Oral Answers to Questions

James Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

1. What progress he has made on establishing the big society bank.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

I am delighted to be able to tell my hon. Friend that we are making excellent progress in establishing the big society bank. I am equally delighted to be able to tell him that it will be called the Big Society Capital group.

Big Society Capital announced appointments to the management and board in July. It is now securing Financial Services Authority and state-aid approval, and we expect it to be open for business in the spring.

[James Morris]

Does the Minister agree that the most important thing about the initiative is that it gets funding to organisations in some of the most deprived communities in my constituency?

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend is a noted, effective and passionate advocate of his constituency. It is of course for Big Society Capital itself to decide exactly where it places its investment funds, but I have absolutely no doubt that it will want to prioritise social intermediaries who focus on those families who are most vulnerable, and on those individuals and families who are most in need of help.

Public Disorder

James Morris Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

My constituents are understandably angry about the violence in nearby West Bromwich and the centre of Birmingham. Does the Prime Minister agree that the most important thing now for the people of the black country and the west midlands is that the Government are seen to stand up for the law-abiding majority in our country?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I was very struck at the meeting that I had in Wolverhampton with shopkeepers and residents that they simply want to ensure that the Government and the police stand up for the law-abiding, take back the streets and make sure that they belong to the law-abiding people of our country.

Open Public Services White Paper

James Morris Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we are about is trying to improve public services for all. By giving people choice and power, we enable the money to be focused, as she rightly says, on the places that are seen to be best by the service users, thereby increasing the proportion of public services that are excellent and gradually dragging up the average. Of course we also want to make sure that we do not have any coasting or substandard services, so she will also find that the White Paper contains a series of measures precisely to target providers that are consistently failing or consistently mediocre.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Last Friday, I met representatives of a number of voluntary organisations across the black country. Does the Minister agree that it is precisely those groups that we need to energise to get involved in improving the delivery of public services in my constituency?

[Mr Letwin]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. It is vital that we energise the voluntary and community sector now, and the White Paper will show the sector a huge path forward. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who has responsibility for civil society and who was here a moment or two ago, will shortly say more to the voluntary sector about the opportunities that the open public services White Paper framework provides for it.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to enable young people in (a) England and (b) Northamptonshire to participate in the national citizen service in the summer of 2011.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to enable young people to participate in the national citizen service in the summer of 2011.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) knows, we are offering more than 10,000 places to 16-year-olds this summer, including 135 in Northamptonshire. Our 12 providers are working hard to ensure full participation. I hope that he will lend his personal support to Catch22 and the Prince’s Trust in his area.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Morris]

There are a number of national citizens service pilots in and around my constituency. Does the Minister agree that we need to find ways of increasing and deepening access to this scheme in the most deprived areas by using innovative ways of communicating with youth clubs and other local institutions?

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. One of the key benchmarks for success of the scheme is creating the right social mix on residential courses. The aim is to create opportunities for young people to meet people they would never otherwise expect to meet. That is very much part of the obligation on our providers and we are monitoring it very closely.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

James Morris Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, and everyone who, with patience and painstaking fortitude, has brought the UN resolution to fruition. I pay tribute, as other hon. Members have, to our armed forces who are implementing that resolution. That type of work is what protecting British national interests is all about. As other hon. Members have said, every generation needs to define what is in Britain’s national interest. In the modern world, our national interest encompasses security, humanitarian issues and commercial interests. It demands that, as a nation, we are prepared to build alliances, to contemplate military co-operation with other nations, and to deploy our unique soft and hard power assets. We are doing so in relation to Libya. We were right to act, but we were right not to act alone.

It was right to agree a resolution with clear parameters for engagement and with broad-based support, which means that, in this context, the international community can act without the United States necessarily taking the lead. It is an example, too, of Anglo-French co-operation, with Britain and France being seen to be in the lead. It confirms that we do not live in a unipolar world. Britain, in the modern world, with a new definition of our national interests, must be as flexible and co-operative as possible to protect its national interest.

As other hon. Members have pointed out, recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have given the British people good grounds for caution about our country taking military action and being involved in foreign intervention. When I speak to my constituents in Halesowen and Rowley Regis, they are concerned about our commitments in the world. They have become weary in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan because they saw no clarity about the missions or their end point. We must not make the same mistake again with Libya.

It is vital that we avoid the tendency that has characterised some of our military interventions in the recent past to use over-optimistic language and to engender inflated expectations about what we can achieve and, in some contexts, a downright delusion about the lengthy effort required to achieve a successful outcome when we make the grave decision to intervene in the affairs of other countries. That mindset and language characterised our initial involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our new modern national interest demands that we are pragmatic, realistic and straight with the British people about what we are trying to achieve through the resolution. We must see the debate tonight, and the United Nations resolution, in the context of Britain adopting a broader strategy towards the middle east, a region which in recent times has been subject to turbulence and unpredictability, forcing on Britain a posture of ambiguity in foreign affairs, and obliging us to live with that ambiguity and make decisions within that context.

Although we are taking military action under the UN resolution, we must also be determined to use our influence through alliances and through our soft power assets to help build functioning civil societies and democracy in the countries of the middle east. It is in our national interest to utilise those soft power assets simultaneously with making a focused decision to take the action that we are taking in Libya.

The resolution that we are debating tonight is clear and pragmatic. It has broad-based support and I believe it is in Britain’s national interest to take action against Gaddafi now, but at the same time to be mindful that in doing so, we are making a grave decision that must be combined with Britain using its soft power assets throughout the middle east to promote democracy and build civic society.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I inform the House that I will take one more six-minute speech, then I will drop the time limit to four minutes to try and get in as many speakers as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

9. What steps he is taking to make Government procurement simpler for small and medium-sized enterprises.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to make Government procurement simpler for small and medium-sized enterprises.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

12. What steps he is taking to make Government procurement simpler for small and medium-sized enterprises.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend raises another extremely important question. It is emphatically not the Government’s intention to subsidise small and medium-sized enterprises through the contracting process, but rather to enable Government to be more efficient by promoting the kind of innovation that SMEs so frequently bring to the work they do. Our feeling is that if we get locked into contracts merely with very large suppliers, we often lose that innovation, and we are determined to avoid that result.

[James Morris]

SMEs are vital to the black country economy. What is the Minister doing to ensure that small and medium-sized companies in places such as the black country can compete for Government contracts on a level playing field?

[Mr Letwin]

Again, that is an enormously important question. One of the purposes behind our move to spread contracting to SMEs is precisely to ensure that we do not get such an unbalanced economy. We want to reach out to firms that have the best propositions—often, small and medium-sized firms—in parts of the country where there are not major contractors who do much business with Government. We believe that that is a good way of helping to build the economies, and enterprise and innovation, in those areas of our country.

Libya and the Middle East

James Morris Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have not seen those specific reports, but clearly a number of people have been murdered in Tripoli, in Benghazi and in the rest of the country by that murderous regime. The responsibility for that lies squarely with Colonel Gaddafi and the people who run that regime, not with anybody else.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

On the broader point about the changes that we are seeing in the middle east, does the Prime Minister agree that it is in Britain’s national interest to pursue a soft power policy, along the lines that he has described, to promote democracy and support opposition movements where people are moving towards a desire for greater democracy in these countries?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much agree with that. In terms of the soft power to which my hon. Friend refers, this country has incredible assets, be it the British Council, the BBC or political relations. All those things should be brought to bear and we should recognise, as I said in my statement, that building democracy is painstaking and patient work. Alongside hard power, those soft power assets can sometimes achieve the greatest success.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I certainly do not know the details of that procurement, but I am confident that it would have followed all the rules to the letter.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

2. What progress he has made on the establishment of public sector mutuals.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

9. What progress he has made on establishing public sector mutuals.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

I announced last week that every Department will put in place “rights to provide” for public sector workers to take over the running of their services. The first wave of 12 pathfinder projects was launched in August this year. Leading organisations in the sector, including Local Partnerships, the Employee Ownership Association and Co-operatives UK, have come together to launch an information and support service for public sector workers interested in mutualisation. I hope that Members on both sides of the House will encourage and support these worker co-operatives.

[James Morris]

Many public sector organisations and employees in my constituency are interested in this idea. Will my right hon. Friend clarify whether he sees these policies applying more to local community organisations, or whether he envisages organisations on the scale of, say, NHS trusts being able to take on mutual status?

[Mr Maude]

I do not think that we should be prescriptive about how large or small, or how local or broad, these co-operatives could be. The pathfinders range enormously in size: I think that the smallest has only three potential employees or members, while the largest has 1,100, and it is possible to imagine them being even larger. I hope that groups of public sector workers from right across the sector will consider whether this could be a good route forward for them to take, and we will make it as easy as possible for them to take it.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

James Morris Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Perhaps we should stick to elections in this country, rather than worry about Venezuela. The point is that the amendment is designed to allow someone who has presented themselves to the polling station before 10 o’clock to enter it, receive their ballot paper and vote after 10’clock, even though there was a queue that prevented them from being dealt with by the officials immediately. This will be even more important if we end up with combined polls next year. In many areas in the Rhonda, there tends to be a fairly quiet period between 8 pm and 9.30 pm, but then there is a sudden surge of voters. If Assembly elections as well as the referendum are happening in the same polling station, with people having to approach two desks to provide the information necessary to get their ballot papers, the delay might well be increased. If local authorities are worried about whether the number of staff is sufficient to fulfil all the functions properly, that provides all the more reason to make special and specific provision for people to be able to vote, even though they are not in the polling station until after 10 o’clock.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

May I press the hon. Gentleman on the definition of presenting at a polling station? At what point when someone arrives at a polling station do they present? Will someone stand outside the polling station to decide? How long would a queue be before someone is excluded?

[Chris Bryant]

Discussing the length of the queue would be a great British debate, but my view is that if there is a queue of 500 people, they should be allowed to vote. I do not think that anybody should be disfranchised just because the operation is not swift enough to allow people who present themselves at the polling station before 10 o’clock to vote immediately. As is clear in the amendment, presenting means standing in a queue if it is not possible to vote at once. If a person arrives at one minute to 10 o’clock, they should be able to go straight through the polling station door and talk to the returning officer and then be presented with a ballot paper. If necessary, that should apply to the two polls—the referendum and local elections.

I note that the Electoral Commission has continued to be concerned about late polling since the general election. Clearly, there was uncertainty in the application of the regulations in different parts of the country, because some returning officers were slightly more generous than others. As I understand it, the commission is keen for a resolution, and is broadly supportive of the thrust of my proposal.

I am very hopeful, as always, that the Minister might succumb to my ardent desire in relation to the amendment.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

T2. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that as part of his broader constitutional package, there is an opportunity to codify and formalise the relationship between central and local government in order to promote and solidify the coalition Government’s localist agenda?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. The push for greater decentralisation, after years and years of grotesque centralisation under a Labour Government, is one of the most important changes that this coalition Government will usher in in the years ahead.