  Mr. Baron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his Answer of 6 July 2004,Official Report , column 617W, on podiatry, what the whole time equivalent is of the number of chiropodists and podiatrists employed by the NHS in each year since 1997. [188610]

  Mr. Hutton
  The information requested is shown in the table.

  Qualified chiropodists and podiatrists employed in the national health service in England as at 30 September each year

  Whole-time equivalents

  1997

  2,730

  1998

  2,750

  1999

  2,770

  2000

  2,847

  2001

  2,894

  2002

  2,916

  2003

  3,027

  Source:

  Department of Health non-medical workforce census.

  Between 1997 and 2003, the number of whole-time equivalents chiropodists and podiatrists employed in the NHS increased by 297, or 11 per cent.

  Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if he will break down the costs of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters by main budget heading; [184000]
  1467W
  (2) whether the Final Report of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters was unanimous; and if he will make a statement; [184001]

  (3) on what dates the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters has met; [184002]

  (4) what steps he is taking to appoint a successor chairman of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment; [184008]

  (5) what changes he plans to the terms of reference of the chairman of the (a) Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment and (b) Small Area Health Statistics Unit. [184009]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The Department has not yet received the final version of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) report. We understand it is expected to be published in October this year. It would not he appropriate to comment at this time.

  The CERRIE secretariat has informed me that the Committee held 16 meetings on the following dates—4 December 2001; 7 February 2002; 20 March 2002; 6 June 2002; 8 August 2002; 1 October 2002; 11 December 2002; 27 February 2003; 30 April 2003; 26 June 2003; 22 October 2003; 16 December 2003; 24 February 2004; 31 March 2004; 19 May 2004; and 24 June 2004. The Committee also convened a workshop on 21, 22 and 23 July 2003, which all members attended.

  The position of chairman to the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) was advertised. Any appointment will be made in strict adherence to the published guidance of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.

  I have no plans to change the terms of reference of either COMARE or the small area health statistic unit.

  The committee is expected to conclude its work in October 2004. The total cost of this work will be approximately £445,000. This includes the costs of the secretariat, meeting expenses, including a three day workshop and Committee members' travel and subsistence.

  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) whether the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters has commissioned written transcriptions of the audio-recorded proceedings of its meetings; [184003]

  (2) what access members of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters have had to written transcriptions of the audio-recorded proceedings of the Committee's meetings; [184012]

  (3) for what reasons the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters cancelled its planned study of cancer incidence in north Essex. [184013]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  These are matters that should be addressed in writing to the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters.
  1468W

  Correspondence
  Mr. Paterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he will reply to the letter dated 20 July, from the hon. Member for North Shropshire, regarding the ESBL outbreak at the Princess Royal Hospital, Telford and the Royal Shrewsbury hospital. [188262]

  Dr. Ladyman
  A reply was sent to the hon. Member on 9 September 2004

  Deaf Patients (Missed Appointments)
  Tim Loughton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the estimated cost to the NHS of missed appointments of deaf or hard of hearing patients was in the latest year for which figures are available. [178427]

  Dr. Ladyman
  Information on the costs of missed appointments in audiology is not collected centrally.

  Modernising hearing aid services has improved the quality of life of those people who have received digital hearing aids. It has modernised services to make sure that deaf people receive the most advanced hearing aids available, rather than rely on outdated technology from the 1970s.

  Designated Accommodation
  Bob Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many rooms are set aside for(a) the use of smokers, (b) worship, broken down by religion and (c) nursing mothers and pregnant women in each building and set of offices for which his Department is responsible. [187171]

  Ms Rosie Winterton
  The Department operates a no-smoking policy within its buildings. There are therefore no smoking rooms in the Department's headquarters buildings.

  On the Departmental estate, there are six rooms specifically set aside for worship and are available for use by members of any religion. In other buildings, meeting rooms can be reserved for this purpose.

  The Department has no rooms specifically set aside for nursing mothers or pregnant women.

  Drug Prescriptions
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many instances there have been in the last three years of drugs being prescribed on the NHS for non-medical purposes. [187521]

  Ms Rosie Winterton
  No information is available on the reasons why a medical practitioner prescribes a particular drug.

  Health Public Bodies
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the savings from the Departmental Review of Arm's Length bodies will be spent. [187876]
  1469W
  Ms Rosie Winterton
  Decisions on the allocation of health and social care resources in future years will be taken as part of the normal budget allocation process in the light of the 2004 spending review settlement.

  Home Deliveries
  Mrs. Helen Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the NHS will provide(a) a midwife and (b) medical attendance at a home birth. [186114]

  Dr. Ladyman
  We expect the national health service to provide a range of maternity services that includes the provision of home births. It is however for local decision makers to decide if a home birth service can be delivered safely and, if they do so decide, then the service might be withdrawn by a NHS trust on a temporary basis if a short term staff shortage means that such a service cannot be delivered safely or would jeopardise patient safety elsewhere in the trust.

  If a NHS trust provides a home birth service, it should ensure that suitably skilled midwives are available to attend the woman and to provide care and support throughout the labour and birth. Appropriate transfer arrangements should also be in place in case the woman or baby needs specialist medical care.

  MRSA
  Mr. Streeter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many incidences of(a) hospital-acquired infection and (b) methicillin resistent staphylococcus aureus at Derriford hospital, Plymouth have been notified to his Department in each of the last five years. [188446]

  Ms Rosie Winterton
  Information on the number of hospital acquired infections for in individual trusts is not collected centrally. The Department introduced mandatory reporting of methicillin resistent staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteraemias (blood stream infections) for national health service acute trusts from 1 April 2001. The number of MRSA reports for the three years for which figures are available is shown in the table.

  Plymouth hospitals NHS trust

  Number of MRSA bacteraemia reports

  2001–02

  99

  2002–03

  81

  2003–04

  98

  Andrew Mackinlay
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) which hospitals stock antibiotics against strains of MRSA; and if he will mike a statement; [184422]

  (2) which antibiotics are effective against strains of MRSA; and if he will make a statement. [184423]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The use of the description methicillin resistant in methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) implies resistance to all penicillin and cephalosporin type antibiotics (beta lactam group of antibiotics). Resistance to other classes of antibiotics is extremely variable.
  1470W
  Most MRSA that occur in the United Kingdom are still sensitive to and may be treated with vancomycin, teicoplanin, linezolid, or quinupristin/dalfopristin. They may also be sensitive to rifampicin, fluoroquinolone antibiotics (such as ciprofloxacin), chloramphenicol and variably to other antibiotics including tetracyclines macrolides (such as erythromycin) and aminoglycosides (such as gentamicin). Trusts have stocks of these antibiotics. Decisions on the antibiotic(s) appropriate for the treatment of any one patient must, therefore, depend on microbiological laboratory testing of the individual strain of bacterium isolated.

  MRSA
  resistant to all available antibiotics have not as yet been isolated in the United Kingdom.

  Private Sector Capital Grants
  Mr. Flook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the(a) budget and (b) spending outcome on private sector capital grants was in each of the last 10 years in (i) England, (ii) Somerset and (iii) Dorset. [188006]

  Mr. Hutton
  Information on capital grants solely to the private sector is not available centrally.

  Vulnerable Adults
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what problems have been identified with implementing the Protection of Vulnerable Adults list in healthcare settings. [187064]

  Dr. Ladyman
  Unless changes are made to the Care Standards Act 2000, a protection of vulnerable adults check would be required each time a junior doctor or healthcare trainee moved to a new training post. In view of the numbers involved, this would cause difficulties for the national health service and potentially jeopardise the supply of trained staff to the NHS workforce.

  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to cross refer between the Protection of Children Act list and the Protection of Vulnerable Adults list. [187111]

  Dr. Ladyman
  Section 92 of the Care Standards Act 2000 allows the Secretary of State for Health to consider any referral to the Protection of Children Act list for possible inclusion on the protection of vulnerable adults list. This would be in circumstances where it appears that the nature of the misconduct against a child is such that the individual would also be unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults.

  Waiting Lists
  Mr. Rosindell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients were waiting for an operation in an NHS hospital in the London borough of Havering in(a) July 1997 and (b) July 2004; and what the figures are for all other London boroughs. [187729]
  1471W
  Mr. Hutton
  The information requested is not collected by borough. However, the table shows the number of people waiting by strategic health authority (SHA) area.

  In-patient waiting list in June 1997–98 and 2004–05

  SHA code

  Name

  1997–98

  2004–05

  Q04

  North West London

  44,199

  27,516

  Q05

  North Central London

  43,523

  30,483

  Q06

  North East London

  41,538

  26,913

  Q07

  South East London

  41,632

  27,088

  Q08

  South West London

  31,892

  20,523

  Source:

  Department of Health form KH07.

  Helen Southworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the changes have been to waiting lists at Warrington hospital in each of the last seven years for which information is available. [183658]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The information requested is shown in the tables.

  Inpatient commissioner waiting list information for the primary care trust (PCT) and health authority (HA) covering the Warrington area

  Patients waiting for admission by month waiting

  Month ending March

  Year

  Quarter

  Name

  Specialty name

  Total waiting

  0–2

  3–5

  6–8

  9–11

  Health authority

  1997

  1996–97

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  8,923

  4,858

  2,082

  1,109

  798

  1998

  1997–98

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  10,484

  4,889

  2,371

  1.447

  1.140

  1999

  1998–99

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  9,426

  4,281

  2,119

  1,377

  993

  2000

  1999–2000

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  8,602

  3,574

  1,857

  1,383

  936

  2001

  2000–01

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  8,911

  3,907

  1,928

  1.395

  902

  2002

  2001–02

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  8.546

  3,831

  1,991

  1.366

  965

  Primary care trust

  2003

  2002–03

  4

  Warrington PCT

  All specialties

  4,803

  2,098

  1.348

  902

  455

  2004

  2003–04

  4

  Warrington PCT

  All specialties

  4,221

  2,509

  1,277

  435

  0

  Patents waiting for admission by month waiting

  Month ending March

  Year

  Quarter

  Name

  Specialty name

  12–14

  15–17

  18–20

  21–23

  Health authority

  1997

  1996–97

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  75

  0

  0

  1

  1998

  1997–98

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  484

  153

  0

  0

  1999

  1998–99

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  512

  144

  0

  0

  2000

  1999–2000

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  639

  213

  0

  0

  2001

  2000–01

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  573

  206

  0

  0

  2002

  2001–02

  4

  North Cheshire HA

  All specialties

  393

  0

  0

  0

  Primary care trust

  2003

  2002–03

  4

  Warrington PCT

  All specialties

  0

  0

  0

  0

  2004

  2003–04

  4

  Warrington PCT

  All specialties

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Note:

  PCT's were not formed until April 2002

  Source:

  Department of Health QF01

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Acute Hospitals
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what estimate he has made of the population level required to maintain an acute hospital in the Province as viable. [187804]
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  Outpatient commissioner waiting list information for the primary care trusts (PCT) and health authority (HA) covering the Warrington area all specialties

  General practitioner written referrals not yet seen, who have been waiting (weeks)

  Quarter ending March

  Code

  Name

  13 to <26

  26 plus

  1998

  QCV

  North Cheshire HA

  1,176

  217

  1999

  QCV

  North Cheshire HA

  1.871

  339

  2000

  QCV

  North Cheshire HA

  1,267

  538

  2001

  QCV

  North Cheshire HA

  789

  379

  2002

  QCV

  North Cheshire HA

  592

  19

  General practitioner written referrals not yet seen, who have been waiting (weeks)

  Quarter ending March

  Code

  Name

  13 to <17

  17 to <21

  21 to <26

  26 plus

  2003

  5J2

  Warrington PCT

  232

  91

  0

  0

  2004

  5J2

  Warrington PCT

  80

  0

  0

  0

  Note:

  Data for North Cheshire HA and Warrington PCT is not directly comparable. PCTs only came into existence in April 2002.

  Source:

  Department of Health QM08R.

  Angela Smith
  "Developing Better Services" concluded that a minimum population of between 100,000 and 150,000 is needed to provide the volume of patients necessary to sustain a modern acute hospital and to support advances in treatment, medical technology and specialist skills.

  The establishment of managed clinical networks is essential to the delivery of safe, effective and sustainable services at smaller acute hospitals. A number of

  1473W
  networks are already in place in Northern Ireland; there are plans for existing networks to be further developed and others introduced as part of the implementation of "Developing Better Services".

  Autism
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether there are specific targets regarding early diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorders in the Province. [187773]

  Angela Smith
  The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety's Priorities for Action 2004–05 includes the following action:
  "By 31 March 2005, Boards and Trusts should establish multidisciplinary diagnostic, assessment and early intervention teams to provide for improved life outcomes for around 200 children and young people with autism per year."

  This target is in addition to the numbers of children already being referred for diagnosis where an autistic spectrum disorder is suspected.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how much funding has been allocated to improving awareness and education about autistic spectrum disorders in the Province in each of the last five years. [187775]

  Angela Smith
  The funding allocated by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS), health and social services boards and trusts and the Department of Education (DE) for improving awareness and education about autistic spectrum disorders for healthcare staff, education staff and parents is outlined in the following table:

  £

  DHSSPS

  HSS boards and trusts

  DE

  Total

  1999–2000

  24,800

  24,600

  —

  49,400

  2000–01

  25,400

  30,800

  —

  56,200

  2001–02

  26,000

  62,800

  —

  88,800

  2002–03

  50,000

  141,700

  49,000

  240,700

  2003–04

  50,000

  251,300

  842,000

  1,143,300

  Care Homes
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on insurance costs for independent care homes. [187762]

  Angela Smith
  The cost of insurance for independent care homes is a business matter between home owners and their insurers.

  Civic Forum
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what the(a) set-up costs and (b) most recent annual running costs were of the civic forum. [187806]

  Mr. Paul Murphy
  Set-up costs for the civic forum were approximately £75,000. The running costs of the civic forum for the financial year 2002–03 were £328,000.
  1474W

  Clinical Negligence
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how much was awarded in(a) legal costs and (b) damages for clinical negligence cases in Northern Ireland in each of the last 10 years. [187810]

  Angela Smith
  The information in respect of the cost of clinical negligence cases in Northern Ireland in relation to each of the previous six years is as follows.

  Amounts paid in settlements for clinical negligence claims from 1998–99 to 2003–04

  £000

  1998–99

  12,286

  1999–2000

  4,859

  2000–01

  9,409

  2001–02

  7,415

  2002–03

  13,550

  2003–04

  15,194

  The information relating to the previous four years is not readily available in the form requested and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

  Information on the split of the above figures between damages and legal costs is not readily available in the form requested and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Cocaine
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what information he has collected on the extent of cocaine use in the Province; and if he will make a statement. [187809]

  Angela Smith
  In 2003, there were 25 registered cocaine addicts on the Drug Addicts Register while the Drug Misuse Database shows that in 2002–03, 68 persons presented for treatment citing cocaine as their main drug of misuse. In the All Ireland Drug Prevalence Survey 2002–03 1.6 per cent. of 15–64 year olds reported that they had ever used cocaine.

  There is growing anecdotal evidence of an increase in the use of cocaine in the club and pub setting among young adults. In light of these reports the Government have set up a small group to consider more closely the level of cocaine use in Northern Ireland with a view to informing future policy and strategy development in terms of prevention and treatment.

  Counterfeit Goods Seizures
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on counterfeit goods seized in the Province in the last year. [187450]

  Mr. Pearson
  The Police Service of Northern Ireland have had significant success in disrupting and frustrating criminals networks involved in intellectual property crime and in 2003–04 seized £7.6 million of counterfeit goods. Enforcement work is continuing, and under the umbrella of the Organised Crime Task Force the PSNI is working in partnership with industry and brand holders to identify illicit products, improve
  1475W
  understanding of the scope of trademark and copyright law, and raise public awareness of the risks associated with the purchase of counterfeit goods.

  Crime (Elderly People)
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what the mortality rate of elderly people who have been the victims of crime was in the last five years for which figures are available. [178382]

  Mr. Pearson
  The medical cause of death certificate contains no specific information as to whether the person had previously been the victim of a crime. Information can be provided only on cases where the cause of death is assault. The following table provides figures on the number of people of pensionable age (aged 60 or over for females, 65 or over for males) who died as a result of assault1 over the period 1999 to 2003.

  1 Cause of death was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes X85-Y09 and Y87.1 (2001–03) and the Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes E960-E969 (1999–2000).

  Number of deaths resulting from assault of people of pensionable age registered in Northern Ireland, 1999–2003

  Deaths

  1999

  1

  2000

  2

  2001

  0

  2002

  0

  2003 (data for 2003 are provisional)

  2

  Dementia
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will estimate the annual cost of providing nursing and personal care for dementia sufferers in Northern Ireland. [187797]

  Angela Smith
  The information requested is not available centrally.

  Disability Benefits
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what rationale underlies the differing periods of time which must elapse from the commencement of an illness before a claim can be made for(a) attendance allowance and (b) disability living allowance; and if he will review the rationale. [187824]

  Mr. Spellar
  The qualifying periods for attendance allowance and disability living allowance help ensure that they are not paid to people with short term, transient disabilities. The differences in the qualifying periods for the two benefits reflect the differing characteristics of the people they are designed to help. Disability living allowance focuses help with the extra costs of disability on people who have the very considerable disadvantage of being severely disabled early, or relatively early, in life. Hence, it has a shorter qualifying period than attendance allowance which provides help with the disability-related extra costs of people who do not experience the onset of severe disability until later in life when they are aged 65 or over. There are no plans to change these arrangements.
  1476W
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether he plans to review the legislation that places an age restriction on eligibility for disability living allowance. [187825]

  Mr. Spellar
  There are no plans to review the legislation in relation to the age bands for either the care or mobility components of disability living allowance.

  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will lower the rate of the care component for attendance allowance in order to provide elderly claimants with assistance towards their care costs. [187826]

  Mr. Spellar
  Attendance allowance is paid at two rates. The higher rate is for people who need help with personal care and/Dr supervision or watching over to avoid substantial danger to themselves or others by day and at night. The lower rate is for people who have those needs either during the day or at night. As at May 2004, attendance allowance was providing help towards the disability-related extra costs of over 65,000 people aged 65 or over in Northern Ireland. We believe that the allowance is properly directed towards the needs of older disabled people and there are no plans to introduce a third rate.

  Doctors' Working Hours
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what percentage of(a) junior house officers, (b) senior house officers and (c) specialist registrars are compliant with the European Working Time Directive at each health trust in the Province. [187802]

  Angela Smith
  The information detailed in the table below was obtained from each of the HPSS Trusts during May and June of this year as an assessment of how the junior doctors they employ would measure in terms of compliance against the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) requirements as to be introduced at 1 August 2004.

  Percentage

  Trust

  Junior House Office Compliance

  Senior House Officer Compliance

  Specialist Registrar Compliance

  Altnagelvin Hospital Trust

  100

  63

  26

  Armagh and Dungannon Trust

  n/a

  100

  n/a

  Belfast City Hospital

  67

  57

  82

  Causeway Hospital Trust

  100

  100

  33

  Craigavon Area Hospital Trust

  100

  69

  74

  Craigavon and Banbridge Community Trust

  n/a

  100

  n/a

  Down Lisburn Trust

  10

  100

  100

  Foyle Trust

  n/a

  100

  n/a

  Greenpark Hospital Trust

  n/a

  50

  25

  Homefirst Community Trust

  n/a

  100

  100

  Mater Hospital Trust

  100

  78

  45

  Newry and Mourne Trust

  100

  41

  25

  North and West Belfast Trust

  n/a

  100

  100

  Royal Group of Hospitals

  60

  36

  45

  1477W

  Percentage

  Trust

  Junior House Office Compliance

  Senior House Officer Compliance

  Specialist Registrar Compliance

  South and East Belfast Trust

  n/a

  100

  100

  Sperrin Lakeland Trust

  100

  77

  67

  Ulster Community Hospital Trust

  54

  57

  37

  United Hospitals Trust

  11

  37

  31

  note n/a = not available

  Based on this information, the overall HPSS compliance position was that, approximately 60 per cent. of the total junior doctor workforce was expected to meet the August 2004 EWTD requirements.

  However the situation has nioved on since this information was gathered, in that a further 75 new junior doctor positions have been created within the HPSS, and that the addition of these new posts are expected to bring the overall compliance figure up to nearer 70 per cent.

  The Department is currently engaged in gathering more up to date information from all HSS organisations in relation to the junior doctors EWTD compliance position, and will be analysing the information gathered with a view to making a more definitive assessment of the overall current HPSS compliance position.

  We continue to work closely with all HSS organisations to ensure the objective of achieving full EWTD compliance for all junior doctors is achieved as soon as possible, while ensuring services to patients are not adversely affected.

  Drug Overdose Mortality
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many(a) intentional and (b) accidental deaths there were from drug overdoses in each health board area in each of the last five years. [187799]

  Mr. Pearson
  The following table gives the number of drug-related deaths registered by Health and Social Services Boards in Northern Ireland for each year between 1999 and 2003.

  Number of drug-related deaths by registration year and Health and Social Services Board area in Northern Ireland

  Cause of death

  Health and Social Services Board

  Registration year

  Intentional self-poisoning by drugs1

  Accidental poisoning by drugs2

  Undetermined and other poisoning by drugs3

  Eastern

  1999

  9

  11

  6

  2000

  19

  7

  5

  2001

  15

  5

  2

  2002

  21

  8

  6

  42003

  6

  11

  2

  Northern

  1999

  3

  7

  1

  2000

  7

  3

  2

  2001

  2

  4

  2

  2002

  8

  1

  5

  42003

  6

  8

  3

  Southern

  1999

  1

  1

  3

  2000

  2

  1

  2

  2001

  1

  0

  2

  2002

  1

  3

  3

  42003

  3

  1

  3

  1478W

  Western

  1999

  4

  1

  3

  2000

  1

  1

  3

  2001

  2

  0

  0

  2002

  2

  7

  3

  42003

  2

  6

  1

  1Intentional self-poisoning by drugs: This comprises intentional death due to prescription drugs, illegal drugs and/or where a combination of alcohol and drugs was involved. It does not include intentional alcohol self-poisoning alone.

  2 Accidental poisoning by drugs: This comprises accidental death due to prescription drugs, illegal drugs and/or where a combination of alcohol and drugs was involved. It does not include accidental alcohol poisoning alone.

  3 Undetermined and other poisoning by drugs: This comprises death of undetermined intent due to prescription drugs, illegal drugs and/or deaths where a combination of alcohol and drugs were involved, but not intentional or accidental alcohol poisoning alone. This category also includes death due to mental and behavioural disorders related to drug (prescription and/or illegal drugs) use, excluding alcohol and tobacco.

  4 Data for 2003 are provisional.

  Ear, Nose and Throat Services
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1) if he will make a statement on longterm plans for otorhinolaryngology services at Tyrone County Hospital; [187800]

  (2) if he will make a statement on otorhinolaryngology services in Fermanagh and Tyrone. [187801]

  Angela Smith
  The Otorhinolaryngology Service provided by Sperrin Lakeland Trust includes ENT services and is currently based at Tyrone County Hospital. Inpatient and day case services are delivered from the Tyrone County Hospital; outpatient services are delivered from both the Erne and Tyrone County Hospitals. The service also provides cover to Cavan and Monaghan Hospitals.

  The Western Area Programme Board for the implementation of Developing Better Services has established a multidisciplinary Working Group to determine the future service outline for the provision of otorhinolaryngology services across the Western Board area including Tyrone County Hospital. The Group is expected to report in October 2004.

  Endoscope Decontamination Review
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when the independent external review into endoscope decontamination will report. [187777]

  Angela Smith
  The independent review of endoscopes is due to report at the end of November 2004.

  Farm Payments
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many payments due to farmers in Northern Ireland by 30 June have not yet been paid,
  1479W
  broken down by category of farm payment; and what the total value of such outstanding claims for payment is. [188244]

  Mr. Pearson
  In Northern Ireland the number and potential value, if paid in full, of farm subsidy claims due to have been paid by 30 June 2004 but which had not been paid by 8 September 2004, are broken down as follows:

  Applications unpaid

  Value (£ million)

  Beef Special Premium

  4,071

  1.6

  Slaughter Premium

  1,849

  0.8

  Suckler Cow Premium

  539

  1.4

  Extensification Payment

  2,074

  4.2

  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what his target date is for paying to farmers in Northern Ireland all payments due to them by 30 June. [188245]

  Mr. Pearson
  To date 94.9 per cent. of potential total expenditure has been paid. It is expected that the European Commission's regulatory requirement for 96.14 per cent. of total scheme expenditure to be paid by 30 June 2004 will be achieved by 30 September 2004.

  Fertility Treatment
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what plans he has to prioritise on sub-fertility waiting lists females who are approaching the cut-off point for age-related treatment options. [187793]

  Angela Smith
  There are no plans at present to prioritise on sub-fertility waiting lists females who are approaching the cut off point for age-related treatment options. A consultation and equality impact assessment on the future provision of sub-fertility services in Northern Ireland have now been undertaken and I hope to be able to announce my proposals in this regard in the very near future.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many couples are awaiting(a) initial outpatient assessment and (b) treatment for sub-fertility in the Province. [187794]

  Angela Smith
  The information requested is not collected centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what the latest figure is for the average waiting time from GP referral to consultant assessment for sub-fertility treatments in the Province. [187795]

  Angela Smith
  The information requested is not collected centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what plans he has to bring the criteria for NHS-funded sub-fertility treatments in Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom. [187796]
  1480W
  Angela Smith
  Publicly funded IVF treatment has been available in Northern Ireland since the establishment of the interim fertility service in December 2001. Access to the interim service is regulated by criteria recommended in the advisory report submitted in February 2001 by the Regional Medical Services Consortium.

  To inform decisions on the longer term provision of fertility services in Northern Ireland, including the access criteria which may be applied, I issued the document, "From People to Parents" for public consultation in October 2003. The consultation process has now closed and I hope to be in a position to announce my proposals for the future development of fertility services in Northern Ireland in the very near future. In making my decision I will of course wish to take account of criteria for NHS funded fertility treatment used in GB.

  Flooding
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on floods in the Province in August. [187791]

  Mr. Spellar
  During the latter part of August 2004, several areas in Northern Ireland were affected by severe localised rainfall conditions that proved to be beyond the capacity of local drainage systems. The Londonderry area was particularly affected. Localised flooding also occurred at a number of locations in Greater Belfast, North Down, East Down and East Antrim, which resulted in some road closures for short periods of time.

  Staff from Rivers Agency, Water Service and Roads Service along with other responders worked to minimise damage to property and disruption to the community. During each of the flood events an inter-agency flood team was formed, comprising representatives from Rivers Agency, Water Service and Roads Service to coordinate the response. The team, along with other agencies—13 in total in the Londonderry incident—worked together to provide assistance and advice to those affected.

  In the Londonderry incident, Water Service, Roads Service and Rivers Agency deployed some 75 staff, working late into the evening and next morning, to minimise damage to property and aid recovery. I would like to pay tribute to the efforts of those staff and the staff of other agencies. The Central Claims Unit had its loss adjusters on the ground on 18 August. Notwithstanding these efforts, a number of householders and businesses suffered significant flood-related damage. Derry city council organised a "help shop", to provide advice and information, on 20 August, and all the relevant statutory agencies participated in this event. My ministerial colleague, lan Pearson, visited Londonderry on 18 August to survey the damage and to ensure that remedial measures were in train.

  The circumstances of the flooding incidents are being fully investigated to identify any opportunities to reduce the risk of further events and improve the standard of the inter-agency response. As with all such incidents, it is essential that any lessons are learned and applied.
  1481W
  Water Service is implementing a programme of flood relief schemes at 50 locations at risk of flooding. £6 million has been invested on such schemes in the last four years and a further £5 million will be invested over the next three years. Moreover work on the £100 million Belfast sewer project is already underway and a further £59 million will be invested in upgrading the sewerage network across the region in the three year period to 2006. Major upgrades of the sewerage system planned will also help to reduce flooding risks. In addition, Rivers Agency has an ongoing works programme to protect property from flooding from watercourses and the sea, amounting to approximately £7 million per annum.

  However, it must be recognised that, although modern drainage standards will provide better protection, it is impossible to guarantee that flooding will not occur, when unusually severe weather conditions are experienced.

  General Practitioners
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what assistance is available to locum general practitioners on(a) sick leave and (b) maternity leave. [187765]

  Angela Smith
  A locum general practitioner who is on sick leave or maternity leave is entitled to the same range of social security benefits as any self employed person who pays class 2 national insurance contributions. This includes incapacity benefit and maternity benefit.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what estimate he has made of the(a) number of missed general practitioner appointments and (b) resultant costs in the Province in the latest year for which figures are available. [187769]

  Angela Smith
  This information is not collected centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many(a) contacts to and (b) domiciliary visits from each general practice out-of-hours service there were in the Province in each of the last five years. [187811]

  Angela Smith: The information requested is not available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Hospital Hygiene
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what steps are being taken to improve hygiene in local hospitals; and if he will make a statement. [187815]

  Angela Smith
  All health and social services trusts in Northern Ireland have a duty to ensure that high standards of hygiene in hospitals are being met and maintained. The Department of Health. Social Services and Public Safety is placing a renewed emphasis on clean hospitals with the planned establishment of standards for cleanliness against which performance will be measured and improvements delivered.
  1482W

  Hospital-acquired Infections
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what estimate has been made of the cost of hospital-acquired infections in the Province in the last year for which figures are available. [187443]

  Angela Smith
  There are no figures or estimates available on the cost of hospital-acquired infections in Northern Ireland.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many vancomycin-resistant enterococcus cases there were in the Province in each of the last five years. [187445]

  Angela Smith
  The information requested is set out in the following table.

  Reports of glycopeptide resistant enterococci (GRE), 2000–04, Northern Ireland

  Number of reports

  2000

  0

  2001

  1

  2002

  6

  2003

  3

  2004 (up to 31 August)

  1

  Housing
  David Burnside
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether discussions took place between representatives of the Housing Executive and local political parties over the future of the Protestant families who moved from the Torrens area of North Belfast in August. [188142]

  Mr. Spellar
  Yes. In the light of recent events the Housing Executive has continued to have discussions with the Democratic Unionist Party and the Progressive Unionist Party. The Housing Executive has also met with Sinn Fein (at its request) and briefed the Social Democratic and Labour Party. In recent years the residents of Torrens have been largely represented by the Democratic Unionist Party or Progressive Unionist Party. The Ulster Unionist Party has not initiated any discussions and has had no involvement with the Housing Executive in relation to Torrens for some time. The Housing Executive will continue to engage with local politicians over the future of the Torrens area.

  Learning Disability Provision
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what improvements have been made in enhancing educational provision for those aged 16 years and over with moderate learning disability in the Province. [187776]

  Mr. Gardiner
  Pupils with moderate learning difficulties, whether placed in an ordinary school, a special unit or a special school, generally leave school at the statutory school leaving age. In a small number of cases and depending on their special educational needs, they may remain in school beyond statutory school leaving age. Parents have a general right of appeal to the SEN Tribunal if they disagree with the boards decision to cease to maintain a statement at any time.
  1483W
  Education and library boards (ELBs) are required, in conjunction with other relevant agencies, to draw up a transition plan for all pupils with statements of special educational needs (SENs) to set out appropriate post-school opportunities, including further education.

  The Department of Education chairs an Inter-Departmental Working Group (IDG) that is looking at the transition of all young people with statements of special educational needs to adult life. The remit of this group does not extend to include consideration of post 16 educational provision in schools for MLD children, but rather to consider how to make strategic improvements in the transition process for young people with SENs on leaving school. The IDG is in the process of finalising an action plan, which will be produced in autumn 2004.

  The educational and library boards' Regional Strategy Group for Special Education Needs has established a working party to look at the equality of provision post 16 for pupils in MLD schools across the five education and library boards. The group is considering a number of options and is working with the Department of Employment and Learning, who have responsibility for colleges of further education.

  In addition the Department for Employment and Learning has put in place a range of initiatives and funding streams designed to promote access to post 16 provision by students with disabilities including those with moderate learning disabilities

  Maternity Services
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland which health trusts have expressed an interest in developing midwife-led maternity facilities. [187768]

  Angela Smith
  There is already a midwife-led unit adjacent to the consultant obstetric unit at Craigavon hospital. Similar midwife-led units are planned for a number of other hospital sites including the Altnagelvin, Ulster and Royal sites and the new hospital for the south-west.

  In addition, on 29 July I announced my decision to allow the development of Community Midwifery Units (stand-alone midwife-led units) in Northern Ireland. My announcement has opened the way for Health and Social Services Boards and Trusts to consider the potential for establishing Community Midwifery Units as part of the wider implementation of Developing Better Services and the associated reconfiguration of hospital and other health services.

  Mental Health
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how much has been spent on mental health (a) assertive outreach and (b) crisis response services in each of the last five years in the Province. [187771]
  1484W
  Angela Smith
  No funds were specifically allocated by health and social services boards for assertive outreach or crisis response services prior to 2001–02. Recent funding by health and social services board area is as follows:

  Southern Health and Social Services Board

  In 2002–03, the southern board allocated £220,000 to assertive outreach and £220,000 to crisis response services. This increased to £225,000 in 2003–04.

  Northern Health and Social Services Board

  In 2002–03, the northern board allocated £142,000 for assertive outreach services. In 2003–04, it allocated £759,000 for assertive outreach and £1,052,000 for crisis response. A further £612,000 was allocated non-specifically to develop both services.

  Eastern Health and Social Services Board

  No funds were specifically allocated for assertive outreach or crisis response services prior to 2003–04. In 2003–04, it allocated £112,000 to assertive outreach and £1,390,000 to crisis response services.

  Western Health and Social Services Board

  No funds were allocated prior to 2003–04. In 2003–04, the western board allocated £196,000 to crisis response services.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what plans there are to develop(a) assertive outreach and (b) crisis response mental health services in the Province. [187772]

  Angela Smith
  Health and social services boards are currently developing both assertive outreach and crisis response mental set vices throughout Northern Ireland. An additional £3 million has been made available by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in 2004–05 to further develop these and other community services.

  NHS Staff
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many full-time(a) nurses and (b) administrators are employed by the NHS in Northern Ireland. [187805]

  Angela Smith
  Me information requested is as follows.

  Number of full-time nurses employed within all NI HPSS1 organisations as at 30 June 2004

  Nursing staff group

  Headcount

  Qualified Nurses

  8,544

  Unqualified Nurses

  2,513

  Total

  11,057

  1Health and Personal Social Services.

  Note:

  Bank staff who cover for staffing shortfalls and fluctuating workloads in order to maintain service delivery have been removed from these figures. Student nurses have also been removed.

  1485W

  Number of full-time administration and clerical staff employed within all NI HPSS1 organisations ay at 30 June 2004

  Administration and Clerical staff group

  Headcount

  Clerical and Admin

  6,806

  Manager

  728

  Senior Manager

  1,011

  Senior Executives

  166

  Board Member

  151

  Total

  8,862

  1 Health and Personal Social Services.

  Note:

  Bank staff who cover for staffing shortfalls and fluctuating workloads in order to maintain service delivery have been removed from these figures.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many nursing vacancies there are at each health trust in the Province. [187779]

  Angela Smith
  The number of vacancies as at 30 June 2004 are as follows.

  Number of nursing midwifery and health writing vacancies within all trusts as at 30 June 2004

  Trust

  Headcount vacanices

  WTE1 vacancies

  Altnagelvin Group HSS Trust

  69

  68.7

  Armagh and Dungannon HSS Trust

  10

  8.3

  Belfast City Hospital HSS Trust

  78

  76.1

  Causeway HSS Trust

  8

  7.1

  Craigavon and Banbridge Community HSS Trust

  13

  11.0

  Craigavon Area Hospital Group HSS Trust

  9

  7.7

  Down Lisbum HSS Trust

  22

  21.3

  Foyle Community HSS Trust

  8

  8.0

  Greenpark Healthcare HSS Trust

  45

  44.3

  Homefirst Community HSS Trust

  24

  n/a

  Mater Infirmorum Hospital HSS Trust

  111

  108.4

  Newry and Moume HSS Trust

  13

  13.0

  North and West Belfast HSS Trust

  21

  13.4

  Royal Group of Hospitals HSS Trust

  219

  191.8

  South and East Belfast HSS Trust

  86

  85.3

  Sperrin Lakeland HSS Trust

  28

  28.0

  Ulster Community and Hospitals Group HSS Trust

  48

  42.2

  United Hospitals Group HSS Trust

  38

  38.0

  Total

  850

  2772.7

  1Whole time equivalent.

  2Total WTE figure does not include Homefirst.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many overseas nurses are working at each health trust in the Province. [187780]

  Angela Smith
  As at 31 August 2004, the total number of overseas nurses employed within health and social services trusts in Northern Ireland was 815. Figures are detailed by trust as follows.

  HSS1 trust

  Number

  Altnagelvin Group HSS Trust

  37

  Armagh and Dungannon HSS Trust

  0

  Belfast City Hospital HSS Trust

  53

  Causeway HSS Trust

  13

  Craigavon and Banbridge Comm. HSS Trust

  2

  Craigavon Area Hospital HSS Trust

  50

  Down Lisburn HSS Trust

  56

  Foyle Community HSS Trust

  1

  Greenpark Healthcare HSS Trust

  58

  1486W

  Homefirst Community HSS Trust

  36

  Mater Infirmorum Hospital HSS Trust

  51

  Newry and Moume HSS Trust

  3

  North and West Belfast HSS Trust

  0

  Royal Group of Hospitals HSS Trust

  226

  South and East Belfast HSS Trust

  0

  Sperrin Lakeland HSS Trust

  41

  Ulster Community and Hospitals Group HSS Trust

  114

  United Hospitals Group HSS Trust

  74

  Total

  815

  1Health and social services.

  PFI/PPP Contracts
  Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many contracts have been let by his Department in each financial year since 2001–02 to(a) PriceWaterhouseCoopers, (b) Deloitte and Touche, (c) KPMG and (d) Ernst and Young for advising his Department on private finance initiative and public private partnership contracts; and what fees were paid in each case. [182269]

  Mr. Pearson
  The following table sets out the number of contacts awarded by the eleven Northern Ireland Departments and the Northern Ireland Office in each year from 2001 to date:

  Year contract awarded

  2001–02

  2002–03

  2003–04

  PriceWaterhouseCoopers

  4

  11

  6

  Deloitte and Touche

  —

  1

  2

  KPMG

  1

  1

  1

  Ernst and Young

  —

  —

  1

  The following table sets out the total fees paid in respect of these contracts:

  £

  Year contract awarded

  2001–02

  2002–03

  2003–04

  PriceWaterhouseCoopers

  1,984,445

  608,852

  1,282,934

  Deloitte and Touche

  —

  34,738

  22,060

  KPMG

  88,800

  22,555

  332,513

  Ernst and Young

  —

  —

  99,845

  Both tables cover contracts where the company identified was either the sole contractor or the lead partner in a consortium. Where the company was the lead partner in a consortium the figures quoted for fees paid include payments it would have been contractually obliged to make to the other partners in the consortium. In these circumstances the contracting authority is not in a position to identify payments to consortium members.

  It should also be noted that a number of public services to which these contracts relate are the responsibility of local authorities or private companies in England and Wales, but are fully funded through central Government in Northern Ireland.
  1487W

  Prosthetic Limbs
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many individuals in the Province have prosthetic limbs; and what the causes of the disability are in each case. [187781]

  Angela Smith
  As at March 2004, the number of people who have prosthetic limbs in Northern Ireland is 1,716. The causes of the disability in each case are as follows.

  Cause

  Number

  Trauma

  589

  Arterial

  563

  Congenital

  223

  Civil disturbance

  128

  Malignancy

  99

  Other

  68

  Neurological condition

  26

  Re-amputation—through non-healing

  11

  Venous

  9

  Northern Ireland total

  1,716

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people are employed in the Province specifically to treat those with prosthetic limbs, broken down by profession. [187782]

  Angela Smith
  Information requested is provided in the following table.

  Number of people employed in the Province to treat specifically those with prosthetic limbs. broken down by profession

  Profession

  Headcount

  WTE

  Physiotherapists

  4

  2.01

  Prosthetists

  5

  5.00

  Consultant in rehabilitation medicine

  1

  1.00

  Occupational therapists

  1

  1.00

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  2001–02

  2002–03

  2003–04

  Verbal abuse threat

  132

  67

  77

  50

  56

  109

  Written material

  1

  4

  1

  4

  3

  10

  Graffiti

  5

  7

  6

  2

  4

  7

  Physical assault

  15

  54

  58

  37

  50

  103

  Attack on home

  13

  53

  49

  38

  59

  148

  Attack on property

  20

  37

  45

  33

  39

  57

  Other

  7

  15

  24

  21

  15

  19

  Total

  93

  237

  260

  185

  226

  453

  The number of incidents reported for 2003–04 increased 100 per cent. from the same period the previous year. This increase is believed to reflect the considerable effort made by the Police Service to build confidence within Minority Ethnic Communities and encourage the reporting of such incidents.

  Mr. Dodds
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people were convicted of racially motivated offences in Northern Ireland in each year since 1997. [187415]

  Mr. Pearson
  Accurate information in respect of conviction rates is not currently available. The Police Service of Northern Ireland have recently introduced new recording and monitoring systems in respect of
  1488W

  Number of people employed in the Province to treat specifically those with prosthetic limbs, broken down by profession

  Profession

  Headcount

  WTE

  Nurses

  27

  20.83

  Total

  38

  29.84

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland hat progress has been made on improving the cosmetic appearance, with particular reference to colour synergy, of prosthetic limbs provided in Northern Ireland. [187783]

  Angela Smith
  There is a range of silicone coverings (cosmeses) that may be provided to prosthetic users. These vary in cost from around £200 for a single colour covering to £5,000 for a high definition silicone covering. The latter are not provided routinely as part of prosthetic provision. Where the consultant and prosthetist consider there is a clinical need for a person to be supplied with a high definition cover, a case is made to the relevant Health and Social Services Board for funding.

  The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Green Part Healthcare Trust and Health and Social Services Boards are in discussion on the implications of widening provision of high definition coverings.

  Racism
  Mr. Dodds
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many racially-motivated attacks were reported in Northern Ireland in each year since 1997. [187411]

  Mr. Pearson
  The Police Service of Northern Ireland record incidents which are perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be racial. They have supplied the following figures:

  racially motivated crimes which will assist police in identifying crimes of this type. A detailed analysis of incidents reported during 2003–04 is presently being undertaken and this information will be available in due course.

  Rail Services
  Mr. Gregory Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland pursuant to his answers of 7 September 2004, references 185114 and 185115, on rail services, whether the totals for(a) infrastructure maintenance: cross border line and (b) upgrading the cross-border line include money spent on maintaining and improving the Enterprise rail service between Belfast and Dublin. [188273]
  1489W
  Mr. Spellar
  Translink has confirmed that the costs detailed in my answer of 7 September 2004,Official Report, column 1136W, number 185114 for (a) infrastructure maintenance of the cross-border line and (b) upgrading the cross-border line do not include the costs of maintenance and improving the Enterprise rail service between Belfast and Dublin. These costs are detailed separately in my answer of 7 September 2004, Official Report, column 1136W, number 185115.

  Railways
  Mr. Gregory Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how much public money from Northern Ireland departments his been spent on(a) maintaining and (b) improving the rail service between Belfast and Londonderry in each of the past five years. [188274]

  Mr. Spellar
  Public money spent on(a) maintaining and (b) improving the rail service between Belfast and Londonderry in the past five years is as follows:

  £

  Infrastructure maintenance

  1999–2000

  912,000

  2000–01

  939,000

  2001–02

  11.088

  2002–03

  11.199

  2003–04

  12.179

  Improvements

  1999–2000

  100,000

  2000–01

  350,000

  2001–02

  200,000

  2002–03

  100,000

  2003–04

  28,000

  1 Million

  Regional Disablement Service
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what assessment he has made of the merits of providing funding directly to the Regional Disablement Service rather than through health boards. [187786]

  Angela Smith
  Funding for the Regional Disablement Service is provided by the four Health and Social Services Boards from the Physical and Sensory Disability Programme of Care budget via Service Level Agreements with Green Park Trust for the provision of services. The agreements are subject to regular monitoring and performance management to ensure that the best possible care is provided. As each Board has a statutory responsibility for the commissioning of services for its resident population, and the current arrangements provide a robust accountability regime, there are no plans to change them.
  1490W
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether it is planned that the Regional Disablement Service should provide satellite clinics in the Province. [187787]

  Angela Smith
  The contract for provision of prosthetic and technician services is currently being tendered. The new contract provides for the establishment of satellite clinics during its term, which commences 1 April 2005 and runs for a period of seven years. A detailed specification for a satellite service and its funding would have to be developed in collaboration with Health and Social Services Boards ahead of its actual establishment.

  Respite Beds
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many respite beds there are in each(a) council and (b) health board area; and how many of these beds are (i) solely for the use of patients with particular conditions and (ii) restricted to use by individuals within a certain age range. [187763]

  Angela Smith
  Information on the number of beds which may be used to provide respite care is not collected centrally. Health and social services boards do not have a specified number of residential or nursing home beds dedicated solely to respite care, as beds may be used to accommodate either permanent residents or persons requiring respite according to demand.

  Ulster Hospital
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the(a) number and (b) workload of plumbers at the Ulster Hospital (i) in 1994 and (ii) on the most recent date for which figures are available. [187814]

  Angela Smith
  In 1994 the Ulster Hospital employed four whole-time equivalent plumbing staff to provide a service to the Ulster Hospital and community facilities in the East Belfast and Castlereagh areas.

  The Ulster Hospital and Community HSS Trust currently employs four whole-time equivalent plumbing staff to provide a service to the Ulster Hospital and health and social care facilities in Newtownards and Bangor.

  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the state of(a) plumbing and (b) sewers at the Ulster Hospital. [187817]

  Angela Smith
  The condition of plumbing services and sewage systems in the Ulster Hospital is considered to be in a condition consistent with the age of the buildings.
  1491W
  The redevelopment programme that has commenced at the Ulster Hospital includes the replacement of the existing sewage system and renewal of internal plumbing services.

  Universities
  Mrs. Iris Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many(a) Protestant, (b) Roman Catholic and (c) other students domiciled in Northern Ireland commenced university courses in (i) Northern Ireland and (ii) Great Britain in each of the last 10 years. [187812]

  Mr. Gardiner
  Information on students enrolled at higher education institutions is collected and provided to the Department for Employment and Learning by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Religion is only recorded for NI domiciled students enrolled at NI higher education institutions. The religion of students enrolled at higher education institutions in GB is not collected.
  1492W
  Religion was first collected in the 1995/96 academic year and the latest information available relates to the 2002/03 academic year. The breakdown of religion for the NI institutions is shown in the table.

  NI domiciled first-year students enrolled on courses at Northern Ireland higher education institutions by religion 1994/95 to 2002/03

  Academic year

  Protestant

  Roman Catholic

  Other

  Not known/unavailable

  Total

  1995/96

  995

  1,155

  73

  11,537

  13,760

  1996/97

  925

  1,124

  54

  9,984

  12,087

  1997/98

  3,389

  4,528

  315

  6,497

  14,729

  1998/99

  3,563

  4,774

  399

  6,650

  15,386

  1999/2000

  3,724

  5,241

  412

  5,708

  15,085

  2000/01

  4,62

  6,634

  509

  5,608

  17,378

  2001/02

  4,564

  6,148

  470

  7,116

  18,298

  2002/03

  5,720

  7,564

  663

  4,806

  18,753

  Figures for 1995/96 to 1999/2000 relate to a snapshot of enrolments at 1 December in the relevant academic year and figures for 2000/01 to 2002/03 relate to a full-year count.

WORK AND PENSIONS

  Opportunity for All—Sixth Annual Report
  The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Alan Johnson)
  Today I have published "Opportunity for All—Sixth Annual Report 2004", Cm 6239. The report sets out our strategy for tackling poverty and social exclusion, and reports on the indicators used to monitor progress. Copies have been placed in the Library.
  140WS
  Poverty and social exclusion are deep-rooted problems that have built up over many years and will take time to resolve. Our strategy has been to tackle the root causes of poverty. I am pleased to report substantial progress has been made on a range of our indicators. For example, we have seen improvements for children living in workless households, people of all ages living in homes that are of the set standard of decency, employment rates, including those for disabled people, lone parents, ethnic minority people and people aged 50 and over, and the number of people sleeping rough.

  Undoubtedly there is more to do. Tackling the root causes of poverty takes time as well as commitment and investment. It also requires a partnership across all sectors of society. However, it is exciting that we are now starting to see early signs of some equally deep-rooted change.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle.

Lord Steinberg
Leonard Steinberg, Esquire, having been created Baron Steinberg, of Belfast in the County of Antrim, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Harris of Peckham and the Lord Ashcroft.
Lord Alliance
Sir David Alliance, Knight, CBE, having been created Baron Alliance, of Manchester in the County of Greater Manchester, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Owen and the Lord Razzall, and made the solemn affirmation.

European Monetary System
2.50 p.m.
Lord Dykes Lord Dykes asked Her Majesty's Government:
What recent assessment they have made of the economic opportunities that would be available to the United Kingdom upon joining the European monetary system.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord McIntosh of Haringey): My Lords, the assessment of the five economic tests, published on 9 June 2003, states that, with the five economic tests met, Britain in the euro would enjoy the benefits of greater trade, investment and employment. However, sustainable convergence and sufficient flexibility have yet to be achieved. As the Chancellor announced in this year's Budget,
"while the Government do not propose that a … assessment be initiated at the time of this Budget, the Treasury will again review progress at Budget time next year and report to the House".—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/04; col. 324.]
Lord Dykes: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. But does he agree that it sometimes takes an awfully long time for this country to do important things? The Government are facing some complex tasks, including the approach of the general election and, of course, the referendum on the European constitution—very complicated matters. But, from now on, will the Government at long last begin to address the important matter of conveying to the British public the growing success of the euro as an
892
international currency both inside and outside the euro-zone and the growing disadvantages that we now face in not joining and in stubbornly refusing to join?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I cannot agree that we are not continually addressing these matters. The assessment that we published in June last year was extremely—some would say excessively—detailed in 18 volumes, and we still believe that that assessment was the right thing to do at the time. We do not believe that it is necessary or desirable to continue to make public statements updating that basic assessment. Every six months we carry out a study on flexibility and we shall continue to do that.
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, the European currency has now been in operation without the participation of the United Kingdom for more than five years. What is the Treasury's estimate of the net economic cost to date of our non-participation? Or is this yet another matter which the Chancellor has declined to divulge to the Prime Minister?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, wishes to pay attention to the tittle-tattle in the newspapers by former employees, he is welcome to do so. But clearly the assessment that has been made cannot be entirely quantified, and there is no single answer to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, asked. As the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, said, these are complex matters and they are not to be solved by sound bites.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, when the Chancellor initially announced the five economic tests, he said that the most critical one was sustainable economic convergence. Can my noble friend tell us quite how one can ever get sustainable convergence?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, we probably could not obtain sustainable convergence as defined by economists, but if we did it in a more common sense way—I shudder to think what is happening behind me—and used the analysis which was used in June last year, we would be able to see when there is sustainable convergence, and we could see at that time that there was not.
Lord Taverne: My Lords, as far as concerns one of the present weaknesses of the euro-zone—namely, fiscal discipline—do the Government agree that the most recent proposals of the Commission, which put the emphasis on peer pressure, are rather more sensible than a regime of strict rules, severe penalties and no enforcement? Is it not the case that one of the most important matters would be for the Government to stress the importance of the "no bale out" provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, thereby strengthening the pressure from market forces?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, is beyond me in some of the detail, but in principle I agree with what he says. On

893
3 September the Commission published an analysis of the stability and growth pact following the decision of the European Court of Justice. Three of the four recommendations of the Commission communication are in line with the Chancellor's view of the prudent interpretation of the pact. I think and hope that that is what the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, agrees with.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is still the Government's position that they are agreed in principle to joining a successful single currency? If that is the case, why are the Government not doing more to explain the benefits for those countries that are already participants in a single currency that they deem to be successful?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I agree that the Government are in favour in principle of UK membership of a common currency if the conditions are right. However, to convey a message, it has to be relatively simple and understandable. I acknowledge that to say as we do that three of the five economic conditions have been met and two have not is not the easiest thing to communicate in simple terms.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, do the Government accept the recent analysis from the much respected German Bundesbank, which finds that no economic benefits have accrued to the German economy or to other European economies from the single currency or, indeed, from the single market? If so, would they agree that joining the EMS is, at best, pointless?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, no. The most recent assessment of the situation regarding the euro area, which is the European Commission and IMF estimate last Friday, is that the euro area as a whole is achieving a moderate recovery. They are upgrading estimates of growth for 2004 and downgrading estimates of inflation.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the interview given by the Chancellor last Friday to the Financial Times made a cast-iron case for staying out of the euro, at least for the foreseeable future?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, no. I have it in front of me. I would be glad to debate it in detail with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, but certainly it does not convey that impression to me.

GPs: Referrals to Personal Injury Lawyers
2.58 p.m.
Viscount Goschen Viscount Goschen asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether it is appropriate for general practitioners to be paid for referring patients to personal injury lawyers or claims management companies.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Warner): My Lords, we would find any such practice distasteful but this is a matter of professional medical conduct for which the General Medical Council is responsible. The council's guidance to doctors, called Good Medical Practice, states,
"You must act in your patients' best interests when making referrals and providing or arranging treatment or care. So you must not ask for or accept any inducement, gift or hospitality which may affect or be seen to affect your judgment".
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, is it not wholly unacceptable to have two professional regulatory bodies at odds with each other on this issue? As the Minister said, the GMC has been extremely clear in its views that this practice is unethical and improper, whereas the Law Society earlier this year amended its own regulations for this practice to allow fee sharing despite the fact that the GMC had ruled it unethical. Will the Government now urge the Law Society to change its regulations back again to outlaw this ambulance chasing?
Lord Warner: My Lords, in this country we have a system of professional self-regulation through the General Medical Council and the Law Society. The GMC, as I have said, has made its position crystal-clear. In GMC News in April it said:
"Doctors generally have no expertise in legal services on which to base their recommendation of a particular firm and their chief interests in such schemes is a financial one. For these reasons such schemes are not appropriate".
It is for the Law Society to consider this matter in the light of what the GMC has said and, I understand, it is balloting its members on the change in its introduction and referral code.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, is the Minister aware that in a report published in May of this year called Better Routes to Redress, the Better Regulation Task Force recommended that the Chief Medical Officer and the NHS chief executive should issue immediately joint guidelines to hospitals and surgeries on the content of advertising by claims management companies on their premises? Is he aware that these companies and, indeed, solicitors compete in order to gain an exclusive franchise to distribute advertising literature in these articles? Have the Government taken that report on board and what are they doing about it?
Lord Warner: My Lords, we are aware of the Better Regulation Task Force's report. Indeed, it was this Government who set up the Better Regulation Task Force. We are considering very carefully the proposals in its report, Better Routes to Redress.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the essential thing is a matter of choice for the potential litigant? No single name should be put forward at any time and clear choice is essential. Does he agree also that it is vital that the potential client

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should understand that having a claim against a particular person or institution should be pursued and that any doubt about that is undesirable?
Lord Warner: My Lords, the Government recognise that great harm can be caused to people and that they have rights of redress. On this particular question we are discussing, the issue is whether the particular proposal from the Law Society is deemed to be appropriate medical conduct by the professional body—the General Medical Council. I think it has made its position crystal clear.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, do I not detect a hint of hypocrisy about the criticism of the Law Society? The Government have permitted, indeed have stimulated, the cult of speculative litigation. Before the previous government permitted that, no professional body would have allowed it. Now ambulance chasing has been made legitimate by the Government in relation to solicitors. This pompous comparison between the two professions overlooks the source of the authority.
Lord Warner: My Lords, I refute that absolutely. Perhaps I could give your Lordships a few figures. The figures from the Compensation Recovery Unit show that the overall number of accident claims went down by 9.5 per cent in the year to March 2004. Of those, public liability claims were down by 16.7 per cent; clinical negligence claims were down by 10.8 per cent; and employers' liability claims down by 14 per cent. That hardly represents government encouraging a compensation culture.
Earl Howe: My Lords, what is the position with regard to health service employees, or indeed other public servants, such as the police, in the context of this question? Is it appropriate for such individuals to be paid to refer people to personal injury lawyers? What is to stop that happening?
Lord Warner: My Lords, people must make their own judgments in these cases. But this is rather wider than the particular question that was raised. I shall look into the matter and write to the noble Lord.
Lord Christopher: My Lords, have the Government given their views on this matter to the General Medical Council? I declare an interest as a past member of the GMC. I am a little surprised at what he has told us as it was news to me. I should have thought that it was inappropriate for any medical practitioner to give particular advice to a patient in a matter of this sort. If a patient seeks an opinion, it is fine to say, "Well, in those circumstances it is not for me to say what you should do. Perhaps you should consult your solicitor". But to go beyond that seems to me to be entirely inappropriate. I am troubled at the prospect of a ballot of GMC-registered doctors coming out the wrong way.
Lord Warner: My Lords, I think my noble friend may have misheard me. I said that the ballot taking place relates to the Law Society and its members on the
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changes to its introduction and referral code. I think that the GMC's position is absolutely clear from the quotations I gave from both its Good Medical Practice guide and the GMC News in April.

Military and Operational Commitments
3.5 p.m.
Lord Astor of Hever Lord Astor of Hever asked Her Majesty's Government:
How long a "demanding … large scale operation", as described in Delivering Security in a Changing World: Future Capabilities (Cm 6269), can be sustained concurrently with standing military commitments and an enduring small-scale peace support operation, without overstretching the Armed Forces.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach): My Lords, we acknowledge, as we have always done, that the most demanding, large-scale operations could be carried out only by breaking what we call our "harmony guidelines"; that is, the amount of time our personnel spend on operations or on exercise, compared to the time they spend at home. Our planning assumes that a large-scale operation would be an infrequent, one-off commitment that lasts up to six months, thereafter drawing down to medium scale.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Assumptions that we will win, and win quickly, any large-scale symmetric operation and that our allies will then relieve us is dangerously questionable. Is it not vital at a time of overstretch, and with little time for our Armed Forces to rest and train, that provision to rotate them is built into planning assumptions for the war-fighting duration and follow-through periods?
Lord Bach: My Lords, of course we have to bear that consideration in mind. But defence planning assumes large-scale operations similar in size to Operation TELIC, which became a medium-sized operation well within the six-month period, will occur infrequently. That is our experience over the past 50 years. Of course we realise that our Armed Forces require a period of recuperation prior to being ready to conduct another similar-sized operation. The length of time required to recuperate will depend on the choices we make in prioritising activities and resources.
Lord Garden: My Lords, on which month of which year does the Minister expect to have the necessary people, equipment and training completed to be able to fill all the annex requirements for concurrency in Command Paper 6269? Will it be longer or shorter than the six years the Armed Forces waited for a similar promise to be delivered in the Strategic Defence Review?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the exact month or the exact date. He of course was

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playing a leading role in the Ministry of Defence at the time the Strategic Defence Review came out so will no doubt have the answer to his question.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, in view of the current situation, to which reference has been made, will the Government defer their proposals concerned with the infantry arrangements?
Lord Bach: My Lords, no, we will not defer those decisions. Those decisions are not ready yet in any event. The Army Board will be meeting later this year to decide on them and one should not expect final decisions to be announced before the New Year. I would recommend to the noble Lord that he look at an article by the Chief of the General Staff in the Spectator magazine of 11 September this year, in which he deals very clearly with the issue. I hope that I will be forgiven if I quote briefly from it. He said:
"The Army Board's duty is to ensure our Army's capability and ethos up to some two decades ahead. It is my duty to lead the board in so doing. That process involves change, inevitably an uncomfortable process, but one which if not grasped would indeed lead to a grave threat to the Army's war-fighting capability. Standing still is likely to realise that threat".
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, apart from the technicalities, in which I am not at all well versed, are the Government satisfied that, given the present commitments of the Army, soldiers are able to spend enough time at home?
Lord Bach: My Lords, it has been an extraordinarily busy period—I think that that is the noble Baroness's point. It is true that during the height of Operation TELIC, we were not satisfied with the amount of time that our soldiers were able to spend at home, but the position has improved greatly since then.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, does the Treasury see the present operation in Iraq as a medium-term commitment? If so, will all the money that is needed for that operation be drawn from within the MoD budget, so that the MoD will not go to the Treasury for further funds, or will the MoD have to go to the Treasury to fund the operation in Iraq?
Lord Bach: My Lords, from the very start of the operation in Iraq—whether during the course of the conflict or now, in the peace support part of the operation—the Treasury has always made sure that the Ministry of Defence is financed in order that it can meet its requirements.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, can the Minister tell us what proportion of our Armed Forces is currently located outside the United Kingdom and whether he expects that the proportion to increase or decrease?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I fear that I do not have the figures with me, but I will of course write to the noble
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Lord with them. I am not sure that I am prepared to offer an opinion as to which of the two options that he sets me is correct.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, can the Minister tell us why we still need three battalions in the Parachute Regiment?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I very much look forward to answering the noble Baroness's Starred Question tomorrow. It relates, in a small way, to the question that she has just raised. The Parachute Regiment is very different from those that I think that she has in mind in relation to this question. The Parachute Regiment has a proud history, as do the other regiments that she has in mind, and is vital given the increased necessity for expeditionary exercises, which is what we have been involved with much more in the past few years than previously.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, the strategic review only glanced at the issue of asymmetric threats and the need for troops here. We also have unexpected events such as, the press says, seven ships having to be held back for a possible fire fighting operation. In the past, 19,000 soldiers have been required for a fire fighting operation. Given that, is there any reason why numbers should not remain as they are until it is much clearer what the needs will be? I am not talking about change; I am talking about numbers.
Lord Bach: My Lords, to move to change, which is what we need to do, it is important to recognise that decisions are vital to ensure that our future capability is, frankly, aimed not at the old threats but at what we see as future threats. As is highlighted in the paper to which the noble Lord referred in his Question, in certain areas we judge our current capability to be disproportionately high now for the actual level of threat. By way of example only, I mention antisubmarine warfare and air defence in particular. That judgment is not dependent on new capabilities that we will be obtaining. We also identify the capabilities in which we need to invest. It is therefore prudent to reduce some capabilities now, tough as that is, while restructuring and investing in our priority areas.

House of Lords: Building Works
3.14 p.m.
Earl Attlee Earl Attlee asked the Leader of the House:
Whether it is appropriate for the House of Lords to sit when major works are in progress and when many facilities for Members are not available.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean): My Lords, it is unfortunate that some facilities for Members are unavailable at present and that some Members have been disturbed, particularly, I understand, in the Committee Corridor. It is

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hoped that almost normal services will be returned by 11 October. All the work plans were approved by the committees of the House and the impact of the building works was discussed by the House last December, when your Lordships voted to return this September. A detailed notice about potential disruption was sent to your Lordships on 16 July.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, but does she not agree that when the House agreed to sit in September, in many cases it was out of loyalty to the Leader and on her advice? Does not responsibility for this shambolic state of affairs lie right inside the Leader's office?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: No, my Lords, and I think that some of your Lordships should remember—I had this pointed out to me when it fell to my lot to answer this Question—that the committees of the House discussed and approved the works and that the House discussed the sitting times, including the possibility of disruption, which were raised by some Members of your Lordships' House. The noble Lords, Lord Boston of Faversham, Lord Ampthill and Lord Colwyn, certainly spoke of those matters and the House voted accordingly.
Lord Williamson of Horton: My Lords, we do appreciate that, when the House decided to have a September sitting, we were warned of the inconveniences, which are certainly unwelcome. But does the Minister agree that a very relevant point now is that the question of a September sitting is not decided for ever and, if it were to be reconsidered next year, the problem of falling over the carpet and all the other works during a Session would ipso facto be solved?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, no doubt there will be issues to discuss about that arising from the Leader's report, which I understand will be published tomorrow. I take the point: there is some dust; there is noise; perhaps there is a little discomfort; and there is inconvenience. But this is not a disaster area. The fact is that we have reassembled because there is business to do. That is what is important, not questions of convenience, dust or difficulties in finding enough refreshments. The fact is that the House has business to do. We have done business over some nine Bills. I myself had the pleasure of talking to your Lordships during a day's debate on Iraq. The fact is that the House is here to discharge the business allotted to it. If that involves a little inconvenience on occasion, so be it.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, the Minister is absolutely justified in saying that the House was given full details of the works to go ahead and what might be the consequences, but can she answer two brief questions? First, has she reason to believe that things will be back in a proper state by the time of the reconvening of Parliament on 11 October, or is there any overrun in the expected time? Secondly,
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given that what we are spending is taxpayers' money, can she assure the House that we are living entirely within the budget agreed to by those committees?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I have no reason to think that the budget is any different. I can tell your Lordships that £14.4 million is being spent over the three phases of the refurbishment. I understand that that has been considered by the appropriate committees of your Lordships' House. On the question of whether all will be returned on 11 October, I was careful to say that almost normal services will be available on 11 October. I understand that there will still be a degree of disruption in the Library and to Committee Room G.
Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that sizable numbers of noble Lords dislike September sittings? Does she further appreciate that although she is very good, if I may say so with respect, at keeping your Lordships informed about things in your Lordships' House, the disruption that we suffered last week and continue to suffer this week is, in my experience, much greater than we ever envisaged when we discussed these matters last year? Can the noble Baroness hold out any hope to those of us who take that view of an end to September sittings?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I acknowledge that there are Members of your Lordships' House who dislike September sittings very much. Were it not for that fact, we would not have discussed these sittings twice—in December of last year and November of the year before—when those voices were very clear in their objections.
I agree with the noble Lord that it is undesirable to have this degree of disruption in the House. But it is enormously important that the facilities of the House are put right in order that it can function properly in the longer term. We have had real issues of concern about the facilities, particularly on the question of health and safety for members of our staff for whom we, as sitting Members of this House, have a duty of care. That duty of care has to be discharged.
I do not have the length of experience that the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, has over the degree of disruption, but the inconvenience that we are suffering is not all that great considering how important these changes are.

Business
Lord Grocott: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall make a short business statement.
With the leave of the House, a Statement on regional referendums will be repeated some time after four o'clock this afternoon. The Statement will be repeated by my noble friend Lord Rooker. The Statement will come after four o'clock because there is an earlier

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business statement in the Commons which sets it back. That is why we are taking it later than we normally would.

Housing Bill
3.21 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 120 [Termination of management orders: financial arrangements]:
Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 162:
Page 85, line 40, leave out from "reason" to end of line 42.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 163 not moved.]
Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendments Nos. 164 to 166:
Page 86, leave out lines 9 and 10.
Page 86, line 27, at end insert—
"(5A) The provisions of any of subsections (2) to (5) do not, however, apply in relation to the order if —

(a) the order is followed by a final management order, and

(b) the management scheme contained in that final management order provides for that subsection not to apply in relation to the order (see section 112(5)(c) and (d))."

Page 86, line 29, at end insert—
"( ) The charge takes effect on the termination date for the order as a legal charge which is a local land charge."
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 120, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 121 [Termination of management orders: leases, agreements and proceedings]:
Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendments Nos. 167 to 169B:
Page 87, line 16, leave out "in the nature of a lease or licence created" and insert "which (in accordance with section (General effect of interim management orders: leases and licences granted by authority) or ( General effect of final management orders: leases and licences granted by authority)) has effect as a lease or licence granted"
Page 87, line 20, after "done" insert "before the termination date"
Page 87, line 30, leave out "that" and insert "the termination"
Page 87, line 38, leave out "(4)" and insert "(6)"
Page 88, line 3, at end insert—
"( ) This section applies to instruments as it applies to agreements."
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 121, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 122 [Management orders: power of entry to carry out work]:
Lord Hanningfield moved Amendment No. 170:
Page 88, line 23, leave out "reasonable notice" and insert "notice a month in advance"
The noble Lord said: We now come to Clause 122, which deals with the power of the local authority or other authorised individuals to enter a premises to carry out work on a property during the interim or final management order.
We have debated previously that such power must be used with caution as they possess the ability of infringing an individual's right to privacy. Can the Minister tell us when such a power of entry would he used and, in particular, under what specific conditions and circumstances?
Amendment No. 170 attempts to clarify what the Minister considers to be a noted period of reasonable time before intended work and entry can commence. As the Bill stands, there is nothing to stop a local authority deciding overnight to enter premises. We are seeking a level playing field on a national basis rather than having a free-for-all that varies widely from one area to the next, merely confusing everybody involved.
Amendment No. 171 would remove from the clause the possibility of legal action and a fine for not complying with allowing an authorised person to enter the premises. This amendment is consequent to Amendment No. 170. If the Minister can provide us with further details of what he considers a reasonable time period with which we are comfortable, I will not pursue this matter further. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker: Clause 122 provides the right of entry for a local housing authority, or other person authorised by it, to a property which is subject to a management order for the specific purpose of carrying out works. The clause is principally aimed at occupiers, rather than landlords.
Subsection (1) provides that reasonable notice must be given to the occupier in order to gain access.
Subsection (4) provides that if an occupier, having been given reasonable notice that the works are to be carried out, refuses access for that purpose, the local housing authority may apply to a magistrates' court for what is described as "an access order".
Subsections (5) and (6) provide that if the access order is not complied with by the occupier, then that person commits an offence and upon conviction may be fined up to £5,000.
Amendment No. 170 seeks to remove the requirement in subsection (4) for the giving of reasonable notice of intention to carry out works, with a requirement that one month's notice must be given in every case. As I have indicated, this clause is concerned to ensure that the local housing authority is not frustrated in carrying out its repairing obligations to occupiers of property that it is managing because of a management order. In a lot of cases it may be perfectly reasonable to give one month's notice if the works are minor or routine, but it is not reasonable if

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the required repairs are to remedy a dangerous or injurious hazard in the property. In those circumstances the local authority would want the work carried out as soon as possible.
Clause 203 allows access for the purpose of inspecting on 24 hours' notice. It would look odd if, having carried out the inspection under that provision and having identified a serious hazard, the local authority could not embark on works to sort out the problem for a month. That would not make sense.
Amendment No. 171 seeks to remove the criminal penalty for non-compliance with an access order. It is safe to assume that in the vast majority of cases occupiers will be more than willing to grant access to carry out the works. They are the direct beneficiaries of the works or improvements. Nor do the Government seek to criminalise occupiers who may have forgotten about the appointment or wish to rearrange it for a more convenient time.
There are two limbs to the access order. If the authority is unable to gain access and it either has some doubt as to the occupier's intention or it is an emergency, then it may apply to the magistrates' court for an access order. It is only if the occupier fails to comply with that order that he will commit an offence.
There will be examples where it is necessary to take this course of action: the resident landlord may resent the local authority having taken away his management of the property and may just want to make things difficult and be a member of the awkward squad; or the landlord may not care and make life difficult—for example, if certain communal features were in his flat and in disrepair. This provision is intended to address that type of case.
The removal of subsections (5) and (6) would have the opposite effect to that intended by the noble Lord. Enforcement of breaches of access orders would have to be by proceedings for contempt of court which could lead to something worse than fines. Imprisonment can be used for contempt of court.
If the concern is that local authorities might act unreasonably in acquiring access—and that is justifiable concern—then government Amendment No. 238M prohibits it by inserting a new clause for authorisations for enforcement purposes including, power of entry under this clause. Any entry has to be authorised by a deputy chief officer of the authority. We do not want to be unreasonable. In only very few circumstances would emergency access be required. In the vast majority of cases, it could be routine. Therefore, one could give longer notice. With that response, I hope that the noble Lord will be satisfied and not pursue the amendment.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Hanningfield: I thank the Minister for that reply. It gives some of the assurances for which we were looking. As with several other parts of the Bill, we need to look at it carefully to ensure that we are happy with it before the next stage. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 171 not moved.]
Clause 122 agreed to.
Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 171A:
After Clause 122, insert the following new clause—

CHAPTER 2
  EMPTY DWELLING MANAGEMENT ORDERS

    EMPTY DWELLING MANAGEMENT ORDERS: INTRODUCTORY
    (1) This Chapter deals with the making by a local housing authority of—

    (a) an interim empty dwelling management order (an "interim EDMO"), or

    (b) a final empty dwelling management order (a 'final EDMO"),

    in respect of a dwelling.
    (2) An interim EDMO is an order made to enable a local housing authority, with the consent of the relevant proprietor, to take steps for the purpose of securing that a dwelling becomes and continues to be occupied.
    (3) A final EDMO is an order made, in succession to an interim EDMO or a previous final EDMO, for the purpose of securing that a dwelling is occupied.
    (4) In this Chapter—

    (a) "dwelling" means—

    (i) a building intended to be occupied as a separate dwelling, or

    (ii) a part of a building intended to be occupied as a separate dwelling which may be entered otherwise than through any non-residential accommodation in the building;

    (b) any reference to "the dwelling", in relation to an interim EDMO or a final EDMO, is a reference to the dwelling to which the order relates;

    (c) "relevant proprietor", in relation to a dwelling, means—

    (i) if the dwelling is let under one or more leases with an unexpired term of 7 years or more, the lessee under whichever of those leases has the shortest unexpired term; or

    (ii) in any other case, the person who has the freehold estate in the dwelling;

    (d) "third party", in relation to a dwelling, means any person who has an estate or interest in the dwelling (other than the relevant proprietor and any person who is a tenant under a lease or licence granted under paragraph 2(3)(c) or 10(3)(c) of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders)); and

    (e) any reference (however expressed) to rent or other payments in respect of occupation of a dwelling, includes any payments that the authority receive from persons in respect of unlawful occupation of the dwelling.

    (5) In subsection (4)(c), the reference to an unexpired term of 7 years or more of a lease of a dwelling is—

    (a) in relation to a dwelling in respect of which the local housing authority is considering making an interim EDMO, a reference to the unexpired term of the lease at the time the authority begin taking steps under section (Making of interim EDMOs)(3),

    (b) in relation to a dwelling in respect of which an interim EDMO has been made, a reference to the unexpired term of the lease at the time the application for authorisation to make the interim EDMO was made under subsection ( 1) of that section, or

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    (c) in relation to a dwelling in respect of which a local housing authority is considering making or has made a final EDMO, a reference to the unexpired term of the lease at the time the application for authorisation to make the preceding interim EDMO was made under subsection (1) of that section.

    "Preceding interim EDMO", in relation to a final EDMO, means the interim EDMO that immediately preceded the final EDMO or, where there has been a succession of final EDMOs, the interim EDMO that immediately preceded the first of them.
    (6) Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders) (which makes further provision regarding EDMOs) has effect."
    The noble Lord said: These amendments provide for the introduction of a new clause after Clause 122 entitled:
    "Empty dwelling management orders: introductory".
    I shall speak to a host of government amendments explaining what we want to do about empty homes. I apologise for the length of the speech. Although this is not brand new material because the issue has been debated—and, indeed, requested from all sides of the House in the other place—it is new in the sense of the Government putting forward a proposal.
    Amendments Nos. 171A to 171H, 174A to 174D and 210A provide for the introduction of empty dwelling management orders. Such management orders would enable local authorities to secure occupation of long-term, private sector empty homes in certain defined circumstances. The Committee will be familiar with the concept of management orders in Part 4 in respect of accommodation subject to the licensing provisions in Parts 2 and 3. They provide for local authorities to "step into" the shoes of property owners in order to ensure responsible management. The amendments extend the control provisions of Part 4 to empty homes.
    The amendments give effect to the Government's commitment in the sustainable communities plan to allow local authorities to lease long-term, private sector empty homes. That commitment was made in response to a recommendation by a Select Committee in another place and we followed it up with a consultation paper, entitled, Empty Homes: Temporary Management, Lasting Solutions, which the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister published 17 months ago.
    Empty homes present a significant problem, but they are also a significant opportunity. Last year, in England, local authorities reported some 718,000 vacant dwellings. Of those, nearly 84 per cent were privately owned. At the same time, local authorities reported that 308,000 privately-owned dwellings had been vacant for more than six months.
    The presence of significant numbers of long-term empty homes, often heavily concentrated in areas of housing decline, can significantly affect the viability of an area. There are many examples in northern England where empty homes have contributed to blight and market failure. That is a matter we are tackling through the housing market renewal programme. But the problem of empty homes is by no means confined to such areas.
    Empty homes may be less concentrated in other areas, but that does not mean they can be ignored. Nearly 2 per cent of the private housing stock in London—more than 43,000 homes—was vacant for more than six months at the last count in 2003. In overall terms, London and the south-east accounts for nearly as many long-term, privately-owned empty homes as the north-east and north-west. The presence of large numbers of empty homes in all parts of the country is something with which we ought to be concerned. But, particularly in areas of high housing demand, their presence is nothing short of a scandal.
    Anyone who is unfortunate enough to have lived next door to a property that has been left empty for a long period of time will understand the sheer frustration that such a situation can create. Poorly maintained empty properties are magnets for vandals, drug users, squatters and even arsonists. Boarding them up to secure against break-in simply identifies properties as long-term empty. It is not sustainable.
    From my former role as a constituency Member, I could give examples of empty homes that were not just inner-city terraced homes. They could be outer suburban three-bedroom semi-detached properties—in ordinary roads with trees and families—which were just left. The properties do not just stay the same: for example, gardens grow, they become derelict, odd windows are smashed but do not get repaired. As I have said, they are an invitation to problems for everyone. People get very frustrated and go to the council saying, "Do something about it". It replies, "Well, it is nothing to do with us. We do not own it". But, of course, the council is the responsible housing authority where people go when there is a problem. So there is a difficulty and we need to deal with it.
    Notwithstanding the annoyance caused to neighbours and others, there is the abject waste of a dwelling. We have a crisis of dwellings in this country. We all know that our house-building programme is not good. It is the worst that it has been since 1924. Our replacement rate is appalling at something like 0.1 per cent a year, whereas in continental Europe it is 1 per cent per year. That is a massive difference. The average dwelling in this country is expected to be maintained for 1,200 years; on the continent it is 100 years. To even say that sounds stupid. But the fact is that that is the current situation with the present building programme and the rate of replacement.
    We can therefore see that empty homes represent a waste of an asset. They are a wasted opportunity for owners who could otherwise make financial gains from selling or letting them. They present a wasted opportunity for those who cannot get a foothold in the housing market. Many local authorities are working extremely hard to develop empty property strategies that seek to offer a package of incentives and penalties to empty property owners. But they believe that their efforts are frustrated by a lack of effective enforcement powers.
    The threat of compulsory purchase can be a useful weapon, but it like the nuclear option: it puts people off because they know how long it can take and how frustrating it is. From the responses to the consultation paper, we know that many local authorities are very

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    reluctant to use compulsory purchase powers. They are very complicated and form part of a long and drawn-out procedure.
    The issue is that the ownership of the property does not necessarily have to be changed in order to bring it back into use as a dwelling for people to live in. So the key is not necessarily the change of ownership. The key to unlocking the potential of empty homes is to get them back into use as homes as quickly as possible. That does not necessarily require a change of ownership. Where the owner is unwilling to do that, we should not be afraid to consider compulsion.
    I recognise that the amendments will not completely solve the problem of empty homes. We are realistic enough to know that there will always be a certain proportion of housing stock that is vacant at any given time. Indeed, vacancy is essential. Without that the market cannot operate, which is why we are not seeking to deal with every empty property on the market. If every home was always fully occupied, buying and selling homes would grind to a halt.
    Nor are we seeking to penalise people for leaving a home vacant for valid and reasonable reasons. Many people leave their principal home vacant while staying elsewhere. That can be through choice: for example, a person may be caring for someone, seeking job opportunities elsewhere, living with a partner or even living in a care home for a period of time with the expectation that he or she may return home.
    While we would caution against leaving a property vacant and unattended for long periods of time, that is a matter of personal choice in which state intervention is not warranted in the examples that I have given. The properties that are the subject of the amendments are entirely different. They are not the principal homes of absent owners, second homes or holiday homes; nor are they homes that are undergoing repair or alteration or are subject to a process that will, in time, lead them to being reoccupied. If they met all those criteria, there would not be a problem. To all intents and purposes, they are abandoned properties that are discarded by owners who are unable to provide a good reason for them not being occupied.
    There are often significant underlying factors at work, such as disrepair, which prevent some homes being occupied. It is not always a question of owners of empty properties being culpable. Our aim is not to penalise people for failing to tackle a difficult problem. The home might be left to the owner as the result of a will. He may not be able to cope with it, or just does not want to know about it in the hope that it will all go away. Our objective is to persuade owners in these circumstances to pass the responsibility of bringing the property back into housing use to a local authority. Of course, we want this to be with their consent. But where that consent is not forthcoming, we do not apologise for granting local authorities powers to secure occupation without the need to obtain consent.
    We have considered very carefully the human rights implications of these measures. We are sensitive about interfering with people's property rights. But the rights of owners to do as they choose with their property
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    must be balanced against the rights of other property owners and the wider community in which they reside. It is the Government's view that these measures strike a fair balance that does not place owners at a financial disadvantage. Indeed, they stand to gain the benefit of an improved asset and an income, where previously they may have had to pay to keep the property empty.
    Above all, the amendments send a clear message to property owners that, by leaving homes idle for long periods of time without good reason, they risk losing their right to make decisions about how the property is managed. We expect this message will help to persuade many more owners to enter into constructive dialogue with local authority empty property officers about the range of services on offer to assist them. The emphasis will remain with voluntary measures. The new powers available to local authorities would sit behind, as a back-up measure, only to be used where it is evident that voluntary measures will not resolve the vacancy.
    I have already apologised for the length of time I am taking, but this is an important part and I am quite happy to go through each amendment, very briefly, because it will assist in the further stages of the Bill.
    Amendment No. 171A describes interim and final empty dwelling management orders. It provides for a local housing authority to secure occupation of an unoccupied dwelling. A "dwelling" is defined as a building intended to be occupied as a separate dwelling, such as a house, or a part of a building so intended, such as a flat. It introduces the concept of "relevant proprietor"—that is, the person who the empty dwelling management order is made against. In most cases, this will be the freeholder of the dwelling, but where there is a leasehold interest of more than seven years, it is the person with the shortest unexpired term of more than seven years.
    Amendment No. 171B requires a local authority to apply to a residential property tribunal for authorisation to make an interim empty dwelling management order. Prior to seeking authorisation, the local authority must attempt to notify the relevant proprietor of the fact, and ascertain if he has any intention to bring the dwelling back into occupation.
    Amendment No. 171C requires that the residential property tribunal must be satisfied that various tests are met, and that the case does not fall within any category of exception prescribed by the appropriate national authority before authorising the making of an interim empty dwelling management order.
    Amendment No. 171D requires the local authority to take any steps it considers appropriate to secure occupation and proper management of the dwelling, pending either a final empty dwelling management order or revocation of the interim empty dwelling management order. It cannot grant rights of occupation without the consent of the relevant proprietor.
    Amendment No. 171E provides that the local authority may make a final empty dwelling management order to replace either an interim order or a previous final order if it considers the dwelling is likely to become or remain unoccupied. It does not require authorisation from the residential property tribunal.
    Amendment No. 171F requires a local authority to take steps to secure occupation and proper management of the dwelling. The local housing authority does not require the consent of the relevant proprietor to grant rights of occupation. A final empty dwelling management order must contain a management scheme for setting out how the local authority intends to carry out its duties and how it will account for the moneys expended and collected.
    Amendment No. 171G provides for a third party to apply to a residential property tribunal for compensation for any interference with his rights as a result of the making of an interim empty dwelling management order or to request the local authority to pay compensation for interference with his rights as a result of making a final empty dwelling management order.
    Amendments Nos. 171H and 174A to 174D are consequential amendments. Amendment No. 210A covers a wide range of matters relating to the operation and effect of empty dwelling management orders and financial arrangements. It is a long and detailed schedule, and is fairly self-explanatory.
    3.45 p.m.
    The general effect of an interim empty dwelling management order is very similar to that of the interim management orders under Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Bill, and can last for up to 12 months. While it is in force, the local authority takes over most of the rights and responsibilities of the relevant proprietor but does not become the legal owner of the dwelling. Rent collected while the order is in force must be used to meet relevant expenditure, or to pay compensation. Any balance must be paid to the relevant proprietor.
    A local housing authority may vary or revoke an interim empty dwelling management order at any time, on its own initiative or at the request of someone with an interest in the dwelling. However, if the local authority has secured occupation of the dwelling, it may only revoke the order with the consent of the relevant proprietor. It may also refuse to revoke the order unless any expenditure it has incurred up to that point that has not been met by rental income is paid to it either by the relevant proprietor or someone else.
    A final empty dwelling management order may last for a maximum of seven years. The general effect is the same as for an interim order. The only significant difference is that the local authority does not require the consent of the relevant proprietor to grant occupation rights. The procedure for varying or revoking a final order is similar to that for an interim order.
    A local authority has a right to possession of any furniture in the dwelling while the empty dwelling management order is in force, but the relevant proprietor may request possession of it. The local authority may also supply furniture to the dwelling.
    A retail property tribunal may terminate a lease of a dwelling on which an empty dwelling management order is made, if it considers the dwelling is not being occupied and the local authority requires possession to
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    arrange for it to be occupied. This provision is necessary in order to prevent any sham arrangements being put in place to defeat the objective of the empty dwelling management orders. However, we recognise this could deprive someone of property rights, so the schedule provides for the retail property tribunal to order payment of compensation by local authorities to the person whose interest is determined.
    On the termination of an empty dwelling management order, the local authority must pay to the relevant proprietor any balance of rent left after deduction of its relevant expenditure, and any compensation it has been required to pay. lf, on termination, the balance is in deficit, the local authority may seek to recover the deficit from the relevant proprietor if he has agreed to pay it, if it relates to a service charge paid by the local authority and, in the case of an interim empty dwelling management order, if the relevant proprietor unreasonably refused consent to the grant of occupation rights.
    If none of these provisions apply, the local authority must meet the deficit itself. However, if a subsequent final empty dwelling management order is made, the local authority may instead seek to recover the deficit from any surplus made under that subsequent order.
    There are a wide range of rights to appeal to a residential property tribunal against matters that affect a person with an interest in a dwelling on which an empty dwelling management order is made. A relevant person may appeal to the residential property tribunal against a decision of a local authority to make a final empty dwelling management order, or the terms of it; the terms of an interim order, including any terms regarding compensation payable to a third party or a dispossessed landlord or tenant; or a decision of a local authority to vary or revoke, or its refusal to vary or revoke, both an interim or final empty dwelling management order. A third party may also appeal to a residential property tribunal against a decision by a local authority not to pay compensation to him, or a decision relating to the amount of compensation payable.
    In conclusion, we consider that these arrangements strike a fair balance between the right of property owners to determine how their property is used and the duty of local housing authorities to secure occupation of that property in the wider public interest. That should come as no surprise to noble Lords since we consulted on this over a very long period.
    In particular I would point to the fact that the amendments provide for local authorities and residential property tribunals to balance the interests of the community against the effect the order will have on the rights of the owner and of third parties; local authorities would have the right to seek authorisation from a residential property tribunal to make an interim empty dwelling management order; there is a right to seek variation or revocation of an empty dwelling management order and a right to appeal against a refusal to do so; there is a right of appeal against the making of a final empty dwelling

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    management order or the terms on which it is made; and compensation would be paid to persons other than the relevant proprietor whose interests are affected by the making of an empty dwelling management order and to dispossessed landlords and tenants whose leases are terminated by a residential property tribunal in authorising an empty dwelling management order. I beg to move.
    Lord Hanningfield: I begin by saying that we are less than enthused by the way in which the Government have handled this part of the Bill, in particular the introduction of such a large and significant element at this stage. Earlier this year during the deliberations in Committee in the Commons, the Government announced that they would bring forward in this Bill a scheme for the handling of empty properties. To table and publish such an important part of the Bill only last Thursday when they had the whole summer in which to do so borders, I believe, on an abuse of Parliament. It has in effect denied opposition colleagues from being able to scrutinise it in the manner this House expects.
    Part of my concern turns on the fact that this is in no way an insignificant inclusion. The provisions being moved by the Minister today will have a major impact on many citizens, along with the involvement of the state in their private lives—the taking into possession by local housing authorities of an empty but, I must stress, a private property.
    This measure is designed to bring a greater number of properties into the housing sector. However, we have serious reservations about whether that ambition will be met by this scheme. This approach appears to he all stick and no carrot. We agree that there is an issue in relation to empty homes. The scandal of 730,000 houses and flats in England standing empty is one we should all be concerned about. However, we would have preferred some form of voluntary model. Such powers as those before the Committee today should have been introduced as one of a range of options backed up by other, stronger measures.
    There are important questions and points that need to be clarified. For example, the Government need to give further consideration to the legal complexities that might apply in circumstances involving the application of an EDMO in respect of leasehold dwellings, in particular flats. In such circumstances the responsibilities of the lessee will continue, notwithstanding the existence of an EDMO. The OPDM needs to consider whether, given the necessary statutory amendments, this would be practical, or whether the power to make an EDMO is confined to freehold interests only.
    The ODPM needs to consider dispute properties; for example, those where family breakdown has occurred and one of the parties refuses to agree to the property being sold so that the other party derives no benefit from the property as a form of punishment for the relationship breakdown.
    There can he multi-owner disputes. On the death of a single or joint proprietor, ownership passes to one or more members of the family who are unable to agree
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    on the future of the house. One person may wish to retain and improve the property for family use while the others wish to sell and realise the equity. This may also occur where the Court of Protection is involved and cautions have been placed on the sale by other family members in dispute of an agreement or will.
    It should consider DIY owners, those who inherit or acquire empty, semi-derelict properties with a view to use as second or retirement homes. Having undertaken work on a do-it-yourself basis to reduce costs and as a hobby, they find that with the passage of time the condition of the property deteriorates and the costs escalate. They are reluctant to acknowledge that what had been a manageable project five years previously has now turned into a major headache with little chance of being turned around.
    There are additionally issues around cost. Will the operation of the scheme be cost neutral to local authorities and be operated as a commercial enterprise, reclaiming financial expenditure through rent? How long will an authority wait before moving in, and on what grounds will a decision be made? Could we be left with a fragmented system where we have one local authority applying a different interpretation and being rather more keen to seize a property than the authority next door?
    Of the 729,770 empty homes in England, 76,637 are under the tutelage of local authorities and a further 37,625 under registered social landlords. Some 10,110 are controlled by other public bodies and the remainder, 605,398, are in private hands. Surely there is a case for the Government and local authorities to get their own act in order before starting to eye up private properties. Over 100,000 houses are in state hands and yet are still lying empty.
    A further question relates to what will happen to such properties once they have been made fit for human habitation by the local authority. Will they be let to key workers or homeless people in the vicinity? If that is the case, how will such a scheme operate? Who will these people he, and how will they be chosen? What guarantee can be given that such people will not, for whatever reason, subsequently damage the property they are renting? What redress will the owner have if such damage occurs? These are just some of the questions that remain unanswered.
    As I have mentioned, we are not at all impressed by the short period of time we have had to scrutinise these provisions and we are unable to comment today in the detail we would like. I know that my noble friend Lady Hanham will also want to comment on these issues.
    Baroness Maddock: I should say first that we welcome what the Government are doing here. Bodies such as Shelter and the Empty Homes Agency, of which I am patron, also welcome these provisions. However, I agree with the noble Lord in his remarks about the way they have been handled. Having spent the whole of the week before we came back trying to find out whether these amendments had been tabled in order to prepare, I found that they eventually arrived

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    only last week. I am not in a position to employ full-time staff, so that makes life very difficult. I hope that, in the future, the Government will do better with this type of thing. I realise that that is not simple, but it was as far back as 19 May this year that the Government said that they would put forward amendments.
    The Minister has made a number of important points explaining why this is such an important issue. We have a huge number of empty homes in Britain. The noble Lord who spoke before me was a little dismissive of the number of homes and how this would assist in providing the many homes that are needed. But it is a fact that 84 per cent of empty homes are not publicly owned buildings; they are in the private sector. That is why it has been so difficult to deal with them and why it has taken so long to devise a comprehensive and imaginative solution.
    In introducing the provisions, the Minister talked of what happens in areas where there are lots of empty properties. It is a fact that in some of the most deprived areas of the country, we find that a much higher percentage of homes are left empty. Research has also shown that in areas where more than 5 per cent of the dwelling stock is empty, house prices reflect that fact and as a result are much lower. Given the facts—about which we could speak at length, but I will spare noble Lords that debate today—it is clear that there is a need to do something about empty homes.
    I have campaigned on this issue for well over 20 years in my own political life, so I see the provisions to be put on the face of the Bill as something of a milestone. Noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches have pushed for such provisions for a number of years and therefore we welcome them. My only regret is that something was not done sooner.
    These amendments will provide a much-needed tool for local authorities, in particular where the owners of empty properties refuse to co-operate. It must be remembered that these will be provisions of last resort, and we hope that all the best practice we have seen introduced will enable local authorities to operate without having to undertake this kind of bureaucracy. However, it means that many more homes will be brought back into use and we will see more secure homes and a better quality of life for many families up and down the country.
    4 p.m.
    As the Minister said, a good many voluntary leasing schemes are already in operation. In recent times there has been renewed interest in these schemes across the country. Many registered social landlords have become involved; some are running with major portfolios. East Thames Housing Group now has more than 1,500 previously empty properties on its books. That is without this legislation, so it shows what can be done.
    Across the country there is a patchwork quilt effect of private sector leasing. In some areas there are excellent partnership relationships between local authorities and the local registered social landlord, but
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    there are areas where there is no interest from registered social landlords. We need to ensure that there are more incentives for registered social landlords to see that private sector leasing schemes are an integral part of their work.
    I vented most of my anger about the late tabling of the amendments last week. As we have said, it has been difficult to get to grips with them. I tried to listen to what the Minister was saying but did not always catch it completely, so I hope that I am not asking about matters that he thought he had explained. We may pursue other matters on Report.
    The Empty Homes Agency is concerned about compensation. It was not in the initial consultation, nor in the initial position of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. I understand that that is partly to do with human rights issues. Furthermore, in some cases consent from the owners of properties is required to rent them. Will the Minister set out the Government's thinking on those issues, the reasons why they came to their conclusions and the reasons for the amendments they have tabled?
    Some people take the view that if people have left their properties empty for a long time they perhaps do not have any right to compensation. If I have read the notes to the amendments correctly, compensation would be awarded only if the owner was not receiving any rent from the property, which is what we hope would happen.
    One of the points that is welcomed by people who work in the area is that if local authorities have not recouped the costs of the initial interim empty dwellings management order, they will he able to apply for another. That is welcome because it should convince local authorities that are averse to embracing the new power.
    One area that is rather sad, although I understand the problem, is that the definition of a dwelling would preclude empty flats above shops if there were no separate access. I can see the problem and that it might be a legal minefield, but will the Minister reconsider it?
    Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause under Amendment No. 171B requires a dwelling to be wholly unoccupied. However, the new schedule proposed by Clause 210A—in Paragraph 2(3)(a)—refers to the rights of existing occupiers. We are confused as to how that will work out; it seems inconsistent.
    I am sure that we shall return to the issue in more detail on Report. With those few comments and questions I look forward to the Minister's response.
    The Earl of Caithness: I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, for her comments. She made a plea to the Government to be more timely in tabling amendments. We have been saying that for years; the noble Baroness said it again today, but the answer is that it just will not happen. We will be faced with the same situation as we have now: of little information on anything and late tabling of amendments.

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    We move into an area where we change from a partnership between owners of properties and local authorities into confiscation. The Government are giving draconian powers to local authorities to take away someone's private property for a period of years. That should be done only with the greatest reluctance and after the greatest scrutiny. We are only just beginning our scrutiny and the other place will not scrutinise the provision at all.
    The Minister said that he listened to the committee in another place that analysed the draft Bill. If he listened to the committee on this issue I only wish that he had listened to its other recommendations when it comes to the home condition report and the pack we are about to discuss under Part 5, because clearly they have not listened to the committee at all on those issues.
    The Minister kindly put in the Printed Paper Office the final regulatory impact assessment, which he signed on 7 September. Four different options were put forward. Option 1 was the status quo and options 2, 3 and 4 referred to EDMOs. Under option 2, there are 165,000 properties at stake. Under option 3, about 300,000 are involved, and under option 4, 165,000 properties, the same as in option 2. Needless to say, the Government have gone for the largest number of properties. Will the Minister explain why that action was taken?
    When the Government are doing something as controversial as this, would it not have been sensible to go for either option 2 or option 4, where a smaller number of properties is available, to see how that worked before tackling a bigger problem?
    When we look at the results of the consultation and the analysis, it does not surprise me considering that the majority of the respondents were either local authorities or housing organisations. Out of the 134 respondents, only 10 were individuals. That tends to be the case, but it is a bad way to make decisions. The Government decided to go for option 3, which is the preferred option of only 14 per cent of the respondents. Why are they making decisions when such a small minority is in favour of such a draconian power?
    Like the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, I have not had the chance to look at the amendment in as much detail as I would have liked. From what she says, I know that I have carried out less work than she has. Is it true that the EDMO has to have a tribunal agreement; does the local authority have to have the tribunal's agreement before it makes an EDMO, or can it make one without the tribunal?
    Does the local authority have to act on every one of the tribunal's decisions, or if the tribunal makes a set of recommendations, can it ignore them and do its own thing? I was confused when the Minister talked about compensation to the owner. I will read in the Official Report tomorrow what he said, but when he replies will he say a little more about how compensation to the owner will work? That might be helpful.
    Can the Minster confirm that when a local authority confiscates a property from an owner under an EDMO, it will take on all the liabilities that go with the
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    property? If it is a flat, can he confirm whether the rental will be paid; and, if it is a house or a flat, whether the council tax, the water rates and so on will be paid by the local authority?
    Can the Minister confirm that the local authority will indemnify the owner once an EDMO has been taken out? Why should the owner be responsible if his property has been confiscated for a period of years? If an EDMO has been taken out, the local authority should be obliged to leave the property in good order. Can the Minister confirm that that is the case?
    Following up the point made by my noble friend Lord Hanningfield about the many situations that could arise and result in a property being left empty, what will occur in the case he mentioned where a family is discussing what should happen to a property, and then resolve that issue in year one of the seven years of the EDMO? Will they be able to apply to the local authority or the tribunal to have the EDMO rescinded and take back the property with vacant possession in order that they may do what they like with it?
    Can the Minister confirm that at the end of the EDMO the property will be returned to the owner with vacant possession and that there will be no security of tenure for any of the occupants that the local authority may have put therein?
    4.15 p.m.
    Lord Greaves: I declare an interest in that I am a member of Pendle Borough Council, an area of northeast Lancashire. I represent a ward which has a large number of empty properties. I recognise the situation described by the Minister when he refers to the problems created by empty properties in areas of otherwise good older housing. He could have been describing a large number of places, such as Colne in Lancashire.
    I regret having been unable to attend on any of the previous days during which the Committee has discussed the Bill because it goes to the very heart of the areas in which I have been involved for the past 35 years in trying to tackle the problem of poor and sub-standard housing. There are many decent streets of good housing in which one or two houses cause the blight of social problems described by the Minister.
    The aims of the government amendments are admirable. I want to stand on a little hill, wave a flag and cheer the Government—which I do not do very often—because their aims and objectives are quite brilliant.
    I share some of the questions that have been raised, including some of those raised by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. He comes from the opposite end of the scale of rights involved—I start with the problem of the empty houses and he starts with the rights of the owners—but somewhere in between there has to be a balance. Some of the practical problems that have been raised need answering. I hope the Minister will be tolerant if on Report we go into more detail on some

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    of these issues than we would have had they been discussed in the depth that they should have been in Committee.
    Having said that, I wish to raise one or two questions. I am slightly confused about some of the wording in the amendment. It may be that I have not understood it properly. It is highly complex and it is quite likely that I have not understood it properly; I look forward to the Minister explaining it to me. Under the clause heading "Empty dwelling management orders: introductory", subsection (2) of the proposed new clause states that,
    "An interim EDMO is an order made to enable a local housing authority, with the consent of the relevant proprietor"—
    and then, in subsection (3), it suggests that the final EDMO is a successor to the interim EDMO. I do not understand why it states,
    "with the consent of the relevant proprietor",
    when much of the remainder of the amendment deals with a situation where there is no consent from the relevant proprietor. It may be that I have misread it, but that would seem to be the initial definition of interim EDMOs and final EDMOs. It is a matter which can be looked at, or it can be explained why I am wrong.
    The problems in Birmingham that the Minister described are exactly the same as those of which I am aware. Many properties are not in good condition for a reason—they have been left empty for several years. Even in the best of areas, houses which have been left empty for several years often deteriorate; repairs are needed, water gets in, leakages are not repaired and so on. In areas which have more social problems, as the Minister said, windows get broken, kids get in, people break in and steal, traditionally, the fire-back boilers and various other kinds of equipment. Slowly, over a period of time, such houses become derelict or semi-derelict and the local authority steps in and boards them up.
    A process takes place: it starts off with a perfectly reasonable house—which is left empty—and slowly, over a period of time, it gets worse and worse until eventually it becomes derelict. I am not clear about what condition of house the EDMOs are intended to deal with. Quite clearly, if a local authority takes over houses which are not in a decent condition for people to live in, which are not fit to live in or do not meet the new health and safety housing standards, how much spending on such houses will the Government expect local authorities reasonably to undertake?
    If it is a question of a few hundred pounds to put them in order, that would be one thing, but with many of these houses you are talking about thousands of pounds. A figure of £20,000 is not unusual for a house which a local authority may, at the moment, compulsory purchase because it is in such a poor condition. It then has to do it up. It might be more than £20,000, but taking that figure, if you let the property for, say, £60 a week, which might be on the low side, it would take seven years to recoup the money—and that is assuming that there are no other management costs
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    associated with it and no on-going repairs in the future, which quite clearly there will be. It may therefore be a long-term operation.
    I am not clear from what the Minister said and from what the amendment sets out whether it is really intended to deal with that kind of situation or whether, if a house reaches a condition below a certain threshold, other measures will be brought in. If the house is in one of the new select licensing areas, if I have got the terminology right, it may be that the other measures will be there to deal with the matter and the authority may have to go down the CPO route.
    But if a property is not in such an area—and, as I understand it, the EDMOs are designed to deal with properties which are not in these designated areas—it may be much more difficult. I should like to get my mind around this question and understand the Government's thinking about the circumstances in which these orders might be made.
    I take the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, about the combination of sticks and carrots and that this is all sticks. In the old days—I say the "old days"; I am going back to the 1970s, when there was a great deal more money in areas such as my own for improvement grants—local authorities had far more resources than they have now, or at least have had until the recent housing market collapse in partnership areas. We are one of those areas and so we may now be getting far more resources to deal with these problems in different ways.
    The annual capital programme for housing of my own authority of Pendle, for example, was up to £6 million or £7 million in the late 1970s, which was a reasonable amount of money for an ordinary small district. Despite inflation, that amount fell towards the end of the 1990s to less than £2 million. So the amount of money available to local authorities in many of those areas collapsed. Of course, some of that money had to be spent on council housing as well, although in many authorities in north-east Lancashire and others with lots of old terraced housing, the proportion of the HIP that went into the private sector was always much higher than went into council housing. That was just the nature of the situation.
    So resources were not there. I was chairman of my local authority's housing committee, for my sins, back in the mid-1970s. We used to have a combined carrot-and-stick approach of saying to owners of empty properties such as those which the proposals concern, "We're going to CPO it, but we don't want to CPO it. And we will give you a grant. We will work with you to do the house up and do it that way". That approach fell by the wayside when it stopped being possible for local authorities to give grants to private landlords in that way and they had to rely more on the stick than the carrot. Since the local authority did not have the resources anyway, the number of houses which were dealt with like that went down from scores every year to a handful.
    If the Government now intend to allow local authorities to intervene again and to tackle the problem of houses which I call "rotten teeth" in areas

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    which have a future and are not going to he cleared, but which nevertheless require this intervention just to deal with such houses, that would be very worthwhile and welcome. However, there is then the question of resources. Where is the money coming from for the local authority to intervene? If the local authority makes an empty dwelling management order, where is the money coming from in the first instance to pay for the repairs in that property before the rent starts coming back to pay for it?
    I am asking the Government these questions because their aims are brilliant, but until we can see how the proposals are going to work in practice, along with the other raft of measures in the Bill—a Bill which I am enthused by as a whole—we will not know whether they are going to work.
    My final point is about compensation and echoes that of the noble Earl. Lord Caithness. Compensation is mentioned in the Bill, but there is no indication of the scale of compensation that the Government think is going to be involved. Will compensation be paid exceptionally—something that happens now and again—or will it be paid as a matter of course? On what kind of scale will it be paid? Will it be related to rents? Will it be related to capital values when the houses are taken over? Or will it be related to capital values after the council has fettled the houses up and made them decent? The whole question of compensation needs a great deal more elaboration.
    Lord Avebury: I agree with the Minister that the problem of empty homes is nothing short of a scandal. I am also in agreement with my noble friend Lord Greaves in thinking that it is a pity that the scheme could not have been extended to deal with the large number of properties over shops which still remain vacant. Although some of them are being modernised—I have noticed this even in my own area in south London—there does not seem to be enough of an incentive for landlords to do it on a larger scale. Therefore, if one looks up above the shops in almost any parade in south London, one will see available property which could be put back into use and which is gradually falling into dereliction.
    My principal reason for intervening is that I tried to find out what was happening to the contracts into which NASS had entered for accommodation for asylum seekers, but which would no longer be required because of the sharp fall in the number of people coming here and seeking asylum, bearing in mind that those were long-term contracts, some of which did not contain escape clauses. When I tried to find out about the matter—first, by asking NASS and, secondly, by tabling Questions on the Order Paper—I was told that those contracts were "commercial in confidence", but that all but two of the contracts signed by NASS expire some time in 2005 and the remaining two in 2006. That means that a large number of properties will be falling vacant in this sector.
    Will it be possible to make an EDMO for properties which NASS no longer requires, but which it cannot relinquish because the contracts do not contain an escape clause? Will the Minister say how many of the
    920
    110,000 properties in other forms of public sector ownership that were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, actually belong to NASS? I suspect that it is the majority of them. Therefore, it is worth spending a little time thinking about how we deal with the matter.
    NASS is the most opaque public sector organisation of all. One cannot get a thing out of it. It has not published its budget even for 2003–04, let alone for 2004–05, but we know that it spent more than £0.5 billion in the year to March 2003. Therefore, we are not talking about small sums of money and small numbers of properties.
    I hope that the Minister can assure me that, as part of the new scheme that is outlined in the amendments, a very close look will be taken at NASS. He should also bear in mind that if the ODPM does not do it, the National Audit Office is extremely interested in the way that NASS manages its properties.
    Baroness Hanham: The inevitable way in which the amendments have been put down has meant that we have ended up with comments that would have been better made at Second Reading, but I shall add a few more questions to those that have been asked.
    We all acknowledge that there are properties that are left empty for unacceptable reasons. How does one deal with that problem in a way that does not appear to be confiscatory and that does not lead a politically motivated local authority to act in way that it should not?
    The Minister spoke about compulsory purchase orders and the slowness of the process. I agree with that. We went some way in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 towards dealing with that. However, a compulsory purchase order is quite a threat. I know from my experience in my authority that a property comes back into proper order amazingly quickly at the mere threat of compulsory purchase.
    In authorising the making of an interim EDMO, should the residential property tribunal not be expressly required to consider all the reasons why a property is unoccupied? The reasons why an unoccupied property should not be taken over are given in the Government's amendments, but the residential property tribunal does not appear to be required to make sure that those reasons are valid and have not been ignored by the local authority.
    Should not a final, as well as an interim, EDMO require the prior authorisation of the residential property tribunal? It is our understanding that a final EDMO does not require it, but that is the moment when it all begins to bite.
    4.30 p.m.
    As to the question of the rent that will be raised, and what it will be used for when the dwelling is let, is it the Minister's understanding that the local authority will have to obtain the best rent that it can? Who is the property going to be let to? If the private sector is involved, will the property be let to people on the

    921
    waiting list, or will it be let through an agency to people who want to rent or acquire a property in the private sector? Who will manage the property—the local authority, a residential landlord or a housing association? Who will have responsibility, and from where can redress be sought?
    I turn to specific amendments. Subsection (5)(a) of Amendment No. 171A is extraordinarily vague. What is meant by the local authority "taking steps"? When is the moment for a local authority to take steps, and after what investigations? Who is going to inquire into the reason why a property is vacant, and who is going to make a judgment on the conditions that have been laid down?
    In subsection (2)(b) of Amendment No. 171C, what is meant by "immediate"? An owner may be prepared to take steps to put the property right, but, if works are required, there are often delays with letting contracts, planning permission or building regulation approval. It ought to be made clear within these clauses that the owners are allowed a reasonable time in such circumstances.
    In subsection (2) of Amendment No. 171 D, the steps to be taken should not be those that the authority considers appropriate, but those which are objectively considered so—presumably by an independent person who understands property conditions.
    In subsection (4) of Amendment No. 171D, surely if the property cannot be let, the order should be revoked. Subsection (5) of Amendment No. 171D needs to be expanded to make it clear that the local authority is under other duties as a responsible property manager, for example, securing the property and taking reasonable steps to prevent damage, preventing burst pipes and so on in winter.
    As the unfortunate way these amendments have come about means that, inevitably, a lot of this afternoon's questions cannot be answered beforehand, there will be a raft of amendments on Report. That is doubly unfortunate, because on Report we do not have the same opportunity to intervene as we do in Committee. It is deeply unfortunate that we did not have the amendments in time for us to have the opportunity to table our own amendments, which will have to come at a later stage.
    Lord Rooker: I appreciate the tone of the speeches on the group of amendments. I will not go over the details of why they were put down only last week. I will just refer to the fact that, to varying degrees, both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party in the Commons called for action on empty homes, as has the Labour Party in the past. We can argue about which homes are actually empty, but we are talking about the totality of such homes. The Government are now proposing a fairly modest scheme, for reasons I will seek to explain. It is not a question of fobbing colleagues off. I have specific answers to some of the questions I have been asked in the past few minutes, and obviously on Report we will have a more meaningful discussion.
    922
    I have said that this scheme is essentially a longstop. It is not the first port of call. In other words, by and large it is a voluntary scheme. No legislation is required for such schemes, and we want to get the job done on a voluntary basis if we can. Regarding the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, about CPOs, our central point, as I said earlier, is that we are not concerned about the dwelling's change of ownership. We do not want the state to take ownership of the dwelling—that would genuinely look like confiscation. That is not the purpose here and it could destroy the scheme. The ownership of the dwelling is a by-product. It is irrelevant to what we are trying to do, which is to get the dwelling used as a home. In fact, we want mixed tenure.
    Even if CPOs were easy, and were not long and drawn-out, there might be good reasons for not going down the CPO route anyway, as that would take the ownership of the dwelling away from the owner. I suspect that that would raise more human rights issues than what we are proposing. I take the noble Baroness's point—that essentially it is possible to get voluntary action with the threat of legislative action, and in some ways that is what is proposed here, but as a last resort.
    I have jumped the gun a little bit. Our estimate is that local authorities will make about three orders a year—that is, a thousand dwellings. That does not mean to say that there will be a total of only three dwellings in each authority; we are absolutely convinced that, because of the backup of the legislation as a sanction, we will get more empty properties back into use. We do not need legislation for a voluntary scheme.
    The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, raised the issue of technical problems with long leases. I am not a long lease expert, but I agree with him that they are technical problems. We think the detailed provisions cover most of the problems that have been raised in the consultation, but we are prepared to accept that there may be some issues about the service of notices relating to leasehold matters. We will certainly give that further consideration and come back on Report. This issue has not yet bottomed out.
    It is outrageous that too many state-owned properties are empty, but no legislation is required at this stage to deal with them. They form just 16 per cent of all such properties. There used to be more; it is well-known that the Ministry of Defence, for lots of reasons, needs to keep many empty properties, although it floated off a number of them some years ago.
    In the case of local authorities, for similar reasons to the private sector housing market, there will never be a situation where every dwelling is occupied, because that would block people from moving around and swapping tenancies, just as it would block them from buying and selling properties. We are concerned with dwellings kept empty for longer than six months for no reasonable reason. We are cutting out a huge number of dwellings anyway, but we want to do all we can to encourage local authorities to combat all the empty

    923
    properties in their areas, including the state-owned ones. There is no argument that we want to deal with that.
    I was asked to whom the local authorities will let the properties, and whether it would be to key workers. That will he entirely up to the local authority. We could not be prescriptive from the centre, simply because of the variety of local authorities, who understand the issues in their areas. If the strategic authority takes the view that for its definition of "key workers"—in my view everyone is a key worker, but at present the phrase has certain definitions—then that is a good idea, and it may be the case that some authorities can do that.
    I also want to deal with the issue of "compensation". I looked through the notes again yesterday, and I have listened to noble Lords today. "Compensation" is the wrong word. I suspect the lawyers and the drafters will say that is the word that has to be in the legislation, but it is not compensation as used by noble Lords and Baronesses asking the questions. I will come back to the question on more than one occasion. The relevant proprietor will not receive compensation per se, but rather the balance of any surplus on the rent and the capital appreciation of the property. There is compensation that could go to third parties, perhaps where a lease has been arranged and a finance company is involved. I believe that human rights legislation dictates that a lease is property and, therefore, there is a degree of compensation. The idea that the owner of the empty dwelling will receive loads and loads of compensation because the local authority has taken over the management of the property is not true. "Compensation" is not the correct word. We may consider that. It certainly requires a better explanation.
    What the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, said about flats above shops is absolutely right. The separate access issue refers to the definition of a dwelling. I fully agree with those who raised the issue about flats above empty shops. Since I was responsible for the housing and planning brief, and indeed since Keith Hill took it over, we have moved much further forward and action is under way.
    Generally speaking, the tenants of shops which are used mainly—but not exclusively—as retail premises and which have flats above do not want to be landlords and neither do the property owners. That difficulty has been identified for some time; we need an intermediary who can deal with that. I must make it absolutely clear that this Bill cannot deal with that. Action in the department is under way on that.
    Subsection (2) of Amendment No. 171B refers to where,
    "the dwelling is wholly unoccupied".
    There is a reference to the rights of existing occupiers in the schedule. The reference to "existing occupiers" relates to people who occupy a formerly empty property at the point when an interim or final empty dwelling management order is made. Some tenancies were granted and the schedule protects the rights of those people at the point when the final empty dwelling management order is made.
    924
    The key order here is the first one, the interim one. One has to go to the residential property tribunal to obtain that order. Following that, one can get people into the property. They are then living there and they are the people referred to. That is why there is this apparent contradiction; but there is not a contradiction because people can live in the property when the final empty dwelling management order is made. That may sound barmy, but they are there because the interim order was made in the first place.
    The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked some detailed questions and I hope I have some detailed answers, although I thought that he came a little too close to defending unacceptable practices in the property market. On whether every interim empty dwelling management order requires the authorisation of the residential property tribunal, the answer is yes. Does a local authority have to act on every order authorising an interim empty dwelling management order? The answer is no. The noble Earl then asked whether the residential property tribunal has to approve a final empty dwelling management order. The answer is no. Will a local authority indemnify the owner? The answer is yes. Must a local authority leave a property in good order? I thought that was a brass-neck question. Most of these properties will be in a scandalous condition, but they will be done up, at the end of the day, by the rent obtained from the order. but they will he dilapidated. Yes, it will not be in any worse condition—as left by the owner when it was empty—than it was found in to start with. The answer to his question is yes, it will be left in good order.
    The noble Earl also asked whether the owner can ask for an empty dwelling management order to be revoked. The answer is yes, if the residential property tribunal agrees. Will the property be returned with vacant possession? The answer is yes.
    I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves., for the general thrust of what he said. I almost interrupted him but decided against it. He raised the issue of how much a local authority will spend on a dwelling. In a way, it is for a local authority to make an assessment of the housing needs, market values and the rental incomes in its area. It would not make sense to spend money that it believed it could not get back, say, over a seven-year period. In some ways it shares part of the risk. It is also an incentive against local authorities spending a huge amount of money on properties that they do not own but which they think they will get back from the owners in due course. They may not get that money back from the owners in due course. They have to make a judgment about the best route in their areas. Of course, there may be other schemes that they could follow.
    The noble Lord asked about doing this with the consent of the relevant proprietor—that was under the introductory clause. The answer is that a local housing authority can grant a tenancy only during an interim empty dwelling management order with the consent of the owner. If no consent is forthcoming, the solution is to make a final empty dwelling management order. The hope is that it will not be necessary to make final orders in every case if owners co-operate with a local

    925
    authority and take on the management themselves. The making of an interim empty management order does not require the consent of an owner, but it requires authorisation from the residential property tribunal.
    I have partially covered the issue of compensation, but I now have a note which may provide a better explanation. The note says, "More detail on compensation". As a non-lawyer and as a lay person, I believe that compensation is the wrong word and gives the wrong impression. We do not expect that compensation will be paid in all or in many cases. I can give an example. A property may be subject to a lease of, say, four years' duration. The person who benefits from the lease is not using it. We know that because the dwelling is empty. The residential property tribunal can cancel the short-term lease and so permit the local housing authority to grant tenancies.
    The problem is that human rights case law is quite clear. A lease is a possession and if the state is to deprive an owner of his possession there must be compensation, but the compensation does not have to be excessive. In regard to the owner, called in the amendments "the relevant proprietor", there is no deprivation of a possession. There is a control on his use of that possession and so no requirement to pay compensation arises.
    I have covered a fair amount of the issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, asked me about making inquiries. We are dealing with properties that have been empty for more than six months for no good reason—I shall not go over the exemptions that I raised earlier. A local authority will have to show the residential property tribunal that it has made full and extensive inquiries about the ownership of the property, or if it has found the owner, it will have to show why nothing has been done about it. A local authority will not be able to walk straight into empty properties and get things cracking straightaway. There have to be good and proper checks. As I said earlier, this is a major change in public policy regarding private sector housing for the greater public interest.
    The noble Baroness also asked about the level of rent and tenants. Those would be matters for a local authority. It may subcontract the management. It will have acquired the management orders from the tribunal and if it has made a final one, so be it. But there has to be a schedule. It all has to be written down and there has to be a set of rules about how a property is managed and the rents that are charged, which will vary around the country. It will be up to a local housing authority.
    As I have said, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, regarding shops. He referred also to the National Asylum Support Service and to empty properties. It is interesting to see that a note has not winged its way to me on that. It is hardly surprising as I do not know the answer myself and it certainly has not appeared in any of my briefings. Such properties are, by definition, owned in the private sector; they are
    926
    empty but income is being received on them because the Home Office, through NASS, is paying for them in case they are required.
    It is true that contracts were taken out when asylum applications were far higher than they are now, but I defend NASS. I know that problems have arisen. People tend to forget what was happening in London and the south-east counties at the height of the massive influx of asylum seekers. There was almost a collapse in social services and in housing where there were great pressures in Kent, East Sussex and some of the London boroughs. People tend to forget what was happening a few years ago. Operating NASS to disperse asylum seekers was not easy, and from a standing start literally tens of thousands were dispersed successfully around the country so that they could pursue their claims. That was not done without massive operational efforts in securing properties. Some were local authority properties, but one has to go generally into the market because the vast majority of empty properties in this country, as I have made abundantly clear, are in the private sector and longer-term contracts were needed.
    This is not the place for us to debate the issue of why there were no get-out clauses, but before Report stage I will find out about the number of properties and whether there is anything that could be done about that. I suspect that by the time the clause comes into force and is fully operating those contracts will have come to an end. Nevertheless, I will seek further advice on the issue.
    I apologise again for the lateness but it would be wasting time to go over it. We have been requested by all political parties to do something about empty properties; 84 per cent are in the private sector and that is our modest response.
    Baroness Hamwee: The Minister's replies have been extremely helpful. There are a number of points which he clarified today, such as when consent is required and the situation of a wholly unoccupied property. It strikes me that it would be extremely helpful if the department were to produce a flowchart of what is required and when—something that would help us and the people who will operate the system. That would stop me muttering to my noble friend about whether we need to ask for a recommitment of this clause.
    Lord Rooker: That is a reasonable request and I will pass it on to see what can be done. This is an innovative scheme. I do not accept that the scheme is a form of confiscation, as I heard mentioned earlier. Someone is not using an asset; it is not being confiscated—the ownership and the rights of ownership are not being confiscated. The rights of the use are being confiscated, but the asset is not being used for the greater public good. I suspect that there will be some literature produced about empty homes so that everyone understands exactly what the procedures are,

    927
    what the rights are and what happens. If that is the case, the chances are that we will get a lot of voluntary co-operation.
    The Earl of Caithness: I, too, am grateful for what the Minister said. In some cases he clarified the situation; in others he confused it for me. It might be my hearing but I thought at a couple of stages he referred to the "retail property tribunal". I think he meant the residential property tribunal. As far as I am aware there is no retail property tribunal.
    Given the Minister's answer to me about how the local authority should leave the property, presumably that now requires that there should be a schedule of condition before the local authority takes occupancy of the property for somebody. Is that requirement in the Bill?
    The Minister said that we should have a sensible discussion on Report. I do not think that is at all possible. This is such a complicated area. What we have done today is a Second Reading. I see the Whip sitting there and I know what the Whip will say when it comes to Report. We are allowed to talk only once, and rightly so. He will get up and tell us that we are talking more than once. We will not have a sensible discussion.
    I therefore ask the Minister to talk to his noble friend the Chief Whip to recommit this part of the Bill. That is the only way that we will get a sensible discussion. The clause will not be discussed in another place. If we are going to have EDMOs, it is our responsibility now to make certain that they are right and that they function properly. We cannot do that just at Report stage. The clause is too big, too complicated, with a big schedule. I will not speak at length when we recommit, because it would be wrong to abuse it. However, in this instance it is a very good argument to say that we should recommit just this section.
    Lord Greaves: May I—
    Lord Rooker: Could I just respond to that while we are in Committee? I could go back down the list but I have just given the noble Earl more "yes/no" answers to every one of his specific questions, save for one, than I think I have ever given in answer to a set of questions from the Dispatch Box. I shall not go to my noble friend arguing for recommitment because I was able to give the noble Earl such specific "yes/no" answers to his questions.
    Lord Greaves: I was very grateful for a lot of what the Minister said. I shall read Hansard with my usual enthusiasm tomorrow. So far, I have read all the Hansard reports on this Bill. As regards the definition at the beginning—I wrote down the words carefully—the Minister said:
    "The making of an interim EDMO does not need the consent of the owner".
    928
    However, my reading of subsection (2) in Amendment No. 171A is that it does. It states:
    "An interim EDMO is an order made to enable a local housing authority, with the consent of the relevant proprietor".
    There seem to be two opposite provisions. I agree entirely that the threat of compulsion is put there in order to encourage people to volunteer; indeed, that is very clear. The threat of compulsion has to be there, because that is the whole thrust. However, it does not seem to read clearly
    The Minister also said that one cannot put a tenant in an EDMO without the consent of the owner. Yet Amendment No. 171D(2) states quite clearly that the authority, having made an EDMO,
    "must take such steps as they consider appropriate for the purpose of securing that the dwelling becomes and continues to be occupied".
    I am not trying to pick holes in order to make dastardly political points because the thrust of this proposal has my enthusiastic support, but perhaps it was drafted in a hurry at the last minute. Perhaps people need to look at some of the wording to make sure that it works. We do not want to pass legislation and have nice glossy pamphlets telling people how it will work, only to find that it does not stack up when it comes to the courts.
    Lord Rooker: Although I have not gone back to that section, the answer is probably the difference between the interim empty dwelling management order and the final empty dwelling management order. It is the distinction between the two. Perhaps when the flowcharts are organised, the noble Lord will find that that section is clear. We will have a look at that point.
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendments Nos. 171B to 171G:
    After Clause 122, insert the following new clause—
    "MAKING OF INTERIM EDMOS
    (1) A local housing authority may make an interim EDMO in respect of a dwelling if—

    (a) it is a dwelling to which this section applies, and

    (b) on an application by the authority to a residential property tribunal, the tribunal by order authorises them under section (Authorisation to make interim EDMOs) to make such an order, either in the terms of a draft order submitted by them or in those terms as varied by the tribunal.

    (2) This section applies to a dwelling if—

    (a) the dwelling is wholly unoccupied, and

    (b) the relevant proprietor is not a public sector body.

    "Wholly unoccupied" means that no part is occupied, whether lawfully or unlawfully.
    (3) Before determining whether to make an application to a residential property tribunal for an authorisation under section (Authorisation to make interim EDMOs), the authority must make reasonable efforts—

    (a) to notify the relevant proprietor that they are considering making an interim EDMO in respect of the dwelling under this section, and

    (b) to ascertain what steps (if any) he is taking, or is intending to take, to secure that the dwelling is occupied.

    (4) In determining whether to make an application to a residential property tribunal for an authorisation under section (Authorisation to make interim EDMOs), the authority must take into account the rights of the relevant proprietor of the dwelling and the interests of the wider community.
    (5) The authority may make an interim EDMO in respect of the dwelling despite any pending appeal against the order of the tribunal (but this is without prejudice to any order that may be made on the disposal of any such appeal).
    (6) An application to a residential property tribunal under this section for authorisation to make an interim EDMO in respect of a dwelling may include an application for an order under paragraph 22 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty duelling management orders) determining a lease or licence of the dwelling.
    (7) In this section "public sector body" means a body mentioned in any of paragraphs (a) to (f) of paragraph 2(1) of Schedule 11.
    (8) Part 1 of Schedule 6 applies in relation to the making of an interim EDMO in respect of a dwelling as it applies in relation to the making of an interim management order in respect of a house, subject to the following modifications—

    (a) paragraph 7(2) does not apply;

    (b) paragraph 7(4)(c) is to be read as referring instead to the date on which the order is to cease to have effect in accordance with paragraph 1(3) and (4) or 9(3) to (5) of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders);

    (c) paragraph 8(4) is to be read as defining "relevant person" as any person who, to the knowledge of the local housing authority, is a person having an estate or interest in the dwelling (other than a person who is a tenant under a lease or licence granted under paragraph 2(3)(c) of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders))."

    After Clause 122, insert the following new clause—
    "AUTHORISATION TO MAKE INTERIM EDMOS
    (1) A residential property tribunal may authorise a local housing authority to make an interim EDMO in respect of a dwelling to which section (Making of interim EDMOs) applies if the tribunal—

    (a) is satisfied as to the matters mentioned in subsection (2), and

    (b) is not satisfied that the case falls within one of the prescribed exceptions.

    (2) The matters as to which the tribunal must be satisfied are—

    (a) that the dwelling has been wholly unoccupied for at least the prescribed period of time,

    (b) that the relevant proprietor of the dwelling does not intend to take immediate steps to secure that the dwelling becomes occupied,

    (c) that, if an interim order is made, there is a reasonable prospect that the dwelling will become occupied,

    (d) that the authority have complied with section (Making of interim EDMOs)(3), and

    (e) that any prescribed requirements have been complied with.

    (3) In deciding whether to authorise a local housing authority to make an interim EDMO in respect of a dwelling, the tribunal must take into account—

    (a) the interests of the community, and

    (b) the effect that the order will have on the rights of the relevant proprietor and may have on the rights of third parties.

    (4) On authorising a local housing authority to make an interim EDMO in respect of a dwelling, the tribunal may, if it thinks fit, make an order requiring the authority (if they make the EDMO)
    930
    to pay to any third party specified in the order an amount of compensation in respect of any interference in consequence of the order with the rights of the third party.
    (5) The appropriate national authority may by order—

    (a) prescribe exceptions for the purposes of subsection (1)( b),

    (b) prescribe a period of time for the purposes of subsection (2)(a), and

    (c) prescribe requirements for the purposes of subsection (2)(e).

    (6) An order under subsection (5)(a) may, in particular, include exceptions in relation to—

    (a) dwellings that have been occupied solely or principally by the relevant proprietor who is at the material time temporarily resident elsewhere;

    (b) dwellings that are holiday homes or that are otherwise occupied by the relevant proprietor or his guests on a temporary basis from time to time;

    (c) dwellings undergoing repairs or renovation;

    (d) dwellings in respect of which an application for planning permission or building control approval is outstanding;

    (e) dwellings which are genuinely on the market for sale or letting;

    (f) dwellings where the relevant proprietor has died not more than the prescribed number of months before the material time.

    (7) In this section—
    "building control approval" means approval for the carrying out of any works under building regulations;
    "planning permission" has the meaning given by section 336(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 990 (c. 8);
    "prescribed" means prescribed by an order under subsection (5);
    "wholly unoccupied" means that no part is occupied, whether lawfully or unlawfully."
    After Clause 122, insert the following new clause—
    "LOCAL HOUSING AUTHORITY'S DUTIES ONCE INTERIM EDMO IN FORCE
    (1) A local housing authority who have made an interim EDMO in respect of a dwelling must comply with the following provisions as soon as practicable after the order has come into force (see paragraph 1 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders)).
    (2) The authority must take such steps as they consider appropriate for the purpose of securing that the dwelling becomes and continues to be occupied.
    (3) The authority must also take such other steps as they consider appropriate with a view to the proper management of the dwelling pending—

    (a) the making of a final EDMO in respect of the dwelling under section (Making of final EDMOs), or

    (b) the revocation of the interim EDMO.

    (4) If the local housing authority conclude that there are no steps which they could appropriately take under the order for the purpose of securing that the dwelling becomes occupied, the authority must either—

    (a) make a final EDMO in respect of the dwelling under section (Making of final EDMOs), or

    (b) revoke the order under paragraph 7 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders) without taking any further action.

    (5) For the avoidance of doubt, the authority's duty under subsection (3) includes taking such steps as are necessary to ensure that, while the order is in force, reasonable provision is made for insurance of the dwelling against destruction or damage by fire or other causes."
    After Clause 122, insert the following new clause—
    "MAKING OF FINAL EDMOS
    (1) A local housing authority may make a final EDMO to replace an interim EDMO made under section (Making of interim EDMOs) if—

    (a) they consider that, unless a final EDMO is made in respect of the dwelling, the dwelling is likely to become or remain unoccupied;

    (b) where the dwelling is unoccupied, they have taken all such steps as it was appropriate for them to take under the interim EDMO with a view to securing the occupation of the dwelling.

    (2) A local housing authority may make a new final EDMO so as to replace a final EDMO made under this section if—

    (a) they consider that unless a new final EDMO is made in respect of the dwelling, the dwelling is likely to become or remain unoccupied; and

    (b) where the dwelling is unoccupied, they have taken all such steps as it was appropriate for them to take under the existing final EDMO with a view to securing the occupation of the dwelling.

    (3) In deciding whether to make a final EDMO in respect of a dwelling, the authority must take into account—

    (a) the interests of the community, and

    (b) the effect that the order will have on the rights of the relevant proprietor and may have on the rights of third parties.

    (4) Before making a final EDMO under this section. the authority must consider whether compensation should be paid by them to any third party in respect of any interference in consequence of the order with the rights of the third party.
    (5) Part I of Schedule 6 applies in relation to the making of a final EDMO in respect of a dwelling as it applies in relation to the making of a final management order in respect of a house, subject to the following modifications—

    (a) paragraph 7(2) does not apply;

    (b) paragraph 7(4)(c) is to be read as referring instead to the date on which the order is to cease to have effect in accordance with paragraph 1(3) and (4) or 9(3) to (5) of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders);

    (c) paragraph 7(6) is to be read as requiring the notice under sub-paragraph (5) also to contain—

    (i) the decision of the authority as to whether to pay compensation to any third party,

    (ii) the amount of any such compensation to be paid, and

    (iii) information about the right of appeal against the decision under paragraph 34 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders);

    (d) paragraph 8(4) is to be read as defining "relevant person" as any person who, to the knowledge of the local housing authority, is a person having an estate or interest in the dwelling (other than a person who is a tenant under a lease or licence granted under paragraph 2(3)(c) or 10(3)(c) of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders))."

    After Clause 122, insert the following new clause—
    "LOCAL HOUSING AUTHORITY'S DUTIES ONCE FINAL EDMO IN FORCE
    (1) A local housing authority who have made a final EDMO in respect of a dwelling must comply with the following provisions once the order has come into force (see paragraph 9 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders)).
    (2) The authority must take such steps as they consider appropriate for the purpose of securing that the dwelling is occupied.
    (3) The authority must also take such other steps as they consider appropriate with a view to the proper management of the dwelling in accordance with the management scheme contained in the order (see paragraph 13 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders)).
    (4) The authority must from time to time review—

    (a) the operation of the order and in particular the management scheme contained in it,

    (b) whether, if the dwelling is unoccupied, there are any steps which they could appropriately take under the order for the purpose of securing that the dwelling becomes occupied, and

    (c) whether keeping the order in force in relation to the dwelling (with or without making any variations under paragraph 15 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders)) is necessary to secure that the dwelling becomes or remains occupied.

    (5) If on a review the authority consider that any variations should be made under paragraph 15 of Schedule (Further provisions regarding empty dwelling management orders), they must proceed to make those variations.
    (6) If the dwelling is unoccupied and on a review the authority conclude that either—

    (a) there are no steps which they could appropriately take as mentioned in subsection (4)(b), or

    (b) keeping the order in force is not necessary as mentioned in subsection (4)(c),

    they must proceed to revoke the order.
    (7) For the avoidance of doubt, the authority's duty under subsection (3) includes taking such steps as are necessary to ensure that, while the order is in force, reasonable provision is made for insurance of the dwelling against destruction or damage by fire or other causes."
    After Clause 122, insert the following new clause—
    "COMPENSATION PAYABLE TO THIRD PARTIES
    (1) A third party may, while an interim EDMO is in force in respect of a dwelling, apply to a residential property tribunal for an order requiring the local housing authority to pay to him compensation in respect of any interference in consequence of the order with his rights in respect of the dwelling.
    (2) On such an application, the tribunal may, if it thinks fit, make an order requiring the authority to pay to the third party an amount by way of compensation in respect of any such interference.
    (3) If a third party requests them to do so at any time, the local housing authority must consider whether an amount by way of compensation should be paid to him in respect of any interference in consequence of a final EDMO with his rights.
    (4) The authority must notify the third party of their decision as soon as practicable.
    (5) Where the local housing authority decide under subsection (3) that compensation ought to be paid to a third party, they must vary the management scheme contained in the order so as to specify the amount of the compensation to be paid and to make provision as to its payment."
    On Question, amendments agreed to.
    Lord Davies of Oldham: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
    Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
    House resumed.

    Regional Referendums
    4.58 p.m.
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend Nick Raynsford, the Minister for Local and Regional Government. The statement is as follows:
    "With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement to the House on regional and local referendums in the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber. This follows the Statement I made in July, in which I referred to the differences of view in this House about whether we should go ahead with referendums in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber. I explained the Government's decision to reschedule the referendums in those areas, and confirmed, against a strong confidence in postal-voting—in the northeast, our decision to proceed with the referendum in that region. Members will recall that Parliament approved the orders enabling that referendum to take place.
    "In July, I also gave two assurances to this House. First, I said that the Government would not proceed with the referendum in the North East on the basis proposed if the Electoral Commission produced convincing evidence that it was unsafe to do so.
    "Secondly, I said that, with your permission Mr Speaker, I would make a further statement in September on how we intended to proceed with the referendums in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber having had the opportunity to consider the Electoral Commission's evaluation report of the June electoral pilots. Today's Statement follows on from those two assurances.
    "Regarding the commission's report and statement, the Electoral Commission published its report on 27 August. In parallel it published a statement setting out its view of the implications of its report for the regional and local referendums in the North East.
    "The report concludes that successful elections were delivered in the four pilot regions. The commission states that to date it is not aware of any evidence to suggest any widespread abuse of postal voting either within or beyond the pilot regions. Moreover, from an extensive public opinion survey, the commission found that people in the pilot regions were satisfied with all-postal voting by a margin of two to one—59 per cent against 29 per cent.
    "Nevertheless, the commission concludes that the all-postal pilots raise a number of important issues that need to be addressed for the future development of voting methods in Britain. It makes a range of recommendations designed to make voting more convenient, to increase the administrative capacity to run elections, and to build greater public confidence in voting arrangements.
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    "Above all, the commission identifies in its report the strong public support for electors to have choice as to how to vote—a demand for choice that the commission is clear that all-postal voting does not meet. Accordingly, it has withdrawn its previous recommendation that all-postal voting should become the norm in local government elections.
    "In its place the commission proposes a basis for future multi-channel elections to develop a new foundation model of voting. The commission undertakes to work with government, electoral administrators, political parties, and experts in access and security to design this new approach to voting which must be capable of offering electors both choice and security.
    "It is against that background of findings and recommendations that the commission has drawn up its statement about the conduct of regional and local referendums.
    "As regards the North East referendum, which this House has approved for 4 November, the commission has unambiguously concluded that this referendum should proceed as an all-postal ballot without changes to the process. Central to the commission reaching this conclusion is its recognition that the referendum process is already under way, and its judgment that there would be far greater risk to the process if significant changes were to be made now than if the referendum were to continue as planned.
    "The commission recognises that the system for the North East referendum is an improvement over that piloted in June, particularly as there is no requirement for a witness to sign a security statement and because we have required considerably more assistance and delivery points, at which voters can receive help and vote in privacy. The commission also recognises that there have been no allegations of fraud in the North East, there is extensive experience of all-postal voting in that region and there is greater public support for all-postal voting than in any other region.
    "Accordingly, the commission also explicitly states that it is not making any recommendations for change to the orders already made in relation to the conduct of the North East referendums. The commission undertakes to work with the chief counting officer and government to encourage and promote good practice within the framework of the existing order.
    "There are therefore no grounds for not proceeding with the North East referendum. It will go ahead as planned on 4 November. We as Government welcome the commission undertaking to work with others to encourage and promote good practice, and we stand ready to play our part.
    "I turn now to the referendums in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber.
    "In its statement the commission states that given the recommendations in its evaluation report, it could not support any future referendums on the all-postal basis now being used for the North East.

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    "We welcome the commission's commitment to multi-channel elections—the form of elections that has consistently been the long-term aim of the Government's electoral modernisation strategy. We are ready to work with the commission on developing its proposed new foundation model of voting and we will be discussing further with it how that will he taken forward. We hope that all key stakeholders will join us. We share the commission's belief as to the importance of securing a degree of public and political consensus for significant changes to the electoral process before moving forward. And we note that the commission aims to report on the new model in March 2005.
    "Against this background it would be wrong now to reach final conclusions on the precise timing and form of the referendums in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber. Over the coming months, we and others will want to see how work progresses on the new foundation model, and to consider and analyse more deeply the full range of the commission's recommendations. We will then be better placed to take final decisions about the form and timing of these referendums.
    "I would, however, reiterate what I said in July. The Government are absolutely committed to these referendums going ahead.
    "It is important that the people of the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber should have their opportunity to express their view for or against an elected regional assembly and the associated local government reorganisation. I understand the concerns that have been voiced about delay leading to uncertainty about the future structure of local government in Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire and North Yorkshire.
    "We recognise that concern and we take it very seriously. But we want to make sure that the referendums are held against a background of confidence in the voting system. We will of course aim to minimise the delay. In all events, given the need for primary legislation following a 'yes' vote in one referendum to allow elected regional assemblies to be established and the associated local government reorganisation to take place, there is no reason why this revised timetable for the referendums should cause significant delay to the overall local government reorganisation timetable.
    "The extensive electoral pilots last June have much to teach us all. Already they have led the commission to revise some of its key conclusions about all-postal voting which it drew from earlier smaller pilots. But the way is now clear for the people of the North East to make their choice on an elected regional assembly for their region. And the people of the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber can be confident that they too will be able to exercise their choice before too long".
    My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
    5.6 p.m.
    Baroness Hanham: My Lords, the Minister must find himself in a state of embarrassment, having to bring this Statement which was given in the other place by his right honourable friend Nick Raynsford. First, in July, the Government had to admit that they could not carry out referenda in the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside, in November. Now, they are saying that they intend to put those off indefinitely.
    Of course that really comes as no surprise, as it has become increasingly clear that there is little appetite for changes to government in those areas, and should the referenda be pursued, the Government are certainly not going to win. The Deputy Prime Minister, of course, would not want to lose face in his own area on his own flagship policy. However, could the Minister tell us how much this frolic has cost in terms of government information already put out, preparatory work already done and the cost of each ministerial visit—of which there have been many—and public consultation prior to the announcement of the deferment on 22 July?
    The Government point to the words of the Electoral Commission—words which I quoted to the Minister last Tuesday, but of which he did not appear then to be aware—that one of its key recommendations was that,
    "there should be no further all-postal votes undertaken in the United Kingdom".
    The commission did suggest a further examination of voting systems other than all-postal, but is the Minister really saying that even an organisation so adept and independent as the commission is going to be able to undertake an in-depth consideration of the value of all the other methods of voting, controversial as some of those will be, carry out the necessary consultation and be in a position to make recommendations by March of next year? Would any recommendations then made be expected to play in to both the untimed referenda as well as a general election?
    The Government have got themselves impaled on an extremely sharp hook by insisting on "messing about" with the voting system, which they have now done systematically for a number of years.
    Will the Minister tell the House how he expects Parliament to consider any report of the commission on these matters in a timescale that is commensurate with good organisation—particularly in view of the fact that neither this House nor the other place has yet had an opportunity to discuss the Electoral Commission's report and/or the draft Bill on powers and responsibilities of regional government in time for it to effect the one remaining referendum in the North East?
    Actually, this is a matter of at least as much significance as the decision on the ballot. There has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the commission's report or the draft Bill. In that regard, the Minister may be interested to recall the words of his noble friend Lady Symons of Vernham Dean when she was responding to the debate on the Constitution for

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    Europe (Referendum) Bill on 10 September. She said (at col. 851 of the Official Report on 10 September) that,
    "a referendum held before Parliament, the cornerstone and very hallmark of our democracy, has had the chance to scrutinise the"—
    in her case she was talking about the treaty but in our case we are talking about the Electoral Commission report and the draft Bill—was an "extraordinary proposition". Indeed it is and it is apt to the matter about which I have just spoken. Perhaps the noble Lord can give us an indication of when such a debate might take place.
    The Government make much of the fact that the Electoral Commission gave the go-ahead for the North East referendum to take place with all-postal voting, but that, of course, is because Parliament had already been bounced into the decision before the recess—at that stage, before it knew what the Electoral Commission's views would be and, since then, plans have been underway. However, having set up the Electoral Commission to advise them on the pilots, was it not absurd that they took that decision before receiving the commission's report? Had they not done so, it might also have been possible for the North East venture to have been conducted according to a more normal voting system, whether or not the returning officers and others were prepared to carry out the all-postal ballot again.
    The Minister assured the House last Tuesday—the Statement does so again today—that there will be considerably more assistance and delivery points in the North East referendum election. But, as was pointed out last week, the population of the county of Northumberland is scattered, and unless each village and town is assured of several such points, it means that people will still be hampered if they wish to deliver their votes personally.
    This whole regional government policy, as we have said so often, is a mess. It is a policy which is not even widely supported in the regions concerned and one that pretends to be about local government but is nothing to do with local government reorganisation. The Statement underlines that situation.
    The Minister concluded by saying that the extensive electoral pilots last June have much to teach us all. And so say all of us—they have been a disaster.
    5.12 p.m.
    Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I was going to say that I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, but I am not sure whether thanks have yet been given. Normally when the Opposition rise on these occasions, they remind me that I must say thank you as well.
    However, I am not sure how much further forward the Statement takes us. That may be because the Electoral Commission made its report when Parliament was in recess and there has been a certain amount of discussion of the issue in the media. Nevertheless, of course one must welcome the information.
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    First, I put on record that we on these Benches are delighted that the Electoral Commission has rejected all-postal voting for local elections. The Statement refers to public confidence. I have to say that in my mind public confidence is not satisfied by references only to fraud which leads to successful prosecution. Although I have not read the whole Electoral Commission report, by definition it is the case that there are more allegations of fraud, thus undermining public confidence, than there are successful prosecutions or prosecutions at all. To take one point, we all know the difficulty of persuading witnesses to testify.
    The report refers to the demand for choice. I support that, but it also refers to developing a new foundation model of voting. I have to say that I am not persuaded by the jargon. I would be more persuaded if the new foundation model looked at matters from the point of view of the voter and considered all the issues thrown up in the experience of voters and, no doubt, in the experience of many of your Lordships who have played a part in recent elections. I refer to matters such as considering the timing of the various steps taken in the electoral process so that, for example, ballot papers do not arrive before official information about the election in question, and being clear to the voter about the fact that a postal ballot can be delivered on the day of the election. I am sure we all know of voters who were disenfranchised because they did not understand that kind of issue.
    As regards the referendum in the North East, we welcome the fact that that is to go ahead in order to give residents there the chance to make their own decision. We have said that consistently throughout this debate. But I support what the noble Baroness said about assistance and delivery points. Much of the North East is rural and very sparsely populated, including, to my surprise, as I found out about 10 days ago, parts of Hartlepool—very nice it is too.
    I urge the Government not to get themselves into a situation in the North East in which decisions are taken too quickly and on the hoof. The kind of muddle that that creates for everyone is not fair to the chief counting officer, to the staff, to party activists and, most of all, to voters.
    As regards the other referendums, the Statement ends by saying that people in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber can be confident that they will be able to exercise their choice "before too long". Is that the same kind of language as "shortly" and "in due course" and so is not capable of very clear definition? If it is capable of clear definition, the Committee will be grateful to hear it.
    I must express some concern that the timing of the referendums appears to be wrapped up with the project of expanding methods of voting. They are different issues. I simply cannot see that sensible work can be concluded by next March. But I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement.
    5.18 p.m.
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am the least embarrassed Minister one could ever imagine. I am also probably the least politically correct one. I am not at all

    939
    embarrassed, and nor was I embarrassed last week when I answered the noble Baroness's question. I do not have it in front of me but it was in the following terms: "In the light of the Electoral Commission's report, why are the Government holding the referendum in the North East?" My answer, which I rewrote myself as opposed to using what was presented to me, was that it was in the light of the Electoral Commission's report that we were proceeding in the North East because that was what the report said. The fact that it said, "Don't do it at any other time", was not an issue so far as concerned the North East. I read the full report and made it quite clear what the factors were.
    The noble Baroness asked me about money. I have various figures but, in terms of the information campaign, I think that originally £5 million was set aside for the three regions. The current estimate of the main components of that is up to £3.2 million. That is in relation to the "Have Your Say" information campaign, which I think was being run. Obviously there is nothing happening in the other two regions and I understand that, in any case, that campaign has now finished.
    So far as concerns Parliament, we published the draft Bill. The Select Committee in another place said that it would have a look at that. The implication is that, in due course, the Government will bring forward a Bill, subject to there being a "yes" vote. I am not a business manager but no one has said to me that we should put aside government time to debate the draft Bill when in due course there will be government time for debating the full Bill. The draft Bill is there for everyone, outside and inside, to see what we have said in relation to the powers. So far as concerns a debate on the report of the Electoral Commission, that is a matter for the usual channels and it is not for me to speculate.
    This is a fairly long Statement but—I have to be careful what I say here—it did not say a great deal that was new. The one point that is new is that the Electoral Commission will look at a new model for voting and will report by March next year. That is the new bit of the Statement. That is the news for today. We made the commitment in July simply because of the hiatus in local government reorganisation. Those two areas—the four counties—needed to know. They all know now what was going to be on offer in terms of the options. However, that will no longer be done because there will be no referendum. That can cause problems in terms of recruitment, training and decisions to be made. We fully understand that. Therefore, we do not want any undue delay.
    There are some important dates about which I have been reminded. I do not know whether my colleague, Nick Raynsford, referred to them in the other place, but 16 June 2005 is important in the chronology in terms of what happens when. There are no secrets about this. Everything is in the legislation; that is, the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Act and referendum orders. There is a series of things to be done after the original
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    soundings and process started, and a period by which it has to be completed; otherwise we shall have to start again.
    March 2005 is reasonable; it is six months away. The general election is in 2006, so the law says, or certainly by 2006. I do not know what will happen in spring next year but the Government are very supportive of the Electoral Commission. We are encouraging people to work with it and with our partners in the political parties in arriving at this new model for voting procedures, which will enable us to give a settled view and, hopefully, the opportunity to keep the commitment to people in those two regions that they will have their referendums before not too long.
    5.22 p.m.
    Lord Waddington: My Lords, is it not the case that while this debate about referendums for regional assemblies grinds on, the Government stealthily and without any democratic mandate continue to expand regional government on the ground, hoping, no doubt, that eventually they will be able to say that whatever public opinion says now, the time will come when they will be able to say with great force, "Now these bodies have all these powers, is it not really quite wrong that they should not be democratically accountable?" Where is the evidence that any public benefit will flow from the draining away of power from existing organs of government to these new assemblies? Is it not the case that Mr Prescott seriously thinks that these new regional bodies will be more pliant and more willing to do his bidding so far as planning is concerned than existing local authorities? That is at the back of this.
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, that is not at the back of this, and I wholly reject what the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, said. The Government are clearly making use of the government offices and regions that we inherited from the previous Conservative government. It is true that we are changing functions and structures to deliver some of the issues on a regional basis. That has nothing to do with whether there are elected or unelected regional assemblies. As I said, the regional assemblies are there; they are all unelected at present.
    Lord Greaves: My Lords, as people will know, I live in the North West and I should declare that I was elected a councillor with my biggest ever majority under the Government's all-postal vote pilots. I also have to report that the whole thing was a shambles. If we get to debate this properly at any time I will be able to tell noble Lords many things about what went on. One fellow who was sat in the sun in Nelson town centre filling in ballot papers for all his family was a well known lifelong Labour supporter. One of our people went up to him and said, "This is how the Labour Party win elections, is it?" He said, "We've had a family meeting. It's all right. We've all decided to vote Liberal Democrat this year". It was a shambles. I am very pleased to say that he was not a voter in my ward.

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    The Minister said that the date of March 2005 was the new information in the Statement. However, the Electoral Commission announced that in its report on postal pilots. Is the Minister saying that the Government will do something additional by March 2005 or will it simply be the Electoral Commission?
    If the Government are so keen on having these referendums in Yorkshire, the Humber and the North West, why do they not just hold them? Is it that they think that people are so uninterested in this whole project that none of them will bother to go to the polling station?
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, no. As I said, the reason for the Statement made in both Houses today is to keep a commitment that was made in July that we would come back in the short September Session to make a Statement that would be relevant particularly to those areas where there is "local government blight", if I can put it that way. Clearly, there is local government blight in those four counties and they needed to have a further Statement of the Government's view. The Government will give their views on the Electoral Commission's report in due course. We have not yet done that.
    Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, referring to what was said by my noble friend Lady Hanham, the Electoral Commission did not give wholehearted support for the North East referendum. It prefaced its comments by saying that it would go for it because the process was already underway.
    The Electoral Commission said that it could not support the referendums for the North West, Yorkshire and Humberside and that it would further discuss the issues. However, apparently the referendums will go ahead, if there is a degree of public consensus of support, by March 2005. I did not have the Statement with me so I had to take down what was said. How will that public consensus of support be measured? What does "degree of support" mean? Does it mean if 10 per cent say "yes" or 60 per cent say "yes"? The Statement said that the Government are confident that people will be able to exercise their choice before too long in these three regions. Does that mean irrespective of what degree of support there is?
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, no. I said that the Electoral Commission stated that it will report by 2005 on this new model and then we will assess how the referendums will take place in the two regions. The issue of the referendums taking place is a settled view. Soundings were taken and statements were made to Parliament for the three regions. It was assessed that there was sufficient support for referendums to take place in the three regions, with two regions not doing that. It is still valid to proceed with the referendum up to a certain date based on the soundings that were taken originally. That is the point I made. No one said that the referendums will take place in March 2005.
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    If it was the case that it is said that the referendums were already underway and that is the reason we are proceeding with the North East, they were already underway in the other two regions in exactly the same way. So, I do not rest my case on that. I rest my case on the words of the Electoral Commission report—it is a brief report on the website; a couple of pages of A4—which made it quite clear that it has the confidence in the North East to proceed on the present basis on a series of factors. One was that it was already underway but that could not be the only one because it was underway in the other two regions and we are pulling the plug on the other two. For all the reasons we gave—more experience, more support, no knowledge of any fraud or anything like that—it was confident. So, it was not the case that the Electoral Commission said, "Do it in the north-east because it is a fait accompli; Parliament has already approved it". We had already approved it for the other two but we were not proceeding on that basis.
    Lord Hanningfield: My Lords, the Minister referred to the blight on the counties and accepted that there was blight. However, the Minister did not mention the fact that there are county council elections in those four counties on the first Thursday in May. That is very important indeed. The campaign is getting underway for those elections. People are already selecting candidates. I have the same doubts as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about this foundation model and it being in place by May. There could well be a general election at some stage next year. There are rumours that it could well be on the same day as the county council elections in May. Perhaps the Minister will comment on what is going to happen with the county council elections. With the confusion in those four counties, how can they proceed with county council elections at the beginning of May?
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, I must read the sentence from the Statement that I read out earlier.
    "And we note"—
    "we" being the Government—
    "the Commission aim to report on the new model in March 2005".
    The Commission is going to report on the new model in March 2005. Nothing will be in place and nothing says about it being in place. As far as I am aware—and I think it is quite spurious to raise these doubts—nothing is going to interfere with the county council elections on 5 May, which I think is the first Thursday in May, of next year.
    Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, did the Minister, in kindly reading out the Statement made in another place by Mr Raynsford, re-read the answers given by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on more than one occasion expressing confidence in the arrangements which we were going to be exploring during the pilot schemes? It is against the background to those exchanges and the confidence of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, which turns out to have been mildly misplaced, that I have three questions about the period between now and March.

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    First, has any research been carried out in this country into why there is a reluctance among other western European countries to have postal voting on demand?
    Secondly, while all the electoral pilot schemes appear to have been monitored so far by administrators, would there be virtue in also having an independent element in any future testing?
    Finally, with the extension of postal voting, and in the light of recent events, do the Government think that Section 115 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which relates to undue influence, will need re-writing?
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, they are fascinating questions. On the initial point of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, about my noble friend Lord Filkin, no, I have not gone back and done that. If one looks at the dates, I suspect that the Government took a decision the day before I made the first Statement in this House, which I think was the morning of Thursday, 22 July, following the debates in the House of Commons 48 hours beforehand, which of course superseded the answers my noble friend had given about other matters.
    In other words, we proved we were the ultimate listening government by listening to what the House of Commons, the elected Chamber, said about the referendums in the two areas. We made the decision on the night, having listened to the House of Commons, which is why I then came to this House to make the Statement.
    I do not know anything about research on the reluctance of others. I would be interested in research on why we are not able to export our wonderful firstpast-the-post electoral system to anybody. We have not exported it to South Africa or to any of the former Communist states because in some ways it is a discredited system. I say that personally; that is not the Government's view, of course. The fact is that every voting system this Government have introduced since 1997 has been a proportional voting system. To that extent, I think the Government have been a very good government.
    I do not think that we have ever looked at the issue of independent testing in pilot schemes. I have no doubt that the Electoral Commission, when thinking about these things and the Government's response to its report about all postal voting elections, will probably look at Section 115 of the Representation of the People Act.
    Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I have listened to this interchange with great interest. Of course we are all very concerned about low turnouts in elections. I think that we all understand why the Government have paid so much attention to electoral systems, but I suggest to the Minister that perhaps the Government should now be looking elsewhere in relation to this problem.
    The Survey of public attitudes towards conduct in public life, which has just been published by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, reveals that of
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    1,097 people consulted, only 24 per cent reckon that they trust government Ministers to be telling the truth and only 27 per cent trust MPs. It is interesting that 41 per cent an improved figure but still very low—trust their local councillor, whom many people know.
    Perhaps the public's perception of government Ministers, MPs and councillors is the cause of the trouble on low turnout and the Government should look at that before they proceed too far in fiddling about with voting systems in the hope that they will improve turnout. The situation is very worrying. It is part of the cynicism in this country about political processes. It is much the most worrying thing that we should all be thinking about in relation to democracy.
    Perhaps the Government will look very carefully at the public's perception of Ministers, MPs and local councillors and whether there is something here to consider that is even more important than voting systems.
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, the noble Baroness has raised important points. I was going to refer to that report later on the Housing Bill when discussing the issue relating to estate agents, because that is the one body that figures lower than government Ministers in terms of the public's trust. I do not think they are all crooks and all tell lies. I would say that about others in public life.
    However, the noble Baroness has raised important points about the lack of turnout issue. The turnout at the last election was 59 per cent, which is an incredibly low turnout in a modern, mature and allegedly alert democracy. But, if people think that their vote does not count, they are less likely to use it. Turnout is higher in continental Europe where they do not use our voting system.
    Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, are not the Government wriggling in a cage of their own making? It seems to me that the people of the North East now have a great opportunity and a great responsibility. Not only are they going to be voting for what might or might not happen in their own regions, but if they take the trouble to reject the regional assembly proposals, then at the same time they would create the opportunity to remove the blight which the Government have placed on local government in the whole of the north of the country, by expressing a definite opinion that they do not like it.
    Of course it remains to be seen whether that is what will happen, but if the North East rejects the regional assembly proposals it would be interesting to know what the Government's view will be on the other two regions where they have putative referendums to come in the future. It seems to me that they would be wise to withdraw the whole lot.
    Lord Rooker: My Lords, I would be extremely unwise to comment on that question. It is the choice of the people of the North East in the referendum to vote the way they want. It would be quite wrong for government Ministers to speculate on what might happen, whatever the choice was, on the turnout, the

    945
    differential between "yes" and "no" votes or "no" and "yes" votes, or whatever. It would be wholly wrong for me to go into that.

    Housing Bill
    5.38 p.m.
    House again in Committee
    Clause 123 [Service of overcrowding notices]:
    Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 171H:
    Page 88, line 34, leave out "section" and insert "Chapter".
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 172:
    Page 89, line 22, at end insert—
    "(10) In deciding whether or not to serve an overcrowding notice, the Authority shall have regard to the prescribed standards referred to in section 64(2)."
    The noble Baroness said: Clause 123 allows for the service of an overcrowding notice where a house in multiple occupation is considered to be overcrowded. The clause will apply only to houses in multiple occupation that do not require a licence because the licensed HMOs will be dealt with under licensing procedure. Under Clause 64 the local housing authority cannot be satisfied that a house which requires an HMO licence is reasonably suitable for occupation by a particular number of households or persons unless it meets the prescribed standards laid down by the national authority. This means that there will be national guidance for local authorities with regard to overcrowding for licensed HMOs. There is, however, no provision, as far as we can see, under Clause 123 for there to be any such guidance. This would lead to different standards being applied between licensed HMOs and those that do not require a licence. The purpose of Amendment No. 172 is therefore to require the authority, in deciding whether to serve an overcrowding notice, at least to consider the same guidance as applies to licensed HMOs. This would give them a yardstick by which their actions should be judged. The amendment would require the local authority only to consider the guidelines. It does not require them to follow them, if there is a good reason for them not to do so. The amendment would result in consistency of treatment for all types of HMOs when dealing with overcrowding issues. I beg to move.
    Baroness Hamwee: I am again asking a question about definitions and pointers. I readily admit that it may be that I have simply missed the point. Clause 123 is about an "excessive" number of persons being accommodated. The term is also used in Clause 124. Is that "excessive" as in Clause 125, where it is not defined but is dealt with? Or is there a definition somewhere else, which I have failed to pick up? Or is it one of those things that one recognises when one sees it, without a definition?
    Lord Rooker: Clause 123, as the noble Baronesses have said, is concerned with the service of
    946
    overcrowding notices in respect of houses in multi-occupation. I understand that there has been some concern that local authorities apply different standards for room sizes and it is felt that there would be more certainty if there were a set of national standards. We have no plans to introduce national standards at the moment. We intend to consult on these provisions, as well as on the overcrowding provisions in Part 10 of the Housing Act 1985, including whether there is a need to retain the current house in multi-occupation specific provisions that are contained in the Bill under which local standards have been set. Clause 187 enables the appropriate national authority to amend or modify the house in multi-occupation specific provisions in this part by order.
    The noble Baroness's amendment provides that in deciding whether a house in multi-occupation is overcrowded, the local authority must have regard to minimum standards that are prescribed for licensing purposes. The overcrowding provisions in this part apply only to unlicensed houses in multi-occupation since the licensing regime itself deals with overcrowding and space standards. This amendment would result in further regulation of the HMO sector—which is probably not its aim—since, in determining whether a non-licensed house in multi-occupation is overcrowded, regard would need to be had of the number and quality of shared bathrooms, toilets, kitchens and other facilities. As currently drafted, the only factor of which local housing authorities can take account in determining whether a house in multi-occupation is overcrowded under Section 124 is whether there are enough rooms, vis-à-vis the number of people living in the property.
    We think that the effect of this amendment, which greatly enhances the local authority's power to serve overcrowding notices in respect of non-licensed HMOs and therefore limit the permitted number of occupants, would be to introduce a shadow licensing regime for the whole of the house in multi-occupation sector that is not officially licensed.
    On the question of whether there is a definition of an excessive numbers of persons in Clause 123(2), as dealt with in Clause 125, the local authority decides what is excessive in its view, taking account of Clause 125. The residential property tribunal will decide on appeal. if there is a dispute about it.
    Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for that reply, but I am slightly baffled by it because he said that it would bring more houses in multiple occupation into a licensing system. But the whole of Clause 123 is about the service of overcrowding notices. It is a clause that applies to any house in multiple occupation: not just to licensed HMOs or to unlicensed HMOs, but to any HMO. If it applies to any HMO then, by definition, it will bring it under some sort of statutory control and it is relevant to this part of the Bill and the previous part.
    I do not understand the Minister's reply because our amendment suggests that, as overcrowding is stated in the Bill to be a problem and local authorities are able to take action, they should have regard to the prescribed standards rather than having to implement

    947
    them. It would bring some consistency. Perhaps the Minister might like to come back on why, when there is a clause that encompasses all the HMOs, it should become a problem when one tries to steer it towards a prescribed standard.
    Lord Rooker: My mental answer just then was "No". I did not want to come back because I do not have an answer. Clause 123(1)(b) specifically refers to houses in multi-occupation not required to be licensed. To that extent, the noble Baroness is incorrect. I shall be happy to drop her a note on this matter.
    Baroness Hanham: I would be grateful to the Minister if he would do so because the whole clause is headed "Service of overcrowding notices". If it relates to HMOs that are not licensed, which is what we are talking about, we say that there should be regard to the standards that already exist. I thank the Minister for his reply. We may return to this, depending on his response by letter, if he is able to let me have it before the next stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause 123, as amended, agreed to.
    Clauses 124 to 126 agreed to.
    5.45 p.m.
    Clause 127 [Appeals against overcrowding notices]:
    Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 173:
    Page 91, line 7, at end insert—
    "(6) A residential property tribunal may allow an appeal to be made to it after the end of the period mentioned in subsection (1) if it is satisfied that there is good reason for the failure to appeal before the end of that period (and for any delay since then in applying for permission to appeal out of time)."
    The noble Baroness said: Strangely, my Amendment No. 173 is not grouped with the other amendments. Amendment No. 173C, which is a government amendment, does exactly what our Amendment No. 173 would do, which is to extend the period before an appeal to the residential property tribunal is out of time. If that is correct, I welcome it. I think we have got into a muddle about the grouping. I beg to move.
    Lord Rooker: There should not be any muddle. I shall not go back through loads of notes now. So far as Amendment No. 173 is concerned, the Government support it and I recommend it to the House.
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    Clause 127, as amended, agreed to.
    Clause 128 [Revocation and variation of overcrowding notices]:
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 173A:
    Page 91, line 19, at end insert—
    "(2A) An appeal under subsection (2) must be made within—

    (a) the period of 21 days beginning with the date when the applicant is notified by the authority of their decision to refuse the application, or

    948

    (b) the period of 21 days immediately following the end of the period (or further period) applying for the purposes of paragraph (b) of that subsection,

    as the case may be."
    The noble Lord said: Clause 128 concerns the revocation and variation of overcrowding notices. A person whose request to have a notice revoked is refused or not promptly dealt with has a right of appeal to the residential property tribunal. The amendments tidy up the appeals procedure by requiring appeals to be made within 21 days, unless the tribunal gives permission for late appeals. I beg to move.
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendments Nos. 173B and 173C:
    Page 91, line 23, at end insert—
    "( ) A residential property tribunal may allow an appeal to be made to it after the end of the 21-day period mentioned in subsection (2A)(a) or (b) if it is satisfied that there is good reason for the failure to appeal before the end of that period (and for any delay since then in applying for permission to appeal)."
    Page 91, line 24, leave out subsection (5) and insert—
    "(5) In this section "relevant person" means—

    (a) any person who has an estate or interest in the HMO concerned, or

    (b) any other person who is a person managing or having control of it."

    On Question, amendments agreed to.
    Clause 128, as amended, agreed to.
    [Amendment No. 174 not moved.]
    Baroness Maddock Baroness Maddock moved Amendment No. 174ZA:
    After Clause 128, insert the following new clause—
    "INFORMATION TO BE PROVIDED TO OCCUPIERS
    (1) The local authority shall from time to time take reasonable steps to make those occupying residential accommodation aware of their duties and powers under Parts 2, 3 and 4.
    (2) The local authority shall publish a summary of their duties and powers under Parts 2, 3 and 4 which shall include—

    (a) an explanation of the classes of persons or properties subject to the licensing duties set out in Parts 2 and 3 within the authority's district,

    (b) an explanation of the duties and obligations imposed on those who are licensed, and

    (c) an explanation of the circumstances in which the local authority might exercise its powers under Part 4.

    (3) The local authority shall make the summary available for inspection at their principle office and shall provide a copy free of charge to any member of the public who asks for one."
    The noble Baroness said: I apologise for the lateness of this amendment. The Bill gives a number of duties to local authorities to enable them to licence houses in multiple occupation. The purpose of all those duties is to promote the health, safety and general welfare of occupiers and potential occupiers of houses in multiple occupation and other residential accommodation. In enforcing the various schemes, local authorities are required to notify and to hear representations from those who might have to comply with any licence or order imposed in respect of a particular property. Although occupiers are given some limited information—for instance, when the authority takes over the management

    949
    of a property in pursuance of an interim or final management order—there is no requirement that residents be made aware that there is a duty on the landlord to be licensed or that the landlord may be subject to general or specific conditions if he wishes to retain his licence or avoid a management order or overcrowding notice, which we have just been discussing.
    Given the limited resources of local authorities, which we have discussed as the Bill has progressed, it is important that the obvious and natural ally in the introduction and policing of the above schemes—the occupants of residential accommodation—are made aware of the obligations imposed on landlords by those schemes. Equally, those most likely to know whether their welfare is being affected are the occupants themselves. At present, nothing in the Bill requires local authorities to educate occupiers about the powers available under the Bill. That is the purpose of the amendment.
    In the absence of any information being given to occupiers, the likelihood of any real benefit to occupiers is diminished, as is their ability to participate in the process. That is detrimental if we are trying to help local authorities to roll out the programme, which we all agree is a good idea. We should make sure that there is some publication and some way of communicating with residents. I beg to move.
    Lord Rooker: The amendment proposes that local authorities should provide information about their powers and duties to residents of properties affected by the powers. Although we accept and agree with the points made by the noble Baroness and the way in which she has raised them, we do not think that the amendment is necessary.
    There are provisions in the Bill as drafted that will alert occupiers to proposals for or the existence of such schemes. There are requirements to consult about the making of licensing schemes and to publicise them when they are made. Moreover, the Bill provides general duties on authorities to secure the effective implementation of licensing schemes. The powers and duties under Parts 2, 3 and 4 will be identical for every local housing authority, so we do not think that it is such a good idea to impose a separate duty on each authority to summarise the legislation.
    If it will help, I can assure the noble Baroness that the Government fully intend to promote licensing and that that will include the publication of leaflets advising both landlords and occupiers of the licensing regime. Those will be distributed nationally and should be widely available free of charge from local offices, libraries, housing advice centres, citizens advice bureaux and other agencies. I hope that that will meet the general thrust of the points made by the noble Baroness which, as I said, we take on board.
    Baroness Maddock: I thank the Minister for that reply and will look carefully at the more detailed parts of his answer. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause 129 [Index of defined expressions: Part 4]:
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendments Nos. 174A to 174D:
    Page 91, line 33, at end insert—

    "Dwelling

    Section (Empty dwelling management orders: introductory)(4)(a) and (b)

    Final EDMO

    Section (Empty dwelling management orders: introductory)(1)(b)"

    Page 92, line 2, at end insert—

    "Interim EDMO

    Section (Empty dwelling management orders: introductory)(1)(a)"

    Page 92, line 15, at end insert—

    "Relevant proprietor

    Section (Empty dwelling management orders: introductory)(4)(c) and (5)

    Rent or other payments (in Chapter 2)

    Section (Empty dwelling management orders: introductory)(4)(e)"

    Page 92, line 17, at end insert—

    Third party

    Section (Empty dwelling management orders: introductory)(4)(d)."

    On Question, amendments agreed to.
    Clause 129, as amended, agreed to.
    Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 175:
    After Clause 129, insert the following new clause—
    "POWER TO REQUIRE EXECUTION OF WORKS TO REMEDY NEGLECT OF MANAGEMENT
    (1) If in the opinion of the local housing authority the condition of a house is defective in consequence of neglect to comply with the requirements imposed by regulations under section 198, the authority may serve on the person having control of the house, or the person managing the house, a notice specifying the works which, in the opinion of the authority, are required to make good the neglect.
    (2) The notice shall require the person on whom it is served to execute the works specified in the notice.
    (3) A person commits an offence if he fails to comply with a notice under this section.
    (4) In proceedings against a person for an offence under subsection (3), it is a defence that he had a reasonable excuse for not complying with the notice.
    (5) A person who commits an offence under subsection (3) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.
    (6) The provisions of Part 3 of Schedule 1 shall apply to a notice served under this section as if it were an improvement notice (omitting paragraphs 12, 13, 17 and 18)."
    The noble Baroness said: The Committee will be aware that the management regulations are a detailed set of regulations dealing with the day-to-day running of all houses in multiple occupation, not just licensed HMOs. The regulations are prescribed by central government. Currently, the regulations deal with issues such as cleaning, maintenance, testing fire alarms, ensuring that banisters, stair carpets and floor coverings are safe, boundary walls are kept in repair, letterboxes work properly, gardens are maintained and that the manager displays details of his name and address. That is just a brief summary; there are other

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    provisions. The Government will be redrafting the management regulations, but the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has said that they will continue to cover essentially the same ground.
    Under the Bill, any breach would be a criminal offence. Breaches could be trivial, such as having a broken letterbox or unkempt garden. The current management regulations provide for criminal prosecution in the event of a breach but also allow for the service of a works notice where work is required to remedy a breach. Current government circular advice advises local authorities normally to resort in the first instance to service of a works notice rather than instituting criminal proceedings in the event of a breach. Experience in Leeds has shown that that is what the authority does, save in the most serious cases. Landlords are concerned about the extent to which the criminal law is being relied on in the Bill to deal with breaches.
    The proposal contained in the new clause would retain the existing alternative of serving a notice in the event of breach. Failure to comply with the notice would be a criminal offence. The notice procedure provides a half way house, so that one does not have to resort immediately to criminal proceedings.
    The Government have rejected that suggestion because they want local authorities to rely on the HHSRs to carry out a risk assessment under that system in the event of a breach. That approach fails to take into account the detailed nature of the management regulations. The failure to clean up a room in a property or mend the letterbox, although a breach of the management regulations, is unlikely to attract a score at all under the HHSR system. Furthermore, it is really a waste of resources for an environmental health officer to go to the lengthy and detailed procedures envisaged under the guidance to deal with minor matters. Prosecution is a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
    A simple notice procedure to deal with such small breaches is a useful method in the local authority's enforcement armoury and will also save costs. I beg to move.
    Baroness Maddock: I shall speak to Amendment No. 238A, which is grouped. We think that there has been an omission from Clause 198. My amendment replicates powers currently contained in Section 372 of the Housing Act 1985, which requires the execution of works to remedy poor standards of management. A similar power is not contained in this Bill. That is why we are moving the amendment.
    The Government may think that everything in Clause 198 covers that, but as it is something that has been in operation for a number of years and something which officers of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health think is important to keep, I would like to hear the Minister's view on this amendment.
    6 p.m.
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: These amendments deal with issues that are similar to each other but not exactly the same.
    952
    The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, would permit a local authority enforcing the management regulations to issue a notice specifying works to remedy physical defects if the property was defective in consequence of neglect to comply with the requirements imposed by the management regulations under Clause 198.
    The amendment is well intentioned but it misinterprets the purpose of the management regulations, which set out basic management duties for HMO managers with regard to those HMOs that are of the description so specified.
    The focus of the management regulations will he on the management of the property. They are not intended to address the physical fitness of the property. That is where the misunderstanding arises. The physical conditions of properties, including HMOs—whether licensed or not—and all required works can be dealt with by the powers available to local authorities under Part 1 of the Bill.
    It is not our intention to create unnecessary bureaucratic duplicate measures which are already provided for in the management regulations powers. Management regulations are only concerned with management duties while the powers provided under Part 1 of the Bill are the correct vehicle for tackling the hazards to which the noble Baroness has drawn attention.
    We understand why the amendment has been put forward, but we do not think that it is necessary or that it will work in the way in which the noble Baroness suggests.
    I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, for her amendment. It would amend Clause 198 to include in the regulations powers that enable a local authority to serve notices on owners of HMOs to carry out works or actions that may be necessary to ensure satisfactory standards of management and that they are in place in the HMO.
    The noble Baroness was seeking a response to whether we felt that we had left something out from previous legislation. We have not.
    If works relating to the physical conditions of properties are required, the powers available to local authorities under Part 1 of the Bill can be used to require them to be carried out. I understand where the demand for "works notices" under the management regulations comes from. Local authorities are used to these tools under the existing management regulations, made under Section 369 of the Housing Act 1985.
    The flexibility and powers for local authorities conferred by Part 1 make it unnecessary for management regulations to continue to be the vehicle for ensuring that works are carried out. Again, we do not want to create unnecessary duplication between Part 1 powers and management regulations.
    It may help if I give an illustration of what management regulations are aimed at tackling. The management regulations will be able to place a duty on a manager to ensure that means of escape from fire are

    953
    not blocked. If the local authority discovers that they are, then it will be able to prosecute that person for failure to comply with the management regulations. However, if blockage of the fire escape constitutes a hazard to the health and safety of the residents, the local authority can take action under Part 1 of the Bill to require the landlord to remove the hazard. It is not necessary to confer an additional power on the local authority to serve a different kind of notice on the landlord because the type of work that needs to be carried out relates to something that is covered by the management regulations.
    The solution to the problems and difficulties to which both noble Baronesses have drawn attention is dealt with in the practical workings of the management regulations. I hope that that explanation helps.
    Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for his reply. I am sure that his explanation is absolutely spot-on. But we need to reconsider what the management regulations are set to do against Part 1 of the Bill.
    The requirement to do the improvements which are set out under the management regulations—which are more trivial matters—are covered by the improvement notices in Part 1. I am not sure that I agree with that, although I hesitate to say that the Minister is wrong. I would like the opportunity to check that and, if necessary, return to these matters on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause 130 [Meaning of "residential property" and "home information pack"]:
    The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Allenby of Megiddo): Before calling Amendment No. 176 I should inform the Committee that Amendment No. 199A has been added to this group.
    Lord Hanningfield Lord Hanningfield moved Amendment No. 176:
    Page 92, line 25, leave out "or intended to be occupied"
    The noble Lord said: All the amendments that we have tabled under Part 5 of the Bill have to be seen in light of the fact that we have serious concerns as to the inclusion of this part. The Minister in the other place was able to show that he, too, had doubts about the feasibility of some aspects of the home information packs and, indeed, the home condition reports and he welcomed sensibly tabled amendments that improved the overall quality of this legislation.
    There are many aspects of this Bill that we welcome. Part 5, however, the compulsory provision of home information packs, we do not.
    We appreciate that the Government have had such a scheme in mind for quite some time. Indeed, the improvement of the current system by which property is bought and sold has been one of their long-held election manifesto pledges. Any initiative that attempts to improve the way in which the housing market works on a day to day basis we welcome.
    However, the issue here seems to be that neither we, nor the property industry at large, had fully appreciated that sellers would be obliged to provide
    954
    these packs, at substantial costs to themselves, and that the packs would have to be available as soon as the property was put on the market.
    We therefore disagree wholeheartedly with the compulsory nature of these packs as well as when the legislation requires them to be produced and the onus that this places on the seller and their agents. As well as this, although we appreciate the need for consistency, we disagree that every house to be sold should need one.
    To that end, I would like to begin by moving Amendments Nos. 176 and 177 and also, with your permission, speaking to Amendments Nos. 210 and 199A, which cover the issues of warranties, to establish what property requires a home information pack. The need for clarification on this point is much needed.
    If a house is clearly derelict and in need of much renovation, why should the vendor have to produce a lengthy, expensive report on its condition when it is clearly obvious that any buyer will realise that the house he is thinking of purchasing is clearly a renovation project?
    At the other end of a house's life cycle—the formative years—how can a home information pack be necessary for a property that has not yet been built? The final specifications may need to be clarified to suit the buyer's requirements, such as issues regarding tenure and other essentials. All this sort of information, that the Bill expects to be available, may not have been finalised when the property is put on the market. Indeed, we will be discussing the timing of the production of these packs at a later point in the proceedings.
    Likewise, if a property is brand new and entirely covered by adequate guarantees and warranties by the builders, why should an information pack be provided over and above what has already been put in place? On the issue of warranties, our amendment makes clear that a warranty provider means the National House-Building Council or another provider duly approved by the appropriate national authority.
    Will the Minister assure us that there will be enough inspectors in place before the legislation is rolled out across the land? We accept that the National House-Building Council and other approved bodies are well qualified to carry out the inspections envisaged for the production of home information packs. But, so far, there have been a wide range of figures bandied about as to the number of inspectors that will be required. I beg to move.
    Baroness Maddock: This is a new section. We support efforts to assist consumers with buying and selling houses. But, as will become apparent—in particular, my noble friend Lady Hamwee will make it apparent—we are very concerned about much of the detail and implementation of home information packs.
    I support the intention of Amendment No. 199A. It is important because the National House-Building Council provides warranties for new houses. We need to be careful I have said this in reference to other

    955
    parts of the Bill—that where things are operating satisfactorily, we need to be able to draw them into legislation and not work against them. Obviously, the National House-Building Council expressed quite a lot of concern about that. When new homes are first marketed, it would like them to be exempt from having to have the home condition report. As regards "second-hand" homes, the NHBC refers to a 10-year warranty. I am a little worried about blocks of 10 years, but I am sympathetic to the points that it has made. We do not want completely to do away with the present system.
    One reason why people buy new houses is because they get a warranty and know what is happening. It may be that there is certain other information that also needs to be provided. But I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to the position of the National House-Building Council. I am fairly sure that they are, but I should like to hear in some detail what the Minister has to say about that. So I am supportive of the principle behind Amendment No. 199A.
    Lord Borrie: It was right that the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, should give their broad views on this controversial part—Part 5—before we get into the detail of a great deal of separate amendments. I would like to express a different view on the two fundamental questions that they have both mentioned. When, if there is a duty to supply a home information pack and a house condition report, should that be required? Should there be a gap in time before it is due, although the house is put on the market?
    That would be severely detrimental to Part 5 and the valuable consumer protection embodied in it. If there is a time gap before a home information pack is required, that would be a blow to the intentions of the Bill. Apart from preliminary thoughts that the vendor has about wanting to sell, if he puts it on the market to the general public he or his estate agent should have the pack available. As to whether it should be compulsory or voluntary, we all know that there have been a number of voluntary schemes in operation up and down the country, many of which have been very useful. We have all seen some of the lessons that have been learnt from that.
    If a scheme is introduced for England and Wales that is not compulsory, it inevitably means that if there are chains of vendors and purchasers—we all know that that is one of the great problems vendors and purchasers have—the chain will be only as good as each link. If one of those links is broken because there is no home information pack or house condition report, the rest will not go through effectively. In other words, compulsion is required to make the scheme effective.
    It is a valuable scheme. We all want reassurances from the industry. No doubt the Minister can convey assurances on matters such as how many inspectors there will be and whether purchasers will be satisfied or want their own surveys or valuations done as well, which would somewhat destroy the purpose. We all want answers to those questions. But if, from the
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    beginning of the discussion on Part 5, we allow some period when the vendor markets the property but does not have to produce the pack and, a fortiori, if we have the scheme only voluntarily and not compulsorily, we would probably be wasting our time.
    6.15 p.m.
    The Earl of Caithness: I am sure that we will come on to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie. In fact, I think that we start looking at the points he raised at the next amendment. This is a different amendment. I must declare my interest. I am a consultant to an estate agency in London. I am a surveyor and have practised for probably more years than I care to remember just at the moment.
    I should like to raise one point of major concern with the Minister; that is, the lack of response and information that I have received from his department. At Second Reading, I raised a lot of issues; it was only last Friday that I received the final piece of information. On 26 June, I received a letter from the Minister in which he said that he would write in more detail in days to come. I looked forward to receiving that letter. Coincidentally, I wrote to him on 26 June, reminding him that, with Committee stage coming up, I was looking forward to receiving a detailed reply. On 15 July, the Minister wrote a letter that I did not receive. But that did not answer any of my specific points. I got answers to those specific points only on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week.
    This is a completely new part of the Bill; that is, Prescott's penalty on property owners. It is new, unchartered territory. No other country in the world does what we are going to do. Therefore, it needs to be scrutinised with very great care. The amendments were ably introduced by my noble friend. But I want to clarify with the Minister how one is supposed to produce, as an agent, a home information pack containing a home condition report when one is selling a property that has not yet been built from a plan. There is a show house. The next house will be identical. Someone comes along wanting to buy it straight off the plan. A home information pack cannot be produced. If a property is three-quarters built, a home information pack cannot be produced, let alone a home condition report. This part of the Bill therefore starts off as a nonsense. I therefore strongly support my noble friend Lord Hanningfield in moving the amendment.
    Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I have not taken part in discussions so far on this Bill. This is the part of the Bill in which I have a particular interest—perhaps I should declare an interest. There is another major problem. As regards houses that have not been built, valid points have been made, although, presumably, one would be able to say that they will be built to a certain specification.
    I am more concerned about how one gets anyone along to certify exactly the condition of a building. Many people may find themselves in that difficulty. My home in London is surrounded by redevelopment. In fact, 20 years ago, I had to rebuild my whole house. The building opposite went down three storeys

    957
    underground and split my house apart. If the seller's pack had existed, perhaps the vendor would have revealed to me that the house was fatally flawed, and it might have helped me.
    Since then, all those big buildings that were built then have been demolished and they are rebuilding everything. Pretty well everyone in the area has cracks developing in their houses. Now, no one can get any surveyor round to look at the cracks. Although you would imagine that the groups that were just finishing building would want to be quite sure of the condition of your house, so that they did not get the blame for what the next huge developer is going to do, this is not the case. Certainly, surveyors who were asked to come in July to look at new cracks developing have not been seen yet.
    What concerns me—and I speak as a dentist who knows how hard it is to get a dentist at the moment—is how you are going to find enough surveyors or qualified people to comply with all of these home information packs. There is real cause for concern there. The Minister will have to satisfy the Committee that people will be in sufficient quantity, and sufficiently available, at a cost that people can afford if they want to sell their property, whether is it new or old. Certainly, in the area of London I have spoken about, you could not possibly produce a pack if you could not get anyone to walk in the door. It may be that we will all be bidding up more and more, and whoever pays the surveyor most will get one to come to their house. Who knows? But it is just not good enough. This is a very important point.
    Another important point is that when the housing market is running hot, as it was in the past when houses were selling so quickly, you would have to be very quick with your pack. But it is quite a different matter if the market is slow, and your house is on the market possibly for a year or two. How many packs are you going to have to produce in that time? I see that there is a later amendment which says the pack must not be more than three months old. That is quite a horrific thought—you would have to pay repeatedly for the same conditional survey to be made. This part of the Bill really causes worries.
    Baroness Young of Old Scone: I want to address Amendments Nos. 210 and 199A, because there seems to be some misunderstanding of the issue of a warranty, and a more fundamental misunderstanding about the very valuable purpose of the home condition report and the home information pack. Since everyone has been making mini-Second Reading speeches about this section, I might as well join in and say that I am a great fan of both of those provisions, and I think they will help considerably in a number of ways.
    One of the issues I want to raise in the context of these two amendments has not been raised previously. The warranty that a house has as a new build primarily relates to the structure and condition of the building. The home condition report contains other elements, for example, the environmental efficiency of the building, which are important concerns to the purchaser in terms of what
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    that will do to future fuel bills, as well as, I hope, to many purchasers in terms of the environmental impact that their intended purchase will have. I hope also, being a great fan of the home information pack and the condition report, that we will see other environmental condition issues associated with that. The provisions already contain information about flood risk management, which is of vital importance to buyers of property.
    I hope that the Minister, in dealing with these two amendments, will recognise that the warranty is only very partial in what it covers. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, that if the system is working then it should not be amended. The warranty will no doubt be a very valuable input into the home condition report for those houses that are new.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: As this is the first time that I have contributed to the debate, I had better declare an interest as a solicitor whose firm does lots of conveyancing. I myself used to do a lot. I would like to illustrate what the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, said about the virtue of Amendments Nos. 199A and 210. It seems to me that if those were added they would exclude from the purview of the HIP a considerable number of transactions. I am as keen as anyone to improve our conveyancing system, to make it easier and less expensive. But I do not think there is any point in trying to pretend that the HIP will make things any cheaper.
    If one considers the prospect of a pack becoming out of date when the market is flat—as the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, said, it is commonplace for properties to be around for well in excess of the likely period after which one is going to have to renew surveys and searches—then one is really into major expenditure. I do not know whether the statistic has been given hitherto, but to give one specific example of my home patch in Suffolk, Babergh District Council now charges £129 for a basic search. It charges another £74—and this is national—for drainage and environmental searches, and it charges £10 extra for each of 15 optional enquiries. So if one had the whole 15 optional enquiries, plus the basic search, plus the drainage and environmental searches, one is talking of £350. And many local authorities charge a lot more than £129 for basic searches.
    It seems to me that there is no point in being anything other than profoundly pragmatic about all this. If these two amendments are, as I say, going to reduce the potential costs of conveyancing—which ultimately, one way or another, find their way back into the system, whether through increased prices or however else—without any major drawback, then I hope the Government will go with it.
    Lord Rooker: Unfortunately, I am not in a position to make a Second Reading speech, but to answer the amendments. I am going to have to stick to that, because lots of issues have been flagged up.
    I think I shall kick off before I start on my notes with one specific answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, who moved these amendments.

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    He made the point that, if a house is derelict, why should there be a home condition report? If it is marketed—and this is the key—for residential occupation, then a home condition report is required. If it is marketed for redevelopment, then no home condition report is required. We will achieve that by regulation. I am happy to give that assurance. Quite a bit will be in secondary legislation.
    I was also quite pleased to listen to the last few speeches, because we got away from the London-centric argument. I take the view that London is slightly different from the rest of the country. Particularly, the part of London where the noble Earl, Lord Caithness operates is completely different to the rest of London, so far as I am able to ascertain.
    On the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, on skills, I take the point about the shortage of people, and we will come to that in later amendments. First, we would not operate the system if it did not work, because it is not planned to come in overnight anyway. Secondly, we do not envisage a massive shortage of people qualified to do the home condition report. I think the figure is somewhere around—do not hold me to this, because it will turn up later on —7,000 nationally. It is not envisaged that there will be difficulty in getting the people trained and skilled to do the report in this legislation. It is horses for courses. I fully accept the point the noble Baroness made about the individual issues she raised. Nevertheless, there are many issues that have been flagged up that we will come to later. I am not trying to pre-empt those, by the way, it is just that it enables me to kick off this section and give a few answers before questions start being raised.
    6.30 p.m.
    I turn now to this group of amendments, and the two others related to it to which I shall be happy to respond. It is the Government's intention that the marketing of single dwellings for sale with vacant possession should be subject to the home information pack obligations. The definition of "dwelling-house" in Clause 130(1) is key to securing this. Making the deletion suggested in Amendment No. 176 would run counter to that objective.
    The effect of deleting the words,
    "or intended to be occupied as a separate dwelling",
    from subsection (1) would be to remove unoccupied homes from the home information pack duties. But there are many reasons why a property might be unoccupied while it is being marketed. Obvious examples include cases where the owner has already moved, or where someone is selling the home of a deceased relative. The benefits of up-front information in the home information pack apply just as much to homes which are vacant during marketing as they do to homes that are occupied.
    We see no reason for opening up what would be a potential loophole, as well as putting the customer at risk. This is a consumer protection issue.
    Amendment No. 177 would delete the words,
    "and includes one that is being or is to be constructed",
    from subsection (1), thereby excluding homes which are not yet built or still in construction from the definition of a dwelling house and thus from the home information pack duties.
    I shall seek to explain why the amendments are undesirable. It is common practice for house builders to market new homes before construction is completed. Indeed, I know that in many cases the marketing takes place before construction has even started. It is commonly the case that houses are marketed "off plan", before a single brick has been laid—assuming, of course, that any bricks are being used to build the houses. That is not always the case these days. Buyers of such homes need up-front information of the sort the home information pack will provide just as much as the buyers of existing homes. This is already recognised by house builders, most of whom provide prospective buyers with a pack of helpful information about their new home. Our intention is that the home information pack will bring this information into line as far as possible with that available to the buyers of existing homes.
    I accept that commissioning a home condition report on a house that does not yet exist, or is only half built, is unnecessary and not what we propose. The Bill provides in Clause 144(9)(c) power for the Secretary of State to address this in regulations. We will do that because we want a sensible market to operate in which people have access to better information. We are reasonably convinced that, overall, the market will operate better and to the benefit of consumers.
    Our consultation paper on the contents of the home information pack included a proposal to allow home condition reports to be omitted from the pack for first sales of newly built homes so long as the structural integrity of those homes is covered by a satisfactory warranty. To qualify, warranties would have to provide the necessary cover for any undisclosed defects, and therefore offer an effective substitute for the home condition report for first sales of new homes. We are setting up specialist working groups that will consider this and advise us on the appropriate contents of home information packs for sales of new homes.
    I turn to Amendment No. 177A. This would delete the words "or may become" in subsection (2) and thus would amend the definition of "home information pack". The effect would be to disapply the definition from properties that are not yet on the market. The amendment may seem relatively innocuous but, when taken together with similar amendments tabled by the noble Earl to other clauses—Amendment No. 178A to Clause 131 and Amendment No. 194A to Clause 141—a different picture emerges.
    The amendments would open up a loophole that would enable estate agents to engage in supposed pre-marketing activities that would amount to actual marketing in all but name, but without triggering the home information pack duties, which I presume is the fully declared intention of the mover of the amendment. It would, for example, enable someone to evade the duty

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    to have a pack when marketing begins by advertising the property as "becoming available for sale shortly" knowing full well that potential buyers would see this as a marketing gambit. That is what it is and we might as well call a spade a spade. It is a loophole waiting to be exploited and is therefore not something I could recommend to the Committee.
    Amendment No. 199A seeks to add a new subsection to Clause 144. The new subsections, as set out in Amendment No. 210, would exempt the responsible person from providing a home condition report for the sale of a new home. The amendment would also provide that there is no duty to have a home condition report where the property is resold during the period in which the warranty cover remains in place.
    Although we do not intend that home condition reports should be required for the sale of new homes—that is, from the builder to the first buyer—for the reasons I gave earlier, we are not convinced that this exemption should apply throughout the 10-year warranty period.
    Amendment No. 210 would have a similar effect to that of Amendment No. 199A. I have already explained that we intend to exempt sales of new homes, but still believe that the home condition report is required for subsequent sales of new homes—that is, new homes that would then be second-hand. Subsection (8)(c) of Amendment No. 210 would provide that a home condition report is not needed when the ownership of a new home is transferred from a developer to another company prior to marketing and where the company assuming ownership is registered with a designated warranty provider.
    To be frank, this provision is not necessary because the home information pack duties are triggered only when there is marketing to the public or a section of the public. A pack is therefore not required when a property is transferred from one person to another in these circumstances. It is necessary only when the property is put on the market, or where a "qualifying action" is taken by an estate agent. I can also assure noble Lords that, while we debate these issues in Committee and on Report, officials in the department are continuing to work extremely closely with interested parties to discuss all the issues relating to this part of the Bill, including those relating to new homes.
    Because we are at the beginning of this group, I think that it is worth putting a little more on the record, although it would not normally be required. I turn to warranty schemes, which have already been raised. In our view, an effective housing warranty scheme will involve inspections at the construction stage with a view to preventing or correcting defects before completion. An effective warranty scheme will also provide a good measure of redress for the home owner if defects come to light after completion. It should provide for the builder to rectify defined sorts of defects, including quite minor ones, for an initial period and should then provide a "no fault" insurance cover for a further period against significant damage
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    arising from defects in the original construction. The designation of any housing warranty scheme by the Secretary of State would be on the basis of a scrutiny of the operational effectiveness of the scheme and the extent of the cover provided.
    As mentioned, we intend to consult separately about the designation criteria for designated housing warranty schemes. We envisage that the criteria would have regard to a series of issues: the process for vetting builders seeking admission to registers, and for monitoring builders on the registers; the technical standards laid down by the schemes; builders' undertakings in relation to compliance with the scheme standards; warranty scheme operators' arrangements for checking plans and carrying out site inspections; the arrangement under schemes for resolving disputes between owners and builders over what remedial work is needed to bring a home into compliance; the terms of the insurance cover underpinning the builder's obligations; and the terms of the insurance under which the owner can claim if damage due to non-compliance with the scheme standards comes to light following the end of the builder's warranty period. I think that it is worth putting those points on the record further to help our debates.
    I am reminded that I have spoken to Amendment No. 177A tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, that has been regrouped and therefore has not yet been moved. He now has advance warning of what my response will be. I apologise for that.
    The Earl of Caithness: I was going to thank the Minister and remark on how kind it was of him to give me an answer to something I have not yet spoken to. However, I can assure the Minister that I will speak to the amendment in due course. The noble Lord also said that I operate in a different market from anywhere else. Of course I do; that is the housing market. There is no such thing as the single housing market as a general or specific area. The housing market in England and Wales is comprised of thousands of separate housing markets. It is different throughout the country from one area of town to another; it is different from street to street. That is why we need qualified surveyors to know the differences.
    The Minister spoke about the regulations to be laid under Clause 144(9)(c). When are we going to see them? I fear that much of the debate will be shoved away under the promise of regulations, but unless we see draft regulations before Report stage we will not be able to carry out the work that we need to do satisfactorily in Committee. For instance, in Clause 144(9)(c), the Minister will be able to provide for different types of property market. Where houses are of a particularly low value he will exempt them from having a home condition report or an HIP. We will create all sorts of false markets. Unless we can discuss that in Committee, the House will be prevented from doing what it should.
    The Minister referred to the warranty and said that there would be no HIP when it came to the first sale from the developer to the first owner. He did not like the idea of a 10-year warranty. The noble Baroness,

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    Lady Maddock, was also concerned about it. What happens if an owner puts down a deposit on a house that is yet to be completed and for all sorts of reasons is unable to proceed with the purchase that he is legally contracted to buy? That person will then have to sell that property. Surely in those circumstances it would be wrong to have a home condition report.
    Would it not be wise to have the warranty extending perhaps not for 10 years but to have no HIP necessary for the first two years after the house is completed? At that stage I can see a logical argument for bringing in a home information pack. The housing market is full of such circumstances in which we will catch people and subject them to extra unjustified expense.
    Lord Rooker: I did not apologise to the noble Earl for the delay in response to his question at Second Reading, so I apologise for forgetting about that. In response to his example of someone who puts down a deposit on a new property covered by a warranty, who does not live in the property but is required to purchase it—I am not sure about the contractual obligations if the property has never been lived in—I am not sure how the sale would figure. I shall take advice. It is the kind of nitty gritty example for which we need to have an answer.
    We would like to cover every property sale in the country, but to cover 100 per cent is probably not a practical proposition for the kind of example that the noble Earl has just given. I am not giving an answer, but I can envisage the circumstances of a brand-new dwelling that has been sold off-plan, where someone who has put down a deposit is for some reason required to go the whole hog and buy the property and then market it to sell it—although it cannot be completed and they have never lived in it. We would not want to open up loopholes, but such practical questions have to be dealt with. That is why we aim for 100 per cent, but we will probably never fully achieve it.
    Forty thousand people market their property every week. No matter what happened to the 40,000 that marketed last week—if any problems arise—another 40,000 people will market this week. In other words, any government who introduce such a programme need to be certain that everything is in place to run the system, simply because they are people's homes and it goes without saying. Forty thousand homes every week is about 2 million per year. If something does not work, it is not just the 40,000 people who marketed last week who will be affected, but those marketing this week and the next week and the week after that. The rules have to be in place and copper bottomed.
    Many questions on many issues must be answered and people must be trained, as I said to the noble Baroness. No one denies that it is a big operation. It is also because the majority of properties—I will not argue about the number—are in a chain. That is why the system has to be compulsory; it cannot be voluntary. A voluntary system will not work, simply because of the majority of properties being in a chain. We shall come to that issue in later amendments.
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    6.45 p.m.
    Twenty-eight per cent—one quarter—of transactions fall through after an offer has been made and accepted. Think about that: 40,000 properties are marketed every week; think about the distress, the anxiety and the frustration and the cost to the person who has made the offer and obtained the surveys. I spoke to someone yesterday who had paid as prospective purchaser for two surveys and both dwellings had fallen through: he was extremely angry.
    Many people are involved in this matter and we must get it right and answer as many questions as possible and be open and honest: to get it 100 per cent right will be extremely difficult given the type of example raised by the noble Earl.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: On 7 June at Second Reading the Minister twice said that he would not detain the House regarding the information and evidence on which key parts of Part 5 are based. He invited that debate—I think he called it—to happen in Committee. I refer to the crucial nature of the 28 per cent statistic—as he put it, 28 per cent of transactions break down between offer and exchange of contract, with all the attendant heartbreak and expense and so on. Everyone here accepts that; those of us in the business have seen it too often.
    Have the Government undertaken substantial and widespread research among the body of people who will know this better than anyone—namely, solicitors engaged in conveyancing—as to how that 28 per cent figure is compiled and, more importantly, what causes they ascribe to the breakdown of transactions? They are many and disparate.
    Lord Rooker: I do not have the answers off the top of my head, but there are many disparate causes, not least finding out about the property on which one has made an offer. It beggars belief that people make offers on property not knowing much about it. They will spend less time in a house than in the supermarket and make an offer. Then they start to find out about it when the seller has to give the information about what is available, rows with neighbours, fixtures and fittings, which is the fence and all the basic stuff that has to be filled in now. The majority of requirements under the Bill already have to be provided now.
    We are trying to get most of the information upfront to enable people to make an informed decision on an offer, knowing more about the property in the hope that the sale will take place rather than falling apart if they make an offer that is accepted. I understand that solicitors have an interest; I cast no aspersions on the noble Lord—far from it—but I understand that the Law Society is not very happy about the scheme. Many other people who know about the heartache are coming on board, the more they find out about it.
    I freely admit that the proposal has changed since the Government first brought it forward before the last election when we were criminalising people and doing all kinds of things—it quite rightly got a drubbing and we have made substantial changes. I will see whether a

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    breakdown of information is available, because I am happy to have a debate in Committee to see how the 28 per cent figure breaks down. I have seen so much about it over the past few months, but I am not sure whether there is a breakdown of the figure.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I am grateful to the Minister. It is very important that he should do that. When he replies, will he make reference to the Home Office document on this issue, which it describes as a "small study by economic consultants"? It concluded that the proposed HIP could create benefits. I hope that the information upon which we are proceeding does not rest upon this small study. It does not look as though it does.
    Lord Rooker: No, I do not say it rests completely upon that study. This issue was piloted in Bristol on a voluntary basis—indeed, some people around the country are still operating such a system—but, because it is voluntary and because of the chain system, you cannot check the effectiveness of it. That is a part of the problem.
    Even I have said in my musings, "This is a big operation—40,000 a week across the country. We have got to get it right. Why can't we pick a region and consider everything in that region?". But, of course, you would get all the arguments about people buying and selling out of the region and on the margins. Most people will be buying and selling within the region, subject to job changes and so on, but I was convinced—as indeed the current Minister has been convinced—that it will not work unless everyone plays ball because the vast majority of properties are in a chain. That is the major difficulty and one which I freely accept.
    There will be amendments in due course in relation to estate agents who are not even based in England. They think that that will be a way around the measure, but it is not. However, there is a way around it for us.
    We have to face these matters—it is a complicated issue—but we are satisfied that this is a major consumer protection measure. I believe that it is one that will get a good wind the more information that is known about it.
    Baroness Hamwee: I agree that it is a consumer protection issue. I am not sure whether I have declared my interest as a solicitor, albeit as one in a practice where everyone else does the conveyancing because it would not be safe if I were let loose on it.
    As regards the Minister's comment about people spending so little time looking at a property, with the first flat that I bought—I was influenced entirely by the spiralling prices in the early 1970s—I spent about seven minutes in the property, spotted the offers that the vendor had received and offered him £100 more than he was asking. That was a lot of money at the time.
    Noble Lords have received a briefing from the National Association of Estate Agents and I take this point from that briefing. According to the Government's
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    own document, Key research on easier home buying and selling, the most common reasons for failure are related to the property price not meeting the lender's valuation or a change in the buyer's financial status. Thirteen per cent of aborted purchases were caused by a bad survey, which is arguably the only factor that could be dealt with by the introduction of home information packs.
    From the same briefing, the Minister referred to the trial in Bristol. The home information packs were free of charge. There were 159 volunteer transactions during the six-months' trial period, of which only 61 exchanged or completed a sale by the end of that six months' trial. However, 4,400 sales were completed in Bristol in a six month period in the same year—in other words, not the same six months. But the figures are helpful.
    The Earl of Caithness: Let me put what the noble Baroness has just said in context; the 159 transactions in the Bristol survey excluded the new Beazer homes. With those excluded, you get 159—which shows that it is a very small survey on which the Government have based their legislation. The Government, of course, paid for the home information packs. The noble Baroness was right to quote the key research. The valuation—on which there will be nothing in the home information pack—is the major cause of failed purchases.
    The Minister referred to 40,000 properties marketed per week, but one of the great sources of information on which the Government rely is what is happening in Denmark. We market 40,000 properties a week in England and Wales; in Denmark, there are fewer than 70,000 property transactions a year. Again the Government have used a totally wrong comparison to bring forward in the Bill. As they did with New South Wales and Denmark, they have done with Bristol. This is based on a very shaky foundation.
    The Minister did not answer my point about whether he will publish the draft regulations under Clause 144(9)(c) before the Report stage. It is very important that we should know.
    Lord Rooker: I cannot answer that. Obviously we want to publish as much as possible before the Report stage. We want to give the House answers because that will help us to obtain a fair wind for the Bill.
    Of the figures that have been given in terms of failure rates, there are currently arguments that the transaction failure rate is now only about 15 per cent. But the Government have carried out an informal survey with major groups of corporate and independent estate agents. That indicates that transaction failures are still, running at about 30 per cent, and of those about 43 per cent were attributable to an adverse survey.
    I freely admit—I almost declare an interest—that in 1979 I pulled out of a purchase following a survey which stated that the roof was on the move. I have gone past the property on the train since and the roof was still there. But the report said it was on the move and I said, "No, I am not getting into that", and pulled

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    out. I do not rely on Denmark but it is worth pointing out that, although it is true that it is smaller, it is a very similar market to England and Wales. More than half its homes are owner occupied; the annual transactions-to-population ratio is similar at one to 55; more than 90 per cent of home sales are conducted through estate agents; and Copenhagen, which has a population of 1.75 million, has a vibrant market and is similar to large cities in England. All the main players in the Danish home buying and selling industry agree that the system works well and is an improvement on the old system.
    No one is saying that it is the same—it cannot be because of the population difference—but, as I said, the ratio figures indicate that it is not totally unfair to look at it proportionally as a market with conditions similar to our own.
    Lord Hanningfield: We have many more amendments. Shall we move on to some of them?
    The Earl of Caithness: I want to pick up on two points. First, to thank the Minister for what he said about the regulations. Secondly, the 43 per cent that he mentioned is 30 per cent of adverse valuation surveys—it had nothing to do with the structure of the buildings—and that is not covered in the home information pack. Only 13 per cent was due to an unfavourable survey. So it is not 43 per cent; it is only 13 per cent.
    Lord Hanningfield: We have had an exciting debate on the amendment. There are dozens of these amendments so we had better have another day or two for the Committee stage of the Bill. We always knew this was going to be an interesting area.
    There seems to be a great deal of support for Amendments Nos. 199A and 210. I repeat the points made by several noble Lords about new houses either not being completed and resold or houses being sold in the first few months of completion. I was interested to hear the Minister's tremendous enthusiasm for it all. I can remember Ministers having the same enthusiasm for the community charge and having several debates on it; they were selling it to us over and over again.
    It might be a good idea if this legislation was brought in before Christmas this year. My feeling is that it will be as popular as the community charge. I am surprised that the Minister said he has had many people supporting this provision; I have heard very few people support it. It is a pity that we have to wait two years for it because it might create the same reaction as the community charge.
    We will obviously debate the matter later in Committee, as well as on Report and at Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    [Amendment No. 177 not moved.]
    7 p.m.
    The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 177A:
    Page 92, line 30, leave out "or may become"
    The noble Earl said: This is a simple amendment to which the Minister has already said a few words. I hope that he will say a few more.
    Clause 130(2) states:
    "References in this Part to a home information pack, in relation to a residential property, are to a collection of documents relating to a property or the terms on which it is or may become available for sale".
    I can understand why the home information pack relates to properties that are for sale, but having it relate to properties that "may become available for sale" has much wider implications. There are implications for those who are just considering selling their property in due course. The clause seems to put an onus on people to have a home information pack ready and available whether or not they are going to put their property on the market. I beg to move.
    Baroness Hamwee: I know that the Minister has commented on these words already, but I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Earl. It may be that I did not understand the Minister's arguments, but perhaps he could set out what other stages between a sale being a twinkle in a prospective vendor's eye and putting the house on the market the Government have considered and how they came to this form of words. There are quite a lot of stages between considering putting a property on sale and doing it. This seems to be so open that it is hard to support it on the face of it.
    Lord Rooker: To be honest, I am confused. I am not clear whether the noble Baroness is supporting the noble Earl or not. She seemed to start off that way and then to come round to the commonsense view of opposing him towards the end.
    I have nothing new to say beyond what I have already said, except to point out that the amendment is part of a little group that is littered around the Bill that opens up a massive loophole that would enable estate agents to engage in supposed pre-marketing activities. The key question is: is the house on the market? If it is known that one can go to an estate agent, put one's head around the door and say, "Have you got a filing cabinet of people not featured in the window who think they might sell if someone wanted to buy?", dozens of estate agents, and the crooks and spivs of this world, will operate a black market and say, "Oh, you can come to us. By the way, people who put their head around the door, we'll send them up to you and if they like your house and make an offer, you don't need to get a home information pack". That would be pre-marketing that really amounts to marketing. A massive loophole would be opened up if the amendment were accepted, without triggering the duty to provide a home information pack. The amendment goes against the whole thrust of this part of the Bill.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: Would the Minister employ an estate agent who is going to market his

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    property in such a manner? How on earth can an estate agent get the best coverage, the best price and the maximum number of offers if he keeps it in his filing drawer?
    Baroness Hamwee: I agree with the Minister in that I would not want to open up a loophole. I would much rather that legislation was straightforward and enforceable. However, is it right to make duties enforceable, attracting penalties that are set out later in this part of the Bill, in connection with a property which may become available? I have not analysed the Bill to see whether one would ever get to that point, but it seems to be relevant to the arguments that the Minister was using.
    Baroness Gardner of Parkes: The "may become" provision is extraordinary. What if a group of people are sitting around a dinner table and someone says, "Well, have you thought of selling this house?" If the reply is, "Oh, I might think of it", does that mean that the house "may become available"? Or does one have to approach an estate agent? I am all for closing loopholes, but why can there not be a specific, designated means of defining when one's home is now for sale? The Minister spoke about estate agents saying a property might become available, but that is the technique that they use now. They are always ringing up and saying, "Would you like to sell your house?" Then they will say to someone else, "Would you be interested if so-and-so decided to sell?" That matching of people goes on even now. That is more likely to happen at a time when property is hard to sell. People will not be prepared to pay for a home information pack when no one is buying and when they think that they will have to repeat it. Will there be a ceiling on how much one has to pay constantly to repeat one's home information pack if it sticks?
    Lord Rooker: If the chat around the noble Baroness's dinner table is such that someone says, "I might want to do it? Are you interested?", the property is not being marketed to the public. The trigger is marketing to the public or a section of the public. I suspect that the noble Baroness's dinner table would not count as the public. It is only if a seller indicates to a section of the public or to the wider public that his property may be available for sale that he would need to have a home information pack. For the estate agent, the definition of "qualifying action", which is the trigger, is in Clause 141. That definition is quite tight. There are grey areas. We do not want to legislate for further grey areas. We want to make the legislation as black and white as we possibly can.
    The Earl of Caithness: The Minister has moved on to Clause 131 while I am on Clause 130. I am not yet talking about marketing, although I shall talk about it. I am talking about a home information pack for a house that "may become available for sale". That is nothing to do with marketing. We have not come to marketing yet. I might not even employ an agent, so the clause relating to agents is not relevant yet. I am
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    grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who, with her solicitor's brain which I do not have, also sees the provision as a problem. In order that we can move on, will the Minister have a look at this point, not from the point of view of marketing—we will do that under Clause 131—but from the point of view of a house that may become available for sale. For example, we may know that somebody is going to sell a house because his parents have deceased or whatever. He has not given instructions. From my interpretation, he is caught, because that house may become available for sale. He has not yet reached that stage, but the stage before that.
    Lord Rooker: Perhaps I am doing the noble Earl a disservice, but as I said before it was moved, Amendment No. 177A is seductive and looks relatively innocuous. However, we are not stupid. The Marshalled List is public knowledge. As I have said, if the amendment is taken together with two other amendments, regarding Clauses 131 and 141, which is the intention, a different picture emerges. It is not as innocuous as it first appears. Taken together, they open up a massive loophole. That is what I am warning the House about, so we do not go down that road. On its own, the amendment is innocuous, and the noble Lord can make a reasonable, moderate case for it. However, the other amendments grouped with it would be highly damaging.
    The Earl of Caithness: I am grateful for the Minister's last remarks, because we will come back to this. To take up what the Minister said, the Committee could accept my amendment but refuse the amendments to clauses 131 and 141. My Amendment No. 177A, which he looks at with dread, is so innocuous that the House could accept it at a later stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Lord Hanningfield moved Amendment No. 178:
    Page 92, line 30, at end insert—
    "( ) The Secretary of State may by regulations prescribe the operational date of all or part of the introduction of this Part with regard to the capacity effectively to implement.
    ( ) The Secretary of State may not make any regulations under this section unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament."
    The noble Lord said: I do not wish to dwell on this amendment for too long, but suffice to say, given the debate we have already had, there is a lot of doubt as to whether the Government can really establish Part 5 of the Bill and have it implemented by the Minister's date of early 2007. We all share concerns about the level of expertise available to produce the packs. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors claims that although 2,000 of its residential property surveyors are currently sufficiently qualified to carry out the inspections needed to compile the packs, the likely need, according to the Government, is for 7,000 inspectors by 2007. The Minister said so himself

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    several times during the debate. Given that surveyors will need to go through a 12-month conversion course, followed by several months of in-role training, we are being very optimistic if we think that in a matter of 24 months we will have a sufficient number of qualified surveyors to do the work.
    That is why, and I am sure the Committee will agree with me on this point, it is important that the legislation gives the Secretary of State a degree of latitude as to when he can go about the implementation of Part 5. I am particularly keen to see the first subsection of Amendment No. 178. The capacity to implement effectively is the point I want to emphasise. Without the necessary surveyors in place, it is not difficult to envisage the entire housing market grinding to a halt as house sellers wait their turn for a surveyor to carry out the necessary inspections. As the Minister said on an early amendment, between 1.3 million and 1.4 million house transactions take place every year in the United Kingdom. Even taking into account a slight steadying of the market come 2007, it is unlikely that number will have dropped very much. In fact, due to the demands of the Deputy Prime Minister for thousands more new houses, particularly in the south east and my own county of Essex, the housing market will be even more full. It is important, therefore, that the Secretary of State has discretion over the implementation of Part 5.
    I now talk briefly to the second part of the amendment, which is designed to ensure that the process behind Part 5 is revisited fully by both Houses before it is implemented. I am sure none of us has any particular desire to trawl through this debate again in two years' time, but it is important that the conditions are right for the implementation of that part. I do not need to point out that the world may well have changed a lot by 2007, both in the country nationally and perhaps quite rightly in Westminster too. To that end, it is important that the process is revisited.
    Lord Borrie: The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, has raised an important matter—that of the numbers of inspectors qualified to do the job. He used the word "surveyor", perhaps loosely. I do not think it requires a qualified member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to do the job, and, as the noble Lord is well aware, many people have talked about an appropriate NVQ that would be quite adequate. The Government's statement about 2007 is based on the view that time is needed to get an adequate number of inspectors.
    The key point is that this is a chicken and egg situation. If Parliament passed an amendment of this sort, the prospect of the actual introduction of home condition reports and the need for inspectors would be put that much further forward in people's estimation. As it is, with the Government's plans reasonably firm on the matter of date, once the Bill goes through there will be some sort of incentive and interest in attaining that qualification, interest which would not be there if the prospect were pushed away several years ahead.
    7.15 p.m.
    Baroness Hamwee: On the amendment, though I am not following the line of argument of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, can the Minister amplify the statement made in the compendium letter sent to noble Lords following Second Reading, and indeed the comments made today, about taking time to introduce home information packs "on a compulsory basis"? That is the wording in the letter dated 26 June. We would not introduce HIPs on a compulsory basis until we were confident that the packs could be assembled quickly and efficiently and in a form that people would find easy to use. We will come to the issue of voluntarism later. Will the packs' introduction be achieved by the commencement orders, or is there something more complicated behind it?
    Lord Rooker: Off the top of my head, the phrase in the letter covers a situation where the date is set. We know early 2007 is challenging. but we believe it is possible. When we are getting close to that date, the legislation is in place and the training is under way, it will be much easier to encourage the industry to implement the system anyway, in advance of the actual date. It is not as if nothing will happen in property marketing one Friday, and then everything will all happen on the following Monday. The radicals in the industry and those who can see the benefits of consumer protection, and actually of marketing the issue as one of protecting consumers, will be up and running before the statutory date. That was what the terminology in the letter was intended to cover.
    We have no intention of introducing the home information pack requirement until we are satisfied all the pieces of the jigsaw—and it is a jigsaw—are in place. We will not, for example, introduce the home condition report until we are satisfied that adequate numbers of appropriately qualified and insured home inspectors are available. We want to ensure there is capacity in the industry to implement Part 5 of the Bill in an efficient and effective way, and therefore we will continue, as we do now, to work closely with representative bodies affected and the industry in general, as we develop the regulations and prepare for implementation of the home information packs.
    We have set up new programme management arrangements designed to ensure that the home information pack proposals are implemented smoothly, so the interests of consumers are safeguarded and the disruption to the industry is minimised. We do not want a black hole to appear. By and large, those arrangements have been welcomed by the industry and consumer representatives, and we look forward to working closely to achieve a realistic implementation.
    As I have said, the research to date suggests the beginning of 2007 is an achievable target for implementing home information packs. It is challenging but nevertheless achievable. If the blueprint shows that is not the case, we will think again. This is not our poll tax. We learnt our lessons from that tax: unless we are ready and convinced, we will not do it. Therefore, if enough

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    pieces of the jigsaw are put in place we shall pull back. There is no question of us implementing this proposal until everything is in place for a successful introduction.
    Of course, we would encourage the widespread use of home information packs well before the period of implementation of a compulsory system—six months beforehand. There has been an enormous amount of government publicity and from the industry. The industry will gear up before the system becomes universal. That should give ample reassurance that a commencement order is sufficient to introduce the operational date of the home information pack duties.
    The demand issue was raised by the Select Committee on the draft Bill in the other place. I have repeated the assurances that we gave the Select Committee about not implementing it unless we are satisfied. Our view was that to satisfy demand for home condition reports there is a need for some 7,500 to 8,500 inspectors, assuming a mix of full and part-time working, so it will not necessarily be a full-time job: 40 hours a week. Sufficient numbers, with a satisfactory geographical spread across England and Wales, will be required. It is no good if they are all based in London.
    Research has been undertaken by the relevant sector skills council. We have figures; for example, from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Borrie, that such a qualification may not be necessary. The Royal Institution estimated that 4,500 chartered surveyors were carrying out residential surveys.
    On a central basis, it is estimated that there are between 10,200 and 17,000 people currently employed in property services or adjacent sectors who may be expected to convert to work in home inspection. It is not as though we want to re-invent the wheel and that nothing similar is being done. Among other interested professional bodies, the Asset Skills research shows the following levels of interest: the Association of Building Engineers at 1,500, the Chartered Institute of Building, 500, and the Institute of Maintenance and Building Management, 1,250. A range of people in the country are undertaking similar or ancillary work.
    It is a matter of the industry gearing up once we have the appropriate training. Not only do they need to be trained; they also need to be insured. It is fundamental for the security of the buyer and the seller and for everyone involved in the chain that they are not just qualified but actually insured for the work that they undertake.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: In the spirit of genuine cooperation, does the Minister consider that there is no merit in having a fully-fledged pilot of this elaborate scheme before it goes national? We had a small, partial pilot in Bristol, I think, in 1997. It was a different scheme. All the packs were paid for by the Government. There are so many potential loopholes and problems and so much dissent about whether it will be more or less expensive and whether it will save
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    much heartache, and so on. Might it be wise to take a county like Northamptonshire, run the scheme there full-tilt for a year and then take stock?
    Lord Rooker: When I was responsible for the day-to-day aspects of this, I raised the issue because of the scale. None of the pilots has been compulsory because there has been no legislative framework. That is an issue. If it is not compulsory because of our changed system, no pilot, however big, will tell one what one needs to know. The noble Lord makes a suggestion. Ministers are listening to what is said in Committee. At present, we intend to roll out nationally on a compulsory basis. We do not have closed minds on this. Yesterday I saw a poster which said, "Minds are like parachutes: if they're not open, they're not working". The noble Lord suggests carrying out the scheme on a county or a regional basis. This is an important issue which affects millions of our fellow citizens on a yearly basis. It is not just the individual sellers, but their families and everyone else who becomes involved. I shall take away the suggestion of the noble Lord.
    The Earl of Caithness: I thank the Minister for that. It is terribly important that we conduct a better, bigger and wider trial than we have had so far. That is what the Select Committee in another place recommended, but it was turned down by the Government. I am grateful for the tone of the Minister's reply to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. As we all recall, the home information packs, or the sellers' packs as they were then known, were supposed to be in effect by 2003—so they have dropped back four years to 2007. I believe that if we carried out a much bigger trial, over a longer period of time, we would still find wrinkles that would be best sorted out before the system went national.
    Lord Hanningfield: We have had another interesting debate on this group of amendments. The Minister said that it was not to be his community charge or poll tax. I remember many people wanting to get the matter right with all aspects planned, as the Minister said, to make everything certain. The more we talk about it the more complicated it becomes. That was certainly the purpose of the initial introduction of the community charge. Then the Secretary of State, Nicholas Ridley, decided to do it much quicker. If it had had the right kind of planning and thinking and the right time spent on it, we may still have the community charge.
    We have already had one bad experience this year on all-postal ballots. I feel that this could be much worse than all-postal ballots. We shall carry on and only time will tell. We shall have several more interesting debates on this theme during this part of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause 130 agreed to.
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: I beg to move that the House do now resume. In doing so, I propose that further consideration of the Bill in Committee recommence not before 8.30 p.m.
    Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
    House resumed.

    Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2004
    7.27 p.m.
    Baroness Andrews Baroness Andrews rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 5 July be approved [25th Report from the Joint Committee].
    The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the regulations before us today make a number of amendments to eight of the many sets of regulations which provide the structure of the old and the new child support schemes.
    The amendments cover a range of regulations, some affect the old child support scheme provisions and some the new scheme, and the rest, both schemes. Included are amendments to the transitional regulations, which provide for the transfer of cases from the old scheme to the new scheme. Some cases—linked to new cases—have already moved from the old to the new scheme.
    I could not introduce these regulations without referring to the fact, as noble Lords will know, that there have been problems with the new IT system. I can reassure the House that the agency is working closely with EDS, the contractors, to correct the defects as a matter of urgency. We have made it clear that we will not make arrangements to transfer cases from the old scheme to the new until we are satisfied that it is working well. In the mean time, we need to ensure that the legislation for both schemes is kept up to date and is fit for the purpose. Hence this group of changes.
    This package consists mainly of clarifying and technical amendments which support the policy intention. I shall give a brief explanation of each regulation. I shall group them according to the status of the scheme, starting with the amendments to the old scheme. I am always happy to provide more detail if noble Lords want it and to reiterate that some of the changes in this package, to make them fit for purpose, are being made as a consequence of changes elsewhere in other legislation; for example, the introduction of the educational maintenance allowances.
    To help noble Lords—I hope that it has been a help—we have provided a schedule to allow noble Lords to see how the regulations, as amended, will look. That is for guidance only and has no legislative status. I hope that is helpful.
    I turn now to the amendments and will concentrate on the old scheme. Regulation 4 amends Regulation 17 of the Child Support (Maintenance Assessment Procedure) Regulations 1992, which provides for the revision of child support decisions in the old child support scheme. The amendment introduces a new
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    subparagraph into paragraph (1) of Regulation 17. The subparagraph itself mirrors changes that have already been made to the Social Security and Child Support (Decisions and Appeals) Regulations 1999, for new scheme cases, so we are bringing that into line. It allows the agency to revise the decision appealed at any time between receipt of the appeal and determination at an appeal tribunal. Where the appeal is revised in the appellant's favour, the appeal will not go on to tribunal. Instead, the appellant will receive a new decision, with new appeal rights.
    Regulation 5 amends the Child Support (Maintenance Assessment and Special Cases) Regulations 1992, which provides the basis for old scheme child support liabilities to be assessed. One amendment is made as a consequence of the introduction of a national scheme for the educational maintenance allowance, following, as noble Lords will know, a very successful pilot exercise. EMA payments are made to young people aged 16 or over who continue in education. In most cases the person receiving EMA will be the child of the Child Support Agency's client. But, in a very small number of cases, the beneficiary could be the client, or the partner of a client. The amendment ensures that in all cases EMAs do not count as income.
    Other changes have also been made to allow for travel-to-work costs to be calculated in metric measurements instead of imperial ones. The calculation will be made by a small stand-alone computer system, and, to avoid any possible confusion, forms and leaflets will explain that 240 kilometres is broadly equivalent to 150 miles.
    Noble Lords may ask why we are making that amendment now. The regulations as they stand can be interpreted as already compliant with the EU directive because there are generic regulations—DTI regulations—converting imperial measurements in existing legislation. However, the regulations apply in a fairly broad-brush manner. Therefore, in order to remove any prospect of uncertainty, we have introduced this amendment which puts the legal position beyond doubt.
    A further amendment made by Regulation 5 reflects financial help recently introduced by the Government for employees who have become fathers or have adopted a child. In common with similar payments, statutory paternity pay and statutory adoption pay are included as earnings.
    I turn now to the second group of the new scheme. Regulation 2 amends Regulation 6B of the Social Security and Child Support (Decisions and Appeals) Regulations 1999 which, among other things, provide for decision making in child support. Regulation 2(2)(a) and 2(2)(b) make minor clarifying changes of a somewhat technical nature in relation to the operation of what we call the tolerance rule in child support. Briefly, this rule means that small changes in income are ignored and do not lead to changes in maintenance due. The importance of that to the parent and family is that it provides parents with some stability and certainty of the amounts of maintenance payable. We all know how important that is.
    Regulation 2(2)(a) covers cases where both income and non-income changes—for example, the arrival of another child—are notified together and the non-income change leads to recalculation of maintenance. In these circumstances the new liability will take account of both changes, irrespective of whether in itself the income change would breach the tolerance rule. As I said, this might be where there is a change in the number of qualifying children and a small change in net income of a non-resident parent of less than 5 per cent. In these circumstances the CSA would alter maintenance to take account of both changes.
    Regulation 2(2)(b) makes clear how we deal with cases where an earlier reported change in income did not breach tolerance and so maintenance was unaltered. It ensures that any new liability resulting from a subsequent non-income change—for example, new shared care arrangements—will also reflect the earlier income change. Both changes will be effective from the date of the later change.
    It is sensible to clarify these matters in legislation since, as maintenance is being recalculated because of non-income changes, the agency will also sweep up any small income changes.
    Regulation 6 amends Regulation 29 of the Child Support (Maintenance Calculation Procedure) Regulations 2000. These provide for start dates for child support liability in specified cases. Some non-resident parents are liable to pay child support for children by different persons with care. Our term for these parents is "multiple parent with care cases". Existing legislation provides start dates for paying maintenance in these cases. The provisions assume that the first maintenance calculation, though in force when the application from the second parent with care was made, remains in force when liability for the second parent with care is calculated. However, this is not always the case.
    Sometimes it will be the fact that maintenance for the first parent with care has come to an end after the second parent with care has made her application. This might be, for example, because the qualifying child in the first case has reached the age of 19 or found employment. The old scheme did not provide for this, or provided it in different ways, so the amendment provides new, initial start dates for these cases where liability in respect of the first parent with care has ceased before a maintenance calculation in respect of the new parent with care has been made. There will not be many of these cases, but, where they do occur, the current effective date provisions would be insufficient. That is why we need to make this change and remedy the gap that exists.
    Regulation 7 amends the Child Support (Maintenance Calculations and Special Cases) Regulations 2000, which also provide for the calculation of child support maintenance in the new scheme. One amendment within this group mirrors the one which I have described in Regulation 5, providing for statutory adoption and statutory paternity pay to be treated as earnings. The remaining amendments in
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    this regulation are intended to clarify the legislation and to ensure that it reflects the policy intention. In the new child support scheme the maintenance due is calculated as a percentage of the non-resident parent's net weekly income. A parent with income of less than £5 a week is required to pay nothing. A non-resident parent on benefit is normally required to pay a flat rate of £5—but if their income, including benefit, is less than £5 a week, again a nil rate will apply. The amendments clarify that social security benefits are net weekly income for the purposes of establishing whether a non-resident parent can be assessed to pay nothing.
    Regulation 9 contains two minor technical amendments to the Child Support (Variations) Regulations 2000, which allow for child support maintenance calculations to be varied in specified circumstances.
    The final group of regulations applies to both schemes. Regulation 3 amends the Child Support (Information, Evidence and Disclosure) Regulations 1992. The amendment clarifies that when an appeal is made to an independent tribunal, the Secretary of State may disclose the relevant information to the non-resident person(s) with care and any other person with a right of appeal.
    Regulation 8 makes several amendments to the transitional regulations. The transitional regulations ensure that there is a proper legal framework for the conversion of old scheme cases to the new child support scheme. They also allow changes in liability to be phased in over a period of up to five years in specified circumstances. I stress that the amendments ensure that the provisions in this area work as we intended them to. Some old scheme cases that are linked to a new application have converted or will convert early to the new scheme. The bulk of the old scheme cases will be transferred to the new scheme when, as I said, we are sure that it is working well.
    Regulation 8(3) ensures that a conversion can happen on cases where there is an outstanding departure direction, revision or supersession which cannot be resolved until more information is provided. Here we will provide that the conversion decision will be based on the information used or considered to make the maintenance assessment being converted. When the full information becomes available, both the old and new scheme decisions will be corrected as necessary.
    Amendments made by Regulations 8(4) and 8(7) allow the child support payable to a parent with care in the new scheme to be adjusted where a non-resident parent has overpaid maintenance under the old scheme. Regulation 8(7) also allows payments made by a non-resident parent in the new scheme to be attributed to arrears which accrued under a maintenance assessment in the old scheme. So these amendments essentially provide a bridge by which overpayments and underpayments of maintenance can be offset between the two schemes.
    Those are perhaps the most significant changes in this package, which we readily acknowledge is very technical and very detailed. I intend to leave it there. If

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    noble Lords wish to raise other points of detail, I will do my best to respond or at least to reply in writing. The important point is that with these minor but important amendments we are trying to ensure that the new and old schemes operate as fairly and effectively as possible for the families and particularly for the children concerned. The regulations underpin our continuing commitment to ensuring that child support works for parents and children.
    I am satisfied that the regulations are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and I commend them to the House.
    Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 5 July be approved [25th Report from the Joint Committed].—(Baroness Andrews.)
    Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the House will be extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for explaining these amendment regulations so clearly and so briefly. To summarise the changes that these regulations make to no fewer than eight existing pieces of legislation in such a way is indeed masterly. I applaud, too, the Explanatory Notes—provided originally, I understand, to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
    I use the word "legislation" advisedly because one should never forget that much more law is made by statutory instrument than by Act of Parliament. That becomes especially important at a time in our history when so many Acts are framework ones, so that the devil is in the detail. Not that I have detected any devils tonight, though I do detect that amendments are being made to both child support schemes under the 1991 Act and the 2000 Act—what the noble Baroness described as the "old" and the "new" schemes.
    As I understand it, the policy behind Regulation 2 covers a situation arising under both Acts and is to do with a change of circumstance; for example, the absent parent's income or a change to the number of children involved—which I would have thought would be a lot less likely. It must be very rare indeed that an absent parent of, say, two children would suddenly find that they are responsible for three living with their original partner. How many cases of that does the noble Baroness know of? Slightly more likely is a case where the absent parent has had more than one partner with children born to more than one partnership. Again, can the noble Baroness tell me how many maintenance payers—because that is what we are talking about that applies to?
    The new recalculation rules make such perfect sense that I am surprised that they have not been in place since the commencement of the 2000 Act.
    The clarifying Regulation 3 does not concern me. It is only fair that all parties to the appeal should have the information. However, like Regulation 4, which started under the 2000 Act, it corrects an omission, and now the revision or lapsing of an appeal against a child support decision will be the same as under the 1991 Act. Again one wonders quite how the omission occurred, but I shall leave that perhaps for another time.
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    Regulation 5 amends the two schemes by virtue of new legislation such as the statutory adoption and paternity pay and the educational maintenance allowance. I am not clear, however, who benefits when. Clearly, the educational allowance is person specific and should not affect maintenance. However, paternity pay given to an absent father should be included in the maintenance calculation, as should adoption pay.
    It is all, in a sense, part of the maintenance calculation procedure, whose scheme is being amended by Regulation 6, which seems to tidy up a slight muddle in the definition of the date when an award is made. Circumstances change, such as when one child becomes 19—as the noble Baroness suggested in an example—maintenance is no longer payable and so a new calculation has to be made. As I understand it, the new regulation makes provision for a time overlap between the absent parent being contacted either before or after the change of circumstance.
    I hope that I have that right. It is a complicated matter. Indeed, it is so complicated that I thought I heard the noble Baroness say that a change in income of 5 per cent would be tolerated. Did she in fact mean £5 a week, which I think is much more likely and is the figure given in the Explanatory Notes?
    Finally, I observe, however much I regret it, that the word "partner" has now become established in English law. As far as child support is concerned, it is no longer necessary to specify what it means in each and every piece of legislation. I suspect that we will see a whole lot of social security orders where the definition of the word "partner" will be cited as that in paragraph (10)(c) of Schedule 1 to the 2000 Act.
    For years after the setting up of the Child Support Agency there were complaints of its activities, both from the recipients of maintenance and from those from whom the agency collected the money. Those seem to have died down and I have not heard of any recent problems barring the introduction of the newish computer system to which the noble Baroness referred. With the large number of absentee parents—some 800,000, I believe—that is surprising. Can the noble Baroness confirm that the agency is now on an even keel and that the system is working well and will work even better once the new IT is up and running?
    Baroness Barker: My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness on her introduction. She was given a job to do and it was perhaps one of the worst. In my experience, when the DWP announces that something is just "technical", it is time to run for cover. However, she stepped up to the plate and she did an extremely good job of introducing what I think her colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, would call "very techie" amendments. I thank her very much indeed.
    I thank the noble Baroness also for providing the schedule of regulations. It was extremely helpful to see these provisions embedded within the clauses to which they relate. It helped to explain many points.

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    We on these Benches welcome quite a few of the provisions. We strongly welcome the provisions on the educational maintenance allowance exceptions. We also accept the overall proposition that minor changes in circumstances amounting to not much more than a small change in the non-resident parent's income should be within what the noble Baroness called the tolerance rules. We think that that is an example of effective administration. We welcome also the exemptions on statutory paternity pay and statutory adoption pay.
    I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, resisted the temptation to deal with the regulations that recalculate distance in kilometres instead of miles. Why we do not make the rest of Europe multiply distances by eight and divide by five, I do not know—but it is a thought.
    The point at which the noble Baroness started and the one on which the noble Lord ended is perhaps the key background to this—the two IT systems that the DWP is attempting to run, both containing roughly 1 million cases but neither working particularly effectively. As my honourable friend in another place, Paul Holmes, noted, and as my honourable friend Steve Webb noted over the summer, 76 per cent of cases are on the old system and 24 per cent are on the new, but neither of the systems is working very well. The noble Baroness rather glided over that. The payments perhaps do not involve substantial sums, but they are made to people who badly need them. The timing of payments is critical to their ability to balance their budgets and the bad performance has had a major effect on their lives.
    One matter about which I am most exercised is in Regulation 8—the provision that seems to imply that people may be transferred from the existing system to the new system with incomplete information. The regulations refer to examples where assessments are made with incomplete information. Does the department have an estimate of how many people are likely to be transferred from the existing system to the new system with incomplete information, and, on average, how long it will take to find that missing information? Will assessments and payments start to be made on the new system based on incomplete information or will there be a pause or delay between the two?
    The noble Baroness spoke with considerably more awareness than I have about cessation orders and continuation orders. From what she said, I take it that, if there had been an over-payment or under-payment on the old system, that would continue into the new system but, when payments were remedied, there would be a period of time under which the correction would take place. When those recalculations of payments are made, can the noble Baroness tell us—perhaps not now but in writing at a later stage—whether they are intended to be made over periods of time and whether they will be made in exact amounts or in bandings?
    I think that the noble Baroness has been given an impossible job this evening—not in explaining the technical nature of the regulations but in defending the
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    department's computerisation. I have every sympathy for the people who have to use the system. It is clearly extremely difficult for them to do so with any sense of accuracy, but I have even more sympathy for those who are dependent on the system for the payment of small but necessary amounts, which impact on their household budgeting and their ability to keep their heads above water.
    I thank the noble Baroness very much for the way in which she introduced the regulations. I hope that at some stage—perhaps not this evening—she may be able to answer some of the questions.
    Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I am very grateful for the welcome that noble Lords have given to the regulations and for the kind words that they have offered me. I appreciate that.
    I start at the point at which the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, finished—that is, matters relating to the future of the system. In evidence to Select Committees and in presentations to the House, no Minister has disguised the frustration that he or she has felt at the difficulties that we have had in implementing the scheme. Those frustrations are obviously shared in particular by the staff, who are desperate to make the scheme as good as possible, to make the payments as swiftly and accurately as possible and to ensure that the money reaches the children. We may be talking about small sums of money but they are critical sums.
    I can tell the noble Lord that there is no doubt that the system is improving. A number of statistics now show that a steady increase in the number of cases is being dealt with and that there is growing capacity in the system. I shall give a few brief examples which indicate the volume of work with which the scheme is coping. The scheme started in March 2003 and, as of June 2004, the CSA received 404,616 applications of which 197,000 have been cleared and 117,000 have had maintenance calculations made on them. It is a huge undertaking involving a huge volume of work. Although the system did not prove as robust or as resilient as we had hoped, we are looking at a steady increase in capacity; we are dealing more readily and more speedily with the new cases that come in; and the cases which had become stuck are being freed up.
    However, I reiterate—this goes to the heart of what the noble Baroness said about overpayments and underpayments and the timescale for ensuring that people receive the benefits of the schemes—that we cannot afford to transfer the old cases to the new scheme until we are absolutely sure that it is as good as it can be. That is where we stand in relation to that matter. But we are making progress and, in particular, claimants say that they prefer and appreciate the new simplified system. It is a huge bonus to them. But our prime concern is to protect their interests and to ensure that their maintenance is made, paid and maintained. I am grateful for what the noble Lord said about it.
    Perhaps I may address the issues with which I am able to deal. In relation to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, we do not know how

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    many non-resident parents become liable for an additional child with an original parent with care or another parent with care under Regulation 2. We know that people live very complex lives and sometimes additional children are born to the original mother, perhaps following a temporary reconciliation, or other children may be born to other, different mothers. We do not collect information on that, but more commonly the issue will arise when a new child is born into the non-resident parent's new household. I am afraid that that is as far as I am able to respond to the noble Lord.
    The noble Lord asked about the tolerance rule and the figure of 5 per cent. I did mean 5 per cent. For the new child support scheme, we recalculate liability only when changes in net income exceed 5 per cent of the figure used in the current calculations. I probably did not make that clear. Therefore, under the old scheme, the tolerance rule ensures that payments of child support are adjusted in most cases only where the difference between the old and the new assessment is at least £10 per week. Therefore, it is slightly more complex.
    The third point raised by the noble Lord related to Regulation 5. I can confirm that statutory paternity pay and adoption pay do count as earnings. I believe that that was the question that the noble Lord asked.
    The noble Baroness asked me about the transfer to the new system. She raised the problem of incomplete information and asked whether we knew how long it would take to find the missing information. We do not know. We do not know many things about the length of time that matters are taking because the IT does not enable us to be certain of some of them. However, obviously we want as much complete information as possible to be used as the basis of the assessments and as soon as possible. Again, that is a reflection of how we need the scheme to be as robust as possible.
    The noble Baroness asked about the process of overpayments and underpayments. Because this is quite a technical issue and good social security practice relates to both schemes, if the noble Baroness will allow me, I shall write to her on that point.
    If I have not picked up any of the questions raised by the noble Lord or the noble Baroness, I shall read Hansard very carefully and follow up those points of detail. In the mean time, I again commend the regulations to the House.
    On Question, Motion agreed to.

    Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (Amendment) and Police Reform Act 2002 (Modification) Order 2004
    7.58 p.m.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal)The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 19 July be approved [27th Report from the Joint Committee].
    The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the penalty notices for disorder were introduced by the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. These are on-the-spot penalties for disorderly behaviour. Police officers may issue penalty notices in respect of offences listed in Section 1 of the Act. Current penalty notice offences include being drunk and disorderly, causing harassment, alarm or distress, wasting police time and being drunk on a highway. Therefore, they are targeted at a range of low-level anti-social offences which can blight our neighbourhoods and communities and which serve to increase the fear of crime.
    As noble Lords know, penalty notices for disorder form an important part of the Government's determined campaign, working with the police, local authorities and concerned citizens, to tackle antisocial and nuisance behaviour and offending. But this type of offending is at the lower end of the scale of seriousness and therefore needs to be dealt with in a way which punishes the offender and reassures the community but which does not take up large amounts of police and court time.
    Penalty notices for disorder have proved that they fulfil that remit. They enable offenders to be dealt with quickly on the street or at the police station by the issue of a ticket. A significant amount of police time is already being saved by not having to prepare the paperwork necessary to take an offender to court—around two-and-a-half hours per case. Further time is saved by the police officer not having to attend the court hearing. That means that police officers are free to spend more time on the streets deterring crime and dealing with other offenders who might otherwise never be apprehended. In addition, court time is freed up to deal with more serious offending.
    Penalty notice amounts are currently £80 and £40. The recipient of a notice has 21 days to decide how to respond to the notice. If he pays the penalty within that time he cannot be tried and receives no criminal record for that offence. If within 21 days he chooses instead to go to court so as to contest the notice, he may be tried for that offence. If he does nothing, a sum of oneand-a-half times the original penalty amount is registered against the offender as a fine. Such fines are then enforced in the normal way. That is very similar to the discussion we had on Friday about these notices.
    The penalty notice scheme was piloted and then rolled out nationally earlier this year. The police have welcomed it and have asked for it to be extended to further offences. One new offence, that of causing harassment, alarm and distress, was added to the original list in 2002 and is well used, representing as it does almost half of penalty notices issued. The Government have now decided that the time is right to add a further 10. They are largely low-level offences which are suitable for penalty notice disposal or. in two cases, offences for which the least serious examples are suitable for such treatment. It is the addition of these 10 offences which we are debating today.
    The proposed new offences are four offences involving alcohol misuse by those under 18; three new firework offences; destroying or damaging property where the damage is valued at under £500; retail theft under the value of £200, and dropping litter. A further order is to be laid before the House which will set the penalty amounts for each of these offences. The order proposes that the majority of these offences should become penalty notice offences by 1 November but the three firework offences will be available for penalty notice disposal two weeks after the order comes into force, bearing in mind the proximity of bonfire night. That will mean that police officers will be able to issue penalty notices for many offences associated with fireworks in the run-up to 5 November. That should help to combat a very serious problem involving firework misuse which is experienced daily on our streets across the country.
    As the House knows, theft and criminal damage are generic offences and can cover a wide range of behaviour. As I said, for theft it is no more than £200 and for criminal damage where the value is no more than £500.
    The order which is before the House today pursues, therefore, the Government's commitment to tackle anti-social behaviour and nuisance offending. I beg to move.
    Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 19 July be approved [27th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)
    Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that succinct explanation of the order. The extra offences which have been added to the existing ones for which a penalty notice can be issued, which she has enumerated—namely, theft; destroying or damaging property; depositing and leaving litter; and the widening application of fireworks offences—clearly make a lot of sense.
    The order also includes a widening of alcohol-related offences. While we fully recognise the dangers to the public peace and, indeed, to the personalities of the young persons, of binge drinking, I share with my right honourable friend Mr David Davis his concerns that the highly publicised plans to clamp down on binge drinking are but a prelude to the imposition by the Government of cash curbs on pubs and breweries, especially in view of the failure of the Licensing Act to address the problems posed by many pubs in residential areas. I would welcome an assurance by the Minister that he has no intention of imposing these burdens in future.
    Turning to the modification of powers exercisable by police civilians—in this House, we rise above such cheap epithets as "Blunkett's bouncers" or "plastic policemen"—this is a proposal which we welcome, provided that it releases police officers to deal with more serious forms of crime. However, this widening of the role of community support officers must not be used as a cloak to avoid addressing the fundamental need to increase the number of police officers, which,
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    in the view of my own party, is the only really effective way of reversing the tide of anti-social behaviour and restoring respect for authority and the law.
    I would remind your Lordships that my party is pledged to increase police numbers by 40,000, to remove central government interference on local policing and to put it on to a sustainable financial footing, also to create a genuine partnership between police and public by establishing directly elected police authorities in England and Wales. However, with those reservations, I agree with this very comprehensive order.
    Lord McNally: My Lords, one of the reasons why we on these Benches are suspicious of secondary legislation is that when we have the major debate on the key Bill, there is always the suspicion that what is being debated is the tip of the iceberg and it is at the secondary legislation stage that we shall see what the Home Office really intends.
    It also means that mini-debates such as this are on very narrow specifics when they need to be taken in a broader context. Most of the measures in these orders or the problems that they are trying to address are, by common consent, a desire by people to see something done. There is wide concern about unruly behaviour. The problem I face is seeing any kind of coherence in the government response. One worries that sometimes this little package or series that we see is designed to cover the Government's Daily Mail flank in advance of a general election rather than to put some of these issues in their proper context.
    As far as policing is concerned, what we are doing at the moment is trying to catch up after a decade of cutting police numbers by both parties when they had responsibility for these matters. One of the advantages of being in this House for almost 10 years is that I remember pressing the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, about the Government sticking to the previous government's record and intentions on police spending and being assured that new technologies and greater mobility mean that we did not need extra police on the street. So, I am glad that there is now common consensus that we do. I should also point out that this party was advising community support officers a decade ago when again it was seen as some kind of weird liberal thinking.
    Today most of these orders are aimed mainly at young people. Young people cause most public concern. My eyes were caught by two things: first, today's Guardian headline, "Today's youth: anxious, depressed, antisocial"; and, secondly, a booklet on social exclusion published by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister entitled Breaking the Cycle. It states:
    "Social exclusion is about more than income poverty. It is a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas face a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime, bad health and family breakdown".
    I draw attention to that because social reformers in all parties believed that if those problems were cured, the anti-social behaviour—crime itself —would diminish in the better, richer society that would be created.

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    What is worrying about the research published in the Guardian today is that it found:
    "The increases cannot be explained by the rise in divorce and single parenthood … because they found comparable increases in all types of families, although there is a higher rate of adolescent mental health problems in single-parent families.
    "Nor can growing inequality over the 25 years explain the rise in problem teenagers because rates of increase were comparable in all social classes. There was no difference between white and ethnic minority teenagers".
    In some ways it is extremely worrying that this rejection of society's behavioural norms is taking place. One finds it in so many ways. You talk to teachers who find that they cannot teach because of the simple defiance of students that will not take authority. Then we find that the rules and regulations make it very difficult to exclude those who then destroy the education for a whole class. You talk to policemen who say that the youth seem to be very well versed in their rights, with very little idea of any kind of social responsibility.
    The temptation therefore is to appease that concern by ever more draconian measures. On Friday, these orders were slapped on 10 year-olds and now we are going to fine people on the spot for theft, which seems a slightly odd way of punishing theft. It might be an encouragement to go and steal something else to pay the fine.
    I am really putting a marker down. I know that the Government have other studies coming up on the educational and training aspects of 15 to 18 year-olds and their leisure pursuits. Some studies show that crime drops where the old youth club provisions are restored and where sport and other leisure pursuits are available. I cannot believe that that is not a better route than simply relying on ever more draconian policing.
    I suppose it is a sign of old age when one starts thinking nostalgically. I have a teenage son. Sometimes when I raise my voice at him I think, "Where have I heard that before?" Then I realise that it was from my father. It is a difficult period, but this generation does seem to be throwing up even greater challenges.
    I have a small point on fireworks, about which I do not think there will be great protest. Members of the general public often ask me why, when in our youth fireworks happened on bonfire night, they now seem to run for three months beforehand and three months afterwards and are let off almost anywhere at any time of day or night. If this order can help in that regard, it will be welcomed.
    As I say, I am worried that the motivation behind the order is not the more efficient policing to which the Minister referred but ticking another box for the Daily Mail. We welcome the order in a limited way because we believe that the wider issues, of which it is a part, need to be addressed in a wider context.
    8.15 p.m.
    Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for their comments. Although they
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    went very wide of some of the issues with which we are dealing, I have taken from them that I have general assent to the orders that we are bringing forward.
    I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, that binge drinking is an issue of concern. Of course, I can make no commitment to any further introduction or change of policy. The targets we have in our sights as a result of this order are the selling of alcohol to under-aged children, the delivery of alcohol to under-aged children, the purchase of alcohol by under-aged persons and the drinking of alcohol by under aged persons in a bar. Noble Lords will know that alcohol has had a significant impact upon the behaviour that, regrettably, we are seeing in many of our city and other centres. It has been a real problem.
    The Government's alcohol harm reduction strategy for England, published by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister's strategy unit on 15 March 2004, included recommendations aimed at encouraging greater use of penalty notices for disorder to clamp down on the low-level drunk and disorderly behaviour that we are seeing. They are quick, easy and direct. I can assure your Lordships that before they are issued an officer has to have clear evidence that such an offence has been committed.
    The noble Lord, Lord McNally, talked about draconian measures but these penalties are seen by others as a quicker and more efficient way. Instead of pulling people right the way through the criminal justice system, criminalising them for what may be a one-off piece of foolishness, they are a way of punishing it, recognising that it is wrong, but dealing with it. We think that it is a more effective, and often more speedy, response.
    I assure the noble Lord that the police have welcomed it. Governments quite often come up with ideas that people in the field do not find to be of much use. The impression that we have from officers is that, for once, government have come up with something that works, which is useful and which has made a difference. Already 20,000 penalty notices for disorder have been issued to great effect. Most of them are being paid. Noble Lords should think about what that says for our criminal justice system.
    In relation to theft, the difficulty that we have in terms of the volume of crime is petty theft from shopkeepers. We have consulted shopkeepers and they very much welcome this. Particularly, in relation to the younger element, not criminalising a child who has stolen a 10p sweet from the local sweetshop may be seen by many as a very good thing. I know that noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches will applaud telling the child that it is wrong, making sure that the parents know what the child has done and intervening swiftly in a way that does not unnecessarily criminalise the child but which, we hope, brings an end to the behaviour. This is not to placate the Daily Mail or anybody else.
    I know that there is a wider debate. I listened with great care to what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, but we have done more than any government before us

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    to increase the numbers of police officers on the beat. We are taking a holistic approach. We are looking at education and diversion with the work we are doing with DCMS; work is being done with NOMS and probation to find diversion, and we are doing work on drugs. There is obviously a lot that we can discuss, but maybe not tonight and maybe not on this order.
    I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that this is not electioneering. This is hard work that needs to be done and is being done well. It is already proving to be very successful. I am glad that we have unanimity on all our Benches that this is a good thing and we should get on and do it. I commend this order to the House.
    On Question, Motion agreed to.
    Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn until 8.30 p.m.
    Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
    [The Sitting was suspended from 8.19 to 8.30 p.m.]

    Housing Bill
    House again in Committee.
    Clause 131 [Meaning of "on the market" and related expressions]:
    Lord Bassam of Brighton Lord Bassam of Brighton moved Amendment No. 178ZA:
    Page 93, line 1, at end insert—
    "(A1) In this Part references to "the market" are to the residential property market in England and Wales."
    The noble Lord said: This is the first of a number of government amendments. This one is intended to remove a potential ambiguity about the meaning of the expression "on the market" in Clause 131. The amendment makes it clear that for the purposes of Part 5 "the market" is the residential property market located in England and Wales.
    Amendment No. 181B follows on from Amendment No. 178ZA and removes a redundant reference to England and Wales in Clause 136.
    Amendment No. 210F includes "The Market" in the index of defined expressions in Clause 155, specifying the meaning in accordance with Clause 131 as amended. It is thus consequential on the first amendment.
    Amendment No. 181ZA clarifies that for the purpose of Clause 132,
    "a business in England and Wales",
    includes any business conducted from premises that are not used exclusively or mainly for business purposes—for example, a residential property.
    The small drafting changes in Amendments Nos. 178B and 194ZA are intended to clarify the point that only actions that are taken with "the intention of" marketing will trigger the HIP duties. This phrase describes the policy aim more clearly than the expression "a view to marketing", which it replaces.
    An estate agent is not in breach of the duty if, for example, he or she tells a spouse or colleague that a particular property is going on the market, but this would not be a qualifying action within the meaning of the part, provided that the communication was not aimed at marketing the property.
    Another example is where an estate agent is seen at a property that is not yet on the market and is asked whether it is up for sale. If the estate agent were to answer truthfully, "Not yet, but it will be as soon as the home information pack is ready", that would not be a qualifying action either.
    Amendment No. 181ZB is intended to simplify the explanation for the purposes of Clauses 134 and 135, which detail responsibilities of the estate agent and the seller respectively, by defining the property as a residential property that is "on the market".
    Amendment No. 185ZA is a small drafting change to achieve consistency of expression with Clause 138(6). Both will now read,
    "where the responsible person is the seller".
    Amendment No. 188B removes and replaces Clause 138(6) and thereby removes the unnecessary requirement that a seller must believe that the other person responsible for marketing his property—for example, the estate agent—has a home information pack in the situation when a request is made for a copy of the pack. This requirement is unnecessary because, by definition, one of the responsible people must have the HIP, and where the seller does not have one, the other person must have one.
    Amendment No. 191B deals with the situation where the seller imposes a condition on Clause 139(2), requiring the buyer to pay a charge to receive a copy of the HIP or part of it. The amendment ensures that all conditions under the clause, including these, are effective only if notified to the potential buyer before the end of the 14-day period after a request for the pack is made.
    Amendments Nos. 192A and 192B remove a slight verbal ambiguity by ensuring that "purporting to be" in Clause 140(1) refers both to the pack and to any document included within it. Amendment No. 193ZA removes a potential loophole that might make Clause 140(4) seem to catch cases where there is no duty to comply with a request made under Clause 138(1). The duty to comply with,
    "a request to a responsible person for a copy of the home information pack",
    does not apply in various situations detailed in Clause 138. That includes, for example, when the responsible person reasonably believes the person requesting the pack does not "have sufficient means" to make the purchase or,
    "is not genuinely interested in buying a property".
    Finally, Amendment No. 210ZC clarifies the period during which a penalty charge notice may be given in the case of a continuing breach of any duty, under Clauses 137 to 141 or Clause 147(4). In the case of a continuing breach,
    "A penalty charge notice may not be given after the end of the period of six months beginning"

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    on the last day of the breach. I hope that that explanation is clear. I beg to move.
    Baroness Hamwee: Perhaps I may ask a question about Amendment No. 193ZA. I understand that there should be relief from the duty to provide a pack if one does not think that a person can pay for the purchase or is a serious prospective purchaser, but that does not seem to be what it is about. The duty under Clause 140 is about ensuring the authenticity of the document. That confuses me. It suggests that "spoof" documents could be supplied. I am sure that that is not what is meant.
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: I am sure that that is not what is meant but, in due deference to the noble Baroness, I will ensure that we check that point. It seems fair that we should.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I find all these amendments inoffensive, except for Amendments Nos. 178B and 194ZA. They are the same but concern different clauses. This is rather a micro-point, but it is worth making. Amendment No. 178B affects Clause 131(1). It would change the words, "a view to" to "the intention of". That would be senseless. The clause states:
    "A residential property is put on the market when the fact that it is or may become available for sale is, with a view to marketing the property, first made public in England and Wales".
    Instead of the words,
    "with a view to marketing the property",
    the clause would read,
    "with the intention of marketing the property".
    So far as I can see, if a property is put on the market, it is with a view to selling the property. Surely, that should be the amendment. It is wholly unreasonable to expect the Minister to give a running answer to that rather knotty point. But it is one that I hope his learned advisers will think about. I would commend to the Committee that my wording is a heck of a lot better than theirs.
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is being entirely reasonable in giving me a get-out clause before responding. As a lay person, if I want someone to market my property, I would want him to have intent rather than a view maybe to marketing it. It is possibly a question of emphasis, but I hear what the noble Lord says. Of course, we will take learned advice.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: If you put the thing on the market, which is what they start by saying, it is with a view to selling it. You do not put it on the market with a view to marketing. It is not a big point.
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: You put it on the market with the intent of selling it. Well, I think most people do.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: Selling it.
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: The noble Lord makes a point, and we will reflect on it. We can do no more than that.
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 178A:
    Page 93, line 2, leave out "or may become"
    The noble Earl said: We now come to the serious business of marketing. This is one of the most important areas of the Bill. The Government are taking away the right of somebody to market their property as soon as they want to do so. They are shackling that person's freedom, that they currently have, and making it impossible for them to do something that is done successfully, and without any great difficulty, at the moment. This erosion of freedom is unnecessary, and will cause great resentment if the Government pursue it. It is quite common in estate agency for people to make very quick decisions about the need to sell a property. This can be for a variety of reasons. The most common reason cited, perhaps, is that they find a property that they want, or that they have been looking and looking and have now seen something that really interests them. In order for them to proceed with that purchase they have to sell their own property. However, the Government are not going to let them do that until they have a home information pack available to them. That could take some days or weeks to prepare.
    Let us take the simple case of a freehold property. That should not be too difficult. You now have a home condition report, you have to get all the searches and all the requisite information, and that could take up to 10 days. But what happens if you own a flat, and you have managing agents who are less than diligent in providing you with information about service charges, costs of repairs, future programmes or sinking funds for future costs? I have battled endlessly with management agents in selling flats over the past. They can cause quite a major delay to the sale of a property.
    Quite often the managing agents are nowhere near where the flat is. I have sold flats in London where the managing agents have been up in Manchester, and getting information out of them has been horrendously difficult.
    The owner of that flat is now going to be faced with the situation that he cannot sell his property because he is not allowed to market it. That is quite wrong. If we are going to have home information packs, and we want to speed up the process of buying and selling properties, surely the property should be allowed to be marketed at day one?
    The other extreme is the ability to sell quickly. I have sold a property within 24 hours of being given instructions. I had the right purchaser, at the right price, for the right property, and it all worked. It does not happen very often, but it did happen. Why should, in that instance, an owner have to go to all the expense, time and trouble of preparing a home information pack? He might well have lost the sale. The sale was critical because the purchaser had to choose between two properties, and he was either going to sign an unconditional contract with my vendor, or somebody else's vendor, within 24 hours. So the sale went through.
    However, what the Government are now doing will distort the market by preventing marketing at day one. That is crucial to how the current market works. If the Government persist in the view that one cannot market at day one, there will be a seismic shift in how the property market works and how quickly it can flow.
    In due course, some 20 years down the road, I do not believe that it will be such a problem, but it will be a major problem in the early days of providing a pack. For that reason, we need to provide flexibility to allow a vendor to market a property immediately he or she wishes to do so. I beg to move.
    8.45 p.m.
    Baroness Hanham: Amendments Nos. 179 and 180 tabled in my name are probably rather tendentiously grouped with this amendment. However, they refer to "marketing", which must have brought them together.
    The purpose of these amendments is to help the Secretary of State, and I hope that the Minister will view them in that light. I understand that, in law, information is deemed to be public once it has been published in the London Gazette. I am not entirely convinced that many prospective house buyers scan the pages of that fine journal, and to that end I congratulate the draftsman of subsection (3) of this clause for including the expression,
    "public or to a section of the public",
    thus getting over that particular hurdle.
    I turn to the issue of what constitutes a "section of the public". If I were to say in passing at a council meeting that I was thinking of selling my house, would I then be required to produce a home information pack that day? On a more serious note, if a property developer were to place an advertisement in a London evening paper—not the London Gazette—prospecting for buyers of luxurious riverside apartments just down the river from here in a development that is yet to be built, would that be deemed to be marketing to the public?
    We touched on some of these matters earlier, but as my noble friend Lord Caithness has pointed out, marketing is now a major issue in this part of the Bill. We feel that the most expedient way to deal with it would be to delete this clause and simply leave the definition of marketing to the public to the Secretary of State.
    Lord Borrie: We all know of the experience of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and it is valuable to the Committee to have the benefit of his thoughts. However, I regard some of his language as a bit extreme and emotional. The use of the phrase, "shackling" the freedom of the vendor to market his property and the citing of certain examples suggest a touch of special pleading.
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    Let us take the instance of someone who has set his heart for many years on buying a certain property in the neighbourhood. It comes on sale and therefore he is keen to buy. In order to finance the purchase, he has to sell his existing property. That person will want to put his existing property on the market as soon as possible. I fully understand that. But why should he be able to put that property on the market without enabling the buyer to have the benefit of the provisions we are discussing in this part of the Bill—namely, a home information pack and a house condition report—just so that he can put his house on the market quickly, in order to move ahead of other people who may be interested in the property which he has been keen to buy for many years?
    Should we suggest that the Bill be radically altered and reduced in its impact in order to deal with a special instance of that kind? The rush to market which it is suggested that the vendor should be able to do would be made at the expense of those who want to know what kind of property they may be bidding for if they interest themselves in his existing property.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I strongly support Amendment No. 178A in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I am unable to support Amendment No. 179 in the joint names of the three Opposition Peers. I would like some elucidation from the Minister on Amendment No. 180. I do not support Amendment No. 179 because, rather than giving the Secretary of State power to make more regulations on a central issue—namely, what marketing is—I would rather leave that word to be construed by lawyers in the courts under common law principles. Any statutory definition of marketing will be a mess.
    I particularly support the amendment to delete the words "or may become available" in Clause 131(1). The provision seems to extend in a most unsatisfactory and unclear way the potential ambit of Clause 131—which is an important clause—to say that residential property is put on the market when it "may become available" for sale. That seems a contradiction in terms. I do not see the rationale or justification for those three weaselly words.
    I turn to Amendment No. 180. Those who want subsection (3) to be deleted could be fouling their own nest. It is helpful to say that a fact is made public when it is advertised to a section of the public, but it would help the Committee if the Minister were to tell us what the Government understand the words "section of the public" to mean. Is it any group, anywhere, at any time, as one might logically think, or does it have some particular meaning? Given its importance, it would be interesting to know if he can give us any help.
    The Earl of Courtown: Can my noble friend Lord Caithness tell the Committee how long a delay the legislation would instil into the selling of property—or can the Minister?
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: As long as it takes me to get on my feet. That last point is for the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, to deal with. I shall deal with the

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    amendments in turn. I start with Amendment No. 178A. I am sure that all Members of the Committee involved in the debate understand that Clause 131 defines the circumstances in which a property is regarded as having been placed on the market and the period during which it is regarded as remaining on the market.
    As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, ably explained—as one would expect—the first amendment is about what he sees as obstacles to sale. The noble Earl made the case from the perspective of estate agency businesses of the provision being seen as an erosion of the freedom to take to market. While I appreciate the sincerity and commitment of that view, we take a different approach. It comes down to that: we have a different view of how we see the market working in the future.
    The Government are rightly making the case that we want to have a well-informed market. Some of our common and personal experiences suggest that it is highly desirable that people have more information. That is the purpose of the home information pack and why we take the view that it is important for that information to be available as early as possible in the process. We therefore believe this amendment is inappropriate and that it would open a loophole by enabling a marketing process to begin before that information had been properly assembled.
    A seller in those circumstances could simply advertise the fact that his home was about to become available for sale and thus start the marketing ball rolling in all but name, but without having to have a pack ready. That would obviously trigger inquiries, offers and negotiations without either side being in possession of the information needed to make meaningful decisions. I listened with care to what the noble Earl said, because his comments expressed clearly that a potential buyer might have to make decisions and take a view about complex matters in the process of considering and making a reasonable assessment of the offer.
    Our case is that they will be better placed to do that with the information contained in the home information pack. While I can see that taking something to market at an early stage may have some potential advantages, there will also be delays at a later stage in the process if that information is not available and the potential purchaser is unable to make reasonable judgments.
    As we see it, the absence of the pack at the outset will continue to perpetuate the problems that all house purchasers and potential home purchasers experience at the present time, with a high rate of transaction failure and the unnecessary worry, stress and waste of time that come with it. That is the reasoning behind our objection to the amendment. We do not think it will help in the process of improving the way in which the market operates. I was very taken by the points made by my noble friend Lord Borrie in opposing the view expressed by the noble Earl.
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    I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said about Amendment No. 179. We think that the amendment is unnecessary because Clause 131 already provides for the definition. It states:
    "A residential property is put on the market when the fact that it is or may become available for sale is, with a view to marketing the property, first made public … by or on behalf of the seller".
    Of course, a property will remain on the market until it is taken off or sold.
    As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, Amendment No. 180 would delete Clause 131(3). That subsection defines when a fact is made public. Its removal could make it unclear when a property is put on the market and the associated duty to have a home information pack commences. We believe it is important that sellers and their agents should be clear about when the home information pack obligations kick in and when they conclude. The proposed amendment would not help that. For those reasons, the amendment cannot he supported.
    The noble Lord invited me to say a few words about expressions—in particular the expression "section of the public"—which are used in the clause but are not defined in the Bill. Our understanding is that the phrase has been used in other Acts of Parliament where some flexibility is desirable. The noble Lord is usually attracted to things like that. The case law indicates that "the public" relates to the public at large; and that "section of the public" indicates a slightly more restricted group. Thus, for example, the placing of an advertisement in a national newspaper could be described as "marketing to the public" as everyone in the country could potentially see it. By contrast, the placing of an advertisement in a local shop window would be marketing only to a "section of the public" as only a small proportion of the public would he likely to see it.
    Family members, individuals or small groups of people—one's immediate colleagues at work, for example—would not be considered as a section of the public for these purposes. Marketing to such people will therefore not be affected by the duties described elsewhere in this part of the Bill. Generally speaking, the seller would know such people in a private capacity and the property would therefore not be available for sale on the open market.
    I realise that I have probably inadequately responded to all the points that have been made, but that is our case. There is a clear difference of view. Returning to the first of the amendments, the noble Earl made the point that in the future he did not think there would be a problem with the way in which the clause is currently drafted and that it will work. That is a very significant point.
    Throughout the debates on this issue, my noble friend Lord Rooker has made it clear that implementation will be steady. We acknowledge that there are difficulties to overcome. We will make sure that the introduction of this part of the legislation. which is very important, travels at a pace but at a pace which understands and respects the fact that the

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    market will change because of the constraints we are placing on it by putting into place important changes through the home information pack.
    9 p.m.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: Before the Minister sits down, I note that he accepted that Clause 131 is the lynchpin of the whole of Part 5 of the Bill. However, if an auctioneer is auctioning Black Acre and at the end of the auction says, "A number of people have asked me whether the owners are going to sell Whiteacre. Well, they're considering that, but they may be bringing it to market in the spring", why on earth should that, which clearly brings it within the "may become available" provision of Clause 131, trigger a requirement on the part of the owner of Black Acre to go to the significant expense of putting together a home information pack when he has not even made up his mind to sell? Can the Minister answer that, because I am blown if I can see how it serves a useful purpose?
    Baroness Hamwee: While the Minister is thinking about that, I turn to "public or section of the public". If I were to put a couple of lines in a company's newsletter, which went only to those who worked there, would I be advertising to a section of the public?
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: I am less confident in giving an explanation to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, but in response to the noble Baroness, I can say that that would be deemed as marketing to a section of the public. I do not think that there is any question about that. I want to reflect further on what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, because his example depends very much on the exact form of words used. Of course, there will always be difficulties in those sets of circumstances. In the end, this legislation will work well if we use our common sense and have goodwill. In bringing about an important change for the potential buyer, we have to give careful thought to that, because the advantages are paramount and obvious to all.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I think that the Minister sees the point, but it is often useful to the people of a town or a group of property developers to have some inkling that a particular property may be coming on the market. As the legislation stands, just saying that is going to trigger the need for the home information pack.
    Baroness Hanham: I refer specifically to Amendment No. 180, which would remove Clause 131(3). Much of our debate has shown why that should be; namely, the suggestion that bringing the matter to the attention of the public is an advertisement in itself and triggers the marketing clauses. It is very unclear what "advertising to the public" and "section of the public" mean. It is not even clear whether putting a picture in an estate agent's
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    window and not advertising in any other way would be covered by the clause. More questions are raised by Clause 131(3) than are answered.
    The Earl of Caithness: I shall read with care what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, because he made some points that I would like to pick up at a later stage. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, accused me of special pleading. If he means that I am making a special plea on behalf of the market in which I work, I shall plead guilty, because the housing market is a mixture of different markets around the country that come together to form the housing market of England and Wales. If I have made special pleading, I have acted no differently from that area of the country which has made special pleading that houses below a certain capital value should not need home information packs. There is no difference—it is just another section of the market with a particular problem, caused by this piece of legislation. I work in the international market in London, which is undoubtedly faster than most other parts of the country and much more international and cosmopolitan.
    The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said I was making a special plea for the vendor, but I am doing the same for the purchaser. If the noble Lord and I are seeking the same property, Whiteacre—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips—and the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, really wants the house, but I have my house on the market with a home information pack, he is at a disadvantage because he cannot submit an offer to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, as he does not have a HIP. The pack works both ways for the vendor and the purchaser, and—I have to repeat the word—it shackles an important sector of the market, though not at all the majority, that will be hamstrung by this legislation.
    The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said that we could advertise that the property is likely to become available. Does that mean I can now put Whiteacre into London Property News, saying, "We haven't actually received instructions, but it's possible that we will do so, and the property is likely to come on the market"? In that case, the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, who is desperate to get Whiteacre, can now see that, "Ah! That is the house I have really been after. I will drop the purchase price of my house because I want a quick sale so that I am in a position to buy Whiteacre".
    When we look at the practicalities of what the Government are trying to do, we get into some very difficult areas. It is no good the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, saying "Well, we have all got common sense and we can all handle this". We are dealing with a cut-throat business market where at times people are desperate to get, or to sell, a particular property. The noble Lord went on to talk about making the market work properly. Do not let us forget that over 70 per cent of present transactions go through without any hitch at all. We are not talking about a market that is not working—just about a minority sector of a market that can be improved. As an agent, I would dearly like to see that, and I know the noble Lord, Lord Phillips,

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    wants it improved from the solicitor's point of view. However, we are not talking about the great majority of transactions.
    Clause 131 is crucial. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, did not answer any of my points with regard to flats. I know it will be difficult for him to answer at the moment, but this time I hope that he or the Minister will write to me promptly. At what stage can a property be put on the market with an incomplete pack? At what point can the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, start marketing Whiteacre? He gives me instructions to market the place; it is a flat, and I cannot get the service charges, any of the building costs, the plans for repair or indeed the schedule for the last five years, or details of the sinking fund. I am hamstrung. I will go to my client and say: "I'm sorry, I cannot market your property. You might want to, but you can't, and I can't either. The Government won't let us". At what stage can we actually get on and start marketing the property? Why can it not be at day one, if there is an intention to prepare the pack as soon as possible?
    Lord Bassam of Brighton: Because the noble Earl made particular points about flats, I ought to try and respond to some of what he said. I apologise for the discourtesy of not picking up those points earlier. If there are further points that the noble Earl wants covering and I do not cover them, of course we will try to provide him with some more information between stages.
    The noble Earl raised the issue of acquiring information on flats and delay in the marketing process. I understand the point. I know that the noble Earl is concerned that managing agents will struggle to provide the information in real time and in the time that assists in the marketing process, particularly at an early stage.
    Our view is that the contents of the pack will, in most circumstances—the noble Earl almost made the point for us—enable the market to work well, with 70 per cent of transactions proceeding at an orderly pace. That is not to say that there cannot be improvements, even for those who feel that the system works well as it is. Most of the information will be there and the seller will already have it in his possession. Where information is not readily available and to hand, sellers will be able to market with incomplete packs after a defined period—that will be set out in regulations—provided that they can show that efforts have been made to obtain the missing information.
    I believe that over time—perhaps this is behind the point made by the noble Earl—these changes should not cause a problem. In any event, reforms to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act will strengthen leaseholders' rights to obtain information from landlords in a more appropriate and accessible way. One has to look at the changes that we are putting in place as being part of a longer-term programme of improvements to the market and to access to information for those involved in the buying and selling process. Information is there for those who manage the market through estate agencies, sales and so on.
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    Returning to my earlier point, if we approach this matter with goodwill during the period of time in which we build up to implementation, many of the problems that can now be seen, or imagined, will begin to dissipate. We need to focus on solving them in a practical and hard-headed way. The advantages, certainly for those buying and needing more information to make a reasonable judgment about property, are paramount and very important. That is why I believe that purchasers will see the longer-term benefit of the changes that we are making.
    The Earl of Caithness: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for that further explanation. He has made an excellent effort to reply to me. He is absolutely right: we need to focus in a hard-headed way. We need to focus on what is going to happen on day one, when we have these packs, which are totally unused by any other country in the world. We are pioneering a new worldwide system in a very complex, large and diverse housing market.
    The Minister reminded me of something that I said on an earlier amendment to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, "We will set out in regulations". Could the Government lift the veil gently on these regulations so that we may see them? If we cannot look at the regulations, we shall not be doing a proper job of scrutinising the Bill. Again, I make the plea to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam: can we please see the draft of the regulations before we go into Report stage? Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 178B:
    Page 93, line 3, leave out "a view to" and insert "the intention of"
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    [Amendments Nos. 179 and 180 not moved.]
    Clause 131, as amended, agreed to.
    Clause 132 [Acting as estate agent]:
    [Amendment No. 181 not moved.]
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 181Z.A:
    Page 93, line 16, leave out "of business""
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    9.15 p.m.
    The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 181ZAA:
    Page 93, line 22, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
    "(3) A person may not act as estate agent within the meaning of this Part unless he is qualified under regulations made under section 22 (standards of competence) of the Estate Agents Act 1979 (c. 38)."
    The noble Earl said: We move now to the qualifications for somebody selling a property. The Committee will not be at all surprised to find me raising this amendment. I have moved something

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    similar before in your Lordships' House and I remember the Estate Agents Act 1979 going through this House.
    It seems to me utterly ludicrous that we can have a situation in this country where if the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, wants to sell £100 worth of shares he has to do so through somebody who is highly qualified, has passed all sorts of financial exams and is stringently regulated by the FSA. If the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, wants to sell perhaps the major asset that he owns—his flat or his house—it can be done by anybody without any qualification; that person need have no training whatever. That is a nonsense and it does not happen in other places in the world.
    The Government have used Denmark as an example for the housing market. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said earlier how similar Denmark was to Britain. But in order to deal with the complexities of the home information pack in Denmark, estate agents have to be licensed. To gain a licence, agents must have a good theoretical and practical knowledge of property matters. From June 2003 all new licensees must have a degree in property transactions and have completed two years' practical training. There is no comparison with England and Wales—we have nothing.
    But we are lucky. The Labour government of the 1970s passed the Estate Agents Act 1979 in which Clause 22 contains standards of competence. It states:
    "The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument make provision for ensuring that persons engaged in estate agency work satisfy minimum standards of competence".
    Here is the Fifth Cavalry coming to the help of this Government. The Secretary of State can prescribe professional academic qualifications, designate any body or persons as a body which may itself specify professional qualifications, make provision for the establishment of a body to examine and inquire into the competence of persons engaged, or professing to engage, in estate agency work, and delegate powers to that body.
    The net result is that,
    "no individual may engage in estate agency work on his own account unless he has attained the required standard of competence",
    and that,
    "no body corporate or unincorporated association may engage in estate agency work unless such numbers and descriptions of the officers, members or employees as may be prescribed have attained the required standard of competence; and any person who contravenes this subsection"—
    subsection (3) of Clause 22—
    "shall be liable on conviction on indictment or on summary conviction to a fine which, on summary conviction, shall not exceed the statutory maximum".
    The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will now tell me what that is! But the principle behind that is that as the Government make the process of buying and selling properties that bit more complicated, it is only right that when one is dealing in most cases with the most precious asset a person has, the person handling that transaction should be qualified. It is not right that the
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    mess should be cleared up after that person makes a mistake. We should tackle it before it happens and get the standards right now. I beg to move.
    Baroness Hanham: I rise to support the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. It is fundamentally important, if the Bill is to proceed in the way it is, that people can trust the estate agents who deal not only with the sale of their house but in many cases on the compiling of the home information pack.
    As it stands, currently only one in three estate agency businesses in this country are even members of the ombudsman for estate agents. The ombudsman for estate agents does not offer legal redress for consumers who have to complain about estate agents, but who can do so only if the agents are members of the scheme. The majority of estate agents offer no legal redress or indemnity and can be called to account only through the courts. That inevitably means that the home inspectors will carry the can if something goes horribly wrong.
    I have always been enormously surprised that estate agents are not regulated in a way that would give comfort to the public who are buying and selling through them. I therefore support the amendment.
    Lord Borrie: One of the advantages of the present subsection (3), which the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would like to remove, is that it covers those who act as estate agents—that is, act on behalf of a vendor with a view to marketing residential property—regardless of whether they describe themselves as an estate agent. Therefore, as the Explanatory Notes to the clause mention, a solicitor who acts as if he was an estate agent shall be treated as such for the various provisions of the Bill. It therefore follows, and perhaps this is an unintended consequence of the noble Earl's amendment, that a desirable feature of subsection (3) would disappear. But of course that is not the main part of what the noble Earl is seeking.
    I feel a sense of déjà vu for the quarter of a century in which the Estate Agents Act 1979 has been in force but for Section 22. Through the 1980s, when I was Director-General of Fair Trading and had certain powers under that Act to ban people from acting as estate agents for various kinds of wrongdoing and misdemeanours, there were many occasions when various interest groups and members of the public suggested the very sort of logic that the noble Earl and the noble Baroness have put forward—that, surely in this important transaction, those who act as agents for the vendors should have some sort of qualification.
    The noble Earl may be right. I am not sure that the method of implementing Section 22 that he suggests is the right way of doing it, but I think that, for the purposes of debate, and certainly for the purposes of hearing what my noble friend the Minister may say, I should indicate that the arguments as I remember them for not implementing Section 22 over the years went something like this.
    In the first place, it was said that standards of competence differ a great deal according to what the estate agent is doing, what kind of property he is

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    selling, and whether indeed he is doing valuations and surveys and the other things that estate agents often do, especially those qualified by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. It might be quite difficult to have either a range of qualifications or to think of a common denominator that would be appropriate for all.
    I remember banning certain people from acting as estate agents because they had been in gaol for fraud. I remember that many of the complaints about estate agents were not about competence. No one was suggesting that they were not capable of doing the job; they just were not honest. They were doing all sorts of things like failing to pass on offers to the vendor because they got a handout from someone else and that kind of thing. A number of them did that, and no doubt a number of them got off from various charges. However, in my day, and I dare say that it may not have changed all that much, some of them were dishonest—or, at any rate, shall I say that competence is not necessarily the same as integrity?
    Finally, in relation to insisting on qualifications for doing any particular task in life, holding any particular post or being in a particular occupation, the question always was and always will be asked: does that not unduly inhibit competition, which is normally beneficial to the public'? The argument is made that there should be rivals for the custom of the public and that, if the requirement for competence is raised to an unduly high level, that may be nicely comfortable and cosy for those who are already in the relevant profession or occupation but it is not necessarily a good thing for members of the public who want a wide range of people who are, I dare say, moderately qualified and certainly people of integrity. But sometimes one wonders whether systems of qualification and registration and so on achieve that.
    I am not sure that I can say more, other than I do not think that this is the way of achieving what the noble Earl is seeking. However, I am glad that he put forward the amendment because we shall all have the benefit of hearing the Minister's up-to-date view.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: Before the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, sits down, can I ask such a useful witness of reality whether, during his time as director-general, those whom he disciplined for various acts of misbehaviour among the estate agent fraternity were disproportionately people who had no RICS qualifications or whether he can recollect little distinction in the numbers between the qualified and unqualified estate agents?
    Lord Borrie: My memory is not as good as the noble Lord would like it to be, but I do not think that most of them were members of the established qualified institutions—the RICS and, at that time, the Incorporated Society of Valuers & Auctioneers.
    Lord Hylton: When the Minister comes to reply, I think that it would be very helpful if he could confirm,
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    or otherwise, that the relevant part of the Estate Agents Act 1979 is in force. If it is in force, does the current Bill produce a conflict of laws?
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I find myself a little torn by the amendment of the noble Earl. On the face of it, it looks eminently reasonable and I should be as interested as others to hear what the Minister says in response. The whole world of property has, like everything else, become more and more complicated over the years, and therefore the time may have come to implement this part of the legislation. But one should make no mistake about it: the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, in terms of bureaucratising and, to some extent, slowing down the competitive ability of the estate agency world may be inhibited.
    One point that I want to make strongly is that the first part of the noble Earl's amendment—that is, to abolish the existing subsection (3)—should not stand because, as the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, hinted, many solicitors' firms act as estate agents and do the whole job. They sell the property and convey it, and it would be quite wrong if, in seeking to make an improvement in one area, he were to destroy a perfectly satisfactory practice that goes on in another.
    Lord Rooker: I apologise for missing the first part of the debate, but I had a perfectly good and honourable reason.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: Was it the noble Lord's dinner?
    Lord Rooker: No, I had no dinner. I am afraid that I have brought a bucket of cold water for this amendment as well. I can just about remember the Act in question. If I remember right, it was a Private Member's Bill in 1979. I can see my colleague but I cannot remember his name.
    Lord Borrie: The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, was one of the two sponsors.
    Lord Rooker: That just shows you. Of course, there was general consent for the Bill because of the fall of the government. It was a Private Member's Bill that got a fair wind through both Houses because of the vote of no confidence. But, since then, no government have seen fit to make the regulations under Section 22.
    9.30 p.m.
    When the Act was originally debated in the House, the government spokesman said that it would not prescribe any standards unless and until the need for them was apparent. Section 22 has not been brought into force, which is the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. Presumably, there has been no commencement order; hence no requirement for regulations.
    The Office of Fair Trading report looked very carefully at the issue of competence requirements for estate agents. The report concluded that the range and

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    complexity of the legislative requirements placed on estate agents do not justify a regulatory requirement for minimum standards of competence. That is what the report concluded.
    The Government agree with the OFT's "intellectually rigorous" analysis, although those words are not in my notes. Placing competence requirements on estate agents would lead to an increase in their costs which in the end would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher rates of commission. We do not believe that that is justifiable as it would impose unnecessary costs on business and inhibit competition without delivering sufficient improvements.
    I suppose that in a way I would rest my case on that last sentence. I do not think the case is that strong otherwise. In other words, if there is to be regulation it must have material benefit for people. There is no question about that, otherwise it would be a waste and a fraud to do it. It would give a false impression to people that by regulating, things will be great. In this case we could do all these things but it would not deliver sufficient improvements to make the job worth while. I think that that is the honest view. Common sense would tell you that they should be competent, but the legislative proposals would be so complex that it would not be worth while for the gains that would be made. That is fair and I am quite happy to stand here and make a robust defence on that basis as opposed to my earlier sentences.
    On the other hand, there is help on the way. One has to look at this in the round. I realise that we go through the amendments one by one. Nevertheless, the Government have tabled Amendments Nos. 210C to 210E. We believe that that little package of amendments, which is on the second page of the Marshalled List—certainly we shall not reach them tonight—provides for a requirement for estate agents to belong to a redress scheme approved by the Secretary of State. We think that that potentially offers a more effective and efficient mechanism for improving standards in the sector.
    Let us suppose that once estate agents have had to sign up to a redress scheme, the independent body that runs the scheme decides on a dispute between an estate agent and buyer or seller, finds for the buyer or seller and then says to the estate agent, "Legally, you have to make redress"—which is not the case at present. There would then be a cost upon them and they might start to clean up their act as regards the competence of the people working in the estate agency who had caused the problem in the first place. It offers a mechanism for improving standards in the sector. It is a backdoor means of raising competence because we are more or less saying, "If you get yourself in trouble, it will cost you a fortune if you have incompetent staff and you fall foul of the person doing the adjudication". It will be a legal requirement to be a member of such a scheme.
    Although we are opposed to compulsory training and competence requirements, we accept that there may be a case—there is a case; there is no question of
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    that because everyone should be qualified to do what they do, whatever the job—for developing a recognised qualification and national quality standards for residential estate agents. If done properly, this could provide a career incentive to improve standards. There is no question of that. There are thousands of people involved in this industry. It is very competitive so there is opportunity there for career incentive. We see this primarily as a matter for the industry. However, as the Government, we are prepared to offer help and advice and support to stakeholders involved in the development of the process.
    We do not say that we do not agree with the amendment, but in the light of the Government's own package of amendments for estate agents to belong to redress schemes, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
    I wonder whether I can take the opportunity—this place does not have any rules so I can probably do this—to ensure that something I said earlier in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is not misunderstood, not so much by people here but those outside. By Report stage, we will offer to spell out in more detail what the "dry run" will entail: in other words, the six months before the compulsory date that the pilot starts. I have clearly said in the six months beforehand. I was not saying that we do not want to offer a pilot.
    There is a problem. I have taken further advice on the matter since I am not as up-to-date as the day Minister on this. The industry is dead against any single pilots, compulsory or otherwise. The view of the National Association of Estate Agents, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the RICS and the Consumers' Association is that we need to have a date for the pilot across England and Wales. Otherwise, the education institutions will not gear up for the home inspector courses. We are not likely to get people on the courses, which we need to do a reasonably sized pilot.
    The industry apparently is dead set against pilots, even in just one area, because of these difficulties, so there are some major problems. The matter has obviously been discussed. To my certain knowledge it has been discussed. We are offering a six-month dry run, as I said earlier, before the compulsion commences so that we can run the publicity, offer encouragement and everything else. By Report, we will come back and spell out more about what we mean by that dry run. I am not saying that it is the equivalent of a pilot, but it will not mean that everybody goes home on Friday under the same old discredited system—and it is a discredited system for those that fall foul of it—and come in bright and perky on Monday morning to a brand new system.
    It clearly would not work like that anyway. We need something programmed and a managed introduction. Although it becomes compulsory on a date, it must be a managed introduction, hence our use of the term "a dry run". It is a national dry run in that sense. I will gladly give way to the noble Baroness.
    Baroness Maddock: Perhaps the Minister could clarify a little more what he means "by Report". The

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    plan was that we would come to Report the first week we are back in October. I can see that we will be in the same position. I will be running around the week before trying to find out what is available and maybe not finding it. I am sorry to be so sceptical but the last week has been hell.
    Lord Rooker: I have no knowledge of the dates of Report. I genuinely have not seen any dates.
    Baroness Hanham: Day one of Report.
    Lord Rooker: I am told that day one of Report is 13 October. That is the first Wednesday that we are back. That information is available to the usual channels. I am just a humble Minister who comes here to conduct the business. Whatever day it is, I will be here.
    However, I take the point of the noble Baroness. One can see by the size of it that this is a major Bill at the fag end of a Session. It is quite clear that this Bill was always going to be "running late", as it were, up against the end of the Session. We will use our best endeavours to get more information available in advance of tabling amendments, such as other documentation to assist proper scrutiny of the Bill.
    I do not want this Bill not to be properly scrutinised, believe you me. I get as annoyed as anybody else because I feel as though we are being rushed without adequate time, especially on issues of course—I am not saying this is relevant—that the other place did not discuss. There is a lot of new material in this Bill.
    The Earl of Caithness: I am very grateful to all noble Lords that have taken part. The noble Lords, Lord Borrie and Lord Phillips, took me up about the drafting of my amendment and wanted me to omit the first part, which is to leave out subsection (3). I had a huge amount of difficulty with the Clerks in tabling this amendment. They were very against my tabling anything like this. They said that it was not within the Long Title of the Bill. However, I managed to find a way, thanks to the Estate Agents Act 1979, but it was the Clerks who advised me to put down,
    "leave out subsection (3)".
    I did not want to leave out subsection (3); I thought it was rather good. But the Clerks said that that is what I had better do, so who am I to argue with them? Having won the major battle, I was not going to fight over a few words like that. But it does amuse me that it has worked out the way it has.
    The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said that estate agents are not all that honest or have the requisite integrity. As an estate agent and surveyor, I could not agree with him more. That is what worries me about my profession. I think the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, hinted earlier that even estate agents are less popular than politicians. As I have sold a second-hand car, and
    1008
    been a politician and an estate agent, I can only look up now, I hope. I cannot get much lower on the ladder in people's estimation than those two things.
    Baroness Hanham: You could become a journalist.
    The Earl of Caithness: God forbid! I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Borrie. That is exactly why I put down this amendment. I am seeking to raise standards. The noble Lord, with his great experience—I remember him well in the 1980s—talked about the difficulties that having qualifications poses. I put to him the argument that he was using earlier this afternoon, many hours ago. It is consumer protection. Too many people are being taken by estate agents. We need higher standards. I do not think that the profession is honest or has enough integrity. In a lot of cases, it does, but there are too many bad cases. We want to weed out those bad cases. My view is that we should weed them out beforehand rather than afterwards. Although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, his amendments are some sort of backdoor scheme and, in this instance, I prefer to go in through the front door. Let us be bold about it. I hope that the noble Lord will think again and say that we must get a grip of this situation. We now have a wonderful opportunity to take this forward.
    I take issue with the Minister on one point. He said that the present system of buying and selling is discredited. It is not discredited. Over 70 per cent of transactions go through all right. That can be improved. It is a section of the market that is not working as well as it could. I heard what the Minister said about the dry run. I want to read with care what he said. It is important. People in the profession with whom I have talked are very keen that there is a further trial area on a much bigger scale than the rather miserable one in Bristol.
    In view of the amendment that I tabled, I wrote to a number of estate agents, some of which are quite large firms. I wrote about a dozen letters asking them whether they employed qualified people and what they did. I got one reply from an estate agent who said that his firm did not employ qualified people but did some in-house training. That is not good enough. It condemns my profession. It is for that reason that I shall support the Minister when he comes to his amendments but I hope that he will support me and say that we have got to wield a much bigger stick to this bunch. I might come back to this but, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause 132, as amended, agreed to.
    Clause 133 [Responsibility for marketing: general]:
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 181ZB:
    Page 93, line 31, leave out from "is" to "; and" in line 32 and insert "on the market ("the property")"
    On Question, amendment agreed to.
    Clause 133, as amended, agreed to.
    Clause 134 [Responsibility of person acting as estate agent]:
    The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 181A:
    Page 94, line 5, at end insert "or"
    The noble Earl said: This is a very simple amendment. It is to insert the word "or". The purpose of this amendment is that an agent cannot act without instructions. Therefore, the ceasing of any marketing is de facto sufficient that he is no longer instructed so it should be "or" rather than a separate paragraph. I beg to move.
    9.45 p.m.
    Lord Rooker: I regret to say that I have a much longer speaking note than the noble Earl's introductory speech. It is another one of those little, innocuous amendments, I am afraid. Clause 134 describes the responsibilities of a person acting as an estate agent, when they apply and when they cease to apply. The agent must comply with the duties set out in Clause 137 for as long as he is instructed by the seller to act and is taking steps to market the property on the seller's behalf. He stops being responsible when all the following three conditions are met: his contract with the seller is terminated; he has ceased to take any action to make public the fact that the property is on the market; and any such action taken on his behalf has ceased.
    The amendment would insert the word "or" after the first condition. The intention would appear to be to provide that an estate agent is to be regarded as responsible in cases where his contract had been terminated but he continues to carry out marketing activities. We are not persuaded that that would assist consumers, to be honest. In fact, it is the very opposite: the effect would be to make more ordinary sellers become responsible persons under the Bill and subject them to the home information pack duties. If the estate agent is still actively marketing a property, he ought to be the one complying with the home information pack duties.
    The amendment would also mean that an estate agent would no longer be subject to the duties under the Bill where the agent's contract had not been terminated but marketing activity had ceased. That could present huge problems to which the noble Earl did not refer.
    The Bill as drafted relieves agents of complying with the duty when a property has been taken off the market. To replace that with an arrangement whereby a property could still be on the market but the pack obligations would come and go according to the level of activity of the agent concerned would be impossible for anyone to police. It would be impossible for trading standards officers. As drafted, the Bill sets up a straightforward, sensible and easily understandable arrangement. I therefore hope that the noble Earl will
    1010
    not pursue what appears to be his innocuous, seductive, sensible amendment, because it is not so in reality.
    The Earl of Caithness: That was quite fascinating, but not at all what I was expecting. Clearly, I have started something much more ingenious than I thought. I was under the simple impression that if I stopped marketing a property, I was no longer instructed. As long as I am instructed to sell Whiteacre for the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, I will market it. If I do not market it, I will be got rid of. My job is to market property. So it was in fact a simple amendment. However, it is clearly much more complicated than I had anticipated. I will read what the Minister said and am delighted that he spoke for much longer than I did. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause 134 agreed to.
    Clause 135 agreed to.
    Clause 136 [Application of sections 137 to 140]:
    Lord Rooker Lord Rooker moved Amendment No. 181B:
    Page 94, line 29, leave out "in England and Wales"
    Clause 136, as amended, agreed to.
    Clause 137 [Duty to have a home information pack]:
    Baroness Hanham Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 182:
    Page 94, line 38, leave out "the duty of a responsible" and insert "a matter of voluntary discretion for a"
    The noble Baroness said: This is a large group of amendments, including Amendments Nos. 182, 184 and 185. The remaining amendments are consequential on those first three. They are all linked and would, if implemented, make the information packs voluntary. During the course of the day, we have had some discussion on the desirability of a voluntary or statutory home information pack. It is still our view that this part of the Bill is wrong and that we should try to advance amendments to bring the Government to a commonsense view and stop these home information packs being an absolute requirement.
    We understand that some people might find some merit in producing the packs and. without doubt, in some circumstances they would add to the marketability of the property. However, as a general rule, producing home information packs could be seen as one of many options available to a home seller.
    While we recognise that they may well have some merit in simplifying the process of presenting a home on the market—indeed, many people may chose to produce the packs in order to increase the desirability or marketability of their property—imposing a duty to produce such a pack is unnecessary, will force people to sell their properties privately and will he most unhelpful to all concerned.
    There are many reasons that bring us to this view and some of them will be discussed further on in the course of the Bill. At this stage I put down a marker that we believe that these packs should be voluntary. I beg to move.
    Baroness Hamwee: That is a view that we share. The more the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, convinced himself about the need for a compulsory scheme—talking about 40,000 last week, 40,000 this week, 40,000 next week, so we have got to get it right—the more I thought what a jolly good idea it would be to have a voluntary scheme which would enable us to gain the experience to get it right. We could tweak the scheme over a period in the light of that experience.
    The arguments for home information packs have been about transparency and speeding up the process. I am unconvinced that this is the way to speed up the process. I hope that the electronic mechanisms that are becoming available—on-line searches, and so on—will do that. It defies my belief that the packs will. We simply do not see eye to eye on that matter.
    The best evidence of the potential of the pack comes from the experience that some agents are able to put before us. There are voluntary schemes going on now.
    Over the summer I was interested to read an item in the press—given the time, I will not share the full article with your Lordships—about an agent who operates a voluntary scheme. He said that it should not be forced on sellers. He is quoted as saying:
    "If the Government were involved, it would become far more complicated and less flexible".
    That is a sad reflection on the Government, but one I fear that I share.
    The underlying point is that we should get proper experience. We have heard from the Minister of the problems that the industry is reported as seeing in the pilot. For goodness sake, let us not get it wrong.
    The Earl of Caithness: This is a very important set of amendments.
    Under the proportionality section of The Principles of Good Regulation published by the Better Regulation Task Force, it is stated:
    "Policy solutions must be proportionate to the perceived problem or risk … don't use a sledgehammer to crack a nut".
    In the report on the Bristol seller's pack trial—which the Government think is the greatest thing since sliced bread but is in fact useless—it was reported in paragraph 7.11:
    "Thirty eight per cent of sellers considered their experience with the seller's pack worse than expected";
    and in paragraph 9.4 it says:
    "The buyers' exit survey showed that only 23 per cent felt that the pack helped them to decide whether to put in an offer".
    The same report stated:
    "One of the aims of the seller's pack was to help the buyer make an informed decision on whether to purchase".
    Yet only 42 per cent consulted the pack before making an offer. There is no great demand for the pack.
    1012
    What about the cost? There will be a huge added cost to the whole of the property market for buyers and, particularly, for sellers. It is alleged that the current system costs about £350 million due to aborted transactions, which I seriously question. That £350 million figure is based on the analysis and extrapolation of costs incurred in just 30 transactions—I repeat, 30 transactions—when we market more than 40,000 per week in this country. That is a highly suspect figure.
    But we know that the home condition report is an added cost of a minimum of £300 per report: 2 million transactions would cost £600 million. So we would practically double what the Government say the present system costs. That is a nonsense of a way to make legislation. The Government are imposing Prescott's penalty on property owners. There is no doubt that this is a huge added burden, which will cost a great deal of money. It is not "cost equal". For that reason, these amendments, with some of those that we discussed earlier, are absolutely crucial to getting the balance right.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I am grateful to the Minister for saying that what he had offered before supper was not now possible. The least persuasive part of his explanation was that the industry did not like the idea. Without being too condemnatory in saying it, one has to say that the estate agency industry has a vested interest in the passage of this measure. There is no question but that very many transactions. which, for all sorts of reasons, currently go through without any survey being undertaken will now have to have a survey.
    At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that there was evidence from other countries of the success of packs. But what is so manifestly lacking here is a lack of evidence from this country. When we debated this issue in relation to the Homes Bill in 2001, I went to see the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to discuss the evidence on which the Bill had been brought forward. He was very frank: the evidence was extremely thin, about which he was quite open.
    Given the scale—to which the noble Lord just referred—and reach of these reforms, which could not be more profound, affecting as they will up to 2 million transactions a year and members of the so-called ordinary public, it is a folly for us as a House to go forward with this hugely different, highly complex, Byzantine regime without solid evidence. What proportion of failed transactions will be addressed by the buyer's pack? What will be the extra costs? We have had no remotely convincing statistics of what they are likely to be. What are the savings likely to be? We have had mere speculation as to what the savings are likely to be.
    At the time of the Homes Bill, I conducted a detailed survey among the solicitor practitioners of the Suffolk and North Essex Law Society, which had no axe to grind. Its net conclusion was that that Bill was likely to impose significant extra costs on the "conveying"

    1013
    public—if I may put that way. There is no question that those costs will find their way back into the costs of acquisition and disposal.
    Of all the aspects of this debate that make me believe that this set of amendments must be right is the sheer lack of basic evidence that what we are doing is workable and likely to achieve its purpose. I urge the Government to think hard about that. Although this may not be a poll tax—that is somewhat hyperbolic—there is no doubt that interfering wholesale, as we are, with an extremely well tried, well honed, organically developed system of conveyancing in this country, really is tampering with things one knows not of. My fear, frankly, is that the best intentions in the world may not relieve the proposals in this Bill from pretty dire consequences downstream. I simply do not see why we need to take that risk. I was very grateful for the Minister's reception of my suggestion of a pilot earlier, and I really do not see why it should not be undertaken. I am deeply unimpressed by the industry not thinking much of it. I concede the difficulty of training the inspectors, but that is a superable problem. I think if you decided to take a county, and Northamptonshire was going to be the pilot, one could set up training for inspectors in that county quickly and efficiently, so that you could get the pilot on the go.
    For my part, I wish the intentions of this Bill all the good luck and success in the world. But short of a pilot, or something like it, I do not believe that we are headed down a sensible path. For those reasons, I would support this set of amendments.
    10 p.m.
    Lord Rooker: As I have said before, if we are not confident that it will work, if we are not geared up and the industry is not geared up and we have not got the staff trained, it will not be brought in. I have made that clear. But we cannot get to that point if we do not pursue the legislative route. It has to be, as I have said before, the compulsory route. It is not worth doing voluntarily, simply because of the number of properties that are in chains in this country. It would simply not work on a voluntary basis. So our starting point for debating this amendment, and others with the same aim, has got to be clear from our point of view: acknowledgment of the deficiencies of the present home buying and selling process.
    There is misery caused. When I went to address the AGM of the National Association of Estate Agents about 18 months ago—I think I have said this before—I dumped the speech. I did not use it. About a week beforehand, because I had been writing letters as housing minister every day to Members of Parliament who had got letters and surgery cases from their constituents about the buying and selling process, I said "Give me 20 of the last letters we have had in". And I used them as my speech. It did not go down very well, because they did not like taking it. I simply quoted from these ordinary people's letters the fingerprints of ordinary citizen's experience in buying and selling properties. It was disastrous. True, they
    1014
    were the complainants, but that was the point. There is a really serious problem here, and they did not like it. I said I probably would come back the following year with some more, but by then I was not the housing minister.
    There is a real problem of deficiencies in the system. The Government start from that position. The process is slow by international standards. I know I am going to be asked for this, and I have not got the figure for it, but we are just about the slowest in Europe. Whether that is little Europe or big Europe, I do not know. I do not know how slow we are, but we are incredibly slow, there is no question about that. Anyone who has been in the process knows. We think it is very inefficient, and takes place in a disjointed fashion. Professional people—solicitors and others—spend most of their time sitting around waiting for someone else to do something, but nothing happens. That is the reality and people understand that. It is absolutely appalling. It is wasteful and prone to delays.
    Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I am terribly sorry, and most grateful to the Minister for giving way, but that was the provocation to cap all provocations: to make a generalised statement that solicitors sit around waiting for something to happen. Just sit inside any solicitor's office for a day, and you will know that their reputation in conveyancing matters depends upon them pulling their finger out and getting on with it. That is because, as the Minister has implied all along, speed is of the essence.
    I know that the Minister is being semi-jovial at this time of night, but I hope that he will withdraw the remark.
    Lord Rooker: They are not doing nothing, they are obviously doing something for client B while they wait for replies for client A. They are still clocking up on the clockometer for the money. I am not saying that they are twiddling their fingers. They have made inquiries, sent out various forms and contacted local authorities. They have started the searches and have tried to contact the solicitors for the other party. But the system is a problem and an incredible waste of professional people's time.
    We think that around 30 per cent of transactions fail after the offer has been accepted, which in itself is a problem. Indeed, Members of the Committee can go and ask people in the street about their experiences. They think they have a deal and then, all of a sudden, it evaporates. Although the figure has been queried, we estimate the cost of failures to be around £350 million. Around £1 million a day is wasted. That is not money down the drain because it goes into someone's pocket, but it is not part of buying houses because nothing has happened. The deal has fallen apart. However, someone has been paid because people have paid out their money.
    Nine out of 10 consumers are not satisfied with the present process. When asked, 90 per cent of consumers are not satisfied with the present procedure. We ought to focus on that statistic. The results of our research carried out by independent consultants were presented

    1015
    in a consultation paper, together with options for reform. The responses revealed a clear consensus on the way forward. Home buyers and sellers need more information and they need it up-front, at the start of the process.
    It is true that only a minority of people have surveys carried out. The percentage is worryingly small when you think about what they are actually buying. As I have said, because of the chain system, home information packs need to be compulsory so that everyone can benefit from them. We cannot have someone wrecking the whole process, which we do not doubt would happen if they were voluntary. Voluntary arrangements would not work.
    The Law Society's transaction protocol provides some evidence. For years the protocol sought to encourage sellers, through their solicitors, to make all the legal documentation available at the start of the transaction process. That has been only partially successful. Despite the best efforts of the Law Society, the voluntary protocol has not been able to deliver the improvements we seek, so we have taken the mandatory route to deliver these universal benefits.
    The effect of the main amendment and those tabled with it would be to introduce a voluntary home information pack system and essentially continue what is now a very unsatisfactory process; indeed, it would be almost the status quo. Sellers would be allowed to avoid the duties by ensuring that the marketing material made it clear that the property was being sold without a pack. That would probably be the worst of all worlds. Given the choice, some sellers—perhaps a sizable proportion—would choose to market their property without a home information pack. That might be to avoid costs or in the hope of avoiding disclosure of information. That is key here—the avoidance of the disclosure of information about problems with the property that sellers are aware of, but do not want to disclose. We think that that is very unfair to buyers who would have had to provide a pack for their own sale, given that most people are part of a chain.
    More harmful than that, the result of these amendments would be an unsatisfactory two-track process where sales without packs would slow down sales with packs in a chain, cancelling out the benefits to those who had provided the packs. Having people freeloading in the system just would not work and we would be back to where we started.
    A small number of forward-looking estate agents—those who really care about the people they are working for—are already marketing properties with home information packs and reaping the benefits, not least in lower transaction failure rates. While I accept that such agents represent only a small proportion, numbers are increasing. However, the increase is taking place far too slowly for us to say that the market will ultimately provide. I am afraid the phrase used by the late Ian Gow when he was Minister for housing—"the magic of the market"—does not apply here because we would have to wait until kingdom come
    1016
    before the system became universal. Only by introducing the requirement for the packs can we deliver the benefits.
    We listened to the concerns expressed during the debates on the Homes Bill before the general election. We have come forward with a different system now. It is not based on criminal sanctions at all. But we need to beware of relaxing the duties if we are to succeed. A case can be made for a voluntary basis, but it would not improve the buying and selling of homes. We cannot make such a case at the same time as saying that we are going to improve the system.
    There are markets all over the country. House prices vary regionally: there are expensive houses alongside inexpensive ones. While I pay enormous tribute to the sincere concern the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has raised in his amendments, behind which there is goodwill and experience, the section of the market in which he operates is unusual to say the least—I do not think that it is mirrored anywhere else in the country.
    I hope that on reflection the Committee will recognise that a mandatory system is the only one that will work. It would not be worth having this part in the Bill if we were not doing that. That is why we went back to get a manifesto commitment to introduce a compulsory home information pack system. There would be no need for legislation for a voluntary basis; we would not be doing what we are doing.
    I know that that is a bucket of cold water, but the voluntary system will not work and we are not going down that route; if we were we would not need the Bill. It would be a false prospectus to say to people that we can improve the system on a voluntary basis. We cannot make such a case: it will not work because the bulk of properties are involved in a chain. People will say that we said that there would be a different system and that we would improve it; that they trusted us and we did not tell them the truth.
    The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, quoted us the latest report from the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life about the fact that the general public think that Ministers and MPs are telling fibs. I think that the report said "lying". We are not lying on this matter. We would be telling fibs if we said that we could do this on a voluntary basis and improve the home buying and selling process. We genuinely do not believe that we could make that stick. It would not be telling the public the truth. It is not a happy story. It is incredibly complicated.
    I accept that and I have given enough forewarnings: every week another 40,000 dwellings are being marketed. We step on that and get it wrong at our peril as Government. We understand that, which is why the provision will not be introduced unless we have it geared up, we have had a good dry run, people are adequately trained and all the bits are ironed out that are not straight at the present time. The only way to do it is through a compulsory system.
    The Earl of Caithness: I must take up the Minister on some of his points. He blames the chain system for the delays. I contend that he is totally wrong to do so:

    1017
    other countries have chain systems and are quicker than us. The chain system can hold something up but it is not the only cause. The Bill is not going to help the chain system. We are slow by international standards but we are becoming much quicker. We are also cheap by international standards. We are speeding up hugely because of e-conveyancing; the solicitors have become much quicker; the agents have improved over the past six years.
    If the Minister carried out a survey now compared to the evidence of the 1990s he would find that transactions are going through more quickly. I was surprised when he said that nine out of 10 people were not satisfied with the present system. If I carried out a survey now I could get 10 out of 10 for him, because it is a matter only of the question one asks. I could get one out of 10 if I asked another question. That is not a terribly good statistic.
    The Minister said that forward-looking estate agents are selling with packs now. The Minister in another place, Keith Hill, called Maria Coleman, who was part of the Bristol project, "saintly" in Committee. At that stage Maria Coleman, besides being an agent, was very involved with a company that produced the packs. No wonder she was for the packs. It was a conflict of interest which I hope she declared to the Government before she took it on. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that.
    I have used packs in the past and it helps when solicitors provide information to agents. It can work on a voluntary basis. I disagree fundamentally with the Minister on that.
    10.15 p.m.
    Baroness Hanham: I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this very important part of the Bill.
    1018
    One of the assumptions made by the Government in regard to home information packs is that buyers will accept the home condition report. I am not sure that that will happen. I do not know of any buyer who will say to the seller, "Okay, the report that you have given about the condition of your property is correct". We may very well find that the situation is not much different from that which exists now; people will simply go and get a second survey of their own which they feel they can trust.
    We have not yet touched on the cost of these packs. The current estimate is £1,000 for each pack for each seller. We shall come later to how often the packs will have to be produced. Thanks to the activities of the Bank of England, the property market is slowing; we are not in the same heated market that we have been in for a number of years. It will be interesting to see whether that slowing will benefit from home information packs. I doubt that it will. I think the whole mechanism is beginning to calm down; there is more for buyers to seek, to look at and to go around. E-conveyancing and e-transactions are already beginning to speed up the whole process.
    The Government are seeking to impose an extremely bureaucratic system. It is not a system that we like. We think that there are benefits in putting this on a voluntary basis if people wish to put all the information together, have it available and risk having a home condition report that buyers will accept, but it should not be on a wholesale compulsory basis.
    With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment for the time being.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    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 eighteen minutes past ten o'clock.

Official Report of the Grand Committee on the Pensions Bill
(Eighth Day)
Monday, 13 September 2004.
The Committee met at half past three of the clock.
[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale) in the Chair.]
Clause 172 [Calculation, collection and recovery of levies]:
Lord Higgins Lord Higgins moved Amendment No. 268:
Page 119, line 11, at end insert—
"( ) The trustees or managers of the scheme may charge a sum at least equivalent to the non-risked based amount of the levy to all scheme members."
The noble Lord said: The amendment is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale. During our previous sitting, we had a very wide-ranging debate on the Pension Protection Fund levy. Perhaps the grouping was too extensive. On Report we will need to deal with the matter in a more focused—I believe that is the "in" phrase at the moment—manner.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Targeted?
Lord Higgins: No, we are against targets, and I thought that the Government were also against them, but nobody is against being focused.
The noble Baroness in her usual way was kind enough to set out the timing of the implementation of the levy. That was extremely helpful, because we were all surprised at some of the ways in which it is apparently planned that the scheme will operate. The noble Baroness dealt with the period of the initial levy, which has no risk-based element—it is not on the record, so I am not sure how we can get it—after which, for a transitional period of two to five years, the scheme is a mixture of the two; and, finally, from year six onwards, it has both a basic and a risk-based element. On reflection, I feel bound to say that, since one of the problems with the levy's not being risk-based is that it seriously adversely affects sound schemes, which would be paying protection for less soundly based pension schemes, to wait six years before full implementation is too long. No doubt we will wish to return to that point.
The amendment was debated in another place. The CBI is particularly concerned about it. The amendment suggests that the trustees or managers of the scheme may charge a sum at least equivalent to the non-risk-based levy to all scheme members. In other words, a pension scheme paying the levy should be allowed to recoup some of the cost from its members.
GC 268
That, at least, would have the advantage of bringing home to scheme members what the system is all about. The question is whether that would be appropriate.
My impression is that the Government were not unsympathetic to the amendment when it was debated in the Commons. But, if a company could charge out the insurance premium—for want of a better expression—to its members, a problem of uncertainty arises: does it cover only active members or does it also include deferred members? Many schemes will have very few active members and many deferred members or those whose pension is in payment. It is not clear from the debate in another place whether the proposal covers everyone. The CBI appears to be in favour of it. I declare an interest—my goodness it must be very trivial—in this matter: I was a deferred pensioner and am now an actual pensioner of a large multinational. I would not view with enormous enthusiasm the idea that the company would suddenly ask me to pay towards the cost of the scheme because another company may go bust, when I have been receiving the pension, I regret to say, for some considerable time. I am not clear why that should or should not be so.
In all events, those are the arguments being put forward. It would be helpful to hear the Minister's comments. I beg to move.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: On Thursday we had a very thorough and thoughtful debate on the PPF, the risk-based levy and so on. We do not believe that you can have a genuine risk-based levy unless everyone pays on a risk basis.
I would have thought that Amendment No. 268—an EEF amendment, if I can so call it—was difficult. I can see what people are trying to achieve by it, but I would have thought that it was better for pension schemes and their members to discuss together how the premium will be paid rather than to be too prescriptive here. On balance, therefore, subject to what the Minister says, I am inclined not to support the amendment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Hollis of Heigham): I thank noble Lords, and agree that there are issues about phasing in the risk-based levy. If opposition parties have strong views about that or alternative routes, we will obviously be happy to consider them in consultation with the industry. That said, all the advice that I have been given in my meetings with the industry is that it wants it phased in as quickly as possible. That means not waiting to the end of the full transitional period, which is six years. We are in a dilemma, but I am perfectly happy to continue those discussions.
The principle of phasing the levy in seems to have been welcomed by the major companies—by definition, those that are least likely to be paying a high risk-related premium. It would be difficult to unpick that, but I am very happy to take on board any points or even anything that should go in the guidance notes from the Government or discussions with officials and working parties. I realise that the matter is difficult,

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particularly when one wants to raise the single sum and balance the two. The more one takes on, risk-based, the more one lays off on to scheme funding for weaker companies. It is an honourable dilemma, but we do not have any easy solutions to it.
The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, has identified the two issues involved with the amendment. One is whether scheme members or essentially the employer will pay for the levy. The other is, if the levy is laid off on scheme members, what we not only do about existing pensioners—they might not be happy to see a charge of £5 or £10 a year fall on them—but how we trace and track deferred members. We know that for every two active members, there is likely to be one non-active pensioner.
We have given a lot of thought to the matter. We do not disagree with much of the thrust of the amendment, but there are problems about its practical delivery. In the first instance, recovering any sums from deferred members would be difficult to administer, because they have no pension in payment, and are unlikely to be employed by the sponsoring employer. As a result, many schemes do not have up-to-date contact details for those members. Indeed, many of them may come back through the tracing service in due course, so it will be quite hard.
Even when we have members, we also have quite complicated methods of calculating the sums. The method for recouping costs means that we might have to get the money from pensioner members, which would affect their current income in payment. For deferred members, we would have to work out quite complicated costs about accrual rates over time and so on; statistically, it would be an elaborate exercise.
Reluctantly, we are saying that although we do not disagree that it would not be unreasonable to ask people to contribute towards the payment of the protection of their pensions, there are practical administrative difficulties in the non-risk-based element. If the average per capita sum is about £20 a year a member—that might come for the non-risk scheme element to only £5 or £7 frankly, the administrative costs in chasing that might outweigh a simple contribution. We cannot find a way through the matter any more than I suspect that the noble Lord can. Therefore, we are leaving it to employers, scheme trustees and their consultation to work out whether they wish to lay off any of the costs and how best to do so.
Some schemes have large numbers of active members; some are tiny; some have different ranges of payers; some have multiples of deferred members with tiny pots and so on, some of whom have been lost track of and will have to be chased. Therefore, the costs of administration could exceed the saving to the employer if we were to go down the proposed route. With that acceptance of the complexity and the admission that we are slightly stuck on the matter, I
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suggest that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment. If he has any further thoughts on the matter, we will be happy to consider them.
Lord Higgins: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for clarifying the situation, which was not entirely clear in the debates in the House of Commons. I find her arguments very convincing. I am chairman of a pension fund and had to try to track down deferred members to get their agreement to changing their AVCs from Equitable Life to another organisation. That was extremely difficult and very costly. Even so, one could get nowhere near 100 per cent of the people involved. I understand, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 172 agreed to.
Clause 173 [Cases where fraud compensation payments can be made]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 268ZA:
Page 120, line 14, leave out from "event," to "and" in line 16 and insert "a scheme failure notice has been issued under section 116(2)(a) in relation to the scheme and that notice has become binding,"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 268ZB to 268ZH:
Page 120, line 17, leave out paragraph (c) and insert—
"(c) a cessation event has not occurred in relation to the scheme in respect of a cessation notice which has been issued during the period—

(i) beginning with the occurrence of the insolvency event, and

(ii) ending immediately before the issuing of the scheme failure notice under section 116(2)(a),

and the occurrence of such a cessation event in respect of a cessation notice issued during that period is not a possibility."
Page 120, line 25, leave out from "a" to end of line 27 and insert "scheme failure notice under section 122(2) in relation to the scheme and that notice has become binding."
Page 120, line 37, at end insert "and that notice has become binding"
Page 121, line 4, leave out subsection (8).
Page 121, line 21, leave out sub-paragraph (ii) and insert—
"(ii) a cessation event has occurred in relation to the scheme in respect of a cessation notice issued during the period—

(a) beginning with the occurrence of the last insolvency event which occurred before the current event, and

(b) ending with the occurrence of the current event, and"

Page 121, line 24, at end insert—
"( ) For the purposes of this section—

(a) a cessation event in relation to a scheme occurs when a cessation notice in relation to the scheme becomes binding,

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(b) a "cessation notice" means—

(i) a withdrawal notice issued in relation to the scheme under section 116(2)(b) (scheme rescue has occurred),

(ii) a withdrawal notice issued in relation to the scheme under section 122(3) (scheme rescue has occurred),

(iii) a withdrawal notice issued in relation to the scheme under section (Withdrawal following issue of section 116(4) notice) (no insolvency event has occurred or is likely to occur),

(iv) a notice issued in relation to the scheme under section 174(2)(b) (scheme rescue has occurred), or

(v) a notice issued under section 116(4) (inability to confirm status of scheme) in a case where the notice has become binding and section (Withdrawal following issue of section 116(4) notice) does not apply,

(c) the occurrence of a cessation event in relation to a scheme in respect of a cessation notice issued during a particular period ("the specified period") is a possibility until each of the following are no longer reviewable—

(i) any cessation notice which has been issued in relation to the scheme during the specified period;

(ii) any failure to issue such a cessation notice during the specified period;

(iii) any notice which has been issued by the Board under Chapter 2 or 3 which is relevant to the issue of a cessation notice in relation to the scheme during the specified period or to such a cessation notice which has been issued during that period becoming binding;

(iv) any failure to issue such a notice as is mentioned in sub-paragraph (iii), and

(d) the issue of, or failure to issue, a notice is to be regarded as reviewable—

(i) during the period within which it may be reviewed by virtue of Chapter 6, and

(ii) if the matter is so reviewed, until—

(a) the review and any reconsideration,

(b) any reference to the PPF Ombudsman in respect of the matter, and

(c) any appeal against his determination or directions,

has been finally disposed of."
Page 121, line 31, leave out "the event within" and insert "the issue of the scheme failure notice under section 116(2)(a) mentioned in"
On Question, amendments agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 173 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Skelmersdale: The government amendments to which we have just agreed and which were "precursed"—I think that is possibly the word—earlier in our sessions,
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almost entirely rewrite Clause 173 for perfectly respectable reasons. However, a lot of this would occur anyway where fraud did not appear. It is not particularly relevant to fraud because the PPF payments, which we discussed at some length previously in Committee, follow to a great extent, although not entirely, the same formulation.
Therefore, I am rather confused by subsection (1)(b) of Clause 173; the fraud element comes in because of the commission of a prescribed offence which, so far as I can see from my various pieces of background reading, has not been exemplified very much, if at all. It would be extremely helpful if the Minister could help me in that respect.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Is the noble Lord asking what we consider to be a prescribed offence and whether that will come through in regulations?
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Yes, it will come through in regulations. To give the scantiest of backgrounds, I refer to two points. First, the noble Lord will know that this is an area where, as he absolutely rightly says, the Pension Protection Fund has taken over the responsibilities of the Pensions Compensation Board. Therefore, this is one area where the PPF remit extends beyond DB schemes to DC schemes. From the experience we have this is a very limited offence. The 1995 Act, which sought to deal with Maxwell-type fraud, has broadly worked, I am pleased to say. So far as we are aware, the Pensions Compensation Board dealt with three such cases which took eight to 11 months. We discussed that in connection an earlier amendment. I believe that they resulted in a total default of about £500,000.
Such cases nearly always arise because the employer has allegedly embezzled some of the funds. Two of the cases concerned DB schemes and one was a DC scheme. The noble Lord will understand that that is privileged information and that it would be inappropriate to give the names of the relevant companies. I would have to share that information on Privy Council terms.
A prescribed offence will be an offence that involves dishonesty. It is not about mistakes or something being one day late but about dishonesty. That test is well established in common law.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am very grateful. I shall return to this matter when we discuss the levy in a few clauses' time.
Clause 173, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 174 [Board's duties in respect of certain applications under section 173]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 268ZJ:
Page 122, line 6, after second "as" insert "reasonably"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 268ZK and 268ZL:
Page 122, line 7, at end insert "reasonably"
Page 122, line 14, at end insert—
"(3A) For the purposes of this Chapter a notice issued under subsection (2) is not binding until—

(a) the period within which the issue of the notice may be reviewed by virtue of Chapter 6 has expired, and

(b) if the issue of the notice is so reviewed—

(i) the review and any reconsideration,

(ii) any reference to the PPF Ombudsman in respect of the issue of the notice, and

(iii) any appeal against his determination or directions,

has been finally disposed of and the notice has not been revoked, varied or substituted.
(3B) Where a notice issued under subsection (2) becomes binding, the Board must as soon as reasonably practicable give a notice to that effect together with a copy of the binding notice to the persons to whom it is required to give a copy notice under subsection (3).
(3C) A notice under subsection (3B) must be in the prescribed form and contain such information as may be prescribed."
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 174, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 175 to 178 agreed to.
3.45 p.m.
Clause 179 [Fraud Compensation Fund]:
On Question, Whether Clause 179 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: I have one point to make concerning the fraud compensation fund. I am not entirely clear about the definitions of situations that would be covered under the Bill, in particular these clauses. The noble Baroness referred to fraud and dishonesty. A letter has come to me from a Member of another place which is concerned with an individual who says that the value of the scheme was reduced by 95 per cent by an ex-trustee because of breach of trust. I was not clear about the expression "breach of trust" with regard to dishonesty and fraud. He also says that the pension ombudsman does not seem interested in the case and, if I understand it correctly, only cases from 1997 onwards are affected. It might be easier if I sent her the letter, but can the noble Baroness say whether breach of trust is covered by the board in those circumstances? If not, what redress does another trustee, for example, have against the individual concerned?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: It would help me enormously if I were to see the letter. I have not had any particular briefing on this, but my understanding is that there would be a remedy against trustees only if dishonesty were involved. For example, the trustees might have made a pretty disastrous investment decision, but that would not, in my book, be a breach of trust. I am thinking on my feet, but there would either have to be culpable negligence—for example,
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failure to extract money from the employer when appropriately due or failure to bring in the accountant when appropriately due—or the trustees would have to have been involved in dishonest action. That is where I think the case would stick. If the noble Lord could send me a copy of the letter, we could have more background and see whether it is simply a complaint about investment decisions or whether there is a degree of recklessness and culpability which veers over into dishonesty.
Lord Higgins: I am most grateful to the Minister for her reply. I think there is a difficult dividing line in such matters. I shall send the noble Baroness a copy of the letter. I apologise for not having done so earlier, but I have only recently managed to catch up with the details myself.
Clause 179 agreed to.
Clause 180 [Fraud compensation levy]:
On Question, Whether Clause 180 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Skelmersdale: I said that I would come back to the levy. Not only is there to be a scheme levy, as my noble friend Lord Higgins has said, there will also be a risk-based levy. In certain circumstances, there will be a fraud compensation levy. The trouble is, one does not know what fraud is until it happens. Therefore, it is difficult, I should have thought, to raise a levy in anticipation of what the noble Baroness has just admitted is, comparatively, a very small amount pertaining to very few schemes. I know that the various pension schemes' organisations to which we have referred in debates on previous amendments are extremely interested in how this will work and how the department intends the board to calculate it. After all, it should be a comparatively insignificant amount, but it could be much larger. Indeed, the amount could go up and down, depending on the circumstances and depending on the year.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, is right: we expect the sums to be extremely modest. In Clause 180, unlike the other PPF-related clauses, we do not envisage that the levy will be an annual occurrence. The Pensions Compensation Board has needed to collect only two levies since April 1997, for precisely the reasons that the noble Lord described. The second was announced only in March this year. The compensation levy currently being collected is at a rate of 23 pence per member and applies to all schemes liable to pay the levy, providing they have at least two members. We have no reason to think that that pattern will alter under the PPF board.
We intend to limit the size of levies and their impact on individual schemes through regulations, so that people know in advance where they stand. Unlike the other levies, they will cover all the DC schemes. About 97,000 schemes will be billed, of which 85,000 will be DC schemes. Obviously, DC schemes tend to be the smaller schemes, but that is one reason why the levy is so low. Our intention is that levies will be calculated

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according to the formula that the PCB uses. It seeks to maintain a float of about £2 million in the fund, and that is what we expect to do.
There will be very little change. What I should have said in my previous response is that the main difference, apart from the fact that the process will be run by the PPF, is that there will be 100 per cent compensation; at the moment, it is 90 per cent. With fraud, we seek to restore the individual members' scheme to what it was. That is the main difference. Apart from that, the levels will be pretty much as they are under the PCB.
Lord Skelmersdale: I had picked up that it would be 100 per cent compensation, thanks to the useful briefing for Peers that the noble Baroness circulated a long time ago—was it weeks or months? On page 36 of that document, there is a useful example that shows clearly that compensation would be 100 per cent.
I am grateful for the answer that there will, basically, be no change from the existing scheme of things, but I hope that the noble Baroness will understand why I asked the question. The Bill is not explicit in that regard.
Clause 180 agreed to.
Clause 181 [Information to he provided to the Board etc]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 268A:
Page 126, line 30, at end insert—
"( ) This section is subject to section 296."
The noble Lord said: This group of amendments covers basically the same point, which is a human rights point. The intention is that information to be provided to the board under regulations to be made under the clause should be protected. We have a long time to go before we reach Clause 296, which deals with protected items, but basically this relates to information that is subject to legal privilege.
As I understand it, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights enshrines the right to privacy. Scots law, in particular, has traditionally protected the relationship between a solicitor and his or her client and has made provision for the doctrine of legal professional privilege, which we do not have south of the border in exactly the same way. To preserve that relationship and ensure that such communications are privileged, provision should be made in the Bill to the effect that the provisions of Clause 181 will not extend to the disclosure of such information. I hope that the noble Baroness will agree, so that it will be the third day running that I will have had a modicum of success with the Bill. However, that may not be the case.
Also in the group is Amendment No. 269. I feel strongly that when pieces of paper and so on are taken away, they should he receipted, and everybody should know what is going on. I also wondered why, in the first instance, it was necessary to have as long a period as four months to retain bits of paper, given that a little later on there is a 12–month extension for such holding. I should have thought that three to six months would have been a much more appropriate period.
Clearly, retention must be necessary and proportionate. That is not currently in the Bill, but it would seem to me to be common sense and normal practice. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Again, I doubt whether there is very much disagreement between the noble Lord and myself on any of these issues. On the first of his points and Amendment No. 268A, I simply refer him to Clause 296, which specifies that,
"A person may not be required under or by virtue of this Act to produce, disclose or permit the inspection of protected items".
I am happy to give the reassurance that he suspected that I could give him—that legal privilege covers those items. So that is OK, I think.
Lord Skelmersdale: Hang on a minute, that is not exactly the point. Legal privilege covers those items, but the point at issue is whether the clause is covered by Clause 296.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Yes, it is.
The second point raised by the noble Lord was about documents being seized. I absolutely agree with the principles behind the amendment; it is important to give a receipt, for reasons that we discussed with regard to the regulator. Frankly, if receipts were not given to provide a paper trail, evidence would not stand up under PACE. Therefore, giving a receipt is right in terms not only of human rights but of practicabilities. It would also help people whose premises have been entered: they could keep track of documents which had been taken and, when necessary, ensure that the documents were returned to them. As we said earlier, some of those documents are part of the lifeblood even of a company that is winding up.
The third issue on which the noble Lord pressed me related to the minimum period. The reason that it is 12 months is that we expect the assessment period to be 12 months. Therefore, the documents are likely to be necessary for the assessment period. None the less, that would not mean that there would not be receipts given or that, if the board needed to hold on to the documents, duplicates could not be made, so the company could continue to have access to the material it needed to wind down or go for its valuations.
Lord Skelmersdale: There was a third point, relating to retention of the document being necessary and appropriate.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: This is a time question. We are going for 12 months rather than three because that period broadly coincides with the time necessary for the assessment period, which is precisely when the board will need those documents. That is not to say that the company will not have duplicate documents in that situation, should it request them.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am extremely grateful to the Minister. I may have to come back to the last point, having read what she said, because I am not sure whether we are in as much agreement on that point as we were on the other two or three points. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 181 agreed to.
Clause 182 [Notices requiring provision of information]:
[Amendment No. 268B not moved.]
Clause 182 agreed to.
Clause 183 [Entry of premises]:
[Amendments Nos. 269 to 270B not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 183 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: I want to ask just one question. The clause relates to entry of premises and will affect those operating with regard to the various fraud compensation arrangements, and so on. Could the noble Baroness give us some idea how that compares with, say, the powers of entry of Customs and Excise? Is it a fairly standard situation? Customs and Excise normally has greater powers than anyone else, and I was not clear whether the powers were appropriate in relation to police or Customs and Excise. Where on the scale of powers of entry do the provisions fall?
4 P.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Although issues of warrants may obviously arise, the board will normally enter not because fraud is going on—that could be the case, however—but because the Pension Protection Fund needs the basic information, as the scheme is winding up. It is effectively in the assessment period. We expect the PPF to be in and out of the company premises quite regularly, in the sense of collecting the information necessary for the assessment period to determine the value of the assets and the protected liabilities, to see whether the scheme comes through.
Obviously, we expect that to be with the consent of the company; it may well be anxious to see the security of the scheme by coming into a compensation arrangement. Therefore, we do not expect that to be especially challenged by employers, unless there is fraud and so forth. Issues of warrants come up where the employer resists entry. As I understand it, there our powers are broadly similar to those of the Inland Revenue, which in turn are broadly similar to those of Customs and Excise—a magistrate's warrant has to be agreed.
I emphasise that we expect the PPF to have routine entry, with consent, to premises as part of determining the assessment period. That is to monitor the future viability of the fund and whether it is capable of being wound up outside the PPF, because its assets are greater than its liabilities to an extent that it can more than match the compensation offered by the PPF or not. We do not expect warrants to come up very often—bluntly, only when we suspect that the employer is verging on fraud, in the sense of trying to destroy documents that we need. I expect the provisions to be used in only very rare circumstances.
Lord Higgins: My question may have been prompted by my misunderstanding, and that may in
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turn have been provoked by the fact that there are two levies. There is a Pension Protection Fund levy and a fraud protection fund levy. There is only the one board, and the board may require entry in connection with the Pension Protection Fund or a fraud investigation. Is that right?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: That is exactly right. In terms of the levy, but particularly of the assessment by the PPF during the assessment period of 12 months or so, when it is uncertain whether a company can or should wind up its pension fund outside the PPF, we expect there to be regular, free and continuous access into the books and so on. Because the PPF is responsible for fraud as well as the levy, as the noble Lord rightly said, there will clearly be situations where a warrant is necessary where it is suspected that documents would otherwise be destroyed. In that case, the board has to go to the magistrate, but we would expect the request to be granted. The powers of entry and for the granting of warrants are similar to the powers of the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise.
Lord Higgins: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I am now a little concerned; I was trying to think of other examples where there were powers of entry merely to obtain commercial information rather than information that is in any way related to an offence. I do not wish to pursue the matter, so I shall let it rest there.
Clause 183 agreed to.
Clause 184 [Penalties relating to sections 182 and 183]:
On Question, Whether Clause 184 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Skelmersdale: I am about to ask exactly the same question on the clause as my noble friend Lord Higgins did on the previous clause. Are the penalties envisaged necessary and appropriate in this instance?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: It might be helpful for me to spell this out, because it is a sensitive area, and then continue to the issue of penalties. The obligations to provide information to the board are set out in the earlier provisions of this chapter, which we have already discussed. These are the duty to provide information requested by notices under Clause 182 and to co-operate with a person who has entered scheme premises using the power under Clause 183.
Clause 184 follows on from these obligations and is designed to ensure that there are effective criminal sanctions available for use against those who intentionally fail to comply with these obligations. There are two types of offence: first, when individuals without reasonable excuse fail to comply with a request to provide information, they will be guilty of an offence which can lead to a fine of up to level 5 on the standard scale—which, I understand, is £5,000. Secondly, for the more serious offence of deliberately altering, destroying or concealing a document that they may be asked to produce, again without

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reasonable excuse, an individual will be guilty of an offence which can lead to a fine or imprisonment for up to two years—or both.
We envisage that these penalties will only be used in exceptional circumstances. They are an important deterrent and will encourage individuals to provide the information that the board of the PPF will need to carry out its functions. The penalties would apply only when an individual has deliberately failed to provide information, or has destroyed or tampered with evidence, without reasonable excuse. I hope that that response is satisfactory.
Lord Skelmersdale: Almost. Level 5 on the standard scale is normal, as I understand it. My question relates to subsection (7) about the last offence mentioned by the noble Baroness, the intentional destroying or altering of a document. Is that paralleled in, say, environmental law, where such powers of entry are similar?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am sorry. I really do not know about the powers of environmental law.
Lord Skelmersdale: Could the noble Baroness be helpful by giving another example outside pensions legislation where similar fines or imprisonment are levied?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am trying to think back to the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, which had similar powers. I am fairly sure that we had similar powers in the CSA Bill because we had a similar debate, where noble Lords raised concerns about what information was kept by Experian, the credit agencies and so on. I am assured that these matters are broadly similar to the Financial Services Authority legislation.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am grateful.
Clause 184 agreed to.
Clause 185 [Warrants]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 270C:
Page 130, leave out lines 11 and 12 and insert "sheriff"
The noble Lord said: The amendment refers entirely to the authorisation of the warrant in Scotland. It has been put to us by the Scottish Law Society that the power to grant warrants should extend to sheriffs only. The society says that often a Justice of the Peace will not be legally qualified—as would be the case south of the border—and may be unfamiliar with the criteria needed to grant such warrants. Given the few times that such warrants will be needed, the JPs will not be able to build up expertise. The warrants are for investigating serious matters, so it would seem to be fair that a warrant should be authorised by someone who is legally qualified. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I probably need some advice from my Scottish friends. Actually, this is the third day running that I am happy in principle to say
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that the noble Lord is exactly right and, if time permits, I should like to come back with a Government adjustment to reflect that situation.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am grateful, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 185 agreed to.
Clause 186 [Offence of providing false or misleading information to the Board]:
[Amendments Nos. 271 to 273 not moved.]
Clause 186 agreed to.
Clause 187 [Use of information]:
On Question, Whether Clause 187 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Skelmersdale: This is such a short clause that it warrants a very short question: what on earth is it doing in the Bill?
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I am not a lawyer, but I am a little bit puzzled. The clause says:
"Information held by the Board in the exercise of any of its functions may be used by the Board",
for its purposes. Does,
"may be used by the Board",
mean that it may not or must not be used otherwise?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I know that the clause sounds either otiose or disingenuous, but it may be helpful if I give an example of where it may come into practice, which may address the questions asked by Members of the Committee.
The board may become involved with the scheme because the employer has entered insolvency proceedings; at this point, the board would begin to gather data in order to carry out the valuation of the scheme's assets and liabilities. However, at a later date, there may be an application for fraud compensation from the same scheme. By virtue of the clause, the board will be allowed to use the data that it gathered earlier to help process a fraud application. It would not be an appropriate use of the board's time or money to gather that information twice. However, the usual restrictions will still apply: in other words, the board will still have to follow the disclosure requirement set out in the Bill and any obligations imposed on it by the Data Protection Act in respect of fair processing.
The problem that lies behind the clause is the very appropriate concern issuing from the Data Protection Act not to allow "fishing trip" information. The clause covers a situation when the board is moving from one issue related to winding up to a second issue relating to fraud—when it has collected the information which then goes across.

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I do not know whether that has answered the queries of Members of the Committee. I should prefer to take legal advice on the question of "may" and "must". If my answer does not satisfy the Committee, I shall write.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: The Minister's remarks were helpful. I assure her that, however much I may criticise her, I would never dream of calling her disingenuous or otiose.
Lord Skelmersdale: Certainly not the latter—and almost certainly not the former.
I am still a little confused because it seems to me perfectly obvious that when the board has information it will use it. I did not really gather from the Minister's explanation why there should be specific provision to allow it to do so.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Perhaps I can help the noble Lord. This was not in the briefing—but the problem might have arisen in the past, when OPRA collected information, and sometimes found information that was relevant to other forms of prosecution. It might have involved the Pensions Compensation Board, and so on. There was a real problem about Chinese walls and what information should go across. There were occasions when the chairman of OPRA had to excuse herself from discussions of deliberations, because she had become party to sensitive information.
I am ad libbing here, but I suspect that we are addressing a problem that is a hangover from a time when these functions were exercised by two separate bodies, with fraud on one hand and pension compensation or OPRA rules on the other. That is the context. Unfortunately, as a statutory body, the board needs the powers to act in this way. I am assured that the words are necessary—but I suspect that they relate to the history, which did not occur to me until I was pressed on the matter by the noble Lord, and which is one of separation of responsibilities which have been brought together here for the first time. In the past, that movement of information would have been problematic under the Data Protection Act.
Lord Skelmersdale: So essentially the Government are doing away with the Chinese walls.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: We are essentially saying that the PPF is now the board responsible for both functions. We have reconsideration committees and a proper appeals procedure, which is much more extensive than the one that existed with OPRA. Therefore, the problem does not now arise horizontally, because we have put in vertical remedies to cope with these issues.
Clause 187 agreed to.
4.15 p.m.
Clause 188 [Restricted information]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 274:
Page 131, line 7, at end insert—

"(c) the Secretary of State, or

(d) any person that the Board has consulted on the matter"

The noble Lord said: This amendment deals with the same thoughts. The question is: who exactly should reveal information, and who should cling on to it? Except as provided by Clauses 189 to 194 and Clause 225, restricted information must not be disclosed by the board or any person who receives the information directly or indirectly from the board. That seems perfectly sensible, but the department will also receive restricted information. Indeed, restricted information might come out of consultation between the board and outside parties. Therefore, it would seem sensible to include the department and such outside parties in this prohibition. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I need further help from the noble Lord—partly because of the acoustics. Is he saying that we should add to the shopping list of bodies to whom the restricted information can be given to, or that we should increase the number of bodies to whom it cannot be given?
Lord Skelmersdale: As I understand it, subsection (1) is about information that cannot be disclosed, therefore the amendment would add to it.
Lord Borrie: The noble Lord should possibly use the word "by". Paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (1) each start with the word "by": "by the Board" and,
"by any person who receives the information … from the Board".
Does the noble Lord wish to include the word "by" in proposed paragraphs (c) and (d)?
Lord Skelmersdale: Certainly.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am not sure whether my response fully addresses the matter, so I shall reflect on the matter and come back to the noble Lord. As it stands, both the Secretary of State and those whom the board may have consulted to acquire the information would already be bound by the restriction. As my noble friend rightly identified, Clause 188(1)(b) states that restricted information must not be disclosed onwards,
"by any person who receives the information directly or indirectly from the Board"
unless the onward disclosure is permitted by Clauses 189 to 194. The noble Lord does not need any further information about what restricted information would be in those circumstances. Does the noble Lord need me to comment on any further issue?
Lord Skelmersdale: What about the Secretary of State and, in this case, the department?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Both the Secretary of State and the board, whoever they have consulted, are

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bound in the same way. Information may be disclosed onwards only if the person concerned has done it or if there are overriding circumstances such as criminal charges or criminal information. There is a well set-out procedure of what information may be disclosed and under what conditions. I would he very happy with an amendment to spell that out if the noble Lord thinks that it would be useful to have it on the record.
Lord Skelmersdale: If it is already there in pensions legislation and not amended by this Bill, I see no need for it.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: If the Secretary of State receives the information either using his own powers or from the PPF, the department must treat information appropriately. Where it is from the PPF, the department or the Secretary of State must follow the restricted information code. I think that all the loose ends have been picked up, but if the noble Lord continues to be worried, perhaps he could let me know.
Lord Skelmersdale: No, I am also certain that I am satisfied. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 188 agreed to.
Clauses 189 to 191 agreed to.
Schedule 8 agreed to.
Clause 192 [Other permitted disclosures]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 274ZA:
Page 133, line 39, after "section 7" insert "or 23(1)"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 192, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 193 [Disclosure of information by the Inland Revenue]:
On Question, Whether Clause 193 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: I was not absolutely sure whether the Inland Revenue still existed, or whether it was now combined with Customs and Excise. I am also not clear whether there is disclosure by Customs and Excise as well as by the Inland Revenue. I think that it is an old Treasury Minister's inhibition, but I have never liked the idea of the Inland Revenue disclosing information in this context. Indeed, I have some difficulty in thinking what Inland Revenue information might be relevant for it to disclose to the board in the exercise of its functions.
The noble Baroness will be familiar with my next argument; we have had it on previous occasions. It is not clear at what level the disclosure takes place, in terms of the Customs and Excise hierarchy, or indeed what controls are imposed on those receiving the information. I am particularly concerned by subsection (2), which states:
"No obligation as to secrecy imposed by…the Finance Act 1989…or otherwise shall prevent the disclosure of tax information".
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Section 182 of the 1989 Act was imposed for good reason. The idea that the information is floating around to a wider and wider audience gives me considerable cause for concern. Can the noble Baroness justify the relaxation of restraints that Parliament previously thought appropriate?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am advised that, because the clause refers to commissioners of Inland Revenue and Customs, it is still technically correct. That deals with the noble Lord's first point. We envisage that the provision will be rarely used but it may be appropriate, particularly in fraud compensation cases for the Inland Revenue to consider whether it has information that should be disclosed to the PPF in order to assist the board to fulfil its functions. I suspect that it will be rare. The provision is permissive; in other words, the Inland Revenue controls and determines the gateway out, rather than the regulator, the PPF or the Secretary of State on the way in.
There are strict rules to ensure that permission must be given at a senior level. We got into difficulties at our previous sitting about what level that technically was, and I cannot now remember. It was certainly at the equivalent of EO or above in DWP, but there are different grades in the Inland Revenue, so I shall need to come back to the noble Lord on what level the power shall be exercised at. We expect it to be rare and in circumstances such as fraud. As comes up under a drafting amendment, the power is permissive and the Inland Revenue will determine whether it is appropriate to disclose the information. The noble Lord is right—the Inland Revenue is very protective, and rightly so, of the integrity of its information and therefore the privacy rules associated with it.
Lord Higgins: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that reply. Last time that we discussed the matter, I was unhappy at the level of EO or equivalent; it seemed that the decision ought to be at some higher level. Are we right in thinking that disclosure of information will happen only if there is some question of fraud, or is it in relation to the Pension Protection Fund as such?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I expect disclosure to happen when sometimes the regulator, but primarily the PPF, cannot get the information that it seeks from the company with which it is dealing—in other words, where there is some suggestion that there may either be manipulation of information or destruction of records.
I shall give an example. Again, I am ad libbing, so, if I am wrong, I shall apologise to the noble Lord and correct the information. One of the reasons why, in an earlier debate, we discussed the fact that the PPF would have the right to ignore any changes in scheme rules in the three years before a scheme came into the PPF for compensation was that there could be manipulation of those rules. For example, there could be manipulation at fairly senior level between DB and DC contributions, in order to maximise the potential for compensation. It may be that records associated with it have been destroyed—sometimes in good faith,

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although it seems unlikely that records from three years earlier would no longer exist. In such a situation, the PPF may want to check the veracity and reliability of the information about what is counted for Inland Revenue purposes against the information that the PPF is given. That is a possible example, but only if the Inland Revenue believes that it is necessary for the PPF to have the data, for example to ensure that a scheme is still tax-approved or registered.
I can conceive of various situations in which the PPF is worried that the information that it has is not reliable or robust or in which some information about tax status that the PPF needs may be held by the Inland Revenue. The Inland Revenue will control such information.
If the noble Lord has any particular worries on the matter, he should write to me, and I will seek more extensive guidance. It is a complicated area.
Lord Higgins: I am grateful for that reply. If the information were not available in the company or pension fund concerned, that would be an offence. Under Inland Revenue rules, they must keep such information for seven years or so.
I shall give the matter some further thought, but I am always worried when information begins to float around more widely. I particularly remember on one occasion when it floated into local authorities at a low level. I shall bear in mind what the noble Baroness said.
Clause 193 agreed to.
Clause 194 [Provision of information to members of schemes etc]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 274A:
Page 135, line 3, at end insert "or in prescribed circumstances"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 194, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 195 agreed to.
Clause 196 [Publishing reports etc]:
On Question, Whether Clause 196 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Skelmersdale: This clause could be found virtually anywhere in the parts of the Bill containing the powers, duties and rights of the board of the Pension Protection Fund. It says:
"The Board may, if it considers it appropriate to do so in any particular case, publish a report".
I assume, as the clause comes in the fraud section of the Bill, that we are talking only about fraud, in which case that might be made a little clearer. I may have got it wrong, and the clause may apply to any case before the board relating to the entire Bill. In that case, it might be sensible to move the clause out of the fraud section into the more general section relating to the board earlier in the Bill.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I take the noble Lord's castigations, but I wonder whether what he said is
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completely true. There were previous amendments, for example, about the provision of information to members of schemes. It is not just a question of fraud; it is about the disclosure of information. We have passed the fraud section, and we are into clauses relating to information, some of which may indeed be fraudulently withheld. This is the general information section. I am happy to consider the matter, but the clause probably is in the appropriate place, and there is a bundle of amendments relating to information.
As the noble Lord half suspected, the clause applies to all functions of the board. The board may wish to publish reports or statements containing details of consultation exercises, statistics concerning the PPF's functions or recommendations of good practice for schemes that become involved with the PPF. The clause was introduced by the Government in another place, following debate about similar provision for the regulator. As Members of the Committee shall see, Clause 196(3) contains the slightly unusual words,
"to be made with malice"
4.30 p.m.
Although Parliament is a privileged forum, the provision was inserted in response to concerns raised in another place about naming and shaming. It is an extra burden of care before going into a naming and shaming list of the sort that we have seen in the past, if the PPF decides to do that.
Lord Borrie: I am sorry to intervene after the Minister has spoken. I was very surprised at the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. This is the very last clause in Chapter 5, headed "Gathering Information"; Chapter 4 is headed "Fraud compensation". I do not see why this should be confined to matters relating to fraud.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: No, I think that we have moved on. Perhaps I may ask about a possible inconsistency in Clause 196. I am not a lawyer but I would welcome a response from the Minister on the matter. Subsection (3) states:
"For the purposes of the law of defamation, the publication of any matter by the Board is privileged unless the publication is shown to be made with malice".
Is that consistent with the general exemption from liability in damages contained in Schedule 5(28)? That states:
"Neither the Board nor any person who is a member of the Board, a member of any of its committees or sub-committees, or a member of its staff is to be liable in damages for anything done or omitted in the exercise or purported exercise of the functions of the Board conferred by, or by virtue of, this or any other enactment".
Another question is: would the qualified privilege for members of the board which is given for the purposes of the law of defamation equally apply for the purposes of the law of injurious falsehood? To put it differently, are the members of the board exempt from liability in damages in cases of injurious falsehood by virtue of Schedule 5(28), or will they be exempt from liability only if they have acted bona fide as there cannot be an injurious falsehood without an element

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of malice? I apologise for not having given the noble Baroness notice of that technical question. I would be happy if she would prefer to respond in writing.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My understanding is that the position is exactly as the noble Lord described it at the end: any publication by the board is to be exempt from defamation unless it is shown to be made with malice. In other words, Clause 196(3) overrides the previous provision about no liability for damages. This means that an individual cannot prosecute the PPF for damages concerning the content of a report unless they can show to a court that the report has been made maliciously.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: Why is it thought appropriate that it should override Schedule 5(28)?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: As I recall, under Schedule 5(28) the members of the board would not be liable for damages where, for example, they acted in good faith. The question on which I was being pressed is whether they could give information about the status of a company which, to some extent, was a self-fulfilling prophecy—in other words, information about its insolvency or risk. The company might feel that that was unreasonable or unfair. Unless the report was malicious, the issue of damages would not arise.
Clause 196 agreed to.
Clause 197 [Meaning of "reviewable matters"]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 274B to 274E:
Page 136, line 30, after "that" insert "—
(a) "
Page 136, line 32, at end insert ", and
(b) the reference is to be construed as not including a failure to do the act or make the determination which first occurs after a prescribed time"
Page 136, line 32, at end insert—
"( ) Regulations may make provision suspending the effect of any determination, direction or other act of the Board, or any notice given or issued by it, which relates to a reviewable matter until—

(a) the period within which the matter may be reviewed by virtue of this Chapter has expired, and

(b) if the matter is so reviewed—

(i) the review and any reconsideration,

(ii) any reference to the PPF Ombudsman in respect of the matter, and

(iii) any appeal against his determination or directions,

has been finally disposed of."

Page 136, line 37, at end insert—
"( ) Regulations under subsection (3) may also modify any provision of this Part in consequence of provision made by virtue of paragraph (a) or (b) of that subsection."
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 197, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 9 [Reviewable matters]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 274F:
Page 289, line 43, leave out paragraph 1.
The noble Baroness said: As we are moving on to a new chapter, it might be helpful if I make a few contextual remarks.
Clause 197 is the first of a series of clauses in Chapter 6, which deals with reviews, appeals and maladministration. The clauses set out, among other things, the challenges that people can make to determinations made by the PPF board. I shall set out our overall strategy before coming to the specific amendments to the Schedule 9 list of reviewable matters.
Our overall strategy for dealing with PPF appeals is to strike a balance between fairness and administrative efficiency. In order to achieve this we are introducing a two-stage internal review process within the PPF to deal with appeals. We will discuss the details of this if we discuss Clause 198. However, we envisage that it will be broadly similar to the process currently in place for occupational pension schemes generally. That will be an informal review and a right to refer on, if not satisfied with that, to a reconsideration sub-committee set up by the PPF to review more formally.
Where someone remains dissatisfied with the outcome of the two-stage internal review process—perhaps there has been an error of fact that they want corrected and a reconsideration—they will be able to refer their dispute to the PPF ombudsman. This is a new office that we shall be setting up specifically for this purpose. The PPF ombudsman will be in a position to review matters of fact, law or maladministration.
The intention of Clause 197, together with Schedule 9, is to make it clear on the face of the legislation which of the board's decisions can be challenged. One might ask why some PPF decisions might not be challenged. If I may say so, the sort of decision that could be challenged is fairly obvious when one scratches away at this. As regards a defined benefit scheme, if the levy payable has been calculated incorrectly, for example, it needs to be challenged. If it has not been corrected in the internal review process, it can be challenged with the ombudsman. However, the kind of decision that cannot be challenged is the formula used to calculate the levy. This is because the formula is used for all schemes and there can be no deviation from it. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to allow challenges to a formula that has been established for all schemes.
I turn to the specific Amendments Nos. 274F, 274K and 274M, which amend Schedule 9. In the examples that I cited a few moments ago, our intention was to allow such challenges to be made under paragraph 1 of Schedule 9. However, we have recognised that the intention behind this paragraph may not be clear. We have therefore decided to replace it with the new paragraph which will sit after paragraph 15 (and which is to be introduced by Amendment No. 274M). This new paragraph makes it clear on the face of the Bill itself that the board's determination in relation to the

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initial or PPF levy can be challenged. This group of amendments also introduces Amendment No. 274K, which will allow a challenge to be made against the board's failure to obtain an actuarial valuation under Clause 135(2).
Paragraph 7 of Schedule 9 already provides for challenges to be made against the board's approval of a scheme valuation, or the failure to approve such a valuation. However, we recognise that appeal rights need to be made available where the board fails to obtain a valuation. Amendment No. 274K makes provision for this.
These amendments are essentially redrafting to close what might otherwise appear to be loopholes. I thought that it was worth taking the opportunity to spell out what we expect the role of the PPF ombudsman may be more generally. If the Committee wishes, I am very happy to enlarge on that role regarding costs, staff, number of cases we may expect and so on. I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am extremely grateful for that explanation because my suspicious mind led me to believe that there was a danger of a change in policy which had not been announced. However, now that the noble Baroness has explained the position, it is quite clear that what we are actually discussing is reformulations and simple drafting amendments. I am happy with that.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 274G to 274M:
Page 289, line 43, at end insert—
"The issue of a determination notice under section (Approval of notices issued under section 116) approving a notice issued under section 116.
The failure to issue a determination notice under section (Approval of notices issued under section 116)."
Page 290, line 1, leave out from "section" to end of line 2 and insert "116 by the Board by virtue of section 117 (Board's duty where failure to comply with section 116)."
Page 290, line 4, after "a" insert "scheme failure"
Page 290, line 14, at end insert—
"The failure by the Board to obtain an actuarial valuation of a scheme under section 135(2)."
Page 290, line 20, leave out "140(5)(a)" and insert "(Withdrawal following issue of section 116(4) notice)"
Page 290, line 35, at end insert—
"Any determination by the Board under section 172(3)(a) (the eligible schemes in respect of which the initial levy or the pension protection levy is imposed) or the failure to make such a determination."
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Schedule 9, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 198 [Review and reconsideration by the Board of reviewable matters]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 275:
Page 137, line 6, after "decision" insert "to determine whether the matter is reviewable and then"
The noble Lord said: The process of reconsideration by the board of reviewable matters struck me as being rather light—an internal equivalent of judicial review. The board has to decide: first, whether the matter is within its competence; secondly, whether a review could make a material difference; and the third stage would be to conduct the review. The last two stages are already in the Bill but the first is not, which is the reason for the amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I thought that I had touched on this matter to some extent, but perhaps I need to expand further.
When a written application is made requesting a review of the board's determination of a "reviewable matter"—we need to spell that out because some matters are not reviewable; for example, the structure of the formula—there will be a two stage internal review procedure within the PPF to deal with it. It will be more informal and involve the correction of a mechanical error and a reconsideration committee. If an interested party is dissatisfied with the outcome of the first-stage review, which should pick up errors, it can request a second-stage review. This will be undertaken by a specially constituted committee of the board, referred to in the legislation as the "Reconsideration Committee", which can undertake a review only if the dispute relates to a "reviewable matter" and a "review decision" has been given following a first-stage review.
Amendment No. 275 would require the reconsideration committee to determine whether the matter is reviewable and then carry out the second-stage review. I do not believe that we need to do that because, by definition, if the reconsideration committee is sitting, it has already been determined that there is a reviewable matter that has come within its remit. We do not need that extra stage. I appreciate that a second-stage review could be requested when one is not appropriate. But if that occurs, the applicant will be advised of the correct review procedures to be followed—he will not lose out on his right of appeal. So it is not necessary for the reconsideration committee to decide whether it can review and then go on to conduct a review. That would become the same process.
Finally, Amendment No. 276 would require Clause 198(3) to be deleted. Clause 198(1) requires regulations to be made to require the board to undertake a review when it receives a written request to do so. So in general terms, if a person wishes to dispute a "reviewable matter" decision made by the board, he or she will need to do so in writing. However, Clause 198(3) allows the regulations to provide that a review can be undertaken on other occasions. For example, the levy payable by an eligible scheme may have been calculated incorrectly and an invoice may have been mistaken. Such an error could come to light in two main ways. We would hope that possibly the scheme trustees could bring the error to the board's attention by writing to ask for the decision to be reviewed. This would normally be corrected at the first-stage review.

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Conversely, the board may notice the mistake after the invoice has been issued to the scheme. In that case the board would need to be able to review the decision of its own volition—which it could not do if the amendment were passed. So by deleting this subsection the noble Lord would deny the board the capacity to correct mistakes that it has noticed, rather than the trustees. I am sure that he would not wish to do that.
Finally, Amendment No. 277 would amend Clause 198(4)(d) which, as it stands, ensures that the regulations under Clause 198(1) must provide for the board to pay such compensation as it considers appropriate to such persons as it may determine. So, for example, when PPF compensation has been underpaid, the regulations may provide that the PPF board should reimburse the amount underpaid and may also include a requirement to pay interest. The intention is to ensure there is an adequate statutory remedy for any infringement of rights that has occurred. The regulation-making powers under Clause 198 will be used to provide adequate remedies. However, the opposition amendment would require the regulations to set parameters on the amount of compensation that the PPF board could pay in relation to "reviewable matters". That is not necessary, and the noble Lord did not press it in any of his arguments, so I hope that with that explanation the noble Lord will withdraw not only the amendment but the subsequent ones.
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes, of course I shall withdraw them. With regard to Amendment No. 276, to which I should have referred in my introduction, my initial thought was that subsection (3) was not necessary, because the matter was already covered by Clause 204(5). I see that that clause refers entirely to the ombudsman, so it is necessary to have it in twice. I understand that now, thanks to the noble Baroness's explanation.
To a great extent, the point in Amendment No. 277 is covered by a government amendment that we will get to shortly. I am happy to withdraw Amendment No. 275 and not to move the others.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 276 not moved.]
4.45 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 276A:
Page 137, line 21, at end insert—

"( ) to provide for such variations, revocations or substitutions, or any determinations, directions or other decisions made as a result of the review decision or reconsideration decision, to be treated as if they were made at such time (which may be a time prior to the making of the review decision or reconsideration decision) as the Board considers appropriate,

( ) to provide for any notice varied, substituted, issued or given by the Board as a result of the review decision or reconsideration decision, to be treated as if it were issued or given at such time (which may be a time prior to the making of the review decision or reconsideration decision) as the Board considers appropriate,"

On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 277 not moved.]
Clause 198, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 199 [Investigation by the Board of complaints of maladministration]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 277A:
Page 138, line 7, leave out from beginning to "or" and insert "the pension compensation provisions,"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 199, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: I am a little puzzled by the clause. It is headed "Investigations by the Board of complaints of maladministration", but, unless I have misunderstood, the maladministration complained about is maladministration by the board, which will then carry out an internal inquiry. I may have misunderstood the purport of the clause, but, in any case, if the board is accused of maladministration, it would be more appropriate for the matter to be dealt with by some independent body, presumably the ombudsman for the Pension Protection Fund. I may have misunderstood the purpose of the clause.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I do not think that the noble Lord has misunderstood: that is exactly what will happen. The provisions of Clause 199 apply not only to PPF compensation but to fraud issues. If someone believes that there has been maladministration, the board will see whether the issue can be resolved through the informal process of reconsideration. If not, the matter will go to the PPF ombudsman, who will be completely independent of the board. The noble Lord is right.
Basically, there is an internal review process that should pick up errors. There is a reconsideration committee to examine larger disputes—about valuations or whatever—that can be agreed between the parties. If not, matters of fact about valuations or matters relating to the appropriate application of the law or the mishandling of a case by the PPF board can go to the PPF ombudsman. From there, any matter of law, not of maladministration or fact, can go to the High Court. It is a four-stage procedure. I hope that, with that information, the noble Lord will feel that we have put some good steps in place.
Lord Higgins: I am grateful for that explanation. It is not the normal procedure for an ombudsman. There is not normally an internal inquiry, nor is there any ability on the part of the body complained about to pay compensation. It would normally be the ombudsman who would decide whether it was appropriate for compensation to be paid. I have a nasty, sneaking feeling that the board will carry out an internal investigation and pay up fast, in order to prevent the matter getting to a wider audience. No doubt, that is excessively cynical on my part. I understand the mechanism that the noble Baroness has in mind.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: It is no different from the system for the pensions ombudsman under the 1993 Act. The noble Lord is right to say that it is different from my experience of local government or parliamentary ombudsmen and so on. The powers to require rectification are different. In local government, I sometimes did not feel that it was appropriate to do what the local government ombudsman wanted me to do. The ombudsman might have been dealing with an individual case against a local authority, and, in a planning case, there might be a triangular situation.
The noble Lord is right to say that the powers are different. They are similar to those of the pensions ombudsman, and I hope that the noble Lord will agree that they are satisfactory.
Lord Borne: I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, on this matter, because the word "maladministration" hardly existed in political parlance before the existence of "ombudsmen". In other words it was something that was not necessarily criminal or illegal in civil law, but involved some inadequacy or inefficiency of a government department. When the parliamentary ombudsman was created, the famous Grossman list or schedule of ways in which the department could be guilty of maladministration was enunciated. It has been used ever since by all the public sector—including local government, which the Minister mentioned—and private sector ombudsmen. Their overriding concern has always been, "Has there been maladministration?".
I suppose that I felt the same as the noble Lord, Lord Higgins—at any rate until I also read Clause 205 which we have not yet debated. All that there is here is a situation in which the board can do an internal examination whereby such typical complaints of maladministration can be examined internally before one reaches the completely independent person, the ombudsman.
Lord Higgins: That was a slight diversion. Such was the inflammatory speech made by the noble Lord that there seems to be a slight smell of burning on this side of the building. I gather that the matter is being investigated.
Clause 199 agreed to.
Clause 200 [The Ombudsman for the Board of the Pension Protection Fund]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 278:
Page 139, line 35, at end insert—
"(7) Regulations may provide for the imposition of a levy in respect of eligible schemes for the purpose of meeting expenditure of the Secretary of State under subsection (6).
(8) Where regulations make such provision, subsections (2), (3), (5), (6) and (7) of section 111 (administration levy) apply in relation to the levy as they apply in relation to an administration levy (within the meaning of that section), except that in subsection (7) the reference to subsection (1) of that section is to be read as a reference to subsection (7) of this section."
The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment I shall also speak to Amendment No. 345. The current wording of Clause 200 requires the Secretary of State to provide a grant in aid to fund the office of the PPF
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ombudsman. We are not dealing with large sums here. The total cost of the pensions ombudsman, rather than the PPF ombudsman, amounted to less than £1.5 million in 2002–03. That should come within the levy to repay the grant in aid paid by the Secretary of State so it is clear that it remains independent of the Government. I hope that with that explanation noble Lords will be happy to accept the government amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 200, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 201 [Deputy PPF Ombudsmen]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 278A:
Page 139, line 38, after "Ombudsman" (insert "in this Chapter referred to as"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 201, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 202 [Status etc of the PPF Ombudsman and deputies]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 278B:
Page 140, line 27, at end insert—
"(2A) The persons to whom section 1 of the Superannuation Act 1972 (c. 11) (persons to or in respect of whom benefits may be provided by schemes under that section) applies are to include—

the PPF Ombudsman

a Deputy PPF Ombudsman

the employees of the PPF Ombudsman.

(2B) The PPF Ombudsman must pay to the Minister for the Civil Service, at such times as he may direct, such sums as he may determine in respect of the increase attributable to subsection (2A) in the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under that Act."
The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment I shall also speak to the amendments in the group. We have already accepted Clauses 200 and 201, which deal with the setting up and funding of the PPF ombudsman, his staff and any deputies. As already mentioned, the PPF ombudsman's office will be funded in the first instance by a grant in aid from the Secretary of State and then a levy. We expect the sums to be extremely small. The intention behind the current group of amendments is threefold.
First, they include the newly established PPF ombudsman, his staff and any deputy ombudsman in Schedule 1 to the Superannuation Act 1972. This means that they will be eligible to receive civil service premium pensions in line with existing provisions for the pensions ombudsman and his staff. Secondly, the amendments provide for the PPF ombudsman to pay to the Minister for the Civil Service the amount payable in respect of those pensions. Also, they provide for similar provision to apply for the pensions ombudsman in relation to any deputies. Thirdly, the amendments correct an omission in previous legislation, by requiring

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the pensions ombudsman to pay to the Minister for the Civil Service the amount payable in respect of the pensions ombudsman and his staff. In practice, this happens already and Amendment No. 313AA places that on the face of the legislation. With that I hope that your Lordships will accept these amendments. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 202, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 203 agreed to.
Clause 204 [Reference of reviewable matter to the PPF Ombudsman]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 279:
Page 141, fine 15, leave out paragraph (a).
The noble Lord said: I am something of a regulations and statutory instruments fanatic—and have been for many years.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Perhaps the noble Lord is the statutory instruments ombudsman.
Lord Skelmersdale: Not quite. So whenever I see the word "regulations" in a Bill I look at it extremely carefully. After all, the point about regulations and statutory instruments is that they are used for matters which change over time within the broad parameters of an Act of Parliament and may do so regularly. The noble Baroness produces or is responsible for endless social security statutory instruments during a year. Over the past seven years she has been responsible for an enormous number—which I have not counted, but perhaps she keeps a running total.
In this case regulations shall require the PPF ombudsman to conduct an oral hearing in relation to any reviewable matter, and so on, and enable him to consider evidence and make other provision about procedure for conducting investigations. I would have thought that that was pretty standard stuff and it would not change on a regular or even irregular basis before the likelihood in, say, seven or 10 years, of another pensions Bill. Therefore, regulations are certainly not appropriate and such matters could well be incorporated in a schedule to the Bill. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I do not agree with the noble Lord. We are talking about who can request a review by the PPF ombudsman, how such reviews are to be made and the time limits for doing so. It is perfectly reasonable that that should be done by regulations, but the regulations will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure—so they would be debated in both Houses. Anything that contains time limits is particularly unwise.
Regarding the prescribed persons, I could conceive that the bodies that believe themselves to be injured in any way might go wider than we would currently list. For example, at the moment there may be no statutory right for, say, an unmarried partner of either gender to have rights of compensation or whatever from a
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scheme. We might list scheme members or survivors. That might well change over time and many of us hope it will, but that is a gradual process and depends on how broader society shares that view. Then we might need to add to this. The last thing that we would wish to do would be to come back with primary legislation requiring a Second Reading and three stages in both Houses, when it could be done by amending affirmative regulations. This seems to be exactly the sort of matter which I hope that, on reflection, the noble Lord would agree should be dealt with by regulation—but through affirmative procedure so that the House would know what was going on.
5 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: The example that the noble Baroness has just given would be quite a major shift in policy, although she says that she has hoped for it for some time, which, given her position, I can understand. Surely it would be part and parcel of an Act of Parliament in the future because it would affect not only this but all sorts of other things as well. Therefore, during the course of the legislation's proceedings through Parliament, it would be perfectly possible and proper to amend it to encompass this. I am afraid that I am not convinced by the example.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: That will teach me to offer one.
Lord Skelmersdale: I shall read what the noble Baroness has said and come to a view on it. However, it still strikes me that this is standard stuff; it will be a one-off—albeit affirmative—regulation, and I do not think it likely that it will be necessary to come back to Parliament to change it in anything like the foreseeable future. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 279A and 279B:
Page 142, line 12, after "payments," insert—
"( ) conferring power on the PPF Ombudsman to direct that—

(i) any determinations, directions or other decisions which are made by the Board in accordance with any determination or direction given by him, or

(ii) any variations, revocations or substitutions of its determinations, directions or other decisions which are made by the Board in accordance with any determination or direction given by him,

are to be treated as if they were made at such time (which may be a time prior to his determination or direction) as he considers appropriate,
( ) conferring power on the PPF Ombudsman to direct that any notice varied, substituted, issued or given by the Board in accordance with any determination or direction given by him is to be treated—

(i) as if it were issued or given at such time (which may be a time prior to his determination or direction) as he considers appropriate;

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(ii) as if it became binding for the purposes of this Part at the time at which he gives his determination or direction or at such later time as he considers appropriate,

( ) prescribing the circumstances in which any determination or other act of the Board in accordance with any determination or direction given by the PPF Ombudsman, is not to be treated as being a reviewable matter for the purposes of this Chapter,"
Page 142, line 14, at end insert "(including such powers as the Board may have on making a review decision or a reconsideration decision under regulations made under section 198(1))"
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 204, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 205 to 209 agreed to.
Clause 210 [Backdating the winding up of eligible schemes]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 279C to 279E:
Page 144, line 30, leave out sub-paragraphs (i) to (iii) and insert—

"(i) a scheme failure notice or a withdrawal notice issued under section 116(2) in relation to the scheme becoming binding,

(ii) a withdrawal notice issued under section (Withdrawal following issue of section 116(4) notice) in relation to the scheme becoming binding, or

(iii) a notice issued under section 116(4) becoming binding in a case where section (Withdrawal following issue of section 116(4) notice) does not apply."

Page 145, line 3, leave out from "than" to end of line 4 and insert "a scheme failure notice or a withdrawal notice issued under section 122(2) or (3) in relation to the scheme becoming binding."
Page 145, line 10, at end insert—
"(3A) In a case where subsection (3) applies, the Regulator may by order direct any person specified in the order—

(a) to take such steps as are so specified as it considers are necessary as a result of the winding up of the scheme beginning in accordance with that subsection, and

(b) to take those steps within a period specified in the order.

(3B) If the trustees or managers of a scheme fail to comply with a direction to them contained in an order under subsection (3A), section 10 of the Pensions Act 1995 (c. 26) (civil penalties) applies to any trustee or manager who has failed to take all reasonable steps to secure compliance.
(3C) That section also applies to any other person who, without reasonable excuse, fails to comply with a direction to him contained in an order under subsection (3A)."
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 210, as amended, agreed to.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 279F:
After Clause 210, insert the following new clause—
"PENSION SHARING
(1) Regulations may modify any of the provisions of this Part as it applies in relation to—
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(a) cases where a person's shareable rights under an eligible scheme have (at any time) become subject to a pension debit;

(b) cases where—

(i) a pension sharing order or provision in respect of such rights is made before the time a transfer notice under section 151 is received by the trustees or managers of the eligible scheme, and

(ii) that order or provision takes effect on or after the receipt by them of the notice.

(2) Regulations may also modify any of the provisions of Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999 (c. 30) (pension sharing) as it applies in relation to—

(a) cases within subsection (1)(a) where any liability of the trustees or managers of the eligible scheme in respect of a pension credit was not discharged before the time a transfer notice under section 151 was received by the trustees or managers of the eligible scheme:

(b) cases within subsection (1)(b).

(3) In this section—

(a) "pension debit" and "shareable rights" have the same meaning as in Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999 (c. 30) (pension sharing), and

(b) "pension sharing order or provision" means an order or provision falling within section 28(1) of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999 (activation of pension sharing)."

On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 211 [Pension schemes to which this Part applies]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 280:
Page 145, line 25, leave out subsection (2).
The noble Lord said: The beginning of this clause was covered right at the outset of our discussions on the Bill. The provisions of this part apply to every occupational pension scheme other than a money purchase scheme or—and this is the point—
"a prescribed scheme or a scheme of a prescribed description".
That is fine, as far as it goes. However, the clause continues by saying that regulations under subsection (1)(b)—the prescribed scheme or a scheme of a prescribed description—
"may provide for exemptions from all or any of the provisions of this Part".
To what extent does this refer to subsection (1)(b), and to what extent can some schemes which are further prescribed be exempted from this part, while others are not? I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham:The simple answer is that subsection (1) exempts money purchase schemes, prescribed schemes or schemes of a prescribed description from the remit of the scheme funding provision. Schemes that are currently exempt from the MFR and which we expect to be exempt from the minimum requirement include most public service schemes; schemes in which a Minister of the Crown has given a guarantee, such as the British coal and

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mineworkers' schemes; and schemes with less than two members. I wonder whether that answers the noble Lord's question.
Lord Skelmersdale: Not quite. The amendment refers to subsection (2), which says that regulations under subsection (1)(b)—a prescribed scheme or a scheme of a prescribed description—
"may provide for exemptions from all or any of the provisions of this Part".
The question is whether those two go together, as it were, or whether there will be further regulations exempting some types of scheme from some provisions of this part.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: That will teach me to try to expedite proceedings.
As well as schemes that will be exempt from the new funding provisions in their entirety, such as money purchase and Crown-guaranteed schemes, there will be some schemes for which some but not all the provisions should apply. The power to do this is in subsection (2) of the clause, as the noble Lord identified, which Amendment No. 280 seeks to remove. Without subsection (2), a scheme could only be fully bound by, or fully exempt from, the new funding provisions.
The problem with that approach is that defined benefit schemes are not homogenous. We also need to cater for the specific situations that may arise during the life of an occupational pension scheme. The power in subsection (2) enables us to adapt legislation to fit the circumstances now and in the future. For instance, we may exempt schemes that are winding up from many of the new requirements, such as drawing up or revising a statement of funding principles, or putting a schedule of contributions in place.
Where a scheme is in the process of winding up, it would he inappropriate to ask it to remedy the situation as if it were not winding up. That is the use of such a power. Where a scheme is winding up, members' interests will be protected by other legislation, such as the debt on the employer provisions, the statutory priority order and ultimately the PPF. We want that power to be able to exempt them from subsection (1).
The power in subsection (2), together with the power in Clause 222 to modify the scheme funding provisions in prescribed circumstances also enables us to place appropriate requirements on particular schemes, such as those operating on a pan-European Union basis across national borders, or multi-employer schemes operating on an industry-wide basis.
Taking these powers to make adjustments to the scheme funding provisions in regulations enables us to consult the pensions industry and other key stakeholders such as the CBI and the TUC on our proposals, and provides for the possibility of further modifications in the light of operational experience or the development of different types of scheme. Discussions with representatives from these groups are already under way and will continue as the detailed provisions are developed.
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I trust that the noble Lord will accept that some schemes are wholly exempt and some schemes may be because they are in the process of winding up. There may be some extremely complex pan-European schemes where one wants more finesse than the Bill allows. That is why we need the powers in subsection (2).
Lord Skelmersdale: I seem to remember an expression on the west coast of Scotland that, "We think better later". I got much more out of the noble Baroness's second explanation than I did out of her first. I am very grateful to her, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 211 agreed to.
Clause 212 [The statutory funding objective]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 280A:
Page 146, line 8, leave out "that limits the amount of its" and insert "rules that limits the amount of the scheme's"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 212, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: I think it would be appropriate to rise now because this clause is of considerable importance, as indeed are—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am a little puzzled. We are talking about Clause 212, but it is preceded by government amendments which have not yet been dealt with.
Lord Higgins: I can help the noble Baroness. I got confused by this as well this morning. There is a mistake in the grouping. I notified the office about that and hoped that it would notify the noble Baroness and others. At present, Amendment No. 280 is in the wrong place.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: As I understand it. Amendment No. 281 is an amendment to Clause 215.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lyell): I am following the Marshalled List, and, as I understand it, we have agreed to Amendment No. 280A. I was putting the Question whether Clause 212 shall stand part, and the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, wished to speak to it. I apologise—I had marked Clause 213, but the noble Lord wished to speak to the Question whether Clause 212 shall stand part. No doubt he will wish to speak to the Question whether Clause 213 shall stand part also.
Lord Higgins: As I understand it, I am now speaking to the Question whether Clause 212 shall stand part. The noble Baroness was confused because an earlier version of the grouping presented the clauses in the

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wrong order. It took me about a quarter of an hour this morning to work out what had happened, and I cannot do it on my feet now.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I picked this up again at 3 o'clock this afternoon and the error is still there. Anyway, that is fine.
Lord Higgins: In that case, although I reported it, nothing happened. However, I think that I am right in saying that we are now on the Question whether Clause 212 shall stand part—the statutory funding objective.
As I began to say, this is a very important clause, as are those which immediately follow it. It effectively substitutes a statutory funding objective for the previous minimum funding requirement. Indeed, I believe that the minimum funding requirement is still in operation.
I was not involved in the original legislation to introduce the minimum funding requirement, but there is a widespread view that it had serious technical problems and unfortunate consequences for the investment market. There was a strange effect on particular companies which came up against the limit of the minimum funding requirement. However, from my own experience, the fund of which I was chairman never got anywhere near the minimum funding requirement, but was funded above that. Even so, we might have had concerns at times about whether we were adequately funded. The minimum funding requirement effectively has not worked. That has been demonstrated by the number of company schemes which have gone bust. Presumably, if they had been funded at an appropriate level, they would not have done so.
Can the noble Baroness tell us how many schemes are currently under their minimum funding requirement? I suspect that it is a very considerable number. Therefore, I welcome the change proposed by the Government—namely, a scheme-specific funding objective which will be based on advice from the scheme actuary and would make it apparent to members and trade unions that the scheme was adequately funded.
I gather that the department's pristine intention has been somewhat adjusted or, at any rate, affected by the European pensions directive. This includes various provisions, so that instead of having sensible expressions in the Bill such as the actuarial value of liabilities, we end up with references to schemes' "technical provisions"—a totally meaningless expression which I understand is eurospeak for what one would normally call the value of the liabilities. However, it seems that this is the reality of the situation. I am not clear why we did not object to this kind of absurd terminology when the directive was being formulated, or perhaps we did and were overruled. However, there are other aspects that give cause for concern. It is appropriate to raise the following matter in connection with the clause that we are discussing.
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I gather that the directive also requires that the fund should hold sufficient and appropriate assets. Whereas the expression "technical provisions" may become a term of art and reasonably well refined, the expression "sufficient and appropriate assets", at the other end of the scale, seems to be so vague as to be virtually meaningless. However, this is an important matter.
It is also the case, if I understand it correctly, that the powers in the Bill as they stand at the moment would enable someone simply to adopt the MFR in its old form using the same powers. I gather that that is certainly not the Government's intention but is that a possible way in which the powers could be used?
What is more worrying is the aspect of the matter—if I understand the point correctly in the directive to which this clause is related—which requires that the sufficient and appropriate assets have to be there at all times, which may not be the case at all with schemes at present. It is not clear what the expression "at all times" means, or whether the directive or this clause should make provision for them to be sufficient and appropriate for a limited period. It also raises difficult questions about how you value the liabilities together with the assets at a moment of time in terms of discounting for the fact that they are all not due at a particular moment. The expression "sufficient and appropriate assets at all times" presumably means at all times taking into account the fact that the liabilities and the assets do not relate to a moment of time but are spread over time.
5.15 p.m.
There is concern that this clause could be interpreted to mean effectively that a scheme has to be funded on a full buy-out basis at any moment. I guess that a number of schemes are not in that position at the moment. The Minister may have data that illustrate whether that is true. While I think it is right that we should get rid of the minimum funding requirement, which has proved useless and an irritation at times, we should be careful to examine exactly what the Government are proposing as regards the statutory funding objective. I have sought to spell out some of the possible doubts about what it means. I should have thought that this is a matter of very considerable concern.
Later we shall discuss the recovery period and so on, which is related to some extent to what I have just said. I hope that the noble Baroness will reassure us on these points, which are clearly very important, as the whole future viability of any scheme seems to be related to this clause.
The relevant heading, which is not part of the Bill, refers to scheme funding. It would be clearer if it referred to schemes' funding, as scheme funding might appear in this context to refer to the pension protection scheme rather than to the schemes of pension funds. I should be grateful for the Minister's response.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: Behind this technical and rather dusty wording, there are questions of great significance for the economy, for

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business and for individual pension funds. Can the Minister tell us her department's current estimate of the overall impact on pension funds of moving from the current MFR arrangements to the statutory funding objective, as it is called, either under current conditions or when it comes into effect? Can we have some order of magnitude, some idea of whether this will be a tougher or less tough target and by roughly how much, in money terms? That is very important in assessing this.
We would also be grateful if the noble Baroness could give us further information on the sort of schemes where the gap between one and another will be greater. To have some overall estimate of the effect would be exceptionally useful.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am certainly happy to respond. I endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, has said about the welcome there has been for moving from the MFR to scheme-specific funding. This has been widely welcomed by the industry for two broad reasons.
While not wanting to use terms such as "one size fits all", I have been struck by the fact that MFR is very top-down. As a result, trustees have not owned the funding of their schemes as one would have hoped. They have been too reliant on a formula coming from their actuaries or their accountants and have not owned it themselves. One reason for that is that MFR, as most people would now agree, focused perhaps too narrowly on the connection between assets and liabilities and did not take into account the strength and solvency of the company and therefore the capacity, over time, to remedy matters.
As was mentioned in a previous debate, a very strong company such as BT could be allowed a number of years to rectify matters, whereas a company that was much flakier might have a higher level of scheme-specific funding but less capacity to remedy up to meeting its full liabilities. There are two broad grounds. Scheme-specific funding is a determination by the trustees on funding methods, which can be ongoing or discontinuous depending on whichever method is adopted, given the advice of their actuaries and reflecting their investment principles. That allows a more realistic—we hope—structure for the pension promises originally made to be delivered.
The noble Lord asked me how many schemes are currently underfunded under MFR. I am amazed that I have the answer—I am very impressed with myself. I am told that, as of December 2003, some 45 per cent of schemes were less than 100 per cent funded on the MFR basis. He also asked whether a scheme could accept or adopt the MFR in a slightly lazy-minded way and simply move over. That could happen only if the trustees and the scheme actuary made a series of decisions which effectively put the individual scheme at this level. They could not, under the legislation, simply adopt the MFR. In other words, they could arrive at a scheme-specific funding level which presumably was aligned with that of the MFR; they could not simply introduce the MFR in lieu of scheme-specific funding.
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The noble Lord's third point was about the European directive and the phrase "technical provisions". The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, has raised this point as well. Under the new scheme funding requirements, each scheme will be required to meet the statutory funding objectives of having sufficient and appropriate assets to cover its "technical provisions". Where that statutory funding objective is not met, the scheme's trustees must put a recovery plan in place.
The term "technical provisions" is used but not defined in directives. I circulated some background material on this earlier. It is worth putting this point in Hansard because, as the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, said, it sounds dusty but is actually key. We consider that "technical provisions" mean the amount that the trustees, on actuarial advice, judge that a scheme needs to have in its fund now to be able to meet its accrued pension commitments as they fall due, to be paid in the future, as far as can be reasonably foreseen, according to sufficiently prudent assumptions on factors such as investment returns, life expectancy and so on, and taking account of all commitments for future benefits and contributions.
The Bill describes technical provisions as the amount required, on an actuarial basis, to make provision for the scheme's liabilities. The intention is to require schemes to value their liabilities on a full solvency basis: that is, the cost of discharging all their accrued liabilities by the purchase of insurance company annuities.
Lord Higgins: Is there legal advice that that definition is acceptable in the terms of the directive?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I shall come on to that, because one of the points that the noble Lord raised cross-refers back. I believe that I shall be able to meet that point. The European directive was originally extremely heavy in terms of valuations required: it required full valuations every year. We were able to get a derogation from that to triennial valuations with interim valuations where there has been a material change. I believe that that will substantially reduce some of the burdens on companies in a sensible way.
The noble Lord then asked about sufficient and appropriate assets at all times. I am assured that that applies only to schemes which are operating on a cross-border basis. Cross-border schemes will have to comply with the scheme funding provisions in Part 3 of the Bill, as modified under the powers in Clause 222, to take account of that requirement. For example, it is likely that schemes will be required to undertake annual valuations and send a copy of the valuation report to the Pensions Regulator, but it applies only to a section of schemes.
The noble Lord cheerily asked a question about apostrophes. He may be quite right about that. There was rather a nice line in the New York Times, which I read when I was in the States this summer and which I should like to share with the Committee. It said that President Bush was hostile to all taxes, including syntax. I cannot help feeling that this may be one case where he may come up against that.

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Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, asked me for statistics on the overall impact on scheme-specific funding and on the financial implications for schemes. The pension benefits must obviously be properly funded in order that the benefits can be paid as they fall due. I do not have a cost figure in the sense that the actual cost of providing the pension benefits promised by DB schemes is not altered by the replacement of the MFR with the new scheme. The noble Lord needs to return to his question. The cost of a scheme being able to meet its full pension promise as defined classically is not altered by whether you have MFR or scheme-specific funding: that remains a constant. In that sense the requirement of schemes to meet their pension promise remains unchanged and, therefore, the cost to do so remains unchanged.
But certainly MFR and scheme-specific funding allow trustees to make different decisions, whether on an ongoing or discontinuous basis, on the advice of their actuary, and to take into account different considerations, such as the strength and solvency of the company, in how they best meet that obligation of delivering the full pension promise at the point at which a member leaves. I do not know that I can add to that. I do not know whether the noble Lord wishes to press me further, in which case I invite him to do so. I hope that I have met some of the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, raised.
Lord Higgins: I am certainly grateful for that reply. The figure that the Minister mentioned of 45 per cent of schemes being at the moment below the MFR is a frightening one. I am not clear how those concerned with supervising the schemes enabled that situation to come about. Would I be right in thinking, however, that with a scheme-specific funding system introduced (assuming, ceteris parabis, all else being equal) rather more than 45 per cent would manage to meet immediately their scheme-specific funding level? The noble Baroness shakes her head.
5.30 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Not necessarily, because scheme-specific funding is about seeking to ensure that the scheme will be able to discharge its full liabilities as and when its members seek to draw those liabilities down. Each scheme will be different; one scheme will proceed on an ongoing basis and another on a discontinuous basis, while another may have a different ratio of deferred members to active members. They may have different salary structures and may, reasonably or otherwise, be making different assumptions about longevity. They may have different strategies relating to future salary increases by the employer. All those things will come into the scheme funding schedule, such that the trustees on the advice of the actuary must produce a funding strategy to satisfy the regulator that the funding promise will at an appropriate time be able to be met.
I do not believe that one can do such an easy read-across. It was possible with MFR because it was standardised, which is why I was able to produce those
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statistics—slightly to my own surprise. It cannot be done with scheme-specific funding in the same way. What we can do is to ensure that the regulator works with the trustees on the advice of the actuaries to ensure that, given certain assumptions and decisions made by the trustees, the pension promise of that scheme should be met in full over a realistic and appropriate period of time.
Lord Higgins: Making the change from MFR to scheme-specific funding may have an effect on whether or not the employer decides to close the scheme. Again that will depend on individual cases and it is uncertain how that will go.
The Minister in her first reply, rather than in her recent intervention, said that we had obtained a derogation from the European directive—if I recall correctly, with reference to whether the "at all times" provision applied or not. Is that a permanent derogation? She went on to say that the "at all times" provision applied only to schemes on a cross-border basis. Some of them, such as that of Shell, would be very important. But it seems very odd to have one standard for cross-border schemes and another for UK schemes. There are obviously implications as to whether the European directive and those enthusiastic for it were trying to have a scheme always funded on a full buy-out basis. I gather that was something that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not wildly enthusiastic about, which I can understand.
These are serious points. We should consider to what extent the present wording of the clause represents the best we can do. The original intention of the Treasury seems to have been significantly altered in some respects by the implication of the directive. I shall make other points on subsequent clauses.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: The Minister invited me to press her further on this matter. I obviously did not ask my question clearly enough.
I understand and accept that changing the funding objective does not make any difference to the actual assets that one has or to the actual cost at any one time, and does not change the pension promise. However, my question was—and I repeat it. I hope, more clearly—what does the department believe the effect of changing from the MFR to the statutory funding objective will have, on average, on the liabilities or underfunding of schemes?
The Minister did not begin to answer that question. She proudly pulled out of her notes the figure of 45 per cent of schemes being underfunded on an MFR basis in December 2003. On the new statutory funding objective proposed, what proportion does the department estimate would have been underfunded at that time? I do not think that it is nearly good enough to say, "We've no idea, it will depend on the individual trustees". Has no estimate or assessment been made by the department? That was what I was asking—and I ask it again more clearly, I hope.
Lord Higgins: The Minister said that it would be possible for a scheme to devise an arrangement which

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was the equivalent of the old MFR. Given that that arrangement has failed to ensure that schemes are properly funded, do we need to tighten up the clause so that a particular scheme could not in effect reproduce the MFR, with all its inadequacies?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: On that last point, I was at pains to say that it is not that those schemes will replace MFR but that they could end up with the same figure as they reached under the MFR scheme. Under MFR, they might well have been 95 per cent or 98 per cent funded; they may get to the same point by completely different paths.
With reference to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, I cannot see how one can answer it until one knows the type of scheme funding principles adopted by individual schemes. There is clearly a difference between ongoing and discontinuous schemes, with assumptions being made about having a full buyout immediately or over time. It would be a question of what would be appropriate, given the assumptions being made about salary increases and so on. Perhaps the noble Lord could tell me, but I do not see how one could make that estimate.
I can see how at the end of a period of time in which schemes have in place the scheme funding assessment one could do an account and see where one scheme was 90 per cent funded, another 85 per cent and another 92 per cent. One might turn that into a sum, add the difference up and show the difference between where the schemes were and where they needed to be. I do not see how one could do that in advance, because each scheme would be judged by its own criteria, which it has yet to set up.
I may be being dense, but I do not see how I can answer the noble Lord's question. That is the whole advantage or—if he likes—difficulty of moving away from MFR. I suspect that it is one of the reasons why the PPF has to have a separate set of valuations—in order to produce precisely the standardised scheme that the noble Lord is asking for, which will not be provided by scheme-specific funding. The question there is whether it is possible to meet or exceed the compensation offered by the PPF.
I do not believe that I can answer the noble Lord's question, and I do not believe that we shall have the information until scheme-specific funding strategies are in place, and we can see the degree of shortfall by individual schemes. That will vary from scheme to scheme; it may align itself with MFR, or it may not.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I believe that the Minister can answer me—and the answer that I am hearing loud and clear is that the DWP has made no estimates and does not know what the effect will be. That is a fair summary of what the Minister has just said: the department has made no estimate of what the effect will be. The 45 per cent figure will obviously no longer be relevant. The department has no idea what the figure will be, or whether there will be more or less underfunding. The department has no views on what
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would be an appropriate method; the department shrugs its shoulders and leaves the matter to individual funds. That is really what the Minister said.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: That is a provocative and frankly absurd way in which to put the matter. I was trying in a reasonably thoughtful way to say to the noble Lord that he was asking a question that prejudges answers to questions that have not yet been addressed by individual schemes. Only when we have that information can we make that estimate. For the noble Lord to say that we are shrugging our shoulders is absolutely absurd, and he knows it. I do not mind him in the least deciding to enliven proceedings by going in for a bit of combative rhetoric.
Normally, I would have hoped that with the noble Lord's background and experience, he would be more reflective about the situation in which funds will find themselves. Until we know by what method they seek, on the basis of actuarial advice, to propose a scheme-funding structure and get it evaluated by the regulator, we will not be able to add the sums up. For me to suggest otherwise would lack integrity. For the noble Lord to say that when I cannot tell him the answer to his question, it shows that we are simply shrugging our shoulders, is to put a spin on the matter. I hope that on reflection he will realise that what he said was good fun but actually absurd.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I shall try once more, then. The trouble is that I first asked the question in a very low-key way and got no answer at all. I have asked two or three times now whether the department has made any estimate of the overall effect of the change.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: No—but I put it to the noble Lord that there are about 10,000 DB schemes out there. How many of those does he believe will go for the scheme-specific funding on an ongoing basis or a discontinuous basis? He has five seconds in which to answer.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I shall take that as a no.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I am asking the noble Lord a question about the sort of information that we would need even to begin to make the sort of assessment that the noble Lord has invited me to make. That is the whole point of scheme-specific funding, which is bottom up. If we were laying down an MFR funding assessment from the top, we could take a measurement and say how big a slice was missing.
The industry has welcomed the detailed scheme-specific funding, with its assessments of assets liabilities, future salary increases, assumptions about longevity, staff turnover, the ratio of deferred pensioners and so on. That funding is individually constructed on individual schemes—so I cannot then be blasted by the noble Lord for not being able to produce the information, which is available only when there is a top-down funding assessment, such as the

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MFR. If the noble Lord believes that the department could and should have made an estimate, what methodology does he think that it should have employed which would have been sufficiently robust?
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I am only asking a simple question about whether the department has or has not made that assessment. I have now got an answer, although it seems difficult to get it clear. But if that is the answer, that is fine.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The answer is not difficult to get clear. It is difficult to make an answer, for the reasons that I have given. The noble Lord wants me to give an answer that would not have integrity, because the schemes have not made a decision about how they will assess their scheme funding, and the regulator is not yet in a position to authorise that decision as appropriate. But that is not the department shrugging its shoulders.
To say that I cannot give the noble Lord the information I would like when, by definition, it does not exist, is not to walk away from the problem. It is a proper, truthful and honest assessment of the situation. It is no use the noble Lord putting a spin on that; the fact is that we do not have that information, for the best of reasons and not for the worst. The best of reasons is that the schemes will produce that information, not the Government, and that is why we have abandoned the MFR standard. I do not believe that I can go beyond that; the figures do not exist because the schemes have not yet introduced their scheme-funding method. Only when they do can we assess the shortfall between that and the capacity to meet full wind-up buy-out promises. At that point, I am sure that we shall all be very happy to share that information.
The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, asked about the European directive. The directive does not require a domestic scheme to be fully funded, in the sense that it must at any time be able to buy annuities and deferred annuities to discharge all its accrued liabilities immediately. That is unrealistic and inappropriate for an ongoing scheme, because liabilities fall in over time. We are coming back to the FI 17-type debate here.
Looking at the official journal of the European directive, I believe that it is clear that the concern over cross-border schemes is that there may be no capacity for a cross-European scheme to have a statutory recovery period to be negotiated with the regulator. That is why they are requiring funding at all times. Paragraph 3 of Article 16 states:
"In the event of cross-border activity as referred to in article 20, the technical provisions must be fully funded at all times in respect of the total range of schemes operated at all times. If these conditions are not met, the competent authority"
of the home member state—
"shall intervene according to article 14".
To comply with that requirement, the home member state may require the replacing of the assets and liabilities.
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There could be a cross-border scheme which would be subject to the regulatory authority of the home member state—for example, the Netherlands—rather than to the UK, even though quite a number of members of the scheme worked and lived in the UK.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Higgins: So does that mean that Shell, for example, has to be fully funded?
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: Perhaps I may help the Minister. I suspect that it depends whether the Shell UK pension scheme is separate from the European one, but I am only guessing.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Yes, that may be right. That is our reflex, but perhaps the noble Lord will let me look into that regarding the Shell case.
Lord Higgins: I gave Shell only as an example so that does not really help. But it seems surprising anyway that we should have different standards for cross-border schemes than we have for our UK schemes if a cross-border scheme is based in the UK.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: In the UK?
Lord Higgins: Yes. It seems that a scheme based in the UK which has cross-border implications would always have to be fully funded on a buy-out basis, whereas a UK scheme would not. I cannot see any justification other than the fact that we are stuck with a super-European directive which would require that.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: We will be dealing with cross-border matters under Part 7. I promise to look at every damn cross-border scheme I can think of to see whether it is protected by a separate free-standing scheme, as the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott said. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, will permit us to concentrate our debate on the Shell situation when we deal with Part 7 of the Bill. Pan-European schemes are the most complicated aspect of an extremely complicated Bill.
Clause 212 agreed to.
Clause 213 [Statement of funding principles]:
On Question, Whether Clause 213 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: This clause seems relatively straightforward. I am not clear why there are civil penalties relating to it or how civil penalties would apply as a sanction. What kind of civil penalty is implied?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Of all the issues that could have been raised on this clause this is the one that I had not expected. Please allow me to check the clause.
Lord Higgins: Perhaps I may help the noble Baroness. The clause as such is very important, but it appears to be relatively straightforward compared with the previous clause. However, right at the end it

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says that if the clause is not complied with there will be civil penalties. I am not clear what would happen. Does the Pension Protection Fund sue the trustees?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The regulator is entitled to impose fines in respect of specified breaches of the requirement of the legislation, continuing the powers under the powers of the Pensions Act 1995.
Lord Higgins: There are some variations in the way in which sanctions apply, and what is apparently envisaged here are fines and so on; whereas, for example, we shall deal later with a clause about whether trustees or the company can give advice. At the moment if one gives advice—as I know only too well, having to avoid that—one is subject to criminal penalties, which is an absurd arrangement. But I am content with what the Minister said.
Clause 213 agreed to.
Clause 214 [Actuarial valuations and reports]:
Lord Higgins Lord Higgins moved Amendment No. 280B:
Page 146, line 32, leave out from "intervals" to "of" in line 33.
The noble Lord said: The amendment relates to the intervals at which the trustees have to produce actuarial valuations. Again, I assume that the provision is designed to get round—if that is not a dangerous way in which to put it—the European directive. Normally, the process would be triennial; apparently, it is all right if there is an actuary's report in the middle. Any prudent scheme normally does that, but I was not clear why the process was phrased in such a roundabout way, rather than simply saying "every three years". I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The noble Lord has summarised in four lines what would have been a four-page speech. What he has said is exactly right. Basically, we thought that it was unreasonable to ask for full-scale valuations every year; we are going therefore for triennial valuations, as is customary, with interim valuations to meet the agreement that we have come to. Normally, we would expect the actuaries to do those interim valuations in any case, if there were significant changes in the funding either of assets or liabilities.
Lord Higgins: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 280C not moved.]
Clause 214 agreed to.
Clause 215 [Certification of technical provisions]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 281:
Page 147, line 30, leave out from "212" to end of line 31.
The noble Baroness said: Amendments Nos. 281, 283 to 288A, 292 to 294A, 340B and 350ZB all make minor technical changes, which are necessary to ensure clarity and consistency. I am happy to read out what all the individual amendments do, but it may be that the Committee would accept them without my doing so.
There is one point that I should like to establish. The technical drafting amendments simply clarify whether the provisions apply to the future or the past. However, it might be helpful to clarify an issue on which we have received a number of representations. We are aware that a requirement to seek the agreement of the sponsoring employer raises particular issues for schemes in which the rules of the scheme give the trustees or scheme actuary the responsibility for determining the level of contributions payable to the scheme. Such a requirement would override existing rules of the scheme in a way that could have an adverse impact on the security of members' benefits. We have concluded that it would not be appropriate to override existing rules of schemes in that situation. We therefore propose to modify the new provision under the powers in Clause 222 to provide that when rules of the scheme provide for the trustees or scheme actuary to set the contribution rate, that arrangement may continue.
I wanted to put that detail on the record. The rest of the changes relate to minor technical drafting, but I am happy to describe any of them if it is the wish of the Committee. Indeed, I am happy to circulate my speaking notes if the Committee would like that. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 282:
Page 147, line 33, leave out "a reasonable period" and insert "one month"
The noble Lord said: The clause requires the regulator to receive a report in writing if,
"the actuary cannot give the certificate required by subsection (2)…within a reasonable period".
What does the Minister consider to be a reasonable period? I am not wedded to one month or six months, or whatever period. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Regulations will give guidance under Clause 84(2)(a) on the code of practice subject to consultation on what is a "reasonable period". We use the term a lot, and we shall have an overview of all its meanings in various contexts. That will be done in consultation with the industry, and will be turned into a code of guidance that it can follow. The other virtue of using that phrase is that it avoids the hassle that we had with OPRA, whereby something like 52 per cent of offences reported to it were of employers paying their contributions a day or a couple of days late. We shall get rid of that level of detailed graffiti.
The overriding issue is that there will be a general code of guidance as to what "reasonable period" means in all parts of the Bill, which will be an easy ready reckoner for practitioners to consult.
Lord Skelmersdale: That is very helpful. Clearly, "a reasonable period" may be unreasonable in some cases and overgenerous in others. I am glad that it will be spelt out in regulations that will end up as a code of practice. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 215, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 216 [Recovery plan]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 283 to 286:
Page 147, line 41, leave out from "must" to end of line 42 and insert ", within the prescribed time—

(a) if there is no existing recovery plan in force, prepare a recovery plan;

(b) if there is an existing recovery plan in force, review and if necessary revise it."

Page 148, line 4, after "preparing" insert "or revising"
Page 148, line 6, leave out subsection (5) and insert—
"(5) Provision may be made by regulations as to other circumstances in which a recovery plan may or must be reviewed and if necessary revised."
Page 148, line 14, leave out from beginning to "must" and insert "The copy of any recovery plan sent to the Regulator"
On Question, amendments agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 216, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: The clause gives rise to the other part of the argument that we began earlier on MFRs, and so on—namely, what is to be done if a particular scheme turns out to be, in nice, simple, non-European terms, in deficit. The question is over what period the scheme should be required to bring itself back into conformity with its statement of funding principles.
The matter is affected to some extent by the European directive. Obviously, if it were in the form of a buy-out situation, that would not matter; but if 45 per cent of schemes are below their MFR, it seems probable that a very considerable number of them will be below any likely or sensible scheme-specific standard. Things will have to be done over various time periods, and it is not clear to what extent the regulator will be able to require a scheme to put its matters right in a particular time. I presume that he would take into account the strength of the employer, so that it would not be appropriate to have the same provision for all schemes. Perhaps, however, that is rather paradoxical; perhaps, if the employer is strong, he ought to put things right straightaway, rather than it be argued that he is a strong employer so that it does not matter if he does not do so for some time. There is something of a paradox there.
Regulations are to specify acceptable recovery periods, rather than the regulator doing so. I was not quite clear why the Government were to specify such periods; presumably, that relates to the solvency of the scheme and of the company. Is it really appropriate for the Government to do that through regulation, rather than the regulator?
The other difficult problem arises when we consider what will happen if the recovery period extends beyond the date of the next revaluation. Does it then roll forward? If the recovery period goes over the next six years, does one start all over when one comes to the next valuation and roll it forward again? In those circumstances, is it possible for the end of the recovery period never to be reached? The noble Baroness looks
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rather puzzled. Not to put too fine a point on it, she did not see this one coming. If the recovery period is six years, does it remain at six years, or does it depend on a valuation taking place in the mean time? The valuation may be either better or worse than was expected when the plan to end the deficit was made, of course.
Those are the main points that arise on the clause, and I would be grateful for the Minister's comments.
6 p.m.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: What is the Government's thinking on a longstop maximum reasonable recovery period? Would 20 years be acceptable under any circumstances? Would 10 years be too much? It would be helpful if we had some indication of the Government's thinking on maxima.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The clause is rather important, and it may help if I try to widen the debate. I try to cut my comments down as much as possible, so that we can expedite proceedings, but what happens when a valuation shows that a scheme is underfunding against the statutory funding objective is a critical issue. Where that happens, subsection (1) requires the trustees or managers to prepare or review, and if necessary revise, a recovery plan. The intention is that a recovery plan should be put in place where a valuation indicates that there is a funding shortfall, with no recovery plan in place. If a subsequent valuation shows that there is still a deficit, the trustees or managers will be required to review the recovery plan and, if necessary—for instance, because the shortfall has increased—revise it.
In that sense, no recovery plan is open-ended over three years. For example, if there was an acceptable recovery plan to take place over six years with a three-year evaluation, that does not mean that one has another six years thereafter. At that point, one would be seeing to what extent one could move forward, and therefore whether the contribution came from the employer or whether anything else needed to be made more rigorous in the circumstances. I looked sceptical while the noble Lord was pushing me because the problem seemed more theoretical than real. Over the three years, liabilities and assets may both have changed quite sharply and, as a result, further revaluation would take place at that point. In the light of what has happened to the stock market and so on, the recovery plan may be closer to realisation than was originally expected.
There is a power in subsection (1) to prescribe the time within which the recovery plan must be prepared or reviewed, and if necessary revised. It is worth putting on record that we intend that the period should be 12 weeks from the date on which the actuary signs the valuation report. That is currently the period allowed under the MFR for preparing or reviewing and revising a schedule of contributions and putting it in place following a valuation. Under the new provisions the preparation and review of any recovery plan will be a complementary activity with the preparation and review of the schedule of contributions following a valuation. We do not, therefore, expect the common timetable to cause

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problems for schemes. As required by subsection (2), the recovery plan will be a document showing the steps to be taken to bring the funding of the scheme back on track and the period over which the trustees plan to make good the shortfall.
I want to make it clear that we do not expect to specify in legislation a fixed period for correcting the shortfall. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, asked whether we had a maximum in mind—20 years, 10 years, 50 years, whatever. He will not like my answer at all, any more than he did my previous answer, because he is asking for answers to questions that, by definition, do not have the sort of answers that he would like. The time will depend on the circumstances of the scheme. For example, in an ongoing scheme, it may be appropriate for the recovery period to be the average remaining working life of the members. However, in a scheme closed to future members, where most of the members are pensioners, a shorter recovery period may be more appropriate. I shall not be tempted today to put years on that.
We do not have a fixed period. That is a key difference with the new scheme's funding provisions, and one which has been widely welcomed. One of the main criticisms of MFR was the very inflexible rectification time in which schemes had to get to 90 per cent in three years or to 100 per cent in 10 years. That proved unacceptable to business. The rigidity of that was independent of the solvency of the employer and the strength of the company. It made the fixed target of 90 per cent in three years in practice one of the areas in which MFR was most criticised, as I am sure that Members of the Committee are aware, because of the rigidity of the recovery period independent of the viability of the company.
Under the new scheme funding arrangements, the trustees and the employer, with the advice of the actuary, will be required to work together to develop a customised funding plan for their scheme. It will need to take account of the specific circumstances and nature of the scheme, as required by subsection (3). Trustees will need to have regard, for example, to matters such as the age profile of the scheme members, and whether the scheme is open to new members. The code of practice which the regulator will issue on trustees' duties under Part 3 will give guidance on the matters which trustees will need to take into account in determining how and over what period any shortfall is to be made up.
Although we are not specifying a fixed period for correcting deficits, we are putting safeguards in place to prevent abuse. There are sensible precautions to protect the interests of scheme members and to demonstrate compliance with the requirement of the European pensions directive, which allows schemes to be underfunded for a "limited period of time", provided that they put a "concrete and realisable" recovery plan in place under Article 16. Therefore, recovery plans will be subject to such other requirements as may be prescribed in regulations
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under subsection (3), and subsection (4) requires trustees or managers to take account of prescribed matters when preparing or revising the recovery plan.
It is our intention to require that recovery plans are time-limited and comply with certain limitations to ensure that schemes do not effectively plan to operate with an open-ended deficit. We are currently discussing the nature of those limitations with representatives from employers, the pensions industry and OPRA. For instance, regulations may prevent arrangements under which the whole deficit was repaid towards the end of the recovery period, or may require plans to be structured to restrict the amount of re-spreading permitted.
I do not know whether there is anything further that I can usefully add. Subsection (5) enables regulations to set out other circumstances in which a recovery plan may or must be prepared or revised, following a valuation. Subsection (6) requires schemes to send a copy to the Pensions Regulator, which will allow him to apply closer scrutiny or take regulatory action where it deems that members' benefits may be at risk. I emphasise that we are consulting representatives from employers, the pensions industry and OPRA on what additional information would most assist the regulator in identifying the schemes where members' benefits might be at risk.
Clearly, the size of the deficit relative to the scheme assets, the number of members and the length of the plan are all factors. However, other factors, such as the relative strength of the funding strategy chosen by the trustees will be equally relevant. For instance, members' benefits could be less at risk where there was a larger deficit in a scheme where the technical provisions are calculated on an extremely prudent basis, than where there was a smaller deficit in a scheme where the technical provisions are calculated on a moderately prudent basis.
We will also require schemes to give their members details of any recovery plan that they put in place, when they send them annual information about the scheme's funding position. We will do that through an amendment to the current disclosure regulations for occupational pension schemes. The clause follows the approach taken elsewhere in Part 3.
I have taken some time, but I thought it might be useful to set down some of what we think that we can do and what is being progressed in consultation with OPRA, employers and the pensions industry and will therefore come forward in regulations and guidance. I hope that I have answered some of the questions, except for the ones that are by definition unanswerable. That does not prevent them being asked, but it means that one cannot give the tidy answers that in other circumstances would be helpful.
Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market: I apologise for having to flit in and out of the Committee's proceedings to other engagements elsewhere. The area is very important, and I am grateful to the Minister for spelling it out so far as she could. I want to take her a stage further, however. I can see that, for trustees, managers, employers and actuaries, in certain

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circumstances, it will be vital to get it right. She indicated a number of factors that require flexibility from scheme to scheme. However, it was not absolutely clear, to me at least, whether there would eventually be a firm time limit on all schemes. Naturally, she would not give one today and said that consultation was going on with industry. However, at the end of the day, will there be through regulations guidance to trustees and managers on exactly what the ultimate time limit is within which they have to operate?
I note, for example, in Clause 221(2), that the regulator will have powers to give directions about how and over what period any failure to meet the statutory funding objective should be rectified. That rather suggests that the regulator will have to review, for individual schemes or schemes as a whole, exactly what the limited time period should be. In drawing up recovery plans, trustees, managers and employers would need some clear idea of what that was. Is it ultimately intended that there will be clearer guidance than can be given today?
Lord Higgins: For clarification, did the reference to a 12-week period mean the period within which the recovery plan has to be produced? The Minister indicates that that is so. In line with what my noble friend said, I understand that it is now not the Government's intention to set recovery periods. However, the regulator will presumably do so. Can I be clear about valuations? If, soon after the Bill comes in, a six-year recovery period is set by the regulator, presumably that will be adhered to regardless of whether there is a valuation in the mean time. Will the scheme be six years if the scheme is better off, worse off or the same, or will we get a new recovery period every time that we have a revaluation?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The noble Lord's understanding is absolutely right; the 12 weeks is the period to produce the recovery plans, as with OPRA.
We are finding it hard to engage on the point about the six years and renewal because the process is that the regulator will normally intervene in directions only when the trustees and employers cannot agree, fairly obviously. Basically, it will be for the trustees and employers to produce a rectification or recovery plan to be able to meet the scheme funding and take that into account. In the light of that and other information that the regulator has about a company's solvency, investment principles and so on, the regulator may decide that the recovery plan is realistic, needs to be tightened or can be extended. It will certainly not be open-ended, but the regulator may wish to expedite things and accept that the timetable is prudent and appropriate.
At the point of the three-year valuation, the recovery may have been completed. It may not have been, or may need to be expedited because the situation of assets has worsened or liabilities have increased. In light of that, the recovery plan may need to be amended. In that sense, I suspect that that would be a reiterative but sensible process. I cannot answer
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the question in the way the noble Lord put it, again; I have to do it in the form of a dialogue. The outcome is very clear. The degree of intervention from the regulator will be determined by the degree to which the regulator believes that a scheme may be at risk. Therefore, it needs to exercise greater stringency and oversight to prevent a scheme coming into the PPF at some point in future.
I wonder whether I have answered the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, with the answer that I have just given. All recovery periods will be time limited. That will not be set out in regulations, because we are not talking about MFR. Regulations will give guidance in the code of practice for trustees, but it will be for trustees, on the advice of actuaries, to produce a plan that the regulator is satisfied meets the objective to be able to meet the pension promise as laid down by the rules of the scheme. I do not know whether I can help further.
6.15 p.m.
Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market: The Minister could provide clarification simply by answering on this point. That means that there will not be a fixed time limit right across the board eventually. The regulator will have the power to decide, in terms of the individual scheme, whether the time limit set by the trustees and employer is too long and will therefore, taking into account all the factors, be able to come back and say, "I want a shorter time limit than has been set" or whatever.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: That is exactly right, precisely because each scheme will be different. It would depend on the valuation, whether ongoing or discontinuous. Information about future possibilities of salary increase and so on, and an assessment of the strength of the company are relevant. The company may say, "We would like five years", and the regulator may say, "You should be able to do this in three years". If the regulator is not satisfied that the scheme is appropriate and realistic, it will come in. That will vary from scheme to scheme; there will not be a common time period. That was precisely the problem of MFR, when there were three years to get to 90 per cent and 10 years to get to 100 per cent, which really took no account of the profile of the scheme, the age of its members, the pay levels of those members, the life expectancy assumptions made by its actuaries and the like. I agree with the noble Lord's description; it is also my understanding that that is the process to be followed.
Clause 216, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 217 and 218 agreed to.
Clause 219 [Matters requiring agreement of the employer]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 287:
Page 150, line 7, after "any" insert "provisions of a"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 288 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 288A:
Page 150, line 13, at end insert—
"(2A) No modification may be made under subsection (2) that on taking effect would or might adversely affect any subsisting right of—

(a ) any member of the scheme, or

(b) any survivor of a member of the scheme.

For this purpose "subsisting right" and "survivor" have the meanings given by section 67A of the Pensions Act 1995."
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 289 not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 219, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: There are one or two points on the clause, which is concerned with matters on which the employer has to agree with the trustees or managers. I shall ask a question that I have been meaning to ask all the way through. I am not sure why managers keep turning up. There are employers, employees and trustees, but managers have nothing to do with the matter. However, it was noticeable in the case in the courts between Unilever and its fund manager that it was the manager—a glamorous lady matched by an equally glamorous lady on the other side—who constantly turned up rather than the chairman of trustees. I was never clear why. What is the role of managers in all such matters? Their status is rather strange.
The other thing that worries me about the clause is that the trustees or managers and the employer must agree on certain issues, such as,
"the methods and assumptions to be used in calculating the scheme's technical provisions".
I may be quite wrong, but my understanding is that that is not the present position. At the moment, the methods and assumptions to be used in calculating the scheme's assets and liabilities are a matter for the trustees and the actuaries. It is not necessary to get the agreement of the employer to the assumptions. If that is not so, I have been behaving rather oddly on a number of previous occasions, because certainly one did not use to get the agreement of the employers to what was suggested.
In subsection (4), there is mention of a "reasonable period". I have no problem with that, but the relationship between the employers and the trustees is very important. It is important that the trustees act in an independent manner.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: On the first point about mergers, the noble Lord is quite right. He has asked me this about three times, and each time I have overlooked the point in my response. The provision concerns public sector schemes not protected by Crown guarantee, such as Arts Council stuff—that shopping list of schemes which have managers rather than trustees. They are not protected by Crown guarantee; they are DB schemes and they come within
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the scope of the PPF and pay the levy. That is my understanding where the Bill refers to trustees and managers. I do not know of any exceptions to where it applies, other than in that way.
The noble Lord's substantive point was about the expectations involving the sponsoring employer in the decisions being made by trustees about scheme funding. It may be worth spelling this out. The trustees will be responsible for taking decisions on the governance and funding of the scheme. However, the ongoing viability of the scheme is crucially dependent on the continuing support of the sponsoring employer. The clause requires the trustees to seek the sponsoring employer's agreement when developing an appropriate strategy for funding the scheme's pensions commitments.
While we hope that in most cases the trustees and employer will be able to agree on the funding of the scheme, we recognise that in some cases the trustees may not be able to secure the employer's agreement—if he needs to raise his contribution level, for example. Where that happens, particularly where the employer might otherwise consider closing or winding up the scheme, subsection (2) enables trustees to modify the future accrual of benefits under the scheme, for example, by reducing the scheme's accrual rate from, say, 1/60th to 1/80th. They can do so only where the employer agrees.
Subsection (2A), in government Amendment No. 288A, clarifies what is meant by "accrual of future benefits". Effectively, it prohibits any modification that would adversely affect a member's subsisting rights, as defined in Section 67A of the Pensions Act 1995, as inserted by Clause 251 of this Bill. Those rights are built up in respect of past service.
I should mention that where the trustees and employer agree to such a modification, it is intended that the regulations made under powers in Clause 248(2)(b) will require the employer to consult those scheme members who would be affected by the change. We will, of course, consider the requirement to consult in more detail when we look at Clauses 248 to 250.
Where a scheme is so modified, subsection (3) of Clause 219 requires the trustees or managers to notify the active members of the scheme—those who will be affected by a future change—in writing, within one month of it taking effect.
Where the trustees or managers are unable to agree with the employer on these matters, they are required by subsection (4) to notify the regulator. So, for instance, they will need to notify the regulator where trustees and employer cannot, or do not wish to, resolve matters through modifying the future accrual of benefits.
Subsection (5) empowers the regulator to impose a penalty on a trustee or manager who has failed to take all reasonable steps to comply with the requirements in this clause.
The clause will introduce an important check and balance within the scheme funding regulatory framework, enabling the regulator to intervene and help resolve disputes between the trustees and the employer, as we shall see, I hope, when we consider Clause 221.

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That is the basis of the funding partnership that we expect to see under scheme-specific funding.
Lord Higgins: I do not have a clear answer from the noble Baroness. My understanding is that this is not the present position, because at present the trustees, in conjunction with the actuary, decide what the assumptions are and what the basis of the valuation of the liabilities should be, without any agreement by the employer. Am I wrong? I do not think so.
Secondly, if one looks down the paragraph, the matter ultimately remains unresolved. Supposing that there is no agreement between the employer and the trustees. If the employer agrees—not otherwise, apparently—they may, by resolution, modify the scheme. Supposing that that does not happen either, they have to report it to the regulator, but then nothing happens. How is the matter resolved?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: In most schemes, the employer currently has the deciding say on the contribution rate. In some schemes—the minority—the trustees do. We seek to establish a collaborative arrangement in which, if the collaboration fails to produce an acceptable scheme of contributions and any adjustments, the regulator would intervene to ensure that it happened. Is there anything further that I can add?
Lord Higgins: There appears to be a change from the present situation.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: For some schemes, yes.
Lord Higgins: So the Government are going to force trustees, who had previously made the assumptions and agreed on the valuation and so on with the actuary, to get the employer's agreement. The employer may well take the view that he does not want to pay up as much as the trustees think that he should. I had not realised, because it was outside my experience, that there were any schemes in which one had to get the agreement of the employer. It would certainly be undesirable, for those schemes for which the trustees have set the matter, for that to be prevented in future.
If there is a dispute, how is it resolved?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: A dispute will ultimately get resolved by the regulator.
Lord Higgins: The clause does not say so.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: In other clauses, the Bill certainly does. Clause 221 states that the regulator resolves disputes, but we will come to that in a moment. For the most part, the employer decides, and that will be modified. As I said when I spoke to a group of government amendments, we will modify the requirement where the trustees already have the power to set the contribution rates. They do not have to seek the employer's agreement. Where trustees already
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have the power, it will not be diluted. Where employers have full power, there will in future be a collaborative process between the employer and trustee.
Lord Higgins: That is not what the clause says. The clause does not say that, if the trustees have the power without the agreement of the employer, that will continue.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Clause 222 states that:
"Regulations may modify the provisions of this Part as they apply in prescribed circumstances".
That will be the point at which the existing power of the trustees is not overridden by the changes in Clause 219.
Lord Higgins: Clause 222 could mean anything to anyone.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: Why do we want to leave that to regulations? I hope that I heard the noble Baroness correctly and that she said that, where trustees effectively had the sole power at the moment, the intention was not to change or override that. I would have thought it perfectly simple to have that in the Bill and make that clear. This is an important and topical matter. Of particular relevance is the recent WH Smith case, where Martin Taylor, the chairman of the trustees there, stood up very firmly. If that power is to be diluted, that would be a seriously retrograde step. There is no reason not to have that set out clearly in the Bill.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: It is not only WH Smith, but the Marks & Spencer case as well, I suspect, where the trustees had unusual powers, to some extent, over the autonomy of their scheme, independent of the employer. The provision is in the form in which it is because of the parliamentary draftsmen. Let me check on it. I take the substantive point that it is not clear in the Bill exactly how the power would be used. Reassurances may need to be given. I shall see whether we need to increase the clarity, either through guidance or through any changes—I would be reluctant to make changes, given what parliamentary counsel have said on the matter. I accept the criticism that it is not obvious that the power in Clause 222 protects the existing powers of trustees against the employers, compared to Clause 219. Some cross-reference may need to be made in Clause 219 to Clause 222, which may serve the purpose.
Clause 219, as amended, agreed to.
6.30 p.m.
Clause 220 [Matters on which advice of actuary must be obtained]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 290:
Page 150, line 40, leave out from "prepared" to "by" in line 41.
The noble Lord said: This clause relates to when the actuary gets involved. As the draftsman has put it more elegantly, it relates to matters on which the advice of the actuary must be obtained. Subsection (3) provides that when the actuary is giving advice:
"The regulations may require the actuary to have regard to prescribed guidance".

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That is fine; I have no problem with that. However, I have a large problem with the very unusual formulation of the following words:
"'Prescribed guidance' means guidance that is prepared"—
so far, that is fine—
"and from time to time revised by a prescribed body".
The body is unspecified. To make matters worse, it continues,
"and, if the regulations so provide, is approved by the Secretary of State".
I have two questions. First, what prescribed body is intended to issue the prescribed guidance? Secondly, on what occasion should the regulations provide that the Secretary of State perhaps even second guesses the prescribed body? I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I may be able to respond quickly to the noble Lord. The prescribed body would be the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries. It will draw up the guidance. The Secretary of State intervenes not on matters of professional judgment but on the process point only. He must be satisfied that the process point is appropriate. Officials are working with the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries to draw that up so that the Secretary of State can then endorse it. It is fairly easy and it should be fine.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am delighted to hear it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
[Amendment No. 291 not moved.]
Clause 220 agreed to.
Clause 221 [Powers of the Regulator]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendments Nos. 292 to 294A:
Page 151, line 5, leave out from "failed" to end of line 9 and insert "to comply with the requirements of section 213 with respect to the preparation or revision of a statement of funding principles;"
Page 151, line 15, leave out from first "to" to end of line 20 and insert "comply with the requirements of section 216 with respect to the preparation or revision of a recovery plan;"
Page 151, line 22, leave out from "to" to end of line 28 and insert "comply with the requirements of section 217 with respect to the preparation or revision of a schedule of contributions;"
Page 151, line 50, at end insert—
"(2A) No modification may be made under subsection (2)(a) that on taking effect would or might adversely affect any subsisting right of—

(a) any member of the scheme, or

(b) any survivor of a member of the scheme.

For this purpose "subsisting right" and "survivor" have the meanings given by section 67A of the Pensions Act 1995."
On Question, amendments agreed to.
[Amendment No. 295 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
On Question, Whether Clause 221, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: I wish to raise one small issue. Clause 221(1)(c) refers to the requirement that the actuary certify the calculation of the scheme's technical
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provisions, whereas under previous clauses he simply has to sign what he has produced. I am not clear what the difference is between certifying something and signing it. Clearly, "certify" is the right expression, but previous clauses provide that the actuary must merely "sign". I would have thought that the terms meant the same thing, but I do not know why the terminology differs.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Is the issue about where the actuary is unable to certify and therefore has not signed?
Lord Higgins: A previous clause provides that the actuary must sign rather than certify.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Can the noble Lord point out where it is provided that the actuary must sign? I presume that he signs where he certifies, and that if he is unable to certify, he does not sign.
Lord Higgins: Clause 214(2)(a) describes the actuarial report as,
"a written report…signed by the actuary",
whereas Clause 221(1)(c) refers to the actuary certifying the calculation. I am not clear about the distinction.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: Clause 214(2)(a) refers to a written report,
"prepared and signed by the actuary".
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Unless there is a charge of which I am not aware, the difference in terminology arises because Clause 221(1)(c) refers to cases where,
"the actuary is unable…to certify the calculation of the scheme's technical provisions".
Were he able to certify, he would sign it off under Clause 214(2)(a).
I think that the noble Lord's difficulty arises because he inserts a negative. I add my usual qualification that, if I am wrong on this, 1 shall write to him.
Lord Higgins: The noble Baroness is probably right.
Clause 221, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 222 and 223 agreed to.
Clause 224 [Promoting and facilitating financial planning for retirement]:
Lord Higgins Lord Higgins moved Amendment No. 295ZZA:
Page 152, line 24, at end insert—
"( ) The action must in particular include an estimate of the minimum resources which an individual needs to have to produce a retirement income greater than that which would be provided by means tested benefits."
The noble Lord said: I am trying to find something as lengthy as the number in Amendment No. 295ZZA.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: "Zzzz".
Lord Higgins: It sounds like a BMW.

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This clause concerns retirement planning, which we will no doubt discuss later. My amendment would provide that the action taken by those providing retirement planning advice,
"must in particular include an estimate of the minimum resources which an individual needs to have to produce a retirement income greater than that which would be provided by means tested benefits".
I am extremely sceptical about the entire clause. It is very desirable that people know what they are likely to face—or enjoy—in retirement. In any event, people really want to know whether it is worth providing for their retirement—that is to say, whether they would receive sufficient benefits to remove the need to rely on means-tested benefits. On previous occasions, the noble Baroness and I have exchanged views on the amount of resources needed to float someone off means-tested benefits. The estimates produced by Mr Willetts, Mr Field and the Government vary greatly.
In any event, it is clear that a substantial sum would have to be accrued to make saving worth while. That reflects the enormous expansion by the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the provisions of means-tested benefits. Estimates of the number of people who will end up on such benefits are fairly terrifying, not least because of the likely burden on those who are not on means-tested benefits. Therefore, if we have the exercise of providing information on retirement planning, this would be the most essential element of provision; otherwise people will not know whether it is worth providing for their retirement. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I hesitate because I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is also concerned about this issue. We cannot estimate far in advance people's eligibility for pension credit within the pension planner. It is impossible to tell whether a 40 or 50 year-old will be eligible for disability premiums and what the state of their capital may be.
This morning I made a cross-reference to the pension credit calculator. Somebody on the cusp of retirement, if their information is relatively conventional, could deduce from the Pension Service's calculator whether they would be entitled to pension credit. The Pension Service is happy to circulate copies of the calculator; we simply downloaded it from the Internet. Whether individuals have paid off their mortgage will affect their eligibility for benefits. Another factor is whether they are entitled to disability premiums. In the few months before retirement, one may be able to give people a more reliable estimate of whether they would be eligible for an income-related benefit. We could not do so many years before simply because of the uncertainty of the individual's circumstances. One cannot easily roll them forward.
The noble Lord asked whether saving was worth while. Various calculations have been made of the level of pension pot necessary to float people off income-related benefits. A significant number of health warnings must be attached to the calculation, primarily because one of the most potentially
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"generous" benefits is housing benefit. Around 80 per cent of pensioners are owner-occupiers and will almost invariably have paid off their mortgage by pension age. A pensioner in rented accommodation might well be entitled to housing benefit of £100 or £200 a week under certain circumstances, particularly if they have a disability which requires a particular type of accommodation. So there is a health warning about housing costs, about whether you are living singly or jointly, and about what assumptions one makes about indexation when deciding whether to opt for an index-linked pension or not. Variations of how much is needed in a pension pot can range from around £50,000 to £100,000-plus before someone reaches a pension level that would take them out of the situation covered by pension credit.
I do not want to sound too belligerent but pension credit and its targeting has an undeservedly bad press. I understand that pensioners would prefer to avoid detailed enquiries into their circumstances. But one must remember that pension credit is based on a snapshot at the point of retirement. It has stripped out nearly all the complexities of individual voluntary contributions and private organisations such as RNIB. It is a very simple calculation which, because most pensioners' incomes are stable, would need to be revisited only where there has been a major event: the big two are the death of a partner or the sale of a house and possibly going into sheltered accommodation.
The procedure takes about 15 to 20 minutes on the phone. All our feedback shows that, although many pensioners are apprehensive initially, time and again we receive bouquets of thanks, with people saying that the information was helpful, that the young person to whom they talked was easy to understand and could progress the matter, and that as a result they now receive £20 or £30 a week that they would not get otherwise.
Although pension credit is income-related, one must compare it with the situation that prevailed previously. Before pension credit was introduced, if the widow of a local authority manual worker was entitled to a pension of £100 a month, or £20 a week, from the local authority, she would be no better off than if there was not a penny of pension because it would be lost in a 100 per cent, pound-for-pound reduction against MIG. We inherited that situation from the previous government. We recognised the need for MIG, but it disincentivised the small saver. Pension credit means that such a widow now keeps £60 of the £100 and is therefore, under pension credit, £13 a week better off. I accept that that is based on income calculation but compared to the situation that preceded it there is now no such disincentive for small savers. Given finite resources, it targets the available moneys on the smallest savers who otherwise would have lost the benefit of their savings pound for pound.
Although I understand the noble Lord's criticism of pension credit, means testing and so on, there are benefits. First, it means that around 2 million pensioners receive additional moneys that they would never otherwise have received. Secondly, as a result, it rewards small savers for the first time. Thirdly, in

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practice, all our feedback from the Pension Service shows that the workings of pension credit have proved not only acceptable but reasonably attractive to pensioners receiving the service.
6.45 p.m.
Since the noble Lord has baited me slightly, I wish to make an additional point. In 1997–98, on a relative low income test—60 per cent of median income—after housing costs, 2.7 million pensioners were in poverty. As a result of our activity, the current number on the same relative low income is 2.2 million. The figure has fallen by half a million. Even more dramatic is that in 1997–98 26 per cent of that cohort of pensioners were in poverty—after housing costs, because so many are owner-occupiers—whereas five years on, only 9 per cent of the same cohort are in poverty. Using the baseline of 1997–98, we have taken two thirds of that cohort of pensioners out of poverty, partly because of our targeting of benefits through initiatives such as pension credit. I must say that I am extremely proud of that record.
Baroness Barker: As another survivor of the then State Pension Credit Bill, I cannot decline the opportunity given by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, to return to the subject. To an extent, the noble Baroness laid down a route towards a discussion on pension credit, which we have had many times in your Lordships' House. I understand that this has happened because of the nature of the amendment. The noble Baroness has avoided the third element of income on retirement: stakeholder pensions, the other much-vaunted part of the Government's pension policy. The provision of stakeholder pensioners will make a prediction of final retirement income much more difficult. Of all the many things that the noble Baroness has said in defence of the Government's pension policy, one of her most telling remarks was that the key determinant of a person's retirement is what they do in their 20s and 30s, not in the years leading directly to retirement.
We support strongly the aim of these provisions. It is extremely important that people have a way of making informed choices at an early enough stage in their earning life to make a key difference to their retirement income. Therefore, the exclusion of contributory benefits and council tax benefit makes the system extremely limited in what it can offer. The noble Baroness mentioned housing benefit but council tax benefit is perhaps a bigger issue for more people.
I thank the department for organising a demonstration on the issue. Those of us who attended it made a clear assessment that individuals could obtain no more than a very rough guide of what their income might be on retirement. It is therefore a very blunt instrument for determining what changes an individual may make to plan for retirement. The noble Baroness will remember that one of the issues that I raised during the demonstration was that care costs were not included in the prompts used to take people through the needs that they may wish to provide for
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during retirement. Given the generation of people about whom we are talking, some provision should be made for care costs.
Given the uncertainty of integrated information that is reliant on benefits, which the noble Baroness has honestly outlined, does she not agree that the Government are selling a promise that ultimately the department will be hard pushed to deliver? At a time when it is possible for people to take remedial action themselves, they will be no clearer about their likely retirement income.
Lord Higgins: I certainly agree wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness who has just spoken; it is important that, if people are going to provide for their retirement, they should do so as early as possible. However, I want to concentrate on the amendment and discuss the clause in a moment or two.
I do not propose to repeat the endless debates that we have had on the pension credit, the stakeholder pension or the state second pension. That constitutes much water under the bridge. I seek to establish that if this advice is to be given—when we have the clause stand part debate I shall express much scepticism about it—at the very least it is only fair to people (indeed, I think that it is misselling otherwise) to give them some indication of how much they have to save for it to be worth while, allowing for all the complications connected with housing benefit and everything else.
While estimates have been varied as to what it is necessary to have to "float yourself off" means-tested benefits, I should not have thought it was seriously arguable that saving £20,000 is no good at all. Mr Frank Field expressed this in more colourful terms, saying roughly that you should spend it at the pub on a Saturday evening. I do not agree with that. He used a more colourful expression which 1 shall not use, but there is no point in saving £20,000 for your retirement. I should have thought that the estimate which is made ought to make that clear. That is the point of the amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: On that last point I was trying to do some ready reckoning. I am trying to work out what money you would get with a sum of £20,000. I believe that it would be £100 a month, or something like that. I am trying to do sums in my head. Given the pension credit, it would be worth having.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I do not think that it would be as much as that.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I shall check that. I accept that the retirement planner cannot encompass all of the things that may happen to people. For example, an absolute key matter for the woman is whether her partner is the main carrier of the income in retirement and he dies ahead of what might reasonably be expected in terms of longevity tables. That would completely alter their accounts.
I defer to the noble Baroness who has more hands-on experience than I, so to speak, but I think I am right in saying that only about one pensioner in eight, and only about 3 per cent of all pensioners, go into

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sheltered housing, let alone residential care, although they may have home helps, which they may or may not pay for depending on their income. I take on board all the warnings given by the noble Baroness but it is hard to incorporate such eventualities into any assessment. The retirement planner does something slightly simpler. It enables people in their 30s and 40s to project, probably into their early years of retirement in all fairness—into their 60s and 70s—what income they would like and expect to enjoy. Then, given certain assumptions about what savings they have, their expenditure on travel to work, their housing costs and so on, it enables people to assess how far short they are of realising that and how much they need to save in order to be able to remedy it. Bluntly, it is a wake-up call to people who begin, perhaps in their 40s, to realise that their retirement may not be as prosperous as they had hoped and to enable them to see what the options are. For example, can they save more? Can they increase their hours? Should they increase their years of work? Does it mean that a woman does not take retirement as early as she had hoped?
Having said that, I absolutely accept that many other individual contingencies exist and that people will not know whether they are going to happen to them, and which we cannot build into the retirement planner.
Pension credit, which is the big one that I was concerned about when the noble Baroness first raised it, we have covered as best we can so that people at the cusp of retirement can do the read-across to the Pension Service to see what their eligibility will be. But I do not see how one could realistically build in much of the information, as the noble Baroness rightly says, that affects the standard of living, particularly of older pensioners, into a retirement planner at this stage. In other words the retirement planner is most useful in the first 15 years or so of retirement. It may become less useful as ill-health grows, as issues about survival grow and as one is more likely to come within the reach of pension credit because one's income has fallen and not kept pace with the cost of living. That is a legitimate criticism.
Having said that, we are not trying to claim that the retirement planner can answer all of those issues, but it can serve as a wake-up call for people in their 30s and 40s to realise—as we know from all the evidence, including from the Citizens Advice Bureaux—that they have a slightly utopian notion of the income that they think they will receive in retirement. They are not going to get it and they need to know the strategies that are open to them to improve their financial position. I would not wish to claim more for the retirement planner at this point. We shall discuss those people who have received combined pension forecasts, but they have emphatically said that it is very useful and a significant proportion of them have increased their savings as a result.
Lord Higgins: We still have not covered the clear point that these calculations should make people aware of the fact that they have to save a great deal if they are to get any benefit from it. All the other points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, do not focus on that issue. If we are to have this exercise at all, it is important that that particular point—which is the crucial point regarding whether people should save—must be brought out clearly.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Could I just press the noble Lord; what does he mean that it will not benefit people? Anyone who has a full basic state pension and has any occupational pension, stakeholder or anything else in retirement, will benefit. That is unlike the regime we inherited whereby if people had income worth between £77 and, say, £105 on today's figures, they would not have benefited. They would have lost 100 per cent. Now they will keep 60 per cent. So it is not true that they will not benefit. What they will not get until they come out of pension credit is 100 per cent of the value, because it is a targeted form of support.
Lord Higgins: I am not talking about pension credit but whether one receives any return for saving a small amount of money.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Of course one does. Why does the noble Lord think that one would not? Whatever income £20,000 may as a lump sum produce in terms of a weekly income, one will enjoy either all or part of that in retirement. How much of that one will enjoy will depend on the interaction with pension credit. For example, it will depend on whether one is the second earner in a family. If a woman is bringing in that sum of £20,000 and the husband's occupational pension is already sufficiently generous, they will enjoy every pound of any income earned by that £20,000. I do not understand the noble Lord's point. Of course one will enjoy all small moneys, but the amount one enjoys will depend on the total assessment of household income and how it interlocks with pension credit.
Lord Lea of Crondall: Perhaps I could add a point. The strategic question that faces us all is the low savings ratio and the need for people to increase their provision for retirement. We have all given a general welcome to the new thinking, whether it is in the Citizens Advice Bureaux and other people, to see what we can do. The bias that is introduced by Amendment No. 295ZZA—which is an Alfa Romeo rather than a BMW—is to make people think, "Well don't bother because you might get caught out with your means-tested benefit". But if one looks 20-odd years ahead, the amendment would be a strange form of words to introduce as a requirement on the people who are providing that information, when, as part of the bigger picture, they will have to be balanced in the sort of information they give. It would be a strange instruction to add to this clause, which will have to be developed as the years go by.
7 p.m.
Lord Higgins: I do not want to delay the Committee longer on this. I understand the point the noble Lord is making. The trouble is that the whole effect of the vast increase in means-tested benefits has been to make it less worthwhile to save. I should have thought that there is some case for making that clear to people, even though it has the unfortunate effect of making them face the reality of the situation.
I do not wish to pursue this issue further now, although I should like to come back to it on clause stand part. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 224 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: The broader question of the clause, which suggests that the Government should promote retirement planning, is, in one sense, clearly desirable. But one cannot help feeling that the estimates made are likely to be misleading. Take, for example, the state benefits that one is likely to receive. The result of the next general election is likely to be that people will receive a higher state pension than they will under the present Government because of the proposals which we have made. If this had been done in the past, the people who invested in Equitable Life would not have been grossly misled as a result of the failure of the regulatory system under both parties.
There is a whole series of issues here which mean that trying to forecast what is likely to be the outcome may well result in severe disappointment. It seems to me not a function of government to engage in what is inevitably, to a considerable extent, whether it be on the state or the private pension side, likely to be misleading. The whole point of the Bill is to deal with people who will find their pension expectations disappointed. They will find themselves with a very much smaller pension provision than they expected. Yet under the same Bill, the Government are telling people what their pension prospects are. I simply do not think it is possible for the Government to do it with a sufficient degree of probability for it to be a worthwhile exercise.
Baroness Barker: I should like to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, has said. Let us take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, on our previous debate. I cite again, for good reason, the example of an employer with which I work. The employer has a lot of staff who are part time and are not paid very much. The employer has had to think long and hard about whether the provision of a stakeholder pension of a small percentage will actually be beneficial to employees in their older age.
I take the point that one wants to encourage employers, but there are some who, for good and ethical reasons, are deeply concerned about the lack of information with which to model what might happen to their employees. Such employers fear that they may be doing a disservice to low-paid and part-time staff in particular.
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It is not just those employers who wish to abrogate their pension responsibilities to their employees who stand to be caught by this lack of information. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, is right. The more provision of state pensions is provided to people in the form of one-off allowances, which may or may not be uprated annually, and of discretionary benefits, the more difficult it becomes for anybody, including employers who, for good reason, want to make sure that their employees are not disadvantaged, to make a decent, educated guess at the likelihood of future provision.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I can understand all those criticisms, but my question back to both the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is: is it better for people to have the information, limited though it is and with all the health warnings that we need to attach to it, than none at all? Until we went into the area of automatic pension forecasts and combined pension forecasts, how many women, for example, did not realise that they would not necessarily get a full basic state pension? I can tell the Committee that it was 70 per cent. If, as a result, they get an automatic pension forecast, they will realise that they do not get one in their own right, and that if they are not married they will not get one by virtue of their partner. That may or may not propel them to the altar, but it may seriously propel them into thinking about their situation in future, and not regarding "him" as being available to pay for their pension.
I am sure that the noble Baroness and I could multiply instances. The pension planner can deal with only the current legislation on pensions, social security and so on, and is therefore subject to change in state pensions and any other form of pension provision, and in the individual circumstances. I accept that, but the alternative is not to have anything at all. Without that, a lot of people will go without the information that they need.
The noble Baroness will agree that the CABs are flooded with people who do not have even the most basic financial literacy. They are in debt, cannot cope, face eviction, do not have any rainy-day savings whatever, and have not even begun to think about their pensions. Those who have access to the pension planner will at least be given some basic comprehension about their basic state pension and what pensions they may get. It may even lead them for the first time into asking their employer whether they have a pension, in some cases. It will at least give them some sense of what they are likely to enjoy, and might give them the opportunity, as my noble friend Lord Lea said, to rectify the situation.
It is a long way from complete, by definition, because we cannot say what the situation will necessarily be for state pensions and private occupational pensions in 30 years' time. None the less, it is salutary for low-paid people, people who have been students at some period in their life, and people who have worked for a period below the LEL—few women know what the LEL is—to realise what the implications will be for their pensions.

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Because the planner cannot do 100 per cent—it can give people only 60 per cent or 70 per cent—that is not a reason for saying that 60 per cent or 70 per cent is not desirable, provided that health warnings are attached. The noble Baroness will know, having gone through the pension plan, that plenty of health warnings are attached. The alternative is not to have anything at all. The reception that we are getting already shows that there is a hunger for the sort of information that the planner will have, backed up by information such as that from the CAB, financial advice, employer advice and so on. We have to transform financial literacy in this country. One of the biggest forms of social exclusion in this country is not where one lives, but how little so many people know about finance and all its implications, and how to make a future for themselves and their families.
I accept all the criticism; I just think that it is unfair. We are being criticised for not doing what we know perfectly well we cannot do and have not set out to do. That tells me that we must make sure that the limitations on such a planner are clearly there. That said, the information has so far been found useful and valuable. Noble Lords who saw it were asked whether they had any comments on the adequacy of the financial planner and to suggest ways in which it should be adjusted. We did not receive a single comment from any noble Lord, but they are coming forward now. I wish that we had received them at the time, and we could have then responded to see whether we could take any of them on board. Most of them are, by definition, about what may happen in future, and we cannot forecast that.
The alternative is not to have a planner. From my limited experience, people—including, frankly, my own sons—have benefited from the information. It has made them realise the situation that they are in, but it is of course incomplete because, by definition, a lot of factors that will affect people's outcome are 30 years in the future.
Clause 224 agreed to.
Clauses 225 and 226 agreed to.
Schedule 10 [Use and supply of information: private pensions policy and retirement planning]:
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 295ZA:
Page 292, line 17, leave out sub-paragraphs (3) and (4).
The noble Baroness said: We made a drafting mistake. It was always our intention that those powers which we seek from the Inland Revenue and so on would be permissive, and that they should follow the Social Security Administration Act 1992. We are simply rectifying a drafting mistake. I hope that Members of the Committee will agree to the amendment.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 227 agreed to.
Clause 228 [Information and advice to employees]:
Lord Higgins Lord Higgins moved Amendment No. 295A:
Page 154, line 13, leave out "and advice"
The noble Lord said: It would be convenient to discuss Amendments Nos. 295B and 295C with this amendment.
I shall deal first with Amendment No. 295A. Clause 228 is concerned with information and advice to employees. It provides:
"Regulations may require employers to take action for the purpose of enabling employees to obtain information and advice about pensions and saving".
I have two concerns. First, the provision places on employers a responsibility to give employees information about a number of areas for which they are not immediately responsible. More particularly, I wish to question the use of the word "advice". My experience in this field has been salutary. One would have liked very much to advise employees on what to do about Equitable Life, particularly because the company's trustees had taken out an AVC, like so many groups of trustees, with Equitable Life. Under the Bill, trustees are no longer required to take out an AVC. Equitable Life went from disaster to disaster, and it was apparent to the trustees that it was doing so. Alas, it was not apparent to the government regulator under either government. However, we could not say to the employees covered by the fund, "For goodness' sake, get out of Equitable Life". Had we done so, we would have been liable for criminal penalties because we were not registered financial advisers.
The provision is a radical change from the current situation. It refers to employers rather than trustees of a pension fund but the same situation appertains: you cannot give advice unless you are a registered financial adviser. This clause suggests that the Government propose to reverse their policy on that matter. I have indicated that that would be a rather good idea in many respects, but it would then raise the issue of the qualifications of the employer or trustees to give financial advice. Employers will not necessarily have the least ability as financial advisers. They may be all right at running a company, but their ability to give financial advice, if they have any, is a matter of sheer chance. So we need to be clear what the Government's policy is on this matter. Will they continue to impose criminal penalties, or will they encourage the unqualified to give such advice? I am somewhat ambivalent about this matter, because the group of trustees with whom I was working were extremely expert and highly qualified to give financial advice, and would certainly have been able to say without a moment's hesitation. "Get out of Equitable Life". But we could not do so. So what is the policy now on employers or trustees giving advice? I beg to move.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My question to the Minister is, who pays for this advice? It is reasonable for an employer to give information about a scheme, but we are getting into the area of advice. It is right that at the moment employers are at grave risk if they give

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advice, and that advice should preferably be independent—should probably not come from an employer. Is it the Government's intention that employers who are running a pension scheme should have to pay for individuals in that scheme to find advice elsewhere? I should have thought that that would he a disincentive, certainly to small employers.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I shall deal with that last question first. Any employer who fails to contribute at least 3 per cent into a pension scheme will, in lieu of that—or as an alternative, or however one wants to put it—be under a requirement within the remit of these provisions. I was asking about costs this morning, and we may be talking about £100 or £150 for an individual scheme member, depending on the assumptions that one makes about how long, who, and so forth. As a result an employer of someone with moderate earnings, such as £15,000–a not untypical stakeholder, for example—may decide that, after corporation tax exemption, it may be cost-effective to contribute to a stakeholder pension, which would obviate the need for paying for advice. There is a trade-off in that regard.
In my own mind, I am quite clear that an employer who is failing to contribute towards a stakeholder pension that he has set up, so that it remains an empty-shell company, will as a result not get employee contributions. As a result, we feel that there should be an obligation on that employer, in the absence of making even the most modest contribution towards the employee's pension, to come within the remit of the clause. That is the compromise.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I must clarify the situation. This provision, then, applies only to employers who are not making a 3 per cent contribution to pension schemes. It obviously applies only to employers with more than five employees, too, otherwise it would not be relevant to stakeholders.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Yes.
Baroness Barker: Does the provision include employers who have offered a stakeholder pension, when the employees have declined it?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: If there is a stakeholder pension, that must be available. I cannot conceive of a situation in which an employee would decline a stakeholder pension—when, even though the employee is choosing not to contribute, the employer will contribute 3 per cent or 5 per cent.
While the noble Baroness perhaps reformulates her question, let me come back to the question asked by the noble Lord—
Lord Higgins: Where does this 3 per cent business turn up in the Bill? There is not a sign of it in Clause 228; it has suddenly come out of the blue.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: Where is it?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: At Second Reading, I made it clear that those employers who were not contributing at least 3 per cent would be under an obligation to provide advice and information to their employees.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: So, only those employers—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Only those employers are required to do so, though others may choose to do so.
Lord Higgins: There should be something in the Bill to that effect.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: We shall find out which subsection of the Bill refers to that matter. Let me come back to the point about advice and information, to which the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, referred, and whether employers are qualified to offer advice on the Bill as opposed to information.
In the December 2002 Green Paper the Government stated their views that employers who do not currently provide their employees with access to an occupational pension scheme, make contributions of at least 3 per cent to a group personal pension scheme, or offer schemes with a low take-up have a responsibility to ensure that their employees have access to the information they need to make an informed choice about saving for retirement, with the exception of the very smallest companies with fewer than five employees which, as the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, said, are required to designate a stakeholder pension scheme. We are currently undertaking pilot exercises in that regard.
Subsection (3) provides that employers to whom regulations under subsection (1) apply must provide information also to be specified in regulations to the new Pensions Regulator, which ensures that the regulator can measure employers' compliance with any future regulations.
Subsection (4) expands on subsection (3) and allows the Secretary of State to specify in regulations the information that employers must provide to the regulator, the form and manner in which it must be provided and the period within which it is to be provided.
The matter was clear in the Green Paper and in our debates, and it is covered by subsection (3), which states:
"Employers to whom regulations under subsection (1) apply must provide",
this information. Therefore, I believe that the matter is covered there. I am surprised that this is news to noble Lords opposite.
Lord Higgins: I am not clear from what the noble Baroness is quoting, but at all events there is no reference whatever to the matter in Clause 228. It may be in a schedule or somewhere else. The fact that the noble Baroness made the relevant speech at Second

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Reading and the fact that the matter was contained in a Green Paper does not constitute legislation. There is absolutely no indication on the matter in Clause 228. Coming back to the main point, there is surely less reason to suppose that employers in the category that the noble Baroness mentioned are any better at giving advice than any other employer. On the contrary, I should have thought that they would be worse.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: That is exactly why I should like to come on to the point about advice. The noble Lord is absolutely right on that. That is precisely why employers will not be asked to give advice. None of the options that we are currently planning for involves employers giving regulated financial advice, so the question of employers' liability should not arise.
The pensions information pack, which I was checking with the officials, makes it very clear that employers can give factual information. They cannot give advice but they can give access to people who can give advice; that is, regulated advisers. The document provides a case study. I am happy to circulate this to noble Lords. For example, an employer could say that saving for retirement is an important issue, state pensions form a base but are unlikely to provide everyone with enough income for a comfortable retirement, or that he is offering a stakeholder pension scheme with X, Y, Z company, or that he contributes X percentage of his employees' pay to the company group personal pension or stakeholder pension scheme on top of any contribution that the employee makes, or that the earlier the employee starts paying into a pension and the more he or she pays in, in general the higher his pension will be.
The employer can say that but may not say that an employee should definitely join a stakeholder pension or that he advises an employee to invest in the ABC investment fund, or that an employee would be better off putting his money into something else, or recommends that an employee transfer benefits under his old pension scheme into a certain scheme. What employers can do and what they may not do in this respect is well covered.
The clause that we are discussing contains powers relating to how the regulations will apply. What we are saying in the RIA, which your Lordships will also have, in paragraph 523, is that employers and organisations with low scheme membership and/or low or zero levels of contributions to pension schemes are one of the groups most likely to benefit from pensions information and access to advice through the workplace. I refer also to low-paid workers, part-time workers and so on. Employees in this group may previously not have had access to this information but it will now come through.
What has slightly taken me by surprise is that members of the Committee on the Opposition Benches appear not to have been aware of this provision. It was in the Green Paper; it was referred to on Second Reading; it is in the regulatory impact assessment. For
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those employers who do not contribute at least 3 per cent there will be, in regulations, a requirement that they should offer information and access to regulated advice. I have done the costing and am hoping that, as a result, employers may decide that they are better off contributing to a stakeholder pension at 3 per cent. However, that is their choice. That has always been part of the Bill and, as I say, I am slightly taken aback that it has come as a surprise to Members opposite.
We have been at great pains to make the distinction between information and advice in the documentation precisely to avoid a situation in which a small employer, who is not necessarily very sophisticated regarding pensions, will not be put into a false position leading to a subsequent case of mis-selling. In that sense, I think that we have covered the noble Lord's point.
Lord Higgins: The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, and I were equally surprised that the noble Baroness raised these points when the clause is opaque in this respect. One had no reason to suppose that this clause would be defined in the way in which it has been. In any case, if the Government think that advice should be provided, why should this requirement apply only to those who are not making contributions of 3 per cent? It is either a good idea or it is not. In fact, it will impose higher costs on the very employers who are likely not to be in the best position to provide or obtain this information.
It is all very well for the noble Baroness to say that the existing legal and criminal sanctions position will remain the same. This ought to be on the face of the Bill and the legal position on giving or obtaining advice should be made clear.
I am not disputing for one moment that it was mentioned in the noble Baroness's speech—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: We are talking about Clause 228(1), which states:
"Regulations may require employers to take action for the purpose of enabling employees to obtain information and advice about pensions and saving for retirement".
Subsection (2) states that regulations under subsection (1) may in particular,
"provide that they are to apply in relation to employers of a prescribed description and employees of a prescribed description".
This was always the intention. It was debated in the Commons, where the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives both questioned some of the points about advice and information. But they were very clear, as far as I can tell, to whom this referred.
I agree that the Bill does not say that the employer must provide at least 3 per cent in contributions otherwise this requirement will apply. That will be dealt with in regulations. But the regulatory impact assessment makes it very clear how one is to understand Clause 228(1) which is about information, and subsection (2) which concerns how it will apply to employers of a prescribed description. Indeed, at Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker,

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welcomed the clause and was delighted that it would apply to employers who might not otherwise contribute.
I have been slightly wrong-footed, because I took this as common knowledge between us and thought the real issue was how to protect employers from allegations of mis-selling. This provision was clearly laid out in the Green Paper, consultative documents, the Second Reading debate, the regulatory impact assessment and debates in another place.
Lord Higgins: There is one simple final point to be made. If it is so clear that this should not be in regulations, it should be on the face of the Bill.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: I really think that it is time to give us a chance now. I am very happy to accept the noble Baroness's long and complicated audit trail about how she has always intended this provision to be there and it is in the Green Paper, and so on. All we are talking about is whether it is beyond the wit of parliamentary draftsmen to draft regulations requiring employers who are not contributing at least 3 per cent to provide such information. Then everyone is clear, and we do not
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need to go into whether people in another place knew. Let us keep it simple and not worry about what was in the Green Paper. If that is the intention, let us say so.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: No. It is not inconceivable that a future government of whatever description might think that 3 per cent was not the right figure and want to change it. As a result, they would need the power by regulations. A figure tying us down to a percentage is exactly the sort of point of information that should be covered by regulations.
Lord Higgins: It can be specified in the Bill that the provision is amendable by regulation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 295B and 295C not moved.]
Clause 228 agreed to.
Lord Davies of Oldham: This looks to be a highly convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until 3.30 tomorrow.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Tordoff): The Committee will adjourn until 3.30 p.m. tomorrow.
The Committee adjourned at half-past seven o'clock.

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