National Insurance Contributions Bill

Debate between Damian Collins and Bob Stewart

Monday 4th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I will say a few words in support of the Bill. Like all Government Members, I believe that this is an excellent measure that recognises that it is businesses of all sizes that create jobs in this country. People are now finding jobs in growing numbers. By reducing taxes on employment, we will make it more likely that businesses will employ more people. The strength of the recovery in the private sector underlines the growth in the economy as a whole. The Labour party predicted that growth would not come and that jobs would not be created. By reducing the cost of national insurance to employers, the Government are in this Bill taking another excellent step in the right direction.

I agree with the Exchequer Secretary that we should look at the Bill as one of a range of important measures that the Government are introducing to support the business community, and all those measures support each other. My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) spoke of meeting young people under the age of 30 who had received StartUp loans from the Government to invest in starting their own businesses, which have had a great deal of success. The Bill will help businesses like those to get to the next stage on the path to growth and to go from being a start-up to employing a small number of people. There is an enormous appetite among people in this country to have a go at starting their own business. That is one of the most positive things to come out of the recession. We need policies that work with the grain of people’s entrepreneurial instincts and back them as they back themselves.

[Bob Stewart]

I have listened carefully to this debate. I have never run a small business; I have run a medium-sized business, but it was not my own. Would it not be a tremendous fillip to small businesses if HMRC was slightly more proactive when it saw a business making a clear mistake, and wrote to it saying, “It would be better if you did it this way”?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The quality of the advice to businesses from all quarters is important. That echoes a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon, who said that we all need to advocate the Government’s policies to ensure that businesses benefit from them.

Olympics and Paralympics (Funding)

Debate between Damian Collins and Bob Stewart

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and fellow Kent Member. It would be churlish of me not to agree with him. All of us in Kent are extremely proud of the role that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson) has played, as Sports Minister, in steering the Olympic games safely through the final development of the facilities and planning. He has been ably supported by an excellent team at LOCOG and the ODA, which have done a terrific job in ensuring that the games will be ready on time, We can all be proud of that as we look forward to their happening.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) referred to how the Olympic games will inspire young people across the country. They are a major sporting event. One of my first sporting memories was probably of Sebastian Coe winning his gold medal in Moscow in 1980. The 1984 Olympics were an inspiration to my generation of school children across the country not only for the great variety of sports on the athletics track but for the hockey, which I mentioned earlier. We know that children will take a great interest in it and find it very exciting. Their memories of the London Olympic games will be a defining moment of their young lives, and might inspire them to take up a new sport or pursue an existing interest in sport. The legacy is difficult to quantify at this stage, but we all have faith that it will be an important part of the games.

[Bob Stewart]

It crosses my mind that the Olympic games will be an inspiration to women worldwide. When the games are broadcast, people across the world will see that it is not possible to take women out of the Olympic games. They will be involved, and women who are not normally allowed to take part in sport in some countries will see that women in London can do so. That will be one of the huge inspirations of our London Olympic games.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I think of Kent and the inspiration of Kelly Holmes, as one of our great Olympians, to young people right across the county. Many streets throughout the country, including in London, are named after famous Olympians. I believe there is a road in south London named after Tessa Sanderson, after she won the javelin gold medal at the LA Olympics. The great athletes of our country, men and women, will be inspirations to generations to come, as they have been in the past, and an important part of the Olympic movement.

I want to touch on some of the local aspects of the Olympic games. The torch relay comes to Hythe, Sandgate and Folkestone on 18 July, before making its way to Dover for its next overnight stop. That is something the whole community can celebrate and enjoy, giving people a chance to see and touch part of the Olympics. It is also an excellent way of building up the excitement and anticipation of the events.

The school games are an excellent initiative, led by my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, and schools across the country will actively participate in them. The application rate has been incredibly high. Schools such as the Marsh academy, the Harvey grammar school and St Augustine’s primary school in my constituency will be taking part in the games. It will be an inspiration to students that the staging of the games will involve some of the major Olympic facilities in the Olympic park, such as the aquatics centre and the Olympic track. Indeed, some of the first competitive events involving British athletes using those facilities will be at the school games, rather than the main Olympic games. What a fantastic message that sends out about the great importance we attach to developing school games. [Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend want to intervene?

[Bob Stewart]

I was just shifting position.

[Damian Collins]

Sorry, I misread my hon. Friend’s signals.

Civil Aviation Bill

Debate between Damian Collins and Bob Stewart

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech from the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), who gave such an eloquent, thoughtful and intelligent speech, much of which I could agree with. I shall come on to the substance of her remarks about airports and Heathrow in a moment. I am also grateful for the opportunity to echo her tribute to Alan Keen.

I had the privilege of serving for just over a year on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee with Alan Keen. He was a great colleague on the Committee and continued its work as best he could, right through last summer, including taking part in our questioning of the Murdochs and the phone hacking inquiry. He was, of course, present for the launch of the Committee’s report on football governance, a topic that was a lifelong passion of his. He is sorely missed, not only by hon. Members on both sides of the House, but by members of the Committee.

The hon. Lady demonstrated in her speech that communities that live alongside and around airports are vibrant and have a strong affinity to those airports as a great source of wealth, jobs, income, skills and training for the local economy. Communities that live alongside airports are by no means blighted, but can benefit an awful lot from them. My constituency has a somewhat smaller—in fact, much smaller—airport than Heathrow at Lydd, which works under the name London Ashford airport. It is applying for an extended runway so that it can offer more local and regional services. But the arguments that people in Romney Marsh in my constituency would make about why they support the expansion of that airport are very similar to the hon. Lady’s remarks about Heathrow. The economic benefits of that investment in aviation and having a vibrant airport in the locality are good for the local economy and create jobs, rather than turning people away. That is appreciated by many of the hon. Members who have spoken in this debate so far, whose constituencies either contain an airport or are within the economic hinterland of one.

I welcome the thrust of the Bill, in particular the remit of the Civil Aviation Authority to focus on the consumer experience and passengers as its primary motivation. That will help the regulation and support of airports. I am especially drawn to clause 1 of the Bill, which sets the CAA’s general duty. Subsection 1 provides that it

“must carry out its functions…in a manner which it considers will further the interests of users of air transport services”.

Subsection 2 adds a duty to promote competition. I am sure that people will have amendments and ideas that will be discussed in Committee, but I wonder whether those two points may be combined into one, so that the CAA should consider promoting competition as part of supporting and furthering the interests of air transport services, rather than as a separate point. Many of us would see that those two things can be combined, because competition helps to improve the level of quality and service.

I have in mind especially issues of capacity, which may be at the heart of the concerns that many air transport users face. It was mentioned earlier in the debate that one of the particular issues that air transport passengers might face is the time delays caused by flights being required to stack because they do not have a landing slot. In my constituency in Kent, that is a particular cause of noise and environmental pollution. One of the best ways to clean up the aviation industry and reduce its carbon footprint would be to reduce the amount of time planes spend in the air unnecessarily. Much of that happens simply waiting for a landing slot.

[Bob Stewart]

Stacking causes a lot of noise in my constituency and I just want to endorse what my hon. Friend says. There is increasing stacking over Beckenham and we are getting fed up with it.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend’s constituency is 30 miles or so from mine. I am sure that his constituents and mine share that concern.

Extra runway capacity in the south-east of England is a way to manage aviation much more effectively and reduce planes’ stacking time. Although some might say that increasing aviation capacity might lead to environmental pollution, much better management of planes in the air would significantly reduce it. It is a serious point, and the CAA should think of it when considering the air passenger experience.