Modern Slavery Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It has been a pleasure to sit here listening to the debate, not just for the quality of the speeches, though one would expect the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) to give a commanding performance. The real pleasure for me has been looking at the Government Whip, who has had to take refuge, quite understandably. As the debate has gone on, the Government Whip has become greyer and greyer. I thought that, while we would put up a good fight in this House to amend and strengthen the Bill, the main changes would happen in the other place. After listening to the unprompted interventions and speeches, it has become clear that the Government will be hard pressed to hold the line they have drawn in the Bill that they have submitted for Second Reading. There will be a clear choice for the Home Secretary to make. Does she wish the Bill to remain her Bill, or will it become a Bill that the House begins to fashion in its own likeness? I will come back to that.

I see a Whip leaving the Chamber now. I hope that she is off to one of the places where this message needs to go—No. 10. It will be hard pressed to resist the changes the Home Secretary wants the House to make to the Bill before it leaves us and goes to the other place. I wish her well taking that message. I know that, in her own style, she will make the case we are making here.

Like others, I want to put on record the basis for my interest in this topic. It is the person who is sitting in the Box below the Gallery, Anthony Steen. I would not have been committed—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We should not mention people in the Box, as much as we are tempted, and as great as the man that he mentioned may be.

[Mr Field]

I accept that I cannot mention the great man in the Box, at whom we are now all looking. Convention prevents me from drawing attention to his presence there or even to the fact that elsewhere, outside the Box, he is known as Anthony Steen. For it is he who ignited my interest in this area. Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), made that point very effectively. In many ways, when he left this House he took out to the wider world the candle that he lit in this Chamber. To all intents and purposes, it is his Bill that we are debating today: no Anthony Steen, no Bill.

However, Anthony Steen is not the only person who ought to be thanked on the record. The hon. Member for Central Devon drew attention to how quickly the debate has progressed here. It has done so because of three women, the first of whom is Philippa Stroud. I can mention her because she is not in the Box, Mr Deputy Speaker. When she was at the Centre for Social Justice she decided that this topic ought to be investigated and initiated the inquiry that led to the report “It Happens Here”. She is a parent of the Bill. She convinced Fiona Cunningham, who was then the Home Secretary’s political adviser, that this was an important topic in its own right and one for which the Home Secretary ought to win time from her colleagues for a new Bill. Anybody who knows how Parliaments progress knows that, as a Parliament reaches its conclusion, parliamentary time becomes not easier but more difficult to command. We therefore naturally applaud the Home Secretary’s decision —for she is of course the third person. Philippa’s work, Fiona’s work, the work of the all-party group and the work of the person we cannot mention in this Chamber would have come to naught had the Home Secretary not made the crucial decision that there should be a Modern Slavery Bill. Although she has had to go to other meetings, she will take great heart from the fact that in two areas on which she has not been totally happy with the Bill as introduced—I think it is reasonable to say that—she will probably get her way.

Education Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am not pressing my new clause, even though the Minister could have had his speech written for him by old Labour, which I think will be noted. I wish for the proceedings to go forward as expeditiously as possible.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

As amusing as that may be, it is not a point of order.



New Clause 2

Admissions policy of independent schools opting for Academy status

‘(1) Section 6 of the Academies Act 2010 (effect of Academy order) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (4) (definition of “selective school”), after paragraph (b), insert—

“, or

(c) it is an independent school with a selective admissions policy converting to an Academy”.’.—(Mr Brady.)

Brought up, and read the First time.