Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

May I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, as he will shortly be leaving the House? As a new Back Bencher, I will never forget coming to this place in 2001 and, in the light of the appalling terrorist attacks that had taken place across the world, seeing the strong leadership he gave on the importance of keeping our country safe. He is a remarkable politician, a remarkable man. I remember once in the Home Affairs Committee that, even though he could not see who we all were, he knew exactly who was concentrating and who was not. I do not know how—he has this extraordinary gift—but he is an extraordinary politician. I pay tribute to him, and I know the rest of the House will join me in doing so.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

During his conference speech, the Prime Minister rightly warned voters flirting with UKIP that if they went to bed with Nigel Farage on 7 May, they could end up waking up with the Leader of the Opposition on 8 May. May I put it to the Prime Minister that the outcome could actually be a lot more unpleasant? Is it not now the case that if voters go to bed with Nigel Farage on 7 May, they could wake up not only with the Leader of the Opposition, but snuggled up next to Alex Salmond?

[The Prime Minister]

That is the point. Who knows who you could wake up in bed with? It might not just be Alex Salmond; it might be Nigel Farage. It could be any number of people. [Hon. Members: “It could be Nick Clegg.”] Yes, of course that is an option too. It all points to the difference between the competence of the Conservatives and the chaos of the alternatives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, we are taking action in the skies over Iraq, but we fully support the action that America and other states, including Arab states, are taking in the skies over Syria, which has had some effect on the town of which the hon. Lady speaks. I think there is a case for Britain doing more, but I recognise that what we have to focus on right now is the air power over Iraq and the training of an effective Syrian national opposition, because in time the right answer for Syria is the same as the right answer for Iraq: a Government who can represent all of their people and armed services that can fight on behalf of all of their people. Britain should play its role in making sure that happens.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister join me in thanking the 45 companies and organisations that attended my fourth jobs fair last week? Will he also thank Selby college for putting on the event and the staff at Selby Jobcentre Plus, and welcome the fact that unemployment in Selby and Ainsty is now down by more than half since the last election?

[The Prime Minister]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on holding those jobs fairs, which have been a very effective way of helping people who are looking for work to get jobs. If we look at Yorkshire and Humberside overall, we see that across the year there has been a 46,000 reduction in unemployment. That demonstrates that unemployment is coming down right across our country, but we have to stick to the long-term economic plan that is delivering that.

Industrial Action Update

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

What the hon. Lady says is simply not the case. Over the past five years, public sector pay has increased by an average of 13%, which is more than four times the average increase of 3% in the private sector. As far as the lowest-paid people are concerned, we have been at pains throughout this process to exempt people earning below £21,000 from any pay freezes, so what she says is simply not correct.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

As hundreds of schoolchildren across Selby are being denied access to their education by the National Union of Teachers today, what message does the Minister have for the hundreds of families affected, including the parents who have been forced to pay for child care, and for the businesses that have been forced to give people time off work because of this illegitimate action by the NUT?

[Mr Maude]

I would invite them to reflect that the responsibility for the damage that is undoubtedly being caused, despite all the effective contingency measures that we have put in place, lies squarely on the shoulders of the union leaders who have called this strike action on the basis of inadequate or outdated mandates. I would also invite them to ask the Labour party where it was when the strikes were called and whether it condemned them, and to look at the correlation between the amount of money paid to the Labour party by those unions and the Labour party’s action.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

On the day in which youth unemployment declined, in view of the fact that youth unemployment went up remorselessly year after year after year in the latter half of the Labour Administration, and given that this Government are introducing a £1 billion Youth Contract, which gives everyone between the ages of 18 and 24 who has been out of work for a certain period the opportunity to take up an apprenticeship, subsidised work or a place on work experience, it is pretty rich for the hon. Lady to lecture us about the problems of youth unemployment.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Has the Deputy Prime Minister had time to reflect on this week’s analysis of Yorkshire’s top 150 companies by the accountancy firm BDO, which shows that in the last year businesses in Yorkshire have seen an increase in revenues of £5 billion, that investment is up 20%, that exports to emerging markets are up 50%, and that 10,000 new jobs have been created?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As an MP for a great Yorkshire city, I of course want to join my hon. Friend in celebrating the great achievements of businesses in Yorkshire, particularly the rebirth of so many great manufacturing companies. I am immensely proud that this Government have been backing manufacturing, after years of neglect under Labour.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I want to contribute briefly to pay tribute to and thank Margaret Thatcher for saving our country and for inspiring me, and many thousands of people from ordinary working-class backgrounds in this country, to achieve and to get on in life. Her understanding of what working-class aspirational people wanted was a great strength, and like Clement Attlee she was a Prime Minister dedicated to the cause of working-class aspiration. Some try to propagate the myth that Mrs Thatcher was simply on the side of the wealthy, which is nonsense. She did not win three elections by appealing only to the wealthy or to the south of the country.

I recall as a schoolboy at the end of the 1970s the national decline, the endless strikes, the lights going off, and the rubbish not being collected. Ordinary people were simply fed up with how our once proud country had been turned into a basket case. Margaret Thatcher turned our country around and saved it. She wanted to improve ordinary people’s lives by giving them more personal freedom and encouraging them to stand on their own two feet. She certainly did that for me. I was a young person from a working-class background, the grandson of coal miners. All of a sudden, there was a national figure and a leader of our country who made it clear that people can achieve success, whatever their background or walk of life. That was a politician I could relate to. She is the reason why I am standing in this Chamber today.

I had the pleasure of meeting Baroness Thatcher on a couple of occasions. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), I was petrified to be in her presence. I greatly remember, and will always cherish, her words of encouragement to me when I was a candidate and, after the election, when I told her I had won the Selby and Ainsty seat.

Baroness Thatcher was a conviction politician and a truly great Briton, and we owe her a great debt.

Hillsborough

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Home Secretary and the Attorney-General are sitting here and saying that they will keep the House up to date—the Attorney-General with the decisions that he has to make and the Home Secretary with the lessons-learned exercise, which is clearly vital.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

The report has highlighted so many areas where things went tragically wrong, but most importantly it has cleared the victims of any blame. I hope that this will bring relief to the families. Does the Prime Minister agree that the despicable journalism following the tragedy has had a devastating effect on the families, whose loved ones were smeared? Does he, like me and, as we just heard, my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), hope that there will be a full front-page apology in tomorrow’s The Sun and from its proprietor to the people of Liverpool and Liverpool fans everywhere?

[The Prime Minister]

What my hon. Friend says is important. I have answered the question about how others need to face up to their own responsibilities. The newspaper reporting, the false police narrative and all those who coalesced around it not only did damage to Liverpool and the families but led to many in the rest of the country accepting that narrative. So this is not only an apology to Liverpool and Merseyside. It is an explanation to the rest of the country that these families were right and have been vindicated. They should be proud of that.

EU Council

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The financial transactions tax was mentioned, because the growth compact says clearly that a number of eurozone members will go ahead with it. I do not support it and Britain will not take part, because unless there is agreement all over the world, the transactions will go to jurisdictions that do not have the tax. That would cut our jobs, our investment and our GDP. The people who would pay for such a tax would be not the bankers, but the pensioners, and I do not think that that is sensible.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

How bad does the Prime Minister think the financial damage to the UK would have been had we not got ourselves out of the euro bail-out mechanism?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question. We can start to count the cost, because with things such as the Spanish bank bail-out, we can work out what percentage we would have paid. We have saved Britain considerable amounts of money by ensuring that we are not involved in the bail-outs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mr Nigel Adams—[Interruption.] I am really very worried about the conduct of the Education Secretary. In the average classroom, he would have been excluded by now. He must calm himself.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Q2. As we remember those who fell 30 years ago during the Falklands war, Argentina continues to dispute British sovereignty over those islands yet continues to receive loans worth billions of pounds from the World Bank, in which British taxpayers are a major shareholder. Will the Prime Minister join President Obama in instructing his officials to vote against any more such loans to Argentina?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. No British taxpayers’ money is spent on World Bank loans to Argentina, and I think that that is an important point, but what is even more important is what happened yesterday. The Falkland islanders have decided that they will hold a referendum to demonstrate that they believe in self-determination. That is important because Argentina continues to try to hide the argument and to pretend that the views of the Falkland islanders do not matter. They do matter; I hope that they will speak loudly and clearly and that Argentina will listen.

Trade Union Funding

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I will thank my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for securing this debate.

I wanted to speak today because I am supportive of what trade unions do in representing the interests of their members, giving them a voice and standing up for their rights. Although the traditional view of the relationship between employers and trade unions has been that it is one of confrontation, that view is misleading; in most cases, employers and union representatives have a very constructive relationship.

Indeed, from the point of view of the employer many benefits come from unions. For example, trade unions can be a supportive and welcome presence in assisting with significant changes within a business and they also provide a forum for negotiation that often saves time and cost compared to dealing with employees on an individual level.

On a personal level, I am hopefully about to be elected as the new president of Conservatives at Work, which was formerly Conservative Trade Unionists. I pay tribute to Lord Taylor of Holbeach for all the work that he has done as the previous president. My colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), is also very much involved with Conservatives at Work.

Conservatives at Work has played an important part in guiding the Conservative party in its work with trade unions, so I am involved in that and I have always remained supportive of the aims of trade unions. That said, I am uncomfortable with the idea of taxpayers’ money being used to fund union officials who are working in public sector roles, as was revealed in my own part of the world in June last year when it emerged that taxpayers are paying almost £200,000 towards the salaries of union officials at North Yorkshire county council while important local services were under threat, and indeed continue to be under threat.

On a wider level, it has been revealed that in 2010-11 public sector bodies spent £113 million on staff working on trade union activities.

[Mr McCann]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nigel Adams]

I will push on, as I only have a couple of minutes to speak.

To clarify, £113 million of taxpayers’ money was spent. Broken down, an estimated £80 million was spent on paid staff time, with £33 million in direct payments, which was £7 million more in direct payments than in 2009-10. At a time when there is a lot of protest about cuts—due to the catastrophic financial position left by Labour, a party that I understand receives 90% of its funding from trade unions, although I stand to be corrected on that—it is not right that we have public sector workers who are being paid not to do the front-line service that they were employed to do. As the taxpayer is picking up the bill, the subscriptions that the unions raise from their members, which the man on the street would assume were being used to fund the union, can then be spent on other activities, such as campaigning or potentially keeping the Labour party afloat.

All of us on this side of the fence were thrilled at the Prime Minister’s recent public support for the campaign on union funding. He described the use of taxpayer funding to pay for trade union activity as unsustainable, both morally and economically, and I am pleased that we have the weight of the Government behind us.

I accept that under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, union officials have the statutory right to “reasonable time” off work, with pay, to attend to specified trade union duties, but let me say that again—it should be “reasonable time” off work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Adams]

From our Benches as well.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Yes, probably from ours as well; we would not be happy with it. That is an important point. There is some perception that we are union-bashing, but that is not true. I remember listening to the speech made by the leader of the Labour party at conference, just after he had been elected. He spoke about the dinner ladies who were told that they had to buy their uniforms and aprons. The trade unions got involved and made sure that they did not have to do that. That is important work by trade unions.

Everyone here likes to mouth off. We are the people who stand up and front up. We will stand up, debate and have an argument, but 95% of the people out there would sweat with fear at having to stand up right now to make arguments. That is why we need healthy, working trade unions.

However, there are some problems, and there is an easy way to overcome some of the perceptions about the funding between trade unions and the Labour party. It is simple: instead of having an opt-out of the political levy, let us have an opt-in. Someone would have to opt in each year, which then has to be audited. Where the pot of money from the opted-in political levy is spent can be decided by the trade union.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

The Attorney-General and I always use our best efforts. The development of the criminal law is within the remit of the Ministry of Justice. I am sure that the hon. Lady will address her remarks, via the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), to that Department.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to promote reform of the European Court of Human Rights.

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

I am working closely with the Foreign Secretary and the Justice Secretary, and talking to many member states and to key figures in the Court and the Council of Europe. Only last week, I spoke at the seminar on court reform for European civil society organisations. There is a keen appetite for reform of the Court and we are confident that we can gain agreement on a reform package.

[Nigel Adams]

There is an incredible backlog of 150,000 cases. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that that undermines the Court’s ability to perform its role efficiently, and that something needs to be done soon to improve that efficiency?

[The Attorney-General]

Yes, there is no doubt about that. The Court itself knows that. Some efforts have been made to reduce the backlog, particularly by streamlining the sitting hours of completely hopeless applications. The problem remains that there is a large number of cases that is in excess of the number of cases that can be heard each year. It is for those reasons that the United Kingdom, as part of its reform package, has asked those who are interested to examine how principles of subsidiarity can be introduced so that fewer cases have to be considered by the Court, with cases instead being resolved properly at national level wherever possible.