Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Wednesday 21st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

7. What recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of reducing the voting age to 16.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr David Lidington)]

The Government stated in their manifesto a commitment to maintaining the voting age at 18. We therefore have no plans to lower the voting age in elections. We continue to believe that the voting age should remain aligned with the age of majority at 18. This is the point at which many other key rights and obligations are acquired and is in line with international comparators.

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[Mr Lidington]

We are talking here about electing the Parliament and the Government of the country, and although some 16 and 17-year-olds exercise and demonstrate enormous responsibilities, it is also the case that we make a general protection in our law for 16 and 17-year-olds—for example, through the criminal justice system. That is another way we recognise that 18 is, on average, the right point to make that judgment.

[Liz McInnes]

Last week, my local authority, Rochdale Borough Council, approved a motion supporting votes at 16 that received cross-party support. When will the Minister drag himself into the 21st century and get in line with the progressive and forward-thinking councillors representing the borough of Rochdale?

[Mr Lidington]

I am always genuinely interested to hear what is happening in Rochdale Council, but I draw the hon. Lady’s attention to the fact that 26 of our 27 EU partners, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, all have a voting age that begins at 18. I do not think that those countries can fairly be said to be not in the 21st century.

Carillion

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I had better not trespass on the responsibilities of the new Secretary of State for Justice, but I can say that contingency plans at the Ministry of Justice included the creation of a Government company that is available to take on the provision of these services at any time.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Carillion is responsible for 11,800 in-patient beds, so what action will the Government take immediately to avoid exacerbating the current NHS winter crisis?

[Mr Lidington]

The word from hospital trusts today so far has been that the work of hospitals has not been materially affected by the collapse of Carillion. The Department of Health has not been looking at this in isolation. In preparing contingency plans, it has been talking for some time to the NHS trusts that use Carillion as a contractor. The contingency plans address these issues with the aim of minimising disruption and making sure that services to patients continue both safely and to a high standard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

1. What steps he is taking to ensure that local authorities have sufficient resources to deliver an effective service for voters at elections.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr David Lidington)]

Before I answer the hon. Lady’s question, Mr Speaker, I hope that you will allow me briefly to thank and pay tribute to my predecessors in these roles, in particular my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashford (Damian Green) and for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin). They have done great service for their constituents, this House and their country during their time in office and I want to put my thanks to them on the record. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) for the work that they did in the Cabinet Office before moving on to other responsibilities.

The Electoral Commission’s report shows that, overall, the 2017 general election was successfully delivered by a committed community of electoral administrators. We work with the commission, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and the Association of Electoral Administrators to ensure that returning officers are effectively supported to run polls.

[Liz McInnes]

I thank the Minister for that response and welcome him to his new role. As well as the snap general election last year, my local authority of Rochdale Borough Council presided over the Greater Manchester Combined Authority mayoral elections, for which it received no central funding, which is surprising considering that one of the Mayor’s functions is to replace the police and crime commissioner’s role, which did receive central funding. What action will the Government take to help local authorities such as mine to deliver well-run elections for these new roles?

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[Mr Lidington]

It is true that the Prime Minister has asked me to continue with my predecessor’s responsibilities of overall supervision of intergovernmental relations within the United Kingdom. I spoke yesterday evening to the Deputy First Minister of Scotland and the First Minister of Wales and assured them that I hope to visit both Scotland and Wales in the near future. I hope also to visit Northern Ireland.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

T3. Earlier, the Minister remarked that the 2017 snap election had been well run, but following that election the Association of Electoral Administrators felt the need to provide its members with a free counselling service. What action will the Government take to address the significant staffing pressures and unsustainable workloads experienced by our election staff?

[Mr Lidington]

One of the challenges facing electoral staff this year was an unprecedented number of people taking advantage of the opportunity to register online, and administrators had to sort out duplicate registrations. We are looking at the lessons to be learned from that, but we should not fail to acknowledge the fact that online registration has made it easier for people to register and has been a great boon to many of our citizens.

Sentencing

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his support, and I will say two things in response. First, I certainly share his commitment to doing all we can to make certain that our prisons are effective agents of rehabilitation, because effective rehabilitation that reduces the cycle of reoffending is in the interests of the safety and security of everybody in this country. Secondly, my right hon. and learned Friend is right about the importance of respecting international obligations. We rightly talk about British values and seek in our various expressions of policy to embody and represent those values, and among those values are respect for the rule of law and a rules-based international order. It is certainly harder to urge respect for those principles on others if we are not clear about doing so ourselves. For those reasons, the package I have announced today represents a clear, and also, I hope, an effective way forward.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

This Government have introduced a system of universal credit on the basis that it mirrors the world of work, so why will they not use the same logic and consider that prisoners should be prepared for life outside prison by maintaining their civic right to a vote?

[Mr Lidington]

I am not sure whether the hon. Lady was urging that all prisoners should be enfranchised, regardless of the seriousness of the crime or the length of sentence, but I think that was the implication of what she said. What I have announced today relates enfranchisement to effective rehabilitation, but I do not agree that we should depart from the principle that it is reasonable to clearly tell someone who has been sentenced to prison—which means the court must have considered every alternative penalty and decided that the crime had been so serious that no other punishment would suffice—that they have forfeited the right to vote as a consequence.

Business of the House

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

There is a system in place to try to check for the risk of bogus signatories to petitions. Given the pace at which information technology moves, those systems clearly need to be updated from time to time. The Petitions Committee and the House authorities are keen to act on the basis of any evidence of malpractice such as that described by the hon. Lady.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Following the horrific events of yesterday, the Prime Minister said in this House today that she wanted all MPs to learn life-saving first aid skills. With that in mind, can we revisit the debate on compulsory first aid education in schools, which was the subject of a private Member’s Bill that was sadly talked out by Government Members?

[Mr Lidington]

I think that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister encouraged people to acquire those skills. Whether the best way to do that is by making such education a compulsory part of the school curriculum is a slightly different question. It is a perfectly reasonable element of the debate, but allocating time to such skills lessons would inevitably mean prolonging the school day or taking time away from other activities. The Government’s general approach is that we want to give local schools and headteachers discretion about such things.

Business of the House

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I willingly join the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure the entire House, in expressing unreserved revulsion at and condemnation of the event he describes. It is, frankly, sickening to hear that human beings could be prepared to behave in such a fashion. I remember, from reading and seeing news reports just under a year ago, the sense of shock and genuine grief on the part of people in the south side of Glasgow. People from very different ethnic and religious heritages felt that they had lost a friend and a devoted champion of community life. That is how we should remember.

In a sense, the best tribute would be for people in Glasgow in particular, and all of us, to redouble our resolve to eradicate from our society this scourge of bigotry, whether it is based on racial, religious or any other grounds. I hope very much that the Pakistani high commission in London, which I think will have been equally appalled by these news reports, will have taken note of the words that the hon. Gentleman has spoken this morning.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

As a fellow Greater Manchester MP, it was my privilege to visit Sir Gerald in his constituency and see for myself the love of his constituents and the esteem in which they held him. He will be greatly missed in that constituency and by everybody in this House. Like everybody, I will miss Sir Gerald’s sartorial elegance. I remember one day, when he turned up in a particularly flamboyant number, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) commented that several deckchairs in Blackpool must be missing their seats.

My last memory of Sir Gerald is his absolutely barnstorming speech from the Labour Back Benches against the forced academisation of schools. I was pleased—no doubt this was thanks to the efforts of Sir Gerald and many others—that the Government backtracked on those plans.

Another subject very close to Sir Gerald’s heart was the NHS. With that in mind, I would like to request an urgent debate on the activities of NHS Shared Business Services. When I worked for Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, NHS Shared Business Services put in a bid to run our payroll services. As trade union reps, we did a quick search of the internet and found a catalogue of woeful errors it had left in its wake from the NHS contracts it already held. May we have an urgent debate about why it was allowed to carry on performing NHS work?

[Mr Lidington]

The issue with NHS Shared Business Services was identified by the Department of Health and NHS England in March 2016. They immediately established an incident team, which is still working to try to resolve the situation. A team led by NHS England, including clinical experts, has now reviewed all 708,000 items of correspondence. Some 2,500 were identified as having potential risk of harm and required further investigation. Local GPs have now identified nearly 2,000 as having no patient harm. There remain 537 active cases, and they are still being followed up so that we can be absolutely certain there has been no harm to any patients. So far, there is no evidence to suggest actual harm. When the investigation is complete, I am sure that it would be reasonable for the relevant Health Minister to report to the House.

Business of the House

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I cannot offer my hon. Friend a debate in Government time. If he would like to put some of the detail in a note to me, I will draw it to the attention of the relevant Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport so that he can have a comprehensive response.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Today is Secondary Breast Cancer Awareness Day. May we have a debate on the support given to people living with secondary breast cancer, given that Breast Cancer Care’s campaign “Secondary, not Second Rate” has found that people living with this incurable disease face poor care, delayed diagnosis and a lack of information and support?

[Mr Lidington]

A half-hour debate on cancer diagnosis in Westminster Hall on Tuesday may provide the opportunity for an intervention, but the hon. Lady has done the House a service by reminding us of the importance of this issue. I am sure we would all wish to support the work the cancer charities are doing to highlight the importance of secondary breast cancer to ensure that that challenge is not overlooked, and that we would all wish to support both the research on causes and cures, and the work going on to support those who have to live with secondary breast cancer and their families.

Business of the House

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and the Americas would be delighted to talk to my hon. Friend about his recent visit to the island. I think all of us across the Floor of the House want to see the day when Cyprus can be reunited and the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities brought together again. That would be a really good day for the United Kingdom. I think there will be an opportunity to raise this at the next Foreign Office questions, but a conversation between my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Minister is probably the best immediate way forward.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Yesterday, the BBC reported that Katrina Percy, the ex-chief executive of the Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, which is being investigated because of the lack of investigation into unexplained deaths at the trust, had resigned from her post but was then shunted into a £240,000-a-year job, which was created just for her, with no other candidates. May we have an urgent debate in Government time on this very worrying decision?

[Mr Lidington]

My understanding is that this appointment was wholly within the jurisdiction of the local board of the relevant NHS trust, and it is a decision that that board therefore needs to explain and for which it is accountable.

Europe: Renegotiation

Debate between Liz McInnes and David Lidington

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

A number of factors give rise to migration, but the fact that roughly 40% of people from elsewhere in the EU who live in the UK are in receipt of benefits or tax credits of some sort indicates that that is one of the major contributors to the pull factors.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

In his speech this morning the Prime Minister announced his intention to scrap Labour’s Human Rights Act. Is he opposed to the Act because it was a Labour Government who finally implemented it, or is he opposed to human rights on a more fundamental level?

[Mr Lidington]

I am sorry if the hon. Lady was shocked by that sentence in the Prime Minister’s speech, but it was in the Conservative party manifesto back in May. She is obviously entitled to defend the Blair Government’s Human Rights Act, but this country enjoyed a long tradition of respect for human rights well before that legislation was enacted, and I am confident that the United Kingdom will continue to have such a tradition when it has been replaced.