Channel 4 Privatisation

Debate between John Redwood and Lucy Powell

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

I could not agree more. My hon. Friend makes some excellent points, some of which I will turn to later in my speech.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does not the hon. Lady see the opportunity that could be provided by a new private owner or owners, who could contribute a lot of new ideas, innovation and extra money to transform the channel for the better? Why is she always so pessimistic about any new idea?

[Lucy Powell]

I do not know why the right hon. Gentleman thinks that large American media companies are more innovative than small, British-made institutions such as Channel 4, which has been innovating for the 30 or 40 years since Margaret Thatcher invented it. He might want to rethink his point. We are not known for the blander, more mainstream content that would come from the sell-off. That is not how our success has been built. Creativity means actually being creative.

Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Lucy Powell

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

Oh, no Stalinist. I am someone who believes that there should be a fair valuation, and a fair and balanced approach taken to those who put masts on their land in good faith, expecting that income to come in the future. I will say more on that shortly.

We support the measures in part 1. Smart devices have increasingly become targets for fraud, surveillance and other forms of cyber-attack. We have some concerns that these measures have not come sooner and do not go further. In 2016, the Government promised that

“the majority of online products and services coming into use”

would be

“’secure by default’ by 2021”.

Why are the Government only just bringing this legislation in, given that previous commitment? These requirements should and could have been mandatory from the start, as opposed to our spending four years with a voluntary code. I have real concerns that we are always behind the technology curve. These devices are already being used in ways beyond the scope of this Bill—for example, by stalkers and abusive partners in tracking those they are abusing, as well as in fraud and criminal activity. There is nothing in this Bill about that, let alone measures to address new waves of technology that are already making their way into people’s homes and lives, such as virtual reality.

Moving to part 2, our main concern with this Bill is that it is likely to slow down, rather than speed up, the broadband and 5G roll-out.

[John Redwood]

I was very interested in the hon. Lady’s comment about virtual reality. Does she think we need to change the legislation now to deal with the metaverse, which is meant to be a great opportunity of bringing together various technologies in something new?

[Lucy Powell]

I do. I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concern about the metaverse; we are constantly considerably behind the curve on legislating for the regulation of some of these issues, and of course that will not even be covered by the forthcoming Online Safety Bill either. The pandemic has demonstrated more than ever the importance of broadband to our prosperity, but the Government’s failure to deliver the roll-out is hampering creative industries, businesses and those attempting to work from home.

The Government have consistently rolled back on their commitments. The Secretary of State mentioned that the Prime Minister originally promised full-fibre broadband to every household by 2025. He then downgraded that pledge to universal gigabit-capable broadband to every home. The commitment is now that at least 85% of UK premises will have access to gigabit broadband by 2025. That is downgrade after downgrade, which sells our capacity short.

The National Audit Office expressed serious reservations that even the watered-down target would be met. The main barrier is the Government-funded roll-out to harder-to-reach areas. The unequal roll-out of next generation gigabit broadband will mean that the same households that do not have superfast or, in many cases, as we have already heard, any functioning broadband at all, will continue to fall behind—for years, if not decades, to come. As the Public Accounts Committee said last week, the Government have no detailed plan in place for reaching communities where it is not commercially viable to do so, and there is little in the Bill to address that key issue.

The Bill does make further changes to the electronic communications code, which governs the agreements between telecoms companies and the landowners who host their masts. The code was last updated as recently as 2017, but those changes have not had the desired effect of speeding up roll-out.

Despite promises that rent would not reduce by more than 40%, many community sports grounds, churches and local authorities that host phone masts have had their rents cut by up to 90% or even 95% in some of the cases that we have already heard about today. That will be further exacerbated by the Bill, which hands more power to the telecoms companies in court and disincentivises people from coming forward to have phone masts put on their land in the first place. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) looks like he is itching to come in on that point.

Exiting the European Union

Debate between John Redwood and Lucy Powell

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

I am not giving way, because I have a couple of points to make, and I am conscious that many Members wish to make speeches.

[Lucy Powell]

Where are they then?

[John Redwood]

There are clearly Members on the Opposition Benches wishing to catch Madam Deputy Speaker’s eye.

The second point I want to make is that this is about our balance of trade and our balance of payments. One of the tragedies of our membership of the European Union over nearly 50 years was how we transformed ourselves from an industrial country with a strong farming and fishing industry into one that had been badly damaged by the rules and tariffs that the EU imposed on us and our trade with the rest of the world. It was asymmetric and very cruel.

We lost a large chunk of our motor industry in the first decade of our membership—I think it halved—and we lost a lot of our steel industry. We moved from being a net exporter of fish to being a heavy net importer, with much of our fish taken by foreign vessels and foreign industry. We have lost a lot of our self-sufficiency in temperate food, because the common agricultural policy did not suit us. State aid, cheap energy and so forth on the continent helped places such as the Netherlands to outcompete us on salads and flowers, for example.

We have a big job to do to rebuild ourselves as an industrial, farming and fishing country that is capable of cutting the food miles, cutting the fish miles and delivering more to ourselves and to our own plates through import substitution. I hope that from 1 January, if not before, Ministers will use these new powers to review all the restrictions and rules about trade and tariffs and create a British model that is better and fairer to Britain, so that “made in Britain” means something, and more is made in Britain and willingly bought by British people. It is very difficult for the Opposition to oppose that, although they will doubtless try to, because they always want to sell Britain short and to build the EU up to greater heights. None the less, outside this Chamber there will be great relief to know that at least some people in Parliament wish to see a revival of British fishing, British farming and British industry and to understand that the rules of trade and the skewed subsidies and tariffs against the rest of the world have been extremely damaging to people who want to build businesses and farming activities in the UK and that it is time for a reversal. I wholeheartedly support this measure. I want to take back control and I urge more MPs to get into the spirit of it, and, instead of cavilling and criticising every move that this country wishes to make to be independent, contribute to the debate about how we can be better.

Education and Social Mobility

Debate between John Redwood and Lucy Powell

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

I opened my speech with exactly that comment. I think that that is common ground. However, selecting some people who are good at football or good at academic subjects does not prevent us from providing a good education for everyone else. If we want to have more Nobel prize winners in the future, we should bear in mind that they are likely to be attending the great universities in our country. Do we not want to feed those great universities with the best possible talent from our schooling system, and should not those talented people have been given an education that stretches them and takes them further along the road to great work before they reach the universities? The most successful people at university have often had an extremely good education beforehand. They are self-starters, and understand the importance of that.

[Lucy Powell]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Redwood]

I do not have time, and many other Members wish to speak.

We need to get the maximum number of talented pupils through at the highest possible level, so that they can achieve even greater things at the elite universities.

That brings me to my next problem with the Opposition’s arguments: they completely ignore the fee-paying schools. Some fee-paying schools in our country achieve enormous success academically. They have a double privilege, because they select bright pupils who also have rich family backgrounds. When the two are put together, the combination is explosively successful.

I do not begrudge people a great education if they come from a rich background. I did not come from a rich background myself, but I am grateful for the fact that those people can have a great education, and it is even better that they pay for it themselves as well as paying their taxes. I am not jealous. It must be a great problem to be against all kinds of elite education when we have those great schools with their double advantage. However, a grammar school gives people who are bright but did not come from a rich background an opportunity to compete better against the phenomenally successful elite schools in the public sector. As was rightly pointed out by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), some of our public schools dominate not only academically, but in the sporting world and in other worlds as well, which shows that their combination of resource and selection is very powerful. Surely we need more centres of excellence to which people can gain access without having rich parents.

I find it deeply disappointing that Opposition Front Benchers, having called a debate on this important subject, cannot confirm or deny that they wish to abolish the grammar schools that we have. I have one little tip for the Opposition. I was in opposition for all too many years, and I remember how difficult it was, but, as a shadow spokesman, I always found it helpful to work out my party’s position before challenging the Government on theirs. I needed to make sure that my party’s position on the topic for which I was responsible was sensible and also likely to be popular. I think that the Opposition have failed both tests today. It sounds as if the shadow Secretary of State wants to abolish the grammar schools, but does not have the courage to say so.

Let me issue a plea to the House. I ask Members to get behind the excellent grammar schools that we have, and to get behind the excellent comprehensives that we have. I ask them to understand that where comprehensives and grammars coexist, the comprehensives can do very well, and can achieve great things with their pupils. We do not have enough great schools, so let us not cripple those that we have. I certainly do not want to live in a world in which one has to be rich to go to an elite academy.

Further Education

Debate between John Redwood and Lucy Powell

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lucy Powell]

No. I am going to make some progress.

High-wage, highly skilled and more productive economies have high levels of attainment and investment in 16-to-19 education. International evidence tells us that investing in the literacy and numeracy of students in post-16 education is directly linked to higher productivity, and research shows that the economic returns from investing in 16-to-19 education exceed £20 for every £1 spent.

[John Redwood]

What did the hon. Lady learn from the very high levels of youth unemployment that we saw in 2009-10, when Labour left office, and why were people unable to secure apprenticeships then? [Interruption.]