Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman will know how to secure a debate. He has just secured a debate on excess deaths, and if he follows the same procedure, I am sure he will have good luck in securing another debate.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
In Harrogate and Knaresborough, we have had more than 12,000 apprenticeship starts since 2010, and this week’s announcement of changes to apprenticeship policy was positive and will help those numbers grow. What I liked particularly was that it will make it easier for SMEs to offer apprenticeships. The main message I hear from businesses is that it is challenging to fill vacancies and bring in new talent. Can we have a debate about SMEs, apprenticeships and skills policy to give them the boost they need to fill the vacancies they are creating?
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising this issue yet again. I am in regular contact with the Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), and I am confident that it will not take an ITV drama for us to resolve the issue. He is working through what the right hon. Lady will know are some very difficult issues. He has the final shift in this particular story, and I am confident he will deliver on it.
We were all shocked by the layer on layer of injustice that was levelled against those who suffered in the Post Office Horizon scandal. Terrible and shocking as that was, the right hon. Lady and I know that the infected blood inquiry is on another level. We want to ensure people get justice, whether they were infected directly or were affected in some way. We are determined to do that, and I know that the Paymaster General is going to deliver.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I have met with several families in my constituency whose children have education, health and care plans, yet they still experience difficulties finding special educational needs and disabilities support. I have taken up their cases with senior council officers, who tell me that SEND is the No. 1 financial challenge for the council. Can we have a debate on the changes made in the Children and Families Act 2014 and the effect they are having through increased demand for services in local authorities? In North Yorkshire alone, the council believes 1,000 cases last year were attributable to changes made by that Act.
Penny Mordaunt
My normal answer would be that my hon. Friend needs to apply for a debate and that I am sure it would be well attended, but that is not required because there is such a debate this afternoon. My hon. Friend is always first out of the blocks, and he has got the points he wishes to raise in Hansard before anyone else, I congratulate him on doing so.
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for her question and I shall ensure her suggestion is heard by the Secretary of State. She will know about the financial support that we have given households, as well as recent measures in the autumn statement, that mean over £100 billion in support has been provided. On average, low- income households have received £2,500 a year to enable them to cope with higher energy bills. Through her auspices, her constituents could make use of a number of insulation schemes, including those in the private and public sectors. I will ask the Department to ensure she is aware of all those schemes.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
We often have debates about parliamentary standards for MPs, which I have contributed to, but we rarely debate the standards adopted by political candidates. They are not elected, and most never will be, yet that large group of people has a significant effect on the public perception of our politics and politicians. If we want to improve standards in politics, that begins at the grassroots level of political activism. During my time as an MP, there have been far too many instances of behaviour by my political opponents that have failed any definition of acceptable standards, or even legal ones. Can we have a debate about how we raise the bar throughout our political system, including local party associations and candidates for office?
Penny Mordaunt
I hope what my hon. Friend says will be met by agreement from both sides of the House, particularly from party leaders. I happen to know that my hon. Friend has suffered appallingly at the hands of a particular individual and I urge him to raise that matter with the relevant party leader. We should take these things seriously. I know from my own party that our candidates are required to sign up to the Nolan principles of public life, which is matched with training. This week our sitting MPs and parliamentary candidates received training from the Antisemitism Policy Trust. This is an incredibly important point and I hope we will all hold our colleagues, whether they are MPs or prospective parliamentary candidates, to account on this matter. I hope that my hon. Friend’s particular situation is resolved swiftly.
MPs Staff: Employment Conditions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Having been a member of the Conference, I am delighted to be able to speak in this debate. The Conference has done some important work. We all know that this is a highly individual workplace, and that brings pressures, close and intense working, and a daily range of issues that are varied and challenging. We all know of personnel cases where things have gone wrong, so it was a very good idea to create the Speaker’s Conference, and all its members set off on our work knowing there was a problem to solve: that the working conditions of our teams, Members’ staff, could and must be improved.
We have had a very good process, and I thank the House staff for all that they did. In particular, I thank them for their research and for drawing interesting parallels between other Parliaments around the world. It is clear that some of these Parliaments have been on similar journeys to ourselves. It is hard enough to organise things on a national parliamentary basis, but to do so on an international parliamentary basis is particularly challenging.
I think back to a joint meeting with representatives from the Bundestag. The organisation was good: we had to fit in with multiple participants, co-ordinate between sittings and ensure good translation services. I know more about that meeting because I chaired it, but there were many other meetings as well. The way in which House Officers carried out their background research was particularly helpful. For example, there was a visit to my constituency office—among a number of other such visits—to see what happens in the more distant part of the parliamentary estate. We had a visit from the Director of Members’ Services, Mr Chris Sear. When he joined us in Harrogate, I made myself scarce by visiting some constituents, so he could talk to the team and find out what they were doing and all that they do to support people on a daily basis.
Throughout this process, I was aware that there had been some difficulty with gathering information. There was plenty of anecdotal information, but problems have been hard to quantify. That difficulty with information meant that, to keep perspective and proportionality in all that we did, we had to constantly remind those involved that the vast majority of MPs are good employers.
There was a focus on three areas: culture, community and behaviour. I will comment, if I may, on a couple of the more important decisions. The first was to keep MPs as employers of their teams and as the deciders of who is in their team. That is a very good thing. Any changes to that would have been difficult to implement and would, I am sure, have met significant resistance. It also became clear very quickly that the way that support is provided or accessed by Members’ staff is slightly haphazard, and that that could be improved.
Members’ staff can sometimes feel like second-class citizens—for example, when everyone else on the parliamentary estate are eligible for a flu jab, they are not. Listing Members’ staff as expenses is demeaning; they are not expenses, they do valuable work. Members’ staff could join parliamentary networks.
The transfer of employment rights for staff when they change from working for one MP to another is critical. Effectively, a member of staff has to start all over again when a Member retires or loses their seat, or when a constituency boundary is abolished. That member of staff may have worked here for many years, but they would not have any employment rights. Clearly, that is wrong. As a result of the Conference, that will change, and that transfer of rights was a very early decision.
A further point is the Member Services Team, with a recommendation for significantly greater HR support. Basically, this is about moving everything to a far more professional and standard working arrangement. One area where more is to be done concerns those who are working away from the estate. It is hard to see what is going on in constituency offices—there are 650 or so in diverse locations around our nation—and I was sure that further work was needed. The parliamentary authorities should work together, alongside the political parties, to identify early where risk may be developing—for example, staff turnover rates could be considered, or basic personnel admin, such as leave records.
During the Conference’s work, we spent some time discussing the structure of MPs’ offices—possibly because I spent a large amount of time ensuring that we did so. Some are better than others, but how a colleague sets up their office is their business, not mine.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. Both he and I are pretty experienced in the private sector in managing people; not everyone has that experience, but I believe that the HR services available to Members are excellent. Will he consider in a future Conference making it a requirement that Members undertake an HR exercise before they are allowed to recruit staff, who will be paid for by the taxpayer?
Andrew Jones
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely interesting point. The challenge is that when a Member starts here, the work starts immediately, and the period between an election and the workload starting is very brief. What she suggests could be practically difficult, but she is quite correct about possible lack of experience and how standard practices, although they may be difficult to deliver, are clearly the right thing to do. My right hon. Friend makes a very valuable point, which should be considered, because I do not think that this is the end of the process.
Members structure their officers differently. All my team have always been based in Harrogate and Knaresborough; I have never had a team member based in Westminster. London MPs have different needs, probably basing their teams on the parliamentary estate. Most Members will split their teams. A result of our work will be the creation of a series of templates to show new Members what success might look like—not to impose, but to guide—and the provision of more training when they arrive and are setting up their offices.
The absence of imposition is important, because we are all individuals with different needs and different backgrounds, so the political parties have a role to play in the training of new MPs, some of whom as my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) says, may have very limited experience, or even none, of being an employer. It is true that this is an individual workplace, but that has sometimes been used as an excuse for not looking hard enough at what happens here, or as a get-out-of-jail card for poor practice. That is not acceptable. We have a set of recommendations; we worked to make sure that they are practical, and there are many of them.
It was a great call by Mr Speaker to create the Conference. I again thank the House team for all their work to support us; they did a very good job. I can confirm to colleagues that, throughout, the Conference’s work was done in a constructive, collegiate, cross-party way. Our task now is to implement the findings of the Conference, but I do not think that this work, while positive, should be the only part of an initiative to improve standards in our public life and politics.
Since I became a Member of Parliament, eight current or former Labour MPs have been given custodial sentences, two Conservatives, one Liberal Democrat and one Scottish Nationalist. We have had by-elections caused by poor behaviour by colleagues from all parts of the House, and there have been cases of bad practice. A series of processes have been introduced in good faith to address problems, but I think it has become apparent that the House needs to do more work to both simplify and speed up the processes. Who is responsible for what? What happens when people are being investigated, and how does that work align with the Recall of MPs Act 2015? It is also for the political parties to recognise problems and act, though.
It is easy to say, “The other lot are corrupt.” We hear that all the time. My point is that the problems are wider and deeper. That is a broader issue than the Speaker’s Conference dealt with. I think our work in this Conference will improve a sizeable part of our political system. It should be supported and implemented as soon as possible.
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I start by thanking you, Mr Speaker, all Members and all staff of this House for making the State Opening and the King’s first Gracious Address to Parliament so successful.
I know that many right hon. and hon. Members will be taking part in remembrance services across the nation and overseas this weekend. Medals proudly worn by our veterans are not just thanks from a grateful nation; they are a message for the rest of us. We should remember their service and sacrifice, but also the lessons that made their service and sacrifice both necessary and possible. This weekend, as we attend services and lay wreaths beside memorials, we should reflect on how best to honour them and the freedoms we enjoy because of them, and protect their precious legacy.
The shadow Leader of the House started by talking about the cost of living. I am sorry that, as she did so, she did not recognise that this week we have paid out £2.2 billion in cost of living payments and that 99% of households eligible for the cost of living payment have already received it from this Government. I disagree with the hon. Lady, because I do not think that our cost of living issues are remotely helped by lessening our energy security, which is why we are bringing forward the Bill and why I ask her party to support it. It is not at all incompatible with investing in renewable energy and clean technology.
The hon. Lady is rather fond of criticising both our record and our plans for this Session, so it might be helpful to get the scores on the doors. She believes that our 43 Bills, 1,000 statutory instruments and record number of private Members’ Bills—24—passed in the third Session of this Parliament is a shabby record. I point out to her that only in two of the 13 parliamentary Sessions between 1997 and 2010 were more Bills put through than we put through in the last Session. In the last Sessions of Labour Administrations, the average number of Bills brought forward was 21. The hon. Lady cannot justify her charge against us about the amount we have got done. She might be relying on the time it took us—it did take us less time than we had allocated to pass a lot of that legislation and to do Government business—but that is not really a problem for those on the Government Benches; it is a more a problem for those on the Opposition Benches, although I have no complaints about that. Those on the Government side of the House have been pulling their weight, even in Opposition day debates—in debates on school safety and animal welfare, for example, there were more Conservative speakers than Opposition speakers.
Let me go into the specific points that the hon. Lady raised. On tents, the Home Secretary has no plans to ban Millets—we are not doing that. The Government have made the largest investment ever in tackling homelessness and rough sleeping, providing £2 billion to accelerate its mitigation and prevention, including preventing 640,000 people from becoming homeless in the last five years.
On conversion therapy, we have a manifesto commitment, and it is still a manifesto commitment. The Secretary of State will keep the House informed on the work she is doing on this important matter.
I was surprised to hear the hon. Lady raise nutrient neutrality. I had hoped she would support our measures, but the Secretary of State will no doubt update the House on the further work he is doing in that area. However, we are bringing forward many measures that will assist more developments to happen, including reforms at the valuation office.
At the heart of the charge the hon. Lady presents are values and the question of who is fit to govern for the people of this country, and I would ask her to undertake just a little self-reflection. She mentioned doctors, but 80% of the medical doctors in the House sit on the Government Benches, while 91% of the veterans in the House sit on these Benches, so I do not think there is a problem with our values, our service or our duty.
Yesterday, outside this place, Just Stop Oil activists held up an ambulance on Waterloo bridge. It was Government legislation, passed in this House, that enabled the police to arrest 40 of those protesters and get the traffic moving—legislation that the hon. Lady blocked, along with reforms to protect the public from strike action.
The hon. Lady supports the regressive tax policies of the London Mayor and the tax and spend policies of the shadow Chancellor, which would saddle every household with an additional £3,000 of tax per annum. The one-time party of “education, education, education” is now the party of “tax education, education, education”—the hon. Lady should think about that for a moment and about the values it represents.
I will take no lectures from a Labour party that puts politics before people. Labour Members talk of change, but I am afraid that the Labour party has not changed at all.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Yesterday, I hosted the first ever parliamentary reception for Yorkshire Cancer Research—a fantastic charity that has been working for nearly 100 years in the fight against cancer, and not just in Yorkshire. It is a significant funder of research, and we have some very fine research institutions in the north. However, institutions in the north as a whole—the north-east and the north-west, as well as Yorkshire—can do more. Please could we have a debate about research funding and the process by which it is allocated?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for the work he is doing. He raises an important point, and if he were to apply for a debate, I am sure it would be well attended. The Department of Health and Social Care invests about £1 billion a year in research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and that institution welcomes funding applications on any aspect of health research. Its expenditure on cancer research in the last financial year was over £100 million. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important matter, and I shall draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to what he has said.
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that. He will know that Justice questions happened this week. Given that the next opportunity for questions is a little time away, I will write on his behalf. If he could provide me with some further information, that would be helpful. I shall ask the Ministry of Justice to contact him.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
It is clear from the quantity of issues raised with me by constituents at surgeries, and from talking to local schools, that we are seeing a significant increase in the number of families seeking support for children with special educational needs, and that that growth is putting pressure on local providers. Please can we have a debate on special educational needs and disabilities funding, so that we can explore how it is targeted, and factors such as waiting lists and the number of school places?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend raises an important point. He will know that we have published over £1.5 billion-worth of high needs provision capital allocations for the 2023 and 2024 financial years. This is a priority for the Government. As the Secretary of State will not be at the Dispatch Box for a little while, I shall ensure that she has heard the concerns that he raised.
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman will know that the salary of the Governor of the Bank of England is not within my remit, although many other things are. However, he raises an important point, and that was why the Prime Minister was so keen to stress that we will get people through this. That is why we are putting together a cost of living package totalling £94 billion, covering energy, household support and many other things. These are difficult times and we are facing a pretty unique storm, in part because of and exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. We must get through this. The country will get through it. We know that the British people are stoic and we will give them every possible help we can. Hopefully the tide will turn and we can all look forward to better times.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
We recently had some very positive expansion of electric vehicle charging points in Harrogate and Knaresborough, but the progress made across our country has been quite mixed, especially in rural areas. One reason is the different approaches being taken in both planning and delivery of electric vehicle charging points. We had a question on this topic from the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), so I think there is significant colleague interest in electric vehicle charging points. Please can we have a debate to explore the different methods in use around the country and to establish what is working best?
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
Well, I am always happy to receive feedback, and I shall do my best to do much better next week.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Too often, new housing estates are left in a poor state. The houses are sold, but the roads are unfinished, drainage defective, play areas incomplete and landscaping poor. I have seen that in a number of developments in my constituency, but I am particularly thinking of the residents of Snapdragon Way and Garten Close, who, among others, have had enough. Can we have a debate about mandating developers, local authorities and utilities to co-operate and finish developments that they have started in a timely manner, because residents simply should not have to live in new houses on streets that look only half put together?
Penny Mordaunt
I am very sorry to hear about this situation, and I know that my hon. Friend has been working tirelessly to get people to step up and take their responsibilities. He will know that the next questions on this matter are on 27 March, but I shall write on his behalf to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ask for its advice about what possible remedies it could suggest to my hon. Friend to get people to step up and take responsibility.
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I am very sorry to hear about the situation that the hon. Gentleman describes. He is quite right that it is about not just the functioning of bureaucracy but families facing unresolved issues and the additional trauma of not being able to move on from a tragedy that has occurred. Given that the next questions for the Ministry of Justice is a little way off, I will write on his behalf to ensure that the Secretary of State hears those concerns and ask him to contact the hon. Gentleman.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Last week I met the Football Foundation and Pannal Ash Junior football club in my constituency. Pannal Ash Juniors is a fantastic local club, which started with just six boys and now has more than 500 boys and girls playing football, and has been built up over many years by former Conservative councillor, now club president, Cliff Trotter. I want to see all children, regardless of age or ability, being able to take part in sporting activities and climb the football pyramid. Can we have a debate about increasing access to and participation in grassroots sport, for all the benefits sport brings and to help to find the next generation of England’s Three Lions and Lionesses?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point and putting on record the tremendous success of that football club and how much we owe to Cliff and other individuals who have enabled it to happen. We recently had a debate on community sport, but the issue is raised pretty much every week, so I am sure that if my hon. Friend applied for a debate, it would be well attended.
Business of the House
Andrew Jones Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Scotland is the nation of the Argylls and the Black Watch crossing the Rhine, the Scots Guards at Tumbledown and Shimi Lovat’s commandos securing Pegasus bridge. The taxes sitting in the Scottish Government’s accounts not being spent on education are paid for by grain farmers not grievance farmers, and by incredible communities and creatives. The people who elected the hon. Lady are incredibly resourceful and they do not match the SNP’s vision of them as a nation of victims; they are a powerful force for good in the Union and the world. They march to the fife and drum, not the saddest tune played on the smallest violin.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I recently attended a regional meeting with the English Football League to discuss the Government’s fan-led review, and I was pleased to be joined at it by Harrogate Town’s chief executive, Sarah Barry. The review represents a significant step change in how the football pyramid receives crucial funding. At Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport questions a few minutes ago, the Secretary of State announced that she would be publishing the Government’s next steps within a fortnight. This topic has attracted much interest from colleagues on both sides of the House, so will the Leader of the House ensure that when that is published there will be sufficient time for a good debate on the issue?