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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“I agree with the Minister entirely, and I certainly do not suggest that any of the practices to which I referred have been used improperly. My point is that I do not see how we can be confident that the provisions in the Bill will result in SOCA being more likely to recover the proceeds of crime than the ARA was; what I am suggesting to the Minister is that the provisions do not go to the root of the problem of why the ARA has not been successful.”
“I am sure that all carers would like to be helped to find their way through the problems that becoming a carer throws up, but would not the adviser’s job be much easier if the benefits system, in particular, were much less complex? The Government could do something about that.”
“I hope very much that the Government and, indeed, any Government will continue to give older carers particular consideration in making their judgments.”
“If that is to be achieved, we must all assist carers to deliver that care. Again, as we all agree, in future there will be many, many older carers, partly because of longer lifetimes, but partly because of other demographic changes. Indeed, it is far from inconceivable that someone looking after an aged parent is well past retirement age, so there is a whole new dimension to older carers’ needs and responsibilities that we must address. I agree entirely that supporting carers is not just the right and decent thing to do but is economically prudent. If people providing care on a voluntary basis do not continue to do so, it is simply unsustainable for the taxpayer to pick up the entire burden.”
“The Minister himself said that far too often carers believe they have to shout loudly to obtain the services that their loved ones need. He is entirely right, and it is perhaps the most significant problem that many carers face and which they often identify. It is particularly acute among older carers. Far too often, the services that are available to carers and the people for whom they care are arranged for the convenience of the provider, not for the convenience and use of the person who utilises them. Surely, the assumption should be that it is the carer, who knows the individual best, who knows best, not that it is the state that knows best. Most people, as we all agree in this debate, would prefer their care to be delivered at home, in an environment with which they are comfortable and familiar.”
“It is important, particularly for older carers, that their relationship with social services departments is good, productive and a genuine partnership, but too often that is not the case, as the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), has said. A good relationship with the social services department means that an older carer is more likely to ask for help when it is needed. A bad relationship means that it is less likely that that help can be asked for, and that may be because many older carers fear that if they go to social services and ask for help, they will be judged incapable of looking after their loved one, who will be taken into residential care against their wishes and the wishes of the carer. That must be addressed.”
“It is important to remember that when we are dealing with the over-65s, we are dealing with a proud generation. They do not enjoy asking for help. They have the admirable but completely counter-productive attitude that it is up to them, not the state, to look after their loved ones, so they do not claim help—both with regard to respite and with regard to financial assistance—when they should. The difficulty that the Government, and indeed any Government, face is that they must identify carers who do not identify themselves as being in need of help, and must none the less provide that help to them. In providing that help, carers’ relationship with the agencies that ought to be in partnership with them to help provide care is crucial.”
“An extra difficulty is that some carers have been forced to retire or stop working earlier than they otherwise would have done, so their pension payments are reduced and their pension income is therefore smaller. As others have said, it is still too complicated for people to get what is available. The carer’s addition to the pension credit is not claimed by 63,000 carers who are entitled to it. That figure is too large. Older carers are the very people who are put off by the vast amount of paperwork, referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), that must be completed if they are to obtain that income. Older carers are also put off by the need to ask for help—a point that the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) made.”
“Secondly, older carers may have difficulties with fatigue, which begins to set in more easily, and becomes more difficult to recover from. Thirdly, other hon. Members have mentioned medical conditions, which often afflict the carers themselves; that problem is exacerbated among older carers. Less obvious are the financial problems, although they too have been mentioned, not least by the hon. Member for Northampton, North. On the finances of older carers, there is no doubt that the carer’s allowance is, understandably, regarded as an income replacement measure, but when a person retires, they may lose that income, because it is offset against pension payments.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), because I want to concentrate on people at the opposite end of the age spectrum to those whom she was talking about when she left off her remarks. I shall talk a little about older carers. As we have heard, there are about 6 million carers in the UK, and about a quarter of them are over 65. It is a staggering statistic that 8,000 of them are over 90; I find that remarkable. Older carers face particular problems, some of which are obvious, and others of which are less obvious. Among the more obvious problems that they face, particularly if they are caring for someone with a physical disability, is the difficulty of managing the physical lifting as they become older.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that, although it is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) said, that regional development agencies are too small to compete internationally, in many ways they are too big to deal effectively with the diverse problems of a particular region? If we take the west midlands, it is difficult for a regional development agency to come up with a strategy that is equally applicable for Warwickshire and for Wolverhampton, which the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) represents. That is part of the problem that RDAs face.”
“I thank the Minister for that answer, and the enthusiasm with which she gave it, but she will have been told, as I have, that one of the tools that members of patient and public involvement forums value most is the ability to inspect hospitals or other health care facilities, including, where they think it necessary, without notice. Given that those powers and that ability will be circumscribed for local involvement networks, and in the case of inspections without notice, removed altogether, does she not think that it is inevitable that the public will have less confidence in LINKs to protect their interests than they did in PPI forums?”
“The right hon. Gentleman has been extremely generous. He says that the Bill’s restructuring of the LSC will save £40 million, but does not the regulatory impact assessment suggest that the real cost will be something in the order of £55.7 million, a total that is subject to change when we have the final figures? I may have misunderstood what he said, so will he confirm that the LSC’s 2005-06 annual report attributes the £40 million of savings to some 1,300 staff losses? Does that not mean that the £40 million has been rationalised already, without the abolition of the local skills councils?”
“Does the hon. Lady agree that what she is describing very eloquently is education as a second chance—the opportunity to go back and correct what one did not do to one’s satisfaction the first time round? If she agrees with that, would she further agree that it is important that, whatever structure we have for skills training and re-education, we do not focus too much on those who are below the age of 25 to the exclusion of those who are above 25 who need to take advantage of those second chances?”
“It does not enable us to deal with fundamental problems in our economy and the skills structure. Until we do so we will not be able to compete. I very much hope that in the course of our debate and the Bill’s progress that the Government will either add what needs to be added or consider very shortly a further Bill that will deal with those problems.”
“For all of us, it should be important, because if we are going to persuade those who need to reskill for the good of our economy that education is a lifelong experience, and should be available to them, they need to see that we regard education as lifelong for everyone. I hope that in the course of this debate, we do not lose sight of those people, but it does not seem, either for them or for those who need for their own good and for the good of all of us to reskill later in life, that the Bill deals with their problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) referred to the Bill as a tidying exercise, and it may be so. The Secretary of State described it as an enabling Bill, but in my judgment it does not enable anywhere near enough.”
“Further education can be a social experience; it can be a health-giving experience; it can be an enhancing experience in many different ways. We have lost sight of that because, in this debate and in others, we talk a great deal about the needs of people between the age of 14 and 25, and a little less, although we have still discussed it, about the needs of those who need to retrain in the working environment. Those who have been forgotten are people who engage in further education—I do not want to say “recreationally”, because that is the wrong word—without a direct connection to employment. For those people, further education is important.”
“Again, nothing in the Bill deals with that. It is right—and it is accepted in the White Paper and in the Leitch review—that we cannot wait to deal with those problems. They will not be resolved by dealing with the skills requirements of people under 25 because, as both documents observe, 70 per cent. of the working population in 2020, which is the target date for all that Government activity, has already left compulsory education, so it is too late for them. We have to make provision for them post-25. Finally, it is important not to forget in the course of this debate that further education is about more than simply work-related skills. It is important that we regard education as a lifelong experience, with merits not simply for gaining new skills for the workplace but gaining new experiences for life more generally.”
“It is also highly likely that anyone of my age or younger will not be able to expect that the profession, trade or career that they begin at 16, 18 or 21—or whatever age—will be the profession or trade that they will be working in when they retire. It is highly likely that all of us will have to accept having two, three or perhaps four changes of career in a working lifetime. Reskilling and retraining become vital for that reason, and of course the people in need of such retraining and reskilling will be well above the age of 25. The skills structure needs to be flexible enough to deal with that and, as the Leitch review says, it needs to be demand led. It discusses individual learning accounts, and they seem to me to be the only way in which the system can be flexible enough to respond to such continuing and varied demands.”
“There is much good provision for level 2 skills and below, but far less good provision for skills above that level. It is as important that people are able to develop such skills because, as is already generally accepted, we neither can, nor would wish to, compete with the rest of the world on the basis of lower wages. We will have to—and should want to—compete with the rest of the world on the basis of higher skills. The higher skills required to enable us to do that will not stop at level 2; we will need still higher skills. If there is a problem with graduating from level 2 to level 3 and other intermediate level skill qualifications, that needs to be addressed, but the Bill fails to do that.”
“It is important that that group is properly catered for and provision is made for it, but in the new world of work the over-25s are just as important and they are not as well served. Part of the reason for that is the progression that everyone now needs to make in the course of their chosen profession. As many Members have said, progress in training must be continuous. We must make provision for ongoing training for everybody. It will not be possible for people to sit on their laurels and think that the skills that they learned at 16, 18 or 21 will see them through the rest of their career. Ongoing training and skilling is vital. There is, however, a problem in that we are developing a plateau at about the level 2 mark. It is difficult for many people with level 2 skills to go on to develop skills at level 3 and beyond.”
“As has been discussed in the debate, we face a very definite problem: we are behind our competitors in work force skills, and in many respects we are falling further behind. In 2006, we were 18th out of 30 OECD countries in terms of the proportion of 25 to 64 year olds with skills at or above level 2, and the problem is getting worse. The amount of learners between the ages of 19 and 59 fell by 16 per cent. between 2004-05 and 2005-06. There is a further decline in enrolments for 2007. I want to address that problem in the remainder of my brief remarks. The LSC has focused primarily on those up to the age of 25, and everybody understands why it would wish to do that.”
“We have heard about the costs that the Government hope will be saved by this restructuring of learning and skills councils, but before we accept those savings as a given it is important that we talk about what costs might arise on the other side of the balance sheet. The Bill restructures the learning and skills councils in a way that I am unconvinced is either needed or desirable. On first inspection, it does not appear to me to be wholly sensible that the powers of the LSC should be transferred further away from learners and from employers, which is what the Government intend to do by transferring responsibility regionally instead of locally. What concerns me most is not the organisation of the LSC, but its direction and priorities.”
“If those costs are no longer to be covered by the Secretary of State but instead are to be transferred to the LSC, it is important to recognise that it will be necessary to ascertain how those costs will be met. However, that is unclear. On the transfer of certain powers to FE colleges, the explanatory notes state: “There will be no increased funding as a result of the provision in the Bill transferring powers of the Secretary of State to establish and dissolve further education corporations to the LSC. The LSC will incur certain additional costs in exercising the powers, but these costs are difficult to ascertain.” Those costs might well be difficult to ascertain, but the costs of firing principals will be even more difficult to ascertain and could be much larger.”
“The Secretary of State retains the power to issue guidance on how governing bodies should consult learners—clause 20 deals with that. I welcome these provisions, but the LSC does not gain that responsibility. The Secretary of State retains it, yet learning and skills councils will have the power to set up, dissolve and potentially fire the management of further education colleges. That is odd. There is also the question of much the exercise of those powers that might be transferred to the LSC will cost. The hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) has made the point that there is the danger that there will be legal proceedings following the sacking of the manager, principal or chief executive of an FE college. I can say from experience that legal proceedings cost money.”
“Many Members have talked about the role that we want colleges to play, and all of them have recognised that they are crucial institutions that do good work. However, the Bill sends colleges mixed messages about how much we trust them to do that important work. We are considering allowing colleges to confer their own degrees, yet we are also considering allowing the LSC to direct governors to behave as it thinks most appropriate, and even to dismiss the principals of colleges. It is one thing for the Secretary of State to do that; at least he or she is elected and democratically accountable to this House. However, the LSC—a non-elected, non-departmental body—does not have such democratic accountability. I am profoundly troubled by that proposal. There is another incongruous aspect of the Bill.”
“I agree with those Members who have said that the Bill is a missed opportunity. The Leitch review and—to be fair to the Government—the White Paper that preceded the Bill were wide ranging and, in their different ways, ambitious documents, but this Bill is not. It is not all bad, of course. There are provisions on consultation that I welcome, and I also welcome the freedoms that the Bill gives to colleges—as far as they go. The problem is that those freedoms are undermined by other parts of the Bill, especially measures—which have been discussed in detail—that might give the Learning and Skills Council the power to intervene in the running of colleges. We should trust colleges to do the important job that we ask them to do.”
“May I suggest to the Secretary of State that any carbon trading scheme will and should benefit indirectly those who efficiently manufacture methods and systems that enable us to deliver renewable energy very cheaply? May I therefore thank through him the Minister for Climate Change and the Environment for yesterday meeting me and representatives of Converteam, a renewables manufacturer in my constituency? Will the Secretary of State undertake to do all he can with the Government to ensure that those who are able to produce renewables technologies efficiently are encouraged by the standards that the Government set and by any other support that can be given?”
“Will the Leader of the House reconsider the request of my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House for a debate on policing priorities? The right hon. Gentleman told the House that there is no requirement for the police to arrest for trivial offences, and he is right about that, but does he none the less accept that there is pressure on them to do so because of targets that the Government impose? As perhaps a future—certainly a former—Home Secretary, the Leader of the House knows that the police do their job only with the public’s consent. Does he accept that that consent may be damaged by the perception that I have described? That is why we need a debate.”
“The Minister’s preference is clearly a measure that will allow the Secretary of State to make regulations to include custody in the appropriate duties of care at a later date. Either now or later in his speech, will he explain to the House why including custody might be appropriate in the future, but would not be appropriate now?”
“Is it not wholly illogical to argue, as the hon. Gentleman appears to be doing, that if further protections for those in custody are coming along later—such as those that he has set out—it is sensible to wait until then before we give those in custody the protection that they would otherwise have if we implemented the amendments that the other place has sent back?”
“It is right that hard cases make bad law. That has always been true and it is true in this case too, but it would be unfortunate if we ended up making bad law by trying to exclude those cases that may be hard for the Government to deal with. For those reasons, I hope very much that the amendments from the other place will be accepted.”
“Thirdly, as other Members have said throughout consideration of the Bill, this is a Bill and hopefully an Act which has been long awaited by a great many people. It will be watched and scrutinised carefully by those who have waited so long for it to go on the statute book. It would be tragic if the legislation gave the impression that the private sector is vulnerable to corporate manslaughter prosecutions but the public sector is not, and that in some way protections have been given to those in the public sphere which are no longer, quite properly, available to those in the private sphere. I know, of course, that that is not the Government’s intention, but it would be tragic if that impression were given. I fear that if we exclude deaths in custody, as the Government wish, there will be that danger.”
“That breach is defined as amounting to a breach of the duty which “falls far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation in the circumstances”. The Minister and others have made perfectly reasonable points about the differences between the challenges faced by those in the Prison Service and by those in other situations. That is entirely fair comment, but any jury and any prosecuting authority would be expected to consider those differences and those particular challenges in deciding whether a prosecution should be brought in the first place. By enabling deaths in custody potentially to be covered by the law, we would not be opening the floodgates. We should therefore have confidence that we can include it without that danger.”
“Therefore, there must surely be a good argument for including corporate manslaughter protection for those who are in custody now, if there ever is a good argument for that. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey); I see no reason why it should not be now if it could be later. Secondly, when we discuss the matter in the House we should be clear that we are not talking about laying the Prison Service or prison governors open to any false or vexatious prosecution claim. The standard of proof in the matter is high. It is clear from the Bill as it stands—the amendments do not cover this point—that in order to establish guilt of corporate manslaughter and responsibility for a death of that kind, there must be a gross breach of the relevant duty of care.”
“Having conceded that principle, the Minister goes on to argue that the reason why those cases should not currently be subject to corporate manslaughter prosecutions is that there will be further protections for those in custody later, and that the Government are working hard—I take him at his word on that—to ensure that there are other measures, some of which he spelled out, which ensure that, though the present position is unsatisfactory and there are not sufficient protections for those currently in custody, there soon will be. If that is the Minister’s argument, and if those who are in custody will in future, we hope, be less vulnerable than they are now, their present vulnerability is potentially more deserving of the protection of a corporate manslaughter prosecution than it ever will be.”
“I, too, hope that the House does not reject the amendments in this group that the other place has sent us for consideration. I shall make three brief comments about those amendments and the Government’s amendment in lieu. First, I join in the general acclaim for the way in which the Minister has dealt with the legislation and the amount of movement that he has caused the Government to make. However, in doing so, he has put himself and the Government in a somewhat odd position. He has, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said, conceded the principle that deaths in custody could potentially be subject to corporate manslaughter prosecutions.”
“The Under-Secretary will agree that rural and branch lines are no use without stations to serve them. I raised with his predecessor the question of Kenilworth station, which does not yet exist, even for such a big town. Now that the business case is available and positive, will he join me in doing all he can to ensure that Kenilworth gets that vital transport link?”
“I am sure that we all agree that we do not want to restrict access to further and higher education. However, does the Minister agree that one of the dangers of the way in which the Government are pursuing their policy is that they are giving the impression that the only way in which to succeed in further or higher education is to go to university? It is important to talk about a broad range of educational options that might be suitable for some, but not others.”
“I agree entirely that it would be much better if British universities did what American ivy league universities do in identifying those who can most benefit from a higher education, but the hon. Gentleman must recognise that the major difference is the amount of funding and the resources that American universities have to do that with. I am sure he would agree with me that many British universities do as much as they possibly can with the limited resources that they have available.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that although there are many similarities with the American system, one of the major differences, which has a direct bearing on what he is saying, is that American universities have a well-developed system of keeping their alumni interested in, and supportive of, the university? Does he agree that British universities could try to do that to a greater extent? If they were to succeed, there would be not only more examples of people from less well-off backgrounds who had gone to university on which to draw, but better access to funding.”
“There must be considerable advantages to our society of encouraging people to keep their brains active, given that we know that dementia, Alzheimer’s and other conditions among older people will be an increasing drain on the health budget. I am keen to allow others to participate, but I wanted to speak in favour of broadening the definition of widened participation, so that it includes those beyond the 18-to-30 age group, important though that is. I want to talk about a broader idea of what education should be; it should be a genuine lifelong learning experience. It should not be expected or anticipated that a person’s education will finish when they are 16, 24, 60 or 84. It should genuinely be an opportunity that people may take advantage of at any stage of their life. If we can achieve that, we will genuinely have widened participation.”
“There are wider benefits to higher education, too, but very little has been said about them this afternoon. There are huge cultural benefits, benefits of well-being, and straightforward health benefits to higher education and further education. We have an increasingly ageing population that will need to return to education more often. People may wish to return to education once their working life is done. They may well want to re-enter some form of education during what may be a very long retirement, in order to keep their brain active and keep themselves interested, and we should encourage that. Why should we not talk about widening participation in higher education for those in retirement? They will have the time, and may have the income, to go into higher education.”
“I do not have a magic solution to offer the Minister any more than anyone else does, but neither his Government nor any other Government can simply say, “The issue is too difficult and complicated; we won’t address these problems.” An answer must be found, because the group of people to whom I am referring will become ever larger, and will have ever more demanding needs. We need to find a way to ensure that their educational experience is comfortable, and we need to ensure that they can afford to undertake those educational tasks and can sustain themselves economically while they do so. That is partly because of the economic benefits that they will receive, but partly because of the benefits that we will all receive if more people reach a higher standard in education.”
“Those individuals face particular problems. The hon. Member for Aberavon mentioned people who wished to become part-time students; overwhelmingly, the people I am describing will wish to study part-time, rather than full-time. They may face caring responsibilities, or more general family responsibilities, and they may well be obliged to earn money while studying. They will almost certainly face the challenge of having to reacquaint themselves with how studying and learning works, because they will have been absent from education for some time. They will face particular challenges, and although the issue is partly about how we can structure their educational experience so that they feel more comfortable with it, it is substantially about funding.”
“However, we face a particular challenge when addressing those who are between careers because, for whatever reason, they have left their particular employment or profession. Such people might wish to retrain and re-educate themselves so that they can go forward in a different field. However, those people are often in an especially difficult position. Employers, of course, see it as in their interests to pay for the continuing professional and academic development of their staff, so they do so. The universities find that helpful and they provide a good service. However, people who are between careers have a problem because they do not, by definition, have an employer that can help to fund what they wish to do to retrain, to be re-educated, or to re-skill. How are they to fund what they wish to do?”
“We face a changing economic world in which few people of my age or younger will be able to look forward to one career from the moment they leave education to the moment they retire. We have realised that that is true for manual trades and technical professions, but we might not have recognised it quite so comprehensively for the professional or academic fields. For people in those fields, too, there will be huge burdens of retraining and expectations of re-education, so universities have a massive part to play in developing that re-education and retraining. I accept that that already happens, to an extent, so I congratulate universities on what they do. They already effectively provide continuing professional development for those in mid-career who wish to develop their skills. I would like to see more of that.”
“Someone who did not go into higher education should be able to do so later, and people who, for whatever reason, went into higher education and then came out of it should be able to go back. Academics and those involved in higher education often say that people who go back into higher education later in life after an initial only-too-brief experience have done proportionately better on the second occasion, and better than others who have gone straight into higher education. There is a lot to be said for the opportunity to go in, or back in, at a later date. It is important that we develop the idea of lifelong learning and consider widening participation in that context.”
“For perfectly understandable reasons, the Learning and Skills Council is focusing its attention and funding on the 14-to-25 age group, but the people who suffer are those outside that age group who are trying to attend adult learning courses later in life. Again, I understand why that focus is there and I sympathise with many of the reasons for it. However, one of its consequences is that it underlines the perception that if one has not taken the chance to go into higher education early in life, one cannot do so later. Such a situation would be profoundly regrettable. I am not making my point solely to criticise the Government. On the contrary, I think that they are trying to deal with the situation. It is important that people understand that education, and especially higher education, is about second chances as well as first chances.”
“target for participation in higher education among the 18-to-30 age group for several reasons. One of the target’s flaws is the fact that it tends to focus too much attention on that age group and thus to underline the perception that higher education is only for people between the ages of 18 and 30, and that when one reaches the age of 30, it is no longer an appropriate course to pursue. That is profoundly wrong, and it is entirely at variance with other things that the Government are properly trying to do to develop the idea of education being a lifelong experience. In many ways, the problem is mirrored by what is happening with adult learning courses.”