Summer Adjournment

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) on behalf of her constituents. I cannot match the eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) in rattling through so many issues in such a short space of time, but I will do my best. I want to use this opportunity to raise a number of unfinished business items that the Government need to pick up, and possibly some local issues if time permits.

The first issue is compensation for victims of the Equitable Life scandal. I am delighted that the Government have managed to pay out, overall, more than £1 billion to the 900,000 policyholders who are victims of this scam. However, the fight is not yet complete. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has announced the closure of the compensation scheme at the end of this year to new applications for compensation. I am delighted that the Treasury has agreed to open up applications to ensure that the people—136,000, we believe—who have not yet registered a claim on the account can do so, and that we will use national insurance numbers and all means to trace those individuals so that they can register that claim.

Of course, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced further compensation for the people who have not yet received full compensation, but that is limited to the individuals who were on pension credit. On the Government figures alone for what has been agreed, £2.8 billion is still owed to nearly 1 million policyholders who have not received their full compensation. I can assure the House that the all-party group on Equitable Life policyholders, which I am privileged to co-chair—we have over 200 members—will continue the work until such time as all those policyholders receive full and fair compensation.

The second issue that I want to discuss arose in the previous Parliament. Tacked on to a piece of legislation in the other place was a move to enact highly divisive caste discrimination legislation without proper consultation with the Hindu community. It has caused immense concern within that community. Despite the fact that it was voted down by this House and returned to the other place, the other place insisted on its clauses and sent it back. Then, unfortunately, our coalition partners gave way on the issue instead of removing it from legislation. Now that we have a Conservative-only Government, we clearly need to remove that divisive legislation from the statute book completely.

In general, we would all want to ensure that any form of discrimination is outlawed, but as soon as legislation is introduced in the sensitive area of caste, one of the problems is that it then has to be monitored. I can imagine the scenario were this legislation to be enacted, with children returning home to their parents and asking, “Mummy, Daddy, what caste are we? My teacher has asked me to find out what caste we are so that we are not discriminated against.” Caste, particularly in the Hindu community, is in many cases a thing of the past, given intermarriage and so on, so it is wrong to create a problem in relation to something that is slowly desisting. One step the Government should take is to introduce legislation to remove that from the statute book for good and all.

The third area is one of my great passions—stopping people smoking and preventing young people from starting to smoke. I have just had the honour of being elected to the chairmanship of the all-party group on smoking and health. The coalition Government gave local authorities substantial funds for public health, which was due to be ring-fenced, to encourage people to give up smoking and to prevent people from starting to smoke, as well as for connected purposes. My particular concern is that the funds are not being used for their intended purpose, and that, as a result, we are not getting the action we need to ensure people are assisted to make the health decision to give up smoking.

In my view, whether to start smoking is one of the key decisions that a young person makes in life. If they start smoking, they quickly become addicted, and the big tobacco companies have them for life. The fact is that tobacco and cigarettes are the one product sold world wide which, if you use it as it is intended to be used, will kill you. The reality is that we must encourage people not to smoke. We need to ensure that local authorities use this opportunity to make sure that smoking becomes a thing of the past. I still believe that smoking is a matter of free will, so I do not want it to be banned completely. I do, however, want to make sure that we do not encourage anyone to smoke in the first place.

The next area I want to raise is my great disappointment that Chatham House has decided to invite Bako Sahakyan to speak. No country, not even Armenia, recognises the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. That area is illegally occupied by Armenia, which has resulted in more than 1 million people being displaced from their homes to refugee camps. I do not think it is right that a body should bring into this country, and give a platform to, someone who is perpetuating injustice to that community. There have been United Nations resolutions galore about that, yet none has been implemented. It is the constant complaint of people from Azerbaijan that while resolutions are agreed at the United Nations and immediate action follows, in their case they have been waiting more than 30 years for justice.

On a lighter note, I await the result of the judicial review of the application of VAT to bridge clubs. When that result is announced, I hope that the Government will ensure that mind sports, such as bridge and chess, are properly funded by Sport England so that young people get the opportunity to learn not only the physical aspects of competitive sports, but the mental ones. I hope there will be the opportunity for such sports to be promoted in this place and elsewhere—in schools and beyond—so that clubs can operate under and get grants from Sport England to ensure that the mind as well as the body is trained to perfection.

I wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as well as Mr Speaker, the other Deputy Speakers and all the staff of this place a very happy recess. I shall be running a work experience programme in my constituency so that a number of young people can learn about the joys of being involved in politics and learn something about the hard work that we all put in.