Imprisonment of Catalan Leaders

Debate between Chris Evans and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

Of course I am sorry—I am sad—if a child is unable to reach out and touch his father and see him, but the hon. Gentleman says that in that particular case, the charges are trumped up. That is his viewpoint. The courts of Spain have decided otherwise. If we are going to be a country that accepts and respects the rule of law, and if we accept that Spain has a robust and transparent legal procedure, we must accept the outcome of those court decisions, however much he or others may personally disagree with them.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister says that this is a matter for Spain. However, the fact that a European arrest warrant has been issued for the President of Catalonia means that other countries are now involved. Is he confident that the warrant has not been issued merely for political purposes?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am confident about the robust processes of our own country. As I made clear before, the issuing authority would be in Spain. It is for our independent agencies—the police, the courts and our prosecuting authorities—to decide the merits or otherwise of the warrant, and unless or until one is executed, we should not comment further.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Chris Evans and Christopher Pincher

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. If ever anything tore into the very fabric of British society, it was that. It is terrible when we walk down the street now and see that so many of the famous building societies we grew up with are no longer there. That needs to be changed. We need to start talking about alternative co-operative models. As business finds it more difficult to borrow from traditional areas, we need to talk about the mutual sector, and about having more mutuality in our society and in our businesses, including employee share ownership schemes.

As I am running short of time, I must talk about the NHS. Our nurses do a fantastic job at the frontline. When someone is in need, our nurses are there, but very often this Government have not been there for them. Instead of nurses being given a pay rise, which I think we all agree they deserve, again today we got a very vague statement of “maybe, if and but”. That is not good enough for the most vital service workers in this country. I think, too, about all the people on universal credit. Again, this is all a sop to those who are in need. There should have been an announcement today about pausing universal credit so that it could be looked at and eventually changed. There is no good in plunging our most vulnerable people into abject poverty, but that is what this Government are about. They are very good at warm words.

Of course, every Chancellor’s speech has to end with a flourish, and we saw that today, with Conservative Members waving papers and cheering as the Chancellor announced, in his uninspiring tone, that he was going to abolish stamp duty on houses worth less than £300,000 in order, he said, to help millennials on to the housing ladder. Then minutes afterwards, as has happened in all his speeches—last time it was about national insurance contributions—we get the real story. Hidden away on page 154 of the OBR report is the clear statement that the temporary holiday on stamp duty will increase house prices by 0.3%. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) is shouting at me. Judging by the OBR’s ability to predict the future, does he honestly think that house prices are going to go up by only 0.3%? I do not think so.

[Christopher Pincher]

They might come down.

[Chris Evans]

They might come down, the hon. Gentleman says.

The point that the Chancellor is missing is that many of these people cannot afford a deposit to buy a house, so as well as reducing stamp duty, he should have been looking at vehicles for people to save to buy a house. Not many people took up the help to buy ISA, but we need those types of things.

This was a speech where the Chancellor was boxed in. The red box he held up was a symbol of how he was boxed in—by his Government, by Democratic Unionist party Members and by his party. Because of Brexit and this country’s productivity problems, we needed radical reform, but this Government cannot provide that any more. I say to them: stop clinging on to power, and let us go back to the country.