Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

We have looked at the past, we are where we are and now we look to the future. That suggests that we will become completely and utterly in thrall to providers that we cannot possibly trust. That is a big security risk, and it is a statement of absence of thought by any Government. If defence of the realm is our No. 1 priority, this becomes demi-defence of the realm, and I am simply not prepared to put up with that.

[John Redwood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for highlighting and leading on this crucial issue; I fully support him. Will he confirm that there is technology outside China that would do this job perfectly well?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am glad that my right hon. Friend raises that point, which I was going to come to. He is right. There has been a whispered suggestion to many of my colleagues and, I am sure, others—I do not mean that anyone has set out with malicious intent, but with practical intent, I suspect, to head off any would-be vote in the wrong direction—that we have to use Huawei because there is no other way of doing this, but that is simply untrue. Yes, there were 12 companies once upon a time and they are much reduced in number now, but I am aware of at least three that have been involved in 5G development or are capable of doing 5G development in what I call the free market world, with all of us, and they are Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung. In fact, Samsung has been involved in the South Korean 5G network anyway, and every one of them says, “We can do this.” The question then is that this will add cost, but I am sorry to say that, in reality, when it comes to security versus cost, my view is that security wins every single time.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

May I just pick up on one point? My right hon. Friend talks about, “should we wish to give them benefits”. The reality now is that the British Government have to pay benefits even to families of people working over here when their families are not with them. That is roundly disliked across Europe, but those countries all accept there is nothing they can do about it because the European Court of Justice imposed that as part of freedom of movement. It was never debated as part of freedom of movement and it was never supposed that it would happen. It is an end to sovereignty when one can no longer make a decision to change something like that.

[John Redwood]

My right hon. Friend puts it brilliantly; that is exactly the kind of limitation of our sovereign power, and of our freedom to make decisions that please our electors, that I have been talking about. It is quite important, given the history of this debate.

Turning to the Scottish nationalists, I agree with what the Scottish nationalist spokeswoman, the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), said: we only want volunteers in our Union. We are democrats. We believe that the Union works, but that if a significant portion of the Union develops a feeling that it is not working for them, we need to test that. I was a strong supporter of accepting the Scottish National party idea, just a few years ago, that there should be a referendum. That referendum had the full support of the United Kingdom Parliament, which is the sovereign authority for these purposes on Union matters. I also fully agreed with the then SNP leadership when I talked to them about it—I think our formal exchanges were recorded in Hansard. They said that they agreed with me that whichever side lost should accept the result, and that it would be a “once in a generation” event, not a regular event that happened every five years until one side got the answer that it liked. I hope that the SNP will reflect on that. We are democrats and we want volunteers in our Union, but we cannot pull it up and examine it every two or three years through a referendum, which is very divisive, expensive and damaging to confidence and economic progress. We should live with the result.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have visited and talked to a number of my colleagues across Europe—in Germany, Holland, Spain and France—and I have also talked to the Danish Minister. Everyone to whom I have spoken so far and many more—I see that the Poles have also come to the same conclusion—have decided that there is something fundamentally wrong with the European Commission interpretation of people’s right to access benefits in a country where they do not have residency. Recently, the Germans have tightened up in almost exactly the same way as we have done. We had all those people saying that what we were doing was terrible, but now that the Germans are doing it, those people have gone quite quiet.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Is not the question of who gets a benefit from this country, or who comes to stay in this country, a matter for this Parliament, not for the EU?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is exactly the point that I have been making from the beginning. We have always said to the European Commission that this matter lay outside the treaties. It is a national Government responsibility, and it is national Governments who should take that responsibility. The Opposition did very little about organising this so that they would be able to stand against the EU Commission on that basis.

Romanians and Bulgarians (Benefits)

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The changes are long overdue, and I would like to know why the right hon. Gentleman did not explain why the last Government did nothing about resolving the issue. He says that we should not be partisan, but he just has made a very partisan statement when an apology was all he needed to make. He needed only to say that he was sorry for the mess Labour left us in.

What we are talking about will have no practical effect on the implementation of universal credit, which, by the way, is proceeding exactly in accordance with plans. On the contributory principle—this is the point I wanted to make to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—there is no magic wand. Let us bear it in mind that if it was a blanket contributory principle, we would end up paying a lot of benefits, such as winter fuel payments—an issue that, as the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) knows, was not resolved by his Government—to lots of people who had long since departed Britain. We are considering the matter, and universal credit will give us an ideal opportunity to embrace tax credits and, through this requirement, to start the process of change so that we can resist the pressure of paying tax credits—because they would no longer exist—to people who come to the UK for the first time and claim to be self-employed. That is the area I am looking at.

We need no lectures from the right hon. Gentleman about prosecutions for minimum wage infringements. The last Government’s record on this was so bad I wonder why the Opposition bother mentioning it at the Dispatch Box. We are trying to change it, and will change it, whereas the last Government gave way on every single issue in Europe from the moment they arrived.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Why can the Secretary of State not propose to the House that we legislate to say that no one can get benefits unless they can demonstrate a suitable contribution record or have spent at least 10 years in full-time education in the UK?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I said earlier, that is the direction of travel we are trying to head in. We are trying to change the rules, in order to make the test covering the period someone spends here and the commitment they make to the UK much tougher. We are wrestling with the habitual residence test, but it is weak in parts because it makes no requirements concerning the length of time someone commits to being in the country. That is an area we have to, and will, challenge. I want to change those rules so that the European Court recognises that someone needs to make a commitment to the country they are in before they can start drawing down.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Lady is confusing two answers. The answer that she received from the Treasury—from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—was to do with checking against the references of the accredited companies. That was a process that was looking for 80%, and it was achieving just over 75%. What my hon. Friend the Minister was saying was that the number of companies being brought on to the pilot was exactly in line with the number that is there. I can promise the hon. Lady that, if she really wants me to, I will give her a written answer to that question as well.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Is the Secretary of State looking favourably on the idea that workers coming here from Europe to earn a living should have to establish a contribution record over a reasonable period of time before becoming eligible to receive benefits?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) and others are engaged on this matter with our European partners. We do not think it right that somebody who has made no contribution to this country should be able to walk in here on day one and take benefits, as is being proposed. I promise my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) that I will not allow that to happen.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I stand by what we said originally, and I say it again: in this Bill we have protected people on disability living allowance, as well as people in the support group on ESA. All the disabled premiums in JSA and so on are also protected. I do not know where Labour Members think they are going with all these points, because the reality is that they are basically opposed to absolutely everything. They would spend more money, they would tax more and they would borrow more, and the people who would suffer would be the British people who would have to pick up the bill. That is the reality.

I was making an important point about fraud and error. In essence, more than £10 billion was lost, and we do not even know how much was overspent, because Labour would not collect the figures. Writing off those debts wastes taxpayers’ money. To put this in perspective, the Bill sets out what we are doing at the moment to raise £1.9 billion, but that money could have been raised without difficulty had Labour’s system been better and more efficient.

It is also worth pointing out that, for many of the people Labour Members talk about, universal credit will improve their income dramatically. I have some very good examples of that. Under universal credit, a typical one-earner couple who have two children and rent their home will be £61 better off—including the changes today. A one-earner family with an income of £20,000 and two children will see a net gain of at least £34 a week. That will be a big boost for them and was not taken into consideration in the IFS figures.

The reality is that there is an issue about fairness, which we touched on just now. We should bear in mind that 70% of all households will not be affected by this legislation. Many of our constituents are taxpayers picking up the bill for all these costs, including the deficit and borrowing that the last Government left us. Over the last five years, following the recession, the gap has grown between what people in employment have been earning and what those on welfare have been getting. Those in work have seen their incomes rise half as quickly as those on out-of-work benefits—10% compared with 20%. That is not fair to taxpayers. Returning fairness to the system is critical, and it is one area that Labour refuses to acknowledge. Under the previous Government, taxes rose, borrowing rose and the deficit rose—and they left those bills for the next generation to pay. It is our job to get that under control. These are not decisions taken lightly or easily, but we have to take them and they are in denial.

The shadow Chancellor likes to sound off from a sedentary position. He likes to give it out but does not like to take it. I remember only a few weeks ago that he went around the studios complaining that we were too mean to him. If he does not like it, then he should stop making sedentary interventions.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that inflation can be particularly tough on people on low incomes who face small increases? Will he reassure people in the country that the Government and the future Governor of the Bank of England will be dedicated to getting inflation down, so that the value of benefits is not eroded more?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Exactly. Mortgage rates are a critical component of what a household spends each year. Under Opposition plans, if interest rates had to rise because of their messy borrowing and spending, every 1% would cost another £1,000 on a typical mortgage. What have also done as a coalition, which we should be proud of and on which our coalition partners were very keen, is raise the tax threshold. That is taking more than 2 million people out of tax—people who were paying tax under the previous Government. That is serious help and an improvement of £165 a week for the average family.

Living Standards

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is not just the poorest who are paying. Everyone will have to bear a proportion, because everybody is going to pay for this. Yesterday the Opposition claimed that the shocks that caused inflation are not relevant, yet today they stand there and tell us that it is all down to inflation. They need to make up their minds which case they want to mount first.

[Mr Redwood]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is his strong intention always to make sure that it is worth while working, and will he bring us up to date on the progress and timetable on that?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will indeed. The point I was making was that, as the universal credit comes forward in the next two years, it will do huge amounts to ensure that the incentives to return to work are improved. Secondly—and this relates to complaints from Opposition Members about the tax credit—it will reset the baseline so that those incentives will be increased and improved. Had we remained in the same position as the previous Government with their tax credits, there would be no way back for us now.