Shale Gas Extraction

Debate between Karin Smyth and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The answer is energy security and price.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s constituency of North East Somerset borders mine; it would be helpful if he could confirm that we are not expecting any fracking or seismic events in the local community. Small and medium-sized businesses in Bristol South were innovative in green and future energy, but they had the legs cut from under them in 2015 when his Government “cut the green crap”. What assurance can he give businesses in Bristol South on future energy development?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The subsidies that are paid, when they are paid, have to be reasonable and proportionate and we are finding that, with some of the old contracts that we have based on the gas price for renewable energy, it has led to very high prices. North East Somerset was the site of the old Somerset coalfields, which were a very successful part of the economy historically. I think everyone in this country will have to do their bit to help with energy security.

Business of the House

Debate between Karin Smyth and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Thursday 28th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Unfortunately I find myself in a degree of disagreement with my hon. Friend. I think fireworks are a little bit of harmless fun. People enjoy them, and we should not take every enjoyment out of people’s lives with endless licensing and regulation. Conservatives are meant to be cautious about excessive regulation and giving power to bureaucracies. I am afraid I am unsympathetic to his request.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Can we have a debate on the Government’s environmental illiteracy and the impact on people in Bristol South and indeed Somerset? This morning people can buy a flight from Bristol to Edinburgh for £29.99, but the train journey is £97.20. Individuals in Bristol South are making their contribution towards COP26, but the Government are not making theirs. Reducing air passenger duty and the delays to the Portishead line mean the Government are not helping, and that is something we need to debate.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I will continue my disagreeable line, as I disagree with the hon. Lady, too. I sometimes find myself in a surprising degree of agreement with her on local matters but, no, this Government want to keep the cost of living down. We want people to enjoy travelling around our great country. If it is £29.99 to fly from Bristol to Edinburgh or Glasgow, that is great for our constituents, and I hope they enjoy their trip.

Business of the House

Debate between Karin Smyth and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that nothing is too old fashioned for me, and I shall try not to disappoint him in future. I am sorry that his travel arrangements will be inconvenienced, and I mean that genuinely because I appreciate that the situation is difficult for Members who have to come a long way. People must order their priorities accordingly. My personal priority always revolves around the Chamber of the House.

I will point out that a right hon. Friend of mine, whose name I will not give away, will be a long way out of the country on long-planned business and is going to pay a £1,000 of his own money to make sure that he is back for an important parliamentary occasion. Some people take that view of attending for business, and others may indeed wish to start their election campaigns early. That is a choice that they must make. However, Monday and Tuesday are sitting days, and once Mr Speaker has resigned, we must elect a Speaker if the House is sitting. That is completely routine and standard and orderly, and it is important.

I will, if I may, correct the hon. Gentleman on the question of Dissolution, as I was corrected by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). The date of Dissolution is set backwards from the date of the election. With the election being on Thursday 12 December, Dissolution has to be on Wednesday at one minute past midnight. It cannot be on any other day. There is no flexibility in the terms of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

I confess, Mr Speaker, that there were conversations about whether we could have finished tomorrow, but for everybody who said to me that we should stop on Thursday, somebody else said that we should stop on Tuesday. There was no clear consensus. It is my view as Leader of the House that my responsibility if there is no consensus is to ensure that things carry on as they were planned to be. It would be wrong for me to force the House in a way that there was not a consensus to go down.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Exactly two years ago, I had an Adjournment debate about airgun safety, which was responded to graciously by the right hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who is in his place. That instigated a review of airgun safety. I and my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson), who is in his place, have pressed the Government persistently for the publication of their review and consultation. Today, I rang my constituent to say again to him and his young son, who was severely injured, that that has not come forward and that we have no idea when it will. Will the Leader of the House please indicate for the families we represent when that important review and consultation will come forward?

I add my support on the need to bring the Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Bill to this House. Front Benchers from all parties have indicated clearly that it will be dealt with very quickly. There is cross-party support and it could be done very quickly next week.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

On airgun safety, I will write to the Minister who is responsible to get an answer. There will obviously be no time for a debate on it before this Parliament comes to a conclusion, but it is important that when Members raise questions, they get answers. I cannot always promise people the answer they want, but by and large, it is important that answers are given.

I note the hon. Lady’s point about the Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Bill. It seems that there may be an evolving consensus around that issue in this House.

Business of the House

Debate between Karin Smyth and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I must confess that I agree with my hon. Friend; it is really shameful that somebody who has a role with the police should criticise them when they have done everything possible to ensure that law and order is maintained, despite coming under enormous pressure. I spoke to some of the police officers who were around during the Extinction Rebellion protests. Some of them were getting up at 2 o’clock in the morning and then being on duty for 12 or 14-hour shifts, to ensure that we were kept safe. We should be enormously grateful to the police service of this country.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, I note that you did your bit for British-Irish relations at the weekend by appearing on “The Late Late Show” on RTÉ—it is good viewing, if anyone wants to watch it. This Sunday, as Vice-Chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, I shall be meeting friends and colleagues from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland and the Channel Islands as part of the Assembly’s meeting. Will the right hon. Gentleman, as the Leader of this great House, join me in recognising that, at this critical and really difficult time in our relations across these islands, the gathering together of politicians of different views and from different parts of these islands is more crucial than ever, and will give an assurance that the full support of this House will be forthcoming in future years to ensure that the Assembly flourishes and that our conversations flourish, so that we can get through this particularly difficult time in our history?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Yes, I will absolutely do that. May I also hold up the hon. Lady as an example? She is a neighbour of mine, and despite our strongly different views of the world, we have always been able to have, whether on television or in hustings debates, very civilised conversations. I think that is a model for how debate should be carried out.

Cities and Local Government Devolution [Lords] Bill

Debate between Karin Smyth and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

May I add to what the Minister has just said? In my dealings with Mr Meacher in this House, he never put his strongly held political views above his fundamental good manners and civilisation. He was always the most decent man to talk to, even though I doubt there was a single subject of any political importance on which we agreed. He is a loss to this Chamber.

I will come on to my amendment 46, which would exempt Somerset, God’s own county, from the provisions on having a mayor. The Minister suggested that Somerset was not exceptional. I think that that was a momentary lapse because he is not only a most honourable gentleman, but somebody of fundamental good nature and wisdom. We will forgive him such a momentary mental lapse on this occasion and put it down to the wet weather or something like that.

The Government are giving fine and good undertakings. I will quote briefly from the Secretary of State on Second Reading:

“It is a fundamental tenet of this Bill, in contrast to other reforms debated over many years, that it does not give me or any of my ministerial colleagues the power to impose any arrangement on any local authority.”—[Official Report, 14 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 326-327.]

My hon. Friend the Minister has reiterated those undertakings. They are excellent and encouraging, and they provide a solid basis for proceeding. Unfortunately, there is a “but” coming.

Everything I hear from local councillors in North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset tells me that they are having their arms twisted. We are seeing a velvet glove today—a finely manufactured velvet glove of the highest quality velvet. Behind it, however, is a firm iron fist that expresses the Government’s will that things should go in a certain way. I encourage the Government, through my amendment, to make the background noises—the conversations in smoke-filled rooms—match the fine words that we are hearing in this House.

And so I come to why I want to exempt Somerset. Well, there is history—there is always history! I will start, as always, with Alfred the Great. If we go all the way back to 879, Bristol was in Mercia and Somerset in Wessex. One of those two kingdoms was completely under the Danes—that was obviously the Gloucestershire bit. The borderline between the two has been there for over 1,000 years. There is a strongly embedded history in Somerset and, indeed, in Bristol which means that they see themselves as independent, distinct units.

It is important that the Government go with the grain of communities that have built up over generations, centuries and, in this case, even a millennium, rather than create new administrative regions that mean very little to people. Most people have no interest in the title of their council. They have an interest in where their home is. Their home may relate to a great city, to a great county or to a village, a county and the country. The use of power needs to go with that. Therefore, devolution from the United Kingdom to an administrative body with which people do not have sympathy and about which they do not have a feeling makes things no better. People have a loyalty to the nation and a loyalty to their locality, but if interspersed between them is some random political agglomeration that came about through a sudden burst of enthusiasm by a Government, people have no association with that, no enthusiasm for it and no loyalty for the institution.

Of course, this has been tried before. This is my second and perhaps more important appeal to history in the context of Somerset, particularly in relation to North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset. We were part of a much disliked, most unsuccessful, high-cost organisation called Avon. It is known to the cognoscenti as CUBA—the county that used to be Avon. The name CUBA was appropriate because it was almost as left-wing as Mr Castro in its approach to government and it was exceptionally expensive. It had one of the highest increases in rates in the 1980s. It was felt by people in the rural areas that it was run for the benefit of Bristol, with the cost being borne by people in rural areas.

We continue to see that in Avon and Somerset police, the cost of which is borne by the rural areas, even though—I am sorry to say this with the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) sitting opposite me—most of the crime is in Bristol. Inevitably, being an inner city, Bristol has more drug dealing, more armed crime and more social disorder than Nempnett Thrubwell and other villages in my constituency, which are bastions of law-abiding civility.

[Karin Smyth]

I was not going to intervene, but the hon. Gentleman is maligning the great city of Bristol, which draws in people from North East Somerset with its great employment and cultural opportunities. Indeed, that causes some great problems in my constituency in respect of travel arrangements and so on, but we are grateful to have his constituents coming to work in the city. Perhaps we can have a more balanced discussion.