Business of the House

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

Yes, it will. The faces change but the Government continue. If there is a delay in the hon. Lady getting a timely response, as she has indicated, I will always follow up on behalf of hon. Members. That is one of the main reasons for having business questions, so that we can ensure that urgent cases in particular are followed up. She has that assurance.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

In June, Warrington Council introduced a low-traffic neighbourhood zone in the Latchford area of my constituency—an area that is totally unsuitable, because it is constrained to the south by the Manchester ship canal and to the north by the River Mersey. Roads have been closed to traffic, resulting in longer journey times and more congestion. In a survey I conducted, 87% of residents who were impacted by the changes say they want things to go back to how they were. May we have a debate in Government time on low-traffic neighbourhood zones, and does my right hon. Friend agree that local councillors need to listen to local residents and scrap those changes?

[Penny Mordaunt]

We do need to listen to local people, not only because that is what their representatives are supposed to do, but because quite often they will have the best ideas on how to manage particular situations. I would tell my hon. Friend how to secure a debate, but I know that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), who is sitting next to him, he has already managed to secure an Adjournment debate. I congratulate him on that, but I shall also flag the fact that he has raised the matter with me to the relevant Ministry.

Business of the House

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: those services are incredibly important for children’s development and to support families, but also to enable people to remain in work and progress through work. I will raise that matter, which I know is a concern across the House, with the Department for Education. Colleagues involved in the work the Government have been doing on early years, to take a more holistic approach to that whole area and make sure it is doing what parents need it to do, will also want to hear the hon. Gentleman’s remarks.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in wishing all members of the Hindu community in Warrington South a very happy Diwali. I recently met with many members of that community, who expressed concerns about recent events in the midlands. Can the Leader of the House assure my constituents that the safety of all communities is a priority for this Government, and that they should enjoy the festival of light in their community?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. I join in with his remarks, especially regarding all those in his constituency.

Standards

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I start by being slightly pernickety, which is to say that I am not a right hon. Gentleman. I do not know whether the Lord President of the Council can do anything about that, but I note that she referred to me as such, for which I am grateful.

On a serious point, historically, we will probably be considered the standards Parliament, because standards have been such a prominent part of the politics of this whole Parliament. As a colleague of 649 of my closest friends, I feel quite painfully the fact that, in this Parliament, 16 Members have already been suspended for a day or more, or have withdrawn from the House before any investigation was completed. That puts this Parliament as having suspended more people than any Parliament in many decades. That, I suspect, is partly because we have put in place the ICGS, which is dealing with work that would previously have been swept under the carpet. Even in my own time in the House, these issues would have simply been dealt with by the Whips and somebody would have been either quietly paid off or told not to complain. I am really glad that that culture is changing, that people feel able to complain when they feel bullied or sexually harassed and that behaviours that were thought to be acceptable 15 or 20 years ago are no longer considered so in the House. We may have more of this before the end of this Parliament, and we just need to bear cognisance of that. Even if we look only at the code of conduct cases, we have ended up suspending more in this Parliament than for a very long time.

I had some very wealthy relatives. When I was young, they taught me that if a person ever inherited money, it was because it had been held in trust. As Members of Parliament, we inherit our seats—not normally hereditary seats, but in some cases they are—and we inherit the reputation of the House that came from previous generations. It is important for us to hold that in trust and pass it on to the next generation of Members of Parliament burnished rather than tarnished. We will have to do a job of work throughout the rest of this Parliament to be able to do that effectively.

The system, I believe, also has to be fair to Members of Parliament. It is phenomenally complex and sometimes, in addition, complicated. An individual Member will be subject to rules of their own party, the ICGS rules, the code of conduct, the Electoral Commission, and the law of the land, and sometimes it is difficult for them to have all those things in their mind. That is why it is so important that the system for Members of Parliament is completely fair, embodies natural justice, and makes sure that the individual complainant—if there is a complainant—and the Member themselves are given an opportunity to put their case and for it to be heard fully. The court of public opinion is not often a fair place. It often jumps to conclusions and decides things far too rapidly. My worry is that, sometimes, our processes happen far too slowly, and that is not justice for either the complainant or the Member, especially as politics has a shelf life—we have elections, for example—and sometimes cases keep going for years, which is not fair on anybody’s mental health either.

Ever since I joined the Committee, I have always wanted us to have some formal process of appeal. I have argued that the system that we have had heretofore provides a sort of form of appeal: if the Commissioner finds against the Member, the Member is allowed a very full opportunity to make their case to the Committee in oral or written evidence. To be honest, it is better that we have a much clearer definition of the roles of the Commissioner and the Committee. That is what Sir Ernest Ryder has provided us with. He gave us a clean bill of health on how we have been operating in the past. He was quite clear in saying that there is not only one way of having a fair trial or hearing; there are many different ways. It might be an inquisitorial system such as we have, but it might be a confrontational system, or an adversarial system, as we have in a court of law. Of course, Committees of the House of Commons are not a court of law; they are fundamentally different. If we went down an adversarial route, the costs would increase dramatically and the length of proceedings would be very different. We have also always had a fundamental principle in the House that a Member speaks for themselves; if they cannot, then I would argue they have slightly lost the plot.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I want to put on record my thanks to the lay members on the Committee. It is a unique Select Committee in Parliament and lay members—members of the public who are selected—play an important part. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree with me that the Committee is much stronger for having lay members sitting there alongside parliamentarians.

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed; that was the next point I was going to make. The hon. Gentleman is very good at doing that in Committee, incidentally, and persuading me of the view that I already hold, but that may just mean that we proceed very much on a consensual basis in the Committee and there is no partisan divide at all. Nor is there a divide between the lay members and the Member members.

There was a point at which people were arguing that MPs should not be involved at all in any of these processes, but I think that is wrong in relation to code of conduct cases. We often end up having a discussion about what casework really involves, or what an all-party parliamentary group does, and I think we make better decisions thereby. However, I do not think we could do that without the lay members and without their having a vote. The balance between the two, the seven lay members and the seven Members, is a good one, and it is sometimes a genuinely fascinating debate, with people offering different perspectives.

On the motions before the House, first, I hope that introducing a procedural protocol that lays out all the processes and what a Member can expect if they have to go through an investigation that ends up going all the way to the Committee will be helpful to all Members. We have laid all that out.

There has been some criticism in the past about whether the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who is an adviser to the Committee, should be present when the Committee is considering a memorandum and producing a report on an individual Member. We have decided that from now on—and we are already operating this—the Commissioner will not be present. If we have questions for the Commissioner, we will send them in writing and receive answers in writing, and that will also be available to the Member under consideration.

Secondly, as the Leader of the House has already said, we are introducing an appeal through the Independent Expert Panel. That is a formalised process, and some people may find that that process is stricter than the previous system, because Members cannot appeal just to have a regurgitation of the facts or the argument; there are clear reasons why someone might be able to proceed to appeal, and the appellate body, the IEP, might decide, “I’m sorry, that doesn’t really count. You just want to rehearse the arguments all over again.” Members may find that this is a stricter process, but it closely parallels the situation in many tribunal systems and Sir Ernest Ryder, who had responsibility for the tribunals system in England and Wales, has helped us to get to that position.

There is one other thing that the Leader of the House did not mention, but which I am grateful that the Government have included in the motions. Let us say that the Commissioner recommends that a Member has breached the rules and the Committee decides that there has been a breach of the rules and wants to impose a sanction. We will publish our report, in the way we have done, with the Member concerned getting an embargoed copy an hour before it is published. They will then have a period of time in which to decide whether to appeal. If they do, that goes to the Independent Expert Panel. However, at the end of that process, if the IEP upholds the Committee’s decision and the sanction, the motion should be put to the House forthwith—that is to say, without debate and without amendment, exactly like any other recommendation from the Independent Expert Panel in relation to independent complaints and grievance scheme issues. That makes for perfect clarity and simplicity.

I am grateful, in a way, that the Government have corrected our homework in two regards. The first is in relation to Members’ being allowed to inform their own staff. I think the Government have made that perfectly sensible amendment, which was a sin of omission of ours rather than a sin of commission. The Leader of the House referred to the issue of members of the Committee recusing themselves, which is mentioned in the report and has been raised by some Members. If a member of the Committee has attended only one of the sessions at which an individual case is considered, should they be able to take part in the final decisions? There is nothing in Standing Orders that allows a Committee to prevent a member from taking part; in the end, it is a matter for the member’s own conscience. Broadly speaking, in most of our minds, someone who had not attended the individual Member’s oral evidence would not be able to give them a fair hearing. It is not in the motion—we are relaxed about that—but I wanted to give the House an indication of where we are going on that issue.

I thank both Sir Ernest Ryder and Sir Stephen Irwin. I feel a bit surrounded by knights of the realm sometimes, but it is good to have a new knight of the realm on the Committee—the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), who joined us today. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain); her measure is perfectly sensible. The trouble with conventions and gentlemen’s agreements is that if there is no longer a gentleman on the other side of the agreement, it is no longer an agreement, so it makes perfect sense to put that on the face of the Bill.

The Leader of the House referred to some other issues. Obviously, I would have preferred it if we were dealing with the whole of our report. She referred to how she wants to achieve consensus. We on the Committee think that we have done so, we are open to discussion, but there are some issues I want to raise.

First, we want to ban the provision of paid parliamentary advice, including providing or agreeing to

“provide services as a Parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant”.

That is self-evident. I think everybody supports it and I would like to make that the rule—it is not yet the rule.

We also think that Members who have second jobs, especially if they are ongoing, should have a contract saying what they and cannot do, because sometimes people will put in a contract, “You will provide contacts with Government on our behalf.” Well, Members cannot do that as that is, expressly, paid lobbying. We think they should be able to provide a contract; the Government disagree.

We want to clarify the serious wrong exemption, which Owen Paterson tried very aggressively and assertively to use as his excuse last year. It just did not wash, but it needs to be clearer for Members.

We want to clarify the paid lobbying rules, which would help out hon. Members a bit, because they are not clear in some areas. At the moment we draw a distinction between a Member “initiating” or “participating” in an approach to or a meeting with a Minister or an official. That is a completely false distinction and we need to get rid of it.

The one big difference I have with the Leader of the House is in relation to the registration of ministerial interests. I know the previous Leader of the House used the line about the constitutional principle of the separation of powers a lot. That is complete and utter baloney. It is nonsense. That phrase has carried on from the previous Leader of the House but one, now I think about it. We do not have a separation of powers. By definition, Ministers are Members of this House. My anxiety is that ministerial offices quite often get the rules about the House wrong, and sometimes Ministers or Members leave staff to do the registration when it is the responsibility of Members. I hope we can get to a better place on that.

It is a fundamental principle that a member of public should be able to look online for a Member—whether they are Minister now, were a Minister a month or six months ago, or have not been a Minister at all this year—and see all the facts about their registrable financial interests, so as to be able to judge whether that Member was acting “without fear or favour”, or was acting with some other consideration in mind. It is, in a sense, even more important for a Minister than it is for others. If two Members, one an ordinary Member of Parliament and one a Minister, go to an air show, with the hospitality, the accommodation and so on paid for by an arms company—it might come to £3,500—it is probably more important for us to know that the Minister was given that hospitality, because it is the Minister who might be making decisions on procurement from that company. Transparency and equality between all Members is really important, and all the information needs to be searchable and findable. We need to do more work on that.

The Government need an adviser on the ministerial code, and I hope that that will come as soon possible. I am very fond of Lord Geidt, who is a magnificent man. I think he felt crushed by the events of the last of years. If we are to hold in trust the reputation of Parliament and of the whole of politics, we must get someone in place as soon as possible.

Like the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), I thank the lay members of the Committee. I shall mention only two fully by name, because they have just left: Jane Burgess and Arun Midha have served out their time, and we are recruiting new lay members at the moment. We are one down, and we will need another three next year. Paul, Rita, Mehmuda, Vicky, Michael and Tammy do a magnificent job, and I am enormously grateful to all of them.

Business Question

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. As he identifies, the protocol was clearly a huge issue in the Northern Ireland elections. It is something that the Foreign Secretary has been pursuing for a long time by trying to encourage EU colleagues to come to the table to find a way forward. She will continue with those plans. The hon. Gentleman is right to identify, however, that if we cannot find a way forward, the UK Government will clearly have to consider options to overcome the challenges that communities in Northern Ireland are facing. Shoring up and supporting the Good Friday agreement is a fundamental desire of the UK. The Good Friday agreement must be protected, so if the protocol is damaging it, the UK Government will have to take action.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

For the vast majority of our constituents, the largest purchase that they will make in their lifetime is a house for them and their family to live in. For my constituents living in Steinbeck Grange in Warrington, however, the opportunity to purchase a dream home has turned into a living nightmare. The Competition and Markets Authority has launched an investigation into the mis-selling of leasehold. Can the Leader of the House update us on where the CMA is with that investigation? Can we have a debate in the House on the opportunities to retrospectively fix the leasehold scandal that affects many people living in my constituency?

[Mark Spencer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. That subject would make a good Adjournment debate if he were to apply. We welcome the CMA’s action to tackle potential mis-selling and unfair terms, and the Government certainly want affected homeowners to obtain the justice and redress that they deserve. I know that my hon. Friend will play his part in drawing the House’s attention to the challenges that they face. It is DLUHC questions next Monday, and I am sure that he will be in his place to raise the matter again directly with the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

Committee on Standards: Members’ Code of Conduct Review

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I see some nodding. For a start, I do not know how it could be policed. Some have suggested that MPs should fill in timesheets, but I cannot see that happening. Moreover, it seems invidious to tackle an MP’s earned income but not their unearned income, for instance from shareholdings or trusts.

Every constituency is different; every MP is different; and while the political parties should pay a greater role in turfing out those who are swinging the lead, in the end I think that that is what the ballot box is there for.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am grateful for the fine introduction that the hon. Gentleman is giving to the debate, and I thank him for his work on the Committee on Standards. One of the issues that we have discussed in the Committee is that of a Member perhaps writing a book—I know that the hon. Gentleman has some experience of writing books—and the income generated by it. Writing a book is something that Members would do in their spare time, and could potentially be called a second job if they were earning from it. It is not clear how that sort of thing could be dealt with.

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman about timesheets and the like. Does he agree that while some of the suggestions are about certain types of job, such as working in the NHS, there is an understanding that people working in business can also bring valuable experience to the House?

[Chris Bryant]

I am very upset with the hon. Gentleman, because he said that I had written some books but he did not say “some very good books, which are available in all good bookshops.” However, I declare my interest, Madam Deputy Speaker, before I am reported to myself.

There is a serious point here. I think that voters are well equipped to make decisions about this. It does not quite work equally between marginal constituencies and what are considered to be safe constituencies, but, speaking for myself, I think it would be odd if we were to say that MPs should not be allowed to write. The written word is as important as the spoken word when it comes to pursuing the things that we all believe in. If the House feels differently, however, I will stop writing books. [Hon. Members: “No, no!”] We are not having a Division on that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

As an aside, while I was preparing to write this speech, a former member of the Committee on Standards sent me a WhatsApp message. I had asked him for advice on whether I should join the Committee, and he said, “I’ve been on this Committee for a couple of years, haven’t seen much action, don’t anticipate that will change—don’t expect to be too busy, in fact you might want to think about joining another Committee too.” How wrong he was.

Standards in Parliament and the conduct of MPs seem to have rarely been out of the news over the past six months. I must say it is a tremendous shame that there are not more hon. Members present for this debate, because this is one of the most important issues that our constituents consider. There can be few more contentious votes in recent times, I am afraid, than the one relating to the former Member for North Shropshire.

The inquiry into the review of the code of conduct, which all hon. Members are expected to follow, is very timely and welcome. It is a 120-page report and I want to focus on just three or four things. First, however, I want to make a point I have made in other debates: we should look at every opportunity to simplify the rules. I mentioned in a previous debate that I get confused as a member of the Standards Committee, and I think my local newspaper ran a headline saying the standards rules were confused and “complicated”. I say this because there are 12 or 13 different codes and sets of guidance that MPs are required to follow, all in different places and most of them adjudicated by different people, and it is very difficult, particularly for new Members of Parliament, to know exactly where to go to get the right information so that they do not make mistakes. That was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), and training and guidance at all stages of our experience in Parliament and reminders of the sort of things that are expected from a Member of Parliament are very important.

On second jobs—although for some Members it is about not just second jobs, but third or fourth jobs as well—the Committee heard from a number of witnesses and the conclusion I think almost everybody reached after hearing from them is that this is not a simple issue to resolve. Perhaps the most compelling evidence for that view was received from the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), who has a private Member’s Bill to ban second jobs. That convinced me that there was absolutely no simple answer. Frankly, it would carve out lots of exceptions to allow people to do all kinds of second jobs, therefore not banning second jobs. We need to think very carefully before legislating, and my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) made the point that we are enriched by having professionals from different disciplines in the House who can contribute to debates.

When I was first elected two years ago, I quickly realised that I did not have time to hold down a second job. My family would not have seen me if I had tried to take on another job in addition to being the Member of Parliament for a very busy constituency, but I do understand that some MPs have time to do other things. Indeed, in some cases they need to do other things to maintain professional qualifications—doctors or accountants, for example—and we should recognise that that is a good thing. However, I equally think that anybody who is recruited on to a board because of their experience here needs to ask why they are being recruited. That is exactly the same as people offering that input into here and Members being required to put input into commercial businesses. We should think very carefully about whether we should require Members of Parliament to hold contracts with such organisations. I think that what is expected of Members of Parliament should be set out so that there is proper transparency.

However, I agree that the electorate are the ultimate decision maker in terms of the work undertaken by MPs. If they believe that their representative focuses more on outside interests than standing up for constituents, they should use the ballot box to make changes when the opportunities arise.

I want to talk briefly about a couple of other points. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) mentioned the respect principles to accompany the Nolan principles. Everyone in public life is expected to follow the guidelines set out by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and I do not think that a new principle needs to be added there. I agree with the intention, but I think the sentiments are met elsewhere within the seven principles, so doing that could add confusion.

The hon. Member for North East Fife mentioned conventions and I think there is a convention that colleagues on the Standards Committee do not talk to the press about issues in relation to the Committee. We perhaps need a bit more guidance on that. It is important that every member of the Committee acts impartially and without political notions, and I try to hold to that. Making comments to the media about MP colleagues and then finding that colleague in front of the Committee is at some point going to cause problems for the Committee.

I believe that all Members of Parliament recognise that it is a privilege to sit in this House of Commons, and with that privilege comes a set of responsibilities and expectations. Members of the public rightly expect high standards of integrity and behaviour from those they elect to govern.

Business of the House

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and I have already set out what the Government have been doing in our disability strategy. I think it is better to deal with the individual cases, which we as MPs are well positioned to take up when they come to our attention. As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), I am always happy to try to facilitate that. Sometimes citing the headline figures from surveys is not particularly illuminating.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Since coming to this House two years ago I have raised on numerous occasions my concerns about the level of borrowing by Warrington Borough Council. The Labour council now has debts of about £1.6 billion. Today there are reports in the national newspapers that Together Energy will be the 26th energy company to enter administration. That is particularly relevant to people in Warrington because £52 million of public money has been invested in that loss-making company by the borough council, and there would potentially be a catastrophic impact on local services were the company to enter administration. Can we have a debate in Government time on how councils are using public money to invest in private companies? I again urge the Government to launch an inquiry into this gambling by local councillors.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this question. Just before the 2017 general election I was on the Treasury Committee, and I lobbied the then Chairman for an inquiry into exactly this subject. Councils are not there to speculate; they are there to run public services and to handle taxpayers’ money well. I have a great quibble about using the word “investment” for local government expenditure, because actually it is spending taxpayers’ money. Local government should not be talking about investing; it should recognise that it is using other people’s money and therefore has a great fiduciary duty to spend it wisely. Councils that do not spend it wisely should be held to account both by Members of Parliament and, as they ultimately will be, by their electors.

Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I will leave that with my hon. Friend: it is a fantastic quote and I am glad that he has presented it to the House.

Today we are debating a Labour motion and a Government amendment. We have no problem with supporting the Labour motion. We will vote in favour of it, if we get the opportunity to do so. We are happy to leave it to the Committee on Standards in Public Life. We applaud it for the work that it has already put in, and the House looks forward to receiving the decision as soon as possible and to backing it in its important work.

Then we come to the Government amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) is absolutely right: this is nothing but a fig leaf, a cover up, to try to divert attention and get away from the real issues, including the Prime Minister’s private flat, his villa in wherever it is in Spain and the propriety of so many Members of Parliament. I did not even understand most of what the Leader of the House was trying to explain. If he left it just as: they would do as the Committee on Standards in Public Life suggests, that would be absolutely fine, but it seems like they want to direct the Committee on Standards in Public Life. They want to lead it into certain directions and they want to suggest to it what it should do as part of its work. I think the Chair of the Committee on Standards was absolutely right. It should be left to the Committee to determine and decide. They do not need the Government’s prompting to get these issues resolved. Let us leave it with them. It is a cross-party Committee. It is a Committee that is well chaired by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is very studious and diligent about his work.

Today—this, I think, gets to the heart of it—the hapless International Trade Secretary, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), was sent out. Somebody gets the short straw every morning and today it was the International Trade Secretary. She could not even make up her mind how many hours we should all get to work on our second jobs. I think it was initially 10 to 15 hours. Then she suggested, I think it was in the Radio 4 interview, that it was up to 20 hours. They cannot even decide among themselves for how many hours they should get to do their second jobs.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

Oh, yes. I usually eat Tory Back Benchers for breakfast, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Andy Carter]

I am very grateful. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am a member of the Standards Committee and I just want to clarify something he mentioned earlier. He was talking about the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is a different committee to the Committee on Standards in this House. I think he was confusing the two. I just think it is important. The Committee on Standards in Public Life is an independent committee not associated with this House.

[Pete Wishart]

I am fully aware of what the two different and distinct committees are. What we want to do is ensure that we get the opportunity to back the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. That is what we are looking forward to doing.

Just briefly, Madam Deputy Speaker, to remind ourselves of the scale of this problem and issue when it comes to second jobs, The Sunday Times showed us that 138 MPs have had second jobs in the past year and that 12 earn at least an extra £100,000 a year from outside interests. Almost one in four Tory MPs spends at least 100 hours a year on second jobs and 25 MPs spend more than 416 hours a year.

We in the Scottish National party believe that our job as a Member of Parliament must be an exclusive commitment to our constituents. We also want to see all of Parliament included. That includes that rotten corrupt circus down that corridor there. The House of Lords has to be included in this. I welcome the valiant efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) to try to get the issue looked at again—his amendment was not selected—and all my other colleagues who have been trying to press this issue. It cannot and can never be right that someone can be rewarded with a place in the House of Lords for giving £3 million to the coffers of the Tory party. It is a measure that would make a tin-pot dictator in a banana republic blush, with the size and amount of sleaze and scandal.

Business of the House

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I have no up-to-date information on Luke Symons, but I will pass on to the Foreign Secretary the concerns that the hon. Gentleman has raised. There are Foreign Office questions on 26 October, so I encourage right hon. and hon. Members to raise such issues with the Foreign Secretary then. Whenever these matters are raised at business questions, I pass them on to the Foreign Secretary, so I shall pass on the hon. Gentleman’s comments and his desire for more information.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am sure that, like me, the Leader of the House will have welcomed the Prime Minister’s comments about the protection of the green belt in his excellent speech in Manchester earlier this month. Like a number of other areas throughout the UK, Warrington is currently consulting on its draft local plan, which is, as the Leader of the House will know, the point at which green belt can be released for future development. In my constituency, thousands of homes are planned on green belt, so may we have an urgent debate in Government time to give councils guidance on the local planning process and the need to prioritise town centre regeneration and brownfield usage ahead of destroying the green belt for future development?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I heard my hon. Friend earlier promoting gin from his constituency; I am glad that he did not confuse his question and ask for gin distilleries on the green belt, which would have made for a different tone.

When developing their local plan, local authorities are prevented from altering the green belt boundary, unless in exceptional circumstances, and they must consult local people. It is of course right to use brownfield sites first and to try to redevelop town centres, and a number of permissive rights—permitted development rights—have been provided to make that easier for developers to do. That will help home ownership, which is a fundamental objective of the Government and is what people want. Our constituents want to own their own home and Governments must try to facilitate that, which means house building but, yes of course, on brownfield first.

Business of the House

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

That $2.3 billion is not an amount of money to be sniffed at. There is a limited budget for funds, so it is right that that money comes from the overseas development budget because that is what it is.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has committed to four targets for COP26 in Glasgow this year: first, to secure global net zero by mid-century and keep the 2.7 °F target within reach; secondly, to adapt to protect communities and natural habitats; thirdly, to mobilise finance—developed countries must make good on their promise to mobilise at least $100 billion in climate finance by 2020; and fourthly, to work together to deliver and finalise the Paris rulebook, which comprises the detailed rules that make the Paris agreement operational, and accelerate action to tackle the climate crisis through collaboration among Governments, businesses and civil society. The Government’s policy is very much in line with what the hon. Lady asks for.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I have previously raised in the House my concerns and those of my constituents about the decision by Warrington Borough Council to borrow £1.6 billion to invest in business around the UK. One of those businesses is a domestic energy supplier, Together Energy. The total exposure for taxpayers in Warrington is £41 million, and we are seeing what is happening in the energy sector. Will the Leader of the House schedule a debate in Government time on the decisions that councils are taking, so that we can have absolutely clear transparency? Does he agree that action of this type is absolutely irresponsible?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We must have shorter questions.

Business of the House

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The nation owes a great debt to those who keep us safe, and we have been kept safe by our nuclear deterrent now for many decades; it is a fundamental part of our defence strategy. The 22,000 men involved between 1952 and 1991 are people who deserve the thanks of a grateful nation. I will of course pass on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence what the hon. Lady has had to say about any proposals or anything that can be done for the people who were involved in these tests.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will know, because I have raised the matter with him in the House on a number of occasions, that residents living in Steinbeck Grange in Warrington believe they were mis-sold leasehold properties by David Wilson Homes more than 10 years ago. I welcome the work that the Competition and Markets Authority is undertaking to investigate these complaints, but my constituents and others around the country have an understandable need for the Government to take action to legislate to tackle historical problems.

May we have a debate in Government time on what actions the Government can take to support my constituents, particularly by looking at the use of incentivised solicitor arrangements, where discounts are offered for homebuyers to use friendly law firms that then disappear, leaving homebuyers with no opportunity to challenge their lawyers if they did not disclose the facts at the time of purchase?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The last point that my hon. Friend raised sounds almost like fraud. If somebody is proposing a solicitor who is not a real solicitors company and there is no comeback on the firm, that sounds like an extreme level of malpractice.

I can assure my hon. Friend that Her Majesty’s Government are committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service. The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill is currently making its way through the House of Lords and will end ground rents for new qualifying long residential leasehold properties in England and Wales, which is a major change to property law. It is encouraging that the Competition and Markets Authority is taking enforcement action to tackle certain instances of mis-selling, but I encourage my hon. Friend keep campaigning on this and particularly raising that very troubling issue of vanishing solicitors.