Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I believe that the 20,000 Syrian refugees—many of whom will be children—that we will take directly from the Syrian refugee camps are the modern equivalent of the Kindertransport, and this country should be proud of that. At the same time, let us recognise that when it comes to those Syrian refugee camps, Britain is spending more than France, Germany and Italy. On our aid budget, we all sat around the table and promised 0.7% of GDP, but how many major countries have actually kept their promises? This one has.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. On those people we will be letting in, can some priority be given to not just Christians, but the Yazidis, who have been so poorly treated in Syria?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In drawing up the criteria, we will be looking at the people who are the most vulnerable, and there is growing evidence that some people are vulnerable not only within Syria but within the refugee camps themselves, so Yazidis, Christians and others—particularly children or women at risk of abuse—will all be in our scheme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[An hon. Member]

SNP gain!

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

Q5. I don’t think so love. In May 2010, unemployment in South Derbyshire, an ex-mining area, stood at 1,540. Today it is almost a third of that, at 580. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the strong Conservative Government and a Conservative district council with a long-term economic plan are able to succeed in bringing jobs and growth where the Labour equivalent failed to do so?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; in South Derbyshire, since the election, the claimant count—the number of people claiming unemployment benefit—is down by 68%. Those are the statistics, but every one of those people is someone with a job, with a livelihood and with a chance to provide for their family. That is what this election is going to be about: for young people who want jobs, we are offering apprenticeships; for young families who want homes, we have got homes with Help to Buy; and for pensioners who want security, we have got the pension and the pension benefits guarantee. That is what is on the ballot paper and that is what I think people will choose at the next election.

Recall of MPs Bill

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend is exactly right—I hope in due course to make such points as well as she has—including about the fact that the protection lies in the threshold, and I will come on to that in a second.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

When I sat on the Standards and Privileges Committee, it was interesting to see the sort of complaints that we received. Regularly, there were 28 complaints a month of which only one was relevant to what the Committee could look at, and it quite often ended up as a case of “No harm, no foul”. My difficulty with my hon. Friend’s amendments is that the work load created would sometimes be absolutely phenomenal. I want a very high threshold to avoid the problem of vexatious complaints.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I will address her points properly, but if she feels that I have not done so, I invite her to feel free to intervene at any point.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)]

Having opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with my party colleagues, I have deliberated uncomfortably and cautiously for the past few weeks on the issues about which we must decide today, but I have been persuaded of both the justification and the need for action of the sort that we are asked to approve today. Many Members have spoken about the humanitarian atrocities that are being perpetrated by ISIS. Surely to goodness we must learn from the mistakes of Srebrenica and Rwanda and not make the mistake of simply allowing them to happen.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

There is a gentleman living in my constituency who is part of the Yazidi group. I was appalled by the paperwork and photographs he showed me of the atrocities that are going on. We must all support the motion; it is absolutely a just motion.

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I very much hope that all Members across the House would agree with that, whatever their take on the military issues to be discussed.

However, beyond the humanitarian catastrophe there is the strategic threat, which will grow given that, as we have heard, ISIS already controls an area bigger than Britain and has the stated objective and ambition to make that bigger and bigger. We have seen from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan what will happen if terrorist organisations with international ambitions are allowed such freedom of manoeuvre. ISIS has manpower; it has got hold of some very sophisticated equipment; it has a flow of money. It is quite a formidable enemy for the Iraqi army and the Kurdish forces. That is why Iraq is looking outside its borders for external help.

Yes, it would be better, as the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) said, if the clear lead were given by some of the regional neighbours and by Muslim states. We are very grateful, I hope, for the efforts that are being made by some of the neighbours, but the moral responsibility falls on countries such as the United Kingdom, because we are one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as we have a substantial Muslim population ourselves, we have more than most to fear from the growth of ISIS if it were allowed to go unchecked. So there is a just cause; there is a clear legal case; there is a plausible objective to degrade ISIS and enable the Iraqi and Kurdish fighters to recover the terrain that they have lost; and there is a strategy that we shall use our air power to soften up the enemy and allow the ground forces to recover that terrain—we are not going to deploy our own forces, but we will help them to do that.

“Can it work?” Members are asking. There are no guarantees, but it could. If there is a detailed plan, then, bluntly, I do not know what it is, but on a need-to-know basis I do not need to know. We do not know how long it will take, what it will cost, or what, short of outright triumph, is our exit strategy. I was impressed by the fact that the Prime Minister was very realistic about the limitations of what air power can do and what military power can do. The military effort has to be accompanied by a humanitarian aid effort, by diplomatic efforts, and by efforts to find a political solution. As many have rightly said, we do not find a political solution to a complex situation on the ground from 20,000 feet above it.

I also welcome the fact that the Prime Minister was appropriately modest about the contribution that the UK is proposing to make. Of course, we will be supplying forces who are highly skilled and very courageous, who will go with the good will of all of us, and who will be using very sophisticated equipment. However, there is absolutely no place for hubris on the part of the United Kingdom about the scale of the overall effort that we are going to make.

EU Council, Security and Middle East

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

On the issue of the debate, I am sure that the authorities will have listened to the hon. Gentleman and that we can find a way to have a proper debate, whether this week or next week. I am sure that that would be worth while.

On Putin and Russia, as I have said before, what we have to do is to make count the fact that Russia needs Europe and America more than Europe and America need Russia. I am not promising that a set of sanctions will suddenly lead to a radical change of mind in the Kremlin, but if the Russians see that they are opting for a completely different and much, much colder relationship between the west and Russia, it might make them pause to think that they are making the wrong decision in not allowing the Ukrainians to make their own decisions about their own country.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that removing passports from terrorists who return from Syria and Iraq, barring dangerous foreign nationals from Britain and legislating to prosecute all types of terrorist activity are not a knee-jerk response, but a sensible and prudent approach to keep Britain safe?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. The first response should be to gather evidence, prosecute and convict. However, we have learned in this age of the appalling threat of Islamist extremist violence, which is different from some of the threats that we have faced in the past, not least because the people who carry it out not only do not care whether they survive, but seek what they see as martyrdom, that we have to up our response. We have lots of very effective laws and rules. We do not need to overhaul them, but we do, in some circumstances, need to enhance them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is wrong. [Interruption.] The fact is that many of the green levies were put in place by Labour. Let me remind him that one of the first acts of this Government was with the £179 renewable heat initiative, which the leader of the Labour party wanted to put on the bill of every single person in the country—and we took it off the bill.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

Q12. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the work force at Toyota in my constituency, as well as manufacturers across the country, whose hard work has ensured that car production went up by 10% in the past year?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend. I remember my own visit to Burnaston in Derby—[Interruption.] Again, Opposition Members do not want to hear good news about manufacturing. They do not want to hear good news about our car industry. The fact is that this country is now a net exporter of cars again and we should be congratulating the work force at Toyota. We should be congratulating the work force at Jaguar Land Rover. We should be praising what they are doing at Nissan. These companies are leading a re-industrialisation of our country. I was at the Cowley works on Monday, where the Mini, which is doing brilliantly, is leading to more jobs, more apprenticeships, more employment, more skills—all things that we welcome under this Government.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I represent an old mining area, and, as folk might imagine, some of the e-mails that I have received have been quite lively. However, I have been reminded that unemployment in my area is now 2.8%. The old mines have gone. People remember the difficulties that arose between the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, whose members did not strike, and the National Union of Mineworkers, whose members did, but people now have jobs. People have reinvented themselves.

Some of the e-mails that I have received have been very passionate about the future that Mrs Thatcher gave to our country, and the aspiration that she gave to it. I certainly know that I am in this Chamber because of her. As a 17-year-old, I wrote a paper about why British Leyland should be privatised rather than nationalised, because it was losing £1 million a week. What an outrageous situation it was—although quite why a 17-year-old knew facts like that, I cannot imagine.

The change in our country has been phenomenal, and all the groundwork was laid by Mrs Thatcher. I was so pleased to meet her, and I love the photograph that I have of her with me. When I finally became leader of our council—which had always been a Labour council—the first thing that I did was to put a portrait of Maggie Thatcher in my office. I do not think that there had ever been a picture of her in any of the council offices before, except on a dartboard. That was a major change, and it meant that South Derbyshire was turning around. The future was bright—the future was blue—and we owe her so much.

Charitable Registration

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman has put my reasons for securing this debate more eloquently than I could have. It is meant to put on record the level of concern about the issue in this and the other House. There are many questions to be asked, and I hope that at least some of them will be asked today. He is right that some of them relate to the Charity Commission’s powers.

The notable Julian Rivers, professor of jurisprudence at the university of Bristol, has far more experience of the issue than probably anyone in this room. He has raised numerous concerns about the Charity Commission’s decision on the Preston Down Trust, particularly about the extent to which the Charity Commission considers that the abolition of the presumption of public benefit calls into question earlier cases involving religious charities, given that the former Minister said in the House in 2006:

“The Bill preserves the existing law on the definition and test of public benefit”.—[Official Report, 26 June 2006; Vol. 448, c. 24.]

There is clearly serious confusion. A much fuller discussion of Julian Rivers’s concerns is contained in his book “The Law of Organised Religions”. He raises several concerns about this area of law that are now far from academic as a result of the Preston Down Trust case.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

Like many others, I have many constituents who are worried, not just for the Plymouth Brethren who work and form part of the community in South Derbyshire but for other religions as well. We have a big Catholic group in our area that does a lot of social work and has a big social constituency. I find it interesting that this could be the tipping point. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s reply.

[Fiona Bruce]

Yes. Professor Rivers says that the law on the registration of religious charities

“is not completely clear and coherent… careful legal analysis and authoritative restatement would be helpful.”

One area of concern and confusion that he highlights is what we mean by the phrase “a section of the public” in relation to religious charities. If an organisation is to pass the test for charitable registration, a section of the public must benefit, but are not members of a denomination—the Methodists, for example—also members of the public? It has been suggested that the Charity Commission is trying to turn the question on its head by thinking of a class as restricted and therefore not consisting of members of the public, rather than as public because it is, on the face of it, open to all. The issue sounds complicated, but it is very important in the Plymouth Brethren case, in which it is clear that openness is a crucial factor in the Charity Commission’s thinking.

Oral Answers to Questions

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

No, that is the reverse of the truth. The arrangements we inherited made it incredibly difficult for SMEs to bid, because the procurement processes were so bureaucratic, so clunky and so expensive, both for the taxpayer and for bidders, that many SMEs and voluntary and community sector organisations were, in effect, excluded. We are addressing that. There is more to do, but I would be grateful for some support from the hon. Lady’s side, particularly in encouraging Labour-led local authorities.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

My constituent, Mr Isham, who runs a business in Willington, is also finding it difficult to break through the barriers to obtaining Government contracts. May I encourage the Minister to come to South Derbyshire for a question and answer session with local business people, so that they can learn at first hand from the master how to apply?

[Mr Maude]

I would obviously be delighted to meet my hon. Friend’s constituents, but I would urge them to look at the Contracts Finder website, where, for the first time, Government and public sector contracts are available for scrutiny. If they find that procurement is still being done in the old-fashioned, outmoded way that we inherited from the Labour Government, they should phone our helpline and we will get on the case, as we have done in many cases already, and put improvements in place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I simply do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. In our review of control orders, we listened extremely carefully to MI5, the security services, the Metropolitan police and all those involved. There was a full review process to make sure that we could have a system that is legal—that is vital because the courts unpicked so many of the last Government’s changes—that the public can have confidence in and that will keep us safe.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

On the day when 200 people from Bombardier in Derby are here to hear whether we can change the arrangements for the Thameslink contract, can the Prime Minister give us some hope about future contracts and about changing the tender arrangements—the mess that we were left in by the previous Government?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly want to do everything I can to help Bombardier, which is an excellent company that employs people in Derbyshire and has done a brilliant job as an engineering business in this country for so many years. Before people from the Labour party start shouting, let me remind them that this procurement process was designed and initiated by the previous Government. It is no good their trying to shuffle off their responsibility—it is their responsibility.