Public Bodies Reform

Bob Russell Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

To put it bluntly to the hon. Gentleman, it is a Government who are having to clear up an appalling mess left by his party, which left office spending £4 for every £3 in revenue. This coalition Government are having to reduce and eliminate a budget deficit that was created by his party with gross irresponsibility. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is undertaking a serious review of the future status of Remploy, and is very much aware of its good work and the valuable employment that it provides for many disabled people.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Quango is not a description usually associated with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. If it is not on the Minister’s culling list, will he please consider putting it in there? This morning, IPSA refused to refund the cost of an advertisement for an advice bureau for my constituents. Is that not an affront to the House? Perhaps the Minister would like to invite Sir Philip Green to take over IPSA. I am pretty sure that the backroom staff of Topshop could do a far better job.

[Mr Maude]

I have been invited to go down that path before, and I am a cautious fellow so I shall resist the temptation to do so. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his endorsement of the approach that Sir Philip Green has taken in helping the Government pick up a number of stones to find out exactly what is crawling around underneath.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) should calm himself. If he is trying to catch my eye, he has not got much chance at this rate.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Voluntary organisations and charities were not responsible for the banking crisis, nor for the financial crisis left by the last Labour Government. As we both value voluntary organisations and charities, will the Prime Minister discuss with his Treasury colleagues how the increase in VAT that those organisations have to pay can be refunded to them?

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly have those conversations with the Treasury, and we will want to do everything we can to help what used to be called, rather condescendingly, the third sector but I believe is the first sector: the excellent charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises that do so much for our country. One thing we should do is look at funding them on the same basis as the Government fund themselves. The Government are always very generous with their own bureaucracy, and they need to recognise that so often these first sector organisations have the right answers to the social problems in our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question. He will know that Ministers have policy responsibility for IPSA, but are not responsible for its internal workings. He will also know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has been making sure that, where the IPSA rules make it difficult for Members of Parliament to carry out their duties, information on those rules is made available. He will also know that, next week, the Speaker’s Committee on IPSA will have its first meeting. A motion on today’s Order Paper provides for the appointment of five Members to that Committee. At that meeting, they will consider how there can be accountability to this House.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Since last Wednesday’s Westminster Hall debate, in which the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) made it clear that IPSA was in breach of parliamentary privilege, what action has the Minister taken to ensure that IPSA is not in breach of parliamentary privilege?

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling asked me whether I would advise the Standards and Privileges Committee, but that is not a matter for members of the Government. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) himself will be appointed, if the House so desires it, to the Speaker’s Committee on IPSA, and I know he will use his undoubted skills to make sure that IPSA is given correct advice so that Members of this House can do their jobs to the standards our constituents require.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Bob Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) on raising the real threat to the operation of this Parliament and to the ability of democratically elected Members to do the job for which they were elected. I sincerely hope that the Minister was listening and will give feedback and take action. I hope that the leader of the council—[Laughter.] It could almost be a council, could it not? I hope that the Leader of the House hears what has been said and takes immediate action. Our work is being seriously interfered with and Parliamentary privilege is therefore being compromised.

I have not yet found a Member of Parliament who thinks that IPSA is doing a good job, but we should acknowledge and appreciate that its staff—those who are trying to do the job—are wading through treacle, just as we are. It is down to the Government—my Government—to put it right.

I am not technically proficient, so it goes way over my head, but those MPs who do know how to operate the computer system are spending many hours on it—or their staff are doing so. We had a simple system before and a few Members made it go wrong, but that was to do with second homes. I am not aware of anything seriously affecting the way that our staff operated. Why should they be penalised? Why should they suffer because of the sins of MPs? Why should new MPs have to tolerate a system that would not be tolerated in any other walk of life?

I have been to IPSA—I doorstepped it. If I can do that, I am amazed that no investigative journalist has done so. I can tell colleagues that the accommodation is luxurious—the best that I have ever seen and better than anything in a Cabinet Minister’s office. The work done there could easily be done from an industrial estate in Romford. IPSA does not have to occupy very expensive offices in central London.

I repeat: we should not criticise IPSA staff. It is their bosses who created this monster. It is not fit for purpose. This is not a question of MPs wanting to line their pockets; it is a question of MPs being able to pay the bills, so that they can operate their constituency offices and their staff can get on with their jobs. I honestly believe that if the job had been handed over to Tesco, it would have been done more efficiently, because Tesco knows everyone who goes in its shops and what they purchase. If every MP were issued with a House of Commons credit card, at the end of the month the printout would say what had been purchased and it would be deducted automatically. No money would go out of or into an MP’s personal account.

It is an affront that I have found it necessary to open a separate bank account. I do not see why the private bank account of my wife and I should be called upon to pay the office costs of an MP and that money then paid back into our private account. It is a real affront. Please, let us take up the excellent research undertaken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley). We have the Leader of the House and the Minister here, and I can guarantee that the Deputy Prime Minister will hear about this at 5 o’clock tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

From what I have seen, IPSA itself recognises that there are a number of anomalies in the system—although I do not remotely speak for IPSA. Those include the anomaly that if a colleague lives in a second home that they now own they cannot make a claim in respect of that second home. They could, however, rent the home out to a third party and then use an IPSA allowance to rent further accommodation. That is plainly irrational and I gather that it is going to be changed.

[Bob Russell]

Will the right hon. Gentleman please confirm that the public anger during the last year was directed at MPs’ second home allowances and not at our staff, our constituency offices and the office costs? IPSA has created problems that were not there before.

[Mr Straw]

I was going to come on to that very important point.

Just to go back slightly, it is true that this is the first time that there has been a body adjudicating on the conduct of Members of Parliament. However, the reason for that is not an invention of the board of IPSA; it was because of the egregious and outrageous conduct of some Members of the previous Parliament. We know what happened. We also know that the Commons, during a period of years, although it was never presented with the full facts, failed to take—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bacon]

You are not making any progress.

[Bob Russell]

You are defending the indefensible.

[Mr Straw]

No. I am just putting on the record—[Interruption.]

Saville Inquiry

Bob Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The short answer to that is yes. These matters should be determined independently by the Director of Public Prosecutions in the correct way. One of the things that should mark us out is that these things should happen only in the interests of justice and not in the interests of vengeance. I am sure that that is what will happen. I set out the position to the right hon. and learned Lady.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I should like to thank the Prime Minister and the right hon. and learned Lady for their measured contributions. On other days, soldiers who had been based at the Colchester garrison lost their lives in Northern Ireland. In 1987, I spent three days with 3rd Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment on duty in Belfast and was full of admiration for their courage and bravery, because they faced the prospect of being shot at by fellow British citizens. I wonder whether the Prime Minister will confirm that awful though Bloody Sunday clearly was, more than 1,000 members of the security forces lost their lives during the years of the troubles?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right; over 1,000 people—from the security services, the Army, the police and other services—lost their lives. Also, 250,000 people served in the Army in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner. Those of us who have not served in the Army cannot possibly know how tough it must be to be on duty on the streets, faced with violence and the threats of violence. It is worth remembering what service those people all gave and what restraint, in almost every case, they showed.

I was speaking to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who served in Londonderry, in Derry, a year after Bloody Sunday. He rightly made the point to me that the pressures that we put on our often very young soldiers were huge, and we should pay tribute to all those who served for what they did. But it is not in their interests, and nor is it in our interests, to try to gloss over what happened on that dreadful day. The report enables us to face up to what happened and to accept what happened, and that is the best way of moving on and accounting for the past.

Afghanistan

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for the question and I know that my hon. Friend has great experience of Afghanistan, including having travelled there a great deal. I do not agree with him, though, that there is somehow a repeat of Basra, as he put it. Under the counter-insurgency strategy we are making sure that we have the correct number of forces spread across Helmand and across Afghanistan to deliver counter-insurgency. In some cases, as he knows, that means moving forces from one place to another to make sure that they are thick enough across the whole ground. It is welcome that there are now 20,000 US marines in Helmand. That should enable us to deliver such security, so we should not be in any way worried or ashamed or anything like that if we move the disposition of our forces around Helmand with our US allies. That is part of delivering a successful outcome.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement. This autumn, soldiers from 16 Air Assault Brigade, from Colchester garrison, will be deployed to Afghanistan for the third time. In the Prime Minister’s statement on equipment, he did not mention unmanned aerial vehicles. Bearing in mind that UAVs are a very welcome tool in identifying insurgents and those who lay improvised explosive devices, will he give a commitment that UAVs will be very much there and part of the equipment programme?

[The Prime Minister]

I can give the hon. Gentleman that reassurance. On previous trips to Afghanistan, I have had proper presentations on the work of UAVs, drones, Predators, Reapers and other such projects, and what they are able to do is incredibly impressive. A great deal of British investment is going into those technologies, too, and we will ensure that they can be deployed as quickly as possible.

Debate on the Address

Bob Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question, although I hope that before long he will be referring to it as “our Government” rather than “his Government”. You are absolutely right—[Hon. Members: “Wooh!] Sorry, he is absolutely right—I will get the hang of it eventually—and we will be prioritising social housing, not least because the last Government left a huge black hole that they refused to fund—

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Failed miserably, failed miserably!

[The Prime Minister]

I ask the hon. Gentleman to calm down.

Some of the £6 billion in savings that we have found will be put back into the social housing that Labour promised and never delivered.

Nothing will better sum up the clean break that this Government will make with the past than our freedom Bill. We will repeal ridiculous laws that allow a never-ending list of public bodies, from local councils to quangos, to enter people’s homes without permission. We will scrap Labour’s plans for ID cards and, after the Labour Government failed to act for so many years, we will end the incarceration of children for immigration purposes once and for all.

We are going to bring the same spirit of radical change to the biggest challenge of all: sorting out the mess that Labour has made of our economy. Everything that the previous Government told us was wrong. They told us that they had abolished boom and bust, but they gave us the longest and deepest recession on record. They reassured us that we were better prepared for this recession than other countries, yet we were one of the first countries into recession and one of the last countries out of recession, and we have one of the weakest recoveries. They promised us prudence, but they left us with the largest UK budget deficit in peacetime history. They lectured us about their golden rules, but in the end the only golden rule was: “Never trust Labour with the economy of this country”.

It stops now—no more spending beyond our means; no more reckless borrowing; no more taxing of the poorest to pay for the mistakes of the few. In just two weeks, this Government have done more for our economy than Labour managed in the last two years. We have changed the way Budgets are written, by establishing a new Office for Budget Responsibility, which will stop any Chancellor fiddling the figures ever again in our history. We have launched and completed an in-year spending review to save £6 billion of waste—waste that Labour still says is vital to our recovery. What a ridiculous argument. Do Labour Members really think that the £125 million a year that we discovered the previous Government were spending on taxis, the £320 million that they spent on hotel bills or the £7 million spent by one Department on stationery are necessary? Are all these luxuries somehow essential to firing the engines of our economy? Of course they are not, and it is right that they are being reduced.

It is because we have found these savings that we can stop one of the most stupid, reckless and irresponsible tax rises ever dreamt up in the middle of a recession, which was the idea of putting up national insurance on every job in our country. With this coalition Government, that jobs tax is going. That is what we have done in the last two weeks.

[The Prime Minister]

The whole point is that we are getting to grips with spending so that we do not have to put up taxes. The only people I remember with a plan to raise VAT were the last Government, who actually published it, although to be fair to the hon. Gentleman, he had lost his first seat then—and we are all looking forward to him losing his second one.

That is what we have done in two weeks; the Queen’s Speech shows what we will do in the next two years. We are going to bring some law and order to the banking system, which Labour allowed to wreck our economy. There will be more powers to the Bank of England, in our financial services regulation Bill. We will get to grips with the unacceptable bonus culture and open up credit lines for small businesses. We want to ensure that our banks serve our economy, rather than the other way round. We are going to change our whole economy, so that it is not built on debt and waste, but instead on savings and investment.

Our energy security and green economy Bill will mean more energy efficiency in our homes and our businesses. From the savings that we have already identified, we will make £50 million available for the building and refurbishment of further education colleges. One of the last acts of the previous Government was to completely bungle that building programme. One of the first acts of the new Government will be to start putting that wrong right. If we add to that high-speed rail, an interactive energy grid, corporation tax cuts and super-fast broadband, we will get a completely new economy and a Britain that is back open for business.

And one last thing: we will finally bring justice to the Equitable Life policyholders—people who were shamelessly betrayed, year after year, by the bunch of people sitting there on the Opposition Front Bench.

The Government we have just had were not just disastrous for our economy; they were bad for our society, too. This Queen’s Speech marks a decisive shift from the past, treating not just the symptoms of what is broken in our society, but its root causes. In Britain today there are families better off on benefits than in work and couples with children being paid more to live apart. We have taxpayers who go out to work, earning just £15,000 or £16,000, and are expected to carry on supporting people who refuse to work. All these things need to change. Our welfare reform Bill will begin the process of benefit reform.

The programme that we have set out in this Queen’s Speech will mean real changes straight away in our schools, too.

[Bob Russell]

Will the Prime Minister confirm that, after 13 years of a Labour Government, the gap between rich and poor had widened, and that the number of children living in poverty was among the worst in Europe—worse than that of Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right, and worse than that—[Interruption.] The former Health Secretary says that he is wrong. That shows how out of touch they are: they do not even know the damage that their Government did. We can add to that the fact that there are more children here in households where nobody works than in any other country in Europe. That is the record that they have left, and that is the record that we want to put right. So before the summer, we want to pass an education Bill that allows our best schools to reopen as academies straight away. We will not stop there. There is going to be greater freedom for all schools, radical reform so that new schools can be established, more trust for teachers and, through our pupil premium, we will make sure that extra funding goes to the poorest pupils.

We will radically reform all our public services so that they serve the public, not bureaucrats in Whitehall. We are going to do things in a completely different way from what has gone before, dismantling the top-down apparatus of state control and bringing in real choice and accountability. So with policing, out go centralisation, unnecessary paperwork and central targets, and in come beat-based police meetings and elected individuals as police commissioners. With the NHS, out go centrally directed hospital closures and politically motivated targets, and in come full patient choice and elections for your primary care trust. And that is not all. Because we are getting rid of Labour’s jobs tax, we can now afford to fund the cancer drugs that people have desperately needed for so long, to extend life and give hope to thousands of people in our country.

This Queen’s Speech addresses problems not only in our economy and our society but in our politics, too. It includes a comprehensive programme for pushing power downwards and outwards from this place. That is what the decentralisation and localism Bill is all about. Already we have shown our intent: the imposition of new unitary councils—going; regional spatial strategies—going; home information packs—gone; comprehensive area assessments—going; Standards Board bureaucracy—going; the excessive ring-fencing of local council budgets, and treating local government like infants—gone. We will be the Government who give politics and power back to the people. Not only will we push power outwards; we will also sort out the other issues that brought this House into disrepute, with a clampdown on lobbying and the right for constituents to recall any MP found guilty of serious wrongdoing.