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Electronic Communications
- That the draft Electronic Communications (Networks and Services) (Penalties) (Rules for Calculation of Turnover) Order 2003, which was laid before this House on 8th September, be approved.—[Mr. Heppell.]
PETITION
Palliative Care
7.26 pm
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire): In March 2002, the availability of terminal, respite and day care facilities for the communities of North-West Leicestershire, South Derbyshire and adjacent areas was seriously reduced when Sue Ryder Care summarily closed its much valued and greatly loved hospice at Staunton Harold Hall. Although the local NHS trust has since supplied alternative services and obtained some extra places in nearby hospitals, the view of many people who have worked unstintingly for years giving time to and raising finance for Staunton Harold is that a successor facility is needed to help to provide improved palliative care in the area.
Banded together as Hospice Hope, Dorothy Lacey, June Matthews, Carol Smith, Jan and Stewart Shepherd, Lee Cooper and others have prepared a petition containing 2,260 signatures to the House of Commons and I am privileged to present it.
- Hospice Hope and the supporting signatories believe that North West Leicestershire and adjacent areas need the restoration of its own hospice and associated day care centre for those requiring palliative care.
The petitioners therefore urge the House of Commons to pass the necessary legislation to provide the resources needed to afford the people of North West Leicestershire and surrounding areas an adequate level of access to palliative care in a hospice or day care environment.
And the petitioners remain etc.
Sports Lottery Bids
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Heppell.]
7.28 pm
Stephen Hesford (Wirral, West): I am obliged to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House authorities for granting me the opportunity for a debate on what is a serious and urgent matter for my constituents.
The reason for the debate is an allegation of bias in the distribution of lottery funds from Sport England, which I shall consider by examining two bids made in my constituency, although my remarks are not limited to those bids. I shall make a more general proposition about north-south bias in the distribution of lottery funds.
The House will know that this year Sport England experienced a funding crisis and had to review lottery funding. I am not concerned about the extraneous events but about Sport England's response to the crisis.
The two bids from my constituents were for sports facilities at Pensby high school for boys and for West Kirby sailing club. The House will know how much effort is put into preparing such bids and what a disappointment it is for them to be turned down by Sport England.
Without a shadow of doubt, Pensby boys school's bid for £900,000 to refurbish and build sports facilities on its playing fields would have benefited the local community—some 30,000 possible users of those facilities in an area that does not have the required facilities for activities such as five-a-side football, netball, tennis and so on. West Kirby sailing club's bid for about £80,000 to extend its clubhouse and training facilities would have enabled it to expand its training facilities for disadvantaged youths from inner-city Birkenhead. Those bids are currently the subject of an appeal, and I shall return to that in a moment.
I want to address three issues: how the specific applications were dealt with; what I consider to be the bias in the distribution of money by Sport England, which is perhaps part of a north-south divide; and the sham nature—I hope that that does not overstate the position—of the appeal system to which those two bids are subject.
The trail started on 14 July this year, when Sport England wrote to the possible recipients of the money. Almost identical letters were sent to Pensby boys school and West Kirby sailing club, and one of the features of the letter detailing the rejection by Sport England is that it contained no real information. I ask the House to bear in mind that considerable criticism because it is a feature that will crop up continually in my speech. Those involved also indicate rather curiously that the bids were refused partly because they were based on criteria that had already been set out in a letter in April. I question that because the criteria set out in the April letter were not relevant to what has been subsequently described as the new business case.
On 17 July, West Kirby sailing club wrote to Roger Draper, chief executive of Sport England, to query the refusal and said:
- "We have been given no reason for the rejection of our application, other than the comment in the Press Release, which says that the projects which have not been approved did not meet Sport England's new business objectives."
On 26 February, Gordon Tebay, who was Sport England's senior development manager for facilities in the north-west, sent an internal memo that suggested that the tender figure represented tremendous value for money and used the words:
- "representing a good value for money course of action to take."
- agreed to address the points formally by way of tying up these loose ends in a written response as far as"
- "issues at Stage 2 are concerned."
- Overall, I feel that the Club has worked prudently and the facility"
- "The Club is extremely keen to proceed to get the scheme converted to award"—
- at the March case conference".
- "I do hope the Club can achieve conversion to Award asap and trust you can oblige them in this respect."
In terms of the Pensby boys school bid, its appeal note indicates that it feels that it was disadvantaged by the time lag caused by Sport England taking 10 months for the formal approval to stage 1, as opposed to the three months advertised. That put back the decision process to such an extent that the bid hit the funding crisis, which it would not have done had it been dealt with in a timely way. My first point is that the reason for rejection is unclear. The various reasons given in correspondence appear to be fluid, but the response to attempts to get information about the two bids was secretive.
On the question of appeal, I wrote to Sport England because concerns were being expressed by those two bids as to what the appeal meant. On inquiring, Paul Churchill of West Kirby sailing club learned from others who were in the process of appealing that some people had been told that there was not an appeal—there was a suggestion of people being fobbed off. I wrote to Sport England to clarify what the appeal meant, and I received a letter on 18 September. I do not know whether Sport England intended any irony when it composed the
letter—probably not—but it sets out the so-called appeals process as follows. It set up what it calls an independent adjudicator—the appellate body—which turns out to be an ex-employee of Sport England. What the appellate body can do is very little, because the Sport England letter states:
- "The adjudicator cannot decide that a rejection of an application for funding should be overturned."
It is even worse than that. The appeal goes back to what is called a case team, which has had no involvement in the original assessment, which reassesses the application. But that independent reassessment cannot overturn the original decision, because when it has looked at it, it goes back to the original decision makers, who then take the decision. One has to ask whether it is likely that the people who turned something down in the first place are going to overturn their decision. I called the appeals system a sham, and in reality it is. I have no confidence that it will work, although I hope that the decisions in relation to my constituents will be overturned.
Further to that, to underline—if it were needed—the way in which the appeal system has been less than helpful to Pensby boys school and West Kirby sailing club, Mr. Sillitoe, the independent adjudicator, sent identical letters to both appellants, despite the fact that on the face of it their cases were radically different. He told them that he would be away until November and that they should not expect to hear from him until then, although I am not sure whether that was supposed to help them. In fact, we know that he will not be part of the decision-making process, so a lot of help that was.
I was worried by some of the things that I have mentioned, so I wrote to Sport England on 7 October setting out those and other issues. It may or may not surprise hon. Members to know that I am yet to receive a response; I do not know if or when I shall receive one, or what its form might be. My letter made it plain that I did not think that the appeal process was fair or reasonable or that the original decisions were balanced. I said that the decisions were inconsistent, and that inconsistency was inherent in the process, which leads me on to my third point.
When I wrote to Sport England about its appeals system, I asked it to send me details of all the bids that had gone through the same procedure as those from Pensby boys school and West Kirby sailing club. I also asked for a list of successful and a list of failed bids. I drew the following conclusions after calculating the value of bids and examining where awards were made. Nationally, one in four bids in the tranche were rejected but one in three bids from the north, which is made up of the north-western, north-eastern and Yorkshire regions, were rejected. Only one in five bids from the southern region, which is made up of London and the south-eastern and south-western regions, were rejected. Only one of all London's bids was rejected. Nearly half all rejected bids came from the north and nearly a third came from the north-west, which is where my constituency is. Nearly twice as many bids were rejected
from the north as from the south. More than half the total money allocated for successful bids went to the south and nearly half all successful bids were from the south. On average, a successful bid from the south received £200,000 more than a successful bid from the north. Fewer than a third of all successful bids came from the north and they received only a third of the total money for successful bids.
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