Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jim McGovern

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Owing to pressure on the availability of larger properties, many social landlords provide significant incentives for people to move.

It is important to remember that the housing market is dynamic. It is not a static market, with people staying in the same house their whole lives, and they should not expect that to be the case. I understand that people move house, on average, every seven years. It is perfectly reasonable that that happens, and that it should continue to happen, because it frees up the properties people need. I intervened on the hon. Member for Dundee East to make that important point.

When a three or four-bedroom property in the social rented sector is freed up, it might well be filled by someone who had been living in the private rented sector, which is more expensive, so they will be moving into the cheaper social rented sector. The person who had been living in the three or four-bedroom property might move back into the private rented sector, which has a higher cost, but there would be a bigger saving because the other person had moved into the social rented sector. That is important, because some of the debate has focused on the inflexibility of the housing market. It has been said, for example, that there are not enough one-bedroom properties in the social rented sector for people to move down to, but there are plenty of properties across the country as a whole. People will move more freely between the private and public rented sectors and will continue to have their rents paid for them unless they choose, as they will be free to do, to earn more money by working a few more hours a week or by taking in a lodger and so on in order to get the extra income.

[Jim McGovern]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman—he is making the speech, but this applies to everyone on the Government Benches—whether he can imagine asking his mother, sister, brother, daughter or son to take in a stranger as a lodger?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I would be very happy to take in a lodger myself. Indeed, in my earlier life I had lodgers in my house, which helped to pay the bills.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jim McGovern

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, which made him sound even more antiquarian than I am. I do not think that I have ever heard anyone argue for the Protestant ascendancy in the House, and as far as I know it has not been argued for here since 1829, although conceivably some may have argued for it since then. It is absolutely right to say that there are historic aspects of the construction of our constitution that it would be better for us not to change.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

Can the hon. Gentleman nail an argument that continues in Scotland day after day, week after week and year after year? Is the Prime Minister of this country allowed to be a Catholic?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Yes. The Catholic Emancipation Act 1829 makes it clear that the Prime Minister is entitled to be a Catholic. The last office to be specifically excluded was that of Lord Chancellor, but, as far as I am aware, the provision was amended in the late 1970s. The one thing that a Catholic Prime Minister cannot do is make or advise on appointments in the Church of England. That is specifically listed as a felony.

The point is that times have changed, and the Bill has come forward. If there were to be no change in our plans for the succession, I would not be the one charging the barricades and saying that we ought to be changing them, but the Government have proposed this change, which they wish to limit to a very narrow sphere. They wish to limit it to making primogeniture equal among males and females, and to allowing marriage to Catholics, without considering the grating unfairness that currently exists in our laws of succession in an age of much greater toleration, and in an age in which so many of the areas in which the Queen is sovereign do not have an established Church.

Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jim McGovern

Friday 22nd October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I was referring to the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington and following up on those, as I now wish to follow up on the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). His speech was in a fine tradition of the House. In the 19th century, speeches of two and a half hours were common. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) was here for the Don Pacifico debate—[Interruption.] I am pleased to hear it. The great Palmerston spoke for two and a half hours in that debate, and I feel that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is becoming Palmerstonian in his approach to the House.

It is important that our procedures are respected and that they operate fairly and properly. Part of that procedure is that if 100 do not go through the Division Lobby to support a closure motion, there can be no closure. That is perfectly justifiable, and it ought not to be brushed away by some airy-fairy talk of new politics.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but I am not quite sure that I am so grateful for his history lesson. When he talks about these days past and the British empire and so on, does he mean when working-class people knew their place?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is trying to lead me astray. Mr Deputy Speaker asked me not to carry on talking about history, but I disagree entirely with the hon. Gentleman’s point.

On the specifics of the proposals, we have to look at the Bill in its context. We need not go back to the great strikes of early history. I was thinking initially of Achilles sitting in his tent and about whether that was a first example of industrial action and the withdrawal of labour, and about whether we should get on to Patroclus and so on, but I thought that would be too abstruse at this time in the afternoon. However, the Bill is important because it would take us back to the industrial relations of the 1970s and 1980s, so the immediate historical context is of tremendous importance. I remember growing up—I was a child once, although I never normally admit to it. We had a wonderful debate the other day with all sorts of people saying they had once been 16. I sat here wondering whether I had ever been 16 and hoping that it had passed by quite quickly. However, when I was a child, I saw the streets, including Leicester square, used as a dumping ground for rubbish because of strikes. They were strikes that had been called not with any democratic oversight, but because unions had the ability to bully their members.

The great lady, Margaret Thatcher—Baroness Thatcher, Lady of the Garter—came in and pulled this country up by the scruff of its neck. She introduced legislation, which was opposed every time by the socialists—they opposed everything she did—to democratise the trade unions and bring them under the control of their members and to allow this country to be run by its democratically elected Government, rather than by the grand, godfather-like bosses of the trade union movement. Anything that takes us back to those days would be desperately unfortunate and risk our seeing the same number of strikes that we saw in the 1970s and 1980s and the destruction of British industry.

Our car manufacturing was destroyed by strike after strike called from mass meetings. Do hon. Members remember those mass meetings? Do they remember watching them on the television? Do they remember the voice votes controlled by a few bullies? A hand or two would go up, but they would never be counted. That was the type of behaviour we had in this country before the laws that Margaret Thatcher introduced. That put us back on to a proper footing, where prosperity could arise, commerce could take place and business could flourish. We saw the launch pad built for an amazing economic performance that was no longer being destroyed by the trade unions.