Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

Not only have we looked at that; we are doing it. In the spending review, we announced an extra £900 million for HMRC, which is creating an extra 2,000 specialist posts to tackle tax avoidance and tax evasion. It took the hon. Gentleman’s party 12 years just to set up a specialist unit at HMRC to deal with high net worth individuals. We have extended that to ensure that there is a specialist unit to deal with the tax affairs of all those who pay, or should pay, the 50p rate.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

10. What steps he is taking to tackle excessive executive pay.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

14. What steps he is taking to tackle excessive executive pay.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)]

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), yesterday announced a package of proposals designed to address the market failure in setting executive pay. The proposals represent a major step forward in empowering shareholders, reforming remuneration committees and improving transparency in order to give shareholders the tools that they need in order to control unacceptable rewards for failure.

[Andrea Leadsom]

What consideration has my right hon. Friend given to a system of three-year rolling executive pay, in which the worsening of performance in one year would lead to a claw-back of remuneration from previous years? Does he think that putting pressure on companies to adopt such a system would be sufficient, or would it be necessary to legislate?

[Danny Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is already part of the Financial Services Authority’s code of practice for banking remuneration. It is particularly important to end the distorting effect of those kinds of incentives in the financial sector, but the additional powers that we are giving to shareholders, which my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary announced yesterday, will allow companies in other sectors to adopt that kind of practice, should they wish to do so.

Youth Unemployment and Bank Bonuses

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend speaks for the many families and young people in all our constituencies who are experiencing a crisis, and I give him credit for recognising their challenges.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady feel at all positive about the Government’s steps to create new apprenticeships for young people to get them into real jobs that will endure?

[Rachel Reeves]

The reality is that the Office for Budget Responsibility has examined all the Government’s plans and predicts that unemployment will continue to rise all the way through this year, and the OECD predicts that it will rise next year as well. That is their verdict on the Government’s economic policy.

Connecting Europe Facility

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

As I understand it, the EU’s ambition is to develop a trans-European network in transport, telecommunications and energy as part of the treaty on the functioning of the EU. It therefore wants the budget for 2014 to 2020 to include sufficient funds to put an extra €50 billion into a connecting Europe facility. However, it also wants to regulate EU-wide programmes. Specifically, on transport, it is proposing that member states commit to a core network by 2030, and to a comprehensive transport network by 2050. The EU estimates that it would cost Britain between £64 billion and £137 billion to meet those targets over that period. Does the Minister believe that if such a regulation were to come into force under qualified majority voting, it could force Britain to spend that amount of its own resources in a way that would be directed by the EU? That would be an astonishing outcome.

On energy, the Commission believes that member states need to spend €200 billion on electricity and gas networks alone, and that €1 trillion is needed for EU energy infrastructure in total. Will the Minister tell me what proportion of that the UK would be required to spend, and whether that requirement would be enforceable at EU level under QMV?

On telecoms, the EU target for rolling out broadband is different from that of the UK. The Commission believes that there are telecoms bottlenecks that hinder the single market. In the light of our own recent commitment to rolling out superfast broadband, I would be interested to know whether the Minister thinks that the British Government need the EU’s advice or the Commission’s targets on how, and to what level, we roll out superfast broadband here. Are those legitimate areas for the EU to be involved in, or are they domestic matters? Does the Minister see a pan-European angle to these questions or not?

What is the Minister’s view of top-down EU expenditure, made entirely at the taxpayer’s expense, as opposed to private sector, or combined public and private sector, investment? Is he aware of any efforts by the Commission to test private sector interest in some of its pet schemes? What proportion of the roughly €7 billion that Britain’s taxpayers would contribute to the connection fund would be spent here, where there is a huge backlog of infrastructure needs, rather than elsewhere in Europe?

I want to make three broad comments on the proposals, in support of the motion. First, I find it astonishing that the European Commission seems to be the only bit of Europe in which the recession, the financial crisis and the issues of sovereign insolvency have passed unnoticed. It is as though it were inhabiting a parallel universe.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the cost of moving from Brussels to Strasbourg on a regular basis is an ideal budget item to be struck through before forcing member states to spend money on these proposals?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes, I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s excellent idea. That would be high on my list of bits of wasteful bureaucracy to get rid of.

What sort of parallel universe is the European Commission inhabiting, if it thinks it reasonable to be expanding the European budget for 2014 to 2020 in the current climate? Why is the EU seeking to take power and control over these particular policy areas, at a time when they are already high on our own Government’s agenda? Requiring Britain to contribute to EU funds is not acceptable, and giving the Commission the authority to require Britain to make expenditure on its own domestic projects is equally unacceptable.

My second point is that the EU has proved itself time and again to be an inefficient allocator of scarce resources. In regard to structural funds, Open Europe estimates that Britain has contributed €33 billion between 2007 and 2013, and that we have received roughly €9 billion. If we took back control over that €33 billion, we might well wish to continue to contribute to the poorer EU member states—that is, those with a national income of 90% of the average or less. However, if we had contributed the same amount to those poorer member states, we could also have spent the same €9 billion that we received from the structural fund, creating a £4 billion saving. If Britain had allocated that same amount, €9 billion, to its own regions, plus the same amount to the poorer EU states, there would have been a £4 billion saving that could have gone towards reducing our deficit or investing further in the poorer regions of the UK. The difference identified by Open Europe’s estimate is a result of the leakage due to the recycling of cash between the richer countries.

It is interesting to note that the Department for International Development spends about 4% of its budget on administration, with a target of 2%. By contrast, the EU Commission spends 5.4% of its contributions to overseas aid on administration. No doubt it is very conscious of that figure, as it has been singled out for comment.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The hon. Lady is making quite an interesting point, but does she not agree that the problem with her argument is that the British state does not have any convergence mechanisms?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am sorry, but I am going to have to ask the hon. Gentleman to repeat his question. It does not have any what?

[Jonathan Edwards]

It does not have any convergence mechanisms for redistributing wealth around the British state; that is the whole problem.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He makes a good point, and he is absolutely right. It might interest him to know, however, that of the UK’s 37 regions—as defined by the EU—only two, Cornwall and west Wales, are net recipients of structural funds. All the other regions have been net contributors, including the highlands and islands region, which has contributed a net €66 million to structural funds over the past seven years, and the Tees valley and Durham region, which has contributed a net €453 million over that same period. He makes an interesting point, but in my view Britain would be far better placed to decide where to allocate those scarce resources.

Another illustration of the EU’s inability to do that job is the recent Commission study that found that 170,000 full-time equivalent personnel were needed for a whole year to administer the EU’s structural funds during the last budgetary period. That is an unbelievable number of people. On the grounds of efficiency, therefore, the allocation of funds would be far better being done at home.

My third point relates to legitimacy and localism, particularly in the areas of transport and energy. We are talking about huge, extraordinarily expensive projects that are deemed to be in the national interest. There is no doubt that, while we all want instant access to energy, we are not all so keen to have a nuclear power station two miles down the road. The case must always be made by democratically elected, legitimate leaders for the need for a particular project and/or location. HS2 is a very good example of a project on which a majority of those consulted rejected it, yet where the Government decided that it was in the national interest to disregard their views. In the case of the third runway at Heathrow, the Government decided that public opinion outweighed the national need for aviation expansion. My point is that the EU, with its remote and bureaucratic image in Britain, is hardly the right place from where decisions on projects that affect lives and communities should be taken. The great risk is that local priorities for infrastructure will be undermined while infrastructure for energy and transport projects will be forced on local communities that do not want them.

Let me end with a word of friendly advice to the European Commission. It should focus on facilitating the single market, expanding its membership and contributing to areas that are of common interest to all member states and where the EU together can add value. It should keep away from European domestic affairs and avoid the pernicious creeping power grab that this latest proposal so clearly highlights.

Public Service Pensions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

Yes, they will. I think that I can reassure the hon. Gentleman on all the points that he has made. What we are saying is that we do not want bulk transfers any more, in which the new providers have to set up their own scheme. Instead, the people to whom he refers will continue to be part of the public sector scheme—the NHS scheme, the civil service scheme or whatever—with the new provider, rather than the taxpayer, paying the employer contribution into the scheme. This will create a more secure footing for those people to be on. It is important to be able to give full reassurance to the hon. Gentleman and, through him, to the members of those schemes that he is concerned about.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I congratulate Ministers and the unions on this excellent settlement, particularly because of the way in which it will benefit the lowest paid and part-time workers, many of whom are women. Will my right hon. Friend tell us how many women are likely to benefit from the settlement? Does he also agree that the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) cannot welcome the proposals because of her union paymasters?

[Danny Alexander]

I cannot give my hon. Friend a precise figure for the number of women workers who will benefit, but about 60% of the public sector work force are female, and all those people will benefit from the terms of the scheme. Unfortunately, women workers tend to be among the lowest paid at the moment, and tend to have steady rather than rapidly rising salaries, but they will particularly benefit from the scheme that we are putting in place under the agreement announced today.

Banking Commission Report

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

At times it feels like the current war as well. I do not think that the effects of the financial crisis have disappeared from our economy. Through these proposals, we are taking steps better to protect British taxpayers in the future. There is a decent implementation period for some of the recommendations, such as the loss absorbency recommendations, precisely to take account of what is going on in funding markets. It would be pretty extraordinary if this country, after all that it went through in recent years, with the biggest bank bail-out in the entire world happening here, did not learn the lessons of what went wrong and try to protect people in future.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

The Vickers proposals definitely make banks more robust and more resolvable, but does my right hon. Friend think that they will definitely be more competitive? Specifically, the stickiness of personal current accounts and SME accounts is a real problem. Will he consider the proposal for full account portability rather than this halfway house which just makes it faster to transfer one’s bank account?

[Mr Osborne]

There is a specific reference to full account portability in the report, as my hon. Friend will see when she reads it, and that is there partly because of the point that she made to me about it in the Treasury Committee. We will consider full account portability if the switching service that we introduce is not effective and does not deliver the expected consumer benefits.

Autumn Statement

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Let me explain to the right hon. Lady that what we are seeking to do is to get the pension funds investing in British infrastructure. We are not proposing to provide, in this respect, guarantees for these projects. There are some guarantees set out for specific Government infrastructure projects such as the Thames tidal waste tunnel. What I am talking about with the pension funds is not guaranteed projects like PFI; it is simply about trying to get private sector money invested in British infrastructure. [Interruption.] Let me explain, briefly.

We have Canadian and Australian pension funds investing in Britain, but not British pension funds investing on a sufficient scale. We are going to try to bring them together, through a private sector agreement, into vehicles where they can co-operate and then invest in infrastructure. This is not about the Government underwriting those investments; it is about trying to get the industry together to make private sector investments. There is a memorandum of understanding which sets out how this is done.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I welcome the Chancellor’s statement. It is a great shame that the shadow Chancellor appears to be living in a parallel universe to that of Government Members. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in view of his desire to set up a better and a stronger economy for the future, it would be a good idea to look again at the prospect of account portability in the banking system to create a truly free consumer choice for the future in terms of personal current accounts and small business lending?

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that is a very important part of making sure that customers get the best possible deal. It was the part of the Vickers report that got the least coverage because of the interest in things like ring-fencing. We are determined to introduce changes that allow people to switch their current accounts very easily, and we hope to have them in place before the end of the Parliament.

Fuel Prices

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

This is an important issue that affects every home in my constituency. I add my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for securing this debate.

That appreciation is shared by my constituent Annalise Lucas from Cubert. She is a member of Network Cornwall, which is a network for female small business owners in Cornwall. Like many mums with small children, she balances work—running her costume design business—with looking after her family. Like many hard-working families in my constituency, Annalise and her husband, who works at Newquay Tretherras school, are finding the ever-increasing fuel prices, coupled with the higher costs of living in Cornwall, a real struggle.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the many young mothers who work part time and who struggle to afford the cost of filling their car to get to work?

European Budgets 2014 to 2020

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

Let me make a bit more progress and I will take the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention in a short while.

The Commission also asked us to use as our starting point for a freeze—this is perhaps where the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) has been confused by the Commission’s numbers—the level of spend planned in 2005, but we cannot ignore the fact that the global crisis has taken place since then. Every country has had to scale back its spending from pre-crisis days and the European Commission is no different.

The Commission can also do more to ensure that money is spent more wisely. We are leading the way on reforming financial management in the EU. For the first time in 17 years, we have refused to support the sign-off of the EU accounts. We are pushing for simpler, clearer rules on spending programmes that make it easier to spot fraud and error, and we have also raised our game at home to ensure that EU money spent here is spent properly and wisely.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Will the Financial Secretary give way?

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Will the Financial Secretary give way?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before the Minister gives way to the hon. Lady, I emphasise that, of course it is in the gift of the Minister to give way as he thinks fit, but the total time for the debate on this matter is only one and a half hours, and it would be a pity if Back Benchers were disappointed. I am sure that the Minister will tailor his remarks and his giving way accordingly.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I shall bear in mind your comments. I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Does he agree that one of the most ridiculous wastes of money in this day and age, with tight budgets, is the European Parliament continuing to move between countries during the week, at enormous expense to British taxpayers?

Eurozone Crisis

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I find the position adopted by Labour Members quite curious. They want us to be at the top table, yet they voted against the increase in our subscription to the IMF, so we would not be at the top table. I believe we have played an important role through European Councils by trying to push our eurozone partners to make progress on tackling problems in the eurozone. We are very clear that matters such as the completion of the single market, competition and financial services should be dealt with by all 27 member states, not by the 17. I believe that this Government are punching way above their weight.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

If the remorseless logic of greater fiscal union proves to be true, can my hon. Friend tell us what steps he intends to take to ensure that Britain’s voice is still heard under QMV?

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

Every reputable international organisation that talks about what is happening in the UK economy now recognises that the Government need to stick to the course, rather than throwing away the valuable credibility that we have gained as a consequence of tackling the mess left behind by the previous Government.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that having our own currency is one of the keys to turning round our economy? Does he share my astonishment that the Labour party does not rule out joining the single currency?

[Mr Hoban]

It is remarkable, is it not, that when the Leader of the Opposition was asked whether a Labour Government would join the euro, his answer was:

“It depends how long I’m prime minister for.”

This Government have closed down the euro preparations that the Labour party set up, and that is why I think that we have taken the right decision to stay out of the euro and tackle our debt and deficit problems. That is why we have low interest rates, which help strengthen the recovery in this country.