Debate on the Address
John Redwood Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was right to say that what matters most in the year ahead is that the economic recovery, which is now under way and speeding up, needs to be supported and developed. The whole House agrees that we want people to be better off. Their living standards were cruelly squeezed in the great recession between 2008 and 2010, and in the early years of the coalition Government there was some further loss of real incomes. It now looks as if that is beginning to change, and the way it can best change is if there are more jobs so that more people move from being out of work and into work. Under my right hon. Friend’s important policy, it will always be better to be in work than to be out of work.
As the recovery extends, wages will go up and there will be more better jobs available. Very often the best way to get a well-paid job is to start off in a not so well-paid job and to work one’s way up. Many of us have had to do that, and it will be increasingly possible as the recovery gets under way. I see that Labour Front Benchers think that that is ridiculous or funny. They should live in the real world and understand that economic recovery is good news for people’s potential living standards. None of us thinks that living standards are anywhere near where we want them to be. We need to develop that recovery.
The Queen’s Speech was right to have a limited number of measures. We have a short year before us and it is often not possible to do things through legislation. We need things to develop as the marketplace has its way.
Mr McCann
Perhaps the reason for the wry smiles on people’s faces is that, although there are opportunities for people to start in low-paid jobs and to progress to higher-paid ones—many people have done that in their lifetimes—in the current economic situation many people who work in my constituency are lucky if they get a few hours a week on a zero-hours contract. It is unlikely, therefore, that they will be able to meet the aspiration of starting off in any paid job, never mind anything else. That is why Members on the Opposition Benches have wry smiles.
Mr Redwood
I think that is churlish. As the Prime Minister has pointed out, using constituency after constituency as examples, people are getting back into work. Some are not in the jobs they would like or for which they are being paid nearly enough, but the way to work on that problem is to get behind the economic recovery.
The Gracious Speech promoted three big things that are important in that connection. I am glad that Labour now agrees with many of us that the opportunity and right to own one’s own home is one of the most important things. Many people have that ambition and all too many of them are not able to afford it at the moment, so measures in the Gracious Speech and elsewhere that can help create more opportunities for young people in particular to buy their first home and for others to improve their home, or even to have their first home in later life, will be very welcome.
Part of the answer is sensible rates of building, which in turn produces opportunities. I visited a construction site in my constituency, where the Prime Minister will be pleased to hear a lot of houses are being built. Not all my constituents are delighted about that, but those seeking a home are. We are already seeing many more jobs for plumbers, bricklayers and carpenters, and wage rates are going up, because those people are in demand. That means that they have a better living standard after the period towards the end of the last decade and the earliest part of this decade in which their wage rates were very badly cut or squeezed.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
Is it not true that by controlling Government borrowing, keeping interest rates low and keeping mortgage rates low, we are giving more people opportunities to buy and own their own properties, to pay lower mortgages and to live the dream of having their own home?
Mr Redwood
Indeed. That is part of the strategy and, as we can see, it is beginning to work, with more house building now being undertaken and more people being able to afford a home.
The next thing we need is more domestically supplied energy and cheaper energy. The two go together, felicitously, so if we can get a bigger energy sector extracting oil and gas in Britain—onshore and offshore—we will have more jobs, some of which will be higher-paid jobs, but also access to cheaper energy. I am very pleased that the Government are going to get behind the shale gas revolution. It is already transforming the American economy, creating higher living standards for many and producing the much lower gas prices that are pricing Americans back into competitive jobs in industry vis-à-vis Europe and Asia, where the price of energy is high. We need the same here.
We need to make sure that all people setting up their own business, or who have already set up their own business but have not taken on many or any employees and are now thinking of doing so, should feel that that is possible and feasible. If we have too much regulation and control—much of it well intentioned, no doubt—the very bright or able can still run a business, because they know how to handle that regulation and control and can get proper advice, but other people find it far more difficult. They are put off, thinking, “I really do not understand all this. I don’t know what it’s all about.” Anything that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister can do to make it much easier for people to start their first business and then to take on their first employee will be extremely welcome and will promote the recovery.
George Freeman
My right hon. Friend is making a very eloquent case about how the best and most sustainable means of raising the standard of living is by developing sustainable jobs. Does he agree that one of the most damaging things we could do is to raise the tax on jobs as represented by employer’s national insurance contributions? That is being considered by Labour Front Benchers, but it would be hugely damaging.
Mr Redwood
That is quite right. The point has been made before. Lower taxes on enterprise and effort are generally a good thing. We want people to keep more of the money they make or earn when they set up businesses or get good or better jobs, and we also want to make sure that the Government do not deter employers from creating more jobs by over-taxing work.
I am pleased that the Gracious Speech refers to the need for more and better roads. In the past 15 years, our road building has fallen well behind what needs to be done to support the economic recovery and to promote industry, commerce and more jobs around the country. I look forward to seeing the detailed proposals.
What I primarily wish to do this afternoon is to speak for England. [Interruption.] I am glad that at least two hon. Members agree with that proposition. We speak too little for England in this House of Commons; yet a majority of us are English Members of Parliament.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I heartily encourage this movement from the right hon. Gentleman. Let us hope he can do more and more of it post-March 2016, when Scotland becomes independent.
Mr Redwood
I will have to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. The Gracious Speech of course invites us to talk about this matter by referring to the possibility of more extensive devolution of powers to Scotland—in the likely event that Scotland votes to stay in the Union, which many of us want to see—and of the extension of powers to Wales. However, the Gracious Speech makes no mention of extending devolved powers to England, and we cannot carry on with lop-sided devolution without considering the business of England.
As many hon. Members will know, I believe in being economical when it comes to public expenditure on the business of politics and government. I do not want a new expensive building and a whole lot of new English MPs down the road, in the way that Scotland has for its Scottish Parliament. This sacred plot has been the site of the English Parliament for many centuries. This Union building is now for the Union Parliament—built for an empire and a great Union—but it could again be the site of the English Parliament under the United Kingdom Parliament. Like me, I am sure that many colleagues who understand the need for value for money for taxpayers would be happy to do both jobs. We would be prepared to come here under your skilful guidance, Mr Speaker, to talk with our Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish colleagues on all the matters of the Union, and to come here on other occasions to deal with the business of England without their help, guidance and certainly their votes. I think that there would be justice in that.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a great shame that after primary powers were devolved to Wales so that it could take more command of its own affairs, we did not reduce the number of MPs in Wales, as the last Labour Government did in Scotland, purely because, as I understand it, it was objected to by our partners in the coalition?
Mr Redwood
I take my right hon. Friend’s advice on that, because she is more current on those arguments than I am.
I would like English MPs to be able to settle English issues on a fair basis. Labour gave us a cruel inheritance. The Prime Minister is wrestling with the bodged constitutional reforms on a huge scale that were made in the previous decade, which have left us with lop-sided devolution. Many in Scotland are hungry for more devolved powers and many in England feel that the settlement is very unfair. Labour also left us with three mighty federalising treaties with the European Union, which have left this Parliament struggling for power in many important areas of policy that matter to voters, as we saw on 22 May. This Parliament no longer has the power to make all or, in some cases, any of the important decisions in those areas.
Mr Redwood
Indeed. The parties that voted against the boundary proposals have a lot to answer for. Again, that is unfair to England and to those constituencies that have many more voters than the average and that looked for some justice to be brought in through sensible reform. If this place is to work, we must surely work towards a world where we all represent roughly the same number of people. That is the kind of proportional representation that I believe in.
I hope that Scotland votes to stay in the Union. I think that that is likely because, had there been a tidal wave of opinion in favour of independence for Scotland—if that really was the wish of many people in Scotland—surely in the general election of 2010, the Scots would have voted in 30 or 40 Members of Parliament who were rooting for independence for Scotland. We would have taken that seriously and would have had to listen to them.
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene. May I say how much I agree with him that in the next Parliament, we must address the issue of equal-sized constituencies? I ask his forgiveness for the ultimate insult, which is that I will leave his speech to depart for Brussels. Sadly, that is what I have to do because the G7 is starting in a few hours and I do not want to be late. I do not want to do him any discourtesy, so I wanted to point that out while commending his strong passion for equal-sized constituencies, which are a key democratic reform.
Mr Redwood
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for his courtesy. He has been courteous to stay as long as he has given that he has such pressing engagements. He illustrates the point that I wish to move on to, which is how much Brussels dominates our proceedings and our government, but I will first complete my Scottish point.
The most likely need that we will face after the Scottish referendum is the need to look at the question of lop-sided devolution. I would be happy to extend more powers to the devolved Scottish Parliament, but I want to be a voice for England and I do not think that we can carry on doing that without England having a settlement as well.
In the less likely event that the Scottish nationalists get their wish and there is a vote for independence, I will be one of the first to congratulate the Scots and help them in any way towards a smooth transition. However, I will want them to be genuinely independent. I will not want us to pretend that there is some kind of special relationship that is rather like a federal system. If people wish to be independent, they should be independent.
In that event, I propose that the House of Commons should immediately pass legislation saying two important things. The first is that the 2015 general election will not apply in Scotland and the current Members of the Westminster Parliament from Scotland should continue for as long as it takes to complete the process of separating the countries. There would be no point in having the expense and nonsense of a general election in a country that was leaving the Union. The second thing, which the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) might like less, is that the Scottish MPs should play no part in any discussions about non-Scottish business in this place and no part in forming the response of the rest of the United Kingdom to their wish to be independent.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene again. I agree with him wholeheartedly on that point. In the SNP we have a self-denying ordinance of not taking part on English issues and non-Scottish issues because we believe, and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is demonstrating this, that England is as good as France and Germany and can run itself amply, without any help at all from the Scots.
Mr Redwood
Very good. I shall now move on and speak for the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman might find that we are back here together still arguing about these matters after the referendum, but I hope he will accept the verdict of that referendum, as I will do, because we cannot go on arguing about this.
Jim Shannon
I support the unification of the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—that is, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England together—so will the right hon. Gentleman tell me whether he recognises the contribution that the MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland bring to this House, and the knowledge that they bring from their own regions, which can help to formulate Government policy to benefit the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Mr Redwood
Indeed. I am a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom Parliament, and proud to be so. I would like my country to stay together, but I do not want people in it who are not keen to be in it. If a democratic process is gone through and we discover that a part of the United Kingdom wishes to leave, as democrats, we must realise that that is the answer. We cannot keep on pulling up the plant to see where the roots are. I hope the referendum will be a one-off and that it will settle the issue for a considerable time.
Mr Redwood
I am glad to see the Scottish nationalists agreeing.
I come on to talk about the United Kingdom and its relationship with the European Union. We have today again witnessed a very important ceremony in this House. That ceremony is designed to remind us all of the battles and struggles of our forebears to ensure that this House of Commons had the power to limit the Crown—had the power to make the authority of government in this country accountable to this House of Commons—and a very moving and important ceremony it is. But we have a new struggle on our hands, equally important though not one, fortunately, for which we will need muskets and musket balls. We will need words, actions and independent thinking.
Our struggle is that this once great and sovereign House of Commons now is not sovereign or great in so many fields because the European Union has powers to instruct, overrule and command. There is a particular case that I would like the Government to consider in this next year in the legislative programme. The case is that of the human rights convention and the list of human rights therein. It was a Labour Government, when signing us up to the treaty of Lisbon, who expressly said in their motion on the treaty and in the Act of Parliament that they put through on the back of it that we were not going to consolidate all of the convention on human rights—that this House and this country would make up its own mind on human rights. That was reflected in the legislation that we passed—an act of sovereign legislative activity to say that we did not want it all dictated from the European Union.
What has now happened under a European Court judgment is that the European convention on human rights is being absorbed into the corpus of European law and will become an instruction on this House, against the wishes of Labour and against the wishes of the rest of us in the House at the time. I think the House should now move an amendment to the European Communities Act 1972 expressly ruling out that grab of power by the European Court of Justice on this issue, reflecting the words of the treaty we signed and reflecting the words of the legislation that this House passed. Unless this House is prepared to do this at some point on some important issue, this House is in no sense sovereign any more. We can claim to be sovereign only because all the powers of the European Union today are technically the result of our passage of the 1972 Act, but if we are never going to amend or revisit that Act, those powers have gone and we are completely under treaty and ECJ law.
Another area that we may need to look at is the promise by Governments of all persuasions that matters relating to taxation and social security would remain national issues, because they involve the money of our taxpayers and the money going to people in our country who most need help. Surely this Parliament should control our taxation, and our expenditure of substantial sums of it on benefits.
Mr Stewart Jackson
My right hon. Friend is making a characteristically powerful speech. Is not another mark of a sovereign nation that it controls the integrity of its own borders? Is it not high time that, even if we fall foul of the European Court of Justice, we look again at the ramifications of the free movement directive and possible changes to it? Should we not employ some of the changes that Spain, for instance, has made, to protect the integrity of our borders within the European Union?
Mr Redwood
I agree, although I do not think the legal case is quite so clear on that matter, which was why I concentrated on one on which were given assurances that a power had not been transferred. I believe the previous Government transferred a lot of power over borders, so it might be more appropriate to consider the matter by way of renegotiation. However, if my hon. Friend has particular examples of the ECJ or the Brussels Commission exceeding the powers that were granted to it, exactly the same argument will apply as with the human rights convention. We need at some point to make changes if we cannot effect them by negotiation and agreement with our partners. When negotiating, it is always a good idea to have a plan B just in case they do not see it our way. I always find that that concentrates the mind somewhat.
The Gracious Speech will reinforce the recovery, and that is what matters most to many of our constituents, who wish to have better jobs, better living standards and access to better housing. We are the inheritors of mighty constitutional turmoil, and we can no longer put off the business of England. Whatever result comes from the Scottish referendum, this House must engage earnestly with the business of England as surely as it has, on and off, with the business of Scotland and that of Wales and Northern Ireland in recent years. Above all, because we need to be in control of our own destiny and represent our people in ways that our forebears would respect, this House needs again to say that there are limits to European Union power, which will be prescribed here and dictated from this House. We can then look the British people in the eye again and say, “Yes, we will redress your grievances. We still have the power to do so, and we have the political will to act.”
European Council
John Redwood Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
As ever, the hon. Gentleman speaks powerfully about these issues, and those are the sorts of things we can take into account when looking at individuals who will be affected by travel bans and asset freezes. On historical analogies—a number of people are making such points—I think that perhaps the best ones to draw are by looking at what happened to Georgia and the frozen conflicts of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and in Transnistria. There is a pattern, and we need to interrupt it by the European Union and member states, with our American allies and others, taking a strong stance.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Prime Minister now seek fundamental changes in EU energy policy? Some member states are far too dependent on Russian gas, and the rest of us are far too dependent on intermittent, dear and scarce sources of energy, owing to EU directives. Do we not need to get control of our power to be able to reply?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is entirely right. Here in the UK, we are not reliant to any significant degree on Russian supplies of gas, but some countries in Europe receive 60% or 70% more of their gas from them. As a European Union we need to think about how to make ourselves more resilient as a group of countries, and part of that will be by completing the European energy single market, which will make a difference to those countries. This is clearly a good moment to press that concern in Europe and get more done.
Deregulation Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Letwin
I have good news for my hon. Friend: it is not a matter of considering it; we have done it. Every single new regulation we have brought in—incidentally, their number is limited by our one in, two out principle, which means they are slightly more than twice balanced by things that we have removed from the statute book—contains a sunset provision. We took that step right at the beginning of our taking office, and the purpose is to ensure that people do not mindlessly roll out the same regulations long after they have passed their sell-by date.
If I may, I want to return to the Bill—for a moment at least. To set the scene, the Bill is just one small part of the process. The red tape challenge looked at about 6,000 regulations. The one in, two out constraint holds back the stream, while the red tape challenge removes water from the lake behind the dam. In addition, and just as importantly, we have spent an enormous amount of time and energy focusing on enforcement, because it is not just a matter of what regulations or indeed statutory guidance are in place, but a matter of how things are enforced. We have been taking considerable steps to ensure that the agencies responsible for regulation enforce in a way that is much more conscious of the needs of our businesses.
In that context, clause 61, which is probably the single most important clause in the Bill, creates a growth duty—[Interruption.] Do look it up, please; it is useful for Opposition Members to know about a Bill when they are about to launch an attack on it. The clause requires our non-economic regulators, every time they make a decision, to spend time and energy considering whether that decision takes proper account of the need for economic growth. That is not to say that that consideration should overrule all regulators’ duties, but we are trying to create a sense of proportionality and to ensure that our regulators consider effects on growth as they go about their duties.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
That is an excellent idea. I welcome the clause, but is it not the case that now that the EU regulates comprehensively in areas such as the environment and business, we do not need domestic regulation on top, but just the UK consequences of EU rules?
Mr Letwin
In many instances there is a good case for not layering further domestic obligations on top of international or EU obligations. My right hon. Friend has a pretty long and distinguished record of involvement in this area, so let me give him an example from the Bill. Clause 59 provides for “ambulatory references” in international maritime regulation. We took the approach that the law of the sea is basically formed by international agreements, and that there is every reason for our regulation not to add to that, nor even to qualify or interpret it, but rather simply to refer to it so that every shipping company and captain of a vessel knows that it is the international agreements that apply to them. That has the advantage that we can be sure that our regulation is aligned with international regulation, which tends to induce shipping to come to this country, and it also simplifies the statute book. That is the kind of shift that we are trying to achieve in many domains.
EU Council
John Redwood Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
I make no apology for coming to this House and repeating the policy prescriptions we need to achieve in Europe. We have a very consistent record of going after completing energy, completing digital and completing services. That is what will make a difference. It is hard work in Europe—it is hard going —but we are making progress.
The Leader of the Opposition asked a number of questions; let me answer all of them. On electricity disconnections, more than 200,000 people are currently disconnected and work is under way to reconnect them. Obviously, circumstances will differ in each case, so it may take longer for some than others.
I very much welcome the fact that there is cross-party agreement on the intelligence services. Over recent years, we have put in place—under Governments of both parties—very good arrangements for governing our intelligence services and we should be proud of the work they do.
On the EU-Canada trade deal, the right hon. Gentleman is right that there is still more to do. I think that the most difficult decisions in principle have been made, particularly on key areas such as beef and dairy, so I do not expect this to take a long time. The pressure is on, because everybody knows that the EU now wants to turn to the bigger deal with America, so the Canada deal needs to be wrapped up.
On digital and the single market, there is quite a lot of detail in paragraphs 5 to 9 of the communiqué about the specific progress on individual items. Whether they are telecoms, data or rules for e-commerce, a huge number of detailed changes have to be made.
I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that we have looked very closely at the data protection directive. The effect of the current draft would be to add more than £300 million to the costs of UK business. It would mean that quite small businesses that do market research, for example, would have to employ one extra person simply to comply with the directive. We need a directive in order to make the digital single market work properly, but the current draft is wrong and we should hold it up so that we get it right.
On deregulation more generally, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will read the report, which is excellent because it comes up with good principles that should be adopted in Europe, such as the one-in, one-out principle that we have adopted in the UK. It also makes 30 recommendations for directives to be scrapped, amended or in some cases completed. It is a good report.
On unemployment, let me answer the right hon. Gentleman specifically. The UK youth unemployment rate is below that of France, Italy and the EU average. It is down over the quarter. The youth claimant count is down 79,000 since the last election. There is much more to do, but the fact is that just this morning we announced 100,000 extra training opportunities for young people and there are record numbers of apprenticeships—they are now running at twice the rate they were under the previous Labour Government.
The right hon. Gentleman made a number of economic predictions that rather reminded me of other predictions he has made over the years. He told us in 2010 that our policies would lead to a loss of 1 million jobs. That was completely wrong: we have added 1.4 million private sector jobs. In 2012 he was still saying, amazingly, that the loss of public sector jobs would not be made up for by the growth of private sector jobs. Again, he was wrong: we got 1 million more people in work.
As late as June this year, the shadow Chancellor, who is not in his place—presumably he is sorting out Labour’s HS2 policy—said that we would choke off growth, and yet the truth is that this year we are forecast to grow more than twice as fast as Germany. Those are the results we are getting both here and in Europe.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
During the summit, did the Prime Minister manage to raise the issue of energy prices? EU regulations mean that we have much dearer energy than America or Asia, and I seem to remember the previous Government willingly signing up to those proposals. They are clearly a competitive impediment to us.
The Prime Minister
There was no specific discussion about energy prices, but one of the proposals of the business taskforce report is to ensure that we do not add to the cost of, for instance, shale gas extraction. That was very much welcomed by other member states. We need to consider how regulations add to the costs for energy consumers.
G20
John Redwood Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The motion that we put before the House spoke specifically of there being a UN vote—a UN process—and not then some sort of rush, as the right hon. Gentleman likes to say, to military action. It specifically mentioned that there would have to be another vote, but he voted against that motion. It did say that there would be another vote, but the point he makes is important. Of course we always favour taking things to the United Nations, but in the end we have to make a decision in this House and the Opposition have to make a decision too: do we think it is right to confront those who use chemical weapons? I think it is.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I read reports that the Prime Minister had a very welcome meeting with the German Chancellor to discuss member states of the EU having more control over economic migration and benefit systems. Is this true, and is there any news about the timetable for this welcome work?
The Prime Minister
I have many discussions with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. At the G20, most of our discussions were about Syria rather than about reform of the European Union, but we have had good discussions about the reform of the European Union. The stance that the German Government have taken is very helpful and I will continue to discuss that with her.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Jon Trickett
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I assume she is saying that the 161 individual lobbyists were employed by the tobacco company. If that is the case, under this Bill not one of them—not a single one—would be required to be on the register. That is why when she intervened on me I was saying that we want all lobbying activities to be brought into the full light of day, not remain in the shadows.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Has the hon. Gentleman discussed his proposals with leading national charities, because they might not wish to have to register their people, who are legitimately campaigning for their charitable purpose?
Jon Trickett
I have—but I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has done so. He might be well advised to meet them first, before asking a question like that. Yes, I have met the leading charities. I have also met representative organisations of the leading charities, and I have made two things clear to them. First, if they employ lobbyists according to the definition that we want to introduce, they will have to be registered. Even the large representative organisations say that that is the right thing to do. We are talking about professional lobbyists. Throughout the country, in every neighbourhood and constituency, there is much excellent community and charitable work that is undertaken voluntarily, and that is not professional lobbying. We do not expect people who lobby us at our surgeries with a particular problem in their neighbourhood to have to register. However, if a large organisation such as a charity—I can think of some that spend £300 million a year; that is their turnover—has parliamentary consultants working for them or for third party organisations that are lobbying Parliament in the material interests of that charity, that should be registered. The register will take only a few moments to fill in—it is not a particularly arduous task—and it is right that anyone who lobbies Parliament should be on it.
That is not my view alone, and it is not the view simply of the Opposition. I have met, as I have told the Committee, all the representative organisations of the lobbying industry. I have met many chairmen, chairwomen and managing directors of the larger lobbying companies and, almost without exception, they think that the Bill is too weak and does not go far enough, so they oppose it. I have also met all the lobbying transparency campaigners. One would not think that the people who campaign for lobbying and the people who campaign to constrain lobbying would inevitably share the same point of view but, in this case, without exception, both sides say that the Bill is simply inadequate.
The Bill is simply not up to the task, and it is likely to make lobbying more opaque, rather than more transparent. By suggesting that the register should include only consultant lobbyists, the register would exclude—these are important figures; they are not mine—99% of meetings between lobbyists and Ministers; 80% of lobbyists; and 95% of lobbying activity. Much of that activity and those lobbyists are already registered on voluntary registers. More likely than not, they will deregister if the Bill is introduced. We will know less about the industry and its activities than we do now.
Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons
John Redwood Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
We make no more important decision in this House than to give permission to our armed forces to unleash some of their formidable arsenal. We should only do so if we feel there is democratic consent for the aim and the purpose of the conflict, and we should do so only if it is legal so to do. In my adult lifetime in politics I think that we, as a country, have intervened too often. We have too often asked our armed forces to do things that armed forces alone cannot do. I am not against all intervention. Of course, when we had to liberate Kuwait or the Falkland Islands, they were noble aims. Our armed forces performed with great skill and bravery, and the British public were behind them. We must be very careful, however, not to inject them into a civil war where we do not know the languages, where we have uncertain sympathy for the cultures and the conflicting groups involved, and where the answer in the end has to be a political process in the country itself and not external force.
I therefore welcome strongly the three things the Government have set out. I welcome this debate and the fact that we will do things democratically. It is our job to speak for our constituents and, if there is to be military activity, to ensure that the British public will it—they certainly do not at the moment. I welcome very much the Government’s statement that we will not arm the rebels. That is huge progress and I support that fully.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that what we would like to hear from the Deputy Prime Minister when he sums up later is a clear statement that the Government believe that in all future cases military action—immediate external assault—will not be entered into unless this House has given its say-so first?
Mr Redwood
Of course I agree with that. Any sensible Government would do that, because what Government can commit our armed forces without the implicit or actual support of the House of Commons? That can be tested at any time, so no Government would be so foolish as to try and proceed without it.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend just go a bit further and agree that anybody going through the Government Lobby tonight is not giving their approval for direct military intervention on behalf of the UK, and that the Deputy Prime Minister should make that very, very clear in his summing up tonight? There will be another vote.
Mr Redwood
I leave the Deputy Prime Minister to speak for himself and the Government.
The third thing I welcome is that the Government are not trying to influence the conflict. That is an important new development, although I am not sure how it marries with possible military intervention. If military intervention is planned, I presume that it will be against Assad and his forces and that, of course, would have some impact on the conflict. That impact might be in the direction that the Government and others wish to go, but they need to accept that there is a possible contradiction between or ambiguity in their wish not to have an impact on the balance of forces in Syria and their wish to intervene over the issue of chemical weapons.
Everyone in the House shares the Government’s horror at the use of chemical weapons and the brutality shown, perhaps by the regime. It is quite possible that the regime used them. I agree with right hon. and hon. Members from both sides who have pointed out that there have also been atrocities and horrors enough without chemical weapons—those should also shock our consciences and worry our emotions, and they do.
Given the understandable wish to respond to the use of horror weapons, we need to ask whether the Government could undertake, or assist others to undertake, a military intervention that would fulfil the purpose. That should be the only question. Of course I understand that the Government cannot come to the House and debate a series of targets with us in advance—that would be folly. However, I hope that the House can help steer Ministers to ask the right questions of their advisers about whether there is any type of military intervention that could make the position better rather than worse.
The military experts to whom I have talked say that the last thing we want to do is shower down bombs or cruise missiles on stocks of chemical weapons; that would degrade them, but could let them out as well. It would be a dreadful tragedy if, in an attempt to stop, by destruction, the use of chemical weapons, we infected people in the surrounding areas. That does not sound like a good idea. Bombing the factories might have a similar consequence, although perhaps the risk would not be as great as bombing the stocks of chemical weapons.
Is the idea to bomb the soldiers and their commanders who might use the weapons? That could be a way. However, we would have to ask the Government how many soldiers and officers we would need to kill to guarantee more or less that Assad would not use the weapons again. I fear that the answer might be very many, given that we are dealing with someone as mad and bad as Assad. Would we want to go that far? Are we sure that it would work?
Is the idea to bomb a load of buildings, preferably when people were not in them, so that we destroyed the command headquarters or military installations? That would be possible; western forces have done such things in other situations, normally as preparation for invasion. Again, however, how many would we need to bomb to make sure that Assad never used chemical weapons again?
I hope that the Government will think very carefully about the issues. If they wish to persuade the British people, who are mightily sceptical about our ability to find the right military response to stop Assad and his horrors, they need to come up with some answers privately and find the language to explain to Members, and the public we represent, why they have every confidence that we can achieve the noble aim of stopping Assad using chemical weapons.
I wish the Government well. If they really can come up with a way of stopping Assad murdering his own people, nobody will be happier than me. Everyone in the House would be extremely happy. But the Government have to understand the scepticism of the British people. Assad is mad and bad and it will not be easy to stop him. I fear that we will not be able to do it in a half-hearted manner with a few cruise missiles in the hope that he will not retaliate.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Reports are circulating that No. 10 has indicated that it cannot rule out a recall of Parliament again on Saturday or Sunday to debate this matter further. Have you received any information from the Government in relation to any such request? It would have implications for this evening’s debate.
Bilderberg Conference
John Redwood Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
We have had trade unions there sometimes, and there are plenty of social democrats. I do not think anybody as left wing as the hon. Gentleman has ever attended, but if I scratch my memory I will probably remember somebody. Obviously, the hon. Gentleman forecast with absolute precision the collapse of capitalism in 2007. In that respect, I agree that his foresight was rather better than that of most pundits. We continue to meet, in the hope that next time we will see it coming with slightly more clarity.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
As many UKIP voters fear that the Bilderberg group is a plot to promote more unaccountable European government, can my right hon. and learned Friend give them any reassurance or suggest why they might be wrong in that thought?
Mr Clarke
Nowadays we get accused of plots to establish a Government of the world, to poison the local watercourses, and to plan an invasion of the United States of America. Ten years ago, I was told I was attending a plot to hand over Britain to Brussels and to subordinate us to a “United States of Europe”, and the next instalment of the plot will come later. I cite that example in order to point out that a fellow member of the steering committee was Mr Conrad Black, and in private, as in public, Mr Conrad Black was not in favour of handing anything over to Brussels and was not in any way furthering that cause. I regret to say that Mr Black is, as I recall, the only member who ever attended who has since had the misfortune to be sentenced to a term of imprisonment, whereupon he withdrew from the Bilderberg meetings.
Seriously, however, I assure my right hon. Friend that the full range of opinion from left to right from across western Europe is pretty well represented at Bilderberg. That in itself shows that the idea that we are furthering any kind of agenda is absolute nonsense. If I were plotting to do anything, I would not assemble that particular group of people, because we would never agree on an objective.
EU Council and Woolwich
John Redwood Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I have great respect for the former Home Secretary, and I know that he knows how important the issue of comms data is. I hope that, when we bring forward proposals, we will have support from across the House of Commons for them. Comms data were mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, and we have specifically said that we want to look at how we can match IP addresses, because that is such an important part of what needs to be done. We should look at all the options, including non-legislative approaches, so that we can make some progress on this important issue. I look forward to having the right hon. Gentleman’s support, and to hearing his explanation to others in the House of how important this is.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s efforts to get us cheaper energy through shale gas, but did the EU recognise that its regulations and energy policies are making us completely uncompetitive in world markets, destroying jobs and giving us energy that our elderly cannot afford?
The Prime Minister
I think it is important that we ensure that Europe does not make the situation worse through new regulation that could stop the exploitation of shale gas. That was part of what we discussed at the European Council. Also, there is an opportunity to get cheaper supplies of energy if we can increase competition within the single market, and that should be the aim of our policy.
Debate on the Address
John Redwood Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s speech and the contents of the Gracious Speech.
I urge my right hon. Friend to telephone the President of the United States and say that it is high time Guantanamo Bay was closed down, which we read the President is minded to do. It is a moral blot on the west that people are still there without facing trial or being released for their liberty. If there are people for whom there is not enough evidence for a proper trial but about whom there are still legitimate worries, could they not be let out under surveillance? Surely it is high time we no longer tolerated that prison.
I strongly support what the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister said about our armed forces. They have shown enormous strength, great professional service and huge bravery, especially in Afghanistan. I hope that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary will move to get our troops away from risk and danger in Afghanistan as soon as possible. Some might have to stay there for longer, to provide training and support, but surely the Afghans are by now sufficiently trained to do the patrolling and take on the more dangerous tasks. They have the local languages and contacts. I want our troops out of risk and out of danger. So many have died. They have created the conditions in which the Afghans can now have a more secure future, so please now trust the Afghans and take our troops away from those risks.
I hope that the Prime Minister will be extremely careful about being dragged into any intervention in Syria. None of us likes what the regime is doing—the terror, the bombing and the huge loss of life is unacceptable —but we also know that the forces of opposition range from the friendly and those in favour of democracy and liberty to very different types of people whom we would not normally choose to be our allies. While I welcome the Prime Minister’s wish to use what diplomatic weight the United Kingdom has to try to find a solution, I hope that he will resist any hot-headed moves to commit our troops to Syria, whether directly on the ground or indirectly, and be very careful about the idea that killing some more Syrians might be a helpful contribution to an extremely dangerous situation.
I welcome the fact that the Gracious Speech has relatively few Bills in it. That is very good news. We legislate too much in this House, and we often legislate in haste and repent at our leisure. I think everybody would agree that this Government are trying to reform a very large number of things already. A lot of very complex legislation has been put through affecting many of our public services. Surely now is the time for Ministers to supervise those reforms and ensure that they are well thought through, properly administered and embedded, while the rest of us must subject them, and every penny of public spending that Ministers propose, to increasingly extensive scrutiny.
This Government face a mighty task. They inherited an extremely broken and damaged economy. All Ministers now need to lend their weight and their talent to dealing with that one central issue and not get too distracted by other things of interest abroad, and we in this House need to make sure that every penny they propose to spend is well spent, because the origins of our debt and borrowing crisis lie in an enormous surge in public spending. Unfortunately, some of that spending was not well judged and did not lead to the better schools and hospitals that all parties and people of good will want but, instead, added to the complexity, the unnecessary cost and sometimes the waste throughout the public services.
In order to promote this economic recovery, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will inject a new sense of urgency through his new energy Minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. One of the most oppressive things about our current economic situation is the very high energy prices that have been imposed on individuals, families and businesses, and we now need to regard cheaper energy as fundamental to getting better economic growth. Our American friends and competitors have energy prices 50% below our own for running industry, which these days is often more energy-intensive than labour-intensive. That is too big a gap, and it is a matter of great urgency. I hope the Government will look very carefully at ways to get energy prices down and to go for cheaper energy in the United Kingdom.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the pursuit of misconceived green energy policies has contributed to the problem that he is identifying—namely, that we are now one of the most expensive places to generate energy in Europe and as a result our industries are suffering as regards competitiveness?
Mr Redwood
I think that the Government need to re-examine the whole carbon tax regime, which is not imposed by our Asian or American competitors, and the balance of power generation for electricity, because we seem to choose to generate a rather high proportion by extremely expensive means. I would impose this simple test: is it going to work and is it going to be cheaper?
The Government would be wise to understand that we may not be too far away from an unfortunate conjunction of events on a cold winter’s day when there is no wind blowing and we are very short of energy. I am worried that a number of our important old power stations are being pensioned off or forcibly converted before we have put the alternatives in place. As the Prime Minister has rightly said, that should have been done by the previous Government, who spent 13 years arguing over whether to have new nuclear or new gas and did not put in place the replacement and back-up power that we clearly need with a strategy that relies heavily on wind and other intermittent renewables and where an EU set of rules requires us to close down prematurely a series of older power stations that we might still need.
Indeed, I would hope that one of the new energy Minister’s urgent decisions will be to ask for permission or derogation to keep open some of the older power stations for another two or three years while the Government put in place the necessary permits, licences and investment framework for the replacement power stations—which will, I think, have to be gas powered—in order to ensure back-up and security of supply. One of the important tasks of government in the overall task of keeping the country secure is to keep the lights on, and we need to do more to make sure that that is happening.
I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will encourage the Chancellor to go further and faster in sorting out the banks. Some of us are extremely impatient about the way in which the Royal Bank of Scotland, the recipient of so much public subsidy and shareholding, is still not able to help finance a proper recovery. It is extremely difficult to have a strong economic recovery in this country at a time when our major bank is still undertaking such a massive slimming programme and trying to reduce its loans and exposure to risk because it got itself into difficulties under the previous regulators and remains in difficulties under the new regulators. There are regulatory fixes; I do not wish to go into the technical details, but I hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will move quickly and more purposefully to split up RBS and create working banks to finance the faster recovery that all parties in this House clearly want.
That would also help with private infrastructure. Those on the Government and, I think, Labour Front Benches are keen to promote more large infrastructure projects, and it would be very good if they could be financed privately. We are many years beyond the initiation of that idea under Labour, and then under the coalition, but we are yet to see the commitment of large financing to the power, transport and wider broadband and other communications projects needed for economic development and to trigger more economic growth through the construction industry. I hope that more attention will be directed to tackling those issues.
I am very pleased that at the core of the Gracious Speech, as the Prime Minister said, is his wish to do more to control our borders sensibly. I am a free-enterprise free trader—I am all in favour of talent coming in and of diversity in our country. However, I think that most of us believe that far too many people came in far too quickly, creating difficulties for housing, health and other service provision. When new people arrive in our country, we want them, as well as the people already settled here, to enjoy a reasonable lifestyle and for that to be achieved at a pace with which the existing community is happy.
I think the big mood of anger that we saw in Thursday’s elections stems from the feeling that many people have that some of those who arrive in our country get free and easy access to public services and benefits before they become British citizens and valued members of our community. People ask, “Is this fair at a time of cuts, pressure and difficulty? Can we really afford to have hundreds of thousands of new people coming in who are immediately eligible for high-quality public services and welfare provision?” When we see the details of what the Prime Minister is suggesting, I hope that a fair and sensible system will be introduced.
In meeting the European Union obligations on the freedom and movement of workers, it would be a very good idea to say that while of course people can come in to take a job, that would not make them eligible to receive a welfare or top-up benefit of any kind, and that it would not give them automatic entitlement to a lot of fringe benefits for their wider family. It should be the free movement of workers, not the free movement of benefit-seekers. I believe that the contributory principle is enforced in other parts of the EU, so why do we not have a rule that says that people can get access to welfare benefits and services only if they have paid national insurance for five years, or—to cover those who are already settled here but who, through no fault of their own, have not been fortunate enough to have a decent work record—if they have been in full-time education in Britain for five years? We need to look at whether we can use that contributory principle to provide some discipline.
Something that is of great interest to the trade union movement and the Labour party, as well as to the rest of us, is the impact that high volumes of migration have had on wages. Because Britain has been such a welcoming home to so many people, it has seen a large number of migrants from the rest of Europe. That has undoubtedly acted as a damper on wage levels at the lower end of the market. Often, people of great talent and skill come in and do jobs well beneath their skill level for very low wages because they are better than the wages where they come from. Some of that is a good thing, but too much of it creates enormous difficulties because it means that people who have been here for many years or were born here cannot get a job, the overall level of wages is rather low and living standards are not as high as we would like. That causes anger and tension in local communities.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would help if the minimum wage in this country was enforced vigorously?
Mr Redwood
I do not think that the minimum wage is high enough for a family. Our ambitions should be rather higher. It is a Labour cop-out to say that all the problems can be solved by enforcing the minimum wage. We all know that, on the whole, people do not live on the minimum wage, but get benefit top-ups. If people have family commitments, they of course need benefit top-ups.
I am talking about the justice of a system in which there are people in Britain who cannot get a job at all and lots of other people coming in from outside who are taking jobs on very low wages and expecting welfare top-ups, making it difficult to get the welfare bill down. That does not make any sense. There is a double bill for Britain: we have to pay the full welfare costs of the British person who cannot get the job and the top-up costs for the person who comes in from outside. Labour should take that point seriously and worry about it.
British people expect the Government, in trying to keep the country secure, to have the power to get rid of terrorist suspects and other unpleasant individuals who have, perhaps foolishly, been let in. I want the Government to appear strong and to be able to act strongly when necessary. There is huge public will for this House to gain powers that enable us to extradite people who are guilty of crimes or who are suspected of crimes and need to go elsewhere to be tried properly.
My final point is about Europe. I know that the Prime Minister is not keen to have a long debate on Europe. The trouble is that Europe is no longer a single subject; it is about the life that we lead. If we want to be sure that we can control eligibility to our welfare system, we have to sort out European welfare issues. If we want to extradite people from Britain, we need to sort out the European Court of Human Rights and will soon have to sort out the European Court of Justice as well, because there is an important European constraint on the power of Governments to act in that area. If we want to have cheap energy, we may well need to change European energy policy as well as our own. We can make immediate progress through derogations and permissions, but it would be far better to change the overall energy policy, because the whole of Europe is being damaged by its dear energy strategy, which allows America, Asia and others to take the jobs and markets that we need. We need to control our borders, keep the lights on and extradite people who deserve to be tried somewhere else. To do that, we need to sort out the European issue, as well as all the individual issues in their own right. I wish the Prime Minister every success in that.
I do not want to belong to a powerless Parliament. I do not want to belong to an impotent Parliament. I want to belong to a Parliament that can give redress to angry people outside if we think that they are right. I want to belong to a Parliament that controls our borders. I want to belong to a Parliament that settles our energy crisis. I want to belong to a Parliament that can legislate to finalise who has welfare entitlement and who does not. We are not in that happy position today. That is why I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that we need a new relationship with the European Union. Bring it on as soon as possible and put it to this House of Commons, because without it this House of Commons is, indeed, impotent.