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25 July 2006 : Column 1648
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I understand the point made by the noble Earl, but he will have heard what my noble friend said about the actual usage of some of these cross-country services. It is intended under this franchise to ensure that the successful bidder provides a regular, hourly service over a series of routes through one of the great bottlenecks on the railway system, Birmingham New Street station. That is why we are prepared to countenance some breaks and changes in train services. Passengers would prefer a train that picks them up at the right time and arrives at their destination on time. While I recognise the point about changing trains, it is preferable for passengers to know that their trains are punctual even if that necessitates a change of trains.
Housing: Home Information Packs
11.40 am
Lord Addington: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare a small interest in that a member of my family has just completed this training.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will consider providing reimbursement for those who have undertaken training for the compilation of home information packs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Andrews): My Lords, the home condition report will remain part of the home information pack, but as an authorised document rather than a mandatory item. There are significant employment opportunities for those in training as home inspectors, and properly trained inspectors will be needed to produce energy performance certificates required for packs. This is in addition to the number of inspectors needed to meet the demand for voluntary full home condition reports.
Lord Addington: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, does she not accept that most people undertook this training on a gilt-edged assurance from the Government that there would be a mandatory demand for their services? They have undertaken long, extensive and expensive courses. Do not the Government have at least some duty of care to make sure that they get either some reimbursement or that the scheme is brought back in—if that is a wise idea?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, let me start by saying that we are aware of the difficulty caused by the announcement of a change in the implementation policy. My honourable friend the Minister of State is writing to express her regrets and apologies to the people who embarked on the course. However, we want to make it absolutely clear that we believe that there are major employment opportunities in this area. We are committed to making a success of the
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However, we also have an obligation to the consumer. When we went into the detail of the process of implementation, it became clear that there were disadvantages, partly because the industry was not ready and partly because we were not sure about the numbers coming forward for training and completing their training on time in the right parts of the country. Various factors had to be taken into account and we have done so.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, when I asked the noble Baroness a few weeks ago about the point of having home information packs when it was clear that the building societies were not going to accept the surveys for mortgage valuation purposes, she assured the House that talks were taking place, the deadline would be met and there would not be a problem. What on earth is the point, other than saving the Government’s face, of imposing this bureaucratic system on the public and on those selling their houses with all the costs associated with that when it clearly has no value whatever? When will the Government learn to take note of the warnings they had from the industry and from this House instead of proceeding in this arrogant manner, which has cost many people hundreds of thousands of pounds?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I do not think it is a weakness for the Government to have listened to voices telling us that we should consider the effects on an industry which considered itself not to be ready. We have listened to that. Perhaps if the previous Government had done a little more listening they would have been a little more successful; for example, in the rollout of the railways. There is, indeed, a very good case for the home information pack. If the noble Lord reads the debate he will see that both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat Opposition in the House of Commons have congratulated us on the decision we have taken. The Liberal Democrats said that they were very grateful. The home information pack includes everything, except the HCR, which people will need for more security and transparency in transactions which, under the present system, cause wastefulness and distress. It remains a valuable product and we support it equally. When the home condition report is tested with consumers it is extremely popular. We have made a commitment to ensure that the voluntary rollout is successful.
Lord Desai: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is better for the Government to have thought before implementing something like this and withdrawn it, rather than—as the party opposite did with the community charge—insist on it and ruin themselves and the country?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I completely agree. When, under our system of conveyancing, one
25 July 2006 : Column 1650
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I am sure the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness for being frank and forthright in what she has said. None the less, one needs to dwell on the fact that when the Bill was first introduced into the House the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was kind enough to accept that the research as to the practical effects of the pack was simply not adequate. Is there not a lesson here for legislation as a whole that it is far better not to have to withdraw a Bill on the point of implementation but better not to bring it forward unless it has been thoroughly researched?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I am very pleased that the noble Lord is in his place today to ask this question. I regret that he will not be in his place as we complete the successful voluntary rollout as his contribution to this House is formidable. He is absolutely right: we need evidence-based policies for all we do. He was one of the people who called upon us to carry out area-based trials, which is very difficult to do for all the reasons that we have exchanged over the Dispatch Box. However, we will now carry out area-based trials, with the support of the industry, as best we can. We have to test out the home condition report in place and its impact on consumers. It was difficult to do that in the dry run because of the volume of packs on which we have had to base our evidence, but we shall certainly do it.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as one who fought against this measure but undertook the training. I can assure the noble Baroness that there is not a surveyor I know who will undergo further training on this scheme because they cannot trust the Government after they have reneged on it and cost us thousands of pounds. Under the new circumstances, can we continue to sell houses as soon as we are instructed and not have to wait for the remainder of the home information pack to be produced?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I am sure that when the noble Earl receives the letter from the Minister of State expressing her regrets, he will understand more about why we have taken the decision. We have not reneged on the policy. As I have said, we are completely committed to both the home information packs and to the value of HCRs. As to the question he asks, in a Written Statement the Minister of State in the other place said:
“Working with the industry and with consumers, we are proposing to support a series of area-based trials and we will test proposals such as allowing sellers to start marketing their homes if they have already commissioned their HIP rather than having to wait up to 14 days”.—[Official Report, 18/7/06; col. WS 80-1.]
25 July 2006 : Column 1651
Life Peerages (Disclaimer) Bill [HL]
11.49 am
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to authorise the disclaimer of a life peerage; and to provide for the establishment of a mechanism to replace a disclaimed life peerage. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Phillips of Sudbury.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.
Criminal Defence Service (Representation Orders and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2006
Criminal Defence Service (Financial Eligibility) Regulations 2006
Criminal Defence Service (Representation Orders: Appeals etc.) Regulations 2006
Data Protection (Processing of Sensitive Personal Data) Order 2006
11.50 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs (Baroness Ashton of Upholland): My Lords, I beg to move the four Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the draft regulations and order laid before the House on 13 and 22 June be approved [30th and 31stReports from the Joint Committee and 39thReport from the Merits Committee] [Considered in Grand Committee on 18 July].—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)
On Question, Motions agreed to.
Education and Inspections Bill
11.51 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Lord Adonis): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Adonis.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD SPEAKER in the Chair.]
Clause 79 [Provision of food and drink on school premises etc]:
25 July 2006 : Column 1652
Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 214A:
Page 62, line 40, after “authority,” insert “or academy, city technology college or city college for the technology of the arts,”
The noble Baroness said: We have tabled a series of amendments relating to school food because we felt that Clause 79 needed some debate. AmendmentNo. 214A is a minor amendment and carries forward our wish to see academies, city technology colleges and city colleges of arts and technology included within the general provisions that relate to other maintained schools. We have spoken at length to such amendments, and I do not wish to speak to them again at any length.
Amendment No. 214B is the substantive amendment in this group. It would reinstate school milk for all primary schools and ensure that schools provide sufficient refrigerated storage capacity to keep it fresh for the period required. That is because last time this was tried, the objection was that these schools no longer had refrigeration facilities to keep the milk, although many of us who had school milk in the 1950s and 1960s will remember that there seemed to be fewer refrigeration facilities in those days.
Back in the 1970s, the right to school milk was withdrawn. I cut my political teeth marching down Whitehall with a pushchair that had two little girls in it and carrying a placard that said, “Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher”. We have come a long way since then. There is a scheme which subsidises milk for young children in schools, but it can be taken up only by those under five, at nursery school. It is not generally taken up by primary schools. The scheme is funded through the European Union; it provides a fairly substantial subsidy for providing roughly half a pint of milk for each child every day. It aims to provide either free or highly subsidised milk for all primary school children.
Section 512ZB of the Education Act 2002 contains a provision whereby children eligible for free school meals are also eligible for daily free milk. But it is not mandatory—indeed, the wording is fairly loose, stating:
“Where a local education authority exercise their power under subsection (1) of section 512 to provide a person within paragraph (a) or (c) of that subsection with milk, the authority shall provide the milk free of charge if...the person is within subsection (4), and...a request that the milk be provided free of charge has been made by him or on his behalf to the authority”.
The problem is that the LEA does not have to provide free milk; it has to be requested, and many parents do not know that they have the right to request it. If the school does not provide milk to any of the children, it does not have to provide it to any of those eligible for free school meals. So there is a many a slip ’twixt cup and lip, one might say, on this issue.
Those schools that provide milk often do so only as an option at lunchtime and do not provide enough milk for all children to benefit from it. On those occasions, they often provide only to those eligible for free school meals, and many of those do not take up the option. If children are not urged to drink it, they often do not drink it.
25 July 2006 : Column 1653
We are not arguing for full cream milk to be provided. Indeed, the guidelines that have now been issued about school food lay down that it should be either semi-skimmed or skimmed milk. If it is to be drunk as milk alone, semi-skimmed is probably more acceptable for children to drink.
The European Union scheme also provides a subsidy for cheese to be provided in schools, but Britain has never made use of that, although in 1997 the Labour manifesto made promises to bring back both the free school milk and the cheese. French children benefit from the cheese subsidy and eat a great deal of cheese that is provided and subsidised very extensively by the European Union.
There is a strong case for the school milk provision to be applicable also to secondary school children. Some 25 per cent of teenage girls have such a calcium deficiency already that they will not achieve peak bone mass without some sort of intervention. This increases the risk of bone deterioration in old age.
We should be aware, too, that it is estimated that some 50 children in every secondary school, which equates to 5 per cent of the secondary school population, have nothing to eat all day. They arrive at school, having had no breakfast at home, with no money and no free school meal entitlement. Save the Children did a report a couple of years back called Bread is Free, and many years ago the British Nutrition Foundation researched the issue. Some schools make free bread available for hungry children, and some make loans available to children so that they can buy school meals. But that does not help very much, in fact, because those children often come from homes where they are worried about telling their parents that they have taken the loan, because they feel that their parents simply cannot repay it, which really just makes things worse at home. Most schools simply turn a blind eye to the fact that children come to school without breakfast and go without any food all day long. They ignore the plight of these children—and then they wonder why the children behave badly.
The issue of children turning up at school without any sort of breakfast is a very big one. I know that the Government, in the extended schools programme that they are introducing, have extended the number of schools where breakfast is provided—particularly to children without free school meals. This is a big issue. Using the subsidy that we can get from the European Union to provide them with free school milk is something that it seems madness not to take up and use, yet we make it as difficult as we can for schools to do so. I urge the Government to make it much easier for schools. We would like to see the right for all primary school children to have school milk again.
Amendments Nos. 214C and 214D raise a different issue. Amendment No. 214C is purely probing. We suggested leaving out these lines because we were uncertain as to precisely what sorts of foods were being prohibited. I have to say that since beginning work on this amendment, I have been inundatedwith vast amounts of material about all kinds of regulations on school foods. What sorts of foods are to be banned from school is more explicit. Generally
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Noon
The final issue is the sort of food that can be brought on to school premises. Discussion in the Commons on the issue of school food raised the bogeyman of schools being unable to hold cake stalls or tombolas at school fairs because that would mean bringing forbidden foods on to school premises. Again, in the draft regulations that have been issued there is a generous list of exceptions, which excludes celebrations, fundraising fairs and a number of other such occasions—staff parties, for example—but we received a letter from a school governor who was clearly worried by the sorts of regulations being introduced. I shall read from it, because it illustrates the concerns about having to implement these regulations:
“Some of the supporting material gives the impression of having been put together without anyone having read through the final documents for consistency—thus baked potatoes with various fillings are cited as an example of an acceptable lunch main course for secondary schools, but not primary schools. As the main regulations will be entirely incomprehensible to governing bodies and parents without guidance, this sort of discrepancy is somewhat worrying...These regulations are going to take up a lot of time”,
as school meals are a regular issue for governing bodies. It continues:
“Making the regulations subject to parliamentary scrutiny would undoubtedly reduce the chance of mistakes, and would encourage careful thought about how regulations would be explained before they were made”.
I shall not suggest that we have detailed parliamentary scrutiny of school meal regulations—that would not be a good use of parliamentary time—but this suggests that the regulations that are being issued are something of a worry to governing bodies, and create some problems out there. I beg to move.
Lord Lucas: I think we are being a little old-fashioned in harping on about milk. Why should we spend our money on a substance that is composed largely of saturated fats and sugar, which many people find difficult to digest? The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, was much more on track when she was talking about breakfast. It is terribly important that kids come to school with something in their stomachs and that they are reasonably fed throughout the day. If we are going to spend money, let us spend it on making sure that there is bread around at breakfast time and something to enable these children to have enough energy and attention, rather than going back to what she and I both remember as the intolerable business of being forced to swallow half a pint of extremely sour milk in the mid-morning break.
25 July 2006 : Column 1655
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