Points of Order

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the hon. Lady for what she has said. She is an extremely distinguished denizen of the House, both in respect of her constituency work and of her chairing of very important Committees—the Health and Social Care Committee and the Liaison Committee. She speaks with considerable authority and gravitas by virtue of those roles and the reputation she has garnered. I do not want to pick an argument with the Leader of the House—he and I get on extremely well—but points have been made and the hon. Lady has underlined them. If she is dissatisfied, my advice to her is the advice I regularly give to Members wanting to know how they can take a matter forward—the word begins with “p” and ends in “t. My advice is: persist, persist, persist. There is nothing to prevent her from returning to the matter when we come back after the conference recess. On the Conservative Benches, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who is not in this place—I believe he is chairing various Committees this afternoon or attending Committee meetings—taught me decades ago that in politics quantity, persistence and, above all, repetition are at least as important as the quality of your argument. It is not good enough to have a good point and make it once—you have to keep going. If I may say so, at the risk of causing some disquiet on grounds of courtesies, I would suggest to the hon. Lady that she should follow the Churchill adage in pursuit of her cause: KBO—keep buggering on—at all times.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I, of course, associate myself with all the remarks we have heard about your stepping down. I shall not embarrass you by throwing more compliments at you. May I reinforce the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) and the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston, have made? Last week, the Leader of the House was disgraceful and irresponsible in his comments about Dr Nicholl, and he should come to this Chamber to apologise from the Dispatch Box. That would be the courteous thing to do. More importantly, do you agree that if the Government are confident that they have a system to ensure our constituents and patients will get timely access to medicines, they should publish the analysis now, so that we can scrutinise it in this House of Commons in the time we have left?

[Mr Speaker]

I feel sure that we will return to both issues erelong, if the hon. Gentleman’s legendary indefatigability does not desert him in the weeks and months ahead—it will not, and therefore we will hear more on those subjects.

Points of Order

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am sorry that it is necessary for the hon. Gentleman repeatedly to write to Ministers on this matter, and it is obvious that he is dissatisfied with the response or lack thereof. My only advice to the hon. Gentleman is the advice I usually give to Members irritated in these circumstances, which is persist—persist man, persist. He is a dexterous and adroit parliamentary performer, and he will know the instruments available to him. If he believes, as I rather imagine he does, that the matter is urgent, he may wish to deploy a procedure that might give him a chance of raising the matter with a Minister in the Chamber on that basis.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The House may well not have seen that another issue has just broken in the news, which is that more than 48,000 women have not received correspondence regarding cervical screening appointments and have gone without correspondence regarding cervical screening results, 500 of which, apparently, were abnormal results. This is the latest failing of Capita, and Capita should lose this contract and the service should come in-house. The previous Health and Social Care Secretary, who is now the Foreign Secretary, would routinely update the House on these types of matter. Has the current Health and Social Care Secretary given you an indication that he is going to come to this House to update us, so that we can ask questions on behalf of our constituents?

[Mr Speaker]

The short answer to the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is no, but I would very much expect that the House will be addressed on this matter very soon, certainly within a matter of days. Like the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), the hon. Gentleman is well versed in the instruments available to him. If he does not get a statement, or in lieu of a statement and as a reserve mechanism, he knows that he can seek to raise the matter on an urgent basis. I believe that on 528 occasions over the past nine and a half years the Chair has judged that a matter is urgent, whether the Government think it is or not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We cannot continue with the historical injustice of allowing such unequal representation. That representation currently allows for the electorate of one seat to be twice the size of another’s or, to put it in other words, allows one elector’s vote to be worth twice that of another. This injustice, long recognised, must be resolved.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his well-deserved promotion to the Treasury Bench. In the past, Ministers have argued that cutting the number of MPs will save the taxpayer £12 million. That is exactly the same amount of money that the previous Prime Minister has just spent on his lavender list of resignation honours. Is it not the case that this boundary redistribution is proceeding on the basis of a register from which 2 million people are excluded, and is that not an absolute affront to democracy?

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to recognise that cutting the number of MPs from 650 to 600 will not just save £12 million, but save £66 million over the course of a Parliament. At a time when many areas of public life have found savings, it is right that we should put our own house in order. Equally, it is right that we should finally establish the democratic principle of constituencies with an equal number of voters, which was first called for by the Chartists back in 1838 and recently endorsed by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

We have made huge progress in ensuring that we have registers of beneficial ownership in the overseas territories. We are also publishing the beneficial ownership register for the UK. The progress that has been made in the overseas territories is the greatest under any Government in history, which perhaps is one reason Transparency International said that the summit had been a good day for anti-corruption.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The Panama papers have shown how illicit finance robs the very poorest countries of the world. Malawi, for example, loses about $130 million a year through such finance. Will the Minister explain why the Malawian company Press Trust Overseas Ltd cannot have its tax affairs scrutinised because it is in the British Virgin Islands? Should not the summit have come to an agreement to force such overseas jurisdictions to publish central beneficial registers?

[Matthew Hancock]

If the hon. Gentleman cares so much about the matter, he might have congratulated us on the progress that we made at the summit. He will be delighted to know that the British Virgin Islands has signed up to have a beneficial ownership register and to share that information with the UK Government. We are making progress in tackling the scourge of corruption, about which previous Governments, including the one he supported, did too little.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. This is true not just about ethnicity in the senior civil service but about gender and people with disabilities. We need to ensure that the senior civil service represents the country that it serves. Steps are under way to ensure that that happens and I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to reach that conclusion.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

We welcome the Minister to his place and the Opposition support genuine efforts to increase the diversity of the civil service. He will be aware that 58% of permanent secretaries were privately educated, as were 53% of senior diplomats and 45% of public body chairs. Would he therefore support targets to increase the numbers from state education at the top of our civil service?

[Matthew Hancock]

I certainly strongly agree that it is important that as well as considering gender, ethnicity and other characteristics we ensure that people from all backgrounds—whichever school they went to and whichever part of the country they come from—can get to senior levels in the civil service. We have a programme under way to ensure that that happens.

Tunisia, and European Council

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support; I want to continue this ever closer union between us for as long as possible.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

In Leicester, we all hope and pray for the safe return of Ray and Angela Fisher. I am grateful for the commitments that the Prime Minister has made with respect to the embassy and Foreign Office staff. Does the Prime Minister agree that Daesh thrives on divisions in the region, whether those involve Kurds or Arabs, Sunni or Shi’a? What is he doing to build an effective united front against Daesh?

[The Prime Minister]

I join the hon. Gentleman in wishing his constituents well. On building a united front, there is now an enormous international coalition that includes many Arab and Gulf countries. We need to keep that coalition together because all of us bring different things. Some of those countries, as Sunni Arab states, will bring the ability to talk to Sunni Muslims in Iraq and bring them away from Daesh and towards a belief in an integrated Iraqi Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I point out to the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect, that the need for austerity was caused by the huge budget deficit that we inherited from the Government of which he was a part. We would rather have not had to do that, but I give credit to civil servants across the country who have done a huge amount. The civil service is smaller than at any time since the second world war, but it is doing more than it was before and productivity has improved dramatically.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The Paymaster General has spent the last five years attacking civil servants’ facility time and check-off. We now learn, a week before Dissolution, that he is inserting a gagging clause into the civil service code. Why is it so necessary and urgent to change the civil service code now?

[Mr Maude]

The change to which the hon. Gentleman refers simply makes clear what was already the case. There will be considerable concern about whistleblowing, and we will do whatever is needed to ensure that we continue to be much more open about things that have gone wrong. Things are much less suppressed than they were when the Labour party was in power.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am proud that the UK is now ranked as having the most transparent Government in the world. It undoubtedly has an effect in driving efficiency and savings. The ability to benchmark and compare spending in different parts of Government is a hugely powerful driver of efficiency and savings, and we intend to continue down that path.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Can we perhaps have a bit more transparency with respect to ministerial interests? This week, we saw Ministers hobnobbing at the black and white ball, although I noticed that the Paymaster General was sadly excluded from the Cabinet auction, and we saw new analysis showing that in the past 12 months Tory Ministers have made 168 ministerial visits to marginal Tory-held constituencies. In the interests of transparency, will the Minister now provide a full list of all ministerial visits and the reasons the locations were chosen, and will he publish the ministerial list of interests?

[Mr Maude]

It sounds like the hon. Gentleman is getting a little concerned about the result of the upcoming election. The Government are disclosing more about what Ministers do than any Government have ever done before, and enormously more than the Government whom he supported before 2010.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point and she is completely correct to say that an official produced the figure of £1 million. However, when asked for the workings and calculations that underpinned that number they were unable to produce them, and it turned out to be a completely fictional number. The correct calculation of the cost is more likely to be a negative number and a saving to the taxpayer, as well as being a measure that enables the PCS to do what its members now prefer and have a direct relationship with them.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The Paymaster General has reiterated his support for getting rid of check-off, even though the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has written to Departments saying that there could be legal costs associated with that. A leaked HMRC memo talks about marginalising the unions, which could lead to industrial action among civil service unions. Does that show that Ministers are playing irresponsible party politics with the trade unions, and that the right hon. Gentleman should abandon his plans to get rid of check-off?

[Mr Maude]

It is always reassuring to find that the old truths turn out to be enduring and that Labour speaks for its paymasters, the trade unions.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that this is not another invasion of Iraq. It is a response to a desperate plea by the new Iraqi Government for outside help to combat what is seen as an existential threat to the Iraqi state; nor is ISIL just another enemy in the complex and lethal sectarianism of the middle east. It is a monster, with a bloodlust that can only be compared to the Genghis Khan Mongols or the latter-day Nazis—and one that the world simply cannot turn aside from or wash its hands of. But equally, it is foolish not to recognise the risks of military action through air strikes: the inevitable civilian casualties, the death threats to hostages, the very real possibility of terrorist retaliation on British soil and the risk of mission creep, which the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was talking about in terms of taking action towards Syria with a dubious legality—I gather from what he said—and the uncertain and unpredictable consequences for the civil war against Assad.

Perhaps the biggest problem, as always in war, is the exit strategy. No war can be won from the air—we all agree on that—and this war can be won only on the basis of political and diplomatic action, which, frankly, will be quite difficult to achieve. First, this depends on the regional powers that feed ISIL with money, arms and political support reaching an agreement that they will withdraw that oxygen, which keeps the pyre burning. In particular, the oil-smuggling network that was created to evade UN sanctions on Saddam’s Iraq, now in the hands of ISIL and yielding more than $3 million a day, must be stopped via Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Secondly, this depends on achieving some reconciliation across the broken Shi’a-Sunni divide. That is incredibly important. Of course things have flared up with lethal intensity because of the highly discriminatory policies of the last Maliki Government. The new Iraqi Government recognise this. Of course they have been in office for only three weeks, but they have yet to provide a power-sharing agreement that will bring the Sunni majority on side.

Thirdly, the moderate Sunni element needs to be split from the extremists. Again, that is beginning to happen, but the lessons of al-Sahwa, the awakening, which played such a crucial role in stemming the insurgency in 2007-08, need to be revisited. Fourthly—this is the most difficult one of all, but the most important—the really big, major powers in the middle east, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which until recently were implacably opposed to each other, clearly are needed to use their influence to restrain their proxies and to restore at least some co-existence across inflamed sectarian lines. All that will be extremely difficult to achieve; but ultimately, the war against ISIL will be won only if we can reconstruct and repair the broken Iraqi state.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a very good speech. Does he agree that we must do all we can to rebuild trust between the Kurdish Government and the Government in Baghdad, because that will help us to build up civil society in Iraq, which is absolutely key to taking on ISIL?

[Mr Meacher]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Of course that is part of the commitment of the new Iraqi Prime Minister, al-Abadi, to produce a governance within Iraq that takes account of all the key parts of the population, not just the Shi’a and Sunnis, but crucially the Kurds, who are a very important part of this equation.

Again, it cannot be emphasised too strongly that the Iraqi Prime Minister, al-Abadi, has made it absolutely clear that he does not want western and US troops on the ground in Iraq because he believes that he has sufficient volunteers to contest ISIL with Iraqi forces, provided that there is collaboration from air cover. But in the last analysis, the only serious long-term answer for these broken states—not just Iraq, but Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Nigeria—is to restore them again to a real, viable state. It is easy to say that; it is extremely difficult to do. It will take a long time, and it will require enormous, long-term economic and aid commitments, which was patently not apparent after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. That aid will, no doubt, predominantly come from the US and Europe, but it should come from other places as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority on these matters. Regarding the regional actors, does he agree that, although it is welcome that five Arab nations are involved in this mission, they should do all they can to stem the flow of donations from their own citizens to ISIL that has been going on?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful for that intervention and I absolutely agree that all those regional partner-nations must do everything they can, as we must.

The point that I was making is that military force on its own will not be enough. There needs to be a wider, encompassing political framework, with a plan for humanitarian aid and reconstruction, which will ultimately lead us to create a stronger and more accountable Iraqi Government as part of a wider settlement in the middle east. We should contribute to that work, but ultimately it will be for the countries of the region to ensure long-term peace and stability.

In the midst of this important debate, we should reflect on the service of our armed forces and on what we will ask them to do. I believe that throughout the country, whether people agree or disagree with the action being proposed today, our armed forces will always be held in the highest regard. They represent the best of our country and we have a lifelong commitment to supporting them in every way we can.

The judgments we are making are difficult, and there are no easy answers to the situation we find ourselves in. I do not relish the action that we are taking. Like Members from across the House, I come to this debate with a heavy heart, and I am mindful of the risks and uncertainties that undoubtedly lie ahead. However, it is in our national interest to act; it is in the interest of the people of Iraq to act; and it is in the interest of peace and stability in the middle east that we act. That is why I will support the Government motion today.