Sugary Drinks Tax

Debate between Helen Jones and Mark Pawsey

Monday 30th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

I have said to the right hon. Gentleman that I will not give way again.

The Government need to introduce a much tougher responsibility deal, with targets for improvements in individual products. A cross-Government strategy is also needed. As well as looking at schools, the health service and other public services, Ministers need to come out of their silos—after a time, all Ministers get into silos in their Departments—and look at what is happening overall. We do not want to see a repeat of what happened in the previous Parliament, when the Department of Health urged us to take more exercise while the Department for Education was cutting funding for school sports partnerships.

We need to consider that seriously, because what the petition asks for has to be part of an overall strategy to ensure that we promote healthier diets and get people more active, and not just by playing sport—sport is important, but I speak as someone who spent more time avoiding games at school than I ever spent playing them. There are other ways of getting people active. We need to encourage more walking and cycling, which is a role not just for the Department for Transport but for the Department for Communities and Local Government and for local councils, too. There is no reason why we cannot design new developments better to encourage more walking and cycling. There is no reason why we cannot ensure that new developments have children’s play facilities, communal gardens or even allotments, which are in very short supply, to encourage people to take exercise out in the open air.

We cannot continue with the current hands-off attitude. The problems are too great for that. The Government need to accept that the things they have done so far are—[Interruption.] The Minister will have a chance to speak when she winds up; she need not chunter from a sedentary position. Ministers ought to be above that sort of thing.

We need to have a full look at the situation and to encourage a proper national conversation, because the only way that such initiatives can be successful is if we take people with us.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Jones]

No, I have said several times that I will not give way again. I will now wind up my speech. The hon. Gentleman can make a speech later.

We must take people with us. We must get people to understand the need for a healthy diet, we must get people to understand the risks that many of us are currently taking with our diets and, most of all, we must get people to understand the future risks to their children. As I have said, a sugar tax is one of the things that we need to have, but the Government need to go much further and introduce a proper, co-ordinated national strategy to ensure that, in future, our people are healthier than they are now.

“Councillors on the Frontline”

Debate between Helen Jones and Mark Pawsey

Thursday 5th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate. Like many Members who have spoken, I am a former councillor, although I feel rather inadequate in the face of the long service of all the other Members here, having served as a councillor for only five years.

I became a councillor in 2002, and it was easy for me to do so, because I did not have a boss to ask permission from. I was running my own businesses, and like other Members, I found it easy to allocate time to being a councillor. I sat on a district council, and the majority of meetings were in the evening, so it was easy for me to attend. At no stage did I contemplate putting my name forward for a county council, given the number of daytime meetings and the time commitment they would have involved.

I am pleased to make my contribution as a member of the Select Committee, and I pay tribute to the Chairman for pulling the report together in a way all members were able to support. Listening to the debate, I was reminded of the evidence sessions we held—almost 12 months ago now. We had a number of formal evidence sessions, but I got most out of the more informal sessions, and particularly the speed dating, which was much to the interest of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). It was extremely valuable to be able to meet people who would not normally give evidence in the very formal Select Committee setting. It was particularly valuable to speak to people who had contemplated becoming a councillor, but who had chosen not to do so, because there is no body representing them.

As an aside, let me say there is some merit in making more use of informal evidence sessions in the Select Committee system. We get to speak to people on more of a one-to-one basis and to hear their views without their needing to be concerned about going into the House of Commons, sitting behind a desk with microphones and being interrogated by Members of Parliament. We got an awful lot out of the less formal sessions, and the Chairman is looking at doing more informal sessions, because we generally get more out of them.

The report is important because the councillor’s role is important, and councillors enable councils to do their work well. We need to encourage more people to put their names forward, and I want to talk about the role of the political parties in that.

I come from an area with a two-tier authority. The first tier across much of my constituency is parish councils. Parish councils are, of course, not political, and people with an interest in the community will put their names forward for parish councils. However, at district and county level, the councils are run on party-political lines. I do not know the statistics, but a significant proportion of councillors on county and district councils are from the established political parties, although I suspect there are more independent members on district councils than on county councils.

We need to make it easier for people to become councillors. In the main, the way to do that is through our established political parties. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst is doing work on that in the Conservative party, and I am sure the same kind of work is being undertaken in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. The role of the parties in encouraging people to come forward must be brought out. Perhaps the parties should come together and put together a uniform campaign to explain why people should become councillors.

Another issue raised in the report is the need to encourage people with broader experience of life—particularly people with experience of senior roles in the community—to put their names forward. If we look back two or three generations—we often see this when we visit council offices, because there are photographs of past mayors and past councils on the walls—we see that business leaders, head teachers, accountants, lawyers and other professional people with experience of senior roles were actively engaged in local politics. One concern is that we are not encouraging that cohort to come forward, and those people often see the council’s role through a negative lens, rather than a positive one. As has been said, it is distressing to hear of councillors being encouraged to take the fact that they are a councillor off their CVs; that is a matter of great concern.

The Chairman of the Select Committee drew attention to the fact that the average age of a councillor is now 60, that only 31% of councillors are women and that 96% of councillors are white. On the age range, we have discussed the fact that the role can be attractive to somebody who is straight out of university; for them, the allowance is relatively large, and somebody who is young and perhaps living at home can use it as their primary source of income. However, as people move into jobs that are more demanding of their time, and particularly when they have children, it becomes difficult for them to get involved—my children were reasonably old before I felt able to put time into becoming a councillor. Parents may, therefore, be particularly under-represented among councillors.

In written evidence to the Committee, Professor Colin Copus made an interesting European comparison. It turns out that Spain’s councillors are the youngest, with a mean age of as low as 45. We then go up the table through Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Austria, France, Germany and Sweden, before we get to the UK at the very top, with an average age of 59. We really need to focus on those in the middle years of their careers and to make it interesting for them to come forward.

How might we do that? Clearly, we need to ensure that people are not put off by the prospect of becoming a councillor. There is a real lack of understanding of the time that being a councillor takes up. We have spoken about training, and I recognise the need for it, but one thing I was aware of, particularly in the early years of being a councillor, was the massive number of briefings, which take up an awful amount of time. Even when we become more experienced as councillors, we are still dragged along to many meetings that are perhaps not necessary. I recognise, as the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) said, that councillors need to be actively involved in the council, but far too often, councillors go into meetings that are not particularly significant or valuable, and they come away thinking, “Did I really get anything out of that?”

One thing that is a real turn-off for people thinking about becoming a councillor—we, as parliamentarians, are responsible for this—is the bickering and the Punch and Judy nature of politics. Parliament often does not represent itself well. Many people’s only awareness of national politics is what they see in Prime Minister’s Question Time on television. They see the bickering, and it does not encourage people to come forward.

We have heard a fair amount about the under-representation of women in councils. I should be interested to hear the view of the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), but I think women are particularly put off by the bickering that sometimes happens in a council chamber. We all support robust debate, but sometimes it goes too far.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I hear that point made frequently. Anyone who has seen women council leaders in the north-west would probably not think that. The real drawbacks are meeting times and the lack of child care. I had my child when I was a councillor and I had to go back a week later, because it was a hung council. Those are the things that need attention. The idea of a different political mindset among men and women is overplayed.

[Mark Pawsey]

My evidence may be anecdotal, but it comes from two councils that I know of. One was quite antagonistic, and women were under-represented. The other was in Rugby and it was rather more gentle, partly, I felt, because power had gone through different groups and coalitions so we worked more consensually. I thought it was a more attractive council chamber to be involved in, and we had a far larger proportion of women. I simply make that observation.

We need to give councillors real power. The Localism Act 2011 has been mentioned. For far too long, all councillors did was rubber-stamp policy that came from Government. I remember having Hobson’s choice about what action to take. Not doing what the Government wanted would mean not getting the grant that would enable something to happen. Under the current cabinet model, cabinet members have executive power and are actively involved in the council; but council back benchers have little role. They sit on scrutiny committees and can make recommendations, but it is hard to get things done. That is why the Government should be applauded for the 2011 Act, which gives power back to councillors and councils. I hope and expect that the additional powers that councils have will lead many people with more senior roles in the community to put their names forward.

I want to consider the accessibility of councillors. Often, particularly in a two-tier authority, people do not know which councillor is responsible for what, and often they will therefore not go to their councillor to solve a problem. It has been mentioned that MPs get letters about potholes, roads, road lighting, parking and planning—things that are not within our control—and we should tell those correspondents “Go to your local councillor, who is someone who can deal with that.” My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) made a valuable point about multi-member wards, where the disconnect is even greater. With single-member wards, an effort to convey to people the responsibilities of their councils, and councils that made themselves more accessible, things would work better. I was interested by the remarks of the hon. Member for Croydon North, who spoke about a councillor’s satisfaction at solving a problem. We can all identify with that, but it struck me that the benefits matter in question was more likely to be a national issue than a local council one. That is the reverse of the experience I have been describing, which is probably more the norm.

We have had a useful report and debate. I hope that we have recognised the important and active role that councillors play, and that some of our recommendations will be taken forward.