Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Bryant and Rachel Maclean(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Bullying and Harassment: Cox Report
Debate between Chris Bryant and Rachel Maclean(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Far from expecting my staff to treat me like a demigod, I regard them as absolutely essential; none of us could be MPs without our staff and we could not function in this place at all. They make us look good, frankly—[Interruption.]
Rachel Maclean
No, they are not.
The point I want to make to the Leader of the House is that this should not just be about avoiding bad and negative behaviour; it should also be about a culture where people can thrive and reach their true potential, as in any other workplace. What are her thoughts on that point?
Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement
Debate between Chris Bryant and Rachel Maclean(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). I rise to speak about this issue from the point of view of the people of Redditch, who are always at the forefront of my mind in this place. I remember clearly the expression of their sovereign desire to leave the EU, which they expressed in the referendum with 62% in favour of leaving. I have not found anyone in Redditch who has changed their mind during the ensuing period, even though we have been grappling with a series of extremely difficult and complicated technical issues.
We spend a lot of time in this place dealing with incredibly complex legislation, some of which has been eloquently explained tonight by hon. Members on both sides of the House. However, my constituents always come back to talking about three basic things. They voted to leave the European Union in those numbers because they wanted to take back control of their money, their borders and their laws. That brings me to something that we have not heard mentioned at all tonight. It is something that is very hard to put into figures, and it is called sovereignty. It is an emotional concept for people in my constituency and in constituencies across the United Kingdom, including Hartlepool, which we heard about earlier.
People in Redditch and across the midlands are very level-headed. They know very well that we are reliant on jobs in the manufacturing industry and in the supply chain. The excellent Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, makes this point on a regular basis. I declare an interest in that I helped him to win that election, and I am very proud that I did so. He is a businessman, and he understands the need for a deal so that those jobs can be protected. I also understand that very clearly from the businesses in my constituency, including GKN and a number of other businesses, large and small.
I come back to a point that I have made before in this House, which is that we are sometimes misled by listening to the voice of the very large corporate businesses and failing to heed the voices of the small and medium-sized enterprises. I know those SMEs intimately, because I ran one for 26 years before I came to this place. I can tell the House that there are many things that stand in the way of businesses. They face obstacles every single day as they grapple with trading conditions, whether at home or around the world. The great genius of our British entrepreneurs is that they are able to turn those obstacles into challenges and to innovate and be entrepreneurial. They are able to seize the opportunities that are provided by any state of affairs or economic situation that they face. That is why we have such a thriving and dynamic economy in this country, and why we have given rise to some of the best businesses in the world.
I asked the Minister earlier whether she believed we would be in a position to take advantage of the 90% of trade outside our European borders in the future, and she assured me that we would be in a position to start signing those deals and that we would shortly be able to move quickly to ratify them. That is why I welcome this withdrawal agreement. We have all been calling for certainty and clarity; I hear it from my constituents in the business sector all the time. This agreement will start to put in place some of the things that we have been calling for. It is not perfect, of course; there have been vigorous debates on these subjects and they will continue.
When I think about being the Prime Minister, I think, “My goodness me! Who would want to do her job?” At the end of the day, she just cannot win, can she? She cannot ever please everybody, either on our side or on the other side of the House, or in the country. We had a vote in which some people voted to stay and some people voted to leave, so she is never going to be able to please anybody. However, I hear people in Redditch saying, “Good on her. She is just getting on with it. She is facing down criticism on all sides.”
Chris Bryant
The thing is that the Prime Minister will have to please more than half the Members of this House. If she does not do so, she will not have an agreement, the whole thing will fall apart and she will be done for, won’t she?
Rachel Maclean
I have absolute confidence that the Prime Minister will continue to do what she is doing, and I for one certainly support her. If she can bring back a deal that is in the interests of my constituents, I will support her. I take heart from the way in which she has been able to make such significant progress in the face of all the criticism and of people saying, “You won’t be able to get this far. You won’t be able to make a deal. You won’t be able to settle these incredibly complicated issues. You won’t be able to unpick all these decades of agreements.” But actually, she has. She went to Africa over the summer and, again, she was in a position where she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. She was faced with people demonstrating their dancing skills. If she had not joined in, everyone would have said, “Oh, that’s terrible. She’s awful. She isn’t spontaneous.” What did she do? She got stuck in, and she got so much admiration from people for her dancing skills. I really think she should be on “Strictly Come Dancing”, and I would certainly vote for her to do that.
Chris Bryant
I think the Prime Minister would probably have to leave the House if she went on “Strictly”, so the hon. Lady would be voting for her to leave office.
Rachel Maclean
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I hope that he will take my comments in the spirit in which they were intended; they were somewhat light-hearted. Of course I would not wish the Prime Minister to leave the House. I want her to get a great deal and to enable us to leave the European Union. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see that I have put that on record.
Rachel Maclean
It certainly does, but the hon. Gentleman is making me lose my place.
I shall return to the negotiations, where we have seen considerable progress not only on the business-related issues that I have referred to but on the question of European citizens.
Rachel Maclean
I thank my hon. Friend greatly for that intervention. If we all embrace the optimism that he has just demonstrated, I am certain that we can do some great deals in the interests of the British people and of Redditch.
I return to my point about the status of EU citizens. It is a matter of great concern. We all have EU citizens in our constituencies. I have been approached by EU citizens who live in Redditch, such as those who work at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, and we rely upon them to deliver the caring services that we can all need. That is why I welcome the details already set out in the withdrawal agreement, but there is more work to be done on that and we must ensure that the processes are working properly and that people get the security they need to be able to stay in our country, because that is exactly what we want. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) said, we invited people to come from the EU, and they have contributed and we want them to stay.
My final point is about women and Brexit. I am a proud feminist and agree with campaigners on many issues, but I cannot bring myself to agree with the suggestion by some notable feminist campaigners over the weekend that women do not want to leave the EU. Newsflash: women are able to make their minds up based on the issue, not their body parts. We are able to consider an issue without basing it on our gender. Amazingly enough, I feel entitled to say that because I am in a minority in this House. I have some hon. Friends on my side who are also women. I do not have any on the other side at the minute. I actually do want to leave the EU, and I am a woman, but I recognise that I do not speak for all women—women, just like men, will have a variety of opinions. However, to try to say that all women do not want to leave the EU is a lot of nonsense that I utterly refute.
Rachel Maclean
The hon. Gentleman is speaking from a sedentary position, and I am going to conclude my remarks. This Government have done more for women since being in office in terms of bringing women into work, strengthening women’s rights, bringing in policies that support women back into the workplace, such as on childcare, and a whole raft of other issues. I put it on the record that I refute that ridiculous stance about women and Brexit, which should be rejected out of hand.
In summary, I of course have some questions about the withdrawal agreement. Naturally, I expect to scrutinise the final deal that is brought back in great detail, as any Member should. I would not like to see us spend hard-earned taxpayers’ money—the £39 billion or whatever it is—unless we get something good in return. That is absolutely essential, and I would not be doing my job and would be failing my constituents if I did not hold the Government to account on that. In the negotiations so far, we have demonstrated to our international partners that we are a reliable negotiator and that we can be trusted to keep our promises, and we are sending out a signal so that they can come back and negotiate with us. That is how we will continue to build the scaffolding to deliver on the will of the people and their sovereign desire to leave the EU.