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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): On the principle of transparency, paragraph 24(6) defines net market value as market value less the loan outstanding. Does, or can, the loan outstanding include accrued interest on the loan?
Ruth Kelly: I believe that the loan outstanding is treated as it generally is in tax legislation. If the hon. Gentleman wants an exact definition, I shall of course write to him with it.
For the reasons of fairness and transparency that I set out, I urge hon. Members to support the schedule.
Question put and agreed to.
Schedule 39 agreed to.
Clause 289 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill (Clauses 4, 5, 20, 28, 57 to 77, 86, 111 and 282 to 289 and Schedules 1, 3, 11, 12, 21 and 37 to 39) reported, with amendments; to lie upon the Table.
SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT (CONSTITUENCIES) BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 2)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Orders [28 June 2001 and 6 November 2003],
That the Order of 9th February 2004 (Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Bill (Programme)) be varied by substituting for paragraph 5 the following:
"Programming Committee
5. Sessional Order B (programming committees) made on 28th June 2001 shall not apply to proceedings on the Bill."—[Joan Ryan.]
Question agreed to.
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
That the draft Non-Domestic Rating (Chargeable Amounts) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 22nd March, be approved.—[Joan Ryan.]
Question agreed to.
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Manor House (Torquay)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Joan Ryan.]
6.17 pm
Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD): I rise for this Adjournment debate in the knowledge that a lot of extra time is available to me, but I will not tax the patience of the House by utilising it all.
I am not here to whinge about the Government, who have a good record on improving provision for people who are visually impaired because they are blind or partially sighted. No doubt the Minister will want to mention some of the policies that they have introduced, especially on vocational training and welfare to work.
I want to talk about a particular group of people who are receiving support that is partly, but not wholly, funded through the Minister's Department. I also want to talk about Manor House, a facility in my constituency.
I begin by quoting the 2001–02 annual review published by the Royal National Institute of the Blind. It says:
"Every day over 100 more people . . . will start to lose their sight. Imagine if it was you. How would you read books or see the latest blockbuster film? How would you get around, or go on holiday? How would you do your job? Would someone be there for you to talk to? Imagine then if you did not receive the services needed to continue with everyday life.
For around 2 million people with sight problems in the UK, living with sight loss is a daily reality. In many cases, people are not getting the support and services they need. There is no immediate, comprehensive help and support should you lose your sight."
Those were the words of the RNIB's chairman, Mr. Colin Low. I should like to follow them up with a further quote from the report, because it is pertinent. It tells of the experience of a Mr. David Brown, who says:
"I'm not going to give up something I love doing just because I can't see any longer. With the help of Manor House, I mastered cooking my favourite meal, Thai curry."
Manor House is an RNIB facility that has offered services such as rehabilitation and mobility training for 60 years. The RNIB's 2001–02 report states that, in 2002,
"we opened a new accommodation block, so more people can attend the centre."
So this is a well established centre that, even in 2002, was having money invested in it by the RNIB for a good residential block to meet the needs of its client group. It is therefore very odd to hear that this centre of excellence is under threat. Finding out precisely what the RNIB's proposals are has proved extremely difficult. Throughout this period of uncertainty, staff at the centre have effectively been told not to speak out or to seek support, and have been reassured all along that they would be fully consulted and involved in any changes to the situation.
Manor House is a specialist employment and social rehabilitation centre for adults who have lost their sight or whose sight has deteriorated. The aim of the centre is to give people the skills and confidence that they need to cope independently at home, at work and outdoors.
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Courses are tailored to individual needs and can include assessment, work preparation, independent living skills, vocational training, job-seeking skills, low-vision training, and so on. Accommodation is available on site with 24-hour staffing.
In response to the rumours of closure and of the transfer of clients into mainstream provision, the staff at Manor House have pointed out:
"Residential provision is unique in the opportunities it provides to make positive changes to disrupted lives, in a short period of time. Here there is time and space to think about oneself and one's future without distractions, with important peer support, 24-hour ongoing assessment, support and opportunity to develop greater independence and skills from the outset. The building and grounds themselves ideally provide the initial stages of mobility and independence training in a quiet setting."
That is vital for people to help them to get to a position from which they can go into the mainstream vocational training regime. They go on to say:
"The provision includes input which is always available from a range of experienced staff—the immediate and personal as opposed to the more often than not inaccessible, slow or even no solutions available in the community. For most of the clients with whom we work, be they high-achieving visually impaired adults who require a short specialist course to update their computer skills, or the person with more complex needs working through the initial rehabilitative stage, the proposed mainstream provision that is being discussed at present is not appropriate."
So, early on, the staff—who work not only with the client group in which I am most interested but with other people with some degree of sight deficiency—have expressed their concern about moving some of the provision into the mainstream.
Why is specialist provision so important? Let us consider what would happen to someone who woke up tomorrow morning and found that they could not see. Their employer might sack them because they could no longer do their job. Their family might not be able to cope, and their life could begin to fall apart. The local social services might tell them that there was a 12-month waiting list for mobility training, and that it would be for only one hour a week. They would be referred to their disability employment adviser, who would suggest that they needed to learn to use the assisted technology that would enable them to continue to work, and who would also review their employment options.
Would that person feel more comfortable making those first steps in a further education college where people—often young people—move fast and thoughtlessly and the residential accommodation is far away, or would they prefer to be in a small, safe environment where they were treated as individuals with individual needs and where their skills could be monitored and nurtured so that they could enter the mainstream with confidence in their ability to survive?
Why is such a valued, and valuable, unique service closing? First, we must consider the context in which many charities and voluntary organisations operate today. There has been a shift since 1997, as many charities and voluntary organisations have been attracted by the opportunities that the Government have rightly made available through grant funding and contracts either to carry out duties that have replaced functions that the state used to provide or, more likely, to add value to that which the state is able to provide.
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There is nothing wrong with that—it was a long-standing criticism of Governments that they did not use the voluntary and charitable sector enough—but, as a side effect, some charities and some voluntary organisations start to alter their original ethos, and even to shift away from their original client group, in order to access income. That is part of the context in which the problem has arisen.
Secondly, and specific to Manor House, we must consider the RNIB's financial difficulties. The RNIB has moved recently to a super-duper new headquarters in Judd street, London, and it is running a significant deficit. The view is that there is a need to consider the asset base, realise some assets and bring down that deficit.
I want to consider the matter from the taxpayers' perspective, just for a moment. Manor House is linked to a further education establishment, South Devon college, which sits on a site just out of the centre of Torquay in an area known as Torre. It has been there since the 1930s. A great deal of taxpayers' money has gone into that college and new buildings have sprung up year after year—there is always building work going on there.
In fact, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money have been invested in the site, but this is a higgledy-piggledy, ramshackle college in the sense that it is not a uniform unit and that access for people with disabilities is extremely poor. Indeed, the people with disabilities are stuck up on the fifth floor of a building. In the event of a fire, they would have to go to a metal fire escape to wait to be rescued by the fire and emergency services. We hope that such a fire never occurs.
Practical problems exist, but because of how the Government operate their internal financing regimes the Learning and Skills Council is prepared to put money in for the college to move to a new greenfield site, rather than give it the money to bring things up to scratch. The college could bring itself up to scratch, but that would probably take 10 years of constant disruption. Quite rightly, the principal says that that would not make for a good learning environment. So, to access the money on offer, the college is going to move.
Manor House provides the link to vocational training. The RNIB realises that there is an issue: if it were to dispose of Manor House, what would it do about that link? It has found another college that is able to get another new stream of taxpayer's money to update its premises to deal with this client group. Money is therefore being spent on a brand new college in my constituency, and money is being spent to upgrade a college in Taunton to which some of the vocational training will be moved, while the RNIB realise an asset sale in Torquay. That does not make financial sense to the general taxpayer, because there is no joined-up or linked thinking as to how that impacts on the purse, partly because different bits of money are coming from different parts of government. That is not good value for money if considered in the round.
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