Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers

Debate between John Redwood and Kate Green

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman asked that question, because initially the Welsh Labour Government intended to rely on the AS-levels, which, of course, they could do because, unlike in England, AS-levels had continued in Wales. However, we have a national, UK-wide university system, so I very much welcomed the consistency of decision across Wales, England and Scotland to ensure that students from Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales could all access universities throughout the UK.

Today’s debate is not simply about the Government’s policy and their inability to govern competently; it is also about integrity and process. It is about what the Prime Minister knew, what the Secretary of State knew and when they knew it. It is about why, when faced with concerns about their chosen system, they did not do anything to address them. Our motion is not about scoring party political points; most of all it is about transparent government and learning from the mistakes that were made this year so that they are not made again in future. That is why I hope all Members from all parties will support the motion. As constituency MPs, we all know that what has happened since August has shattered confidence in this Government among young people, their families and educational professionals.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

In the spirit of co-operation across the Chamber, I am sure that we all want to do the right thing for the class of 2021, so does Labour want the exams to be later next year to give more time for tuition?

[Kate Green]

Yes indeed we do, but the Government need to start to plan that now so that markers can be recruited, schools can schedule their learning and teaching and UCAS and universities can plan their admissions process. We still do not have a clear decision from the Government.

The collapse in confidence must be addressed, because only if confidence is in place will we make a success of the reopening of our education settings and the exams to come in the academic year that is just starting, as the right hon. Gentleman mentions. The mistakes that were made this summer must be understood and learned from, and they must not be repeated.

Privileges

Debate between John Redwood and Kate Green

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for this early opportunity to debate the report of the Committee of Privileges, which we published last week, and for tabling a motion in the terms requested by the Committee. She was good enough to inform me that she is not able to be present in the Chamber this afternoon to move the motion, and I thank the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for doing so and for supporting the Committee’s report.

This case has proved rather protracted, for reasons I will come to, but it is essentially a very simple matter, so I will try to keep my remarks as brief as possible. As the hon. Gentleman outlined, Mr Cummings failed to obey, first, an order of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee and, then, an order of the House itself to attend an oral evidence hearing. When the House referred this to the Privileges Committee as an alleged contempt, we agreed a resolution on process that is appended to our report. It is based on a resolution agreed by our predecessor Committee some years ago when considering the case of News International witnesses who were alleged to have committed a contempt by misleading a Select Committee. We have adhered strictly to the procedures set out in that resolution, even though it has had the effect of lengthening our inquiry.

We invited Mr Cummings to give oral evidence, but despite our giving him ample opportunity to agree a date, it proved impossible to do so. In an email to us, and again in his blog last week, Mr Cummings has made various mis-statements about this. I do not wish to detain the House unduly, but I want to put on public record a rebuttal of one or two of his assertions.

In his blog, Mr Cummings states, in relation to the date of a projected evidence session before the Committee of Privileges, as agreed in December:

“We tentatively agreed 31 Jan”

but

“they cancelled the hearing in January and declined to reschedule it”.

Our report sets out what actually happened. At the start of December we offered Mr Cummings a selection of dates for a hearing in January. In response, Mr Cummings told us that he would “probably” come on 31 January—the latest of the dates we offered—but that he would confirm before Christmas. He did not.

I wrote to Mr Cummings on 10 January, seeking confirmation. I received no reply. The Committee’s Clerk emailed him on 23 January, also seeking a response. He replied on 28 January:

“helo ive just seen this, I will reply this afternoon”.

There was no further reply. On 29 January, with two days to go until the proposed evidence session, and having had no confirmation that he would attend, the Committee met and decided that it had no alternative but to cancel the session and bring our inquiry to as rapid a conclusion as possible.

In his blog, Mr Cummings states:

“My last letter to the Committee of 26/2 is below. I got no answer...”

That is quite untrue. On 28 February, two days after his email, I wrote to him to respond in detail to his comments. I received no reply. All these letters, emails and responses are published on the Committee’s website.

At an earlier stage—this is similar to the experience of the DCMS Committee—Mr Cummings had insisted that all Members of Parliament taking part in the hearing should take an oath. I replied, pointing out that that would not be possible; we were willing to administer the oath to him, at his own request, but the oath could be administered only to witnesses, just as in the law courts the judge and barristers do not take an oath. In his blog, he described that argument as “laughable”. He also says that the Committee

“replied that No, they didn’t want to promise to tell the truth and sadly they weren’t able to make such a promise(!) but would I come anyway”.

Those comments are completely fabricated. I will not continue outlining the exchanges; anyone who wishes to can read our full report, and the various letters and email exchanges published with it, and make up their own mind as to whether it was the Committee of Privileges or Mr Cummings who was behaving unreasonably.

Notwithstanding those responses from Mr Cummings, I want to assure the House that the Committee has done its very best to approach the case scrupulously. Our report assesses whether his conduct amounts to contempt of Parliament. It might seem obvious that a refusal to obey an order of the House, or of its Committees, is a contempt of Parliament. However, in certain exceptional circumstances it is conceivable that a prospective witness might be justified in declining to give evidence, if they have genuine grounds to fear that they would be treated unfairly, or that giving evidence might significantly prejudice future court proceedings against them.

The report considers the arguments advanced by Mr Cummings to see whether there were extenuating circumstances that might have justified his conduct, particular in relation to the risk of legal proceedings against him, which Government Members have mentioned today. The report concludes that the DCMS Committee had offered Mr Cummings a series of alternative dates for a hearing and that he had not supplied any evidence that he was at significant risk of criminal prosecution, or that suggested any significant flaw in that Committee’s inquiry or in its handling of witnesses. Legal inquiries into whether he or others might have been at risk of future criminal proceedings were assessed in the light of assurances that we received from regulators, which led us to understand that he himself was not facing criminal proceedings.

We agree with the DCMS Committee that Mr Cummings’s evidence would have been relevant to its inquiry—a few moments ago we heard more detail from the Committee’s Chair about why that would have been the case—and we agree that his refusal to attend was a significant interference with that Committee’s work. We conclude that he committed a contempt by his refusal to obey first the Committee’s order and then the House’s order. We recommend that he be admonished by resolution of the House, to be communicated to him by the Clerk of the House. We do not recommend the old practice of summoning him to the Bar, which we believe would merely give him an opportunity to grandstand. The motion before the House, in conjunction with the report that it approves, constitutes the admonishment. If agreed to, no further action by the House will be sought in this matter.

Finally—this point has been raised a number of times this afternoon—the report comments that

“the case of Mr Cummings has raised further questions as to the enforceability of the House’s powers and those of its committees to secure evidence”.

The Committee will therefore now return to its wider inquiry into these matters, referred to it in the previous Parliament, and we plan shortly to announce a series of oral evidence sessions. We hope to co-ordinate our inquiry with the Liaison Committee’s current inquiry into Select Committee effectiveness.

[John Redwood]

Will the hon. Lady’s Committee pursue comparisons to see what might be working more effectively in other democratic institutions?

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that excellent suggestion. I urge right hon. and hon. Member to submit their own evidence to the Committee—we will shortly publish details on how that can be done.

It has been apparent to all of us for some time that the current situation is unsatisfactory. I acknowledge that admonishment is a fairly feeble sanction against an individual who does not appear to feel a sense of shame at his own behaviour. The historical punishments used by the House—fining and imprisonment—have not been used for many years and, although they have not been abolished, it is highly unlikely that any attempt to use them now would survive legal challenge. None of the alternative options—they may be summed up as doing nothing, attempting to assert the House’s rights through resolutions or changes to the Standing Orders, or legislating to confer powers on the House—is without objection, which is why the problem is still with us; if there was an easy answer, something would have been done a long time ago.

Notwithstanding that, the Committee wishes to canvass options vigorously, including, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) suggests, by looking at how other legislatures around the world have dealt with the issue. We will focus not only on ways of strengthening sanctions, but at ensuring, as we have striven to do in this inquiry, that the House is fair and scrupulous in the way it treats witnesses. We intend to report to the House with proposals as soon as possible.

I will conclude by placing on the record my thanks to my colleagues on the Privileges Committee for their assistance in bringing the report to the House, to the Leader of the House for tabling the motion, and to the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), for introducing the debate. I urge the House to support the motion.

Women and the Economy

Debate between John Redwood and Kate Green

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

My right hon. Friend is right. I suspect that neither of us has 70 years to wait for the gap to be equalised. I shall return to that point later.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Why did not the last Labour Government solve this problem?

[Kate Green]

We did an awful lot better than the coalition Government and this Government. [Interruption.] Yes, we did! The speed of reduction under the Labour Government in the past decade meant that the gender pay gap came down by around a third, but that progress has sadly not been maintained under Conservative-led Governments.

Scotland Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Kate Green

Monday 8th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

The right hon. Gentleman and I might be able to agree that that would not be in the spirit of the discussions that we have had around the purpose of this Bill, which is to create the freedom for Scotland to operate within its devolved powers and to do so within the context of, and as an equal partner in, its relationships with the UK Government.

[John Redwood]

In order for England as well as Scotland to feel that justice is done, how would the hon. Lady recommend that the Scottish grant be adjusted for the money it will be collecting in its own right from taxation?

[Kate Green]

Clearly, the fiscal settlement will be of crucial importance to the people in Scotland, to my constituents and to the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman. That is a function of negotiation that I would expect to see as the fiscal settlement is worked out. One principle that was discussed under the Smith negotiations was the principle of no detriment. We can already see that there are issues to be ironed out here, such as those of operational costs, and the potential knock-on effects and costs of Scottish Government decisions about benefit levels, entitlements and top-ups. For example, it could be that a decision of the Scottish Government creates a passporting through to an entitlement, the cost of which falls to the UK Government. It could be that the decision of the Scottish Government in relation to crediting people into national insurance contributions creates a consequence for the national insurance fund. That is complex to disentangle, and it will be really important for this Parliament to have a mechanism for ongoing scrutiny. I hope that the Minister, in responding to this debate, will say how he thinks that scrutiny will work.

There seems to be surprise that the wording of the Bill appears to have fettered some of the scope of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament to control the devolved welfare benefits. There is also surprise that only new welfare benefits can be created, and not benefits in relation to, for example, education or health. There are concerns that clause 19, which deals with disabilities, carers and industrial injuries benefits, may be worded too restrictively. It might not be possible to bring certain people into the ambit of the benefit, or people could have a question mark over their qualification for the benefit. For example, it might be that they live on one side of the border, but provide care for someone who lives on the other side of the border, and that needs to be sorted out.

There is concern over the provisions on topping up the reserved benefits and over whether there is an intention for the Scottish Parliament to take an across-the-board approach to topping up those reserved benefits, or whether it is merely a discretion to top up benefits for an individual in one individual case.

I think that we were surprised at the ambit of decisions on discretionary housing payments that will be delegated to Scotland in clause 22, which could potentially fetter the opportunity that colleagues in Scotland might wish to take completely to eliminate the harm done by the bedroom tax. There are also worries about clause 23 and the restriction of the application of short-term temporary assistance, which appears to leave out the possibility that families with children with an ongoing need for support could be excluded from the provisions of the existing legislation. These issues will need to be sorted out if the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government and the Scottish National party are to take advantage of the full fiscal autonomy that they have said is their medium-term ambition. We cannot wait for the medium term to resolve these issues; they must be resolved in Committee.

Important new provisions are introduced in clause 24 for the housing element of universal credit. Again, this could be a useful provision for the Scottish Government, as they would be able to reflect the characteristics of the Scottish housing and rental markets. For example—I hope that the Minister will tell me whether I am right to think this—they could vary their broad rental market agreement areas or the local housing allowance. However, there are again restrictions on the extent of the powers being devolved. They will not, as I read it, apply to those who receive housing benefit rather than the housing element of universal credit. They will not apply when people switch at pension age into receipt of pension credit. There is a gap in the legislation in ensuring that the devolution of housing benefit is sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that the Scottish Government will have the incentives and levers to use reductions in the housing benefit bill to enable them to build new homes.

I welcome the provisions on the devolution of employment programmes such as the Work programme and Work Choice. This is a sensible reflection of the different characteristics of different labour markets, although I remind SNP colleagues that the differences exist not just between England and Scotland but within Scotland. That is why Labour proposed in our election manifesto to devolve the Work programme and Work Choice to local authority or combined local authority level. I would expect to hear from Scottish parliamentarians and the SNP what their approach will be to that double devolution to reflect local labour markets.

I say to Ministers that I have read the provisions of clause 26 on “work for your benefits” on a number of occasions now and have absolutely no idea what they are getting at. I hope that there might be some clarity tonight.

Finally, there will be some significant operational questions, because the smooth delivery of benefits is as important to benefits recipients as the amounts and entitlements that the system offers them. Decisions taken in Scotland could of course affect operational workload elsewhere, such as in relation to decisions about mandatory reconsideration or changing the assessment process, which could have a significant effect on appeals workloads. I note that a fully functioning separate Scottish tribunal system will not be in place until 2023.

In conclusion, it is clear to me that we have a shared intention but a gap and a lack of specificity in providing for the intentions that we all understood to underpin Smith. They must be addressed before the Bill completes its parliamentary passage. We cannot leave issues of such grave constitutional importance in such uncertainty. It is clear that the scale of the constitutional change implied in the Bill is extensive, complex and impacts on the whole of the UK. That is why we will need to ensure that we have the mechanisms to keep its impact and effect under close and continuous scrutiny here in this House.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Kate Green

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

The problem with using the tax threshold as a means of not taking money away with one hand and giving it back with the other is that it gives to people who do not need as well as to people who do. By contrast, tax credits targeted at lower-income households give to people who need, and the tax credit is tapered away rather than kept at the same level as people rise up the income spectrum.

[Mr Redwood]

What a miserable world the hon. Lady lives in. People on £30,000 and £40,000 need more money as well as people on £10,000 and £20,000, and I am here to try to ensure that they get more money. I do not believe that the Government should take all their money; they should be allowed to keep more of it so that they have more to spend, which would create more jobs. I thought that was part of the Opposition’s argument—or it would be, were we having a different debate. They will not use that argument today, because we are debating benefits.

My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are trying to deal with part of the problem by taking people out of tax altogether and cutting the amount of tax that those at the lower end of the income scale have to pay. That is a very good thing to be doing. They are also about to launch their universal credit in trial systems. The whole purpose of universal credit, as described, is to make it more worth while to work and to deal with the fact that if benefit is taken away too quickly, people face a high rate of tax combined with benefit withdrawal, which is a big disincentive to going to work. It might even get in the way of their going to work, as they might not have enough money for the bus fare, the clothes they need and all the rest of the things one needs when setting oneself back up in a job. That is very important.

Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Kate Green

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

I am not trying to say anything that contentious. I am trying to unpack what is going on in this clause, because we are in Committee. I was not going to presume to give my views on total public spending, because that is a matter for another day and another debate. I am trying to get the Committee to understand that we are dealing with three different types of project, and the health one is closer to the pure public sector project. Even if it is carried out in a private sector facility with some so-called “private sector risk”, all the patients will be paid for by the NHS if it is for the NHS and so it is a flow of public revenue. We have to account for it in the proper way and be realistic about that.

[Kate Green]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an interesting argument. Does he not also accept that one of the difficulties with long-term infrastructure projects is that they have different phases, some of which may be susceptible to public intervention and some of which, later on, will require private investment. Let me give the example of a large site in my constituency that is currently in private ownership and has large redevelopment potential. The initial investment will have to be public investment to decontaminate the land and prepare the planning requirements, but down the line one would hope to see private investment. Does that not create a further accounting conundrum?

[Mr Redwood]

Yes, indeed. My point, which is not hostile to the Minister and is merely an attempt to inform the debate, is that we are discussing a set of very different projects and we are not sure what we are talking about because the Bill is very generic and general. We can probably all come to the conclusion that for this to work we will need precise control over what is being proposed—of how much of it is public, how much is private, how much involves a direct charge on the taxpayer and how much involves a guarantee or indemnity.

If a guarantee or indemnity is involved, I am sure that the Minister, with his forensic financial backgrounds and skills, will be able to keep control of it and to reassure the Committee that it is unlikely to be called on unless it was absolutely essential and a very important project would not go ahead without it, which would mean that it was a reasonable risk to run. I am happy at that end of the spectrum, as we will have to trust the Minister’s judgment and this is a good Minister with the skills and ability to do such things. We need to probe when such projects are proposed, however, as we are the custodians of public money and do not want to end up with white elephant projects with huge guarantees and indemnities that will in due course have to be met by some Government.

I am also concerned about the projects in which there is more of a mixture or a muddle, because they must be fitted in to the public expenditure plans. That does not prejudge whether the expenditure should be higher or lower, and there will be different views on that in the Committee, but they will need to be fitted into the plans. A large sum is involved—£50 billion—and we do not know the time scale. The Government might want to come back and ask for more money, and a provision allows them to do so by order, so I want a little more information from the Minister about how such projects will fit into the public expenditure plans and how Ministers collectively will evaluate the mixed projects that receive a big flow of public subsidy and, more particularly, those that really are public sector projects. They might be dressed up as private sector projects, but as far as I am concerned if all the money for the provision on behalf of customers or users of the service comes from the state, that is a public sector project and the private sector is merely a franchisee or agent of the state. If all the money comes from the state, I expect the state to have a grip of the project and to satisfy us that it represents value for money that is being organised in the best way.

I am not ideologically driven as regards the provision of state services. I think that should be done in the cheapest possible way, provided that they offer good quality, and that always causes problems, but I hope that the Minister will give us some guidance about how he will differentiate and seek reassurances about the granting of those indemnities and guarantees and about what proportion of the projects will involve pure public spending, as the Bill entitles him to spend as well as offer guarantees.