Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. The fact is that we need to correct—and we will correct, in the Immigration Bill—the fact that it has been so difficult to deport people who do not have a right to be here, and who should be facing trial overseas or deported overseas, but advance spurious arguments about the right to a family life. It is right that we are changing that. There is nothing anti-European about it. It is a very sensible step that the Government are taking, and we should pass the Immigration Bill with all speed.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Last year, the Government successfully deported the radical cleric Abu Qatada. The new Immigration Bill will crack down on illegal immigrants and will make it easier to deport foreign criminals. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that immigration law also applies to political parties and their gurus?

[The Prime Minister]

I can, but I am sure that I should not comment on a case that is, I believe, currently being investigated. [Hon. Members: “Go on!”] No, don’t tempt me.

It is an important piece of law that we will be discussing on Thursday. We do not just need to have control at our borders; we need to ensure that people cannot come to Britain and abuse our health service, or get rights to council or other housing, or bank accounts or driving licences, if they have no right to be here. The Immigration Bill makes all those important changes and many more besides, including making it possible for us to deport people before they have appealed if they do not face a risk back in their own countries. They can then appeal from overseas. Those are all very good changes, and I hope that we will not delay too much before passing this important Bill.

EU Council and Woolwich

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is the intention of this move. Having all countries sign up to an action plan for putting together registers of beneficial ownership by companies and the rest of it will help tax authorities to make sure that people are paying tax appropriately. That is a debate that we are leading at the G8 and in the European Union, and that should apply—we hope—to every country.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Some of the comments that I received after the Woolwich attack could perhaps be most generously described as reactionary. Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who pick on a religion and the people of that religion would do better by visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau and understanding where intolerance may lead? Above all, it should be recognised that these people are no more than cold-blooded psychopathic murderers.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. The point is that there is nothing in Islam that can justify that appalling level of violence. Islam is a religion of peace and we should show respect to Muslim communities and people of the Muslim faith by recognising that and repeating it. As we do that, we also need to recognise that there is a problem with a perversion of Islam that is being used to poison young minds, and we will not defeat that ideology unless we take it on, argue against it and clear it out of universities, Islamic centres and other parts of our country. That is the battle we need to be engaged in, but we will not win the battle unless we take Muslim communities and British Muslims with us. I believe that we can.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Two people in the political world had the biggest influence on me. The one who made me a centre-right politician was Ronald Reagan—I will talk about that another time—but Margaret Thatcher did three important things to me and formed who I am, as a child of the ’80s. First, she did not just abolish the glass ceiling that had been there from time immemorial—she smashed it to smithereens. That is why I, like a great number of my hon. Friends, stand here as a child of a comprehensive school; our parents had very normal jobs and we did not go to a fee-paying school. I ended up with an engineering degree and I am now a Conservative Member of Parliament, and my sister is an orthopaedic surgeon. We went through that comprehensive school system, and Margaret Thatcher said to us, “If you work hard, there is no limit to what you can achieve.” We took that on. It was about a work ethic.

There are five comprehensive schools in my constituency, and when I visit them I tell the children, “I went to a comprehensive school, too, and nothing can stop you achieving whatever you want.” Margaret Thatcher did for me what the tabloid press have done for children these days, who think that if they go on “The X Factor” they will become a pop star. She made us realise that if we worked hard we would achieve our dreams and that it was not just about fame and fortune.

Conviction was very important. It is about standing up for what we believe in, rather than taking the path of least resistance. Political history around the world is littered with leaders who took the path of least resistance. Conviction politics is vital. I want to give a live example for people out there today: the privatisation of British Telecom, which my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) mentioned earlier. It is not just that before privatisation people had to wait six months to get a telephone line, or that they needed permission from British Telecom to put an extension in their house. We look today, after the death of Margaret Thatcher, at how advanced telecommunications have become in our society.

She did not privatise British Telecom in the 1980s because she foresaw that we would all be using Twitter, Facebook, the internet and e-mail and have constant access to news; she did it because she knew that the state could never do for those industries what commerce and people with experience of running businesses could do for them. All those people who have used Twitter and Facebook to make the most vile comments in recent days should remember that they can do so because they have easy access. They should try to imagine what it would be like if they had to wait six months to get a mobile phone before doing so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), in an excellent speech, said that he did not disagree with a single one of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, except her decision not to stand in the second round. I agree. I do not think that I disagree with anything she did, but there is a lesson that I think we could learn on something that was not done. I passionately believe that she was absolutely right to tackle the union menace that had crippled this country and made us the laughing stock of Europe. When we look at the growth factors in western Europe and what was happening in this country, we see that we were doomed. That culminated in the miners’ strike. There were rights and wrongs, but that is not a debate for today. However, I will say that it was wrong that more was not done after those communities lost their mines.

I think that a lesson has been learnt. Our current Prime Minister has picked up on the idea of the big society and, by looking at what happened in the 1980s as a whole, what it means to help whole communities. Yes, they were the right decisions to make and the convictions were right, but there are always consequences that must be dealt with. He rightly describes himself as a one-nation Conservative, and I agree. It is about managing for the whole country. However, I believe that Margaret Thatcher’s intention was to do that. It cannot be said that she was there only for the rich, because she empowered the poorest people in society and, as has been said, she knew that education is the great leveller.

Conviction is the hardest form of governance. It will never be popular, but it is the only honourable way to govern. As the Prime Minister said recently, he is here not to be popular, but to do what is right. We owe Margaret Thatcher so much. She literally saved this country from becoming, in the current context, probably worse than Greece, Spain and Portugal are today. May she rest in peace; she certainly deserves it.

Hillsborough

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The Leveson inquiry is separately looking at the whole issue of how the press is regulated and how mistakes that are made are properly corrected. I think that everybody, including those in the press, recognises that the current system is not working and needs to be strengthened. There is then the whole question of whether that happens through strengthened self-regulation, independent regulation or statutory regulation, but that is what Leveson is there to look at.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I am a very large football fan from a family of football fans, and a number of Members in the Chamber also go to football matches and other sporting events. The hurt and the tragedy of waving loved ones off to a football match, only never to see them again, was compounded by the defamation of their characters afterwards. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister ask the Attorney-General to seek to bring a defamation charge against anybody who was found to have spread these vicious lies? Does he agree that an appropriate starting point to help heal the wounds of Hillsborough would be for tomorrow’s front page of The Sun to feature a picture of the Liverpool football club crest with one word, “Sorry”, written across it in bold?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that the Attorney-General will listen carefully to what my hon. Friend says. As I have said, a number of apologies have been made over the 23 years by police, newspapers and others. I think that what matters is that you have to properly think through what has happened, what went wrong, what was got wrong, what it is necessary to apologise for, and then really mean it when you do so. I feel that it is very important the Government apologise as clearly and frankly as I have today because there is proper new evidence showing that the families were right, that an injustice was done, and that that injustice was compounded by the false narrative that, if we are frank, I think lots of people went along with: we all thought there was some sort of grey area and asked why all this was going on. That is why it is necessary to pay tribute to those MPs, newspapers and family groups who kept the faith and kept campaigning because they knew an injustice had been done, they knew it was wrong and they suffered in the way they did. It is for newspapers to decide what to do themselves, and I think it is important that they really think it through and feel it before they do it.

G20 Summit

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. It will be a decision for the Greeks to make in collaboration with the members of the European Union that have extended that money to Greece, of which we are not one, and of course the International Monetary Fund. The problem is that any delay in the terms of the memorandum effectively means more money going from those predominantly eurozone members to Greece, so those discussions have to be had; but other countries that are on track with the programmes that have been put in place will, I think, feel very uneasy about one country getting special terms. In the end, it will be a matter for the eurozone members and Greece to hammer this out between them.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on facing down the Argentine President and pointing out that we will not be bullied or have any silly stunts. Does that not contrast starkly with either giving away huge European rebates or cosying up to African dictators, and show once again that if we want someone to stand up for sovereignty and British interests, we need a Conservative Prime Minister?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. It seemed to me important to try to make that point, not just to Argentina but—almost more to the point—to other countries, which sometimes go along with motions proposed at various international gatherings that are against the interests of the Falkland islanders because they have not heard their voice. People are now going to hear that voice, and I hope the world will listen.

G8 and NATO Summits

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

This is where I part company with the hon. Gentleman. In this country, we have consistently said “You need to have deficit reduction, which delivers low interest rates and enables your central bank to pursue an active and expansionary monetary policy”—which is what we have had in this country—“and at the same time you need the structural reforms to ensure that your businesses are competitive and can take on more people and grow.” That is what we are seeing in Britain, with 600,000 more private sector jobs. It is a world away from what is happening in Greece or in many other parts of the eurozone, which do not have the monetary policy accompanying the fiscal policy and which have not undertaken the structural reforms we are undertaking.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that the biggest threat to our country at present is indeed the crisis in the eurozone, but almost parallel with that is the possible pending crisis in the middle east. Given that a very important conference begins today in Baghdad, did my right hon. Friend manage to find time at the weekend to emphasise to the Russian and Chinese leaders the importance of their role in trying to ensure a peaceful outcome of the Iranian situation?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. A good portion of the G8 was spent discussing the situation in Iran, and specifically discussing the talks that are under way in Baghdad today. It was heartening that the Russians signed up to a pretty tough text on Iran, and I think that the path is very clear. Europe has rightly adopted the oil sanctions, and the pressure is beginning to tell on the Iranian economy. This is the moment at which to maximise the pressure, to encourage other countries around the world to join in with the sanctions, and to say to the Iranians “There is a different pathway. You can have civil nuclear power; you can have a more decent relationship with other countries of the world; but you must give up the ambition of enriching uranium to such an extent that it could deliver a nuclear weapon to you.”

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

While we are on the subject of people who say things before they should, I would have thought that when the hon. Gentleman stands up in the House, he should make an apology. He stood up last week and claimed a whole series of facts about meetings that I had had with Rupert Murdoch based on privileged access that he had had—and he is not denying it—to this inquiry, and the facts turned out to be wrong. A man of honour would stand up and apologise.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

The press have a proud and historic role in British politics and it is right that political parties communicate their policy to the nation, but does my right hon. Friend agree that that is in stark contrast to a political party that thinks that national politics should be directed by the highest union bidder?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Most questions have focused on the terms of the urgent question. I have sadly to tell the hon. Gentleman that that was a million miles away from it and does not require an answer. It was completely out of order. We will take another Member who, I am sure, will be in order—[Interruption.] Order. I do not require any sedentary chuntering in the background.

Party Funding

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I say again that we have been more transparent than any Government have ever been. I invite the hon. Gentleman to ask the leader of his party, and its previous leaders, who were Prime Ministers, to disclose even a fraction of what we are already disclosing.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I was, for a long time, a member of the Unite union and I found it exceptionally hard to opt out of the political levy—money that was used to fund the campaign against my colleague in the seat of Pudsey. Does my right hon. Friend agree that a step forward on affiliation fees would be for people to opt in and to indicate which party they would like the money to go to?

[Mr Maude]

One of the eccentricities of the system is that even if my hon. Friend had been ingenious enough to find out how to opt out, he would not have saved any money, because he would have paid exactly the same amount in any event.

Diamond Jubilee

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

On behalf of my constituents, I want to describe how the Queen comes across to a great many of us. I have never met Her Majesty, and until I attended a garden party last year I had never seen her in the flesh. Indeed, even then I saw her only from a distance. That is the great experience of many of my constituents and many in this country. However, one thing overrides all that. Many people regard Her Majesty almost as a member of the family, because they know her so well. In a time of crisis she is always there on our television screens. Indeed, Christmas day simply would not be Christmas day without Her Majesty’s 3 o’clock address.

One thing that shines out about having a monarch who is well above the political process is what she does when we have disasters and tragedies in our country, such as the tragic events of 7 July 2005. When she was able to visit the hospital and meet the people who had been so tragically and grievously wounded, the country was able to share in its mourning behind Her Majesty, a lady who is in no way linked to political organisations. During the Falklands war, when some suggested that it was simply too dangerous for her son to be sent into conflict, Her Majesty, never one to shy away from responsibility, would hear nothing of it. She said that he was a serving member of the armed forces and so would go and do his duty. With that comes the respect of the nation and of those who serve Her Majesty and this country. I will keep this short: on behalf of my constituents in Elmet and Rothwell, I simply say “God save the Queen.”

Trade Union Funding

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon]

Yes, I accept exactly what my hon. Friend says; I am all in favour of transparency. However, TUC membership now stands at 58 unions, representing 6.5 million people—more than the population of Scotland. Of those 58 unions, just 15 are affiliated to Labour, leaving 43 that are non-affiliated. In addition, there are huge numbers of small staff associations. My point is that those 6.5 million are a complex network of people, and the vast majority of them will be moderate Britons, in all sectors of the economy, from all walks of life, and not militant activists.

I am proud that our party has a long history of co-operation with the trade unions, beginning in 1867, before the Labour party even existed. It was the Conservative Prime Minister the Earl of Derby who first sought to legalise trade unions in 1867. He said in the House of Lords at the time that

“the voices of Manchester, of Birmingham, of Leeds, and of all the other important centres of manufacturing industry were absolutely unheard.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 July 1867; Vol. 188, c. 1775.]

He praised a trade union march in London, insisting to a hostile Liberal Opposition that the process was entirely legal.

I say these things not because I am not a proud Conservative: I come from the Thatcherite wing of the party, but even Mrs Thatcher was an active trade unionist. In 1950, she was elected president of the Dartford branch of one of the first organisations that she ever joined, the Conservative Trade Unionists. One of her first engagements as Leader of the Opposition was to address the CTU. She told them in 1975—it is well worth hearing this quotation—that

“the law should not only permit, but…it should assist, the trades unions to carry out their legitimate function of protecting their members.”

We all remember Mrs Thatcher for the wars against Arthur Scargill and so on, but she was supportive of trade union members and grass roots, although she was against militants. I am a firm Thatcherite on trade union reform.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

To add to my hon. Friend’s comments about Mrs Thatcher, I remember that Norman Tebbit was very much a trade unionist within the aircraft industry and, indeed, led strikes.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend proves my point. In 1979, during the general election, trade union members held a mass rally at Wembley stadium under the banner “Trade unions for a Conservative victory”. That is the kind of future that I hope our Government will aspire to.

My conclusion is that we need to support the moderate majority of trade union members, most of whom are not political activists. In politics, language is everything. We should not be afraid to support grass-roots trade union members, to encourage people to join trade unions and—dare I say it?—to have, perhaps, the occasional beer and sandwich. We often discuss facility time, and, yes, we need to crack down where it is abused and say that it should not be used for party political activity. Nevertheless, some facility time is good. A local employer in my constituency, the bus company Arriva, says that facility time is incredibly beneficial. The politically neutral First Division Association, which has 20,000 members, uses facility time to relocate the families of civil servants who are serving overseas. While we crack down on the abuses, we should recognise that not all facility time is bad.

Whatever reform is pursued, our focus must be on what is right for union members. It may be worth returning to the original opt-in position for political levies, which was the status quo until 1945.

Finally, I will quote Richard Balfe, the former Labour MEP who came over to the Conservatives. He said:

“British politics has changed enormously in recent years. Labour has become a rich persons’ party and the Conservatives are reaching out to groups that in the past would not have been natural allies. We do not expect to convert the leadership of the trade union movement, but we do offer respect for the achievements of the movement and the possibility of a mutually beneficial dialogue.”

I say to the Government and my hon. Friends that, despite the rhetoric, let us not walk into the elephant trap set for us by Len McCluskey, Bob Crow and others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing the debate. It is important that things are debated. However passionate the arguments on each side are, there is nothing wrong with having this debate.

I have been disillusioned this morning. I am certainly not speaking in the debate to bash the unions. I do not believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) wanted to bash the unions either.

[Fiona Bruce]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that not one single Member on this side of the Chamber has said anything other than to acknowledge the good work of the unions?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

When people look back through Hansard, they will see that much praise has been given to the trade unions.

I was a member of Unite for 11 years. My money ended up being spent against my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), but there we go. I cannot say that I was ever funded by Unite. I believed in the trade unions, and one of the most important things about them comes down to the shop stewards. I have seen some good shop stewards—members of the Labour party and elected councillors. I was a Conservative councillor, and the shop steward in the university where I worked was a Labour councillor, but we were able to work together. A lot of it comes down to the shop steward on the floor, and I have seen progress being made.

I am not here to bash the work of the unions at all. The problem I think we have—I put this challenge to Opposition Members—is that if at the next general election, Royal Bank of Scotland turned up and said, “We have decided to give £10 million to the Tory party to campaign,” there would be outcry from the Opposition Benches.

[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.

[Jim Sheridan]

By shareholders as well?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman asks whether shareholders would be able to do it. Why not? We are trying to empower shareholders.

[Mr McCann]

Does the hon. Gentleman not concede that it has already been tried? The Conservatives introduced the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993, which forced trade union members to re-sign up to their trade unions every three years—a further attack. Does he also concede that while he may believe in trade unions, the contributions from the hon. Members for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) and for Witham (Priti Patel) demonstrate that they are on a completely different planet from the one he is on?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I would not say that my hon. Friends are on a different planet from me; their arguments just have a different emphasis. Many Government Members believe in trade unions, and find it demeaning to be compared to the Third Reich. It demeans the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who said that we were going the same way as Hitler by trying to remove the trade unions. That devalues the debate today, which is about where the funding comes from.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the Warwick I and Warwick II agreements? To get the policies that they wanted from a Labour Government, the trade unions dictated the policies to be enacted by a Labour Government in return for union funding.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

There are indeed many stories, but I want to return to the specific—

[Jim Sheridan]

On a point of order, Mr Owen. That statement is completely untrue. Trade unions do not dictate Labour party policies. The hon. Gentleman should withdraw that remark right now—

--- Later in debate ---

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. That is a point of debate.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Thank you very much Mr Owen. We have seen in the past couple of minutes where my frustration has lain, with people saying, “Unions do this” or “Union bashing”. That is not what the debate is about; it is about funding and how public sector money is used. Politics is about perception, and if there is a perception that public money given to the unions is then given to the Labour party, the best way to solve that problem is to tinker with the rules and have an opt-in, so that people can say where they want the money to go. Then the unions can say, “We have this many people opted in and this pot of cash, and we have decided to give it to the Labour party.” No one would argue with that. We cannot argue with that.

There may need to be some reform. The balance needs to be redrawn for some of the public sector workers working full-time purely on union business, but that is a different debate. Please do not make this an argument about union bashing. That is offensive to many Conservative Members who believe in the work of trade unions. I am not here to speak for everybody on the Government Benches, but I know that a great many of my hon. Friends very much believe in the work of the trade unions. A great number of us have been members of trade unions and have worked in places where we have seen their work, but that does not mean that the situation is completely okay; there are aspects that need reform, but debate is the best way to examine that.

[Ian Lavery]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I will, but I only have about 10 seconds.

[Ian Lavery]

The hon. Gentleman is being very conciliatory in his contribution. The political levy is covered in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Union members must be balloted, whether or not they pay a political contribution.