Valedictory Debate

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)]

Half a century ago Mr Harry Ewing, a predecessor of mine as Member for Falkirk, described Falkirk as an iron town. He meant that in a worldwide sense, I think. The Carron Company was established in 1759 and sat at the forefront of the industrial revolution, and for over two centuries the iron industry defined the Falkirk area, feeding Glasgow’s shipyards and much else besides. Falkirk’s industry helped power Scotland. Today, a company in Denny called Specialised Castings can trace its lineage all the way back to the original Carron works, and Falkirk’s Alexander Dennis Ltd remains the wholly Scottish-owned manufacturer of the red buses we see across London and, indeed, the world.

Falkirk’s power remains central to Scotland’s industrial economy. Thousands of families in the Falkirk area will be sustained into the future by employment in petrochemicals and oil refining, shale gas importation and in the service industries that serve them. Ineos has committed huge investment to the area, as have the UK and Scottish Governments. Communities that once benefited from employment in mining are now leading the way in a different kind of underground activity—exploring for coal-seam gas. I know that that sometimes makes people in this place a little queasy, but I think it is one of the world’s future power sources.

It has been my great privilege to serve the hard-working folk of the Falkirk area in this place. They are as decent, realistic about human nature, forgiving and aspirational for their families as any people we could meet anywhere. They have been kind to me and my family in challenging times, as have you, Mr Speaker, and Members from across the House. I thank my constituents, all the Members here and the staff of the House for their great human generosity.

Like many Falkirk folk in the oil and chemical industries, and seafarers too, as quite a few come from the area, I have been able to apply the knowledge of oil, gas, mining and shipping that I have gained from representing those folk to other parts of the world, such as Africa—indeed, with yourself, Mr Speaker.

Falkirk people are the opposite of inward-looking wee Scots. They are the most decent and outward-looking people in the world. As a natural Unionist, who has served that Union in this place and in our very fine British Army, I recognised the narrow referendum vote in favour of the Union and the narrow win for the Union locally not as a sign of narrow-mindedness locally, but as the harbinger of the end of the Union as we know it. Most Falkirk folk, like most Scots, define themselves as Scottish first now, and many of those who chose the Union last year did so largely through fear. Scots are being asked for their votes now on the basis that they may get a larger share of UK wealth than many folk in England feel is fair. The Union cannot exist on the basis of fear or an appeal to greed. When greed and fear are the watchwords, we know that the tipping-point has been passed.

The Labour party in Scotland has not let anyone down, except people who did not like Labour Governments or Labour Prime Ministers, which admittedly included quite a few Labour party members, as I recall. However, from my modest participation in this place, I believe that the Labour party has done a great deal to be proud of. It faces great difficulties in Scotland. Scots feel that they face a choice between a new uncertain future in which they are masters and mistresses of their own destiny or behaving as if they are making menaces. That is how many people south of the border feel—that menaces or threats are being made that if great resources do not go up to Scotland, bad things will happen across the UK.

My strong view is that whatever the constitutional future of Scotland, the Labour party in Scotland needs to establish its own independent entity in Scotland. Two of my very close colleagues, my secretary May McIntyre, whom I thank, and Dennis Goldie, appear to own the trademark for the Scottish Labour party, so I suggest that the Labour party in Scotland treat them nicely and not threaten them. They are long-serving, very loyal Labour people.

Members of the English intelligentsia have already decided that Scots are on their way. They think it is a shame and hope it will all turn out for the best. Most English folk are concerned mainly about the impact of Scotland on their constituencies or where they live in England. They have discounted the result in Scotland—they think they know what is going to happen in Scotland.

The time has come for Scots to behave like the big boys and girls they are. Above all—this is what I am most concerned about—they need to convince energy businesses that Scotland will be stable economically, regardless of the new constitutional status. We have to move on from the Union we know to something altogether new. There is risk involved, and romance may well be the first casualty.

Summer Adjournment

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)]

I have two issues that I will put together as seamlessly as I can. I might not be as seamless as the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) because I plan to breathe a couple of times.

A little while ago, there was an issue in my constituency and the surrounding area involving the Grangemouth refinery. It was a sad story and there was much tumult locally. I will not bore Members with the detail but, suffice it to say, there was an issue between the employer and the trade union, Unite, that almost led to the closure of the refinery, which employs about 1,400 or 1,500 people and a further 4,000 or 5,000 in the local labour chain. In the long run, 5,000 or 6,000 people would have lost their jobs, had the refinery shut. I have my views on the situation, but I do not think that this is the place to air them.

In due course, the situation was solved by a combination of the union seeing a bit of sense and the employer negotiating with the UK and Scottish Governments. The UK Government gave some guarantees about future investment. This week, the employer, INEOS, announced that it had secured a £230 million facility through the Government’s loan guarantee scheme and that, in addition, it was investing £300 million in a new plant to process shale gas imported from the US. For the first time in many years, that will secure the jobs at Grangemouth for a long time to come. It has always been touch and go whether Grangemouth’s future would extend beyond five or 10 years; it now seems to be secure for at least 20 years.

I hasten to say that Grangemouth is not in my constituency, but it is just a few hundred yards away and the majority of the people who work there live in my constituency. There are also several thousand people in the supply chain who live in my constituency.

A couple of issues arise from the current situation. First, given that the gas that is imported will come from fracking, we need to take a position on whether we support fracking. I do support fracking, but it is a contentious issue and not everyone in this House agrees with it. In addition, Dart Energy has a substantial coal bed methane extraction project in my constituency. I firmly support that as well. Locally, the Scottish National party has campaigned against coal bed methane extraction. I do not know what position it will take on the importation of gas that is extracted through fracking. The view that it has taken suggests that it will be against it in principle, and therefore against the employment of a large number of my constituents. However, I will leave it to the SNP to answer that. Having said that, the SNP Government in Scotland have made a contribution of £6 million. The Scottish Government are taking one position and the local representatives are taking another.

The extractive industries in Falkirk, Grangemouth and the surrounding area in central Scotland are concerned primarily with oil. I am fortunate to be one of the civil society representatives on the extractive industries transparency initiative to which the UK is signing up. That is going very well and the Government have just submitted their application to the EITI. That is an important symbolic measure for the UK.

Of course, the primary element of the EITI in the UK is oil and gas. That leads on to the second issue that I want to raise. Recently, I have had quite a lot of communication with politicians from other parts of the world who are involved in the EITI, which is about transparency and good governance in the extractive industries. That relates mainly to mining in some countries and mainly to oil and gas in others.

Recently, I have had a lot of contact with Nigeria. The governor of Rivers state, which is Nigeria’s Aberdeen as it is the main centre of the oil industry, has led the EITI process in that country. By chance, I was in the region a couple of weeks ago for a day or two and I visited him. It was striking what a good job is being done there. What is being done varies across Nigeria and we tend to hear the bad news stories. One can see the link between the money that is being paid into the state and the investment by the state—both the federal state and Rivers state—into the infrastructure. That is the whole point of EITI. Hundreds of new schools are being built, several of which I visited. A monorail system and a good road system are also being built. That is a good example of what can happen through good governance.

I am reluctant to praise the Government, but they are pushing ahead with some good legislation and have signed up to the transparency and accounting directives. The beneficial ownership stuff will also be coming up shortly. The UK is pretty much in the lead on that, with the support of the Opposition.

I will conclude on this point, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you will pull me up if I go over my eight minutes. I do not want to delve into how other countries vote or into which Governments are returned. I know that nobody wants to do that, except for in a few rare cases where there is consensus. However, I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that the party of government in Nigeria has effectively started campaigning. I am a little sympathetic to the plight of the opposition in that country, not because I know a great deal about the internal politics of Nigeria, but because I see what is going on in Rivers state, which is very good. I am therefore prepared to accept that the opposition—the All Progressives Congress—has some kind of plan. I would not wish to be any more explicit than that. It seems to me that there is a coherent opposition. The governor of Rivers state is an important member of that opposition and there are many others. At the moment, we tend to hear the party of government’s campaign through one or two things that are said in this House. I noticed that there was a visit by the Finance Minister of Nigeria two weeks ago, and those things were echoed in statements in meetings around the place. Some things that were said were essentially party political, and Members who were, I think, being supportive for good reason of the Nigerian Government were essentially echoing party political themes, and the opposition in Nigeria cannot campaign at the moment because it is unlawful to campaign until November.

I urge Members to reflect on the fact that there is a presidential election next February in Nigeria, and some of the stuff that is coming out, and coming through London and back through CNN, the BBC World Service and so on, is blatantly party political campaigning that the Nigerian Government can do, but which an increasingly well-organised opposition cannot.

Easter Adjournment

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who like you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I and every other Member is on a permanent quest for knowledge and self-improvement. I thought I would help that along by saying a few words about the extractive industries transparency initiative, for which I sit on the multi-stakeholder group in the UK.

I am happy to say that the Government signed up to the initiative last year, which will mean that in three years or so the UK will be a member of it. All the extractive industries companies based in the UK that operate here and elsewhere will have to declare to the Government the payments that they have made to the UK and to any country that signs up to the EITI. The Government will then make a statement of the payments they have received. That will not solve every problem of money going astray in developing countries, but it will move us a little way towards ensuring that the money that Governments receive from contracts and licences to exploit oil, gas and minerals, particularly in Africa but all over the world, does indeed find its way to those Governments and that they can account for it in their public expenditure.

The initiative is chaired by Clare Short, a former Member of this House, who also co-founded an all-party group called “Trade Out of Poverty”, now chaired by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), who is not in his place at the moment but who I believe will be coming back into the Chamber. The emphasis of that group, along with the all-party extractive industries group, of which I am a member, is to help developing nations encourage investment despite sometimes potentially risky contexts, particularly in minerals and mining, rather than having to rely on aid, as we often imagine they do—wrongly, actually.

I digress slightly from the EITI, but it sometimes feels as if political and public dialogue in the UK about developing nations is always about aid—the spending of 0.7% of gross national income and so on. I sometimes think that the bar for investment in those countries is set too high. Some worthy non-governmental organisations make the wrong judgment in being too critical of where Department for International Development expenditure goes, such as when it makes it more feasible for companies to overcome substantial risk and invest in developing nations.

There was a demonstration outside DFID a couple of weeks ago involving a couple of people in black tie and a waiter with a bottle of champagne and glasses. It was all about DFID paying money to various projects in the developing world. My first instinct was that the protest might have been by someone such as the Daily Mail—I do not necessarily want to be critical of it, but that would be consistent with its normal editorial line. However, it turned out to be a protest by the World Development Movement. It struck me that it was shooting itself in the foot by helping to bring DFID expenditure into unjustified disrepute. Its concern was that money was being spent to help companies operate in risky countries. However, there is great potential benefit to those countries in future, and I thought it was a great shame that that NGO had missed the point and wanted to discourage companies from the UK and across the world from examining prospects in some countries.

To return to the EITI, in many ways its role is similar to the one that will be played by the EU accounting directive, about which the Government have just issued a consultation document, although it is a little different and certainly has a different purpose. The US is currently going through legal proceedings that have held up its own equivalent, but importantly, it has signed up in the past week as a candidate country for the EITI. The relevant part of the Dodd-Frank Act is being held up because some extractive industry companies are concerned about the emphasis being placed on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Congo-Kinshasa to some. The concern is that it will effectively encourage people who want to get certain products from the earth to go to Australia and other countries, so the effect of legislation designed to make things more transparent could be to discourage investment and development in the DRC. I do not know whether that is right, but the process is being held up in the United States. It is really important that we carry on with our own process in Europe, which is the accounting directive—as I said, I am pleased that the Government have launched the consultation document—and the EITI.

I do not want to bore Members for too long about the EITI, although it is an important matter that quite a few Members will know little about. However, I wish to add that the tendency until recently was to encourage developing countries to sign up to the EITI. We have Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which is pretty effective—some people might argue about that sometimes—and we pretty much know who is paying tax on what, so it is hard for money to go astray. We can just to go HMRC and it tells us companies’ tax figures. It is therefore hard to get involved in corrupt practices in the UK. Developed countries have tended to say, “The EITI is not really for us. It is only for developing countries where money tends to disappear.” The effect has been that big developing countries, and middle-income countries that are wealthy in gross terms, such as Brazil and India, have said, “We’re not going to sign up to it, because none of the developed nations has. It is a bit patronising expecting only developing nations to sign up and not the US or UK”. Only recently have developed nations begun to sign up. It might seem a bit strange that we have not signed up to it before, but it is essentially because the context was different. We have now accepted the point that it is difficult to ask developing nations to sign up to a transparency project without signing up ourselves.

The EITI has been going on quietly in the background, but it is important to get it on the record because it will be important when it comes to fruition in about three years. Officials at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Minister in charge, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson)—she ostensibly chairs the meetings, but of course she is on maternity leave at the moment—have put a lot of time into it, as have the businesses that have signed up to the multi-stakeholder group, on which the relevant NGOs and the Government are also represented. A lot of work is going on to ensure that we achieve candidacy status in about 18 months. It is a commendable, broad cross-party effort, and there is no dispute about the objective. As I said, the EITI is chaired by Clare Short, who obviously has a particular political perspective, but has a sound perspective on the extractive industries.

From time to time we have had some difficulties, with a degree of purism creeping in—I am trying to choose my words carefully—from NGOs with substantial control over interests in developing nations. It sometimes feels as though strings are being pulled and wires being tugged to get certain outcomes. For example, it was very difficult to get Ethiopia made a candidate country. It finally happened a week or two ago, but there was enormous lobbying against it. That was a great shame, because Ethiopia was very keen to sign up, and so were the Ethiopian NGOs. Everyone agreed, but western-based NGOs were keen to stop it happening, for various reasons. I understand the human rights issues, but I think that Ethiopia will eventually qualify for membership.

It is a shame when western-based NGOs in very developed countries—whether they are based in London, Washington or New York—sometimes seem to look past the interests of nations that we want to help to develop economically and reflect their own interests in getting stories or increasing their membership and funding. I know that that is contentious, but that is how it seems to me. The stewardship of the EITI has been very sound in dealing with that in the last few weeks. People who know about the EITI will know that Ethiopia has been a contentious issue, but I am pleased to say that it is now a candidate country.

Various things are going on quietly in the background, although full agreement has not been reached. The UK Government are actually leading on the issue of beneficial ownership transparency. That is part of the EITI and we hope that the outcome in three years’ time will be that the UK signs up. We do not think that there is corruption in the UK, but if we sign up to a strong, gold standard EITI—without unnecessary bells and whistles—it would set a good example for all the other nations we would like to see sign up to it.

I shall conclude by wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and all Members and officials of the House a nice Easter.

Christmas Adjournment

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)]

I want briefly to talk about eating disorders, a subject that I have become aware of in detail recently and which deserves a lot more time. I have done a wee bit of research, and although it might have been discussed at length in this place, I do not know that it has, so I think it deserves more time. I will briefly mention it now, and then perhaps go away, do a bit more research and come back to speak about it in the new year. It would not do for a Member to speak about something they did not know much about, would it? That would never happen.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

It happens every day.

[Eric Joyce]

No way. I cannot believe that level of cynicism, to be perfectly honest. We all research our subjects well before speaking.

I recently became aware of several such cases in the UK, including in the English health system—I am not simply talking about my own constituency, in Scotland, where this is a devolved issue. The number of young people suffering from eating disorders, particularly anorexia, has grown considerably. They tend to be in their early teens and they tend to be girls, although not always. It becomes obvious to parents when their child loses a substantial amount of weight, which can happen quickly, and there are various patterns that are easily observed. In the first few stages, it will sometimes seem that the child is trying to lose weight, perhaps to fit into a dress, because of fashion imperatives or whatever. Some weight is lost quite quickly, and the parents will be watching, but not necessarily thinking it a medical issue.

Then it continues. Over a brief period of perhaps three or four months, I child can lose 25% of their body weight. A child who is, say, 8 stone or 8 stone 2 lbs can drop below 6 stone very quickly before the parents have grasped what is going on. Then, they will alert their local GP, who might, or might not, be completely switched on to the subject, and in due course, they might, or might not, get a referral to local services dealing with that kind of thing. The hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) briefly referred to mental health services in his area. The configuration of those services is pretty much the same in most areas, as far as I can see, although they operate slightly differently in Scotland.

By the time it gets to the NHS, the problem will usually be quite advanced. Often, if the child continues to refuse to eat, they will be admitted to accident and emergency in a period of weeks because their vital organs will be starting to fail, and they will be going slightly mad—that is my non-clinical term. The essence of it is that once a child gets to that stage, it is very hard and takes a long time for them to recover, because people have to persuade them of the common sense of eating—that it is good for them, that they should treat food like they would medicine. It will take years and years to get that child back on track, if ever they do get back on track, so it is essential that the disorder is identified earlier.

It is clear from reading papers by excellent organisations such as Beat that there is a gap in provision. Beat is an organisation that works on this issue, and I urge Members to google it and look at its website. The gap in provision is no one’s fault, as such; it is simply that the NHS, despite a considerable increase in funding over the past 10 or 12 years, is hard pressed. It works its budget hard, but by the time people approach the local services for those with eating disorders, they do not have the resources.

This is a subject that should concern everyone in this place. Having spoken to a lot of people about this, I have noticed that if someone has a child heading towards being admitted to A and E, their best chance is to put them in a private hospital using private resources. There is a clear pattern. The NHS will do what it can, but if someone can afford private health care, the child will stand a much better chance. This is not just about jumping the queue or opting for minor elective surgery; it is about life and death—some 20% of sufferers actually die—and the well-being of young men and women over many years. If a parent can beg, borrow or steal the cash, my advice, unquestionably, would be to use private provision.

We should all be sitting up and paying attention to that, because it is clear that the relevant services in the NHS are overwhelmed. Hon. Members might have a few cases, but my instinct is that we will all have more of them in the relatively near future, because it is a growth area. People are still not terribly sure what eating disorders are, but I can assure hon. Members, from the cases I have looked at, that they are devastating for those involved, and it is clear—this is what worries me most—that private provision is people’s best chance. The NHS should look carefully at how it resources its relevant mental health services for eating disorders.

I will stop there, Mr Deputy Speaker, except to wish you and every Member of the House a wild and crazy, or quiet and pleasant, Christmas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady ought to have a bit of humility, because when her Government left office, a quarter of a million homes still had no broadband whatsoever. We are going to sort that out. We have massively increased the investment in rural broadband. It is five times more than the amount that is going into urban broadband. Her party makes a big song and dance about opposing cuts, but in the interests of consistency, it might like to support increases in spending, particularly when they are much more than her Government ever promised.

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

4. What discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on the EU directive on privacy and electronic communications; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

We are very good Europeans on the Government Benches and we are one of the first countries to have implemented the e-privacy directive. Naturally, we are engaged in ongoing discussions with our EU colleagues. Several member states, including France and Germany, have had discussions with us about the best way to implement it.

[Eric Joyce]

This measure contains a number of sensible dimensions, as does the related data protection directive, but does the Minister agree that we should reject the idea of a freedom to be forgotten, which is what is being proposed by the European Justice Commissioner?

[Mr Vaizey]

We will have discussions with Ministers at the Ministry of Justice, which is the Department responsible. We will undertake a consultation and call for evidence, so that people can give us views and help our negotiations on the data protection directive.

General matters

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

I want to speak briefly about two things: first, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, secondly, Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—a subject into which I will segue with surprisingly little effort; as you will discover, Mr Deputy Speaker, there is a significant link between the two.

Today, the incumbent President, Joseph Kabila, was invested in office again after an election that was preposterous. It was condemned strongly by the United States and France—and by Belgium; one might not normally think that terribly important, but in the case of the Congo, the Belgians’ position is quite important. Europe looks to Belgium to give a moral lead in some historical respect. The Carter Center observed the elections and said that they were not valid. The Open Society Institute did the same. In general, the position of most Governments, including the UK Government, is that the elections were a farce.

Nevertheless, Joseph Kabila turns out to be still in power. It is one of those odd situations where it is hard to break off diplomatic relations with a country because it has flawed elections. Many countries do not have elections at all, but the Congo is one of those worrying cases where things are going backwards. It had pretty well organised, well run elections funded by the international community back in 2006. This time, early in the year, President Kabila changed the rules to take out the second round of elections because he did not think he would win in the second round. He thought he would win easily in the first round. As the campaigning moved on, it looked as though he might lose in the first round, so it looks awfully like some manipulation took place, although nobody could see it. The manipulation occurs in the places where the ballot boxes are tipped out—sometimes just tipped out all over the floor and sometimes actually counted.

Some remarkable results emerged. In Katanga, where President Kabila clearly has a fantastic campaigning machine, he managed to get 99.8% of the vote—remarkable. His getting the vote out and his ID work must have been truly magnificent—99.8% of the vote. Only more remarkable than that is the fact that the turnout in Katanga, his own stronghold, was 100.14%—astonishing success in the Congo. Perhaps we should be watching how those politicians campaign and what the campaigning methods are. On the other hand, perhaps not.

[Mr MacShane]

Was it AV?

[Eric Joyce]

There are direct elections in the Congo, of course, for the president. The parliamentary elections, which took place at the same time, will be counted shortly and the results will come out in January. We should probably have no more confidence in those. That is a great shame. I urge the UK Government to take a very strong position. As time goes by it is hard to deal with such a Government. We give considerable international development aid. We cannot reduce that; it goes directly through NGOs, but I hope the Government will take a strong position in the coming weeks and months.

I shall now segue into IPSA. The President of the Congo has a cunning ruse. It is not that cunning, actually. He simply takes national assets, sells them to a mate for a pittance and then his mate sells them on for a few hundred million dollars profit. He has done it many times now. I have stuck it on my website for all who may be interested to see it. He has done it to the tune of $5 billion or $6 billion in the past two years. One such deal involved a company listed in the UK, a company called Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, better known as ENRC.

The deal is well known and has been extensively written about. I urge all Members to google it. It is an absolute shocker of a deal. It is quite clear that it was a very ropey and dodgy deal. One of the primary defenders of the deal is a man called Ken Olisa, who was a member of the board of ENRC. He said at the time, “I wouldn’t have joined the board if I thought there was anything ropey, if anything crooked was going on.” That was just before he was famously sacked by the ENRC oligarchs who run it. He then changed his tune and is famously quoted as saying that the company is more soviet than City. This is a company that essentially enables the President of the Congo to rip off the people of the Congo.

IPSA has five board members—very experienced individuals who draw on their own experience. There is an accountant/academic, a former judge, a former quangocrat, and even a former Member of Parliament, so a pretty good bunch, except that the business man on IPSA is none other than Ken Olisa. I find that absolutely staggering. When I spoke about the subject last time, I was not even aware of it. Someone tweeted, “Perhaps Joyce ought to look at Ken Olisa’s other job before he slags off Ken Olisa again.” It is absolutely astonishing that that man should be on the board of IPSA, carrying out a function that we all agree is very important. I hope he may have the chance to reflect on whether his position on the board is appropriate.

Business of the House

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I point out to my hon. Friend that we are debating related issues—the International Monetary Fund and the eurozone crisis—in Westminster Hall next Tuesday, when I expect a Treasury Minister to be responding. There will an opportunity for my hon. Friend to raise that question in that debate, which I am sure he will want to attend. I will ensure that the Treasury Minister is forewarned about where he is coming from.

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

As you know, Mr Speaker, there will be presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the 28th of this month. Substantial evidence, which I have here, is emerging that a named individual, in collusion with some senior politicians in the DRC, is extracting billions of dollars of value, probably unlawfully. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on that subject?

[Sir George Young]

If there is any question of criminal activity, the appropriate authority is the police. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has taken the necessary steps to draw the matter to their attention.