Party Funding

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I remind Members that they are expected to use their mobile devices discreetly and without impairing the decorum of the Chamber? I say gently to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) that he should not stand up, seeking to catch my eye, while fiddling with his device.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I promise not to fiddle with my device, Mr Speaker.

Peter Cruddas was reported yesterday giving, as an example of how to influence policy, discussion of the Tobin tax with the Prime Minister the day before he met Angela Merkel. Is that true? Did that conversation take place and, if it did, what role was Peter Cruddas playing—treasurer of the party or private business man?

[Mr Maude]

As anybody who has anything to do with any financial transactions and any interest in London continuing to be the most vigorous international financial centre in the world opposes the Tobin tax, if he did say that, it would not be particularly surprising.

Trade Union Funding

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Owen, to serve under your chairmanship.

Can we just think about the people that we are talking about? They are public servants who represent millions of public servants, whose only role in life is to deliver quality services for the people we are fortunate to represent. These people are not the enemy within.

I agree with what the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) said about the Tory party’s track record not being anti-union. The Tory party supported Solidarnosc in the early 1980s, but it did not support the shipyard workers in Sunderland when it destroyed the Sunderland shipyards. The Tories supported the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, but they did not support it while they were destroying the British coal industry. The Tories then forgot about them and put them on the dole along with the other 200,000 miners who lost their jobs because of the Tories’ policies. Only last week the Prime Minister had some trade unions into No. 10 to talk about the health reforms. The one thing those three examples have in common is that the Tories liked those groups as long as they were doing their bidding. When the unions are doing the bidding of their members, somehow they are no longer friends of the Tory party.

I am proud to have been a member of a trade union for 43 years. I have been at the sharp end. Unlike most people here, I have not just read about this. I was an elected lay official for my union, released from work for 15 years by Newcastle city council to represent a membership of 7,000 and a work force of 16,000. My hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), who spoke earlier about industrial relations, has got it absolutely right: we have lost sight of what industrial relations means. It is about developing a relationship with people and between management and the unions. Most of the time is spent avoiding problems. It is about building relationships, so that we can say, “Look, we need to go and see these people, because if we do not see them, things will go off the rails.”

There are huge examples. I spent many hours with home care workers, encouraging them to take redundancies or to take ill health retirement. That was a huge step for them, but they put their faith in me and that helped my authority in being able to respond to the cuts being imposed on them. I did thousands of disciplinaries and grievances. I was involved in appeals, social security appeals and industrial tribunals. If I had not been there doing that, those people would have been unrepresented. It is somehow being argued that taxpayers should not be doing this and that the unions should fund it all. If the unions fund it all, as the Tory party knows, no union in the world could have sub levels high enough to do that. It would also lose the hands-on experience of people who were working on the ground and at the coal face—I literally worked at the coal face—who try to make things better for the people they employ and the people they represent.

Where has this debate come from? We all know that this debate has not come from the employers, because I work closely with the public sector employers in Gateshead, such as the council, the college and the hospital—I see the chief executive on a regular basis—and not one of them has said to me, “Let’s get rid of facility time.” We have some strong, hard relationships. As we sit here today, the unions in Gateshead council are sitting with the management trying to work out how they make 350 people redundant with as little damage to the people and the service as possible.

It would appear that the truth is that the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who led this debate, was not strong enough to control her officers, because her officers have control of whether members have time off. If the council and the officers do not agree that the trade unions have time off, it does not happen. If she was not strong enough to control her officers, that is a fault with her and her administration, not with those who represent the people on the ground.

We know where this has come from: it has come from the storm-troopers of the TaxPayers Alliance. If we are talking about storm-troopers, we all know what Hitler’s attitude was to trade unions: get them out of the way, lock them up and destroy them. I am sure that no Member would support anything that Hitler or the people he represented did, but that is the slippery slope that we are on with this debate.

Industrial Action

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

In his report, Lord Hutton made it clear that he did not want public sector pension reform to be a race to the bottom, and we totally agree with that. We want as many people as possible to have access to a decent pension in retirement, but we want the public sector pensions that persist after reforms have been put in place to continue to be decent pensions that are sustainable for the long-term future. That is what we are aiming at, and that is what we will achieve.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

In relation to turnout, could the right hon. Gentleman reflect on the fact that only 39% of his constituents voted for him and only 27% of the constituents of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury voted for him? We do not need any lectures about turnout. Notwithstanding the confidentiality of some of the negotiations, will the Minister put in the Library a document showing exactly where we are with the negotiations and, in particular, where we are with the local government negotiations, where, as far as I am aware, no offer has been made?

[Mr Maude]

My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary came and stood at the Dispatch Box on 2 November and made an offer. What is going on in the discussions on the four schemes is that the elements that he announced are being worked over, in conjunction with the unions, to work out what the best configuration is for the future. All these work forces are different—they have different salary profiles, different demographics, different age profiles—and the right arrangement of those moving parts within each scheme will also differ. That is where the negotiations are taking place, in order to arrive at the right agreed outcome. That is happening at the moment, so the idea that no offer has been made is completely irrelevant and immaterial.

G20

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I learned a very important lesson from our experience in the exchange rate mechanism: never fix interest rates in a way like that because you may need a different interest rate in your economy from that applying elsewhere. That is why I am so completely opposed to Britain ever joining the euro. I could not be clearer about that—unlike the Labour party, which spent 13 years planning and preparing for our eventual admission to the euro. We must allow other countries to make their own choices, and the choice of people in Greece—it is their business—seems to be that they want to stay in the euro. That is not the choice I would necessarily make—or that Mrs Bone, or even Mr Bone, would necessarily make—but that is the choice they seem to want to make and we have to support them in it.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Another report came out today from the Institute for Public Policy Research showing that 32,000 jobs in the public sector were lost in the north-east last year while the number of private sector jobs also went down, and the number of public sector jobs in London and the south-east went up. Why should the Europeans trust the action plan from the Prime Minister when his inaction plan in this country is destroying the regions of this country?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course there has to be a rebalancing of public sector and private sector jobs in our economy, and of course there are difficult circumstances faced by different parts of the country, but in the north-east we have seen the expansion of the Nissan plant, and we have the new Hitachi train plant going into the north-east as well. What we need to do as a country is to become more competitive—to start manufacturing and making things again, which will benefit all the regions of our country.

Public Disorder

David Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Notwithstanding the very heavy taxation of the Prime Minister’s knee muscles, I am inclined to continue and accommodate the remaining Members who wish to contribute, but I urge colleagues to help me to help them by being brief.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I was genuinely saddened to hear the Prime Minister’s response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) on the proposal to evict the people responsible for this damage from social housing. Some of us from the communities that have been on the receiving end of the damage and seen stable communities destroyed by these acts really know what we are talking about, so may I ask the Prime Minister to think about this and engage with us before pursuing the matter?

[The Prime Minister]

Perhaps I can arrange for the Minister for Housing and Local Government, who has worked very hard to deliver this policy, to contact the hon. Gentleman. If people in social housing behave appallingly, it should be possible to evict them and keep them evicted.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

David Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I have no rancour against the coalition. I think that it is doing some wonderful things: in deficit reduction, welfare reform and education. We are lucky to have two very fine young men at the head of this coalition—they know who they are, and they do not need to be named. However, I feel that they have got this one wrong. This Bill is a mistake. We have had 350 years of settled parliamentary democracy. We have had no despots ruling—and ruining—this country. We have a great deal to be proud of. I have listened to the arguments closely from the outset. I voted against the Bill on Second Reading, and I had hoped to be persuaded in the intervening weeks that somehow I was wrong and that many of my colleagues were right. However, I am afraid that I was right and they are wrong. This remains an extremely bad Bill.

Some wonderful arguments have been put forward. We have been told that the British public do not like general elections—that we must have fewer of them; that the last thing that my constituents want is a general election every three or four years, because they are so bored of them. However, in the same breath, we are told that we should have elections for mayors and police commissioners; and yet somehow, the most important election of all—a general election—is relegated to something that we would rather not have, and if we must have them, we should have them every five years.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

My constituents cannot wait for the next general election.

[Mr Walker]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be standing for his constituency at the next general election and that the reason his constituents cannot wait is that they want once again to affirm his brilliance.

We have had 350 years of settled parliamentary democracy, and we are now turning our backs on that a little hastily. Of course, we can draw on the European model. Europe is a great place—I think it is absolutely wonderful—but there is not a great deal that it can teach us about democracy. Democracy is an innovation across most of Europe, arriving in 1945 and 1946 in some places, and in the late 1990s in others. So, although many good things are happening in Europe, our parliamentary democracy is something that we should be proud of.

I do not want to stray outside the bounds of this Third Reading debate, so I shall conclude my remarks by saying that I think this coalition is going to last for five years. It is led by two honourable and right hon. Gentlemen, and if they want it to last for five years, they will take their parliamentary parties with them. But it should not be the duty of Parliament to do the heavy lifting for the coalition. That is the duty of the coalition partners. The Bill is a grave mistake, and I am afraid that there is only one thing I can do from now on: I must work tirelessly for the rest of my parliamentary career to become Prime Minister so that I can do away with what I regard as this rather dangerous piece of nonsense.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, but the fact is that we opposed the increase in the budget that he voted against the other night, and will go on opposing increases in the budget. The key is the next financial perspective: that is the best way in which to control the budget. We need to build allies for that, we need to build our argument for that, and we need to make sure that Europe starts to live within its means.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Q10. The North East chamber of commerce has reported that 17,000 construction jobs are at risk as a direct result of proposed cuts in local councils. For some of us in the House, unemployment is not just a subject for theoretical discussion. Some of us have lived through and experienced the real desolation that unemployment means. Will the Prime Minister now tell us clearly whether he believes today what he believed in 1992—that unemployment is a price worth paying?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not take that view at all. I take the view that we must do everything we can to get our people into good and well-paid jobs. I have to say, however, that if we do not tackle the deficit, every job in the country will be under threat. That is the point. We are not doing this because we want to; there is no ideological zeal in doing this. We are doing this because we have to.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the British Chambers of Commerce. What the British Chambers of Commerce said at the time of the Budget was that this

“will have positive effects on business and investor confidence”

and

“will be welcomed by companies the length and breadth of the country—and across the globe.”

That is what the chambers of commerce think. They think that we are right to take this action, and they think that the Labour party is wrong.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that I am actually the unofficial bag carrier to the Prime Minister; I do not even qualify as the official one. We have organised ourselves in a way that means that we have cut to the bare minimum the number of groups that we operate. We have a far tighter Cabinet Committee system than that which was operated under the previous Government, because, as I said to the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who asked an earlier question, we are absolutely determined that our Cabinet Committees be genuine decision-making bodies, not merely a dignified part of the constitution.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

12. If he will ensure that trade unions are involved in the work of his Department’s efficiency and reform group.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

We are committed to proper engagement with public service staff and their representatives. Last week I had a good meeting with the Council of Civil Service Unions, and yesterday I attended a meeting of the TUC’s public service liaison group. We will invite the TUC and its member organisations, plus other representatives of public service employees, to meet regularly to discuss matters affecting the work force who deliver our vital public services, and to build on the work of the Public Service Forum, which I am committed to continuing and which will meet in July. There will be difficult issues to discuss, no doubt, but we are determined to air them through regular dialogue.

[Mr Anderson]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Will he look at the report that the Public and Commercial Services Union produced last year, showing that 20,000 tax collectors were sacked at a time when at least £40 billion of tax evasion and avoidance was going on in this country? Will he work with the unions to try to resolve that matter?

[Mr Maude]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but he will recollect the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury who said that there was no money left. We have to run the Government with less money than there was, and there will have to be cuts. We hope, to the maximum extent possible, that public spending can be cut without affecting jobs, but it is unreal to expect that that will be totally avoidable.

Debate on the Address

David Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith]

One of the key features of what we have agreed in the Government’s programme is that some of the savings produced by the measures announced yesterday have to be ploughed back into helping to create jobs, for example through the affordable house building described earlier. Market perceptions have changed over the period, and it is important that we make it clear that we are prepared to make the kind of cuts that will be necessary. We cannot go on with £160 billion of public sector debt. Anyone who imagines that we can is living in a dream world.

The situation makes things difficult for areas such as mine, where crucial elements of infrastructure have never been properly put in place; the A1 link between the north of England and Scotland is one example. For us, raising capacity on the east coast main line is more urgent than high-speed rail; we urgently need that capacity ahead of high-speed rail to make sure that we are not disadvantaged when it gets only part way up the country.

I very much welcome the pupil premium, which should particularly help disadvantaged children in a number of areas, such as Northumberland, that up to now have had more than £1,000 less per pupil than some other areas of the country. Much has been said about Building Schools for the Future, but that programme failed to provide for schools such as the Duchess’s Community High school in Alnwick. The buildings there are a disgrace, and the previous Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), admitted as much, but its excellent results precluded it from being considered for rebuilding under that programme. We need measures that will enable decisions to be taken that do not go against schools that do a good job.

I welcome the abandonment of Labour’s forced local government reorganisations. Unfortunately, it has come too late for Northumberland, where the verdict of the people in a referendum not to have a single authority was simply ignored by the previous Government.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman has a strong record of standing up for the north of England. Does he support the halting of BSF funding for schools in Gateshead?

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman has to realise that very difficult public spending decisions have to be taken. Unless he and his hon. Friends start to recognise that they would have had to do something similar, they are in an unreal world.

One of the things that I most approve of in the Gracious Speech is its very first line:

“My Government’s legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.”

That is a statement of belief, with freedom as its first principle. Hallelujah! We have not heard one of those for a very long time. The lack of any clear framework of belief or ideology was the blight of the Blair years. There was plenty of self-belief, but self-belief is not enough. Without a clear set of underlying principles, there is nothing to guide Governments when making decisions on issues that have not been anticipated or predicted.

A Government who believed in international law would not have launched in Iraq an illegal war that has cost so many lives. A Government who had a fundamental commitment to civil liberties would not have introduced identity cards or tried to introduce 90-day detention without charge or trial. A Queen’s Speech sets out a programme of what is mainly law making and the repeal of laws, but it is usually events and the Government’s response to events that write the history of Governments and Prime Ministers—and in this Government, no doubt, the Deputy Prime Minister as well.

The Government are made up of two parties with very different histories, different policy commitments and different basic philosophies. We are in contest with each other for the support of the voters, and we will continue to be—in by-elections, local elections, elections to the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and European elections. But, we are working together in government because the voters gave no party a majority, and the country needs a strong, broadly supported and stable Government. We have been able to reach a wide-ranging agreement that combines policies from both our manifestos, and it is a considerable achievement to have done so. It is even more of an achievement to have done so in a way that sets out and puts into practice clear principles, some of them shared by both parties, some brought to the table by one party and some by the other.

Tories—if the Prime Minister will forgive me for referring to his party for a moment—have, except during the Thatcher years, traditionally tended to be suspicious of ideology and belief. However, in the Tory manifesto this time I detected an unusual assertion of some welcome principles, such as the decentralisation of power—not a principle that ever attracted Mrs Thatcher, but one that is an integral part of the coalition Government’s programme. Times are changing.

Every Liberal Democrat Member carries a membership card, and I think that I have one with me. Here it is! It says:

“Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we to seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.”

That says it all; and it says why I am proud to support a Queen’s Speech that not only asserts but seeks to put into practice principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.

This country faces an horrific debt crisis—left to it by the previous Government. The coalition will have to take difficult, unwelcome and unpopular decisions, and it will need to test its decisions against those principles. Liberal Democrat Ministers in the coalition have a particular responsibility to see that it does so, and we Liberal Democrats below the Gangway will hold them to it, along with the whole Government.

We said that politics would be different after the election. It is.