Financial Risk Checks for Gambling

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Monday 26th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

I know that my hon. Friend is a big supporter of Windsor racecourse in his constituency. I will come on to that later. I hope you will think about the interventions I am taking, Sir Edward. I do not want to get in trouble.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

You can have injury time if you want, Mr Davies.

[Philip Davies]

Thanks.

Thankfully, readers of the Racing Post and punters still believe in the timeless Conservative principle of individual responsibility. In a recent poll of punters carried out by the Racing Post, when asked who they thought was best placed to assess whether their betting is affordable, 96.6% said that they were, 1.8% said the Gambling Commission, 1% said bookmakers and 0.6% said the Government. If that is not a giant raspberry to the proposed affordability checks, I do not know what is.

Everyone knows that the problem gambling rates in the UK are extremely low, and certainly do not justify anything remotely close to what is being proposed. However, it is also pretty obvious to most people with common sense that the affordability checks are likely to make things worse for people with a gambling addiction, rather than better. Does anyone seriously think that anyone who has a serious gambling addiction, if and when they are told by online bookmakers that they are no longer allowed to bet with them, will just stop betting completely? It is pretty obvious that those people will do all they can to carry on with their addiction, and that will mean going to the black market where there are no controls on people’s behaviour.

Regulatory Impact Assessments Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

No, I am not. I know the Minister well—he is a very good man—and I know he would not be swayed by what the blob was trying to tell him to do or not do. He is a man of his own mind and a very talented Minister, and I have no doubts about his decision-making skills. However, I am afraid that the idea that I should be reassured at the Government, in effect, handing over more decision making to some unelected body of the great and the good of the elite, and that I should put all my trust in them, does not give me any reassurance. To be perfectly honest, it somewhat horrifies me that the Government are farming out these things to the great and the good of the establishment.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am rather confused by my hon. Friend’s speech. Normally, he is a sunny chap who looks on the positive side of life, but from what he is saying, it does not matter whether or not we have a serious impact assessment and whether or not it is worked on, because Governments of all persuasions at all times are so hopeless that nothing is ever going to improve, and we are going to have as many cock-ups in the next 100 years as we have had in the last 100 years. Is that really what he is saying?

[Philip Davies]

I think that is a pretty fair summary. If my right hon. Friend wants me to give a summary, that is not far off the mark. Yes, I am pretty sure that that will be the case.

I am afraid to say that, frankly, that is not going to change until Members of Parliament raise their game, to be perfectly honest. I am not particularly pinning the blame on the Government. They do their thing and their job is to get through what they want to get through. The people who should be holding the Government to account are us—those on these Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches. Our solemn duty is to hold the Government of the day to account, yet my point is that we are absolutely hopeless at doing so. As I have said, during the passage of the Climate Change Act, nobody was interested in the cost-benefit analysis. They were just voting for it like sheep because they thought it would be popular, or because there had been an email campaign encouraging them to do so. They were not doing the job they were paid to do, which was to scrutinise the legislation.

This comes back to the other flaw in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said that the Government should have to bring forward a cost-benefit analysis, and Members of Parliament could then scrutinise it and make a decision. I have to say to him that, if the Government refuse to bring forward an impact assessment or cost-benefit analysis, Members already have the power to say, “Actually, we’re not going to support this until you do bring forward a cost-benefit analysis.” The solution to the problem he is seeking to solve already lies in the hands of Members on the Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches if they are simply prepared to assert themselves and make it clear to Ministers, “We’re not just going to rubber-stamp something because you tell us it’s a good thing to do. Until you bring forward the evidence that shows it’s a good thing to do, we’re not going to support it.”

How many times do Members of Parliament ever say that to the Government? They do not say that; they just nod and go along with it. I do not think the Government are actually the biggest problem. I think it is Members of Parliament on the Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches who are the biggest problem, because we do not need this legislation. Members of Parliament should assert themselves and force Ministers to do this anyway.

A cost-benefit analysis brought forward by the Government in effect amounts to Ministers marking their own homework in that, when they bring forward a Bill, they also bring forward the cost-benefit analysis. I am not persuaded at all by the Minister that some body of the great and the good is rubber-stamping what the Government have come up with, no doubt after being appointed by the Government to do that job. What use is that? We want people who have not been appointed by the Government to scrutinise the Bill, not people who have been appointed by them.

Of course, we know that this is the case because it goes back to what George Osborne said at the time he set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. The reason he set it up, as colleagues will remember, is that he was fed up of the previous Government coming up with bogus forecasts to justify their policies and decisions at Budgets and autumn statements. They had, in effect, manipulated the figures to stick within the arbitrary rules they had set for themselves, which they then perhaps no longer wanted to keep. They were in charge of the forecasts and the figures, and they manipulated the figures for their own political advantage. George Osborne’s stated reason for introducing the Office for Budget Responsibility was, in effect, that the Treasury could not be trusted to come up with honest figures that we could all rely on, all the figures were dodgy and we needed an independent body to do it.

If the Bill passes and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch says, “I want the Minister to come up with a cost-benefit analysis,” all we are doing is handing the cost-benefit analysis to the Treasury, which previous Chancellors have said cannot be trusted to come up with accurate forecasts and figures. I am not entirely sure what use it would be to the decision-making process if we ever got to the point where a Member of Parliament was actually interested in what the cost-benefit analysis said.

I feel slightly conflicted. On the basis of what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and my right hon. Friends the Members for Tatton and for Gainsborough said, this seems, at face value, a very obvious, simple thing to do. I repeat that I cannot understand why any Minister who wanted to make decisions would not want to go through this process. But I fear that, despite the best intentions of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, it would not deliver the outcome that he seeks or, in the end, particularly improve decision making in this House.

Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments, but, given where we are, we are going have to do something to give judges as little discretion as possible, because the more discretion we give them, the more they defy the will of Parliament.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I apologise to my hon. Friend if during my remarks I stressed my personal point of view, which is that if someone is sentenced to more than 12 months, they should be deported. I am not agonising too much about that. The problem is that so many of the people who are sentenced to more than 12 months are not being deported. Does my hon. Friend see that point? We should just concentrate on doing away with article 8 and getting our own Bill of Rights so that we can actually deport these serious criminals.

[Philip Davies]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.

For completeness, I should say that the Court of Appeal stated in R v. Mintchev:

“As a matter of principle it would not be right to reduce an otherwise appropriate sentence so as to avoid the”

automatic deportation provisions. A further clarification stated that

“automatic deportation provisions are not a penalty included in the sentence. They are instead a consequence of the sentence.”

My public service broadcasting message from today to judges is that they should look at the Court of Appeals judgment in that case, so that we do not end up with any other problems like that. There are many crimes for which sentences cannot be appealed, so it is important that judges deal with things the first time. We cannot always rely on the Court of Appeal.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. Of course the situation is only going to get worse. We had net immigration into the UK last year of more than 320,000 people. It is not necessary to be the chief statistician to work out that the number of foreign national offenders will keep going up and up, as the number of foreign nationals coming into the UK goes up.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is the settled policy of Her Majesty’s Government—I see the Minister for Europe speaking with the Deputy Speaker now—that Turkey should enter the European Union. They support that application, and indeed it has been fast-tracked. There are 77 million Turks. Turkish jails are notoriously appalling. There is absolutely no doubt that if Turkey joined the EU, as is our settled policy, every single one of these 77 million Turks would have an absolute right of entry into this country. A proportion of them would naturally end up in prison, and I predict that very few of them would ever be sent back to Turkish prisons.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. In many respects the problem is even more immediate, because my understanding of last week’s negotiations is that Turkish people will be able to enter the EU without visas, so we do not even have to wait until Turkey joins the EU to see that happen, so of course the problem is going to get worse. That is why the Bill is absolutely urgent. We cannot wait to implement its measures; we need to do something now.

When we look at the number of EU foreign nationals in UK prisons since the introduction of free movement, we see that just six countries—the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Poland—account for over half that population. It is from those countries that we have seen the huge growth in the number of people coming over to the UK from the EU. The numbers from countries such as Spain and Germany are much smaller by comparison.

Of course, the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering did not make—I mention it for completeness’ sake—is what has happened to prisoner numbers in those EU countries. Members may or may not be surprised to learn that at the same time that we have been taking more Polish and Romanian prisoners into UK jails, there has been a corresponding reduction in the prison population in those countries. Members may speculate on why Romania’s prison population has plummeted at the same time as the number of Romanians in UK prisons has gone through the roof. I suggest that the two may be linked, and it is for others to try to disprove that link. It seems to me to be rather more than a coincidence.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said—it was the one part of his speech with which I disagreed—that that was a stain on countries such as Poland, and that it besmirched them. Good luck to them, I say. They seem to be playing a very sensible game. I make no criticism of Poland for wanting to export its criminals to other parts of the European Union. My quibble is not with Poland, but with the UK Government for allowing these people into the country in the first place and not kicking them out at the first possible opportunity. I make no criticism of Poland; I criticise the UK Government for not getting a grip of the situation.

This is a growing problem in our prisons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering rightly said, we have very few prisoners from other parts of the world. We have 180 from the whole of central and south America put together. That tells its own story. This is a direct consequence of our membership of the EU.

We must do something to prevent re-entry. The Bill, on its own, is essential, and hopefully I have explained why we need to do something about kicking people out of the country more efficiently than we are currently doing, but that will be pointless if we do not also have measures in place to prevent re-entry. Otherwise it is just a token gesture. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) tabled an early-day motion on this issue. It states:

“That this House notes that the criminal convictions held by EU citizens that are revealed by a Disclosure and Barring Service check are only those held in central records in the UK; is concerned that this does not therefore include convictions held abroad of foreign nationals; further notes that it is not obligatory for an employer to require an employee to provide a certificate of good conduct from their home country; and therefore calls on the Government to introduce and enforce the obligatory disclosure of any previous convictions held by EU and other foreign-born citizens upon application for a job in the UK.”

That is a very sensible early-day motion, and it goes to show that the Bill’s provisions, and indeed going a bit further than my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, would command support from not just people such as me, but Members on both sides of the House.

Given the points raised by Opposition Members—whether the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Bassetlaw, who is a senior Member of the House, or a former shadow Home Secretary—I hope we can look forward to the shadow Minister telling us that the Labour party also agrees with the provisions in the Bill and would actually support going further.

What the shadow Minister says will be important, because this is the last day for private Members’ Bills in this Session, and there will be no further opportunities to take the further stages of any Bill scheduled for today. Therefore, if the Labour party could indicate its support for making it easier to deport foreign nationals, that would give the Government some encouragement to make their own provisions when time runs out for this Bill. I am sure the Minister would be encouraged to know that Opposition parties welcomed more work being done on this issue in the House.

We have no way of knowing the criminal past of any EU citizen entering the UK, contrary to what somebody said in a debate I took part in on the EU. We will have to do a top 10 list of the most outlandish claims by those who want to stay in the EU, but my No. 1 at the moment is that when somebody comes to passport control, we scan their passport and the computer comes up with all their criminal offences in their home country, so we do not have to let them in if we do not want to. I would love that system to be in place, but I am afraid it is a work of fiction—it does not exist at all, as I hope the Minister will also be able to confirm.

I do not want to test the patience of the House—others want to contribute, and there are other matters to be debated today—but I want to make it clear that the Bill is essential; it would certainly command the majority of support among my constituents, and I have indicated that it would also command the support of people on both sides of the House.

Had we been able to kick people out of the country, and had we had a robust policy of border control so that we could take fingerprints or DNA, that might have helped to prevent the Romanian burglar who left his fingerprints and DNA at many of the 31 homes he burgled from getting away with all those crimes because he was not on any DNA database when he entered the country. It might also have dealt with the Lithuanian burglar who was released from prison early and deported, only to be found living back in Britain 12 days later, along with his accomplice, who had apparently been deported from the country not once but twice.

That is what is actually happening in our country day in, day out, week in, week out. We are exposed to dangerous foreign criminals. We have many unnecessary victims of crime in the UK because we are not controlling our borders and not deporting foreign national offenders, even when we know who they are.

The Bill could have prevented the Lithuanian convicted of a knife-point robbery before he came to the UK from going on to rape two women shortly after his arrival. There could be no more tragic example of the problem we face than the death of 14-year-old schoolgirl Alice Gross. The man suspected of killing her had come from Latvia after apparently serving a paltry seven-year prison sentence for killing his wife, yet nobody here knew of his terrible past. The Government have a duty to protect people who live here, and their scandalous failure to do so has had the most dire consequences for many families, including that of Alice Gross.

There is no more important matter facing the House today than this. I hope we will hear from all parties that they will support provisions to make it easier to deport foreign national offenders to keep us safe. The current situation is unacceptable. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering for doing something about it, and I hope the Government will indicate today that they will do something about it too.

EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Friday 26th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I suspect that, in the short term, not a fat lot would happen to the £62 billion trade deficit with the EU, as we would pretty much carry on in the same way. We would keep trading with it, and it would keep trading with us. I tried to check that out. I asked the Prime Minister, after one of his European Council meetings, whether he had had any discussions with Angela Merkel that would indicate that, if we were to leave the EU, she would want her country to stop selling BMWs, Mercedes, Volkswagens and Audis free of tariff to the UK. The Prime Minister did not say anything at all about that, so I presumed that he had not heard anything. Given his determination that we should stay in the EU, I am sure that, if he had had any inkling at all that the Germans were not going to continue selling us their cars free of tariff, he would have been more than happy to put it on the public record. As people can see from his answer, it appears that he had had no such indication from the German Government that they would stop trading freely with us.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is simple: if we left the EU, we would not have to pay a £10 billion a year subscription just to have a £70 billion a year deficit.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At the end of the day, what this boils down to is people’s confidence in their negotiating abilities. I used to work for Asda, and I fear that, if some of my hon. Friends had been our buyers and had used their negotiating skills, we would have gone bust. In effect, what many of my colleagues are saying—and what Labour Members are saying—is that we have a £62 billion trade deficit, but we do not think that we can negotiate a free trade agreement without handing over a huge membership fee every single year. That is the easiest negotiation known to mankind. If they cannot negotiate that deal, what on earth can these people negotiate? If the Prime Minister were to claim that he could not negotiate a free trade deal with the EU based on that trade deficit every year—I am sure that he will not say that because he claims to be a good negotiator—he would not be fit to lead this country into those negotiations. That is what I would say to anybody who aspires to such a role.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

No, I do not accept that at all. The Prime Minister has done absolutely nothing to stop these people coming into the UK—literally nothing. There is nothing in place to stop them; there are a few people on a watch list whom we can stop coming into the UK, but they would be on a watch list whether we were in the EU or outside it. We need to develop a watch list for people from around the world, because this is not an EU issue. We can already stop those people coming to the UK, and we would always be able to stop them coming to the UK, if they are on a terrorist watch list. I am talking about the thousands and thousands of criminals who are unknown to the British authorities, who come through every week on an EU passport to commit their crimes. When I was out with West Yorkshire police a few years ago—this might seem fanciful, and it seemed fanciful to me when I first heard it—they told me they had a problem with people getting a short-haul flight from other EU countries to Leeds Bradford airport, going out into Leeds city centre and committing high-value crimes and robberies, and then being back on the plane out to their country of origin before the police have even finished investigating the crime. I had not even thought that that type of thing could happen, but West Yorkshire police told me that that was a serious concern for them.

Of course, it is easy for people do these things while we are in the EU—there is nothing to prevent them from coming here. They are known to their own national law enforcement agencies, so they are at risk of being apprehended in their own countries. It is much easier for them to commit crimes in the UK, where they are not known to anybody—they can come in and go out in a flash. We have to be aware that these are problems.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

To be absolutely fair—we should be fair, and that is why we need an independent audit—our own crooks can presumably do the same in those other countries?

[Philip Davies]

Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The problem is that there are much richer pickings in the UK than in some of the countries these people come from.

The other aspect of this is that, even if these people run the risk of being caught, they would, I suspect, much prefer to spend their time in a British prison than in a prison in their home nation. So this is a win-win, given their chances of being caught and what happens when they are caught. I am afraid that that does not quite work the same in reverse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That sort of casual statement is quite worrying, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for telling us about it.

I was about to deal with the cost of EU membership. The following information is taken from various papers that I have been studying. The cost is set to be £3.1 billion higher over the next five years than forecast before the 2015 general election. This is not a static process, therefore. That change is due to a reassessment of the size of Britain’s economy relative to the rest of the EU, thus penalising the UK for its economic success. The bigger and more successful we get, the greater a magnet for migrants we become and the bigger the sub we have to pay, despite the fact that the deficit carries on much the same as it always has done.

[Philip Davies]

On that point, is it not ironic that the Prime Minister trumpets the fact that he has managed to get a cut in the EU budget but did not mention that as a part of that cut the UK’s contribution to the EU budget went up, not down?

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[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am astonished that in this great negotiating triumph no attempt has been made to address the issue of the rebate, and I will give a few details on that in a moment. This was considered to be one of the most important issues—such as when Mrs Thatcher secured the reduction—but no attempt has been made to deal with it.

For 2016 the UK will pay £9.5 billion. It was only expected to pay £8.2 billion. Everybody casually rolls off the figure of £9 billion now as if we always thought it would be £9 billion, but it was not always going to be £9 billion; it was going to be £8.2 billion. It has suddenly gone up and nobody in the Government or elsewhere complains about that to our partners. I remember that when my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I were Ministers everybody talked about our “European partners”. This Government seem to have dropped that; they have dropped all the visionary case for Europe in terms of partnership and so forth. They all claim they are great Eurosceptics, but they do not tell us the casual little fact that we were expected to pay £8.2 billion and that has now gone up to £.9.5 billion. We are now estimated to pay just under £250 million per week for EU membership.

Civitas has debunked the Government claim that the EU makes each household better off by £3,300 per year. The Government can argue against Civitas and have an analysis of its case, but they do make that claim. It would be nice to have some analysis of where they get those figures from, but we have not been given that.

According to Open Europe, the top five costliest EU regulations enforced in the UK are: the UK renewable energy strategy, with a recurring cost of £4.7 billion a year; the capital requirements directive IV package, with a recurring cost of £4.6 billion a year; the working time directive, with a recurring cost of £4.2 billion a year. I appreciate that one of the cases made by the Labour party is that it rather likes the working time directive. That is a perfectly logical, good case to make, and I have no argument with them making it, but I would like to know—perhaps the Labour party, the Government and the people would like to know—whether this figure of a recurring cost of £4.2 billion a year is right.

The next cost in the list is the EU climate and energy package, with a recurring cost of £3.4 billion a year. I am quoting Open Europe, which may be wrong, but the Minister can debunk these arguments if he wishes. Then there is the temporary agency workers directive, with a recurring cost of £2.1 billion a year. These are not insignificant sums—£4.7 billion, £4.6 billion, £4.2 billion, £3.4 billion, £2.1 billion—but how much detailed analysis are the British people being given about any of this?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Is it not also ironic that the Labour party seems to be so enthusiastic for our membership of the EU, yet it comes to the House every month and asks that the Government do more to help the steel industry and the coal industry when it is the policies of the EU that are doing most to obliterate the steel and coal industries in the UK?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have mentioned Grimsby and fishing, but my constituency also abuts Scunthorpe. What about these poor people there? They are also going to be allowed to vote on 23 June, and are being encouraged to do so. They would rather like to know the detailed costs of what the EU means for their jobs and what the possible alternatives are. This is serious stuff for them—it is not just a debate in the House of Commons; it is about their whole way of life and their town.

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[Sir Edward Leigh]

This is the worst case scenario and I am being completely fair in putting it. I think it is unlikely.

[Philip Davies]

Will my hon. Friend give way briefly?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Does not my hon. Friend want me to go on with the best case scenario? Then I will give way to him.

According to Open Europe,

“In a best case scenario, where the UK strikes a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU, pursues very ambitious deregulation of its economy and opens up almost fully to trade with the rest of the world, UK GDP would be 1.6% higher than if it had stayed within the EU.

However, these are outliers. The more realistic range is between a 0.8% permanent loss to GDP in 2030 – where the UK strikes a comprehensive trade deal with the EU but does nothing else; and a 0.6% permanent gain in GDP in 2030 – where it pursues free trade with the rest of the world and deregulation, in addition to an EU FTA.”

These arguments about disaster and millions of jobs being lost are, I think, overstated, but I may be wrong. I keep making this point: the Government have vast resources, such as the National Audit Office and the Office for Budget Responsibility. We would like to know before we cast our vote.

[Philip Davies]

The Treasury now acknowledges that 3 million jobs depend on trading with the EU, not on being a member of the EU. If that is the case—I am sure there is a lot of truth in it—given our substantial trade deficit with the European Union, does that not mean, therefore, that about 5 million jobs in the EU are dependent on its trade with the UK?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, that is the point that was made time and again during the debate yesterday. I am not sure the Government have entirely answered it to my satisfaction.

The Government seem to argue that were we to vote to leave the EU, that would be such a catastrophic snub to our EU partners that there would be a degree of vengeance. I think that is a childlike view of how policy is created in Paris and Berlin. Many people in France—I take a bit of an interest in this—have argued for many years that it would not be an absurd state of affairs for Britain to leave the EU, for all sorts of reasons. However, the Government argue that a dramatic vengeance game would be initiated.

By the way, if our European partners acted in that way, would we want to have anything to do with them? It is a ridiculous argument anyway. They would not behave in that way, because of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies)—because of our trade deficit with them, particularly with our German friends. They are intimately bound up with us in terms of trade and there is every incentive to conclude a reasonable deal.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Perhaps I have banged on a bit too much about the economy, and should briefly touch on defence and security, as it is in my hon. Friend’s Bill and is a matter of acute concern. Apart from “Project Fear”, which is based on this false premise of a loss of millions of jobs—Lord Mandelson appears to have made that up on the back of a fag packet—which no one has ever quantified in any great detail, although we wait to hear what the Government say about that, there are all these arguments about security. David Owen, a former Labour Foreign Secretary, who has now come out in favour of leaving the EU, dealt with that matter and debunked it very well on his interview on the “Today” programme yesterday. He asked how the European Union has improved our security by creating, in an imperialist and expansionist way, a new trade association deal with Ukraine, which led directly to Russian fears of being encircled and to the annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. By the way, I do not countenance, approve or support in any way what Russia has done. The fact is that the EU gave President Putin that opportunity.

In a direct answer to my hon. Friend, is it really conceivable that, if the UK decided to leave the EU, our friends and allies in the Baltic states would want to throw us into some appalling doghouse and have nothing more to do with us when their freedom and security depends so much on us? We do have the strongest armed forces in the European Union. France and Britain are the only two countries that are capable of deploying world power. The Minister who is summing up this debate has considerable expertise in this matter because, as a Back Bencher, he spent years talking about it.

Although I cannot speak for the French Government, I do regularly speak to people in France, and I can assure Members that France has no interest or desire in not continuing to co-operate in an ever closer way, in terms of an ever closer union of sovereign states, in military policy. This whole argument that, somehow, the peace and security of Europe would be endangered if we were to leave the EU does not hold water. I will not repeat all the arguments that have been made many times before about our peace and security depending not on remaining in the EU, but on NATO. That is not a point that can be directly summed up in any cost- benefit analysis, but it needs to be articulated. We Eurosceptics are not nationalists. We love Europe; we love Europeans; we love European culture; and we want to have the closest possible relationship with our friends in France and Germany.

Let us go back to some of the detailed studies of the cost-benefit analysis. I am very grateful to the Library of the House of Commons for this. In fact, we should pay tribute to it because it is one of the few bodies that has actually attempted, with its limited resources, to collate all these studies. The study by the Institute for Economic Affairs—Minford et al, 2005—“Should Britain leave the EU” estimates a range of 3.2% to minus 3.7% of GDP in ongoing costs. I have dealt with Open Europe. The 2014 study by Gianmarco Ottaviano “Brexit or Fixit? The Trade and Welfare Effects of Leaving the European Union”, the Centre for Economic Performance and the London School of Economics estimated the trade-related costs to the UK of leaving the EU as being in the range of 2.2% to 9.5% of GDP. That is their argument, but it would be nice for it to be tested. In the literature review for “Our Global Future”, the CBI—again, I am not citing people who are naturally friendly to my point of view, but we need to test the arguments—found that the net benefit arising from EU membership is somewhere in the region of 4% to 5% of UK GDP.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend have the figures that the CBI gave for the great benefits that we would have received when it recommended that we join the euro?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We should have had more independent analysis of that. Conservative Members often criticise Gordon Brown, but we should never forget that he kept us out of the euro, against the wishes of his Prime Minister, Tony Blair. We were told that disaster would strike by some in the City of London, the CBI and so on, and they used precisely these arguments. Now the Prime Minister goes to the Dispatch Box and says as a great virtue that we are out of the euro, but we were told by all the powers of the establishment that not joining the euro would be a disaster, and many of the arguments used were exactly the same.

Local Government (Religious etc. Observances) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I drafted my new clause carefully. It is meant to constitute a serious contribution to the debate. I am not arguing that there should, or must, be prayers before a council meeting. Of course, no one needs to go to them anyway. It is simply a decision that is made at the time of the council meeting. Nor am I arguing that the prayers must be of a Judaeo-Christian nature. I am, however, making the serious point, in this House of Commons, that this is our past. This is our foundation. This is what has made us free.

We cannot just say that we must have a “time for reflection” before council meetings, and that anything goes, because if we do that we lose contact with our history. I think that in losing contact with our history of tolerance—which is the foundation, or essence, of the British state—we actually encourage religious extremism. It is often people in whose families there is absolutely no religion who are led astray into following bizarre sects and the like.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is not just our past, though, is it? It is also our present. In Parliament, we start every day with prayers, and those prayers are Christian prayers; they are not from any other religion. However, people do not have to participate in them if they do not wish to. My hon. Friend is much more religious than I am, but I am not aware of anyone who objects to starting the day with prayers. It is actually a rather good way in which to start the day. Wouldn’t it be nice if local authorities started their proceedings in the same way as Parliament?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That sums it up: wouldn’t it be nice? No one is using the language of compulsion. Wouldn’t it be nice? What is wrong with a moment for reflection?

European Parliament Elections Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Friday 9th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on presenting this Bill. I concur and agree with my hon. Friend—indeed, he is a good friend—the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) who has adduced some very powerful arguments for a change in thinking. Much as I admire the Minister’s independence of spirit, I accept that he is hardly like to change Government policy on a wet Friday in January, but I very much hope that he will listen to the very intelligent arguments that have been made.

In my view, and in that of most people, an open list system is a much more democratic way of electing Members of the European Parliament. It is undoubtedly entirely pernicious that a small group of people—sadly, modern political parties are quite small in their numbers—can decide on who heads a list and that person is then automatically elected. All they have to do for the next five years is attend every party meeting and ensure that they are well in with their regional party. They remain No. 1, and whatever the people want, they get elected. We have heard the history of the debate in the Labour party in the 1990s, so I will not repeat it, but it shows that this is not a party political matter. It is an issue that the Labour party could look at as well as the Conservative party.

If we believe in the European Parliament and want to create interest, we should want to have characters elected—people who stand up for something. It is surely right that if they are popular in their region, they can rise up the list and people can vote for them individually. The political parties should not fiddle around, decreeing that a certain sort of person should rise to the top; it is up to the people to decide, as the will of the people is seldom wrong.

Before I sit down—it is the will of the House that this debate is fairly short—let me say that there is a wider issue. A big debate will continue about whether we have elections to the House of Lords. Personally, for all sorts of reasons, I do not agree with elections to the House of Lords. If they do happen, they will undoubtedly be under proportional representation. It would be a complete disaster if people were elected to the House of Lords under a closed list system. It really would be ridiculous to put a load of party hacks in the second Chamber, which is not about people forming a Government but about rationally trying to reform legislation, because we had kept this closed list system. The arguments are very strong. We will not get a result today—

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend sits down, may I say that we have a system that is neither open nor closed; it is neither fish nor fowl. Yorkshire and the Humber region elected Edward McMillan-Scott as a Conservative on a closed list system. Basically, people were invited to vote for a party and they voted Conservative. He defected to the Liberal Democrats and carried on as the MEP as a Liberal Democrat, even though nobody had voted for him as an individual; they had only voted Conservative. The current system is complete nonsense; it is neither one thing nor another.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is also scandalous that someone can defect from the party to which they had been elected and then just carry on in the European Parliament. My hon. Friend has put his finger on it: this is neither fish nor fowl. It is actually completely illogical. Debate and reform are needed, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for moving this Bill.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The original target is completely out of date. Indeed, I note in passing that if this matter is so important for the Labour party and vital for the future of the world, it is interesting that the attendance on their Benches is a bit thin. I think I have seen about 20 Labour Members come in the Chamber to support the measure. Perhaps they might want to explain why that is.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Is not the most important point that if we fix a Department’s budget as a proportion of the nation’s income, we grossly distort the actions of that Department? Departments should spend what they can afford on what they want to do within the limits of what is in the national interest. This measure would be grossly distorting and un-Conservative.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Let us just imagine what would happen if the Government intended to support a particular project somewhere, but found towards the end of the financial year that it was rife with corruption and therefore thought it best not to spend money on it. They would not be able to do that. The Government would not be allowed to say, “We’ll keep the money and not spend it,” but would be forced, at the last minute, to spend it, because Parliament had insisted that it had to be spent, come what may. How on earth is that a sensible way to ask a Department to act?

We heard the idea that if we did this and set the lead, all other countries would follow. We hear it time and again in different contexts. CND started this in the 1980s—“If we get rid of all our nuclear weapons, every other country in the world will follow.” We all knew—even the Labour party came to realise—that that was a load of old nonsense. Then we started hearing it on climate change—“If we hit our climate change targets and do all this, every other country in the world will follow”—but that has been proved to be a load of cobblers as well. All the big people churning out all the carbon emissions are doing absolutely nothing to curb them, apart from welcoming our industry to their countries, but still we hear it, even though it has been proved wrong time after time—“If we do this, every other country will follow.”

What has actually happened in practice? While we have been ramping up the proportion that we spend on overseas aid, similar countries in the developed world have been reducing the amount they spend as a percentage of their GNI. Why have they done that? There are two possible explanations. The first is that they actually have some sense and realise that if they cannot afford to spend the money, they would have to spend less on something that is a discretionary spend—something that we might consider doing at some point.

Prisons (Property) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Friday 14th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Thankfully, he made a long enough intervention for me to quickly brush through the figures to see whether I could find any particular highlights or lowlights. The figures that instantly spring to mind as regards mobile phone seizures are 265 at Altcourse prison, which I cannot say I am familiar with, and 231 at Pentonville, which I am much more familiar with. Those seem to be the two highest figures. Altcourse also had a rather high number of drugs seizures. Several prisons have single figures for mobile phones. The lowest that I can see is Blantyre House, which has just one, as do Low Newton, Morton Hall and Send, while some have two. There is a big discrepancy between 230-odd and just one or two. I can only reiterate that it is difficult to tell which prisons we should be commending and which we should not.

[Mr Leigh]

Prisons have always been like this. I know that my hon. Friend is a deeply humane man who does not want to return to the era of prisons in the 1930s, when prisoners were prevented from meeting people except from behind a glass screen, or the 19th century, when prisoners were kept in solitary confinement. So what are we going to do? He is right to draw the House’s attention to this. Can we hold the Under-Secretary to account? Our prisons are awash with drugs; surely he should be responsible for ensuring, in a humane and a fair way, that there are proper searches so that we can try to make some progress, which palpably, at the moment, we are not.

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. That is the point I am trying to make. There is a lot more that the prison authorities can do to stop these items getting into prison in the first place. There should be much wider coverage of nets to stop things being thrown over the wall. There should be better, more frequent and more rigorous searches of prison officers when they get into work.

If we know that prison officers are often responsible for bringing this material into work, better checks of prison officers would seem to be an obvious step to take. I am sure that the vast majority of prison officers who carry out their job without ever indulging in such activity would welcome the prospect of any bad apples in their profession being rooted out.

Given that so many contraband items come in as a result of visitations, why do we not have better and more frequent use of closed visits, as is the case in other countries, particularly the United States of America? The only way to stop visitors bringing things into prison is by having closed visits whereby the visit takes place through a glass screen. I am well aware that, occasionally, such things are what is known in the jargon as risk-assessed, so that those prisoners who are deemed a higher risk than others will be put on the closed visit regime.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) has made clear, whatever we are doing at the moment is not working. All of this stuff is still in prisons. It is far in excess of what should be tolerated, and we need to be much more robust in dealing with the problem. We talk about human rights, the rights of prisoners and all those kinds of things, but I am not entirely sure that my hon. Friend was right when he said that I would not want us to go back to a 19th-century prison regime, because I suspect that I probably would, particularly if it was much more robust than the one we have today. We talk about people’s human rights but, given that so many prisoners are on drugs while they are in prison and that so many of them take drugs for the first time while they are there, surely we should be looking after their best interests by doing much more to stop these things getting into prison in the first place. It cannot be beyond the will or the wit of the Government or the prison authorities to stop this taking place. That deals with how these things get into prison in the first place and I hope that the Government will take note.

The number of prosecutions of staff for conveying prohibited items into prison is, depressingly, very low. In the previous Parliament, David Howarth, the former Member for Cambridge, asked the Secretary of State for Justice

“how many prison staff were charged with disciplinary or criminal offences involving (a) importation of drugs, (b) importation of mobile telephones and (c) importation of other contraband to a prison in the most recent year for which figures are available.”—[Official Report, 11 January 2010; Vol. 503, c. 797W.]

The answer given was that two members of prison staff were disciplined for conveying drugs into prison, three for conveying mobile phones and five for other contraband, which is a total of 10. I am sure that nobody present believes that the number of materials that come in through that route is as low as that. We need to do much better.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) asked a similar question in March this year. He asked the Secretary of State for Justice

“how many prison officers were (a) accused of, (b) charged with, (c) prosecuted for and (d) convicted of smuggling drugs or other contraband into prisons in the most recent period for which figures are available.”—[Official Report, 19 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 533W.]

In 2008, there were six convictions for drugs and none for any other form of contraband, but in many respects that was the high water mark for this particular issue. The figures given for this year to date—admittedly, the question was asked in March, so perhaps we should not be too unkind—show that only one prison officer has been convicted for smuggling drugs and only one for smuggling other contraband. We need to do much better than that.

On how widespread the problem is, I have given a flavour of the number of seizures that have been made. The director general of the Prison Service gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee in 2000 in the aftermath of a large search at Blantyre House prison. He said that staff and other prisoners had helped with the search, and that he was very concerned about the

“frightening amount of contraband material we found”.

You might have spotted, Mr Deputy Speaker, that that is one of the prisons that has the lowest number of seizures at the moment. Either there has been a revolution in that prison and none of these things take place any more because of what happened back then, or the system of identifying and confiscating such things has again become too slack.

According to a newspaper report in April this year,

“a series of lightening raids on Britain’s toughest prisons”

in the north-west of England led to search squads seizing

“140 weapons, 1,760 pints of booze, 2,746 grams of cannabis, 113 grams of heroin and 41 grams of cocaine in a year-long crackdown which also uncovered 322 mobile phones, 201 SIM cards and 308 chargers.”

If those are the figures for raids in one part of the country, the figures for the whole country must be astonishing. According to the report,

“A total of 32 people were arrested over the finds which also included 503 seizures of steroids and 173 more of equipment used to make or take drugs.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey made a good point about the storage of these things. Let me reiterate that 322 mobile phones, 201 SIM cards and 308 chargers were seized. Do we really expect the prison authorities to set up a locker room somewhere, with each item neatly identified with the person who had it, so that we can hand it back on their release from prison? In effect, that is to say, “It’s absolutely fine that you had this thing. I’m sorry you got caught, old chap. Here, have it back. We have labelled it all properly.”

Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), who, although a fellow member of my chambers, is a far more distinguished barrister than I have ever been. He speaks with great authority. However, I do not wish to declare that legal interest, particularly; I want to declare as an interest the fact that I have been a victim, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). I have been burgled four times, twice in London and twice in Lincolnshire, and it has never been other than a completely traumatic, devastating experience. I apologise if that somewhat warps my judgment when it comes to burglars, but there it is. My experiences are similar to those of no fewer than 745,000 of my fellow citizens who, in 2010, were burgled and had their lives traumatised.

On the last occasion on which I was burgled, the burglars stripped some lead off the roof; fair enough, but they then came inside and stole the hot-water tank, without bothering to turn off the water—why should they? That would have been a kind gesture. The result was that the house was completely flooded. Everything was ruined, and my experience is not unusual nowadays. I do not accept the argument of the liberal elite—if I may use the sort of language used by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies)—that there are nice burglaries and bad burglaries; all domestic burglaries are absolutely horrible, and the public are completely fed up with them.

The deterrent is simply not great enough. In 2010, there was a statistically significant increase of 14% in domestic burglaries, so it is not surprising that 60% of adults feel that crime has gone up since last year. We heard earlier that the public do not necessarily understand what is really going on, and that they read the popular press, but I trust the public. When there are 745,000 burglaries, they start to worry, and they feel under threat in their homes. That ruins their lives. Vulnerable, older, and poorer people feel that even more strongly. They cannot live in gated communities.

I suppose that the police tried their best when I was burgled, but there was no evidence that there was any follow-up, or that they were taking intelligence. They seemed to be overwhelmed. All they said to me is, “You have to have a burglar alarm fitted and fit more locks.” However, the poor simply cannot afford this. It is the poor and the old who suffer. Judges and we in this House have a duty to defend our people from being victimised in this way.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend is saying. Is it not all the more terrible that 10% of all crimes and 20% of all burglaries are committed by people on bail? Given that, should not the Government be doing something to tighten up the bail rules, instead of making it harder for courts to remand people in custody?

[Mr Leigh]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I do not want to weary the House with too many figures, because then I will be accused of quoting statistics, which do not give the whole story. However, these figures are alarming and it is up to the Government to reply to them. As I have said, 48% of all burglars do not receive an immediate custodial sentence. Some 37% of burglars of private dwelling houses—the worst form of violation of our fellow citizens’ rights—do not receive a custodial sentence. Approximately 87% of custodial sentences for domestic burglary are for less than three years. In 2010, only 16% of those convicted of burglary were sentenced to more than 18 months in prison. In other words, only 16% were sent to prison, and a lot of them were out within nine months. We know that a house that has been burgled has a 20% chance of being burgled at least once more within a year.

Apart from the trauma and the violation of people’s rights and privacy, burglary costs insurers a staggering £370 million per annum. Members should not believe all those insurance adverts in which the kind insurance company comes in the next day and mends everything—that does not happen. As I and our fellow citizens know, it is hard going every inch of the way with these insurance companies.

What about the clear-up rate? The British crime survey shows that approximately 659,000 domestic burglaries were committed in 2009-10. Given that only 9,670 such offenders were convicted, the clear-up rate was a mere 1.4%. So, not only are many of the punishments derisory—someone who is convicted, if indeed they are convicted, will not go to prison for very long—but the clear-up rate is incredibly low and the police are obviously struggling to deal with the problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said—the point he made bears repeating—according to Ministry of Justice figures for a particular year, 2,980 burglars with 15 previous convictions were not sent to prison. I hope the Minister will reply to that point when he sums up the debate.

We had an argument earlier about current sentencing guidelines. I quoted various figures to the Secretary of State during interventions, saying that only 48% of burglars go to prison, and he said, “I’m sorry, but my position is absolutely clear: I believe that if you burgle a private dwelling house, you should go to prison.” The purpose of my speaking in this debate is to try, in my own small way, to convince the Secretary of State, the judges and the whole system that there is a widespread and strong belief and understanding among our fellow citizens that someone who breaks into and steals from a private dwelling house will go to prison, and I want to drive that message home. However, I was told that sentencing guidelines—my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe spoke with great authority on this issue—suggest a community sentence for first-time offenders. They may have been convicted for the first time, but how many burglaries have they actually committed? We have no idea. We are talking about a community sentence—no prison sentence at all.

Currently, for a category 3, lesser harm or lower culpability domestic burglary—I do not accept this language, which is that of the Sentencing Council—the sentencing starting point is a high-level community order. Our fellow citizens will be astonished to hear that somebody can commit a domestic burglary and get a high-level community order. The suggested range goes from a low-level community order to a mere 26 weeks' imprisonment, which, as we all know, is nothing like 26 weeks' imprisonment. On top of that, criminals receive a guilty plea discount. I am sorry to have to say that we are simply not doing enough to grip this.

Employment Opportunities Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Davies

Friday 17th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is bizarre that the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) thinks that it is appalling for young people to be going out to work for low wages, and that he would therefore prefer them to be sat at home watching Jeremy Kyle and “This Morning” and visiting their local amusement arcades, rather than having gainful employment. That is a matter for him, of course, and we all have our own views on what we think is best for people to do. I think that working is better than doing as the hon. Gentleman suggests, but he obviously disagrees.

I have risen to support my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), and to commend his courage, because there are certain political views people are not allowed to hold. The principle of free speech fell away in this country a long time ago, and it certainly went out of British politics a long time ago. Over time, a situation has arisen whereby we are not allowed to express certain views in polite company, such as questioning the merits of sex education in schools. Also, in the previous Parliament nobody was allowed to question the benefits of the Climate Change Act 2008.

[Mr Leigh]

It is impossible to have any sensible debate on the national health service, too, as it has become a kind of religion. We have had a catastrophic health statement this week, ruling out competition. There are clearly no-go areas in the arena of public debate, on which the two Front-Bench teams join together so there is no proper debate as to how we can best take matters forward. On the NHS, for instance, the social insurance systems on the continent are far superior and give patients a much better deal, but there is no proper debate of how we might introduce such insurance systems.

[Philip Davies]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you would not want me to start talking about the national health service in this debate, so I shall resist my hon. Friend’s tempting offer, but he is absolutely right that it is considered unacceptable in politics to argue for certain unpopular causes. I always ask people to celebrate anybody in politics who will stand up and say something controversial or unpopular, because I think they are doing a great service to our democracy, even though they may be insulted by Labour Members. I therefore commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on bringing this important issue before the House, and for trying to generate a grown-up debate about the benefits, or otherwise, of a fixed national minimum wage that people are not allowed to get out of.

I have always believed that a political consensus is usually a precursor to a disaster. Every party in this House supported joining the exchange rate mechanism, yet it turned out to be a complete disaster. The setting up of the Child Support Agency had cross-party support and it was seen as a great thing, but it has been a complete fiasco. Everyone across the political divide has had to support the setting up of tax credits, too, yet anybody who has had any dealings with the system knows that it has been a complete fiasco as well. The fact that there is political consensus in support of a measure does not mean to say it is good, therefore; it just means to say the measure is likely to be politically expedient.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, it is very easy for everyone to try to sweep such matters under the carpet, but we would be doing this place a great disservice if we did. I am appalled that Labour Members, who supposedly—as they claim—represent the most vulnerable in society, are perfectly happy for those people never to be given the opportunity to get a job as a consequence of Labour’s policies either on this matter or on benefits.

[Mr Leigh]

My hon. Friend is making an important contribution and it is important that we have this debate, but let me ask him a question as a critical friend. Let us forget the fact that there is a minimum wage at the moment. Why should a disabled person work for less than £5.93 an hour? It is not a lot of money, is it?

[Philip Davies]

The point is that if an employer is considering two candidates, one who has disabilities and one who does not, and if they have to pay them both the same rate, which is the employer more likely to take on? Whether that is right or wrong and whether my hon. Friend would or would not do that, that is to me the real world in which we operate. The people who are penalised are those with disabilities who are desperate to make a contribution to society and who want to get on the employment ladder, but find time and again that the door is closed in their face. If they could prove themselves earlier and reassure the employer who took them on that they would not cause a problem in the way the employer might fear—I am sure that there are a lot of myths out there and that many of these people would be just as productive as those without a disability—they might well move up the pay rates much more quickly. At the moment, they are not getting any opportunities at all.

We all know that some employers break the law and pay below the national minimum wage, but it strikes me that the only way employers are likely to get away with that is if they employ illegal immigrants. If an employer is employing a British citizen or someone who is here legally and tries paying them below the minimum wage, legal action can be taken against them, they will face a huge fine and the employee can do something about it. If that employer is employing an illegal immigrant, the power rests with the employer, because they will judge that the illegal immigrant will not take up the case officially. If they do, their illegal status in this country will be exposed and they will be turfed out of the country.

One consequence of the national minimum wage is that it encourages illegal immigration into this country. Illegal immigrants know that they can get employment below the national minimum wage and are happy to do so because it is probably higher than the wage they would earn back in their country. They also know that they will have no problem getting a job because some employers will be crying out for someone whom they can pay less than the national minimum wage. I am not sure whether any research has been done on this, but I would be interested to know how much illegal immigration into this country has come about as a result of the introduction of a national minimum wage.

Whatever the effects on employment of a minimum wage are in general, its effects in a recession must be worse. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch may well have made this point before I entered the Chamber, as I was a few minutes late, but people will recall that at the start of the credit crunch, or recession, a couple of companies—my hon. Friend, who is more knowledgeable on this than I am, will correct me if I am wrong, but I am sure that those companies were JCB and Corus—told the people working there that the wage bill needed to be reduced by 20%, so either 20% of the staff could be made redundant or everyone could take a 20% pay cut. One way or another that wage bill had to be reduced. If I remember rightly, the workers in those places—JCB sticks in my mind in particular—got together and voted to take a 20% pay cut. They made that choice themselves. Rather than being made redundant, they chose to take a pay cut.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right and reinforces my point. Those people decided they would prefer a 20% cut to risking a 20% chance of being made redundant.

[Mr Leigh]

Again, it is very important that we tease out these arguments. Those people took a pay cut, but presumably it still did not reduce their wage below the minimum wage. What worries me about my hon. Friend’s argument is that although I know the Bill says that everything will be voluntary, will there not be massive pressures from employers? Might they not tell staff that they are in awful trouble and ask whether they will consider taking less than the minimum wage? Might they not say to a disabled person, “You’re not quite so good at doing this job; will you please take less than the minimum wage?” Although the provision is ostensibly voluntary, there will be pressure on the employed to take less than the minimum wage.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend might think that such choices should be available only to people who are highly paid, but a firm in which all the staff are paid the minimum wage might be faced with the same predicament. Why does he think that the only people who should have the choice are highly paid people? Why should more lowly paid people not have the same option to take a pay cut or to be made redundant? Why does he want to deprive them of that choice? Why does he think that only highly paid people are capable of making that decision? Why are not more lowly paid people capable of doing so, if they feel it is in their best interests? To force those people to be made redundant in such circumstances is, I think, an outrage. It is an outrage that we would not allow them to make the choice themselves. The whole principle is that the Government and state know best and know what is best for everybody, so they will not even allow anybody to make the choice for themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I fear that I would incur your wrath again if I were respond to that, so may I just say in passing that I thought what the shadow Chancellor said yesterday was drivel. I will now move on to the rest of the Bill.

My point is that the minimum wage could be reduced by about a pound an hour, which would be a great benefit to employers and may encourage some of them to take on more people. If tax rates were adjusted accordingly and those people currently earning the minimum wage of £5.93 an hour were taken out of tax, they would not be any worse off. Therefore, no one would be penalised by that. Those people would still take home the same rate of pay as they do now, yet it would be a great fillip to employers, many of whom are struggling; as my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough helpfully pointed out, there would be benefits in terms of the employment contributions that they have to make as well.

[Mr Leigh]

Equally, there is a perfectly coherent point, coming from a Conservative direction, that it is good that low-paid people should pay some tax, because that is how they involve themselves in the running of the country and paying for the country.

[Philip Davies]

I have heard that argument. I do not want to be sidetracked, but I do not agree with my hon. Friend. The fewer people at the lower end who pay tax the better. I do not see why we should expect the lowest paid in the country to contribute to taxes. They should be allowed to take home and keep what they earn. It is very rare that I say this to my hon. Friend, but I simply do not agree.