Welsh Affairs

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Owen Smith

Thursday 5th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

We will stand on our record of having trebled the funding for Wales during our period in office. While the Under-Secretary has been in office, the spending for Wales has been cut by £1.5 billion. So we will stand proudly on our record and we can rest assured that the people of Wales will understand that we will deliver for Wales.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We do need to bring the Secretary of State on, because we still need two minutes at the end.

[Owen Smith]

Lots of Members in this House today have invoked history in this important debate, and I will do that one more time. The Prime Minister, in his amusing recent speech, said:

“The Welsh dragon is roaring again—and it’s not red, it’s blue.”

I suggest that, historically speaking, we ought to invoke another great Welshman, the first leader of the Labour party and former Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, Keir Hardie, the anniversary of whose death we celebrate this year. He said that Wales is represented by “Y Ddraig Goch a’r Faner Goch”—the red dragon on the red flag of Labour. That was true in 1915 and it will be true again, I trust, on 8 May 2015.

Government Policies (Wales)

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Owen Smith

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am sure that the shadow Secretary of State has taken your comments on board.

[Owen Smith]

Let us look at some of the symptoms in Wales of the disease of Tory economics, starting with food banks, because they are a useful barometer of this Tory Government’s impact. The volume of food banks in Wales has grown at a faster rate than anywhere else in Britain. In the first six months of this year, 40,000 people in Wales were forced to use them. That is a tenfold increase since 2010, when just 4,000 people used them. By the end of this year, it will have been a twentyfold increase, which is an extraordinary statistic.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Owen Smith

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 4, leave out paragraph (c).

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 76, page 2, line 4, at end insert—

‘(1) The Treasury shall, within two months of Royal Assent of this Act, publish a report on the additional rate of income tax.

(2) This report shall make recommendations on—

(a) preventing the tax-avoidance measures employed by individuals to avoid making payments at the additional rate of income tax, and

(b) the impact upon Treasury revenue of setting the additional rate to—

(i) 50 per cent and

(ii) 45 per cent in the tax year 2013-14.’.

Amendment 7, page 2, line 5, leave out subsections (3) to (6).

Amendment 62, page 2, line 22, at end add—

‘(7) The Treasury shall, within two months of Royal Assent, make an assessment of the relative administrative costs of—

(a) making an additional charge to income tax payable by all individuals with an adjusted net income above a certain amount; and

(b) the measures in section 8 of, and Schedule 1 to this Act.’.

Clause stand part.

[Owen Smith]

It is a great pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle.

The legislation we deal with in this House can sometimes appear rather obscure or require a significant amount of interpretation. For financial legislation that is often true in spades, but not so with this Bill, because what do we have, straight off the bat, on page 1, in part 1, chapter 1, clause 1? A tax cut for millionaires—£40,000 for 14,000 millionaires, signed away in one short line, in subsection (2)(c), which cuts the additional top rate of tax from 50p to 45p. Let me be clear: our amendment would get rid of that provision. It would do what we as the Opposition are able to do and strike out from the Bill the change from 50p to 45p. Let there be no doubt whatever: we will be voting to remove paragraph (c) later today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith]

Is the hon. Gentleman about to—

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) has only just walked into the Chamber. He cannot have picked up the debate quite this quickly. He might need a little more time to listen before he intervenes.

[Owen Smith]

We should give the hon. Gentleman time to warm up, but if he wants to intervene to tell me where in the HMRC report we can find a definitive set of data on the impact on competitiveness of the various rates of tax, I will gladly sit down and wait for him to do so.

Commission on Devolution in Wales

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Owen Smith

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are having a debate on devolution in Wales, so I am not quite sure whether a future debate is relevant. We ought to stick to the agenda.

[Owen Smith]

Indeed, and thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Today’s debate and the Silk commission are extremely important, and I welcome them for two reasons. First, they enable the discussion of issues of genuine magnitude. Part I of the commission’s role on fiscal powers, and part II on the boundaries between the competences of Westminster and Wales, both cover enormously important issues that will have an impact on people in Wales in particular and across the rest of the UK. Secondly, the debate is important because it provides an opportunity to discuss the wider issue of the Union, to which my article referred, and the wider context in which the Silk commission is set. A lot of Members, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) in his excellent contribution, have taken that opportunity. I wish to talk about that wider context.

Government Members, including the Secretary of State, have looked askance today at Opposition Members who have said that they are suspicious of the motivation that may lie behind some of the remarks that have been made, and perhaps even behind the Government’s whole direction of travel with regard to the Union. We are seeing diminishing support from the Conservative party for the concept of the Union.

Those concerns are not plucked out of thin air, and they are not illegitimate. They are born of our reading and listening to comments made by Conservative Members, and of hearing comments such as those of the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, who said that Scottish ambition was “fraying English tolerance”. They come from reading the conclusions of the report commissioned by the Prime Minister, when he was in opposition, from the current Justice Secretary. It recommended that the only way to deal with the West Lothian question was to create an English Parliament with English votes on English issues, denying Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members a vote.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Owen Smith

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. It is up to Members to decide on the number of times that they give way to interventions, but I am concerned that that is going to stop other Members getting in. If we are going to have interventions, Mr Cairns, we need to make them very brief.

[Owen Smith]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s excellent point. One thing that I was slightly disappointed about in the ministerial statement was the fact that those discussions clearly have not taken place. Some of the statement’s specifics are very welcome, particularly its point about the terms of reference and, notably, the fact that the level of payment to people with hepatitis C might be equalised.

[Ms Abbott]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. You will be aware that “Mr Secretary Lansley” and “Anne Milton” tabled an amendment that is on the Order Paper and includes the figure “£3 billion”. Some Opposition Members feel that this debate cannot go forward until we have some clarification of its accuracy.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

A point of order takes up valuable time, too. I recognise that you wanted to make it, but you will have the opportunity to put the case a little later. What we ought to try to do is respect all Members. I want to try to get in all those Members who are here; I do not want disappoint them.

[Owen Smith]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I now have very little time left, so I shall speak a little faster, if I may.

It is absolutely critical that the Minister makes it very clear in her response that she is talking about equalising the payment to people with hepatitis C with the previous payments to victims of HIV. It is also important that she consider the specificity of the recommendations, including the terms of reference. Victims’ access to nursing care and to the NHS ought to be looked at differentially. They were infected by the NHS, in effect, and therefore they ought to be treated differently when looked after by the NHS.

In the last minute of my speech, I want to pay tribute to some people in the Public Gallery today. The reason I am so interested in today’s debate is that a very brave constituent of mine, Leigh Sugar, died earlier this year. His family came to see me just days after his death to express their desire for him to be the last person who suffers in their dying days, having not been looked after properly by the NHS, and having been infected through NHS treatment.

Leigh is a classic example of a person who, as a mild haemophiliac, went to hospital—he, in his teens—to be treated for the condition and came out with a devastating disease. That disease ultimately led to his death from liver cancer. Far too many people have died before we have seen this House deliver justice, and it is absolutely critical that justice be seen to be done today. This is a moral issue, it is a matter of conscience and of justice, and we owe it to the victims, whatever the difficulties of the CSR, to see justice served so that they might be properly recognised and properly recompensed.