Investigation of Veterans

Debate between John Penrose and James Heappey

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that this issue has not landed on anybody’s desk in the Northern Ireland Office out of a clear blue sky—it has been taking up a very large proportion of everybody’s care and attention. It is probably fair to say that it was doing so under former Labour Governments as well as the current Government, and indeed the coalition Government. It is certainly not a new problem, and it has clearly defeated successive attempts to solve it. That is why we have to proceed as fast as possible, but with care.

With regard to people who have already faced cases, clearly we need to make sure that they are treated fairly within the law. Bearing in mind Mr Speaker’s earlier strictures, I probably should not comment on individual cases, but I am sure that everybody here would stand up for the notion that yes, clearly, everyone should be treated fairly within the law.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

I deployed to Afghanistan twice and to Iraq and to Northern Ireland, all in quite quick succession. I can tell the Minister that I received operational training and operational kit. I carried operational rules of engagement. I received operational pay, and I received an operational medal for all four of those tours. The distinction that a soldier is aware of the legal premise on which they are deployed is not true—it is not fair, and it stinks. Troops do not get to choose whether they deploy on an operational tour because of the legal underpinning that the Government have chosen, and it is unreasonable to assert that now. We must limit their liability immediately.

[John Penrose]

I completely agree. I was trying to make this point in response to a couple of earlier questions, but let me have another crack at it. For members of Her Majesty’s armed forces serving on the ground, no matter where they are, if they are on similar kinds of operation, the practical effect and feel of those operations will be the same. My hon. Friend, who is my parliamentary neighbour in Somerset, is absolutely right to make that point. It is not an acceptable justification for inaction for any Government to say, “The legal basis is different, and therefore we cannot solve this.”

All I am saying is that the legal solution has to be different because the legal basis is different, even though soldiers may not care or worry about it. If we do not take that difference of legal basis into account, the answer we come up with will not work in protecting them. We want to protect them properly and successfully. If we do not, the first malicious prosecution that is mounted in a court and knocks a hole in it will show that our efforts have been in vain. My hon. Friend is right. This is an explanation of why it is different; it is not a justification for not acting, nor is it a justification for not succeeding in coming up with an identical outcome, even though it has to be based on different legal foundations.

Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill

Debate between John Penrose and James Heappey

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

There is now a whole range of underlying pro-competitive reforms—I am not normally one to give Ofgem a vast amount of credit, but it really deserves some in this case—that are needed in this market. Renaming the default or standard variable tariff may not have a huge effect, but it might have a positive effect. There is a series of other things, some of which are even more important, that must happen. It is crucial—I agree with the Labour spokesman about this, as I think we all would—that we do not waste our time and that Ofgem continues to reform the market while this temporary price cap is in effect because, when the price cap comes off, we will want the market to have been sufficiently reformed that no further price caps are necessary, because it works like a normal market in which the customer is king. If we have not done that, we will have wasted our time and everybody else’s.

I was talking about the complications and the hideous complexity of Ofgem’s proposals, but if all that inflexibility and complexity has not put Members off already, they should have a look at the bureaucracy. Pretty much every free market economist will agree that the best way to discover a price is not through a committee that meets every couple of months, but with a genuinely competitive market in which supply and demand are matched from moment to moment all day, every day. Fortunately, we just happen to have one of those handy. The switching market is full of deals on which energy firms compete like mad for business. It is innovative; it has razor-sharp prices; and it takes changes in wholesale energy costs in its stride every day of every week. The customer is, in other words, genuinely king or queen.

That is, as we have just discussed, exactly what we want to see in the rest of the market, so why are we ignoring it? Why go for a far less competitive version that is inflexible, hideously complicated, bureaucratic and committee-based when we could simply tie rip-off default tariffs firmly to the switching market and go down the pub for a drink? The mechanism, as we have heard, would be simplicity itself: a maximum mark-up between each energy firm’s best competitive price and its default tariff—we would cap the gap. Unlike with the arrangements in the Bill, there would be just one decision for regulators to take: the size of the gap. Everything else would be taken care of by the link to the competitive switching market.

[James Heappey]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend—my neighbour—for giving way. Has he given any thought to what a relative cap would do for time-of-use tariffs, the arrival of which we should surely be encouraging? They rely on a big differential from free or negative pricing to the most expensive prices, which disincentivises energy use at peak times. Is he concerned as I am that what he proposes might discourage the arrival of such tariffs?

[John Penrose]

Much would depend on the size of the cap on the gap proposed by Ofgem, and much would depend on the rest of the pricing structure of the energy firm in question with regard to where it chooses to put its default tariff. Many of these things are, as my hon. Friend points out, yet to arrive. They are starting to be introduced, but they are a relatively new innovation, with small but growing penetration. He is absolutely right that we need to make sure that we do not disincentivise such tariffs. They certainly will not be to everybody’s taste, but they may be to the taste of an increasingly large number of people.

I would prefer to start from a simple cap—capping the gap—and then have to make a couple of adjustments, rather than making even more complicated something that is, as I have described, already hideously complicated. If we manage to take care of all the complexity and bureaucracy by establishing a link to the competitive switching market—hey presto!—we will have driven a stake through the heart of the rip-off tariffs. Switching supplier would still be worth while, and there would be far fewer jobs for bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists. The customer would be king.

My amendments would make a relative cap either possible or required, depending on which version was chosen. I do not expect or intend to press the amendments to a Division, but I want everybody to realise that there is a more competitive, more flexible, less bureaucratic, more customer-friendly and generally better alternative, and that at the moment we are not taking it.

It is not just free market Tories such as myself who think that capping the gap is the right way to go. The Labour Front-Bench team, as we have heard, have tabled an amendment that proposes something similar. They might disagree with my description of it, and they have a fancy-schmancy name for it, but, broadly speaking—as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) pointed out earlier—the wording is very similar and the amendments would effectively do the same thing.

Labour Front Benchers and I disagree over timing, however. The effect of their proposal would be permanent, whereas ours would be temporary while we fixed the underlying anti-competitive problems in the market. There is, none the less, clear cross-party consensus on the principle, at the very least, so why does the Bill ignore this cross-party opportunity? Why are a notionally pro-competition Conservative Government choosing the less competitive, more bureaucratically inflexible and more complicated version instead? Why are we snatching defeat from the jaws of what ought to be a famous free market victory? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answer.