Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

The Prime Minister was asked—

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 19 November.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning the senseless attack in a synagogue in West Jerusalem this week, in which five people were killed. One of the victims was a dual Israeli-UK citizen, Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, and we send our deepest condolences to his family and friends, as well as to the families of the other victims. This was an appalling act of terror, and we condemn all acts of this kind.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Graham Jones]

I think the whole House will echo the Prime Minister’s comments regarding the incident in Israel. It is a tragedy that we are all deeply concerned about.

How confident is the Prime Minister that he will not see further defections to UKIP?

[The Prime Minister]

There is only one way to secure an in/out referendum on Europe, and that is to back a Conservative victory at the next election.

Recall of MPs Bill

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

I say to the idea that somehow this will be free from the influence of big money that it will not be. The hon. Gentleman has not even thought about limits in terms of what could be spent on the elections. If we look at what happens in the United States, we see that in some states as soon as someone loses an election, money goes in to destabilise certain state legislators. Before recall, big money is spent, so being able to control that would be very difficult.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The question of what these limits are is important. What does recall mean to a person of limited means when they are up against big money?

[Mr Jones]

Exactly, and I made that point last week. If I had the £250 million or £300 million the hon. Member for Richmond Park has, I would not have to worry. [Interruption.] Well, I am sorry, but it is a matter of fact. [Interruption.] Of family history, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) says. If someone has that amount of money, it influences the way in which they can conduct recall elections. If I had that amount of cash, I do not think I would be bothered even if I lost it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that democracy involves real choices. I also think that we should be very clear about the importance we attach to the 1984 joint declaration, which makes it very clear that the current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, including lifestyle. It talks about:

“Rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence”

and, indeed, “of strike”. Those are important freedoms jointly guaranteed through that joint declaration and it is that, most of all, that we should stand up for.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Q6. Proposed cuts to GP funding, the proposed closure of a walk-in centre in Accrington, proposed cuts to the GP practice in Accrington Victoria hospital, accident and emergency in special measures, the police taking constituents to A and E at Blackburn Royal hospital in police cars: the NHS in my constituency is in crisis. What can the Prime Minister ever do, considering the broken promises he has given, to assure my constituents that the NHS is safe?

[The Prime Minister]

We are not cutting spending on the NHS, which is what those on the hon. Gentleman’s Front Bench recommended at the beginning of this Parliament. We are spending £12.7 billion more on the NHS, and if we look at his own clinical commissioning group in East Lancashire, we can see that the funding this year of £490 million is going up by 2.14%. That is an increase of more than inflation. That is our policy and that is not the policy of the Labour party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not know why the council took those decisions. Other councils have not had to take such dramatic decisions and have managed their finances more effectively. As I said in my previous answer, this Government have been responsible for a significant reallocation of money to help children in the crucial early years. Through the Youth Contract and other initiatives we now see youth unemployment lower today than it was when this Government first came into office.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

What are the Government doing to increase the number of pre-school children who are reading books and engaging in reading? We know that that has a big impact on social mobility, particularly for those in D and E and poor areas where they do not have access to books. Reading is vital and I do not think we are doing enough.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman: the huge and positive effect of getting children to enjoy and relish reading is well demonstrated. In fact, a new campaign has recently been launched, with the support of The Sun and a number of campaign groups, to get children reading more. I was at a primary school just yesterday to play my bit in advertising the campaign. The more that hon. Members from both sides of the House can get involved the better, because it will mean more children reading at an earlier age.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

1. What progress the Government have made on implementing its big society policy.

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)]

We have given communities more power through the Localism Act 2011. We have invested in volunteering, which has risen after years of decline. We have invested to support charitable giving, which has held up in difficult times. Some 70,000 young people have taken part in the National Citizen Service. I am very proud that this country leads the world in supporting social enterprise and investment.

[Graham Jones]

That is not a situation I recognise in Hyndburn, I have to say. Archbishop Vincent Nichols recently said:

“The Big Society hasn’t helped… Charity isn’t an alternative to public service… there are now families with nothing”.

Will the Minister finally admit that the big society project is in fact a big failure?

[Mr Hurd]

No, I will not. I think the cynics have got it entirely wrong. Some of the changes we have introduced are irreversible, not least in terms of giving communities more power and information, which they are not going to give back. We recognise that charities are going through a very difficult time, like lots of organisations, but this Government are actively supporting them to help them to adapt and improve their resilience, while Labour MPs continue to scaremonger.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

As my hon. Friend knows, I was in Wales last week, and the deficiencies of the health service under Labour guidance in Wales were a subject of constant discussion.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

T8. Last weekend I was searching for a V14 form to return a tax disc, I did a search on Google, and a copycat website came up offering services that cost money. What efforts are being made by the Government to work with the advertising agencies to try to deal with copycat websites that are ripping people off?

[Mr Maude]

My colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and I had a meeting with Google and others last week to address exactly this issue. We are taking urgent steps, with Google and with the Advertising Standards Authority, to address it. It is a real concern, the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it and we are on the case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The Post Office card account has been a great bonus for many people. I think it has really helped not only our post offices, but particularly elderly people who have access to those sorts of accounts, and I will look very carefully at what my hon. Friend says.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Q2. Why is market intervention by the state in mortgages okay, but market intervention in the energy market is not?

[The Prime Minister]

We are intervening in the mortgage market because banks are failing to provide mortgages so young people can get on to the housing ladder. We are also intervening by putting everyone on the lowest energy tariff, but what the Leader of the Opposition cannot control, although he would like to, is international gas prices. He needs a basic lesson in economics, and it sounds like the hon. Gentleman does, too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Q15. The Prime Minister has run away from the question whether he will personally benefit from the millionaires’ tax cut. It is a simple question: when the top rate of tax is cut from 50p to 45p, will he personally benefit?

[The Prime Minister]

The top rate of tax under this Government will be higher than in any year under his party’s Government. That is the change that we are bringing about. When they introduced the 50p rate, they lost £7 billion in tax revenue. They are not only socialists but incompetent socialists to boot.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s scheme, and I welcome PICTFOR’s support. I look forward to working with him on the scheme because it is important that we get that message out, even to children at a young age, and I am sure that we can all have a happy new year with that scheme.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of the merits of establishing an independent body to investigate complaints against charities.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

The Charity Commission investigates complaints where serious mismanagement or maladministration puts the charity’s assets or beneficiaries at significant risk.

Complaints about the services a charity provides should be directed to the charity itself. Lord Hodgson concluded in his review of the Charities Act 2006 that a new body would be inappropriate and unaffordable. I agree with his assessment.

[Graham Jones]

Agapao International, a charity in Haslingden in my constituency, took control of a property that was gifted to it by the community in 1999 through various charitable grants. It is now attempting to sell the property for its own financial gain in order to put right financial mismanagement, and there have been dozens of complaints against the charity. The Charity Commission does not seem to have the powers to investigate. Will the Minister meet me to see what can be done to resolve the issue?

[Mr Hurd]

I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, but I understand that the Charity Commission has engaged with the charity, and the bottom line is that its role is to deal with serious misconduct or mismanagement, not to deal with complaints where people are just unhappy with decisions that are taken within the law and within the governance arrangements of the charity.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David]

It is for the Government to speak for themselves about their proposals. The Electoral Commission has said that it is concerned about that potential problem and believes it should be tackled through the allocation of resources. We will consider the matter when we discuss the provisions that fall much later in the Bill, but I do not think that the Government are taking the question of addressing the problem at all seriously. If they were, the simplest thing would be to do what the Select Committee recommended and ensure that the same carry-over arrangements apply to proxy and postal voters as to everybody else. The case has not been made for treating postal and proxy votes differently.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

How will this impact on local government? We might see a significant fall in registration in certain wards, so would that lead to boundary changes? What will happen to the boundary changes at local government level that are implemented before we see individual voter registration?

[Mr David]

That is a big issue. One of the concerns I expressed earlier was about the impact a depleted register could have on the next boundary review in December 2015. From a democratic point of view, if many people who are entitled to be on the register are not, that will have a knock-on effect on how the new boundaries are drawn up. That will have an impact on other boundaries, too, as it will be taken into account in one way or another.

[Graham Jones]

So, what would the impact be when the number of people registered in a ward dropped below 66%? Does anything in the Bill or in my hon. Friend’s conversations with the Government suggest that that would have an impact?

[Mr David]

The objective analysis of likely voter depletion shows that there is unlikely to be uniformity throughout the county. We are likely to see a marked contrast between the rural and urban areas, as I said earlier. If my hon. Friend wants to break it down to regions, I think that there will be a great contrast between the number of electors who will be able to vote in the north-east of England and the number in the south-east of England. That reflects the differences in movement, in demographic trends and in the social and class structure. A particular concern has been expressed about London. Greater London has the greatest amount of movement of individuals and is thus likely to be the area where the greatest number of people who are entitled to vote are not on the electoral register. I would contend that the greatest contrast is likely to be between Greater London and more affluent parts of the south-east of England; let us be blunt about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The information comes from a very good piece of work that we commissioned the Electoral Commission to do, so that we had a clear understanding of the electoral registration system’s starting position before we introduced individual electoral registration. We mean to carry out that piece of work after we have introduced the system so that we can demonstrate that the right hon. Gentleman’s fears are groundless. As I have said, the system is working very well in one part of the United Kingdom, and without all of these problems. We have learnt from Northern Ireland’s transitional experience so that we do not repeat the mistakes—mistakes that were introduced under the Government of whom he was a member. I think that he really exaggerates the fears.

[Graham Jones]

Following the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), in the piece of work the Minister says the Electoral Commission has done, how many people were excluded from the register or were not on it? Was it 3 million or 6 million? What was the figure?

[Mr Harper]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman, although I am not pleased to, that the figure was 6 million. I can confirm, therefore, that under the previous Government 3 million people disappeared from the register, so I will take no lectures from the Opposition on that. I am confident that, under the proposals we have set out, we will not see the problems that they have suggested there will be. The brutal truth is that when they were in government they commissioned no research to help them understand the position post-2000 and so they did not know what was going on. Having commissioned that work and had the Electoral Commission carry it out, we now know that the problem actually got worse and the previous Government did nothing about it. We are confident that our proposals are robust, and I will set some of them out and respond to the amendments in a moment. We know that the system works well because it works perfectly well in Northern Ireland and we have learnt from the problems that occurred during the transitional process.