Election of Speaker

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (in the Chair)]

Order. No candidates have withdrawn, so the candidates for the next ballot are Chris Bryant, Ms Harriet Harman, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Dame Eleanor Laing and Dame Rosie Winterton. The next ballot will be opened as soon as the ballot papers have been printed, checked and put in place, which is likely to be in about 20 minutes—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] This is an early stage of these proceedings at the present rate of progress. I will cause the bells to be rung as soon as the Lobbies are ready, and the ballot will then start. As before, Members will have 20 minutes in which to vote.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Clarke.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (in the Chair)]

May I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman come to the Table to try to explain what his point of order is?

[John Spellar]

I think colleagues know who has dropped out. It seems to me utterly absurd not to have just reprinted the ballot paper for people to put their cross. All this delay is quite unnecessary and bureaucratic.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (in the Chair)]

I am sure that we are both out of order, but, with great respect, although these arrangements do need revising in various other respects, with the arrangements that we have it was not possible to know who the candidates were for the next round until a proper opportunity had been given for any candidates who wished to withdraw. I am afraid that the delay is inevitable. I declare the House suspended until the next stage in the proceedings when we have the ballot papers.

Proceedings suspended.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend raises a very important issue. As we increase the housing supply, it is important that the quality of new build homes continues to improve. We set out in our housing White Paper an ambition and a target of a housing market that works for everyone. We expect developers to deliver good-quality housing. We have already announced our intention for a new homes ombudsman to protect the rights of homebuyers and to hold developers to account. We expect all developers to build their homes to a good quality standard. These are homes that people will be living in for many years. They deserve those standards.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Q8. All the major European industrial nations insist that ships for their navies are built in their own yards. As part of the Prime Minister’s legacy, may I urge her to be a good European and follow their example, and instruct the Ministry of Defence to build its new support vessels in British yards, securing British jobs and using British steel?

[The Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, this Government brought forward our shipbuilding strategy to ensure that we support and encourage shipbuilding around the United Kingdom. On the Royal Navy, I understand that the issue he raises relates to support ships. The MOD is looking at future provision and the building of those support ships. We maintain our position on building the ships of the Royal Navy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend referenced the withdrawal agreement and said that there was no position on what the future relationship should be. Of course, the framework for that future relationship, which is in greater detail than many had expected, is set out in the political declaration, which gives the instructions to the negotiators for the future. In that circumstance, it is right that we consider the role that Parliament will play as the negotiations go forward to ensure that we get the future relationship right. I believe it is possible to have a future relationship with the European Union that is deep and close, but that gives us the freedom to do what we want to do, which is to have an independent trade policy and to develop trade agreements and trade arrangements with the rest of the world.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Q5. I welcome the crackdown on cold-calling to fleece pensioners out of their hard-earned pension pots, but is that not just dealing with the symptoms, rather than the underlying cause, which is the ill-judged free-for-all pension changes introduced by the Prime Minister’s friend, the previous Chancellor George Osborne, which gave the green light to the shysters and the spivs? What is she going to do about that?

[The Prime Minister]

The changes introduced by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer gave pensioners more flexibility and freedom in relation to how to use their own money.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Clearly, all suppliers are subject to the general law of the land, which covers many of those points. In addition, we have introduced a supplier code of conduct, which looks exactly at those corporate responsibility points, and we review it continuously, and we will review it with such cases in mind.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Today’s Carillion report clearly demonstrates the urgent need to deal with the late payment culture in the construction industry, which is hitting many subcontractors. Most important and pressing for me today, four months after the Carillion collapse, is the ongoing shutdown of the Midland Metropolitan Hospital. I have raised the matter with the Cabinet Office several times, with Health Ministers, and even twice here in the Chamber with the Prime Minister, so when will the Government stop dithering and start work again on this much-needed hospital?

[Oliver Dowden]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman is very passionate about this issue. I can reassure him, rightly again, that we remain absolutely committed to getting the new hospital built as quickly as possible, and we are supporting the trust to achieve that while ensuring that taxpayers’ money is spent appropriately.

Capita

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

As ever, my hon. Friend and neighbour is absolutely correct. That happens regularly, and it is exactly why private companies all use outsourcing to provide services such as cleaning and site security—because they can use specialist providers and because that delivers savings. He talks about how the Capita model arose. I remind Labour Members who are getting overexcited that Capita was founded by Sir Rod Aldridge, who was a major donor to not the Conservative party, but the Labour party.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

May I associate myself with the comments about Army recruitment made by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)? Does not the Minister accept that Capita is only the latest outsourcing company to be in trouble? With some, including probation, hospital and rail companies, having to hand back contracts and the growing crisis in the over-leveraged, offshored care industry, does he not question whether there are not actually deep systemic problems with the Government’s dogma-driven privatisation model?

[Oliver Dowden]

I simply fail to understand how Labour Members can say that this is dogma-driven when the last Labour Government awarded 55 PFI contracts a year and one was awarded in the last year. Some 20% of the contracts awarded to Capita were awarded by the Labour party. This is not about ideology; it is about what works. Outsourcing delivers savings, which means that we have more to invest in the public sector—more in our schools; more in our hospitals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this very important issue. It is one of the issues we will be focusing on in this Commonwealth Heads of Government week, and yesterday I called on my fellow Commonwealth leaders to join the UK in committing to halving the number of malaria cases by 2023. We are the second largest donor to the fight against malaria and, as the Minister for the Middle East, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) said in International Development questions, we remain committed to our five-year pledge to spend £500 million tackling it. Yesterday I announced that the UK will commit a further £100 million to the global fund, which has the aim of unlocking a further £100 million of investment from the private sector.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Q5. Three months ago, following the Carillion collapse, building works stopped on the two-thirds finished Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Smethwick. On 28 February, I raised this with the Prime Minister, and she assured me that:“The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS Improvement are working with the trust and the private finance initiative company so that work can recommence as soon as possible.”—[Official Report, 28 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 828.]Six weeks later, after endless dithering by those bodies, I have to ask the Prime Minister to get a grip on her Ministers and officials and get a decision, get a deal and get this hospital built. Will she do that?

[The Prime Minister]

I am aware that the right hon. Gentleman has raised this issue with me before. The contract between the trust and the private finance initiative company is still in place, so the PFI company is contractually obliged to manage the project and find another subcontractor who can continue to deliver the building work and the services. As the right hon. Gentleman may know, even before the issue arose with Carillion there were some delays to this project. The Department of Health and Social Care is working actively on it, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is doing so as well and he has also been in discussions with the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, who has also been in discussions with the trust. We recognise the level of concern being raised on this issue and we are working to resolve it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Q12. The Prime Minister will be aware that the huge new Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Smethwick is currently halted by the Carillion collapse. However, it is already two thirds finished and the longer the restart of work is delayed, the more the ultimate costs will rise. Yet only this week, more project management staff were laid off, so will the Prime Minister commit to getting this site back to work and instruct her Ministers, especially in the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury, to get a grip on this project, get the work rolling again next month and complete this much needed hospital?

[The Prime Minister]

I understand that more than 8,000 Carillion workers have had their jobs safeguarded, but, of course, that is no comfort to those made redundant and their families. The right hon. Gentleman raises a specific point about the Midland Metropolitan Hospital. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS Improvement are working with the trust and the private finance initiative company so that work can recommence as soon as possible.

Capita

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. That is why I, and we as a Government, welcome the fact that the FRC is looking into the four major accountancy firms and seeing what lessons we need to learn. Of course we will respond to that and act appropriately.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

May I bring the Minister back to the core issue, which is that there are two separate but linked problems: the business model and the performance of these companies? Like Carillion, Capita seems to be part of the over-concentrated, over-leveraged, dividend-and-bonus-exploiting culture that relies on the state to bail out failure. Capita incompetence is only too clear from its lamentable performance on the recruitment contract for the armed services. When will this Government finally get a grip?

[Oliver Dowden]

Behind the right hon. Gentleman’s question is an important point about the diversity of suppliers in this market. We do need to look to diversify further. That is why, for example, we have set a target that 33% of all our Government contracting should be with small and medium-sized enterprises—precisely to ensure that we have that greater diversity. On his point about state bail-out, we have done precisely the opposite of a state bail-out. Carillion went into liquidation, so its shareholders paid the price; because Capita has decided to stop paying dividends, its shareholders are paying the price. Therefore, it is not correct to say that the state is bailing them out in this situation.

Carillion and Public Sector Outsourcing

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

As I have already said to the House, these are not political appointments so there is no political intervention in them. It is quite right that donations to all political parties are made public. That is what the House has voted for and embodied in legislation, and it makes the situation clear to everybody.

Let me turn to Carillion’s liquidation. Along with all my fellow Ministers and, I believe, the whole House, I recognise that the collapse of Carillion has caused huge anxiety for the people who work for Carillion companies, the people in Carillion pension schemes, the suppliers and subcontractors and, of course, the people who use the public services provided by the company’s workers.

I reiterate the priorities that have animated the Government throughout the process. They have been: first, to make sure that public service delivery continued without interruption, which has been the case, as no public bodies have reported any major service disruptions; secondly, to reassure the workers employed on public service contracts that they will continue to get paid for their work; thirdly, to make sure that the right support is in place for pensioners; and fourthly, to protect taxpayers from an unacceptable bail-out of a public company, the risk of which is rightly borne by the shareholders and the banks that have lent to it.

The situation today is that the official receiver is now effectively running Carillion, and in the course of time his investigations will show exactly how the company ran into trouble. Although Carillion was under some financial pressure from three UK public sector construction projects—two hospitals and a road scheme in Scotland—it is already clear from the company’s statements to the stock market and from information that has become public since the liquidation that the problems it faced lay largely in its overseas construction projects and in the level of financial risk that it took on.

Within days of the first profit warning in July 2017, the Government retained legal and accountancy support and started an intense period of contingency planning. Preparing these plans involved considerable effort by officials from right across Government. The Department of Health and Social Care co-ordinated a similar exercise for NHS bodies, including trusts, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government worked with local authorities that had exposure to Carillion. The key aim of all these contingency plans was to ensure that public services were kept running safely and smoothly in any possible scenario. The solution had to be specific to the contract in question, had to be affordable and had to be capable of being executed, if necessary, at short notice.

As a result of that planning, the work covered by the service contracts has continued with minimal disruption: the school meals have been served, the hospitals have been cleaned and the maintenance staff have continued to go about their work. With regard to the construction contracts, some infrastructure work, such as that on the Aberdeen bypass, now continues uninterrupted. Other construction sites where work has paused have been put into a safe state so that work can be resumed quickly. The official receiver is working hard to resume work on these sites at the earliest possible date. This work requires customers to find new project management firms that can oversee the completion of their projects.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for the information that he is providing to Members of Parliament. The Midland Metropolitan Hospital has a site management in place and a series of contractors. Given that those contractors are now locked out of the site, they will be going off to undertake other work, so increasing costs will have to be borne. There will also be disruption to the work from the delay on an already delayed hospital, which has nothing to do with the workforce.

[Mr Lidington]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly serious and reasonable point. It is crucial that we do all we can within our power to minimise the impact of delay on the public sector construction contracts, and to retain the knowledge held by the Carillion staff employed on those contracts who, in most cases, are undertaking a project management role, managing the work of a number of different subcontractors. In particular, the development of our future hospitals must continue. This is something that the Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), is working on day by day.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

rose—

[Mr Lidington]

May I come to discussing the particular hospital that the right hon. Gentleman cited?

We are working with the official receiver to ensure that Carillion construction staff working on the Royal Liverpool Hospital, the Midland Metropolitan Hospital and the Southmead Hospital in Bristol continue to be paid. This allows for a more orderly timeframe for the discussions to take place between the private finance initiative contractor and the lenders to ensure that new contractors can replace Carillion and that the work can resume at the earliest possible date.

I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we know that we have a lot of work still to do. We have, for example, to find alternative suppliers both for those hospital contracts and for other contracts, but I regard the hospital contracts as a particular priority. The exact structure of those contracts and the extent to which they are nearing completion obviously varies depending on which hospital contract one looks at. The precise solution will differ from Liverpool to Bristol to the west midlands. I assure him that we regard getting on with that job as a very high priority indeed.

Carillion

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

On my hon. Friend’s last point, I promise, on a “without prejudice” basis, to examine the case for doing so and to discuss it with ministerial colleagues. On his broader point, as I have said in response to a number of hon. Members across the House, there is a case for the Government to take a fresh look at the procurement process. However, I do not want that, in the next few days and weeks, to get in the way of our immediate responsibility to make life as easy as it can be made for employees, pensioners and others who are very worried about their futures.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I echo the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). The new Midland Metropolitan Hospital now towers over the terraced housing in the Smethwick part of my constituency. Despite a delay due to a design failure, work is now proceeding apace and it is two thirds completed. What will the Government be doing about ensuring the flow of funding and work so that the contract can be completed and we can look forward to the opening of this new, much-needed hospital?

[Mr Lidington]

Discussions are taking place with the trusts, with Carillion managers and contractors, with PwC—as a special manager in the liquidation on behalf of the official receiver—and with the lenders to the project companies so that in coming days construction activities can continue without material disruption on crucial projects that the Government strongly support.