Budget Resolutions

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Rishi Sunak

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

If the hon. Lady does not mind, I will make some progress and come back to her.

I begin with small businesses. My predecessor, Lord Hague, has a well-documented enthusiasm for beer, so it will come as no surprise to Members that pubs are a cornerstone of my rural constituency’s economy. Following in his footsteps is difficult enough, but it is impossible for me to visit a pub in my constituency without seeing a picture on the wall of William pulling a pint with the landlord. Not only is my constituency home to more than 200 pubs, but I am proud to say that it hosts the Campaign for Real Ale’s 2017 pub of the year: the community-owned George & Dragon in Hudswell. I was delighted to be in Hudswell just last Friday when the landlord Stu Miller, his family and team received their award in the loud company of everybody from the village.

In recent months I, like many other hon. Members, raised concerns that the revaluation of business rates risks penalising such small, enterprising businesses. I am delighted to say that this was the Budget of a Chancellor who, like any good barman, listens to our concerns. For the landlords who run them, the jobs that depend on them and the communities that enjoy them, this Budget’s £1,000 business rate discount will make a real difference to many pubs at a time when money is still tight.

But pubs are not the only rural businesses that the Budget will help. Auction marts and livery yards across North Yorkshire have seen particularly steep rises in their business rates because the idiosyncrasies of such companies are not well understood by officials and because the last revaluation coincided with the disastrous foot and mouth epidemic. Such idiosyncrasies are more than even the most ingenious civil servant could be expected to foresee. Auction marts, livery yards and riding schools are particularly important to the fabric of our rural community, so I thank the Chancellor for the extremely welcome creation of the new £300 million discretionary business rates fund, which will put decision making back in the hands of communities and allow businesses in constituencies such as mine to benefit from the local knowledge of councils in ensuring a smooth transition to the new schedule.

[Stephen Doughty]

The hon. Gentleman was talking about pubs, and he will know that I am a keen pub goer. Indeed, I was in a pub in his constituency the other day, enjoying a pint with my cousins. What does he have to say to customers in pubs, who are going to face a 3% increase in the price of a pint?

[Rishi Sunak]

What I say to customers and to the hon. Gentleman is that I am sure that the Minister doing the wind-up will be able to say how much better off customers are from having benefited from several years of freezes in beer duty that would otherwise have been put in place. I am sure they would also like to hear that this Government will be consulting on new duty rates for white cider and still wine to see what more could be done to help customers who drink those alcoholic beverages. Lastly, let me say that I would welcome him back to my constituency any time and will be happy to share a pint with him next time he is there.

Trade Union Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Rishi Sunak

Thursday 15th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Doughty]

Q 261 Specifically on Cobra, in your view would it be a very small number of instances where it would ever be appropriate for that system to be brought into play?

Deputy Chief Constable Hall: That is ultimately for Government to determine, but I see that there are often local disputes where Cobra would never need to get involved and manage that. The Government will make decisions as to when they need to activate that machinery.

[Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)]

Q 262 Thank you both for being here. I have a question for the deputy chief constable. I think you mentioned that your primary responsibilities are to keep the peace and uphold the law. Obviously there have been situations where that has not been the case on picket lines, and we heard evidence on Tuesday about that and talk of intimidation. I was looking around at how you deal with other organised protests, such as marches, and it says clearly on the Met police website:

“Organisers should try to give as much notice as possible”,

and provide the names and addresses of organisers. Given that, would it be a help or a hindrance for you to have the notice period in the Bill of two weeks and the identity of someone organising a protest? It seems pretty clear that it would be a help, rather than a hindrance, but I wanted to confirm which of those you think it would be.

Deputy Chief Constable Hall: Well, I think there are degrees of protest. If you look at protest across the country as a whole, there are some big, national-level protests, but almost on a day-to-day basis many smaller protests take place, too. We are certainly not notified of all of them, nor do I think it practical for police to be notified of them. Many protests are self-policed and are not ones that we would particularly need to get involved with.

Certainly for the bigger scale protests—the ones that are likely to involve some element of policing—some advance notice to plan around that is necessary. Very often, our intelligence structures provide that information to us anyway to enable plans to be put in place. Some of that comes through organisers notifying us, and some of it comes from information and intelligence that we receive into policing.

Trade Union Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Rishi Sunak

Thursday 15th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Doughty]

Q 341 Thank you, Sir Alan. Professor Ewing, we were talking about the certification officer. Recalling what you were saying, essentially you are worried that a Minister—a member of the Executive—will appoint an individual who is effectively police, judge, jury and executioner with some fairly wide-ranging powers.

Professor Ewing: Let me say, I hope it was not anything I said that led to the disturbance.

My concern with the Bill is, first, these very extensive powers of investigation, which could eventually lead to someone to being imprisoned for non-compliance. What would worry me is what would trigger that process. What triggers the process is the suggestion that the certification officer can take these steps where he thinks there is good reason to do so. Given the nature of the power that has been given to the certification officer, you would be looking for much a higher threshold before powers of that kind could be triggered.

That is the power of investigation, but there is also the power of adjudication, which has been greatly expanded under, I think, what is now schedule 2. The issue is that the certification officer can initiate a complaint, so in a sense he is the complainant. The certification officer as a complainant will bring his or her own witnesses, cross-examine his or her own witnesses and then make a decision in his or her own cause. They will then have a new power to impose a financial penalty.

That seems to me to be a violation of fundamental principles of natural justice, which apply in this case and I refer to in my written submission: fundamental principles of justice rehearsed by Lord Chief Justices as far back as the 1920s. It would certainly contravene the well-established principle of English and Scots law that no one should be a judge in his or her own cause. I think that provision needs to be looked at very carefully again.

[Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)]

Q 342 Thank you, Professor, for being here. I want to ask you about thresholds and that part of the Bill. I am obviously not a legal expert on rights, but I think what the threshold provision is trying to do is balance the right to strike—which certainly no one is saying should not exist—with the right of people to go about their ordinary business, send their kids to school, use the trains and tubes, gain access to hospitals and so on. That balancing seems moderate and reasonable. Do you think any weight should be given to the rights of people to go about their ordinary business? Do you agree with the general secretary of the Unite union who, you may have read, has said in principle that he can agree with the idea of thresholds and time-limiting ballots?

Professor Ewing: I do not want to intrude into these very sensitive debates. Whether or not it is moderate or reasonable, I would ask whether it is lawful. That would take me back to the ILO conventions that I referred to earlier—in particular, ILO convention 87—and there to the jurisprudence of the supervisory bodies that emphasise two points.

One is that we should be counting the votes of only those people who vote in strike ballots. If you do not vote, in a sense, you do not count for these purposes. Secondly, when we get to questions of thresholds, the ILO supervisory bodies have said, in a long line and expanding group of cases, that any threshold has to be reasonable. On the question of what is reasonable, what they have said so far is that a threshold of 50% of those eligible to vote is not reasonable. The Bill pitches that at a bit less—at 40%—and the question is, is 40% reasonable?

In determining whether 40% is reasonable or not, I think you have got to take into account the voting methods. The problem with the 40% threshold in the context of the legal framework within which it will be dropped is that it will be dropped into a very rigid system of voting. And if you are going to make an argument for thresholds, I think you have got to be a bit more relaxed about the way in which people go about voting. To have mandatory postal balloting is, I think, probably excessive, too rigid and does not apply elsewhere.

Trade Union Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Rishi Sunak

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Doughty]

Q 150 David, I do not have the statistics for the rest of the UK transport network, but do you accept that there is a similar thing here, and that we should keep industrial action in perspective, taking into account other reasons for lost customer hours?

David Sidebottom: I think so. We have specifically asked passengers what the priorities should be for improvement, and we also ask whether they are satisfied with what they have got now. We have focused on those areas where there is high priority for improvement and a low level of satisfaction. Information provision is the key driver of dissatisfaction for Britain’s rail passengers, so we focused on that and how the problem manifests itself.

The challenge that we saw over the summer with Network Rail and the “will they/won’t they?” strike situation caused a dilemma for the industry as much as it did for passengers. That is when we put emergency timetable information on to websites and make it available to the public.

[Rishi Sunak]

Q 151 Following on from the comments of the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, if the numbers and the percentages seem small, I am puzzled, as you said before, that Londoners seem to have accepted that strikes are just part of London. It makes me think that the constant talk—are they going to happen, are they not going to happen?—and the uncertainty adds to the disruption to people’s lives, as well as the strikes themselves. Would that be a fair comment?

Janet Cooke: Yes, it does add to the uncertainty. My comment was not intended to be flippant, but from the feedback we get there is an air of resignation about commuting in the London area. It is going to be overcrowded; it is great when it works, but it does not always work as well as it might. Maybe my point was slightly inappropriate, but it is part of an overall feeling. I think that, as commuters into London, you just accept, if you commute a long distance into London, what the experience tends to be like.