Christmas Adjournment

Debate between Eric Joyce and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[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.

UK-Listed Mining Companies

Debate between Eric Joyce and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)]

It is a privilege to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Benton, and in front of these magnificent new clock displays, as described.

I am interested in UK-listed mining companies—other hon. Members will be interested, because of the UK dimensions of these companies’ operations—primarily because I have spent a fair amount of time in developing countries and seen that the way mining companies operate can have a significant impact on all sorts of things locally.

I started going to the Democratic Republic of the Congo shortly after I was elected to the House a dozen years ago and I have been there a couple of dozen times. Each time I go to a country like that—particularly ones that are resource-rich and often without any meaningful extraction going on, although sometimes with some pretty good stuff going on—I am struck by how good companies, and countries, with proper governance can return substantial benefits, providing all the right environmental and social aspects are properly observed. Conversely, when that is not done, it can be disastrous.

People sometimes refer to the resource curse, meaning that a lot of countries have enormous potential wealth but no actual wealth, because they are not able to extract as their governance makes the country too much of a risk. The environment might be too physically risky, or, more to the point, the risk to reputation and capital—for example, if there were an expropriation of some sort—is too great. Shareholders will often not be prepared to put up with that. Back in the 1990s in Liberia, we saw the damage that was done with the diamonds to some companies that mined across Africa and which now, as a consequence of that shock, take great care to pay close attention not just to rules but to public perception. Some companies will not go near countries such as the DRC because of the risk to their capital, to some degree, but also to their reputation.

When looking at the mining industry as a whole, we begin to realise the importance of UK listing. Companies across the world with no particular links with the UK have mining operations in far-flung places such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan or, indeed, Australia, Canada and Brazil, but they choose to list in London for strong commercial reasons, partly to do with their reputation and partly because that is the best hub within which to get access to all the people they need to do business with, both in markets and banks and in all the other ways that benefit companies with a UK listing.

About 18 months or so ago—without mentioning particular companies; it is probably helpful if I do not now, although I did then—it became clear that some companies were coming to the UK and listing in London without wishing to accept the broader constraints and rules, which were often not written but were general understandings among the business community of things that people do and do not do when they have a listing.

A company can be listed, in some cases, with less than 25% of its total stock in the UK, which is normal, but it can be even less than that. That means that shareholders’ control over such a company can be quite limited and it can carry on as before, without changing its practice. I was worried about that. For a while last year, the Government mooted the possibility of relaxing the rules in respect of companies that were not really British, but eventually that was passed over and it did not happen, which was good news. There was a great deal of lobbying to that effect and the Government listened to it.

The principle is that a company listed in the UK is not an asset of that country, and that applies in the same way as it does to companies listed anywhere. Such a company has simply chosen to list in the UK. For example, we generally perceive BAE Systems—the best known of certain companies that tend to be known by acronyms—as a UK company, but that is no more a UK company in some respects than any other foreign-owned company. It is simply in the UK and has a British heritage, and that is about the size of it. It is important to see what is listed in the UK. We have some degree of control over companies that choose to list here through our voluntaristic methods and regulatory measures. It is important that they are all treated equally.

I noticed in the past year or so that some companies that were relatively new to the list had an ownership structure that was not what would normally be found in the UK, where one or two people own most of the shares. They have therefore had to take on shareholders, but they have perhaps felt that things do not need to change because they make such a lot of money that the shareholders will be happy. However, in a couple of cases they have taken an enormous hit—perhaps a 50% discount on shares—so now they are looking again at how they can work properly as a UK-listed company. That has to be good trend. That was essentially what drew me to this debate.

I have had some contact with companies that work and exploit in the UK and know that there are issues to do with planning presumptions for open cast, and so forth. Other hon. Members may wish to mention that. My primary message is about the impact of UK-listed companies on the developing world.

Public discourse in the UK on the subject has been dominated historically by industrial struggle, mainly to do with coal, the changing world, changing fuel and energy options, and changing working patterns and political assumptions. That has been the dominant theme in recent years and decades. If a Member of Parliament mentions mining to a constituent, that is what they are thinking. They are not thinking about this huge beast, which is the UK listed sector, or about the scale of the contribution that mining makes. Some of the largest companies in the FTSE 100 are miners and they are the ones that often move the figures across the board—just that one industry.

The companies from around the world that list in the UK are not British in the conventional sense. That is true of most commercial organisations across the world. These organisations transcend international borders, coming together to trade where it best suits them. London, of course, is pre-eminent in the world in respect of mining.

The UK is important in this regard and, on the whole, that is a good thing. We do not have a perfect system, but we subscribe to some important conventions. I will mention some important conventions in respect of other parts of the world—big parts, without naming names. Legislation will come into place shortly that enhances those conventions and takes them further, making them, to a large degree, legal requirements. London listing is therefore fundamentally a good thing.

London has justly developed a broadly good reputation, alongside the United States, for going some way to ensuring that corporate governance in the mining industry is respected. That is not to say that everything in the garden is rosy—often, it looks to be far from that—but the fact remains that if large international entities wish to trade in and from the UK, certain rules of decency apply. In the UK, the rules include the Bribery Act 2010 and a series of important regulator measures put in place by successive Governments. In the United States, the rules include the Cardin-Lugar amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act, which demands a considerable level of transparency from those doing business in the developing world.

In Europe, about which I will say more, legislation will be passed shortly. I will leave that to the Minister, because it is probably for her to speak about that, given her role. There will be some important legislation soon reflecting what has been going on in the US. The legislation in the US has been powerful, but not perfect. Interestingly, as I discovered from a position of some naivety a year or so ago, some of the entities that are most critical of the Dodd-Frank Act and the Cardin-Lugar amendment, which require that high degree of transparency, are highly commercial lenders or hedge funds. They are, however, critical in the opposite way to what we might expect: they are critical of the legislation for not driving enough transparency. We might think, “Well, that’s a surprise, I thought these guys would want less transparency”, but they want to know where the money is and where it is going—they want to chase the money up. The large hedge funds that are owed lots of money by countries and commercial entities want to drive greater transparency. That is an unusual but good alliance between, on the one hand, some good non-governmental organisations with their meagre resources, digging away and trying to root out graft in parts of the developing world, and, on the other hand, these guys with quite a lot of money who know their stuff and have good, strong commercial reasons for driving transparency and good governance. To some degree, that is what is happening in the US and with the European legislation to which the Minister will probably refer.

When it comes to the extractive industries and the developing world, it is essential for two things to happen. First, the activity must help to ensure that income generated by some of the world’s poorest states benefits their citizens, by reducing graft and helping difficult countries—if we can call them that—to reduce internal corruption. There is some corruption in many of those countries, although not in all of them and not even routinely in a lot of them, but there is a considerable amount and it is difficult to fix. Transparency can help the people running such countries to fix the considerable levels of graft that still exist.

Secondly, transparency helps UK-listed mining companies and companies in all sectors to do business in areas where they would otherwise be loth to risk their reputation and capital. Mining is affected more than most industries. Throughout the world, mining companies in geographically big, developed states such as Canada and Australia have been able to exploit their local geological assets. In recent years, people have become more aware of the environmental implications, but in those countries people have benefited from mining in a big way. The same is true in other parts of the world with huge natural resources and the industrial capacity to exploit it, such as Kazakhstan, South Africa and Brazil. As those companies have expanded and used up much of the stuff under their homelands, as it were, they have moved throughout the globe looking for new sources with which to satisfy the huge and growing demand for energy, for example.

We all know the debate about energy and our consumption of it, but as countries develop economically —China is the best example—they, too, demand more energy resources. That is simply an empirical fact. As the companies respond to that demand, they need to find another place to mine, and in many cases that other place—that other continent—is Africa. Those companies have also come together to trade in, and to the great benefit of, the City of London and its markets. The pattern, therefore, is one of productive exploitation of Africa’s geological riches and of greater transparency of the organisations doing the digging, through London and New York—London is significant, but not the only centre. Potentially, there is a neat symmetry about the whole process.

I have just noticed that I still have a lot of notes to get through, so although the structure of the debate has been perfect so far, I might extemporise a little to enable some other Members to speak.

In the meantime, in my experience—for a politician, I have had a fair amount recently—the great majority of operators are behind the symbiosis I outlined, which has historically been reflected in large listed companies that have been in the UK for years, or that have their origins here. It is also increasingly true of companies that want to trade out of the UK in spite of the fact that their ownership structures have traditionally led them into different practices before listing in the UK. They are learning as well, and to give them some credit—I have not always done so in the past—they are now beginning to learn that if they want to do business out of London, they have to change and, essentially, to modernise their practices and assumptions.

In the developing countries, the World Bank, the IMF and other bodies—organisations such as the Revenue Watch Institute or the Association for Geographic Information from the UK, or the worldwide George Soros Foundation and Open Society Foundations—have done a lot to get countries such as the DRC to move towards becoming a place where serious companies can operate. I mention the DRC because I am confident that governance is lacking there, but other places have no democratic elected Government at all, and in the west of Africa four or five countries currently have dictatorships and there is no governance. It is perhaps too easy to criticise only countries with flawed democracies when many in Africa are without any kind of democracy, so we need to keep such things in context.

About 18 months ago, as I mentioned, I got involved in a case in which an asset had been expropriated. The two companies eventually settled, but that took several years of no one being employed on the site. Some 5,000 people had been paying tax and the company had been the largest corporate taxpayer in the Congo, yet for that period, there was nothing at all. That was due to a wrangle that was not caused by corruption in the commercial sector, although perhaps it was because of a bit of nescience, in some respects; Government graft led to that terrible situation.

The companies have actually worked things out between themselves, and a large amount of money changed hands so, in a couple of years, that asset in the Congo might again start to produce some fruit with exports and—from my perspective—through earnings for the people on the ground, who were earning money there before. If that happens, it will be because one of the companies was listed in London; otherwise, it might simply have been cutting about the world and not necessarily paying heed to public opinion. The company was listed in London and wanted to be a proper, large, serious mining company based there, so it paid heed to the concerns of the international community, the NGOs and, of course, the other company, which was savvy about how to pursue its objectives. I am avoiding saying the names so as not to indentify the companies, which would not be fair at this point because they have behaved relatively well. My point is that the London listing made a profound difference to one important project. If that project gets off the ground again, which I think it will, it will show that even in a place such as the DRC, it is possible to get the standards right. I have some constructive scepticism about how long that might take to happen, but let us see.

Before I conclude, I will refer to a couple of important organisations. The International Council on Minerals and Metals, which has its origins in Canada, is now based in London. It has members from the industry, which funds it, and has a series of standards based on core principles and auditing—public reporting and assessment—to ensure that companies maintain certain standards for environmental imperatives and the local social imperatives of any particular operation, which is a new but important thing. There are 22 members and 34 national or regional mining associations and global commodity associations are affiliated.

I could mention other organisations, but I have been to visit the ICMM, and I am still learning about its regulation, which is voluntaristic and appears to have a correlation with strong, voluntaristic companies such as Rio Tinto, which has been based in the UK for a long time. That is not to say that there is not controversy about the mining industry and foreign operations, but some companies have been subjected to the rigours of the UK market for a long time, and that can have a considerable impact on the new ones.

I have noticed that NGOs, which are rightly looking for the best for the developing world, have deployed language that sometimes looks hostile to the principle of investment. That is not how they mean it, because they see the stuff that happens on the ground, but it is important to make it possible for companies to invest, providing that they come up to the standards expected of a London-listed company.

Despite that voluntaristic stuff, it remains true that international legislation is essential. I have mentioned the Dodd-Frank legislation and our Bribery Act, and I want to mention the efforts of organisations such as Publish What You Pay, the One campaign, the Open Society Foundation, which is funded by George Soros, Tearfund, and Global Witness. All are stressing the importance of legislation that is pending in Europe—the Minister may be able to say something about it—which the Prime Minister stressed last week in Brussels. There might be quibbles around the margins about exceptions, the definition of a project and so on. I am not an expert and I know that some people have raised what I consider to be finely tuned issues. However, the general principle of the legislation is certainly accepted by NGOs, and seems to be accepted by all the responsible operators.

The new accountancy and transparency directives will greatly enhance efforts to improve governance in developing nations. They will also make it easier for UK-listed companies to do business in such places. Big commercial companies are not altruistic organisations; they are there amorally, in the purest sense, to do business and to make money for their shareholders. We must appeal to that imperative in companies, rather than pretending that they simply want to be good guys. We must appeal to their ability to make money decently, subject to proper regulation, and in ways that return benefits to local communities in places such as the Congo and Guinea.

The extractive industries transparency initiative is led by Clare Short. The UK led the way with this worldwide initiative, and it has taken us several steps along the path to proper accountability. The initiative measures payments made to Governments by mining companies, for example, and the income declared by those Governments. It is not perfect, and it will not prevent graft elsewhere, so if there is expropriation, which is then passed on by a third party, and the money goes who knows where, it will not appear in the books. However, those are important steps down a path that is enhanced and augmented by legal measures such as those that will be forthcoming in the EU.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I apologise for only just arriving in the Chamber. I raised the extractive industries transparency agreement in the House last week. Is not one of the problems that the machinery of government in the DRC is so inefficient and ineffective, and there is so much corruption, that the effectiveness of the agreement is strictly limited, in that many of the mining companies can just ignore it?

[Eric Joyce]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. There is no argument—it is simply a fact that is part of the tragedy of the DRC. It has applied to join the extractive industries transparency initiative, but at this stage it could not possibly do so. There is eternal tension between wanting companies to come into something like the EITI, and saying that if it takes anyone, it will become a daft badge that means nothing.

Graft is widespread in the DRC. EITI reports show that pretty much all the income reported is accounted for, but that the level of income is tiny, so there is a neat diagram showing that 96% of the income is accounted for, yet the level of income is lower than it should be, so the question is what should be done about that great big chunk. However, I do not want to go into too many names or bang on about that kind of stuff at the moment.

There is an interesting situation in Guinea, which is not like the DRC. The President of Guinea is trying to do the right thing, but he is beset by all sorts of graft at a lower level. The context is difficult, and a large expropriation might be about to take place. I worry that that will make it impossible for other companies to go into Guinea.

I should also mention the all-party group on extractive industries, which was recently formed. That is good, and we have a website—“Investing in Development”. That reflects a growing awareness of the scale of the industry throughout the world and especially in London—among large companies at FTSE-100 level, as well as smaller companies. I could list them, as could many hon. Members with a background in the mining industry.

The trend in the House is that as some people have a background in the industry, we occasionally hear it mentioned, but this is never regarded as a huge issue that permeates other areas of debate, such as international development. I hope that this is a small gesture towards that and that, in time, the whole issue of extractive industries can be more fully developed in this place.

Trident

Debate between Eric Joyce and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Absolutely. If we do not know the cost, if we do not know what the alternatives are and if we do not know the foreign policy considerations surrounding the alternatives, we move into the era—once again—where the Ministry of Defence basically does what it likes and Parliament endorses it at some later stage. So we are moving—sleepwalking, actually—into a massive level of expenditure. Never mind whether people like or dislike, agree with or disagree with, nuclear weapons—is that really a sensible way for this country to go headlong into spending £100 billion?

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend think that, when the Government committed themselves to a review, they must have known what the nature of the review was going to be, so they must also have known at the time that they were never going to make the review public?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Presumably, there were discussions in the MOD about exactly what the terms of the review would be, who would contribute to it and what desk research would be done. The MOD must have also decided, “Well, we’re not going to publish it anyway, so it doesn’t really matter what’s in it.” If I were a Liberal Democrat MP—I am not one, I have no intention of being one and I do not think that I ever will be one, so I am talking about a purely hypothetical situation—I would be very angry about that because, having negotiated that review into the coalition agreement, the Liberal Democrats are now being told that they are not even allowed to know what is in it.

Before I give the Minister sufficient time to reply—I am sure that he will be happy to take even more interventions than I have—I have a few questions to put to him. If the current Government are re-elected in 2015, will they provide a parliamentary vote on the Trident main gate? When will the format and timing of the annual update statements be decided, and what is the reason for delaying an announcement on those statements? To their credit, the Government have produced quarterly statements on the situation in Afghanistan, and frequent statements on the situation in the middle east and north Africa. I welcome those statements; they show openness, which is good. Consequently, those of us who take those matters very seriously can question the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Defence on them regularly in Parliament, and we know when those opportunities are coming up. That is what Parliament is for and that is the right way of doing things. The expenditure on Trident is so massive, the decision on Trident is so huge and the implications of Trident are so enormous that we need something more than an annual statement about it to Parliament. We need at least a quarterly statement on Trident from the Secretary of State for Defence.

My two final questions to the Minister concern work at Aldermaston, because it seems to me that there is something very murky going on at Aldermaston—something very murky indeed. A huge amount of money is being spent there and, as I understand it, a lot of preparation is being made there for warhead production. So we need to know what the nature of the work is to inform decisions on design of a successor warhead—work that is currently under way—and how much money is due to be spent on those studies in the current comprehensive spending review period? Also, what are the costs of the nuclear weapon sustainability programme at Aldermaston, and will the Minister make those costs public?

I will conclude with this point—I have set out my position absolutely clearly. I believe that nuclear weapons are immoral and wrong, and we have huge obligations and huge opportunities through the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, not only to rid ourselves of nuclear weapons but to promote a nuclear weapons convention that would bring the non-declared nuclear weapons states—Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea—into the discussions about ridding the world of nuclear weapons altogether. If we are serious about going down that road and achieving a nuclear-free world, we have to do something about it and set an example. It is a pretty strange example to deny Parliament the opportunity to discuss Trident in detail, so that it can know the expenditure involved, and to commit ourselves to this vast expenditure on a weapon of mass destruction that—if ever used—will indiscriminately kill millions of people on this planet. As I have said, nuclear weapons are immoral, wrong and dangerous, but we have a right to know the levels of expenditure on them. I hope that this debate is the start of many debates on this subject. Many of us who are committed on this subject will keep on raising it, so that we know the truth about the amount of money that this country is spending on weapons of mass destruction.