Humber Flood Risk Management Strategy

Debate between Andrew Percy and Nic Dakin

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely. I want to talk about the problems and failings in the current system, but before I do—I do not want to be entirely negative—I will praise the Government. The response in my area after the December surge was welcome. We appreciated the flood repair and renewal grants, and the support for business has been well received. Also, additional Government funding since December has been of particular benefit to my area: a £5 million scheme to raise the banks at Reedness has been approved, as has £3 million to shore up the banks at Snaith, and work will begin in a month’s time to shore up the banks at Burringham, which were not breached but were severely damaged.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on his leadership on this matter, from which the whole region will hopefully benefit.

The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) referred to the response to the floods. The local agencies responded well, but for future learning I draw attention to the Humberside fire and rescue service’s plans to develop the Ark flood preparation and response centre, which would be of major benefit not only to the region but nationally. What does he think about that?

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that excellent bid, which aims for transition funds from the Department for Communities and Local Government and will be decided on towards the end of the year. He recently met the Humberside fire and rescue service to discuss the bid, which would create a national flood training centre. We do not currently have such a centre and firefighters must undertake training in fresh water, which is not always as clean as it could be. Events cannot be modelled in such water, but, more importantly, many firefighters come back with stomach bugs, which makes the practice expensive. Where better could a training centre that can model flood events be placed than in the Humber, which has the second highest flood risk after London? The bid has support from both sides of the Humber and from MPs of both parties, so if there is anything that the Minister can do to push it along with his friends at DCLG, it would be greatly appreciated.

I praise the Government for acting swiftly with the surveying work and for providing additional funding, which will benefit my constituency in the short term, but it is only a short-term fix. Although we are grateful for additional funding, today’s debate has been about the long-term strategy that is desperately required. Our region—the Humber, east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire—is on the edge of an economic renewal. The Siemens investment has been talked about, and there is the potential Able site, so a lot is happening. The greatest risk to economic renewal must be the potential failure properly and adequately to deal with the massive flood risk. £888 million does sound like a lot of money, but it is not that significant when spread over 10 or 15 years. The potential return tells us all we need to know about the value of that money.

I do not have time to go on about the problems with the current funding system, such as building in future development and the value of agricultural land—the Minister has heard those arguments before—but I urge the Minister, who is gracious in all debates and knowledgeable about the flooding that hit our area, to do all that he can to support our proposal for a long-term solution to the problems. Although I said that it was outrageous that he would not write us a cheque for £888 million today, it is not actually all that outrageous—

Qualified Teachers

Debate between Andrew Percy and Nic Dakin

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

As a practical person and a head teacher, I would give the people employed in my college a framework in which they could get those qualifications, and we could have accreditation of prior learning, assessments and so on. Those people who have not done the job I did will have theoretical views on this, but I know how it is done, because I have done it day in, day out. The people out there know how they are running their schools and colleges, and the people who work in them know what they are doing as well. We trust them, but they need to be in a framework that delivers. We also need to listen to what parents are saying. In a recent YouGov poll, 78% of parents said that they want the teachers teaching their kids to be qualified.

I have just left a symposium in Portcullis House on the Finnish teaching system. I was reminded that not only do Finnish teachers need a master’s degree in their subject knowledge, but the degree has to deal with pedagogy. That is what teachers need: the knowledge and the pedagogy. That is what I needed when I had teachers standing in front of the kids in my college who I had a responsibility to deliver for. I am sure that is what people up and down the land want.

[Andrew Percy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nic Dakin]

I am afraid that I cannot give way because so many Members wish to speak and the Secretary of State was so greedy in using up the time.

All my experience tells me that essentially there are only two things that really matter in running schools and colleges: the quality of leadership and the quality of teaching and learning. If we get those two things right, all the rest will follow. Of course, just because someone has a piece of paper, whether a postgraduate certificate in education, graduate teacher status or whatever, does not mean that they can necessarily teach, because there needs to be a framework of support in their school to ensure that they learn the skills of the profession.

To be fair to the Secretary of State, he very much echoed what the shadow Secretary of State said in underlining the importance of teaching as a profession. That echoes what the Prime Minister said quite rightly in 2010, which was that teaching should be a profession. Well, a profession has proper structures for training, qualifications and professional development. That is the framework that delivers high-quality individuals. Within that delivery of high-quality individuals, there will always be people who need appropriate support.

The Deputy Prime Minister was right when he made it clear that anybody teaching in our state-funded schools should either have qualified teacher status or be on the way to gaining it. I am really pleased that the Schools Minister, who is in his place, despite struggling a little to make this clear in the Westminster Hall debate, made it extremely clear when he appeared before the Select Committee that he was alongside the Deputy Prime Minister on that. That is why I am confident, because they are people of honour, that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Schools Minister and the rest of the Liberal Democrats will be alongside us when we vote for the motion today.

Spousal Visas

Debate between Andrew Percy and Nic Dakin

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for his constituents. The Minister will have heard that and I concur with what my hon. Friend said. I am conscious that I have only a couple of minutes before the Minister is due to reply, but my honourable neighbour is seeking to intervene, so I will give way to him.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. He, of course, describes a very common situation in the area that we share in northern Lincolnshire, where, sadly, these cases are too numerous to mention. Is it not the fact that at the heart of this is family life being unfortunately disturbed and great distress caused because of rules that are probably well intentioned but have unforeseen consequences?

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not disagree with the intention behind the rules. Wanting to cut down on sham marriages—absolutely. Wanting to put rules in place so that people come here and integrate better—absolutely. Wanting to make sure that people are not a burden on public funds—yes. But for my constituent, who lives in a lower wage area with a higher disposable income than somebody in the south of England, who is not able to bring his family in, and whose wife has a job offer that is not taken into account, the rules, well intentioned though they may be, fall down.

I am keen to hear the Minister’s response, so I end with a couple of points that I would like to see out of this. I have rebelled against my own party on the idea of regional pay, of which I am a passionate opponent, so I will just throw out for the Minister the idea of a regional variation and ask him to consider it without it necessarily being my idea. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) from a sedentary position may be offering it up as his own idea. We need to have some consideration of people’s disposable income and outgoings, for all the reasons that I have highlighted.

In a previous debate, the Minister, who is good and competent and cares about this area of policy, mentioned the possibility of considering whether job offers for applicants could be taken into account. Of course we need to ensure that fake job offers and so on are properly accounted for, but I would appreciate an update on that.

On behalf of my constituent, Gary Smith, I just make the plea to the Minister to look at this income-related element again. As I have said, this is a constituent with a wife to whom he has been married for five years, with a child whom they share. They are unable to come together at the moment. He does not want his wife to come here and claim benefits; he wants her to come here to work and to contribute to our local economy. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Broadband (East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire)

Debate between Andrew Percy and Nic Dakin

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

There will be no mention of Lancashire, Mr Deputy Speaker, which I know will disappoint you.

My hon. Friend’s point was a general one about the whole country. Many of our schools cannot access the educational tools they wish to access because of poor broadband speeds. Access to those speeds makes such a difference. The double whammy in my area is that schools have lower funding compared with schools in other parts of the country. Investing in more impressive kit therefore becomes more challenging for them.

It is estimated that small and medium-sized enterprises with superfast broadband continue to grow by 4.7%, compared with 0.6% for those without. My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe recently collected an award on behalf of Scunthorpe because it has the fastest-growing online retail business.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour on securing the debate. He is quite right that the Google award for retail, of which people locally are very proud, went to Scunthorpe last year. He importantly underlines the value of broadband in not only retail, but business generally, health, education and other services. I was pleased when he said that he will urge the Government to bring forward the 2015 date for rolling out broadband in north Lincolnshire and look forward to him getting to that section of his speech.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for his intervention. He is right. I visited a business in West Cowick on Saturday that wants to grow but that is currently restricted by its broadband connectivity. It attracts many corporate clients—we need that kind of cash in our part of the world—but it will struggle as it tries to expand because of its poor broadband connectivity.

That brings me to one solution and my first main point: the potential for wireless broadband to help with the roll-out. I was unaware of the amount of wireless availability in the area. Jibba Jabba, whose catchy name will resonate with anybody who used to watch “The A-Team”, is part of Lakeside IT and based in Doncaster—we will forgive it for being just over the border in south Yorkshire—and Quickline, which is based in Hessle, are two locally based companies that currently offer between 10 megabits and 40 megabits, which is roughly equivalent to the speeds experienced by urban residents with carbon fibre connections. Their services are available across the whole of east Yorkshire and north Yorkshire and are expanding to cover north-east Lincolnshire.

I met the companies a few weeks ago and told them I would be interested in trialling wireless broadband alongside my fixed-line broadband to see how it works and have been staggered by what happened. I have done a number of speed tests in the past couple of weeks. In the small village of Airmyn, just outside Goole, where I live, I record speeds of about 2.5 megabits for downloads and 0.5 megabits for uploads on my fixed-line broadband. I cannot do a great deal with that—it is just enough to stream iPlayer and such, and sending files is incredibly time consuming. Speeds on my wireless broadband, which is simply a small box on the side of the house, have gone upwards of 28 megabits for downloads and about 18 megabits for uploads. Those numbers are currently reduced because something is being done to the mast, but they will increase.

In many other parts of the world, wireless broadband is being used as part of the roll-out, but it is not part of the delivery plans here. My argument to the Minister is that we need more of a push on wireless broadband. People in the whole of my constituency can achieve significant speeds through wireless broadband, so we need to give it more importance, because we will struggle in parts of the country to roll out fixed-line broadband by 2015.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Andrew Percy and Nic Dakin

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

I will try to avoid further outbursts over the EU, Madam Deputy Speaker—I can never resist the opportunity to get my views on the EU written into Hansard.

I agree with much that has been said. I am not going to get into an argument with the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) over whose constituency glows redder, but in my constituency a significant amount of power is generated locally—by the Drax power station, which is just outside, by Eggborough power station and by Keadby gas power station. Furthermore, I share the Scunthorpe steel works in my constituency with the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin)—unsurprisingly —and I will say something about that in a moment.

I echo some of the concerns expressed by colleagues on both sides of the House. In the Humber, the petrochemical industry is a huge employer, and we are hoping for further growth. Indeed, the whole renewables sector in the Humber is incredibly important, and it would be perverse were we to bring Siemens and other tower and turbine producers to the Humber only for them to be unable to use steel from Scunthorpe because it has been rendered uncompetitive.

I am not going to rehearse all the arguments on climate change. I am not a scientist—I do not understand a lot of these things—but I understand that it is probably a good thing to do something about the amount of carbon we are putting into the atmosphere. Of course, however, jobs must always come first. We need no greater reminder of that than what is happening in Scunthorpe at the moment with Tata Steel—1,200 jobs are going already because of losses going back a few years. In fairness to Tata, it has not blamed this policy, but it has said that it has considerable concerns about its impact on future growth at Scunthorpe. I would like to hear from the Minister—she and I have had conversations about this on several occasions, as she will remember—what the Government plan to do to support the high-energy users. The Humber economy is very much based around high-energy use, so this policy could impact on us disproportionately. I know that the Government are considering that point, but the sooner we can get some certainty the better.

As I mentioned, much has already been said, and in the interests of brevity I do not propose to go over it all. [Interruption] But I have not quite finished. Something needs to be said about general support for manufacturing. What has happened to manufacturing in this country not only over the past decade but over the past couple of decades is a scandal. I welcome the fact—I believe in being as positive as possible—that the Government are committed to a resurgence in manufacturing, which, as I said, is very important in the region represented by me and neighbouring colleagues. That is why we welcome the enterprise zones, which the hon. Member for Hartlepool mentioned, and we are hopeful of getting another one approved for the Humber shortly. I welcome the emphasis on skills and sending young people the clear message that working in manufacturing is just as valuable as trotting off to university to get a degree and become a doctor.

We are hearing all the right things from the Government, and I support that entirely. However, I have concerns about where we are heading with this policy, which is why I think that both the amendments have some merit. Before deciding how to vote, I will listen to the response from the Minister, who I know is very much alive to the issue. Clearly the Government will not want to do anything that puts manufacturing jobs at risk, so I look forward to her response. On that note, I will end this brief, four-minute speech, and look forward to hearing from other hon. Members.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow my neighbour, the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and I support many of his comments.

For the Government to unite the representatives of manufacturing industries with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund in opposition to their proposals is a masterstroke. I do not accept the ingenious argument that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury gave in Committee, which was that such a range of opposition to the tax was proof positive that the right balance had been achieved. That is patently not the case: as we have already heard, the arguments of the high-energy manufacturers and the environmentalists are complementary, not contradictory. The key challenge that we face as a nation is how to balance greening the economy with growing the economy. The Government’s proposals fail to meet that challenge. The UK is competing internationally for investment. The Humber is competing with Bremerhaven and Esbjerg for green investment. As we have already heard, those making investment decisions too often sit outside these shores. In the real world, the carbon floor price represents a serious threat to our competitiveness. We are in danger of seeing multinational companies choose to invest not in the UK but elsewhere.

Football Grounds (Regulation)

Debate between Andrew Percy and Nic Dakin

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin]

I absolutely agree with the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. Safety is crucial and should never be compromised, but there also needs to be a sensible way forward. In these difficult financial times, that is very important. The Glanford Park terracing has stood for more than 20 years. It is under threat solely because the football team has been successful. It is my contention, and that of the Football Supporters Federation, that Scunthorpe United and its supporters should not be penalised and lose the safe standing option because of the club’s success.

If the current rules are adhered to, a very small club will have to spend significant amounts of money during these difficult financial times to convert the safe standing area into seating. That would mean that the club would have the invidious choice of paying even more for a larger seating area, to maintain the maximum ground capacity of around 9,000, or reducing the ground capacity significantly.

Seating the Doncaster road end would reduce Glanford Park’s capacity by about 1,000. That would mean fewer tickets would be available for big games, such as the recent Carling cup game against Manchester United or the forthcoming FA cup visit of Everton. In turn, that would mean more disappointed fans and less revenue for the club. There is a danger that such a move would harm the club because it would be forced to divert its limited financial resources and energy into redeveloping the stand; that money would be better spent on improving the team or enhancing the experience of supporters.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and, as he is obviously aware, Glanford Park is in my constituency and I am delighted to work closely with him on this issue. However, is there not an even more important issue here? We talk about localism a lot; this issue is about what the fans want, and what the fans of Scunthorpe United are saying very clearly is, “Let us make our decision about what we want, and let us keep our terraces.”

[Nic Dakin]

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right in many respects. It is important to listen to what local people and local fans are saying. However, we would not and should not compromise safety. Nevertheless, it comes back to looking at this issue in the modern circumstances of today and recognising that Scunthorpe United’s stadium is a 9,000-capacity ground, with average crowds of 5,000. I will just make a little more progress now before taking any other interventions.

The Football League, in its letter to the Minister for Sport and the Olympics of 22 October, stated quite clearly:

“Football League clubs, particularly in Leagues One and Two, are evidence that standing at football is safe when managed correctly.”

That is a very helpful statement.