Debate on the Address

Dan Byles Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Gillan]

I agree. I almost intervened on the hon. Lady earlier because half my family live in Denmark, so I am familiar with the child care facilities there. The importance of this issue is now being recognised in the highest echelons of Government.

As we are legislating not just for child care but for the protection of children, I would like the Government to consider again an important matter that I have raised before—the mandatory reporting of activity around children by those engaged in regulated activities. Since 1950, the reporting of suspected and known abuse of a child by a member of staff at a school or location of a similar regulated activity has been entirely discretionary. Despite legislation in 2002, nothing has changed. There is still no legal requirement to report abuse of a child in an institutional setting. The statutory guidance says only that such abuses or allegations “should” be referred to or discussed with the local authority designated officer.

Given the flood of non-recent cases of child abuse in schools that we see reported every week in the media, we now know that discretionary reporting does not work. Mandate Now has done some terrific work of which I am very supportive, as are a number of MPs across the House. We should consider a law that requires professionals who work with children in regulated activities and who know, suspect, or have reasonable grounds for knowing or suspecting child abuse to compulsorily inform the local authority designated officer or, in appropriate circumstances, children’s services. Failure to do so would be a criminal offence. At the moment, the guidance is frequently ignored. The legislation that the Government have proposed on the protection of children could allow us to consider introducing this measure in this Bill at this time. I hope that they will at least consider that.

The Government are legislating not only for those at the start of life and our young people but for those in the twilight of their years. I welcome the pension provisions, which are long overdue and welcomed by many of my constituents. However, I remind the Government that there is still a running sore in the pensions world—that is, Equitable Life. The fact remains that nothing has been done for the people who took out pensions with Equitable Life before 1 September 1992. I pay tribute to Paul Braithwaite and the Equitable Members Action Group, who have done so much work in this area. As the economy is now starting to grow and to look much healthier, now is the time for the Government to strike—to go back and collect those people, who are getting fewer and fewer in number. I very much hope that my words will be heard in the Treasury. The compensation scheme needs to be seen to be fair. At the moment, there is some controversy about the fact that the actuarial firm that is calculating the compensation payouts and the one assessing the validity of appeals is one and the same. I hope the Government will look at that, because it does not send out a message that the situation is fair and equitable.

I have had a long and privileged association with the land of my birth, Wales, and I am pleased to see the proposed measure on carrier bags and plastic bags. We often think that devolution is a one-way street, with us giving things to the countries that have devolved powers to themselves, but this is just a little proof that we can carry out a measure in Wales or in Northern Ireland and bring it back to this House. However, although the measure will take a large number of plastic bags out of circulation, let us not be lulled into a false sense of security that it will save the environment. At first, people’s habits are formed by the charge, so they save their bags and take them to the supermarket, but then they forget and buy the 10p bag for life, so the number of bags for life mounts up at home in the same way as the little, thin, annoying bags mount up from every visit to the supermarket. I want to avoid having to re-legislate on this matter, so I hope the Government will look closely at the detail of the Bill, but so far, the action taken has been a force for good. When I did some research, I found that since 2007 Marks & Spencer has charged 5p for all its standard food carrier bags—as I know to my cost, because when I do not have a bag with me, I end up having to juggle a large number of parcels or buy a bag for 5p. The profit from that charge goes to charities—the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Marine Conservation Society—and towards educational projects in primary schools to promote awareness of marine life. I believe that since the measure was introduced in Wales, it has raised some £4 million for good causes, which is something we could all support. We could bring about a similar result from making these charges across the board.

I was also pleased to have it reaffirmed that NATO will meet in Wales. I think it will have a warm welcome and enjoy very good facilities in the Principality.

The proposed change in the planning laws to ease access to land for the process of fracking will prove controversial. I hope the Government will learn a lesson from the experiences of my constituents about to access to land and High Speed 2. It has not been a happy event. HS2 and the Government do not have statutory powers to access private land without the owner’s consent; that will only happen once the hybrid Bill has been approved by Parliament. I wonder whether the Government’s new proposed provisions will override those in the HS2 hybrid Bill with which my constituents have come to terms, and whether they will allow, in effect, compulsory access to people’s land. Many of my constituents have been very concerned that giving access could result in them losing some rights over their land. Indeed, I think that some 40% of the phase 1 route of HS2 has yet to be examined, in some cases because landowners have refused access.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

On the change in law regarding hydraulic fracturing, may I, as the chairman of the all-party group on unconventional oil and gas, reassure my right hon. Friend that my understanding is that it is simply about access to drill at a depth of greater than 300 metres beneath a property? It should not give any right of access to the property above the surface.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful for that clarification. Perhaps I am seeing problems where none exist. However, my message to the Government is that if they are going to engage with landowners about any infrastructure development or fracking, they need to make sure that that engagement is correctly done and appreciated by the people in the communities that will be affected, because that has not been the case with HS2.

[Dan Byles]

I entirely agree.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am glad my hon. Friend entirely agrees on that important point.

I am pleased that the Government are now going to limit large pay-offs for people who leave the public sector, but that conflicts with a recent request from HS2’s chief executive to lift all pay controls on HS2 personnel so that she can get the best people for the job from the marketplace. That implies that the best people would not be satisfied with the public sector salaries available to our very good officials right across the board. There seems to be some tension between that and what the Government are doing. I hope they will make sure that those working on Government projects will get the same rate across the board. That is important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow that rousing note from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess). I am also privileged to speak in this, the last Queen’s Speech debate before the general election. I am sure that I am not the only 2010-intake MP who is blinking in surprise and wondering where on earth the past four years have gone; they appear to have flown by. In my personal life, I have become a father not once but twice, to two young girls. The coalition Government have achieved a huge amount—more than many of us hoped they might and more than many of our opponents claimed they would.

It is worth pausing for a moment to remember that the main reason the two different political parties came together for the good of the country was to fix the economy. We inherited an economy that was just pulling itself out of the deepest recession since quarterly records began in 1955. There was the highest peacetime fall in GDP output since 1931. We inherited an eye-watering deficit of more than £150 billion a year. That is the principal measure against which the coalition needs to be judged over the past four years, and on that measure it is absolutely clear that it has been extraordinarily successful. The IMF now rates the UK as the fastest growing major economy—the fastest in the G7. We have created more than 1.5 million new private sector jobs since 2010 as a result of—I have to get the phrase in at this point—our long-term economic plan.

In my constituency, unemployment has been steadily falling. The number of jobseekers has more than halved since 2010 as a result of exciting and innovative companies such as—to name but a few; this is not an exhaustive list—Sertec, Brose, BMW, ADV Manufacturing, Premier Group, Ocado, Loades EcoParc and Leekes. All are growing and creating jobs as a result of the improved economic situation.

However, the coalition can be proud of more than fixing the economy. Even though our parties have different philosophical and political beliefs, we have managed to achieve, or are well on the way to achieving, radical and necessary reform in other policy areas as well. We have brought in a welfare cap for the first time. My constituency is interesting in that its average working pay is almost dead on the national average. The welfare cap of average pay simply means that no household in receipt of benefits can receive more than the average constituent in my constituency. That is absolutely right. It is remarkable, really, that we had to bring in the cap. Work is being done by the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that work pays so that we can finally get away from the ridiculous situation where, for quite rational reasons, people had to turn down extra work—extra hours or an extra shift—because they would ultimately have been worse off as a result of the high clawback on certain benefits. If we can get away from that and make work genuinely pay, that alone will have made the past four years worth while.

In education, free schools and academies are putting parents in the driving seat of their children’s education and restoring rigour to exams. In the NHS, we are gripping failing hospitals rather than sweeping them under the carpet. In my constituency, after years of the north of the county being worse off compared with the south of the county in NHS spending per head, despite it being more deprived, we are finally now seeing above-inflation primary care budget rises. At George Eliot hospital, which has for so long been struggling, we had the bravery and the guts to put it into special measures. As a result, clinical staff numbers are up, there is more investment and improved outcomes, and it is on a firm footing for the first time in many years.

I find it remarkable that some Labour Members have tried to suggest that this Queen’s Speech is somehow thin or light. On the contrary, and given that there are areas where more reform and work is required, it contains 11 Bills. That is pretty challenging with less than a year to go until the election, and this Queen’s Speech is ambitious in what it is seeking to achieve.

The infrastructure Bill, which has already been mentioned by many colleagues, is absolutely essential if we are to get investment, particularly in energy, although it is about more than energy. We face a massive investment challenge on the energy side if we are to close the gap in capacity and keep the lights on. The issue of shale gas has been mentioned several times. The shale gas debate continues to suffer from the problem of people trying to portray it in terms of competing extremes. In fact, it is a lot simpler than many people wish it to be. It is not about whether the UK uses more gas. We will be using gas for decades to come: 83% of our homes are heated by gas, while 70% to 75% of our electricity comes from gas and coal. Even a speedy expansion of renewable energy will take a long time to eat into that fossil fuel use, and we should start by displacing the coal, not the gas.

The shale gas argument is not about whether we should use gas but simply about from where we get the gas. Importing it has a larger emission footprint—the Committee on Climate Change has said that imported liquefied natural gas is likely to have a higher life-cycle emission footprint than domestic shale gas—and creates no jobs and no tax revenue for the Exchequer. Alternatively, we can use the domestic gas that the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineers and Public Health England have all said can be produced safely as long as that is properly regulated. That will create jobs—up to 64,000 according to Ernst and Young and up to 74,000 according to the Institute of Directors—and produce tax revenue for the country that can be spent on public services. In 2011, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that more than 16% of Government corporate tax receipts came from the oil and gas sector. It is easy for people to turn their noses up at oil and gas, but it pays for our schools and our hospitals.

Pension reform could be one of the great lasting legacies of this Government. In decades to come, people will look back to the pension reforms that we are proposing in this Queen’s Speech and see them as the start of rebuilding the strength of UK pensions after the damage done by the previous Government.

On the measures to tackle slavery and human trafficking, I need not add to what has already been said. Human trafficking and slavery in the 21st century is abhorrent and yet all too prevalent. I am sure that these measures will get broad cross-party support to make sure that the UK can continue to be at the forefront of tackling such issues.

On help with child care, as a young dad with two young children I know only too well the difficulties and cost of dealing with child care. In fact, were it not for my redoubtable mother-in-law, we would struggle with it considerably more than we do. Anything that can be done to help, in particular, working families on low incomes with the challenge that child care costs present has to be a good thing.

Plastic bags have been mentioned a few times in various ways. As somebody who has spent quite a lot of time at sea in a small boat, including a small rowing boat, I see at first hand the appalling ocean pollution that carrier bags, in particular, play a large part in. I am not expert enough in the economics of plastic bags to be able yet to judge the merits of the proposed Bill—I will look at it more closely—but if it can go any way towards helping to diminish plastic bag use and the sorts of pollution, particularly ocean pollution, that it creates, that will be a very good thing.

I am keen to see what an updated charter for budgetary responsibility will look like, because it is essential that we maintain our discipline and economic resolve as we move forward. This Government have been extremely successful in bringing down the deficit, which is down by over a third since we came to power, but still at eye-watering levels. Some Labour Members have criticised us for the fact that we have not managed to get rid of the deficit completely in five years, but that simply shows that it was even harder than we thought it was going to be. Thank goodness we had a Government who were trying to grip the deficit rather than one with a shadow Chancellor who claimed that there was no structural deficit problem in the run-up to the 2010 election: we can imagine what it would be now if that had been the case.

Legislation to make the UK the most attractive place to start, finance and grow a business is essential. This is a really exciting time for many different sectors in terms of technological advances and opportunities for new, small, innovative start-up companies to really make their mark in the world by harnessing the use of many new technologies. My own experience is predominantly in the energy sector. I have met some fascinating entrepreneurs and innovators from energy and clean-tech start-ups, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that they will want to come to the UK in order to start up the companies that will be tomorrow’s Microsofts, Apples and Googles. I strongly welcome any measures that make it easier to set up and run small businesses in the UK.

I know there is an enormous waiting list of Members who want to speak after me, so I will simply say that this Queen’s Speech shows that the Government are ambitious in what they hope to achieve in their final year—we will of course carry on after that. I am sure that many of the Bills will be carried over to the next Conservative Government if they are not completed in the next year. There is a lot still to do to put the country on the right footing.