Energy Prices: Support for Business

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Barbara Keeley

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

As I too represent an agricultural constituency, I am very conscious of the needs of farmers, which should be at the forefront of the nation’s care and concern.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

In times of crisis we turn to our civil society organisations to support us with vital services. Across the arts, we are expecting museums, galleries and theatres to provide the public with warm banks. Those critical community and cultural organisations tell me that they face the combined challenges of falling donations and income, rising costs and the continuing impact of covid. What can the Business Secretary tell us to reassure those essential organisations that support for energy costs will extend beyond six months for them?

Shale Gas Extraction

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Barbara Keeley

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Using our domestic resources, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) mentioned earlier, reduces our carbon emissions —it is really straightforward.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Fracking is an outdated, dangerous and expensive way to produce energy, and it will not provide the clean, secure energy that our country needs. In my constituency, an exploratory fracking site at Barton Moss needed a police operation, which cost Greater Manchester police £1.7 million in 2014 and involved 150 police officers across five months. Fracking did not have community support, and Greater Manchester police had to pay the heavy price of policing the demonstrations against it. Why are the Government forcing it back on the community in my constituency?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

There is a war in Ukraine. We need security of supply.

Business of the House

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Barbara Keeley

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend asks an excellent question. It is really important that we are all equal under the law, and it is fundamental that the law is carried out by the police. We police by consent; the police are us, and we are the police. For that to work, people have to have confidence that the law will be enforced. Having said that, I do not know the specific details of the case or the reasons for the police decision, but the Government are taking more action to deal specifically with the issues around illegal campsites and associated criminality. I will pass on my hon. Friend’s comments to the Lord Chancellor, and I note with great interest what he has to say about the Human Rights Act.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

More than 2,000 autistic people and people with learning disabilities are being held in inappropriate hospital units, 10 years after the Government promised to close them. Yesterday, we learned that an autistic man with a learning disability, Tony Hickmott, has been detained in care for 21 years, breaking the hearts of his elderly parents Pam and Roy.

That could change if the Government lived up to their promise. Indeed, in our report on the treatment of autistic people and people with learning disabilities, the Health and Social Care Committee has urged the Government to do so. The Government have not responded to that report, although a response was due on 13 September. Will the Leader of the House please take action to press the Secretary of State on the urgency of responding to the report and of acting to make sure that people like Tony Hickmott can live in their home, not in a hospital?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the matter. I think that anyone who has seen the press reports will be as deeply concerned as she is. I point to a lot of cross-party work that has been done to raise the profile of autism, not least by my late right hon. Friend Dame Cheryl Gillan and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), who has been very committed in the area.

It is important that the Government respond to Select Committee reports in accordance with the Osmotherly rules. I will take the matter up to ensure that those rules are met.

Participation in Debates

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Barbara Keeley

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The advice of the Government broadly, not specifically to this House, is that it is extremely clinically vulnerable people who should not be going into work, not members of families where a member of that family is extremely clinically vulnerable. It is important that we follow the same advice that we are giving to our constituents. I said earlier that last week I had to write to a constituent saying exactly that, and that I do not feel it is right for this House to take a different approach from the one that we are expecting our constituents to take.

As regards people revealing their medical details, nobody will be expected to go into any detail as to what their illness is. They will merely need to be extremely clinically vulnerable, and it will be a choice for those people. I think the difficulty with allowing anybody who can participate remotely to participate in all aspects remotely is that we would then not have debates; we would have a series of monologues and we would have the risk of the system going down. We have already had a couple of people on calls this afternoon whose words were muffled or distorted. The technology is not perfect. The efforts of the broadcasting team are absolutely admirable, but the technology does not work perfectly and people being here physically is important for proper democratic accountability.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]]

After my recent treatment for breast cancer, my oncologist advised me to reduce my contacts as much as I can during the pandemic. That is the reason I have not been travelling to the House. That does not make me clinically extremely vulnerable, so I would fall outside the changes suggested by the Leader of the House unless they are widened. I am glad we are discussing the extension of remote participation, but the plan by the Leader of the House to restrict it to Members who are clinically extremely vulnerable is just wrong. With the right support, Members can do their job remotely, but we have been denied that. I call on the Leader of the House to do the right thing and confirm that all MPs who are not able to travel to Westminster safely for a health reason or a reason related to the pandemic can participate remotely

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I begin by wishing the hon. Lady well in her recovery.

I am sure the whole House would like me to do that.

Business of the House

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Barbara Keeley

Thursday 5th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes such a powerful point. It is deeply unsatisfactory that it has taken 50 years to deal with this issue and that there will be further delays. The Government do have plans to improve the planning system and to speed up infrastructure projects. Let us hope he does not find any newts, because they are often an absolute nuisance—a newtsance, one might even say, Mr Speaker—when it comes to building projects. I will pass on my hon. Friend’s comments to my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary, who will be answering questions in a month’s time, on 3 December.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]]

The new Government guidance on care home visits requires them to take place outside, at a window, or with a floor-to-ceiling Perspex screen separating people. For many of the cases I have had raised with me, that is not a solution as their loved ones have dementia or are bed-bound, or the care home lacks the resources to make the adaptations required. I would like to apply for an Adjournment debate to raise those cases with the relevant Minister, but because I am participating virtually I cannot do so, even though the Chamber is already set up for virtual participation and, as we know, Adjournment debates are primarily for the hon. Member and the Minister. Will the Leader of the House consider changing Standing Orders so that Members can apply for and lead an Adjournment debate virtually, and enable them to do their jobs?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Lady is proving that she can do her job  by raising this important issue. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has made regular statements where he can be questioned. Adjournment debates do allow other hon. Members to intervene. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is sitting in his usual place, regularly intervenes very helpfully in Adjournment debates. It is important that the debates in this House are with people who are physically here, but the hon. Lady has proved that she can raise her point in these interrogative sessions.

Business of the House

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Barbara Keeley

Thursday 16th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think there is not a single Member of this House who has not had, in his or her constituency, an issue raised of a planning kind that is of great importance to local constituents. It is important that local views are made known and that facilities have been kept during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure that virtual planning committees, with local planning authorities across the country, are implementing planning decisions. However, they are also still required to consult on and publicise planning applications to get the views of local communities. I think that is the right way to proceed.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]]

I want to support the comments of the shadow Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), on the lack of accountability. Throughout this crisis I have received a very high level of casework, with many issues raised by constituents about the lack of financial support for them from Government schemes, but, having written to Ministers, I have often received template replies from correspondence officers rather than from the Ministers themselves. Those replies merely restate details of existing schemes, rather than dealing with my constituents’ concerns. The Leader of the House talks of courtesy, but can he tell me what he will do to ensure that I get full responses from Ministers when I raise constituents’ issues? Anything less than that is a betrayal of the democratic role we play.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Lady is right. Responses from correspondents in Departments is not the correct way to treat Members of Parliament. If I may make a brief defence of Departments that did that at the height of the pandemic, I think they were almost overwhelmed with correspondence at that time and I had a certain sympathy with them at that time. However, I think that time has passed and that we have a right to expect proper answers. What have I done? Well, as of yesterday I wrote to one Minister. I raised, jointly with the Leader of the House of Lords, the issue of responses to written questions with Ministers some weeks ago. I will take up, and have taken up, individual cases of poor answers for individual Members of Parliament. If the hon. Lady would like me to take up any cases on her behalf, I will happily do that. It is essential and a key part of holding the Government to account that correspondence is responded to in a timely way by a Minister.