Finance (No. 2) Bill
Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Baroness Primarolo(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way to the rover from Dover. I gently point out that the reason why we cannot show a preference towards our own businesses in matters of procurement is to do with the European Union, which he loves so much.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Believe it or not, that discussion is outside the scope of the Budget resolutions. But given that the hon. Gentleman had just acquired a nickname—although I will not be addressing him as such—I decided to allow him to intervene. Mr Davies, I should be grateful if you returned to the Finance Bill.
Finance Bill
Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Baroness Primarolo(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Charlie Elphicke
The issue had an enormous impact on the amount of taxes paid in this country. Why were interest rates being rigged by the previous Government, according to the memo?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The subject before us is what we will be debating, Mr Elphicke; we do not need to be sidetracked at this stage. I call Catherine McKinnell.
Charlie Elphicke
I have taken enough interventions. I have been generous in giving way and in dealing in detail with the hon. Gentleman’s points in particular.
The Opposition are saying, it seems, that we should take more money out of the banking system, but that would be irresponsible because it would constrain banks’ ability to lend. The Opposition use Barclays as an excuse to blame everything on greedy traders manipulating the LIBOR interest rate. I would urge caution, however, because I have looked through some of the internal documents floating around, particularly the note of a conversation involving Paul Tucker of the Bank of England. If I may, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall briefly read it to the House by way of scene setting and to demonstrate the Opposition’s mischievousness in seeking to impose this tax.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is about to make a fascinating point, but he will of course assure me that it is relevant to the new clause.
Charlie Elphicke
It is indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, because a key part of the Opposition’s rationale for the new clause is that what happened at Barclays was so disgraceful that we need to punish the bankers. A large part of the shadow Minister’s argument is that these bankers are outrageous and we need to impose a tax. My point, however, is that we need to consider the wider picture. I am particularly concerned about the comments concerning what the previous Government did on regulation as well as tax. It says here:
“Mr Tucker stated the levels of calls he was receiving from Whitehall were senior and that, while he was certain that we did not need advice, that it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently.”
It seems it was not only greedy bankers manipulating the interest rates and putting pressure on the LIBOR interest recording; it seems more clearly to have gone to the heart of government and to have been sanctioned by Downing street, according to some comments on the internet. When we talk about how to tax the banks, we need to consider how to get more lending and ensure responsible banking with incentives for the long term. We also need to ensure that members of the previous Government accept their responsibility for the Barclays scandal, the LIBOR situation and their own behaviour.
Madam Deputy Speaker
No, not okay. All interventions are supposed to be brief, and that includes Front-Bench interventions. I think we have got the gist of it now.
Charlie Elphicke
What I have set out also highlights the previous Government’s role in failing to regulate and, it seems, in indulging in a bit of market manipulation pressure of their own. I do not think that is acceptable. In her scene setting, the shadow Minister was basically saying, “What happened at Barclays is outrageous; therefore we need to do this.” What I am saying is that we should be careful what we wish for, because banks need enough capital to lend to small businesses, to create the jobs and money that we need to expand the economy and make this country a great success in the next 10 years, building Britain back up to the sort of success that we saw in the ’80s.
Debate on the Address
Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Baroness Primarolo(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tessa Munt
Does the hon. Gentleman agree, therefore, that the courts have the ultimate solution in that, if a parent with care prevents a child from accessing his or her other parent, the care can be taken up by the parent who is excluded, and that that is the ultimate sanction and might encourage parents to stick to the rules and ensure that their children have absolute access to both parents?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. May I remind the hon. Lady of Mr Speaker’s announcement at the beginning of the debate about parliamentary convention for this Session and the need for interventions to be brief, not substantive speeches or long points, interesting as they may be?
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Lady for her interesting intervention. The full tool box needs to be available to the court system, but the legislature also needs to send a strong message to the court system, social workers and everyone involved in child care and child care access about what we expect it to look like, which is that people who stand in the way of their children’s rights should have the book thrown at them and should not be allowed to do so anymore.
I want to make a brief point about the education of children with special educational needs. These children have been badly let down for too long. They find it very hard to access the right school. I chaired a summit recently to which, I am delighted to say, came the leader of Kent county council, a cabinet member for Kent county council and a group of parents of children with severe special educational needs—many of them high on the autistic and Asperger spectrums—who have had a very difficult time. It is wrong in principle that parents facing the significant challenges of looking after a child with special educational needs should, on top of that, have to battle the education system to get the right education for their child. It is wrong in principle that, in many cases, it has taken two or three years for those parents to find the right school for their children.
Several things became clear to me during the summit. The statementing process is too slow and cumbersome. That is wrong. It should be more fast-tracked, efficient and effective in looking at children’s needs and diagnosing them correctly. Once that is done, each county council or education authority needs to maintain a decent database of which schools in their authority area can cater for which needs. Too often, it seems, there is muddle and confusion in the bureaucracy over which schools can cater for which needs. The whole system should be fast-tracked so that parents are offered schools appropriate to their child’s needs, rather than schools that are not appropriate. That happens in many education authorities. Everyone knows that. It is wrong and needs to be dealt with.
Furthermore, on special educational needs, there must not be an apartheid between the state sector and the private sector. We need to put the children first. If a private, independent school caters best for the special needs of children, parents should be offered that school and not just told that a maintained school has to take yet more pupils because the education rules and laws are such that pupils can be shoved into a school, whether the school likes it or not or does not have enough places. In my constituency, there is the perverse situation in which one independent school catering brilliantly for special educational needs has 20 spare places, while another special needs school doing an outstanding job in the maintained sector needs a portakabin in the playground to cater for the number of special educational needs children, because it has been told by the education authority to take yet more children. We need to strike the right balance: we need to give parents much greater say and choice, use the places available in the system most appropriately and ensure that the statementing process is as quick as it can be. In education, when it comes to looking after our children, we need to put the parents first. We need to ensure that they can make the decisions that are right for their children, because, broadly, they know best because they know their children best of all.
I am delighted to support the Queen’s Speech. It focuses on the economy, on utility bills, on the cost of living and on helping hard-pressed families. It focuses on families and children, and on helping families to bring forward the next generation.
International Women’s Day
Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Baroness Primarolo(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Would the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) like to sit down? I think it is best for Members to leave the chairing of the debates to the Deputy Speaker, but if the hon. Lady is giving way to Charlie Elphicke, she needs to sit down while he is speaking.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. There are many loving relationships, and there has been a revolution meaning that there are more women in the workplace than ever before, and also in relationships in which the children are cared for and deeply loved. Men even change nappies, as I did. Should we not celebrate the good things about men and women, and about women in the workplace?
The Economy
Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Baroness Primarolo(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Charlie Elphicke
As the hon. Lady well knows, she and I debated the issue at length during the Committee stage of the Welfare Reform Bill. I know that Opposition Members sneer at this, but I think it important that child tax credits are rising by £135 next year. That is a move in the right direction. It is good that the lowest paid in the public sector are being protected from the pay freeze because they are disproportionately women, just as it is good that 1 million people are being taken out of the income tax system because they are disproportionately women. We need more action of that kind. The hon. Lady’s party had 13 years in which to take such action, but, as we know, child poverty sky-rocketed during the last Parliament. At least this Government are trying to take positive action in difficult times.
Hard-working families need to see stable finances, a stable Government and a stable fiscal position, because that is the only way in which we will bring back real growth. If we had continued to pursue the policies of the past, what would have happened to our country? We would have ended up as a basket case, like Greece, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. However, we had a credible plan, and we took firm action to control the deficit and sort out our national finances. We have made tough decisions that hit the least well-off, but also the most well-off. We are all in it together. Everyone is sharing the pain, more or less equally, and I think that that is the right direction of travel for the Government.
Members on the rowdy Opposition Back Bench may not agree with what I am saying, but the figures make it clear to me that we are working to create fairness. For instance, unlike the Opposition, we want to create fairness for motorists. By the end of next year, those who experienced such difficulty as a result of Labour’s fuel duty escalator will save £144 on the cost of filling up the average car by the end of next year. That is an important example of progress. The apprenticeship scheme has also been a real help to our young people after youth unemployment rocketed, particularly under the last Labour Government. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Members do not have to agree with what is being said, but they do have to listen to it, and not continually interrupt.
Charlie Elphicke
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
In the last Parliament, youth unemployment in the shadow Chancellor’s constituency rose by approaching 150%, whereas in the current Parliament the rise has been much lower. We are having to try to turn around the supertanker to return to our young people the futures that were so disappointingly taken from them by the last Government. We need to look after the younger generation, and allow them hope for a better future.
Let me end by saying a little about what the Government are doing for east Kent. The South East England Development Agency spent £20 million on a business park project and created tarmac, but no buildings and no business park. Money was too often wasted. Now we have a local enterprise partnership that has already created an enterprise zone, which is important to a community that experienced difficulties after Pfizer decided to run down its research in the United Kingdom. That is real progress.
Our area has benefited from massive activism. The fast train service to Deal and Sandwich will help to improve the economic situation, as will the £40 million regional growth fund. I also welcome the £180 million catalyst fund that the Prime Minister announced the other day. Such things are very important. We have seen more economic activism in east Kent in the last year than we have seen in the last decade.
If we can establish the people’s port in Dover, it will give the community a sense of ownership, place and control of their destiny which will have an important impact on their confidence in us. East Kent is so often at the end of the line, a poor relation of the rest of Kent. I hope we can establish the people’s port project, and make it work so that it is a great showcase. If we make it a success, we will be able to hand back confidence and the idea of building a future, and thereby regenerate Dover, making it every bit as good as it can be so that it is once again a jewel in the crown of the nation.
Looking across the piece at what we are doing both nationally and locally in Dover and Deal, we can see that the Government have the right policies at the right time. They are making the difficult decisions that will pay off for us over the next decade or so.