Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. The scrutiny that that was given, the process, the transparency—that was a proper process. As my right hon. Friend the Culture Secretary has explained, on four occasions he took steps that were not welcomed by News Corporation, but in everything he did, he was open, transparent and taking independent advice.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Why is the Culture Secretary getting better employment rights than the rest of the workers in Britain? Is it possibly because the Prime Minister knows that as long as the Culture Secretary is in the firing line, it prevents the bullets from hitting him, the Prime Minister?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman has the right at any time to take his pension, and I advise him to do so.

Party Funding

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Why has the Prime Minister not turned up to answer questions? Is it because there is not enough money on offer? Is it not a fact that the Prime Minister has been surrounded by sleaze ever since he walked through the doors of No. 10, a public property that he has been using for his own and his party’s ends? The truth is that it is time this matter was cleaned up in a proper manner. It is time it went to the police.

[Mr Maude]

It is indeed time that this matter was cleared up. I look forward to the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiastic support for putting a cap on donations, including donations from the trade union movement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is nothing if not skilled in crowbarring the European Commission into almost any topic, and I congratulate him on doing so again. I do not think that the parallel is an exact one, because the European Commission can only propose legislation; adopting it, thankfully, is the role of elected Members of the European Parliament and elected Ministers in the Council of Ministers.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

The Deputy Prime Minister is on television almost every week talking about the influence of the Liberal Democrats within this coalition. I have an idea for him: why does he not do something useful for a change by having the guts to tell the Prime Minister to drop the dastardly Bill to privatise the health service and get in line with all those royal colleges and the British people who are calling for the same thing?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is truly ironic that the hon. Gentleman gets on his high horse once again to talk about the private sector in the NHS when it was his Labour Government—I am not sure whether he had disowned them—who crowbarred into the NHS sweetheart deals with the private sector that were deliberately designed to undermine the publicly owned parts. Some £250 million of taxpayers’ money was wasted by his colleagues in government on private sector contracts that delivered nothing. It is this coalition Government—two parties coming together—who are making privatisation by the back door illegal.

Informal European Council

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think the right hon. Gentleman is entirely right, and the refreshing thing about this Council is how much time was spent on the nitty-gritty of the single market—on digital, on services, on education and on energy markets. Having Mario Monti, the new Greek Prime Minister and others there with a real focus on the single market, including the new Spanish Prime Minister, gives us a much better prospect for making progress on this agenda than we have had for many years.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is not the truth of the matter that throughout 2011 the Prime Minister marched his troops to the top of the anti-European hill, and now, like John Major before him, and with the help of the Deputy Prime Minister, he has marched them down again? I think there is a word for it: it is called appeasement. If this meeting had been held in Munich, the Prime Minister would have been coming back waving a piece of paper.

[The Prime Minister]

I always wonder whether practice is going to make perfect with the hon. Gentleman. At least he has been consistent: he has always voted against all EU treaties, and I am giving him the rare pleasure of not having an EU treaty to vote against.

EU Council

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point—that the financial services go way beyond the City of London. As I said in my statement, 100,000 people are employed in the financial services in Birmingham, and the sector makes up 7% of UK employment; it is responsible for £1 of every £9 collected in tax, and 3% of our trade surplus. It is a hugely important industry. There would be a threat if there were a treaty of the 17 in the EU without the proper safeguards; that is why I vetoed that approach.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is this not the same Prime Minister who month after month has been castigating working people for not staying at meetings to deal with pensions? He has walked out, without using his veto; he has walked out, without getting a rebate like Mrs Thatcher; and he has walked out without a couple of opt-outs like Major. As Del Boy would say, what a plonker!

[The Prime Minister]

I can absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that I did not at any stage walk out of the meeting. What I did was to press Britain’s interests as a British Prime Minister should.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Now that the Deputy Prime Minister has displayed a high state of excitement about party political donations, will he do the decent thing as leader of the Liberal Democrats and instruct them to surrender their ill-gotten gains of more than £2 million from that jailbird Michael Brown?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, that matter was independently examined; the Liberal Democrat party was entirely within its rights, and it was entirely reasonable, to accept the money at the time, even though, of course, we would not have done so if we had known then what we subsequently knew. Given that his colleagues on the Front Bench are tabling amendments and deciding how to vote according to what their paymasters in the trade unions say, we need to know whether he and other Labour MPs are voting for what they think is right, or what they think is right for the trade unions.

G20

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, many people will comment on the ultimate failure of the G20 to resolve the eurozone crisis, but the G20 has made good steps forward in areas such as trying to roll back protectionism, and particularly on the issue that the right hon. Gentleman raises about globally significant financial institutions and the impact that they can have. The approach that Vickers recommends is fully in tune with what other G20 countries are recommending.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister realise that the British people out there are listening to the sheer effrontery of this British Prime Minister suggesting a growth plan for Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, while here at home he sticks rigidly to high inflation and mass unemployment? Hypocrisy by the bucketful!

[The Prime Minister]

That probably sounded better in front of the mirror than when the hon. Gentleman got to the Chamber.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. May I commend her for her questioning and what she did yesterday on the Select Committee? I think she showed commendable pluck, if I can put it that way, as well as asking some extremely pertinent questions.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

In the course of the past few minutes the Prime Minister has been asked a simple question twice and refused to answer it: as Prime Minister, did he ever discuss the question of the BSkyB bid with News International at all the meetings they attended?

[The Prime Minister]

I never had one inappropriate conversation, and let me be clear: I completely took myself out of any decision making about this bid. I had no role in it and I had no role in when the announcements were going to be made. That is the point. When the hon. Gentleman makes signals like that, I have to say—

Phone Hacking

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Everybody is aware that the reason why Murdoch had such tremendous power was that he had more than 40% of the print media, with television stations thrown in. It was not because of his amazing personality that politicians of all parties were in his pocket; it was because he had such power through the newspapers. In answer to the recent question of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), the Prime Minister said he did not want to strip Murdoch or anybody else of their titles. Will he therefore include in the inquiry’s terms of reference that the judge can, if he so wishes, say that nobody should have more than one title or one television station? Will the Prime Minister agree to that, because without it this cancer on the body politic—Murdoch—will remain?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, the inquiry can go where it wants to go; it can follow the evidence where it leads. I am sure the judge will want to produce an inquiry under the current law. That is what we have to do; we have to be a Government of the law. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman that we cannot have a responsible company owning a television or radio licence and also a newspaper, but we do need rules about plurality. That is why the media have not only a competition policy that they have to obey, but some rules about plurality so we can make sure there is a decent share of voice—a number of different voices in our media. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but I am afraid that not enough was done over the last 10 years to make that happen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not know what could be more gradualist than a proposal that would start in 2015 and not be complete until 2025. Many of the options for transition that we set out in the White Paper could not reasonably be accused of going too fast. We totally accept that a change on this scale, given that it has been discussed for more than 100 years, needs to be done carefully and incrementally.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

At the beginning of Question Time, the Deputy Prime Minister said that he was against “privatisation”. Half an hour later he said that he was against “privatisation of that kind”. A week used to be a long time in politics, but he has reduced it to half an hour.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I said there would be no privatisation of the NHS, and that is what I meant. There will be no privatisation of the NHS.