Prime Minister’s Adviser on Ministers’ Interests

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I submit that that would be a question of the robustness of the adviser. The process would operate in a similar way to that of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, in that if the adviser felt that there was a serious case to answer, he would pursue it. If he thought that it was based on hearsay or tittle-tattle, he would dismiss it. Obviously, the moment at which he announced an investigation would be a threshold moment, but we have experience of that with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who operates in that manner.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I support what the hon. Gentleman is saying. In response to the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), I think that media witch hunts would be less likely if the new arrangements were to be adopted, because the media would be less suspicious that anything untoward was happening.

[Mr Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman also serves on the Committee, and I am grateful to him for his participation. He makes his point extremely well. Witch hunts start when there is a suspicion that the Prime Minister is seeking to protect a Minister from an investigation. That is when the media—and, indeed, Her Majesty’s official Opposition—tend to jump on the bandwagon.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I rise to speak briefly in support of the comments of the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chair of the Select Committee. He put the case very well. We do not need to use extreme language, as the proposal is common sense, particularly given recent events. We want an investigator who has the capacity to conduct proper investigations and offer advice. The constitutional relationship between the Prime Minister and this House would not be changed by that. He could accept or reject the advice, but at least investigations could be made independently, without having to ask the permission of the Prime Minister first. That would be a significant change.

[Mark Reckless]

Regardless of the formal situation, does the hon. Gentleman accept that the political reality will be that if this independent investigator decides to conduct an investigation off his own bat and then gives a withering condemnation of the Minister concerned, it would be very difficult for the Prime Minister to keep that Minister in office, and de facto control would pass to the adviser?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I trust that the investigator would make a withering condemnation only if that were justified. The recent events surrounding the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) and his amanuensis, Adam Werritty, deserved to be thoroughly investigated, but in my view they were not properly investigated.

Such a situation would not arise in future. I hope the Chairman of the Select Committee will not mind my mentioning that we will undertake a report on special advisers. I hope we will recommend putting their relationship with Ministers on a better footing in future, so that situations such as the Adam Werritty case do not arise again.

This proposal is timely. Recently, Prime Ministers have operated in an extremely powerful, individualistic way, and in a secretive way. They have often not trusted full Cabinets to discuss important matters. We are now moving towards a situation where the Prime Minister will be a little more open and accountable, without damaging our constitution in any way—in fact, this proposal will improve it.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

It seems to me that the Prime Minister will be assisted by this appointment of an independent investigator, as he will not have to make these tricky decisions.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those comments. A situation might arise in which a Minister who has not behaved very well is a personal friend of the Prime Minister of the day. The Prime Minister could then say to the Minister, “Well, the investigation wasn’t instigated by me. It was instigated independently, and I have to accept the advice of the report. It is not me who is causing you difficulty; it’s the investigation by the independent adviser.”

In every way, therefore, this proposal is a progressive advance that is in keeping with the spirit of the times. I hope that in future more of the Prime Minister’s current powers will be devolved.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The impression that is sometimes given of the House of Lords—where it is seen through a sepia-tinted filter and everyone there is a dispassionate observer of the scene, unsullied by politics entirely—unfortunately does not quite conform to the truth. More than 70% of the Members of the House of Lords are there because of decisions taken by people such as me, not the British people. The largest number of people who are in the House of Lords through their former vocation are retired MPs, so we can take a choice: either we give the British people a say in who is there or we simply turn it increasingly into a retirement home for ex-MPs.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

T6. When will the Government report on their Trident alternatives review, and will the Deputy Prime Minister commit to publishing the findings, which has not been the case with the Trident so-called value-for-money review?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The review on the alternatives to a like-for-like replacement of the Trident system is ongoing, according to the stipulation in the coalition agreement. My hon. Friend the Minister for Defence is heavily involved with it, and I am sure he will come to this House and seek to make a statement when the work is complete.

Regional Pay

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) for that introduction; I am not used to it.

The battle over regional and local pay is one, frankly, that in the current circumstances the coalition could do without. It would be a battle—a gruelling, energy sapping and pointless battle between and within parties. Even the Labour party is divided on its proposals for regional welfare. Opposition among the Liberal Democrats to the underlying principle and philosophy behind the suggestions is now widespread. We are not against the collection of evidence, but the evidence means that we are against the proposals. Shortly I and a number of colleagues will submit evidence that we hope will convince further. There was no problem recently getting 22 Liberal Democrat Members to sign a letter to The Times opposing regional pay, and of course those numbers were limited because our ministerial colleagues could not be asked to participate.

The politics of the proposal are lethal and divisive. It pits region against region, abandons the principle of equal pay for equal work, and treats the low-paid and local differently from the high-paid and mobile. The economics of it are nonsense, too, being bolstered largely by clichés and prejudice from the usual suspects—the Institute of Directors to name but one.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is refreshing to hear some common sense from the Liberal Democrats. The hon. Gentleman might be aware that a survey reported by the CBI suggests that 94% of private sector employers are concerned, above all, about markets and consumer demand for their goods and services, and the proposal would reduce consumer demand.

[John Pugh]

That is certainly true, and a lot of UK national firms—building societies, banks and the like—do not have regional pay structures.

No one can dispute that reducing public sector pay in low-wage areas necessarily reduces the money spent, and therefore demand, in those areas. No one can dispute that putting relatively more money into the pockets of public sector workers in high-wage areas increases the money in circulation in those areas, and thus demand. Ultimately, economic division will be cemented in and, frankly, a good reason would be needed for doing that.

Civil Service Reform

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

For a start, there needs to be better performance management and much better management information. It is a constant complaint that the quality of data is poor and inconsistent. It is hard to hold Departments and parts of Departments to account when we do not know how well they are performing. I point out to my right hon. Friend that when we turned MyCSP, the organisation that delivers the civil service pension scheme, into a joint venture mutual, its levels of productivity and accuracy, doing difficult processing work, improved markedly as it moved towards the vesting date.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I hope I am not alone in having a great sense of unease about the greater involvement of Ministers in selecting permanent secretaries. When permanent secretaries have to succumb to ministerial favour, is there not a danger of moving towards a presidential system, with more politicisation, less impartiality and civil servants fearing to speak truth unto power lest their careers not advance? I hope that I am not alone in saying that, and I hope that the Minister has a good answer.

[Mr Maude]

The answer is that we are absolutely not moving to the presidential-type system. I recommend that the hon. Gentleman talk to his right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, who has experience of this. The simple truth is that if a Minister is to be accountable for what their Department does, it is not that unreasonable to suppose that they should have a better degree of choice in selecting the principal instrument for the performance of their Department.

Public Procurement

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I beg to move,

That this House considers that European Union Documents No. 18966/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to the Draft Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on public procurement, and No. 18964/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to a Draft Directive of the European Parliament and the Council on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors, do not comply with the principle of subsidiarity for the reasons set out in Chapters 2 and 3 of the Fifty-seventh Report of the European Scrutiny Committee (HC 428-lii); and, in accordance with Article 6 of Protocol (No. 2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union on the application of principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, instructs the Clerk of the House to forward this reasoned opinion to the Presidents of the European Institutions.

This debate gives the House a welcome opportunity to consider the subsidiarity questions—pronouncing that word will be one of today’s challenges—identified in the draft directive on public and utilities procurement. It may assist the House if I give some general context on subsidiarity, after which I shall turn to the draft directives under consideration, focusing in particular on the subsidiarity concerns.

This is the fifth time the House has considered a motion for a reasoned opinion on subsidiarity. The first three related to financial services, and one related to justice. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), read into the record on 7 December—at column 313—a very good definition of subsidiarity. That is not only my opinion; the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), speaking for the Opposition, said precisely the same thing, so there is clearly general approbation on both sides of the House for that definition. I do not propose to trouble the House by reading out the definition again—[Interruption.] There is approbation for that from those on the Government Benches behind me. However, colleagues can, of course, read it for themselves, if they so wish.

The Government support the Lisbon treaty provisions to uphold the principle of subsidiarity and want to work with Parliament to highlight any subsidiarity concerns that the Government may share. Our explanatory memorandums on the proposals in question drew attention to those concerns, and I am very pleased that the European Scrutiny Committee—chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who is present—decided to pursue the matter with suitable dispatch. I also note that the National Assembly for Wales has written to the European Scrutiny Committee expressing concerns about subsidiarity in respect of the procurement proposals.

We have looked into whether other member states share these concerns, and I know of at least one case: the Swedish Parliament has raised similar concerns and tabled reasoned amendments on both proposals in very similar terms to those of our motion.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the principle of subsidiarity is too little used and too little understood? We take it seriously, but many other European Union member states do not. Should we not take a lead on this issue more often?

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[Mr Harper]

Off the top of my head, no, as I do not pretend to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all public procurement for cars across Europe. We will not help our car industry by having people make procurement decisions to buy such cars regardless of other criteria. We need to ensure that we take into account a wider range of criteria and the hon. Gentleman will know that the Government set out our steps towards making procurement decisions, taking wider features into account. The European Commission suggests using public procurement strategically to meet challenges such as increased innovation and environmental protection to ensure that some of those extra, wider issues are built into procurement decisions.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

On this matter of trade, we do not so much have a problem with the rest of the world, but we have a serious trade problem with the rest of the European Union where we have a very big trade deficit. That is evidence that the other parts of the EU do not play fair on trade, particularly when it comes to currency. The Germans have persistently maintained a low parity for their currency over many decades, which has meant that their manufacturing sector has been built up at the expense of ours.

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[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Government have been doing a great deal of work on this, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been setting out some of the Government’s policies to improve that position. However, I shall not go into those in depth, because that would take us away from the focus of this reasoned opinion.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

I shall take one more intervention on this, and then I shall set out our concerns about the oversight body, which is the focus of the reasoned amendment.

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[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Minister is being very patient and generous in giving way. On Bombardier, is it not the case that with such complex and big contracts, it is very hard to make judgments between bids? Over time, the Siemens bid might turn out to be a lot more expensive and a lot less good than we first imagined.

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I have answered the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone about the procurement process and I am not going to go into specifics about a particular procurement decision because I have not seen the detail and I was not involved in making that decision. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about such procurement contracts being significant and complex and there is a need to get the specification right in the first place. There has been a considerable amount of controversy about that particular case.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is always a great pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), whose speech was properly prepared and helpful to the debate. I am very pleased with the Government’s motion, and it is not often that I am unqualified in my support for the Government. Indeed, from time to time I am critical of my own side, although the robust speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) was also very welcome. We also heard some particularly helpful interventions from both sides of the House, and I concur with them all.

I am happy to speak in favour of the motion and support the principle of subsidiarity in this instance. The proposal states:

“The subsidiarity principle applies in so far as the proposal does not fall under the exclusive competence of the EU.”

I am rather pleased that the national health service and various other public bodies do not fall under the exclusive competence of the EU. In fact, I rather like them being under the exclusive competence of the British Parliament, but that is my personal view. I think that we ought to decide democratically what we do with our public services and not be dictated to by anyone else.

We are putting forward a reasoned opinion, but I would go even further and call it a reasoned opposition. Indeed, I think that opt-outs or derogations would be preferable to subsidiarity, as I have argued from time to time. The Government have talked about the possibility of regaining some powers from Brussels, and I could suggest one or two to be returned—but that might go beyond the boundaries of the debate.

The draft directive is about contracting authorities or public bodies, but some of those are now more or less in the private sector, so I am not sure whether they really fall within the scope of the EU’s proposal. The idea of a national oversight body, presumably set up by the British Government, that would police British contractors or contracting organisations on behalf of the EU is bizarre. If the EU wants to set up a body to police things, it should do that itself. It should not expect us to do it. Even then, I would, of course, object.

We are talking about the EU trying to lever public services into the marketplace, and the EU marketplace rather than the British one. I am in favour of strong public sector organisations with public sector employees, paid for publicly and accountable to this Parliament, local authorities or other public bodies. I am against the privatisation of our public services in principle, but if there is to be any private involvement it should be British private involvement, and we should not see our public services sold off to foreign organisations over which we have little control, if any. The whole proposal is unacceptable.

The European Scrutiny Committee’s document refers to social services. It states:

“The evaluation on the impact and effectiveness of EU public procurement legislation has shown that social, health and education services have specific characteristics which make them inappropriate for the application of the regular procedures for the award of public service contracts.”

That is a long way of saying that it is inappropriate for the EU to intervene in our public services, and I strongly agree. I am a member of the European Scrutiny Committee. Sadly, on this rare occasion I was unable to attend the meeting at which the matter was discussed, as I was out of the country on parliamentary business—I obviously missed an interesting and serious debate—but I absolutely support the Committee’s decision.

There have been some general comments on public procurement, what other countries do and what we do, and it has been observed that some countries seem expert at somehow managing to secure contracts for their companies rather than foreign ones. Indeed, I remember some years ago Signor Agnelli, the proprietor of Fiat, being asked why there seemed to be Fiat cars everywhere in Italy, whereas other countries seemed to import cars. He denied the existence of any sort of protectionism or arm-twisting in Italy and said that it was simply because Italians preferred to drive Fiat cars. We all know that Italy is completely above suspicion in these matters, so I will go no further.

Members also talked about railways. I really think that we have made a terrible mistake in offering the Thameslink contract to Siemens. I have been travelling on Thameslink and its predecessors for 43 years, and if the contract proceeds as we expect, I shall be very unhappy about the fact that in future I will be travelling on Siemens trains rather than Bombardier trains made in Derby.

I am known to be sceptical about the EU arrangements. I want voluntary arrangements with our fellow European countries. I am an enthusiastic European in the genuine sense. I love Europe as a place, the countries, the people, the politics and the philosophies that have come out of this great subcontinent, but I am not in favour of an ever-growing EU that is increasing its control over our lives and economies and trying to dictate how we run our countries. That should be done by democratically elected Parliaments. I hope that in time other countries will feel as we do about that. With the current crisis in the eurozone, I suspect that other countries are already starting to think in those terms. The Greeks are very unhappy about what is happening, and who can blame them? Around 25% of their population are unemployed. Wisely, the UK has been somewhat more sceptical of the EU, and perhaps has been leading the way towards a more sensible future for the whole of Europe in the coming years.

[Mr Cash]

rose—

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[Kelvin Hopkins]

It has been said that the European Union is one way of avoiding conflict between the nations of Europe, but, with the pressures inside the eurozone at the moment, tensions are being exacerbated by the European Union, not lessened.

[Mr Cash]

I do not need to go any further down that route, other than to say that public procurement amounting to 18% of the EU’s GDP represents a significant advantage to countries with the maximum degree of foreign direct investment, if they are able to induce the Governments and official bodies of those countries to procure for them the return that they no doubt feel is justified, given the contribution that countries such as Germany make to the European Union as a whole. All that requires a great deal of careful analysis.

I do not want to be unduly suspicious, but I fear that there is a considerable amount of hand-wringing over the extent to which Germany is expected to contribute to the European Union in relation, for example, to Greece and to Spain, when in fact, as Wolfgang Münchau said in the Financial Times a couple of days ago, the root problem is the imbalance that Germany is creating by its refusal to import. I cannot be sure about this, but BIS should ask itself the serious question whether there is not a similar problem in relation to public procurement.

If Germany, for example, makes massive contributions to other countries in Europe, no doubt it believes that if it in turn obtains contracts for the roads, railways and all the other things that make up the public procurement system, it will therefore, through the contracts that it has secured there, receive a repayment—with fantastic profits attached, no doubt—that returns the money to Berlin. That is no doubt what it wishes to achieve—and is achieving.

[Mr Cash]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raises that issue, because it is very much the direction in which we should go. We need an analysis and we need to know whether the UK is stepping up to the plate. We know that we have incredibly good industries, but are we making the most of them? Are we being cheated? Are we—if it falls short of cheating—being taken for a ride? Are the rules being properly complied with, and should BIS not conduct a strategic analysis of the issue, irrespective of the fact that the Business Secretary, being a Liberal Democrat, has an apparent abhorrence of investigating what I should like him to look at in terms of the inadequacies and manipulations of the European Union?

I am not being hostile or over-suspicious, but when 18% of GDP is tied up in such public procurement, it is very important for us to be completely sure that we are having a calm and collected look at the extent to which it operates for or against us. The evidence on Bombardier suggested that things had gone badly wrong. I do not really care which side of the House is at fault; as far as I am concerned, this is an opportunity to get it right. I am glad to see that those on both Front Benches are nodding in agreement, because I know that their main concern is to serve the national interest, and that would be well achieved by making such an analysis.

The document contains, as part of the study that the European Union conducted, issues relating to small and medium-sized enterprises. Bigger manufacturing industries tend to be able to look after themselves, but some SMEs need to be carefully monitored and given every possible advantage to enable them to get into the procurement market. The document also refers to the “strategic use” of procurement in Europe—strategic, I imagine, in the context of global trade.

There are deep concerns about the extent to which our water, electricity and many other main utilities are exposed to degrees of competition that are apparently not complied with in some other countries. I hope that that, too, will form part of the overall strategic analysis.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Some of our utilities, such as electricity and water, are owned by foreign companies—even foreign state-owned companies—and there is a suggestion that they are exploiting the British market to subsidise their own markets.

[Mr Cash]

Yes. This is all part of what I would like someone to look into very carefully. We are far too used to hearing generalisations and soft words when we are in fact talking about very substantial sums of money—on a monumental scale—and the question of whether this is a fair and free market that benefits us. I take into account the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) about the manner in which free trade operates, but for practical purposes, in terms of public procurement, I would want to be satisfied that it always works on a fair and reasonable basis and does not in any way upset the UK economy.

This is a very important debate, albeit not one that has attracted a vast amount of interest. I am afraid that these European debates, the contents of which are extremely important, do not necessarily attract the degree of attention that they deserve, because although they deal with people’s daily lives, with whether the UK economy will function effectively, and with many other areas within the rubrics of the European Union’s legislative framework, they do not have the word “domestic” stamped on them, and people think that when we talk about “Europe” we do not mean the UK. The truth is that the UK is affected very directly by everything that happens in the EU, and I want to be entirely satisfied that we get the full benefit of the trading system that the single market is supposed to provide.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The work that the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee does, in which some of us try to support him, does make a difference, and this House does hear about the realities of the European Union. I think that our Front Benchers, possibly our civil servants, and certainly the public outside appreciate that we are taking these things seriously. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Gentleman in that regard.

[Mr Cash]

That is extremely generous of the hon. Gentleman. I feel very strongly that we have a duty to look at these matters and to do what we can to help in debating them for the benefit of our constituents in the United Kingdom as a whole.

The explanatory memorandum contains a reference to the impact assessment and its executive summary, which gives us reason to believe that the impact on the European Union has been considered. However, the European Union is not an end in itself; it is an artificial framework that has been created for the purpose of an objective, which is, ultimately, political union. We know that. We also know, from what Chancellor Merkel has been saying recently, that that is very much tied up with her own agenda; I do not need to go down that route. We must consider the impact on the United Kingdom of the huge amount of money involved in public procurement, and the effect in relation to utilities, which may determine whether we get any energy and whether we have a proper water system, electricity system, and so forth. Enabling other countries’ companies to have control over those matters is a question not only of trading but of national security.

It is very important to have these things properly looked at. I am sure that the Minister and the duty Whips will pass on my messages to BIS, and that we will end up with a virtuous circle whereby we have a proper analysis to ensure that the United Kingdom gets what it deserves out of the European Union, and does not participate in it in ways that are, as our debate on subsidiarity amply demonstrated, unnecessary.

European Council

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me try to shed some more light on that. The position is this. I think there are some major legal question marks over what the 25 EU members have signed up to. However, the best thing for Britain to do, instead of going for an outright legal challenge—which might be partly successful—is to say, “We have our misgivings and concerns. We’ve reserved our position, but we won’t challenge, so long as you are sticking to the elements of fiscal union and not the single market.” I have given this considerable thought and I think that that is the right way forward, not least because there are some things being done in the agreement that the EU treaties give permission for, because they allow member states, as my hon. Friend will know—he is a great expert on this—to do things together under some circumstances. Therefore, the legality is not completely black and white. That is why I think it is in Britain’s interest to use our leverage to make sure that those involved stick to the fiscal union and do not get involved in the single market.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

There are newspaper reports that the Prime Minister is one of a group of four Conservative EU leaders who are proposing to ostracise François Hollande, who is soon to be the socialist President of France. Given that Monsieur Hollande is more of a Euro-realist than President Sarkozy, would it not be sensible to work positively with him, instead of against him?

[The Prime Minister]

I can confirm that I am not part of any secret pact. I basically take a pretty straightforward approach, which is that it is not normal practice to see candidates in the middle of an election. I have made exceptions on occasion, but I am not going to make an exception in this case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

We are very much aware that this is a problem, but part of the difficulty is that trafficking for forced labour is notoriously difficult to establish, and often the victims will not come forward. That said, as my hon. Friend will be aware, there is now a national referral mechanism that alerts the police at neighbourhood level, the UK Border Agency, social services and charitable organisations as to how they can pick up such information and feed it into the specialist units of the police, which can then bring in the Crown Prosecution Service to try to deal with those matters.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

If the Government are serious about more prosecutions and, indeed, about preventing trafficking, should we not substantially increase the UK Border Agency’s strength, with many more properly based staff so that they can do the job?

[The Attorney-General]

As the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, with my hat on as superintendent of the Crown Prosecution Service, it would be easy for me to ask for extra resources in all directions outside my own Department, but if he thinks that there are specific instances in which the service may be in some way deficient he should, I suggest, bring them to my attention or to that of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The evidence that I have from the Crown Prosecution Service is that it receives very good co-operation from the agencies with which it deals.

Informal European Council

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

In the last few days, the Greek Government have said that they refuse to have their economic governance taken over by the European Union. Does the Prime Minister support the Greeks in that, and if so, will he say so here and now?

[The Prime Minister]

The only way I can answer that question is to say that the Greeks have to decide themselves whether they want to stay in the euro. If they do, they have clearly got to meet some pretty exacting targets for reducing Government deficit, reducing Government debt and accepting a very austere approach. If Greece wants to stay in the euro, those are the conditions it will have to meet. I am not Greek; I am British. We have made our decision to stay out of the euro; this is their decision, and we should not tell them what to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

If a matter that requires investigation is brought to my attention and to the attention of the Serious Fraud Office, the Serious Fraud Office or other prosecutorial authorities will investigate it. The fact that there may have been a financial collapse does not necessarily mean that criminal offences have been committed.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Tax evasion and tax fraud cost the Exchequer billions every year. If the Government are serious about reducing the deficit, would they not do better by chasing the tax evaders and tax fraudsters, rather than sacking public service workers and cutting public services?

[The Attorney-General]

If I may say so, that is rather a long way from the Serious Fraud Office. If the hon. Gentleman wants the statistics on the pursuit of tax evasion, I would be happy to provide them and write to him about it.

United Kingdom Statistics Authority

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to endorse the recommendation that Andrew Dilnot be made chairman of the UK Statistics Authority. I had the pleasure—indeed, the honour and responsibility —of serving on the selection committee. I cannot say too much about what went on in the selection process, but his performance was, as the chairman said at the pre-appointment hearing, stellar—and in a very strong field. We have got exactly the right person in Andrew.

Before saying more about Andrew Dilnot, I want to say something about Sir Michael Scholar. I agree with all the compliments paid to him this afternoon. Indeed, I praised him publicly at the Public Administration Committee when he came before us in the previous Parliament. The fact that he has been criticised by—or perhaps I should say that he has slightly disturbed—politicians on both sides of the House shows that he is even-handed. However, I think that he was just being truthful when he criticised special advisers in the previous Government for misusing statistics about knife crime. I am sure that they were not pleased, and they may have privately said that he was a Tory stooge—who knows? The fact that he has now upset the Mayor of London and has been accused of being a Labour stooge suggests that perhaps he is nobody’s stooge. Perhaps he is just his own man, telling the truth as he sees it, and that is what we want in a chair. He has done a splendid job.

Sir Michael has drawn attention to the fact that official statistics are not held in high regard by our voters. In a recent public lecture at Oxford university, he said that we came bottom of the league table in our attitude to official statistics and that our electors do not trust them. That is a very serious matter. In my view, our official statistics are of very high quality, and they should be trusted, but it is their misuse by Governments and by the media that leads to their being mistrusted. I think that I was appointed to the Committee because I have some modest experience of statistics; I studied the subject and used to teach it at a modest level. I used to show my students how one can use statistics to tell fibs, in a sense, by distorting things; one can exaggerate the vertical scale to make it look steeper than it should be, and so on. People can try all sorts of tricks to make statistics tell the story that they want to tell.

The great thing about the UK Statistics Authority is that it will present the statistics raw, and truthfully. If they are misused, it is up to the authority to point that out from time to time. I entirely agree with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Justice Secretary and Home Secretary, said about pre-release. Let us get rid of pre-release and we will solve some of these problems. We can then all see the statistics as they come out and make of them what we think, not get it all pre-digested by politically interested, politically motivated Governments of both sides.

Sir Michael has pointed out that we have to raise the status and the opinion of official statistics with our electors so that they are trusted. I personally trust official statistics, and I trust the splendid people who work in Newport in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). I have visited their headquarters and spoken to them many times, and they are clearly public servants who can and should be trusted. We want to ensure that the population at large regards them equally well.

I have had a long association with Andrew Dilnot, because long before I was a Member of the House I used to attend the pre-Budget presentation by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which he led. It was always a splendid occasion, and the statistics and analysis that the IFS produced were always first class. I still receive its green budget reports—in hard copy, I am afraid, because I am old-fashioned—and always pore over them with great interest.

I am one of those people who are fascinated by numbers and statistics. I like nothing better for Christmas than a book full of statistics that I can spend Christmas day entertaining myself with. People might call me an anorak, but I believe that numbers are important. The great thing about Andrew Dilnot is that he has a passion even greater than my own for statistics. The passion that he showed in the interview was almost as though he were talking about great works of art. Statistics tell truths if they are accurate and presented truthfully, and his enthusiasm and passion for statistics as almost works of art inspired us all. I believe that we have the right person for the job.

I agree entirely with what the Chair of the Public Administration Committee, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), and a number of other Members have said about Andrew Dilnot. I could not attend the hearing, because I was a member of the selection committee, but I am sure his performance was as exciting and stimulating as it was at the interview. It was a great pleasure to be involved in the process, and I think we have got exactly the right person for the job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, and declare an interest: I am not the statistician in my family.

I believe that those who follow such debates would be well advised to get hold of the Public Administration Committee’s sixteenth report of Session 2010 to 2012, HC 910-I, “Appointment of the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority”; the corrected transcript of oral evidence of 10 May 2011 of Sir Michael Scholar, Jil Matheson and Richard Alldritt on the appointment of the chair of the UK Statistics Authority; and the written evidence on the appointment of the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, which contains all but one of eight papers submitted to the Committee. I tried to find out what the missing paper was—it was “UKSA 04”—but “UKSA” also stands for “United Kingdom Sailing Academy”, “the United Kingdom’s Strongest Athlete” and one or two other things with which I need not delay the House today.

To illustrate that statistics need interpretation, I remind the House that if the UK Statistics Authority reduces its number of staff as it intends, by 2015, the number of staff it had in 2005 would be approximately 42% higher. That is to say that it is a 29.5% reduction from the figure of 2005. That has come about via a 16% reduction from 2005 to now, and there will be another 16% reduction from now until 2015.

That is an example of how, in three sentences, one can cast a cloud over people’s understanding, but what it basically means is that we need statisticians and those who read their work. That is why the UK Statistics Authority has a vital role in getting information from the Government out into the open in a way that the outside world can understand and interpret, and feed back to hon. Members in a way that increases our understanding.

I did not believe that it was right to combine the Statistics Commission and the Office for National Statistics, but that is done. Sir Michael Scholar has clearly explained how the UKSA arrangements are supposed to retain a separation between the regulator and the producer of statistics. I am willing to accept that, but I am still not very happy about it.

When Sir Michael Scholar gave evidence to the Committee with Jil Matheson on 10 May 2011, he made some points about the problems that he put to the Prime Minister in 2010. On page 11 of the transcript, Sir Michael said that

“before any significant changes could be made to the statistical capability of a Department, or any major changes to its statistical output, the Department would be obliged to secure the agreement of the National Statistician. That would be going back to a system that pertained in this country during the time that Claus Moser”—

Lord Moser—

“was head of the Central Statistical Office. I asked the Prime Minister if he would go back to that system, which would be something that he could do through administrative action without any need for legislation or for any additional expenditure. I also asked him if he would accept the proposals we had made on prerelease access…My third proposal to him was that he should give the Authority a place in the decision making about cuts in statistical capability across the whole Government. Recognising, in the difficult fiscal position that the Government were and are now in, that there were going to be cuts, we felt it was very important that the Statistics Authority, with a view right across the scene of the whole statistical system, should be brought into the process of decision making about where cuts should be made.”

It would be very helpful if the Government, now or shortly, responded to each of those points. We know about the pre-release access—progress has been made on that and it has not brought the roof down—but the other two points still matter and should be made.

The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) referred to himself as an “anorak”—which I think is the only word we get from Greenlandish Eskimo, but I stand to be corrected—and in the hearing on 10 May 2011 he referred to time series. Sir Michael Scholar, the chairman, said, in effect, “I don’t think we can give you the assurance that we aren’t losing something that is valuable.” It would be wise if the Government and the new chairman, together with the national statistician—

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I raised my concern about the loss of time series in the Select Committee in the last Parliament. I am also worried that the squeeze on expenditure may see valuable time series lost for the future and that would be a great mistake.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It is not just the time series: we also need to protect the extra investment going into the longitudinal studies, which are a vital statistical treasury that can be used both prospectively and retrospectively.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) for the way in which he has chaired the Committee and to Dame Janet Finch, whose dignity helped to resolve an awkward situation. It is vital that we have a chairman who is fair, fearless and clear. That is not a comment on Dame Janet, but on Sir Michael Scholar—and I hope that it is one that we can make in retrospect when Andrew Dilnot retires. Those are the attributes we want from our statistics, and we also need them from the chair of the UKSA.

At one point, the House declined to give its support to someone for that kind of role—when Elizabeth Filkin was the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. We paid a price for that. It was a parliamentary price, but there will be a national price to pay if we do not give our support to the chairman and the National Statistician. I therefore commend the motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House endorses the nomination of Andrew Dilnot CBE for appointment as Chair of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority.