Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Swire and Stephen Pound

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes an ingenious connection between York and Northern Ireland—the only connection that attracted investment before was probably with the Vikings, who took an early interest in both areas.

There are clearly tremendous advantages in Northern Ireland: it is not in the euro; it is extremely good in terms of education; it is a great place to live; and it has low costs, good IT, good connections and good transport connections. Yes, we can do more, but let us just look very carefully at how well Northern Ireland has done to date in attracting inward investment.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

If we can move on from the battle of Clontarf, I must say that the Secretary of State is getting the reputation of being something of a one-club golfer when it comes to the Northern Ireland economy. When even yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph referred to a putative corporation tax as “an economic disaster”, one has to ask: does the Secretary of State have another driver in his bag, and will he or his caddy whip it out and show it to us?

[Mr Swire]

We have many clubs, and we shall use them in the same way as they were used at the Open last week—with tremendous professionalism. The whole issue of corporation tax is a key thing that the joint group has been—

[Stephen Pound]

It is a disaster.

[Mr Swire]

It is not a disaster; it is what we have been looking at very carefully.

There are other things that we need to do to rebalance the Northern Ireland economy, which both Governments over a successive number of years allowed to become far too dependent, for obvious reasons, and we will use any club available in our or anyone else’s bag to bring that about.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Swire and Stephen Pound

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I find the Minister of State’s selective comments to be quite extraordinary. The Queen of Hearts suggested that one should believe six impossible things every day before breakfast, but does the Minister seriously expect us to believe that a shrinking private sector can somehow compensate for the highest public sector job losses of any UK region? That sounds like “Alice in Wonderland” to me.

[Mr Swire]

Let us look in the real glass, rather than the looking glass, and give the hon. Gentleman three quick facts. The unemployment rate for Northern Ireland was down 0.7% over the quarter and 1% over the year. The number of unemployed people in Northern Ireland was estimated at 59,000, down 7,000 over both the quarter and the year. Northern Ireland unemployment for 18 to 24-year-olds for the three months to October 2011 was estimated at 18.2%, compared with a UK average of 20.5%. No one is saying that this will continue. We hope it will, but we are trying to deal with unprecedented economic circumstances, both globally and in trying to right the appalling legacy of the Labour Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Swire and Stephen Pound

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

I do not want to be cynical about the previous Government––not unless I have to be––but I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that they raised these allowances two years running up to the election but that their plans, had they won the election, were to reduce them. We could have stuck with those figures. We did not. We chose to increase the high level of the cold weather payment to the benefit of all who are most vulnerable.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

In wishing the Minister of State the very happiest of birthdays today, may I remind him that politicians are often accused of giving warm words and cold comfort? Bearing in mind the uniquely disadvantaged position of the fuel poor in Northern Ireland, will he at least approach his colleagues in the Treasury for an uprating of the winter fuel allowance this year in view of the extremely inclement weather forecast?

[Mr Swire]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I just explained to the previous questioner that we have chosen to increase allowances in a way that the previous Government were simply not going to. The cold facts are there in the spending commitment. We have nothing to apologise for; indeed, we have plenty to be proud of.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Swire and Stephen Pound

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, and his predecessor John Hume, on championing the cause of credit unions for many years. There are 177 credit unions in Northern Ireland. They are part of the big society agenda, and we think they are great institutions. We want them to be able to expand and offer the services that credit unions in Great Britain currently can. He will agree that what is important during the change is that people with their money in those credit unions are properly protected. Like me, he will no doubt welcome the move to bring credit unions under the FSA or its successor, to protect them in a way that the Presbyterian Mutual Society savers were not protected.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman will surely remember that a well-crafted and consensual Labour Bill to address precisely this issue was presented to the House in the last Parliament and cruelly garrotted during the wash-up. Does he regret the actions of his party?

[Mr Swire]

I do not believe that the Labour party got everything wrong, just most things.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Swire and Stephen Pound

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

The Secretary of State and I have been very clear. We said we would return to this after the election of the new Assembly, which has now happened. The right hon. Gentleman might not be aware of the commission on a UK Bill of Rights, and the Lord Chancellor has written to the First Minister asking for two people from Northern Ireland to advise on the implications for Northern Ireland. The Executive need to initiate a parallel process to come to some consensus on what specific rights that recognise Northern Ireland’s particular circumstances might look like.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

When members of the United States Congress asked the same question, perhaps not as elegantly as it was phrased by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), the Prime Minister replied in a letter that he stood “ready to facilitate agreement”. Will the Minister tell me what steps he and the Secretary of State have taken in the past six months specifically to facilitate this agreement?

[Mr Swire]

We have talked to a number of people, not least the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, and we are currently advertising for replacements. The Secretary of State and I have been quite frank and have said that we want to return to the issue after the election and to move forward on it, which the hon. Gentleman’s party, I point out gently to him, did not do for 12 years.

Civilian Deaths (Ballymurphy)

Debate between Lord Swire and Stephen Pound

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Swire]

The hon. Gentleman should not conflate the two things. I was repeating what the Belfast Telegraph reported the hon. Member for Ealing North as saying about further costly inquiries. As for ire directed towards the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, if I heard him correctly, he made some severe criticisms of the Parachute Regiment which were then picked up by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark.

Various Members, not least the hon. Member for Belfast East just now, asked how the Government thought inquiries could be replaced. We are committed to listening to the views of people across Northern Ireland on dealing with the past. It was clear from the summary of responses that we published to the previous Government’s consultation on Eames-Bradley that there is little consensus at present. However, as we emphatically do not believe that the past can simply be shut down, we will continue to seek a way forward.

[Stephen Pound]

I thank the Minister for his kind words earlier. Much of what he is saying is outside the remit of the HET—and I understand and support his comments about it. What assurance can he give us tonight, what process can he offer, what peace can he bring to those family members who still desperately need nothing more than the truth to be brought out? If not the HET, what?

[Mr Swire]

The Government are looking in a measured way at options that might command support across the community, including the option of creating an information-sharing process that could help families and the wider society achieve greater understanding of the events of the past 40 years. We are consulting on that. There is no easy or quick answer. I tend to agree with the hon. Gentleman that further costly inquiries are not the way forward, but I stress again that that does not mean that we can bury the past. We have to address the issues, and we will do so in a measured and, I hope, sensitive way.

In conclusion, I welcome this important and valuable debate and again thank the hon. Member for Foyle for bringing the matter to the House. I reiterate that the Government are committed to considering carefully the Ballymurphy case in the context of how we deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland’s troubled past.

Question put and agreed to.