2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Lord Grayling and Wayne David

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

What we have agreed to do across the Government is table amendments to the Bill before the House at the moment that introduce things like a proportionality test, which is much needed and mirrors the situation in Germany. That is the kind of reform to the arrest warrant that is very much needed.

[Wayne David]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Chris Grayling]

No, I am going to make some progress.

I want to return to the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the other Committee Chairmen. We recognise the desire of the House Committees to carry out detailed scrutiny of our proposals. I want to make it clear that the Government are strongly committed to the set of 35 measures in Command Paper 8671, but we do not want to circumscribe debate in this House, which is why if the amendment is moved, I will be happy to accept it.

This is not simply a question of us deciding that list. There is a process of negotiation with the Commission and the other member states to follow. We will need the support of the Council and other member states if we are going to opt back into different measures.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Grayling and Wayne David

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

The Welsh Assembly’s Labour Government have an initiative to help unemployed young people called Jobs Growth Wales. Do the central Government support it?

[Chris Grayling]

We support any sensible measures to tackle youth unemployment, because it is a challenge for all of us. The hon. Gentleman needs to answer this question: why is his hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) chairing a protest movement that is designed to stop young people getting the work experience opportunities that would get them into work and do the right thing for them?

Jobs and the Unemployed

Debate between Lord Grayling and Wayne David

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I would ask the House this question. Why would we take Labour Members seriously on youth unemployment when they had such a terrible record on youth unemployment over 13 years in government? What we saw from Labour in office was at best incompetence, at worst a wilful disregard for taxpayers’ money, and a failure to understand how to create long-term sustainable jobs in the economy.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Has the right hon. Gentleman made any estimate of how unemployment will increase because of his Government’s policies?

[Chris Grayling]

We have taken a decision—and rightly so—to push out of Government the job of economic forecasting. That is the purpose of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Its analysis, independent of Government, is that unemployment will fall and employment will rise as a result of the decisions that we have taken in the Budget. That is the direction in which we should be heading.

Those in the previous Government cannot simply blame the recession for this mess. Despite 10 years in power, even before the global banking crisis started, more than 15% of our children—1.75 million children—lived in households where no one worked. We have one of the worst rates of workless households in the EU. I am therefore delighted to take on the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford on employment today, and to remind the House and this country what a terrible record the previous Government had in their 13 years in office.

There were fewer jobs in manufacturing. We have heard a lot of talk today about the 1980s, but let us be clear: the big drop in manufacturing employment in this country and the big slump in the proportion of the economy taken up by manufacturing took place under the Labour Government, between 1997 and 2010. Labour should be ashamed of the previous Government’s calamitous record on supporting manufacturing business in this country and creating a regulatory environment that drove so many firms out of business and overseas. The previous Government constantly missed their targets on apprenticeships. We heard again and again of how they were going to deliver hundreds of thousands of apprenticeships, but they never hit their targets. They spent massive amounts on employment programmes—designed in Whitehall but ineffective in practice—and they left the biggest deficit in our peacetime history. After all those promises about ending boom and bust, Labour finished with the longest recession in the western world.