Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Grahame Morris

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his continuing interest in this issue. The REMA programme is considering a number of options, including sending more efficient locational signals, which I know he is very knowledgeable about, zonal pricing, reform to transmission charging and changes to network access. The second round of the consultation is imminent.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

T4. This Government’s treatment of miners, retired miners and their widows is nothing short of a national scandal. Since 2021, the Government have been sitting on the recommendations of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee report, which recommended reviewing the mineworkers’ pension scheme’s surplus sharing arrangements in favour of miners and their widows. During that time, thousands of miners have sadly passed away through the legacy of industrial disease, while the Government have pocketed £4.8 billion of the miners’ own money since 1994. When are the Government going to do the right thing and return the miners’ money?

[Graham Stuart]

The Government are doing the right thing, have done the right thing and will continue to do the right thing in coming to a fair settlement between miners, the Government and the taxpayer. That is what we will continue to do, and I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss it further.

Road Fuel Prices

Debate between Graham Stuart and Grahame Morris

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

As so often, my hon. Friend has been ahead of me. The issue he raises is part of the picture; like him, I have observed that the captive market along motorways is subject to higher prices than elsewhere. I hope that can be part of our consideration to make sure we have a system that works at its best for everybody.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

May I respectfully point out to the Minister that this is not a town versus country or urban versus rural issue? The RAC has identified that some retailers are grossly profiteering, taking a three times bigger margin than they were at the beginning of last year, particularly on diesel sales. For the avoidance of doubt, will he confirm that the Government scheme he has outlined today will apply to all fuel retailers, not just those at supermarkets?

[Graham Stuart]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman with the precise details of everybody who will be included. He is right to highlight that this is not just an issue in urban areas. However, in those areas there tends to be more competition and easier transparency than there can be in rural and coastal areas.

Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Graham Stuart and Grahame Morris

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Graham Stuart]

I would go further than that. By having a system that is entirely aligned with and attuned to the interests only of UK producers, we hope to have a better system than the one we have now. I cannot give firm timelines, because the TRA is not set up yet, but hopefully it will be speedier, more proportionate and balanced, absolutely scrupulous in observing WTO case law, flexible enough to implement it, better attuned to the needs of UK producers, and more effective at averting injury to them.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way and hope he will bear with me. Given the emphasis he is placing on the importance of secondary legislation, and the fact that, as he said a moment ago, the TRA has not been set up yet, has he had a chance to reconsider putting trade union representatives on the TRA?

[Graham Stuart]

It took the hon. Gentleman’s contribution finally to silence the hon. Member for Scunthorpe, who normally heckles throughout everyone’s address—[Interruption.]. As has rightly been said, that is harsh but fair.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The aim is that this should be an expert body, that the normal, rigorous civil service appointments process should be observed in its appointment and that we should have an organisation that has impartiality and effectiveness as its primary concerns, rather than being driven by political or indeed representative considerations. That is what we are planning to do.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Graham Stuart and Grahame Morris

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). She made an interesting speech, as one would expect. Many hon. Members’ speeches have been powerful, not least in suggesting the weakness of the system that guides local government funding.

There is a consensus of disappointment—albeit unspoken on Labour Benches—about the speech made on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition by the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford). It entirely lacked any alternative narrative or suggestion, other than a platitude about the system being fairer and needing to be looked at in future, to give us an idea of what the Labour party would do. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles was a Minister in the previous Government, and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) was a senior figure in that Government. After all, the previous Government led us into this calamitous financial state, meaning that today’s Ministers have to make tough and difficult choices. Her Majesty’s Opposition’s total failure to recognise responsibility for the mess that the Government inherited, or to provide any insight into the tough decisions or choices they would make if they were ever allowed back into government by the British people, was disappointing. The House deserved better, and I expected more of the hon. Member for Corby, of whom I am actually an admirer.

I am a founder of Rural Fair Share, a cross-party campaign group of MPs from both sides of the House, and I am chair of the all-party group on rural services, so I make no apology for speaking from a rural perspective. Powerful speeches have been given by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). There was a very Devonian quality to much of their speeches. They spoke effectively for Devon, but also for rural areas right across this country, not least the East Riding of Yorkshire.

As has been said—I make no apology for saying this again—people in rural areas earn less than those in urban ones. The idea that people in rural areas are somehow all prosperous and wealthy compared with the massively deprived populations of urban areas is false. In truth, people on lower incomes are paying £86 more per head in council tax. That came about under the system instituted by Labour Members who talk about the cost of living crisis. It sometimes feels as though they do so with crocodile tears. They put in place a system in which poorer people pay higher levels of council tax, while their councils receive £145 less per head in central Government grant than those in urban areas, and the cost of delivering services in rural areas is higher, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have said. Look at a map: where does it cost more to empty the bins—in the city or in the vast rural area around it? It is obvious that there are cost pressures.

[Grahame M. Morris]

The hon. Gentleman is selling a misconception to the House. Where are services more expensive? Let us look at the numbers for looked-after children, which, as he well knows as chair of the Education Committee, cost £40,000 to £50,000. In my area of Newcastle, there are 101 looked-after children per 10,000 of the population; in Wokingham, there are 24 per 10,000. That is an example of where costs are much higher.

[Mr Stuart]

It is fair to point out that Wokingham is not representative of all rural areas in this country. It is a rather unhelpful comparison. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that urban areas involve costs, and concentrated areas of deprivation have costs. No Government Members are suggesting complete equalisation, but to have an area with more low-income people paying higher levels of tax for fewer services is not sustainable.

I know that, in his heart of hearts, the hon. Gentleman was disappointed by the speech of the hon. Member for Corby, who simply failed to explain how Labour would wrestle with the issues. The Minister is wrestling with those issues. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is trying to heckle me. What we heard from him was a defence of a system that is indefensible. [Interruption.] It is indefensible to suggest that the system was based on need and that consensus had somehow been smashed. The truth is that the previous Labour Government refused to listen to voices from all parts of the House representing the rural interest. In fact, they allocated four times the weighting to population density—not deprivation, but density—than to sparsity. That was unjustifiable, but, sadly, it continues to be a fundamental part of the system today.

I, too, am pleased that there has been a minuscule increase today in the diminutive grant to rural areas from £9.5 million to £11.5 million. However, even the larger figure would not stretch to a grab bag of crisps for each resident who lives in a rural area, although that might depend on how competitive one’s local grocer is. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon laid out just how many decades it would take to equalise the figures. Those of us who speak on behalf of rural areas simply say to the Government that we must take more action to narrow the gap. We think that the 50% rural penalty—50% more funding goes to urban areas—should be reduced to no more than 40% within five years.

We have asked for more evidence. The Government have undertaken to carry out research on the cost of rural services. I fear, as do many of my hon. Friends, that the research will look just at rural services. It must compare the costs of services across urban and rural areas. It would then be able to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) about the number of children who are in care and the cost pressures that arise from that.

Not only must the funding system be dynamic and reward successful councils that promote housing and business, but it must have a baseline that genuinely reflects need. The system that Ministers are wrestling with today was inherited from the Labour party. It is not fair and it does not properly reflect need. The fact that rural communities have been penalised so much for so long just goes to show how morally bankrupt are the arguments that we have heard from the Labour party.