Yorkshire (Tour de France)

Debate between Jason McCartney and Greg Mulholland

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

It is an absolute honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) on securing this important debate and on being instrumental in forming the all-party group, which will massively support this exciting venture. I add my thanks to Gary Verity, Peter Dodd and all the team at Welcome to Yorkshire, and also to Tom Riordan. They have had amazing vision, and determination to win the bid, against all the odds, for Yorkshire. This really is an exciting time for our part of the world.

I am not surprised by the interest shown here this morning. There are, I think, a dozen coalition Back Benchers here, and it is amazing to see so much support. The support and interest are not surprising, however, because we all know that cycling is the new rock and roll, and on Sunday evening I had a quick chat with its current lead singer, Bradley Wiggins, at the BBC sports personality of the year awards. I raised the prospect of his cycling in Yorkshire on the Tour in 2014. I will not repeat exactly what he said—we have to remember, of course, that he comes from Lancashire way—but he indicated that he is really looking forward to cycling in Yorkshire.

We have a great history and heritage of cycling in Yorkshire. For example, did Members know that the first British stage winner of the Tour was the now 82-year-old Brian Robinson from Mirfield near Huddersfield? When I announced to some people last week that the Tour de France was coming to Yorkshire, a number of them said, “Tour de France, coming to Yorkshire? How can that work?”, but this will not be the first time that it has come to the UK. The Tour has already visited England three times, and each time the event has got bigger and better. It all started in 1974 with one stage on the Plymouth bypass. In 1994 there were two stages on the south coast and, as many Members have already mentioned, the grand départ came to London in 2007, with a time trial plus one road stage. We now have the grand départ coming to Yorkshire in 2014. It is estimated that Ken Livingstone invested £3.5 million in the 2007 bid, and London got a financial return in excess of £85 million.

[Greg Mulholland]

I want to reiterate a point I made earlier that ties in perfectly with that. London will once again host the event, but it has not put a penny in. That is fine, because Yorkshire won the bid, but if that is not an argument for Yorkshire getting some investment from central Government in London, I do not know what is.

Health

Debate between Jason McCartney and Greg Mulholland

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney]

I thank the Minister. I said earlier that the decision would go to the Secretary of State via the independent panel. I look forward to its going through that process.

The first test for redesigning services is that there should be clear clinical benefit. The health impact assessment was that option G—to keep Leeds open—had fewer negative impacts than the chosen option. The second test is clinician support. There is no evidence that the decision has the support of clinicians; in fact, most have given their support to the Leeds unit.

The third test involves the views of the public. Surely nothing can be clearer than the views of the 600,000 people who signed the petition to keep the Leeds unit open, and the admirable cross-party support for the campaign. The fourth and final test is that there should be support for patient choice. A survey in west and south Yorkshire clearly shows that patients would not travel up to Newcastle.

Many constituents with experience of the Leeds unit have been in touch since the announcement on 4 July.

[Greg Mulholland]

The evidence clearly shows that Newcastle will not hit the magic number of 400, making the point of the process farcical. As we now know that Glasgow will continue, but will perform only 300 operations a year, there will be two underperforming units, and we will have lost Leeds, which could easily reach those numbers. Does that not make the whole thing a farce?

[Jason McCartney]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is an assumption that all the patients who have been going to the Leeds unit will automatically migrate to Newcastle. That is a big flaw in the assessment, and I look forward to further exploration of that matter.

Constituents who have been in touch with me include teenager Seb, who recently did work experience with me. He had three heart operations and a pacemaker fitted at Leeds. He wants the Yorkshire unit to stay open; he stresses the fact that there are good transport links to the Leeds unit.

Paul told me about his 10-year-old stepson who suffered a cardiac arrest last August. His stepson had a defibrillator fitted internally, which he will have for the rest of his life. Paul said the Leeds location was key for their family.

Ruth told me about her six-month-old daughter Eleanor who was born with a heart defect caused by Down’s syndrome. Ruth fears for the emotional and financial stress families will be put under by the longer travelling distances, as parents try to hold down their jobs, care for other children and fulfil other responsibilities.

I was also contacted by the grandparents and, separately, the parents and siblings of four-year-old Lily Rose, who had surgery in the Yorkshire unit. They asked how a four-year-old was expected to cope at such a traumatic time without being able to see her mummy each day. The emotional impact on the rest of the family would be enormous. They stressed that distance from the centre is extremely important. They reiterated the population figures: 14.5 million people are within two hours of Leeds, whereas only 3 million are within two hours of Newcastle.

Those cases are real; the families were in touch with me over the past two weeks. In the past year, I have spoken in the Chamber about George Sutcliffe, Ben Pogson and Joel Bearder who, with their families, have been campaigning locally for the Leeds unit to stay open. I compliment them and all the families who have worked so hard on the campaign, and will continue to do so.

It is clear that the plans do not meet the four tests, which are factual; they are not about emotion. I look forward to the flawed decision eventually being referred by the independent panel to the Secretary of State so that the tests can be looked at again. I firmly believe the JCPCT decision clearly fails all the four tests for redesigning services, and I look forward to its being reconsidered.

Green Investment Bank (Leeds)

Debate between Jason McCartney and Greg Mulholland

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland]

That is very helpful, and I thank my right hon. Friend very warmly for his intervention. Whether it is as popular with his constituents as it will be with mine, I do not know, but I thank him for it and agree with his sentiment.

The vision for the green investment bank is admirable and exciting, and the case for its location in Leeds is similarly exciting and innovative. They seem to be an excellent match. The Leeds city region already has a mission to become a world-class, low-carbon economy, and at the same time, as we know, the Government have said that they want to be the greenest Government ever.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) said, the Leeds city region is wide and diverse, covering the whole of west Yorkshire, parts of neighbouring north and south Yorkshire and the 10 local authority districts of Barnsley, Bradford, Calderdale, Craven, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds, Selby, Wakefield, and York. With close to 3 million people, a diverse resident work force of 1.5 million, 106,000 businesses and an economy worth £53 billion per year, it is a region to be taken seriously.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. He mentions Kirklees, my local council, and I shall add some more statistics from our part of the world. David Brown engineering in Lockwood, Huddersfield, has just received money from the regional growth fund for its offshore wind turbine gear technology; the transition town movement in the valleys of my constituency, Holmfirth, Slaithwaite and Marsden, is up and running; and on a more regional basis, in west Yorkshire and beyond, there is also co₂sense Yorkshire, an organisation leading the charge in Yorkshire for carbon capture and storage technology. Does he agree that it all adds up to a fantastic case for Yorkshire to secure the green investment bank?

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank my hon. Friend. This debate does show the strength of support for the bid from all round the Leeds city region and, indeed, the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Let me say this one more time, because I have heard doubts cast on it: Leeds is the second biggest financial centre in the country—not Bristol and not Edinburgh. I will give some figures. Financial advisers in the Leeds city region were responsible for almost 200 deals in 2010, worth £10 billion to the economy. If that is not music to Ministers’ ears, I do not know what is.

[Jason McCartney]

I praise my hon. Friend for the positivity of his arguments. He is laying out a compelling case for the bank’s coming to Yorkshire. Does he agree that another big element is the certainty, unlike in some other potential locations, that there will not be a referendum on independence in Yorkshire—no matter how much I would like one, as a born Yorkshireman? We do not want to be negative about anywhere else, but Yorkshire does not have that uncertainty about potential referendums on independence.

[Greg Mulholland]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The show of unified support for this bid from all political parties is vital, and I am afraid that the political situation is different for some of the bids to which he refers.

In 2009, there was a 32% rise in the value of deals in the financial district in Leeds, despite the value of deals in the UK falling by 16% in the same period. Three banks and four building societies have already chosen to locate their headquarters in the Leeds city region, including the headquarters of the UK’s largest financial insurance provider and its investment function, responsible for £75 billion-worth of assets, as well as 10 private equity firms, including the UK’s leading mid-market equity house. We do not just have a big financial sector; we also have the right skills set to support the green investment bank’s products. The sector has direct and recent experience in establishing new financial institutions, with the financial service sector in the Leeds city region having been involved in the delivery of 19 of the past 21 building society mergers.

BBC Local Radio

Debate between Jason McCartney and Greg Mulholland

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jason McCartney]

The hon. Lady makes a superb point about the variety of musical choices. BBC Radio Leeds has a session for unsigned bands on Thursday evenings and has Yorkshire brass on a Sunday afternoon.

I want to concentrate on local sports. The coverage of local rugby league will be cut back at BBC Radio Leeds. Where will rugby league fans be able to keep up to date with the likes of the Dewsbury Rams, the Hunslet Hawks and Halifax? There will be the odd score flash about the Bradford Bulls and the Huddersfield Giants on Radio 5 Live, because they play super league games, but full match coverage of such games is rare on Radio 5 Live, which is very focused on football.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jason McCartney]

I give way to my hon. Friend, who is a big advocate for rugby league.

[Greg Mulholland]

Last night, my hon. Friend and other members of the all-party group on rugby league heard about the amazing community work that is being done by rugby league. The cuts to many of the stations that have been mentioned will do real damage not only to the coverage of the sport, but to its ability to assist in the community. Does he agree that there should be a full impact assessment of the effect on rugby league before any decisions are made?

[Jason McCartney]

My hon. Friend is right, and we will take the matter forward with the all-party group on rugby league.

Pubs (Planning Policy)

Debate between Jason McCartney and Greg Mulholland

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank my hon. Friend and look forward to continuing to work with him on this issue. I know that our hon. Friend the Minister is listening to us. Let me be clear that no one is suggesting that those genuinely failed pubs—those pubs that cannot make a living and no longer have a community that wants them—should not change. No one is even suggesting that there should be significant barriers stopping their conversion or redevelopment. I want to make that absolutely clear to the Minister, and I hope to convince him that there are ways in which we can do that by, for example, putting halts in the planning process. My hon. Friend is right. There is only one way in which we can determine whether a community wants a pub and that is to ask the people who live in that community. Very few councils do that. As I will discuss later, the issue of viability is very often not established, or it is simply established because the current owner claims that the pub is unviable.

The Minister may say that pub campaigners can sometimes be a little over-sentimental. As a member of the save the pub group, I refute that charge. Why do we not say more about pubs also being small businesses that actually make an incredibly valuable contribution to the national economy, which is, of course, eroded every time a pub closes? The tax-take from those pubs is also eroded every time one closes. Pubs are small businesses, with an individual, a couple or a family earning a living and employing people in the local economy. The new economics foundation has suggested that twice as much as every pound spent in a pub goes directly to the local economy, compared with half of that for every pound spent in a supermarket. Often, as we have said before, supermarkets are replacing pubs.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He hits on a very good point there. My local pub, The Coach and Horses, in Honley village has just reopened having been closed for three months. My hon. Friend was right to talk about the employment opportunities. The pub employs bar staff, the manager, the entertainment that it is bringing in on Friday and Saturday night, the cleaning staff and the catering staff. Whenever we hear about a small supermarket moving into an area, people always talk about the employment opportunities. We need to emphasise the employment opportunities that pubs can bring to rural villages and remote areas. I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend on making that point.

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank my hon. Friend and fellow Yorkshire MP for making that point. It is easy for people in planning applications—I have seen it as I am sure have other hon. Members—to present the pub as something that is of the past and that is no longer wanted by communities. They deliberately ignore points such as employment opportunities. They suggest that a business that has served a community for 50 years or even 100 years and contributed to the economy should be replaced by a set of flats that will make a one-off profit for a business, or a supermarket that will do things in a different way. It is so important that we do not lose sight of that point.

Let me outline the framework for pubs in planning law and why, sadly, pubs have so little protection. Planning policy statement 4, which applies to villages and local centres—already it is rather ambiguous because there are pubs that are in areas that do not qualify—replaced planning policy statement 7. That was a change made by the previous Government in December 2009 and was a cause for concern. PPS 7 was stronger and made direct reference to supporting the retention of local facilities such as public houses. The new policy simply refers to planning applications affecting shops and leisure uses, including public houses or services in local centres.

The Government are thinking of replacing that planning policy statement with a new framework. I urge the Minister, who is a genuine supporter of pubs, to ensure that when that statement comes out it includes a direct reference to the importance of public houses so that councils can take that into account. Without such a reference, councils will not do that.