Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I was interested to hear of the project referred to by my hon. Friend, and we are anxious to promote regeneration in his constituency. The regional growth fund is on schedule. The first two rounds allocated £1.4 billion, but a new bidding round has opened recently and an additional £1 billion is now available. I hope that projects in his constituency will consider applying for this so that we can regenerate, provide employment and create wealth.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

As a former charities Minister, I am disappointed that we have not heard much from the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) about the Government’s position on philanthropy, so may we have a statement from him to give him a chance to stop the traducing of the Chancellor’s reputation on philanthropy, because he has been described as anti-philanthropy despite being the man who has brought us the Budget that just keeps on giving?

[Sir George Young]

The coalition Government are in favour of philanthropy and we have taken a number of steps to promote it. We have made changes to the inheritance tax regime, we have proposals for small donations so that tax can be claimed back, and we are streamlining the mechanism by which charities reclaim tax.

On the specific measure to which the hon. Gentleman refers, he will know that we are having discussions with the charitable sector to seek to protect it from any damaging changes in the proposals that have been announced, which come into effect in a year’s time. There is a serious issue as to whether those on high incomes, who have philanthropic objectives, should be able to exempt themselves from income tax by making substantial donations. In America, which has a good culture, there is a cap on relief, so there is nothing inherently anti-philanthropic in ensuring that those who have high incomes make some contribution to the overheads of the country through income tax.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The appetite has been exhausted.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

Yesterday the European Hockey Federation announced that London, and the new Queen Elizabeth Olympic park, had been selected as the venue for the 2015 European hockey championships, the first such event on the park. This is in addition to the Commonwealth games, the rugby league, rugby union and cricket world cups, a world athletics championship, world championships in triathlon, gymnastics and canoeing, and bids out for a youth Olympics, rowing, swimming and eventing championships. It is an extraordinary success story for British sport and a hugely positive legacy from London 2012.

[Kevin Brennan]

Google is failing to enforce privacy rulings online, dragging its feet when told to take down offending material and prioritising websites that carry illegal, unlicensed content at the top of its search results. When will Ministers act to ensure that Google prioritises legal sites over illegal sites?

[Hugh Robertson]

We have regular discussions with Google on all these issues. It is better than the hon. Gentleman suggests at taking down illegal material, and those discussions will continue.

Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), can we have a statement on the Cabinet and the higher rate of tax? The Twitter account of The Sun is reporting that friends of the Prime Minister say he pays the higher rate of taxation. We have not heard anything from friends of the Chancellor—or does he not have any left after mugging the nation’s grannies yesterday?

[Sir George Young]

Why should this outbreak of openness be confined to Members on the Government Benches? I hope that the hon. Gentleman will try to persuade all his friends in his party to be as open and transparent as he apparently wants us to be.

Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is right that we need a balanced energy policy, and there is a role for coal. We have put resources on one side to promote clean coal technology, and if we can overcome the environmental problems associated with the traditional coal-fired power stations, I am sure that coal can play an important role in the future supply of this country’s energy.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

To mark the re-establishment of the all-party group on folk arts, following the sad death of Alan Keen MP—I was elected chair, by the way, and the vice-chair is the be-knighted Member for the town of Colchester—may we have a debate on the importance of folk arts to the economy, and in particular on the Government’s position on representing the folk traditions of the nations and regions of these islands in the Olympics opening ceremony?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I am sorry if I misconstrued the same point when it was made a fortnight ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell). I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) on his election to the chair of that important group; I am sure it was done by secret ballot of Members from all parties and I commend the group for its work. It is important that the opening ceremony for the Olympics is taken as an opportunity to portray all that is good about the United Kingdom, and I agree that the elements the hon. Gentleman has identified should be part of that ceremony.

Charging for Access to Parliament

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend, as always, makes a very good point. I will talk about those issues later.

The history books tell us that the bells of the Great Clock of Westminster rang across London for the first time on 31 May 1859, and Parliament had a special sitting to decide on a suitable name for the great hour bell. Many suggestions were made during the course of the debate. It is alleged that the Chief Lord of the Woods and Forests, Sir Benjamin Hall—a large and ponderous man known affectionately in the House as Big Ben—rose and gave an impressively long speech on the subject. A wag in the Chamber shouted out, “Why not call him Big Ben and have done with it?” The House erupted in laughter, and Big Ben had been named. There are many other stories about why Big Ben is called Big Ben, but I use that as an illustration of its importance: when the bell was brought to Parliament, there was a parliamentary debate to show how central it is to our parliamentary democracy.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

If I may disagree gently with the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), this place is not a museum but a democratic institution and Members should be able to arrange for their constituents to visit every part of it free of charge. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on the debate. He is right that this could set a precedent. If we start hiring this place out to corporate bodies, massive banks and so on, there is a danger that we will lose the essence of this democratic House.

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head. In my conclusion, I will repeat some of the things that he said. He points to a very great danger as regards what our Parliament may become.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I support the amendment in my name and that of the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso). The approach to the subject is bipartisan, and I note that there are Members on both sides of the House speaking for the amendment or the motion.

I am a member of the Administration Committee, which is a far duller Committee since the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) is no longer a member. The Committee was consulted by our colleagues on the Finance and Services Committee prior to the proposal going to the Commission. I accept that the workings of the Administration Committee are not the most exciting, but we have been appointed by our peers, so to speak, in this place. I remind the House that the Members who represent their parties on the Commission have to be agreed to in a motion in the remaining Orders of the Day. However, I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) that it is not the most transparent process.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is not the difference in principle between the summer tours, which the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) mentioned, and the Clock Tower that while the paid-for summer tours are going on, Members can still have their constituents in and take them around for free? That is not the proposal for the Clock Tower. It is a completely different matter.

[Thomas Docherty]

That is entirely why the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross and I propose that the Commission be asked to look at the detail. It occurs to me that a more pragmatic way forward is to take away the privilege that only Members of Parliament can decide who goes on the tour. If we genuinely want to open up Big Ben, we could take Members out of the equation and give all members of the public that opportunity. That might be the way forward. I hope in that spirit that the hon. Member for Harlow will support the amendment.

I do not wish to be political, but many of my constituents would look with some surprise on some of the arguments being proposed not by the hon. Member for Harlow, but by other hon. Members who might speak in the debate from the Government Benches. They would be surprised that, at a time of cuts to benefits, and cuts to support for our armed forces and front-line workers, hon. Members think that Clock Tower access is a priority for public spending. Many of my constituents would find that wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

For the purpose of this speech, Mr Deputy Speaker, I propose to regard myself as a Back Bencher and to stick very strictly to the six-minute limit. That is appropriate, because I speak as a member of the Commission. This is not a Government issue, but very much a matter for the House.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for his energy in pursuing this matter and for finding time for a debate. There is a genuine risk in unpicking a budget that has been put together and taking one item out without knowing what the consequences will be. That is why I am in favour of the amendment, which invites the Commission to have a look at the proposal in the light of the very strong views that have been expressed in the debate and to come up with alternative proposals. That would be a responsible way forward, rather than taking that particular item out and then obliging the Commission to find some other measure, which for all I know might be even less acceptable to the House than the one that is before it.

I agree that the House needs to accept the same discipline to make economies that has been imposed on other public bodies, and I support the commitment to reduce the annual costs by 17% by 2014-15. We are having to make exactly the same difficult decisions as public bodies in our constituencies. There is no easy way out of this.

The proposal to charge for visiting the Clock Tower was included in a package of proposed initial savings back in November 2010. From memory, there was no violent reaction when that was floated some 18 months ago. I should say to my hon. Friend that there is a distinction between the public having free access to lobby their MPs, to see the Chamber, and to view the work of Public Bill Committees and Select Committees, and access to the Palace as a visitors attraction. That principle has been conceded: visitors already pay to visit the Palace of Westminster for tours on a Saturday. That has already been accepted by the House.

[Kevin Brennan]

But at the same time as those paid visits take place, hon. Members can bring along their constituents for free. It is therefore not the same.

[Sir George Young]

One advantage of the amendment is that we could look at whether visits to the Clock Tower should be free if the Member of Parliament accompanies visitors, in the same way that we can take people around the House.

We could look at that option if that would meet the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but the ability to climb the Clock Tower is not essential to the enhancement of our democracy or an insight into how the political system works. There is a difference between access to the Clock Tower and access to the Chamber.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I do not normally involve myself in these sorts of debates—like a lot of hon. Members who do not read the relevant e-mails and so on—simply because I trusted in those who take responsibility to do the right thing for us. This might be a lesson to me: perhaps we should take more interest. The issue concerns the principles by which we should go about the fiscal discipline that the House has undertaken. I believe that, because of all the troubles and what has gone wrong in recent years, the House of Commons has decided to beat itself up significantly in all sorts of ways, and this is symbolic of the end product of that.

The principle being breached in this proposal is that hon. Members, when approached by their constituents, should always be able to arrange for them to tour this place, their Parliament, free of charge, accompanied either by their MP or a passholder on their behalf. The Commission should consider that important principle, regardless of whether the motion or the amendment is passed—although I do not know whether that can have the effect of directing the Commission to do anything, to be quite honest.

[Sir Bob Russell]

I am a long-serving Member of the House. When I arrived here in 1997 representing the premier borough in Essex, which I still do, visitors on tours were charged, but the House authorities dropped it because the administration costs were so great compared with the income.

[Kevin Brennan]

That is an interesting point. The arrangement that I am suggesting is more practical, which is in addition to the principle that Members should be able to help their constituents tour this place.

We have heard about other things that could be looked at if we are to stick to this 70% real-terms cut over the next few years, including the grace-and-favour apartments. Sometimes in this place, when a stone is lifted, one is staggered to find what is underneath. How many members of the public are aware that there are grace and favour apartments still lived in by Officers of the House? It is astonishing in the 21st century. There is little transparency or ventilation of such matters until something like this makes people prod further under the stone. The Commission should consider very seriously what Members have said about such arrangements.

It is important that people can come here, listen to our debates and see the House operating. It is also important that our constituents, particularly our younger constituents, can come here and understand the history of the constitution of this United Kingdom as expressed through these buildings. This is a modern, purposefully designed Parliament, albeit designed as a modern Parliament for the 1840s and 1850s. However, it was so designed to express our constitution, and I have found that the young people whom I show around this building have understood much better how our constitution works and what our democracy is all about. The very design of this place is a physical expression of the British constitution, and we should remember that. It is very important that our constituents can come here, free of charge, and have an opportunity to understand that.

This proposal is taking us in a dangerous direction. The Commission will see this as a fairly innocuous proposal to raise a bit of revenue, but my fear is that in a few years we will see the supreme irony in this place of huge corporate events and dinners for the bankers—the very people who put us in the mess that necessitates all this fiscal cutting. They will be the only people in here, having their swanky champagne parties and dinners in Westminster Hall or on the Terrace, while our constituents are charged simply for the privilege of looking around their own Parliament. That is where all this is headed. Whether we accept the amendment or the motion, the Commission needs to listen to the voices of people in the House and think again.

Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The local councillors in my hon. Friend’s constituency are accountable to the electorate, which I am sure will have taken note of the points he has made. Let me say in passing that local councillors are subject to the Nolan principles of high standards in public life, and if they do not live up to those high standards, they should expect appropriate sanctions through the ballot box.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Now that the Information Commissioner has reported, may we have a statement from the Education Secretary on the private e-mails he sent, using his alter ego of “Mrs Blurt”, to two advisers in his Department, discussing Government business and trying to avoid the Freedom of Information Act? The Prime Minister said that sunshine is the best disinfectant; when are the Government going to start acting that way?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman might have seen the statement put out by the Department for Education at the weekend, cleared by the permanent secretary, which said that special advisers were not required to maintain records of deleted e-mails. All civil servants routinely delete or archive e-mails, taking account of their nature and content. I am not surprised that that is what happened in this particular case. On the broader issue, the Cabinet Office will issue advice shortly in the light of what the Information Commissioner announced in December.

Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend brings to the House’s attention the benefits of low interest rates to business and households. Those low interest rates would be put at risk if we listened to some of the siren voices in the Opposition, who want to push up the budget deficit. When we have the Budget later this month, there will be an opportunity to debate the issues that my hon. Friend mentioned. Speaking from memory, every 1% increase in interest has an impact of about £1,000 a year on the average mortgage. That puts the matter in context.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On this St David’s day, it is appropriate for us to remember the Welsh troops who were killed tragically and injured terribly during the Falklands war. Was the Leader of the House as surprised as I was that the Prime Minister’s spokesman this week said that the Government took no position on the news that the Argentine Olympic team will include a Malvinas logo on their Olympic kit? May we have a statement to clarify the Government’s position?

[Sir George Young]

Of course I would understand the concern were that to happen. That may be a matter for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, which is in charge of the Olympic games. I will draw the hon. Gentleman’s concern to the attention of Lord Coe and see whether any steps need to be taken to ensure that no inappropriate logos are on display during the Olympics.

Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and interested to hear about the Pride of Stratford initiative, which I am sure should be replicated throughout the country. He is right to point to the good news in many parts of the country, with people responding to the initiatives that the Government have taken through the national loans guarantee, the enterprise zones and the regional growth fund. I welcome any debate, perhaps in the context of the Budget, so that we can take this agenda forward.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On the business of the missing end-of-term Wednesdays, Members in all parts of the House find it useful to be able to question the Prime Minister. If the Leader of the House cannot find Government business to fill the time on those Wednesdays, could we arrange to do what is sometimes done on the last day of term in school, with Members bringing in board games, or perhaps the Leader of the House showing a video or leading a nature walk in Victoria gardens, to fill in the time until the appointed hour for Prime Minister’s Questions?

[Sir George Young]

There is a motion on the Order Paper that requires the House to sit through an extra day, so it is not the case that the House is being prevented from meeting. As I said in response to an earlier question, the ratio of PMQs to sitting days has gone up during this Parliament as compared with the previous one.

Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point because later this year it will be illegal to clamp on private property, so the emphasis might move on to the collection of fines for parking on such property. I will raise the matter with the Secretary of State for Transport and see whether any additional measures are necessary to protect innocent motorists from being harassed by such companies.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On 16 January, in Education oral questions, the Secretary of State was unable to reassure the House that he or his special advisors had not

“deliberately destroyed or deleted e-mails relating to Government business that he has sent or received through private e-mail accounts”. —[Official Report, 16 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 467.]

May we have a debate on that issue, which other hon. Members have raised and which is beginning to have the whiff of a cover-up about it?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who raises a similar issue to that raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). I have already undertaken to raise the matter with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and I shall ensure that the hon. Gentleman is copied in to the letter that will be on its way.

Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend raises an important issue. We are introducing measures that will raise around £4 billion over the current Parliament by clamping down on tax avoidance. Some 2,250 HM Revenue and Customs staff are moving into a new anti-evasion and avoidance unity. We took action in the previous Budget to close loopholes.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Why have the Government failed to provide support or time for the Metal Theft (Prevention) Bill, which was due to be discussed last Friday? It is supported by hon. Members on both sides of the House in every party, and there is a crisis out there in the country. It could have got through in time. What is the reason for the Government’s lack of support? Is it petty party politics?

[Sir George Young]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had time to look at the written ministerial statement by the Home Office today, but it outlines the action the Government are taking on scrap metal dealers. I know he was on television earlier this morning, which may have detained him from looking at that.