Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
1. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on preparations for elected police and crime commissioners in Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the dedication and professionalism of Dyfed-Powys police and all the other agencies involved in the search for April Jones, who went missing on 1 October. I am sure that the whole House will join me in praising them for their continued work to find April and in praising the support shown by so many of the people of Machynlleth for her family.
The Wales Office and the Home Office have been working closely with the Welsh Government and partners to make the police and crime commissioner reforms a success in Wales. Considerable progress has been achieved through the Wales Transition Board.
Jessica Morden
I welcome the Secretary of State to his new job. Will he let us know how much printing the second set of ballot papers for the police commissioner elections in Wales will cost the Home Office?
Regional Pay
Jessica Morden Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
In the short time available, I want to talk about regional pay in Wales and my constituency.
Over recent weeks, we have been led to believe that the coalition is cooling on the idea of regional pay and that we might be heading for another U-turn. I hope so, but I welcome the chance to reiterate just how unfair, divisive and damaging such proposals would be for constituencies such as mine. If there is to be a change of heart, the message clearly has not got through to the Wales Office, which this morning mounted a valiant defence of regional pay in the Welsh Grand Committee, although the Secretary of State for Wales told us off for calling it regional pay; she said we should call it “local market-facing pay”—she had obviously read the crib sheet. Having listened to the Minister’s definition, which was as clear as mud, I am none the wiser.
Whatever it is called, it is fair to assume that it would not be good news for public sector workers. The direction of travel is clearly downwards. The First Minister for Wales, Carwyn Jones, was spot on when he said it was code for cutting pay in Wales. Wales has 399,000 public sector employees, but the Secretary of State admitted this morning that she would not be fighting their corner on this issue, despite the fact that her party opposes it in the Welsh Assembly—in fact, all parties in the Welsh Assembly are united in opposition to it.
Let us not forget that these are nurses, teachers and police officers who already face two years of pay freezes and job cuts and who will have to endure a further pay cut of 1%, not to mention the Government’s pension reforms.
Jessica Morden
We are pushed for time, and if I give way, I will prevent someone else from getting in, so I will kindly say no.
We have had 9,000 public sector job cuts in Wales, and there are 39,000 more to come, according to the TUC. The stock argument for the Government’s proposal is that it would allow the private sector to grow by enabling it to compete with the public sector for staff. This is clearly nonsense in constituencies such as mine, where any move on regional pay would hurt the economy, including the private sector.
Jessica Morden
I will give way to my hon. Friend, because he will not get a chance to make a speech, whereas the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) has already spoken.
Phil Wilson
I hope that the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) understands that Opposition Members know about globalisation and its effect on the private sector. Hitachi, a big global company, is coming to the north-east of England, but it is not considering local pay; it is considering sectoral pay rates and skills, and looking across the train-building industry. It is not looking locally.
Jessica Morden
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am sorry he has not had a chance to make his contribution. He is exactly right.
The TUC has estimated that a 1% reduction in public sector pay could result in £97 million being taken out of the Welsh economy. In constituencies such as mine, the public and private sectors are inextricably linked, and money taken out of the public sector hurts the private sector. Members should not just take our word for it; over the past few weeks, the Federation of Small Businesses in Wales has come out in opposition to regional pay. We saw this firsthand in Newport, when the Government were forced to concede over closing Newport passport office with the possible loss of 300 jobs. The Government conceded then that the closure would have a huge impact on our local economy, and many small local businesses were right at the heart of the campaign to keep the passport office open, because they knew full well that their livelihoods depended on it.
There are 23,000 public sector workers in Newport. It has a lot of public sector jobs precisely because of the previous Government’s policy, following the Lyons review, of moving jobs from the south-east to rebalance the economy. As a result, our major employers, as well as the NHS and the local authority, are the Office for National Statistics, the Prison Service and the Intellectual Property Office, to name but a few. This has been a boost to our city and is a real success story. As an ONS worker said to me recently, however, does paying him less mean that the private sector in Newport will suddenly be clamouring for statisticians? We both thought not.
Of course, regional pay is plain unfair. I have a border constituency. If I have two teachers in my constituency, one working in Caldicot, the other in Bristol, with the same skills and experience but paid differently, that is clearly unfair. Let us remember that these people are not hugely well paid—they are often on wages of about £20,000—and would find it difficult to move jobs if this measure was implemented.
Finally, comparing private and public sector pay is not comparing like with like. There are more people with higher qualifications in the public sector than in the private sector, and women, who make up 64% of the public sector work force in Wales and 87% of part-time workers, have very much benefited from the previous Government’s efforts on equal pay. I ask the Government please not to target these women and roll back progress on them. Regional pay, local market-facing pay, or whatever the Government want to call it, will be a race to the bottom on lower pay, and create higher unemployment and more business failures. It is a real pity that we do not have a Secretary of State for Wales willing to stand up and say that.
Police and Crime Commissioners
Jessica Morden Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr David
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and I agree with him completely. In the last Government, I was, among other things, the deputy Minister with responsibility for digital inclusion. I know only too well that some 7 million adults in England—excluding London—and Wales do not have internet access and have not used the internet at all in the past 12 months. Sadly, those people will not have the same access to information as those individuals who have digital computer access. The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that it is people in rural areas and the elderly who will be disadvantaged, as they will not have the same access to the kind of information that I believe they should have.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that having a website is not bad in itself, but that it is a radical departure from how we usually run elections, particularly when the elections are new and are taking place at a different time of year under an unfamiliar voting system?
Mr David
Yes, my hon. Friend makes entirely valid points. Nobody is against having a Home Office website with information about the candidates, but that must be as well as, not instead of, other forms of information. I think that the Government have made a mistake here.
The Government have, albeit wrongly, set their face against this proposal, so in the brief time available, I will not go over old arguments. Instead, I want to focus on a number of areas in respect of which I hope the Government will listen and improve their draft legislation. Before I go on to those points, I would like the Government to assure us that the website will be accessible to all and that the information on it will be provided in minority languages. In particular, as a Welshman, I would hope that a Welsh language version of the website will be available and that Welsh language speakers will be available for the helpline. Perhaps the Minister can provide information about that. I also hope that the information will be provided in alternative formats—in Braille or in large print, for example. I shall now move on to focus on other areas where the Government could improve their draft legislation.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman who secured the debate spoke for just over half the time available, so let me address at least some of his questions before taking interventions from other Members.
Our view is that top-down control, with chief constables looking upwards to the Home Office, did not work particularly well, so we want locally democratically accountable figures setting policy. However, operational matters will, of course, remain the responsibility of the chief constable. There will be police and crime panels to ensure that there is scrutiny and transparency.
The hon. Gentleman made a number of points about the elections themselves and I shall deal with some of them in turn. As I said, I am pleased that so many Members of this House and the other place are stepping forward and that we are seeing candidates from across the country. I think we will have a good slate of experienced people. To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I believe that a number of people who have had experience in the criminal justice system, some of whom are former police officers but others of whom have been involved in that system, have put their names forward. So I think that the public will be offered a good range of candidates—people with practical experience and people with policy-making experience. Like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, I trust the public to be able to sort out the qualities that they want in police and crime commissioners and to make the right decisions in November.
The Government agree that it is important that candidates get their message out. To pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), candidates obviously have a responsibility to do that themselves. Of course it is not the case that candidates can spend a limitless amount of money; there will be limits on expenditure, which will be broadly proportionate to those for other types of election. So candidates will be able to spend some money, but they will not be able to spend limitless sums. We thought carefully about how we could assist candidates in doing that, and provisions will be made in the draft legislation to enable candidates, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly said, to publish information on the centrally funded website.
In addition, if the public are not able to use the website, they will be able to call a freephone number and request, on demand, printed information to be sent to them directly. We recognise that this is a novel approach, but we think that that blend of online and on-demand information will be very helpful. The website and the print-on-demand phone number will be printed on polling cards sent out in advance of the election.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
5. What the Government’s objectives are for the big society initiative.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
6. What the Government’s objectives are for the big society initiative.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)
Our objectives are to build social capital by transferring powers to communities, opening up public services and encouraging more social action.
Mr Letwin
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has written in extremely uncompromising and tough terms to the county council in question, reminding it that there is statutory guidance, and that the proportion by which the voluntary and community sector is cut should be the same as the proportion by which the council’s own budgets are cut. I am delighted to pay tribute, unusually, to the hon. Lady’s own council, which, despite coming from a different political party from mine, has actually followed that rule, cutting both by roughly similar proportions.
Jessica Morden
The Public Administration Committee report on the big society described it as lacking clarity and leadership and ways of measuring progress. Why does the Minister think this cross-party group is so critical of the big society idea?
Mr Letwin
As a matter of fact, the Committee’s report is an admirable work that brings out extremely clearly the value of our big society agenda and urges us to push it further and faster, and we agree with that. Actually, the evidence clearly shows that it is on the ground that people will measure success. When they see more free schools educating their children better, mutuals delivering better health care, and communities taking charge of their own neighbourhood planning and making their environment better, then we will know it is a success.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Solicitor-General
We will endeavour to ensure that all appropriate orders and sentences are applied for and handed out. I am clearly not going to give a running commentary from the Dispatch Box on any particular case, but I agree with my hon. Friend’s broad point.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
8. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of multi-agency risk assessment conferences in improving domestic violence prosecutions.
The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)
I have not made any recent assessment of the effectiveness of multi-agency risk assessment conferences in improving domestic violence prosecutions. The most recent assessment, which the Home Office published in July, found that such conferences had the potential to improve victim safety and to reduce repeat victimisation, but that a more robust evaluation would be required. We see multi-agency working as a key component of the Crown Prosecution Service’s work to improve prosecutions in that area and to support victims, and we will continue to work with the Home Office on the matter.
Jessica Morden
Earlier this year the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General visited Gwent police’s Onyx unit, which they declared to be one of the best in the country at delivering substantial change in the conviction rates for domestic violence and rape. The Attorney-General has repeatedly acknowledged the role that those services play, but can he confirm that he and the CPS are actively monitoring the impact of the cuts on them?
The Attorney-General
Yes, I can confirm that the CPS has very much in mind whether any areas of savings that may be made might have an adverse impact on the service that is provided to victims of violence against women and of domestic violence. My information is that the CPS does not believe that its own work has been in any way undermined or lessened by such measures. That service remains one of its high priorities, and it is a high priority for us as Law Officers as well.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mrs Gillan
I think my hon. Friend knows that we are trying very hard to create the right conditions to encourage private sector growth, and particularly to make life easier for SMEs. He will know that we are also exempting them from audit requirements that will save SMEs in the UK up to £200 million a year. It is particularly important that we are exempting micro-businesses and start-ups from new domestic regulation until 2014. The point that he has raised is just another way in which we are trying to help private business to grow in the UK.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
A Sheffield Hallam university report published over the summer estimated that 30,000 people in Wales could lose their incapacity benefit as a result of the Government’s welfare changes, and could therefore be looking for work. How optimistic is the Secretary of State that the private sector will be able to create that level of employment?
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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The Attorney-General
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I certainly know anecdotally, and indeed from visits to a school in my constituency, of concerns being expressed by teachers about the absence of pupils who appeared to have been sent abroad. In that context his idea is very sensible, but as he will appreciate, it will require co-ordination. The Crown Prosecution Service will not be able to do it on its own.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
4. What proportion of savings to be made by the Crown Prosecution Service over the comprehensive spending review period will be made through a reduction in staffing costs.
The Attorney-General
A reduction in staffing costs will account for an estimated 60% of the total savings to be made by the Crown Prosecution Service over the spending review period.
Jessica Morden
Given that the CPS’s own submission to the spending review said that a 25% budget cut would bring considerable risk to service delivery, what steps is the Attorney-General taking to ensure that Government cuts do not damage its ability to prosecute crime?
The Attorney-General
When these savings were first outlined, the Director of Public Prosecutions and I gave very careful consideration to whether they could be achieved without reducing front-line services. As the hon. Lady will be aware, the plans centre principally on reductions in staff numbers at headquarters, recruitment freezes and the streamlining of services, particularly savings in IT services and elsewhere. For that reason, the CPS and the DPP remain of the view that it is possible to implement the budget reductions without affecting front-line services.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The point that I would make to my hon. Friend is that one of the fundamental causes of the problems during the credit crunch was the poor regulation of our banking system and credit. We have taken steps to put that right by putting the Bank of England back at the pinnacle of that system, after the failure of the system put in place by the Labour party. On inflation, I strongly support monetary policy being independent and established by the Bank of England. I do not want to go back to the bad old days of the Treasury setting interest rates. I think it is better to have that power vested in the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Q11. A number of my constituents with very serious health conditions are being declared fit for work under the Department for Work and Pensions work capability assessment. Can the Prime Minister give me a guarantee that the assessment will be fit for purpose by the time of the big move from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance, especially in the light of cuts at the DWP?
The Prime Minister
Of course we want to get the tests right, but I believe that the tests are showing that it has been wrong to leave so many people on benefits for so long without proper assessment. Of course, we can always improve the processes, and we will ensure that we do that as we go along, but I think it is absolutely right to go through people on all benefits and ask whether they can work, and what help they need to work. Then if they are offered work that they do not take, frankly, they should not go on getting benefits.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am sure that my hon. Friend will work with me to get the turnout up, particularly for the no vote.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Last week a cross-party Welsh Affairs Committee report criticised the Government’s proposal to close Newport passport office, which will see the loss of 250 jobs, be devastating for the economy of Newport and does not appear to be saving any money. Will the Prime Minister agree to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), so that we can put the case to him personally?
The Prime Minister
I am looking at this decision. It is an important decision, and I know that there is great work being done in reflecting on what jobs can be saved in Newport and Liverpool, where the two competing offices are. I am very happy to arrange for the hon. Lady to meet my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration, because he is the one who will have to make the decision, so that he can hear from her and the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) directly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
7. What assessment the Electoral Commission has made of the effects of holding referendums on the same day as other elections.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)
The Electoral Commission set out its position on the proposal to hold a UK-wide referendum next year on changes to the voting system to the UK Parliament in a statement on Thursday 22 July, a copy of which has been placed in the Library. The commission said in its statement that on balance it believes it should be possible to deliver the different polls proposed for 5 May 2011 if the key practical risks in doing so are properly managed. The commission will advise Government and Parliament if these risks have not been adequately addressed at the appropriate stage during consideration of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.
Jessica Morden
Given that the Deputy Prime Minister did not have the courtesy to consult the Welsh Assembly Government before making the decision to have the alternative vote referendum on the same day as the Welsh Assembly elections, will the Electoral Commission be listening to the concerns in Wales about the distraction caused by holding the two elections on one day, particularly in terms of competing media campaigns?
Mr Streeter
The Electoral Commission is extremely good at consulting all its stakeholders, and that will certainly involve all kinds of interest groups in Wales in the run-up to the referendum.