Passport Office (Delays)
Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and Nia Griffith(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Robinson
I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to hear what the Minister proposes to do. The problem has been building up since the Government made the cuts. They failed to do any retraining or to provide for what was coming with a moderate level of overtime. Any service should be able to meet peak demands—that is what management is about.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that asking someone who is in China—such as one of my constituents—to ring up every 72 hours is very poor management, not only of his time but of staff time?
Mr Robinson
It is bad for business all round. We hear complaint after complaint, but the Minister sits there as if he is happy for the chaos to carry on all around him. It is amazing how late Ministers have reacted to this issue. The chaos has been mounting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) so perceptively pointed out, but Ministers did not intervene with panic measures—which should not have been necessary—until the backlog had reached 350,000. Will the Minister confirm that he would normally seek to intervene when it reached 150,000?
Finance Bill
Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and Nia Griffith(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Robinson
Does my hon. Friend agree that the gist of what she is a saying in a general and good contribution is that the Government have managed to combine a deflationary economic policy with inflation at double the rate they forecast? Such a policy does not stand up. Is not the core of this their overall deflationary policy, of which an increase in VAT was the central part?
Nia Griffith
Absolutely. That is now having a devastating impact on the economy, on businesses and on individual families. In our new clause, we are asking for a proper impact assessment of the effect of the VAT rate on growth in the UK. Let us see whether the Government can come up with something more constructive and find a way to drive the economy forward.