Oral Answers to Questions
Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
My hon. Friend raises an important point, because local groups are vital to the delivery of many initiatives, not just in the UK but around the world. I pay tribute to him for his work in promoting climate action in his constituency and more widely. I will of course ensure that either I or members from the COP unit for civil society and the youth team will meet the organisations in his constituency to which he referred, particularly to hear their views.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
The President of COP26 (Alok Sharma)
Domestically, the Government have set out their 10-point plan, their energy White Paper and an ambitious nationally determined contribution. Over the past year, the Prime Minister and I, and other Ministers and officials, have regularly engaged with counterparts around the world to raise climate action ambition.
Cherilyn Mackrory [V]
I welcome the President of COP26 to his new position and wish him every success. This year, 2021, is a key year in our battle against climate change, as we host COP26 and the G7 in Cornwall. Climate change is such an important issue for constituents in Truro and Falmouth, so will my right hon. Friend assure me that all areas of the UK, including Cornwall, will benefit from the developments that come from these two significant events, as we recover from the covid shock in a green and sustainable way?
Alok Sharma
Absolutely. It is of course very good news that the G7 is to be held in Cornwall, which is, as we know, a powerhouse for green innovation. It is home to pioneering offshore renewables technology, as well as the first geothermal plant in the UK, and I am sure it will play an important role as we seek to build back better and greener throughout the whole of our country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Michael Gove
The hon. Lady makes an important point, and it is important that everyone’s vote counts. Those who are living with a disability, blind or partially sighted must feel that they can have confidence in the integrity of our electoral system. We have forthcoming legislation on electoral integrity, and I know that the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), has been working with charities to ensure that we have a fully inclusive and modern voting system.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend does a fantastic job speaking up for the fishermen on both the north and south coasts of Cornwall, and I can absolutely reassure her that in the negotiations we are standing firm on ensuring that her constituents and the coastal communities that she represents can benefit from our exit from the common fisheries policy.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady knows, we already have in place the job retention scheme and the bonus of £1,000 for employers keeping on furloughed workers. She also knows about the £2 billion kick-starter fund that we have instituted, the “eat out to help out” programme, the VAT cut and the many other things that we have done, on top of the £160 billion that we have invested in incomes, jobs and livelihoods throughout this crisis. But of course we will continue to do more as the economic ramifications of covid unfold; of course we are preparing for that. As the Chancellor has said, we must be clear with the country that we cannot protect every job, but no one will be left without hope or opportunity, and this country will bounce back stronger than ever before.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
St Mawes in my constituency was recently placed first in the Which? survey of the best coastal destinations in the UK and the coastal town of Falmouth constantly punches above its weight with very little. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government are looking at further financial measures to help the coastal towns that have been hardest hit in their time of need?
The Prime Minister
Indeed I can. We are funding 178 projects throughout England through our £180 million coastal communities fund, and Truro will receive at least £500,000 from the towns fund this year to support the high street and local community.
Parliamentary Constituencies Bill
Cherilyn Mackrory ExcerptsTuesday 14th July 2020
(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 View all Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 14 July 2020 - (14 Jul 2020)
Clive Efford
No, because I heard Madam Deputy Speaker cough, which is telling me, “Efford, shut up.” I will conclude by making one point about parliamentary oversight.
If we had not had parliamentary oversight, we would now have 600 MPs, and I do not think anyone in this Chamber thinks we should have 600 MPs. Parliamentary oversight saved us from that gerrymander attempt, which I will not dwell on because I do not have time. It is Parliament that sets the rules, and in any process where someone sets the rules and sends someone else off to perform a function, at the end of it there must be oversight to ensure that the function was performed efficiently and according to the rules that were set out. That is what Parliament does. That is Parliament’s role in this area. Why do we not trust ourselves to perform the function that Parliament is put here to perform? If we set the Boundary Commission a task to perform, we should have oversight of the outcome. If we had not had oversight of the previous two reviews, we would have made the mistake of cutting our number to 600, with all the consequent chaos.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
This Bill is all about creating fair and proper representation in this House for everyone in the United Kingdom. Although there are many local challenges, we should be proud that the Bill aims to achieve just that, and for that reason I very much welcome it.
The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 put in place processes to reduce the number of MPs in this House from 650 to 600. In Cornwall, the number of MPs would have been reduced from six to five and a bit. Reducing the number of MPs in that way meant that it was highly unlikely that the boundary of Cornwall would be respected, but that a cross-border constituency formed of towns and parishes in both Devon and Cornwall could and would be created. When the Boundary Commission for England published its proposals for the new constituency boundaries, it produced a parliamentary seat that quickly acquired the nickname of “Devonwall”, which naturally caused considerable upset in Cornwall and a bit of damage to Cornish pride. I tried at the time to argue that it was the start of a takeover, but the commission was not buying it.
Cornwall is a historic nation with its own traditions, its own heritage and its own language, and in 2014 the Cornish people became protected through the Council of Europe’s framework convention for the protection of national minorities. I am happy to say that because of this Bill, the cross-border issue appears to have been rectified for now, and I am grateful to the Bill Committee.
John Spellar
Can the hon. Lady see the logical inconsistency? Had the provisions of the Bill about automaticity gone through, there would not have been any way of stopping that; they would have gone through, and Cornwall would have been disadvantaged under precisely that rule.
Cherilyn Mackrory
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but on this review, the mathematics mean that the people in Cornwall will be represented within its boundary, as we would expect.
Cherilyn Mackrory
I will press on, because we need to get other hon. Members this afternoon.
Constituency boundaries should coincide, where possible, with local administrative boundaries, which should help my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). I am pleased that the Bill, by reviewing the number of MPs needed for fair and effective representation, ensures that the United Kingdom will continue to have 650 Members to serve in this House and six whole, passionate, hard-working Cornish MPs.
It is worth remembering that, as well as protecting the culture and identity of national minorities, the framework convention seeks to protect the political integrity of territories. I am of the opinion that the Bill will help to protect the Cornish people as a national minority by affording us fair representation for effective government, and our boundaries will stay intact. Once the Bill has passed, it will be for the Cornish MPs, the local authority in Cornwall and local residents to work with the Boundary Commission to ensure that the identity of Cornwall is protected, with its six constituencies within its boundaries, to offer the equal and fair representation that the people deserve.
There is an appetite in Cornwall to look further at greater autonomy, and I am sure that the Government will be more than happy to work with Cornwall towards that goal. It is through that mechanism that I call for more permanent protection of Cornwall’s historic boundary, and I look forward to future conversations with Ministers to that end. If the local authority in Cornwall is serious about greater autonomy, I invite it to be part of those conversations with the Government at that time to achieve that. However, for now, I will continue to do what I can to ensure that my constituents in Truro and Falmouth get the fair representation that they deserve, as well as continued support through the current crisis and beyond, and I thank the Government for their part in that.
To that end, I support the Bill, and I support the Government’s attempts to safeguard and encourage democracy throughout the whole country.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), with whom I agree quite strongly that Cornwall is its own nation and should be respected. Indeed, in Committee, we received quite a bit of evidence to that effect from Cornwall Council and Councillor Dick Cole, who drew our attention to the fact that the UK Government recognised Cornwall as a minority nation back in 2014, and that its territorial integrity in terms of representation in this place must be respected.
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member that that should be addressed. Where we might disagree somewhat is that I believe we perhaps need to go further —this is something that could be looked at again under this Bill, perhaps in the other place—to see how we can ensure that those safeguards for the people and the nation of Cornwall are adequately protected.
Cherilyn Mackrory
I would like to take this argument when we have further devolution calls; at that point, because Cornwall has a special status, I would like to see the boundary protected.
Ben Lake
That is a very good point well made.
To return to more familiar ground—Wales—let me say in passing that I was very pleased to see Ynys Môn included as a protected constituency. I see that the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) is here. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on her amendment. I tried to table a very similarly worded amendment—I see the right hon. Member gesturing—but it did not quite fit the bill. What is important is that the change got through. It is a rare day indeed when the Labour party, the Conservative party and Plaid Cymru find common cause on anything, so in that sense it is very good.
I am conscious that I was distracted earlier, so I will now keep to some points about Wales, and particularly a question raised during Committee stage that I believe warrants further debate, and which the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) touched on: the allocation of seats between the nations of the UK. Other Members have already drawn attention to the fact that Wales is likely to lose quite a significant number of seats at this initial boundary review, which, yes—before anybody intervenes—is partly a result of our not having had a boundary review for so many years. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) and I had a good exchange on that in Committee.
However, although I completely understand the arguments for applying a single UK-wide electoral quota and agree with its proponents that it has a logical coherence, I think that the unintended consequences of such an approach should be addressed. In Committee, some practical issues with changing to a single UK-wide electoral quota were addressed, including that we are tying ourselves to demographic changes, with automaticity clauses meaning that further changes are implemented without further discussion or decision by this place.
Reference has been made to the fact that we base our electoral registers on those who are eligible to vote, as opposed to populations, but for the sake of argument, between 2001 and 2018 the population of Wales grew by some 200,000. Projections suggest that between 2018 and 2028—just before the further review—it will grow by another 2.7%. However, it is likely, according to the evidence we received in Committee, that the number of seats that Wales will send to this place will be reduced initially by eight, or perhaps seven, and a further one or two at the next review.
Some practical issues, including the creation of large geographical constituencies, have been addressed, particularly by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). However, there are constitutional considerations as well. Wales will lose eight seats initially, and unless demographic trends change quite significantly in the coming decade, we stand to lose further representation in this place. The right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan made the valid point that one thing that has changed in the last decade or two is the devolution settlement, although that was not necessarily the rationale put to us for the move to a single UK-wide electoral quota. But if we were to adopt that logic, as the representative from the Liberal Democrats told us in Committee, there should be no reduction without further devolution.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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David Duguid
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will join me in acknowledging the excellent work done by all our frontline staff, whether in the NHS, care homes or elsewhere. I encourage the Scottish Government to actively promote the fixed testing sites and the mobile testing sites that I mentioned earlier, to ensure that all care homes and care home staff can access the testing that they need.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Duguid)
The Government have provided unprecedented levels of support to the sector, and, to the credit of all involved, the UK’s food supply chain has remained secure throughout this crisis. Farmers across the UK produce some of the best food in the world, and to the highest environmental, welfare and safety standards. Our farmers have what it takes to compete with the rest of the world, and they can be confident that this UK Government will back them all the way in securing new global markets while protecting those standards.
Cherilyn Mackrory [V]
I thank the Minister for his answer. What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the opportunities that might arise for the agricultural sector in Scotland and the wider United Kingdom—including my local farmers here in Truro and Falmouth—once the EU transition period ends?
David Duguid
There are great opportunities for farmers right across the UK, in Scotland and in my hon. Friend’s constituency in Cornwall. Outside the common agricultural policy, we can provide our food and farming sectors with the opportunity to become more competitive, productive and profitable, while—importantly—taking into account each nation’s unique geography and heritage. We can create our own system of farming support, with each part of the UK being able to meet the specific needs of its farmers.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Kemi Badenoch
Pay gaps are caused by a range of factors. The hon. Lady is right that we ran a consultation on this issue in late 2018; I will write to her to provide her with an update.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was a disgrace that that was being used as a defence in criminal cases of murder. I pay tribute to Members from all parties who have run an effective campaign and congratulate the Ministry of Justice on taking action on the issue.
Census
Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend the Minister and her Department for the work that she has done on this subject so far. The House can probably tell by my accent that I am not actually Cornish-born. While many proud Cornishmen and women are Cornish by birth, some are Cornish by choice. I have adopted Cornwall as my home and Cornwall has adopted me, and I am grateful to live its abundant heritage, flamboyant culture and its unique way of life every day. It is not all sandy toes and salty kisses, but Cornwall is my family’s home and roots for our daughter as she grows. As much as I love and care for Cornwall and the people I represent, I will never actually be Cornish and I certainly do not pretend to be. I was not born there. Instead, I consider this subject as objectively as possible and with a sense of fair play.
Recently, we celebrated the sixth anniversary of the recognition of the Cornish as a national minority through the framework convention for the protection of national minorities under the Council of Europe. When Cornwall received this recognition, the Government at the time pledged that the Cornish would now be afforded “the same status” as the UK’s other Celtic people—the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.
Since then, the Government and Cornwall Council have worked together to try to further the cause. I have no doubt that the inclusion of a Cornish tick box in the next census in 2021 would go a long way to our achieving the same status as our fellow Celts. This would mark a significant milestone in our journey as a national minority. I say with deep regret that the Cornish are the only national minority who would be denied a tick box if the present draft of the 2021 census is to be agreed, so there is more to do to ensure that the Cornish are treated in the same manner as the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, despite the equal minority status.
I believe that there will be an option for people who identify as Cornish to tick the “Other” box. In the 2011 census, 83,966 people in Britain ticked the “Other” box and physically wrote “Cornish” as their national identity. Within Cornwall, that total was 73,220, or 14% of the total population. We can assume that many more thousands would have ticked the Cornish box had the option been available. By way of comparison, in the 2001 census, when there was no Welsh tick box, 14% of Welsh residents wrote the word “Welsh”. In 2011, when a tick box was available for the Welsh, the percentage who recorded themselves as Welsh rose to 67%. That clearly indicates that without a tick box, there is significant under-counting of an important national minority.
An education survey of schoolchildren in Cornwall showed that more than 50% of the children identified themselves as Cornish. Identifying as Cornish is a growing trend among our young people, rather than a dated one. The Cornish are proud in every sense of the word, and we must remember that there are thousands of Cornish men and women who do not live in Cornwall. It was once said that it was possible to find a Cornishman in every mine on earth. Although we can give only the Cornish people living here the opportunity to tick their box, I believe it is important that we make that an effortless and straightforward exercise.
The census is not just a tool for identity; as we know, it is much more than that. The census is a once-in-a-decade data collection exercise of epic proportions. It asks questions of all of us, our households and our homes. In completing it, we help to build a detailed snapshot of our society. Information from the census helps the Government and local authorities plan and fund our local services, such as health, education and highways. That helps to ensure that funds are allocated where they are most needed.
In a motion put to full council last year, all 123 elected members of Cornwall Council—at the time, that included me—voted in favour of supporting a Cornish tick box at the next census. Councillors from all political groups, along with the Cornish MPs, have campaigned for a tick box for many years. As a newly elected MP, I am probably rather late to this particular party. However, Cornwall’s minority status and how we quantify that is extremely important to Cornwall and the Cornish people, wherever they happen to live, and therefore it is important to me.
I look forward during my time in this place to working closely with my Cornish colleagues and Ministers to further this cause, to ensure that we meet the obligations set out six years ago and demonstrate a positive commitment to Cornwall’s national identity and culture. Consideration of a tick box at the 2021 census would be a most welcome start.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
If the hon. Gentleman had read the communiqué that came out of the summit, he would have seen not only the billions of pounds of investment, but the UK support going to developing countries. He always castigates private investment, but perhaps he ought to read what the UN Secretary-General wrote in November in the Financial Times, where he pointed out that the private sector is vital to advance development goals. Sometimes the hon. Gentleman needs to read and listen to the experts, rather than to people on his own Benches.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Alok Sharma
My hon. Friend raises a good question. The summit highlighted the UK’s distinct offer to support clean growth, and our expertise in low-carbon sectors and green finance. For example, along with the President of Kenya, I attended the London stock exchange for the launch of the first green Simba bond, which the UK Government helped to develop.