Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Steve Barclay

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

Of the £36 billion, £5.4 billion is going to adult social care, with the rest going into the NHS or through Barnett. That is over three years.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend think that the Government could consider different bands for frontline staff in the NHS and management staff in the NHS, to get away from the concern that so many of my constituents have that any pay rises in the NHS will be taken up by managers over frontline operators?

Economy Update

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Steve Barclay

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My right hon. Friend will be aware that some people who have been furloughed during lockdown have taken on other jobs. A big hotel and golf complex—a family-owned business in South Northamptonshire—furloughed about 300 staff. When it came to unlocking and it called back all those staff, around half of them resigned because they already had other jobs at supermarkets, delivery companies and so on. What can my right hon. Friend do, first, to protect the taxpayer from people effectively earning double pay, and also to stop that happening to the huge detriment of this family-run business?

[Steve Barclay]

First, may I join you, Madam Deputy Speaker, in offering congratulations to my right hon. Friend on her well-deserved recognition? She raises an important and legitimate point. The furlough scheme was designed to operate within the employment law framework. An employee is able to have a second job while on furlough, provided that that was allowed within the terms of their existing employment contract. I appreciate the spirit of the point she raises, and that was not the original intention when someone moved on to another job. It was part of the balance, as we have debated in this House many times, between the speed of the scheme’s deployment and how one designed its various features. What is allowed within an employment contract shapes what employees can do while on furlough.

Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Steve Barclay

Monday 11th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Is not this exactly the issue that we have been debating over the past week, with the EU proposal to cap bonuses? That would have the unintended consequence of pushing up salaries, which are notoriously difficult to claw back. Does my hon. Friend agree it would be much better to put in place a proper compensation scheme, perhaps through statute, that was determined by the banks themselves and that ensured clawbacks and full accountability?

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One-size-fits-all rules often capture the good but are insufficiently robust to deter the bad. Yes, the Bill is welcome and takes constructive steps forward, but we also need to see more measures from the Treasury on individual fines.

Private Finance Initiative

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Steve Barclay

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

I was coming to exactly that point. The point is that funding the project through a special purpose vehicle means that it is not consolidated into the national debt picture. In other words, it is an off-balance sheet form of financing. Therefore, for a Government who want to spend a lot of money on capital projects without blowing up their national debt picture, it is the perfect opportunity.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), is it not a central claim made by the industry that part of the advantage is the management of construction risk? One of the issues, however, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire referred to, is the bundling of contracts. The construction risk and the design are bundled with the management service charge, and that drives some of the complexity, which drives some of the cost.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I think that my hon. Friends are reading my speech, because that was to be my next point. They have obviously been given advance notice. That is exactly the point: the builder, in theory, takes the risk on a project such as building a school, and the LEA only ever starts to repay the debt when the school is built and everything is in place. Theoretically, the builder takes the project risk. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) says, in reality there is bundling, and because there are sometimes unique risks to a project, often those revert to the LEA. The perceived advantages from the fact that the builder takes the project risk are therefore not always as clear cut as they might appear. In the end the major advantage has been that of not consolidating the debt on the national balance sheet.

Onshore Wind Energy

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Steve Barclay

Thursday 10th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but the fact remains that not many Opposition Members are present in the Chamber.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Further to that point, may I suggest that one reason for that may be that the leader of the Labour party was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change? He signed legally binding targets that are highly questionable. Indeed, the Labour Chair of the Public Accounts Committee was behind a report that concluded:

“We are concerned that the Department agreed to the legally binding EU-target”—

the 2020 target—

“without clear plans, targets for each renewable energy technology, estimates of funding required”,

and without understanding other factors such as planning issues. We will come later to the fact that the legally binding target, which will require 10,000 new turbines by 2020, notwithstanding the fact that 40% of planning applications fail, is beyond the control of the Department that signed it.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. As I said at the start, that binding target is one reason why we have a tug-of-war between the national interest and what local communities want.

I was talking about the visual impact of wind farms. One of the main problems is flicker. Sunlight on the rotating blades disturbs many people; it creates genuine hardship because it is constant when the wind is blowing and, obviously, when the sun is shining.

Turbines also have an aural impact. They are audible at a great distance—potentially, as far as two miles, depending on the landscape. I have been given some wonderful descriptions of the sound. It is described variously as like an aircraft continually passing overhead, a brick wrapped in a towel turning in a tumble drier, someone mixing cement in the sky or a train that never arrives. Wind turbines are often noisiest at night, and the sound is constant. One cannot get away from it and it does not stop.

Wind turbines also have an impact on wildlife, as we heard earlier. A survey estimates that 350,000 bats have already been killed by turbines, as have 21,000 birds of prey and millions of small birds, and that each turbine kills between 20 and 40 birds a year. Larger animals, particularly horses, seem to find turbines disturbing.