Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Swinson and Michael Connarty

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

4. What steps he plans to take to safeguard the universal service obligation for the delivery of mail.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The universal service obligation is not an optional extra—it is a fundamental duty enshrined in law and only Parliament could change that. In addition, it is the responsibility of the postal regulator, Ofcom, to ensure services are available throughout the UK at an affordable and uniform price, six days a week.

[Michael Connarty]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but is it not time that we looked at how Ofcom carries out its remit, possibly through a judicial review of that remit? Ofcom has been dragged reluctantly to review the actions of the cherry-pickers such as Whistl, which wants to pick mail up in the 8% of the UK’s geographical area that covers 42% of the mail thereby undermining the ability of Royal Mail to deliver, yet Ofcom attacked the standard of wages and conditions of the Royal Mail workers rather than deal with the problem of cherry-picking of the universal service obligation, which could be irrecoverably damaged.

[Jo Swinson]

There is agreement on both sides about the importance of the universal service obligation, and I do not think there is any evidence that the regulator is failing to fulfil its duty. It looked in detail at the case the Royal Mail put forward last summer and concluded that the market is operating as it should at the moment. It is committed to a further review later this year, and is also looking at the issue of access pricing. These issues are continually under consideration because the USO is so important.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Swinson and Michael Connarty

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

4. If he will bring forward proposals to require companies to include supply chain issues in their annual narrative reporting.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The Department has no plans to require companies to report specifically on supply chains. However, responsible supply chain management is an important issue, which good businesses should understand and take seriously. From October, listed companies will be required to report on community, employee and human rights issues. Later this year, we will publish a framework for action on corporate responsibility, which will consider supply chain management.

[Michael Connarty]

I thank the Minister for that reply. We found out yesterday in a press release that businesses are being urged to sign a human trafficking charter. That came not from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills but from the Home Office. It appears that the Minister for Immigration is taking over the responsibilities of Business, Innovation and Skills Ministers. He is proposing that businesses should sign up to a charter that seems very similar to the contents of my private Member’s Bill, the Transparency in UK Company Supply Chains (Eradication of Slavery) Bill. Surely it is up to BIS to include human trafficking in the narrative reporting of companies in its proposed statutory instrument. If the Minister for Immigration wants that requirement on human trafficking, surely BIS Ministers do too.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are grateful. We have got the point.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jo Swinson and Michael Connarty

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

It is important to bear in mind that this will be an independent adjudicator who will conduct an investigation that will consider all the evidence before coming to a conclusion about specific supermarkets and what they have or have not done. General concerns about the supermarket supply chain have not left consumers in quite the same position of being able to take action, unless, for example, they decide to stop shopping at supermarkets altogether. The Bill is likely to drive change. Consumers have been involved in a variety of movements whereby their concerns about certain issues have driven change in the behaviour of suppliers. Indeed, that was the case with milk prices this summer. Drawing on my personal experience, before I was a Minister I took complaints about misleading advertisements to the Advertising Standards Authority, so I know very well the power of a negative finding, the publicity that goes with it and how companies take it seriously and are very keen to avoid such an occurrence.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Does the Minister not realise that the code makes absolutely no reference to the need to address the supply chains of the major supermarkets in order to prevent modern-day slavery, such as that in the Noble/Freedom Food eggs case? I have written to her about the need to incorporate into this Bill the principle in my private Member’s Bill, the Transparency in UK Company Supply Chains (Eradication of Slavery) Bill. Nothing in this code addresses supply chains, but surely one of the ways to get a level playing field is to prevent major supermarkets from exploiting labour brought into the country as a result of human trafficking to undercut the competition.

[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Gentleman raises serious issues, not least that of legality and human trafficking. If there is evidence of law-breaking, it should be taken to the appropriate authorities so that it can be followed up. I appreciate his concern, but the adjudicator’s role and the groceries code have been developed in response to the Competition Commission report of 2008. Notwithstanding the serious issues that he raises, the way to proceed is to focus tightly on the report, which provides the clear basis for addressing the problem and consumer detriment that we are trying to solve. Although I have explained to the House that the code is not a panacea that will solve every possible problem, it does mean that we can continue with a strong degree of consensus and cross-party support.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Debate between Jo Swinson and Michael Connarty

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I welcome the sea change from a system that was clearly not transparent as far as the public were concerned. It was clear that the public thought that the system we had before contained hidden powers for Members of Parliament and a lack of transparency. The electorate were right to demand a redefinition of what we were allowed to spend their taxes on. I have no regrets about all the things for which expenses were available before but have now been withdrawn. It would be wrong of us to think that the public did not demand changes—and they got changes. I regard it as important that we have an independent, transparent system, controlled and reconciled by a body outwith the control of MPs. That is why I cannot vote for the motion.

However, I disliked the witch hunting that went on during the process of change. It distorted the public’s view, and IPSA is a system based partly on what is acceptable to the tabloid journalists and The Daily Telegraph, as well as to the few hotheads—only a few dozen in my constituency—who demanded that we should pay everything out of our salaries and sleep on a park bench. As I have said again and again, it is a punishment system, although IPSA did not mean it to be.

I have to be quite honest that I disliked the windbaggery at the time, of which we have heard some more today, with people playing to the redtops and going for populism rather than common sense in their speeches. That is not useful to any of us. I am sad to say that I could not have supported the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) if it had been selected, because he is doing it again. It mentions apologising unreservedly to the British people—should the 300 new Members vote for that? It suggests that the House trusts IPSA, but I do not trust it. I think IPSA is an incompetent system, put together by people on a board in which I have no confidence, under a chairman who I do not believe understands, or has even tried to understand, what is required. I told the gentleman that to his face, and I have not been persuaded to change my opinion.

If any Member says that IPSA is not interfering with their task of working for their constituents and constituency, either they are not getting reimbursed, they are getting a member of their staff to do the work for them or they are working longer hours. I have an ongoing case in my constituency of a man of 53 who buried his 30-year-old son, who developed pneumonia and left behind four children. That man is an unemployed bricklayer in the middle of a recession that is particularly affecting the building industry. He is my priority, so I chose to deal with his case rather than to start claiming back some of the road travel expenses that I have never claimed since the day that IPSA came into being. I do the same every time—I give priority to my constituency work load and what my constituents need, and I keep putting off claims.

Of course, IPSA’s 90-day rule means that many claims for such legitimate expenses will be denied me, as the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), who travels two hours to the House every day, told us earlier. It has made an arbitrary rule that after 90 days, it does not matter what we have spent money on, we cannot get it back. Another arbitrary rule is that if we forget to send the paperwork within seven days of an online claim, it can deny us the payments. That has nothing to do with the legitimate claims and expenditure of Members of Parliament.

Now is the correct time to have this debate, which is not about having a whinge at IPSA. It has said from the beginning that there will be a six-month review, and that it will improve the system. My contention, as I said to Sir Ian Kennedy when he came to speak to the Scottish Labour group, is that just as a camel is a horse designed by a committee, IPSA’s system was supposed to be a horse but is in fact a donkey. It was designed by people who were not competent to design it or they met a man, or maybe even a woman, of shifty personal background, who sold them a system that is inadequate and yet much more tortuous.

My son is a senior systems solutions architect for Hitachi. He was awarded the Hitachi systems engineer of the year award for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries last year. He laughs like a drain every time I tell him about our online claim system, which we have to back up like some sort of petty cost clerk, by putting together all the paperwork and sending it all in for somebody to check.

I tell my son that two companies are involved—one in Manchester, which is getting a good old pay-off for the online system, and a wedge of people up on Victoria road in rather palatial circumstances who are supposedly checking every single invoice that comes through, and who boast about having turned down so many claims from Members that are in fact legitimate. We have heard that they have even refused claims for people’s offices or not paid national insurance. That is not a system that is working efficiently, but it is costing the Government, and the people through their taxes, a lot of money.

I have had a number of useful conversations with the acting chief executive. I always worry about acting chief executives—are they afraid that if they recommend radical change they could be sacked? He is still acting chief executive, yet he seemed to respond well to everything I said to him.

I have experience of running a claims system as a leader of a council for 10 years. We used a paper system, rather than an online and a paper system. I also have experience of using the system in the Scottish Parliament. At the moment, I get all the bills for my office, which I share with my MSP, paid directly out of the allowances of the MSP and they then send me a bill from the Scottish Parliament and I pay it back to them. That arrangement is much quicker, much more efficient and much more transparent. There has been a suggestion that we move to a system of direct payment. Sadly, I think that a Member who spoke earlier was wrong, because IPSA has moved only slightly in the direction of saying that it will directly pay contracted regular payments, for example, our office rent and our office council tax. IPSA has also offered to do this for our second homes allowance, but—

[Jo Swinson]

rose—

[Michael Connarty]

I am sorry, but I do not have time to give way. IPSA cannot handle the idea that we might want to claim less back than we pay or that we also have regular non-contracted payments that vary, such as service charges for flats. IPSA can handle only very limited things. What it cannot do is handle a system where we send it the invoice, it verifies that it is legitimate, it pays it and then deducts it from our allowances, because IPSA is against an allowance system in principle. IPSA wants a system that is so stupid that we have to make the claims.

IPSA has done something bizarre in terms of transparency by saying that it will pay on invoices: we send it an invoice before we pay it, it will send us the money and then we have to remember to pay the invoice. I predict that there will be tragedies in that way; people will lose invoices and will fail to pay them. If we pay them by credit card, where do we get the receipt to prove that we have paid?

The final thing that I want to talk about is the travel card. We get a paper version where we could clearly fill in what it is for and sign it at the bottom, as we used to do. We could then attach to it any receipts that are not coming from the travel office—the travel office will send IPSA every receipt directly—and so all of my flights, my train journeys and all my use of the Heathrow express would be covered. But IPSA does not want to know about that; we still have to go through a system of having this all put online, then following up on the cost part, assembling all the bits of paper and sending everything in. IPSA is not fit for purpose and it is costing us a lot of money. It is not time to take all the power back to MPs, but it is time to reform it properly.