Parliamentary Representation
Debate between Lord Blunkett and John Bercow(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Blunkett
I agree entirely, and I am pleased that the education centre has been granted planning consent. I hope that there will be a route to it, Mr Speaker, because I am strongly in favour of the service, and support and participate in its programmes. I am pleased that your efforts and those of the Lord Speaker in reaching out, going out and talking about Parliament and politics in a non-party way is encouraging others to be interested in this subject. There is hunger out there. I say that I hope there is access to the new facilities because on one or two days of the week these days, it is quite difficult to get from Portcullis House to here in one piece. I do not want to discourage anybody from coming here, but we will have to look at that.
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that I have taken careful note of his strictures on that point, and I regard it as being as close to a parliamentary instruction as he is minded to volunteer? I hope that he will not be disappointed when the eventual plans materialise.
Mr Blunkett
I am very grateful for that. These days, I grab at anything that indicates that what I have said is taken seriously, so thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
The way in which people see politics and Parliament has been raised. The allowances debacle four years ago is still doing great damage, partly because people believe things that do not happen and they believe and are worried about things that do happen. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South agrees when I say that, in relation to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, issues to do with disability matters have improved considerably. There is always a step back in any organisation when there is a change of personnel, because people do not know that others have been “educated” to understand the issues and to be sensitive to them. But when it comes to an understanding of families one would have thought that those who have families—everybody is brought up in some sort of family, even if they are looked after—would have understood the issues around family life. I regret that we have not got there yet.
On the issue of disability, access to elected office is important. I am pleased that 29 people have been fully funded on this. I have been trying to help people who have approached me from both major parties. No one has yet approached me from the Lib Dems, but I would not discriminate against them if they did, so perhaps I could encourage them to do so.
Cost of Living
Debate between Lord Blunkett and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) cannot opportunistically spring up in that way. He is showing a considerable discourtesy to the House. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) should proceed unhindered with his speech.
Mr Blunkett
I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker.
I am talking about children under 10 who suddenly discover that their parents have to move and that they can no longer have their own bedroom, and about those with shared care not being able to look after their children at weekends. We could have provided incentives for people to move, but I am not sure whether the Government want them to move or whether they want to punish them for having a house with two bedrooms.
Higher Education Fees
Debate between Lord Blunkett and John Bercow(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Blunkett
No, I will not. I pray in aid the Institute for Fiscal Studies, because when it discussed this scheme it said that the system generates perverse incentives. For example, the national scholarship fund provides a financial incentive for universities to reject students when they charge more than £6,000. In other words, the higher-level universities will end up rejecting students from poorer backgrounds—the exact opposite of what has been argued this afternoon. The position is very clear: the scheme is designed to change the architecture of higher education in this country. It is ideologically based, not logically based—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman. Stop the clock. Point of order, Mr Dan Byles.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. The short answer to his question is, yes, it is a matter of debate and, however irritated he might feel, that was not a point of order. We must conduct the debate in an orderly way.
Mr Blunkett
The answer is very simple. More of my constituents and those who visit my advice surgery understand those issues than do those of Government Members. That is a simple fact, and that is why this is a value-laden, ideological issue, not one of rationality, not one of deficit-reduction—
Points of Order
Debate between Lord Blunkett and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
The short answer to the right hon. Gentleman is that it is not possible to devise some new procedure for the purpose that he described. Moreover, I am not sure that it is necessary. The right hon. Gentleman has just pithily explained his precise understanding of the size of the IPSA estimate as a feature of the total estimate. If he works on the basis that everybody else is as capable of interpreting these matters as he is—that is an if, I accept—he might be satisfied that there is a general level of understanding of these important matters.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As regards the speed with which today’s business is being taken through the House, the Secretary of State for Education suggested on the radio this morning that comparison could be drawn between the Academies Bill, with its 16 clauses and two schedules, and legislation on the assisted places scheme to remove the subsidy to private education, which had three substantive clauses and two technical clauses and for which I was responsible in 1997. I know that you cannot protect Parliament from everything that the coalition does, Mr Speaker, but is not the comparison to be made between this Bill and the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and will you protect us from the dangerous dogma of the coalition Government as they push this Bill through?
Mr Speaker
I am always keen and anxious to protect the House and I take considerable steps to do so. I have not made the comparison that the right hon. Gentleman suggests, but of course there would be no need for me to do so because he has just made that comparison extremely effectively. It is on the record, and I know that he will want to share it with the residents of Sheffield, Brightside.
Election of Speaker
Debate between Lord Blunkett and John Bercow(14 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker-Elect
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that speech. He has set out very clearly for new Members how to take one’s opportunities at the outset of a new Parliament.
I do not know whether any other colleague wishes to contribute, but if none does so—
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
On behalf of Back Benchers, Mr Speaker-Elect, I should like to congratulate you, and I should like to thank the Father of the House for reminding me that I was only 12 when he was elected to the House. That has made me feel a lot younger.
Mr Speaker-Elect, you held the Chair for 10 months in the last Parliament. We remember that, as you described this afternoon, you were even handed and fair to all major parties and between Members. You were also rigorous, so I shall be brief.
One of the things that you advocated and that was debated at length was the need for new politics. This House must be able to hold the Executive—the Government—to account more effectively. On many occasions with my own Government, you allowed to be called to the House through private notice questions Ministers who did not report to the House things that they had announced in public before the House had had a chance to meet. I hope that that continues, despite the fact that it would appear that three major constitutional announcements that relate to the House—to the voting system and the upper Chamber, on expenditure cuts and on changes to how the House might rid itself of a Government that no longer had the confidence of the House—all appear to have been made prior to Parliament convening next week. One of those announcements was made only 48 hours before it would have been possible for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to report directly to the House.
Mr Speaker-Elect, we look forward to you defending our interests as Back Benchers from whichever party, but we look forward most of all to your being able to reassert the ideas that were promoted before the last general election—that we should not be engaged in fixes and we should not have the old caballing, and that we should have open, honest, forthright debate and that parliamentarians should genuinely be able to hold this new coalition to account.
Mr Speaker-Elect
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, who has reminded me of my commitment to scrutiny and accountability, and I happily underline that commitment this afternoon.
In closing my remarks, I should like to reiterate what has already been said by others: namely, new Members deserve a huge welcome and every possible encouragement and exhortation to go about their business in the way that they think fit on behalf of their constituents.
Adjournment
Resolved, That this House do now adjourn until tomorrow at ten minutes past Three o’clock. —(Mr Dunne.)