Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Edward Leigh

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend is right. This morning we met representatives from UKHospitality, who said exactly that: the Bill is coming on the back of a number of changes and some difficult times during covid for industries that employ a lot of people, which will be particularly badly affected by this legislation. The Government should think twice about implementing it at this moment in time.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the 302 mentions of uncertainty. It is hard to know how that can foster growth. Let us be honest: businesses are already more highly taxed and regulated than ever before. We all know the reason—the pandemic— and we have to take responsibility for that. Will he assure me that, as a party, we will use this period of opposition to once again proclaim our values as a low-tax, deregulated economy? Otherwise, how will we foster growth in an increasingly competitive world? If we tax businesses more, we simply lay the foundation of a future Labour Government.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I agree. We should be low tax and low regulation. One of the saving graces of this legislation is the detail, although the Bill itself is light on detail: many of the measures will be brought in through secondary legislation, therefore making it easier for a future Government to reverse some of the catastrophic changes.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Edward Leigh

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. That is exactly what we are trying to do, and what the statement is all about. As I said, we have compensated 64% of victims thus far with full and final compensation, and provided interim compensation to practically everybody who has come forward with a claim. She is right that we are disappointed that more people have not come forward to overturn their convictions. That is exactly the problem that we are trying to solve, and we are looking at innovative legal ways to do that. As I said, we hope to have some news very shortly.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am glad that the Minister is asserting the principle of ministerial responsibility, which has long been clear, ever since the Crichel Down case. Even if the Minister is not personally responsible, he is responsible for what goes wrong. When I was Minister for the Post Office, that was made clear to me. It is reprehensible that at least one of my successors is trying to dodge the bullet and just say, “I was given the wrong advice.” If we own the Post Office, the Minister is responsible. That is a principle that we have to establish.

Looking to the future, I have often been in touch with the Minister regarding the views of David Ward, who is the president of the sub-postmasters north-east branch. What the branch wants now is for a line to be drawn under this, for compensation to be paid, for the reputation of the Post Office to be re-established and for the Post Office management to treat sub-postmasters properly from now on.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I totally agree with my right hon. Friend. As Ministers, we must bear responsibility for what we do, as well as expect people within the Post Office, Fujitsu and others to bear responsibility. As Ministers, we must serve a useful purpose. I totally agree about drawing a line under this. That is exactly what we want to do, in two ways: by overturning convictions and by paying full and final compensation. I am pleased to say that around 30 people with overturned convictions have been able to draw a line under it by being compensated fully for what happened to them. We should try to build on that, and make it happen much more quickly. That is what we are working on right now, and we hope to deliver solutions in the very near future.

Post Office: Horizon Compensation

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Edward Leigh

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words and for all the work she does as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on post offices. She is right to say that there are three separate schemes, and there was probably a good reason for that at the time. It is not ideal to have three schemes, and Sir Wyn Williams referred to that in his comments, but we are all keen to see consistency across the three schemes. That is why I welcome the work of the advisory board, which will cover all three schemes to make sure there is consistency across them. I am determined to make sure that happens, and I will keep her fully informed on progress.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

This is a terrible scandal, and Post Office Ltd is not fit for purpose. Thirty years ago, when I was a Post Office Minister, I tried to privatise this body, and it is still in a mess. Only last week, I had a meeting with sub-postmasters led by David Ward, one of my excellent local sub-postmasters, and they are calling for something good to come out of this scandal—namely, that we pass control directly to sub-postmasters, for instance through mutualisation.

We have the chief executive of Post Office Ltd paying himself a salary five times more than the Prime Minister, with a bonus of £400,000 a year on top of that. We have banking remuneration to Post Office Ltd coming to £205 million, of which only 27% went to sub-postmasters. We have 11,000 sub-postmasters in a state of managed decline, earning virtually the minimum wage. I wrote to the Minister on 14 March, so he will have received the letter by now. I do not expect him to reply immediately to my question, but will he at least have an open mind about trying to take us forward and preserve the wonderful world of our sub-postmasters, particularly in rural England?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his points, and I also hope that some good comes out of this terrible scandal. I am a big fan of mutual organisations. I am happy to have a conversation with him. I will respond in writing, and perhaps we can meet following that.

Assisted Dying

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Edward Leigh

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

That was a very good speech. I thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this debate. I thought that her speech was excellent; it was incredibly touching and very sensitive. It was a perfect opening on this very difficult subject.

Of the public, 74% want their Member of Parliament to vote for a law on assisted dying. I did that in 2015 and I would do it again, given the chance, today. By a remarkable quirk of fate, in that vote in 2015, 74% of Members of Parliament voted against bringing in a law on assisted dying, which I think is entirely unsustainable. It is not holding back the tide; it is holding back a tidal wave of support for this.

We have heard so many times in recent years that we must trust the public. I absolutely agree with that, and I trust the 350 people in my constituency of Thirsk and Malton who wanted this debate. I do not agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) on this. I agree with him on many topics—he is a man of great common sense, normally—but this is not about economics. This is about the people and what the people want. I say to the very well-behaved members of the public in the Gallery that I guess that the percentage who want assisted dying is much, much higher, because this is such a sensitive subject.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will my hon. Friend allow me to intervene?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will look to the Chair—who says no; I apologise. We will talk about it afterwards.

As has been said any number of times this afternoon, this is about choice. Of course, all of us in this country are so lucky to have this free society we live in. This is about freedom of choice, but it is not about freedom of choice over anything; it is about freedom of choice about the thing we fear most in life: death.

I would say today that I do not actually fear death; I might think differently in a few years’ time—that point in time is getting closer—but I will tell you what I fear, Mr McCabe. I fear a painful death. I absolutely fear a painful death. I may have options. Some of us are lucky enough that we could plan ahead and say, “Well, we’ll make that trip to Zurich”, or we might take the terrible path that the father of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) had to take. People have a choice, of course, to do what they think is right and not to take that option, but instead to take the natural path. However, I think it is wrong to remove from people the choice, a choice that other countries and other places allow and that we can choose to have, as well—the ones who are lucky enough to have that choice.

There is one thing that we have probably not discussed in this debate. It is not just about the fear of dying; it is about the fear of what might happen. There is a quote from Dr Sandy Briden, who died of a form of cancer that is rare in the UK:

“Knowing I had the option of an assisted death when things get too much would allow me to live now, without the constant fear of what might happen at the end. For me, assisted dying isn’t about dying; it’s about living.”

It is about living that last time we have, knowing we have the choice—away from that anxiety, which must be terrible for people nearing these situations—and it is certainly something that I would have wished for my mother when she passed away at the end of 2019. The palliative care was there, but still it was, for all those around her, a traumatic experience.

I do not get the slippery-slope argument. We have seen that in Oregon, which has not changed its law in 25 years, a very low percentage of people—0.7%—take this path of death through assisted dying.

However, I understand that there are really cogent arguments as to why we would not have this law, which is why I support an inquiry. I just do not see what the argument against an inquiry is. We could look at best practice around the world and decide what is best practice for the United Kingdom.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Edward Leigh

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and it has been a pleasure to serve on the Select Committee under his guidance for the last four years. I agree with many of the points he made, particularly the last stuff on cladding. We know that is a much bigger issue than is currently accepted, and we need to deal with it. It is interesting that he talks about local authorities not having rents capped when it is Labour party policy to cap rents in the private sector. I am not sure that is a very balanced approach.

I agree with many of the points the hon. Gentleman made about the spending challenges for local authorities. Clearly, there are huge spending challenges for local authorities and also for the national Government. It is my belief that we will have to address this stuff in a very different way. This is not a party political point, but Governments of all persuasions have balanced the books in this country only seven times—they have done so in only seven years—over the past 53 years. We cannot simply keep spending more than we are getting in, otherwise we end up with the £2 trillion debt, which is where we are.

I regret some of the spending pledges in our leadership contest at the moment, because we have got to run this country much more prudently. We have to be able to balance the books on an ongoing basis, and certainly to do so within a cycle. We have some massive challenges ahead that we will all have to accept: the cost of healthcare that we are going to provide; the cost of pensions that we are going to have to provide; and the costs of social care. As things are at the moment, all this is going to land on the taxpayer. It does not seem feasible that that situation can continue, particularly in the area of social care. We know there is a funding gap for local authorities of about £3 billion, which will rise to about £8 billion within five years, according to the LGA.

The Minister is doing a brilliant job in trying to get extra funds, and also in making sure that the funds are spread fairly across the country. The current funding formula is certainly not fair. My local authority has about 50% less spending power compared with some London authorities, for example. We need a fair settlement—one that is fair to everybody—but this has to be a rising tide that lifts all boats. If we do not put extra money into the system, we cannot provide a fairer funding system, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) said about school funding, and we cannot have some people losing out when everybody’s budgets are tight. We are going to have to find some more money for local authorities from somewhere if we are properly to address the fairer funding issue.

The biggest issues for my local authority, North Yorkshire County Council, are those involving children’s services and social care, which is what I primarily want to talk about. The difficulty with social care is that it has virtually zero correlation with the method of funding local authorities today or in the future. Moving to a system of business retention—the Minister knows I have reservations about such a system—means a finite amount of money for local authorities at a time when there is huge and rising demand for social care. There is no correlation between those two things. Local authority funding will be unsustainable. Either we find a new way of doing this, or local authorities will provide many fewer services in future.

The Select Committee considered social care twice. The first time, we went to Germany to look at the system there and then we conducted a joint inquiry with the Health and Social Care Committee. We settled on several recommendations, one of which constitutes the right solution, which is sustainable, scaleable and simple. It is the German system that was adopted in 1995. Before then, the German system was funded by local authorities. I am sure that they recognised that that was not sustainable, so they moved to a system of social insurance.

Everybody pays a small amount—just over 1% of people’s salaries, and the employer pays 1% of earnings—into a private insurance system. The insurance companies are not for profit—nobody makes any money out of the system. The levies are settled nationally, and the system also covers people with learning difficulties and disabilities. The system is simple and sustainable. Everybody pays a small amount so that nobody has to pay everything. That is the fairest part.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am glad that my hon. Friend is talking about social insurance. I and many others have been arguing that the continental system of social insurance, particularly for funding health services, is probably the way forward. As our population ages, getting public support to pay for those services through general taxation becomes increasingly unsustainable. Personalising social insurance creates more support.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. However, I believe that healthcare is different. Social care should be funded differently because everybody has a personal responsibility to provide for themselves in the future. Of course, people do not put money aside for many reasons. The system must be mandatory—that is the key—so that everybody puts some money aside even when times are tough. There is a threshold for people on low incomes, but the system means that people properly prepare for the future.

One of the biggest benefits comes when people are assessed as needing care. They can take the services of a charitable provider or the local authority, or decide to take the money. People who decide to take the money on a monthly basis can pay it to a relative or loved one to look after them. Another big benefit is therefore social cohesion. The system is about family looking after family, just as we used to do. We do not do that as much now. The system is good for society and for community. We saw that huge benefit when we went to Germany.

We have cross-party support for the idea. Both Select Committees—20-odd of us—reached that conclusion. It was one of the recommendations of our report, so we should work cross-party on it. There have been commissions on social care in the past, but when they report, the question is whether the recommendations are possible politically. If we put together our own parliamentary commission and reach cross-party consensus, I believe that we could deliver the recommendation.

The system has to be mandatory because there will not be an insurance market for it otherwise. That was the problem with the Dilnot recommendation. The scheme was not mandatory and therefore no insurance market developed on the back of it, so there was nothing available for social insurance. It is a great opportunity, which will cut the link between a potential huge future cost for local authorities, and our ageing population and the increased number of people with learning disabilities. Obviously, local authorities will have a huge part to play in directing services, but they will also be able to provide the other services that are critical for local people.

I am keen to work cross-party on the matter. I know that the Local Government Minister has regarded the proposal positively in the past and I am keen for the Department to give it a positive recommendation in the forthcoming Green Paper.