Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

I know that the hon. Lady is a keen football fan and has worked closely with the Newcastle United Supporters Trust, and I know that this issue is very important to her and to her Magpies-supporting constituents. The working group’s report will be published next month and I expect it to contain strong recommendations. We will consider those recommendations when they are given to me next month.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

It is five years since the Government stated that they would make changes on fan ownership. Since then, we have had two Select Committee reports and, after four years of waiting, the Government finally set up the expert working group, the report from which is imminent. Does the Minister agree that it is time for bona fide fan groups to be given the right to elect and remove representatives on club boards and the right to buy shares in their clubs? For too long those with vested interests have been allowed to stand in the way of progress on these issues and we must not miss the opportunity that the expert working group offers us.

[Tracey Crouch]

We all share the view that football fans are the lifeblood of the club they support and many people feel frustration about club ownership. I have been pleased with the level of engagement with the supporters’ representatives group and I am confident that the final report will provide a structured approach for greater collaboration between clubs and fans. That might well include some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised. The working group report will be published next month and before his ten-minute rule Bill comes before the House in December. I hope that he will look at the report and support us in implementing the recommendations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I understand the point my hon. Friend makes, although he will appreciate that this is principally a matter for the Secretary of State for Education rather than my own Department. I understand that headteachers are encouraged to be flexible in setting their week, but children’s education is important, and we should not deprive them of it by changing their ability to go on holiday.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I am sure the Secretary of State will welcome the figures from the international passenger survey published last month, which showed that the number of overseas visitors to the UK is up 3% for the first four months. However, does he share my concern, and that of the tourism industry, that the figures show that expenditure is down 7% so far this year? If this trend continues to the end of the year, total revenue could be down by £1.53 billion compared with 2014, potentially putting 28,000 jobs at risk. Given those concerns, is it not time for the Government to put together a national strategy for tourism?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting the fact that the number of visitors has continued to increase and is at record levels. Nevertheless, he is right that there has been a small drop in spend. That may be more to do with the weakness of the euro than anything else. On his call for a national tourism strategy, my Department is reviewing all our policy areas. We will respond to the Select Committee report very shortly and set out precisely our intentions to promote tourism in the UK.

English Votes on English Laws

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Because I value the strength that this Chamber brings. To take away its remit over English matters would be to devalue it. We need to ensure that there is fairness in this Parliament; we do not need to dismantle our constitution to the point where we have an English Parliament as well.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Grayling]

I will give way one more time and then I will conclude so that other people may speak.

[Clive Efford]

In 1997, the incoming Labour Government had devolution in their manifesto, which is similar to the position of the current Government, but there was extensive consultation before they created a Parliament and two Assemblies. What we have here is a shabby little alteration to Standing Orders. How is that suitable for the people of England, even for those who agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has to say?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman clearly did not read our manifesto and clearly did not pay attention to what took place before the election, because these proposals were published months ago and have been discussed extensively. They were also set out in fine detail in our manifesto. He is claiming that we should not be implementing our manifesto commitment. There may be other parties in this House that do not believe in fulfilling their manifesto commitments, but we do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

We had the guts to come forward with proper legislation and a referendum before any of the Assemblies were put in place. If only the Conservative party had even considered doing that.

[Clive Efford]

Further to the intervention by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), if we had known at the time that through a simple change to the Standing Orders, the issues that were devolved to the Assemblies and the Scottish Parliament would be handed down to some makeshift English assembly or Parliament, would that have had an effect on our debates on those devolved matters? It could have resulted in a completely different outcome.

[Ms Eagle]

I am sure my hon. Friend is right. The principle—

Business of the House

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I commend my hon. Friend for initiating that well-attended debate. We have now established the new Committee structure, and the Backbench Business Committee will be able to meet shortly. I encourage him to talk to the Committee members with a view to trying to secure one of the Back-Bench business days for that purpose.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on the role of the National Crime Agency in preventing harm to children? I have been raising my concerns about a substance called Miracle Mineral Solution, which is being promoted particularly to parents of children with autism as a cure for that condition. I have been asking the National Crime Agency why this is not considered a direct threat to children. It is being promoted as something that can be given orally in a baby’s bottle or even as an enema. May we have a debate to ensure that the National Crime Agency is on top of issues like this?

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In order to achieve the reforms that all of us believe are vitally necessary in FIFA, the first requirement was a change in leadership. We have now obtained that, but that is the beginning of the process and certainly not the end of it. It is for the football associations of the home nations to work with other football associations that are equally determined to see change, in order to ensure that the new leadership is properly committed to achieving those changes.

In response to my hon. Friend’s second question, on Qatar, that is a separate matter. The Swiss authorities are continuing to investigate the bidding process that resulted in the decision to give the 2018 games to Russia and the 2022 games to Qatar, and we await the outcome of those investigations.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State and the sports Minister to their new posts.

The investigation into FIFA will go on, but the fight for its heart and soul will start now that Sepp Blatter has announced he is standing down. I wonder about these people at the top of FIFA and whether they have ever actually been to a football match for which they bought their own tickets, whether they have followed a football team week in, week out, or whether they have pulled on a football shirt and played in a match. We really need to get rid of these people at the top of the game.

Is the Secretary of State satisfied that Government agencies that are investigating the possibilities of corruption involving UK financial institutions have all the resources they need and that they are doing all they can to root out any criminal activity that may have taken place? Will he say exactly what he can do to ensure that we root out corruption in FIFA?

[Mr Whittingdale]

In the first instance, that is obviously a matter for the Serious Fraud Office and other investigatory bodies in this country, but I have spoken to the Attorney General about it. We will of course ensure that all the resources necessary to carry out a thorough investigation are available to those bodies and we will work closely with the Swiss and American authorities, which are leading on this matter.

On the reforms necessary in FIFA, we are absolutely committed to working through the FA and other football associations to ensure that the new leadership of FIFA is utterly committed to carrying out the sweeping reforms that are so obviously necessary.

Valedictory Debate

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)]

I wish to start by thanking all those who have helped me during my time as a Member of Parliament. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for your stewardship of this House, your dedication to our parliamentary democracy and your unfailing courtesy to all sides, even when provoked. It is customary, of course, for the new Speaker to give up his previous party when he becomes Speaker. You, of course, had given up your previous party long before that.

Let me also thank the staff of the House: the Clerks, the cleaners, the catering staff, the librarians and the doorkeepers for their non-partisan and always unselfish support. Let me thank my colleagues on the Labour Benches, who have been so brilliant to work with and to work alongside. Their wisdom and friendship have sustained my family and me at times of personal loss. Let me also thank all colleagues, especially those who leave the House today, for their outstanding contribution to what we are right to believe is the greatest democracy in the world. Most of all, I owe a debt of gratitude to my constituents who sent me here and who accorded me the privilege of trust and service more than 32 years ago, in which time I have always tried to represent their needs and aspirations.

When I first stood for Parliament in 1983, I asked constituents to elect me as a candidate of youth and fresh ideas. I had to change tack in 2010 to ask them to elect me as a candidate of maturity and experience.

When I first arrived here in 1983, I was so unknown, so patently here just to make up the numbers and so clearly forgettable that The Times confused me with one of the many other Browns in this Parliament—there were as many MPs named Brown as there were Liberals or Social Democrat MPs. That may never happen again. The newspaper published a photo of me when I was a student, but then said that I had been born in 1926. In each successive newspaper in London, the error was repeated—not so much the power of the press, but the power of the press cutting. I was labelled as “elderly”, “veteran” and “old Labour stalwart” —definitely old Labour—with the result that, a few days later, I received a letter from a pension company saying that I had joined a new job late in life and would want to make provision for an early retirement.

Now, 32 years on, it is for others to judge what has been achieved between then and now. Today, it is not my constituents, Scotland or public service that I am leaving, but Westminster in London. I leave to live full time in the place in which I grew up and in which my children will grow up and complete their schooling. I leave this House feeling not just a huge amount of gratitude, but some concern. As the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said, the UK is fragile, at risk and potentially at a point of departure. Countries at their best, their strongest and their truest are more than places on the map and a demarcation of borders. Great countries stand on shared foundations. They are guided by unifying ideals. They move forward in common purpose, and so it must be in Britain.

Whatever the future, in the constitutional revolution that is now under way I will fight and fight and fight again to renew and reconstruct for a new age the idea of Britain, based around shared values that can bring us together and advance a common Britishness, with a shared belief in tolerance, liberty and fairness that comes alive in unique British institutions such as the national health service and in common policies for social justice.

It is because I believe in Britain’s future that I am saddened—I am sorry to have to say this—that for the first and only time in 300 years of the Union, it has become official Government policy to create two classes of elected representatives in this House: a first class who will vote on all issues, and a second class who will vote on only some. That mimics the nationalists by driving a wedge between Scotland and England, and is meant only to head off opposition from the extremists with a direct nationalist appeal to the English electorate. It is not so much English votes for English laws as English laws for English votes. I ask this House to remember that our greatest successes as a country have come not when we have been divided and when we have turned inwards, but when we have confidently looked outwards and thought globally, our eyes fixed on the wider world and the future.

With the unwinding of what is called the pax Americana and in the wake of the recent retreat from global co-operation, we have today no climate change treaty, no world trade treaty and no global financial standards. We must recapture what now seems a distant memory—the heightened global co-operation of the past, which Britain led. We must never allow ourselves to become spectators and watchers on the shore when the world needs us in Europe and beyond to lead and champion global action to deal with problems from poverty and pollution to proliferation and protectionism.

This is about more than economics. Over 30 years, I, like most people on this side and on both sides of the House, have condemned the discrimination and prejudices of the past, which should now be consigned for ever to that past. I welcome the new freedoms, the new rights for equality and the anti-discrimination laws we have enacted and embraced. All societies need a moral energy that can inspire individuals to self-sacrificial acts of public service that come alive out of mutual respect and obligation. Yes, the predominant feeling in our country is an anger at elites that I can see in people’s eyes and hear in their voices. Yes, too, of the many social changes I have witnessed in 30 years, one of the most dramatic has been the fall in religious observance, but I also sense that the British people are better than leaders often presume. They are ready to respond to a vision of a country that is more caring, less selfish, more compassionate and less cynical than the “me too, me first, me now, me above all—me whatever” manifestos.

I sense that there are millions of us who feel, however distantly, the pain of others today; who believe in something bigger than ourselves; who cannot easily feast when our fellow citizens go hungry to food banks; who cannot feel at ease when our neighbours, in hock to payday lenders, are ill at ease; who cannot be fully content with poverty pay and zero-hours contracts when around us there is so much discontent. I repeat that it is not anti-wealth to say that the wealthy must do more to help those who are not wealthy; it is not anti-enterprise to say that the enterprising must do more to meet the aspirations of those who have never had the chance to show that they too are enterprising; and it is not anti-market to say that markets need morals to underpin their success. For this, and for showing me when I was young that when the strong help the weak, it makes us all stronger, I will always be grateful to my parents, who taught me these values of justice; to my party, which taught me how to fight for justice; and to my constituents, who taught me every day the rightness of justice.

We must never forget that politics at its best imbues people with hope. In 1886, Tennyson wrote one of his last poems, “Locksley Hall”, with its pessimistic refrain:

“Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell when all will end?”

The then Prime Minister, Gladstone, was moved to remind Tennyson that in his first poem of that title he had said:

“When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;

Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.”

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I want merely to take Mr Speaker’s advice, since he mentioned that if someone intervenes, the Member speaking gets more time—[Laughter.]

[Mr Brown]

I have spoken today about what endures beyond anyone’s time in office and I want to leave here as I came here, with an unquenchable faith in the future—the future of a country that we can build and share together, a future in which we help shape the world beyond our shores, and a future in which we always demand the best of ourselves. That is a future worth fighting for.

Business of the House

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend has indeed raised this matter before, and I think that I mentioned on that occasion the powers that are available to deal with such situations and the increased attention that is being given to them. He has again made the case for more of those powers to be used, and I am sure that what he has said will be listened to by both the Government and local authorities.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Health was required to come here to answer an urgent question about the crisis in our accident and emergency services. Is it not right, given the widespread concern up and down the country about A and E services, that we should have a debate on this issue here, in Government time, so that we can examine the details? It would also give the Secretary of State a chance to put right his claim that I misled the House yesterday in stating that he proposed the closure of the Lewisham accident and emergency service, which he certainly did. Subsequently, in October 2013, he lost a judicial review on that same issue, so it is surprising that it seemed to slip his mind. Will the Leader of the House provide an opportunity for the Secretary of State to put the record straight and let us have a debate on this very important issue?

[Mr Hague]

There was a lot of discussion about this in the House yesterday in a lengthy urgent question and during a great deal of Prime Minister’s questions. Next Tuesday, there will be questions to the Secretary of State for Health and his colleagues on the Floor of the House, and next week there is an Opposition day debate in which the Opposition have yet to decide what to debate. Putting all those things together, I am sure that there will be many further opportunities for these issues to be debated on the Floor of the House.

Business of the House

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. As he knows, the Prime Minister made a statement on the report by the Intelligence and Security Committee on Tuesday, but he is right to mention the bravery and outstanding behaviour of these individuals and to draw their names to the attention of the House. I will ensure that the Prime Minister is made aware of his remarks.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I would like to associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), which, as a Member of Parliament for a constituency in the borough of Greenwich, I very much appreciate.

The privatisation of the NHS met its Waterloo last Friday in a vote on my private Member’s Bill, which seeks to take the market, and the regulatory authorities that introduced it into the NHS, out of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The will of the House was heard when it voted overwhelmingly in favour of my Bill— 241 to 18—so may I urge the Leader of the House to bring forward a resolution as soon as possible to ensure that it goes into Committee?

[Mr Hague]

While not agreeing with the Bill, I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s work in promoting it and the debate that took place last week. He must know, however, that his Bill is some way down the list of private Members’ Bills, although it received its Second Reading last week, and that there are other private Members’ Bills going into Committee. His Bill will have to go into Committee following the normal procedures and at the normal time, in the light of the order of sequence of private Members’ Bills.

Business of the House

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because I was not aware of that possibility under the Bill. It ever so slightly changes my perception of it, but I fear that I am still not entirely in favour of it, not least because it impinges on Her Majesty’s prerogatives under the constitution.

I am sure I am right in telling my hon. Friend that there is no prospect of filibustering in this House. It is a term of usage, but it is not in order to filibuster, and the Chair would not contemplate anything disorderly happening in the House.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

May we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to explain why the Government have refused to designate the rugby union world cup in 2015 as an event of national significance, as was done by the previous Government for the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012, so that tickets cannot be sold on the secondary ticketing market and hoovered up by touts, many of whom are involved in organised criminal gangs and in exploiting genuine rugby fans?

[Mr Lansley]

If I may, I will talk to my hon. Friends at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It might be simpler for them not to make a statement, but to respond to the hon. Gentleman in his capacity as a shadow Minister—

[Clive Efford]

We would all like to hear.

[Mr Lansley]

Those Ministers may even want to put a copy of that reply in the Library of the House.

Business of the House

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

Clearly that is a significant issue that I am sure presents a real financial challenge to some people. I would like to think that GPs would be careful about levying such charges when it is clear that the person might not be able to afford them.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

May I challenge the Deputy Leader of the House to come back to the House some time in the near future and explain exactly how the Government are devising policy? Yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister on green measures and fuel prices caught everyone unawares. Today the Deputy Minister is making a speech about education and suggesting that we should regulate with regard to qualified teachers in our schools, but only last week the Minister for Schools signed off on cuts that could deregulate the oversight of qualified teachers. The Government’s approach, and not least that of the Liberal Democrats, seems to be inconsistent, so could we have an explanation of exactly what is going on?

[Tom Brake]

I will give the hon. Gentleman an explanation immediately. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that parents want and expect their children to be taught a core body of knowledge by good, qualified teachers or teachers seeking qualification—the quality of their teaching is checked by Ofsted—and to get a healthy meal every day. The Government believe that every child should have access to a good choice of excellent local schools. The hon. Gentleman may know that three quarters of free schools provide good or outstanding education, compared with just 64% in the public sector.