Multiple Deprivation Indicators

Private Members' Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 1:15 pm on 14 September 2015.

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Photo of Robin Newton Robin Newton DUP 1:15, 14 September 2015

The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to one hour and 30 minutes for the debate. The proposer of the motion will have 10 minutes to propose and 10 minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. All other Members who are called to speak will have five minutes.

Photo of Declan McAleer Declan McAleer Sinn Féin

I beg to move

That this Assembly recognises that the current multiple deprivation indicators do not accurately identify the extent of poverty and deprivation in rural areas; and calls on the Minister of Finance and Personnel to review this urgently.

The overriding reason why we decided to table the motion calling for a review of multiple deprivation measures (MDM) is the impact that they have on rural communities, particularly government policies for rural areas and associated funding streams.

In the aftermath of the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development's review of rural poverty, which included an analysis of the deprivation measures and during which we took evidence from expert witnesses from NISRA and others, we felt that now was an appropriate time to bring such a motion to the Chamber to open it out to wider discussion. In the course of our deliberations and meetings with various rural stakeholders, we found that there is a very strong view among those stakeholders that the current method used by government to assess deprivation in rural areas underestimates its full extent. That theme was expressed during the Agriculture Committee's recent review, and it was discussed at a seminar that was held last year — 'Poverty Amongst Plenty?' — which I co-hosted with MLAs from other parties. The seminar was addressed by NISRA and other representatives. We heard some very compelling evidence from organisations such as the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU), the Rural Development Council (RDC) and the Rural Community Network (RCN).

A recurring theme during any deliberation on the issue or with any lobbying is the view that the model that is used in the North is a spatial model. It focuses mostly on small areas of concentrations of deprivation, and they are more easily identified in urban areas than in rural areas. When you use a spatial model, it is more difficult to target individuals, and that makes it extremely difficult. Indeed, the completion of the Committee's report and the current scrutiny of the Rural Proofing Bill makes now a good time for this motion.

We looked at some of the inadequacies in the current measures. Income and expenditure are two of the key domains that are looked at. They count for 50% of the overall MDM score and account for 25% each in how it is weighted. The income level domain is quite rightly focused on, but, from a rural perspective, it does not look at expenditure. There is a great deal of evidence from organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that it costs more to live in a rural area, where the cost of living is higher. They estimate that it could cost up to 20% more to live in a rural area. If you live in a rural area, you have to own, for example, at least one car if not two, and more travel time is needed to get to shops and childcare services. That is compounded by a less than adequate public transport system compared with urban areas.

The other domain that is looked at is employment, which accounts for 25% of the overall score. However, the MDM does not take account of the fact that a lot of people emigrate from rural areas to work in urban areas, or, in the case of my constituency of West Tyrone, go across the water or down South to work.

In the overall MDM score for super output areas across the North, of which there are 890, proximity to services is weighted at 10% of the overall score. <BR/>There is concern among an awful lot of rural stakeholder organisations, particularly the RCN and the RDC, that there is not enough weighting afforded to proximity to services.

A lot of work has been carried out on this across the water in Scotland. The Church of Scotland commissioned a study to compare the experiences of its rural and urban congregations, and that was carried out by Geddes and Houston in 2011. They found that there was huge deprivation in access to services in rural areas, and that can have a negative impact on people's lives in terms of employment, medical care, participation in social activities and, indeed, travel times, which are up to 10 times greater in isolated rural areas.

Photo of Roy Beggs Roy Beggs UUP

Will the Member give way?

Photo of Roy Beggs Roy Beggs UUP

Coming from a rural area, I have a degree of sympathy for the Member in wanting a review, but can he indicate which other deprivation indices he wishes to reduce in order to increase proximity to services?

Photo of Declan McAleer Declan McAleer Sinn Féin

I thank the Member for his intervention. It is important to look across all the domains to see whether it is possible to take a little bit off some domains to increase access to basic services. We look forward to NISRA coming back to us with its recommendations and to seeing what it suggests. The evidence that we heard from NISRA indicates that there is guidance for rural areas, but it is not 100% content that they are being focused on; there is more focus on the overall score. Obviously, we look forward to NISRA coming back with some recommendations.

Studies found that the lower weighting given to proximity to services has a huge impact on underestimating deprivation in rural areas. We found it astounding that not a single rural super output area features in the top 10% most deprived areas across the North. Obviously, that will have implications for anti-poverty initiatives. Rural organisations are very concerned that policy-makers and funders may focus on the top 10% to 20%, even though there is rural guidance on how best to use those measures. I think that it is alarming that there is not one rural area in the top 10% of the 890 in the North. Indeed, the closest we have is Castlederg in the West Tyrone constituency, which ranks ninety-seventh. That is all in the context of the DSD family resources survey, which indicates that 24% of people in rural areas live in poverty.

Given that the current measure is a spatial index of deprivation, it is very important that we focus on how to capture deprivation when it is widely dispersed. The Ulster Farmers' Union made that point very clear when it addressed the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development during the inquiry. It said that it would like to see a method that will pinpoint deprivation in rural areas and that, unlike urban areas, which are more socially segregated, people of all socio-economic backgrounds live side by side in rural areas.

To use its own words, it said that:

"One person could be in poverty and the person down the road could be in relative affluence. We are not sure that the MDM takes that into account at present."

As for some of the other stakeholder organisations that we routinely meet at the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development, and as MLAs, the Rural Community Network and the Rural Development Council strongly feel that urban areas are socially segregated, whereas, in rural areas, deprivation exists amongst relative affluence, and there must be a change in the current measures to ensure that they capture the extent of rural deprivation. Their fear is that that distortion can impact on Government policies and spending in rural areas. Indeed, when Mr Trutz Haase came to a seminar recently, he referred to what he termed the prevalence of opportunity deprivation in rural areas being caused by lack of access to centres of decision, key services and career opportunities.

In conclusion, there is a great deal of consensus among rural interest groups that the current system does not accurately measure poverty and deprivation in rural areas. At the very least, unlike in urban areas, rural deprivation — I spoke about a couple of these key issues during my opening speech — is not concentrated in any particular area; it is very widely dispersed. The proximity to services domain has a very low weighting, and that affects the overall MDM score.

I thank Members for coming here today for this important motion and I look forward to hearing their contributions.

Photo of Dominic Bradley Dominic Bradley Social Democratic and Labour Party 1:30, 14 September 2015

Go raibh míle maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. Tá áthas orm bheith ag labhairt ar an rún tábhachtach seo inniu. I dtús báire ba mhaith liom a rá go bhfuil mé i bhfabhar an rúin agus tá roinnt moltaí de mo chuid féin agam i leith an rúin. At the outset, it is important to be clear about what deprivation is. Deprivation is usually taken to refer to unmet needs across a number of areas or domains.

The most recent Northern Ireland multiple deprivation measure was in 2010, five years ago. It provided a relative measure of deprivation in small areas across Northern Ireland. It was constructed from around 52 different indicators relating to seven separate types of deprivation; income, employment, health, education, proximity to services, living environment, and crime and disorder. According to NISRA in 2010, approximately one third of the super-output areas were classified as rural and two thirds were classified as urban. The average size of the urban areas was 2·1 square kilometres compared to rural areas, where the average size was 45·1 square kilometres.

The 2011-15 DARD tackling rural poverty and social isolation framework found some very startling figures when looking at rural deprivation. The rural west, for example, had some of the highest proportion of households scoring on each of the deprivation indicators. These indicators included not being in a position to save at least £10 a month, not being able to replace worn-out household items such as furniture, not being able to keep accommodation sufficiently warm and not being able to meet household bills and so on. Rural regions have the highest proportion of people with Post Office card accounts. The rural west, however, is more likely to have people with no savings; that figure is 53%. Rural areas also had the highest percentage of households, 8%, that were behind in one or more household bills. This rose to 10% in the rural west compared to 6% in urban areas.

I do not think it is as clear in the Northern Ireland multiple deprivation measures as it could be. There are changes to the system of measurement which could be made to improve the identification of multiple deprivation areas in the rural region. These include the measures used in the Republic of Ireland — the Pobal HP method — which are designed to remove, or minimise, these issues, and measures used in Wales that were developed specifically as rural multiple deprivation measures.

The motion calls on the Minister of Finance and Personnel to review this urgently. I believe that it should be urgently reviewed so that we can learn the full extent of deprivation. However, I believe that there should be a cross-departmental approach with responsibility on all Northern Ireland Executive Ministers as opposed to focusing solely on DFP. Deprivation is the responsibility of many Departments, not least DSD and DARD. Whereas, obviously, the Department of Finance and Personnel could lead the approach, it is important to include other Departments that also have an interest in rural affairs.

I note a question that was asked of OFMDFM around nine months ago on what work that Department was doing, along with other Departments, to address multiple deprivation indicators in rural areas. To date, that question has not been answered, so I hope that is not an indication of the interest that that Department has. In conclusion —

Photo of Robin Newton Robin Newton DUP

I ask the Member to bring his remarks to a close.

Photo of Dominic Bradley Dominic Bradley Social Democratic and Labour Party

In conclusion, we support the motion and commend it to the House, with the proposals that I made in my speech. Go raibh míle maith agat.

Photo of Leslie Cree Leslie Cree UUP

Several key questions are raised by the motion. First of all, what exactly are the current multiple deprivation indicators? Secondly, what is wrong with them in their operation in rural areas for measuring poverty and deprivation? Thirdly, what alternatives to them exist that would be more accurate?

The Northern Ireland multiple deprivation measures 2010 are made up of a total of 52 indicators relating mostly to the period 2007 to 2009. They are grouped into seven types or domains of deprivation and relate to income; employment; health; education, skills and training; proximity to services; living environment and crime and disorder.

Many of them appear to be obvious ways to measure deprivation, such as adults and children in income support, jobseeker's allowance households, incapacity benefit claimants, and the proportion of working-age adults aged 22 to 59 with no or low levels of qualifications. Information was aggregated and broken down into small geographical areas known as output areas and special output areas.

There are 5,022 output areas, each with a population of approximately 350 people. There are 890 special output areas, each with a population of approximately 2,000. Approximately one third of the special output areas were classified as rural, with the other two thirds classified as urban. It is important to remember that not all deprived people live in deprived areas. The deprivation measures will identify areas with large concentrations of deprived people, but those deprived people living in areas where only a small proportion of the population is deprived will be excluded from a solely spatially based policy.

What is wrong with the measures in their operation in rural areas for measuring poverty and deprivation? In the past, NISRA acknowledged and addressed concerns from representatives from the rural community in the 2005 and 2010 research. Although special output areas were designed to have special population sizes of approximately 2,000 to aid comparison across Northern Ireland, due to the smaller geographical size and similar socio-economic characteristics of the population in urban areas compared with rural areas, small area concentrations of deprivation are more readily identifiable in urban than rural areas.

In the geographically larger rural areas, the socio-economic characteristics of the population vary to a great extent. Clusters of deprived households or concentrations of deprivation are, therefore, identified less often in rural special output areas. When one looks at the most deprived rural super output areas and compares the difference between 2005 and 2010, one sees that 10 of the areas have either worsened or seen a very minor improvement. The other 10 that did see an improvement are still in the bottom 20, which tells a tale of how effective the Executive have been in alleviating deprivation.

The situation is even worse for urban super output areas. Of the bottom 20 urban areas in 2010, 19 were in Belfast and one was in Londonderry. Fifteen of the areas that were in the bottom 20 in 2005 were still there in 2010. From the NISRA statistics, it would appear that the Executive's ability to alleviate urban deprivation is as ineffective in urban areas as it is in rural areas.

What alternatives exist to the measures that would be more accurate? We recognise that the indicators are five years old and are based on information that is even older. We also believe that reform and re-evaluation should be constantly ongoing in virtually every walk of life so that lessons can be learned and improvements made. Therefore, we would not be opposed to looking at alternatives that might deliver a more accurate or equitable outcome. However, we must take care to ensure that any changes we might propose are not only an improvement on what is there already but that they hold up to rigorous academic scrutiny.

The Northern Ireland multiple deprivation measures 2010 are based on the same methodology developed by the social disadvantage research centre at the University of Oxford and used in the surveys of 2001 and 2005, as well as for multiple deprivation measures in England, Scotland and Wales.

If we are seriously talking about moving away from this, we need to be very clear about what measures we propose to remove and ensure that the alternatives that we propose are capable of standing up to robust scrutiny.

We support the motion and point out the dangers of deviating from common practice in the rest of the UK.

Photo of Kieran McCarthy Kieran McCarthy Alliance

I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate and fully support the motion to review the multiple deprivation indicators. However, it is worthwhile pointing out that, although I support the urgent review of the indicators, they have served a purpose over the past five years.

The 'Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure', as was mentioned by other Members, was published in May 2010 and replaced the 2005 report. Five years have passed, and the context that the people of Northern Ireland face is dramatically different from before. Accordingly, from the outset, it is clear that the indicators must be reviewed to update their effectiveness for the purpose that they were created for, namely, challenging poverty and deprivation right across Northern Ireland. The 2010 report published by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) presented key indicators that it felt could best be used by Departments to tackle deprivation in Northern Ireland. However, tackling deprivation is complex, given the many interrelated forms that it can take, and the 2010 report attempted to recognise that through the seven general indicator areas that it chose. However, a key and recurring word throughout the 2010 report was "relative" — that is to say that it should not be taken as absolute and applicable to every context.

That brings us to the debate today on the challenges that rural areas are facing in tackling poverty and deprivation. Statistics show us that, in rural areas throughout Northern Ireland, food and fuel poverty rates are higher and access to employment and housing significantly more difficult than in urban areas. Despite that, rural areas are not ranked higher in the index table, even though affluent rural areas have been shown to contain those living in poverty or deprivation. Those individuals and their families are being overlooked when it comes to support from the Assembly because of the nature of the indicators as they stand, and it is one of the reasons why my party colleagues and I have called for their urgent review.

Moreover, I would like to see an improvement in the indicators through the recognition of opportunity deprivation, which could be highly eye-opening, given that it could be argued that application of the current index does not accurately represent our rural communities and thus is leading to a vicious circle of poverty and migration from these areas. Access to public services, education and, therefore, the opportunity to improve oneself is vital. A 1000-mile journey begins with one step, and the current indicators should not be seen as failures in the struggle against poverty and deprivation. Rather, they should be seen as positive steps towards recognising a complex issue in our drive to realise our objective of defeating poverty and deprivation in rural areas.

In conclusion, I fully support the motion and call on the Minister to review the indicators used as soon as possible as we move into an uncertain and concerning 2016. Indeed, issues such as this should serve as a reminder of how essential the work of the Assembly is and why the Executive are so vital to the people of Northern Ireland. It is a real pity and shame that the Chamber is not full of Members, including the Minister, to discuss and debate fully the important issues in the motion. However, the Alliance Party is content to support it.

Photo of Ian Milne Ian Milne Sinn Féin

Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-LeasCheann Comhairle. I begin by acknowledging the work that the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development has conducted to date as part of the Tackling Rural Poverty and Social Inclusion (TRPSI) review. I found the presentations and discussions that followed very informative indeed. I also record my thanks to the research team for preparing the pack in preparation for the debate.

It is generally accepted among rural stakeholders that the methodology used for measuring deprivation does not accurately assess the extent of deprivation in rural areas. Urban and rural areas are not directly comparable. Rural areas are not populated in the same manner; rural communities are often dispersed, with affluent people and those who are less well off living side by side; the day-to-day difficulties that rural dwellers face are not the same as those faced by those who live in urban settings; and the level and depth of poverty are not as easily identified. Rural dwellers are also not as likely to take up benefit entitlements, and farmers, in particular, often have no access to benefits due to having family land or buildings despite having no or little income.

Deprivation can come in different forms, such as a lack of access to opportunities. Rural dwellers have to travel to attend higher education, to increase their employment prospects, to access health care and to socialise. The multiple deprivation measures disproportionately focus on income level and employment as domains but do not consider the higher cost of living in the countryside.

As has been stated by Members who have spoken, a lack of public transport makes it a requirement for most rural householders to own at least one car. Added to that are the running costs and the travel time that is lost each day by getting to and from work, appointments, childcare providers and shops. As has been stated, a 2010 study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the minimum income standard concluded that rural dwellers need to spend 10% to 20% more on everyday requirements than their urban counterparts. No allowance is made for that in the multiple deprivation measures. Additionally, those factors impact on who can avail of employment opportunities and increase the likelihood of young people emigrating or moving to urban areas.

Another concern that has been voiced is the weighting afforded to the proximity to services domain in the current methodology. The fact that there is a lower weighting of 10% means that rural areas are unlikely to feature in the top 10% or 20% of the most deprived areas across the North, which has implications for funding and anti-poverty programmes. That is further compounded by the fact that proximity to services is not the same as access to services. The ability to access services has huge implications for the elderly, the disabled and people on low incomes. It becomes irrelevant how far leisure centres or hospitals are if you do not have the ability to get there.

That is evidenced by the fact that no rural areas ranked in the top 10% most deprived of the 890 super output areas across the North. That was despite a survey by End Poverty Now in 2013, which estimated that 35% of children in Maghera, a small town in the constituency that I come from, are growing up in poverty and a recent claim by the Trades Union Congress that female part-time workers in Mid Ulster, a predominantly rural constituency, are the worst paid in the North.

Despite explanations from NISRA in relation to how the MDM figures should be read in a rural context, that does not appear to be the reality. There is perhaps a lack of understanding in Departments and the public sector about the guidance for rural areas, but that could be remedied by moving forward with the review and changing the method of capturing and presenting data. The MDM statistics are regularly used when addressing social need. Therefore, if we are to tackle poverty and disadvantage effectively, we need to look at how it is measured.

I am encouraged by the work of the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development to date and the acknowledgement from NISRA when it completed the 2010 review that further work needed to be undertaken to identify rural deprivation.

Photo of Robin Newton Robin Newton DUP 1:45, 14 September 2015

I ask the Member to bring his remarks to a conclusion.

Photo of Ian Milne Ian Milne Sinn Féin

Whilst agreement has still to be reached on a preferred methodology, there is widespread consensus among interested rural groups that the current system is not accurately measuring poverty and deprivation in rural areas. I join my party colleagues in calling on the Minister of Finance and Personnel to bring forward the review as a matter of urgency.

Photo of Dolores Kelly Dolores Kelly Social Democratic and Labour Party

As someone who lives in the townland of the Montiaghs, I am acutely aware of the paucity of service provision and access to public services experienced by rural communities. However, I am sure that many people are prepared to pay some price in lack of access so that they can enjoy the beauty of the Irish countryside. Twenty-first century statistics continue to show that the level of unfit houses that people have to live in across rural Northern Ireland is quite mind-boggling. I think that Fermanagh still experiences the highest level of unfitness.

Increasingly, the private sector is providing domiciliary care in the form of home helps, and I have to deal with that issue in my constituency. However, that sector says that it does not particularly want to do that business. It has stopped paying its staff the mileage to and from homes and it cannot recruit staff. I had to intervene in a case where a person had gone into hospital and was then put into respite care. The family wanted their mother home so that they could care for her, but the trust was unable to provide the home help, or domiciliary care provision, to allow that person to be discharged.

The indices that others have referred to during their contributions this afternoon have a real and meaningful impact on how services are provided. Rural people seldom ask for help. As others have said, there is great community support and people do not like to complain. Sometimes, people do not like to complain because they think that, if they complain about the services not being great, they will not even get to keep the service that is not so great that they are already getting. There is a greater need for people to look at the reality of service provision and at the definition of necessity versus luxury. Having two cars at a rural home is a necessity. It is half a mile from my house to the nearest school bus stop, and, quite often, the children walked that distance. That is a reality not just for my kids but for many other children.

As others have said, a high level of fuel poverty is also experienced by many people. New challenges have been set by DSD, for example, in how the affordable warmth scheme is being delivered. Based on research commissioned by Queen's, I think, local authorities now go out and knock doors and ask people whether they are living in rural poverty and whether they need some help with boiler installation etc. I am not saying that that is the case, but it would be tempting for those officers to hit a hotspot in an urban area, where they could run up and down the street and do about 10 houses in the space of an hour, whereas it would take them two or three hours to cover a rural area.

I would like to see some realism injected into the outworkings of NISRA's definition of deprivation and the poverty indicators. I would like to see greater cohesion across the Executive table. It is with great regret that I note that the Executive, and OFMDFM in particular, were taken to court by the Committee on the Administration of Justice over their failure to deliver an anti-poverty strategy. You would think that it is something that would be uncontroversial. If we were all putting the needs of the most vulnerable at the heart of our decision-making, we would resolve and collaborate on those issues very quickly.

It is not just the Finance Minister who needs to look at how some of the indices are calculated. A former principal of my local primary school told me that free school meals were not a good indicator, as many families are too embarrassed to take them. The uptake of school uniforms would be a much truer reflection of poverty in these areas. There is a job of work to be done —

Photo of Robin Newton Robin Newton DUP

I ask the Member to bring her remarks to a close.

Photo of Dolores Kelly Dolores Kelly Social Democratic and Labour Party

— by not only the Finance Minister but the whole Executive.

Photo of Roy Beggs Roy Beggs UUP

First, I recognise the professional manner in which the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency collects statistics to ensure that they are robust. This research was carried out in a very professional manner, which means that we are working with figures that are as accurate as possible.

When I look through the 52 indicators, I see a degree of validity in each one of them: a reason why it has been included. I do not think that there is a need for vast change, although there may be a need for tweaking. Certainly, like my colleague, I am open to taking a good look at and re-evaluating them. However, any change will need to stand up to scrutiny, not only from rural communities but from those in need in urban communities.

I note from the information pack provided to us by the Library, for which I am grateful, that, in the past, the statistics were produced using methodology developed by the Social Disadvantage Research Centre at the University of Oxford. They follow a methodology similar to those used to produce multiple deprivation figures for England, Scotland and Wales. It is important that we know what the need in Northern Ireland is relative to other parts of the United Kingdom.

There is wide recognition that not all deprived people lived in a deprived area, and, similarly, not all people in a deprived area are deprived. There is no perfect indicator: once you get away from the individual or the household to spatial areas, you lose a degree of accuracy. The most accurate measurement is of individuals and individual households: for example, in my constituency, Glenfield estate in Carrickfergus has been widely recognised over the years as an area of need, but its need has been masked by its location in an otherwise relatively affluent area — certainly, more affluent areas neighbour the estate. There are problems with whatever method is used.

When I tried to read up on this, I noted something in the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development's position paper on DARD's anti-poverty and social inclusion programme. NISRA has told the Committee that Wales has just provided an update and advised that it is waiting for — guess who? — OFMDFM and the statistics coordinating group, which is a cross-departmental group, to give direction on the way forward. The motion criticises the wrong group. NISRA appears to be saying that it is not holding anything up: it is the politicians in OFMDFM. We cannot criticise the statisticians when the political direction has not been given. Those who tabled the motion should have been aware of that, and, rather than criticising statisticians, recognised that the failing is in OFMDFM.

Going forward, local councils will play an increasing role in this area as they take a wider interest in community planning. I hope that that will be the case. There are particular challenges in rural communities at present. There is an obvious additional cost to every individual and every family living in a rural community when they have to travel, no matter what they do. Whether they travel on the limited public transport available, hire a taxi or use vehicles that families are forced to keep on the road as the only means of getting to their local town or village.

There is also the issue of heating. Gas is widely recognised as the most efficient method of heating, but it is not available in every rural household. That is just an outworking of the practicalities of gas supply. There are undoubtedly additional costs to living in rural communities.

I commend the MARA project for the work it has carried out over the years in trying to identify those in need who may not have taken up all their benefit entitlement and trying to give them help and advice. That has been a worthwhile project, and there will be a need for it going forward, particularly at this time —

Photo of Robin Newton Robin Newton DUP 2:00, 14 September 2015

I ask the Member to bring his remarks to a close.

Photo of Roy Beggs Roy Beggs UUP

— given the difficulties that exist in the rural community and the current financial situation in agriculture.

I am open to looking at change, and I support the motion.

Photo of Robin Newton Robin Newton DUP

As Question Time begins at 2.00 pm, I suggest that the House takes its ease until then. This debate will continue after Question Time, when the next Member to speak will be Mr Oliver McMullan to conclude and wind on the debate.

(Mr Speaker in the Chair)