Parliamentary Constituencies Bill
Andrew Rosindell ExcerptsTuesday 14th July 2020
(3 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 View all Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 14 July 2020 - (14 Jul 2020)
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The hon. Lady talks about keeping communities together and about breaking up wards. Why does it matter if a ward is broken up? Surely communities are created through small building blocks. By discarding this almost obsession the Boundary Commission has had with entire wards, huge changes could be avoided and communities could stay together. Will she not support the idea that smaller building blocks are the way to create better constituencies that are community based, rather than artificial communities based on entire wards?
Cat Smith
I would argue that the wards, which are obviously drawn by the Local Government Boundary Commission, do actually reflect communities to a great extent. If we are to go down the path of splitting wards, we will end up with the ridiculous situation, like we did at the previous review, where constituencies such as Port Talbot had a shopping centre in one constituency and the high street in another constituency. My new clause seeks to minimise the chances of such ridiculous situations occurring again. Under the current Bill, the Commission will struggle to respect the factors laid out in rule five, which, of course, Members will know, are the existing constituencies, local government boundaries, local ties and geography.
During the evidence sessions of this Bill, the secretariat for the Boundary Commission for England spoke about the difficulties caused by this small tolerance, which makes it
“much harder to have regard to the other factors…such as the importance of not breaking local ties, and having regard to local authority boundaries and features of natural geography.”
He said:
“Basically, the smaller you make the tolerance, the fewer options we have…The larger you make it, the more options we have and the more flexibility…to have regard to the other factors”.––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 7, Q3.]
So while the Government keep saying the boundary commissions will listen to the views of communities in the drawing of the boundaries, some communities will literally be wasting their time putting forward those arguments if the restrictive quota will mathematically prevent the commissioners from respecting their views and the community ties.
Chris Clarkson
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, which is, as always, well-considered and eloquent. I completely agree with him. The Boundary Commission for Scotland has already demonstrated that it is perfectly capable of splitting wards using postcode data. There is nothing in the legislation that prevents the Boundary Commission from doing that; it is simply a choice not to act, and that cannot be a good enough foundation.
Andrew Rosindell
I totally agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. The absurdity of entire wards making constituencies that divide communities, particularly in places such as Greater London, where we have huge wards in my constituency of 10,000 or 12,000, means that changing that involves massive upheavals and breaking up communities, so he is absolutely right that the Boundary Commission must be more flexible on this point.
Chris Clarkson
Certainly, in some of the larger metropolitan boroughs, there is what I call the martini paradox, where three wards is not quite enough and four is too many.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Everyone on the Opposition Benches accepts that this parliamentary boundary review is overdue. I think we all also accept that what we want to achieve is equality in the weight of each individual elector’s vote. However, we found from the evidence that we took and our deliberation in Committee that that is not possible.
There are local circumstances that require flexibility in how we construct our parliamentary constituencies, and I very much favour flexibility for the Boundary Commission to be able to get on with its job. We heard from Mr Bellringer from the Boundary Commission, who said that greater flexibility allowed the commission the opportunity to facilitate local concerns and make the best of representations from local communities, and it allowed him to do his job more efficiently. We do not represent individuals alone. We represent communities. I firmly believe that if we create flexibility, we can protect the communities that the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) referred to earlier. That is why the 5% rigid limitation that the Government want to impose is wrong.
The Boundary Commission wrote to the Committee with some additional evidence, in which it said that
“a ward is a unit of electoral administration”.
Breaking up wards therefore needs to be avoided because it creates difficulty in administering elections. But if that is true, it must also be true that to go across a local government boundary is even more disruptive. What we have to create for the Boundary Commission is the flexibility to avoid circumstances that force it to decide that a parliamentary constituency must take orphan wards from a neighbouring local authority area or bits of communities from a neighbouring area that do not really match up to the communities in the main body of the constituency. We must accept the need to minimise disruption of that kind, so we need to ensure that the people making the recommendations on parliamentary boundaries have the maximum flexibility to do their job.
Andrew Rosindell
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but does he agree that sometimes a ward is completely artificial, so to break up a ward can actually unite a community, rather than divide it? Therefore, the Boundary Commission should be more flexible about using smaller building blocks, such as polling districts, or even an individual road that it makes sense to transfer into a constituency?
Clive Efford
I agree, provided it is within a recognisable local government area and a recognisable community, and there is support from the local community. In additional evidence the Boundary Commission sent, it talked about the administrative problems of going down to polling district level. The commission referred to getting Ordnance Survey to map all the polling districts in the whole country, but it seems to me that all it has to do is ring up the electoral registration offices, which can tell it how many people live in every road in every polling district. Why go to a separate organisation to find out information that is already recorded on a given date when we start the parliamentary boundary review? If that is already recorded and kept, all the Boundary Commission has to do is refer to it; then, it could go down to sub-ward level where that makes sense locally. I think the commission is creating problems for itself.
Why 7.5%? We had evidence from Dr Rossiter, who has researched this issue. He explained that as we go up from 5% to 6 % to 7% to 8%, although each percentage point seems a small amount, it improves the quality of the outcome, and that there are benefits from moving from 5% to 6 % to 7% or 8% because it improves the decision-making process. He then said that, beyond 8%, that benefit diminishes. The amendment therefore proposes 7.5%, and the experts who gave evidence favour a figure close to 7.5%. I ask the Government to reconsider their position, as they no doubt will in the other place, to look at the evidence and to accept that 7.5% is a much more sensible figure than the rigid 5% which we know has created problems in the past.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Jack
On the hon. Lady’s first remark about public health, it is absolutely imperative that we protect lives, but we must also protect livelihoods. On universal basic income, we do not believe it is the best way to deliver social security because it is not targeted at those who need it most. We believe universal credit is the best thing because it gets people back into work, and getting people back into work gets them out of poverty. Countries such as Finland and Canada have tried universal basic income and walked away from it. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation also found that it can increase poverty and it said that it is not the way forward in the report that it released two years ago, so we will not be moving towards a universal basic income.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Duguid)
At the end of 2020, we automatically take back control of our waters as an independent coastal state. We will be out of the common fisheries policy and we can decide who can fish in our waters and on what terms. This Government will maintain funding throughout this Parliament to support both our seafood industry and the regeneration of coastal communities in Scotland and around the United Kingdom.
Andrew Rosindell
The Minister will be aware that taking back control of our waters and regaining our status as an independent coastal state was one of the reasons why 1 million Scots voted to leave the European Union, so can he confirm that the UK Government will not sign up to anything that will take away those provisions and put that status at risk?
David Duguid
Yes, I can indeed confirm that. For the first time in 40 years, we will be free to decide who can access our waters and on what terms. Any access by non-UK vessels to fish in UK waters will be negotiated annually, as is standard practice in many cases between independent coastal states such as Norway, the Faroes or Iceland. We continue to engage with the EU constructively, but we will be making sure our position is understood. We will always defend our rights under international law, just as any other independent coastal state does.
Parliamentary Constituencies Bill
Andrew Rosindell ExcerptsTuesday 2nd June 2020
(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Chloe Smith
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. As she rightly says, there are aspects of community that really come out when we are thinking of rural seats, just as they do in respect of urban and suburban seats. I know that all such arguments will be brought out to the Boundary Commissions as they undertake their work after this legislation passes. I can also reassure her that a specific point in the factors the Boundary Commissions have to use deals with particularly large constituencies, and that one remains the same. She may have it mind, although I do not think her neck of the woods gets quite to that size, but she will know the one I am referring to.
Let me return to the things the Bill changes. It will improve the timings of the public hearings that form part of that extensive consultation process I was just referring to. The hearings will be moved to a little later in the boundary review timetable so that they can targeted to areas where interest is greatest. That often becomes clear only as a review gets going. The Bill will also improve the way the Boundary Commissions have to consider local government boundaries. They are one factor the commissions may take account of when they develop their proposals. Currently, they may consider only those local boundaries that have been implemented at a local council election prior to the start of a review. The Bill lets the Boundary Commissions take into account not only the local boundaries that exist at the beginning of the review, but prospective boundaries—ones that have been formalised in legislation but not yet used in an election. That measure will help to keep constituency boundaries better aligned with local government boundaries, for example, by taking into account forthcoming amendments to council wards in London, Wales, Wiltshire and Cornwall, should the orders for those areas be made by the time of the review.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
In London, a lot of boundary changes are taking place in my borough of Havering, but the pandemic has meant that they have been delayed—the decision has been delayed from December until early next year. Will the Minister confirm that that will not preclude us from using the new boundaries when we look at the constituency boundaries under this review?
Chloe Smith
Yes, I can confirm exactly that. My hon. Friend illustrates the point I have just made; the intention of that improvement is indeed to allow prospective local government boundaries to be taken into account.
Chloe Smith
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but I think it is a really bad argument. It argues against having equal sized constituencies, which is fundamental. If we want to be able to say that we have a first-past-the-post system that operates as fairly and respectably as it can—as it does in the other countries that I just named, and as it ought to in this country—we need to have equality of seats. It is incredibly disappointing that the Opposition are arguing against that, and I do not really understand why they are. It goes with the other really poor argument in their reasoned amendment, which I just finished dealing with.
Andrew Rosindell
The Minister’s point is absolutely correct—we do have to have balanced boundaries—but does she agree that that can be achieved by having smaller building blocks, like polling districts, rather than huge wards that change from one constituency to another? If the boundary commissions used smaller building blocks like polling districts, it would avoid communities being broken up.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. We must have short interventions. A lot of people want to speak. I am sure the Minister will be winding up fairly soon, but if everybody wants to get in, Members should bear that in mind.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
I dare anyone to try to change the name of the Strangford constituency, because they will incur the wrath of my hon. Friend in at least 10 Adjournment debate interventions.
There are indeed some variations in the electoral quota of constituencies in Northern Ireland, which will need to be corrected. The largest constituency in Northern Ireland in terms of electorate is Upper Bann, with a current electorate of 82,887. The smallest constituency is that of East Antrim, with an electorate of 64,830. There is a disparity between the two electorates of almost 20,000. It is with good reason that Northern Ireland continues to enjoy the added flexibility of the 10% variation on the quota, given our distinct geographical circumstances and given the fact that there are limitations to what changes you can make in a place such as Northern Ireland, which has a land frontier with another country. Therefore, we welcome the Government’s commitment to maintain that added flexibility for Northern Ireland, notwithstanding the need to bring more constituencies within that 10% tolerance. Almost half the seats in Northern Ireland are within the 5% tolerance of the UK quota, and a further five are within 10%, so it is only six of the 18 seats that are currently outside the 10% tolerance that will need to be brought back into line.
Andrew Rosindell
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that to keep within that tolerance, it is sometimes better to use small building blocks, such as polling districts, rather than wards? In that way, it can be done much more successfully than creating bigger areas and will help to keep communities together.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and the interest he takes in Northern Ireland. He will be interested to know that the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland seems to have conspired to create polling stations that are almost exclusively a single ward anyway, and that we no longer really have polling districts that are different from the wards, in terms of where people vote, and the division and subdivision of wards. That is the nature of our local government electoral system. However, I take his point and it brings me on to my next point, which has been mentioned by other right hon. and hon. Members, and it concerns the importance of ensuring that communities have an affinity with the constituency that they represent. We really do not want to see a boundary commission splitting villages between two constituencies. That is entirely wrong. It goes to the heart of our parliamentary democracy that communities have an affinity with their constituency and their Member of Parliament, and I hope that that kind of flexibility can be included within the arrangements.
We also welcome the fact that the next boundary review, following the completion of this one, will be eight years on. I think that that is a good thing. It gives us a degree of continuity and ensures that we have approximately two Parliaments between boundary reviews. It is a sensible arrangement that we support.
I note what the Minister said in relation to datasets in Northern Ireland. Our canvass has been postponed to 2021, and our view is that the general election datasets are the most accurate, because more people register in Northern Ireland—as I am sure is the case across the UK—for a general election. Therefore, the December 2019 dataset is very accurate. I commend that to the Minister’s thinking as she considers the options available to her. I echo the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made earlier that we should consider making that the norm for datasets and looking to the previous general election, unless there is some exceptional reason why we would not.
The new boundaries in Northern Ireland will also apply to the Northern Ireland Assembly because, of course, our electoral system means that in each of the parliamentary constituencies, we elect five Members of the Assembly by proportional representation. On the current timeframe for the review, it is unlikely that the changes will be in force in time for the next Assembly election scheduled for 2022, but it is worth bearing in mind that this is relevant not only to parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland, but to an Assembly election.
Finally, I say again that we welcome the retention of 650 seats for the UK. Given the extra responsibilities that this Parliament will have post Brexit, we believe that that is the right approach and it is one that we fully support.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The imperative to review our boundaries is absolutely essential now. We are talking about an electoral register of 20 years ago. I know that every Member of the House will agree that it is time to get this job done, and I commend the Government for moving forward on this as fast as possible. The Bill will create a new political map for the United Kingdom that will see us through at least the next two general elections, but there is one area that needs to change, and I will focus my remarks on that.
We have an opportunity to create not only 650 constituencies based on equal numbers, but ones that are based around actual towns, communities and places of genuine social, historical, geographical and cultural connections, giving greater recognition to local ties, which unfortunately the current system often prevents. The cause of this is simple. It is the lack of flexibility that results from rigidly using whole local government wards as the main building blocks, when smaller building blocks such as polling districts could be used instead. I commend the Boundary Commission for its independence, but apart from a few exceptions, its unwillingness to divert from using entire wards instead of smaller areas such as polling districts leads to unnecessary changes and upheavals, mass confusion and people who are accustomed to being in one constituency suddenly finding themselves being transferred to an area with which they have much less or no connection. We often see communities divided as a result, and a loss of local identity.
The dismay people feel when they are shunted from their traditional constituency into another one, from which they feel totally disconnected, is damaging to our democracy, as is the failure to have continuity of elected representation. I therefore say to the Lord President of the Council, who is in his place, that I hope the Boundary Commission will be willing to include parts of wards and make smaller, incremental changes that still meet the requirements of the Bill, but make larger changes much less likely and allow communities to unite within one constituency.
It is wrong to force communities to go through massive upheavals when small changes can satisfy the numbers within the scope of the Bill, and prevent a radical and unwelcome change for both constituents and the Member of Parliament, who may have spent many years looking after a community and become familiar to local people. I could provide many examples of that. In the Rush Green community in my constituency, 3,000 people from a polling district could have been moved into the area. Instead, the Boundary Commission chose to bring in an entire ward, dividing up other communities. That approach has to change.
The Boundary Commission needs to review the way it does things to make them more sensible and more community-orientated, while keeping within the numbers set out by the Government in the Bill. This really does matter. I hope the Government will use their influence to ensure that a more flexible approach is used and mandate the Boundary Commission to alter its criteria to allow judgments based on local ties, using smaller areas, polling districts or even a road or a house if it means a smaller area being moved to meet the criteria. It could ensure that we avoid communities being broken up and avoid the radical upheavals that have caused so much unnecessary division in previous boundary reviews.
One final request: one more MP, for Gibraltar, please. They have asked for it. Let us have one more MP.
Covid-19: Strategy
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am grateful for all the questions the right hon. and learned Gentleman has raised and for the spirit in which he has raised them. Let us be absolutely clear: what we are trying to do now—he was good enough to refer to it—is move from a situation in which the people of this country have had the overwhelming impression that there is a very clear and simple piece of advice that we all have to obey, which is, broadly speaking, “Stay at home”. The people of this country have, by and large, followed that advice, perhaps more emphatically, more thoroughly than many other populations around the world. Thanks to their efforts, we have made huge progress in fighting the disease—we have got the R down. We need now to begin to acknowledge the progress that has been made and to take the small, limited steps that we can with the R down where it is. That is what the Government are trying to do.
Clearly, when coming out of a message that is so gloriously simple as, “Stay at home”, there will inevitably be complexities that he has rightly alluded to.
Let me try to deal with some of the issues that the right hon. and learned Gentleman raised. What we are saying now is, “You should stay at home if you can, but go to work if you must—if your job does not allow you.” Plainly, he raised, properly, the issue of people who do not have the right childcare, and we will count on employers to be reasonable. If people cannot go to work because they cannot get the childcare that they need, plainly they are impeded from going to work, and they must be defended and protected on that basis. If their kids cannot yet go to school because the schools are not back, plainly they cannot go to work. I think that people with common sense—businesses and employers with common sense—do understand that, and it is incumbent on all of us to get that message across. One thing that was perhaps missing from his analysis was the simple fact that over the last couple of months plenty of businesses, from construction to manufacturing, and office businesses of all kinds, have been proceeding and they have been working. They have been doing so in a way that respects social distancing and is as covid-compliant as possible.
To answer the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s specific questions about the timescale for the publications of our guidelines, we will be publishing the guidelines on places of employment tonight; transport will be out tomorrow.
We are being very, very consistent in what we have said throughout this period. At the very beginning, we said, “You should stay at home if you can, go to work if you must.” What has changed now is the emphasis and the encouragement we are giving people to follow the initial guidance of 23 March. He asks about what science it is going to be based on and how we have reached the conclusions that we have. As I said last night, and as I told the House, the R—the reproduction rate of the disease—is now between 0.5 and 0.9. It varies across the country, as he rightly says. That is why different approaches by the devolved Administrations are to be welcomed, where those are appropriate to their specific needs. Overall, and I think all leaders of the devolved Administrations would confirm this, there is a very strong desire to move forward as four nations together.
Perhaps I can sum up. We all share the strong view that people should stay at home if they can, and that remains the position. The steps we are taking today are modest, and entirely governed by the science. We hope—and this is entirely conditional—that we may be in a position to take further steps in the next few weeks. Given the complexity of what is being said, the right hon. gentleman raised a perfectly reasonable point about people moving across the border into Wales for recreational purposes, and there will be myriad other hypothetical situations that people can raise. But let us be clear: everybody understands what we are trying to do together. We are working together as a country to obey the social distancing rules, which everybody understands. The British people understand that this is the moment for the whole country to come together, obey those rules, and apply common sense in their application of them.
I have huge admiration for the way that the police have enforced the rules so far. I know that the British public will continue to help the police, and everybody, to enforce the rules, get the reproduction rate down, and get this disease even further under control, by continuing to apply good, solid, British common sense. That worked throughout phase 1, and I have no doubt that it will work in the second phase of the fight against the disease.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
First, may I thank the Prime Minister for the tremendous leadership of our nation during these times, and for his comprehensive statement today? Will he please outline his post-Brexit and post-covid economic plan to set our UK economy back on the right track in the coming decade? Does he agree that our priority must be to make plans now to boost domestic output in manufacturing and agriculture, so that we can reduce our reliance on imports, and support British business growth and job creation in constituencies such as Romford? We need a bold, free-enterprise agenda that is led, I believe, by a Prime Minister who I know will show the true bulldog spirit of this country, and take our nation back to prosperity and greater things in the future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady knows, we have raised our concerns about the operation in northern Syria with the Turkish Government and with President Erdoğan several times. We certainly deplore any abuse of human rights and the suffering that she has identified. May I make a proposal to the hon. Lady? I would be happy to look at the details of the case she has raised myself, because I am deeply concerned about what is happening.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
I continue to believe that the House today will have an opportunity to vote on no deal, and it will then have an opportunity tomorrow, depending on how it has voted tonight, to vote on the question of the extension of article 50. As I said last night, there will be hard choices for this House, but this House will need to determine what its view is on the way forward. As far as the Government are concerned, we want to continue to work to leave the European Union. That is what we will deliver for the people on the vote in the referendum. We will continue to work to deliver leaving the European Union, but to deliver leaving the European Union with a good deal.
As for the right hon. Gentleman, he does not agree with Government policy; he does not even agree with Labour party policy. He has nothing to offer this country.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Prime Minister
First, I am sure that Members from across the whole House will want to join me in sending our deepest sympathies and condolences to the family and friends of Jodie. I know there is nothing that we can do or say that is going to ease the pain the family are going through at her loss.
We are very clear that judges must have the powers they need to impose tough sentences on those involved in serious violence and knife crime. The law already provides for a mandatory prison sentence for a second offence of carrying a knife, and conviction of a knife or offensive weapon offence is now more likely to result in some form of custodial sentence—and for longer—than at any point in the last 10 years. Obviously, individual sentencing decisions are a matter for the courts, but we are catching and prosecuting more people who carry a knife, and those who are convicted are now more likely to go to prison and for longer. As I set out in Prime Minister’s questions last week, both I and the Home Secretary are working to see what more we can do to deal with the serious violence and knife crime that has beset so many of our communities.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Development (Penny Mordaunt)
The current Ebola virus outbreak has claimed 377 lives in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to date, and more than 600 people have tested positive for the disease. The response effort has been good, but it has been hampered by terrible insecurity in the region, with many humanitarian workers under fire while trying to initiate vaccinations. More than 200 people have survived the virus and the rate of infection is slow. Yesterday, I spoke to Dr Tedros of the World Health Organisation, who has just returned from the country, about what more we can do to contain the outbreak over the next several months. The UK has stepped up its support in response to the situation in the DRC and its preparedness throughout the region. It is a critical time for other nations to do the same.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Mr Speaker
We have not heard from Mr Charalambous. We must hear from the feller!
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)
The British public deserve to have confidence in our democracy. A diverse range of local authorities have confirmed that they will be taking part in voter ID and postal vote pilots for the 2019 local elections. The pilots will provide further insights into ensuring the security of the voting process.
Chloe Smith
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing her experience and her voice to this debate; it is very important that we hear that. I also thank the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who also represents Tower Hamlets, for his cross-party support for this policy. It shows how important that is. It is essential that electors are aware that their voice is theirs alone. That message was promoted through various channels in May this year, including work with the Electoral Commission, Crimestoppers and the police, and we will do more to spread that message.
Andrew Rosindell
Will the Minister assure the House that those who do not have the documentation she requires will not be disenfranchised by the new policy?
Chloe Smith
Yes, I am very happy to repeat that reassurance. When somebody does not have the correct form of ID, local authorities will provide an alternative method free of charge. On top of that, we are working closely with a range of charities and civil society organisations so that everyone who is registered to vote has the opportunity to do so.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Prime Minister (Mrs Theresa May)
Today is the centenary of the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, under which women were first allowed to stand for public office, and I am delighted that the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons was a Conservative. Women are coming from all over the United Kingdom to the #AskHerToStand day event, with MPs from every party extending invitations to their constituents. This will be an inspirational day, which the Government are delighted to support, and we hope that it will encourage many more women to consider standing for political office both locally and nationally. It is appropriate that we are reminded of the significant contribution made to the House by female MPs, including the fine example set by the late Jo Cox.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Andrew Rosindell
The Prime Minister will know that what drives me in politics has always been a love of country and a passionate belief in our United Kingdom, so I have to tell the Prime Minister that I agree with the people of Romford. They are deeply unhappy about the proposed EU deal, which they believe does not represent the Brexit for which they voted. Will the Prime Minister now please think again, even at this late stage, and instead lead our country in a new direction, completely cutting away the tentacles of the EU from our cherished island nation once and for all?
The Prime Minister
I think that people across the country who voted to leave the European Union voted to bring an end to free movement. Our deal delivers an end to free movement. They voted to bring an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK. Our deal delivers an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. They voted for us to stop sending vast sums of money to the European Union every year so that we could spend that money on our priorities, and we will be able to spend it on priorities such as the national health service. However, the European Union remains a close trading partner of the United Kingdom. As we leave the EU, we want to ensure that we continue to have a good trading relationship with it, and we will be able to have an independent trade policy that will enable us to make decisions to trade around the rest of the world.
My hon. Friend is indeed a passionate champion of the United Kingdom, but he is also a passionate champion of the links that the United Kingdom has with many parts of the world—including the Commonwealth—and those can be enhanced when we leave the European Union.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Rosindell Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
The right hon. Lady gave away her misunderstanding, as her question seemed to imply that she thinks Norway is in a customs union with the European Union. It is not. What we have on the table from the Government is a comprehensive set of proposals that we believe will deliver for British business in terms of frictionless trade and will deliver on what people voted for in the referendum—to restore to this House control of our laws, control of our borders and control of our money—and achieve a new security partnership with our European neighbours that is in the interests of every European country. The right hon. Lady should get behind us, support us and work in the common interest instead of carping from the side lines.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Mr Lidington
Reports of crimes involving motorcycles, mopeds and scooters are clearly a concern. We have been working with the police, industry and other partners to develop a comprehensive action plan to focus on what works and what more needs to be done. The police are now using new tactics, including off-road bikes and DNA marker sprays, to catch those committing these crimes. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is now consulting on proposals to give greater legal protection to police officers pursuing offenders. It takes action to secure a reduction in these crimes, not just a press release from the Mayor’s office. Action is what the Government are undertaking.