Christmas Adjournment

David Johnston Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Let me I start by commending the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) on what she said in her speech. I got to know her a bit through the armed forces parliamentary scheme. I know it will have been a difficult thing to talk about, but it was powerful and an important message to people to check themselves for cancer, because it can affect any of us.

I must start with a note of sadness on behalf of the local community that I represent, because last week we lost Hasnath Miah, who was a sort of champion or local hero in the Didcot area where I live. He had been homeless for part of his life and had been helped by the Didcot community, including through free meals, to get back on his feet. He swore that if he was ever in a position to help other people, he would do so. He had a hugely successful restaurant called Indian Dream, and in the pandemic began giving free meals to key workers, the homeless and young carers, just in the way he had been given food. In total he gave away more than 10,000 free meals. Very sadly, after a stroke two weeks ago, he died at the age of just 49. There has been a huge outpouring of grief for him in the Didcot community. I send my condolences to his family—may he rest in peace.

I will pick out a couple of greatest hits from the subjects I always talk about in this Chamber. The first is the lack of GP surgeries. We have had huge population growth across my constituency, particularly in the Didcot area. GP surgeries are always promised, but never arrive. It is a total failure by the local council and local health leaders: they say they are committed to more surgeries and they keep promising them, particularly in the run-up to local elections, but they never emerge. Meanwhile, our existing GP surgeries work flat out all year round and are now closing their books because they simply cannot cope. They do not have the buildings to be able to take on more patients, never mind the doctors and so on. We have to make progress on the issue, which I will be talking about even more next year.

This month marks 58 years since Grove station—or Wantage Road station, as some prefer to call it—closed under the Beeching cuts. We took part in the bidding process for new stations; the Department for Transport was impressed with our bid, but we were not successful this time. I will keep going until we are. Our area has had huge population growth, so the station makes economic sense, social sense and environmental sense. I am absolutely determined that we will get it reopened.

Sticking with the environmental theme, I am the lead sponsor of the Local Electricity Bill, a totally cross-party initiative that now has the support of 314 Members—tantalisingly close to half the Members of this House. If any hon. Members listening have not yet supported it, will they please take a look? It is a complete no-brainer. Our local communities would very much like to generate more renewable energy, but the start-up costs are far too high at the moment. Essentially, the Bill would remove start-up costs so that energy generated can be sold to the local community.

We have worked hard with the campaign team and with officials in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to change the nature of the Bill. It is now much more about local energy and renewable energy sources acting as “sleeves” for bigger suppliers and teaming up with them for metering and maintenance purposes. It would mean a flowering of renewable energy, which lots of people would like to see locally. I am hopeful that we can make progress with the Government on the Bill next year, particularly in relation to the Energy Bill.

I did a couple of things for the first time this year. I held a crime summit locally, because I was increasingly getting reports of all sorts of crimes, from business break-ins to drug dealing. The theme that probably came out most strongly from people who attended the event, which I held with Thames Valley police, was antisocial behaviour. We have a tendency to underplay antisocial behaviour: if it does not involve great violence, murder or someone’s house being robbed, we do not take it as seriously as we should. For people who are not used to it, in an area where they have not seen it before, a sudden increase in antisocial behaviour is very unsettling. I will be doing more work on the issue next year with the police, whose response I was pleased with: they are going to go away and look at how they handle these things.

This year I also started a work experience campaign with local employers—partly because that was what I did in my previous life as a charity chief exec, but also because work experience had all but disappeared during covid. I encourage hon. Members to do that sort of thing, if they are not doing it already, because it is clear that as a result of covid many employers now have a lot of staff working at home and have simply got out of the habit of providing work experience. They sometimes offer virtual work experience, which is fine—it is better than nothing—but it is not the same as being in the workplace. I was really pleased with all the employers that got involved: Rebellion, Hachette, Astroscale and lots of others.

Business of the House

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The Chartists were right: democracy is very important, which is why this Government will implement the manifesto on which we stood in 2019, for which we received an overwhelming mandate from the British people.

I send my good wishes and, I hope, those of everyone in this House to our sportsmen and women for their upcoming matches: the men’s cricket team, the rugby league team—I know you are interested in rugby league, Mr Speaker—and especially the England women’s rugby team, who have a semi-final coming up.

The hon. Lady mentions the latest adventures of the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock). When I heard that a colleague was volunteering to be squeezed into small spaces with slippery creatures, that they would have to swallow unpalatable things to achieve their goals, and that their credibility and dignity were in jeopardy, I assumed that people were talking about a Member on the Opposition Front Bench, not the right hon. Member for West Suffolk.

The hon. Lady kindly reminisces about my time on “Splash!”. Hon. Members may find it hard to believe, given that the elegance of my performance was compared at the time to that of a paving slab being pushed off a scaffold, but I did actually have training. None of my time was spent away from this House. I have helped to save the Hilsea lido, which is currently being restored to its 1930s glory with help from the levelling-up fund.

The hon. Lady refers to policies and delay—high praise indeed from an Opposition who have no plan and no clue about any topic we might care to name. This is controversial stuff: Secretaries of State are going to be allowed to express their views on their departmental policy area. I know; it is radical stuff. Major investment decisions will be reflected on and discussed across Whitehall. In these volatile economic times, people will be thinking about how they can get the most for taxpayers for their money, but we are conscious that decisions on investment will need to be made and that decisions are needed to reassure people on fixed incomes in particular. Those decisions need to be the right ones: that is grown-up, joined-up, stepped-up government. I remind the Opposition that it took a mere two years for the Leader of the Opposition to ditch all his pledges—not so much a bonfire of the policies, more a puff of smoke.

The hon. Lady mentions the conference of the parties. I thank her for that, because it affords me and all Members of this House the opportunity to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the COP26 President, who has done a tremendous job. The UK should be proud of our record in the area: we are the first major economy to commit to a legally binding target of achieving net zero by 2030.

On the matter of legal advice, it is standard practice that Ministers would have legal advice under those circumstances.

I agree with what the hon. Lady says about our friends in the Scottish National party. One of the great joys of my job and hers is explaining our procedures and practices to people outside this place. SNP Members chose not to use their Opposition day debate to talk about health, education, care, opportunity, social mobility, business, farming or anything else related to the Scottish people. There were no surprises in the topic that they chose or in how they squandered their precious time on the Floor of the House. Their motion is not a mandate; it was not even a binding motion. What was surprising was that not all the SNP voted for it, but there we go.

I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not mention cost of living issues or the fact that this week we are celebrating the welcome £150 core council tax rebate, the second instalment of the £400 energy bills support scheme and the launch of the energy price guarantee in Northern Ireland. Nor did she have any word of sympathy for the travelling public, who will face further strike action on the railways. We will always speak up for working people and the travelling public. I still live in hope that the Opposition might support our legislation.

Further business will be announced in the usual way.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Earlier this year, I launched a work experience campaign for local young people, as placements had dried up as a result of covid. I am very grateful to companies such as Rebellion, Hachette and Astroscale for taking part. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking them? Does she agree that whatever arrangements employers make for their staff to work at home, they must not forget to provide work experience placements in the workplace, because they are a key way for young people to learn the skills that they need?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work to ensure that all young people in his constituency have access to good work experience, which is part of the journey in establishing norms that are sometimes not established at home or at school. We should be grateful that we have record low youth unemployment, but we want to do everything to ensure that such opportunities are available to everyone in our communities.

Business of the House

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Last week, 16-year-old Niamh came to see me about negative behaviour that she and her friends have been getting from boys and men, including rape jokes, which are dismissed by the adults around them as “boys will be boys.” She wants to campaign on this, and I will help her, but it seems pretty obvious that if boys are taught to respect girls, they will not grow up to be men who disrespect women. Can we have a debate on how we change attitudes in this area, not just our laws?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I know that my hon. Friend is very concerned about this and has done a huge amount of work on education and understands its importance. A debate is an excellent idea, and I encourage him to apply for one in the usual way. That is a way of not only raising the issue but sharing good practice and what works.

Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

I join colleagues in paying tribute to the fact that this debate is called the Sir David Amess summer Adjournment debate. It is a fitting tribute to him and a fitting reminder to us that however good or entertaining we think our speeches are this afternoon, none of them will be as good as the one he would have given were he with us.

The first thing I want to talk about is a man called Merv. He is an 86-year-old man in my constituency who lost his wife after 56 years of marriage in 2014, meaning he was on his own. Thanks to a fantastic local organisation called the Didcot Good Neighbour Scheme, run by a fantastic woman called Sandy Sparrowhawk, I have been matched with him to go round and see him every week, which I have been doing since last September. It is supposed to be for him, but it is the highlight of my week, because whatever is going on here—heaven knows lots of things go on here—when I go to have my cup of tea with him on a Friday after all my visits, he never fails to cheer me up with his stories of being in the Army and of driving coaches.

He is a great football fan—a misguided Chelsea supporter—and we have a real laugh. We now know that loneliness affects not just mental health but physical health, and it only takes up a small amount of my time. I would encourage everyone here and outside to do it, because it makes a huge difference to both people.

I have passed up no opportunity since my maiden speech to raise the infrastructure issues in my constituency. We still need Grove station reopened, we still need the A34 and A420 improved, and we still need more GP surgeries. The two districts I cover are in the top 10 areas for house building relative to their size, and we have not had any new GP surgeries. I hope what we can do through the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill is get to a position where we start to put this infrastructure in first, rather than promising it after the houses have been built, because it never arrives. The other thing I hope we might do with that Bill is require new houses to be built to the latest environmental standards set by Government, rather than the one that existed when planning permission was granted, often five or six years earlier. We are building thousands of houses that we know will need retrofitting.

While on the subject of the environment, I am currently the lead sponsor of the Local Electricity Bill, which now has 309 MPs supporting it. If Members are not yet backing it, please do so. People argue whether to have fracking or nuclear or oil and gas or onshore wind, but they do not argue about having more community energy, with local communities able to sell it to local people. That would help to achieve our net zero goals and promote competition while offering vast environmental benefits.

Finally, when we come back, we will understandably focus on the economy, the cost of living and Ukraine, but there are two other issues that I hope will receive some focus. One is the reform of public services. We all get too many complaints about visas, driving licences, passports and planning applications. It is not just that it takes too long to get a response, but that the response is not human enough. The second is an increased focus on social mobility. It is a decades-long problem, but we slightly lost focus during covid, which made it harder. We all need to do more if background is to be no barrier to people achieving their potential.

Business of the House

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

P&O actually broke the law. I should be very surprised if the Ministry of Defence is breaking the law. Unfortunately, we have missed Defence questions, which took place earlier this week, but I will write to the Secretary of State on the hon. Gentleman’s behalf.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

In November, the wife of a constituent of mine died, and the inquest ruled that it had been accidental death by drowning. The hearing was conducted sensitively, but the coroner issued a record of inquest that published my constituent’s name and address, which led to his being named in several newspapers with pictures of his house. May we have a debate on how our data protection laws operate? There clearly cannot be a public interest case for causing additional distress of that kind at a time of grief.

[Mark Spencer]

Let me first convey my sympathies to my hon. Friend’s constituent. Individuals should be given privacy to grieve at such times, and it is concerning to hear of his constituent’s experience in such tragic circumstances. The UK’s General Data Protection Regulation requires data controllers to ensure that the way in which they process personal data is fair and lawful, but I will certainly raise the case with the relevant Ministers on my hon. Friend’s behalf.

Business of the House

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Yes; I am delighted. As I have said before, there is more joy in heaven over the one sinner who repenteth than the 99 who are not repenting. The hon. Gentleman is always right to seek redress from over-zealous regulators who do not do their job properly. I will pass on what he has said to the relevant Department.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

My constituent David Bosley contacted me last month about his son Alex, who is one of a number of my constituents to have had their Instagram account hacked and used by fraudsters to trick their contacts into giving them money. The fraudsters often walk away with tens of thousands of pounds. May we have a debate on clamping down both on the perpetrators of the frauds and on the lax processes of the social media platforms that inadvertently facilitate fraud?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is so right to raise this important and concerning issue, which will be of importance to Members across the House. The Online Safety Bill will ensure that big platforms, including Instagram, will have to do a great deal more to take scams seriously and keep people safe. If firms fail to keep people safe, Ofcom will be able to give huge fines of up to multi-billions of pounds for the largest companies, or even block sites. We are carefully considering the recommendations of the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill at the moment and will incorporate them where we feel that the Bill can be strengthened further. I can assure my hon. Friend that work is under way.

Business of the House

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

First, I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her election yesterday as Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, which shows how widely respected she is on all sides of the House.

I agree with the right hon. Lady about the importance of local high streets, and may I pay tribute to those at Steve’s Cycles and Macs Tools? I obviously do not know them individually, but I know what she means because, across our constituencies and across our high streets, we all have businesses like those that are doing their extra bit for their communities, and they deserve thanks and praise. There was an urgent question earlier today about the support that is being made available. There are funds available to help high streets and to help regenerate high streets, which councils have been bidding for, so there is a great deal of activity in this area. However, if the right hon. Lady wants an Adjournment debate on the specifics of her own high street, I suggest she refer that to Mr Speaker.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Merry Christmas to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to all the staff here.

Friends of mine in business are saying that the ability of the Information Commissioner to levy large fines is having some unintended consequences, in that cyber-gangs are stealing businesses’ data and threatening to publish it if a ransom is not paid. That ransom is almost always less than the potential fine they might get from the Information Commissioner, so to save both money and embarrassment, they are quietly paying it. I appreciate that there is no easy answer, because data breaches are serious, but can we have a debate on the regulation in this area, because none of us wants to see more money going to criminal gangs?

Business of the House

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The reality is that what matters is what we do domestically. It is much more important that we get on with the work I have already set out to the shadow Leader of the House. Under the violence against women and girls strategy, £100 million has been spent on tackling this since 2016. There is a national police lead, the £30 million safer streets fund and the communications campaign to target the perpetrators and to get the message across that violence against women and girls is wrong, full stop. What we do domestically has an effect. Just signing up to things internationally may sound very nice, but it does not necessarily help people here in the United Kingdom.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

My constituency has been subjected to one of the highest rates of house building in the country. One problem that has brought with it is so-called “management companies” charging higher fees. Sometimes they are doing nothing for those fees. Sometimes they are increasing them—sometimes doubling them—year after year, with no justification for what they are doing for this money. May we have a debate on the role of these management companies, because our constituents are being subjected to some truly bad practices?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I visited my hon. Friend’s constituency recently and noticed that there had indeed been a considerable amount of building going on there. The Government are bringing forward a programme to reform and end unfair practices in the leasehold market. I announced that on Monday we will have the Second Reading of the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill; there was a particular problem there, with ground rents doubling quite rapidly and affecting people who had bought newly built properties. Other things have been done, with regard to 990-year leases, removing the retirement sector exemption from zero ground rent measures, and commonhold. However, it is obviously important that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service, and are treated fairly, and I am grateful to him for campaigning on this issue.

Strengthening Standards in Public Life

David Johnston Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

My remarks will probably follow in the vein of those of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker). I have no outside interests or earnings, so in one sense, no matter how strict the rules are, this is not going to affect me directly.

I have never been persuaded by the argument that some Members used to earn a lot more elsewhere and therefore need to be able to earn more here; I think we all know what the salary is when we become MPs. There is a better argument about outside interests bringing skills and expertise to the House, particularly—although not just—from a field in which the Member operated before, as doing so probably helps to improve our legislation. However, we can tighten the rules. It should go without saying that our constituencies should come first and foremost, and I do think that that is what the vast majority of us spend the vast majority of our time on.

I have said many times, away from this place, that when I went from being a charity chief exec to being an MP in 2019, I went from saint to sinner in the minds of the public. Someone who works for a charity is seen as one of the good guys: honest; principled; in it for the right reasons. Politicians are seen as the opposite: dishonest; unprincipled; in it for themselves. Both caricatures are wrong.

I accept that some Members of this House have questions to answer about their outside interests. I personally think that a lot of what they are being accused of is breaking the existing rules. I am perfectly happy to accept that we need to change some of the rules. We will never banish bad behaviour. Every workplace has rules, because it knows that people will behave inappropriately from time to time. That is true of absolutely anywhere.

However, I have a number of concerns about the way this debate—not in this House, apart from a bit at the start of this debate, but the debate more generally in the past couple of weeks—has been going. First, there is the divide between private sector and public sector. We have had the commentary from some Opposition Members that somehow if it is a public sector job, that is good; if it is a private sector job, that is bad. About one in six people in the country work in the public sector. They are not all on wards and in classrooms—they are often in offices, like the vast majority of people who are also providing a good service to the country, just not publicly funded. I cannot see why someone could be a paid director of an NHS trust—because they always are paid positions—but could not be a paid director of a company that was providing medicines or equipment to that NHS trust. I cannot see why someone could be involved in a law firm if it was defending public clients but not if it was defending anybody else. We are sending a bad message to the vast majority of people who do not work in the public sector about the sorts of jobs and the sorts of organisations they work in.

Secondly, right now there are Opposition activists saying that this is all about the Conservatives and Conservatives saying, “You’ve got a problem too.” But what are the public saying? They are saying, “You’re all at it—you’re all the same.” I accept that politics means that Labour thinks it has a winning issue here, but I do not think any of us are truly winning in what has been going on in recent weeks.

Thirdly, the charities I ran were all about improving social mobility, so I spent a lot of time thinking about who gets into politics—the proportion who are from private school, who are graduates, who are wealthy, who have done nothing but politics, or who had to do unpaid internships, which were rife in this place, in order to get their foot on the ladder. I am concerned that we should have more people from ordinary backgrounds and more people with disabilities. We should make this place more family-friendly. That is a challenge right now for people with children; it is putting off those who have them who are thinking about going into politics. If we are going to make changes to this place, there is a whole range of changes that are probably more pressing, and I would like to bind them up together, because there is a lot that we could reform.

Finally, we have a responsibility to think about the politicians who come after us. We are not all the same. We are not all at it. The vast majority of us obey all the rules. It is very tough to persuade talented people to consider politics because of the hours, the abuse, and the increasing personal risk that we seem to be at. The association with the expenses scandal persists, although the majority of us were not even in the House at that time and the system has completely changed. When we push the line that MPs are all trying to get as much money as they can and the only way that we can stop them and get them to focus on their constituents is to have new rules that make them do so, we do ourselves and our politics a disservice. I am perfectly open-minded about the rule changes that we need to make. My most important test is, “Are we obeying all the rules that are there?” I really care about how politics and politicians are viewed, and what we are doing at the moment in saying, “My party’s a bit better than your party”, is making the public’s view of all of us worse.

Business of the House

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that Mr Speaker has been the pilot who weathered the storm, and we should raise a toast to him in that capacity. I am delighted to see that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has started his holiday early, and clearly seems to be enjoying it already from his fastness in Perthshire. I thought he might be in mourning today, because it is of course the anniversary of the battle of Falkirk in 1298, which was not one of the most glorious events in Scottish history. The victory of Edward I on that occasion is one of which we are all aware.

On the hon. Gentleman’s points on this House, let me say that this House works better when people are here; we do a better job of representing our constituents and of holding Ministers to account. Speaking as a Minister from the Dispatch Box, I can honestly say that remote participation is a doddle. It is so much easier than having that immediacy and spontaneity that we get from someone in the Chamber coming up and aiming to catch us out. Having the call lists makes life much easier for Ministers. We are here—I say this as a Minister, from the Dispatch Box—to make Ministers’ lives testing, so that we hold them to account to seek redress of grievance for our constituents, and to check that Government policy is as well thought through as it should be. That leads to better government, because policy is then better thought through, better known and better argued for. We have a duty to be back for the good of democracy. I am sorry to tease the hon. Gentleman for going on holiday a day early, but actually that is the effect of virtual participation.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Cash is used by many people to buy essentials, and constituents of mine such as Joseph from Drayton are very concerned that with the expectation now that people will pay with contactless cards, both their access to cash and their ability to pay with it will be restricted. My right hon. Friend will have seen the Telegraph Money “Keep Cash” campaign, which I warmly welcome. May we have a statement from the Government that makes it clear that people who want to be able to access and use cash will always be able to do so?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend, whose constituency I much enjoyed visiting last week. He has a fine and beautiful constituency, with some of the greatest technological innovation in the country going on in it. I am also grateful for his question and for his support for the campaign by Telegraph Money. I reiterate what I said last week to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight): the Government indeed recognise that access to cash remains important to millions across the UK, and we are committed to legislating to protect access to cash and ensuring that the UK’s cash infrastructure is sustainable in the longer term. So there is a one-word answer to give my hon. Friend: yes.