Business of the House

Anne Main Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

This is a long-standing campaign that has a lot of support on both sides of the House, and I commend the hon. Lady for raising it. I will raise with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister exactly what she has said. If it is indeed the case that a decision rests with them, I will use what influence I have to try to get a decision before the summer recess.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Further to the remarks by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) about British cucumbers being decimated, may we have a debate on why some ill-judged remarks by an EU Minister from Germany are leading to enormous financial implications and bills for our country?

[Sir George Young]

As I made clear earlier, there is no evidence at all of any contamination in the UK food chain that emanates from the problems of the E. coli outbreak in Germany. I say again to my hon. Friend that the public should be reassured that there is no reason at all why cucumbers in this country should not be consumed. If there have been unhelpful remarks from people overseas, of course I will pursue that through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Business of the House

Anne Main Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. This subject has been raised in previous business questions. The answer is that the Government will launch the child poverty strategy before the House rises for the Easter recess. That statement will address the specific point, which she raised, of how the Government intend to proceed on the issue of legality on which she has just touched.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

When asked, the majority of people in this country apparently describe themselves as middle class, yet there are concerns that they are being discriminated against positively. May we have a debate on the hard-pressed, squeezed middle class?

[Sir George Young]

I hope that I can identify myself with that part of the population. There will be an opportunity to look at that issue during the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. My hon. Friend will know that a wide range of measures have been introduced that I think will be welcomed by the middle class, and indeed by all classes, particularly some of the steps we have taken to promote growth. The freeze on council tax will be welcomed by upper, middle and lower classes, and indeed by every member of this society.

Business of the House

Anne Main Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman recognises that the written ministerial statement that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), put out this morning takes forward work started by the previous Government to move work away from the failed CSA and to promote conciliation. The Green Paper is a consultative document, and at the end of her written ministerial statement, my hon. Friend states:

“I welcome your contribution to this important piece of reform to the Child Maintenance system.”

I encourage all those who have opinions on what the Government suggest to take the opportunity to respond to the consultation document.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

May we have an urgent debate on the state of Britain’s roads? After the parlous weather we have had for the past three years, the potholes and the state of road surfaces in heavily utilised areas such as mine around St Albans are an absolute disgrace because of the historical underinvestment.

[Sir George Young]

Some roads will be Highways Agency roads but others will be the responsibility of the county council. There is a debate this afternoon in Westminster Hall on the consequences of the comprehensive spending review on local government; my hon. Friend might have an opportunity to take part in that debate and raise her concerns with the relevant Minister.

Business of the House (Thursday)

Anne Main Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Slaughter]

Does my right hon. Friend know that the Deputy Prime Minister is now on Sky News saying that he would love to get rid of university tuition fees, but that he lives in an imperfect world? He says that he hopes that tuition fees will go in the future and blames the Labour party for not supporting him in the past. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Labour party would be happy to vote with him tomorrow against the motion? Should the Deputy Prime Minister not be—

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have listened very patiently to this entire debate. I seek your guidance on whether we can hear repeated any more outbursts on what is happening in corridors and on Sky News, which has nothing to do with the timetabling of the debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I am sure that the hon. Lady appreciates that I am following the debate very closely. If contributions are not in order, I will say so.

Business of the House

Anne Main Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The House will have an opportunity to debate the Public Bodies (Reform) Bill when it has completed its passage in another place, and that will be the right forum for the hon. Gentleman to make clear his concerns about disposal of national forests.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

In the light of the announcement this week about the proposed cap on immigration, can we have an early debate on the need to provide skilled, ethnic cuisine training, because the curry industry and other ethnic cuisines will be particularly hit by that announcement?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That point may have been made on Tuesday during the exchange following the statement of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The point was well made, and there would be no need to import chefs from Bangladesh and other countries if we were able to provide the necessary skills in this country. My hon. Friend makes a valid point.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Anne Main Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I took history at university, but my thesis was on the Whig party in opposition from 1812 to 1830, which was very good preparation for being in the Labour party in the 1980s and 1990s. I did not get as far as the Irish settlement of 1922, and I always regret that. I shall go to him for some tutorials. He is obviously better informed than I am.

I arrived at the figure of 650 because that seems to work well, and I do not want a reduction. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) pointed out, a reduction in the number of MPs and a smaller House will make the Executive proportionately stronger. I would like to see some proposals from the Government to reduce the number of Executive appointments. There are more than 100, which means that they have a huge bought vote in the House to overrule the wishes of the Members. I want Members to be stronger and the Executive to be weaker, but this measure will have the opposite effect.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Although I completely support the reduction in the number of Members, I have huge sympathy with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the Executive, because of the lack of voice. Members of the Executive do not speak on local constituency matters, and I would therefore welcome any attempts to reduce Executive numbers to increase the voice of Back Benchers proportionally.

[Austin Mitchell]

If the number of Members is reduced, the voice of the constituencies will be proportionally less in this House, and that is another argument for keeping the 650, as I propose. What will happen if the Executive are reduced in this House? Will we have more Executive appointments in the Lords? Will we appoint more of those grovelling chief executives and chairmen who wrote to The Daily Telegraph to support the Government’s plans for cuts at the expense of their customers, saying in effect, “It doesn’t matter how much damage you inflict on our customers and on demand for our businesses, we support the Government.” That is clearly a plea for knighthoods or Government jobs. Will the Government respond to that by creating posts outside Parliament for these people? How will they reconstitute the Executive to make them less strong proportionally in a reduced House? We have heard nothing on that.

Secondly, the reduction would reduce the pool of talent from which to select Ministers and to make all the other contributions that MPs make. Heaven knows, the pool is not all that big now. We do not have all that much talent, and certainly not the level that we used to have—[Interruption.] Well, we have some, especially from Humberside. Our contribution is big, but it is not enough. I would like a bigger pool of talent in the House to pick Ministers from.

Most importantly, the change would reduce the service that we provide to our constituents. I have always found constituency work exciting and interesting, and a solace for my failure to be appointed to any ministerial job—or my ability to mess up any ministerial appointment that I have been offered, which has always been very short-lived because of the joys of constituency work. I find it very satisfactory—

--- Later in debate ---

[Austin Mitchell]

I am sorry, Ms Primarolo.

I should have said that it is much easier to do this job with 650 MPs, and that it will be much more difficult if the clause passes unamended and reduces the membership of the House to 600. That is the essence of my argument. We are straining to do the job as it is, and we have had to take on more staff. We shall need even more staff if the number of MPs is reduced. It is difficult to do our job, but it is well worth doing.

[Mrs Main]

I had a degree of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman when he was talking about the strength of the Executive, but if he has time to make TV programmes and do other things outside the House, I cannot believe that he does not have a spare moment, or that a reduction in the number of MPs would not be feasible.

[Austin Mitchell]

Some of us labour under the misfortune of being better looking than others—[Laughter.] We might appear more on television for that reason, although my days as a television hero are long gone. The essence of my argument is that this demand comes to us from the people. This is not about us putting ourselves forward to do the work; the demand comes from the people and they have to be served.