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Mr. Neil Turner (Wigan) (Lab):
There is widespread agreement that the housing revenue account system is not fit for purpose, so I give the review that is under way a warm welcome. The Treasury has proposed taking an extra £7 billion dowry from councils, but does my right
hon. Friend agree that that would prevent them from implementing the Decent Homes standard, and that it could be seen as a tax on council house tenants?
John Healey: What I have launched is not a review of the housing revenue account system but a plan to dismantle the system that has been in place for more than 20 years. That system has held councils back from being able to build and maintain homes at a decent standard. It is not just that there will be enough money in the system to ensure that all councils can maintain all their homes to a decent standard, because in fact there will be more money for those purposes over the next 10 to 20 years. I am now doing the detailed work with those local authorities that want the reform, which will replace the old system with a structure that will give authorities control over their own rents and housing. That will enable them to provide better services for tenants in the future.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD): The panel appointed by the Secretary of State to examine the west midlands regional spatial strategy has now reported. In my constituency of Solihull, we had an agreed new homes target of 7,600, but now we find that that target is 10,500. That will almost certainly mean that we will have to lose great swathes of our green belt. Will the right hon. Gentleman describe how it is desirable, or even possible, to override the plans and wishes of Solihull's-
Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Secretary of State.
Mr. Denham: As I have tried to make clear a number of times this afternoon, the examination process means that local plans that take only the local perspective into account have to be tested against regional and national housing need. The examination process takes place in public, and when revisions are made it is because the evidence in favour of the need to provide land for housing wins out. It is difficult to conceive of a different system. The only possible alternative would involve the abandonment of any national or regional targets, but that would undoubtedly lead to a massive collapse in house building and a massive under-provision-
Mr. Speaker: I am very grateful to the Secretary of State.
Jane Kennedy (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab): Was my right hon. Friend the Housing Minister as angry as I was to learn that, notwithstanding 23,000 people looking for affordable homes in Liverpool, the Liberal Democrats rejected a project for 60 new homes by a housing co-operative on the grounds that there was no such need in the city?
John Healey: I have said how disappointed I was that Liverpool city council is not taking advantage of the central Government support that we are prepared to give to deal with some of the very serious housing problems in that city. I will continue to do what I can to assist, but it would help if the council started to play its full part and do some of the heavy lifting that it should be doing already.
Sarah Teather (Brent, East) (LD): Does the Secretary of State accept that if his Government go ahead and scrap the £15 excess payments of local housing allowance, all that will result is rent inflation and no savings to the public purse? Will he agree to work with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to rethink the proposal?
John Healey: We are doing just that. We are working with our colleagues in the DWP at present.
Mr. David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): Recent statements by the Local Government Association have echoed the view of the Fire Brigades Union that the fire control project is now out of control and should be abandoned. Does the Secretary of State accept this? If not, why is he the only one out of sync with the people who work in the service and the people who run the service?
Mr. Denham: It is worth restating that we need a system of fire control that can operate over more than one fire and rescue service and that is able to provide efficient communications, particularly on major incidents where appliances and staff may be drawn from a variety of different fire and rescue services. The fire control project is designed to enable us to achieve that. We continue to work with the LGA on the implementation of the project, and I understand that we, and people at local level, will need to work with the FBU on the details of implementation, but the need for this type of control system, which goes beyond individual fire and rescue services, is, I believe, unanswerable.
Points of Order
3.32 pm
Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes) (Con): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have already given you notice of this point of order, which concerns the transfer by Departments of oral questions after they have been printed on the Order Paper, after the Department has been recognised as having departmental responsibility, and after approval by the Table Office-I realise that that is not a foolproof service. Last week I tabled an oral question to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which appeared on the Order Paper on Wednesday 21 October as Question 2. By Thursday the question had been withdrawn and transferred to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. My question was about local authority care homes and the security of those in their care. I need your help, Mr. Speaker, as to whether there is a way in which, before oral questions are shuffled, the relevant Department's parliamentary team can see the list and transfer any question at that point. However, once a question is printed on the Order Paper for oral answer, I believe that the Department should be stopped from denying responsibility to answer.
Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman both for his point of order and for giving me advance notice of it. I note what he has just told me, but there is a procedure in these matters, of which I think I should remind both the hon. Gentleman and the House. I appreciate the difficulties that Members have in identifying which Minister is responsible for certain issues. However, it is for Ministers and not for me to decide who will answer a question. Whether it will please the hon. Gentleman or not is uncertain, but I must suggest to him that he seeks the advice of the Table Office in drafting questions for oral answer to reduce the risk of those questions being transferred.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There has been mention outside the House, as you know, of senior Ministers in the House of Lords answering questions from Members of this House. There has been no discussion whatsoever in the House, but some of us have followed with interest the discussion that has occurred. I take it that if such questioning of senior Ministers who are Members of the House of Lords took place-obviously there would have to be a debate in the House first-it would be in Westminster Hall, and certainly not in this Chamber. If such a procedure took place, there should be no stopping the Department concerned from being subject to questions in the ordinary way, or of replies to questions from being given by Ministers who are Members of this House.
Mr. Speaker: That is a most interesting point of order from the hon. Gentleman, but there are quite a lot of ifs in it. What I must say to him is that he will be aware both that this is a matter under active consideration-I am happy to confirm that-and that it has also been the subject of an earlier point of order, not least raised the other day, if memory serves me, by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), to which I had the opportunity to reply.
I can say to the hon. Gentleman not what form a change would take, but that the issue is under active consideration and that before any change were made, the House would of course have an opportunity to consider it. I feel sure that he would want to contribute to that consideration.
Mr. Speaker: Very briefly, further to that point of order.
Mr. Winnick: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. When you say it is "under active consideration", do you mean it is before a Committee? I have checked, and it is not before the Procedure Committee. Is it before the Modernisation Committee? Who, precisely, is considering it?
Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his supplementary point of order. Unless I am much mistaken, I think he first entered the House in 1966, so he has vast experience of matters appertaining to the House, and indeed to the country. He will therefore know that a matter can be under active consideration in a whole variety of ways, including by people within Government Departments and in other respects than simply in the form of consideration either on the Floor of the House or by a Committee. I leave it to his very versatile imagination to consider in what way these matters might be being addressed.
Mr. Steen: Further to my earlier point of order, Mr. Speaker. I clearly did not make the situation clear enough. I not only consulted the Table Office, but it actually drafted my question. The situation was nothing to do with the drafting, because I went to the Table Office beforehand and my question was actually drafted there. However, the Table Office could not guarantee that it would stick. I am saying that once a question goes on the Order Paper and once there is an agreement by the Table Office and the printer to print it, the Department should be stopped from moving it. It has become a norm for Departments not to answer questions by constantly moving them.
Mr. Speaker: What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is as follows: first, my understanding is that he-I am being very helpful to him, so he should be pleased with this-was advised that the risk of the transfer of his question was low. It is true enough that the Table Office is not able to offer, and never has done, a guarantee that a question will not be transferred. He was advised that the risk was low, but the risk nevertheless existed, and risk is that of the hon. Gentleman, not that of the Table Office.
Secondly, there is no current plan to adopt the change of policy that the hon. Gentleman wants. It is a matter that could be considered by the Procedure Committee and a request to that Committee could be made by any Member. I just have a hunch that he might want to be in the queue to make that request.
Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con):
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I asked a named day question of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for answer yesterday-the question, quite simply, was what planning controls there are on the
erection of mobile telephone masts-so that I could follow it up today at oral questions. Instead of getting a proper response, I got this:
"I will answer this question shortly",
which of course would be too late for today's Question Time. Are you able to help me, Mr. Speaker, in getting proper answers on time?
Mr. Speaker: I am not entirely clear off the top of my head what was the time lag between the tabling of the question and the provision of what might be described only as a holding reply, and that makes it difficult for me to give an answer that would be to the satisfaction of the hon. Gentleman. It is nevertheless an opportunity for me to reiterate that in general terms, and certainly after a period of days has elapsed, it is frankly unsatisfactory for Ministers simply to provide holding replies along the lines of, "I will reply as soon as possible." What we want, as quickly as possible, is a substantive reply from the Minister to the hon. Member who has tabled the question. I hope that that at least partially satisfies the appetite of the hon. Gentleman.
Closed Circuit Television (Monitoring and Promotion)
Motion for leave to introduce a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)
3.39 pm
Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, South) (Lab): I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to impose a duty on public bodies to co-operate with the police and specified local authorities on the use of closed circuit television; to require certain users of CCTV to provide specified information to the police; to require insurance providers to promote the use of CCTV systems; and for connected purposes.
There has been and continues to be much debate surrounding the operation of CCTV systems in the UK, and it is a debate that we should welcome. However, I do not want to use this opportunity today to discuss the politics of Big Brother; rather I want to move the issue forward to how we can best regulate these systems and use them to provide legitimate protection of the public and of property, while at the same time ensuring that our civil liberties are protected.
It is estimated that there could be as many as 1.5 million privately operated CCTV cameras in operation in the UK today, plus another 400 publicly operated systems in operation in town and city centres. It is evident from that that CCTV is a fact of modern life and it is here to stay. The Bill provides proposals to ensure that the systems are used to their best purpose, which is to act as deterrents of crime and aids to prosecution.
No compulsory code or set of minimum requirements is laid down for the operation and maintenance of CCTV systems in the UK. That can cause particular problems for some police investigations in which CCTV footage is used as evidence, in particular for crimes that would be difficult to prove by any other means. While CCTV could and should never be an alternative to policing or crime prevention schemes, evidence suggests that it can and does bring forward prosecutions in cases where it may have been difficult to do so otherwise.
Public systems already have a primary purpose to provide public safety, and there is a need for those systems to be equipped to the levels suitable to provide recordings of a high enough quality to be used as evidence of crime. In Greater Glasgow, the Glasgow community and safety services oversee the use of CCTV systems in those public places to which there is unrestricted access, as well as co-ordinating action by the police, local authorities and major social landlords.
Despite that co-ordination, the cost of each fixed camera runs at between £3,000 and £4,000 a year, a total to which local authorities are not obliged to contribute. There are 16 separate public systems in use in Greater Glasgow, and Strathclyde police must contend with that. The different equipment and processes for each system make evidence gathering a lengthy procedure. Alongside that, all evidence submitted to the courts must operate under an analogue rather than a digital system.
Private systems which operate on private property that allows for a public presence, such as large bars and shopping centres, are usually put in place as property protection measures. As the number of systems is so vast, private recordings provide the majority of evidence
in incidents of crime. The use of CCTV evidence is now a much more common means of pursuing prosecution in the UK; more so than the use of DNA material, for example. Its use as evidence results in more guilty verdicts, easing the burden on police time and the public purse by way of less expensive trials.
Recorded evidence can also help to prompt witnesses who may not have been aware that they were in the vicinity of a crime at the time, but who may hold crucial evidence. Another important aspect is that CCTV can be used to eliminate innocent people from police investigations, speeding up the overall process and lowering the cost. Yet, when dealing with a serious incident in which CCTV footage needs to be examined, police forces can and often do face an array of problems with the quality and accessibility of the footage that they require.
The lack of regulation means that, when dealing with a serious incident, police have to contact all public and private owners in the area. That is, first, to identify any owners of CCTV systems and, secondly, to check for footage worthy of submission as evidence. Problems also occur with the routine destruction of film. Police forces are unaware of how long owners keep their footage before it is destroyed, and the owners are not required to provide such information on a regular basis. That means that some evidence might be destroyed before the police can access it.
Some owners of small or more basic systems are not familiar with the mechanisms required to download data, for example, and in some instances it can take weeks to obtain the film evidence required. With some systems, the cameras do not work at all and no evidence can therefore be obtained. The problems caused by such disparities can directly affect the ability of the police to arrest perpetrators and bring forward a case for prosecution.
It would not be particularly burdensome to require those who operate CCTV systems to have to meet a set of standards of best practice and general maintenance, particularly when most of the private organisations that would be required to do so are likely already to be regulated by the local authority in some way.
For small businesses in particular, there is an issue regarding insurance. Some insurers require owners of CCTV systems to avoid undue bureaucracy and administrative expense. The Bill makes provision for that. Building on the recommendations of a recent Home Office report for a national CCTV strategy, the Bill proposes a voluntary code for businesses promoted by the CCTV user group, which would act as an industry body.
The Bill would impose a statutory duty on public bodies, such as local authorities, transport groups and housing associations, to work with local police forces to streamline public CCTV systems and, importantly, to impose a duty on local authorities to contribute to the costs of co-ordinating such systems. That would on the whole, provide greater efficiency and reduce administrative costs.
Large metropolitan authorities would no longer be required to foot the full bill for the co-ordinating of such systems when other smaller local authorities would be required to contribute. The Bill would also impose a duty on private organisations that control large areas open to the public in which they operate private CCTV operations, such as bars, clubs, cinemas and shopping centres, to provide local police with up-to-date information on the type of system they use, for how long they preserve film and how their system is maintained.
Lastly, the Bill would impose a requirement for insurance companies to promote an agreed code of practice with their business customers. CCTV can have a positive impact on the fight against crime and the fear of crime, but if we are to maintain the public's confidence in CCTV, we have a duty to reassure our citizens that such monitoring is not only effective but worth the investment.
That Mr. Tom Harris, Mrs. Joan Humble, David Cairns, Dr. Alasdair McDonnell, Mrs. Jacqui Lait, Derek Twigg, Lembit Öpik, Norman Lamb and Meg Munn present the Bill.
Mr. Tom Harris accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 November and to be printed (Bill 153).
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