Queen’s Speech

My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging, knowledgeable and indeed compassionate debate and I would like to thank all noble Lords who have participated. We have covered the affairs of five government departments, including the DWP, my own, which between them account for more than half of all government expenditure each year and touch the lives and affect the life chances of every individual in our country—from the cradle to the grave, as it were. I am bound to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, that it does not sound like a thin programme that we are dealing with here. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if in the time available I do not respond to all the points raised, but I will cover as much as I can. I will start with issues around health. My noble friend Lord Darzi explained that the Bill that we will debate will ensure the highest possible standards of care and give more power to individuals to shape the care that they receive. It is about driving up the quality of health services through a duty to produce new, quality accounts. I believe that the thrust of that was welcomed by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and I thank him for his response. Incidentally, on the issue of recession and what that means for health, I understand that his colleague in the other place opined that recession was good for people's health. I am not sure that the noble Earl shares that view. However, I am delighted for his support on behalf of the Opposition and other noble Lords for the NHS constitution. I was interested to hear that the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on the constitution were somewhat at odds with that and disappointing given that its development involved a thorough consultation with staff and patients, unlike the Patient’s Charter. I do not think that words such as ““sad little document”” are appropriate in this case. The 60th anniversary of the NHS is an opportunity to put in place an enduring constitution that safeguards the future of the NHS. It reaffirms our right to NHS services free of charge and provides an opportunity to reaffirm the core values and refresh them for the 21st century so that they provide a basis for a modern, forward-looking NHS. A number of eminent people and organisations support the NHS constitution. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, talked about tobacco. Contrary to what the noble Earl suggested, evidence from a number of countries shows that removing tobacco displays could reduce the likelihood of young people taking up smoking and support those people who want to quit. The department is committed to reducing mixed-sex accommodation to an absolute minimum and single-sex accommodation should be the norm in elective care and remains the ideal for all admissions. It is not the case that local authorities are failing at LINks. Local authorities have been under a duty since 2008 to ensure that LINk activities can take place where it is taking longer than expected to establish the LINk itself. Strategic health authorities across the country will be working closely with their local NHS and local authority organisations, ensuring awareness of the new duty and supporting guidance. I am grateful for the input of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, into this debate and in particular for raising the important issues around the links between recession and health inequalities. Indeed, that feeds into the views of her colleague the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, about health and well-being and the causes of unemployment and how it all fits together. Narrowing health inequalities is a top priority of this Government. We have put in place the most comprehensive programme ever in his country to address them. For example, we are closing the absolute gap on cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Not only have mortality rates come down in our most disadvantaged areas, they have fallen faster than in the rest of England. We are not cutting NHS resources. Despite concerns about the need to become more resourceful, the recent 2009-10 and 2010-11 revenue allocations represent a £164 billion investment in the NHS. PCTS will receive an average increase in funding of 5.5 per cent in 2009-10 and 2010-11, a total increase in funding of £8.6 billion. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in a typically thoughtful speech, raised issues and concerns around the need to support staff, particularly those working in mental health with drug abusers and the young homeless, and the importance of carers and the role of health professionals. I shall write to him about the statutory issues he raised on health visitors. My noble friend Lord Warner acknowledged the scale of investment in the NHS in the past decade, and our clear vision towards quality improvement, stating that we must focus on stroke services and end-of-life care. I thank him for his support for the NHS IT programme, and the major changes it is delivering in providing enhanced accuracy and speedier X-rays through the development of picture archiving and communications. I also thank him for his support of choose and book, which provides patients with a choice of healthcare providers. Patients and clinicians are now beginning to see the benefits that these systems bring to improving patient care. My noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe made an interesting contribution and displayed great knowledge about issues of drug and alcohol addiction. He raised a number of detailed points that I will pass on to my noble friend Lord Darzi. The new drugs strategy, covering 2008 to 2018, Drugs: protecting families and communities, builds on the success of its predecessor with a renewed emphasis on elective treatment, supporting drug users in fully reintegrating into their communities through access to housing, education, training and employment. We have invested over £50 million in new capital moneys to expand capacity and support better commissioning of the main abstinence-based activities: residential rehabilitation and in-patient detoxification. The noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, raised issues within the dental profession. While we acknowledge that there are problems in NHS dentistry, it is in fact growing. The latest statistics show that there were 655 more dentists working in the NHS this year compared to last year. PCTs report no shortage of dentists coming forward when new contracts are offered, in contrast to the situation under the old contract. On the noble Lord’s point about whether the NHS Bill will impact on dentistry, the rights in the NHS constitution will apply for dentistry as for other services. My noble friend Lord Harrison spoke about the negative public perception of the NHS compared to their personal experience, but it was necessary to concentrate, as we have, on greatly increasing investment and quickly tackling serious problems such as unacceptably long waiting times given the state of the NHS in 1997. These quantitative measures were often mistaken for ends in themselves. We are now free to concentrate on the things that we value most: quality, dignity, control and choice. We hope that perceptions will therefore change. My noble friend spoke also about services for, and care of, children with diabetes. We recognise that these services are variable, and are addressing the problems. The national clinical director at the Department of Health is leading a group taking forward the recommendations of the working group that looked at these issues. On education, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, for inviting me to expand on the contents of the children, skills and learning Bill. As has been mentioned, the Bill will allow the Government to continue the next phase of reform and underpins the historic milestone that they have achieved by successfully gaining Royal Assent to the Educations and Skills Act, raising the participation age to 18 come 2015. As the noble Baroness set out, there will be, for the first time, a statutory basis for children’s centres that will, as she asks, allow us to place a duty on local authorities to ensure that there are sufficient children’s centres to meet need. The noble Baroness pointed out that changes are being made to the way in which early education providers are funded. I am sure that her knowledge of the detail is greater than mine. I shall ask colleagues to write to her on that matter. The legislation is a technical change to the way in which early years provision is funded in order to underpin the aims of the single funding formula. It will enable us to level up the playing field to some extent between maintained and PVI providers and to fund them using one regulatory framework. As she will know, since September 1997 there has been an expectation that secondary schools will work in behaviour and attendance improvement partnerships. Partnerships are based on the principle that by sharing resources and expertise, and by sharing out hard-to-place pupils across partnership schools in an equitable fashion, greater progress can be made towards reducing permanent exclusions, tackling low-level behaviour problems and reducing persistent absence. Early evidence from pilots is positive, with some local authorities reducing permanent exclusions to zero since 1997. The Government remain committed to informal adult education. We spend £210 million every year on this learning and have conducted a wide consultation on it because we recognise the enormous contribution that it makes to the quality of life, health and well-being of individuals, neighbourhoods and wider society. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made interesting comments about the importance of social workers and the need to ensure that we attract the brightest people into this field and promote their status. We have an ambitious programme of work in place. The Government have committed £73 million up to 2011 to address some of the underlying issues around status. Today we announced the establishment of the social work task force, which will consider this work and where further developments can be made. Within this work, we are strongly committed to a workforce that has the skills and abilities to deliver effective services. The social work task force will make recommendations on how to drive forward long-term reform of social work training and will, of course, work closely with stakeholders in so doing. The noble Baronesses, Lady Massey, Lady Walmsley, Lady Howe, the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds referred to what the children, skills and learning Bill will do to transfer responsibility for the education of young offenders to local authorities where the young person is in custody. I can inform them that we are going beyond this. The Bill will bring young people in custody under the remit of the wider education legislative regime, including the Education Act 1996. Our aim is to ensure that education in custody meets those young people’s needs and, so far as is practical, matches that available for young people in the mainstream education system. My noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe asked me to explain what we mean by ““suitably qualified”” in relation to apprenticeships. The qualifying criteria will be five GCSEs at A-star to G, or equivalent, plus functional skills in English and mathematics at level 1 or above. I stress that the Government are committed to making it as easy as possible to progress from apprenticeships at level 3 and level 4 into higher education. The Learning and Skills Council and UCAS have recently completed a pilot to arrive at a points allocation for qualifications within engineering and IT frameworks and to develop a methodology for attributing points to each element of the framework. I confirm that the right to time off to train will extend to requests for time off to participate in higher education. I applaud the undertakings of the noble Lords, Lord Dearing and Lord Baker, to establish university technology colleges. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that the measures in the Bill are not about a return to a pre-1992 world of local authority control of colleges. Colleges will remain autonomous institutions from which local authorities will commission 16 to 19 education and training. These reforms provide an opportunity for colleges to be part of a more integrated approach to children’s services led by local authorities. Commissioning is not about control, and local authorities will not be responsible for performance managing colleges. The Skills Funding Agency will have overall responsibility for performance management, which will be light touch and built around the framework for excellence. College and provider performance will be monitored on an ongoing basis through minimum levels of performance. The exception will be colleges that join the newly-designated sixth form college sector. These colleges will continue to be independent institutions but will be performance managed by their local authorities. Nor will this change lead to a diversion of resources away from colleges. The Bill will give local authorities a duty to secure sufficient education and training of a suitably high quality for 16 to 19 year-olds in their area. I welcome the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. He is right that we need to learn lessons from the past and make arrangements to deal with problems between the bodies. I am sure that the noble Lord could provide some valuable insights to those involved in setting up the new arrangements and in this engagement. I reassure him that we are not recreating past problems, which he helped to resolve. Ofqual’s role will be to regulate standards, not to have a view about the details of the curriculum that might be in conflict with the new agencies. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred to the teaching of diplomas. I say to him that the teaching of diplomas is still in the first term, but already we are receiving extremely positive feedback that learners and staff across all the schools and colleges involved are excited by the chance to engage in the new style of learning. As he will know, diplomas are strongly supported by industry bodies, including the British Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Institute of Directors. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, talked about the decline in sports activity in schools. The 2008 school sports survey showed that 90 per cent of pupils were participating in at least two hours of high-quality PE and school sport a week. In 2002, an estimated 25 per cent of pupils were doing two hours of high quality PE and sport a week, so significant progress has been made. My noble friend Lord Griffiths referred to coming in at the fag end, which I think was his expression. Given our discussion about tobacco earlier, that was perehaps appropriate. He and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, referred to concerns about pressures put on teaching staff by change and the challenges for governing bodies. The Government share the concern of people who work in schools that they should spend as much of their time as possible on key activities that support teaching and learning and should not be diverted into unproductive bureaucracy or tasks for which teachers are not well suited. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, asked about the Government’s commitment to academies. The Government are fully committed to academies, as are both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, Ed Balls, and we are committed to a programme of establishing at least 400 academies nationwide. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley commented significantly on the role of carers in our society. A forthcoming Green Paper on carers will explore the options for the long-term funding of the care and support system, which will support both carers and those in need of care and support. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, in a moving but harrowing speech, pressed me on questions about what we can do in legislation to address the terrible problems that he highlighted. That is beyond the remit that I have before me today, but I know that it is an issue that particularly concerns the Leader of the House in another place, and it is being addressed. There are issues around access to healthcare for those who have been human trafficked. Perhaps I may write to him on that. My noble friend Lord Puttnam posed an even greater challenge about what we can do to restore trust in society. Many and varied things can move us from where we are. In this debate, I hope that we will not lose sight of the fact that there are many people out there, including young people, who are connected with society and who engage in a range of highly productive activities. Those activities are focused on progressive campaigns, which engage them whether they are about climate change, health or diversity issues. However, I accept that there are still challenges to meet and agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that as politicians we perhaps have responsibilities to lead the charge on those. Moving on to DCMS, my noble friend Lord Macdonald raised the disparity between the TV produced in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compared to England. We recognise the importance of programming produced in and for the nations and regions of the UK, which is good for viewers, regional economies and cultural diversity. Much of our best TV comes from the nations and regions. In the Digital Britain project that the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Barnes, is taking forward a key work-stream is provision in and by the nations, regions and localities of the UK. We shall be assessing the impact of the policies on all parts of the UK. My noble friend also asked about ITV crowding out TV companies in the nations, which is fundamentally a matter for Ofcom; however, ITV is a major contributor to public service and has a commitment to regional programming, particularly news. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bonham-Carter and Lady Verma, asked about the heritage protection Bill. As noble Lords will be aware, all Bills have to compete for parliamentary time and we expect discussion on priorities. However, the Government remain committed to that legislation. The heritage protection Bill is in a good state of readiness for introduction and will be brought forward as soon as parliamentary time allows. The cultural property (armed conflict) Bill is also in a good state of readiness to be introduced, and the Government are again committed to that at the earliest opportunity. We are also working toward a government statement on the value of heritage, something for which we know that sector has called for some time. It will state the Government’s vision and priorities for the historic environment, and will properly capture its value across government in the widest sense. We will publish a draft document for consultation next year. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, spoke on the legacy of the Olympics and the nature of the opening ceremony. London clearly has a great opportunity to deliver its celebrations differently, but we are some four years away and detailed planning of those ceremonies has not yet begun. London’s celebrations will reflect our values and be uniquely British; we will, doubtless, take up his points. The noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, stressed the importance of the creative industries and the creative economy. I absolutely agree. They have an important role in employment, exports and economic growth. On the importance of culture in schools, I simply invite the noble Baroness to come to the Luton schools music service. They do some fabulous stuff there and bring together a range of diverse provision, given the nature of our town. I am sorry to have slipped that plug in. Briefly, on the DWP—and I am aware that the clock is against me—as my noble friend Lord Darzi outlined, we have modernised the welfare state and, notwithstanding the current economic challenge, delivered high and stable levels of employment, reduced the numbers claiming out-of-work benefits and put an end to the remorseless rise in the number claiming incapacity benefit. A key component of that was raised in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, about Carol Black’s report and its focus on health, work and well-being. I note again those connections between employment, well-being and health. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and my noble friend Lady Massey asked whether the child poverty Bill will include an interim target. No, the commitment is to eradicate child poverty by 2020. We will, of course, need milestones along the way and are considering the right mix between fixed points in primary legislation and flexibility in interim steps. The right reverend Prelate asked whether the Government will affirm our commitment to eradicate all poverty and social exclusion. We need to distinguish between aspiration and our practical priorities, which are the eradication of child poverty, sustained action against pensioner poverty and welfare reform to help those of working age into the labour market who are at the greatest disadvantage. These appear to us to be the most effective ways to combat poverty and exclusion. My noble friend Lady Massey asked about the indicators of child poverty. These are essential elements in the well-being of a child, and it is our intention to consult shortly on the exact content of the provision in the child poverty Bill. The essential commitment is to enshrine in statute our ambition to eradicate child poverty by 2020. My noble friend also raised again the issue of carers, in particular the role of grandparents. Perhaps we can discuss that outside. One of the good things that has happened in particular has been changes to the basic state pension, whereby it is easier for carers to be credited national insurance contributions by needing only 30 years of contributions to receive a full basic state pension, The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, asked about safeguards in the welfare reform Bill. We agree that during the Bill’s passage and under the specific regulations thereafter we must and will have a proper and full debate on sanctions and how they are to be applied. She asked about the housing benefit review. It is due to conclude and report to Ministers at the end of the calendar year. On the migration of IB to ESA, the intention is to transfer all existing IB claimants to ESA between 2010 and 2013. She asked also about resources for Jobcentre Plus to cope with current circumstances. We were allocated an extra £1.3 billion by the recent PBR, more staff have been taken on and there are other issues which time does not permit me to deal with effectively. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was absolutely right to raise issues around the ageing society. It is a key issue for us and impacts on a whole range of policies—pretty much everything that we have been discussing today, including health, welfare, benefits and certainly pensions. I promise to do my best to look after pensions for the noble Lord. The statistic is that in 2050 there will be two people in work for every pensioner. Currently, there are about four for every pensioner. The children, skills and learning Bill will have at its heart the importance of ensuring that all children and young people realise their potential. It will ensure that local authorities have the tools to make a reality of the legislation, raise the participation age to 18 and establish an apprenticeship place for every suitably qualified young person. The health Bill will rigorously focus on quality and put in place an enduring constitution to safeguard the future of the NHS. It will give powers to patients and the public by bringing their rights together in one place, and it will balance these rights with new responsibilities. Our welfare reform Bill, together with the White Paper published yesterday, will complete the transformation of the welfare state, turning it from being essentially passive to profoundly active. It will support more people into work, provide greater support and control for disabled people and strengthen parental responsibility. The child poverty Bill will enshrine our commitment to ending child poverty. Taken together, the Bills are a manifestation of our common purpose—a purpose based on rights, but responsibilities also—and ensure that no one is left behind, no one’s potential is disregarded and that all should have the opportunity of a fulfilling life. I commend this programme to the House. Motion agreed nemine dissentiente, and the Lord Chamberlain was ordered to present the Address to Her Majesty.