Business of the House

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to this very important work, and I pay tribute to all the organisations that have assisted, including the Terrence Higgins Trust, the National AIDS Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. My hon. Friend is right, in that the accident and emergency departments involved have diagnosed 268 people with HIV and found a further 139 people who knew that they were HIV positive but were not engaged with services. There are benefits elsewhere, as they found a further 730 people with hepatitis B and 299 people with hepatitis C. I think this is something we should be doing everywhere and I commend all those involved in this initiative and care for making such good progress.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

The crisis in NHS dentistry continues to worsen. Only this month, another dental surgery in my constituency, Bell Barn dental surgery, not only stopped new NHS patients from joining, but removed its entire NHS list and became fully private. I have had extensive correspondence with Ministers, tabled written parliamentary questions, and had a debate in this House in January last year on the issue. Could the Leader of the House advise me on what more I could do to encourage her ministerial colleagues to take the issue more seriously?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am very sorry to hear about the situation in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I know that Ministers take the subject very seriously; I have had many conversations with them about it, because I faced a similar situation in my constituency. He will know about the uplift in funding provided. Quite often, the issue is whether local commissioners are using the flexibility that they have. He asks for my advice. I held a dental summit in my constituency, and brought all the partners round the table. We have new providers and are making good progress. I am happy to offer him any advice and assistance that I can, but as I say, Ministers are taking this seriously. He will know that they are also looking forward to bringing forward reforms.

Virtual Participation in Debate

Darren Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for giving way so quickly and for allowing me to contribute to her aerobic skills at the Dispatch Box as she stands up and down so quickly. On the issue of gagging Members of Parliament, each of us has our role as representatives of our constituencies, but some of us, as Chairs of Committees, are elected by this House on a cross-party basis to inform proceedings in this House. Consequently, Chairs of Committees need to be given the opportunity fully to debate the issues and to inform Members about our work. If virtual participation is not extended, there are a number of Committee Chairs who—as is the case today—cannot perform their function. Is this not just an extension of the gagging of the will of Parliament?

[Valerie Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know how assiduous he is in his work as the Chair of a Select Committee. That is a key point, is it not? Chairs of Select Committees cannot be here. I do not think it is our business to say who can be here and who cannot be here. All Members have to be treated equally. As the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) said, there is a hierarchy of hon. Members and we have strived not to have that hierarchy in this House.

Let me go back to the motion and deal with the point relating to “clinically extremely vulnerable”. This is not a happy way to deal with right hon. and hon. Members. It places them in a difficult situation. It is not that they do not want to be here, but that they cannot be here. It is about what they say about their families. They do not want to bring their families into debates. They do not want to bring their families into the limelight or to this place. They want to keep them away from it. However, hon. Members are having to say— sometimes in public, Madam Deputy Speaker—why they cannot be here and they are having to bring their families into it. I say that, because the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay cannot be here. He tabled the amendment, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). He co-signed the amendment and he cannot be here for a very, very good reason.

Business of the House

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

A number of my constituents transferred from AstraZeneca to Avara Pharmaceuticals when the Avalon Pharmaceuticals site north of Bristol was sold. They did so because they were promised that if the business failed, they would still be entitled to their full AstraZeneca redundancy package. That has not happened and those workers are now being made redundant on statutory pay only, although AstraZeneca still has a legal contract with Avara to enforce that right, which expires in October. I have written to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and received a wholly unsatisfactory answer, and I have applied for an Adjournment debate four weeks in a row without success. Does the Leader of the House agree that the matter deserves ministerial attention, and that that should be given before the summer recess?

[Mel Stride]

Clearly I am not in a position to comment on the specifics of the hon. Gentleman’s experience with BEIS Ministers, but I accept that it is very important that he has appropriate contact with them and a proper opportunity to explain the situation fully and see whether something can be done to help. I have two points to make. First, BEIS questions are on Tuesday 16 July, and I think that would be an excellent matter to raise then—I recommend that he give the Department advance notice of his question, if he intends to raise it in topical questions. Secondly, if he would like to meet me to have a quick discussion about the matter, I would be happy to do so, to see how I could otherwise assist.

Parliament as a Workplace

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) for securing this important debate, and other colleagues for their contributions.

I wanted to speak in this debate because I think there are two purposes to the drive to continue the reform of Parliament. The first is to ensure that Parliament is as attractive a workplace as possible for as many people as possible. I am always disappointed when, either on a school visit or in my constituency, I ask people to put their hands up if they would like to take over from me as the next Member of Parliament for Bristol North West, and there are very few people—this includes young children and people at my coffee mornings or my constituency pub politics—who want to do that. I am sure there are a whole host of reasons why people might not want to become a Member of Parliament, but it is a huge shame for this Parliament and for our country.

One of those reasons—this is true especially for women, because even with hands-on fathers such as myself, women still bear the burden of child caring responsibilities, as does my wife, who I pay tribute to today—is that people see the chaos. People see the lack of planning, the living in two locations, and think, “How on earth could I do the school run or deal with nursery?” As I am now learning, with multiple children that becomes even harder. We must continue to reform this place so that it is somewhere to which people from across the spectrum of our community wish to come and contribute, and answer that public service calling. People need a workplace that works for them and their family.

I should also make the case for fathers. As I said, my wife still bears the childcare burden because of the inflexibility of what happens in this place, and I am disappointed by that. We should always remember that dads want to spend time with their children and families as well, and in this modern age people should be able to balance those obligations with their choice of career. Many of my peers who work in business or in other organisations increasingly take employment and career choices that mean they have more flexibility to be with their families: maybe not working on Fridays, taking an early or a late finish to be able to do the school run, or being in an annualised hours position where they can take school holidays off. Many of our wives are successful people in their own careers. We want to be able to help them and contribute to raising our families, so that they can pursue their careers alongside us.

Parliament has an important role in setting the tone, not just in the delivery of democracy in this House but in what we as a Parliament expect from the wider economy. There have been many debates in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall about the impact of difficulties around childcare, family choices and practices in the workplace: the fact that dads are not having access to shared parental leave because it will have an impact on their career, and the “mummy track” impact on mums, losing the salary and seniority they deserve as a consequence of caring for children. We need to be saying that we want reform in this place, as well as in the wider economy. We should set the tone here and then legislate, through the Government, to ensure that the same is the case for the wider country.

We should give thanks, as other hon. Members have, for the progress that has been made. As a new Member, I did not know that the nursery in 1 Parliament Street used to be a wine bar. That was news to me. Apparently there was a debate about whether we needed one fewer pub in this place. I do not know why we have a pub at all. I know that might be a controversial statement, but I have never had one in my workplaces before. A nursery seems perfectly sensible, and I welcome that.

I benefited from proxy voting after the birth of my second daughter, Edie, when I was able to proxy vote via my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). There was a clear distinction between the arrival of my first and my second. My first daughter, Ophelia, was born when we were having crunch votes on Brexit. My phone was ringing in the delivery suite, asking whether I was available to vote. I was allowed off the Whip on that occasion, but in the immediate days after the arrival of my daughter, when a father wants to be at home to help and contribute, I had to come back and forth to vote. Proxy voting has solved that, but—this was mentioned in the debate on proxy voting, because I was here for it—dads are able to benefit from proxy voting for only two weeks. If I want to take more time in a shared parental leave setting, as I could do in a workplace outside of here, I am unable to do so. That is one example of why the case for reform and modernisation needs to continue.

I should pay tribute and thanks. There are, of course, some benefits to raising a family here in Parliament. I shall just share a short story, which is loosely related to the topic today. My wife took my two daughters to see her sister-in-law in Washington DC recently. Of course, to take children on to a plane they need passports. It was very easy to get my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge, as someone with standing in our community, to sign the passport documents to authorise that my daughters are real. Sadly, my hon. Friend forgot to put her passport number on the form. My wife went to the passport office. I was in the constituency, an example of having to live in two locations, and received a call from my wife in distress. It was the last date to be able to get the passports sorted, otherwise the trip would have to be cancelled. My hon. Friend was in her constituency being busy, too.

Much to our relief, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) turned up at the passport office here in London and filled in the form in place of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge, until he realised that he had lost his passport, which was why he was there, and could not sign off the form. To the rescue was my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), the husband of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge. Between the chair of the parliamentary Labour party, the shadow Chancellor and two Labour MPs, we solved the passport problem. Why on earth we could not just put a form in the post like every other family, I have no idea.

On that note, Madam Deputy Speaker, I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge on securing this debate. I congratulate other right hon. and hon. Members on continuing the push for reform at pace, to make this a place where mums and dads who want children and want to be able to spend time with their family will come and contribute to the public service and leadership of our country, so that together we can lead that change for the economy, too.

Business of the House

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

All Members would agree with the hon. Gentleman that this is a really concerning matter. He will be aware that the Government launched our serious violence strategy in April this year, part of which is addressing the really worrying issue of county lines and the misuse of drugs. We have key commitments under that strategy to provide a new national county lines co-ordination centre, and we are continuing to work with the Crown Prosecution Service and the National Police Chiefs Council lead on the prosecution of county lines offences, encouraging the use of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 wherever possible. A lot of work is being done and a lot of cash—Government money—is going into community work to get young people off that conveyor belt, which leads in effect to such appalling abuse of them, and which is also a road to crime, because it leads to awful problems for young people during their lives. I am extremely sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

In July 2017, the Government announced that they were going to lift tolls on the Severn bridge this Christmas, which caused me concern about traffic gridlock in north Bristol. On 12 March this year, I tabled a written question, only to be told that no new modelling had been done on the additional number of cars. In July, I found that the modelling was being done, and a freedom of information request over the summer showed that we can expect 6 million extra vehicle journeys every year. Will the Leader of the House tell me whether it is Government policy to take decisions before the evidence is available? If so, may we have a debate about evidence-based policy?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the purpose of abolishing the tolls is to boost the south Wales economy by more than £100 million a year. He might find that some of his hon. Friends would not agree that it was done deliberately to try to cause traffic jams in his constituency. The idea is to save the average motorist more than £1,400 per year, which is good news for the motoring public. Some 25 million vehicles cross the bridges every year. The scrapping of the tolls is going to be good news in south Wales and for motorists.

Business of the House

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Members from all parties will be delighted to hear of those pilot schemes. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for his commitment to making progress in that policy area. I will certainly ask the Department for Education the hon. Lady’s question and see whether it can provide a further update to the House.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

A case has arisen in Bristol of restaurant owners charging their waiters and waitresses to work by demanding that those staff pay a percentage of the total price of the orders they sell to customers, regardless of tips received. This employer’s tax on working is then being used to pay staff wages. Remarkably, I am told that this is legal. May we have a debate to decide whether that needs to change?

[Andrea Leadsom]

That sounds quite extraordinary. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to take up that issue with the Home Office to find out whether it is actually legal. It seems to me to be extraordinary.

Baby Leave for Members of Parliament

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) on securing this important debate, and I thank other right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. I also thank Mr Speaker, who I understand has made quite good progress over the past few years on this matter.

As a new Member, I had no idea that the day nursery used to be a wine bar, so the position of the nursery seems perfectly normal to me, which is good progress in itself. I declare an interest as the father of eight-week-old Ophelia and husband to my wife, Lucy. Ophelia was able to join me here for the first time to vote against the Third Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. Although there are those who have concerns about Members taking babies through a voting Lobby, I pay tribute to the Clerks, who astutely did not count Ophelia’s vote when I walked through—quite rightly so, given that I have no idea of her views on the Government’s Brexit strategy.

I support this important motion. When I went on paternity leave—a little earlier than expected—in the run-up to Christmas, as a Back-Bench MP, I was able to clear my diary fairly easily, and my constituents were supportive, but of course I needed to be here to vote, and there were some important matters that I wanted to vote on. We should consider the use of proxy voting. I see that the Clerks use iPads when we vote, so—dare I say it—perhaps we could use an app. If we could vote without having to nod through the Lobby, that would be welcome progress. In those early days, as my hon. Friends have said, my duty as a husband and a father was to be at home to help in any way that I can, but I had to leave for many hours to come and vote here, so it would have been helpful if I had been able to vote from home or via a proxy. Formalising the process would also be helpful, because while the Whips were accommodating, the presumption was that I would be here for all votes apart from those that I had negotiated not to attend. I would rather that that was the other way around. When there are crunch votes, such as the Brexit ones, when I am sure that Ophelia would have said that I should be here if she could, I would come to vote, but the presumption needs switching.

It is important that we set the tone in this place. We should be doing the same thing that we have legislated for in the country, which seems perfectly sensible, but we also need to set the tone. Parenting is not a gender issue—at least it should not be—and I am of the firm view that a family friendly and gender-balanced economy not just is the right thing to seek, but would be good for economic growth and wellbeing.

The House may not be surprised to hear that I think that my wife is a remarkable and talented woman—

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

She is very fortunate.

[Darren Jones]

Thank you. I say that about my wife not least because during the snap election, when we were two months pregnant, I made it clear that I stood no chance of winning and that I would be able to apply for shared parental leave in my previous job as a lawyer. To make things worse, having actually won the election when I said that I was not going to—I am honoured to be here, of course—the local BBC news team had noticed a slight bump and announced our pregnancy to 1.3 million people in the region without checking first. When we received all these text messages saying, “Congratulations!”, we thought that they were about the election, but we suddenly realised that they were about Ophelia. We had not yet had the three-month scan, so we wondered how on earth everybody knew. My wife therefore had a bit of a bumpy road on the way to becoming a mum involved with a parliamentarian.

My wife is also my constituent, and she has said that it is okay for me to share her experiences over the past year, which have been quite distressing. It has been quite difficult for me to support her. She was the director of public policy at an energy company called Open Energi, which receives Government funding, and doing very well in that senior role. After the announcement of her pregnancy, she was told that her role was no longer needed and that she was being made redundant. Having worked so hard to achieve what she had, that was very distressing for her, but she is a formidable woman, so she decided to take her employer to a tribunal.

As a litigant in person, while pregnant, she cross-examined her former employers in front of a judge, who said that since the Supreme Court had decided that fees were illegal for employment tribunals, his time was increasingly being taken up by “these type” of cases. Can Members imagine the environment and the atmosphere? As one of only two women among 10 people in the tribunal room—there is no gender balance in employment tribunal hearings or sexual discrimination cases—the experience was clearly distressing, and I have now taken up that matter with the president of the employment tribunals. My wife sadly lost that case, so perhaps we need a debate about the application of burden of proof rules in this country, because it is down to women to establish a burden of proof that discrimination could have taken place, but employers can bring forward witnesses and documents to show that it did not take place—at the time, it was said that documents did not exist—and that makes it difficult for women to bring such claims.

As a father and a husband, it is perfectly sensible for me to want to lean in. It is normal for dads to want to lean in. I want my wife to achieve her aspirations as much as possible, and we want to give our children the best upbringing together. I support the motion not just because Parliament should be in line with what is happening in the rest of the country, but because it gives us the opportunity to set the tone for what we expect in a modern Britain. We should look at reforms for companies that receive Government money and at the judiciary—perhaps at even having a gender balance—and then we could achieve change in the wider economy, too. I commend the motion to the House and look forward to supporting in any way that I can.

Sexual Harassment in Parliament

Darren Jones Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I say again that it is important that there are independent investigations of allegations, not mediation, and that we use every effort to ensure that those who make allegations against another individual are properly listened to and supported, and that those allegations are properly investigated.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

On the way to this debate, I overheard two Members joking about this issue and asking, in humour, about whether they had “fessed up” to their sexual harassment. As a man, I stand up to call that out. It is not “bantz”; it is unacceptable. I also understand that in response to some journalists presenting testimony from victims with evidence of sexual harassment, some Members of this House have instructed lawyers to gag the stories that those journalists are pursuing. Will the Leader of the House ensure that the members of staff who use this service will have access to legal advice? What will she do to ensure that victims’ voices are not silenced due to legal process?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I say again that it is vital that we take a grip of this issue and that we look quickly—I mean in a matter of days—at what can be done cross-party to establish a proper, independent grievance procedure that all staff across both Houses can access, so that their concerns can be heard, properly investigated and properly acted upon.

Scheduling of Parliamentary Business

Darren Jones Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) and my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for their maiden speeches. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend, who, as I was, was one of the unexpected winners that brought my party some steps closer to being the party of government.

With the greatest of respect to right hon. and hon. colleagues, I have sometimes been a bit disappointed by my experiences as a new Member of Parliament. The first disappointment I commented on was the lack of answers to questions and our inability to hear either during Prime Minister’s questions. Indeed, a tweet I made on the subject was viewed more than half a million times and retweeted 10,000 times by the public, who no doubt share that concern. The fact that I have to take part in this debate today as a new Member without the ability to do anything substantive as an Opposition Member until, allegedly, October, is adding to my disappointment.

I, like many others, have looked towards politics since childhood as the route to achieving change in this country. I, like many other Members, have worked hard for years, election after election, to be elected to this House to try to achieve that change. Like in the children’s novel, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, I always assumed that if I made it to the end of the yellow brick road to this place I might find the wonderful wizard of government. Instead, much like Dorothy and her obviously disappointed dog, Toto, I have failed to find a Government of mandates, leadership or stature and instead, behind the curtain, I have found a group of middle-aged men protecting their egos in a bid to take over from a lame duck Prime Minister.

[Andrea Leadsom]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I challenge the hon. Gentleman on whether he just called me a middle-aged man?

[Mr Speaker]

I hope he did not; that would be a serious error. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not accusing the Leader of the House of being a middle-aged man, and if he could confirm that, honour will be served.

[Darren Jones]

Of course I would not class the Leader of the House in that group of middle-aged men—but I am sure that she knows each and every one of them as they vie for the leadership of her party and, perhaps, try to take her position.

When Britain faces arguably her most challenging time since the second world war, with decisions taken here in this Parliament deciding what type of country Britain will be for the next generation, it seems to me that the Government need to step up to allow for accountability and opposition. As my hon. colleagues have said, this debate is about the lack of time being given to us, with Opposition day and Back-Bench business debates seemingly in short supply on the basis of simple parliamentary mathematics.

Many Government Members who campaigned to take back control and argued for parliamentary sovereignty for this place will no doubt share my concern. A. V. Dicey, the father of parliamentary constitutional theory, would be turning in his grave; the theories on which he built from Montesquieu on the separation of powers and the trias politica, which mean that power should be balanced between the Executive and the legislature, are not being followed because the Opposition are not being allowed to hold the Government to account. The balance is not as it should be. The taking back of control to this Parliament, as opposed to the Executive, is failing. With a Government entirely consumed by their chaotic management of Brexit, seemingly more interested in self-preservation than the national interest, it must be left to the Opposition to act as a party of government with a mandate for government in our manifesto to ensure proper debate on the issues about which my constituents are concerned.

Dare I say that it is no longer acceptable for Ministers to stand up and say, “Everything will be fine; we are a great nation”? Blind patriotism detached from the real world will only show us as a country out of touch and out of control. That is why we must be allowed proper time for debate in this House, to help the Government understand the reality of their inaction. My frustration at the news yesterday was a prime example, as Ministers decided to waste their time by briefing against each other instead of getting on with the job in hand. That frustration might have been calmed by the knowledge that I would have the opportunity to debate the issues of the day in a grown-up, professional and respectful fashion in this House, in the way my constituents expect of us and for the reasons they elected me to this House in the first place. But it seems that that most normal of asks is being thwarted by the Government, so it is with great disappointment that I find myself having to make this speech in support of the motion from my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), arguing for what should be normal debate in this Parliament.

Although you might not be able to resolve my disappointment, Mr Speaker, at what I found behind the curtain of power, I hope that this House will put the national interest above power games and party political concerns and allow proper time for debate and scrutiny.