UK’s Withdrawal from the EU

Debate between Helen Goodman and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Sorry, I am afraid I do not have time.

However, this Government do not want to have to utilise that work.

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I am afraid I am not going to give way.

As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has consistently made clear, the only way to avoid no deal is to support a deal, and unless this House votes for a deal, the legal default in both UK and EU law is that we leave without a deal.

Let me assure the House that our programme of wider readiness is moving forward in a way that means that there is no need to extend article 50; there is absolutely no desire to do so, either. Four-hundred and thirty EU exit statutory instruments have been laid before the House to date, which is over 60% of the SIs that we anticipate will be required by exit day. Over 210 have been made, and five pieces of primary legislation have already been passed in preparation for our exit from the European Union.

We have spent a long time discussing the backstop, and this House’s concerns about it have been made clear, but it is important to note that there are wider benefits offered by the withdrawal agreement. It provides citizens with the certainty they need about their rights going forward. It signals the end of sending vast payments to the European Union, meaning more money for our NHS and other key priorities at home, while honouring the obligations we signed up to while in the EU, and it delivers the time-limited implementation period that is so vital for business.

Today is not the end of the process, but a way point directing us to the finishing line. It is a mark in the road towards the end destination—one that this country overwhelmingly voted to see. As I am sure Members understand, now is not the time to add any new conditions or create any unnecessary processes. Now is the time to allow our Prime Minister to finish the job that she is so diligently doing, and get this deal over the line. I ask all Members to support the Government in that tonight.

Leaving the EU: No Deal

Debate between Helen Goodman and Chris Heaton-Harris

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Is he trying to tell us that there are no extra costs in the preparations for no deal? Furthermore, can he confirm to the House today that none of the permanent secretaries, who are the accounting officers, at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport, the Department of Health and Social Care, HMRC, the Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have said to Ministers that they require special authorisation, because Ministers are asking them to spend money that is not even in line with Government policy?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I did not say that none of the £2 billion was going to no deal in that situation, and I have not heard any claims relating to what the hon. Lady said in the second part of her intervention.

The Government’s plans are well developed and have been designed—

UK Poverty

Debate between Helen Goodman and Chris Heaton-Harris

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman]

The response that we have had from Ministers and Tory Members today is precisely what the Archbishop of Canterbury describes in the book “On Rock or Sand?” as “wilful blindness”. If we are wilfully blind to the real problems in this country, we will not be able to deal with them. That is the major problem. The Government are responsible for a large number of the measures that have pushed the poorest further down.

What are we going to do instead? My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) pointed out that in-work poverty is now exploding as well. That point is also made in an excellent book by Julia Unwin, which I recommend to all hon. Members. In-work poverty is the new feature of poverty. It is caused by rising prices, a cost of living crisis and falling incomes. The Government will continue on that exploitative path, which will, in fact, increase the benefits bill by £9 billion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) pointed out this morning. However, this morning the Secretary of State was bragging about something that Barnardo’s has complained to me about, namely the taking of £50 billion from the children of this country during this Parliament.

Hon. Members have asked, “What would Labour do?” I will tell them what Labour will do. The first thing that Labour will do is to abolish the bedroom tax.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Paid for by?

[Helen Goodman]

Paid for by taxing the hedge funds, as was discussed during Prime Minister’s questions only this lunchtime, when the Prime Minister refused to do that. [Interruption.]

European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Helen Goodman and Chris Heaton-Harris

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Let us try something else. I have here a list of organisations that received money in 2007 for the purposes of fostering European citizenship. How about the European Liberal Forum, which received €107,000 that year? Was that political?

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is not pertinent to the discussion, because the question is this: how will money be spent in the future? The Minister should tell us what measures he will take to prevent it from going to such political organisations. On Second Reading, I asked him many questions that I hope he will answer this afternoon. What will the application process be? Who will get the money? How can we spread it across the whole country, not just organisations that have been habitual beneficiaries, so as to spread an understanding of Europe? Government Members display such understanding in great measure, but they are much better informed about the mechanisms of the EU than most people in this country, and I do not understand why they want to keep this knowledge to themselves. It is profoundly undemocratic.

I agreed, however, with the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) when he raised the issue of money going to non-EU member states under the theme of enlargement and work. It seems to me that whereas we have settled European policies on, for example, education and culture, enlargement is much more contentious.

That brings me to my next point. I am not going to ask the Minister what the process would be if he wanted to veto the regulation, because it is patently absurd to say that because we have a veto, we should use it. There are other matters relating to Europe that I think it would be far more important to veto than this. [Interruption.] Conservative Members are tempting me down a path down which I think it would be wrong for me to go. What I want to ask the Minister is this: what would be the process for amending the regulation, rather than rejecting it in its entirety? We need to get on with some of this work, and we do not want too much delay.

European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Helen Goodman and Chris Heaton-Harris

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

As the Minister points out, that should be a reason for some people to support the programme, but actually I do not necessarily agree with the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for reasons I shall explain.

I have some observations and questions for the Minister about these two major themes in the Bill. As he has explained, EU documents will be archived at the European University Institute in Florence so that future historians can benefit from complete records. The Clerk of the House has explained to me that our own material is archived in Victoria Tower. Will the Minister tell the House—[Interruption.] Could he stop talking to his Parliamentary Private Secretary and listen to me? Would the EU institutions be able to make duplicates in vellum as we do in this Parliament?

The Minister said that the Bill does not cover the documents of the European Court of Justice and the European Central Bank. The ECB position is rather controversial, given our own decision, in 1997, to publish, after only six weeks, the meetings of the Monetary Policy Committee. Expectation management is an important part of monetary policy, so I wonder why we are not seeing the ECB papers in the same way. The whole exercise cannot be described as a measure to improve transparency, given the decision to keep everything secret for 30 years. Who decided that these documents should be kept secret for 30 years and why? My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), who sadly is not in his place, has commented on Mrs Thatcher’s approach to the miners’ strike, demonstrating how few people can fully understand the significance of papers when they are kept locked up for 30 years.

The aim of the citizen programme is to improve how citizens participate in and contribute to the EU by strengthening remembrance and common values and encouraging a broader engagement and debate. The budget is €185 million, so by my calculation about £7 million will be spent in this country—not, I would suggest, a vast amount. The Minister has said what he thinks we will contribute to the budget, but I wonder whether he can say how much of it he thinks will be spent in the UK.

As the Minister said, 20% of the money will go towards commemorating the world wars and victims of totalitarianism. The Government are spending some £50 million on commemorating world war one. If the remarks of the Secretary of State for Education and the decision to put Lord Kitchener on the £2 coin are anything to go by, the Government are embarking on an unnecessarily jingoistic approach, which this EU programme might usefully counterbalance.

I want to ask the Minister how the funds will be distributed. It is unfortunate that world war one appears only fleetingly for children in key stage 3, so a little more understanding can only be a good thing. Will the money for the commemoration of the world wars be distributed in its own channel, or will it be bundled up with the money the Government are spending directly and through the Heritage Lottery Fund?

As the Minister said, the major part of the moneys will be used on EU citizenship projects for learning and twinning. Since the major wave of twinning took place in the late-1970s, just after we joined the Common Market, and given that the EU now has 22 member states, it seems a good idea to give this initiative fresh impetus so that new relationships can be built across the Union.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I do not want to jump in on the hon. Lady, but there are 28 member states if Croatia is included.

[Helen Goodman]

I am happy to be corrected by the hon. Gentleman. His arithmetic is better than mine.

I wonder whether some towns will choose to be twinned with places in Bulgaria or Romania. I do not know whether the Minister has heard anything about that.

Projects for young people to learn about EU citizenship are particularly good, especially given the Government’s foolish decision to take personal, social, health and economic education, which included citizenship, out of the core curriculum. Young people are the most likely to self-identify as European. I hope that more information and education on, and more understanding of, Europe will mean that people will not be misled by the wilder claims about the European Union made by people who are Eurosceptic. However, I am not convinced that, once people know how the European institutions operate, their views towards them will be flattering.

I have received some interesting information from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations about how the Europe for Citizens programme is operating. I hope that it will reassure the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that the money will not just be taken up by Europhile institutions. It states that the grants have enabled

“support for participation and democratic engagement”,

which is surely a good thing; projects on the

“impact of EU policies in societies”;

and the

“exchange of expertise between members in different countries”.

When I was thinking about who might benefit from taking part in such programmes, I thought of the Minister. Many parts of his brief could benefit from a more collaborative approach with our European colleagues. For example, there could be collaboration on child protection on the internet, tackling the uncompetitive behaviour of the internet giants, and providing a proper copyright and intellectual property protection system. On the point about expertise, it might be worth looking at what some of our European colleagues do to prevent the export of heritage items, which is far more effective than what he is doing.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I was going to come on to the question of whether they should be purely political, but he will surely agree that there is a shared commitment in Europe to democracy and liberty, and that is fruitful for people to understand how they can exercise their rights within the European context and in the European institutions.

It would have been better for these projects to be up and running before the EU elections in May. Why has it taken the Government so long to bring the Bill to this House? The Lords dealt with it at the end of July, when the Minister in the other place stated that his intention was for the Bill to receive Royal Assent by the end of 2013. Will the Minister say why the timetable has slipped? That is particularly unfortunate, as we are only four months away from the EU elections.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I am slightly concerned that the hon. Lady ties the Europe for Citizens programme with the European elections, because to gain funding from it people have to sign up and put in their contract bid that they will support the European Union’s initiatives and be pro-European. It would have been useful if the hon. Lady had bothered to read any background information on this before she stood up at the Dispatch Box. Surely it is not necessarily in the interests of democratic debate to have only one side of the argument funded by this programme?

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman’s remarks are rather ungenerous. It is obviously important for people to understand what it is they are voting for. They are being asked to elect candidates and they need to know what powers the institutions have. I would have thought that could be shared across the House. I was struck by the energetic twinning arrangements in Oxfordshire.

Future of the BBC

Debate between Helen Goodman and Chris Heaton-Harris

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon, although I must say that is a rather detailed point, compared with the radical proposals coming from the Government side of the House.

When we consider the future of the BBC, it is interesting to look at what the director-general said last week in a major speech. He said that he wanted to see public service at the heart of the BBC and promised leaner management and further cuts of £100 million. It is true that some of the recent mistakes have been phenomenally costly, so a “right first time” culture would be incredibly helpful. He spoke at length about the possibilities for the BBC of technical innovations, including improvements to iPlayer, a BBC store and iPlayer radio.

The director-general also spoke about the significant contribution the BBC not only makes now, but can make in future, to the creative industries generally in this country. I think that is something we would all applaud. The fact that we put a 25% quota on the BBC to commission externally has turned out to be an extremely useful way of promoting and supporting other creative industries, and indeed exports, in this country. His proposals for a partnership with the British Library and a digital space with other institutions were extremely positive, as were his proposals for increasing the number of apprenticeships and the amount of education for young people in new technology. He mentioned something that I think we have all agreed with over the course of today’s debate: the importance of seeing more investigative news reporting. He also wants to strengthen the BBC’s global news presence, which will be facilitated through the incorporation of the World Service.

Although the director-general made a number of important statements about the BBC’s content and the possibilities for technology, he said less about the management. That has been a major concern in this debate and I think that it would be helpful if the BBC paid significantly more attention to it. In addition to the issue of top pay, we will obviously look at governance in the process of royal charter renewal. Rather than leaping to some new model, I think that it would be more helpful to have a proper royal charter process that includes consulting the public. As my right hon. Friend said, the fact that the governance arrangements did not work in the Savile episode, for example, does not prove that the model is broken; it demonstrates that the individuals did not fulfil their roles as well as they could have done. I urge caution before we tear up the current model and move into a whole new world—I am pleased to see the Secretary of State nodding in agreement.

It is also worth considering the future of the BBC in relation to the other large media organisations and the importance of maintaining media plurality in this country. The position of Her Majesty’s Opposition is that we should of course include the BBC in the overall understanding of the shares when measuring media markets, but that does not mean that we should apply the same remedies to the BBC as to other media organisations, and that is because of the different governance arrangements. I am not saying that those arrangements or transparency—the point made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan—cannot be improved, because I am sure that they can, but I think that all Members of the House must acknowledge that the BBC has a very different place from the private commercial operators.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I think that the hon. Lady is right up to a point, but surely we should also be looking forward when it comes to governance issues. Many of our local newspapers across the country are dying because they cannot monetise their online provision. In the United States, however, many local newspapers are thriving because they can monetise their online provision, and that is because they do not have a very big BBC online presence providing that content. I think that we need to look very carefully at that when we talk about media plurality.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is a long-standing concern that the BBC should not use its privileged position to compete unfairly with other market operators. Local newspapers have claimed that stories are taken from them and that they are not paid for them properly, which obviously is something we need to address if we are to have plurality at both local and national level.

When we are looking at transparency and public accountability, I think that it is worth thinking about ways in which the public can be involved in commissioning. The best job in television must be that of commissioning editor. I think that a more open approach to the public on commissioning would be extremely welcome. The director-general says that he wants the public to feel that they are the owners of the BBC and that it is theirs, and we say amen to that, but we do not want it to be a piece of rhetoric; we want it to be a piece of reality.

Hon. Members also spoke about the management and culture of the organisation. Clearly, the need to be more conscious of value-for-money issues is still essential. Only last month senior executives gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, and it was clear on that occasion that there is still some way to go. We would also like to see more women in the BBC, both behind the scenes and on air. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) spoke about the serious cases of bullying that the National Union of Journalists has highlighted to us. One of the things that the NUJ has said—it is a good and reasonable point—is that the BBC should have an independent, external process for handling bullying or harassment cases. Doing everything in-house does not give members of staff the confidence that they need in the system.

I want to raise an important point about standards. There is a clear watershed on television; the content is suitable for children earlier in the evening and suitable for adults later. My impression is that the BBC does not operate radio to the same standards and that, from time to time on Radio 1 and Radio 2, there are songs, lyrics and language that are really not suitable for children. We cannot expect families always to put children into a silo of separate channels—that is not how people lead their lives, and the BBC must take that into account.

I felt that the criticisms made about BBC bias by some hon. Members, in particular the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson), were a little unfair. We can all think of occasions when we have been enraged by what we have heard on the BBC, but feeling extreme irritation sometimes does not mean that there is bias overall.

We want to tackle the issue of top pay and strengthen accountability, but we must acknowledge that three quarters of the population believe that the BBC maintains high standards. The most important guarantee of that is continued editorial independence. Although I completely understand that the BBC must evolve with changes in technology, in the end what we look for from it are values and commitment to truth and independence.

I end on a personal note. My mother is Danish. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark in world war two, the Danish relied completely on the BBC to get the truth. Those high standards of editorial independence and truthfulness are as relevant today, and will be as relevant in 10 years’ time, as 70 years ago. Those standards are what we want from the BBC.