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There is some room for confidence. We are entering a new era—a new chapter in British farming. Once again the demand is for increasing food production. Set-aside is back to zero. Food security is back on the agenda. Consumers are looking to local supply and supermarkets are seeking to exploit this in their marketing and buying programmes. I am sure that British agriculture can cope with this. My only concern is whether the Government and Defra are equal to the task. I urge the Minister to ensure that the department recognises the task ahead. It needs to change its approach. Its role must be less regulatory and, indeed, less negative. This is a question of attitude, of trust, as well as of legislative restrictions and regulation. The approach must be more positive. There needs to be a concerted effort to form a serious and trusting partnership with the industry. The Government must back British agriculture.

Since the Queen’s Speech we have had the First Reading of the Local Transport Bill. I will not attempt to give its Long Title, a task with which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, had to wrestle last week. We welcome those features of the Bill giving local authorities power to manage more effectively integrated transport systems. But the Government will not have support from these Benches for road pricing. We will scrutinise that part of the Bill very carefully to make sure that it does not extend by stealth to “spy in the sky” national road pricing. Meanwhile the need for an efficient infrastructure is greater than ever. Freight and distribution increasingly drive the British economy. Public transport, as the Minister said, is a prerequisite for meeting emissions targets.

The final stage of the Crossrail Bill is included at last in the legislative programme. We on these Benches have always been positive about the concept of Crossrail, and we will be looking to ensure that the project cost estimates are realistic and can be delivered on budget. At one time it appeared that this hybrid Bill procedure might suit other major projects. However, the considerable time that this Bill has had

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to spend in Committee suggests that this cumbersome procedure may well have added to the cost.

The problem also affects other large-scale projects, and the Government’s response has been to introduce the Planning Reform Bill. This builds on the White Paper resulting from the two Barker reviews. On major projects the planning system is frequently an obstacle and not a solution. We support the idea of reform but there needs to be a proper safeguard for local interests. There is a need for balance; a need for local people to be involved; and a need for local people to be part of the decision.

Meanwhile local government struggles on, frequently underfunded and with increased burdens from central Government. Local authorities have had to contend with the considerable inaccuracies in population figures. The Government need to make sure that funding properly follows and allows for migrant population growth. Fair funding needs true figures. As with finance, so with structure. We believe in localism. The Government remain wedded to regionalism. Across England local authorities are having their arms twisted to reorganise to suit the Government’s agenda. They find themselves struggling with their local development frameworks.

I turn to the Housing and Regeneration Bill. We accept the need to build more homes. We seek to encourage balanced development, particularly in rural areas, consistent with local decision-making. We support the idea of the brownfield building programme, but we have considerable anxieties that the green belt may be under threat. After all, Natural England, of all bodies, has said it favours such development. We are particularly keen to support rural communities, villages and market towns.

A priority must be to ensure that local people can afford to live and work in the rural economy. This must include housing for rent as my noble friend Lord Plumb would have said had tragic circumstances not prevented him being here today. Here again the key factor must be to ensure that there is an adequate local input to support these developments and that infrastructure requirements are properly anticipated.

I conclude by observing that in all these areas much more is needed than a legislative programme. Governments also need sound administration. This Government often give the impression that intention is enough. They are strong on promise and short on delivery. We can see that in the way they conduct their business—an announcement of a new initiative preferably repeated several times. Who cares about the outcome? The people do. Those running local government do. The commuter stuck in traffic or on a train does. The HGV driver faced with an inadequate road system does. The drainage board engineer does. A farmer struggling with his paperwork after a day’s work in the most highly regulated sector of the economy does. The Government could and should ensure that legislation already in place is properly used for the provision of a better quality of life for all people.

As the noble Baroness said, the areas of government that we are discussing today concern our place in the lived-in world. Throughout the day’s debate, we will be ensuring that there is a good and

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proper balance between the interests of the nation as a whole and those of the local community, and between the interests of the local community and the individual. We rightly expect local people to identify with, and help to sustain, their local communities. We must not deprive people of the sense of ownership that drives these instincts. When we on these Benches come to consider the Bills proposed by the Government and the programme presented to us in the gracious Speech, we shall consider them on those principles.

4.10 pm

Lord Teverson: My Lords, it seems a long time since the Stern report came out, just over a year ago, and a huge amount has happened during that time. Sometimes we forget that it was the Prime Minister who commissioned the report and, in many ways, we should give credit for that. The report is some 600 pages long. At first, it was not even printed; it was available only in electronic form in order to conserve resources. Although it has received quite a lot of critique in terms of future discount rates or proportions of GDP that will be required to get things right, generally it is seen as an area where we can judge programmes and, in particular, environmental progress and plans.

A lot has happened during that time. This year, we have had four reports from the IPCC leading up to the conference in Bali in December. Clearly, I did not go through all the evidence that was available at the various meetings but I went through the summaries, and, if one consistency came through, it was that the indicators and warning signs of climate change were not just more evident and certainly more human-based but their effect was accelerating. Keeping climate change within reasonable bounds is ever more urgent and challenging, and I should now like to judge the contents of the Speech in terms of the Stern report.

We should also remember that the Stern report emphasised that we did not need to panic over our measures. It said that they needed to be consistent and to use a range of instruments but, if we got on with the job of cutting emissions early, we would be able to solve this issue both nationally and—as was concentrated on in the report—globally.

Many of us expected that, with the new Administration, energy and the environment would be put together in one department, but what happened before the Summer Recess represented a completely lost opportunity. Those two necessary areas of government and policy were not put together as they should have been, as they are clearly required to be twinned in order to co-ordinate and work towards a proper and effective climate change policy. The fact that we are discussing those issues on separate days in our debates on the Queen’s Speech shows a great weakness.

Clearly, as is the case universally, we on these Benches welcome the Climate Change Bill. However, again, we must remind ourselves that it will only, by way of a climate change committee, set targets and

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goals—important though they are—and it is also an enabling Bill in terms of additional emissions trading systems. But it does not create any action in its own right, and therefore we must be very careful about the amount of emphasis that we put on the Bill. It is very important and it is a start, but it does not get us to the point of solving any specific issue.

We on these Benches say that scientific progress over the year since the Stern report means that the targets in that Bill—60 per cent by 2050—are already effectively out of date. We see an 80 per cent reduction by 2050 as essential, maybe even beyond that. Although the Prime Minister has said that one of the first tasks of the Climate Change Committee will be to look at those targets and see if they should be amended, the mechanisms and timetable mean that that would not be until 2009. The 60 per cent target was not agreed by a committee; that particular bullet should now be bitten, and we should change the target in the Bill itself.

We should also remember with some humility why targets do not always work and have not been seen to work. Two of the Government’s main current targets in this area have been 20 per cent CO2 emission reductions by 2010—which is not expected to be met—and 10 per cent renewable energy by 2010, which the Government themselves do not expect to meet. Targets do not have to be met: the term does not mean that. That is why we must have an emphasis on action rather than just on frameworks, enabling legislation and targets for climate change.

On carbon dioxide emissions, we are well ahead of our Kyoto target. With the early 1990s dash for gas, however, the House will know that emissions have gone up since 1997. With the new emissions trading systems proposed in this Bill, there is great concern in the carbon trading industry that the quantity of carbon there for trading might make markets very difficult indeed. There is a way around that: those emissions trading systems are right and should be applied to other sectors, but they certainly need to have the currency of the EU ETS, and the same sort of accounting mechanism allowing them to have a much wider market and to work. However, standards on products and other areas are missing from climate change policy and the gracious Speech. Much of this is dealt with under single-market legislation in Brussels, so it is not possible to change it unilaterally within the United Kingdom.

The area that concerns me is not my particular field: housing. Although we would clearly very much welcome concepts such as eco-towns and eco-cities, I do not understand why, as a nation, we still have building standards for ordinary, individual houses and buildings that have much lower insulation and energy standards than many of our European partners. Although we have plans to catch up with those in the next decade, there must be far more urgency in that area.

The Bill and government policy do not include green taxation anywhere. We have had a slight change on aircraft passenger taxation, but, when we must use all the levers to change climate policy, that particular lever has been left out. On transfer technology and

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research and development, I do not see any promise of major research, stimulated by emissions trading, outside the private sector. That might be good, but we do not have a real research and development programme to help us move to these technologies which we need to change our targets. We support the Climate Change Bill, but it must be beyond the targets which need to change. We must include not just domestic but also international aviation, and shipping. The budget periods are too long, but we must move on to action that shows that we are becoming a less carbon-addicted economy.

I will mention the Energy Bill briefly, although it has not really been considered today despite being essentially tied up with climate change. Again, I would be surprised if we are able, through the current legislation and programmes, to play our part in the European targets for renewable energy. I welcome the legislative framework for carbon capture and storage. A number of international treaties have to be sorted out in order to use that technology under the sea. However, we must not look upon carbon capture and storage as being the single silver bullet that will help us to meet our carbon emissions target while being a big user of fossil fuels. I welcome the Government’s proposals on smart meters in order to put power in the hands of consumers, but they have to be real smart meters, not the basic type that has been suggested in the past.

It is a shame that the marine Bill was not included in the gracious Speech. We welcome the fact that a draft Bill will be presented. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether there will be a draft Bill committee and whether it will be a Joint Committee. We think that that would be the way to move forward because the Joint Committee on the Climate Change Bill was very effective. When will the Bill come on to the Floor of the House? Will it be in the next Session rather than later in this one? It covers extremely important issues, not only biodiversity and nature conservation but the legal framework for a lot of the renewable technology sectors that need to contribute to what we are doing.

I was disappointed to see that domestic aviation emissions are increasing very strongly, and we have to have some method of moving to rail rather than air for domestic transport. My noble friend Lord Bradshaw will be speaking on this matter. The final section of the Channel Tunnel link is meeting up this week and St Pancras is coming on stream some 14 years after the Channel Tunnel opened. That shows how ineffective we have been. Although a Statement made before the Recess suggested that there might be a high-speed line between London and Birmingham, there was no commitment. Having a much broader network for high-speed domestic passenger transport is extremely important and is missing from our strategy in this area.

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, has covered many of the areas related to the common agricultural policy and farming, and I shall cover something rather different. Before the next Queen's Speech, we will be into the health check of the common agricultural policy, which was particularly demanded

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by the Government. The current commissioner, Mrs Fischer Boel, is saying that there will not be a major change, yet some movements in other EU member states suggest that there could be a major change in the way that the common agricultural policy operates mid term, rather than after 2013. When will Defra be able to make a statement on what our goals for the health check will be?

My questions for the Minister are: when will those proposals for the CAP health check come on board? How will we move in the short term from air to rail? Will the draft marine Bill be scrutinised by a Joint Committee and will the Bill be introduced in this Session? The Government will be making their own proposals on climate change and setting their own objectives for the Bali conference in December.

In conclusion, we must be careful because we in this country are not leaders in addressing climate change. We may be in terms of the Bill being unique, but we are not good in terms of renewable energy, recycling, biofuels, landfill and all the other areas. We are laggards rather than leaders, regrettably. We now have a full intellectual understanding of what is needed concerning climate change, but we—this is not just the Government, but many of us—have yet to grasp what climate change really means. The IPCC evidence tends to show that what will happen in future will be worse than what has gone before. Targets do not mean actions. We now need to move much more to using all those policy instruments and taking action rather than just having framework Bills on climate change.

Security Industry Authority

4.25 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead): My Lords, I rise to repeat the Statement made earlier in the other place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows:

“With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement to the House on the Security Industry Authority licensing checks and the issue of entitlement to work in the United Kingdom.“The SIA was established in 2003 under the terms of the Private Security Industry Act 2001. Before its establishment, the private security industry was largely unregulated, with no national licensing system for the private security industry.“The legislation sets out that the SIA must establish that applicants are fit and proper before granting them a licence. The detailed criteria are set out in the SIA publication Get Licensed. The fit and proper person requirement primarily involves establishing that the applicant has undergone training and that identity and criminality checks have been completed. To date, more than 250,000 licences have been issued.“I must make it clear from the outset that it is the legal duty of all employers to ensure that those they employ are entitled to work in the United Kingdom. The SIA has not failed to do anything

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that it was obliged to do in law. As my honourable friend the Minister of State for Immigration stated on 11 September 2006, in response to a question from the honourable Member for Monmouth:

“Employers have clear legal responsibilities under the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 which makes it a criminal offence to employ a person who is subject to immigration control unless that person has permission to work in the UK. The possession of a Security Industry Authority licence does not give a person a right to work in the UK, and employers are still expected to assure themselves that their employees have the necessary permission.”—[Official Report, Commons, 11/9/06; col. 2234W.]

That is a matter of record in this House.“While under no obligation, the SIA has the discretion to seek information that applicants have the right to work in the United Kingdom. As a responsible organisation, the SIA decided in April 2005 to initiate a limited right-to-work check on 10 per cent of non-EEA applicants. I am informed by the SIA that between April 2005 and December 2006, more than 3,000 checks were conducted and 41 individuals were identified who were not entitled to work in the United Kingdom. Licences for these individuals were refused. “Ministers were informed in April 2007 that a Border and Immigration Agency enforcement operation had identified that 44 people employed by a security company did not have the right to work in the United Kingdom. Of these, 12 had been subcontracted to a further company that provided staff to guard locations under Metropolitan Police contracts. One of the individuals was involved in guarding an MPS facility where modified cars, such as the Prime Minister's, would be taken for any repair work. Those identified at this stage were immediately removed from their posts. The Metropolitan Police have assured me that there was no security threat to any of the vehicles that had to visit that facility.“In June this year, the Border and Immigration Agency and the Security Industry Authority agreed that the BIA would carry out a more intensive check of the 10 per cent sample of non-EEA applicants. That analysis showed that a higher proportion of non-EEA applicants might not have the right to work than the earlier work had suggested. Ministers were informed of this. Immediate action was taken. “From 2 July this year, every applicant identified as a non-EEA national by the SIA also has their right to work in the United Kingdom checked. I am informed by the SIA that, since 2 July 2007, of the 32,500 licence decisions made, 740 were refused because the SIA was not satisfied that the applicant had a right to work in the United Kingdom. I have been advised by the BIA that all these cases are in the process of being investigated with a view to enforcement action. In addition, from 1 October the SIA has required new and tighter identity checks for all applications and renewals.

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“While action could be and was immediately taken in relation to new applicants, it remained unclear how many people who had been granted licences prior to 2 July did not have the right to work. The SIA undertook further work to assess the potential volume of licences that might have been given to people who did not have the right to work in the United Kingdom to consider what remedial action should be taken.“On 9 August, I set out my approach to the advice that I had received. My approach was that the responsible thing to do was to establish the full nature and scale of the problem and take appropriate action to deal with it, rather than immediately to put incomplete and potentially misleading information into the public domain. Much has been made of the fact that I said that the lines to take were not good enough for the press office or Ministers to explain the situation. The fact is that they were not good enough because the analysis of the issue had not been completed. I took immediate action by asking for work to estimate the numbers involved to be speeded up. I was not content to wait 10 weeks to get these numbers, and I asked for this time to be halved and to have preliminary advice on my return to the office on 20 August. “I approved a letter from the SIA to senior managers of all 2,000 private security companies on its records, reminding them of their obligation as employers to check entitlement under Section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. I made it clear that I did not want to delay the schedule for its release. I also approved with modifications a second letter from the Cabinet Office to government HR directors and departmental security officers, reminding them that all staff with access to government assets should be subject to the requirements of the baseline personnel security standard, which includes the verification of an individual’s right to work in the United Kingdom. I will place copies of these two letters in the Library of the House. “I requested an update by 2 pm on the following day, and received a further update from officials on 10 August. In that update, officials believed it should be possible to provide revised estimates of the numbers involved by the end of August. In the advice that I received on 30 August, I was informed that the SIA and the BIA could build the capacity to check the estimated 40,000 non-EEA nationals who had previously been granted licences at the rate of 4,000 a month from October 2007. “On 5 September, I asked for further details on why this process should take so long, and I also asked my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for crime reduction to chair a task force to resolve, and if possible increase, the 4,000 monthly figure. The task force met on 8 October. As a result of this, the current estimate is that these checks will now be completed in December—much more quickly than originally planned—and I will report again to Parliament when this work is complete.

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“Preliminary work by the BIA has categorised the 6,000 cases checked so far into three groups. Provisional assessment from the BIA reports that 77 per cent of those checked have been shown to have a right to work, with 10.5 per cent shown not to have a right to work. Checks are ongoing on the remaining 12.5 per cent.“I believe this is a very clear example of the Government’s determination to put in place effective systems and procedures further to protect the public and to keep those systems under review. As has been made clear, possession of an SIA licence does not give a person a right to work in the United Kingdom. Employers are expected to assure themselves that their employees have permission to work in the United Kingdom. This is what the law requires of them.“We nevertheless have taken action to tackle illegal working in the security industry sector. As I have demonstrated today, Ministers and officials are taking robust action to satisfy ourselves of the scale of the problem and to ensure that the SIA and BIA work together to address it”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

4.35 pm

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this Statement. It cannot be entirely comfortable for him to have to come to the aid of the Home Secretary who appears to have had sole responsibility for this débâcle and how it was handled. Therefore, I accept that it is a tough call for him to have to answer questions on what is effectively a personal statement.

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