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Baroness Byford: My Lords, I wish to begin by saying how much I am looking forward to listening to the three maiden speeches to be made today. I remember how nervous I felt when I made mine. We welcome the noble Lords, Lord Rowlands, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port and Lord Cameron of Dillington, to the House and look forward to hearing what they have to say during this debate.

My noble friend Lord Howe will speak at greater length than I, and doubtless more pointedly, on health matters at the end of this debate. My contribution will be more limited. Nevertheless, I take the opportunity to put this area of policy into context.

I welcome the reform of mental health law. Improvements in reaching decisions on behalf of patients who are suffering from mental dysfunction are desirable. In that context, I hope that there will be a serious study of the growing problem surrounding the elderly and others suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia.

I am relieved that I have been able to start on a positive note, but it is a source of regret that I find myself unable to continue in that vein. The reduction of bureaucracy across departments featured strongly in the gracious Speech. We applaud that intention, but we are deeply sceptical of the Government's ability to deliver.

We can hope that the continuing reform of the NHS, along with the Government's commitment to reducing bureaucracy and its costs, will result in the downsizing of just a few of the following: the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health, costing some £31 million; the 26 health action zones, costing £52 million; the Health Development Agency which decides which health practices work, costing some £12 million; and the NHS Modernisation Agency, which advises on developments in treatment and health, costing the country £161 million. Also under the health umbrella is the Commission for Social Care Inspection, which costs some £147 million.

Perhaps the Minister can say whether the Government are responsible for the legislation that rendered so many care homes non-viable by requiring amenity upgrades that dropped capacity below the break-even level. Then there is the Healthcare Commission which, for
 
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£71.5 million, audits health services. I thought that that was the job of the Audit Commission. Doubtless when the Minister responds he will correct me.

What assessment will the Government make of the many different groups and the costs of bureaucracy in order to keep them going? I should like an answer to that. Can the Minister also confirm whether he is confident that the new IT system in the NHS will be sympathetic with and able to link up directly with the social services IT network, and that neither of them will collapse under the weight of what they are being asked to do, as indeed others have experienced?

That theme of bureaucracy I extend to Defra and its agencies. I have many times castigated the Food Standards Agency, which costs £119 million, for its unwillingness to act when threats to our health emanate from beyond these shores. I am currently concerned about the import of Spanish eggs which have been proved to be a source of salmonella infection. Were those eggs to be produced in the UK, by now the Food Standards Agency would have closed down the relevant farms, but the Spanish eggs are still coming in. The agency has merely reminded processors to cook them well.

I turn to the Department for Education and Skills. There is to be another Education Bill, following almost immediately on the Children Bill which received Royal Assent in July. It will involve local education authorities, social services, the NHS, the police and others in a lengthy restructuring of the way the joint care of children works. I hope that the new Education Bill will not threaten the successful roll-out of the Children Act 2004, which had so much support around this House. However, I understand that it has attracted no new money. Again, will the Minister confirm that when he winds up the debate?

Also likely to be affected by the new Bill is the five-year strategy. This will force further drastic changes on LEAs. No longer to be the providers of services to schools, they will become the commissioners of services—the guardians of the quality of those services and the champions of the interests of parents and pupils. The five-year strategy will also demand significant changes in schools. In early years education there will be the provision of a flexible system of "educare": childcare based on education, to which the Minister referred. The primary curriculum will once again include music and PE, and is to add the teaching of a modern foreign language. Primary schools will also face an extended day, from eight o'clock in the morning to six o'clock at night for 48 weeks of the year.

Many changes are to be made in the secondary sector, in particular the establishment of 200 new academies, although apparently there is no independent evidence of their efficacy. Moreover, a target has been set for every secondary school to become a specialist college by 2008. This latter provision will presumably compel every secondary school to enter and successfully negotiate the bid system. I am reliably informed that this takes at least 12 months' work on the part of the head teacher or deputy and involves, among other things, fundraising activities to obtain at least £50,000-worth of sponsorship.
 
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That is hard enough for one school to achieve in an area, but surely virtually impossible for those schools forced to join in after others have creamed off the most willing support.

The Minister told us that there is to be a School Transport Bill, and we support the pilots that are envisaged. The aim is to empower LEAs to be innovative in their methods of ensuring that children get to school. It would appear that they have a mammoth task ahead of them, but we welcome the fact that it is to be a voluntary scheme.

A point that has been raised with me regarding this scheme is the difficulty in hiring enough coach drivers. On the whole, these drivers tend to be older people, some of whom are part-timers who cover for absences, holidays and vacancies. We are concerned that the Working Time Directive is seen as a threat to this way of operating. As a result, coach companies feel that many of them will be forced out of business—accelerating a current trend—and thus jeopardising the future of school transport services. How confident is the Minister that the proposals will be successful?

I know that I am not the only one to find it a grim irony that in the same month that the ban on hunting with dogs was passed into statute, we heard the words:

May we assume this to mean that the Government have no interest in destroying further rural traditions? However, in fairness to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, he clarified that point for us earlier, although what was not made clear is the threat from animal rights activists and the pressures they exert on commercial shooting.

The creation of a new integrated agency to deliver rural policy will involve the amalgamation of English Nature, the Countryside Agency and the Rural Development Service. That is welcome, but I understand that the proposal is only in draft form and will not be brought into being for some months. I also understand that some senior members of both English Nature and the Countryside Agency have serious reservations about the move. My own concern is that the process of amalgamation will put into jeopardy the delivery of a rural policy with which we should be pushing ahead over the coming year.

That point is particularly important given the new definition of "rural" to be applied across all government departments. The net effect will be to move some of our larger market towns into the "urban" category. I should have thought that the assimilation of such a change will be quite sufficient an upheaval in itself.

We support the principles behind the Animal Welfare Bill, but will scrutinise very closely its interaction with existing primary and secondary legislation on animal health and welfare. Not all the provisions set out in the Animal Health Act 2002 have yet come into force, which means that its benefits are difficult to assess.

Many fine words have been spoken at all levels of this Government about the environment. Indeed, I understand that the Prime Minister himself supports the view that climate change is the most serious threat we face. And yet the Government's record of achievement in
 
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reducing this threat is poor. The MP for Crewe and Nantwich, Mrs Dunwoody, put it rather delicately when last week she said,

I could not have put it better. It seems that the Government's own Back-Benchers are beginning to realise that their administration is all bark and no bite. Mrs Dunwoody was speaking in the context of transport, but I would apply her words more widely.

Sustainable development requires democratic government not only by the people, but certainly of the people and for the people. If air transport is threatening our very existence, it must be curtailed or at least reviewed. If our energy requirements need to be met from renewable sources, there must be determined encouragement of the development of biofuels and biomass, the introduction of a renewables transport fuel obligation, and support for the use of microgeneration.

In responding to this last day of debate on the gracious Speech, I cannot resume my place without commenting that we believe it to reflect an intention to hold a general election in May of next year. The gracious Speech sets out 25 Bills and nine draft Bills, which would signal system overload in a normal Session. I believe that it is a smokescreen which leaves us to decide which measures the Government are serious about and which they will abandon once their message has reached the electorate.

It is even more interesting to speculate on the Bills that have been left out, and on the reasons for that. My prime candidate within the Defra brief is the lack of a marine conservation Bill. The cleaner neighbourhood Bill is welcome because it will help local authorities, but who is going to fund it? Will the Government be passing down to local authorities the extra funding needed?

To return to a marine conservation Bill, I believe that it is urgently necessary to protect marine wildlife. As each month passes, work that continues to be done by marine biologists makes it ever more clear that our oceans and coastal waters hold important secrets which we must not destroy in ignorance of their worth. It is also imperative to take steps to conserve our fish stocks. It must be obvious to all that the common fisheries policy is not working. As fast as the EU bans one form of malpractice, another takes its place. The opening up of our seas to all comers, even as we are being warned of the threat to the survival of our fish, is at the very least ill thought out.

Over the past five years it has become clear that MAFF, now Defra, has failed the farming and rural community. Its grip over the foot and mouth outbreak was, to be generous, inadequate, resulting in millions of animals being slaughtered unnecessarily. There were insufficient financial controls in place, resulting in the European Commission's decision to pay only part of the costs and our taxpayers having to find an
 
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additional £600 million. Similarly, TB in cattle in certain parts of the country is out of control and the importation of illegal meats continues unabated.

From next year, UK agriculture will experience one of the biggest changes it has ever faced following CAP reform but even now, in late November, there are still some conditions of which we are not aware.

The gracious Speech is a sorry reflection of the Government's relentless obsession with political and electoral expediency. How else can one explain the decision to waste so much time on the Hunting Bill—now an Act—when the electorate could legitimately have anticipated a focus on more urgent issues such as the control of MRSA in hospitals? How else can one explain the postponement of the Animal Welfare Bill which, unlike the Hunting Bill, has the welfare of animals at its heart? Above all, how else can one explain the cynicism of a government who, without a hint of embarrassment, use the gracious Speech as a platform to launch their campaign to be re-elected?

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