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In this Report
Commons Hansard (10 Jun 2004)
Disability (extract)
Tom Levitt (High Peak) (Lab): I have never known what it is like to be disabled. At one point in my life, I had my leg in plaster for a few months, but as a child I had no disabled friends or relatives, so, in a sense, disability never crossed my path. As I grew up, my sister and I used to play with a brother and sister from the family across the road. We were good friends with the family, but it was only after I had left home that I realised that that family contained a third child. That child was from the same generation as the four of us who had played happily together, but the child was autistic, which relates to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman). In all the years in which I lived across the road from that family, I never met that child. I hope that such shame about disability-the desire to hide away one's own child and not to make them count as a member of society-is long past, but unfortunately I am pretty sure that similar examples still occur, despite those events taking place some 30 or 40 years ago.
Many years later, I woke up to disability politics. At the Labour party conference in 1986, I was sitting at a table in a coffee bar when a young man came and sat opposite me with his sign language interpreter. In the course of the next hour and a half, he told me through his interpreter what his life was like.
He told me about the school where his hands were taped to the desk to stop him signing. He said his parents were told that signing was just a phase that he was going through, and that he would grow out of it.
That young man was fluent in sign language. Indeed, today he is one of its top exponents in the country. In those days, however, he was deprived of a common language even with his parents, who had sent him away to school to be looked after and educated believing, no doubt, that there were doing the right thing, although in fact they were adding to the apartheid that disabled people faced at the time.
The other startling thing about that young man is that there are 50,000 people like him in the country-50,000 people for whom British sign language is the first or only functioning language. That is one in every 1,000 people, yet it took me 32 years to meet one of them. That does not reveal how sheltered my life was; it reveals how sheltered theirs were.
I remember, many years later, having a conversation with a deaf friend on a train, partly in sign language. A number of people, including the guard, joined in, because they were deaf-in two cases-or because they had friends or family who were deaf. That was quite an eye-opener, which would not be noticed except by someone confronted with it. It taught me that describing someone as deaf tells people nothing about him or her. Does "deaf" mean "slightly hard of hearing"? Does it mean "hearing all right because of a hearing aid"? Or does it mean "having a completely different first language, living in a different culture"-and all that goes with being part of the sign language community?
We could go further, and ask what "disabled" means. Many places are "disabled accessible": we know that they are, because there is a little badge showing a wheelchair. As many speakers have pointed out today, however, use of a wheelchair does not denote a typical disability. Only a small proportion of those who are physically disabled employ wheelchairs. If we add the numbers with communication disabilities, sensory disabilities, mental impairment and learning disabilities, it becomes clear that the word "disabled" actually means nothing. What we are talking about are people-people with individual needs. They cannot even be thought of as being members of a few groups of disabled people, for there are many different groups. It is very difficult for any Government to legislate for all their needs in one go, with the single exception of their right not to suffer discrimination at work, in terms of access to goods and services or in any other context.
My experiences prompted me to learn sign language, and to work for a while advising local authorities on how their services could be made more accessible to people with hearing impairments. I want to describe an incident involving a council, but I will not name it. In any case, the evidence is 10 years old and things may have changed. A deaf person showed me round the council offices. He took me into the council chamber, switched on his hearing aid and said "The loop system is working perfectly: I can hear exactly what is going on." I said "But the room is empty." He said "Yes. What I am listening to is the housing department reception desk 100 metres away." The loop system was so powerful at the housing benefit desk that it blotted out whatever was happening in the rest of the building.
We then went into a committee room, a rather grand room in which a whole wall consisted of windows facing the afternoon sun. The chairman's seat had its back to the windows, which meant that when the sun was shining in the afternoon no one in the room could lip-read what the chairman was saying. Many people who perhaps did not realise that they were lip-reading, although they knew that they were a little hard of hearing, were deprived of that extra tool to help them understand what was being said. So through thoughtlessness-through not asking hearing-impaired people how they should arrange the furniture in the room-they were being deprived of communication.
In the same committee room, the same man said, "And listen to this." He switched on the council chamber loop system, and when he then switched on the chamber lights both his hearing aids screamed. I could hear them screaming. The reason was that on the ceiling, right next to the microphones serving the loop system, were low-energy light bulbs. He said, "We're a green council, so we have low-energy light bulbs in this room. We have asked if they can be moved, but we have been told that doing so would be too expensive. Obviously, we have to have the lights on, so while they are on the loop system cannot operate in the council chamber."
That council had spent thousands of pounds thinking that it was doing the right thing: that it was enabling deaf people of various sorts to access its services, and enabling the functioning of the council. It was wrong. It wasted money, and through what can only be seen in retrospect as tokenism, it did what it thought was right without thinking it through or asking the right people. As a result, it got it horribly wrong. We have all seen such examples-the ramp that leads to the door that is too narrow-and these things have to be thought through and got right.
Such incidents have taught me that most of the barriers that disabled people face are created by people such as me: people who are temporarily non-disabled. The physical barriers that disabled people face are much less potent than the barriers of attitude and ignorance that they face every day of every week. That is why the concept of reasonable adjustment, which I acknowledge was introduced in the 1995 Act, is so important. It allows disabled people to access employment and it will allow access to goods and services of all kinds. But what reasonable adjustment often requires is imagination rather than cash.
I acknowledge that the 1995 Act was a milestone-the first milestone on a very long journey. The hon. Member for Wycombe took great credit on behalf of the 1995 Act, but it took the then Conservative Government 16 years to get round to introducing it. Previous Labour Governments had already put into effect civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation in respect of gender and race, which we have built on since. We should not compare what we have done in seven years in government with the first 16 years of the previous Conservative Government. Rather, let us wait until we have been in power for 16 years-it is only nine years away-and then compare the Conservative and Labour records on access and rights for disabled people.
However, as others have pointed out, the 1995 Act had some huge gaps. There was no Disability Rights Commission, its time scales were too long and there were huge holes in terms of education and transport in particular. Through the disability rights task force and the other measures that were taken as soon as we entered office, we set about a legislative programme that in my view has been second to none. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), I served on the Committees that considered the Disability Rights Commission Bill and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Bill. Indeed, I also worked on the 1998 Bill on welfare reform, which was very important in terms of opening the door to many of the measures that we are now talking about, such as helping people on incapacity benefit to get back into work
In 2001, the "Towards Inclusion" report was published, and in January of that year we published our election manifesto. Now, we have the draft Disability Discrimination Bill and the Joint Committee's report on it. I had the great pleasure of serving on that Committee as well, and I attended all but one of its meetings. The Bill is very good, has various functions and plugs many holes. It is very popular among disabled people and their organisations. In particular, it addresses the huge hole of transport. While it cites the Leonard Cheshire recommendation of 2017 as the end date for the accessibility of trains, I hope that disabled carriages will be available on every train long before that. There is no reason why everything has to be end-loaded; every carriage of every train has to be accessible. I also welcome the Government's intention to speed up the reviews relating to disabled access to aviation and shipping.
As someone who has served in local government, I greatly welcome and endorse the recommendations to bring councillors within the remit of anti-discrimination legislation in respect of disability. Until now, a councillor who is not appointed to a committee because of perceived problems connected with disability has had no redress. When the Bill becomes law-I am sure that it will be before the next general election-that will no longer apply.
Commons Hansard (10 Jun 2004)
Disability (extract)
Maria Eagle: The hon. Gentleman made some very specific points, including some about British sign language, in which I have a particular interest. He asked what happens next after recognition, and rightly pointed out that not enough interpreters are available. The Government recently announced £1.5 million of new money to support our statement recognising British sign language, and the intention is to increase the number of interpreters available. We consulted the deaf community, and their strongly held view was that more needs to be done to train tutors. With more tutors and greater support for tutors in reaching higher qualification levels, there will be many more opportunities down the line for interpreters to learn the craft and the language.
The deaf community also identified the importance of increasing awareness of the use of British sign language, and the £1.5 million to which I referred has been split about evenly in an effort to achieve the two objectives. The precise way in which that will be done was announced during deaf awareness week, and if the hon. Gentleman has not seen the details I can send them to him.
I was particularly interested in the example that the hon. Gentleman gave of the Red Cross. He rightly talked about the importance of spending money more effectively, rather than simply throwing ever-increasing sums at particular problems when organisational issues arise. He is absolutely right to say that we need to find better ways of getting results for disabled people. Experience in my current post has made it obvious that various Government Departments, local government authorities and other public authorities operate far too much in silos. They do not join up what they do nearly enough, and we must look to providing services for disabled people that are based much more on their particular needs, rather than on whether they fit into a particular local authority budget or Government scheme. Anybody who can come up with a good way of doing that is welcome to come to my office at any time to tell me about it, because it is the holy grail as far as providing better services is concerned.
My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman), who chairs the all-party group on autism, made an excellent speech on the particular issues that impinge on those who have conditions on the autistic spectrum. She talked about the fact that communication impairment and social interaction impairment do not fit very well with some of our benefit systems, and about the disability living allowance and forms. In fact, the form is not the only problem with DLA. The care components and the way in which care and mobility are used as a proxy for disability do not necessarily work tremendously well for people with autistic spectrum disorder. Indeed, it is not just disabilities such as those that do not quite fit with DLA. At the moment, however, we have no plans to change the way in which DLA is assessed, and it would be wrong of me to say that we do, so such problems are not easily solved.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the disability handbook, and I can confirm that after consultation with the disability organisations that deal with autism, including the National Autistic Society, we are about to change the handbook's wording. I hope that that will assist my departmental officials in assessing benefit claims from people on the autistic spectrum.
The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) made his usual thoughtful contribution, but unfortunately I do not have time to say much about it; and my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak told the House about his own experience, particularly that relating to deafness.
We have had an excellent debate, which is worthy of re-reading some time tomorrow-perhaps next week is more likely-and I congratulate all who have taken part in it. There is no doubt about the fact that the Government are committed to improving, strengthening and deepening the rights of disabled people. It is only right that we do so, because 10 million of our fellow citizens rely on our doing so in order to take a proper part in life.
Commons Hansard (10 Jun 2004)
Disability (extract)
Paul holmes: The Government deserve praise for recognising British Sign Language, but what happens next? Finland's population is one-tenth the size of ours, but the country has 600 sign language interpreters. The UK has 400. There are not enough such interpreters available to profit from the recognition of BSL. With the roll-out of the new disability discrimination legislation, employers should make available access to such interpreters, when that is appropriate or necessary. What do the Government plan to do to ensure that more interpreters are trained and made available? They displayed good intentions when they recognised BSL, but they must put those good intentions into practice over the next two or three years.
In business questions earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) said that he had heard that the Government are to host an EU conference on how to support and introduce the use of sign language. Will the Minister give the House some details about that to clarify what is happening?
There are contradictions in Government policy. A Department may make a statement on a matter that is undermined by another Department. I used to be a teacher, and one example that comes to mind has to do with education. The Department for Education and Skills has said, on the one hand, that it is in favour of social inclusion, and that disabled children should have access to mainstream schools, and all types of school; but on the other hand there is the policy of testing. Our children are the most tested in the western world, from when they enter infant school to when they leave secondary school. League tables reflect their results, and schools live or die by the tables when it comes to the children they attract, the money they get and the performance-related pay of teachers, which depends on how successful teachers are in getting children through exams. I know all about that because in the first year of performance-related pay I filled in my own application to cross the professional threshold, and one of the main criteria is how the teacher's classes are doing in terms of academic performance.
All the statistics, including the Government figures every February and annual Ofsted reports, show that the schools that do best in the league tables of which the Government are so fond as they try to drive up standards are generally those schools with the lowest number of children with special educational needs. I could provide many anecdotal examples of schools in Derbyshire that are high in the league table but where the head will tell people their child would be better off at the school up the road because it is better suited to their needs.
On the one hand, then, the Government say they want social inclusion; on the other, they follow educational policies that work absolutely against it.
The Select Committee on Education and Skills, on which I serve, is nearing the end of its scrutiny of the draft School Transport Bill. Almost every witness before the Committee has said that most of it is pointless. Almost all the experiments in it to get children to walk to school or use buses and so on are already being done by various local authorities around the country, so there is no need for a Bill to set them out. The only thing that the Bill does that cannot be done now is that it would let local authorities ignore the ruling in the Education Act 1944 about free school transport, which is that children attending junior schools more than two miles from their home and children going to secondary schools more than three miles from home can get free transport. The largest part of local education authorities' transport budgets is that for SEN children.
I visited an excellent deaf unit at New Whittington primary school in my constituency three or four weeks ago, and one of the children comes from 15 to 20 miles away from somewhere in Derbyshire and gets in a taxi each morning to be taken there. A lot of people who have children with SEN who have to travel some distance to an appropriate setting are afraid that they will be charged under the experiments contained in the draft Bill. Again, on the one hand the Government have excellent policies on SEN children's inclusion in schools and the provision of specialist units like the deaf unit in Chesterfield, while on the other the Government are considering an experiment that people fear will lead to children and parents being charged for access to the special provision that they need.
Commons Hansard (10 Jun 2004)
Business of the House (extract)
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD):In advance of next week's formation of the all-party group on deafness, will the Leader of the House ask the Department for Work and Pensions to make a statement to the House on Government action to promote the recognition of sign language? The Council of Europe has apparently asked the Government to organise such work-the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) is on the Front Bench, and I appreciate her involvement. I understand that the Government will hold a conference on the matter in conjunction with the Council of Europe and it would be helpful if a statement were made to the House and further information were given about what I hope is a positive Government initiative.
......
Mr. Hain: On deafness and sign language, I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Gentleman, who pays close attention to and raises that matter in the House. I will certainly draw his point to the attention of the Secretary of State and examine the extent to which we can meet his wishes.
Commons Written Answers (14 Jun 2004)
Web Accessibility
Mr. Berry: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what assessment has been made of the percentage of disabled people who will be able to access all Government services electronically by 2005.
Mr. Alexander: There are currently no figures on the number of disabled people using online services. The Government recognise that basic access to technology is a problem for many disabled people and the importance of not excluding any citizens who wish to use our online services.
A number of initiatives have been established like the 6,000 UK Online centres, with 25 per cent., of these having practical equipment to assist the disabled in getting online.
By implementing the World Wide Web Consortiums (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and standard usability practices, we are endeavouring to make our online services as accessible and usable as currently practical. A copy of the "Web Accessibility Guidelines" has been placed in the Library.
Mr. Berry: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what Government guidelines cover the provision of information in (a) British Sign Language and (b) Easy Read for people with learning disabilities on Government Departments' and agencies' websites.
Mr. Alexander: The Government published "Let's make it accessible: Improving Government information for disabled people" in 2001 to help Government Departments and agencies to develop strategies to meet the information needs of their disabled customers. It recommends that Departments and agencies should adopt a good practice approach and that information should be user-friendly and accessible to disabled people. The guidance covers the potential needs of people with a range of impairments, including people who are learning disabled or who are profoundly deaf and use British Sign Language as their first language. It also suggests a range of methods for making information accessible to disabled people.
The Guidelines for UK Government websites (published 2002) and the Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design (published 2003) require government websites to implement the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative. We are not aware of a standard meaning for the term Easy Read and no recognised guidance on how to implement it on websites. We are currently reviewing a number of commercial applications that may improve website access to users with learning difficulties.
Mr. Berry: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what plans his Department has to raise awareness in the public and private sectors and in the relevant professional groups of (a) the web accessibility needs of disabled people and (b) the cost of meeting those needs.
Mr. Alexander: The Cabinet Office has published the 'Guidelines for UK Government Websites', which provides extensive guidance to government web managers and their contractors on making websites accessible to people with disabilities. Copies are available in the Library. We work closely with external organisations such as the RNIB and RNID.
Following the publication of the Disability Rights Commission report on web accessibility in April 2004 officials have been in discussion with the Commission on the issues of raising awareness and associated costs.
Commons Written Answers (14 Jun 2004)
Hearing Aid Technicians
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many vacancies there are for hearing aid technicians in the NHS in England; and how many there were in 2003-04, broken down by region.
Mr. Hutton: Specific information is not collected on the number of vacancies for hearing aid technicians; they are included in the physiological measurement staff group. The table shows the number of vacancies lasting three months or more for physiological measurement staff by Government office region as at March 2003.
Department of health vacancies survey, March 2003; qualified physiological measurement staff by Government office region; three month vacancy rates, numbers and staff in post Qualified physiological measurement
The figures per region showing Three month vacancy rate percentage March 2003, Three month vacancy number, Staff in post (whole-time equivalent) September 2002 and Staff in post (headcount) are:
North East, 1.6, 3, 218, 236
North West, 14, 9, 707, 806
Yorkshire and the Humber, 2.3, 9, 385, 444
East Midlands, 0.3, 1, 283, 319
West Midlands, 0.3, 1, 397, 445
East Of England, 2.2, 5, 257, 289
London, 4.7, 21, 481, 548
South East, 3.1, 10, 349, 415
South West, 1.3, 6, 449, 516
Total for England, 19, 66, 3,526, 4,018
Notes:
1. Three month vacancy information is as at 31 March 2003.
2. Three month vacancies are vacancies which Trusts are actively trying to fill, which had lasted for three months or more (whole-time equivalents).
3. Three month vacancy rates are three month vacancies expressed as a percentage of three month vacancies plus staff in post.
4. Three month vacancy rates are calculated using staff in post from the Vacancy Survey, March 2003.
5. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
6. Staff in post data is from the Non-Medical Workforce Census, September 2002
Sources:
Department of Health Vacancies Survey, March 2003.
Department of Health Non-Medical Workforce Census, September 2002.
Commons Hansard (22 Jun 2004)
NHS Services (East Sussex)
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con): What advice would the Minister give to one of my constituents-an 80-year-old lady-who has finally, after 18 months, had a hearing test? She has now received a letter saying that she is now on the waiting list for a hearing aid. She was told, "We cannot tell you how long your wait will be. Please do not contact us to find out", as that only distracts staff from doing the work that they should be doing. Is that a service of which the Minister is really proud?
Dr. Ladyman: I would certainly not approve of that type of contact with the hon. Gentleman's constituents. We should try harder to aspire to a much higher standard than that, but we have made tremendous efforts to modernise audiology services across the NHS. We have introduced a digital hearing-aid programme that is gradually rolling out, which will be concluded shortly. We are also making great efforts to improve the training and supply of audiologists. I very much hope that no one will suffer from that bad service in years to come. If the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me on the specifics of that case, I shall be happy to make inquiries and report back to him.
We have made some achievements and reached some important milestones. That is good news, but we want to go further. We want to build on those achievements and further reduce the length of time that patients have to wait for treatment and deliver better care services across the board. The health service and local stakeholders in East Sussex share that vision. To make that progress and to live within the resources that it receives, the NHS and all the health and care organisations in East Sussex must look carefully at the way that they work, and that is just what they are doing.
For example, the mental health trust has consulted on and adopted a new model of mental health service delivery that will improve prevention and provide early intervention and better access for patients. The East Sussex social services department has made radical changes to its structure, service delivery and commissioning arrangements. Eastbourne Downs primary care trust provides a range of services from a purpose-designed facility in Eastbourne that comprises a community stroke team, day hospital, in-patient step-up and step-down services and community rehabilitation.
Commons Written Answers (24 Jun 2004)
Deaf-Blind People
Mr. Baron: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to ensure health staff have the relevant training to provide an effective service to deaf-blind people.
Mr. Hutton: NHSU, the organisation set up by the Department to establish a university for the national health service, is leading the development and delivery of disability equality and awareness training tools and resources as part of a wider disability learning and development strategy. An initial prototype learning programme, aimed at providing staff with a broad overview of disability awareness, will be ready for consultation in the autumn.
Commons Hansard (24 Jun 2004)
NHS Improvement Plan (extract)
Mr. George Osborne (Tatton) (Con): Despite the best efforts of the East Cheshire NHS trust, which serves my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), some of my elderly constituents face very long waits for the fitting of digital hearing aids. Will the Secretary of State allow those constituents to go to other hospitals in the region that might be able to fit such hearing aids sooner and greatly improve their quality of life?
Dr. Reid: We have made progress, but I note what the hon. Gentleman says. We are investing more money on this matter. While such hearing aids were technologically available under the previous Government, they were not available in practice because the money was not there to get them. Any delay for someone in such a distressing position is a bad thing, and we will try to look at what we can do to speed up the process. What he cannot do, however, is one day demand more efficient production of more equipment by more people in the NHS, and then tell us the next day that the Conservatives are going to take out £1.5 billion to help the relatively well-off to jump the queue.
......
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con): Does the Secretary of State not accept that all waiting times are personal, as they affect individuals? I failed to discover from his statement whether he could meet the considerable concern about the amount of bureaucracy, control from the centre and the fact that people are not free enough, which would allow my constituents to know that they would not have to wait six months to get a hearing aid, would not have to raise private money to provide accommodation for children with diabetes in Ipswich hospital, and would no longer have to wait on trolleys all day in hospital, which is a current issue. Can he explain how he will stop centralisation and enable people to make those decisions locally?
Dr. Reid: If I may say so without ruining the right hon. Gentleman's career, those are sensible points, and I agree with all of them. If people are waiting on trolleys all day that is not acceptable, so I urge him to contact me about that.
We are trying to do two things. First, we are trying to drive the third biggest organisation in the world from the centre with a series of targets that we established some years ago which, as they are met, are not being replaced. Secondly, we are simultaneously changing the system so that patients have more power, choice and information. Gradually, 80 per cent. of the money and 80 per cent. of the driving of the system will be controlled by patients themselves. We are half way through that journey, and it would be crazy to assume that we can drive everything from the centre indefinitely. It would be equally crazy, however, to drop all the targets in our efficiency drive and just put in £90 billion without any objectives whatsoever. No business in the world, whether public or private, would behave in such an irresponsible fashion, and Opposition spokesmen would not have done so if they had not been so keen to cobble a policy together in a fortnight so that they could issue a statement before mine.
Commons Written Answers (28 Jun 2004)
British Sign Language
Mr. Goodman: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
(1) what organisations have received grants from his Department to promote British Sign Language in the last three years;
(2) how much has been spent on grants by his Department to promote British Sign Language in the last three years;
(3) what organisations he consulted in the last three years before distributing grants to promote British Sign Language; and if he will make a statement.
Maria Eagle: On 4 May I announced that the Department was putting in place a programme of work to support the Government's position statement on British Sign Language (BSL). Funding of £1.5 million has been awarded to the following 10 lead organisations: the British Deaf Association; the Centre for Deaf People Leicester; the Centre for Deaf Studies-University of Bristol; Christian Deaf Link; Consortium of Assessment and Training Providers; BSL Consortium-UK Council on Deafness; Deafplus; Leeds University; National Deaf Children's Society; Remark!. The contracts will leave a legacy of improved access to training for BSL tutors and increased awareness of the language.
The Department established a BSL working group to advise, among other things, on priorities for allocating the additional funding described. Organisations represented on the group are the British Deaf Association; the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People; the Federation of Deaf People; The National Deaf Children's Society; The Royal National Institute for Deaf People; The UK Council on Deafness.
Earlier contracts to the value of £444,000 were awarded to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People and the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People to increase the number of BSL interpreters and to improve the training and assessment infrastructure for interpreters.
Lords Hansard (30 Jun 2004)
Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 (Audit of Public Bodies) Order 2004
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord McIntosh of Haringey) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 7 June be approved [21st Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to speak to the second order as well, also laid on 7 June. Both orders are being made under the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000.
It may be helpful if I put the orders in context. Last year, the Government made orders in support of their response to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Sharman, Holding to Account. One of those orders provided that the Comptroller and Auditor-General would be the auditor of all NDPBs other than those incorporated under the Companies Acts. Another order granted the Comptroller and Auditor-General access rights to certain documents for the purpose of carrying out those audits.
The Government welcomed the commitments that the Comptroller and Auditor-General made at the time. He provided assurances that his new powers would not be used in a way that would increase burdens and that the National Audit Office would put in place new arrangements to ensure a high quality of service in the absence of any competitive tendering arrangements.
The Government also made an order to rationalise the statutory responsibilities for auditing special health authorities which were previously subject to audit by both the Audit Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor-General. That order, together with a separate order discontinuing the requirement to produce summarised accounts, reduced the dual audit burden on the special health authorities and reduced Department of Health costs.
The orders being debated today are intended to continue the process that Parliament approved last year. I am grateful for the assistance we have received from the National Audit Office throughout the process of preparing these orders. I now turn to the orders themselves.
The Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 (Audit of Public Bodies) Order 2004 provides for the Comptroller and Auditor-General to be made the statutory auditor for the Hearing Aid Council. The Hearing Aid Council currently appoints its own auditors. The order also takes account of developments in respect of the Seafish Industry Authority.
The Hearing Aid Council is a statutory body established under the Hearing Aid Council Act 1968. It regulates anyone who sells hearing aids, whether in the high street, the purchaser's home or a hospital. However, it does not regulate hearing aids that are supplied free of charge by the National Health Service, through mail order nor e-commerce sales.
The Hearing Aid Council sets the standards of competence and conduct towards which all hearing aid dispensers are expected to work. It was reclassified as a non-departmental public body, with effect from 1 April 2003. It is intended that in due course the Hearing Aid Council will transfer from the Department of Trade and Industry to the Department of Health.
Last year's order, the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 (Audit of Public Bodies) Order 2003, made the Comptroller and Auditor-General responsible for auditing the Seafish Industry Authority as from the financial year 2005-06. The date was chosen to enable the contract with their auditors to run its course. Since then, the auditors have resigned, to become the Seafish Industry Authority's internal auditors. There would be a clear conflict of interest if they retained the position of external auditors. There is now no body with legal responsibility to carry out the external audit. The Government are taking the opportunity, with this new order, to bring forward the date when the Comptroller and Auditor-General becomes responsible for auditing the Seafish Industry Authority to the financial year 2003-04.
The second order, the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 (Audit of Health Service Bodies) Order 2004, deals with the audit of four new special health authorities, and has been prepared in consultation with the Department of Health. The special health authorities are: NHSU, known as the NHS University; NHS Direct; NHS Professionals; and the NHS Pensions Agency.
The previous arrangements required two sets of accounts to be prepared for each special health authority-one set by the special health authority and the other set by the Department of Health-and for each special health authority to be, in effect, audited twice-once by auditors appointed by the Audit Commission and secondly by the Comptroller and Auditor-General. The intention of the second order is therefore to put the new special health authorities on a par with all the others; that is, to make the Comptroller and Auditor General the statutory auditor of Special Health Authorities in place of the Audit Commission, thus avoiding the dual-audit burden. The proposals continue the Government's commitments to improve parliamentary accountability and I commend the orders to the House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 7 June be approved [21st Report from the Joint Committee].-(Lord McIntosh of Haringey.)
Commons Written Answers (30 Jun 2004)
Blind and Deaf People
Mr. Hoyle: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people are registered as (a) blind and (b) deaf in (i) Chorley, (ii) Lancashire and (iii) the north-west.
Miss Melanie Johnson: Information is not collected on a constituency level, but on a local authority basis. The table shows the number of people who are registered blind at 31 March 2003 and those registered as deaf at 31 March 2001 in Lancashire and the north-west.
Number of people registered as Blind (March 2003) in Lancashire, 3,920;
Number of people registered as Blind (March 2003) in North-west, 24,215;
Number of people registered as Deaf (March 2001) in Lancashire, 915;
Number of people registered as Deaf (March 2001) in North-west - data are not
available for all councils within the north-west region.
Source: SSDA902 and SSDA910.
Commons Written Answers (1 Jul 2004)
Screening Programmes
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Health
(1) what the cost to date is of the pilots and roll out of
(a) the chlamydia screening programme and
(b) the bowel cancer screening programme;
(2) how much his Department spent in the last financial year on researching and developing screening programmes for the NHS; and what the total amount of underspends was;
(3) what the budget of the National Screening Committee was in each of the last three years.
Miss Melanie Johnson: The United Kingdom national screening committee (NSC) advises the Government on all aspects of screening policy. It does not have a specific budget for the development of screening programmes. Decisions about screening programmes are made by the four UK countries after the NSC has given its advice. Last financial year, the Department spent a total of £17 million on developing various antenatal, child health and adult screening programmes in the national health service. Allocated funds were fully utilised. The Department also funds the NHS research and development programme, which aims to identify NHS needs for research and to commission research to meet those needs. A list of relevant projects and their costs is shown in the table.
The total cost of the chlamydia screening pilot was £1.2 million. The total cost of the roll-out of the first two phases of the chlamydia screening programme is £13.5 million.
The cost of the English arm of the colorectal cancer screening pilot is £4.75 million. The roll-out of this programme has not yet started.
Title: Interventions for mild to moderate permanent childhood hearing impairments identified by neonatal hearing screening, Start date: 1 April 2001, End date: 30 June 2007, Spend for 2003-04 (£) 147,794
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