European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between John Penrose and Mark Field

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

rose—

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

rose—

Royal Parks

Debate between John Penrose and Mark Field

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, looking after us this afternoon, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) on making some tremendously important points. He has been assiduous in pursuing them with me during the past year, and it has been tremendously helpful that he has done so, because he has been a useful sounding board for some of the ideas that have been under discussion. I hope that he is content with our direction of travel. I will endeavour to respond to some of the questions that he asked in his speech.

Let me start by marking one really important point of principle, which my hon. Friend mentioned and with which I thoroughly agree. He repeatedly used the word “balance”. Although it is a difficult task, it is essential that we maintain a balance in considering how we deal with the royal parks. He rightly pointed out that parks are a priceless and hugely appreciated national asset. They are also used as local parks as well. He gave numerous examples of local residents’ concerns about parks being used in ways that may be appreciated across the wider London area and the south-east, but that might impact negatively on local residents’ use of the parks. There is an inevitable tension between that national role and local accountability. Almost certainly, it has always been thus ever since the royal parks were set up in the 1850s.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the need to balance the importance of peace, tranquillity and quiet enjoyment with the concerns about commercialisation. Perhaps one of the most commercial events that the parks have ever hosted was the Great Exhibition and that was a very long time ago. I suspect that these points are rightly raised periodically because the duty of preserving the right balance will never go away. It is an inherent tension that must be managed according to the needs of national users, local residents and society, as the country changes. People might be willing to accept one kind of use now that they might not have regarded as acceptable 30 years ago. Indeed, if we were to wind forward 30 years, that equation might well rebalance itself. There is a need for constant vigilance and recalibration. We must remain sensitive to the competing needs in the future.

I can reassure my hon. Friend that we are hugely committed to ensuring that the ceremonial and royal character of the parks is maintained. They are not just municipal parks. There is something different about these parks both in their history and in how they are managed now, and it would be a crying shame if we were to put that at risk or to lose that at any point in future.

I am delighted to confirm to my hon. Friend—it is extraordinary that this has not been the case for ever throughout the royal parks’ existence—that in future there will be a representative from the royal household on the newly appointed board for the royal parks. I find it extraordinary that something with such immense royal connotations and a vital, ongoing ceremonial role did not have any kind of official representation from the royal household. It is entirely appropriate that it should.

I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns about the noise and the rest from some of the events. He mentioned some of the different concerts that have taken place. I can confirm that a number of items have created a few problems this year. The biggest number of complaints came from two different concerts over two nights. On 1 July, we had the Black Eyed Peas, and on 2 July, we had the Chemical Brothers, both of which excited a fair number of complaints. My hon. Friend mentioned that not many Bon Jovi fans live in the area, and fans of the other two bands might be relatively few and far between there as well.

[Mr Field]

May I just put it on record that I am a keen fan of the Chemical Brothers? However, I prefer listening to them in my living room, rather than with many tens of thousands of my constituents at the same time.

[John Penrose]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. He also mentioned the importance of noise during the set-up and take-down of event stands and so forth. It is entirely reasonable that guidelines equivalent to those used on a construction site should be in place. I will, if he will allow me, ask the chief executive of the royal parks to write to him, detailing how they approach these issues, so that he can see the kind of safeguards that are in place.

National Lottery Reform

Debate between John Penrose and Mark Field

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

As I have said, an important principle at the heart of the national lottery is additionality, which should already be enshrined in the grants that DCMS makes and that the relevant national lottery distributors make, so there should be a firewall between the two. We must ensure that any proposed changes do not breach that firewall or that principle. All Ministers in the Department are trying to ensure that we do not breach that principle as we grapple, along with Ministers in other Departments, with the problems of dealing with the spending review. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and others like him will scrutinise closely any announcements that are made to ensure that we are true to our word. I can assure him that we are being scrupulously careful about that.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The Minister will appreciate that he told only part of the story on moneys being transferred to the Olympics, because from the mid-1990s significant moneys went into the millennium fund, which came to an end shortly after the turn of the century. Many of us have been concerned for some time about the emergence of the Big Lottery Fund. There seems to be a grey area in relation to political interference and additionality, because moneys have been going into a range of projects related to health and education that many people feel should be, and probably in the past were, funded through general taxation. Will the Minister pledge to ensure that the Big Lottery Fund as it currently stands will be diminished, if not abolished, so that the arts, heritage and sport can be restored to their former glory?

[John Penrose]

I am afraid that I cannot pledge to abolish the Big Lottery Fund, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we share his concern about question marks over some of the donations from the Big Lottery Fund to individual projects in the past 10 years, and we are determined to ensure that such questions should not be asked in future. It is vital that Big continues to donate to the voluntary and community sector—it is an essential piece of the Government’s agenda for the big society, as a way of building up and maintaining the kind of voluntary and local community action that is central to the Government’s vision. Big, if managed properly and in the pure form we hope to get it in, has a tremendously important future. It will be refocused, sharpened and—if I may put it like that—purified, to match an agenda such as he has set out.

[Mr Field]

Without wishing to steal the Minister’s thunder, or get in the way of other contributions, might an element of rebranding be in the Government’s mind? Perhaps the Big Lottery Fund will be rebranded as a big society fund to achieve the very goals he mentioned.

[John Penrose]

I have to confess that we have not discussed the notion of the label on the door in any great detail so far. I thank my hon. Friend for his suggestion and am sure that it will be taken on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I completely agree with and accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about the enormous amount of good will and love for how the lottery distributors have managed to fund all sorts of important good causes ever since the lottery began.

My party has criticised the fund in a small number of cases which, none the less, are important because of the risk to the reputation of the lottery. I do not want to go into huge detail now, unless pressed or provoked, but additionality was the issue on a number of occasions, potentially leaving the way open to damage of the lottery’s reputation. None of us would want that to be a possibility even. It is important for the lottery to be like Caesar’s wife and seen to be above reproach.

I will give way once more, but then I must make progress, because other people want to speak.

[Mr Field]

I would like to reiterate the sentiments of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly)—he is right. A small number of individual cases have been the subject of a hue and cry in the tabloid press. I once shadowed this role, as the Minister knows, and the point that I would like to make is more philosophical—it is about additionality.

One concern, worthy though much of the work is, is that perhaps the work funded by the lottery is taken out of the health, education or other government budgets. At the outset, the very idea of the national lottery was to provide additional money in areas that would otherwise not qualify for taxpayers’ money, that are not run of the mill. Especially in such fraught economic times, which we have not seen in the past decade and a half, the danger remains that, however worthy many of the Big Lottery Fund’s projects might be, we are essentially denuding arts, sports and heritage projects of money that they would otherwise receive.

[John Penrose]

I completely take my hon. Friend’s point. I come back to the point that distributors such as the Heritage Lottery Fund—one of the lottery distributors that I am particularly involved with—are required at the end of every year to sign a piece of paper saying that they have satisfied the principles of additionality. The chief executive signs that piece of paper, taking personal responsibility. I am sure that that test will be applied to all the lottery distributors. Even if it was not part of the audit trail, if I may put it that way, I am sure that all hon. Members would want to make sure that it is maintained.

I want to move on quickly, because I am conscious of time and I want to leave time for other contributions.

I have mentioned a number of things that we would like to change, update and alter. I will mention one more. We want to ensure that the lottery distributors are a little more efficient and effective at distributing the cash at a lower cost. All of us are conscious that we live in an age of austerity. We all know that we are having to tighten our belts. We all know that we are all in this together—to coin a phrase—and we have to make sure that we are doing more with less. It is reasonable to ask the lottery distributors to ensure that they are as efficient as possible in distributing funds so that the largest possible proportion of the money reaches the good causes for which it is intended.