Exiting the European Union

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. Of course, the speeches of all Members who have already participated in the debate continue to be an important contribution to the debate on this subject. Having spoken to European leaders, I can give my right hon. Friend the assurance that they are open to discussions with us on this issue. I am confident that we will be able to see some further changes. Of course, that will be the matter for further negotiations.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister realise that she has handed over power not to people in this House, but to the people she is going to negotiate with over there in Europe? She looks very weak, and she is. They want to be able to demonstrate their power to every other country that might be thinking about getting out of the EU, and she has handed them that power by demonstrating what Britain is doing. The British Prime Minister does not know whether she is on this earth or Fuller’s because of the actions she has taken. Mrs Thatcher had a word for what she has done today. F-R-I-T—she’s frit.

[The Prime Minister]

And I have every confidence that if I had not listened to Members of this House, the hon. Gentleman would have stood up and complained that I was incapable of listening to Members of this House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that his Government have already taken more than £3.5 billion out of the miners’ pension? They are like Philip Green and Maxwell put together. Stop stealing the miners’ pension!

[Mr Lidington]

The benefits due from the pension scheme to all former miners have, as I understand it, been paid in full and continue to be paid in full, and the scheme is fully funded to meet those commitments into the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I want to hear both the questions and the answers, and as the record shows—[Interruption.] Order. I do not require any assistance in this matter. As the record shows, that will always happen, however long it takes. There is a lot of noise and much gesticulation from Members on both sides of the House, but I want to hear the questions and I want to hear the answers.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Answer the questions—you’re in government.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) is absolutely right: we are in government, not Labour. We have set out our position on the border, but what we see is a Labour party that said it wanted to do trade deals, and now wants to be in a customs union that would stop that. They said they wanted to control our borders, and now they want free movement. They said they would respect the referendum, and now they will not rule out a second referendum. That is the difference between us: the Conservative party in government is going to deliver on the will of the British people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

In offering him best wishes for his birthday on Sunday, I call Mr Dennis Skinner.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Q6. I didn’t know about that. I don’t celebrate things like that—I don’t think you should celebrate age.Anyway, there is another group of people who need help, and they are the people who work in the national health service. What they told me last week was that the best period they ever experienced was under a Labour Government when they had the money increased from £33 billion in 1997 to £100 billion in 2010. That was a golden period. Why did that Government do it? How did they do it? The then Chancellor of the Exchequer put 1% on national insurance and, in hypothecation terms, that went directly to the health service. It is called long-term stability. Under this Government, people do not know whether they are coming or going. It is high time that this Government did the same as we did between 1997 and 2010—get weaving!

[The Prime Minister]

And happy birthday, Dennis.

The hon. Gentleman asks why the Labour party was in a position of being able to spend more on public services. I will tell him why: because a Conservative Government had left a golden economic legacy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Last but never forgotten: Mr Dennis Skinner.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Q14. Is the Prime Minister aware that INEOS, the fracking company, has been accused of creating a massive deterioration in the water supply, run by Severn Trent, on the Oxcroft estate in the Bolsover area? Will she, as Prime Minister, investigate this matter, and call on INEOS to halt the process while the investigation takes place?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that the issue will be properly looked into, but underlying it is the question of ensuring that we are able to have a secure and safe supply of energy in the future. That is why the fracking is continuing, and that is why we are supportive of the Shell gas exploration. There are opportunities there for the United Kingdom. As I have said, however, I am sure that the specific issue raised by the hon. Gentleman will be looked into appropriately.

Early Parliamentary General Election

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

As someone who believes that the Prime Minister has presented the case for this election on an entirely false premise, I, too, will be voting against the motion. I was not asking for an election last week or the week before; I was arguing that any move to an election in the near future would not help the negotiations in Northern Ireland. My mind has not changed, so why should I pretend that it has?

I will not be gamed or goaded into voting differently by the Prime Minister’s actions and stances. She has accused others in this Parliament of playing games. In essence, her argument is that she has no confidence in Parliament. We have this bizarre situation in which, after having a referendum about taking back control and parliamentary sovereignty, the Prime Minister has pronounced that she has no confidence in Parliament. She does not trust the Opposition parties, on which she confers all sorts of exaggerated powers to block and correct. Then, of course, she has her complaints about the House of Lords. If Tory Members are concerned about the House of Lords, they should move to abolish it or to introduce competent, coherent and democratic reform, but they should stop using it as a prop in this argument.

This is also a false premise because the Prime Minister is pretending that she needs an election now so that she has a strong hand in the short term, but we know that what she is really after is a free hand in the longer term. She wants wriggle room on the periods of adjustment, the transitional arrangements and other things on which too many of her colleagues have been too strident.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend appreciate that the nearest parallel to what is happening now in this campaign for an election—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am interested in hearing the hon. Gentleman, but I would like him to face the House.

[Mr Skinner]

You were busy talking.

[Mr Speaker]

I was being spoken to by an illustrious member of the Opposition Whips Office, no less, so I would put it rather differently.

[Mr Skinner]

The nearest parallel is the election of 1974, when the miners were on strike and Ted Heath, the then Prime Minister, decided that the election would be on a very narrow argument about who ran the country. Most general elections are about a lot of things, but that one was about a specific thing. What happened in effect was that the Labour party finished up with the largest number of seats and the Queen asked Ted Heath to try to form a coalition with the Liberals, and the Liberals ran away.

[Mark Durkan]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. While we are making comparisons with the election of 1974, an unforeseen casualty of that election was the Sunningdale agreement. The power-sharing Executive formed in Northern Ireland out of the 1973 Assembly ended up falling as a consequence of the 1974 general election because of what was seen to be the balance of forces.

Of course, this general election has been called without regard to the sensitive ongoing negotiations in Northern Ireland, and it is hard to see how it will not have an impact on those negotiations. First, it will probably colour the parties’ attitude to some of the issues we are dealing with, and it will certainly colour their attitude towards each other and their level of trust. Also, the British Government will not be in a position to give undertakings or commitments in the context of those negotiations as purdah kicks in, so how will we get any sort of comprehensive agreement in such circumstances?

As someone who worked with might and main for the Good Friday agreement and its implementation, I do not take those issues lightly. I cannot dismiss them. I want to make sure that we fully protect the agreement, which is why I am no saboteur when it comes to anything endorsed by a referendum, least of all what the Irish people endorsed by referendum when they voted for the Good Friday agreement.

I worry about the implications of Brexit for the Good Friday agreement, and I worry that the Government are in denial about the Brexit process having implications for the agreement. Of course, I also recognise that the agreement gives us the machinery to answer many of the questions and challenges for the whole island of Ireland in terms of Brexit. Strand 2 gives us the material to ensure that, in future, we can operate on a north-south basis in ways that continue to be supported and funded by the EU. We can treat the island as a common market—a single market—in sector after sector under the auspices of the Good Friday agreement.

We go forward in this election positively, but we have no pretence that the election is necessary or that the Prime Minister is justified in the terms she has used. Nor do we buy the sham fight that the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) is having yet again with Sinn Féin.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister give a guarantee that no Tory MP who is under investigation by the police and the legal authorities over election expenses in the last general election will be a candidate in this election? If she will not accept that, this is the most squalid election campaign that has happened in my lifetime.

[The Prime Minister]

I stand by all the Conservative MPs who are in this House and who will be out there standing again, campaigning for a Conservative Government who will give a brighter and better future for this country.

Advisory Committee on Business Appointments/Ministerial Code

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I congratulate my hon. Friend on moving himself up the speaking order for the next debate.

Many Members discharge their responsibilities to their constituents incredibly well even though they have interests outside Parliament, while some Members—albeit a very limited number—do not do much work on behalf of their constituents even though they have no outside work. This is not a binary debate but, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have said, it is a matter of public concern and one that this House is right to discuss. It should do so with time and with dignity, and I suggest that this is not the right place now—in an urgent question off the back of one story about one Member.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that roughly the same arguments are emanating from both sides of the House as we heard 40 years ago when we attempted to set up the register? This has not changed, except in that over the years there has been a desire by the majority of Members to ensure that the register and the duties of MPs are strengthened. The real question to be answered now is: how can a full-time politician be a full-time editor of a daily newspaper?

[Ben Gummer]

One of the many reasons why I admire the hon. Gentleman is that he walked out of the pit straight to this place, and gave an experience to the House of Commons and our representative democracy that few on either side of the House would able to provide. That is of enormous value to this House of Commons. I am not in a position to make the judgment that he invites me to make. I ask that the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments provides its independent report before we judge this particular incident, and that the hon. Gentleman contributes his thoughts to the wider considerations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I believe that there are strong arguments in his favour, but there are also strong arguments on the other side, and they should be discussed in the round.

Points of Order

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I will say this: an address by a foreign leader to both Houses of Parliament is not an automatic right; it is an earned honour. Moreover, there are many precedents for state visits to take place in our country that do not include an address to both Houses of Parliament. That is the first point.

The second point is that in relation to Westminster Hall, there are three keyholders—the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Lord Speaker of the House of the Lords and the Lord Great Chamberlain. Ordinarily, we are able to work by consensus, and the Hall would be used for a purpose, such as an address or another purpose, by agreement of the three keyholders.

I must say to the hon. Gentleman, to all who have signed his early-day motion and to others with strong views about this matter on either side of the argument that before the imposition of the migrant ban, I would myself have been strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall, but after the imposition of the migrant ban by President Trump, I am even more strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall.

So far as the Royal Gallery is concerned—again, I operate on advice—I perhaps do not have as strong a say in that matter. It is in a different part of the building, although customarily an invitation to a visiting leader to deliver an address there would be issued in the names of the two Speakers. I would not wish to issue an invitation to President Trump to speak in the Royal Gallery.

I conclude by saying to the hon. Gentleman that we value our relationship with the United States. If a state visit takes place, that is way beyond and above the pay grade of the Speaker. However, as far as this place is concerned, I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and to sexism, and our support for equality before the law and an independent judiciary are hugely important considerations in the House of Commons. [Applause.]

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Two words: well done. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

No, we should not have clapping in the Chamber, but sometimes it is easier to let it go than to make a huge fuss about it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

What is important is that reform of the House of Lords is led by the Lords themselves. As the debate last week showed, there is clearly an appetite for that. We have had significant reforms, including on the retirement of peers, which has seen about 50 peers retire. I welcome the fact that the Leader of the House of Lords said at the end of the debate that she would consider

“whether a more immediate, practical step could be taken in convening a small, Back Bench-led consultative group whose work could be overseen, for instance, by the Lord Speaker.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 December 2016; Vol. 777, c. 591.]

I look forward to hearing more about the development of those plans.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

How can the Government justify having more than 800 unelected Members of the House of the Lords and reducing the elected House of Commons from 650 Members to 600? There are that many people in the House of Lords that they are running short of toilets.

[Chris Skidmore]

I am not sure about the toilets issue, but the Labour peer, Baroness Taylor of Bolton—a colleague of the hon. Gentleman with whom I am sure he often agrees—commented that while there are 845 Members of the House of Lords, average attendance is around 497. I am not sure what that does to the situation with the toilets.

Let us come back to the boundary changes. The hon. Gentleman has been around for a long time. He knows that when we look at the size of the constituencies in this House, we see that some have 95,000 constituents and some have 38,000. That discrepancy was first picked up on by the Chartists—he may have been around at that time. Two hundred years ago, a working-class organisation demanded change and we are the party that will deliver it.