Oral Answers to Questions
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Maude
I am confident that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, who has responsibility for civil society and is taking the initiative forward, will want to collaborate closely with the devolved Administrations in just the way that the right hon. Gentleman suggests.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
3. What proportion of the budget of the national citizen service he expects to be spent in the 50% least disadvantaged areas of the country.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Analysis by Cabinet Office officials shows that NCS pilots are taking place in more than 190 locations across England and that places are evenly distributed among the most and the least deprived areas of England. Just under half of the places are in the 50% least deprived areas and just over half are located in the 50% most deprived areas. The key criterion for selecting pilot providers was the quality of proposals, including their plans to attract a wide cross-section of 16-year-olds and to support disadvantaged young people to take part. The bidders themselves nominated areas where they wanted to deliver the 2011 pilots as part of the competitive commissioning that was completed in November.
Cathy Jamieson
I am sure that the Minister will be aware of the research published by the university of Strathclyde, since it was the Conservative party that commissioned it, which highlights the danger that the proposed NCS would in fact benefit more middle-class and well-off young people, rather than those in disadvantaged areas. What account is he taking of that research and how is he changing the programmes to deal with it?
Mr Maude
The essence of that programme is that it is designed to bring together young people from a genuine mix of backgrounds. It is not designed particularly to help disadvantaged young people. It will benefit all young people and help to create a much more cohesive society by bringing together people from all backgrounds at an important and formative stage in their lives, during the rites of passage to adulthood. The social mix is an absolutely crucial ingredient of the programme.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Maude
It is possible that such a situation could come about, which is why we have encouraged the organisations that I mentioned to set up the information and support service for groups of public sector workers. We will also establish a challenge group, into which this service can feed thoughts and suggestions. If there are concerns that middle and senior managers are obstructing the right of public sector workers to form these co-operatives, I hope that people will feed them directly to us, through the challenge group, so that we can take the appropriate steps.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister accept that there is a fundamental difference between a worker co-operative and an organisation that is fully mutual? Can he assure me that there will be a democratic process within public sector mutuals and that there will be a membership element to it?
Mr Maude
We do not have a dogmatic view about exactly what form these should take. I hope there will be considerable innovation. Some will want to form joint ventures with outside providers; in other entities, the Government or whatever other state agency is the commissioning body might want to retain a stake in the organisation. There will be strong democratic worker involvement in many of them, but the key element is a degree of ownership by the employees themselves.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Thomas Docherty
As ever, my hon. Friend succinctly hits the nail on the head. The Bill is a mess because the Government did not take full advantage of the opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, unfortunately, that is becoming a hallmark of the Government, particularly in relation to any constitutional change affecting Scotland?
Thomas Docherty
I thank my hon. Friend. I will not repeat my previous lecture on US constitutional history, but it is worth reflecting on what happened before the 1997 general election, when Labour, the Liberal Democrats and civic society in Scotland got together for a five-year constitutional convention and teased out over that period exactly the mechanisms that would lead to a no-confidence vote. As I mentioned earlier, using the example of Scotland, if the Budget falls in the Scottish Parliament, that does not automatically trigger an early general election. What happens is that the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament has to set out that there will be a vote of no confidence later.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr MacNeil
That is why respect is important. The day has been set in legislation for the Scottish Parliament for more than a decade. All of a sudden, somebody wanders in, gate-crashes the party and takes the media caravan on to the lawn. Hon. Members cannot imagine that people in Scotland will not be upset or annoyed that that is happening.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a disgrace that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government were not consulted? To compound that disgrace, the Government claim that they would pay no attention even if the Scottish Parliament passed a motion in this regard.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Lady is right. I wish that the status that the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Government should have were enshrined in legislation.
Prisoners’ Right to Vote
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate that this is a difficult and sensitive issue, and I know that many of my constituents will be shocked at the notion that murderers, rapists and child molesters should be given the vote, but can the Minister tell us more about how he will ensure that any attempt to determine whether people are given the vote on grounds of length of sentence or type of crime will be ECHR-compliant?
Mr Harper
In respect of what the hon. Lady said in the first part of her question, she is leaping ahead. Ministers are considering how to deal with the judgment in the Hirst case. I should also explain that one of the problems with the previous Government’s inaction is that if they had implemented the judgment based on the decision in the Hirst case, we might well have been in a stronger position. As she will know—I am sure she follows this issue closely—case law has moved on. Ministers are considering these issues and, as I have said, when we have taken the decisions we will come and announce them to the House.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Harper
Hang on: let me deal with one intervention at a time.
My understanding—I am sure that this is the case—is that this issue has been raised at the JMC; I am sure that I will be corrected if it has not. Moreover, one would be having these conversations not only with the Administrations but with the Parliaments and Assemblies themselves. I know that some of those conversations have taken place. For example, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has had a communication from the Presiding Officer of the Welsh Assembly making it clear that its Members did not want the date of the Assembly election changed.
Cathy Jamieson
I think that the Minister said that the Scottish Parliament and the other devolved Assemblies had not taken a formal position by means of passing a resolution. Is he therefore suggesting that should, say, the Scottish Parliament pass such a resolution, he would change his mind?
Mr Harper
No, I was not suggesting that at all; I was simply making the point that they have not done so. However, let me save them time and trouble by saying that if they do, it will not make us change our minds, so they can focus on the important issues that voters will be concerned about.
Chris Bryant
Obviously that is the case. I should have thought that, given that none of the Ministers in either of the teams affected represents a Welsh, Scottish or Northern Ireland seat, it would have been more important for them to consult the relevant devolved Administrations just to be able to get the position right.
Cathy Jamieson
Was it not worrying to hear the Minister say that even if the Scottish Parliament passed a resolution that made clear that it did not support the Bill, he would not take account of that and would not change his mind in any way?
Cathy Jamieson
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Will he invite the Minister to ensure that the colour selected for the referendum ballot paper is not a colour that is traditionally used in Scottish Parliament elections?
Chris Bryant
That makes sense. If we had had enough time to go through this process at a slightly more leisurely pace, it would have been possible to consult on and agree to all such things. If the proposals were generally accepted, there would be a rather better feeling about the Bill.
We toyed with tabling an amendment to seek to determine the colour of the ballot paper, but we decided against that bearing in mind what the Minister said last week about leaving some decisions to officers. I have received representations from people who say that it would be inappropriate to use on the ballot paper a colour that is normally used by a political party, because we would then get into the complexities of defining which is a major political party and which is not, and what colours relate to them, which is a problem not least because I am not sure whether the Liberal Democrats are yellow or orange these days. I note that the Minister is wearing a Liberal Democrat tie today—it is mostly yellow but with little bits of blue.
Amendment (d) to new schedule 2 is on official poll cards. In new schedule 2, the Government state:
“If the counting officer thinks fit, the official poll cards used for the referendum and for the relevant elections may be combined.”
The problem is this: how is the counting officer to determine whether he or she “thinks fit”? Why ought we to allow that degree of freedom locally when it might make a material difference to the conduct of the ballot or referendum? We propose that:
“The official poll cards used for the referendum and for the relevant elections must be combined for all electors qualified to vote in all the polls.”
We all get a lot of junk mail these days. The danger is that voters will be confused if they receive two or three—or potentially four, five or six—polling cards for the different elections that are happening at the same time. They will not see how one affects the other. It would be far more sensible, wherever there is a combined poll, for the official poll cards to make it absolutely clear how many votes must be cast, how many elections there are, whether the voter has a postal vote, how they go about registering for a postal vote and so on. Our proposal would mean that there is clarity on a single piece of paper for the ordinary voter rather than a series of polling cards. The Government should make clear the nature of the franchise for each election and poll. As a proposed amendment to new schedule 2, amendment (d) relates exclusively to England.
Public Bodies Reform
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Maude
My hon. Friend is completely right on that. Secretaries of State will indeed be willing to answer detailed questions on exactly those issues. On many of the changes, complicated questions arise on the ownership of assets and where they will end up. The public bodies Bill will provide a power by secondary legislation to deal with asset distribution, and I am confident that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will have heard my hon. Friend’s concerns about British Waterways Board assets.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
I have heard the Minister say a number of times that if something is important, Ministers ought to take decisions on it and to be accountable. In that context, does he believe that consumer protection and a consumer voice are important? If so, why has he chosen specifically to abolish Consumer Focus and to transfer its functions to Citizens Advice? The latter is a worthy organisation, but it surely has enough to do in coping with the increasing demands for advice that result directly from the Government’s welfare reforms.
Mr Maude
The short point is that citizens advice bureaux carry a high degree of trust with citizens. They exist locally and are well supported, and they manage to mobilise very large amounts of voluntary activity. We must get away from the slightly outdated idea that to show that we care about something very much, we must set up a quango to express it.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr MacNeil
I am saying not that the electorate have any difficulties, but that the media that broadcast into people’s homes have a difficulty. If the hon. Gentleman is secure and certain of the sophistication of the electorate, he will doubtless support the inclusion of the single transferable vote, and perhaps other forms of election on the ballot paper. That would give proper cognisance to the sophistication of the electorate.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me and with Tom Aitchison, to whom he has already referred, that this is not simply a matter of the sophistication of the electorate? Mr Aitchison has identified serious practical problems, not least, as he put it in his evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee, the problems of sourcing enough ballot boxes, the hiring of additional venues and the expense of hiring additional staff.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Lady makes her point well; I will add no more, other than to thank her for that intervention.
The amendment tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends seeks to correct the huge error that has been made and to enable a day to be found, with the Electoral Commission taking the lead, so that the referendum can take place on a date on which no other election to a Parliament or Assembly in the United Kingdom is to be held. To that end, it seeks respect and consultation between the UK’s parliamentary and Assembly institutions. I have not prescribed a specific date, but have specified a time frame within which a referendum could take place. That would enable everything to occur and the process to be completed before the next UK election, which was alluded to during the programme motion debate.
My thinking in framing the amendment was to avoid being prescriptive and repeating the Deputy Prime Minister’s error of finding a date and arguing for it, regardless of what else might be happening on that date. My main motivation has been to respect already established processes and elections by finding another day, consensually and with respect for all by all. I do not, however, rule out supporting other amendments through a mechanism of mutual support.
I move the amendment because, although this issue is important—the Committee would not be discussing it if it was not—it is not as important as the range of policy choices to be made in Scotland and the re-election of an SNP Government on 5 May 2011.
Superannuation Bill
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Like other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate, I have been contacted by a number of my constituents who work as civil servants. The people who contacted me are not serial complainers and campaigners who write to me or to other politicians about everything, but people who do valuable work in a number of different departments within the civil service and other bodies locally, and who are genuinely concerned about their futures. They do important work in places such as the Identity and Passport Service, the Housing Investment Division of the Scottish Government, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, the Child Support Agency and Registers of Scotland. Although those jobs are not based in my constituency, they are based in the travel-to-work area. They are important for an area such as mine, which has seen a downturn in the manufacturing sector and is still reeling from the announcement that Diageo is pulling out of the Johnnie Walker plant.
I have come to the Chamber today to put on record my constituents’ concerns and, like others, to take the opportunity to praise dedicated public sector workers, including civil servants, who have given their lives and careers to work on our behalf. However, it is no good speaking such warm words in the Chamber if we do not take action to back them up. We heard the Minister in his opening statement take a softly, softly approach, saying, “We can sort this. It’ll be all right on the night,” but that does not match up with the measures in the Bill.
Richard Graham
Does the hon. Lady agree in retrospect that it was a tragedy that two years ago the PCS did not agree to the previous Government’s proposals?
Cathy Jamieson
We heard today that the people whom the Public and Commercial Services Union represents—the majority of people who work in the civil service—did not agree that the previous Government’s approach was the right one at that stage. Whether or not the hon. Gentleman agrees with the union, it had the right to go to court and did so, and secured a ruling in its favour. We must recognise and accept that. I was surprised to hear other hon. Members suggest that the ruling by the court was something that we should simply dismiss, and I would hope that that is not in fact what they are saying.
Given the need for brevity, I will focus on one particular point and that is the device that is being used to push this Bill through. I am very concerned that the Bill has been laid as a money Bill. I am a new Member and I stand to be corrected if I am wrong or if I have misunderstood what a money Bill has traditionally been used to do, but my understanding is that the Parliament Act 1911 defines a money Bill and charges the Speaker with certifying whether a Bill is a money Bill. Previously, money Bills have been used to protect revenue and to raise tax, but never before has a money Bill been used in a situation like this. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) who suggested that the use of a money Bill in these circumstances could be seen as an abuse of parliamentary procedure, and certainly many of the people who have spoken to me about this feel that is indeed the case. It is an abuse of that procedure to try to speed a Bill through Parliament without the proper scrutiny and, as the Minister has already accepted, to use a blunt instrument to try to force something on to the negotiating table.
If we look at the detail of the Bill, although it is very short we see that the degree to which it is unworkable in the long term is implicit in its provisions. The sunset clause, which means that the Bill will expire after 12 months, can be repealed at any time and can only be extended for a further period of six months by secondary legislation, and that is a real cause for concern. On the one hand, the Minister said that we have to negotiate but we cannot negotiate in public. However, at the same time, he is very publicly using this blunt instrument to try to force the unions into a particular position without providing any of the detail that Members on both sides of the House have sought today—
Michael Connarty
My hon. Friend is, as usual, shy about telling people that she is a former Minister in the Scottish Parliament and probably knows more about this than most Back Benchers. She also points out that the Bill has a sunset clause, but it is more like a sunrise clause. It is a blunt instrument fashioned to be picked up again and again when the Government do not have the capacity to negotiate and to be used to attack people in the public sector whenever they wish to do so. All that will be required is a statutory instrument off the Floor of the House, without anyone seeing what they are up to.
Cathy Jamieson
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s complimentary remarks. In fact, I am a former Justice Minister. Far be it from me as a former Minister to suggest that people should be suspicious about very short pieces of primary legislation that give greater powers to secondary legislation that can then be picked up and laid without proper parliamentary scrutiny. Having had to work on legislation in another Parliament, I recognise that the concerns expressed by hon. Members are well made in this case.
The Bill puts the Speaker in a difficult and unfair position, because he has to decide whether it should be certified as a money Bill when in fact it is about industrial relations and people should be redoubling their efforts to put the previous deal back on the table and to ensure that all the trade unions are involved in the negotiation. Parliamentary procedures should not be abused in this way.
Given that brevity is required, I shall not seek to rehearse points that other hon. Members have made. However, when we are talking about the low-paid and given all the warm words that we heard earlier about the desire to protect the lowest grades in the civil service, I do not think it is good enough that Ministers cannot identify what “low paid” means in those terms and how many people will be affected. It is incumbent on the Minister who winds up the debate to give us more information on that point.
Political and Constitutional Reform
Cathy Jamieson Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Of course there must and will be consultation with the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, as there will be with constituents up and down the country. I recognise, of course, that he will have particular concerns as he represents an island constituency, but I hope that he will be able to see the virtue of a general principle of fairness and more equal constituencies applying across the United Kingdom, with the exception of the two island constituencies that I referred to earlier.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
I wonder whether the Deputy Prime Minister could give a clear answer to a simple question. Did he or any of his Ministers have discussions with the Scottish Government or any of the Scottish party leaders prior to the date of the referendum being trailed in the press? If he did not, what does that say for the so-called respect agenda for the devolved Administrations?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Clearly, we will be consulting with the devolved Administrations. [Interruption.] I do not think that there is anything wrong with the Government’s putting forward their proposals in the manner that we have. We have been open and transparent about it and moved as fast as we can. We have told the House first; I often hear Opposition Members complaining that announcements should not be communicated to others. We have come to the House at the earliest possible opportunity. The date and all other matters will now be subject to full scrutiny here on the Floor of the House of Commons, as is right for all Bills that have a constitutional significance.