Point of Order
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Have you had any notice about whether a Communities and Local Government Minister intends to make a statement on devolution to a combined authority in East Anglia? As we speak, the chief executive of Adnams brewery and Lord Heseltine are shuttling around the three counties of East Anglia offering jobs, offering budgets, getting rid of public bodies and, in short, rearranging this country’s constitutional settlement on the hoof. Is it not incumbent on Ministers to explain to the House what changes are envisaged and to demonstrate that there is proper accountability for such decisions in respect of existing and future legislation?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I have just checked, so I can say that we have received no notice—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman might be interested to hear the response, although I presume he knows it already. I assure him that we have had no notification at this stage. Nothing has been received by the Clerk or the Speaker’s Office. I can, however, tell him that Government Front Benchers are all ears and will be taking that point away. It is certainly now on the record.
Let us see whether we can now make some progress.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I need to bring in another four speakers before bringing in the Minister at 10.37 pm.
Mr Jackson
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and lovely to hear her dulcet tones, which brought back flashbacks of 17 sittings looking in detail at the 145 clauses and 11 schedules of the Bill. As I say, it is lovely to see her in her place and not having been subject to the night of the long knives as a result of the Labour reshuffle, if indeed the reshuffle is concluded, as someone suggested on Twitter, by 4 o’clock tomorrow—
Mr Deputy Speaker
I am sure you do, Mr Jackson, but I can assure you that I do not want to hear the history of the reshuffle. Come on, we could be here all night!
Mr Jackson
It was longer than one of Britney Spears’s marriages—that is what I wanted to say, Mr Deputy Speaker.
What was depressing about our Committee sittings was the conservative nature of the debate and the stasis of what we got from the Labour party, which did not move on. If there is a housing crisis, we need to find radical ways forward to deal with it. It is not as if we are leaving it simply to the private sector. This week’s announcement of the building of 13,000 units on public sector land provides an example of where we are using the might of Government to work with the private sector to deliver. To appreciate that, one needs to look only at Help to Buy, Help to Buy ISAs and other Government initiatives to help small and medium-sized builders, for instance.
The fact is that we have a mandate for starter homes. The hon. Member for City of Durham asked what changed between March and May. With all due respect, let me tell her that we won the general election and her party lost it. We have a mandate to deliver starter homes, and the hon. Lady does not do justice to the wider issues in housing, planning and development. She fails to take into account some pertinent issues. When in power, her Government failed to deliver infrastructure planning properly. We had housing information packs and we had eco-cities. All those things failed. We had density targets. We had regional spatial strategies, which were a disaster and did not deliver homes. Under that Government, the smallest number of homes were built since 1923, there was the largest increase in young people in temporary accommodation and housing waiting lists increased massively.
Immigration Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Jackson
No, I am not saying that, but if the hon. Gentleman is attacking the Government side for being racist, as he did in his Westminster Hall debate, I say that chauvinism and nationalism are bad and that he should be mindful—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think that I need to help a little bit. In fairness, we are on immigration, but independence for Scotland has not happened, so the immigration part will not apply at the moment. It will obviously help us all if we can carry on with the debate.
Mr Jackson
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
With regard to the rationale for immigration, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee found in 2008, as indeed did the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, that large-scale immigration had a minimal impact on the economy holistically. I pay tribute to the Government for having the guts to listen to people and take appropriate action in a responsible, reasonable and measured way. They have taken action before on things that have caused real problems for all communities. The hon. Member for Brent North is not the only one who represents a diverse, multicultural society; I have 10,000 eastern European migrants in my constituency and 10,000 voters of Pakistani heritage. The question is what is good for the whole community. We all know that when we go to those wonderfully moving citizenship ceremonies at the town hall there is a feeling of cohesiveness about being a British citizen. Those people who have followed the correct route and done the right thing are just as angry and concerned about the impact of illegal immigration as anyone else, irrespective of their race or ethnicity.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to deal with Lords amendment 1. I am sure that Lord Heseltine will not lose any sleep over his comments, so perhaps we can get back to the amendment.
Mr Jackson
I was meandering among the ash trees of Lord Heseltine’s arboretum, Mr Deputy Speaker, and—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will get out of the wood and on to the subject in hand.
Mr Jackson
We must respect the unique nature and authenticity of local government. When my right hon. Friend the Chancellor reads the report and teases out its nuances, I am sure that there will be more with which he agrees than with which he disagrees.
The context of centralising business rates was the desire to give a break to businesses, which often encountered difficulties dealing with local authorities that were not business-focused and did not make protecting the interests of individual workers in growing businesses a priority, which was especially the case in places such as Liverpool and Manchester.
Mr Stewart Jackson
I take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment as a Minister, with his great experience as leader of Brentwood borough council. I agree with his point that local enterprise partnerships are based on authentic sub-regional and local economies. Does he see a time when it might be possible to try to—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am sorry. We must have shorter interventions. I cannot say that to Members on one side of the House without saying it to those on the other. I am sure the Minister has grasped the question.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Stewart Jackson
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Labour party should have learnt its lesson from the Bradford West by-election result? It relied on community voting and this kind of backward-looking, pernicious and frankly slightly sleazy and corrupt approach to registration and campaigning. It bit Labour on the backside and it lost by 10,000 votes. It is over.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think there was a question in there somewhere.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Stewart Jackson
I had not intended to speak in this debate so I shall keep my remarks brief. I do not have at my fingertips the comprehensive figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) gave; he made some cogent and powerful points. From my point of view it is always a very risky endeavour when a political idea is fleshed out to become a fiscal policy of any Government. The remarks made just after the general election at the Conservative party conference were really an aspiration that is now being turned into a policy. I believe that this policy is a fiscal time bomb that will blow up in the faces of this Government. I also believe that what we are doing—[Interruption.]
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is speaking.
Mr Jackson
I defer to the parliamentary private secretary to the Financial Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). [Interruption.] At least he is at the moment.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) made a very important point about crossing the Rubicon of undermining the universality of child benefit. The same point was made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. Some time ago, the Child Poverty Action Group said this about child benefit:
“A benefit which goes to virtually all children is of course expensive. But it can also be argued that it is more likely that such a benefit will have ‘substantial and wide-ranging support’, and may be difficult to abolish; provision for the poorest children only, whilst cheaper, is often more precarious.”
Specifically, intergenerational redistribution and the value placed on children are universal values that we are seeking to undermine.
Mr Jackson
My hon. Friend makes an extremely apposite point. If we really are all in this together, it beggars belief for my constituents and his that we are talking about looking after the interests of people on low or median incomes but are remitting abroad, within the European Union, anything between £40 million and £75 million in various benefits for people and families who do not even live in this country.
It would not be fair not to mention that the Chancellor has sought to ameliorate the concerns that various Members across the House have expressed about this policy and I give him due credit for that. Unfortunately, however, I think this policy will go badly wrong and will have a specific impact on aspirational, ambitious families and will breach the basic tenet of universality in child benefit. For that reason, I cannot and will not vote for it.
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I must call the Minister at 5.48.
Identity Documents Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) should carry on with the debate on the new clause.
Mr Jackson
I shall defer to the good sense of the Deputy Speaker and pass over those issues. I am mindful, of course, that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak has worked in the Whips Office, and that Whips are a bit more bare-knuckled in debates than some others. I shall move swiftly on.
I want to talk about authority and establishing one’s policies before an election. I made the point to the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) that—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. We are discussing new clause 2, and the hon. Gentleman must speak to that.
Mr Jackson
By a circuitous route, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall speak to that new clause—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. It might be helpful to the hon. Gentleman to know that he can talk about these matters on Third Reading, if that is the route that he wishes to take. If he could just speak to new clause 2 now, that would be much better.
Police Grant Report
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker
May I just remind the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) that we are dealing with the police grant? We have strayed into discussing prisons, and although I know there is a connection, we are stretching it.
Mr Jackson
I know that we could wander the byways and highways of penal policy for ever, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I graciously accept your admonition on that particular point and I shall return to the police grant, before you rule me out of order.
We have to be realistic about what we are being asked to accept today.