Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I am a little disappointed, because I wrote to the Public Bill Committee and asked whether it would consider an amendment, but I gather there was not time for it to do so. This is probably the only time I can raise the matter I want to mention today because, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) said, the debates will be quite crowded. When there are huge pieces of infrastructure work such as the proposed 3.5 million square foot rail freight development in my constituency, there is no obligation on developers at least to consider green, environmental measures. It is a loss that we will not get to debate that today.

[Mr Speaker]

Yes, but I think that probably relates to amendments that it might have been in someone’s mind to table, but which have not yet been tabled and do not relate directly to the programme motion. However, the hon. Lady has opted for an elastic interpretation of the terms of the motion, and she has got her points on the record, so I hope she is content.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I assume the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) calculated that Question 19 on Ofsted would not be reached. That is not of itself an excuse to shoehorn the matter into a question some considerable number of minutes earlier.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree with me that one of the best indicators to getting good attainment in maths and English is attendance at school? So what more can be done to ensure communities who do not always have a very good attendance record at school—sometimes the Traveller community, as in my constituency—are encouraged to make sure parents ensure their children attend school in settled fashion?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister help to get justice for my constituents, who want to know why an investigation into the meetings that were had by Theresa Villiers, the former Transport Minister, has not been reported on, despite four months of waiting and various assurances that I would have the answer?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady was referring to the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers).

Immigration Bill

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I can understand the passion with which the hon. Lady is speaking and she is making a very sensitive point, but does she agree that there is an element to this that involves the prevention of exploitation of vulnerable people who are brought in illegally, treated badly and fall outside the system? If their pimps and traffickers are unable to do that because we have tougher immigration laws, we will free those people from being put in that awful position. I had a young lady brought to me whose passport had been taken off her. If people can come to our country legally, it will stop those who want to be able to take advantage of them outside the system.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I ask hon. Members to make interventions that are brief? We have a lot of colleagues to accommodate and I am keen to do so.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On the Floor of the House today, we heard many times that the Bill should be committed to a Committee of the whole House. The Minister was asked whether that was possible, and he gave his reasons why he believed not. For clarification, Mr Speaker, and before we vote on the programme motion, is it possible to have split Committee proceedings, with some upstairs, facilitating what the Minister would like to happen, and some on the Floor of the House?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her attempted point of order. Her point might be interesting, but that does not render it a point of order on which I can rule. Her view, no doubt informed by a close reading of Standing Order No. 84A(2), will assuredly guide her and perhaps other right hon. and hon. Members on how to vote on the programme motion, which is about to be moved by or on behalf of the Minister.

MARRIAGE (SAME SEX COUPLES) BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill:

Committal

1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on 12 March 2013.

3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

4. Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading shall be taken in two days in accordance with the following provisions of this Order.

5. Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the second day.

6. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on the second day.

7. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

8. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Mark Lancaster.)

Points of Order

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Monday 4th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order; it will have been heard on the Treasury Bench. As an experienced Member he knows that it is for Ministers to decide whether to come to the House to make a statement, but the Home Secretary will, I feel sure, be conscious of these matters and may feel that their seriousness warrants a statement sooner rather than later.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know that you champion Back Benchers and their role in holding the Government to account, but it is particularly difficult for Back Benchers such as me, whose constituency contains a proposed rail freight interchange, to find out what happened in the decision-making process. The Department for Transport has been fulsome in its answers, but the same questions to the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government are answered either by referring me to websites or by saying that it would involve disproportionate cost.

Referring an hon. Member to a website does not always work and I have found out about private meetings that are not declared on websites. What more can be done to ensure that Departments do not hide behind evasive answers when Back Benchers are trying to find out about the decision-making process that has gone on?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order, and for notice of it. The content of answers is not a matter of order for the Chair, and neither is inconsistency in the way Ministers reply to similar questions. If the hon. Lady is dissatisfied with the answers she has received, she should draw the matter to the attention of the Procedure Committee. Moreover, I add in passing that without regard to the particulars of the case, with which I cannot be expected to be familiar, I have considerable sympathy for the hon. Lady in so far as she is aggrieved by the tendency of some Departments simply to refer right hon. or hon. Members to a website. That is often unavailing, and the intention of Ministers should be to help Members in pursuit of their parliamentary duties. In the best cases, that is what happens, but it ought to be the norm.

Gas Market Fraud

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. A great many hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. I remind the House that there is a debate to follow, under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee, on child sexual exploitation, which I can inform Members is significantly subscribed, so if colleagues are not to be disappointed now, there is a premium on brevity from Back and Front Benchers alike.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I welcome today’s statement. Can I have an assurance that if it is proved that there has been market manipulation, there might be some form of redress for people in fuel poverty in my constituency and others who may have suffered as a consequence?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If the hon. Lady’s intended supplementary question refers to York, it will be in order. If it does not, it will not.

[Mrs Main]

Staffing numbers are a huge concern in the CPS. Will the Solicitor-General meet me to discuss what impact that might have had on the case of Mrs Swarnapali Timmann, who is concerned—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Does the question relate to York or other locations in York?

[Mrs Main]

It may do.

[Mr Speaker]

And it may not. The hon. Lady has got her point on the record, but it requires no answer. [Laughter.] I am glad that the House is in such a good mood.

Annual Statements of Healthcare Costs

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

It is with some regret that I rise to raise concerns about this proposal—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. For the avoidance of doubt, procedure requires that the hon. Lady should not only raise concerns about the Bill but also oppose it.

[Mrs Main]

And to oppose it. I have no doubts about the intentions of my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), for whom I have great respect, as someone who works in the health service. I have serious doubts, however, about the impact of the Bill and the message that it will give to people who are extremely concerned about the future role of health services.

Not so long ago, certain things were routinely prescribed on the NHS that we would now find it ludicrous to prescribe. My mother used to work in an old-fashioned system called the pricing bureau, and people would routinely bring in “scripts” for zinc and castor oil cream or cotton wool. Now, we would find it amazing to see such things on an NHS prescription. We have moved on, and accepted that the NHS cannot provide for everything in our lives. I would welcome a debate on some of the services that people expect the NHS to provide, such as cosmetic surgery, tattoo removal, or even in vitro fertilisation cycles for people of certain ages. That would be a valuable debate, because, as my hon. Friend so wisely says, we have to think about the future and adopt a sustainable, affordable model for the NHS.

However, I believe that giving a person and their family an annual statement of their cost to the NHS could be profoundly divisive. I am concerned, for example, about the effect that it could have on people who have served in our armed forces and come back with life-shattering injuries. They might have had to make difficult decisions about their lives, having been made limbless in the service of their country. What mental effect could it have on them to be told every year what their treatment is costing their country?

Similarly, what mental effect could it have on people who feel that their lives are not worth living, and that they are being burdensome, to be told that there is a tariff associated with their ongoing care? What effect could it have on a family who have fought long and hard for a child with cystic fibrosis or another life-limiting condition, to be sent a bill or tariff, after the child had died, setting out what their child’s life had cost? I believe that such experiences would be unsettling and distasteful for some people.

I am also concerned—I am sure this is a leap that goes way beyond any of my hon. Friend’s intentions—about the Kafkaesque situation that might result, whereby we would start to look at people in the context of how costly they were to keep going, and whether their life was worth that expenditure. If people are made to feel that they are responsible for their own health, whether that is because of obesity, smoking or drinking, so be it, but I am not sure that presenting people with a breakdown of what it has cost to treat them will necessarily make them change their ways.

Having nursed somebody who died from cancer, I can tell hon. Members that people feel like a burden when their life is in a difficult place. They will often say, “I wish I wasn’t doing this to you, to the family, or to others. If I wasn’t around, perhaps you could collect on the insurance, or your life could move on in a different and happier way.” I feel that adding an extra burden for families in such a position, through sending them a breakdown of the annual cost to the NHS, would be unacceptable. That is not a voice that I wish to see coming from the Government, and I do not believe that this suggestion should ever become a Bill. I am comforted by the fact that most ten-minute rule Bills never get anywhere.

If I thought that this ten-minute rule Bill would get somewhere, I would go around soliciting support and testing the waters in Parliament to see whether anybody else shared my concerns. I accept that my hon. Friend simply wishes to ensure that people get the best treatment according to an affordable model, and that people who are being feckless with their own health should be made to face up to and be aware of that fact, but I do not think that having an individual statement of their health care costs that year will make those people change their ways. It might—this is why I oppose the Bill, although I do not intend to press it to a Division—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] If other hon. Members wish to divide the House, that is up to them, but I have not made arrangements to do so.

I was concerned that the Bill might go unchallenged, because ten-minute rule Bills often are, and I thought through some of the possibilities that, although they are not necessarily implied in my hon. Friend’s plans for his Bill, could creep through if what he has been describing took effect. I was concerned enough to raise my worries today, and to think that if the information locked in the NHS about individuals’ costs were made public, it could be used by the people who argue that we should not save seriously sick people, or treat people with complex needs, or value people with disabilities, because the tariff associated with them is higher than the cost for a healthy person. That is not a society that I wish to endorse, and that is why I wanted to raise my concerns.

Question put (Standing Order No. 23).

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance. Is it appropriate parliamentary language for a Member of Parliament to call other hon. Members neanderthals, particularly when they have not even been anywhere near the debate or participated or engaged in it? Do you think that that is a somewhat judgmental statement?

[Mr Speaker]

Well, I think if we are going to have a prohibition on judgmentalism, we are setting ourselves rather than exacting test. What I would say to the hon. Lady is twofold. First, I am not aware, though it is not relevant to the appropriateness of her point of order, who the target of this intended abuse was—although I could try to speculate about it—but secondly, if the target of the intended abuse is at least one Member that I can think of, I rather imagine that far from complaining about it, he will take it as the greatest possible compliment that has ever been paid to him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Further to an answer that I received in September, in which the House of Commons Commission said that it costs the public purse a further £1.5 million for us to come back for the two-week September sitting, is it not time that we looked carefully at the programme of sittings of the House so that we are not constrained—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not wish to be unkind to the hon. Lady. I am sure that her question is of great importance to her and possibly to others, but it suffers from the disadvantage of bearing absolutely no relation to the question on the Order Paper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Second time lucky, Anne Main.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr Speaker. Again, September sittings will cost £1.5 million. Is it not time that the House moved its sittings so as not to cost the public purse an extra £1.5 million?

Feed-in Tariffs

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Monday 31st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This is not said pejoratively, but I have noticed that whenever the Minister is in the Chamber, Opposition Members seem to get very wound up and excited. I do not know whether it is his fault that he winds them up or their fault that they allow themselves to be wound up, but the House needs to calm down a little.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I appreciate that something had to be done about the overly large tariff subsidies, but Electrical and Testing Services in my constituency is worried about the speed of change. What advice and guidance will my hon. Friend give to small businesses so that they can get through the transition period without having to lose any staff?

Points of Order

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for giving me advance notice of it. He came into the House long before I did; he is a seasoned campaigner and a man of great wisdom and experience. He will therefore know that I am not responsible—I say this with some relief—for anything that the Prime Minister might say or do. That is well beyond my ken. The right hon. Gentleman has placed his concerns on the record, and I am sure that he will find other methods, through the use of the Order Paper and other parliamentary processes, of further registering his views and probing the Prime Minister.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am seeking your guidance because we are due to have an Opposition day debate tomorrow whose title is as yet totally unspecified. That means that members of the public who wish to attend the debate will have had no notice of the subject, and hon. Members who might wish to prepare for the debate have no cognisance of it. I understand that 48 hours’ notice is normally given of such debates and their titles. May we seek your guidance on why that courtesy is not being extended to us?

Points of Order

Debate between Anne Main and John Bercow

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for giving me advance notice of it.

I shall deal with this briefly, and in two parts. First, my guidance on the courtesies and conventions of the House states that the House has agreed to the use in the Chamber of hand-held devices to keep up to date with e-mails, provided that they cause no disturbance. All such devices may be switched on as long as they are in silent mode. Members should not use electronic devices as an aide memoire in debate.

Secondly—and the hon. Gentleman referred to this—the Procedure Committee reported last week on this matter and the House will soon want to debate its report. In the meantime, I do not think that the occupant of the Chair can reasonably prevent a Member from discreetly using such a device as an aide memoire in debate. Members should remember to send any notes, electronically or not, to Hansard. I hope—I reiterate this forcefully—that the House will soon reach a view on this in order, apart from anything else, to assist the Chair.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In an earlier exchange with the Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) seemed to imply that he possessed leaked information about a cancellation or compromise of the crisis loans scheme. Will you advise me on how we can get accurate information on this matter, as it has been raised on the Floor of the House?

[Mr Speaker]

I have a feeling that the hon. Lady’s expectations of the scope of my powers are unrealistic, however generous-spirited they might be. It is extraordinarily good of her to think that these matters are within my compass, but I fear that unless I am gifted with talents that I do not possess I am unlikely to be able to satisfy her demands on this front. More widely, I would say very simply to her that hon. Members are responsible for their own statements, and if she wishes to follow up the matter with the hon. Member in question she is welcome to do so.