Debate on the Address

My Lords, we have had a fascinating debate. I have listened to 38 speeches, although I missed a couple of minutes of the speech by my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton. There is no way I am even going to attempt to give detailed responses, but I am going to make a comment on each of them. The beauty of this is that by and large we are supposed to have been debating Bills that are in the Queen's Speech so all the detailed answers to the questions that have been asked tonight will be answered in due course by one of my many ministerial colleagues who will turn up at the Dispatch Box when they are dealing with their Bill. I shall be one of the early ones as I am doing the Climate Change Bill, which will come to this House for Second Reading before the end of this month, assuming it is introduced here as planned, and I will do it justice. Where issues have been raised that are not relevant to Bills for which I have copious notes, I will arrange a letter. I try to avoid doing that because it puts an extra workload on staff, but a lot of substantive issues have been raised tonight, and it is important to respond to them. I shall also try to stick to the strictures of the Chief Whip, as it is important to set an example. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, kicked off on the marine Bill. There will be a draft Bill in due course, but I cannot say when, after the scrutiny, it will be introduced. He also raised the green belt, as did one or two other noble Lords. I know it sounds churlish and almost party political to say that there are 26,000 more hectares of green belt today than there were 10 years ago, but nobody seems to remind the House that there is more green belt than there used to be. The noble Lord made a point about local authority cash. Recent press reports about cuts have been slightly skewed. Everybody knew what the budget was: it was £8.5 million for animal welfare. They knew beforehand and when the bills came in after the year started, because local authorities had not got their act together, there was still £8.5 million not £9.7 million. That was the reality. I regret that, but it is a consequence of overbudgeting in the past, and we will get it corrected. I have no evidence that massive redundancies are being made, as people have claimed. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson—I welcome him and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, to their Front-Bench responsibilities—raised the Climate Change Bill and the 60 per cent target, which I imagine will figure heavily in our debates. He also raised the marine Bill, the thorny issue of aviation—I suspect that the question will be whether aviation is in or out, which will be an issue of contentious debate in the House—and the common agricultural policy health check, which will be before us next year and will be a chance to have a look at what has been happening with the CAP. I do not want pander to the noble Lord, Lord Best, but I have never known him have a bad idea, and that is going back many years. He is more than qualified to speak on the issues he raised. I understand that cross-domain regulation will be in within a couple of years, but I do not think that the private sector can be covered by the Bill and I suspect that the Long Title will prevent any amendments, although it will not stop any speeches being made that are necessary to wind the Government up and show that there is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London raised the important issue of the role of the committee on climate change. It has been strengthened during the consultation on the Climate Change Bill, and we will have more about that during the consultation on the Bill. He rightly made the point that, by and large, it is the poorest people of the world who are at risk from climate change. We must take account of that. Key issues of public health and security figure very high. My noble friend Lord Whitty raised several issues and made it clear that he does not think that the target of 60 per cent is good enough. As he knows, the Government do not run this place. Labour does not have a majority and I have no doubt that there will be good, active debates on the issue from Members all around the House. He also warned us that we should limit the credits on the third world; we do not want the third world paying for what we should be doing. That is a fair point that will be raised during the passage of the Bill. My noble friend also raised the issue of energy. I do not have a full answer for him, because it would be too complicated, but on fuel poverty and the Warm Front scheme, we are still working on the budget of £850 million for 2005-08 and are still settling budgets relating to the Comprehensive Spending Review that we have just gone through. He was also one of the first to make the point that nuclear power has a role in a mixed energy policy. That is fairly obvious and in due course the Government will pronounce on the recent consultation. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, raised the issue of immigration numbers. The figures that he raised are projections, whether 71 million or 81 million. All that I can say to him is that the Department for Communities and Local Government will be updating household projections based on those figures and that will be an important area for debate. There is an issue here. We want the figures to be transparent to show why we need the extra houses. As I said, we will publish new, up-to-date household projections, so that we can have a debate based on the figures. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised the issue of regional assemblies, the planning Bill, the housing Bill, the supplementary business rate and a whole host of other issues. All that I can say is that we must have effective consultation on all those matters; they are not something that central Government can ram through. Someone also raised the issue of accountability at the level of regional assemblies. Huge amounts of public money are being spent and it is important that we have effective consultation. That will be built into the legislative framework. The noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, gave us a good run around. I almost sent for an A-Z of Hertfordshire, because I am not so familiar with the area. He gave us some really practical examples of issues that I have no doubt will be raised when we discuss the transport Bill: crowding and network problems. My noble friend Lady Whitaker rightly raised housing. We have always tried to say that it is not a numbers game; we are talking about people's homes and quality of life. That depends on environmentally friendly buildings, as well as good design. Under much pressure from my noble friends Lord Rogers and Lady Blackstone, we put the word ““design”” into the housing Bill and want to give it strength. The recent planning policy statements 1 and 3 have good design at their heart and local authorities will now be asked to report on better design standards. It is really important to take on board the criticism made by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. That body comes under the DCMS but is well funded by Communities and Local Government. It has good points to make and we ignore them at our peril, because otherwise, people’s lives will suffer. I must say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell of Markyate, that I have had no notes or briefing on the matter he raised, but one of my only claims to fame is that I was the first non-lawyer ever to go to the Law Officers Department as the PPS to the Solicitor-General, my noble and learned friend Lord Archer of Sandwell, in 1974. I did the job for three years. I was given the book, Role of the Law Officers, by the private secretary, who told me to read it to find out about the department. I agree with what the noble and learned Lord said. There is a fantastic misunderstanding by non-lawyers in both Houses of the role of the law officers. His points were well made and I have no doubt that at some time, someone more qualified than me will respond to them, but he also made it clear that his speech was for yesterday's debate. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, like many others, raised the issue of community engagement on housing and planning. I understand that opinions will be tested on public panels when the regional spatial strategies are drawn up. This is a proactive issue of community engagement. We want a different system that is effective and does not cut corners on consultation but does not leave us with a situation like that of Terminal 5, when it took five or six years to get a decision. We must get decisions. We are losing out as a nation because of the slowness of the system. We welcome the return of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth to the House. Were it not for his return to health, he would not be here. I had no idea that 25 per cent of the population of the Isle of Wight were on benefits, as he said. He also made a point about thinking positively. Indeed, making the Isle of Wight the first eco-island in Europe is really positive. I can tell him that there has been much discussion with the local authorities and the directors of social services on the social issues that he raised. My noble friend Lord Giddens mentioned climate change and gave the example of Finland, which is important. We are asking people to change behaviour, and the health issues that were highlighted many years ago in Finland were dealt with quite successfully. I had some figures earlier in the notes that I was given. I do not have a source for them but I can always get it. Eighty-eight per cent of people agree that they should be more responsible for the environment, but four out of five do not relate their own actions to climate change. We have that contrast. Perhaps Parliament could help. We must explain the connection between actions and the outcome so that people do not think, ““Oh, I can’t do anything. It’s too big; it’s only me and my household””. We must get them to understand that the individual actions of people can make a difference. That is very important if we are to change behaviour. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, talked about planning and the Planning Reform Bill, and contrasted the speeding-up of planning versus consultation, which is an issue. I understand that there will be a three-stage process; it is all set out. Quality and quantity must go hand in hand in the provision of housing. The noble Baroness also talked about the need for lifetime housing. This could not be more obvious. We have people in the wrong houses because those houses were not built as lifetime housing. Those people do not want to leave because it may be their family home and they have their memories and everything else there. Moreover, there is nowhere for them to go that is local and where they keep the same doctor, the same newsagent and everyone else. We have not planned as well as we might and we must ensure that we have learnt those lessons for the future. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, gave a very robust response to the Sustainable Development Commission, which he thought had responded quite inadequately to the Severn barrage. The caveat was that the commission agreed to it but with a series of qualifications, one of which related to replacing the habitat. If that could not be done, the commission’s answer was no. That was the implication. The Severn barrage would provide something like 5 per cent of our power. I understand that last New Year’s Eve we closed down two old nuclear power stations that provided about 1.5 per cent of the power for this country, so one can see the benefit of what you could get from the Severn barrage. The noble Lord also gave an example of something else that might be happening in south Wales which could be quicker and more effective but was not on the scale of the Severn barrage. Nevertheless, it involved renewable energy, which is an important aspect. The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, talked about the very narrow issue of railways, as did one of his colleagues. I am all in favour of the railway lobby. He also touched on the constitution at the end of his remarks, but stopped short of calling for independence. He is certainly not happy with the present constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom. My noble friend Lord Morris of Handsworth raised many issues and declared his interest as chairman of Midland Heart. I remember when it started in part of my old constituency. He is quite right that there is an awful lot still to be done. People deserve good housing. We are probably the second most densely populated country in the European Union; the Netherlands is probably the first. However, only 10 per cent of the land in this country is urbanised; perhaps 12 per cent if you count the road infrastructure. Other areas are used for national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and the green belt. All that, together with the urban, adds up to about 46 per cent of the land. The rest of it is open and not built on. There is no real shortage of land. It is what we do with it, how we value it and how we build economic and sustainable communities on it. My noble friend is right. People deserve decent housing. The numbers issue does not come into it because we have got the asset if we use it properly and efficiently. The noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, referred to the regeneration around the Olympic site and planning gain. She is right. With the vast expenditure being made on the Olympics, the country will be watching for what the legacy will be. It will be looking at the legacy for the communities in that part of London and not at the legacy for the hotshot or those who will make a fortune. That will be fundamental. I understand some of the issues that she raised. The money involved in Crossrail is subject to external scrutiny. Road pricing was raised also by others, and it will be only in the context of highly congested urban areas. No one is saying that it should be anywhere else. I have never heard that. The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, raised the Marine Bill, which will be in draft form. She moved on to farming issues, on which I do not want to go into in too much detail because it would be wrong. However, single farm payments were a disaster this year, although I do not think that the issue warranted an item on ““Farming Today”” for 10 months. I fully accept that the first year was really bad. Commitments were made and not kept. We hope to do better in the year about to start and to pay more farmers more money more quickly. I hope that we will be able to deliver on that soon. The noble Baroness also raised an issue, which I thought was quite insulting. We do not have a part-time Permanent Secretary at Defra. We have a Permanent Secretary on call 168 hours a week, like all permanent secretaries, and leading an incredible team. I have seen the resilience of Defra in the past few months. It has had to deal with flooding, foot and mouth, bluetongue, and avian flu earlier in the year, which is now back again. The animal health side of Defra is really being tested. Having stood down in some areas when success was achieved, it has had to set up again because of other issues out of the control of the vets and officials who have to react. It is certainly not fair or accurate for the noble Baroness to say that. Defra has done an excellent job. It is true that Debby Reynolds has just taken early retirement. There is a very good veterinary team in Defra, including the deputy who is due to retire. I think that the appointment has already been made for a successor early next year. But there is a good team in the animal health agency, the former state veterinary service, and the policy officials in Page Street. There is capital expenditure of £121 million at Pirbright, which is part of the foot and mouth issue to be dealt with in the courts in due course, which is why I cannot say much more about it. Because that capital expenditure was being spent, digging was taking place and lorries were moving on and off the site, although they were not always counted in and out, as every one knows because the reports have been published. The fact is that it was highlighted because of the investment going into that laboratory. I fully agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, that the rate of TB is far too high. I hope that we will come to a conclusion soon. We are waiting for the Select Committee in another place to finish its inquiries. The noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, referred to transport and the railways. We accept that a more integrated transport system would be beneficial to the whole country. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Ford who is the retiring chair of English Partnerships. I was in ODPM when she started and the great deal of effort that she has put into welding English Partnerships into a first-class organisation has been recognised. She is right. We want local authority support for the new agency, which has to be joined-up in terms of the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships. As my noble friend said, they were both working with inadequate old-fashioned legislation and were still using the powers of the new towns commission and the old Urban Regeneration Corporation to do things. To go into development and housing with lots of income streams coming in for community rebuilding is barmy. It is so inefficient, it is unbelievable that in 2007 we have allowed that to happen. I hope that the legislation can correct it. My noble friend Lord Haskins talked about food supply and the need for science. That is absolutely crucial. We have an anti-science culture in this country, but we have to be bold. While we do not have to believe everything and do everything the scientists say, we need to use the science. Scientific opinions sometimes conflict with each other. Along with other Ministers in the past who have been looking for a solution to a problem, I have had two groups of scientists giving me different views on an issue. My noble friend also talked about biofuels, saying that they are not exactly the panacea people may think. We are well warned by the experience of my noble friend in that respect. Biofuels have a contribution to make, but my noble friend pointed out that during his lifetime the population has increased threefold, but food production has gone up by more than a factor of three. Land has not increased; the rise is largely due to the good use of science. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, referred to foot and mouth, Pirbright and the bluetongue outbreak. On the tender for the bluetongue vaccine, I have to say that we did not put a vaccine in storage because there are 24 strains of bluetongue and we could not be certain what strain we would get. Portugal and Spain have strains 2 and 4, while northern Europe has 8. We have ended up with the same strain. We have tendered for 10 million to 20 million doses. I do not know what the cost will be, but the Government have done this to achieve economies of scale. However, the fact is that this is not a free-for-all. The vaccine will be sold to users, so it is not a public subsidy in that respect. We will get the vaccine cheaper and it will be properly organised, which is important. We cannot be certain at the moment what will happen with bluetongue over the winter, but we know what happened last year in Europe. While we have had only 62 cases, I freely admit that in some ways the controls on bluetongue are more damaging to the industry than the disease itself. But because this is the first time we have had the disease, it makes a lot of sense to find out as much as possible about its movement rather than simply declare the whole country a bluetongue area. That is seductive, but by doing what we are now, we are learning about it. If bluetongue comes back with a vengeance next year as it did in Belgium and Germany this year, we will be much better prepared to deal with its consequences, because stamping it out will be difficult. Vaccination, we hope, will be a possibility. The noble Duke also talked about slaughter facilities. Slaughterhouses are in the private sector. One has to be amazed when one looks at where the slaughter facilities are sited around the country. Sometimes they are historical accidents of location related to family interests. They are not always in the right place when disease outbreaks mean that there are controls on the movement of animals. I appreciate that that has caused major problems for farmers this year. The noble Duke and several noble Lords asked about the dates. Everything we have done has had to be agreed with the European Union in Brussels. But the fact is that what we could and could not do was not as clear-cut as some people think. We have moved as quickly as we could on these issues. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, talked about the use of water supplies and scientific R&D. He is absolutely right. I have no authority to do so, but I have made a public commitment that there will be no more R&D cuts in Defra. I did so when we were saying goodbye to our Chief Scientific Adviser and welcoming Bob Watson, with his world reputation on climate change. He was part of the Nobel prize-winning team, so Defra has a really strong science base. Ministers are always being asked to make R&D cuts when the budget has gone over a bit. At Defra we have gone so far and no further. The Secretary of State has taken the decision: we are not touching the R&D budget. We have also launched the ““Love Food Hate Waste”” campaign with tips for using leftovers. I personally have not seen it, but I am reliably informed about it. There is no question that Defra is under additional pressure at the present time, so these things are not unimportant. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton raised the issue of climate change, as I expected. No doubt I will hear from him and other colleagues around the House every day that we consider the Bill. My noble friend asked specifically about the involvement of local authorities. I understand that the local government performance framework has recently issued new indicators, as set out, I believe, in the Bill. Indeed, the Bill is now much stronger on mitigation and adaptation—obviously it has not been published yet, but noble Lords must take my word for it—since it was originally considered in draft form. There will be local authority involvement, which is very important, and there will be a requirement on them in respect of climate change. There will also be requirements about consultation. My noble friend also raised the nuclear issue and chastised the Liberal Democrats for never mentioning the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, spent most of his speech talking about identity cards. I do not feel qualified to comment on that issue, particularly with the threat, or promise, of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, going to prison for not having an ID card. Our prisons are very good these days—people are well fed and warm—but they are not the place for Members of this House. I go no further than that. The noble Lord raised the issues of new communities and the housing stock. Of the 3 million houses that are being talked about, more than 1.5 million are already programmed in the spatial strategies. This has not come out of the blue on a blank sheet of paper; more than half the houses are already allocated in the spatial strategies. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro touched on the green belt and the urgent needs of people in his part of the world, where so many houses are second homes and the cost of housing has gone up. We are committed to updating our standards on overcrowding of housing, but not in isolation from other housing needs; it has to be done in the context of the totality of housing needs. My noble friend Lord Harrison raised a cacophony. He was quite good in a way because he said, ““I am going to talk about all the issues that should have been in the Queen’s Speech but which were not there””. I cannot really answer that because the motorway signs on the fields, I suspect, cry out for an amendment to one of the transport Bills. It is not for me to put ideas into a Back-Bencher’s head but, nevertheless, it is an issue that he has raised several times in the House. I do not have any figures on the direct causes of accidents but, like my noble friend Lady Andrews, I have been responsible for answering some of my noble friend’s questions. Like the whole House, I share his concerns about the death of the fire service personnel in the recent tragedy, and we send our sympathies to the families. It is quite unacceptable for large buildings that have large numbers of people working in them and where valuable goods are stored to have inadequate facilities for fire prevention, such as sprinklers. He also referred to a cigarette that puts itself out. Believe it or not, the Government are involved in a debate on this in Europe and with the manufacturers, so at some time there may be more to report on that. Local government restructuring is being carried out only to improve delivery of services to our fellow citizens and it will be done differently in different parts of the country. I was not sure whether my noble friend was joking when he referred to Manshire, because I do not know the details of what is happening. However, I understand that it is a contentious issue in many areas where there are plans for unitary councils. The noble Countess, Lady Mar, made an interesting speech, but it contained many inaccuracies. She does not like Defra—she made that quite clear in her speech. However, during the foot and mouth crisis in August, I was in my room in your Lordships’ House and I read a summary of all the lessons learnt from the 2001 report. There was not one of those lessons that I had not seen being put into action during the time I had been back from my broken holiday, like other Ministers. So we were trying to learn the lessons. I have to correct the noble Countess, because there was not a second outbreak in Surrey. We cured, we thought, the first two, and the fifth one turned out to be the third—it was the same outbreak; the lesions were four weeks’ old. It was not reported but it was the same outbreak. How the movements took place, of course, is a matter for the epidemiology reports. We thought that it was clear, but there was another area where it was the same outbreak, same strain and the same source, Pirbright. We slaughter on suspicion, which I realise is very stressful. I met the first three farmers, two of whose cattle had foot and mouth; the other lost his cattle through slaughter on suspicion. I realise the distress that that causes, but the view was taken after the last outbreak that we should be able to slaughter close contacts and slaughter on suspicion as quickly as possible to try to contain the outbreak. We did not know this came from Pirbright to start with; it could have been another 2001. That is why on both occasions 100 vets were put into quarantine for a week, at massive cost to the department, so that the vaccination teams were ready. The vaccine was already available and we were ready to go to vaccination, following what was said in 2001: ““Don’t wait till you decide to vaccinate; get the teams ready, because it takes five days to get them quarantined””. We did that on day one so that if the decision to vaccinate had been taken we could have physically started the next day and not had to wait. Both times we put the teams in place, but because it looked as if the outbreak was from a single source we stood them down. The industry shared our view. All the decisions that we have taken on this have been in conjunction with stakeholders. That is not an excuse, and ““stakeholders”” is not a derogatory term; we have worked with representatives of the entire livestock industry, including auctioneers. We are listening to them and not taking decisions behind closed doors. We have not decimated agriculture and we have not weakened our science base. Anyone who wants to read the CV of Defra’s new chief scientist can do so. He worked with, not for, Al Gore. He chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change until Bush got rid of him, so that makes him a good guy. He is part of a Nobel prize-winning team. This is a quality person.