Civil Aviation Bill

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and John McDonnell

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman appreciates that aviation is vital not only to this country, but to the community he represents, and certainly to the community I represent. I therefore want to understand the drift of his comments. Is he saying that BAA should cease to operate and that Heathrow should shut down? What exactly is he proposing?

[John McDonnell]

I wish I hadn’t bothered now! We must not go back to that level of debate. The hon. Gentleman is one of the most intelligent new Members of the House, and I have even started to read his books. We must not get dragged down into such trite debates. We will meet separately and work together to develop a strategy to enhance the economic benefits of Heathrow for both our communities, as I did with his predecessor. The debate is not about whether to close Heathrow; it is about how to strike the right balance between enhancing the employment benefits and protecting the environment, and that is all that these amendments do. They simply say to the Secretary of State and the CAA, “You need to take into account the environmental implications and the effects on local communities.”

What has happened in Sipson has not been taken into account. BAA is still buying properties and letting them out on a short-term basis. The community is therefore continuously blighted. There is no compensation for the local businesses—the butcher, the hairdresser, the local post office and pub. Their loyal clientele is now gone, and some of those businesses are closing down while the others can no longer earn a living.

We have met BAA and I have met Colin Marshall. I pushed the boat out and took him for a coffee in central Hayes. I sought to see whether at least some support could be devised for those local businesses to tide them over while they build up the loyal base again as best they can. The answer was no. Only two weeks ago, the board rejected that request. What is happening now? It is offering a small element to try to tart up the front of the shops—that is all.

That is the sort of blight that has occurred as a result of the activities of BAA—well not BAA, but Ferrovial, the Spanish company founded by a fascist under Franco that has now exploited my community to maximise its profits and ship them abroad to prop up the construction corporation, which is now having financial trouble. So I welcome the opportunity that these amendments would provide to place that duty on the CAA and the Secretary of State to ensure that the impact on local communities is taken into account. If these duties were in place now, BAA would have to introduce a compensation scheme for those local businesses in Sipson; it would have to stop blighting the overall area; it would have to introduce a scheme to compensate my constituents for the noise pollution they are experiencing; and it would have to drive down its operations that are producing such air pollution in my area.

I finish by saying that some of my local schools around Heathrow have a box into which children put their pumps when they go into class in the morning. They do so because they suffer from such a range of respiratory conditions, particularly asthma. In Hillingdon, we now specifically train our teachers on how to deal with asthma attacks in class; this is as a result of the air pollution, particularly that from the airport itself. The amendments are some of the most significant in terms of attempting to affect the environmental impact of aviation in this country that we have seen for many a year, and they should be treated seriously. New clause 6 should be treated seriously, because the noise affects not only people’s enjoyment, but their health, as has been shown in recent research. I am pleased that new clause 6 is being put to the test in the House tonight. Even if the Government cannot accept the other amendments, I would welcome it if they would think again, as we go into this consultation on aviation overall, to see how we can build in better environmental protections for the local communities against the expansion and operations of aviation overall.

Superannuation Bill

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and John McDonnell

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Would it not have been useful, though, if we actually had the number so that we could have a properly informed debate, rather than allegation, counter-allegation and, almost, smear?

Ministers were also asked how much public expenditure the imposed scheme would save—my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) on the Front Bench raised the issue again today—but that information has not been forthcoming. The Secretary of State has said that the amount is impossible to calculate. I have been there; I have advised decision makers—and in the private sector it is exactly the same—and when one is entering a redundancy situation, one does a rough, or even a back-of-an-envelope, calculation of the numbers one is looking to lose, the amounts, the average rates of pay, the distribution of the rates of pay across the service, and therefore roughly what the cost would be. That is not too much to ask before we make a momentous decision on this legislation. In fact, the Public Accounts Committee raised the issue again in July, and the Minister refused to respond.

I deal now with the myth of the highly paid civil service. Some people have already mentioned the subject today, but it is important that we get the point on the record. Even though this has been denied today, it has been part of the Government’s strategy to promulgate the myth of a highly paid civil service.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am unclear about the hon. Gentleman’s position on the status quo. Does he believe that the system is sustainable at current levels, given the economic climate?

[John McDonnell]

I believe that people who are made redundant should be properly compensated and, yes, I believe that the system put forward by the last Government was certainly affordable. I actually believe that the mechanism previous to that is still affordable. However, I accept that there was a need for reform. That is what the unions were negotiating on. It was not the PCS’s fault that the last scheme fell apart; the Government ruled that the process by which it was introduced was unlawful—it is as simple as that.

Let me return to the myth of a highly paid civil service that is promulgated, if not today, certainly elsewhere, including by the media. Yes, there are some highly paid civil servants, and we have dealt with that today. The unions themselves are at the forefront of highlighting the need to tackle high pay and bonuses. However, as had been said, the average civil service pay on which redundancy payments are based is £22,850 a year, compared with £24,970 in the private sector. There are 35,000 civil servants who earn less than £15,000 a year. Some 210,000 people—40% of the civil service—are paid £20,000; 350,000, less than £25,000. The bulk of our civil servants are on low or relatively modest pay.

The other tactic that is used—and it has been paraded again today by Ministers and Members in the debate—is a justification of the attack on the compensation scheme by divide and rule, playing public sector workers off against private sector workers. The Government have argued that many people in the private sector receive only statutory minimum redundancy payments or low-level additional scheme payments, but the reality is that most private sector workers are covered by some form of additional scheme, and are usually protected by its being written into their contract of employment. The fact that the level of many of those compensation payments is disgracefully low in some parts of the private sector is no justification whatsoever for undermining standards in the public sector. It is an argument for raising levels and standards in the private sector, even in these economic times.

The argument that when civil servants take on their job they weigh up the merits of going into the public or private sector has been made today. Wages in the public sector are lower, but the benefits are better, and usually more secure—that is the calculation that is made. If we compare civil service grades with jobs in the private sector, we can see that admin officers in the civil service earn 21% less than people in comparable jobs in the private sector.

Finance Bill

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and John McDonnell

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I think that the debate has been helpful to Members on both sides of the Committee. An attempt has been made to get out of the trenches, and to engage in a wide-ranging discussion of how we can proceed in a pragmatic way. I believe that this will become one of the key issues that people will expect us to address as the economic crisis continues. If they see public expenditure cut so that their local schools are not refurbished, and if they see a tax on welfare benefits, they will expect us at least to maximise the revenue from the tax that people and organisations should be paying. Justice and fairness in the taxation system will become critically important to more and more people.

Some of the arguments that we have heard today have been very helpful, and at times they have been entertaining. I am fascinated by the concept that reducing taxation reduces evasion and avoidance: that is almost an argument for no taxation at all, although it may not gain much purchase in the House. We all accept the arguments about simplicity, but the problem with simplicity is that it makes loopholes possible, and we then need complexity to tackle the loopholes. It is a circular problem. However, it is a joint venture for us to try to ensure that the legislation that we draft is appropriately simple.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

What was said was that simplicity aided the avoidance of loopholes, and that complexity led to more loopholes. The hon. Gentleman has just contradicted that.