Clive Efford
MP for Eltham and Chislehurst · Labour · United Kingdom
“Thank you for allowing me to take part in this statement, Madam Deputy Speaker, given that I was not here at the beginning—I was carrying out my duties elsewhere in the House. I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. What is she likely to do in my part of south-east London for technical and vocational places?”
“I rise to speak to amendment 97 in my name, which would remove clause 10 from the Bill. Clause 10 gives powers to the Secretary of State to vary the proportion of public and private provision of health services if they consider that to do so is in the interests of the health service.”
“Labour’s 2024 plan to make work pay set out a welcome desire to bring more essential services back into public control—something that is welcomed by health workers across the country, because so far the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation”, as was promised, has felt more like a trickle when it comes to the NHS.”
“The explanatory notes for the Bill say that this new flexibility is necessary “where there may otherwise be a breakdown in provision of a health service.” Can we imagine a situation where the Secretary of State has concerns about a health service and that an approach to assist a local provider would be rebuffed?”
“There are ample powers to enable the Secretary of State to intervene and resolve breakdowns in the provision of a health service. On clause 10, we must balance what it adds in those situations against its potential misuse by an ideologically driven Government that are determined to privatise our NHS.”
“It was a pleasure to join my right hon. Friend at Greenwich council’s development of 435 council properties in my constituency for the launch of the social and affordable housing programme. Some 70,000 homes are planned, and that is welcome and overdue.”
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“If there are to be such Ministers—I hope not—the Leader of the House should at least accept the principle that they should come from among the elected Members, if there are any, and not from the appointed Members of the House of Lords.”
“When the Leader of the House was Home Secretary, he set up the Special Standing Committee for the Immigration and Asylum Bill, which involved people from the wider community with an interest in the subject in making a difficult piece of legislation more effective and acceptable. That is one of the best examples of the process, on which we should build. Back Benchers should have their own committee of appointment, separate from the Executive, to appoint Members to such bodies and co-opt expertise from outside the House. If we had a debate about the role of the House of Commons, and not just one about the House of Lords, we could address that issue. I do not accept that Ministers need to be appointed in the House of Lords.”
“It is not true to say that we are elected in exactly the same way; we do go through constituency parties, but there is a murky science behind the positioning of candidates on a list. The proposal would not have a dramatic impact on people’s confidence in the democratic process or on turnout. The role of the House of Commons, and the relationship between Back Benchers and the Executive, needs to be resolved. I am a firm believer in the Select Committee system, which works extremely well, but we have been too reluctant and reticent to build on its success and effectiveness in scrutinising legislation.”
“When politicians debate the problem of participation in elections, I am always amazed that, in our pompous way, we assume that the answer is another election—that another election will be the magic bullet that encourages people to turn out and vote. But what are we asking them to turn out and vote for? We are asking them to elect not a legislative body, but a body that scrutinises the legislation that the Government are attempting to introduce. I am not convinced that the electorate will all flood to vote for a body with such limited powers. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Bill Etherington) said that he was in favour of a 100 per cent. elected second Chamber. I would suggest, however, that someone with his independence of mind would not make it on to a party list system as proposed in the White Paper.”
“According to the White Paper, however, the only way to secure the representation in the legislative process of all sections of the community—ethnic minorities, people from different religious backgrounds, all walks of life and professions—is to have some form of appointment in the House of Lords. I presume that those with particular areas of expertise will be appointed to that revising Chamber to perform the reform and scrutiny function and amend legislation, thereby using their expertise in the most beneficial way. As the White Paper states, only by accepting the principle of appointment can we deliver that expertise and the representation of all sections of the community.”
“Mullin) pointed out in an intervention at the beginning of the Leader of the House’s address, Lord Kingsland has said that some Members of the other place believe that having elections to the second Chamber will increase its legitimacy and therefore its power to thwart and defy the House of Commons, and will fundamentally change the relationship between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. We have not had the opportunity to debate that, or to debate our own scrutiny functions. By definition, therefore, we have not resolved what we want from the second Chamber. We are being invited to approve a 50 per cent. elected and 50 per cent. appointed upper House. Some would say that that is too timid a proposal.”
“No one has suggested that we want a weaker second Chamber or that its performance of its current function, when it is not elected, is weak. We are not talking about removing powers from the House of Lords. No hon. Member has suggested that it does not perform as well as it might, even though it is not elected. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House made it clear in his opening speech that we are not considering altering conventions between the House of Commons and the House of Lords and undermining the supremacy of the House of Commons as the primary legislative Chamber. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr.”
“We can do that only when we have defined the role that we, as Members of the House of Commons, want to perform in scrutinising legislation. What exactly is the role of Back Benchers in the process? Much has been said about the legitimacy of the other place. I believe that its legitimacy is in its function and how well it performs it. We must therefore define exactly what we want it to do. As the White Paper states, and assuming that we vote for retaining a second Chamber—I shall follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) in voting for a monocameral system—we want it to be a revising and reforming Chamber that at times has the power to delay legislation and to ask the House of Commons and the Executive to think again.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on his handling of the subject and on turning defeat into victory—that is not too ungenerous—when he retreated from the voting method for tomorrow. It is worth putting on record that the skill with which he tackled the matter did him credit. If we vote for nothing else tomorrow, we should introduce a measure in the near future to remove the remaining 92 hereditary peers. There is unanimous support for that among Labour Members, and perhaps it is a sign of how times change that so many Opposition Members have also argued in favour of it. I shall not vote for elections to the other place for two reasons, which I hope I can explain. First, we need to define the function that we want the House of Lords to perform.”
“I, too, commend my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) for promoting the Bill. I am pleased to sponsor it. I want briefly to take up one or two issues with the Minister. He has said that he believes that powers to deal with the problem already exist and that they work. He cited some examples. However, I contend that they do not work and that people who live near every green space in my constituency, including Eltham park, Middle park, Horn park, Shooters Hill park, Eaglesfield park, Plumstead common, the Course, Altash way and Woodlands farm, face a problem with the bikes week in, week out.”
“I should like the Minister to take my next point on board, so I would be grateful if his Parliamentary Private Secretary shut up for a minute. It is a day for Back Benchers and Front Benchers should listen.”
“No, I shall not give way to the Minister because he has plenty of time to respond to all the issues that we raise. With all due respect, he can just sit and listen. The problem has grown out of all proportion since the introduction of new powers, including section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 and a plethora of road traffic measures. According to Revenue and Customs figures on a Government website, there has been a 20-fold increase in the number of Chinese imports of mini-motos. The number has rocketed from 7,000 in 2001 to 144,000 in 2005. Similarly, the Motor Cycle Industry Association estimates that the sale of mini-moto vehicles has increased from 10,000 in 2002 to 100,000 in 2005. We are not, therefore, considering the position that existed when we introduced section 59 of the 2002 Act to tackle antisocial behaviour.”
“We have new circumstances and a new machine that is being used antisocially that we did not consider when we drew up previous legislation. A registration scheme that requires those bikes to have a number on them, so that failure to register and number the bike means its immediate removal and destruction, is a tool that will give the police powers to deal with the problem without delay. The public are demanding that it be tackled and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to listen.”
“Registration would deal with that key point. I understand the Minister’s point when he says that the people who are most likely to use the bikes in an antisocial way are least likely to register them and keep registration plates on them. I accept that. However, if there has to be an engraved registration number or a plate on the bike, and the consequence of its removal is the immediate confiscation and destruction of the bike, that deals with the individual and the problem. We are asking for a tool to enable the police to tackle the problem. Not only Back Benchers, but the police and the communities that suffer from the plague of mini-motos are calling for it. There is no lack of determination on the part of the police to use the powers about which my hon. Friend the Minister is so confident. However, those powers have loopholes.”
“However, if they stop a bike for the second time, they cannot identify it as the same one. That is a key factor in trying to tackle the problem. I can give examples of residents who have complained about noise nuisance on open space and the police have dealt with it. Yet residents have told me, “We phoned the police and they did nothing.” I have then contacted the police to tell them that people had complained of noise nuisance but that the police had let it go on all day. The police have replied that they had been there, issued notices and dealt with culprits, but that the problem is so vast that somebody else was there in the afternoon, and the residents get the impression that the nuisance had continued all day unchecked. In addition, there is no way of knowing whether the same bike went back in the afternoon.”
“We are trying to tackle the problem throughout the country, yet the Minister appears to believe confidently that we have the powers to do that. I could give examples of ACPO being out of step with its officers in my community and lagging behind their views. I work closely with safer neighbourhood teams in my area and they frequently tell me of the difficulties that they experience in using section 59 powers to stop a bike on open space. Indeed, police officers are lucky if they manage to stop one because they often cannot chase them. Health and safety regulations restrict their ability to do that because the bikes might rush out of a park on to a road, and that poses danger to the public or the individual on the bike. When they stop bikes, they can issue the rider with a warning notice under section 59.”
“No, I will not. Officialdom is out of step with the general public on the issue that we are considering. If the Association of Chief Police Officers had to rely on being re-elected, as we do, perhaps it would take a different attitude to the Bill. The Home Office is targeting £200,000 in 28 areas to try to tackle the problem. If the Minister believes that current legislation is working, let me list those areas: Manchester, Mansfield, Liverpool, Sunderland, Birmingham, Harlow, Southend on Sea, Tendring, Reading, Gloucester, Derby, Coventry, Hodge Hill, Blackburn, Chester, Oldham, Salford, Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, South Tyneside, Hull, Wakefield, York, Camden, Kent, Cheshire, West Cumbria and Newport.”
“I do not like intervening on a Friday because it talks out other very good Bills, but can the hon. Gentleman explain whether the authorities in Coventry had to catch any of those bikes on more than one occasion? Did the police have any difficulties identifying them for a second time when they were carrying out that operation? That is the problem that many police forces encounter.”
“May I caution my right hon. Friend against turning the voting procedure into “the issue”? He seems to be suggesting that a vote against what he is proposing is a vote against any form of reform. He should put an option for a voting procedure to the House. There is one issue on which there is unanimity among Labour Members, and that is that the remaining hereditary peers should be removed. Any procedure that my right hon. Friend puts to the House must allow a separate vote on that issue.”
“I am sorry that I have had to approach my hon. Friend to receive anything close to an apology for the error. When my constituents wrote to Southeastern, the company chose to ignore the complaint in its reply, blaming the Government for a 66 per cent. increase in fares. It is several weeks since I pointed out the error, so will my hon. Friend ensure that Southeastern publicise it and give people who can prove that they were overcharged and who paid an excessive fare the opportunity to obtain a refund?”
“My right hon. Friend said in her statement that we will have the strictest regime for casinos to be found anywhere. Will she add to that by telling the House who will monitor the performance and activities of the casinos? What sanctions will be available if casinos are found to be breaching any of the codes of conduct?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that we should consider how people value the councillor’s role? If that role is diminished, so that councillors are unable to direct policy and make big decisions, will not people feel that the value of turning out and voting is also diminished?”
“Before the hon. Gentleman goes any further down the road with community health councils, some of us have long memories and served on them in the past. It was the Conservative Government who froze their budgets and cut the money that CHCs used to communicate what they were scrutinising to the wider public. The hon. Gentleman should be careful before applauding the work of CHCs, because his Government did not have a good track record of supporting them.”
“Basically, the presence of local residents in terms of neighbourhood renewal is now a box-ticking exercise to satisfy the requirement for some sort of community engagement to deliver on the core themes.”
“That scheme arose from a local initiative, with the heads of local schools talking to residents on their neighbourhood renewal panel and the panel agreeing a sum to finance the improvement and introduction of those services. That is an example of people who were empowered by the resources made available to them through neighbourhood renewal programmes so that they could make a difference. There was a reason for them engaging in the process because they made a contribution and a significant difference to their community. Sadly, our neighbourhood renewal programme has been rolled up into a much more centralised structure in which it has to hit specific targets. The decision-making process has been taken away from local communities. A minimal sum of money is left for people to play around with in their communities.”
“They are extremely popular and are doing a very good job. Similarly, a number of heads of local schools came up with the idea of having adult learning centres in their primary schools. They came to the neighbourhood renewal panel with the plan to work in partnership with the further education college for the borough and develop adult learning centres where parents and people from the community could come to improve their education and employability. The scale of the improvements and benefits to the local community are difficult to quantify, but with little money from our neighbourhood renewal panel the heads were able to set up those schemes. One has led to £1.4 million of additional investment to expand the adult learning centre by having a family centre on the premises and a lift to enable disabled people to access the adult college.”
“The pilot came to an end and in spite of the popularity of the service and the high demand, the community unfortunately failed to influence the service providers to bend their spend—a phrase we have used in the past—to meet that aspiration. I also chair one of our local neighbourhood renewal panels. For many years, at the start of the neighbourhood renewal programme, we asked for funding for neighbourhood wardens from the neighbourhood renewal funding. However, it was difficult to get officers who supported the panel to produce a report in favour of them in spite of the fact that the whole community, covering two estates in the neighbourhood renewal area, was unanimous in its support for the idea. We finally got the report three years later and the neighbourhood wardens are now in place.”
“Much in the Bill moves us in the direction of bringing local authorities closer to their communities, and I very much welcome those aspects of it. I can give examples of difficulties that have arisen in my local communities. A number of the most deprived communities in my constituency were asking for services, especially podiatry services, for elderly people. We convinced the local primary care trust to set up a pilot service in a satellite practitioner nurse-led centre financed by our single regeneration budget programme. That proved popular and was well attended by elderly residents in the local community.”
“I welcome parts of the Bill; there are other parts that bemuse me, and others to which I am violently opposed. As we are considering the role of local authorities in scrutiny, I will make my contribution in that spirit. The Bill is an attempt to make local government more responsive to the needs and aspirations of local communities. That has eluded us for some time, and it has led to disaffection and a lack of engagement in local elections. We have a problem to overcome in relation to local area agreements between local statutory providers and local service providers. How do we engage the local community in those, and how do we create a dynamic relationship that responds to the local community’s aspirations and influences those local area agreements? That should be the focus of our attention.”
“It has been said that we have diminished the role of local councillors by electing executives. I am passionately in favour of the committee structure, because when we were on committees as local government councillors we had the opportunity to scrutinise the officers who were charged with responsibility for delivering services. At present, scrutiny means scrutiny of a member elected to an executive rather than scrutiny of the officers. What used to happen was that a group of members with broad knowledge of, say, social services in an area could interrogate the officers charged with delivering those services.”
“If we value elections and putting information before the electorate, allowing them to make up their own minds, we should recognise that communities that have been given that choice want to exercise it; but the Bill suggests that we take the choice away, and allow no referendums before introducing mayors. The Minister looks puzzled; if I am wrong he can correct me, but I believe that if a local authority decides that it wants a directly elected mayor, it should be able to put the proposal to members of the local community in a referendum so that they can decide. Heaven help them if they are stupid enough to vote in favour of it, but that will be a matter for the community. In any event, the proposal should be put to the community in the form of a reasoned argument.”
“In Greenwich, we underwent the painful exercise of moving from two-member and one-member wards where we had 62 councillors to three-member wards with 51 councillors. In the process we made the wards too big. They are unwieldy and unrepresentative, and parts of communities are lumped together in a ward while half a mile away there is another part of another community, although there was a much more sensible solution to the problem in the locality. The Bill suggests a system of directly elected mayors, leaders or executives. I believe that there have been 35 referendums on mayors, and that on 23 occasions the proposal was rejected.”
“The Cator estate in Blackheath is run by its own trust, currently served by two wards and in future to be served by two Members of Parliament. None of the decisions made any sense, but the commission committed itself at an early stage to delivering a set of ward boundaries providing for a number within 1 per cent. of the average number per ward if the population is divided by the number of wards. By setting itself that standard it drove a coach and horses through any idea of local accountability, local knowledge and local communities. If we are to engage with local communities and encourage people to participate in elections, we must ensure that they feel some affinity with the boundaries of the areas that are being represented.”
“My experience when we had the local government boundary review in Greenwich was that the whole process was unsatisfactory. The local government boundary commission was not accountable to the local community. It held no public inquiry to conclude its initial findings and it split many well-established and well-understood local community boundaries across not only council wards but, inevitably, parliamentary seats, because its findings were the building blocks for the future parliamentary review. I say that having benefited slightly from the parliamentary boundary review. I do not want to give the Minister the impression that this is sour grapes. In fact the difference is marginal, so it is neither here nor there.”
“That is a big problem. The forthcoming taskforce report into the third sector must address the problem of core funding for the third sector to ensure that such bodies can stand up and play their role in delivering some of the strategies that the Government and the funding bodies want an organisation that engages with young people in the community to deliver. If those organisations fold because of a lack of funding for their core functions, the opportunity is lost to engage with them and with the use of their resources and links within the community. That is an essential part of ensuring that we have a vibrant and effective third sector. I want briefly to cover one or two other things. Part of the Bill deals with the future of local government boundary review procedures.”
“The charity is funded by a trust, held by a bank, and it had a capital sum invested for it. Unfortunately, as a result of the dotcom collapse, some of that capital sum disappeared. The income is now reduced and the fall means that the charity has drawn on the lump sum that it invested, making its income even lower. It has been a vicious circle. None the less, the charity is an important voluntary organisation within my constituency and it is having serious problems in identifying a source to fund the core activities of a charitable trust. It has a number of irons in the fire with regard to applying for grants, but it does not have a means to access resources readily. It needs resources that can be underwritten for three years or more to give it sustainability and the chance to plan ahead to perform its core functions.”
“When we do that, and in particular when we talk about introducing local parishes in London, we need to guard against those communities that have readily available to them the capacity to take advantage of those powers at the expense of those communities that are more disadvantaged and therefore less likely and less able to do so. In saying that, not only do local councillors need to play their role, but we as MPs need to play a role, too. Often when we draft this type of legislation, we overlook our role as champions within our communities. I have been involved in setting up local community forums in my constituency, and I am currently involved in trying to set up a charitable trust involving local residents. One of the problems that we are coming up against is that we already have an existing centre that is used by young people.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to clarify that. It is very much centralised at borough level. What has been drafted for the programme of expenditure is driven by the service professionals, whether they are in statutory organisations or the borough itself. The complaint from members of my neighbourhood renewal panel is that what was working well, and what empowered the local community to be very responsive to things that came out of the community at a local level, has been diminished and has almost disappeared. That is to the detriment of the programme. Another part of the Bill that I very much welcome is the intention to expand the support and involvement of the third sector.”
“I will not, because I am about to sit down. I have been speaking long enough, and I know that others wish to speak as well. I could go on, though, and I hope that there will be further opportunities to scrutinise the Bill. I know that other Members will speak about the scrutiny of health services. That is what I wanted to speak about next, but in fairness to them I will sit down now.”
“Friend the Chancellor to tackle that particular issue in the comprehensive spending review, because there is a growing crisis that we have failed to address in the past 10 years?”
“I commend to my hon. Friend the report published this week by Shelter, “Against the Odds”, which highlights the fact that 1.6 million children are living in bad housing. The consequences for those children are that they are twice as likely as other children not to have GCSEs when they leave school; they are twice as likely to be excluded; they are five times more likely to have nowhere to do homework; and they are three times more likely to experience poor health in their lifetimes. Those children pay with their lives for poor quality housing, and if we do not deal with the issue in the next comprehensive spending review, the problems will continue. Will the Minister urge my right hon.”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and especially the extra resources for schools. Although extra funding per pupil and for schools is welcome across the board, does he agree that we need to target resources at the children with the greatest educational needs? Yesterday’s Ofsted report recommended extending to other areas the inner city challenge scheme that has been implemented in London. Teachers involved in the scheme have reported that having access to external expertise and, most importantly, extra resources has helped them to increase attainment in their secondary schools. Does my right hon. Friend agree that such a scheme is a way of tackling inequalities in education?”
“I understand from reading in the press, so I will be corrected if I am wrong, that the Conservatives are suggesting that we have not gone far enough in setting our greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2050. Is the hon. Gentleman saying to the House that if he were Secretary of State for Transport, he would tell a Cabinet meeting, “I cannot deliver on my targets because local authorities, which are responsible for dealing with congestion, are not playing ball and not delivering any strategies to deal with congestion”? Will that be his position?”
“The hon. Gentleman said that if a train operator wanted to remove a Sunday service, that would be a matter for the industry in which politicians should not interfere. Is he seriously suggesting that if a local community were due to lose a Sunday service and people wanted to lobby the local politician, the politician should turn around and say “That is a matter for the market”?”
“I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has answered my question. He implies that if South West Trains wanted to introduce a service of that kind, it would be purely at the behest of the private sector and no one would have any comeback. There would be no accountability, and no one to whom people could apply for redress.”
“Is the hon. Gentleman saying that it is Liberal Democrat policy that everyone who gets on a train should be provided with a seat, or is there some limitation to his party’s desire to have every bum on a seat?”
“I would expect them to make the noises that they are making, but I urge the Minister not to be convinced by them, and to stick to the position that the Government have taken. The rising cost of leasing trains has a knock-on effect on fares and other costs to the travelling public, and that is unacceptable. The Government have taken the right steps in the direction of addressing that issue. I would also like to comment on issues relating to capacity. I was interested to hear the comments about Crossrail from a Conservative Member, whose constituency I cannot recall—”
“We are concerned that the present franchising system does little more than maintain the status quo. The Government need to look into different ways of using the system to create more innovation, investment, expansion and growth in the industry. We have seen the Government’s determination in this regard, and that needs to be recognised. The Office of Rail Regulation, following an approach from the Secretary of State, has asked the Office of Fair Trading to look into the cost of leasing trains from the train leasing companies. That is certainly a move in the right direction. I would not expect the companies to say other than that this will have an effect on investment. I would not expect them to roll over and say, “Okay, it’s a fair cop”.”
“The buck stops at the Dispatch Box, and I will be raising the matter time and again unless we see the standards to which we have become accustomed being maintained. The Select Committee also took evidence about the transfer of risk, which my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has already mentioned. There is evidence that, when train operating companies fall into difficulties and go cap in hand to the Government, they are treated with kid gloves and allowed to refinance at a cost to the public purse. The Minister has said that there is no intention to do that in future, and we fully support that decision. If the train operating companies decide to play Oliver Twist and ask for more, I would urge the Minister to play Mr. Bumble.”
“As the Minister pointed out, there has been significant investment in the infrastructure in that part of the network. The electricity supply has been upgraded, allowing for greater capacity and more reliability for local train services. We hear stories about leaves on the line—thankfully, there has not been any snow yet—but there is no excuse for the level of delay that I personally have experienced in the past month. It is not what we have become accustomed to, and the franchise needs to be looked at very carefully indeed. We have enjoyed significant improvement and a consistently high standard of delivery in recent times, so any slippage backwards is unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will scrutinise the delivery of that service very closely because, it has to be said, it was the Government who reissued that franchise.”