Debate on the Address

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). He has eloquently set out the arguments on the balance between the need to protect national security and the need to protect individual freedoms. He mentioned internet surveillance and my party will look closely at the proposals and support whatever measures are necessary to protect national security, but we will also be conscious of the need to protect individual freedoms and privacies. That means not giving the Government any more powers than are absolutely and strictly necessary in the fight against terrorism, but if powers are thought to be absolutely necessary, we would be remiss if we did not proceed to implement them.

At the outset, I join others in paying tribute to Her Majesty the Queen in her diamond jubilee year. We in Northern Ireland look forward to her coming to the Province later this summer, and I have no doubt that she will be welcomed as warmly as she has been on previous visits.

I also wish to join the Prime Minister and other right hon. and hon. Members in paying tribute to the service in the two years of this Parliament of our brave servicemen and women in theatres of conflict abroad and in the work that they do to protect us all here in this country and in the fight against terrorism.

I welcome several measures in the Queen’s Speech. The briefing that went on before the Gracious Speech referred to a greater focus on family-friendly measures. My party welcomes measures to support and strengthen families and family life, such as speedier adoption and help for parents of children with disabilities to cut through red tape. We will support such measures, because strong families are important and supporting them is key. The Government have been slow so far to implement tax allowance changes for married couples, which were in the Conservative manifesto and the coalition agreement. We look forward to their coming forward with proposals in that area in due course.

We also welcome the banking reform Bill, which will split the retail and investment sides of businesses. That is overdue, it is good news for consumers and will help to protect them, and so will receive our support. There are issues with the speed of implementation—we would like the reforms to happen a little quicker—but we will come to that during the debate on the Bill.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Banking reform is important for the United Kingdom as a whole but especially important for Northern Ireland. We have a dysfunctional banking system, because so many banks have been caught up with bad property loans and so on. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me and people in Northern Ireland that the Government need to focus more on how measures to ease banking will affect banks in Northern Ireland and ensure that we get our fair share of credit easing and so on?

[Mr Dodds]

As Minister for Finance and Personnel in the Northern Ireland Executive, my hon. Friend deals with such issues on a daily basis, and he and his colleagues, including Arlene Foster, the enterprise Minister, and others are working hard to deal with them. He points, rightly, to the particular issues in Northern Ireland. Two of our banks are based in the Irish Republic. The property collapse in the Irish Republic and its eurozone problems are impacting strongly on the Northern Ireland economy. He is right, therefore, that particular attention needs to be given to how credit easing plays through to Northern Ireland, where we have peculiar circumstances that do not affect other parts of the UK.

One reason we have been pushing strongly—we have received a reasonably warm response—on the need to reduce corporation tax in Northern Ireland is that we share a land frontier with the Irish Republic, which has a much lower rate of corporation tax. I look forward to an announcement on that and other issues in this Session and perhaps to legislation in the next Session.

We welcome the emphasis on cutting business regulation. The Business Secretary’s remarks yesterday about the need to roll back the EU regulatory burden were also most welcome. We also support moves on executive pay. The recent revolts by shareholders in companies such as Aviva and Barclays brought cheer to hard-working families, but more needs to be done to empower shareholders through binding votes on pay at the top level. Such measures matter to people out there in the country, and they want action taken on them. That is where the focus needs to be.

We welcome the fact that driving under the influence of drugs will become a specific offence with appropriate punishment. I have received communication on that issue, as other right hon. and hon. Members will have, and although this measure will be of little comfort to those who have already lost family members in tragic circumstances—we have heard some very brave people speaking in the media about this—it will, I hope, prevent more deaths and injuries on our roads in the future.

Likewise, I welcome the much-needed groceries code adjudicator Bill. It will be warmly welcomed by farmers and other suppliers in my part of the world—not necessarily in my constituency, because at last count only three farmers were living within its boundaries, but in Northern Ireland, which is largely a rural area, it will be warmly welcomed.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I, too, much support the groceries code adjudicator Bill. If there is no problem with how our big buyers and supermarkets use their muscle, they will have nothing to fear from the adjudicator. It will be a check and balance.

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[Mr Dodds]

Absolutely, but the adjudicator must have teeth. We look forward to hearing the details as they come forward. However, if that and other measures we have talked about are implemented, they will receive broad welcome.

Having said that, I want to come to several areas on which I disagree with the Government. Some relate to issues that were in the Queen’s Speech, but some relate to matters that were not. The verdict on the Gracious Speech must be that, although it contains useful measures that we will support, overall it lacks substance in heavy-weight measures to deal with the big issue confronting us. There is to be a measure on House of Lords reform. Many people call me or come to my constituency office, but few, if any, have ever raised that issue with me. Even in these days of e-mails, Twitter and Facebook, very little of our correspondence relates to the matter.

There are, however, many issues on which I get a large amount of e-mails and other correspondence. People are concerned about our net contribution to the European Union, for example. They are worried about the cost of implementing regulations from Brussels. They are angry about our inability to reject unwanted EU law, and they want Parliament to be able to decide on behalf of the people of the United Kingdom what our laws should be, who we should have in our country and who we should be able to deport. Those are the issues that people raise with Members of Parliament all the time. They might not be the issues that Members want to face up to, but unless we face up to the concerns that people raise on a daily basis, we shall become ever more disconnected from the people we are supposed to represent.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

A couple of weeks ago, some small business owners from my constituency came down to see me. They talked about the difficulties relating to bank lending and to the high rate of VAT. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that they will take little comfort from what has been said in today’s Queen’s Speech?

[Mr Dodds]

I agree with the hon. Lady. I shall come to the issue of VAT shortly, as people have raised that with me. VAT and fuel costs are of real concern to them. The hon. Lady also mentioned banking. It is clear that a real problem for economic growth in this country is that many viable businesses that have a future and an order book and that can trade are having to deal with banks that are moving the goalposts on lending conditions and what they require businesses to pay. They often do that at short notice, having agreed on a programme of repayments and interest rates only a few months previously. Suddenly, the goalposts are moved and the businesses are bereft of any means of continuing. They are forced into liquidation and into laying people off. Much more needs to be done about the lack of bank lending to businesses, because that is strangling a great deal of the potential growth in our economy.

[Meg Hillier]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the fact that banks have become so far removed from the communities that they serve is causing some of these challenges? There is agreement across the House on the need for reform of the banking system. Would he welcome more mutualisation in the banking sector, and does he share my regret that that does not appear in the Gracious Speech?

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[Mr Dodds]

The hon. Lady puts forward an important issue for our consideration. Many of the banks are largely owned by the public at the moment. One leading business man in Northern Ireland told me recently that he regretted that we had not gone the whole way and taken complete control of the banks, to ensure that all the necessary lending could take place. Members of the public, taxpayers, ordinary hard-working families, individuals and businesses are pumping billions of pounds into the banking system, yet the banks are not doing what needs to be done to ease credit and lend in the way that they should.

I was talking about House of Lords reform, and other Members have rightly raised issues that are of real concern to the people and the communities that they represent. Before we get on to the reform of the House of Lords, I would like to see this House deal with an issue relating to the House of Commons. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said on record during the last Session that they believe that it is wrong that Members who do not take their seats in the House of Commons are still able to receive full expenses, allowances and representational moneys, which puts them in a much more advantageous position than those of us who do take our seats. Sinn Fein, for instance, gets the equivalent of parliamentary Short money—what is called representative money—and is free to spend it, not on parliamentary activities, of course, because it does not engage in any parliamentary activities, but on party political activities. Whereas we as right hon. and hon. Members would rightly be called to account by the authorities for any spending—even a penny’s worth—for party political purposes, a group of Members who do not take their seats are quite free to spend that money to the disadvantage of their political opponents. Let us be frank: it does not particularly affect our votes, but it affects those of others in the House who are not here today and no doubt can speak for themselves in due course. The fact is that Members who do not take their seats are given an enormous advantage.

We know that back in 2001, Betty Boothroyd, the former great Speaker of the House, resisted all this for a long time. Ultimately, the decision was taken to proceed with the concessions because the then Labour Government said—it was bitterly opposed by Conservative Members—that it was important to bring people into the peace process and the political process. Whatever the arguments at that time, the fact of the matter is that there is no longer any need for this special category of expenditure on the basis of encouraging people to be part of the peace process. It is clear that people are involved in the Executive and in the Assembly at Stormont. I welcome that, and think it enormously to the credit of parties in this House and in Northern Ireland that progress has been made, but it would not make the slightest difference to the political process—nobody believes that it would—if these special arrangements were withdrawn in line with what was promised before the election and in the last parliamentary Session.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I want entirely to endorse every single point he has made on the matter of Short money for people who do not take their seats in this House. Those days are over; let us get this sorted out.

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[Mr Dodds]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support. What I am proposing does not require legislation, so I did not necessarily expect it to be reflected in the Queen’s Speech today, but I look forward to steps being taken in this Session to tackle this long overdue issue.

I want to come to another issue on which we have not received many demands for legislation, but about which we have heard many complaints and expressions of concern. The issue has not been raised in the debate so far, but it received an enormous amount of coverage in the run-up to the Gracious Speech: so-called gay marriage. I have to say that I am pleased that no Bill on so-called gay marriage has been proposed for this Session, but I understand that it is the Government’s clear intention to introduce a Bill at some point. I hope that they will reconsider that in light of the fact that well over 500,000 people have signed the Coalition for Marriage’s petition against changing the definition of marriage. That is more people than have signed any petition on the Government’s own website. I hope that there will be a solemn and sincere reconsideration of any suggestion to bring forward such a measure.

Once again, this issue highlights the question of whether we are prepared to connect with the views of the vast majority of the people we purport to represent in this House or we remain disconnected from the concerns of ordinary people in the community. We have already legislated for civil partnerships, and this issue of gay marriage does not have the support of people out in the country. Rather than fixating on issues like that, if the Prime Minister were to come to my constituency—no doubt other hon. Members will hear the same thing in their constituencies—he would hear about the issues that matter, such as the high and rising price of petrol and diesel, and the high and rising price of energy. In Northern Ireland, where we suffer higher petrol and diesel costs than any other part of not just the United Kingdom but the European Union—hard as that is to believe—this is a very important matter indeed, but I am sorry to say that the Gracious Speech contained no reference to any measure that would tackle the high and rising price of fuel.

I know that people will say that the Government have taken action to deal with the problem, and I accept that measures have been taken that have made the price of fuel lower than it would otherwise have been. However, people are inundating me and other DUP Members with complaints about the proposed 3p rise in fuel duty next August, which will undoubtedly make things very difficult for families and businesses. It will, for instance, have knock-on effects on the price of food. People simply cannot understand why we are seeing these taxes go up while taxes on millionaires are coming down.

There is no doubt that the increase in VAT, which has already been mentioned today, has added enormously to the burden on families. In November 2008, the present Chancellor said that he would remind the then Government about the Labour party’s plans to increase VAT from 18.5%

“every single day between now and the next general election.”—[Official Report, 26 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 741.]

He said that it was a shame, and all the rest of it. The tune has changed dramatically since the Opposition became the Government, but what was said then about the burden that the increase would inflict on individuals, businesses and families was absolutely true, and it is still true today. The VAT increases have added considerably to the cost of living, but I do not believe that VAT has been used to help stimulate the economy.

Businesses are facing extreme pressures as a result of bank lending policies and credit tightening. The Greek and French elections have taken place in recent days, and the results have shown a desire to move away from nothing but austerity to an emphasis on growth. Of course we need to deal with the deficit, but I for one am glad that emphasis is now being placed on the need to secure growth in the economy. We cannot deal with the deficit only by cutting expenditure or raising taxes; we must have economic growth as well. The priority of this parliamentary Session must be growth, growth, growth, and we will support the Government in respect of measures that deliver that essential, but so far elusive, piece of the economic jigsaw.