Oral Answers to Questions

John Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General is already taking steps to limit the extent of the public payroll and the taxpayer supporting people engaged in trade union activity inside the civil service. My hon. Friend also raises a wider point. Part of the evidence from the Select Committee and others in response to our proposals on the register for lobbyists showed concern that they did not cover the question of those who lobbied on behalf of firms by which they were employed. We have taken major steps to make that more transparent by ensuring that Ministers reveal who comes to lobby them about any subject, regardless of whether they are internal or external. We are considering whether we can go further in that transparency.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister promised us a Bill two and half years ago and nothing has appeared. Is that because of incompetence or powerful vested interests on the Government Benches?

[Mr Letwin]

The short answer is neither. The reason the hon. Gentleman’s party failed to move on this for 13 years is that it is a genuinely complicated issue. We issued proposals not too long ago and we believe in evidence-based policy making rather than policy-based evidence making. We are therefore paying serious attention to the Select Committee of this House and to others and I would have expected the hon. Gentleman to congratulate us on doing so as Opposition Members frequently ask us to spend more time considering what has been proposed by Select Committees and others in response to our proposals.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Cryer Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Interestingly, registration rates among young people in Northern Ireland are now higher than they are here, so we have looked carefully at what has been done in Northern Ireland to reach out in different ways to young people in order to tell them how to register and, crucially, to ensure that they are informed at the right time, so that they go on to register and get their names on the electoral roll.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

T4. When this place passes a Bill that changes the power of the ballot box, which, it is generally agreed, the House of Lords Reform Bill undoubtedly does, how can the Deputy Prime Minister justify the argument that people are not entitled to a referendum?

EU Council

John Cryer Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We cannot make choices on behalf of other European countries. The eurozone countries say that they want a single currency and that they want that single currency to work. If that is the case, I believe that it follows that they will have to integrate more deeply. It remains to be seen whether all of them will be able to do that. What we see in Europe, week after week, are the difficulties of taking those steps. None the less, we cannot instruct those countries not to do something. That is their choice. We have made our choice, which is to stay out of the eurozone. As I said, we are not going to be involved in that integration and we will not be paying those bills. I hope that my hon. Friend can be reassured on that basis.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Can the Prime Minister confirm that he is prepared to see the sacrifice of sovereignty and democracy in Greece and other eurozone countries to defend the single currency?

[The Prime Minister]

I would not put it like that. I cannot tell the Greek people what to do. My view is that the right answer for Britain is to be outside the single currency and not to be involved in this integration. People can go back to my election address in 1997, when I said that I opposed Britain’s joining the single currency. The reason why I opposed it was that I did not think it right to give up that sovereignty and level of democracy. That is a choice that those countries and those people must make; it is not for us to make it for them.

Debate on the Address

John Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I agree with the last point, but the hon. Gentleman should not let the best be the enemy of the good.

I will finish my points about the Lords, because I want to talk about two other significant issues of justice and freedom. For me, the test is to look back and see what would have happened in the past decade if we had introduced whatever new reform we will come up with. As the Deputy Prime Minister will be only too conscious, in the past decade the Lords have stopped the curbing of jury trials and a number of other measures, including the extension of detention without charge. That would not have happened if we had had too politically similar a House of Lords. When the House considers the matter in some detail, my test will be whether a reform will achieve the same check on the Government.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Davis]

I want to move on, but I will give way later if the hon. Gentleman still wishes to intervene.

The second issue that I want to mention is state power and what has become known colloquially as the snooper’s charter. The Queen’s Speech stated that the Government intended

“to bring forward measures to maintain the ability of the law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access vital communications data under strict safeguards to protect the public, subject to scrutiny of draft clauses.”

I take the last part to mean that how it will happen is up for argument. That is a good thing, because I am afraid the proposal is very similar to what the Labour Government came up with. I will give way to the Deputy Prime Minister if he really wants to argue the point, but I do not recommend it, because the Government have already consulted heavily with internet service providers and producers and talked to them about what they want to do. They want to require companies to maintain large databases of contact information. If I have telephoned somebody, there will be information about who the call was to, when it was made and where from. That will lead to extremely large databases, which the state then wants to be able to access relatively freely.

Frankly, I am surprised that the Government have made the proposal, because both coalition parties opposed it in opposition, and as far as I can see, it goes against the thrust of the coalition agreement. It certainly goes against the thrust of a comment that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made when we were in opposition. He said:

“Faced with any problem, any crisis—given any excuse—Labour grasp for more information, pulling more and more people into the clutches of state data capture…And the Government doesn’t want to stop with the basic information…Scare tactics to herd more disempowered citizens into the clutches of officialdom, as people surrender more and more information about their lives, giving the state more and more power over their lives. If we want to stop the state controlling us, we must confront this surveillance state.”

We opposed those measures in opposition, not just because they were illiberal or risked turning our country into a nation of suspects, but because we believed that they were ineffective. Nearly every measure that we opposed when I was my right hon. Friend’s shadow Home Secretary we opposed because we thought that it would not work against terrorism. That is also true of the measure that we are considering.

I took advice from experts. I asked them a simple question: “If you were a terrorist, how would you avoid this scrutiny?” I stopped them when they got to the fifth method. It is pretty straightforward: for terrorists, everything from proxy servers to one-off mobile phones means that such scrutiny is easy to avoid. For criminals, it is also easy and quite cheap to avoid. However, for ordinary citizens, that scrutiny is not easy and cheap to avoid. We will therefore create something, which some Ministers said will cost £2 billion—the London School of Economics suggests that it will cost £12 billion—that will not be effective against terrorism, but constitutes general-purpose surveillance of the entire nation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

I am keen that we have a system whereby votes in all parts of the country are fair. Of course I would like a proportional system, but I accept that I shall not have that in this Parliament. Friends on the Plaid and other Benches know of my Welsh background. The Welsh have the most advantageous position at the moment, because many constituencies have far fewer electors. We need a fair system.

I do not know what the motives of Labour Members are, but if they try to play silly games and prevent the other place from changing from an entirely nominated or hereditary Chamber to a democratic one, it will be to their eternal discredit. This is the best opportunity they have ever had—especially as they did not do it—to change our Parliament. Why? There are only 15 countries in the world that still have a predominantly appointed second Chamber; I am sure Labour Members would think that Belize and Burkina Faso are good examples. In only one other country is heredity a determinant for membership of the legislature—Lesotho. It is a lovely country, but I am not sure that it is the best model for democratic, 21st-century politics.

There are more Members down the other end of the corridor who are over 90 than under 40. There are 818 Members there already—92 hereditary—and the balance between men and women is 638 to 180. The Chamber is not representative by gender, ethnicity or age. It is not representative in any way. Why not? Because it exists by patronage and heredity. We just have to move on. It has been on the agenda for 100 years and we have to finish the business.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No.

I say to hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches who are not entirely persuaded about Lords reform that I understand that it is a lovely place, that they look lovely, some of them are lovely, and that it is part of our great, historic constitution and offers a job for life— I am not going there, but they might want to—so I understand why it touches a soft spot, but come on, guys: we have to move on. If the Tory party is to be the modern party that it wants to be and that the Prime Minister says it needs to be, it, too, must deliver. We can talk about the detail, the percentages and the length of the term of office, but we must end up with a second Chamber that is predominantly democratically elected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Baldry]

The hon. Gentleman has just heard me comment on the legacy of his Government, so I find it extraordinary that he has the cheek and audacity to ask such a question. The Labour Government left the country with no money and the biggest debt crisis of our lifetime. Indeed, over many years, this country built up massive debts, which we have to pay off. Of course, it is much more difficult to do that when so much of the rest of Europe is in recession. As I suspect France will soon demonstrate, trying to pile debt upon debt is what got Britain and Europe into such difficulties in the first place. It did not work for Britain over 13 years of a Labour Government and would not work now. The eurozone’s troubles are caused by too much debt, the burden of excessive public spending and the burden of excessive public borrowing. It is not surprising that Government are seeking the approval of Parliament relating to the agreed financial stability mechanism within the euro area.

It is no mean task recovering from the deepest recession in living memory, accompanied as it was by a debt crisis. Our banks had too much debt; our households had too much debt; and the Government had too much debt. As Sir Mervyn King, commenting on the performance of the last Government, observed in “The Today Lecture” that he gave last week while the House was in recess:

“Bailing out the banks came too late though to prevent the financial crisis from spilling over into the world economy. The realisation of the true state of the banking system led to a collapse of confidence around the world...unemployment in Britain rose by over a million....to many this will seem deeply unfair and it is. I can understand why so many people are angry.”

One can speculate only that perhaps more than a million people may have lost their jobs unnecessarily because the previous Government failed to act on warnings from the Bank of England.

Notwithstanding the challenge, Britain has so far hung on to our triple A credit rating. We have kept a lid on borrowing costs and, compared with other countries in the eurozone, many of which are in the process of changing leaders or just starting to tackle their debts, we are thriving.

[John Cryer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman—or is it right hon. Gentleman? [Interruption.] Well, I am sure he should be right hon., and I shall put down an early-day motion tomorrow to achieve it! Returning to the last election, is the hon. Gentleman aware that at that time both unemployment and the deficit were falling, yet they are both now rising? The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that the deficit is going to be a lot higher at the end of this Parliament than was predicted two years ago.

[Tony Baldry]

I think we need a bumper book of excuses from the Labour party, explaining why it was not responsible for getting us into the difficulties we face. Let us develop a bumper book of excuses and put all these various contributions into it, saying “Nothing to do with us, guv”! That would be impressive. We must not be complacent. The UK has to rebalance its economy. We need a bigger private sector; we need more exports; and we need more investment. In short, we need to do everything possible to boost growth, competitiveness and jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Amess]

I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says but I am sure that you would get a little tired, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I were to rehearse all that has gone on in this place in terms of the Conservative party leadership.

I hope that the House will be interested in the telephone call I got regarding the Leveson inquiry. I thought, “Fantastic—someone has hacked my phone: I’m in the money.” But instead I was told that my phone number had been found in a journalist’s phone book. Well, for goodness’ sake—so what? I am sure that many journalists have our phone numbers. I was very disappointed to learn that my phone had not been hacked. Frankly, I cannot think that some of the politicians whose phones were hacked would have had any conversation worth listening to. I am interested in colleagues’ phone calls only if they happen to concern me. There is an obsession with hacking at the moment. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) just came and apologised about something to do with the Leveson inquiry, but none of our constituents are raising these matters on the doorstep. Honestly, the amount that this inquiry is going to cost us—millions of pounds—is crazy.

Similarly, no one on the doorstep is mentioning House of Lords reform. I go back to the point that what people were concerned about in 1992 was the fact that they did not trust the noble Lord Kinnock and the Labour party to run the country because of their economic policies.

[John Cryer]

On economic competence, I hope that the hon. Gentleman had a good celebration in 1992, but does he remember that a few months later we had Black Wednesday, when £20 billion was spent on propping up the currency and interest rates rose twice in a day, ending up at 15%? Does he recall that with the same fondness?

[Mr Amess]

I remember that only too well because I happened to be in Japan with the now Foreign Secretary who was then the parliamentary private secretary to the Chancellor; I was the PPS to Michael Portillo, and we got called back. The hon. Gentleman wants to lead me down a track to do with Europe and shadowing the Deutschmark, but I shall not succumb.

I congratulate the Government on the banking reform Bill. Shortly after the election, the Chancellor announced the creation of the Independent Commission on Banking, which was asked to consider structural and related non-structural reforms to the UK banking sector to promote financial stability and competition. Any reforms should be implemented by 2019. No doubt there will be lots of discussion about this legislation, which I hope will at long last bring about fundamental reform of the banking system. It will include the ring-fencing of retail banking and measures on capital adequacy requirements. There will be radical reforms in the Bill which are needed entirely because the Labour Government and the previous Prime Minister completely destroyed the banking sector through what went on with the Financial Services Authority. They should be absolutely—[Interruption.] Some Labour Members, although not all, have a very short memory about what happened at that time. The financial crisis originated in the financial sector and so I believe that regulation is very important. London is the capital of the financial world and we need to lead the globe in these reforms.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the sane and balanced observations of the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess). Given that the hon. Gentleman brought up the issue of the Iraq war and the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, I remind him that I voted against the war—I think seven times, but certainly six. I did not have any particular prescience or a crystal ball, but some of us could very early on see that it was going to be an horrendous mistake. It was entirely wrong, and we opposed it every step of the way.

I remember the hon. Gentleman asking the then Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions:

“What plans he has to visit Southend, West.”

The answer was:

“I have no plans to visit Southend—and I rather think that the hon. Gentleman did not either, until he saw the writing on the wall in Basildon.—[Official Report, 19 May 1999; Vol. 331, c. 1061.]

That might explain his criticism of the former Prime Minister.

I, like many hon. Members, note that House of Lords reform is not exactly the centre of my universe. I do not lie awake at night fretting about it, but a number of speeches today have prompted me to make a few comments on it. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), at the end of his remarks, seemed to imply that the Government will come along with proposals meaning that the new upper House, whatever it is called, will be 100% elected. I suspect that that is wrong, and that the proportion will be 60%, 70% or perhaps 80%—a range of options, just like the previous Government gave the House some years ago.

I have always voted for 100% elected when the opportunity has come along. I have never sought that opportunity, but when it has come along I have always voted for 100% and against anything less than that, and, if the opportunity arises again, I personally—I do not speak on behalf of my party—will oppose anything less than 100% elected, although I would rather not spend any time on the issue at all.

On a related issue, the Chamber that requires more urgent reform than the House of Lords, which after all is just a revising Chamber, is this one. I agree with the earlier comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), but another problem with this Chamber—to which many references have been made for many years—is that power has flowed from it to Whitehall, Downing street and Brussels for about 40 years or even more.

In conversation a while ago with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), I mentioned that power had been flowing from the elected Chamber to unelected institutions for the past 40 years, but he said, “It’s been much longer than that. Power has been taken away from the House of Commons since roughly 1880.” I do not know whether he was around in 1880; I certainly was not! I am sure that if he had been he would have told MPs then that their proposals were an absolute outrage and a betrayal of the parliamentary principle, but prior to that Back Benchers dictated all business on the Floor of the House. It never happened again; it was taken away during that period.

In the relatively recent past, we have had the Jopling proposals, in 1994 under John Major’s Government, followed by the more rigid measure of timetabling, which was introduced post 1997 and which, by the way, I also voted against. Those two things—particularly the Jopling proposals—have cemented a relationship between this place and Whitehall which is entirely unbalanced and needs to be brought back into balance.

That leads me on to an incident that occurred when I was an MP previously, for Hornchurch, with Eric Forth, the much missed, late Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, who was a great parliamentarian and a terrific speaker. He was speaking against everything that had happened since 1994, against timetabling and guillotining, and I pointed out from a sedentary position on the Government Benches that he had actually supported the Jopling proposals. I probably used some fairly Anglo-Saxon language when doing so, but Eric’s response was, “Well, I regret it now and wish I had voted against them.” Funnily enough, he was in opposition at the time.

I shall move on to two issues that do concern my constituents. Like many in the Chamber, I have worn myself out over the past few months knocking on doors, and, as everybody else who has spoken today has said, nobody on the doorstep or at street surgeries mentioned House of Lords reform, but two issues that were mentioned day in, day out were, first, housing and the appalling state of accommodation—certainly in my constituency and many others in England, Scotland and Wales—and, secondly, economic insecurity. Those two things were right at the top of the agenda day in, day out during the campaign.

The Queen’s Speech mentions housing in passing, I suppose. It states:

“My Government will strive to improve the lives of children and families.”

The problem is that the lives of children and families in my constituency are not being improved; they are going in the opposite direction. In Leyton and, to some extent, in Leytonstone, both of which are in my constituency, we are seeing almost Victorian levels of overcrowding, with appalling cowboy private landlords treating people terribly, and the waiting list in Waltham Forest, which makes up most of my constituency, is now more than 20,000.

[Meg Hillier]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend has the same problem in his constituency as I have in mine, but, with the housing benefit cap, many of my constituents, including working families and those with children, are being forced out of their homes and I am not sure where in London they can go to find accommodation at the right level in the private sector. Surely this too is a concern and rather flies in the face of his generous reading of that one line in the Queen’s Speech.

[John Cryer]

I completely agree, and I see exactly the same experience. Owing also to the acute shortage of public housing in my constituency, people are being told, “You’ll have to move to Walsall,” “You’ll have to move to Derby,”—here, there, right across the country. One woman who was in emergency accommodation and had suffered a bereavement—her husband had died and her daughter was in a terrible state—came to see me, having been told, “You’ve got to move to Walsall, and next Tuesday, by the way.” That was on a Thursday, and she was being told that she had to move to Walsall the following Tuesday. In a civilised society, that is a pretty appalling way to treat somebody.

That brings me on to economic insecurity. Since the general election alone, 70,000 to 80,000 construction jobs have been lost in Britain, and in fact it is probably more than that by now; those are the latest figures I have. The stagnation of the economy is also an enormous worry to an awful lot of my constituents.

On the eurozone, the Government, rather than helping to prop up a currency that is clearly collapsing, should encourage countries such as Greece to leave the euro and get their economies moving again, because that is the best way to stimulate our economy—through exports to eurozone countries, which at the moment do not have the cash or resources to buy goods from this country or others, such as Germany and North America. The idea, which the Prime Minister reiterated this afternoon, that we are not bailing out the eurozone is simply a myth. We are giving increasing amounts of money to the International Monetary Fund, which then hands over increasing amounts of money to the eurozone, so the idea that we are not in one way or another bailing out eurozone countries is an absolute myth. It simply is happening.

There was also a line in the Queen’s Speech that quite disturbed me. It stated:

“My Government will seek the approval of Parliament relating to the agreed financial stability mechanism within the euro area.”

There must be elements of the fiscal compact within that stability mechanism, and as sure as eggs is eggs the fiscal compact will be included in the Bill that this place and the other place will have to pass. In reality, that too will go in the direction of the eurozone, meaning the centralisation of power in Brussels, increased austerity throughout Europe and increased poverty. I find it extraordinary that Governments in western Europe will do almost anything to prop up the euro.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman has long been known in this place for his passion on the matter of Europe. Does he believe that, with the elections in Greece and France and the problems in Spain, the euro is sustainable however much money is now pumped into it?

[John Cryer]

My own view is that, no, the euro is not sustainable, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, rather than helping to sustain what is effectively a broken system, should encourage countries such as Greece and Spain to find a way out and a way of exerting power over their own economies, because that is how the eurozone more disparately is going to move forward.

I remember listening to an interview with a European Commissioner on the “Today” programme a few months ago, just as Greece was being plunged into the crisis that it is still in. The questioner said that there was increasing unemployment and poverty in Greece—even then, there were reports of malnutrition among Greek children—and asked whether it was fair that the people involved should pay the price for saving the euro. The Commissioner said, “Well, life’s not fair.” That is extraordinary. She expanded on the comment, because she realised that she had made a mistake and let the cat out of the bag, but her initial comment was that life was not fair—in other words, that ordinary people had to pay the price for mistakes made by the wealthy and powerful.

Sadly, our Government are pursuing a slightly less frenetic version of the “Eurosadist” economic policy practised in Greece, Spain, Portugal and one or two other countries. Yet what we are seeing everywhere across Europe is a rebellion against that austerity. The latest example, obviously, is France, where Hollande has specifically rejected the austerity programme. In Greece, the party that came from nowhere to second in the poll has specifically rejected the programme and is now in the process of trying to form a Government.

What people told me continually on the doorsteps during the recent campaign was that those who caused the crisis and who made the decisions years ago—the bankers, the wealthy and the powerful—are getting away with it and that those paying the price are the most vulnerable and least able to pay during this crisis.

Increasingly, I see home repossessions, economic insecurity and less confidence in spending money because of that economic insecurity. Just to make the situation that bit more insecure, the Government now propose to attack rights at work, make it easier to sack people and reduce health and safety inspections at work. That will make people even less confident, because they will be worrying about losing their jobs. It will be easier to sack people and there will be fewer health and safety controls, particularly in the construction industry and other dangerous industries. The result will be an increasing turn in the downward spiral, further into recession—and perhaps, over the next couple of years, even into depression.

What really worries me, although not so much in respect of this country, is that in many countries across western Europe—particularly Greece, Spain and Portugal —we are starting to see the beginnings of the rise of the far right. Take Golden Dawn in Greece, for example. If we think that the British National party and the English Defence League are a dangerous bunch of fascists, we should see what Golden Dawn is like—it is 10 times worse. For the first time ever, Golden Dawn has representation in the Greek Parliament. That is a direct result of the appalling austerity measures unleashed on the Greek people. Unless there is a change of direction in the eurozone and this country, my fear is that right across Europe we will see the rise of the far right.

Outsourcing (Government Departments)

John Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Grahame M. Morris]

That is an excellent point, and we should be guided by the evidence. If the Minister can demonstrate that that is not the case, I will be interested to hear his response. Certainly, in relation to the national health service, the detailed impact assessment published with the Health and Social Care Bill proved that in-house services were considerably cheaper than those offered by the private sector, as well as being more responsive, accountable and fitting in with the wish for better integration.

A little earlier, different models of provision were mentioned. The coalition Government are promoting different models for outsourcing different services within different Departments—for example, academies and education, the utilities model and the NHS, or payment by result for welfare and benefits. However, although those are different models, the driver is the same. Emergency 999 call centres have been privatised and outsourced together with the administration of the benefit system. The roads on which we drive are the latest to go, as the pace of outsourcing to the private sector speeds up.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Another example is the translation service. Since it was moved into the private sector, a plethora of problems have included translators failing to turn up at court and criminals walking away without being tried because no translator was present.

[Grahame M. Morris]

There are many examples where the proposals for privatisation, outsourcing or whatever models are being piloted have not produced positive results. I do not have the opportunity to list them all owing to a shortage of time, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that example.

The Welfare Bill passed through Parliament in March and lays the foundations for billion-pound contracts of five years or more for private companies to run welfare-to-work programmes and the administration of the new benefits system. I believe that the rush to outsource the biggest spending Department—the Department for Work and Pensions—rather than develop a coherent strategy to create jobs and growth in the economy, is a dereliction of duty by the Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I note that Ken Livingstone has said that if he is elected Mayor of London, he will fully pay his taxes. It is not for me to hand out political advice, but my advice would be to pay them before the campaign gets going.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

5. Does the Prime Minister recognise that the introduction of regional pay would set hospital against hospital, and school against school, as the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has helpfully pointed out, and yet it would almost certainly push up the overall cost of public sector pay? Can the Prime Minister give us a guarantee or a promise today that introducing regional pay will bring down the overall bill?

[The Prime Minister]

The last Government introduced local pay into the Court Service. The idea of local pay for some public services is not an alien concept, but a perfectly sensible thing to look at. Labour Front Benchers suggested in the debate on benefits that we look at local levels of benefits, so surely the hon. Gentleman should be in favour rather than against.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Cryer Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the matter was discussed by the Prime Minister and President Obama during the Prime Minister’s visit to the United States. The Prime Minister said that they would seek ways in which the treaty could be better operated in practice, and ways in which some of the public concerns could be addressed. At this stage that is probably all that I can reasonably say, but I can give the right hon. Gentleman an assurance that this is a matter that the Government and I take seriously.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Does the Attorney-General think it entirely fair that the European arrest warrant can be used to extradite people from this country with no evidence whatever, and that the Home Secretary, who has absolutely no room for manoeuvre, simply has to hand those people over to other Governments, some of whom have a burden of proof that is quite dubious?

[The Attorney-General]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that this subject causes disquiet, but it was his Government who enacted the necessary legislation to enable these circumstances to come about. The matter will come up for review, as part of the third pillar arrangements, by 2014.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend, at this time of year, particularly, in praising the amazing work that hospices do. Many hospices do not receive a huge amount of Government funding, and they have to be very ingenious about how they raise money from people up and down the country. Collecting and recycling Christmas trees so that we do not just leave them outside the house but do this thing properly is an excellent idea. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in praising the work that hospices do, particularly at Christmas time.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Q15. For the past 18 months the Prime Minister has been promising legislation to create a register of lobbyists, but nothing has happened so far. Will he give us a publication date for a consultation paper leading to legislation—or could he take on my ten-minute rule Bill, which is already published? I am a generous sort of bloke, so he can have it now and get it on to the statute book.

[The Prime Minister]

I am a generous sort of bloke too, so I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the lobbying proposals will be published within the next month—so this Government will have moved faster in 18 months than the previous Government did in 13 years.

Industrial Action

John Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We have made a generous offer. It means that many people in the public sector, especially those on lower and middle incomes, will be able to retire on a pension at least as good as they can expect at the moment. But we have said that that offer was conditional on there being agreement, so we want the discussions in the schemes to continue even more intensively than they have been already so that we can give effect to that offer.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Public sector workers will have to work longer and get less out of their pension schemes while, this year alone, bankers walked away with £7 billion in bonuses. I know that the Minister will say that he cannot do anything about that, but does he think that it is fair?

Parliamentary Lobbying

John Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

There is absolutely no problem with transparency. I was also involved in setting up a rural charity, so I do not have a problem with that in any respect. Bureaucratic red tape or cost impacts that cannot be justified would be a problem. There are people who make legitimate donations to charities because of the good work that those charities do. They like to do so in private, and they would be less inclined to donate if they thought that their donations were going to be seen by all and sundry. To want to contribute to a charity in private is a perfectly reasonable thing. We need to be a wee bit careful in exposing all donors to all charities, because that might have a detrimental effect on charities that rely on people who like to do such things under the radar. I am not saying that there is not a solution, but a balance needs to be struck.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I agree with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but much of the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) dealt with direct payments to people who are elected. For example, if a company pays a councillor, it is regarded as a bribe and it is illegal, but similar payments to an MP are perfectly legal. Is that not the kind of contradiction to which my hon. Friend was pointing?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. However, I am not as convinced as others that simply because somebody undertakes, in a way that is perfectly above board, a piece of work on behalf of a charity that it necessarily constitutes deceit in the eyes of the general public. There are plenty of Members of Parliament and elected members of other devolved institutions who have done their job with great distinction and worked on behalf of a charity that backs a cause that they were particularly aligned to, and they have not suffered at the ballot box as a result. What they have done has been open and accountable. We must take care not to assume that all those things are always seen as negative, because they are not and in some cases they can be seen as positive. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has said, as long as the information is out there, it is up to the electorate, who I guess we all trust, to make a judgment. In many cases, that judgment has been made positively in respect of Members who have done it. I simply put the argument as it is without necessarily having a solution to it.

There are very good reasons for encouraging constituents, singly, in small groups or as official delegations, to lobby Members of Parliament on behalf of causes or concerns in the constituency. I would hate to see us introduce any measure that made it more difficult for our constituents to do that. The hon. Member for Newport West has goaded me on the animal welfare arguments. Of course, there are some fantastic charities, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that represent many millions of members and that can organise themselves on a constituency basis and lobby for a particular cause in that area. Good luck to them, because that is what they are there for, that is what we pay our membership for and that is what they should be encouraged to do. As I have said, we need to be careful about an unintended consequence that would actually put off all those people, make their access to us more difficult and make all the more awkward their ability to persuade, inform and educate us. We should not be involved in anything that suggests that.

On donations, we must be—as ever—extremely sensitive, for all the reasons that the hon. Member for Newport West has mentioned; I agree with him about that. However, that is not to say that all donations should always be made public, come what may, for the reasons of charitable good will that I mentioned earlier.

To be frank, if we end this process of trying to make lobbying more open, accountable and transparent, which is a process I support, by coming up with a system that is more toothless, more pointless and more expensive than the current one, rather than contributing to the restoration of public confidence in and enthusiasm for MPs and our political institutions, we will have the opposite effect. For that reason, I hope that we treat this matter with considerable caution.