Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Gentleman says, the Work programme plays a key role in helping to prepare people for work. That is absolutely vital. It also brings employers in, so that they can offer jobs to those people. I have looked specifically at the issue of Tottenham, because I know from when I visited his constituency with him that, yes of course, there is a shortage of vacancies in the borough of Tottenham itself, but we have to encourage people who live in London to be prepared to travel more widely to look for work. That is absolutely vital, and part of the Work programme should be aimed at addressing exactly that.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Rural fire services attend more primary fires and more road traffic accidents than do those in urban areas, yet they receive less funding. This is typical of rural services across the piece, with residents paying more and receiving less. Will the Prime Minister meet me and a group of other MPs from across the House who represent rural areas, to discuss getting a fairer deal for those in rural areas, particularly the rural poor?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. It is important that we have a fair deal for rural areas. There are obviously very big differences, particularly in the use of retained firefighters, but I am happy to meet him to discuss the issue.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

I agree completely with the hon. Lady’s comments. As the Prime Minister said in his speech, there are issues here for the press, the police and, indeed, politicians.

This debate goes to the heart of the country we should aspire to be. It goes to the integrity, responsibility and accountability of some of our established institutions. At the heart of the debate is the issue of how these institutions and the people who head them act. Can the press be trusted, in the words of the Press Complaints Commission’s first chairman, Lord McGregor, not to dabble

“their fingers in the stuff of other people’s souls”?

Can the police be trusted to investigate wrongdoing without fear or favour? Can we, as politicians be trusted—as I have said and as the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) has just said—to speak out when wrong is done?

For the Dowler family, let us be honest, until just two weeks ago the answer to all those questions was no—and the fact that it was should shame our country. So when I read in the newspapers that this is the angst or obsession of a few people in Westminster, I say that it is not, because it goes to the kind of country we are.

It also goes directly to something else that we on both sides of the House hear and talk about a lot: the responsibilities of those without power in Britain, such as those on benefits. We all use words such as “cheats” and “abusers” and we saw that language in the News of the World; some of it is even true in respect of a minority, but how much—let us be honest about this—do we talk about the responsibilities of the powerful? What message does it send to the rest of our society when the established institutions of our country behave without responsibility? It sends the message that anything goes because no one seems to care about right and wrong.

This debate goes to one more, final issue: just as the expenses issue undermined the reputation of the good, decent majority on both sides of the House, so too this scandal affects the vast majority of good, upstanding police officers on whom all our communities rely and affects the vast majority of decent journalists who are doing their job and are, as the Prime Minister said, necessary for a free and fair society. It is also in their interests that we sort this out.

When people say that this does not matter they are not just saying, “Let’s talk about something else”, but something far more serious. That cynicism about the country we live in is almost inevitable—that nothing can be done. I say to Members on both sides of the House. and I am sure that I speak for Members across the House when I say it, that if we fall prey to that, nobody will trust established institutions in this country—or, indeed, anyone else.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The Labour party’s director of communications, Tom Baldwin, is accused of having been involved in the unlawful accessing of banking records to establish details of payments made. May I ask the Leader of the Opposition, who himself aspires to lead this country, what checks he made and what assurances were given to him about Mr Baldwin’s conduct before he appointed Mr Baldwin to that high office?

[Edward Miliband]

I take all allegations against members of my staff seriously, which is why I checked these out with The Times newspaper, which specifically confirms what the gentleman to whom the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) refers said, which is that he did not commission illegal investigations into Michael Ashcroft. [Interruption.] I have to say to the Prime Minister, who is chuntering from the Front Bench, that we should rely on some of those people because Tom Baldwin’s line manager was the current Education Secretary for much of the time in question. He is not in his place today, but for much of the time that the investigation was going on into Lord Ashcroft—remember him?—Tom Baldwin’s line manager was the current Education Secretary. I see the Prime Minister is smiling. This issue has been raised a number of times and I have to say to hon. Members, “Remember Lord Ashcroft and his assurances. Remember his assurances about his tax status, which were relied on by the current Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister.” I have to say to Conservative Members that if I were them, I would shut up about the allegations regarding Lord Ashcroft.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

I will not give way a second time, but I am happy to talk to the hon. and learned Gentleman later, or if he catches Mr Speaker’s eye he could make his points then. I shall be happy to write to the previous Attorney-General if that helps.

We come to the end of the second police investigation and the failure of the police to inspect the evidence in their possession adequately and thoroughly. The risk was that waiting for a certain length of time with, as Mr Yates described it, bin bags full of evidence, there is the possibility that the Metropolitan police would have disposed of that evidence. Just in time, Operation Weeting was established. We all agreed that Sue Akers gave excellent evidence to the Committee. We want to ensure that she has all the resources she can possibly need. That is one of our recommendations. Although when I last pressed the Prime Minister on the issue, at the Dispatch Box a week ago, he said that he was leaving it up to the Metropolitan police to decide on resources, Sue Akers really does need more resources. There are 12,800 names; she has cleared 170 and is clearing them at the rate of 30 a month. We made a calculation, which is not in the report, that that process could go on for several decades. It will take at least a decade unless we give her the resources that she needs. We have confidence in Sue Akers. We believe that she will complete her investigation properly.

There are many issues in the report, but I want to highlight two relevant points. The first concerns the arguments that went on throughout the whole process between the Director of Public Prosecutions and the police. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood pursued that issue vigorously with all our witnesses, and I am sure if he catches your eye Mr Speaker, he will be able to enlighten the House on what he and the Committee saw as the problem. Suffice to say that it is not helpful when such things happen. We should like to see the Crown Prosecution Service and the police working closely together.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

We have heard that there was a culture of too much closeness between those in power and those in News International. Did the Committee hear evidence that a political steer was given to the police to direct them away from investigations? I say that in the light of the fact that Members on the Opposition Front Bench today seem to think it appropriate for the Prime Minister to engage in operational discussions with the police while they are carrying out an inquiry.

[Keith Vaz]

We heard no such evidence, as the hon. Gentleman can confirm if he reads the report.

My final point is about mobile phone companies. They have a responsibility to inform their customers if they have been hacked. We saw a difference of approach between the big providers; Members may want to check their contracts. Only O2 informed customers when their phones were hacked. The others either did not inform their customers or waited for the police to tell them that the inquiry was over. Their customers remained uninformed about the hacking, which is why there is such a build-up of information.

I agree with what the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have said today. Our concern is that the victims were not put first. If we had put the victims first in 2006, if Mr Hayman, Mr Clarke and Mr Yates had done that, we would never have got into the position where all the evidence was not thoroughly looked at. I welcome the inquiry and I have no objection to any member of the panel mentioned in the House today. Putting Shami Chakrabarti on the same panel as a former chief constable is a very good idea; it contains a good balance. I hope that recommendations will be made as quickly as possible. I am sure the Prime Minister is the last person in the world to want this to drag on.

The victims want closure. After such a long debate, and such a long statement and endless questions, we all want closure, so the sooner we get the investigations completed the better—but as the Committee says, we must never forget the victims. They are the people who have suffered the most.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

My right hon. Friend is right, and there is clear evidence for that, and I can perhaps use his intervention to elaborate.

The Competition Bill that was introduced by the Labour Government in 1997 dealt with predatory pricing, including among petrol retailers and supermarkets. My colleagues in the other place, led by Lord McNally, who is now a Justice Minister, managed to pass an amendment that would have included newspapers. The amendment was taken out by the Labour Government—although there were some Labour rebels—when the Bill returned to the Commons. It was absolutely clear that the Labour Government did not want to touch the media empires when they were imposing a tougher competitive regime on other sectors of British industry. I am very clear that that relates to the obvious and evidenced relationships that started under the Thatcher and Major Administrations and continued under the Blair and Brown Administrations. Obviously, such relationships also continued into the beginning of this Government as far as the Conservative party is concerned.

My colleagues and I were clear about that and we tried to do something about it. Lord Taylor of Goss Moor tried to deal with the competitive pricing issue in the House of Commons, and in 1998, Lord McNally said very clearly:

“Concentration of power, married with the advance in technologies, offers a challenge to democratic governments and free societies which we have scarcely begun to address.”

How right he was. Those debates also went to the dominance of particular newspaper titles and the influence of their owners, particularly in relation to the Murdoch empire.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I agree absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman about ensuring that we have a suitable spread of media ownership so that we do not have a concentration of power, but does he agree that a concentration of media power in no way excuses the powerful from exercising their own moral sense and making the right decisions? The idea that a public inquiry might have been put off because of party interest, rather than the national interest, is nothing short of disgraceful, if true.

[Simon Hughes]

I absolutely agree. The speech that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) made in the other day’s debate was not at all persuasive about that point. There were calls for a judicial inquiry from my right hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) and others. That was on the previous Government’s agenda, so it could have been held, just as legislation could have been implemented following the Information Commissioner’s report and recommendations. However, we had neither an inquiry nor the implementation of higher penalties.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that I do not see the read-across at all, because the elected police commissioner will want to respond to the demands of the public for effective, accountable and beat-based policing. There will be a bit of tension, as it were, between the elected commissioner and the chief constable, which, as long as there is proper operational independence, could be a good thing.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister ensure that the inquiry that he has announced into the unlawful practices in the media cover the allegation made by Lord Ashcroft that Tom Baldwin, then a News International journalist, authorised, or was part of, efforts to access the Conservative party’s bank accounts unlawfully?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that the inquiry can look at that. If there is evidence of illegal activity, some very big questions have to be answered. I hope that the Leader of the Opposition will be asking those questions and making sure that he gets good answers.

Phone Hacking

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The “fit and proper” test is a matter for Ofcom; it has to carry that out. It is right in this country that we do not ask individual politicians to make those individual decisions about who is fit and proper. We have also asked the Competition Commission to look at this issue. There is a separate issue, too: we need to allow Ofcom to make a “fit and proper” test at the point of full acquisition. That is a particular detail that we need to look at for the future.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

For the first time ever, I think, I agree with the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner). What is most disturbing and murkiest about this whole situation is the relationship between politicians and the media. From the moment when Tony Blair flew to Australia back in the 1990s, that relationship has meant that successive leaders of major parties have felt it necessary to cosy-up to media moguls. May we have a situation in future in which party leaders do not go to the birthday parties of these people, and instead keep them at arm’s length, so that the whole country can be assured that it is the public interest, not any media interest, that has power in the land?

[The Prime Minister]

The relationship did get unhealthy. It was too close and, as I have put it, too much time was spent courting the media and not enough time was spent confronting the problems, but let us be honest, we are not suddenly all going to become monks and live in a monastery. We have to have relationships so that politicians can try to persuade media organisations that they are trying to do the right thing. We have a duty to explain our policies and what we are doing for the country. Democracy is government by explanation, so we have to explain ourselves to the media, but I hope that this whole process will end up delivering a healthier relationship where we can do that explaining, but confront the problems at the same time.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is very important in all our public pronouncements to be careful about what we say. As the Prime Minister said, in principle it must be for the Libyan people to determine the shape of their future.

Military action by the coalition can be accompanied by a wide range of non-military measures to continue the pressure on the Libyan regime. Security Council resolution 1973, as well as resolution 1970, sets out all the measures that can be taken, including cutting off access to money, trade, weapons and international legitimacy for Colonel Gaddafi. And we need to remind Libyan leaders and commanders that they will be brought to justice for any crimes they commit against their people.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Leader of the Opposition who, like the Prime Minister, is giving a powerful and thoughtful speech. He spoke about the duty to protect, and looking to liberal interventionism as a possible breakthrough watershed in global politics. Does he believe that it requires UN resolutions in future for countries, including our own, to be involved in implementing a duty to protect?

[Edward Miliband]

In the end, we have to look at that on a case-by-case basis, and the responsibility to protect looks at that issue, but clearly the hon. Gentleman is right to say that international consent is incredibly important for any mission that we undertake.

Debate on the Address

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

Indeed, and even in this new possible age of austerity, and even with a September sitting, I am sure that it would be possible to fit in a visit to Greece. That is exactly the kind of help that the Greek economy needs, and it would be much more attractive if they had a devaluing drachma—so that we could buy ouzo rather more cheaply. So my hon. Friend’s point is, of course, absolutely correct.

There are these very important differences, therefore, but the message to Britain has to be that we cannot go on printing and devaluing ad infinitum. There comes a point where the markets pull the rug from under us and say, “This is extreme—you cannot do this anymore.” There comes a point where we will be effectively reneging on our debts, because we will be devaluing the currency in which we are repaying them by so much.

That is why I so strongly welcome the clear response of the coalition Government to put at the top of the Queen’s Speech the need to take action to tackle the deficit, and why I think that they are right to have three phases. We saw the first phase on Monday—the down payment of £5.7 billion net—and we will then have the emergency Budget, which I hope will include some guidance on how we are going to get the deficit down in the medium term. We will then have the really important work, in the autumn, when the Government have had time to do the full-scale public spending review that the previous Government ducked out of and declined to do at the appropriate time. We will then be able see the proper trajectory for spending, which will be important for curbing the deficit.

I want to see the euro stabilised. However, it will be difficult to do that, because it was not wise, as many of us said at the time, to include Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Greece in the euro area. The euro works fine for France, Germany, Benelux and Austria, but it is difficult to get it to work for such a diverse grouping. However, the United Kingdom Government have to allow the euroland members to take more direct power over the euroland economies, because a single currency cannot work unless there is a single budgetary policy and controls over the amount that those countries borrow. They are all borrowing in the same currency. It is like sharing a bank account with the neighbours, where we need to control how much the neighbours spend, otherwise there will be an awful shock when we see how they have flexed the credit card and the overdraft. We need to let those countries have such power, so I hope that the Government will offer advice and assistance.

I would like us to get some powers back for ourselves, at the same time that more powers are being taken for the centre. However, it would be quite wrong of Britain to be obstinate and say that the centre should not have those powers. It is in our interests that the euro should work, and the only way that a currency union can work is if there is centrally controlled budgetary discipline and central agreement on how many euros are printed—some more will probably need to be printed now—in order to get out of this mess and get reflation going in those economies.

However, I am, of course, much more concerned about the prosperity of this country. I am conscious that although we need to control the deficit and take the measures that I and others have often argued for, we are not going to get out of this mess unless we have the strong private sector recovery that I and others are now referring to. I would therefore say to the coalition Government that they need to spend as much time on regulation, tax and other matters that affect the rate of growth of the private sector economy as they spend on curbing the spending problems in the public sector. The two need to go together. It is not a good idea simply to cut the public sector, if we do not create the conditions for strong and good growth in the private sector.

Let us take the sensitive issue of tax. I have been doing a little research on the topic of capital gains tax. I share the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition Members’ wish to raise more money from capital gains tax. That might come as a shock to many of my parliamentary colleagues, but in this situation we need to tax the rich more. They have more money and we need more money to come into the Treasury; we need to tax the rich more. However, the result of my researches shows that the way to get more money out of capital gains tax is to lower the rate. The figures are quite dramatic, although it is easier to see the effect in the United States of America than in the United Kingdom, because there have not been so many fiddles and changes in the way that capital gains tax is levied there as we have had here. We have had indexation, business relief and all sorts of complications, although the British series, as adjusted, seems to bear out the same case.

In America in the early 1980s, there was a period of cutting capital gains tax rates, down to 20%. Capital gains tax revenues hit a massive high in 1986, on the back of the lower, 20% rate. The Americans spent the next part of the 1980s hiking up capital gains tax, from 20% to, I think, 33%, and the revenues collapsed, but they did not get the idea. However, in the ’90s they returned to a more common-sense policy and the revenues picked up again. By the 2000s, the Americans decided that even 20% was a bit high for maximising the revenue, so they took the rate down to 15%, which is where it is now, and revenue surged. The 15% rate seems to be much nearer the optimum, producing far more tax from the rich in the United States than 20, 28 or 34% produced.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is giving a masterclass in economics that, sadly, the Opposition failed to listen to in all their years of taking us to this current low ebb. Is he sure, however, that when the rates of capital gains tax are lowered, people will not simply manufacture a way of turning income into a capital gain, in order to avoid taxation elsewhere? If that were to happen, the gain might not be entirely real.

[Mr Redwood]

Those periods were also periods of surging income tax receipts, which demonstrates that this is good for enterprise, profits and jobs. We need more profits, more savings, more investment and more jobs. If we tax things more lightly, we get more of them. If we tax them more heavily, we get less of them. The enthusiasts for high taxes in this House have always said, “We must put up the taxes on petrol to stop people driving so much, and we must put up the taxes on smoking to stop people smoking so much.” So, presumably, putting up the taxes on enterprise will stop people being so enterprising. That must be the logic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman has made this point before. As a small business man, he was concerned about policing in his constituency. It is also, of course, natural constituency work. People want visibility and if they do not see a police officer, they get worried. When we consider police budgets and re-organisation, we must make sure that we protect those front-line services.

We also ought to be very careful about electing commissioners and chief constables. I am all in favour of a review of the police committees. Most police committees are not absolutely accountable to local people, most of whom do not know who sits on their police committees. Similarly, very few people know who the executive directors of primary care trusts are, despite the fact that they dispense a huge amount of NHS money locally. I am all for more accountability and am happy to look at proposals that would allow certain numbers of people to be elected on to police committees, but we should not take away the operational responsibilities of police officers and the priorities of local policing from police officers and place them in the hands of people who do not necessarily have the experience to do their work.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

For a man of his experience and expertise, I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman morphed the election of police commissioners with the election of police chief constables. No one is suggesting the election of chief constables. We are talking about addressing the very point that the right hon. Gentleman rightly makes, which is that there is no accountability. When we knock on the doors of our constituents, we find that they are frustrated that the local police force has not been focused on local needs and wants but on what I call cricked-neck policing, looking always to the Home Office for leadership. The elected police commissioner, working with the unelected chief constable, will provide the accountability and clarity to local people who have suffered from frustration for too long.

[Keith Vaz]

I am very pleased to hear that reassurance from the hon. Gentleman, who knows his party’s policy better than I do. I am glad that there is no proposal to elect chief constables, but we must look at the democratic deficit to see how it can be filled effectively, leaving operational matters to local people. [Interruption.] A former Police Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), has just come in, no doubt to check on what I am saying about him. I have said nice things, I can assure him.

On identity cards, there has always been concern—my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), a member of the Committee in the last Parliament, was always very strong on this subject, as was the Committee as a whole for a number of years, certainly before I took over the Chair—that they would not deal with the issues that the previous Government had in mind. The Government believe that identity cards should be abolished but they have been introduced and apply to foreign nationals. We need to look at the practical implications of that. What do those people do? Do they have to give back their identity cards, or will we keep them specifically for those who are not resident in this country? We need to look at the detail.

The Select Committee also expressed concern that the DNA of innocent people was being kept on the DNA database. It is the largest DNA database in Europe, and there was great concern about people being able to get their DNA off it, including Members of this House whose DNA was taken from them, especially the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands). He conducted a three-year campaign to try to get his DNA off the database, only finally to be told it was never on it in the first place. If we had a more effective way of dealing with such situations, we would not have had the problems we ended up with. I will support the Government on the database scheme because that is precisely what the Select Committee said when we last conducted an inquiry into the subject.

I am worried that the proposed cuts to the health budget will remove some of the emphasis our Government placed on health, and especially preventive health care, over the past 13 years. I only discovered that I had diabetes five years ago, when by chance I went to my local GP at a time when a drugs company had been asked to conduct a pilot involving a new diabetes drug. I just went along to our local health centre to launch this scheme, as most of us would do. I was telephoned the next day to be told I was on the front page of the Leicester Mercury opening the pilot study, and then I was phoned by my GP to be told that the bad news was that I had type 2 diabetes.

The issue here is that the more money we spend on preventive work and testing people for diabetes, making sure their cholesterol is under control, the less we as a country will have to spend. At present, £1 million an hour is spent on diabetes-related care. At present, too, 500,000 people have diabetes without knowing that—including some Members of this House, to repeat a point I have made before—and if we direct that £1 million at testing the population for diabetes, that will save us a lot of money in the future, and lengthen people’s lives. If people have diabetes without knowing that, that can knock at least five years off their life.