Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I am afraid that I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s premise. Let me point out a number of things to him. First, I think that the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the right place in which to decide a case of such significance. Secondly, if the Government’s arguments had been as hopeless as the hon. Gentleman suggests, three Supreme Court justices would not have agreed with them. Thirdly, as I have already pointed out, the case was in the Supreme Court partly because judgments in Northern Ireland cases were appealed against to the Supreme Court, not by the Government but by the other parties. The Government responded to those cases, and, incidentally, were successful. Fourthly, the Supreme Court was dealing with arguments presented by the devolved Governments, which had to be dealt with by the Supreme Court. In that instance, the Government were again entirely successful.

Lastly, let me say this to the hon. Gentleman. I think it is a good thing that, in a system governed by the rule of law, a Government are prepared to go to court to argue their case, to make use of appeal mechanisms like any other litigant, and then to abide by the final outcome. That is what has happened, and I think it is a good example of the way in which a rule-of-law system should work.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that when members of the public bring cases on a matter of this importance against the Government in Northern Ireland and in England and Wales and there are conflicting decisions, our Government have no alternative whatsoever but to pursue this matter to the Supreme Court?

[The Attorney General]

I do agree. It is important that the Supreme Court resolved this matter and gave us clarity on what should now happen, and it is now for Parliament to decide what to do next—and I am pleased to see that last night Parliament began to answer the question it had been posed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Dinenage]

It is vital, now more than ever, that our economy is able to benefit from everybody’s skills. We simply cannot afford to waste the talents of a single person. That is why, from April this year, we are requiring all employers with more than 250 staff to publish those gender pay gap figures. We are great believers in what gets measured gets managed, but what gets published gets managed even better.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend tell the House what the gender pay gap is for 30 and 40-year-olds in each Government Department? Does she agree that the Government should be getting their own house in order before trying to lecture others in the private sector?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I am delighted to tell my hon. Friend that the gender pay gap in the Department for Education is only 5.9%. Although that is 5.9 percentage points too high, it shows enormous progress in the Department for Education. Across Government, the figure is just below 13%, and we will keep working until it has been eliminated altogether.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Ellis]

I suggest that my hon. Friend approach the Chair of the Select Committee of which he is a valued member and invite her to write to the Leader of the House. The matter will be considered in the normal way.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend at all worried that members of, for example, the black and minority ethnic or the gay and lesbian communities, might feel that the title of the Committee suggests it will be giving priority to the concerns of women over their own concerns?

[Michael Ellis]

I gently say that achieving gender equality is good for everyone. For example, the introduction of shared parental leave allows men to take time away from the workplace to bond with their new children. There are issues to be addressed for women, as discussed in this place earlier today. Names of Committees are a matter for the House and are considered with the Procedure Committee in the normal way.

Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill

David Nuttall Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 13th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

That is right, and I will come on to explain precisely why the Bill is needed.

I have described the inequality, but some people may say, “Well, so what?” Opposite-sex couples have always been able to get married in a church or a register office —or even, now, in medieval castles, on exotic beaches, or, increasingly, wherever else takes their fancy. The problem is that a great many of these couples choose not to go down that traditional marriage route.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that there are just under 3 million cohabiting opposite-sex couples in this country—almost double the figure reported some 15 years earlier—of whom over a third, about 38%, have children. Indeed, cohabitation is the fastest growing form of family in the UK. We need to recognise that our society is changing, just as we did when recognising same-sex partnerships in law back in 2004. That was the right thing to do, and I enthusiastically supported it at the time. It was a glaring inequality and injustice that until then loving same-sex couples were not recognised in the eyes of the state and enjoyed no protections under the law. That anomaly was rightly addressed by this House back in 2004, and I was proud to be part of that.

People choose not to get involved in the paraphernalia of formal marriage for a variety of reasons. It is seen as too much of an establishment thing to do. For many, it is identified as an innately religious institution; even if done in a register office, it has religious connotations. Some see it as having a patriarchal side—as being some form of social control and not a proper partnership. Those are not my own views, necessarily, but they are certainly how many people see it. There are a whole lot of complex motives as to why many of our constituents do not go down the formal marriage route. They are mostly still in committed, loving relationships, but if they do not want to go for traditional marriage, they have no way of having those relationships recognised in the eyes of the state, just as was the case for same-sex couples pre-2004.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend think of any reason why all those who supported the same-sex marriage legislation would not want to support his Bill?

[Tim Loughton]

Absolutely not. At the time, my proposal, which I set out in an amendment, was the policy of the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, and supported by a good many Conservative Members, but for various reasons people voted against it. The logic is that of course we would want to address this inequality.

There are also various practical reasons for doing this. Particularly worrying is the common misconception that there is such a thing as a common-law wife or common-law husband, as a woman typically finds out abruptly on the death of a partner when there is an inheritance tax bill on the estate and potentially on the family home.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

One cause of the underperformance in northern schools that the report identifies is the challenge of teacher supply. Does the Minister agree that one way of improving that would be to recruit more former members of the armed forces into our teaching profession?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, I do, and we have a scheme that does just that. As the years go by, it is recruiting increasing, albeit small, numbers of highly qualified, experienced ex-military personnel.

International Men’s Day

David Nuttall Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has stood up and made some interesting points. Does she not accept that every time there is some positive discrimination in favour of a woman, by implication a man is being discriminated against, and it may well be a working-class boy or someone from a working-class background who suffers as a result of positive discrimination in favour of women?

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Although I accept some of the points about discrimination against working-class men, I have to say that coming from those on the Tory Benches, the comment absolutely beggars belief. Those of us who actually believe in equality prefer to use the term “positive action”. The reason why we need positive action is that there is not equality in our society. We are 52% women, but we cannot even be properly represented in this Chamber. I would welcome any efforts that he might wish to make, working with me and with others from the Conservative party and across the Chamber, to achieve gender equality, because gender equality will mean a better society for all.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

My hon. Friend will know that as a party we have a manifesto commitment to extend the unduly lenient sentence scheme. A number of offences are surprisingly not included in the scheme at the moment. We need to look carefully at the whole range of criminal offences to decide what should be inside and what should be outside the scheme, but he certainly makes a good case for the types of offences we might consider including in the future.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Given that the need for an unduly lenient sentence scheme has been conceded, the public are very confused as to why some offences are covered and some are not. Would it not be simpler to have a scheme that covered all offences?

[The Attorney General]

My hon. Friend makes a tempting proposition to give my office a good deal more work. There is no doubt that one of the advantages of the unduly lenient sentence scheme is that it is available to the public. It does not require the intervention of lawyers and it is, I hope, easy for the public to access. It should also be easy for the public to understand, and I am therefore in favour of drawing the line between cases within the scheme and those outside in a logical and easily understandable place. I would also say that it is important to bear it in mind that, even with an extended version of the scheme, we are talking about a very small minority of cases where judges err in this way. As I said, last year 102 cases were considered under the scheme to be unduly lenient. That is out of about 80,000 sentences passed in the Crown courts that year.

New Grammar Schools

David Nuttall Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

As I have said, we will announce our policy options in due course. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to respond to them, but education in schools is critical to delivering our long-term industrial strategy and to meeting the dual challenges of having a successful economy and of having our migration levels more under control. One way we can do that incredibly constructively is to meet more of our skills needs through our own young people—to train and educate them to be able to play their role in British industry, helping our country to be successful.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that with all the different schools now available, if parents do not want to choose a grammar school education for their children, such schools will not survive and thrive? We should at least give parents with limited means the same choice that better off parents have.

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should not accept poor school standards, whatever school the children are in. We must challenge low attainment wherever we find it, but the point I am making today is that it is not good enough to take something off the table just because of political ideology. We need to challenge all aspects of our education system to play a greater role in raising attainment and building capacity.

School Funding

David Nuttall Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I remember my time on the Work and Pensions Committee with the hon. Gentleman with real fondness; I very much enjoyed it and learned a lot over those years. He mentions headteachers and teachers, and one of the first things that I did upon coming into this role was to pick up the phone and call the teaching unions to introduce myself and to set up initial meetings. I saw them briefly yesterday and I hope that I can have a constructive, productive relationship. The most important people who helped me to get educated were my teachers, to whom I will be eternally grateful. It is important that that is recognised.

On the pupil premium, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the funding rates are protected for the entire spending review period at 2015-16 rates.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Like me, my right hon. Friend was educated in a comprehensive school in Rotherham, so I warmly welcome her to her new role. While we can adjust the school funding formula in the short term, does she agree that the only way to increase school resources in the long term is to have a strong and growing economy?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. I am proud that both of us went through the state school system in Rotherham. I hope to be able to go back up there in the coming weeks and months to revisit some of the schools that enabled me to have the education that gave me a platform to try to reach some of the goals that I set myself. As he says, a strong economy is vital for ensuring not only that we have the funding to invest in our education system, but that the children coming through our state school system have the opportunities to stretch themselves and to get the dignity of work.

Key Stage 2 Tests

David Nuttall Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

As the hon. Lady will know, this process of testing 600,000 pupils is complex. We use contractors, and, on this occasion, an error was made in uploading that material on to a secure website. We took action swiftly when we discovered that error, as we did when the spelling test was put online three weeks ago. It is how a Government react to these issues that determines their competence, and we acted swiftly on both occasions. This whole approach to testing our six and seven-year-olds and our 10 and 11-year-olds does require an element of trust in those people engaged in the process. We must test and develop the test. A huge number of professionals see the content of these tests many weeks before they go live, and we have to trust those professionals to do their job properly and with integrity. On this occasion, one such professional decided not to act with integrity. I hope that the hon. Lady will take the same view that we do about professionals who act in that inappropriate way.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that testing forms an important and crucial part of our education system. If proof were needed that testing is important, one need look no further than the text of the statement that has been circulated in the Chamber today. It says:

“Although this is a serious breech—”.

Unfortunately, the word “breach” is spelled incorrectly.

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, well, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out that error, and I will make sure that it is corrected for Hansard.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

If the hon. Lady wants to send me more detailed information about that, I will gladly take a closer look.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Why should 100% of British businesses have to comply with EU regulations when less than 10% of them export to the EU?

[Sajid Javid]

I touched earlier on the importance of the single market. It is the largest single market in the world, with 500 million consumers, and it brings huge benefits to British businesses in growth and jobs.

National Living Wage

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I have already given way to the right hon. Gentleman; he can have another go in his own speech later.

Labour Members have to face the consequences of the policy: the OBR has made it clear that it will result in fewer people being employed. The right hon. Member for Enfield North mentioned companies such as B&Q and Morrisons. When I worked for Asda, every employee was given a 10% discount card. I have no idea what Asda’s policy is today—it may well be the same—but it used to employ a lot of people with families, and a 10% discount card was a very valuable commodity to them. We should be wary about forcing employers to put up pay, because the inevitable consequence will be that some benefits might have to go if they want to keep the same number of people employed in their stores. These decisions have consequences, and we cannot pretend that increasing people’s pay will not have consequences.

The right hon. Lady mentioned care homes and the care sector. We need to think carefully about what the consequences will be for them. In my constituency, in Bradford, a very small proportion of the extra 2% that is being levied on council tax is being passed on to independent care homes. I thought it was designed to help them with the costs of things such as the national living wage. This high-minded policy is motherhood and apple pie. It enables people to look good and argue, “I think that, whatever people earn, they should get more, and that even when they do get more, they should get even more than that,” but an awful lot of care homes around the country could close as a consequence. Is that really what we want to happen in the UK? It would happen not because employers are mean, nasty people, but simply because they cannot afford to pay the national living wage at the rates that the councils are giving them for care home fees. That is the economic reality, whether people like it or not.

I met a number of employers recently, and they pointed out that the policy takes no account of differentials. When the pay of people at the bottom is raised to a higher rate, they are not the only ones to get a pay rise, because everyone else in the organisation will say, “Hold on a minute, I was paid £1 an hour more than they were, so if their pay’s being increased by £1 an hour, I want an extra £1 an hour as well to maintain that differential.”

Anybody who knows anything about running a business will know that, particularly for employers who run small businesses on the high street in small towns in our constituencies, there is not a never-ending pot of money to pay higher wages to everybody and to protect those differentials. Something has to give: either those differentials disappear, much to the unhappiness of the people who had them before, or fewer people will be employed, or people will be employed for fewer hours.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

I am afraid that I cannot give way, because there is not much time left.

Finally, I have two very quick points to make. First, the increased national minimum wage will almost certainly lead to even more people from the European Union coming to the UK if we do not leave the EU in the forthcoming referendum. That is a basic fact. Secondly, a higher minimum wage is great for people who are already in work and getting paid. However, it can be as high as we like, but it will be of very little use to those who do not have a job. Many people in this country already find it very difficult to get on the jobs ladder, for all sorts of reasons.

I have made this point before and got into terrible trouble for it, but the fact, whether people like it or not, is that too few disabled people in this country are employed. It would not be good if they were put further away from the jobs ladder, and I want the Government to think about what they are going to do, when wages are higher, to help disabled people find a job, including subsidising employers to bring them up to the living wage. Something has to be done. We cannot just leave people on the scrapheap unable to get a job because the first rung of the jobs ladder was too far away to give them a chance in the first place. We have to think through the consequences of all these high-minded policies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Danczuk]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is a real concern for local authorities, and there is disparity across the country. That is a good point.

The other point about business rates is that there is an issue with the fact that the relief will not be introduced until 2017. Small businesses will struggle for a whole year before they receive the relief that is in the Budget. As I have already mentioned in this Chamber, the retail business rate relief grant has been stopped this year for small business owners as well. Small businesses employ 35% of the nation’s workforce, but they employ more than half of those who are on the minimum wage. From 1 April, small businesses will be dealt a double whammy of increased wage bills and a reduction in support from business rate grants. They will be under real financial pressure for a whole year.

[Mr Nuttall]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Danczuk]

I am going to make a little bit of progress. Larger retailers will be able to offset their costs by reducing the benefits that they pay out, such as Sunday pay, as we have seen from the examples that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden has raised in the media recently. Smaller businesses will have to put up prices, slow recruitment or perhaps downscale their operations. Some will have to shut down because they are unable to shoulder the costs until 2017 after having struggled for years. The truth is that the new national living wage should have coincided with the changes to the business rate system.

Next I want to mention the pressures facing the social care sector, which has faced a wave of pressure from the Government over the last few years. We have heard much recently about the social care precept, which enables councils to raise council tax by 2% to pay for care costs. Senior members of Rochdale Borough Council have told me that with the introduction of the national living wage, the precept will provide very little extra funding, if any. Poorer areas such as Rochdale—this is similar to the point made about business rates—will raise only just over £1 million from the precept, because of the council tax bands of the properties in the borough. Even the Conservative-led Local Government Association has warned that the national living wage will put adult care services at breaking point.

The new change is even more worrying in view of the fact that many in the care sector are not even paid the minimum wage. Work by Unison has shown that pay structures, such as not paying travelling time, mean that those who care for our elderly loved ones are not being paid for the vital work that they do. If we want to give careworkers the wage that they deserve, it must be adequately funded. They are some of the most hard-working people, and they deserve to earn at least the minimum wage. Unless the appropriate funding is in place, that simply will not happen.