Deputy Prime Minister
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Chris Ruane
To ask the Deputy Prime Minister how much his Department spent on steps to encourage voter registration in each of the last five years; and how much funding he plans to allocate for such purposes in each of the next four years.
[Official Report, 20 October 2011, Vol. 533, c. 1099W.]
Letter of correction from Mark Harper:
An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) on 20 October 2011.
The full answer given was as follows:
Mr Harper
Electoral registration is the responsibility of individual Electoral Registration Officers (EROs). Local authorities have a duty to encourage participation in the electoral process and the Electoral Commission promotes public awareness of registration and produces research and reports on electoral registration issues. Electoral registration activity at the local level is funded through the Revenue Support Grant from central Government.
The Ministry of Justice (responsible for elections policy until June 2010) provided funding through the Electoral Participation Fund set up in 2007-08 to support local electoral officers in undertaking their statutory duties. The following funds were provided from the Participation Fund: £934,742 in 2007-08, £544,392 in 2008-09 and £153,895 in 2009-10. A further £67,355 was spent in 2010-11 to support activities undertaken by electoral administrators to encourage participation at the elections which were held on 6 May 2010, but approved in the previous financial year. The Participation Fund was closed in the Emergency Budget of 22 June 2010.
The Government have allocated a total of £108 million to meet the cost of implementing Individual Electoral Registration. This will fund EROs to make contact with each potential elector individually and invite them to register in 2014. It will also fund research to understand the current state of the electoral register and currently under-registered groups in order to ensure that as many people as possible are registered to vote. This year the Government are funding the piloting of 'data matching' of electoral registers against other data sources, such as the National Pupil Database and the Department for Work and Pensions database, to identify possible eligible electors, as well as looking at the ways in which we can make it as easy and secure as possible for citizens to register to vote, such as online registration.
The correct answer should have been:
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
1. What recent assessment she has made of the level of youth unemployment in Wales; and if she will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
The latest youth unemployment figures for Wales are disappointing, and I am sure that there is still much for us to do to ensure that the recession does not leave a legacy of workless young people. We will ensure that young unemployed people get the personalised help that they need to find full-time permanent jobs. As part of our reform of the welfare system, we are introducing a number of measures to support young people in finding employment.
Chris Ruane
Forty-six per cent. of the workers in my constituency, and 45% of the workers in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, work in the public sector. The Government want to sack up to 25% of those workers: the theory is that they will be employed by the private sector. Given today’s huge increases in unemployment, where are the jobs going to come from for those public sector workers?
Mr Jones
The hon. Gentleman will know that this Government inherited the most appalling economic legacy from the Labour party. That party seems to think that there is a bottomless purse to fund public sector jobs, irrespective of the economic state of the country. However, I am sure he will pleased to know that in his constituency there are, according to the latest figures, 273 vacancies, and I suggest that he encourage his constituents to seek those places.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
We are bringing it forward in any event. Under the previous Government’s plans it would have been introduced only after the next general election, but we are bringing it forward in this Parliament. Of course, we are trying to get the balance right. We need to proceed with this thoroughly, which is why we are doing it carefully but in a way that means it is fully delivered by the end of this Parliament.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Whose idea was it to remove the civic duty to register to vote? Who made the announcement to the House?
The Deputy Prime Minister
There will be no change at all to the civic duty—[Interruption.] I am quite honoured; that is the response that Opposition Members normally give to their former party leaders. If they listen to the answer, they might quieten down a bit. The civic duty remains exactly as it is. The proposal we have made is that the opt-out should be introduced. The Electoral Commission and others have raised concerns about the possible effect of such an opt-out and, as I confirmed in my earlier answer, I consider that concern sympathetically. That is the whole point of a consultation and we will wait to see the final outcome of the consultation, which ends at the end of this week, but I am minded to change the final legislation to reflect those concerns.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
We hope that the process of individual electoral registration that we are pressing ahead with, and particularly the practice of comparing existing databases with the electoral register, will enable us to identify voters, old and young, who should be on the register but are not.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
The finest databases in the country are run by Experian. I recently had a meeting with it to discuss the 3.5 million people who are not on the electoral register. It informed me that not 3.5 million but 6.5 million people are not on the electoral register. What steps is the Deputy Prime Minister taking to use the private sector—companies such as Experian and others—to increase the number of registered voters?
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is precisely to get to the bottom of exactly how many people who are not on the register but should be that we commissioned detailed research from the Electoral Commission to establish the facts. As I said earlier, we are running these projects so that we can have access to other publicly available databases to make sure that they are consistent with the electoral register.
West Lothian Question
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve, as always, under your Gower chairmanship, Mr Caton. I welcome the opportunity to have this debate for a number of reasons. It gives me the chance to reflect on an issue that was important in the 10 years that I spent as a territorial Minister in both the Wales Office and the Northern Ireland Office. In the case of Northern Ireland, my job was to oversee the talks that led to the establishment of the Assembly and the Executive. In Wales, I worked with the Welsh Assembly in the first decade of its life. I have, therefore, a particular personal interest in this issue.
Secondly, the Government, it seems—I am not quite sure that I have seen the detail; I am certain that the Minister will enlighten us later—have called for a commission to look at constitutional issues, and specifically the West Lothian question. I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) makes his winding-up speech, he can tell us about the nature of that commission—who will sit on it; when it will meet; whether its recommendations are likely to be binding; whether, although this would be unusual, it will be consensual—and all the details that surround the issue.
Thirdly, the constitutional issues that have affected Wales as a consequence of the Government’s policies have had little chance of being debated in the House of Commons. Those issues affecting Wales—the loss of its Members of Parliament and other issues—did not reach the stage of being debated on the Floor of the House, and as you will know, Mr Caton, we were refused a meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee to discuss those important issues of constitutional change.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
On the consensual nature of the commission, what hope does my right hon. Friend hold out that it will be consensual, bearing in mind the constitutional changes of the past eight months, including the alternative vote, which is simply to please the Liberals, and the equalisation of seats, which is simply to please the Tories?
Paul Murphy
None. The Welsh dimension is important, but the West Lothian question affects Northern Ireland and Scotland as well. The issue is of particular interest to Welsh Members because, as the Chamber will know, a few weeks ago the referendum result in Wales was a decisive vote in favour of increased powers and the right of the Assembly to pass its own legislation. Of course, the West Lothian question was being debated and discussed well before that.
Mr Field
There is very much an argument for that. It is not particularly a Conservative party idea, but I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The nub of his point is correct. We have tended to look at devolution as a political settlement. In 1997, after 18 years of Conservative rule from which the Scots and Welsh felt disfranchised, political momentum allowed devolution to go ahead in a way that would not have happened 20 years earlier.
Chris Ruane
If the logic of the Conservative party—not necessarily the hon. Gentleman’s point of view—is that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs should not be allowed to vote on health and education issues that affect London, should that logic be carried forward to London MPs who have the Assembly?
Mr Field
I think it must be to an extent. As I have said, I feel slightly uneasy about issues of policing and transportation. In the dim and distant past when I was on the Front Bench of my party, I was asked to be a transport spokesman. Because of this issue I did not feel able to take up such a role, and I was offered something else instead. It is an issue, although it is a more byzantine and mixed situation. The Home Secretary still has overall control of London policing—
Mr Field
One would not necessarily know it from articles in The Daily Telegraph from the past 24 hours, but it is a slightly more complicated situation and therein lies part of the difficulty.
I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about these issues. From my point of view—this is my individual point of view, rather than that of my party—it is regrettable that we have not looked at all issues concerning the constitution so as to try and obtain a relatively logical patchwork. I accept that historical analysis of such matters means that logic is often thrown out of the window. The worry is that we have moved ahead with breakneck speed in a way that will have a big impact on the House of Commons and affect our relationship with our constituents and within our countries. The House of Lords has not been part and parcel of that, and 117 peers have been added at the same time as we needed to reduce the size of the House of Commons on cost grounds. That is illogical. We may have considerably more peers given that the coalition agreement mentions equalising the proportion of peers for each party based on the vote at the last general election. That suggests there will be another couple of hundred peers, and some older Members of the House of Lords are very hacked off at the idea of not getting a seat in their own Chamber. It is regrettable that we have not looked at that matter, and I hope that as part of the West Lothian question, we will look at all those constitutional issues together and try to obtain a position for the whole constitution over the years to come, including an analysis of the separation of powers referred to by the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans).
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) for securing this important debate. Despite the chuckles that I detected from Government Front Benchers, there has been a lack of opportunity to talk about these hugely important issues as they affect not only Wales, but the United Kingdom. The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 that we have just seen rammed through the Commons was entirely partisan in its composition. Crucially—this point was picked up by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field)—it basically ignored the position of the House of Lords and dealt only with the House of Commons. In terms of a constitutional settlement that is a massive mistake, and these issues must be addressed. House of Lords reform will be on the political agenda, and it was a massive mistake not to consider that when looking at the number of MPs in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.
The Conservative manifesto made no reference to removing the right of MPs from Wales to vote on matters relating to England. Characteristically, it made little reference to Wales and stated:
“Labour have refused to address the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’: the unfair situation of Scottish MPs voting on matters which are devolved. A Conservative government will introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”
That is the nub of the issue.
Since the general election, however, Ministers have taken a different tone. We have, of course, heard about the commission that will be set up to address the West Lothian question. The Minister has stated that the commission’s work
“will need to take account of our proposals to reform the House of Lords to create a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber, the changes being made to the way this House does business and amendments to the devolution regimes, for example in the Scotland Bill presently before the House. We will make an announcement in the new year.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 822W.]
It is very unfortunate that a major constitutional Bill has gone through the House of Commons before the commission has been set up. We do not know the detail of the commission and we all hope that we will hear something about that later today. It is very much to be regretted that the House of Lords and the House of Commons are not looked at together when this issue is considered.
There has been no substantive discussion that I am aware of with Members of Parliament from Wales of whatever party about the issue. It was absolutely disgraceful that the Secretary of State for Wales refused to engage in a debate in the Welsh Grand Committee about the number of Members of Parliament in Wales under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. That showed extraordinary constitutional illiteracy, because the settlement that exists in the United Kingdom at this time is very complex. As we all know, it is partly written and partly unwritten and has been established as a result of centuries of history. It has been reached as a result of huge political events that have affected the islands that lie off Europe, including Ireland and, of course, Great Britain.
The changes that were put through, for what I believe were partisan political purposes, in the recent Bill changed that constitution without any real consent, and what was extraordinary in that context was the lack of involvement of Conservative MPs from Wales, who of course voted like turkeys approaching Christmas, but also took no substantive part in the debate. As a consequence, the views that had been recently expressed by members of the public in the general election in Wales were in effect excluded when the number of Members of Parliament in Wales was reduced by one quarter.
We all know that opportunities for Welsh Members of Parliament to discuss these matters were extremely limited if not non-existent in the Chamber. I think that I made a speech on Third Reading, but we did not get to the point of making any submissions on amendments because of the timetabling. As a consequence, there is a real sense of frustration among Members of Parliament from Wales about the matter.
The lesson that I learned is that the Conservative party has changed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen referred to the Kilbrandon review in the 1970s. There was a time when the Conservative party was the Conservative and Unionist party and did not simply represent the views of English MPs. Increasingly as I sit in the House of Commons now and listen to speeches from those on the Government Benches, I am learning—this has been evidenced again in today’s debate—that the Conservative party does not speak for the United Kingdom any more. It speaks for England. It is not driven by any wish to reach out to the peoples of Scotland and Wales.
Chris Ruane
Would my hon. Friend extend that list to include the people of the northern cities of England—the north-west and the north-east?
Ian Lucas
For present purposes, I will resist that temptation because I am talking specifically about Scotland and Wales. We know that the Conservative party has done very badly in elections in Scotland since 1997 and still has only one Member of Parliament in Scotland, despite huge numbers of relaunches in that country. We know also that even last year, the share of the vote that the Conservative party secured in Wales when it ended up forming a Government with its friends the Liberal Democrats was less than it secured in 1992. It has not made the progress in Wales that it would have liked to make.
The lesson that I would have liked the Conservative party to learn from that is that it needs to reach out more to the peoples of Scotland and Wales than it has done. My view is that it has done exactly the opposite. It has withdrawn from the battlefield. We saw, for example, that the Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to make her position clear on the recent referendum in Wales before it took place. The Prime Minister is in effect treating Scotland and Wales at the moment as a franchise—something that is given over to someone else and that does not really affect the person who gives it over. It is the political equivalent of SUBWAY.
Mr David
Yes, I think that is very important. It is necessary, in this complex mosaic of devolution in Britain, that we have a series of different relationships. Quite often the representation of English MPs to the Wales Office is indeed important. One concern I have is the lack of proactivity from the Wales Office. Increasingly people are asking—
Mr David
Yes, where is she, and what is the point of the Wales Office? The Wales Office has a point; there is a need for a Secretary of State for Wales, but he or she has a job to do. That job needs to be promoted effectively, which is not being done at the moment.
I want to pick up something said by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). As someone who passionately believes in devolution—as power should rest close to the people—and who believes in Wales and the United Kingdom, my concern is that there is almost an unholy alliance, an inadvertent alliance, between Welsh nationalism and the Conservative party. Although they might sometimes be pulling in different directions, the common ground is the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Conservative party is becoming an English party. That worries me intensely. It goes against the whole grain of history. Nevertheless, it is becoming an objective truth.
Owen Smith
That is of course right. I was using shorthand and have fallen into the trap set by the Minister in so many of those debates, even when we did not get to the Welsh clauses.
Asymmetry also exists in other countries. Canada has an asymmetrical system of devolution, as has Spain. One could argue that de facto we have a federal system of sorts, a unique British federal system, but it is certainly asymmetrical. Why is the issue raising its head? Why are we so worried about it now? It has never been true that any individual Government have held a majority purely predicated on the basis of Scottish and Welsh votes. There can be no concern that political imbalances arrive by virtue of there being more Scottish Members, or having misrepresentation from Wales and Scotland. That issue has ostensibly been dealt with by the Government. I fear the headlong rush is due to opportunity, momentum and a partisan view from the Government. There is a sense that the iron is hot, the moment is right for the Tories to strike and secure electoral advantage. That underpins the decisions taken in respect of the constituencies Bill, and I fear it is driving the considerations we are looking at today.
It would be foolhardy to pursue that. History tells us that inevitably not just in this country but others, when constitutional reforms are pursued for electoral reasons and the partisan politics of one party, they fail.
Chris Ruane
Would my hon. Friend compare and contrast the constitutional changes that came about in Scotland, where they had a convention involving civic society, the Churches and the trade unions for many years before that important decision was made?
Owen Smith
That is an important point. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) was extremely eloquent in making a persuasive case that we should be worried about pursuing constitutional changes of this magnitude—[Interruption.] On the back of an envelope, as we heard. These are deep-rooted issues, and they require deep consideration. They should not be treated in this fashion.
We have heard a lot today about resentment in the English shires, and that is a worrying position for the Tory party. It is a little Englander position. The party has spoken on a broader canvas for the whole of its history. It should reflect on that and offer leadership to the country. It should not be driven by English nationalism.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Will the big society bank give grants as well as loans, and will the loans be set at commercial or preferential rates?
Mr Maude
The big society bank will not make grants. It is a bank, so it will make loans and provide investment capital for this important and growing sector. One of the problems in the social investment market has been that Futurebuilders was able to give both grants and loans, which was very distorting for the large and growing number of intermediaries in that market. The bank should be an investment organisation, not a giver of grants.
Big Society
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
We live in acute political times. We have a coalition Government for the first time in a generation and, as has been said many times in this Chamber, we have an historically high peacetime deficit. That makes for a somewhat sceptical political environment. I do not necessarily think that that is such a bad thing, as scepticism in our political system has stood this country in very good stead. Right hon. and hon. Members will be well aware that the great British public do not let us get ahead of ourselves too much. That great tradition has served us very well. However, with policy initiatives such as the big society, my concern is that scepticism has become something more destructive—cynicism. That is a great shame.
In our privileged position as key members of our local communities, right hon. and hon. Members from across the House experience the big society in action on almost a daily or certainly a weekly basis. That is my experience in the Crawley constituency. This morning as I was preparing what I would say in the Chamber, I happened to glance at my schedule for the past couple of weeks. Although it did not surprise me, I was struck to see that it was packed with visits to voluntary organisations and community groups, and telephone conversations with the chairs of local action groups. In addition to helping individual constituents, that is the fundamental work of hon. Members.
I will give a few random examples from my diary. Early last week, I met with Jack Doors, a local voluntary organisation in my constituency. It was started by Jackie Rose, who is disabled and has mobility issues. She realised that it was difficult for many disabled people to get out and about. Off her own back, working from her home and using her own resources, she established a group to arrange transport for disabled people so that they could get out on a fortnightly basis to visit the seaside, go to a garden centre, or to have tea or lunch somewhere. That provides a vital link for many people with mobility issues and it has made a huge difference. It is not something that the state did, but something that was done by an individual with passion.
At the other end of the spectrum, my experience of St Catherine’s hospice in my constituency echoes what my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) said so eloquently about his experience of the hospice sector. It has minimal funding from the state and a great amount of funding and voluntary effort from individuals. With their support, it creates a massive difference for people in my constituency and the surrounding counties.
There are other examples. About a year ago, residents in my local ward were saying on a web-based community discussion forum where I have an e-surgery that the neighbourhood looked a bit unkempt and untidy. Through the online discussion, they organised a community litter pick. We all turned up on a Saturday morning—fortunately it was sunny and dry—with our black bags and the health and safety regalia of high-visibility jackets. For three hours, mums, dads, kids and all members of the community picked up litter, which made a significant difference to the neighbourhood and made it just a bit more of a pleasant place to live.
There are many more examples. I have am proud to have been a governor at three schools. It is important, like other hon. Members, to pay tribute to school governors who work hard—and freely, of course—to create the ethos in our schools and to ensure that those most important of institutions for our young people are successful.
The other weekend, I spoke at the annual general meeting of a gluten free society that was set up in my constituency.
Henry Smith
Things have moved on a lot in the food available to coeliacs, and a lot of that is due to the work of individuals in the community. That is certainly the case with the Crawley Gluten Free Group, which has come together to make a positive difference to people’s lives.
I met another disabled access group and spoke to its users, in particular those with learning difficulties. They have been meeting almost every week for more than 10 years to improve their lives by discussing ideas and common issues and problems.
I contend that the big society is out there and is operating. The trouble is that it has been increasingly stifled by big government. To me, the conclusion seems straightforward. The way in which we can encourage greater services and far wider participation is for big government to become a little smaller and to become an enabling government who create the right environment for the voluntary and community sector to flourish. If the voluntary sector and individual carers who care for elderly relatives and disabled children ceased to exist tomorrow, the state would not be able to provide those services. We all know that that is true. It is important that the state is there. I think that the state is well meaning. I do not believe that it is malicious; just that its bureaucratic nature often makes it inefficient. It therefore often stifles innovation unintentionally.
Margaret Thatcher has been infamously misquoted as saying that there is no such thing as society. I am glad that our current Prime Minister has said that there is such a thing as society, but that it is not the same thing as the state.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
It is a great privilege to contribute to this evening’s seminar on the big society. I find myself rather under-prepared intellectually given the marvellous speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I look at the big society and find myself wondering what is not to love. Anyone who puts themselves forward for election is saying to the people who live around them that they want to do something for them. In some part, there is—or should be—a strong altruistic motive.
There are many projects in Darlington that will now no doubt be described as big society projects on every funding application. As a local councillor, I was often asked to look at funding applications from local groups. We would see, “This is an example of partnership” absolutely everywhere on such applications, and now I expect that people will say that their project is “big society”.
About three or four years ago, I was involved with one such initiative. A young lady called Ashleigh Trevarrow, a keen music fan, turned up at a local music venue, which incidentally is a social enterprise, but was turned away because she was only 16—people had to be over 18 because there was a licensed bar. She decided that she wanted to find somewhere to put on live music nights for young people. It would offer a safe environment. There would be an alcohol-free bar and it would all be run by young people for young people. One cannot get more big society than that. She found that what was needed was the co-operation of the local council, of a local business that would be prepared to host the evenings, and of the parents of the young people. That took some months. A lot of fundraising, co-operation and support from the local youth service were needed to enable her to achieve that. I am certain, and I think that she will agree with this, that that could not have been done without the support of the local council.
The issue with the big society is that some people see it as a national joke. I am a fan, but there is a difference between what the Government are saying and what they are actually doing. I took a delegation of people from the voluntary sector to meet the Minister, who is well regarded by them, but if one spent an hour in the company of some chief executives and chairs of voluntary community organisations from Darlington, one would be left in no doubt about some of their doubts about what the big society can achieve. In some ways, the voluntary sector in Darlington feels that it has been led a merry dance, because we have gone from a year ago, when we were told that we had a broken society, to now, when we are told that we have a big society. People in that sector are looking at their own situations, their volunteers and their budgets. They are trying to plan for the next year or two and they see not a world full of fresh opportunity but a world full of fear and threat. That is the big problem. There is a difference between telling people that we want them to take part and engage in the big society, as we all do, and showing them through our actions how they are able to do that.
Two weeks ago in Darlington, the best of Darlington awards were held. I can recommend such an event to anyone. The business community, the voluntary sector and residents come together. Nominations are taken and we have a wonderful evening of fellowship. We are able to celebrate community work in our town. This year’s winner of the Darlington citizen of the year—
Mrs Chapman
I can only dream. The winner this year of the Darlington citizen of the year award was Gordon Pybus. He is one of those tremendous people of whom I am sure there are examples up and down the country, including in Surrey. He is a real community champion; he has worked for years championing the needs of disabled people in the town. He heads the Darlington Association on Disability and works with local businesses to improve access for disabled people. He does advisory work and, if he has not been before a Select Committee before, he should have been.
One of the major funders of the association is Darlington borough council. It gives Gordon long-term contracts and spends about £5 million a year in the voluntary sector. We are hearing from Gordon and other voluntary sector representatives that there is a big threat to their organisations because of the cuts to the budgets of local government by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. There is a perception out there that the Minister here today understands very well the needs of the voluntary sector, and I am sure that that is true, but that that understanding does not permeate the whole of Government. That is one of the big problems. When we have a Government who want to sell off the forests and then say that we have a big society, we can understand the cynicism that exists in some communities.
There is another example in Darlington of how success can come from a failure such as the proposal to sell off the forests. It is the community cohesion that we have built around a campaign against a local skip hire company that, in the minds of residents, and I agree with them, has been committing environmental crimes at an estate in Darlington. The group has come together, meets regularly and campaigns to prevent some of the worst abuses of the local environment by that company. That group, without any funding, which is obviously seen as a bad thing by certain Conservative Members, comes together, complains together and will be a real champion of its local area. I say to the Government that it is great to have this big society idea. We all support that, but we do not want the Government to say one thing and then do another.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), his party and his Government to the big society, which is something that we on this side of the House have been involved in since birth. It was what brought many of us into politics. Reference has been made by Members on both sides to Burke, Paine and Hobbes as the people who invented the big society, but it goes back a long way beyond them. It goes back to the time when man was a hunter-gatherer on the plains, when co-operation, camaraderie and esprit de corps mattered because people’s lives depended on them. This was reflected in all the great religions. Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs all make reference to the concept. They all declare that there is such a thing as society, that the worship of mammon works against society, that we are our brother’s keeper, and that we should do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.
The Prime Minister had a Damascene conversion five years ago, and I welcome that if it was a true conversion. If, however, it was about countering the Tory dictum that there is no such thing society, about domesticating the rabid right of his party for the purpose of electoral gain, or about airbrushing his party’s past, it will not wash. The Conservatives’ philosophy in the 1980s was that greed was good, that unemployment was “a price worth paying”, and that people should get on their bikes when they became unemployed. Many people on this side of the House, and in the community and voluntary sector, find it hard to believe that they honestly believe in the big society.
We remember the Conservatives’ record of voting against measures to promote unity, cohesion, equality and inclusion. Many of them might have changed their position over the past 10 years. Let us take the issue of gay rights. Where did the Conservatives stand on that, 10 or 15 years ago? I do not think that there are any Conservative Members here tonight who voted against that measure; those here now are mainly new Members. Where were the Conservatives on the issue of the minimum wage? Where were they on the issue of help for the most persecuted and the poorest in society? The Conservatives coined the term “broken society”. We remember Lilley’s list, and his singing and vilifying single mothers. We remember the damage done to mining, to the steel industry and to inner city communities. We remember hooray Henrys awash with money and champagne stepping over the homeless in the west end. That is the historical perspective.
I shall turn now to the present big society. The Minister’s Department has made a number of big mistakes in introducing the concept of the big society. The first was the terminology that it used. The term “big society” does not resonate with the person on the street. People do not live in a society; they live in a community. Perhaps the Conservatives used the term “big society” because it had some resonance with the term “broken society”. Perhaps they thought that the big society could heal the broken society. It sounds so simple and easy, but it is so trite.
The Department’s second mistake involves the need to apologise for past actions and show a little contrition. It was the Conservatives who broke society in the 1980s. It was they who increased inequality and gave the green light to greed. It was they who denied the very existence of society. I shall give the House an example. The story from the holy book of the Good Samaritan was perverted when Mrs Thatcher said that it was not about being good but about being rich. She suggested that if the Good Samaritan had not had the money to pay the innkeeper, the poor man would have died. That totally misses the point.
The Government’s third mistake was to party politicise this agenda without even having the support of their own Back Benchers. Where are their big beasts? I do not want to disparage anyone sitting on the Government Benches tonight, but they are all newcomers. Where are the big beasts? Many of them do not support this agenda.
Stephen Pound
The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is more beast than big.
Chris Ruane
He is indeed.
The Government are presenting the big society as a simple solution to a highly complex issue. There are big issues out there around which we can build consensus. It can be built around defence, for example, or around Northern Ireland or Iraq. Those issues can be depoliticised. Another example is pensions. We all came together over pensions, except that the consensus was broken by the Conservatives just before the election when they tried to make party political points on the matter. There was also consensus on the constitution in Scotland, when we had the convention.
That is how this important issue should have been approached. It is probably the biggest issue that western society will face this century. The fact is that, across the western world, we are atomised and alienated. There are many theories to explain that. They have been put forward in cogent arguments with statistics to back them up. Oliver James, in his book “Affluenza”, traces the cause of the problem to advertising and the promotion of an ideal that we can never attain. When we get on to the treadmill of trying to attain it, we lose our sense of direction; we lose contact with our families and communities as everything becomes about ourselves.
Robert Putnam’s fantastic book, “Bowling Alone”, identifies television as one of the biggest reasons for the problem. He found that an individual today spends more time in front of his TV than he spends at work. That has consequences for the amount of time he can allocate to his community, to his family and to society. Wilkinson and Pickett’s book traces the causes of the present situation back to inequality, which increased rapidly in the 1980s. Are we going to be able to get on top of the issues of advertising, TV and inequality without coming together? The Government think that they have come up with a great idea, but we have known about it for thousands of years. They have party politicised it.
The Government’s fourth mistake was to introduce this idea at the wrong time, when they knew that they were going to make cuts. Some of those cuts are necessary, but many of them are ideological. The budget for the voluntary sector last year was £36 billion, of which £6 billion came from local authorities alone. Labour doubled the amount going to the voluntary sector over 13 years. If the present Government are going to cut that budget and make voluntary sector workers unemployed, they are not going to win the argument with the Churches, with the trade unions, with the community and voluntary sector or with the Labour party. They need to build consensus.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr Brine), who was quite right when he said that the Backbench Business Committee has shown the diverse range of opportunities that it provides. Like the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is not in his seat, I represent a coastal and port community, and I wish him well in his campaign on behalf of the port of Dover.
The hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) was right to say that the big society is not about ideology—left, right or centre. I consider myself a communitarian first and foremost. I live in, was brought up in and have the privilege to serve the rich, resilient and diverse community of the Isle of Anglesey. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) make a contribution on the Isle of Anglesey. Like me, he was born there and brought up on a council estate there, although not the same estate. He rightly mentioned the late Iorwerth Rowlands, who died recently. He was a Conservative, and someone with whom I worked before I was elected to this House of Commons; indeed, when I became a Member of Parliament, he lobbied me.
I have roving surgeries in Anglesey, and I use the Iorwerth Rowlands community centre for that purpose. I was proud to be there on the day when that centre was opened in Iorwerth Rowlands’s name. One thing that he would have agreed with is that that would not have happened had it not been for grant aid. I helped him to get the money to build that community centre, which is in the heart of the community of Beaumaris.
I want to stick to the issues that have been discussed today and the big society. As the hon. Member for Winchester has said, it is predictable that we give examples from our own constituencies. I lived through the big society just this week. On Thursday, I attended a very special launch of the lifeboat at Trearddur bay, which attracted a crowd of 1,000, as well as the world’s media, who came from places ranging from Japan to Australia and the United States. The fact that two prospective constituents of mine, Prince William and Kate Middleton, were also in attendance made the launch a special focus of attention for the world’s media. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is an example of the big society, although I declare an interest because I am a member of its general council.
The following day, I had the privilege of being the guest speaker at the Llangefni rotary club on its 50th charter. I am an honorary member of the rotary club and the Lions, and I acknowledge the work that they do for communities across the United Kingdom. Again, that is an example of the big society in action. On Sunday, I attended a St David’s day celebration. We are not being given the opportunity to have a Welsh day in this House this year, but I was able to participate in an excellent celebration of St David’s day with voluntary groups, the RAF, the private sector and everybody else who came together to put the event on.
I also believe in devolution, which has also been mentioned in the debate, and in localism. I want to talk not about the devolution of power from Westminster to Cardiff bay or to Edinburgh, but about real devolution that helps empower people to run their own activities. In the 1980s, prior to coming into this House, I worked as a manager of a centre for the unemployed. Society was very fractured in the 1980s, and it needed help and attention. As manager of that centre, I worked with the public sector, the private sector, the third sector and community groups to help people in society. We worked together and we built up many achievements, not the least of which was educating and training people for the world of work. That was the big society and the community coming together. We have heard some quotes from Mrs Thatcher and some defence of what she said. I can tell hon. Members that no matter whether or not she believed in society, we had hard experiences in my constituency and my community at that time, and the big society coming together helped alleviate much of that hardship.
In order to create a better society we need to work together. Hon. Members have talked about partnerships, but I am still struggling to understand what the big society is and nobody sitting on the Benches opposite has really explained it to me. We can all give examples of what we think it is and what we think it should do, but we have never heard a definition.
Albert Owen
Before I take an intervention from my hon. Friend, may I say that he was right when he said that the Government probably picked the wrong term with the “big society”? I was surprised that the Prime Minister chose the term “big society” and was unable to market it or explain it to the public, given his public relations skills. The “big community” would have been a better idea and concept to sell, had he chosen it.
Chris Ruane
One of the 300 questions that I have tabled on the issue of the “big society” asks the Minister to define what it is. The answer has come back, and I have been told that there is no definition.
Albert Owen
The Minister is a very decent man, and I am sure that he will find 300 answers somewhere up his sleeve to say what the “big society” is, but we have not been given clarification in this debate. As I have explained, I am a communitarian. I live and work the big society, yet I am struggling to explain to people exactly what it is.
I wish to cite another example of the big society with a link to my constituency. The women’s institute was formed in Ynys Môn, the Isle of Anglesey, in 1915, and a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of going to the annual general meeting. The membership in my area is 500, and the institute mustered almost 200 of them to attend a meeting to listen to their Member of Parliament speaking. Again, that is the big society in action. The agenda that the women’s institute had in 1915 is the agenda that we are still running today; it talked about food security in 1915. So, fantastic examples can be given of the big society, but it is difficult to explain this concept and we need to make progress.
Some hon. Members have asked why cuts should be brought into a debate about the big society. I have worked in the private sector, the public sector and the voluntary sector. I still visit these groups and they raise the problems that funding cuts cause them in creating the community ethics that they wish to promote and in running groups and activities in the community—it is they who are talking about cuts. It would be a big mistake for anybody who has contributed to this debate to say that the cuts will not have an impact on those services in the community, which is what concerns me.
I wonder whether this is the wrong time to talk about a big society in many ways. We need to work to help communities, but we also need to get the right balance between state funding, community spirit and looking for finance from the private sector. I did that and still do it, and I help groups to do it. By working together, we will create not only a big society, but a better society—a society that people really want. As a communitarian, I believe that the Prime Minister rightly talks about “bottom up”, but then tries to lecture from the top about what the big society is, which is where the confusion arises. Do not just take my word for it; take the word of members of the RNLI, the women’s institute and rotarians, who tell me that they do not understand this situation. The Government talk about localism, but we see many measures that are centralised. So a confused message is being sent out, and it is difficult to understand. I hope that the Minister will answer my one question, not the 300 that have been posed. I hope he will tell me what the big society is and whether we live in a broken society.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, electoral registration officers already have the power to look into allegations of abuse, which are in some cases, as he has highlighted, very serious indeed, and where necessary and justified, refer them to the police. That is exactly what I would expect should happen.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I can tell the House what it is above and beyond everything else. It is a contrast with the big state. That was the governing ethos of the previous Government: every problem, every dilemma and every question, it was felt by the previous Government, should be sorted out by officials in Whitehall and politicians in Westminster. We believe—[Interruption.]
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Chris Ruane Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Ruane
I thank the Minister for giving way. Right, here we go: what would happen in Wales if an elector were registered for a postal vote at European elections, not for a postal vote at parliamentary elections, for a postal vote at Welsh Assembly Government elections, and for a postal vote at local government elections? Whatever the Minister says, will the public understand it?
Mr Harper
If such a voter had elected to register for a permanent postal vote for every possible election except a Westminster parliamentary one, they would clearly have had a good reason for doing that, so our proposal that the UK parliamentary franchise be used makes sense. I do not think the hon. Gentleman makes a sensible point.
Chris Bryant
It does not need to be convoluted; it is pretty straightforward. I presume that the Minister will agree with me that the law on combination of polls in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales next Monday will be precisely the same as it is today, so we will not be able to debate amendments to anything other than speculative legislation that will not have been carried by then and will therefore not be the law.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the Minister for giving us some of the detail on the amendments, although he has not given all of it, which is significant. I would like to start by picking up where he finished—on the due process that needs to be followed in relation to anything when it reflects the representation of the people, constitutional matters, or the constitutional relationship between Westminster and the devolved Administrations, but which has not, I believe, been followed in this case.
Of course, there should first be pre-legislative scrutiny, but, as we have heard, the Bill has had absolutely none. It is true that the Government published the Bill, but it exists not because of some grand constitutional principle but because of some naked partisan gerrymandering of a Bill. I am sure that if it had been published in pre-legislative form, so that a Committee of this House or a Joint Committee of both Houses had been able to consider it, that Committee would have said, right at the beginning, “You shouldn’t be spatchcocking together these two elements of the Bill”—[Interruption.] Or, “You shouldn’t be kebabbing the legislation in this way.” The Parliamentary Secretary helps me. It is not really spatchcocking; it is more kebabbing. It requires more of an inner-city image than a rural image; he is quite right.
Chris Ruane
Why does my hon. Friend think there has been such undue haste in rushing the Bill, or Bills, through the House?
Chris Bryant
This is entirely speculative, but it might be something to do with the Bill acting as the Araldite that holds the coalition together. The fact is, however, that the Deputy Prime Minister—or Sandie Shaw, as we normally know her, or him, now—is so Araldited to the Prime Minister that there is probably no need for the Bill to be introduced in precisely this way.
There should have been pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. I am sure that a Joint Committee would have said that it should not have been constituted in this way, and that it was inappropriate to try to foist combined polls on Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland when they had expressly said that they did not want a combination of a referendum and their own elections, especially in Northern Ireland, where on the same day there will be local elections as well as Assembly elections. I am pretty certain that such a Committee would have found that inappropriate.
Indeed, we can be pretty confident of that because the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), made it absolutely clear that it believed that it had not had enough time to consider the Bill before it suddenly had its Second Reading. The Select Committee had only five days in which to read the Bill and to get constitutional experts to talk to its members and provide evidence. Those witnesses themselves thought that it was inappropriate that such haste was being adopted.
Chris Bryant
The Government came to power arguing that coalition politics were somehow better for Britain. Whatever we may think of that proposition, if they are then not prepared to extend the courtesy beyond the internal dynamics of the coalition to others who are engaged in the political endeavour, they have let down their own basic first principles.
Of course the wish to foist a referendum on the same day as elections elsewhere is extraordinary, especially given that the people who now sit on the Government Benches are the people who criticised the Labour party most for the way in which the last combination of elections took place in Scotland.
Chris Ruane
Does my hon. Friend agree that the way in which the current Administration have dealt with the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales—
Chris Ruane
This is my intervention, if my hon. Friend does not mind!
Are not the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales behaving more like governors-general than Secretaries of State?
Chris Bryant
To be honest, I think that they are behaving more like satraps.
I think it extraordinary that there has not been proper consultation, and I do not understand why the referendum has to be held in May next year. It is pretty clear that in the respective Governments, Assemblies and Parliaments there is a firm view that it should not take place at the same time as the elections. Although most people in Wales do not view a Welsh Assembly election in quite the same way as a general election for the whole United Kingdom, many will refer to it as a Welsh general election. That is why it is so extraordinary that the people of Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland have not been shown the same degree of respect as would have been extended to anyone else. That, I think, slightly betrays the rather London-centric view of the Government. I suspect that if there were a free vote on the Bill, many fewer Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would vote for it than will go through the Lobby later today. In particular, I should be surprised if a single Welsh Member voted for it.
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) wants to intervene. Oh no, I am sorry—I am giving way to a Scottish man next.