Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Hands and Chris Bryant

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Gentleman has slightly jumped the gun, as the next question on the Order Paper relates to trade envoys. May I say how proud we are of the cross-party trade envoy programme, which I think he will hear about in a moment? We think they do an excellent, good value-for-money job for the United Kingdom in promoting trade in a number of key markets.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

6. What the travel costs of parliamentary trade envoys were in each of the last three years.

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)]

The Prime Minister’s trade envoys provide invaluable support in progressing the UK’s trade and investment agenda in 61 markets across the world. The travel costs incurred by the Prime Minister’s trade envoys were: £63,566 for the financial year 2021-22; £226,014 for 2022-23; and £232,325 for 2023-24. These costs were for flights, for accommodation when the official British residence was unavailable and for other sundry expenses.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

There is a great deal of murkiness about the trade envoys. I note that, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), the Minister point blank refused to deny that at least one trade envoy has explicitly asked for the exclusive use of a house while acting as a trade envoy. The Minister has point blank refused to publish the breakdown of all the trade envoys and their costs for absolutely spurious reasons. If a Select Committee visits South Korea, for instance, all the details of the costs are published, but not if a trade envoy goes. How can we possibly judge whether the £750,000 that has been spent so far in the past three years has been well spent? Is there any accountability whatsoever, or is this really just a means of providing sinecures for people who are liked in Government?

[Greg Hands]

Well, there is a lot of bluster there and not a few accusations. The hon. Gentleman may wish to try to stack these things up a bit. It is a cross-party programme, not a Government-only programme. Many Labour MPs, Labour peers and others are members of the programme. Gifts and hospitality are already published in departmental registers. If I may say so, Mr Speaker, two qualifications for this cross-party role are diplomacy and discretion, which might explain why not everybody has been asked to do it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Hands and Chris Bryant

Thursday 15th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

In successive Government positions, I have always noticed how diverse the businesses are in my hon. Friend’s Rugby constituency, right at the very industrial heartland of this country. He is right to raise the matter of trade with China. The UK engages with China. We remain open to Chinese trade and investment, while ensuring that robust protections are in place to safeguard the UK’s prosperity, values and security. He raises the issue of GE. We are engaging DIT officials based both in the UK and in China and already engaging with GE.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am not sure that I follow the Minister’s Twitter feed so avidly as other Members—[Interruption.] Easy! I suspect that he might have retweeted something that was published by the Conservative party earlier this year, which said:

“We’ve secured new free trade deals with over 70 countries since 2016. That’s over £800bn worth of new free trade.”

But that is not true, is it? Actually, the UK Statistics Authority has told the Conservative party to stop publishing such fibs. Did the Minister retweet that, and, if he did so, will he apologise?

[Greg Hands]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has raised that. He has pointed out the fact that we have done trade deals with 71 countries plus the EU, and that there is about £80 billion of exports for those countries. He may have done this inadvertently, but he draws attention to the fact that the Labour party has failed pretty much to support any of the deals that he is quoting. It abstained on the Japan deal. It abstained on the Australia and New Zealand deals. I bet the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) did not mention that to the Australian Trade Minister when he saw him last week. According to his Twitter feed, the party split three ways on Canada. It has failed to support any of these trade deals over the years. It is a bit rich of the party to raise it now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Hands and Chris Bryant

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. In fact, I am meeting the overseas territories on this very subject next week. You in particular, Mr Speaker, will be impressed by the Secretary of State meeting Fabian Picardo, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, only last month on this. Getting our overseas territories participating in the UK independent trade agenda is very important. We recognise fully the constitutional responsibilities we have for the OTs and we work closely with them to ensure that their interests are represented.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

  The average sheep pregnancy lasts 152 days, so tupping for next spring’s flocks in Wales has already happened in the autumn. The Minister referred earlier to Welsh lamb being protected in Japan, but 50% of Welsh lamb goes to the European Union, so the big issue is knowing what will happen on 1 January for Welsh lamb. I do not want to have a go at the Government, but I do just want them to get a deal so that Welsh lamb will not be priced out of its single biggest market across the whole of the European Union.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Greg Hands and Chris Bryant

Monday 29th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

That is a very apposite intervention, as I am going to talk about stamp duty land tax in due course.

This is my first Budget speech since closing the debate in 2016, when I delivered a progress report to the House on how the Budget deficit had been reduced from about £6,000 per household to about £3,500 per household, and reported on the very good progress that had been made on restoring the public finances to good order over the previous six years. So may I start by commending the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the entire Treasury team, the Financial Secretary included, on the further progress they have made in the past two and a half years? I remind Members that we inherited a budget deficit of £175 billion—10.5% of GDP—in 2010. At that point, of every £4 being spent by the Government, £1 was being borrowed. I think I heard the Leader of the Opposition blaming the financial crisis, but there had been a budget deficit in each and every year from 2001—a full six or seven years before the financial crisis even began. So I am pleased to see the budget deficit coming down from £175 billion to £27 billion next year—the lowest year-on-year borrowing since 2002. But it is worth reminding ourselves that we are still borrowing money—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

If Labour’s spending was so terrible in those years, why did George Osborne and David Cameron say that they would match it pound for pound?

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Gentleman is recalling a little bit of ancient history, but if he looked at the debate within the Conservative party around the time of the party conference in 2006, he would find some interesting submissions to the debate within the party at that time.

We are still borrowing, and it is worth recalling that. Debt is peaking now, at 80% of GDP. Of course, for the years that debt has increased, we see that the maths make that an inevitability if we are running a deficit. Although reducing debt as a percentage of GDP to 74% by 2023 is progress, I worry whether that figure will be too high in terms of our stated mission of fixing the roof while the sun is shining. Labour Members say that debt is too high and that we have not done a good enough job on cutting the deficit. So what do they think we should have cut more? It is worth recalling that Alistair Darling’s pledge in 2015 was to only halve the deficit, which would of course have led to much higher debt.

Other successes of those years are, first, the increase in capital expenditure, which has not featured so far in the reactions to this Budget. It is increasing by a healthy 4% per annum over the next four years—that is a case of building for the future. So we have been fixing the roof while the sun is shining, but the job is not yet done. We need to bring debt down below the 74%—and not through tax rises. This country is already sufficiently taxed. I warmly welcome our meeting the 2015 manifesto commitments on the personal allowance and on the £50,000 higher rate threshold. Meeting those one year early is very encouraging.

I also welcome measures to encourage the conversion of surplus retail to residential properties, which is incredibly important in constituencies such as mine, where we have a lot of retail space that has been dead since even before Amazon came along—that has simply been unable to be converted to residential. That move is very welcome. The extra Brexit resources are sensible, and I hope that they will include money for the Department for International Trade to take advantage of future trading opportunities, although the £2 billion increase in UK Export Finance capital is also welcome. I am disappointed that there are no specific further funds for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for dealing with the Grenfell tragedy.

I want to speak about something that was not in the Budget but which may have to be in due course—stamp duty land tax, which goes back to my point about crofters, lairds and the leader of the SNP. I have been a keen observer over the years of these changes, and I am glad the Financial Secretary is in his place. I was not part of the Treasury team in autumn 2014 that made those important reforms, and I would have urged caution at that time, but there must be a question as to whether stamp duty land tax is too high, including at the top of the market. I ask the Treasury to consider this in good time. There is no point coming to a fast conclusion on SDLT.

Many of the principles of the reforms were sound. Home purchases were made cheaper for 90% of properties and the SDLT slab system was removed. Subsequent reforms have meant that people pay more for second-home ownership, which is reasonably correct, and there is no SDLT at all for many first-time buyers, which is beneficial. There has to be a question, though, as to whether the overall yield from SDLT can be improved. If I understand it, to date the receipts are down by 10% a year. In August, only 79,000 homes throughout the UK were sold at all. That is down 4% year on year. If I read the numbers correctly, there is a £1 billion shortfall compared with the OBR estimate.

The increase in stamp duty land tax on homes worth more than £937,500—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Hands and Chris Bryant

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made clear, we are encouraged by comments coming from across the Commonwealth, from leaders and Ministers of countries such as Australia. Several additional ministerial visits are planned in Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth markets—for example, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. I will be in South Korea and Taiwan, and other Ministers in China, Japan and Vietnam in the coming months.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly endorse what the Secretary of State has just said about Russia. I am glad he is adopting that attitude, but may I urge him to extend the same attitude towards North Carolina? I think it bizarre that he has opened a new office in North Carolina, when Deutsche Bank, PayPal and a string of other businesses and many US states are boycotting North Carolina because of its ludicrous homophobic new policy in relation to transgender people.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Greg Hands and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I completely and utterly disagree with the hon. Lady. Of course one ought to strive towards equality in representation, but that is simply not the British way of creating the House of Commons. Historically, we said, “Okay, the shires need to be represented”, and consequentially the knights of the shires were brought into the first Parliament in the 13th century—incidentally, the only reason we know the names of any of those who first attended is that they presented their expenses chits and had them paid. Then we decided that the towns and villages needed representation, because the principle was that representation was based on communities—it was communities that were represented here. It was not just about the mathematical calculating machine system for deciding constituencies. There are countries that have used that system. The United States of America uses it for its House of Representatives. In fact, that is what led to the concept of gerrymandering—it was, I think, a Governor of Massachusetts, Mr Gerry, who was the first person to create a constituency designed to get him re-elected, and it was in the shape of a salamander.

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

May I return to the earlier point about urban under-registration, because it is an important point in seats such as mine? However, that is an operational matter for the electoral registration officer and the Electoral Commission; it is not an excuse for perpetuating a bias in the electoral system in favour of small urban seats. It is an important matter, but let us not confuse two things.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is right in a sense, although I expect that the under-registration in his constituency is nowhere near as high as it is in, for example, Hackney North and Stoke Newington or Hackney South and Shoreditch, which have much more mobile populations, in part because the people there do not own their own homes and because of the ethnic mix. Clear evidence has also been provided showing that people from black and ethnic minority groups and poor people are far less likely to register. We need to bear that in mind. I shall refer to that again when we discuss how many MPs there should be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Hands]

Is the hon. Gentleman defending the status quo? Under the current system, we typically have boundary reviews every three Parliaments, with the population data that are fed in typically being about 10 years out of date. The new boundaries that were introduced in May were based on electoral registers from 2000, and they may still be in force in 2024 if we have three five-year Parliaments. Is he seriously defending the status quo, under which our data can be up to 24 years out of date?

[Chris Bryant]

I think that I am correct in saying that that system was set up by the previous Conservative Government, and no, I am not defending the status quo. I am not defending it in relation to the overall structure of the system that we ought to have, nor am I defending it in relation to the precise allocation of seats, and so on. As I have said several times in this debate, I would prefer to move towards closer equalisation. However, I want the boundary commissions to bear in mind other factors, which should include the political realities of the Union, along with ward and other political boundaries. Boundary commissions should also be able to bear in mind geographical features, such as rivers, islands and, in my case, valleys, as well as physical access, because it is pretty difficult to tie two places together that have no access between them.

The timetable for the boundary review is not driven by practical concerns about what would be suitable, but by crude and, I believe, partisan calculations that are the antithesis of the supposedly high constitutional principles that the Deputy Prime Minister invoked in his first speech in office. How quickly those noble ideals seem to have been cast aside. Back then he promised the

“biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832, when the Great Reform Act redrew the boundaries of British democracy, for the first time extending the franchise beyond the landed classes.”