Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The Home Office has written to more than 17,000 businesses reminding them of their obligations to submit their modern slavery statements. We are committed to the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, a UN initiative, and we are proud to be the first country to have an action plan in place, but, as with all these things, we will continue to keep them under monitoring.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

In my role as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Nigeria, I am aware that Guinness Nigeria is being sold by Tesco. Is the Minister aware that Diageo and other companies in Nigeria have pledged to eradicate modern slavery from their supply chains?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank my hon. Friend for his suggestion. He is quite right. That is just another example of where the sector, working with Government, is taking action to stamp out these practices where they identify them and telling us how they are taking action to eradicate them.

Good Work Plan

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, for her comments and for welcoming our increase in penalties. It is essential that we send a message that people’s employment rights are non-negotiable and that they must be paid.

We work closely with Sir David Metcalf, a man for whom I have the greatest admiration. The reason for not increasing, at this stage, the penalties available to the authorities for non-compliance with the national minimum wages is that the penalties were increased about 18 months ago. We have not ruled it out, but we have said that we will look at the effect of the increase and consider it.

The hon. Lady will be aware that a big increase in penalties for employers that persistently breach the verdicts of employment tribunals would be very welcome. Again, we will keep under review the employment tribunals regime to make sure that people have access to the justice they need, but when her Committee considers its response to the report I hope it will agree and endorse what is a substantial package that, in many ways and in many respects, goes beyond what was proposed both by Matthew Taylor, important though his contribution has been, and by the Committee. We have gone further than many people expected, which is quite right given the importance of employment rights in this country.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

In 1961, under another Conservative Government, we signed the social charter, a Council of Europe treaty that is still in force and that enshrines workers’ rights. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the rights he is now talking about follow in that same legal tradition?

[Greg Clark]

I am delighted to have a history lesson from my hon. Friend. I do not think he was there at the time to witness that important breakthrough, but it is important to remind ourselves, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) did, that the Conservative party has always believed that free enterprise should be associated with high standards for consumers, for workers and for members of our community. That is very much in our tradition, and it has not required imposition from outside this Parliament. We embrace our responsibilities with enthusiasm.

Leaving the EU: State Aid, Public Ownership and Workers’ Rights

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered state aid, public ownership and workers rights after the UK leaves the EU.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and to have been selected to sponsor this important debate. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) and the Minister. Their presence underlines the importance of this issue.

I do not need to spell out that we are having this debate in the context of what appears to be gridlock in Parliament. There is no clear consensus about what priorities should shape our future relationship with the EU. Today was supposed to be a day on which we made at least one decision, but even that is no longer the case. I wanted this debate to take place outside the main Chamber to ensure that its content was not considered purely in the context of the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration. Instead, I wanted it to inform the wider, ongoing debate about what the future relationship might look like.

I have chosen to consider these three policy areas for three reasons: first, because they are tools with which the UK Government could transform our economy and society for the better; secondly, because I believe that there is public support for their use by the UK Government; and, thirdly, because I am concerned that there is some friction between the effective use of these tools and EU law. This year, research by the Institute for Public Policy Research concluded that the public want to take back control and expand the role of the state, not reduce it. It suggested that there is no mandate for a buccaneering Brexit based on a race to the bottom in pursuit of even freer markets. Instead, the public want higher environmental standards, tougher regulation and a greater use of state aid, even at the cost of freer trade.

For balance, I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that EU law bans all forms of public ownership. Nor am I suggesting that the EU prevents all forms of state aid. Indeed, there are several exemptions, and where there are no exemptions a member state can seek the approval of the European Commission. I will come on to workers’ rights later in my speech, but I acknowledge that the EU has sought to create a floor for minimum employment standards. In theory, it should prevent a race to the bottom. Those are, without doubt, important safeguards.

I was more than troubled to read that the withdrawal agreement referred only to the non-regression of labour standards. I am deeply worried that exiting on that basis would leave the British workforce exposed to the risk of seeing their statutory rights gradually eroded or falling behind those of their European counterparts.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. She is right to have secured this debate in this Chamber. Before she moves on to employment rights, I want to take her back to state aid. How does she think it will be different, given that the UK helped to develop the EU’s state aid rules, and the withdrawal agreement says that there will be a level playing field, which suggests that the sort of things we see now will be incorporated?

[Laura Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will come on to that issue, and specifically the level playing field, later in my speech. I hope that I will answer his question shortly.

One would have to be wilfully blind to argue that there is no tension between EU law and the pursuit of a heightened role for the state in our economy. For now, I want to move on to discuss public ownership, which can take various forms. I am not advocating organisations that are owned by the Government but behave in the same way as for-profit companies, focusing on financial goals and insulated from democratic control, but the dogmatic obsession with privatisation in the UK in recent years has been exposed as a failed and outdated ideology. Hon. Members no doubt represent workers in their respective constituencies who were affected by the collapse of Carillion, which cost the taxpayer at least £148 million. There were also the failures of the east coast main line and Northern rail services, and the emergency takeover of Birmingham Prison—the list goes on.

Our public services have been siphoned off and are run by private companies interested only in extracting profits to line the pockets of their shareholders, instead of reinvesting them to improve the service or reduce consumer bills. The privatised water companies have paid out £18 billion in dividends to shareholders over the past 10 years.

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[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I will not hold up the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) for very long, but I have just a couple of points that are too long to make as interventions; therefore, I felt the best thing to do would be to speak.

To pick up on the question of rights, a number of hon. Members spoke about a bonfire of rights that will come about as a result of our leaving the European Union. However, there is another organisation responsible for protecting those rights: the Council of Europe. We ignore that at our peril. I know that it is seen as a great thing in this country that we send no journalists along to Council of Europe meetings—we send along our delegation, if they can be spared by the Whips Office, but it is always a secondary thing—and yet the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) mentioned a case that was heard by the European Court of Human Rights. That does not belong to the European Union; it belongs to the Council of Europe, an independent organisation set up in 1948 with the aim of protecting human rights in Europe. The ECHR, which the Council of Europe looks after, is a unique body. It is one where we, as council members, elect the judges to serve for individual countries, so it has a democratic legitimacy.

I think back to the various meetings that we have held over the past few years, and I can assure the hon. Lady that employee rights, whether in specific circumstances or more generally, have been on the agenda for discussion on many occasions. For example, on at least one occasion we have looked at the rights of employees to access information about themselves and their cases, in order to take forward what they want to do. This conversation seems to be a bit one sided. So far it has not looked at the bigger picture or taken into account what the Council of Europe does.

[Stephanie Peacock]

I think I am right in saying that the hon. Gentleman is arguing that the Council of Europe can help to protect workers’ rights, but the people I represent, and a lot of those who voted to leave, voted so that this place could protect workers’ rights. Surely, it is the democratically elected Government’s responsibility to ensure that workers’ rights are protected.

[John Howell]

That is an interesting question. We give up our rights to decide things for ourselves in a number of situations. We give up the right to our own sovereignty by belonging to the United Nations and to NATO. To a certain extent, we give it up by belonging to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Most importantly, we give up our rights to some aspects of our sovereignty by being members of the Council of Europe. It is not right for the hon. Lady to look at this issue solely in terms of one or two organisations; she needs to look at a third organisation—the Council of Europe—which is there to provide just that sort of reassurance to people about their human rights, which I think she and her colleagues are, and have been, looking for.

I want to touch on Birmingham prison, which the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich opportunely mentioned in passing. This morning I participated in a Justice Select Committee sitting in which we questioned senior members of the Prison Service about what happened at Birmingham Prison. A key point relates to provisions in the contract with G4S not to hold it to account in many ways that we would normally expect. All of us, on both sides of the political fence, questioned those witnesses about the legitimacy of excluding those areas from the contract and how they could manage them.

Birmingham Prison is a good example of the mixture of public and private collaboration, in that we have public collaboration through the Ministry and the Department, which hold those running the prisons to account rather than having to run them themselves. We asked about the extent to which windows had been broken and not fixed, and why no one had been held to account and what had happened. At the end of the sitting we specifically asked the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice what would happen at the end of that examination. We got a firm statement that the contract would possibly at some stage go back to G4S when we could all be assured that it would be able to keep prisoners in the state in which we would expect them to be kept and look after them properly. That is a good combination of private and public sector partnerships in action.

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[Chris Skidmore]

I appreciate the hon. Members’ request for a specific date. I will have to fall back on a position of ensuring that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood, the responsible Minister in this policy area, will write to both the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Glasgow South West setting out clearly the next stages and the time frame for them.

Given our record in comparison to the EU standards in many areas, it is not surprising that Eurofound, the EU agency for work-related policy, ranks the UK as the second best country in the EU for workplace wellbeing, behind only Sweden, and the best country for workplace performance.

There has been some discussion about the EU withdrawal agreement. That will ensure that workers’ rights enjoyed under EU law will continue to be available in UK law after we have left the EU. That includes rights derived from EU law, such as the working time directive and the agency workers’ directive. Specifically within the withdrawal agreement, the UK is seeking a stringent and legally binding agreement with the EU not to roll back on employment standards. A joint committee would ensure that the UK was keeping to the agreement at a political level. There will be no roll-back of rights, including collective bargaining rights, when we leave the EU.

[John Howell]

I remind my hon. Friend of the European Social Charter, which we signed up to in 1961. Of the rights guaranteed by that charter, there are the

“the right to work, the right to organise”—

that is to be part of a trade union—

“the right to bargain collectively, the right to social security, the right to social and medical assistance, the right to the social, legal and economic protection of the family,”

and so on. Those are just some of the rights protected by this Council of Europe treaty that we signed up to in 1961 and it stands completely outside whatever is agreed in the withdrawal agreement.

[Chris Skidmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for putting that on the record. I listened to his speech on the Council of Europe and know he is a dedicated member of it. I pay tribute to his work, which often goes unheralded in this place. We know that there are many colleagues from across all parties who do a great deal of work on behalf of the United Kingdom at the Council of Europe, and it is right that that is recognised in this debate.

I hope the Government’s commitment, in both the withdrawal agreement and statements that we have made, will give certainty and continuity to employees and employers alike, creating stability in which the UK can grow and thrive. The political declaration on our future relationship makes it clear that we will build on this for the future deal with the EU. We want to ensure that the future economic partnership of the EU is underpinned by measures that ensure fair and open competition. Obviously, a rigorous approach to state aid is a critical component of that and provides a foundation for ensuring smooth trade and a partnership based on high market access. That is reflected in the political declaration, which establishes state aid as a crucial part of the level playing field commitments. The text makes clear that the precise nature of these commitments will depend on the scope and depth of the future relationship and the negotiations to take place.

There is no choice between taking the state aid rules or protecting workers’ rights; the Government recognise the fundamental importance of both.

Fireworks: Public Sales

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right, and she anticipates a point that I will make later.

The Fireworks Regulations 2004 introduced a lot of rules about the sale, possession and use of fireworks. They introduced a licensing system for those who sell fireworks all year round, limited the sale by other suppliers to dates around 5 November, new year, Chinese new year and Diwali, imposed a maximum decibel level of 120, and forbade the possession of adult fireworks—those in the F2 and F3 categories—in a public place by anyone under 18. F4 fireworks, which are the most explosive, can be possessed only by fireworks professionals.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Jones]

One more time, but then I must make some progress, in fairness to those who want to speak.

[John Howell]

The hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. May I pick up on her point about decibels? There is now a whole generation of almost silent fireworks with a reduced decibel level. Does she welcome their introduction to the market?

[Helen Jones]

“Silent fireworks” is a bit of a misnomer, because they are not entirely silent. Clearly they are welcome, but they do not solve many of the other problems associated with fireworks.

The 2003 Act and the regulations made under it have gone some way towards assuaging public concern about the issue, as have the Explosives Regulations 2014 and the Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2015, which relate to the safety of fireworks as consumer products. But—and it is a big “but”—public concern seems to have risen again recently. I regularly get letters and emails at certain times of the year, as I am sure many other hon. Members do, from people who are concerned about the noise, pollution and antisocial behaviour associated with fireworks.

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[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, and to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris).

When the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) started her speech, she made a throwaway remark about how, when we think about fireworks, we might look back to our childhoods. I do not look back to my childhood when thinking about fireworks, because the displays I attended were absolutely awful.

I have three reasons for not looking back to those firework displays with much enthusiasm. First, I do not think much of Guy Fawkes night. Why we celebrate the burning of a Catholic on that occasion is bizarre. Why we go to the effort of throwing the guy on the fire and letting off fireworks in celebration of it seems strange. Secondly, enormous effort is put into letting off fireworks and, frankly, I found that effort too much when I had smaller children and was a child myself. Thirdly, for many years, until she died, I had a Labrador as a pet. We, too, had to take measures to ensure that she was out of the way when firework displays took place.

I do, however, like some displays. Almost every year on new year’s eve, I come to the House of Commons, partly for the sociability of the occasion, but also to see the Eye firework display across the Thames, which is spectacular. We can look at the displays that take place in other parts of the world—Sydney, for example—but the display put on from the Eye by the London authorities shows this city as the brilliant city that it really is. I enjoy that myself, and bringing friends and family.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a rather curmudgeonly speech about fireworks, if he does not mind me saying so. I understand the point he makes about the huge display here in London, but a great deal of enjoyment is found by many different people in smaller displays in their local communities. My children greatly enjoy going to our back window to see the displays over Chesterfield, such as on fireworks night. Smaller displays can be tremendously enjoyable, but we are all concerned about those people who use them irresponsibly or cause danger. They are the ones we want to clamp down on.

[John Howell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, and I will try to be less curmudgeonly. I did not intend to sound like that, and am sorry it came across that way.

I was introduced to this subject by my local paper, the Henley Standard, which before Guy Fawkes this year ran a campaign, Ban the Bangs. I fully support it, though I had some observations to make about it. The people who participated in the campaign were principally pet owners—dog and cat owners—and one said that she and her dog “tremble uncontrollably” and “are very, very upset”. It is important to bear that in mind.

The campaign was trying to push people to go to organised displays. Despite comments that have been made, in my constituency such displays are organised not just by the district and county councils but by individual parish councils—I will come on to say something about that—which are good displays organised by the parish councillors themselves.

I was struck by something said by one of the participants in the campaign:

“I don’t want to spoil people’s fun but why are they so loud?”

That is an important point: we do not want to spoil people’s fun, but why are fireworks so loud?

The hon. Member for Warrington North referred to silent fireworks in response to my intervention. I appreciate that they are not entirely silent, but they are a lot more so and they could play a part in dealing with the situation, although they do not take away the whole problem. They take away the noise problem and the argument about fireworks being very loud, but they do not take away the problem of flashes, which often cause the most distress to animals. Many animals can cope with the increased noise—they cope with things such as traffic backfiring all the time—but they cannot cope with the sudden flashes. Although silent fireworks have their role to play, they do not answer the whole question.

There is a tremendous amount in the idea of us working together to provide organised displays for people to go to. The parish council of the village that I used live in was a little like Ipswich, I think, in that it organised a display each year on the green, which the whole village came to. It was always well organised. I cannot recall in the 20-odd years that I lived there ever seeing an accident there, and it was a good illustration of what can be achieved.

I understand the need for the campaign, but—perhaps I am being curmudgeonly again—we ought to push for intelligence, common sense and courtesy to rule, three of the rarest elements in the universe. We should push for intelligence on how to use fireworks, common sense in how to organise an event, and courtesy, which the hon. Member for Nottingham North spoke of, to tell people when we are planning to have a display. The Government have some public awareness: they produce “Celebrating with bonfires and fireworks: a community guide.” It is time that that was updated to take into account the sort of activities organised by councils, so that they would be as safe as they could be.

I return to where I started: I like the big firework displays—I love the one in London—but, quite honestly, if I had to give up one for the other, I would happily give up the individual displays and go for the big displays that have all the razzmatazz I am looking for. Every new year, I stand open mouthed watching the display at the London Eye. It adds quite a lot to this city.

Budget Resolutions

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend. That is a good example of how a strategy to integrate different strands of policy and work can be of great benefit to many of the industries on Teesside that he represents so well. We will have more to say about that.

Building on the success of the Faraday challenge, which aims to make Britain a place for the design and manufacture of new battery technologies, the Stephenson challenge referred to in the Budget will support innovation in electric motors. We are emphasising the “D” side of R&D: development as well as research. The “Made Smarter” review, which was championed and led by Juergen Maier, the chief executive of Siemens in this country, is spreading the take-up of new manufacturing technologies to businesses small and large. A national quantum computing centre will scale up quantum systems into workable machines. An industrial energy transformation fund will help many energy-intensive businesses to reduce their energy costs as they transition to a low carbon future, at the same time as making them more competitive.

New fellowships in artificial intelligence will attract the world’s best research talent to our shores, building on our success with institutions such as the Turing Institute. On infrastructure, the Budget ensures that the digital revolution will extend to all parts of the country, through new funding for new ways of deploying full fibre broadband in rural locations.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The one thing that goes across all the areas that my right hon. Friend has been talking about is our investment in fusion technology. He might be about to say something about that, but I was really pleased to see £20 million being given to that area in the Budget. Will he confirm that the Euratom issue is now over, and that we can look forward to a successful fusion technology industry continuing in this country?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, which gives me the chance to confirm that there will be £20 million of investment—and it is investment—in the centre of excellence in fusion research. It will pay dividends for many years to come. The discussions on the successor arrangements to Euratom have gone as I hoped they would—that is, cordially and expeditiously—and good progress has been made on all the issues under discussion. We have made the necessary agreements with most of our major counterparts.

On places, the Budget announced extra funding for the Strength in Places fund, supporting local collaborations between business and research across the UK. This was also an important Budget for Britain’s small businesses. Extending the start-up loans programme will help more aspiring entrepreneurs to take the plunge. Further funding for the knowledge transfer partnerships will place graduates in smaller firms across the United Kingdom. The fivefold increase in the annual investment allowance will help to support firms as they invest and grow, and the £1.5 billion boost to small high street retailers, including £900 million in business rates relief, will support small businesses right across the country.

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[Chi Onwurah]

I will now make some progress, as I am sure Mr Speaker will not indulge me much longer.

I am not sure what is needed for the Conservative Government to see that their economic policies are causing more harm than good. Rising prices and stagnating wages mean that people are now £800 a year worse off than they were a decade ago. Just under half a million young people are still unemployed, and one in nine are in insecure agency work, on a zero-hours contract or in low-paid self-employment. That is the everyday reality for millions of working people—the people behind the supposed record levels of employment bandied about by the Government as the marker of a successful labour market.

The truth is that there are real issues in our labour market—rising insecurity, stagnating wages and a productivity crisis—so it is disappointing to see so little to address them in the Budget. There are increases to the minimum wage or, as the Government have rebranded it, the national living wage, but it is still significantly below the rate set for the real living wage. One in five people earn less than the wage they need to get by, according to the Living Wage Foundation, and the increases will not change that. In addition, unlike the Government’s minimum wage, the real living wage is based on a review of the evidence on what is happening to people’s living standards right now.

The Government’s failure to immediately reform the IR35 rules, which govern how much tax those working as contractors pay, shows that they are refusing to take tax avoidance seriously. By pushing back those reforms to 2020, the Government are denying themselves much-needed revenue, which could be used to properly fund our schools and the NHS, or to pay workers a decent wage. How many more people need to take to the streets protesting about their precarious working conditions? How bad do things have to get before the Government finally take action?

We have heard lots of warm words about defence spending, but they are cold comfort to many of the workers in the shipbuilding industry, such as at Cammell Laird and Appledore, who are facing real uncertainty as to whether their jobs are safe. It is disappointing that the Government failed to announce any support for our manufacturing or shipbuilding industries, which are vital to our long-term economic success.

In the same month that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading authority on climate change, set out the devastating consequences for human civilisation of a business-as-usual approach and the scale of ambition needed to avoid dangerous climate change, what did the Chancellor do? He did not even mention climate change, and the Red Book was little better. The Chancellor left the carbon price support unchanged and said that the Government would seek to reduce the rate if the total carbon price remains high—that is as clear as mud. The Chancellor tinkered at the edges of the climate change levy, a policy introduced by Labour but undermined by his predecessor, George Osborne, who removed exemptions for renewable energy. The Government did announce a £315 million industrial energy transformation fund to support businesses to increase their energy-efficiency. That sounds good, but when we realise that it will be paid for entirely by money saved from scrapping capital allowances for energy and water efficiency, which enabled businesses to claim back the costs of investments, we see that it is really just rearranging the furniture.

What else was there? As has been said, the Government announced £20 million for nuclear fusion. I do not know whether the Chancellor’s understanding of nuclear fusion is as limited as his understanding of blockchain, but these figures should illustrate the challenge here: £20 million is 330 times smaller than the €6.6 billion the EU will contribute to one nuclear fusion experimental facility in France—this is not even a drop in the nuclear ocean. Of renewable energy—wind, solar and tidal—not a single mention was made, at a time when electricity and gas wholesale prices are rising, and we enter another winter with household bills surging and millions facing fuel poverty. There was £10 million for urban tree planting and a commitment to purchase £50 million-worth of carbon credits from tree planting, although it is unclear whether that is new funding. The lack of action on climate mitigations is disappointing.

[John Howell]

I think the hon. Lady’s figures on fusion technology are completely wrong, as she is not comparing like with like. The project in the south of France is a commercial project to make fusion possible at a commercial scale. That means that the projects continuing in the UK do not have to be at that scale, and the £20 million is an enormous contribution to what they are trying to do.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but in fact he illustrates the scale of the problem. Nuclear fusion requires significant investment in order to commercialise it, as he would agree. The level of investment that this Government are making in it is entirely inadequate to meet the challenge and in respect of the contribution fusion can make to our economic and climate future.

Labour is serious about achieving a net zero emissions economy before 2050. We are developing policies to dramatically decarbonise energy and insulate 4 million homes in our first term, as part of our green jobs revolution. We believe in the power of people, the power of leadership and the power of government to address what are frankly existential challenges. After eight years of austerity and counting, it is evident that the Tories have given up on this. This Budget shows the Tories giving up on the planet, too. They lack both ideas and the courage to do what is needed. They must step aside.

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[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). I spoke to him in the Tea Room about fusion, and I think we both remain very excited about the potential of that project. I want to start by looking at unemployment. There was a time when the Library produced monthly assessments of constituencies, and my own constituency was invariably either at the top or near it in terms of best performance in dealing with employment. It should therefore come as no surprise that less than 1% of the economically engaged population in my constituency is unemployed at the moment. The number of young unemployed people—those under the age of 24—across the whole constituency amounts to 50. It is often argued that I know them all. I do not, but I wish I did.

Those figures illustrate an interesting point, which is that there is not a sufficient population within the constituency to fill the jobs necessary for growth and expanding businesses there. Two things need to happen in that regard. First, we need innovative solutions to the transport issue. I am pleased that the county council has helped to engineer smaller buses and lots of local buses, but I would like to see a little more help for this in next year’s spending review. Secondly, we need to make houses really affordable. A number of speakers have already mentioned the fact that houses are not genuinely affordable. There is one policy in the Budget that will help in this regard, and it is interesting that no one has mentioned it so far. It relates to the Chancellor’s attempt to use the discount on houses to keep them for local people. I fully support that policy, and I do so in my role as a Government champion for neighbourhood planning.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Hear, hear!

[John Howell]

Thank you. The whole point is to ensure that this is done through the neighbourhood planning process. This will give people an enormous incentive to undertake a neighbourhood plan, because they know that it might give them the opportunity to say that the houses involved are genuinely to be allocated to local people.

Moving on, business rates reform will be a real help for businesses, and I do not know why the Opposition are downplaying it. In Henley—I think that the same is true in Thame—the problem is not so much about high rents, but business rates, and the local paper maintains an empty-shop watch to note any fluctuations. I sought some information before this debate, and the number of smaller properties in the Henley area that will benefit from this third reduction in business rates is something like 250,000—a phenomenal number.

I mentioned fusion in several interventions, and it is something that I have kept a close eye on not only because the JET Culham Centre for Fusion Energy is in my constituency, but because I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on nuclear fusion. I am therefore pleased that an additional £20 million will be spent on the fusion project, an element of which was recently opened by Prince William. As I pointed out in an earlier intervention, that is a useful sum of money because it is not the commercial project, which is being undertaken in France.

University of London Bill [Lords]

John Howell Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Buck]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman; that is absolutely at the heart of the Bill.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

In my role as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Nigeria, we are trying to sell educational establishments in such countries. It is very difficult to sell the University of London, because people do not see it as a university; they see the colleges as having university status. Does the hon. Lady think that this will make my life easier?

Shale Gas Exploration: Planning Permission

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley]

If hon. Members will bear with me, I will do one to two minutes of introduction and then I will be happy to take interventions.

I will set out my stall immediately: I stand here today to highlight my concerns on both those proposals and an industry that is highly controversial as a form of energy extraction, has a chequered history in the United Kingdom, has not been proven at scale and has, in my part of the world, caused the greatest amount of opposition that I have ever seen in my 15 years of experience in politics.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

rose—

Construction Sector Deal

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington]

Scotland will get its fair share—[Interruption.] Ah, I thank the shadow Minister for pointing out what was happening behind me, because we do not yet have eyes in the backs of our heads, although I am sure that a Labour Government would give them out free to everybody.

The hon. Member for Inverclyde made a good point about fire safety and energy-efficiency specifications for new homes. I have visited the Building Research Establishment in my constituency—I thought you might be interested to know that, Mr Speaker—where state-of-the-art work is going on. If the hon. Gentleman was referring to the terrible tragedy at Grenfell, I am sure that lessons about construction types will be learnt.

Apprenticeships are an important part of the sector deal, and they mean a lot. Apprenticeships do not have to be for school leavers, which has been the tradition. There will be a lot of retraining, and the Government recognise that in their policies, but the purely physical tasks that made up the majority of construction jobs in the past are slowly being replaced with jobs that require a significant amount of training and a lot less physical effort.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman asks me to ensure that the Prime Minister makes it certain at tomorrow’s Chequers awayday that UK companies will be able to export their products to the European Union. I can happily assure him that that is very much the case.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I welcome what the Minister says about the 25,000 apprenticeships, but one of the grand challenges facing the Government is helping to meet the needs of an ageing population. How does the deal help to meet that need?

[Richard Harrington]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The answer is that the type of apprenticeships will be commensurate with the new types of skills within building. As I explained in answer to the hon. Member for Inverclyde, that will involve retraining at different ages, as well as jobs that involve skills other than physical skills, which were complex but were done just by young men in the past. In fact, I am pleased to say that many more women are now involved in construction apprenticeships, and we will start to see people of my age doing apprenticeships—quite a few people in my constituency probably hope that that will be me in a few years’ time.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

John Howell Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington]

Before I say a few words about the amendments, I want to reflect on the passage of the Bill. It has passed through this House in an orderly manner, with a great many thoughtful points made by Members on both sides of the House who are here today and by many who are not. I particularly pay tribute to the Opposition Front-Bench team, led by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead)—I will never forget his constituency after this Bill. Although we have had our moments of disagreement, I have been encouraged by the strong consensus and have done my best to listen carefully to his amendments. I hope he would accept that I have given a lot of thought to them and that I have tried to accept those that I can. Lord Henley and I have made considerable efforts to listen to concerns in the other place as well, as has been seen in the amendments we have made to the Bill.

Outside the legislation, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State committed to making regular progress updates to Parliament. The first report was published on 27 March and the next will follow next month. We also provided draft regulations to support the House’s deliberations on the Bill, and I confirm today that I am placing in the Library the Department’s analysis on the application of Standing Order No. 83O, in respect of any motion relating to a Lords amendment, for Commons consideration of Lords amendments stage.

The Government opposed amendment 3 on Report in the House of Lords. I have listened carefully to the views of Members, including the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. The amendment would require that in a situation where particular agreements relating to nuclear safeguards are not in place, the Government would have to request that the UK’s withdrawal from Euratom be suspended until they are.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The Minister may be aware that in the last few hours, I have had a conversation with the head of Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, who says that the Government are moving in the right direction on this, and have already agreed to pay for an association and are moving in the right direction on that. If the Minister is going to oppose the amendment, he has my full support and that of the head of Culham.

[Richard Harrington]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment, which I believe reflects the progress that we have made. He works very hard for Culham; it is an extremely impressive place and I am sure that everyone on both sides of the House supports what they do.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington]

I can confirm that, as the hon. Lady knows, we are seeking the closest possible association with Euratom. We are working very hard to achieve that objective.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that at the recent meeting of the all-party group on nuclear fusion, which I chair, the Government’s attitude to expanding their collaboration in nuclear activity was greatly evident?

[Richard Harrington]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He also has a keen constituency interest in this, and I am very keen to represent the interests of his constituents.