Debate on the Address

David Amess Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea). It was good to hear about his passion for the role of Members in this House and participation in its debates.

I am delighted to welcome this Queen’s Speech following my two able colleagues who proposed and seconded the motion. I single out my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who made an absolutely superb speech; I tweeted that it was a Tina Turner moment—“Simply the Best”. She was a credit to the House and her constituency.

It seems as though there are only a few days before we face a general election. What we needed in the Queen’s Speech was a mature approach to this last year in government and in the legislative programme. That is what we have got from the Government today. Eleven new Bills were set out and they covered a wide range of subjects. Before the Leader of the Opposition stood up, it was put about that this would be a zombie Queen’s Speech. It was far from that. I notice that that term has been dropped from the commentary given by Her Majesty’s Opposition. They can no longer call it a zombie programme because it is a full one that builds on and consolidates our economic progress and the way in which this Government have been taking the country forward. It is a credit to my colleagues that far from being finished, they are showing that they are preparing for the election and, I hope, to leading this country in a pure Conservative Government next time.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

A real Conservative Government.

[Mrs Gillan]

As my hon. Friend says, a real Conservative Government.

This Queen’s Speech does not bring forward much-required measures on immigration and on enshrining the EU referendum in law, but the Prime Minister and my colleagues in the Cabinet in the Conservative party have been held back by their coalition partners. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood)—I want that referendum. If a Conservative Member is high up in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, I very much hope that they will take forward the valuable work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton).

On the economy, I was pleased to hear the reassurance that we will continue with our tax cuts and reducing the deficit, and the news on personal allowances. I particularly welcome the proposal to recognise marriage in the tax system—something for which my constituents have been asking for a long time and hoping we would fulfil. I am glad that it is finally being brought forward in this Queen’s Speech.

I am pleased that we are again paying attention to small businesses’ needs with the small business, enterprise and employment Bill. Access to finance has always been a problem for small businesses in my constituency. In many instances, they have said that it is the prime factor holding them back from development. If the Government can speed this matter forward, we will all welcome it.

On the provisions on child care, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) and I have something in common. I am passionate about women being able to go back to work if they want to, and having the correct child care provisions is extremely important. There has been a 27% increase in child care costs since 2009. Across the country, the average weekly cost of child care is about £109 for a 25-hour nursery placement for a child under two, and having a childminder for 25 hours could cost £99. The problem is that returning to work is often a marginal decision for professional women. Yesterday I talked to a physiotherapist who works in the national health service and who has just given birth to her second child. She would like to return to work, but she did the calculations and found that, on the basis of working three days a week, it would be a marginal decision as to whether she did so. Yet she is desperate to go back, not only because she has to keep up her professional qualification but because she is devoted to the national health service. I hope that some of our provisions will assist women like her and others so that they can go back to work and make the valuable contribution right across the economy that women do make.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I welcome the measures contained in the Gracious Speech—well, I say I do, but I am not sure about the one on plastic bags. Following what the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) said, however, I shall blame the Liberal party if it proves to be unpopular with my constituents. That seems to be the name of the game at the moment.

I thought that the state opening of Parliament was, as ever, a great occasion, but, of course, this House continues to be diminished as far as I am concerned. I have spoken on every occasion on the first day of debate on the Gracious Speech and we only have to look around to see that we are struggling somewhat for numbers. Whether that is for other reasons, I do not know, but it is symptomatic of what has happened in the House. The powers of Ministers, who are splendid people whatever party they belong to, seem to be increasingly diminished as they have lost powers to unelected bodies and quangos, not to mention the European Union. Given its history and symbolism, we should cherish the state opening of Parliament.

We are in the uncharted territory of fixed-term Parliaments, which I had not expected and am not sure about. Usually, when we come to the final Gracious Speech we expect to struggle for available time, but we have a full year, so no doubt we will be able to see the proposals on to the statute book. But again I say to the House that there is no point in our legislating if it is hit and miss about who is caught, so laws must be robustly enforced.

I congratulate the mover and seconder of the Loyal Address on their interesting contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) positively sparkled. In every sense she made a splendid speech and I would not have expected less from her given her wonderful performance in “Splash!”.

We come here following local and European elections. I know what our parties are saying, but I hope that we are taking notice of the electorate’s messages, which we ignore at our peril. I do not know whether the Gracious Speech was in any sense re-written, but at the end it says that other measures will be laid before us, so I look forward to hearing what those measures will be.

On a positive note I welcome the small business Bill. We are a nation of small shopkeepers, and my constituency in particular has many small and medium-sized businesses, such as “Strangeways Boutique Salon” in Leigh-on-Sea, which was recently named in the top 100 apprenticeship employers list. The Bill has come at the right time as the Bank of England recently announced that loans to smaller businesses fell by £700 million in the first three months of the year. The banks have learned nothing from the crash, and it is about time there was a root and branch shake-up of Barclays bank. I am not at all convinced by any of the statements made by the chairman of that bank. Small businesses throughout the country have been struggling to get the vital cash flow, despite the banks saying that they need to grow, and for some it is leading to insolvency. However, I am delighted that the Government are on the side of businesses, as the Bill proves.

One problem that small businesses face is that of late payment, and the Government have led by example in ensuring that they deal with that in their own bills. All Departments now include in their contracts the requirement for main contractors to pay suppliers, providing additional financial security. The Bill takes that principle and applies it to the private sector by tackling late payments and strengthening the prompt payment code, which improves transparency and creates a small business bank.

I also welcome the legislation that the Government plan to introduce on exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts. It is crazy that once someone signs a contract that has no given hours, they are barred from working for any other company. That is undoubtedly a massive hindrance for those who want a flexible working pattern but want to work more hours. The labour force survey recently estimated that more than half a million people are on zero-hours contracts. That is a significant number of people and I am delighted that we are legislating on that.

My constituency is well known for having the most centenarians in the country, which has put us in “The Guinness Book of Records”, so I obviously have a vested interest in pensions. I can well remember in 1997, the former Labour Prime Minister, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, destroying pensions in this country at one fell swoop. Here we are in 2014 trying to put them back together again. We inherited a broken pension system, and the Bill will give pensioners the freedom to take control of their own finances and to take a significant amount of their pensions on retirement without facing aggressively high taxes as a punishment. The current system stifles innovation and allows pensioners little choice about how they invest their pension, whereas the new system will allow far more competition, choice and consumer control. I must politely disagree with the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), who mentioned housing, because I enjoyed the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and support much of what he said. I think it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) who said that our pension systems need to catch up with those in the United States and Denmark.

I am also happy to see a change to collective pensions, which will provide better value through the pooling of funds of thousands of pensioners, thereby spreading costs and risk in a similar way to car insurance. This will also remove the necessity for pensioners to buy an annuity. Instead, pension schemes will pay money directly to them, avoiding the third party and providing better value for those facing retirement. These pension reforms are more flexible, provide better value and give pensioners much more choice.

I recently asked the Justice Secretary a parliamentary question on support for victims of modern-day slavery. It is shocking that thousands of people are still victims of slavery through forced labour or in the sex industry. A former Member of this House has done great work on this issue, and the Government seem to have included it in the proposed legislation. Modern-day slavery is a scourge, and I am delighted that the Government will tackle it. I am happy to hear that the Bill will increase the maximum sentence for human trafficking and provide courts with more powers so that we can give the clear message that this crime has no place in modern Britain.

I am sure that if the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who represents the Green party, was here she would violently disagree with me about fracking, but I am pleased to see measures on it. It seems to be one of the most sensible options for the Britain’s future energy supply, being both cleaner and more environmentally friendly than other fossil fuels, providing massive potential for investment. I have been told by one of the lobbyists that there may be an opportunity to amend the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, of which I was the promoter, which will help to underpin what we are trying to do on warm homes.

The Queen’s Speech did not include a measure on the EU referendum. It is healthy that the Labour and Conservative parties and the Liberal Democrats have set out clearly where they stand on this issue, but on the doorstep it was clearly not understood. The general public do not understand the need to legislate to have a referendum and they do not understand that if the Conservatives win the next election it will take the Prime Minister time to renegotiate the treaty. That clearly is one message on which the Conservative party should reflect. I do not know whether it will be possible, but I hope that if the Conservative party wins the next election we can quickly renegotiate our membership and say that we will have a referendum in 2016. If I was first in the private Members’ ballot, I would promote a Bill to secure a referendum. If a Conservative Member promotes such a Bill, I would be interested to discover whether it would be the Government’s intention to invoke the Parliament Act in the event of efforts to talk it out similar to those faced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). I hope that we would use the Parliament Act.

As an animal lover, I was disappointed that the wild animals in circuses Bill was not in the Gracious Speech; I hope that we can reflect on that and introduce it later. As far as a data-sharing Bill is concerned, I do not think it a good idea to allow Government Departments to share data on people who owe debt to public bodies. It seems that more and more private data are being made more widely accessible. Can we really trust Government Departments to share that information safely and securely? I can see the headlines.

While I am on the subject of the civil service, I should say that I absolutely approve of the legislation in the Gracious Speech to crack down on the ridiculous situation in which highly paid civil servants and NHS executives get large redundancy pay-offs before getting a similar job in the same year. Senior civil servants and NHS executives, such as those at the mental health foundation in the South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, or SEPT, which serves my constituency, are paid far too much. That is a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money.

Perhaps the Government will consider addressing an anomaly in the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Those who request information should be identified so that the public and organisations are aware of who has made an inquiry. It is ridiculous that there is anonymity at the moment. I urge the Government to address the provisions that the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair added, stating that the law should not apply to him—at least, it is reasonable to assume that he added them; as we all now know, Mr Blair’s letters to President George Bush during the Iraq era are not to be published. That is ridiculous. I feel strongly about the issue as one who voted for the war against my better judgment. I want to know whether I was misled on that occasion when, unlike now, the House was packed. It is wrong that, having waited four years for the Chilcot report, we are going to get only edited letters. That is absolutely unsatisfactory and I expect the Government whom I support to do something about it.

It is good to see that the Deregulation Bill, which removes unnecessary and burdensome legislation, has carried through from the last Session. However, one area that is not regulated enough is that of abortion clinics. The last time they were investigated, bad and even illegal practice was found to be rife throughout the system. Given that the Metropolitan police are currently deciding how to proceed against 67 doctors investigated for pre-signing abortion certificates without knowing anything about the women involved, it is incumbent on Parliament, if we are to be worth while, to put mechanisms in place to ensure best practice. That should mean annual, unannounced inspections of a percentage of abortion clinics. That is not happening at the moment. It is crazy that we have so many unnecessary regulations and laws, while on an issue about life itself, which is what we are all about, there seems to be no regulation at all.

The final measure that I would have liked to have seen in the Gracious Speech is one on a national cemetery. There are national cemeteries all over the world but we do not have one. Westminster abbey and Highgate cemetery accommodate a few notable people, but it is about time that our heroines and heroes—

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Amess]

I think I know what my hon. Friend is going to say.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and for claiming the gift of second sight; I shall ask him my question anyway. Does he believe that the right place to put a national cemetery would be the National Memorial Arboretum in Lichfield—a hop, skip and small jump across the River Mease from my constituency?

[Mr Amess]

My hon. Friend has thrown me. Recently, we visited a national cemetery in a different country; I thought he was going to say how wonderful that was. I am not going to get involved in the merits of Lichfield. A national cemetery there would probably be splendid, although I am rather tempted to suggest Southend-on-Sea. That said, it should, I suspect, be in the centre of the country.

Finally, I should mention that the Government were said to be running out of steam. As far as I am concerned, after the next election it is full steam ahead with a Conservative Government who are not involved in this wretched coalition.