Air Quality Strategy

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 24th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I would love to be able to offer my hon. Friend a new bypass, but unfortunately that is outside my powers. I wish him luck with it, and I, too, congratulate him on his amazing achievement yesterday.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

If the present rate continues, there will be seven more dead people in Slough by the date on which the Secretary of State publishes the air quality plan. The whole point of purdah is that announcements should not be made unless they are significant in the context of urgent health issues. Is this not an urgent health issue? What will the Secretary of State say to the families of those seven people who will die before she even publishes?

[Andrea Leadsom]

As the right hon. Lady says, poor air quality is a public health issue. That is why we are taking urgent action, and we will ensure that a short delay in the timetable will not result in a delay in the implementation of the plan. By doing that, we will tackle this public health issue as quickly as possible without prejudicing our democratic process.

The need to safeguard public health is one example of a possible exceptional circumstance in which consultations could be published during purdah. However, that would generally apply only in the event of an unexpected public health emergency—such as, for example, contaminated food—which needed to be dealt with instantly, and this instance does not fall into that category.

VAT on e-books

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Fiona Mactaggart

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes, I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I will come on to it if he will bear with me.

EU VAT law allows member states to implement reduced rates of VAT of no less than 5% for certain goods and services, listed in annexe III of the VAT directive, at the discretion of member states. One of those reliefs relates to the supply of books on all physical means of support, newspapers and periodicals, other than material wholly or predominantly devoted to advertising. Although that may sound like it includes e-books, article 98(2) of the VAT directive specifically excludes electronically supplied services from the reduced rates in annexe III. That means that the UK charges the standard rate of VAT, 20%, on e-books and the zero rate of VAT on physical books.

As hon. Members will be aware, the UK’s e-books market is a growing one. Therefore, it is not clear that it is in need of a stimulus in the form of a reduced VAT rate. Between 2011 and 2012, e-book sales in the UK increased from £138 million to £261 million, so at a time when the Government are working to tackle the economy’s problems head-on and deliver a recovery that works for all, it is not clear that we should offer fiscal support for such a rapidly expanding industry.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

How many e-books are currently subject to UK rates of VAT and how many are subject to, for example, Luxembourg rates?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady will forgive me—I do not have those specific breakdowns to hand, but I will happily write to her on that point. I apologise for that.

International Women’s Day

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Fiona Mactaggart

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I have explained why I am resisting. I want to give more people a chance to make the contribution that they want to make. I think that that is right in this debate. I am talking about the real situation for women today. I would like to be able to celebrate the progress that women have made; I am explaining why I fear the situation is going backwards.

As I was saying, women are paying 70% of the cost of deficit reduction, with £13.2 billion coming from women and £5.7 billion from men. Women are being squeezed out of the labour market. Record numbers of women are jobless. The biggest jump in unemployment has been among older women aged 50 to 64—up by 20,000 in the last quarter. At the same time, unemployment among younger women went down.

We are facing a crisis for this group of older women. They have faced the shock that their pensions are to be deferred and they need to use these crucial years to build up their pensions. However, they will find it hard to find a new job. Often, women are losing jobs in the public sector, where there is a better record on equal pay than in the private sector. That means that women’s snail-like progress towards equal pay risks sliding backwards. Older women are sandwiched between supporting their children, who are staying at home longer, saddled with university debt, because they cannot afford their own housing, and supporting their elderly parents, who are being failed by a health service made increasingly chaotic by Government reform. The next debate will focus on carers, so all I will say is that this Government’s failure to grasp the challenge of care has delegated responsibility for it to the nation’s women, which just is not fair.

If the prospects for women at work and for women’s income are gloomy, what about elsewhere? Everywoman Safe Everywhere, a commission chaired by the former Member of Parliament for Redcar, shows how women have become less safe. There has been a 31% cut in refuges and services that tackle domestic violence. Some 230 women are turned away from a refuge on a typical day. The suggestion that housing benefit will no longer cover the service provision in refuges is a further threat to refuge provision. When women move on, they will be entitled only to the single room rate of housing benefit.

I will never forget the Iraqi woman refugee in Slough, a qualified radiographer, who was slowly being made mad because she was so scared by living in a house, and sharing a kitchen and bathroom, with young men who had no respect for her religion or her privacy. We are about to do that to women who are leaving refuges.

Removing from the DNA database the samples of men who have been accused but not convicted of rape, when we know both that convictions are hard to secure and—

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I will, but the hon. Lady must understand that by intervening, she is reducing the time for other speakers.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I will be very quick. Does the hon. Lady welcome the Government’s determination to open more rape crisis centres for women?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Absolutely. In order to make more time for other speakers, I cut the bit of my speech that I had written in which I welcomed that, and I cut other things as well. I have frequently praised the Government for putting on a secure basis the funding for rape crisis centres, which used to arrive under the previous Government but was utterly unpredictable. That is the one thing that the Government have done that will make women safer, and I welcome it.