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Welfare of Calves (Export)
3.34 pm
Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South) : I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the export of calves where, after such export, they are to be kept in conditions which would be unlawful in Great Britain--
notably, in veal crates. The Bill clears up an anomaly that has arisen since the Welfare of Calves Regulations came into force on 1 January last year. Of all the cruelties devised for the rearing of farm animals, the veal crates system is one of the most repugnant. Infant calves are removed from their mother at the age of one or two days--a process that involves extreme distress to both--and within about a week they are sent to market. There then follows a gruelling journey to ports such as Harwich or Dover, a sea journey to the European mainland, and a further road journey. Some calves come from as far away as Scotland or Wales and some will not survive the journey. Those who do not are lucky.
Once the calves arrive at their destination, a terrible fate awaits them. They are put into a veal crate, a solid wooden box just big enough for the young animal to stand or lie down but not to turn around. As the calf grows larger it will not even be allowed to lie down in the normal, stretched-out position. It will remain in the crate for the rest of its short, miserable life of about 26 weeks. Throughout that time, it either stands or lies on the slatted wooden floor. It is given no straw or other bedding material because, were it to eat the straw its flesh might turn into a healthy red whereas European consumers want their veal to be pale pink--to such an extent that it is referred to as "white veal".
To achieve that, the calf is denied not only the roughage and fibre that it craves but is fed throughout its life on an all-liquid diet of milk powder mixed with water. The iron content is kept deliberately low in a further attempt to keep the flesh pale. Many calves are reckoned to be anaemic by the time they are slaughtered. In a desperate attempt to eat fibre, the poor animal licks at its wooden crate and its own hair. The post-mortem examination of a veal calf's stomach often reveals balls of hair, which is evidence of the animal's futile attempts to feed itself with the fibre denied by its human owners.
Anyone who has ever seen calves playing in a field will know how beautifully they play together. These unfortunate animals glimpse other calves only at feeding time--once or twice a day when the front of their crates are opened to allow them to drink their miserable rations from a bucket. As they grow up in their crates, those deprived creatures are subject to infectious diseases of the respiratory and digestive systems. To control the infections they are often given repeated doses of antibiotics. As the calves grow larger, the calf shed often gets hotter and they frequently experience heat stress.
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As long ago as 1981, the Select Committee on Agriculture described that system of rearing calves as "abhorrent". But it was not until the introduction of the Welfare of Calves Regulations in 1987 that veal crates were finally banned in this country. Even that ban did not come into force until 1 January last year. Although veal crates are banned in Britain, British farmers currently export about 1,000 calves a day to be reared in Europe in the very system we have outlawed here. Moreover, much of the meat--some 40 per cent.--is re-imported to this country. Last year, we exported 345,700 calves, mostly to the Netherlands and France, where the veal crate is in widespread use.Under the Bill, that trade will be illegal. Some people will say that we have no choice because the treaty of Rome obliges us to submit those animals to lifelong degradation. I disagree ; article 36 of the treaty enables a member state to impose restrictions on exports or imports where those can be justified on grounds of public morality or public policy, or on grounds of the protection of health and life of animals or humans.
If ever there was a case for taking a stand on grounds of morality, this is it. I look forward to the day when British Ministers go to Brussels, as they are about to do in the case of sow stalls, and take the initiative in persuading the EC to outlaw veal crates throughout the EC. I am confident that a Labour Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food would do that.
Unlike you, Mr. Speaker, I am not a vegetarian, but the more that I find out about the way in which our farm animals are treated, the less meat I can bring myself to eat. I know that many people of all political persuasions take the same view. There is a growing revulsion in Britain against the way in which farmers and meat manufacturers rear meat. Farmers and meat manufacturers ignore that revulsion at their peril.
The Bill is only one of a number of recent measures designed to restore some morality to the meat industry. It has the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House and I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Chris Mullin, Dame Janet Fookes, Mr. Bob Clay, Sir Richard Body, Mr. Tony Banks, Mr. Bowen Wells, Mr. Robin Corbett, Mr. Matthew Taylor, Mr. Austin Mitchell, Mr. Andrew Bowden, Mr. Ron Davies and Mr. Jeremy Corbyn.
Welfare of Calves (Export)
Mr. Chris Mullin accordingly presented a Bill to prohibit the export of calves where, after such export, they are to be kept in conditions which would be unlawful in Great Britain : And the same was read the First time ; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 5 July and to be printed. [Bill 181.]
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Points of Order
3.41 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not customary for a representative of the Department for which ten- minute Bills are being proposed to be present throughout its hearing? I can recall this question being raised before when a previous Speaker recommended that a Minister representing the Department concerned should be here--of course, the Government cannot be forced--as a matter of courtesy, interest and potential support. I regret to note that a Minister from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has not been present for an important Bill which is supported by me and many of my hon. Friends and Conservative Members.
Mr. James Paice (Cambridgeshire, South-East) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is unfortunate that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and his junior Minister have been prevented from attending by other important duties. However, I am Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and I shall ensure that he receives a full report on the Bill.
Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : On a completely different point of order, Mr. Speaker. It would be useful to have it on record that the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) when question 17 was called earlier and about which Conservative Members made a number of comments, was due to the fact that his wife, Claudia, gave birth to a baby today and he is looking after her.
Mr. Speaker : It was chivalrous of the hon. Gentleman to draw that matter to the attention of the House. I am sure that the House wishes the parents and the baby well.
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Orders of the Day
Local Government Finance and Valuation Bill
[Second Day]
Considered in Committee. [Progress, 11 June]
[Miss Betty Boothroyd
in the Chair ]
Clause 3
Valuation of domestic properties
3.43 pm
Mr. David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside) : I beg to move amendment No. 23, in page 2, line 34, leave out a' and insert an individual'.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : With this it will be convenient to discuss also the following amendments : No. 27, in page 2, line 48, leave out of all the domestic properties' and insert
comprising the values of each domestic property'.
No. 28, in page 2, line 49, leave out from area' to end. New clause 12-- Valuation--
There shall be maintained for each levying authority area in Scotland a valuation list showing the value of each property. This list shall be prepared and from time to time updated in accordance with arrangements to be prescribed.'.
Mr. Blunkett : In moving the amendment it is appropriate for me to ask a number of questions. First, who, in June 1979, referring to the scrapping of the then valuation system, said, "Tear them up"? Who was it who started the shambles which has culminated in the proposed introduction of the council tax? Who, by delaying that valuation, ensured that the rating system became difficult to operate? Who cut the grants to local authorities in the early 1980s who ensured that that happened?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Nicholas Bennett) : The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore).
Mr. Blunkett : No, it was not my right hon. Friend who made that remark ; it was the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), now the Secretary of State for the Environment. He said "Tear them up" and the tearing-up process resulted in the infliction of the poll tax on the British people because it helped to discredit the rating system and, with the cuts in grant, made it very difficult for councils to operate in the environment in which the Secretary of State for the Environment had placed local authorities. The Bill is therefore the direct result of the first set of actions taken by the present Secretary of State.
It must also be said that Conservative Members, and especially Conservative Back Benchers, are in great danger of being conned. Today decisions will be taken by the House on the nature of the valuation system and on the commitment to a banding process. As the media may not be aware of it any more than are many Back Benchers, it behoves us to state that, once this allegedly small Bill is on the statute book, many of the decisions about what the council tax will entail will have been decided.
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What stands between the Back Benchers and a second round of public wrath and acrimony similar to that caused by the poll tax is a statutory instrument or negative order which is unamendable, unchangeable and eminently whippable. In other words, after tonight Conservative Members will have been conned. They will not be able to say that they did not know because this afternoon we are giving them the opportunity to change their minds. They might feel that it is a good idea to start the valuation system now, from the passage of the Bill, because that will give them a breathing space in which to tell people that the system is under way. However, they will not realise that they will get the banding system whether or not they like it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) will outline later. They will be denied a return to the rates and an immediate abolition of the poll tax, which again my hon. Friend will shortly spell out.Conservative Members will be faced with the delay that the Audit Commission rightly mentioned in its submission today for the consultation exercise that finishes this Friday. It said that the cost--a minimum of £800 million a year--will have to be borne by the British people. We estimate that it will be considerably more than that. That money could be spent on saving essential services. It would clearly prevent any arguments in favour of capping ; it would ensure that teachers had the books and equipment to do their job ; it would mean that social services throughout the country would have the cash to ensure that home helps could be provided ; and it would also ensure the maintenance of leisure facilities, libraries, the environment in general and decent transport, all of which are currently under threat. Such provisions could be continued with that money which, instead, will be used to continue the poll tax. It is even worse that today's debate is taking place just two days before the consultation period is due to finish. In other words, it is a farce that bodies such as the Audit Commission, the Institute of Revenues, Rating and Valuation, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, local authority associations and many others are submitting their evidence as part of the so-called consultation, which is to be completed by Friday, only to find that the horse has bolted before the stable door has even been opened. That adds insult to injury for all those who took seriously the Secretary of State's words earlier this year when he said that he believed in consultation.
As my hon. Friends will remember, the Secretary of State chided us and said, "Come and see us. Consultation is a serious matter." He had the Liberals come to see him and told them that he would take them seriously. They presented their evidence for an alternative that would have abolished valuation, but what did the Secretary of State do? He added up their figures, and then used them against them. It did not do the Conservatives much good in local elections. The valuation process starts today, and it must involve an assessment of what sample properties mean. It is no good the Secretary of State saying, "We have a valuation system called banding." We need a system for assessing the actual value of the property. That value will then determine the bands into which similar properties will be placed. We need to know on what basis that will be done. Will it be capital value rating?
The Institute of Revenues, Rating and Valuation has rightly raised clear questions about what the system will entail. It submitted evidence under the consultation
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process, and the Secretary of State should be made aware of it because time is running out. Proceedings on this Bill will be finished late tonight, so further consultation will be irrelevant. In its evidence, the institute said :"There is no precedent, as far as the Institute is aware, for the grouping of properties into different tax bands for the purpose of a property tax. It is generally assumed, particularly in a capital value based system, that an exact valuation can be arrived at and defended in relation to other neighbouring values through an appeals system."
That is important to the way in which people will perceive what they are charged, and also to their rights as individuals to challenge the valuation, and therefore the placing of their properties in particular bands. It will materially affect what they will pay, and on the margin that could be quite substantial. It could be 20 per cent. under the proposed banding system.
The institute continued :
"It is hard to imagine that properties can be placed in bands without the valuer going through at least the mental exercise of determining an exact or spot ' valuation."
The system cannot operate unless there is an exercise such as that referred to by the institute. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham will later spell out the mental exercise carried out earlier this year when the Government invented the banding system. To move forward today, there must be some guess about the valuation system. What will it be?
Mr. Dick Douglas (Dunfermline, West) : The House should be clear that the hon. Gentleman is referring to an entirely English practice. There is a new clause grouped with the amendment that refers to Scotland, although I do not propose to speak to it. I must make it clear that the Scottish Assessors Association has distinctly different views from those being expressed by the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Blunkett : We are discussing a clause that relates only to England and Wales, and I had presumed that the House would understand that. Our amendment relates to the valuation system in England. Other amendments will be discussed later that refer specifically to Scotland. We are talking about the way in which we want individual valuations to be undertaken.
The problem is that nobody really knows what the system will be or what the professionals will be expected to do. The general secretary of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Mr. Michael Pattison, is quoted in today's Evening Standard as describing the system as likely to be a shambles. He said :
"banding allocations will become unrealistic and unfair. This is the fast route to a discredited tax."
It will be the fast route to the demise of Tory Members. Unless they take seriously what is being said, they will run into exactly the same problems that they experienced with the poll tax. A quick solution with easy answers ended up as one of the most complicated and difficult fiascos in the history of British politics. The Confederation of British Industry's rating and property manager, Mr. Sharman, who chairs its valuation committee, said :
"From a professional point of view I don't like the banding system, it seems to go against the principles of valuation."
It cannot do anything else, unless this afternoon we hear spelt out what that sampling or mental exercise system will be based on. From today, valuers will be asked to go out and do the job--to sample properties and select beacon properties which show how properties will fit into whatever number of bands we eventually end up with.
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We have been asking whether there will be regular revaluations and Ministers have been responding. We understand not. On 24 May, in an interview with the Municipal Journal , the Minister of State said : "Once a property has gone into a band, we think it will stay in that band virtually in perpetuity."As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) pointed out at the end of the Second Reading debate, one cannot get more determined than "in perpetuity". That means that a property will stay where it is "virtually" for ever. Without constant revaluation and with the Secretary of State's words of June 1979, "Tear them up", ringing in everybody's ears, we shall run into exactly the same problems as we have had in recent years.
People must be told of their rights of appeal. They must be given those rights. Again, I should be grateful for the Minister's clarification. I understand from the conclusion of the Second Reading debate that rights of appeal will exist. Will he confirm that they will exist not simply in Scotland, which was being referred to at the time, but in England and Wales? If rights of appeal do not exist, the British people had better know from today.
People can make a judgment when the surveyor, estate agent or estate agent's agent, son or daughter has been sent round to do a spot check on their street. We have no guarantees of the professionalism of those doing that job. People will demand the right to know, first, what it is that their property is being valued on, and, secondly, whether they have a right to challenge the valuation. Unless there are individual valuations, the right of appeal will inevitably lead to mayhem. People will demand to know on what basis their property is assessed and how they can judge whether it is fair. The difficulty of dealing with appeals will become a nightmare. There are 23,000 outstanding valuations under the national business rate in west Yorkshire alone. As 1,000 valuations are made a year, they will be just about completed by the year 2015. It is an absolute farce. At least with individual valuations, one stands a chance of making a judgment, but without them, what is being argued about? It must be whether one has the same sort of house in the same street or same neighbourhood and what factors affect its value.
One must be absolutely clear that the valuation must be on sale price, and sale price relates to capital values. That is what was described, when the Scottish Labour party first mooted it, as the roof tax. That is what Tory Members called it. The then chairman of the Conservative party and present Home Secretary described it in glowing terms as
"the hammer of capital value rates".
He said that it would
"hit tenants as well as home owners. Instead of people benefiting from an increase in the value of their properties, they would be heavily penalised."
My source for this information is the well known and reliable newspaper, the Daily Mail, in its edition of 19 September 1989-- [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Patnick) says that he will buy the paper--
Mr. Irvine Patnick (Sheffield, Hallam) : I merely said that I was back.
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4 pmMr. Blunkett : The hon. Gentleman always lets me know when he is back. I should like him to buy the newspaper : when it gets off its propaganda, its articles are quite informative and extremely well written. I do not fall into the trap into which the Secretary of State for Education and Science falls. He attacks any newspaper that does not agree with his point of view.
Be that as it may, Ministers appear to have changed their minds and to have decided that capital values--or sale price--are acceptable for the sampling process. After all, the Minister of State, a well-known opponent of property valuation and of a property tax, said as much himself :
"property values are no proxy for wealth or income and any system based on property will repeat the injustice of the domestic rates."-- [Official Report, 22 May 1990 ; Vol. 173, c. 186.]
So it is on record that the Conservatives do not believe in property valuation or in capital values--sale price--but they intend to have a system which will in the end result in properties being placed in bands.
Consultation exercise No. 2.21 says that
"straightforward rental and capital values both have substantial disadvantages as a basis for local taxation".
By way of an excuse for that, consultation exercise No. 2.22 states :
"The Government believe that these problems can be overcome by a new approach : by adopting a banded system".
A system of banding merely places properties relative to each other once a valuation has taken place, but the valuation has to take place first before the allocation to a band can happen. That is why we tabled this important amendment, and, in the months to come, many Conservative Members will greatly regret not voting for it. On the day when the Secretary of State made his announcement in the House, 23 April, I described this as the chip shop factor. Unfortunately, he misunderstood what I meant. He thought that I was having a go at chip shop owners, and he predicted that they would come down in force to put their point of view as part of the consultation process which ends this Friday. I did not mean what he thought. I meant that a person who lives next door to a chip shop and next door to a disco on the other side-- [Interruption.]
It has been suggested that some hon. Members do not understand what happens in Sheffield. Those who live in large houses worth £800,000 in Westminster and who will pay only £227 under the proposed council tax, and those who live in mansions in Oxfordshire, do not live next door to chip shops--and I am pleased for them. I do not want people to have to live next door to chip shops. It is bad for their cholesterol levels apart from anything else. It is also bad for the price of their house--and not because chip shops are bad or because their owners are malevolent. It is just that they bring down the price of a property, so people in similar property, with a garden of the same size, just down the road expect to pay more than the property next door to the chip shop.
That was the rough and ready justice of the old rating system. The person whose house overlooks the local park at the end of the street, and has a wonderful environment in which to enjoy his garden and the quiet pleasure of his home, is in a completely different position from the person who lives next door to a small workshop where someone drills cars all day. Not to understand that is to
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misunderstand the wrath of thousands of people who will be put into the wrong band because the sampling process has placed their houses together with properties of the same type, but with higher sale value.The system will be damned unfair and everyone knows it. As we shall spell out later, it will be unfair between families and individuals, and between different parts of the country and different parts of the same street. It will be no good expecting to keep it quiet, because people will talk to each other. They will all understand which band their property is in, and the circumstances in which they live. What method will be used? If the sale price is used, it will be capital values. If not, we need to know what the basis will be. Ministers may spill the beans this afternoon. They may like to withdraw the Bill, even at this late stage, think again and talk to their Back Benchers about how to proceed. It may help Ministers if they do not have to stand on their heads and wave their legs in the air for the second time in 12 months. The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities--who is a very able politician--may even be able to hold down his job with some integrity if he does not have to contradict himself so regularly. Who knows, between now and the general election, there may be a change of Prime Minister and a different system may again be introduced. If so, the Minister will probably come back and say the opposite. I hope that he will tell us how he feels about that prospect.
One thing is absolutely clear : the professionals do not think that the council tax is a good idea. The Audit Commission has considerable doubts about it. The public know that the delay that they are incurring is at their expense, and that the mess that we are in is of the Government's making. Perhaps the best way of getting the message across to the public is to ask them a little conundrum : when is a value not a value? When it is the value of someone else's property just down the road. That is what we are faced with. However, it will not happen.
Valuations will be carried out during the summer. Expenditure will be incurred. If the general election is delayed until next spring, £250 million of our money will be spent on this system. Night after night throughout the winter, we will discuss the council tax in the unhealthy environment of the Committee Rooms ; no one will be listening and no one will be watching. It will all catch up on the Government in the end, just as the poll tax did. In Committee, people laughed and sneered until 2 am. Some hon. Members joked when the Church of England Synod announced that it was against the poll tax. The poll tax and its aftermath will deal the Government a severe and irrevocable political blow.
The council tax, like the poll tax, is ill thought out and is being introduced far too rapidly. We will replace it by amending whatever is on the statute book to make it fairer, more understandable and more acceptable to the British people.
Sir Rhodes Boyson (Brent, North) : I must come to the defence of chip shop owners. As a Lancastrian--I lived there for 35 years before I came to London--I mention every night in my prayers an aunt who had a chip shop. She remembered me in her will and I remember her in my prayers. I do not know what occupation she has in the afterlife, but no doubt it will be done as efficiently as her Lancashire chip shop. I would not necessarily wish to live next to a Lancashire chip shop, or certainly not in London because the gap
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between us must be very wide. However, there is no doubt that the chip shop is part of the culture of Lancashire. There is no doubt that in the first and second world wars the Lancashire Fusiliers were part of the strength of our country, with a basis of those potato chips, which were mostly grown in Lancashire, and of the ordinary working-class life there.However, I do not speak in defence of Lancashire now but on behalf of London, which I represent. The banding system is better than individual rating. If one returns to a system in which everyone's house is looked at every year there will be more valuers and bureaucrats than people living in this country--certainly more than the number of chip shops. There will be valuers everywhere. When one puts in central heating the charge will go up, and we do not want to return to that system.
I welcome the Government's original idea of three bands, a band for Scotland--it is not my job to look after Scotland--and a brass band for England. Despite having a wife from Wales I am not very well up on that--
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart) : A pipe band for Scotland
Sir Rhodes Boyson : Yes, we agree. I am glad that I am taking the Committee with me ; a pipe band for Scotland, a brass band, from "Bess's in the Barn" or elsewhere, for England and for Wales--
Mr. Nicholas Bennett : A male voice choir.
Sir Rhodes Boyson : I am assisted by the Minister, and I am grateful for his shrewd intervention. I agree--a male voice choir for Wales.
However, I must disagree to a certain extent as we need a fourth band. After all, there are four points to the compass and I think that things must be in fours if they are to work properly. One can factorise fours, although one cannot factorise threes. Therefore, if there is going to be a banding system, we need a separate band for London and the south-east, because property prices here are so different from those in the rest of the country.
Presumably the three bands were set up because of the differences between prices in Scotland and Wales, so that the same would be charged for a three -bedroomed semi whether in Scotland with the pipe band, in Wales with the male voice choir or in Lancashire with the brass band. We have to do something like "The Lambeth Walk" for London. We have to do something for London, because prices are so much higher here than elsewhere.
That is important because the amount of Government money coming in will obviously be related to the amount raised locally. My people in Brent, North and people in numerous other seats in London will look at this system and say, "Hang on, we weren't happy about the previous system and we wanted to be fair to the Ribble Valley, but the last thing we want is a reverse Ribble Valley factor whereby we lose out in the south of England."
It is evident from studying the figures that 47 per cent. of houses in Barnet are in the top band of the seven. In my constituency, an overwhelming number are similarly in the top bands. However, only 1 per cent. are in the top band in the north-west of England, so they are not comparable. Presumably, the idea behind the bands was that people in a three-bedroomed semi would pay the same in Wales, Scotland and England and also in London, which is in England.
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Mr. William O'Brien (Normanton) : If the right hon. Gentleman reads amendment No. 29, which stands in the name of my hon. Friends and myself, he will realise that we are referring to regional banding, which is the very case that he is making now. When he refers to banding, would he not merely consider an appropriate band for the south- east? We should consider the position throughout the country on a regional basis.Sir Rhodes Boyson : I take the hon. Gentleman's point. I am concerned to get a fair deal for my constituents, and I am sure that that wish is shared by all hon. Members.
The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. Michael Portillo) : Will my right hon. Friend give way
Sir Rhodes Boyson : The Minister is seeking to intervene ; he will solve all our problems.
Mr. Portillo : I am afraid that my right hon. Friend might be in danger of being too fair to the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien). He will be perfectly aware that the Labour party's policy is not to have regional bands, but to go back to the rating system. Under the rating system, the unfairness of those in more expensive properties paying much more--almost unlimited amounts more--than those living in less valuable properties would be manifest. There would be no improvement on the system that we abolished two years ago. I am sure that my right hon. Friend would not wish the hon. Member for Normanton to get away with his comments.
Sir Rhodes Boyson : I welcome my hon. Friend's intervention. I have no doubt that his oratory will be such in his reply that the Labour party's proposal for a rating system will die some time between his speech and the Division.
4.15 pm
Mr. O'Brien : I appreciate the opportunity to repeat my point. I did not say that amendment No. 29 represents Labour party policy, but that it amends the Bill. It states that there are inequalities among the regions. I want to ensure that the record is correct because I am positive that the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) will support the amendment when we come to it.
The Second Deputy Chairman : Order. The hon. Member is quite correct. We have not come to that amendment yet, so let us leave it for the moment.
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