EU Referendum: Electoral Law

Debate between Damian Collins and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend’s last point. The Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner are going to have a great deal of difficulty evaluating Cambridge Analytica’s role and the dirty money involved. Russia is a much bigger question. There are questions around whether the targeted bombing of innocent civilians in Syria in the run-up to Brexit, in the knowledge that the Germans were allowing in a million refugees, was instrumental in the Brexit result and whether that was intentional; there are questions about whether President Trump was elected through the influence of the Russians; there are questions about whether the fascists in France got a third of the vote because of the Russians; there are questions about how the Russians influenced the German elections; and there are certainly questions about how they influenced Brexit.

I suggest that I limit my comments here to Cambridge Analytica, its abuse and manipulation of British voters and the dirty money behind it.

[Damian Collins]

rose—

[Geraint Davies]

I will give way, but just let me finish this point.

People seem to have this misconception that the Brexit result was not close, but I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that if we ushered 33 people into a room, and 17 voted one way and 16 the other, that is the most marginal vote that we could get. That vote could be swayed by Cambridge Analytica and by the other forms of manipulation. It is in sharp contrast to the natural and rightful instincts of British people that this is simply not fair play.

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) made an important point about the power of the Information Commissioner to investigate these matters. The hon. Gentleman raises serious issues in his remarks, but, often, the Electoral Commission, and the Information Commissioner in particular, do not have the power to go behind the curtain and take the data that they require to support their investigations. They are largely reliant on companies complying with information notices, and, as we have seen over the past few weeks, that can be a frustrating process.

[Geraint Davies]

That is an excellent point very well made. Obviously, it brings into question what further powers those commissioners or others should have to secure the information that they need to bring their legitimate concerns to a conclusion.

Cost of Living

Debate between Damian Collins and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point, because it provides a neat segue into what I want to talk about next. Of course, the Government welcome investment in major infrastructure projects that improve the competitiveness and underlying strength of the economy, and there are numerous schemes where that is taking place. If I look at investment in jobs in my own area through the work of the regional growth funds, I see that £35 million is being spent in east Kent to create new jobs. Businesses such as Wooding in Hythe in my constituency have already received £1 million and they are hiring people on the basis of that investment. Of course we welcome that type of investment, but we are hearing from the Labour party a desire for a short-term, temporary cut in tax to act as a stimulus to the economy, with no real sense of where that money will come from or how it will be costed and paid for. My concern in this debate on the cost of living is that the people who will end up paying for those policies will be the consumers. People will pay through higher taxes, and higher interest rates on their mortgages if they are homeowners.

I will come back to the point made by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) on imaginative partnership with the private sector to increase investment, which also touches on the speech made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on the housing sector. One of the biggest elements of the cost of living is housing. Rent, servicing a mortgage or finding the money in the household budget to try to save and buy one’s first home are all significant costs. I am attracted to schemes where local authorities seek to work with institutional investors to fund the building of new homes that will be run by arm’s length management associations and councils, effectively producing a private partnership with a local authority to build new council houses and to borrow money from an institution over a 40-year to 50-year period. That is a sensible thing to do, and is what any organisation would do. If it is ultimately responsible for paying the rent through housing benefit, why would it not seek to control the end product too? That will give us more opportunities not only to provide people with lower cost homes to rent, but, in time, for even more people to benefit from the right to buy scheme, and for the money to be reinvested into providing new, high-quality homes. That would a good thing: it would reduce some of the costs of renting and be a good thing for the housing market as a whole.

Such a policy would also help to do something to address the scandal of the poor quality of many homes in the private rented sector which are offered to tenants claiming housing benefit but are not fit for habitation. Local authorities should use powers, which they already have, to take action against those landlords. I welcome, in part, the measure in the Queen’s Speech that will create an obligation for private landlords to ask whether people seeking accommodation are qualified to receive it. That will ensure that they are in the country legally and not in breach of the law. That is a good thing, because we will probably find that it is the rogue landlords who are happy to take the money and not ask any questions, and who are making money not out of people who are here illegally, but from some of the poorest people in our society. We should clamp down on that, because it is public money, paid out through housing benefit, that they are profiting from, and we should take firm action against it.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that most landlords have a single property and rent it out themselves? They simply do not have the resources to verify whether a prospective tenant is an illegal immigrant. Making those landlords illegal is outrageous, quite apart from promoting racism.

[Damian Collins]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I think it is very easy to ask those questions and for those checks to be made. Most landlords will probably say that they are paying very large sums to agents to act on their behalf to make these checks. Hundreds of pounds are paid on every transaction by both the tenant and the landlord in managing the private rented sector, so I do not see why those questions would not be asked. Legitimate landlords have nothing to fear. It will be the rogue landlords, who rip people off and exploit the illegal status of some of the people they give accommodation to by keeping them in cramped and unpleasant accommodation, who will have something to fear. It is good for the country that those people fear such intervention.

Many people, particularly young people saving to buy their first home, find the size of the deposit required prohibitively large, and the attempt to save that extra money undoubtedly bears on their cost of living. The Help to Buy scheme, which will support people’s deposits when they buy a new home, must be welcomed as a measure to help many people on to the housing ladder and to give them a far better standard of living and accommodation. This positive initiative will also have a beneficial legacy for the construction sector, giving people greater confidence to build on the property sites currently held in land banks that have planning permission, but which are not being built on because people are concerned that there are not enough people to buy. This scheme will give them the confidence to build, knowing that people will be able to afford the homes because their deposits will be covered.

Finally, on a subject linked to housing towards the end of people’s lives, the Care Bill will end the requirement on people to sell the property for which they have worked and saved all their life in order to meet their care costs in later life. It is unfair that people who have made sacrifices throughout their lives are asked to make the final sacrifice of selling their home to pay for some of their care costs, when others are not put in that position. It is right to cap those contributions: it will reward people’s hard work and aspiration and send out a positive message about the sort of country we are and how we want people to make those sacrifices, work hard and put something by for themselves and their family to have and use later in life. The Care Bill is a positive step in that direction.

I welcome and commend the Queen’s Speech and today’s debate.