Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Justine Greening and Mark Field

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The Bill is about ensuring that we have a strong, robust, successful, innovative and high-quality higher education sector for Britain’s young people. The hon. Gentleman sets out problems and then suggests we should not bring forward a Bill to tackle them.

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

It strikes me that the Secretary of State is giving a lot of good detail on the safeguards, which should satisfy most reasonable people. Others may feel there is something of a closed shop on degree-awarding powers, and I am very glad that the Bill will, among other things, do its best to break it down. Such a closed shop is unacceptable, particularly in relation to global education provision, which, as she says, we benefit from and can push out to other parts of the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. For the many institutions that have spent years working steadily to get their own degree-awarding powers, these changes will be welcome. They should not have to wait so long, and once the Bill is passed, they will not have to do so.

[Mark Field]

I suspect institutions that have spent many years trying to get degree-awarding powers and have not quite got them will feel that they have spent a frustratingly long time doing so. None the less, I am sure this provision will be welcomed in the years to come by many of the institutions she is talking about.

[Justine Greening]

I am sure my right hon. Friend is right.

Syria Crisis: UK Response

Debate between Justine Greening and Mark Field

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Mr Speaker, I shall try to answer briefly the points that the hon. Gentleman raised, which were all important.

As I said, we will do our level best to make sure that the commitments made last Thursday are honoured. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the important role of civil society. In fact, we had a day dedicated to that last Wednesday. Seventeen Syrian civil society organisations were represented at that event, and 27 non-governmental organisations overall. The role they have been playing, and can continue to play, is in delivery on the ground. Many of these people put their lives on the line every single day of the week to get into communities who desperately need their help. We have to continue to assess needs, and the information that we get from civil society is often vital in making sure that we target our aid where it can have the biggest impact,.

Looking ahead, perhaps optimistically, but nevertheless importantly, when we finally get to a position where we can see Syria getting back on its feet and rebuilt, civil society will have a crucial role not only in understanding the needs and priorities of local people but in forming networks that can help on the ground to deliver on them. As I said, I believe that we are playing our role, not only, overwhelmingly of course, in the region, but closer to home here in the EU. A pound spent here in Europe does not go anywhere near as far in supporting refugees as a pound that can be delivered closer to home in the region to provide food, water and shelter, or get a child into school who is currently out of school. It is incredibly important that we do not lose sight of the need to tackle the root causes that underlie the refugee flows into Europe over recent months.

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that I could not disagree with him more on UK airstrikes. One of the key challenges in ever reaching any kind of peaceful settlement in Syria is the presence of the barbaric Daesh, who, day by day, routinely commit acts of unspeakable brutality—particularly on women, but on people more generally—in the territories they control. These people are not simply going to get up and go home. That is why we need to take military action against them to force them out of those territories. This is already happening in Iraq. They are leaving a wasteland behind them, but at least it is a wasteland that we can start to rebuild in, and we are going to do the same in Syria.

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

I wholeheartedly support what the Government are doing. A critical part of our strategy is to ensure that the two small nations nearby, Jordan and Lebanon, are able to cope. It must be incredibly difficult, given the huge number of refugees compared with their overall populations. Will the Secretary of State give some detail on the work we are doing to encourage those two nations, particularly in economic terms, through customs unions and the idea of economic co-operation—perhaps not just with the UK but within the EU as a whole—to try to ensure that they do their best in this regard? We must recognise that many hundreds of thousands of these Syrian refugees are likely to be in Jordan and Lebanon for many years to come.

High-speed Rail

Debate between Justine Greening and Mark Field

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I will take both those things on board, and indeed I will be in Birmingham tomorrow. When we look at high-speed rail in other countries, we see that the countries that have had the most success with it are those that have looked at projects more broadly, so we must ensure that HS2 provides broader connectivity than just to the areas it drops in at.

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

It is fair to recognise that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) makes a valid point about Euston station and the rail capacity of that particular area. Has the Secretary of State given any particular thought to the idea that there should be a nodal link at Old Oak Common, which would link up Crossrail and HS2, thereby ensuring that a large amount of the traffic that would otherwise get caught up in Euston is enabled to go through central London via a different route?

[Justine Greening]

I think that is such a good idea, which is precisely why it is part of the plan.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

Debate between Justine Greening and Mark Field

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Fiscal responsibility is the overriding priority of this Government. In May, within 24 hours of taking office, we published a coalition agreement setting out our agenda for government. Fiscal responsibility was the very first item on the very first page of that agreement. It read:

“deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain.”

Let me remind the House why we chose that as our priority. We inherited the largest budget deficit in our peacetime history, we inherited a budget deficit forecast to be the largest in the G20, and we inherited the largest structural deficit in the whole of Europe. We simply could not ignore the mountain of debt that was casting a shadow over our economy and our people, so we set ourselves an ambitious task—to bring order back to the nation’s finances. The Bill aims to do exactly that.

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

Will the Minister add one more criterion to her list—that a moral case needs to be made for ensuring that we do not pass on to future generations the debts that have been racked up for the consumption of the generations alive today?

[Justine Greening]

I agree absolutely. Far too often we fail to make the point that the penalty for not dealing with the deficit today will be to hand on even bigger debts to our children tomorrow. They will not thank us, and should not thank us, if we fail to address the urgent crisis that we have come into government to tackle.

Before I get into the detail, I would like to set out again the Government’s broader fiscal objectives. This coalition Government believe that fiscal policy should ensure that the national finances are sustainable. As I have just said, sustainable public finances mean that future generations will not need to pay for the services enjoyed by all of us today. Sustainable public finances mean that the economy can expand and grow without the fear of tax hikes and spending cuts in the future. Sustainable public finances also mean that monetary policy can operate effectively and stabilise the economy, when needed. With that in mind, we have taken decisive action since taking office.

In May, we had immediate reductions to in-year spending, which bought us much-needed breathing space in the sovereign debt storm raging across Europe. The emergency Budget in June was the moment when fiscal credibility was restored. At the Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out the Government’s fiscal mandate. Our first goal within the mandate is to balance the structural current deficit by the end of a rolling five-year forecast period.