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End the anomaly by which practitioners in criminal cases receive a fee for file reviews which does not apply in civil cases.
It is estimated that approximately £23 million in savings will be made through the reforms to police station fees, changes to committal fees and the removal of the file review payments over the course of 2010-11.
In addition to these reforms, the Ministry of Justice will issue a second consultation paper to explore reforms to advocates fees in the Crown court.
Copies of the response to consultation and the consultation paper "Legal Aid: Reforming Advocates Graduated Fees" will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses, the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office.
Transport
Liverpool Cruise Terminal
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Clark): The Liverpool cruise terminal is owned and operated by Liverpool city council. It receives port of call visits from major cruise lines. The construction of this terminal was funded by grant from the European regional development fund and the North West Development Agency. The original grant decision was made on the basis of the benefits to local tourism from port calls, normally lasting a day. It was assessed that there was unlikely to be any significant distortion to competition in the market for port of call cruise services resulting from the provision of grant. It was however judged at the time that changing the use of the terminal to permit turnaround cruises to operate from that location could raise competition issues in relation to other ports operating in this market. Accordingly a condition of the funding was that change of use could only be permitted with the agreement of the right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Transport.
Earlier this year Liverpool city council sought advice from Department for Transport on the possibility of such a change of use to permit turnaround cruises and the Department undertook a further competition assessment. The Department has now completed this further assessment and has concluded that the proposed change of use would be likely to have an unfair and adverse effect on competition between Liverpool and other cruise ports. Officials have informed Liverpool city council of this decision.
In making the competition assessment, account was taken of information from a number of other ports which provide cruise opportunities on a similar scale to Liverpool and serve overlapping customer markets within Britain. The evidence demonstrates that it would be unfair to allow one port to benefit from a publicly funded development when competitors have found, or would have to find, private money to achieve the same objective.
Liverpool city council has had considerable success in developing its cruise terminal to attract some of the largest cruise ships in the world. I hope this business continues to thrive. The market for supplying turnaround cruises is, however, a different and highly competitive one. It is right that that business within this market should go where customers get best value without distortion of the market by subsidy. It is for the port of Liverpool to consider whether there are options to develop the turnaround cruise business at Liverpool on a purely competitive basis.
Work and Pensions
Correction (Statement)
The Minister for Pensions and the Ageing Society (Angela Eagle):
During the debate that followed the uprating statement on 10 December 2009, in response
to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North, (Mr. Winnick, I said:
"we have raised the basic state pension above prices every year since 1998-99." [10 December 2009, Official Report, column 521].
The correct answer is as follows:
"Between 1997 and April 2010 pensioners will have benefited from above-inflation increases in the basic state pension, with pensioners better off by £10 or 12 per cent. in real terms in their basic state pension."
I apologise to the House for the inadvertent error.
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