House of Commons debates

Most recent appearances listed first.

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• Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister: Clause 93 — Benefit cap
  

  May I just make it clear that I oppose a benefit cap in principle? This policy has been borne out of prejudice and political expediency, rather than reason. In every recession there are scapegoats, and it is usually the poor, who become a political football for political game-playing and advantage. I am not morally willing to involve myself in that debasing political game.

  We all have to bring our own experiences of our constituents to this debate, which has exposed differences in their lifestyles, and at times it has been apparent that we do live in different worlds. I do not begrudge Members and their constituents who are in good, well-paid employment, in a secure home that they can afford and in a decent environment, but that is not the experience of many of my constituents, or of many constituents throughout the country.

  I have lived in my constituency for about 35 years, and I live in statistically the most deprived ward in the borough. The vast majority of people whom I see around me desperately want to do what is needed to ensure that their families have a good quality of life. They pay back into the community in many ways, they work long hours often in insecure employment and their pay, in many instances, is low and often below the London living wage.

  The risk is unemployment, which over recent years in my constituency has increased by 52%, and over the past year by 7%, so there will be times when many of my constituents will not be able to find work. They struggle, above all else, just to provide a decent roof over their family’s heads, and that is because we face the worst housing crisis since the second world war. Housing supply has not kept up with housing demand, council houses that were sold off in the 1980s and ’90s have not been replaced by successive Governments, and there has been an expansion in buy-to-let, higher-rent-charging landlords, who provide many of my constituents

  with squalid housing conditions and overcrowding—Rachmanite landlords, who are building up lucrative property empires.

• Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister: Clause 93 — Benefit cap
  

  Some Members will have seen recent television programmes that relate to my constituents and to Rachmanite landlords. It has not happened overnight; I blame what has happened over the past 30 years. So what is the logic of the cap for my constituents. Is it an incentive to secure work? The vast majority need no incentive; they are desperate for work. Yes, there is a small minority who will always refuse to seek work, but there are already sanctions for that, introduced by this and the last Government. I already have constituents turning up at my surgery who have been automatically suspended from benefits for three months for the slightest infringement, and they include many who suffer mental health problems or who simply cannot work through the system themselves.

  Is the idea to force people to move to cheaper accommodation? Most in my area pay the rents that they pay because they have no other option; there is nothing to downsize to. In any case, the new housing benefit regulations to force down rents have already been introduced. Benefits in my area already do not meet the full cost of rents. People are faced with options. How do they make up the gap between the benefit and the rent? In some instances this winter, there has been a choice between heating and eating.

  I repeat that in my constituency—and this is happening across the country—we now distribute food parcels to keep people in some form of civilised existence. If people are to move, where do they move to? My local council is advising people to move to Leicester, Southampton, Manchester and elsewhere in the north. The problem is that the lower-rent areas are where there are no jobs. We are in a vicious cycle of forcing people into areas where they cannot survive.

  For me, the cap simply means that more of my constituents will be forced into poverty. All the statistics demonstrate that children will be hardest hit. There is already the problem of children in families being churned from temporary accommodation to temporary accommodation. That destabilises the family and has an impact on their education. The cap is supposed to control costs, but, as has been said time and again, we simply need to control rents. Halt the profiteering by landlords that has gone on in recent decades.

  My view is simply that the cap is unnecessary and based on prejudice and political posturing. In past debates in the House, there have also been discussions about cutting the cost of welfare. There was one quote about benefits being an incitement to idleness. Such expressions were used in the debates about the poor law and eventually led to policies of less eligibility and the workhouse. We do not seem to have learned anything in two centuries about poverty and how to tackle it.

• Oral Answers to Questions — Treasury: EU Sanctions (Iran)
  

  There have been reports and allegations that covert military operations have already taken place in Iran, with bombings and assassinations. Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that the UK Government and the UK are not involved in the operations and that they do not support such intervention by foreign forces?

• Keeping of Primates As Pets (Prohibition): Clause 1 — Local retention of non-domestic rates
  

  Only slightly?

• Keeping of Primates As Pets (Prohibition): Clause 1 — Local retention of non-domestic rates
  

  I feel a bit like Banquo’s ghost in this debate because I was chair of finance on the Greater London council, whose expenditure tipped Mrs Thatcher over the edge and into nationalising the business rates. There are real problems with the complexities of the Bill, as set out in the briefing from London Councils. It is difficult for individual Members of Parliament and individual local authorities to work out the implications for one’s area. Although we cannot receive witnesses on the Floor of the House, as the Deputy Speaker said, the Government have introduced a procedure whereby we can pause a Bill to enable us to undertake further consideration and consultation with the relevant interested parties. Perhaps the Government could consider that at some point during the day. We might want to pause the Bill and come back to it later, after more detailed discussions with interested parties.

• Oral Answers to Questions — Health: High-speed Rail
  

  Because the Heathrow link will be in phase 2 of the project, my constituents will not know their futures until late 2014. Will the Secretary of State ensure that HS2 Ltd opens

  up its books and shares the information about the range of options it is considering for the link at the earliest stage?

• Oral Answers to Questions — Attorney-General: Public Service Pensions
  

  Is not the truth of the matter that even with this settlement, public sector workers will pay more, work longer and receive less, that the Government have bullied into submission a number of trade unions, and that those that refused to submit have not walked away from the talks but have been refused access to them? Does the Chief Secretary not accept that his role in all this is to destroy the industrial relations climate in this country, possibly for a generation?

• Oral Answers to Questions — Cabinet Office: Public Sector Pensions
  

  The Minister earlier announced that if he had not secured agreement by Christmas, he would impose a pensions settlement or scheme on the unions. Is that still his intention, and if it is, will he make a statement to the House next week?

• Charities Bill [Lords]: Prevention of Nuclear Proliferation
  

  I, too, preface my remarks by stating that I have been a consistent opponent of the regime in Iran. I founded the Hands Off the People of Iran organisation in this country to campaign for the restoration of democracy in Iran and, with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley), have signed a number of early-day motions in support of human rights in Iran. I have focused on the persecution of trade unionists, particularly those in the Tehran bus workers union, but I also led the campaign in this country to free Jafar Panahi, the film director.

  Having said all that, I am extremely fearful of the statutory instrument under consideration, because I fear that it will take us into the cul-de-sac of war, which is an all too familiar path for us in this country: we seem to find an opponent, which is usually associated with minerals or oil; we then find that it is a threat to world safety; and we then find or concoct evidence of that threat. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s recent report failed to find any conclusive evidence of nuclear weapons production and, in fact, found no evidence of Iran’s

  “diversion of declared nuclear material”

  to weapons production.

  The report relies on past evidence, which we have debated in the House before: a laptop computer, originating we believe from the Israeli or US intelligence services and referring to the development of a nuclear weapons programme by a certain scientist, Vyacheslav Danilenko. We were told at one point that this Ukrainian was a nuclear science expert, but we now discover that he was an expert in nanotechnology and had no real expertise in nuclear weapons. We were told also that there was a technique, supposedly being developed by the Iranians, involving a test explosion chamber, but we now know from the evidence of Robert Kelly, the chief of the IAEA for eight years in Iraq, that the chamber could never be used in a test.

• Charities Bill [Lords]: Prevention of Nuclear Proliferation
  

  I would, but we are short of time, so if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not. I am sure that he understands.

  All that evidence led to the conclusion by Mr Mohamed el-Baradei, the former head of the IAEA, that he had “no confidence” in the allegations based upon it, but it has convinced the new head of the IAEA, Mr Yukiya Amano. WikiLeaks has, unfortunately, exposed comments from the US on Mr Amano, however, whom it describes as

  “solidly in the US court”

  and “ready for prime time”.

  So I begin to doubt the independence of his judgment on the matter.

  It seems that we are being drawn into an atmosphere of war, and sanctions lead to war. Recent research by Professor Robert Pape of the university of Chicago demonstrates that 95.7% of cases of sanctions since world war one have led to military conflict, but who suffers? I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North that it is not the elite, but the poorest. The reaction is usually for the ruling elite to blame the ills of the country on foreign forces, and sometimes it even unites the country against a foreign foe, but the tragedy is that sanctions often motivate a regime to seek to protect itself by acquiring the very weapons that we seek to rid ourselves of.

  There has been military action on the ground already. We have evidence of that from various reports—not just the drone, but intelligence assets on the ground relating to assassinations. The chair of our own parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee could not rule out such assassinations having been undertaken by Israelis, and he confirmed that on occasions the US and Israeli Governments have given authority for assassinations.

  I just want to get on the record my fear that we have trodden this path before, and that after sanctions come the bombs, then invasion, then loss of life, destabilisation and a growth in terrorism, then usually the installation of a puppet regime and the privatisation and exploitation by western countries of the mineral and oil resources. I hope against hope that we are not embarking on that tonight with this statutory instrument, but I have this dreadful fear of “Here we go again”.

• Opposition Day: [Un-allotted Half Day] — Public Sector Pensions
  

  I just want to make a couple of brief statements, and I apologise for not being present during the opening speeches, but I was actually speaking at a conference on vulnerable workers.

  I just ask the Government to let the negotiators negotiate. When the civil service unions attended the scheme’s talks this week, they were told what they can and cannot discuss. They cannot discuss pension age, despite the previous assurances that Ministers have

  given them. All schemes have to relate to the state pension age, so, even though some schemes may be able to afford a pension age of 65 years old, the Government are refusing to allow them even to negotiate it. The unions are also told that indexation is off the agenda, and that the index has to be CPI, not earnings, as Hutton recommended, or RPI, as currently.

  The schemes have to be career-average. The civil service unions are not allowed to discuss contributions, which have to increase by 3.2% so that the average contribution is 5.6%. Costs always have to be within the scheme’s limit, but in addition the only transitional protection that they can discuss is 10 years for those aged 50, plus the three to four years of tapering for those just below that age. Even if the unions find savings, they cannot use them in another way for further protection. They cannot discuss Treasury assumptions about the discount rate, actuarial reductions for early retirement or any normal pension scheme issues. They are told also that they cannot discuss the abatement rules, which enable staff to take their accrued pension and work on. They can discuss the accrual rate, but that is all pre-determined by the other elements not being open for negotiation.

  So, what the civil service unions are allowed to discuss in the negotiations is nothing of substance, and in reality we face further industrial action because the Government will not allow negotiations to take place. The Government take an intimidatory attitude by putting things on the agenda and, if they do not get their way, then taking them off.

  I echo what other Members have said about the contempt with which negotiators have been treated. I watched the discussion between the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr Maude) and Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, when the Minister accused him of not being at meetings. I now discover that Mark Serwotka was at every meeting that the Minister was at—matched on every occasion. If the Government are not deliberately provoking this dispute, they are walking into further industrial action because of their refusal to allow negotiations to take place.

  I have toured around, talking to individual unions, and I have spoken to several union executives this week, but the depth of anger does not come from general secretaries or from executives; it comes from rank-and-file trade unionists, most of whom have never taken industrial action in their lives but all of whom are dedicated to the public service that they seek to provide.

  So I just appeal to the Government: start negotiating properly; allow proper discussions to take place; seek to avoid industrial action; stop the abuse—the “damp squib” provocations that the Prime Minister has made; and start telling the truth about what people are going to get, because they are going to work longer, get less and pay more. If we look at the calculations that have been made using the Government’s own calculator, we find that no one will get more unless they work for many more years, and teachers and others do not want to work until they are 68 years old just to get some form of pension income that they can live off.

  I urge the Government to get back to the negotiating table and to take their restrictions off the negotiations. They are dealing with people who are dedicated to

  public service, who are willing to settle and who do not want to seek further industrial action. I warn the Government that if they do not negotiate properly there will inevitably be more disruption and more industrial action—and that the Government will be to blame for it.

• Chancellor of the Exchequer: Benefits Uprating
  

  Many of my constituents may well have welcomed the increase, but they cannot because they are no longer receiving their benefit, particularly as a result of the extremely bizarre assessments of their disability by Atos—

• Chancellor of the Exchequer: Benefits Uprating
  

  Many of my constituents would have welcomed the increase but they cannot because they are no longer receiving their benefit, particularly as a result of the Atos assessments of disability living allowance. In addition to that, having lost, or not gained, their benefit, they are waiting long periods for their appeals. Will the Minister look at the length of time that people are waiting for their appeals and the number of appeals that have been postponed as a result of lack of staff?

• Backbench Business: BBC (Proposed Cuts)
  

  I want to speak about the decision-making process that has been taking place over the past couple of years, which has, to be frank, been a nightmare. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to hold this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) set out the overall implications of Delivering Quality First. He chairs the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group, of which I am the secretary. We have lived with the process for the last two years. We have met the staff who have lost their jobs already, and the staff whose careers are now at risk.

  What comes out of every one of these debates is a consensual view across the House about the importance of the BBC. It is always described as a jewel in the crown of British culture, and as setting world standards in public service broadcasting. Many Members have emphasised its critical role as a foundation stone of local and national democracy. However, as a result of Delivering Quality First, as Members have set out, there will be significant cuts over time, which not only undermines the BBC’s potential to maintain those standards but shows that there is an agenda about the long-term future of the BBC itself.

  It is important to discuss how we got here. There is a lesson for future Governments about how decisions are made on the issue. Never again should we have to go through this process. This is not just a budgetary exercise. The assault on the BBC is driven by an agenda that has been set elsewhere. I remember the James Murdoch lecture in 2009 at the Edinburgh television festival, in which he set out an agenda which, regrettably, the Government are following almost to the letter. He set out the objective of the Murdoch empire to deregulate the media overall and undermine the BBC by cutting its supply of funds.

• Backbench Business: BBC (Proposed Cuts)
  

  There are always benefits from a process like this. My concern is about the long-term future and some of the short-term implications that the hon. Gentleman himself pointed out. We should not wander into this debate naively, because there is a separate agenda, which was set by James Murdoch at that time. The tone of sheer arrogance in that speech somewhat contrasts with the tone of his performance in the hearings by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. In that speech, he proclaimed his advocacy of Darwinism, and he said that he believed in natural selection in all things, particularly within the media market. It was like Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street” saying, “Greed…is good.” James Murdoch proclaimed that the law of the jungle worked. It was almost Orwellian. I shall quote him exactly:

  “There is an inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society. The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence of the media is profit.”

  That is exactly the agenda that was set. It is that philosophy in other sections of the media that has led us all the way down to the Leveson inquiry and the descent of parts of the media into the gutter. This is not a conspiracy theory. I do not need to mention the 11 occasions on which the Prime Minister has met Murdoch’s News International. I do not need to mention the six occasions on which the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport has done so, or the three occasions on which the Deputy Prime Minister has done so. I do not think that it is part of those meetings; I do not think that it is part of a conspiracy. I simply think that the Government share that agenda.

• Backbench Business: BBC (Proposed Cuts)
  

  The hon. Gentleman is a new Member, and I understand the point that he has made. Other Members have made that point. I do not want to criticise him, but if he had been here throughout the debate, he would have heard them make those specific points. I want to make my specific points, not seek to replicate or repeat other points that have been made, if that is okay with the hon. Gentleman.

  I simply make this point. My concern is that this is not just a cost-cutting exercise. It is part of a political agenda that, in the long term, is aimed at undermining the BBC. It has been set outside Government—not in Government—but the Government concur with it. Secondly, I was here with the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby, and was involved in discussions on the licence fee settlement. I never ever want to go through that exercise again, because it put at risk the future of a whole range of people, and that was not taken into account.

  I remember the Secretary of State advising the director-general of the BBC in August 2010 that there would be a long consultation on the BBC licence fee, which would be determined the following spring. However, I also remember—my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby has alluded to this—that weekend in October, and the 48 hours in which the Government brought the BBC in and threatened it. The right hon. Member for Bath is right: the BBC was threatened either with the licence for the over-75s being taken over—in other words, a £530 million cut immediately—or it had to take on proposals on the World Service, BBC Monitor and the Secretary of State’s grandiose plans for the future of television development. It was placed in an invidious position and there were threats of resignation, which created pandemonium in the settlement process. We had thought that the process would be a rational debate that this House could shape or influence in some way, but in fact it was the grubbiest deal we have seen in any public sector settlement of recent years. The people least taken account of were the workers who supply the service itself, which I think was disgraceful. If we learn nothing else across the parties, we should learn to behave in such instances in future.

  What are the implications? One implication is that the management must now implement another 1,000 job cuts on top of the 7,000 that have been made since 2004. They are implementing those cuts with exceptionally limited consultation or engagement with the unions. Agreements are being torn up before workers’ eyes with minimal consultation.

  My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby referred to the meeting of BBC NUJ reps in Belfast on 14 October, which involved all staff, who were anxious about the process. I can quote the director-general—the problem with speaking in front of trained journalists is that they normally know short-hand—who said:

  “If you’re really that unhappy, if you think that you can’t do your best work here then leave—no-one is forcing you to stay.”

  That is real management empathy—unfortunately, Hansard does not do irony—with people, many of whom are about to lose their jobs. Such behaviour by management would be unacceptable in any structure, whether public or private. It resulted, for the first time in the BBC’s

  history, in a vote of no confidence by the staff in the director-general and his competence to manage the organisation.

  I urge the BBC to pull back and start engaging in proper discussions and consultations. Otherwise, as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said in relation to Scotland, some unions might move towards industrial action unless there are proper negotiations and their views are taken account of properly. I agree that that raises the issue of salaries in the BBC, and not just for the stars, but for management overall. I think that it is obscene that the director-general earns four times more than the Prime Minister. As has been said, we should consider the high level of salaries throughout and, in particular, the inequality between the high and low salaries. In a public organisation that is simply unacceptable.

  A number of Members have raised concerns about local radio services, and we could list them and put the lists in the House Library for Members to see, but the cuts to stations right across the piece are effectively undermining local radio as we know it. It has recently been praised very affectionately in two debates, yet BBC management does not seem to take account of the views of Members expressed here. I do not believe that S4C is safe in the long term or that the deal with hold. I think that the Government will come back for more cuts. It is not about freezing the licence fee, as I think they will come back for further cuts in future years.

  I am also anxious about the World Service. The right hon. Member for Bath has worked with us on that and there has been excellent cross-party work to try to protect as much of the World Service as we can, but there have already been cuts and I think that it is still in jeopardy overall. Political coverage is being undermined not only in the regions, but nationally, as we have seen 2,000 jobs going in some of the BBC’s core political reportage.

  Overall, I am deeply anxious about the settlement. The only way now is to have a proper discussion—the discussion we should have had last year. Instead of it being bounced through in 48 hours, there should have been a proper discussion and consultation, and I believe that the only way forward now is to reopen the licence fee debate.

  Let me say just one final thing on two parochial matters. Several hon. Friends have mentioned the Asian Network, a service that has grown over the years into one of the country’s most popular and well received stations and brought about social cohesion as the BBC is meant to, but a 50% cut in the Asian Network will, as every Member knows, undermine that service, and it will be picked off. That is salami-slicing, and it undermines the viability of particular services.

  On my local BBC radio station, Radio London, sport is one of its most popular elements, but we are now told that cricket, rugby league and rugby union will no longer be covered, and that football coverage will be curtailed. As a result of such cuts, a station eventually loses its listenership, and that in turn threatens the viability of the station itself.

  That is what we are fighting for. We are fighting not just against marginal cuts, but for the future of the BBC, the future of local radio, the future of specialist

  services such as the Asian Network and the future of services for the nations, regions and principalities that are under threat in the longer term. The only way in which they can be saved is by breaking the Murdoch agenda, by getting back to a discussion about the BBC as a public service, the jewel in the crown, and by reopening the debate about the licence fee—so that we can have a viable BBC for the long term.

• Oral Answers to Questions — Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Autumn Statement
  

  In my constituency, religious and community organisations are now providing food parcels to poor families. At the same time, we are seeing executive pay and remuneration soar. There was nothing in the Budget statement that addressed executive pay or remuneration. Are the Government going to bring forward some controls to tackle that obscene inequality?

• Points of Order
  

  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 2 November the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made a statement to the House regarding the Government’s latest offer to unions on the public sector pensions issue. In the statement and in the document he published, he included examples of the pensions that public sector workers would obtain under his proposal. Later that day, the Prime Minister told the House—he has repeated this today—that on that basis, low and middle earners would get more from their pensions. The Cabinet Office subsequently published on its website a pension calculator on which people could check what pension they would receive under the Chief Secretary’s latest announced offer. As was revealed on “Channel 4 News” last night, the calculator demonstrated that the Chief Secretary’s original examples

  were simply wrong, and that his statement and the Prime Minister’s comments were simply incorrect. The calculator showed that low and middle earners would get less at comparable retirement rates. The calculator has since been taken down from the website.

  Three million public sector workers may go on strike on 30 November unless the dispute is resolved, so it is vital that accurate information be provided to the House and to the general public. The Chief Secretary has unwittingly conveyed inaccurate information to the House and, through you, Mr Speaker, I would ask that he be requested to return to the House to correct the error and provide an accurate assessment of the Government’s pension proposals.

• Points of Order
  

  May I make a further point of order, Mr Speaker?

• Points of Order
  

  Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker, I simply want to disagree with you regarding the phrase “an exceptionally clever chap”.