Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I offer my condolences to Lady Thatcher’s family, and in particular to her children and grandchildren. Both Front-Bench speakers have said that she was not only the only woman Prime Minister of this country, but someone who rose to the top of a major political party when it was dominated by men, as it is still. The Prime Minister has said she broke through a big glass ceiling, and we should recognise that fact.

I add my thoughts to those of the hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell). Today is the 15th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. The House should acknowledge that Lady Thatcher’s initiative in the 1980s was the start of the peace process, for which many people have good reason to thank her today.

Lady Thatcher was a radical politician and will remain a controversial figure. She would have expected that her conviction politics would court controversy even at such a time. Many of her domestic policies caused great concern and harm to many people and communities. I entered the House in 1983, nine months before the start of the miners’ strike. I come from a mining background and represent a mining constituency. My overriding memory of the 12-month strike was not the violence that we saw on our television screens—I condemned the violence at the time—but the poverty and hardship that miners and their families went through for the best part of 12 months.

We know that the cause of the strike was the proposed pit closure programme and the consequent effect, particularly on male unemployment, which had been traditionally high in coal mining communities. I am not saying that the Government of the day were wholly to blame for the strike and its consequences, but I believe they had a responsibility to bring the dispute to an early end, which they did not meet.

On Saturday, I attended a march commemorating the closure of Maltby colliery—the coal mine I worked at as a young man. It was the sixth and last coal mine to close in the Rother Valley constituency. The bitterness that stems from the ’84-’85 strike is there among people even all these years later. Although tribute can and will be paid to Margaret Thatcher, other voices in the country ought to be heard.

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. Like others, Staffordshire MPs have spoken with great passion about their care for their local health service and what it can provide.

On the timing, Robert Francis says that he wants all parts of the NHS to respond to him on what they are going to do right across the NHS, and that should be done over the next year. The Department of Health will be looking in the coming months at all the recommendations and responding. Specifically on the inspections, which are so important, as I said in my statement we are going to look at these changes to the CQC, but even before that Bruce Keogh is going to run this set of inspections into hospitals that have high rates of mortality and make sure that they are being dealt with properly.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

It is quite clear that the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which was supposed to encourage and protect whistleblowing, has failed in this case when faced with the culture of the NHS. On the lessons that could be learned, the Health Committee published a report in 2009 on patient safety and recommended that the Government should look at how whistleblowing was handled around the world, particularly in New Zealand. There, it is handled by an independent person, who carries out the inquiry, often anonymously from the complainant, and gets a far better reaction from institutions than we do here in the United Kingdom.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point about whistleblowers and how we handle them, and I am sure that Health Ministers will listen to that. I just make the point that supporting whistleblowers is one thing, but we also have to respond to what is being said. There were whistleblowers in the case of the Stafford hospital, but the problem was that the response to the complaints, the campaigns and the whistleblowing was completely inadequate.

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do think this is right. Perhaps we can recognise, if we go back over 10 or 20 years in politics, that it is frankly the easiest thing in the world for a Prime Minister to stand at this Dispatch Box and say to a member of the Cabinet, “Oh, it’s all getting a bit difficult—off you go.” I think it is important to get to the facts—to get to the truth. That is what I believe in doing. It is called natural justice, and we should have some more of it.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister is well aware that for many years now, the machinery has been in place for investigations of breaches of the codes of conduct for Ministers and for Members of the House of Commons. Why does the Prime Minister not implement that, as opposed to going to a third party?

[The Prime Minister]

Again, I say, “Can you think of a process that is more robust than a Minister having to provide, under oath, information to an inquiry, and answering questions under oath, knowing all the time that if anything in that information in any way breaches the ministerial code, it can trigger another judgment?” That is what is happening. That is what I agreed with the Cabinet Secretary, a civil servant of impeccable standing, and I am absolutely convinced that it is the right approach.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

1. If he will undertake an impact assessment on the effect of changes in resource for the civil service on delivery of Government policy.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. If he will undertake an impact assessment on the effect of changes in resource for the civil service on delivery of Government policy.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

Our aim is to maintain the superb quality of our civil service while reducing its quantity. Under this Government the civil service headcount has come down from 487,000 to 435,000, which is smaller than it has been at any time since the second world war. Of course, this reduction helps to reduce the deficit, but it is also a natural consequence of our intention to reduce bureaucracy, improve public services and promote the big society by shifting power to people on the front line.

[Mr Barron]

A recent National Audit Office report on cost reduction in central Government suggests that the staffing departures revealed an unplanned and haphazard redundancy drive that has paid off 18,000 civil servants since 2010, at a cost of £600 million, to save just £400 million. One of the report’s conclusions is:

“Few departmental systems can link costs to outputs and impacts, making it difficult to evaluate the effect of cost changes”.

Does the Minister agree, and what will his Department do about it?

[Mr Letwin]

The right hon. Gentleman has a distinguished career, which includes at one time being Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Kinnock, so presumably he has some experience of figures that go completely wonky, and the ones he is presenting give a very wonky picture. What the NAO report actually revealed is that the cost to the Departments was £600 million, the payback to the taxpayer was over 10 to 16 months and the total savings in this spending review period alone, in net present value, will be between £750 million and £1.4 billion. There is a massive saving there, which he would see if he read the whole report.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue and, on behalf of the whole House, very much thank Eddie for his incredible service. I think that in this House we sometimes take for granted the people who work so hard to keep it working and keep it going, and I sometimes wonder what they think of all the antics we get up to in this House. We are incredibly grateful that he, after the incredible service he gave our nation, came here and worked so hard for so many years. We are all in his debt, and send him good wishes for his retirement.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Q11. Youth unemployment figures published this morning show that in the last quarter, 22% of 16 to 24-year-old economically active citizens are unemployed—an increase of 1.2% on the previous quarter. The Prime Minister ranted earlier in Question Time about what the Government are doing about youth unemployment in this country. Can he tell us why it is increasing?

[The Prime Minister]

Every increase in youth unemployment is unacceptable—[Interruption.] I will tell the House exactly what is happening. The number of 16 to 18-year-old young people not in employment, education or training is actually going down, but the problem, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, is that 18 to 24-year-olds are finding the job market extremely difficult. [Hon. Members: “Why?”] The reason why unemployment is going up is that we are losing jobs in the public sector and not growing them fast enough in the private sector, so we need to do everything we can to get our economy moving. The absolute key to that is keeping our interest rates low. We now have interest rates down to 2%. If we followed his party’s policy of extra spending, extra borrowing and extra debt, interest rates would go up, more businesses would go under and we would not get our economy moving.

EU Council

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. His point about the creation of the euro being the fundamental moment that created these tensions in Europe is entirely right. The previous Government’s position was that they wanted to get us into the euro, but they realised that that was not possible. I think that that is still their policy. It was the creation of the euro that fundamentally changed the relationship in Europe, but even they decided that it was okay for eurozone countries to meet on their own. That is not being isolated; it is recognising the reality that Britain does not want to be in the euro, so we cannot stop the meeting going ahead.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Given that last Thursday was not about joining the euro but about protecting the interests of the euro as a currency and, therefore, the interests of our national economy, as the Prime Minister has said this afternoon and on several occasions over the past few weeks, why has he walked away from such a responsible position and allowed our economy potentially to be attacked if there is no success in looking after the interests of the euro? We did it with Ireland, and rightly so, so why are we not looking at taking action more widely to protect the interests of this country?

[The Prime Minister]

What we did with Ireland, as a very close neighbour, long-standing friend and integrated economy, was give it a bilateral loan, which was the right thing to do. I do not accept that the proposal put forward on Thursday night and Friday morning is the most important part of delivering a successful euro. We need to spend more time on the single market, on competitiveness and on short-term measures to stabilise the eurozone. I simple do not believe that whether a treaty is within or without the EU will make a huge difference to the future of the euro.

Public Disorder

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. A lot of those rumours were circulating. Although the use of social media helped gangs to do bad things, it also helped the law-abiding to know what was happening and how to react and stop it.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Violence against others and theft should clearly be dealt with by the criminal law, but does the Prime Minister accept that removing people from social housing for unacceptable behaviour and putting them in social housing in other communities, taking that unacceptable behaviour with them, does not solve the problem?

[The Prime Minister]

It can be part of solving the problem; it says to people in social housing, “If you misbehave, you can be thrown out of your house.”

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd]

Yes, it is odd. These issues are odd and arbitrary and IPSA must recognise that the system needs reform. It has begun to talk about the reform process so it is reasonable for the House to debate the kind of reform we need. If IPSA is engaged in a process, we should be part of the dialogue about how to move it on, and the experiences we have been hearing about show the direction that IPSA must take.

I want to mention one or two other areas where reform is needed. High on the list of priorities for all Members are matters relating to how people move through different lifestyles and ages. Some people will enter the House at a young age, perhaps with young families, while others will be older, but all will have different needs and different requirements. A proper Parliament should be geared up to accommodate Members of different backgrounds and needs at different stages of life. That ought to be automatic, but it is not so now. We need change there.

We need change in other areas that make it difficult for us to operate as Members of Parliament. For example, some of the arbitrary rules on the office cost ceiling might make sense in the lowest-cost parts of the country, but make no sense in large parts of London and even in constituencies such as mine. My constituency is actually one of the poorest in Britain, but its benchmark office costs are those for the city of Manchester. IPSA has to take those things seriously if it is to allow Members to do their jobs.

The issue of travel is fundamental. In virtually all the years I have been a Member, in all my different roles—whether on the Government Front Bench, the Opposition Front Bench or the Back Benches—it has been accepted that if a Member needs to travel on parliamentary business, their needs will be met, if the travel is legitimate. For Ministers that is automatic, and senior Opposition figures have it provided through Short money, but as we move down the political food chain—if that is the right terminology—that now ceases to be the case.

You know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that under the present rules, some travel outside a Member’s constituency will be paid for, while other things will be refused. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) pointed out to me that, as somebody who has spent the last 27 years in Parliament actively engaged on health matters, were he to travel from his south Yorkshire constituency to, for example, the Christie hospital in south Manchester, he would not necessarily be able to claim it as a legitimate cost, even though anybody with half a view of his work over the years would recognise it as important and fundamental to what he does.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I travelled from my home in south Yorkshire to Huddersfield university a few Fridays ago, as the chair of the all-party group on pharmacy, to talk to 300 pharmacy students about pharmacy and how Parliament operates. I thought that was a legitimate claim, but it has now been denied. IPSA needs to look at these things, although I agree that it is improving in respect of some expenses claims.

[Tony Lloyd]

The sad thing is that, in refusing what most people would consider a common-sense, legitimate claim, it will now show as one of those wicked claims that IPSA has refused. That is how ludicrous the situation has become.

We can, of course, spend a lot of time apologising for what happened in the past. Individuals, and the House as a whole, had to go through that painful process. Those of us who were here then definitely went through it, but a third of the House consists of new Members who have no reason to apologise. However, they do have a need to function as proper Members of Parliament. Those who come in new at the next general election will have the same need to operate as functioning Members whose legitimate expenses are paid. That is the big test not for the House, but for IPSA in its review process, which is about to take place. IPSA has to get this right, not for my sake or the sake of the shredder in my office—I will give it back and buy my own, if that is the test—but to ensure that we have a Parliament that can do the work that the public do not necessarily always expect us to do, but which they need us to do.

Departmental Business Plans

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend that it is only by making the kinds of changes that he describes that we can really improve public services. That is why I have the good news for him that under the programme laid out in the Department for Education business plan my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education will do exactly what my hon. Friend requests. That is why we have a programme of academies and free schools which gives those kinds of powers locally to the professionals on the ground. By doing that we enable parents and pupils, by choosing the schools of their own desire, to create real competitive pressure for excellence in the system. Combining that with the efforts to create a proper pupil premium means that the least advantaged will be most advantaged in our system, and the combination of those effects will be to give excellence and improvement for all.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

The Minister says that Departments will publish a simple report on their progress towards meeting their commitments. What will happen if those commitments are often not met?

[Mr Letwin]

What will happen is a series of things that are inconvenient for the responsible Ministers, rising to something that is rather more than inconvenient. In the first place, a report will be made, which will be available to everybody—no Minister likes to see such a thing appear in public. Secondly, the Minister involved will find himself having a discussion with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and me to explain what has occurred—[Interruption.] I do not know whether Labour Members want to know about this, but I am trying to explain it. The second thing that will happen is that the Minister will meet the Chief Secretary and me, and the permanent secretary will have a conversation with the head of the civil service. Finally, if the problem is still not resolved, the Secretary of State in question will have a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. This is a serious set of incentives; if one thinks about what it was like under the previous Government, or any previous Government, one realises that Ministers do not wish to go through that process and will therefore try to meet their objectives.