Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mims Davies

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

What recent representations she has received on removing the benefit cap.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)]

The proportion of individuals capped remains very low in relation to the overall UC case load and exemptions continue to apply. There remains a statutory duty to review the cap within this Parliament. However, we are in an unusual economic period, and any decision will need to consider potentially counter-intuitive and shifting trends.

[Kevin Brennan [V]]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but at a time when all of us know constituents who are struggling through the crisis which has brought them such hardship through no fault of their own, are the Government really going to impose the benefit cap on tens of thousands of families with children when the so-called “grace period” comes to an end? Is that really true? If it is, can she tell me this: how is that fair?

[Mims Davies]

The benefit cap provides fairness for hard-working tax-paying households as a clear incentive to move into a job where possible. Universal credit households are exempt from the cap if the household earnings are at least £604 a month. I reiterate to the House that the amount of individuals capped remains very low in comparison to the UC case load, at around 3%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mims Davies

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that. In fact, later today in the Chamber the west midlands will be standing proud as we see the debate on the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill. The legacy around jobs and skills from that will be very welcome indeed. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be meeting Andy Street this Thursday; I am sure that everyone will be delighted about that. I recently held a roundtable to redesign how we look at self-employment going forward, listening to people across the country talk about how they can build, create and boost their businesses.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I am very interested to hear about the Minister’s roundtable, because one of the great barriers to people in self-employment, particularly women in freelance-type occupations, is the fact that, unlike employed people, they cannot share their parental leave with their partner. Will she, as part of her roundtable discussions, and discussions with other Ministers, ensure that the Government change the system so that self-employed freelancers can share parental leave?

Scheduling of Parliamentary Business

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mims Davies

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on her maiden speech and welcome her to her place. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) on her excellent maiden speech, for its wit and wisdom and its focus on connectivity to her constituency.

Democracy is a system for processing conflicts, and in this House that lies at the very heart of our debates; it is truly what we have come to this place, the mother of all Parliaments, to do. It is absolutely right that parties of all colours should be able properly to hold the Government of the day to account. Since arriving in this place in 2015, I have certainly found that the opportunities to do so have been plentiful.

It has to be said that the calling of this debate by Her Majesty’s official Opposition has very little to do with representing their constituents; to my mind, it has everything to do with political point-scoring. This is truly a case of navel-gazing by the Opposition, using precious parliamentary time to do so. It is a debate about debates, which is exactly what my constituents and theirs will feel angry and aggrieved about.

The reality is that the Standing Orders state that there should be 20 Opposition days in any one Session, 17 of which are for the main Opposition party, which in this case is the Labour party—I see the Opposition Benches emptying. The Labour party was provided with those 17 days in the previous Session, which lasted less than year. It has been offered the usual Opposition day debates for the short September sittings through the usual channels.

However, I agree with the Scottish National party’s Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), that voters simply do not want to see this type of debate; they want to hear us discussing what matters, which is jobs, opportunities, schools, the impact of Brexit nationwide and so much more. Interestingly, the hon. Gentleman also mentioned his frustrations with filibustering. The greatest shame tonight is that we will be unable to discuss properly the shocking incidence of nationwide abuse of candidates during the general election, which is something I raised with the Leader of the House—I received a positive reception—in applications for Back-Bench business debates. It is up to the wit and will of Members of this House to use all the tools at their disposal to ensure that the points and issues raised by their constituents are heard via co-operation, and indeed their own persistence.

As right hon. and hon. Members will be aware, there have already been plentiful opportunities for Opposition Members to make representations in the Chamber on behalf of their constituents during the debates on the Queen’s Speech, because the Labour party of course had six days to choose those topics. Therefore, I join right hon. and hon. Friends in their disappointment that these complaints are being made to the Government. Indeed, I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) that this was purely a great opportunity for the Opposition to look at process, rather than complaints.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am enjoying the remarks of the hon. Lady, who debates very openly and freely. Does she not also agree with her hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who pointed out that, given that the Government have announced a two-year Session, anybody can see that it is only fair play to consider giving Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition some extra Opposition days so that we can do our constitutional job of holding the Government to account?

[Mims Davies]

I think that there are two points to be made in response to that intervention. First, it is up to the wit and wisdom of Members to use all the tools at their disposal, and I absolutely agree that the Opposition will play every trick in the book, and why would they not? Secondly, I have found myself in a multiplicity of debates since the election, so I wonder how Opposition Members can feel so aggrieved. I have been in debates about new towns, WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—Grenfell Tower, travel infrastructure, school funding and so much more since my return to this House. I am sorry that Opposition Members have not found the variety of opportunities that my colleagues and I have found.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

You are talking about me.

[Kevin Brennan]

She has a very good point.

Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mims Davies

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Brennan]

We are very good friends, Ms Buck, so I do not need to remind you that I am Kevin Brennan, not Kevin Barron, although that mistake has been made previously; the Daily Mail online accidentally knighted me, briefly—

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Very accidentally.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Lady is quite right. Like her, I am much more shovelry than chivalry.

Amendment 2 stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting. As with all the Opposition’s amendments to the Bill, it is a probing amendment. Having closely looked at what was said on Second Reading, Members will realise that we merely seek to scrutinise and stress test the Bill a little. The Bill has completed its stages in the House of Lords, but some outstanding issues remain that we need to explore in Committee, particularly through the amendments that my hon. Friend and I have tabled. An amendment has also been tabled by a Government Back Bencher.

We made it clear on Second Reading that we very much support the Bill, which has been a long time coming. It brings into UK law the 1954 Hague convention, which the UK did not ratify at the time and which has been hanging around waiting for ratification for some considerable time, including after the second protocol was added in 1999. Indeed, it was the Labour Government in 2004 that announced their intention to legislate in this way. They introduced a draft Bill in 2008, which was then scrutinised by a Select Committee but unfortunately ran out of time prior to the 2010 general election and then went into a deep sleep under the coalition Government. It has been revived by this Government, which we think is a good thing, although it is now 62 years since the convention was originally passed.

We are not seeking to challenge the spirit of the convention or the principles of the Bill. In fact, we understand that it is in many ways a different kind of Bill. As the Minister reminded us yesterday in the Programming Sub-Committee, the schedules are in effect there to give the Committee information, rather than to be debated or amended. They actually represent the wording of the convention and the subsequent protocols to it. The first six parts of the Bill are very much for us to debate and amend. As I have said, our amendments will, for the most part, be probing amendments, as this one is. I agree with what the Secretary of State said on Second Reading:

“We want to get on with it”.—[Official Report, 31 October 2016; Vol. 616, c. 700.]

That is why we are here today. I hope that we will be able to conclude our proceedings in the plenty of time given by the programme motion that was agreed by the Government and the Opposition.

We would like the Government to clarify some aspects of the Bill that could create difficulties in future for those who have to interpret and implement it when it becomes law. Amendment 2, which we are considering in conjunction with amendment 6, speaks to one such difficulty. An inevitable consequence of the Bill’s 62-year gestation is that certain aspects of it may well have become outdated. The convention was written in the light of the cultural destruction of the second world war, but quite a lot has happened in the intervening period. The descriptions of the types of cultural property that are in need of protection, which can be found in schedule 1 to the Bill, show their age in the way they refer to physical artefacts and the buildings that house them, with no mention of, for example, those objects that take a digital, rather than physical, form.

The convention, as it is worded, covers cultural property that is “movable or immovable”, but the question that was quite reasonably raised in the other place is whether it covers digital cultural artefacts. For example, would it cover moving images as well as movable or immovable images? I understand that the list in schedule 1 is illustrative and not necessarily exclusive, and that the omission might be seen in some ways as a natural consequence of technological developments rather than any particular negligence at the time, but I still think that it would be useful for the Minister to set out the Government’s position on that.

Having said that it is because of technological developments, it may also reflect a change in mindset since 1954 with regard to what are regarded as cultural objects. It is quite telling that the wording of schedule 1 and the definition of cultural property under article 1 of the convention do not seem to say or to imply that, for example, film would be included as cultural property in that regard. Perhaps people in 1954 did not envisage that film, which was still a relatively new form of artistic expression, albeit more than half a century old, would fall into the category of a cultural object. Lord Stevenson spoke quite eloquently in the other place about the growing and indisputable importance of film, and subsequently television, and the way that they are woven into everyday life, and the way that they reflect, reproduce and challenge the worlds that we inhabit. Therefore, the national film archives in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as regional archives, are all of critical importance.

In fact, a couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to visit the British Film Institute’s archives, which are located near Milton Keynes—if the Minister gets an opportunity in her busy life, I recommend she visits them at some stage—to see the work being done to preserve the cultural heritage of the British film industry. In recent years we had the fantastic discovery of the very early Mitchell and Kenyon films, which catalogue life in the Edwardian era in an incredibly moving and powerful way. They reveal the cultural life of ordinary people in this country, not just so-called high culture, showing how they lived and spent their leisure time and their working lives more than 100 years ago with an amazingly vivid quality. While I was there, I was given a DVD of some of the early colour films of Claude Friese-Greene, who developed an early technique for making colour films but was largely forgotten for many years. There are amazingly vivid images of life in the UK from a tour he took in the 1920s.

To confirm that “cultural property” can be interpreted to include that which takes a digital form would clarify that items do not need to be ancient to be covered by the Bill and by the convention. Our creative industries are thriving, dynamic and constantly changing, producing precious commodities that deserve our protection. I therefore hope that the Minister will assure us that they will be granted the protection outlined in the Bill in the event of armed conflict.

The Minister may argue that the Bill, once passed, will take its place among other UK laws on the protection of cultural property and that we would be better off ensuring that digital culture is covered by those Acts, rather than risk amending the Bill. I understand that argument, which is why I outlined that this is a probing amendment to ensure that we have the Government’s position on the record. However, to ensure that we have informed the future interpretation of the Bill, we want to ensure that UK law is as consistent as possible and that there can be no doubt about the importance of digital cultural property or the severity or importance of anything done to destroy it. I hope that the concerns raised are remembered when we decide which items of cultural property are to be safeguarded by the cultural protection fund.

When this topic was debated in the House of Lords, the Minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, said that the wording of schedule 1—in other words, the 1954 convention—was

“flexible enough to meet the concerns expressed about what sort of cultural property might be covered.”

However, earlier in the same speech she responded to Labour’s amendment on the topic by saying

“the noble Lord’s amendment risks allowing the development of an interpretation of the definition in the United Kingdom which is not consistent with its internationally accepted interpretation. That would be undesirable. It would create uncertainty and inconsistency in the application of the convention and its protocols and could result in the UK failing to comply with its obligations under them.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 June 2016; Vol. 773, c. 1478-1479.]

In those two statements there is some possibility of misunderstanding. Is interpreting cultural property so as to include that which takes a digital form a fair interpretation of flexible wording, as the Minister seemed to hint at one point in her remarks? Alternatively, is that interpretation—as expressed in a probing amendment in the House of Lords—a threat to the ratification of the convention? She seems to be suggesting that, and both those things cannot be true. We would be most grateful if the Minister clarified the Government’s exact position on that point. The more strongly she expresses the Government’s view that digital property is covered under the wording of the convention, and therefore by the Bill, the better.

Amendment 6 probes how part 3 of the Bill, which relates to the cultural emblem, fits into the digital age. Hon. Members will have noted that the Bill is unusual in another way, besides the fact that we are not debating the schedules, because it contains a picture. That is unusual in a parliamentary Bill.