Middle Level Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

As a result of the Bill, owners of private waters that are not subject to the Middle Level Commissioners’ control will find themselves incorporated within the responsibilities of the commissioners, who will be able to use their regulatory powers in relation to what are currently private waters. That is an extension well beyond what one might have thought of as being the scope of the Bill. As my hon. Friend knows, being an experienced Member of this House, as soon as people get the opportunity to start legislating they always want to take more powers than they strictly need, which is one of the petitioners’ concerns.

[Mr Jackson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is confusion about the duties and responsibilities of the authority as between navigation and dredging under the Bill? That needs to be clarified when the Bill goes into Committee.

[Mr Chope]

Again, that is a good point, and it has been raised in several of the petitions.

Mr Moore expresses another concern, in stating that he

“objects to Clause 8(3) because the wording follows that of the contentious British Waterways Act of 1983, section (8), which has led to years of litigation as to its effect, whereas the wording of the similar clause in the Environment Agency (Inland Waterways) Order 2012 section (16) is far superior, and allows for no such ambiguity and potential attempted and unwarranted extension of powers. The wording ‘without lawful authority’ is also wholly inapplicable to refer to boats on public navigable waters, when the right to be on the waterways derives from the public right, and the proposed provisions for registration of boats does not change that. This was the burden of Environment Agency submissions in a recent case on the Thames, which was, in my submission, correct”.

So he thinks that as worded, clause 8(3) would not only be against the expressed policy of the Environment Agency, but

“would be unenforceable and ineffectual in law, contrary to the expectation of the Commissioners, and prejudicial to the rights of boaters.”

I hope that even if nothing else is sorted out in Committee, those issues raised by Mr Moore will be.

As we have heard, a petition has also come from the March cruising club, which has been submitted by Mr Harwood, the club harbourmaster. Apart from complaining about the inadequate consultation, he raises a number of issues. Following on from the history that has been outlined by a number of the participants in this debate, he says:

“Pleasure boats have had free navigational access to the Old River Nene, which forms a large navigational section of the Middle Level, from before 1215 protected by Magna Carta and many subsequent statutes and Royal Commissions. There are even Roman transcripts describing navigation along the Old River Nene as early as the 4th Century during the Roman occupation. The Old River Nene is a natural river and a Public Right of Navigation has existed since Time Immemorial and was first codified in the Magna Carta of 1215.”

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Debate between Christopher Chope and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I wish to say a little about what the new board members are going to do in terms of getting trained and educated about what we do in this House. Their statutory responsibility is to determine Members’ pay and allowances—I emphasise the word “allowances” because that is the expression in the statute, although that is not how it has been interpreted by the current board and its chairman.

It is surely important that anybody who is looking at terms of pay and conditions should understand a bit about the job of the people whose pay and conditions they are sitting in judgment over. As you may know, Mr Deputy Speaker, on the morning of 22 November this year the current chairman of IPSA, who sat on the board that selected the four candidates whose names are before the House tonight, told the “Today” programme that he knew a lot about what Members of Parliament did in their constituencies, but admitted to ignorance about what they did in this great House of Commons. That is after three years in the position, which he holds for only five years. In other words, after 66% of his time in post, he still admits that he is ignorant. He said that the only thing he knew about what Members of Parliament did was that they attended, as he put it, “a zoo” on a Wednesday. Later that day, I asked my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House whether he would organise a programme of education for Sir Ian Kennedy. He assured me that Sir Ian had always shown a willingness and desire to learn more about the work of the House, and obviously put him in a strong position to be able to show leadership to the new members of the board.

Pursuant to that, I wrote to Sir Ian on the following day, 23 November, setting out in detail everything that I had done in this House on Thursday 22 November, including asking a question about him. That covered the time between about 8.30 am and after 10 o’clock at night, when I returned to my constituency home. In the letter, which I said I was quite prepared to have treated as an open letter, I invited him to come along and shadow me for a day in the House so that I could show him exactly what we do here because he is so ignorant of it. I had assumed that by now, in the knowledge that we were having this debate, which my right hon. Friend flagged up when he responded to my business question, the chairman of IPSA would have responded to me, but he has not yet done so. I therefore wonder whether he really is interested in finding out what we do here. I hope that other members of the board will have a greater appetite for learning about it before they feel able to comment on our pay, allowances and pensions.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

On the subject of pay and conditions, and the transparency and probity that IPSA is responsible for upholding in this place, does my hon. Friend deprecate, as I do, the fact that despite a very strong lead from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Government, IPSA set its face against that policy in paying its interim chief executive, through a tax-avoiding personal service company, the sum of £39,000?

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Even during the International Monetary Fund crisis in the mid-1970s, things never got so tough that the Government of the day felt the need to interfere with child benefit. It was a reflection of the fact that families with children had higher costs than those without.

The proposals will create all sorts of perverse incentives, and the people who want to try to avoid the measures will have a field day. This has been well covered by the Treasury Select Committee’s recent report, as well as by the Chartered Institute of Taxation and other expert bodies. The fundamental issue is the proposals’ lack of fairness, as between one family and another.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The Centre for Social Justice says that the Government’s policy

“could threaten a new wave of family instability and breakdown”,

and that it

“flies in the face of their commitment to ‘shared parenting’.”

Does my hon. Friend find it incongruous that that policy is being pursued at the same time as the Government are failing to honour their commitment to introduce marriage or family tax breaks in this or future Budgets?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point, which was also covered in the recent Adjournment debate on this subject, which received what I can describe only as a rather woolly response from the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke). He said that, basically, something was going to happen in this Parliament but the Government were not quite sure what or when. That was not good enough. We need an opportunity to look at the whole issue of transferrable tax allowances, and allowances in the tax and benefit system that recognise the family and marriage.

Returning to the issue of fairness, two people on £50,000 a year with children will not have to pay the high income child benefit charge, whereas a family with children with one person earning over £60,000 will have to pay it.