Sir Jeremy Wright
MP for Kenilworth and Southam · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I applaud my right hon. Friend’s passion and clarity on this issue. On the subject of democratic accountability, he knows that if, as the hon.”
“I welcome the intent that the Secretary of State has set out this afternoon, and the urgency with which she will require the relevant companies to act.”
“The Electoral Commission has made no formal assessment of this. It would be a matter for Parliament to introduce such legal protections. It is prescribed in law that poll cards and ballot papers must be provided in English or Welsh, but there are no other prescribed language requirements relating to election materials.”
“We can all cynically speculate about the reasons why this sudden about-turn has taken place this week, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who spoke from the Front Bench, said earlier, it is our job to scrutinise this legislation and to ensure that whatever we put in place does justice to the determination o…”
“In today’s version of the amendment paper, for the first time, that amendment has disappeared and been replaced not with the detailed compromise that Intelligence and Security Committee members, who have been engaged with this process, have been working towards, along with many others, but with Government amendment 157.”
“As the House would expect, we engaged with that process as diligently as we could, with no partisan politics, in an effort to make good law in the pursuit of greater state transparency while preserving our national security equities. As the hon.”
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“The government’s priority status for mental health is read as mental health for adults aged 16-64. PCTs have no interest in anything other than target-driven working-age mental health services”. I hope very much that the Minister will take account of those criticisms and ensure that the upcoming strategy addresses those concerns. I fear that the issue of medical research will not be dealt with adequately in the Government’s strategy. The striking predicted growth in the incidence of dementia to more than 1 million sufferers by 2025 and to 1.7 million sufferers by 2051 is predicated on the absence of a cure and effective treatments. It seems to me, and many others, that successful research is the only way in which we can slow that growth. What is concerning is that little of the necessary research is currently funded or undertaken.”
“Concerns have been expressed about those issues, not least by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Dr. David Anderson, chair of its faculty of old age psychiatry, has levelled a fairly robust criticism of the situation that will give us cause for concern. He said: “Some PCTs and Trusts are proposing the dissolution of specialist older people’s services with patients transferred to the care of general psychiatry services with no training in older people’s mental health, including putting older people on general wards claiming this creates an ageless service. This is a dishonest way of cutting costs to the detriment of older people and is not motivated by, nor will it achieve, meeting the needs of older people. It will provide older people with an inferior, second-rate service.”
“We could look at that model with a view to national coverage, partly because there is a great deal of experience and knowledge vested in the society and similar campaigning organisations, and because the advice and support of voluntary bodies is more welcome and trusted by those who suffer from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia than information from Government agencies and sources. I hope that the Minister will assure us that consideration will be given to how to provide resources to the voluntary sector to carry out that important role. We must also look more generally at the issue of mental health services, and ask whether they are up to the challenge and are capable of dealing with the mental health problems of older people, or of going in that direction.”
“I am pleased that the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), who is a member of that Committee, is here today. The officials were asked about a number of things, including the issue of a single point of contact. The officials reacted positively to the idea of providing a single point of contact where none currently exists but, less encouragingly, they spoke only of how such provisions might be made within the NHS. To some extent, that is understandable—they were NHS officials, after all. However, I hope that the people who will create the Government strategy will think about the issue more widely. I hope that the strategy group looks at examples of good practice such as the Newbury Memory clinic. Everyone who goes there is referred to an Alzheimer’s Society adviser.”
“It is important that dementia is diagnosed not because that will set someone with the condition on a path to a cure—there is no cure—but because it enables sufferers and their families to make the necessary plans and to cope better with what is going to happen. Diagnosis brings about huge emotional stress but, at the time of the diagnosis, people have a great deal to think about and plan for. As the Minister knows, it is important—people often ask for this—that there be a single point of contact to enable people to get the necessary information and advice on the help and services that they can take advantage of. Too often, that is not available. Officials from the Department of Health, including the chief executive of the NHS, David Nicholson, appeared before the Public Accounts Committee on 15 October to discuss the NAO report.”
“We might be able to see ourselves becoming afflicted with other conditions that get a great deal of financial and emotional support from the public, or with a physical disability, but mental health conditions are often overlooked, as the Minister knows, and we do not wish to face the prospect that it may happen to us. Again, that might explain why widespread, consistent and sustained pressure for action on dementia has not been brought. What needs to be done and what should we hope for in the Government strategy next year? I should like to address some issues on which I hope that the Minister will offer reassurance. I have no doubt that the Government strategy will cover the issue of diagnosis.”
“It is more than the costs incurred by strokes, heart disease and cancer combined. Perhaps the scale of the difficulty has deterred us from dealing with the condition in the past, but population ageing will increase the problem. There are emotional as well as economic reasons for our unwillingness to face up to the problem. General practitioners are sometimes unable or unwilling to make a dementia diagnosis in the absence of a cure or effective treatments. They perhaps feel that such a diagnosis would be without hope. More generally, we all find it difficult to face the prospect that the condition will affect us or someone we love.”
“It was part-commissioned by the Alzheimer’s Society and was intended to provide, in its words, coherent evidence of the scale of dementia in the UK, and to combat inadequate attention from policy makers. The National Audit Office report entitled, “Improving services and support for people with dementia” was published in July. As I am sure the Minister will remind us, the Government will complete a strategy on dementia by the end of next summer. I welcome that, although it has been a long time in coming. I have no doubt that, in part, it was prompted by the two reports to which I referred. It is clear from those reports that dementia incurs a huge cost. The NAO estimates the annual economic burden of the condition to be £14.3 billion, which is a colossal figure.”
“It is not widely recognised outside the House that there is a medical condition that affects 700,000 people, is likely to be contracted daily by 500 new people, is terminal, has no cure, will grow in incidence by 40 per cent. in the next 15 years, and for whose development there is no treatment. If it were, we would expect the pressure on the Government to devote time and resources to it to be considerable and for it to come from many quarters. Those are the facts about dementia in Britain, but there is no sustained pressure on the Government to take action on dementia in the way that there is for other medical conditions. Before dealing with the question of remedies, we must ask ourselves why that is the case. In February, the “Dementia UK” report was published.”
“I begin by welcoming you to the Chair, Mr. Marshall, in what I hope and believe will be an important debate. From sitting in that Chair, Mr. Marshall, you will know that debates in this Chamber are often described as important or significant, but I believe that the care of those with dementia justifies those terms. We have not been good at recognising the significance of the matter in the recent past. To give a parochial and internal parliamentary example of that, there are 531 all-party groups, which range in significance, on subjects from nuclear power to table tennis but, as of June this year, there was no all-party group on dementia. Even within the House and despite the interest shown by individual Members such as those here today, we have not sustained pressure on the issue as we might.”
“For the purposes of clarity, I certainly do not criticise all uses of neuroleptic drugs. My point concerns the nature of the care that is delivered in a particular care home and whether that care home is registered as suitable for dementia patients. I certainly know of people with mild dementia being well looked after in settings that have not been formally ascribed the status of being suitable for dementia patients, so we must be careful not to be overly dogmatic on that point.”
“The Minister is right; this is the wrong subject for political knockabout. The key point is that the Government, by setting out their objectives in a strategy, will properly raise expectations in the dementia community as to what can be done. If those objectives are not supported with the necessary funding, we will find a good deal of disappointment among the dementia community, which is why concerns are being expressed about where the money will come from, in addition to the worthwhile policy objectives.”
“On the single point of contact, the Minister has talked about the desirability of involving the voluntary sector, and I am sure that we all agree about that. However, does he think that it would be a good idea for the single point of contact to be provided by the voluntary sector rather than by the state?”
“Does the Minister agree that we need to recognise people’s concerns about, and fear of, a diagnosis of dementia, and to look at what is being done in Croydon, I believe, where what used to be called a dementia clinic has been renamed a memory clinic, and where referrals are now taken up more fully?”
“I appreciate that the Minister is running out of time, but I do not want him to run out of it before touching on co-ordination, and specifically on a possible national dementia services director. Some very heavy hints have been dropped by the chief executive of the NHS about the desirability of that. Will the Minister tell us if, or when, that will happen?”
“May I pursue what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson)? Does the Secretary of State accept that one reason why children eat more fast food and ready meals than they should is the increasing time pressure on ever busier parents? If he does accept that, what steps will the Government take to implement flexible working and other family-friendly policies so that parents can go home and cook more wholesome food for their children?”
“It is refreshing that a Minister in this Government has the grace to concede that he has accepted a Conservative approach, and we are grateful to him for that. However, I seek reassurance on a specific point: if a member of staff is dismissed as a result of a process initiated by the LSC, is there in his view clarity on the legal position if they were to sue for unfair dismissal?”
“I am conscious, as I know the Minister is, that this is a short debate. A number of points are dealt with in the helpful letter dated 26 September this year that he sent to my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes). Will the Minister consider placing a copy of that letter in the Library of the House so that all hon. Members are aware of the background to the helpful information that he has given us this afternoon?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the other things that the public and the judiciary need to be confident about is that, when sentences are passed by a judge, those sentences will be served? The expectation of the court will be that the sentence will be served as it was passed and the danger of early release schemes is that those sentences are not in fact served. That in its turn will undermine the public’s confidence in the judiciary.”
“The Secretary of State’s recent decision not to permit the development of an extended passenger terminal at Coventry airport has been welcomed by many of my constituents who live very near the airport, but one of the difficulties experienced during the lengthy planning inquiry was that Warwick district council had to bear the financial burden of dealing with the matter, in competition with an airline company with extremely deep pockets. Will the Minister consider—in general terms—ways in which in we can help local authorities to deal with substantial planning inquiries of this kind?”
“Would it not be very much in the interests of the Learning and Skills Council for the Government to clarify their thinking on its future? The Bill talks of moving from a local to a regional structure. The LSC will inevitably need to do some work on that, which may come to nothing if the Government change their mind later.”
“The clause will create an LSC that none of us wants, doing things that none of us wants it to do. The fourth reason has become apparent only during the later stages of the proceedings on the Bill and as a result of the machinery of government changes that the Government have talked about in the past few days. As there is now undoubtedly a question mark over the future of the LSC in general, it seems crazy to start to discuss changes that will give it more power, more authority and more responsibility in specific areas, when we do not yet know what form the LSC, or any successor body, will have in the future. For all those reasons, my hon. Friend’s amendments are entirely right and deserve the support of the House.”
“All that we know heretofore is that the Government expect an additional cost to fall on the LSC, but no one knows what that additional cost might be. That seems profoundly unsatisfactory. The third reason why these amendments are right is that what the Government are doing in the clause is setting up the LSC to do something different from what they and, indeed, we in the Opposition would like the LSC to do. We all want the LSC to be very much learner-focused and to encourage learners to find their own way through further education and to do the courses and acquire the skills that are most suited to them. Surely we do not want the LSC to become bogged down in the kind of management decisions in FE colleges that the clause gives it the opportunity and, indeed, encourages it, to do.”
“Of course, I entirely agree that it is not right that there should be no possibility to intervene when colleges are clearly going wrong, but that is a wholly different thing from the micro-management of the institution and the ability of the LSC to intervene in the way that is proposed. The second reason, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings also referred, is that I remain unconvinced that the Government have worked out what all these changes will cost, not only for the reasons that he has given but because there could be legal costs if the LSC is responsible for deciding to remove members of the governing body. Again, we discussed that in Committee, but we still do not have a clear sense of what the Government believe these changes might cost the learning and skills councils.”
“I, too, want to speak briefly in support of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes). There are four reasons why they are sensible. First, clause 17 is in many ways oddly placed in the Bill. Elsewhere in the Bill,, the Government are quite properly attempting to give more freedoms to FE institutions. In many cases, they are giving them the freedom to award foundation degrees, and in other places they are giving FE colleges more authority over what they do. Yet we now see a further restriction of that authority and further intervention by the LSC in the day-to-day management of the colleges.”
“May I take the Minister back to the issue of intervention powers? He is right to say that we all wish there to be intervention powers available in extreme situations, but surely some of those powers already exist and are held by the Secretary of State. We on this side of the House do not understand why it is necessary to transfer the powers to the LSC, given that, as he said, they are so rarely used.”
“Hayes) is proposing to strengthen the Government’s noble intentions in order to ensure that foundation degrees newly awarded by further education institutions will be successful and command the support and confidence of the students who take them. For that reason, I fully support what he has said.”
“If this experiment—for that is what it is—is to work, it is vital that every student who receives a foundation degree from one of these institutions and wishes to go on to further study should have the maximum reassurance that they will be able to do so when the time comes. I hope that the Minister will accept that there is a world of difference between an institution setting out what it proposes to do to arrange for the continuation of study, and actually making those arrangements. Those are two very different things, and they would have a very different effect on the reassurances that could be made available to students. Amendment No. 24 seeks to ensure that those arrangements will be made. My hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr.”
“It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), with whom I substantially agree. I join him in welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) to his new responsibilities. I want to pick up where my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry left off, with a point about the assurances that I hope the Minister will be able to give us. I agree with the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) that what commends amendment No. 24 is its ability to deliver substantial reassurance to students who wish to take foundation degrees at institutions that have newly been given the power to award them. I accept that not every student taking a foundation degree will wish to go on and complete a further course of study, but a great many will.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that one reason why Members in all parts of the House have so many such cases of concern is that the CSA does not use effectively some of the powers that it already has? Many constituency cases are based on the argument that, despite information being presented to the agency by the parent with care, it does not take appropriate action. It is therefore not enough simply to provide extra powers; such powers have to be used.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another concern about the involvement of HMRC is that expressed by a number of voluntary bodies, who have no doubt been in contact with him as well—namely, that HMRC will store its information in several different places? It is important that that information is co-ordinated so that it can be passed on to the CMEC and used for the purposes set out in the Bill. Does he share that concern?”
“It would be helpful if we heard further detail from the Minister in Committee about how the regulations can be expected to operate. Be that as it may, and even if we can resolve all the issues relating to the wording and associated regulations, we will still want some reassurance that the mechanisms and set-up at CMEC will allow it to be rather more effective than its predecessor.”
“If we are all to assure our constituents that CMEC will do a better job than the CSA, we need not only to demonstrate to them that the Bill provides the new commission with more powers to do the things that they want it to, but to ensure that when they call CMEC—hopefully, they will be able to get through on the phone—to communicate information, which is often verified independently rather than simply on their say-so, action will be taken in response to it. The powers in the Bill must be used when constituents have provided the requisite information. In common with other hon. Members, I give the Bill a qualified welcome. Some matters within it need clarification. It is regrettable when, as so often, a great deal of the important nuts and bolts of legislation are dealt with through regulation after the fact.”
“Although I acknowledge the good sense of having such a power available, I would be grateful for reassurance that, when it is used, the parent with care will be fully involved and invited to give consent to the action before it is taken. For all of us who have experienced many constituency cases in which the CSA has not done the job that we would wish it to do—and that its staff wish that they could have done—the reason is often that, despite detailed, accurate and extensive information from the parent with care about the non-resident parent who is absent and has either disappeared off the face of the earth or been found, the latter’s income is not accurately reassessed to ensure that the appropriate amounts are being paid.”
“It is entirely sensible that the new commission should have the power, when appropriate, to examine the financial circumstances of cases that have been outstanding for some time and decide that it would make sense to accept a lesser figure than the total outstanding arrears. However, I would like reassurance that, if the commission is prepared to make that sort of decision, it will not do so without involving the parent with care. It would be wrong of the commission to appear to make decisions for administrative convenience without the agreement of the parent with care, who will suffer the financial burden of the full amount not being collected.”
“In the case of the other three, CMEC must go to court to obtain an order. It would be helpful if the Under-Secretary explained the logic behind that discrepancy. As I said, I may have heard the Secretary of State confirm that the court should be the deciding agency for all four powers. However, if that is not the case, I should be grateful for an explanation. It gives me some cause for concern, because all four appear to be fairly significant punitive powers for the court and, in one case, the commission. I believe that they should all be exercised through a court-related process rather than directly on the commission’s application and decision.”
“Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), providing the powers is only half the story. The other half is ensuring that the commission can exercise them. It needs the time, personnel and resources to exercise them, or having them in the Bill will do no family any good. I should be grateful for clarification of a specific point, which the Secretary of State may have covered but about which I was not clear. The Bill grants four specific powers to CMEC when a partner does not provide financial assistance and the commission cannot persuade that person to do so. At the top of the scale is imprisonment, followed by a curfew, deprivation of a driving licence and deprivation of a passport. The Bill appears to say that CMEC can make the order directly for deprivation of a passport.”
“Although the agreement would not remain voluntary, such a system would not only reduce CMEC’s work load, and therefore its expense—an eminently desirable aim—but make families more likely to engage in the voluntary agreement process. Voluntary agreements are not only good for the families, although that is the most important consideration, but if more separating couples reach a such an agreement, it will leave CMEC much freer to spend more time on the difficult, complex and irreconcilable cases, which require a great deal of time and effort to resolve the situation or, if necessary, to pursue errant partners who are not prepared to fulfil their financial responsibilities. When we consider the rest of the Bill and all the powers that CMEC can exercise, it is important to acknowledge that, as I said in an intervention on my hon.”
“Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose)—made the point that there is a big difference between CMEC being enabled to enforce a voluntary agreement and enabled to take an application from square one from a family whose voluntary maintenance agreement has broken down. There is little incentive to engage in the voluntary maintenance agreement process for someone who thinks that all the hard work will come to nothing if the agreement breaks down. We should have a system that allows CMEC to take on part of the process whereby the agreement was reached, and provides for enforcement at least partly on that basis.”
“That requires far greater involvement of the voluntary sector and many more organisations being involved in the process. Of course, they will require adequate financial support to do that job; I recognise that there will be financial implications. However, if we are to avoid the longer-term expenditure involved in agreements breaking down and CMEC becoming involved in a way that we would not wish it to, it is worth that initial expenditure. Let me return to the point about encouraging voluntary agreements and what CMEC can do in that regard. It is important that it should be able to support those arrangements by standing behind them. Several hon. Members—initially my hon.”
“It is vital that parents who are considering an agreement are not deterred from engaging in that process because they think—they may well be wrong—that if they were to go to CMEC, engage in an open discussion of their situation, and volunteer information as to their circumstances, CMEC would use that information against one party or another, in a more enforcement-related process, if the agreement broke down at a later date. That is not the same as saying that CMEC should not be there in cases where voluntary maintenance agreements broke down. However, it is vital that advice and support come not directly from CMEC but from other agencies that are more trusted in environments where they are relied upon to give impartial advice.”
“With that advice and support, we can have confidence, in the vast majority of cases, that a voluntary maintenance agreement is the way forward. I very much support the thrust of the Bill in that sense. However, that advice and support should almost certainly not come, at least directly, from the new agency, CMEC. We must have a system in which even if, as the Bill suggests, CMEC will have the responsibility of commissioning advice and support, there is some distance between it and those delivering advice and support to families. Mediation is always a better way of resolving such situations than resorting to the state through the CSA, CMEC or any other agency, or through the courts. If it can be done by voluntary agreement, it should be.”
“We in this House may say that voluntary maintenance agreements are the way forward and tell parents to get on and make them, but even with a broad measure of cross-party support, it is not as simple as that. We must recognise that in many cases there is a significant imbalance between the two parents in terms of how able they feel to negotiate, to argue their case, and to ensure that at the end of a voluntary negotiation process a fair settlement is reached which benefits the children. I entirely agree that that is our foremost priority. However, because of that potential imbalance in power, it does not necessarily follow that without some assistance parents will end up in a situation whereby the children benefit from such an agreement. We have heard about the need for advice and support, which is vital.”
“Field) said, the reality is, whether we like it or not, that in the minds of many parents the issues of access and contact are inextricably bound up with those of financial support. Although it would be wrong for anyone to advocate that we should have a system in which it appeared that access or contact was being bought by financial support, it is also important to recognise that the two issues are connected in the minds of many parents. It is crucial to have a system in which we avoid a situation whereby financial support and contact are put in place in such a way that one can be used in a weapon in the battle over the other. I hope that if we move towards voluntary maintenance agreements, with flexibility in terms of how they can be implemented, we can avoid that situation in as many cases as possible.”
“Not every separating couple find themselves at court, but many do, so it is sensible to encourage parents who are at court in any event, resolving a number of other aspects in their lives and for the future of their children, if possible to resolve also the financial aspects of child maintenance while they are in a frame of mind to discuss the future, and if possible, being represented. That is not to say that I advocate going back to the old days where all these matters were resolved by the courts; I do not advocate that, but it would be helpful for those parents already involved with the courts system to be encouraged to engage with a voluntary procedure while they are in that context. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr.”
“Members have spoken on this, and it is important to say that this is the way in which we should wish to encourage parents to resolve child maintenance issues. If the state does not have to be involved, it should not be. It is important also that we encourage those voluntary maintenance agreements in whatever context we can. It is worth remembering that a number of parents who are separating will be in the process of forming their arrangements at or near courts.”
“I begin, as the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), re-enters the Chamber, by welcoming him to his old job this afternoon. He has been involved with the preliminary reforms of the CSA, and I am pleased that he will be able to carry forward further reform. I also want to join in the consensus that there has been across the House in agreeing that that reform was absolutely necessary, and that we could not simply proceed with the situation that we were in, with a failing agency that was not doing the job that it needed to do for a variety of families and children in our society. I welcome the Bill’s general thrust towards encouraging more voluntary maintenance agreements. Other hon.”
“No doubt this is a matter to which we can return in Committee, but will the Minister at least accept at this stage that it is worth considering it again, given that for some individuals the ability to travel abroad is integral to their working lives as well as their recreation?”
“May I ask the Home Secretary for some reassurance on two practical aspects of the registering of an interest by a parent about a particular individual prior to the disclosure of any potential conviction information? First, will the Government ensure that that process is not unduly complex and that it is straightforward? Secondly, will it be possible for that to be done confidentially, so that it does not come to the notice of the person about whom information is sought, and so that women—it will, as the Home Secretary has said, normally be women—are not deterred from making those requests for fear of damaging or losing a relationship for apparently no good reason?”
“Does the Minister accept that one of the reasons why the Assets Recovery Agency has not been as successful as we all might have hoped is that when cases are brought under the Proceeds of Crime Act, they take a long time and are defended to the hilt—often by the use of changes of counsel or the extensive use of the Human Rights Act? It could be argued that that is why those cases have not set the necessary precedents to allow the ARA to recover as much money as it, and we, would like. If that is the case, what confidence can any of us have that the transfer of responsibilities to the Serious Organised Crime Agency will be any more successful?”