Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the electoral register.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the electoral register.

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[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, and I congratulate him on being elected to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, where he can pursue his interest in these matters. He will know that when in government the Labour party did, to be fair, try a number of things, but the things it tried were not successful. We are going to introduce individual electoral registration and we are going to trial data-matching next year, so that we can see whether there are more effective ways of allowing electoral administrators to get people on the register when they are entitled to be on it.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does the Minister agree that some individuals deliberately keep themselves off the register because they are partaking in or are aiding and abetting benefit fraud? How does he think we should address that important issue?

[Mr Harper]

One of the things that we will do on individual registration is ensure that people will have to register with a signature and their date of birth and national insurance number details. Those will be checked against Department for Work and Pensions records to ensure that the voting record database is accurate. One of the things that we will be doing when we trial data-matching next year is looking to see what other benefits can be obtained from those public sector databases.

Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris White]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. He has talked about two separate issues: the values of individuals and the values of our authorities and the commissioners in them. I think we would agree that those are different types of values; one involves people’s personal interests, while the other involves the interests of the taxpayer and wider society. The second is where the Bill will come in to make sure that the taxpayer gets best value for money and that the community is more involved. Social enterprises, in particular, have a great opportunity to bid for public services and to provide that better value for money.

Commissioning that takes a more holistic view and reduces demand on future services, commissioning that engages with, rather than dictates to, communities and commissioning that drives standards upwards—that is the method of delivery that VCSEs are best at providing. When given the opportunity to do extra, to engage with communities, to work with local businesses and to generate true value for those communities, VCSEs do so and thrive in the localities in which they operate.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that whatever the state decides to take responsibility for and control of, individuals and the voluntary sector immediately withdraw from? As he said, the Government did not invent the big society, which has always been with us, but we will, I hope, give it room to thrive.

[Chris White]

I hope that the Bill will give us the opportunity to discuss these issues in a wider forum. We have a real opportunity to put some of these issues on the table. If the Bill passes through this stage, we will, I hope, be able to discuss further in Committee some of the issues that my hon. Friend raises.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken about how we need to generate more for less. By using social value, we can help to achieve the holy grail of generating more for less. By using the £150 billion the taxpayer already spends on services, by maximising what we get for those pounds and by using community groups, mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises to deliver services, we can achieve far better value and a far better deal for our communities. During these difficult economic times, we should not put blinkers on and adopt a mindset that says that reductions in public funding must necessarily lead to reductions in the quality and quantity of our services. We should think bigger, and civil society is key to that.

Now that I have had the opportunity to lay the groundwork for the Bill and to give an outline of why it is important for hon. Members to look at these proposals, I want to focus on the Bill’s specifics. The Bill can be divided into three parts, and I have already described the rationale behind the third part, which is the most important and concerns social value in public sector contracting. The first two parts deal with strategies concerning social enterprises, which are a rapidly growing part of our economy. The work of the Social Enterprise Coalition, the social enterprise mark and the various regional social enterprise organisations are playing an ever-increasing part in our economic and social development.

In recognition of the sector’s potential, various Departments, from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Communities and Local Government, have created their own strategies and come up with ideas about how to help the VCSE sector. The Bill asks the appropriate Secretary of State to create one national strategy to look at the promotion of social enterprise. I hope that that would lead to the consolidation of all strategies across the Government into one clear, joined-up piece of work, so that we do not have a hotch-potch of strategies, which ultimately confuses and frustrates many in the sector.

I recognise that strategies and the like often cause many Members a nervous twitch, so I have done my best to find an estimate of how much such a strategy might cost in terms of manpower and consultation. According to the figures that I have been given, it is estimated that it would cost about £41,000. That is about £63 per constituency, under the current boundaries, or one tenth of a penny per elector.

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[Hazel Blears]

I am rarely accused of being dreary. I am usually accused of the opposite. If the hon. Gentleman will listen to my further remarks, perhaps he will revise his view.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I will bear in the mind the guidance on interventions that the Speaker has just given us. Will the right hon. Lady bear in mind that socialism does not and never will have a monopoly on social conscience?

[Hazel Blears]

I would never try to make such a point. In our country, we live in a vibrant and much admired democracy, with different political views, and people of all parties support civic organisations and community groups. I would never claim to have a monopoly on the good things in society. However, I genuinely believe that the best way to achieve our aim is through a partnership, with state action supporting local people and freeing them to make that difference. That seems to be a fundamental difference between me and some Conservative Members. However, I do not believe that that applies to the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Shepherd]

I make the gentlest of suggestions to my hon. Friend that he misleads himself. I provided the quote from Asquith which set out the position as the House then understood it, and it has turned out, by and large, to be correct over the intervening years. I do not want so to close down the options of this House that when a Government fail or cannot command a majority there is not a general election, as such an election is necessary for the public will. However, as the long title makes clear, we are looking at a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill and the suggestion on the table is for the term to last five years. I do not understand where my hon. Friend is coming from if he thinks that in 1911 the proposal was for a full five-year term—it was not.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

This is a most intriguing debate and my hon. Friend speaks with great passion and impartiality about these important matters. Surely this Parliament can opt for a five-year Parliament but it cannot bind future Parliaments. Should those Parliaments wish to change the arrangement, they will be able to opt for a four-year or a three-year Parliament, or whatever they should wish for at the time.

[Mr Shepherd]

But the options are closing. This measure is part of a constitutional package. We passed a piece of legislation that may introduce a new electoral system and that may ensure that no one party has an overall majority in the future, so to say that we are able to change something will be a matter of great negotiation across the Floor of the House. That is why I am very cautious about accepting changes to established norms and constitutional practice as we have experienced it over my lifetime and since 1911.

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[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendments 7 and 8, which stand in my name and ask for triennial Parliaments. That makes me feel positively like a constitutional Trotskyite, coming forward as the blazing radical in this song and dance for a five-year or four-year term. Amendment 11, which proposes a four-year term, is perfectly acceptable as it is a good amendment. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) quoted from Asquith’s powerful and effective speech. I was going to refer to it at length, but I shall not now do so because he has given us it pretty well in full. That speech set out that in legislating for five-year terms the then Liberal Government were actually saying that the expectation would be for earlier elections, so that was to be a maximum term, not the norm. The provision before us attempts to create a norm of five years.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Would the hon. Gentleman just remind the House how long the previous Parliament ran for?

[Austin Mitchell]

If the hon. Gentleman bides his time a little, I shall deal with exactly that point. He is making the very sensible point that bad Parliaments last for five years and Governments in precarious or disastrous situations try to hang on for as long as possible. That perhaps indicates why he is not going to support this Bill: it is an indication that his Government are going to try to hang on for as long as possible—for five years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Austin Mitchell]

I see another detour on the route map so I shall not go down that road. I had my own proposals once for a maximum six-year term for Prime Ministers. The current Prime Minister said during the course of the election that if the Prime Minister changed, there should be an election within six months of that change—something that seems to be missing from the Bill but which may have been relevant.

The Government are trying to entrench bad practice in this Bill and our amendments—mine for a very democratic three years and amendment 11 for four years, a sensible and statesmanlike version of my democratic stirrings—are trying to stop them doing so.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The hon. Gentleman talked about bad practice. Does he agree that an example of the worst sort of bad practice was the farce that was the autumn of 2007 and the election that never was?

[Austin Mitchell]

I just said that it would have been sensible had the Labour Government gone to the country in 2007—not only because we would have won, but because it was good and it would have been right to ask for a new mandate for a new Prime Minister. The Labour Government made a mistake and in consequence they hung on too long towards the end. I cannot see that I can break down and make any more confessions in the Chamber. That is an assessment of political reality. That is what Governments who are in difficulty do—they hang on—and that is what the Bill seeks to entrench.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

1. What recent representations he has received on his proposals to create fewer and more equally sized constituencies.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

5. What recent representations he has received on his proposals to create fewer and more equally sized constituencies.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

A range of views have been expressed to me, in correspondence and discussion, on the Government’s proposals to create fewer and more equally sized constituencies. In addition, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill had five days of debate on the Floor of the House for its Committee stage.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. It is one of the founding principles of any democracy that votes should be valued in the same way, wherever they are cast. Over the years, all sorts of anomalies have developed, such that different people’s votes are simply not worth the same in elections to this place. That surely cannot be right, and it is worth reminding those Opposition Members who object to the rationale that it was one of the founding tenets of the Chartists—one of the predecessor movements to the Labour party—that all votes should be of equal value.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that, for Members of this place to have an effective relationship with local authorities, it is important that emphasis should be placed on keeping parliamentary constituencies as coterminous as possible after the boundary review?

Superannuation Bill

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I will not quote the figures again, but I refer the hon. Gentleman to the income data survey. I am happy to provide him with a PCS briefing that sets out the figures. [Interruption.] Well, the briefing is based on information independently issued by the income data survey.

In the executive grades, supervisors in the public sector—people with vocational qualifications—earn 18% less than supervisors in the private sector. The decision to go into the public sector, as I have said, is based on a judgment in the round about security, benefits, pensions and, yes, redundancy payments, which are described as accrued benefits that people earn over time. They are part of their wages. What is happening today is a Government unilaterally tearing up the contract that was entered into when many of these civil servants entered employment. I think that that will be open to challenge on the grounds of human rights compliance. Inevitably, members not just of the PCS but of other unions will wish to exercise their rights in law. What is happening is the worst of all worlds for civil servants.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that it is fair or affordable in the current economic situation for anyone to be given six years’ pay as redundancy pay?

[John McDonnell]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not listening. The period of six years has been used time and again to justify the measure. A tiny number of cases are involved, but we would like the exact number. If he can help us to extract that information from his own Ministers, that would be useful.

The vast bulk of civil servants who have been made redundant have been laid off on conditions of no more than three years’ pay, and the majority of them on considerably less. Under the terms of this measure, that will be reduced by two thirds. It is not about the tiny minority who receive six years’ pay, but about the vast majority who will lose up to two thirds of their payment.

Political and Constitutional Reform

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Clearly, the system is one that we have inherited from the previous Government, but equally it is right that local authorities have a statutory responsibility to take steps to make sure the electoral register is up to date. I do not think those two things are mutually exclusive.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Can the Deputy Prime Minister confirm whether the new, reconstituted constituencies will cross current regional boundaries?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

They may do, but the intention is that they will none the less retain the key building block of any constituency, which is ward boundaries. We want to keep that building block in place, as it would be simply too complicated to conduct the boundary review on the scale that has been proposed by any other means.