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House of Lords
Thursday, 29 March 2007.
The House met at eleven o’clock: the LORD SPEAKER on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Peterborough.
Food: Public Procurement
Baroness Byford asked Her Majesty’s Government:
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): My Lords, the Government are continuing to take steps to encourage and help public bodies to increase opportunities for small and local food producers, as shown by the guidance tools, the case studies and other information published on the public sector food procurement initiative website.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, does the Minister not regret, though, the lack of progress that has been made? That initiative was launched by the Government back in 2003, but clearly the Government, with their £2 billion public food budget, have no idea of which departments within the Whitehall system actually use UK-produced food. I gather that one of the departments that have not answered is the Department of Health. What will the Minister do to rectify this matter?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a bold allegation, which I do not think is borne out by the evidence. In 2006 we produced Selling to the Public Sector—A Guide to the Public Sector Procurement Initiative for farmers and growers; we produced the red tractor scheme for safe, assured and traceable food for the public sector; and this year we published the DIY Guide to Implementing the PSFPI—Advice for Practitioners, which is full of modules and case studies for farmers and local producers to get a grip on this.
The record of Whitehall departments is not perfect. Most departments know the percentage of British food served in 2005-06, but I regret to say that the Ministry of Defence, the Northern Ireland Office and the Home Office state that the information can be provided only at disproportionate cost. That is not good enough. No. 10 does not know. That is not good enough. I have the Prime Minister’s support on that. He said:
“I want the public sector to take a lead on doing things sustainably—through the way we run central Government and through the way we buy goods and services”.
Later this year the Sustainable Development Commission will start publishing these figures for all around Whitehall, and therefore people will be on the spot.
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The noble Baroness asked me about the Department of Health, but it does not appear to be on the list. Apart from the departments I mentioned, all the others seem to know. The Scottish Office and the Welsh Office, by the way, do not have in-house catering.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, as the noble Baroness’s Question applies particularly to food that is publicly procured, perhaps all those leaflets should be directed at the departments, not at farmers, growers and other purchasers. Can the Minister say what Joint Committees deal with the purchasing of British food? I declare an interest as a small food producer.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, it works both ways. We have to do work in departments, which is why the Sustainable Development Commission is getting involved. Defra is calling in all the contractors to make sure that we do this, and we are encouraging other departments to do the same.
It ought to be made clear to the public sector procurers that they can in the contracts demand farm-assured products. That is a bonus; they cannot demand the red tractor but, by and large, demanding farm-assured products is the way to do it. I want them to take the French approach, putting people first and the rules second. That would benefit everybody.
There is enough information out there now, and there can be no excuse. Later this year we will launch the Year of Food and Farming, which is part of the process to connect farmers with suppliers and producers. We will of course include Whitehall departments.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, I declare an interest as my son, who farms near Berwick-upon-Tweed, has recently become a director of the UK branch of the Slow Food movement. The movement was launched in Italy and is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Does the noble Lord agree that its objective of promoting the production, sale and consumption of locally produced food is very much in line with the objectives set out by the noble Baroness in her Question?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I agree entirely. I applaud the Slow Food movement and the opening of an office and centre in Ludlow. It shows that the consumer of the food is as much a part of the food chain as the producer. Having on the labels the names of those who made and produced the food enables people to join in the process and gives them a greater connection.
In answer to the other question, we are running conferences around the country in terms of the public sector buying local food. There was one up in the north on 22 March, and the list of attendees from government departments ran to a couple of hundred. The issue is being taken extremely seriously in government. The £2 billion mentioned by the noble Baroness is the amount spent on public sector procurement and we could do a lot more to make sure that such food is British and local.
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The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, I am very grateful for the encouragement given by the Minister’s department to colleague departments to buy British food, but will he go further and set real targets for the volume of products sourced in the UK to be used within other government departments and a time scale for those targets to be met?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I do not know about targets, but we have collected information. Departments have used it in Answers to Parliamentary Questions about the items used by them that have been produced in the UK—be they eggs, milk products, root vegetables, salads, fish, chicken or other products. They do not all have the information, but it has been set out, mainly in the other place, in answer to Questions. We have a baseline. The Sustainable Development Commission will use some of the information as part of the baseline for publishing these figures. That will give a real push to the rest of Whitehall, because the amount of money spent, whether it is in hospitals, schools, the Armed Forces or the Prison Service, is substantial. It is mainly where the £2 billion goes.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, what penalties are faced by departments which fail to fulfil the Minister’s wishes?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, the shame of being mentioned here.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, as the Minister implied a moment ago, is not part of the problem the confusing—I perhaps should say “misleading”—labelling system? Can something be done about labels which state “produce of this country”, when the product in question is not the produce of this country at all but has merely been packaged here?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, the noble Lord is right. Labelling is not the only issue, but public sector procurers in this country can and should be persuaded to demand farm-assured products. That is the way to the solution of this matter. It gets round in some ways the problem of the labelling, because, although a food producer may use products from abroad, the farm assurance label by and large gives one the confidence that the majority if not all the produce is from Britain.
Common Agricultural Policy: Single Farm Payment
11.14 am
Lord De Mauley asked Her Majesty’s Government:
How much money the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has asked HM Treasury to set aside for the possible European Commission fine which may be required for the late payment of the 2005 single farm payment.
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): My Lords, Defra has not requested any additional funding from Her Majesty's Treasury to cover potential disallowances in respect of late payments made to farmers under the single farm payment scheme for 2005.
Lord De Mauley: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer and I declare an interest as one of those still awaiting his modest 2005 single farm payment. Will he respond to reports in this week’s press that, in addition to a fine of up to £305 million, the total bill for the Government’s inept handling of the payments will include costs of £156 million for fixing the failures of the RPA and £21 million in interest payments to farmers, so totalling nearly £500 million? Is this not yet another example—like the Olympics, where they forgot about VAT—of the Government’s complete incompetence in organising the nation’s finances and their arrogance in dealing with taxpayers’ money?
Lord Rooker: No, my Lords; I do not accept the noble Lord’s figures. We have not paid and are not liable for anything like £21 million in interest payments to farmers. We have paid just under £1 million in interest payments; it cannot be much more than that because there is not much left to pay. On the other figures, we have made a provisional allowance in case there are fines and penalties but, in cash terms, no programmes have been affected. There have not been any fines or penalties from the European Union and we have had no indication from it of any such figures. But we have prudently taken that action because we know that we have made some payments late and could be subject to a penalty two or three years down the road. We will argue against any penalties. As of 30 June last year we had paid within 1 per cent of the legal limit—96.14 per cent of the money—and this year we are paying out a lot more a lot earlier. But the noble Lord’s figures cannot be added up. There are difficulties here and I make no bones about it. It has cost a lot more because of the difficulties in implementing the scheme, and that is much to be regretted.
Lord Dykes: My Lords, I thank the Minister for previously facing up straightforwardly to the crisis on the detailed financial figures. None the less, this is an unprecedented shambles. Let us bear in mind the Commons Select Committee report and its comments about responsibility. In 1997, this Government promised transparency and direct accountability and responsibility by Ministers. Is there any other option for Margaret Beckett after this but to resign?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am not commenting on anything in the Select Committee report. The Government will produce a response to it in due course. Matters concerning Ministers are for the Prime Minister; matters concerning civil servants are for the head of the Civil Service. It is as simple as that. I am responsible for the RPA from 8 May last year and the fact is that I do not know—I was not at the meetings when all the decisions were taken. I freely admit that if David Miliband and I
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Lord Dubs: My Lords, will my noble friend say a little more about the progress that has been made since 2005, looking into the future in dealing with these payments?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, first, I want to make it clear that the RPA staff—the 3,000 people in the five offices, all of whom I shall visit next week for the second time—are not responsible for this. They have worked their socks off to try and work this scheme in the interests of the public and the professional civil servants and to get the money to farmers. As for this year’s payments, as of yesterday—28 March—we have made payments to 96,476 out of 109,000 farmers, which is 88 per cent; 60 per cent of all farmers have had the full payment while 28 per cent have had a partial payment. The value of money paid out so far is just over £1 billion out of £1.54 billion, so we have paid out 70 per cent of the money this year, although I freely admit that it will be extremely difficult from now to the target at the end of June. The system is not geared up for that, even with all the changes in working practices that we have made. I believe that at this time last year something less than £50 million had been paid out.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, recently there has been a move from a task-based approach to a whole-case working approach to dealing with single farm payment claims, which is much to be welcomed. But is the Minister aware that there is a real concern that some of those whole-case workers are relatively inexperienced, often in their first posts, and that there continues to be a lack of transparency and co-ordination between the registration teams, the mapping teams, the processors and the legal department, making it extremely unlikely that difficult cases will have an individual allocated to them? What is being done to ensure that front-line RPA staff have appropriate training and adequate management support in securing the effective and co-ordinated delivery that farmers have a right to and deserve?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is right that the new chief executive of the new management team has put processes in place. About a dozen people are on the teams dealing with the cases on a whole-case approach and will have the necessary experience; the training started last summer when I was visiting the RPA offices. But I do not think that we can judge this only on the basis of age and inexperience as the staff sometimes have to deal with incorrectly filled-in forms—this is not all one-sided. But as the commissioner mentioned when I shared a platform with her earlier this week, the forms are excessively complicated, and that is something that we have to deal with. As we get closer to the difficult claims—as I say, we have paid out to 85 per cent of farmers—individuals will have to be assigned to
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Earl Ferrers: My Lords, is not the real problem that a bad system was chosen, a system which was different from that in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland? Whoever chose the system really ought to take responsibility for it. Is it not a bad thing when the system chosen results in farmers not getting their money and possibly in fines as well? Somebody really ought to resign.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, when this system is stable—it will not be until at least 2008—it could be a lot better than that in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A year was lost in the implementation of the planning. Anyone who reads the paperwork will see that a year was lost but that the start date stayed the same. Forty thousand new claims came in including some that the department had never dealt with before, such as those for pony paddocks. Food had never been grown on that land and there was never a Common Market subsidy for it. The paddocks were unknown and none of that land had been mapped. There was a catastrophic drop in productivity because the system was not geared up for that. The de minimis at 0.3 of an acre is far too small and we will address that in the health check of the CAP reforms which the commissioner has agreed to. There are some difficulties. It is easy to comment with hindsight—I was not there, although I have read some of the papers—but, as I say, we are trying to do better than we have in the past.
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Act 2004
11.22 am
Lord Roberts of Llandudno asked Her Majesty’s Government:
Whether they will repeal Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Act 2004 and end the pilot trials now in operation.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, pilot activity in respect of decisions to withdraw asylum support ended in November 2005. Work is continuing on the evaluation of the pilot. No decisions will be taken on whether to implement Section 9 more widely until that work has been completed.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I welcome the fact that the trial areas are now a thing of the past. What has happened to the 116 families, 219 children, involved in the three trial areas? How soon will the reports be in our hands? What plans has the Minister to give evidence to the Independent Asylum Commission so that it has the full government perspective?
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Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the evaluation is not complete, and I am not in a position to prejudge it. A number of the families involved in the Section 9 pilot have come back on to support and a small number have left under the voluntary assistance scheme.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, how many families with children would have been deprived of support if Section 9 had been implemented during these months? How many of those families have accepted the enhanced IOM voluntary return package? Why is it taking so long to produce the evaluation when we already knew from the Barnardo’s study carried out when the power to repeal was granted in the asylum Act 2006 that the pilots had been a failure?
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, it would help the House if the noble Lord were rather more precise in his question about voluntary returns. Statistics show that in 2006 some 5,330 people who had sought asylum left the UK under the assisted voluntary return programme. That detail is in the public domain. I cannot speculate on when the evaluation will be completed but I understand that it will be in the next few months.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the children in those families are treated far differently from indigenous children and therefore not in the context of Every Child Matters?
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, we take the welfare of children affected by the asylum process very seriously. We have put measures in place to ensure that they are not left destitute, that there is support and accommodation for them and that they continue to be with their families. I recognise that this is a very difficult, tough area of public policy, but when people are not here legally we have to take effective measures to ensure their safe return to their country of origin. In saying that, we have to respect their human rights and go through due process to ensure that they return.
Lord Soley: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that this is a very difficult area of public policy that we perhaps ought to debate more fully? My experience has been that often the families being offered return were offered financial assistance that would have been very significant in the country they were going to. The issue was not always the safety of the family in their country; the problem was that they wanted their children to be educated here. It is a very difficult double bind to allow people to come in and get their children educated here. In my old area, there were about 200 such children in our schools.
It is very difficult, and I am not entirely happy with how we deal with this problem at the moment. We need a wider and more open debate, maybe here, about how to handle this narrow, small group of families whose children are disadvantaged, often because parents want something that does not fit with the rest of our policy, which this House would agree with.
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