Points of Order

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for the Deputy Prime Minister to make claims about an issue as important as pensioner poverty and not back them up with any facts whatsoever? If he has inadvertently misled the House, should he not withdraw those claims? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is not for me to control who remains in the Chamber. As the hon. Gentleman has raised a point of order, I am sure that he will be interested to hear the reply. I think that I just about heard, amidst the noise, the gravamen of his point, which related to a claim that the Deputy Prime Minister gave an answer that was not based upon fact. I simply say that were the Chair to be held responsible for answers, or even for questions, on account of the presence or absence of facts, the Chair would be even busier than he already is. I think that one has to be reasonable about this. Look, it is a point of debate. I say in the gentlest and most festive spirit to the hon. Gentleman, who was becoming extremely excited and excitable while awaiting the answer to his question, that I have always regarded him to be something of a cerebral academic, and it is most unusual for him to become over-excited. I wish him a very enjoyable Christmas and a happy new year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that there is nothing more important in a pensions system than—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Perhaps the House can calm down and the hon. Gentleman can actually have the advantage of free speech, which is what this House is about.

[Gregg McClymont]

I am delighted by such a reception, Mr Speaker.

The Minister will be aware that nothing is more important as regards the certainty of a pensions system than clarity about the currency in which pensions are paid out and saved. Does he therefore agree that the lack of clarity from the Scottish nationalists about the currency that an independent Scotland would use is very damaging for Scots and their pensions?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

It has been a busy few weeks in pensions world. The Minister will be aware that the Office of Fair Trading has recently announced that it is to undertake an inquiry into the private pensions market. This follows a Labour campaign for just such an inquiry. The Minister’s response to our campaign was to accuse the Labour party of scaremongering on pension charges. Now that the OFT has decided to undertake this inquiry, may I encourage the Minister to heed another Labour campaign call and lift the restrictions on NEST as soon as possible so that it can provide low-cost, high-quality pensions to everyone who wishes to save with it?

[Mr Speaker]

We look forward, I am sure, to hearing about NEST, whatever that may be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think we get the gist of the Minister’s point.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

7. What progress she has made on Olympic security preparations; and if she will make a statement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There are a lot of noisy private conversations taking place in the Chamber. I would like to hear the questions and the answers.

[Gregg McClymont]

What does it say about the priorities of this Government that they impose a granny tax on 367,000 Scots while giving a tax cut to the wealthiest 14,000 Scots?

Benefits Uprating

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement, and welcome some of his announcements about the uprating of pensions. I am delighted that on the issue of increasing the state pension age further, the Government have learned from some of their mistakes on the previous round and will at least give adequate notice to those affected. That is a positive move. I welcome the U-turn on the mobility component of disability living allowance. The change should never have been proposed. We, along with disability campaigners, have argued hard for a U-turn and we are pleased that the Government have taken that action.

Last year, in the wake of the autumn statement, the Minister told my predecessor that his Government had embarked on decisive action to take Britain out of the danger zone. What a difference a year makes. The Government’s economic policy has failed and is failing, and working families are paying the price. It is when a Government’s back is against the wall that their true character is revealed, because that is when the difficult choices have to be made. The failure is writ large in the Government’s revised borrowing forecasts.

We know that the Chancellor told the House that he is going to borrow £150 billion more than he planned—£150 billion more. The Government are fond of the credit card analogy, and £150 billion is an astonishing extra debt to add to the nation’s credit card bill. It is the price of failure, and this failure is nowhere more apparent than in the extra £29 billion, largely the price of rising unemployment, which the Government project they will spend on benefits. What the Minister failed to say in his statement today is that to pay for the Government’s own failure, they propose to take twice as much money from children and families as they do from bankers.

Let us look at the impact on families and women. We are left with a benefits policy that hits the poorer hardest. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which used to employ the Minister, has said that measures in the autumn statement would

“take away from lower-income families with children.”

Even the Secretary of State had to admit to the House last week that the bottom 30% do quite badly. The Government’s benefits policy will hit women harder than men. The House of Commons Library estimates that of the £2.37 billion raised from tax credits and public sector pay changes introduced in the autumn statement, 73%—£1.73 billion—will come from women and 27% will come from men. Taking together all the changes to direct tax, benefits, pay and pensions announced by the Chancellor since the general election, of the £18.9 billion the Government are raising each year, £13.2 billion comes from women. Women are being hit twice as hard as men.

In addition, the Government’s benefits policy will increase child poverty. In its distributional analysis of the autumn statement, the Treasury has admitted that as a result of Government decisions the number of children living in households with incomes below 60% of the median will increase by 100,000 in 2012-13, which means more children living in poverty. The IFS now estimates that the number of children living in poverty will rise by 600,000 over the next period. Surely the Government and the Minister cannot be proud of that.

Let me ask the Minister some straightforward questions. Minister, you signed up to the Child Poverty Act 2010. Do you believe that under the terms and definitions of that Act child poverty is set to rise under your Government? You will have studied the IFS—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I gently say to the shadow Minister that he knows that debate should be conducted through the Chair and that use of the word “you” is not encouraged in the Chamber. We would be grateful if he addressed the Minister through the Chair. We are grateful that he has some questions, but he must wrap them up pretty sharpish.

[Gregg McClymont]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The Minister will have studied the IFS presentation. Will he confirm that its conclusion is that the people who will pay most will be those in the bottom 30%? Does he agree with the Secretary of State that work incentives will be diminished by the Government’s actions in the autumn statement and that the changes to tax credits and public sector pay announced in the autumn statement will hit women disproportionately?

Points of Order

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I think it would be very sad if we were to reach that situation, but coming from an hon. Member who first came to the House in 1966, I have to say that there is more than a grain of truth and validity in that observation. Members should take account of it.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On the subject of policy being made in the press and with particular regard to the case of auto-enrolment, before the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions left the Dispatch Box, he suggested that policy should be made in the House. Would a written ministerial statement on the changes to the auto-enrolment schedule be in order?

[Mr Speaker]

The decision as to whether a policy announcement should be the subject of a written or an oral ministerial statement is, in the first instance and without exception, a decision for the Minister. It is not a matter on which the Chair would adjudicate—and certainly not in advance of any such matter having to be decided. We ought to leave it there.

Pensions Bill [Lords]

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 6, leave out ‘December 1953’ and insert ‘April 1955’.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 3, page 1, line 8, leave out subsection (4).

Amendment 4, page 2, leave out lines 12 to 18 and insert—

[Gregg McClymont]

In my first foray from the Dispatch Box, I would like to say that I look forward to having a continuing dialogue with the Minister on this subject. He has a formidable reputation in this field. He told me at our first meeting that one of my former students is now his researcher; that, I think, makes him doubly formidable. I would also like to pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). She, along with thousands of women, has led the campaign to highlight the burden being placed on up to 500,000 women by the acceleration of the timetable for the equalisation of the state pension age. I think we can all agree that she has done a very important job of work.

We welcome the Government’s concessions as laid down in the amendments, but we do not think they go far enough. The Government are no longer condemning 245,000 women to an extra waiting period of between 19 and 24 months, and that is welcome; but it is too little, too late. The cardinal fact about the Bill remains that 500,000 women will still have to wait up to 18 months longer, and 330,000 will have to wait exactly 18 months longer, before reaching their state pension age. The Government have chosen to break the all-party Turner consensus that women’s state pension age should not reach 65 before 2020, and they have also broken the coalition agreement, which promised that women’s state pension age would not reach 65 before that year.

Points of Order

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I have a feeling that the hon. Lady’s expectations of the scope of my powers are unrealistic, however generous-spirited they might be. It is extraordinarily good of her to think that these matters are within my compass, but I fear that unless I am gifted with talents that I do not possess I am unlikely to be able to satisfy her demands on this front. More widely, I would say very simply to her that hon. Members are responsible for their own statements, and if she wishes to follow up the matter with the hon. Member in question she is welcome to do so.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for the Prime Minister to claim again today that the Government have embarked on the biggest work programme since the great depression? As you will be aware, Mr Speaker, there was no meaningful work programme during the great depression, but what we did have in the 1930s was mass unemployment presided over by a Tory-Liberal coalition.

[Mr Speaker]

I may disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but I state the truth when I say two things. First, the Prime Minister was in order and, secondly, in his attempted point of order, the hon. Gentleman was not, but he has put his concerns on the record.

Points of Order

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point with great force, but it is not a point of order for the Chair. I will leave it there today.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 20 December, I asked the Transport Secretary in this House about the Government’s response to winter weather in my constituency. The Transport Secretary undertook to write to me that afternoon with the Government’s reply. I have so far not received a response, and when I called the Transport Department today, the correspondence unit informed me that no letter had been sent. Can you help me understand whether I should expect a reply from the Minister?

[Mr Speaker]

It is possible that as a result of the point of order that the hon. Gentleman has just raised, the reply for which he is waiting may soon arrive. I can say beyond that only that the hon. Gentleman will have doggedly to pursue the matter if necessary, but of course it is right both that Members should get speedy answers to their questions and that promised letters to Members should be sent timeously.

Postal Services (Scotland)

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

Royal Mail—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his forbearance. If Members leaving the Chamber can please do so quickly and quietly, we can proceed to an orderly Adjournment debate. I, for one, certainly wish to hear Mr Gregg McClymont.

[Gregg McClymont]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Royal Mail is a vital public service in Scotland. With 1,400 branches, the Post Office is Scotland’s largest retail chain. According to Consumer Focus Scotland, its services are used by 95% of the population. Scottish business, too, depends on the service. The Federation of Small Businesses estimates that one in six small to medium-sized enterprises relies exclusively on Royal Mail.

The Minister will be aware of the serious risks involved in privatising a Government-owned industry that provides a popular public service. Get it wrong and the Government of the day preside over a carve-up: executive pay hikes, job losses and the curtailment of services to the detriment of consumers. That is why I am seeking clarification of the Government’s plans tonight. I am keen to hear about how the Minister intends to protect the existing level of service provided by Royal Mail and the Post Office in Scotland.

The Government propose to split postal delivery and the management of the post offices—Royal Mail doing the former, and Post Office Ltd the latter. Both functions currently reside in Royal Mail Group, which has an obligation to provide a certain level of service to the public. That is the universal service obligation. These obligations are contained in the licence granted to Royal Mail Group. The licence requires that Royal Mail provide a certain number of deliveries at a certain time to homes and businesses and that Post Office Ltd retains post offices in all Scottish communities.

Royal Mail is also currently obliged to take the provision of all post office services from Post Office Ltd. That is called the inter-business agreement. That agreement, alongside a taxpayer subsidy of approximately £150 million per year, enables Post Office Ltd to fund its entire network of 1,400 post offices in Scotland. If neither of those conditions existed—the inter-business agreement or the public subsidy—the number of post offices would fall sharply, especially in rural parts of Scotland. The danger is real, for the Business Secretary has said that the Government do not wish to retain a stake in Royal Mail. That means full privatisation, with Royal Mail managers incentivised to seek maximum profitability. In these circumstances, the importance of postal services as a public service to the nation cannot be their priority. I say to the Minister that there is a strong memory throughout this country of former public service managers making unmerited fortunes at the expense of the public following previous privatisations in energy and in rail. Indeed, this tension between managerial freedom and the preservation of public services always emerges when utilities are privatised.

Finance Bill

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont]

Indeed, they assent. My own view is that the political rhetoric is at odds with the economic reality, and I shall tell them why. Several colleagues have noted that the average maturity of British sovereign debt is 14 years—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am listening to the speech by the hon. Gentleman with the closest interest, and it certainly has the manner of an economic treatise, which is of some interest, but I am just trying to fathom to which part of the Bill his comments relate. I have not yet found it, but I have a feeling that he is about to demonstrate it to me.

[Gregg McClymont]

Thank you for that guidance, Mr Speaker. As I suggested at the outset, everything in the Finance Bill depends on a view about confidence in the economy, and I was suggesting that the Government’s confidence in their own prescription is misplaced. However, I shall try to follow your advice and move on.

Government debt is still at historically low levels. It is edging towards 70% of GDP, but for 60 of the past 100 years, Government debt was at that level or higher, and that undermines the claims for an historic level of debt. It is true that those debts were incurred fighting two world wars, but the recent and more modest expansion of the national debt also happened in exceptional circumstances. I hope that Government Members will not forget the scale of the crisis that the world economy recently suffered. In 2009, global GDP shrank by 2.4%, the first decline since world war two, and the Budget must be considered in that context of global depression.

The political obsession with debt is dangerous and has distorted the Government’s economic priorities as set out in the Bill. Our public deficit is just one of many causes for concern about our future economic performance, and that is why Labour had a plan to restrain public spending when the recovery was secured. Labour led Britain out of recession last year through stronger growth and lower unemployment, supported by an active industrial policy and global co-operation. This Government, by contrast, offer us nothing but scaremongering about the national debt and competitive deflation with our economic partners.

What of job creation? In oral questions last week, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change compared the previous Government’s target of 1.2 million new green jobs to the sector targets that Gosplan set in the Soviet Union. The Opposition might have had plans and targets for job creation, but the Government have targets for the destruction of jobs. That is what we learned from the Treasury leak last week, and that is where an obsession with public debt leaves us.

I should like to address one final superstition—that austerity inspires confidence among the bond markets that finance our debts and the consumers who drive demand and growth. That belief suits the Chancellor’s purposes admirably, as he and his colleagues have done much to undermine confidence in our economy and public finances. They style themselves as the remedy for a moral panic of their own making but, as I have suggested, there is little hard evidence to support what they say. The hard-headed realists on the Government Benches want to sacrifice real services and real jobs here and now, on the basis of what they think the markets might desire of them later. We may yet find that those gods are as inscrutable as they are insatiable. There is a fine line between confidence based on reduced deficits and confidence based on growth. It suggests that markets that smile on austerity now may punish us for low growth later.

In my opinion, the coalition Government and their policies have had little discernible impact on international confidence in the British economy. More important has been the lack of confidence in the eurozone; relatively speaking, confidence in our economy has grown. But the scaremongering about the public finances has already had a clear negative impact on the confidence of ordinary men, women and businesses, on whom the country’s recovery rests.

To conclude, the Budget has little to do with progressive or necessary austerity; it is acutely political in intention. The long-term objective is to reduce the financial burden on those who tend to vote Conservative by reducing the size of the public sector. That is the context in which the Conservative claim that the public deficit is the biggest threat to recovery must be understood. The Budget is profoundly political and not unavoidable. It reflects the superstition, self-interest and party interest of the modern Conservative party. I, for one, will not be supporting it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gregg McClymont and John Bercow

Thursday 1st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry, but these ministerial answers are simply too long. Something has got to be done for next time. Let us get it right.

[Gregg McClymont]

In opposition, the coalition parties demanded a 10% reduction year on year in CO₂ emissions across the public sector. In government, they now pledge these reductions only across the central Government estate. Why the retreat?