Birth of Prince George of Cambridge

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Any birth is a joy, and this is a joy for the people of this country. I am particularly happy because a great grandfather in the duchess’s family was a coal miner in the area where I worked for 20 very happy years. I hope that the inherent spirit and generosity of miners and their care for others will flow through this child’s blood, so that he can play his part, along with whoever takes over from us in this House in years to come, to prevent such things as I heard about on Saturday morning: a 13-year-old girl in my constituency who has just had a spinal operation is sleeping in a camp bed, because of over-overcrowding, in her grandmother’s house. I hope that whoever takes over from us will be able to work together, along with the royal family, to make something like that a thing of the past.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, nemine contradicente,

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty offering the congratulations of this House to Her Majesty, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall and Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the birth of Prince George; and signifying to Her Majesty the great pleasure given to the House by this happy event.

Ordered,

That the said Address be presented to Her Majesty by such Members of the House as are of Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council or of Her Majesty’s Household.

Resolved, nemine contradicente,

That a Message be sent to Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, to offer the congratulations of this House on the birth of Prince George and expressing the warm wishes of the House for his good health and happiness.— (The Prime Minister.)

Ordered,

That the said Message be presented to Her Majesty by such Members of the House as are of Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council or of Her Majesty’s Household.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

David Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I have spent a lot of time this summer working with a veterans group in Tyneside called Forward Assist, which works with people who have left the forces and fallen through the cracks in society. Talking to those men and women made me realise what we ask them to do. We do not just ask them to go around the world and to be prepared to die for us; we also ask them to be prepared to kill for us. We ask them to do abnormal things. Most people would run away when someone was firing at them, but we ask those people to run into the gunfire. Those people are our constituents and the husbands, wives, sons and daughters of our constituents. They say to us clearly that if we are going to commit them to such action again, we must do it on the very best evidence. We have heard today that we do not have that evidence or the certainty that we need.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with the many Members who have expressed concerns about the apparent timetable for action before the recall of the House? Does he agree that being seen to act through cruise missiles or airstrikes should not be confused with taking more cautious but effective action against the regime?

[Mr Anderson]

It is clear that we are being driven by a timetable that has no basis in anything other than appeasing America, which says that the red line that it drew last year has been crossed. We saw the same thing 10 years ago when we were driven by the deadline of an American President—the deadline for him to get re-elected in 2004. We were wrong to follow America then and we would be wrong to follow it now.

The Labour amendment helps to bring clarity, but I make it clear to my Front Benchers that if the amendment is passed, it will be no more than a checklist. It will be a job sheet for the Government and the Opposition to work through so that they can say to the people of this country that they have the support of the United Nations and that there is more clarity and better evidence before they bring us back here to vote again. I want to make it very clear to my Front Benchers and to Government Front Benchers that even if the motion goes through amended, it will not be an automatic green light for anybody in this House to say that we are supporting military action. It will be a statement that we will come back in a given period with good information and good evidence, that we will have another debate and that we will then decide whether to support military action.

The ghost of Tony Blair haunts this debate, but the ghost of Hans Blix haunts it even more. We should have listened to him in 2003. We should have given him time and waited. We ignored the one independent voice in the arena. We should not do that again. We should be very clear about what we are doing tonight. We are giving the Government nothing more than the remit to improve what is happening. We are not giving the green light for any military action whatsoever.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Villiers]

We have already started on that work by bringing the G8 to Northern Ireland to demonstrate what a fabulous place it is to do business. We have also agreed an extensive economic package with the First and Deputy First Ministers, with extra funding for PEACE IV, extra structural funds and the retention of 100% assisted area status, which has enabled the Northern Ireland Executive to create 3,000 new jobs in the past three months alone.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

6. What her policy is on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mike Penning)]

The Government would like to see the issue resolved on the basis of consensus among the parties in Northern Ireland, and we remain open to taking whatever action might be required should there be such a consensus.

[Mr Anderson]

The Minister is aware, as is everybody in the House, that a Bill of Rights was an integral part of the 1998 Belfast agreement. We have waited 15 years for it. How much longer must we wait while people cannot make their minds up? Surely the Government have a responsibility to ensure that this moves forward and should not just pass the buck on to people in Northern Ireland.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

As a former coal miner who became a care worker in the 1980s, looking after frail elderly people—particularly frail elderly women suffering from dementia, incontinence and the inability to bathe and dress themselves—I have nothing but empathy for the family of Margaret Thatcher. They will feel an immense sense of loss that will almost certainly be tinged with a sense of relief. They will feel guilty about that relief, but they should not; it is a normal, healthy attitude when a loved one has been brought low by the reality of our mortality.

As a former miner and trade union leader and as the Member for a constituency whose history was built on the hard work of ordinary men and women, it would be remiss of me not to record the reality of life for people in such constituencies because of policies promoted by Margaret Thatcher. She came to power promising to bring harmony where there was discord. I can safely say that in mining communities up and down the country she brought the opposite. Most mining areas were stable, secure and safe communities where we worked hard and played hard. We did not complain about the difficult conditions in which we worked. All we asked for was the chance to carry on doing that work.

We had built communities over decades, in some cases over centuries, and they had stood the test of time. We built sports centres, swimming pools and cricket and football clubs. We built libraries and developed brass bands, and we ran art classes that gained international fame. That was part and parcel of our culture, but none of it seemed to matter to Margaret Thatcher. She believed that we were no longer any use to the nation because we were deemed “uneconomic”.

On what basis was that case made? I believe that the main reason why the United Kingdom coal industry was classed as uneconomic was that we insisted on running safe coal mines, unlike those in the rest of the world. Our history was longer than that of other coal industries. It was littered with numerous examples of avoidable deaths, and we as a country agreed to invest in the best quality equipment in the world and in training people to produce coal as safely as possible. One of the great disgraces in this country is that we import more than 50 million tonnes of coal a year from countries where men are killed in their thousands, yet we closed down an industry that was the safest and most technically advanced in the world. There is still blood on the coal that is burned in British power stations, but it is American blood, Russian blood, Chinese blood or Colombian blood, so that is okay. Well, it should not be okay. As a country, we have millions of tons of coal beneath our feet.

The other area where the so-called economic justification falls down was in the failure of Margaret Thatcher and her Governments to take into account the social cost in communities such as mine, where there was no alternative employment for people who were losing their jobs, and particularly for their children. The village where I lived had seen coal mining for almost two centuries. In a matter of months after closure, we were gripped by a wave of petty crime—burglary and car crime—mostly related to drugs. We have never recovered from it. When someone wakes in the middle of the night and goes downstairs because their home is being burgled, and finds out the next day that it was the son of one of their best friends, it puts into perspective a community that was built on reliance and taking care of each other. That takes a lot of recovering from.

The situation was compounded by the crass decision in 1988 to sell off houses owned by the National Coal Board to private landlords. They brought in people from outside the area who had no respect for the community or for the houses they were given. Twenty years later, houses that were sold to private landlords for £4,000 were bought back by the council for £60,000 of public money, only for them to be pulled down because of the failure of the policy agreed as part and parcel of the decision to ruin the coal industry in this country.

Over the last 48 hours, a lot has been said about the harsh nature of some of the responses to the news of Mrs Thatcher’s death, but the House needs to understand the reason. Before, during and ever since the attack on the coal industry and the people in it, Governments of both colours were warned of the impact of the policy. We have seen the reaction of people whose frustration is heartfelt. They have lost their sense of place in society. They are being made to feel worthless. They are being cast aside like a pair of worn-out pit boots. They have seen their community fall apart and their children’s opportunities disappear. They are not being listened to, and sadly some of that has boiled over this week.

After today’s debate those people may never be listened to again, and Mrs Thatcher’s lack of empathy, her intransigence, her failure to see the other side and her refusal to even look at the other side has left them bitter and resentful. They are hitting out in a way that is uncharacteristic of miners and their communities. Her accusation that the enemy within was in the mining areas of this country still rankles. I was not an enemy within. My hon. Friends the Members for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell), and for Lanark and Hamilton East (Mr Hood) were not the enemy within. Nor were people like Joe Green, who died on the picket line at Ferry Bridge in Yorkshire, David Jones who was killed at Ollerton colliery, Terry Leaves and Jimmy Jones who were killed in south Wales, or three young boys—Darren Holmes, aged 15, Paul Holmes, aged 14, and Paul Womersley, aged 14—who died scavenging for coal to try to keep their families warm.

It is understandable that people feel bitter that we are here today to remember the legacy of Mrs Thatcher. All we wanted was the right to work, not just for ourselves but for our kids. It was taken away. The funeral next week will take place 20 years to the day since Easington colliery was closed. Please do not blame the people in my part of the world if they choose that day to pay a tribute very different from that being paid in the House today.

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. We should be clear, however, that David Nicholson has apologised publicly and repeatedly for the failure of the strategic health authority of which he was in charge for some important months during this whole approach.

The report makes it clear that we should not try to seek individual scapegoats, and I believe that Sir Robert Francis said this morning that too often that is what happens after a report is published: find someone to take responsibility, fire them out the barrel of the gun, then the job is done. That is not the case: in my view, David Nicholson has a deep affection for our national health service, does a good job on the NHS Commissioning Board, and he has thoroughly apologised and recognised his responsibilities for what went wrong in Stafford. The trust board was overwhelmingly responsible. Clearly all the other organisations, including the strategic health authority, need to learn the lessons, and I think that Sir David Nicholson has done so.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Speaking as a former care worker and president of Unison, which is the biggest trade union representing people in health and social care, I am convinced that members of that union and other health workers will welcome the commitment today on developing a culture of zero harm and quality care as the priority, and they will not be frightened of a new inspections regime. However, unless we have a system alongside that which makes sure they have time to do the job and spend time with patients, as well as the resources, both physical and financial, to make that work properly, unfortunately we will have this debate again about another situation in a decade’s time?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Clearly, a health service facing growing demands requires growing resources. We are growing those resources, but they are limited, so at the same time we must meet the challenge of increasing productivity and cutting waste in our NHS, which we are doing. I do not believe that that should impact on patient care. Every public sector body has to look at how it can become more productive and efficient, but that must not be at the expense of patient care, and that is important for the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, let me say again that at Christmas time it is right to pay tribute to our brave police officers—men and women who look after us round the clock and do an extremely good job. But the point that my hon. Friend has made is important. A police officer posing as a member of the public and sending an e-mail potentially to blacken the name of a Cabinet Minister is a very serious issue, and it does need to be seriously investigated. The Metropolitan Police Service is conducting a thorough and well resourced investigation to get to the truth of this matter as quickly as possible. The Independent Police Complaints Commission will be supervising the investigation, and I think we should allow it to get to the truth.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Q2. Despite what the Prime Minister has just said in response to our leader, the facts on the ground are these: the classic poverty-related diseases of rickets and tuberculosis are on the increase in this country, the number of food banks is increasing, kids are going to school hungry, and we have a stagnant economy. Is the Prime Minister proud that his policies are taking this country back to the 1930s?

[The Prime Minister]

I would hope that the hon. Gentleman, with the constituency that he represents, would today be celebrating the fact that Nissan has announced another £125 million investment in our country. This is now one of the biggest and most successful car plants anywhere in Britain. Yes, we face tough economic times, but the fact is that we have over 1 million new private sector jobs, and last year and this year saw some of the fastest rates of new business creation. That is what is happening in our country. Yes, there are tough times and tough choices, but our economy is rebalancing and we should recognise that.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I have been invited to go to New Zealand and it has been suggested that membership of the Liberal Democrats should be made illegal; I am not going to supplement all of that by commenting on where I end up in a reality TV show. Of course I think it is unwise. Whatever party we come from, we are all elected to do a job for our constituents. That is what people rightly expect of us, and it is no wonder that people have been so unhappy about the decision of one Member of this House to eat insects in the jungle instead.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

T13. It was claimed last week that one of the reasons why we had police and crime commissioner elections was that police authorities had no democratic legitimacy—indeed the Conservative party chairman said that PCCs are 5 million times more legitimate than police authorities were. If that is the case, what legitimacy is held by Ministers of State who have no direct democratic input from this country but who are, in fact, appointed in a way that is much less transparent than appointments to police authorities? Where is the legitimacy for any Minister of State?

Hillsborough

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, but we received the report at 9.30 am, so it clearly has not been possible to make those considerations. The Government often—not always—get a public inquiry report and are able to consider it and put more into lining up all the elements that must come next. In this situation, the report was rightly given to the families first. I have had time for a very brief look and some explanation, but the sort of questions he asks will take longer to answer.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

In welcoming the Prime Minister’s statement and thanking him and the Leader of the Opposition for what they have said, may I raise one point with the Prime Minister? He has mentioned “new evidence” and “new documentation” a number of times, but the truth is that it is not new—the vast majority was old but buried and concealed. We have heard that the Prime Minister at the time was advised by her private secretary that

“the defensive and…‘close to deceitful’ behaviour of senior South Yorkshire officers was ‘depressingly familiar.’”

We have also been told that the report says that no Government have tried to conceal the truth. The real question for politicians is this: what failures did politicians create in not trying to expose the truth?

[The Prime Minister]

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on it. When I said “new evidence”, I suppose I meant “newly published evidence”. The inquiry has not uncovered things that did not previously exist—they existed but were not published, so their publication is what is new today. The really important point he makes will take careful consideration, and those in government at the time will want to think this through and provide their own answers. The sense I get from the limited look I have had at the report is that advice went to Ministers that the behaviour was “depressingly familiar” and that the chief constable should resign. The question then is whether the output of that advice resulted in enough action by that Government and subsequent ones to blow away the false narrative that was building up. That is a very important question that people will want to consider.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look closely at that. I quite understand, as a parent of a very disabled child who had cerebral palsy, that if there was anything that a parent could do to get their child out of the wheelchair, they would want that to happen. I have looked at this case, and NICE actually says that the operation is a treatment option for some children and young people, but it cautions against the potentially serious complications, because it is an irreversible operation with risks involved. However, I will look at the matter very carefully and see whether there is anything more that NICE should consider.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Q11. Whenever the Prime Minister is faced with industrial dispute in this country, he always advises the trade unions to go for reconciliation and arbitration. In the interests of fairness, will he speak to his new Health Secretary and ask him to involve himself in the dispute at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust, to ask its board to do what the union is asking for and refer the dispute to the NHS Staff Council for resolution?

[The Prime Minister]

The new Health Secretary will have been listening carefully to that, and I am sure he will be able to discuss the matter with the hon. Gentleman.

EU Council

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That goes back to one of the problems with the referendum in the 1970s, when people did not receive a full explanation of all that was envisaged by the original treaty of Rome. I am clear that I do not support ever closer union. I do not want to see an ever greater transfer of powers from nation states to Brussels. However, I think that Britain and the European Union can work very well together to maximise the single market and our co-operation on matters such as foreign affairs, while ensuring that it is in our national interest.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Was the financial transactions tax spoken about at the weekend, whether formally or informally? Does the Prime Minister not realise that the people of this country would welcome that as a way of showing that bankers are being made accountable for their appalling behaviour?

[The Prime Minister]

The financial transactions tax was mentioned, because the growth compact says clearly that a number of eurozone members will go ahead with it. I do not support it and Britain will not take part, because unless there is agreement all over the world, the transactions will go to jurisdictions that do not have the tax. That would cut our jobs, our investment and our GDP. The people who would pay for such a tax would be not the bankers, but the pensioners, and I do not think that that is sensible.