Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend has raised an extremely important point. Since Lord O’Neill’s global review, the Government have been supporting research efforts both in the United Kingdom and abroad. That has included £51 million for research in the UK, £265 million through the Fleming Fund to support surveillance in lower-middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and south-east Asia, and a £50 million British contribution to the Global Innovation Fund. I hope my hon. Friend will also welcome the fact that, in a landmark declaration at the United Nations General Assembly in September, following an intense campaign led by the Health Secretary and the chief medical officer, 193 countries agreed to combat antimicrobial resistance, which was identified as the biggest risk to modern medicine. That international agreement was a vital first step towards the effective action that we all want to see.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May I associate my party with what was said earlier by both the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader? The memory of Jo Cox will indeed endure for years.

Following the tragic death of my 21-year-old constituent Miriam Briddon at the hands of a drink-driver in March 2014, her family committed themselves to campaigning for the reform of drink-driving sentencing guidelines and policy. That recently culminated in the presentation of a 100,000-strong petition to Downing Street. May we have a debate on the need for such reform, in memory of Miriam and the many other people who are afflicted by drink-driving crimes throughout the country?

[Mr Lidington]

This is an unspeakably tragic experience for any parent or family to have to go through. The hon. Gentleman may wish to seek an Adjournment or Backbench Business Committee debate on the subject, but the e-petition system that we have introduced provides an additional route by which subjects of this kind can be raised and debated in the House, and he may wish to suggest that to his constituents.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The 0.7% target refers to official development assistance expenditure, as defined by the OECD. The 2% is a NATO target, which relies on a completely different set of criteria. The hon. Gentleman is asking me to compare apples with pears.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

In February, Department for Culture, Media and Sport Ministers froze rather than cut their contribution to S4C’s budget pending the outcome of a review into the broadcaster’s future. We still have no review. Will the Leader of the House allow us a debate on a sustainable future and funding for S4C?

[Mr Lidington]

I completely understand why Welsh-language broadcasting is important to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. I note that Welsh questions are on 30 November, which might provide him the opportunity to raise that matter.

Easter Adjournment

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate, particularly the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I am especially grateful that this is a general debate, if only because we did not hear at Christmas the canter around Southend West and elsewhere from the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), of whom I am reminded almost every week when I cross my constituency and pass the Croes Lan post office, run by his excellent cousin, Ms Janice Pocock. The hon. Gentleman spoke on many issues, but I am going to speak about just one, an issue of concern to me and to one particular constituent of mine, Mr Michael Affonso. It concerns his dealings with the UK Border Agency and my dealings, on his behalf, with the Home Office. It is a personal, unresolved story and I shall use my time to tell it.

Mr Affonso was born in Tanzania, has lived in this country for more than 30 years, is married to a British national and has had protracted concerns over the status of his citizenship, which are, as yet, not satisfactorily resolved. I believe there are other cases of British nationals with spouses from overseas who have been seeking British citizenship for many years and perhaps do not fit into the conventional mould of immigration cases.

Michael Affonso was born in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in 1969. Not long after his birth, he was taken in by a lady who brought him up as her own child and he lived happily with her and her family for the first 15 years of his life in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. In 1984, his biological mother visited him, their relationship was rekindled and they came to Britain. She was married to a British citizen. Michael remembers his arrival in the UK and being questioned by Border Agency officials at the airport. He then moved to Kettering and was established with his biological mother’s family and with her new husband, though the adoption by his new stepfather seems never to have taken place.

Despite the challenges of moving to a new country he settled in, but around 1986 problems emerged in the family and through no fault of his own he was taken into care under Northamptonshire social services. He recalls telling the court at the time that he wanted to return to Tanzania to be with the lady he saw as his real mother, but the court said that as he had never been legally adopted he had to stay in the country of his biological mother—that is, this country—despite being removed from her care.

Michael then spent some time at a children’s home in Kettering and was subsequently sent to foster care. At the age of 18 he moved out and spent several years living independently, starting college, gaining an NVQ in painting and decorating, and living in that area for many years. Some years later, the lady who had brought him up in Tanzania moved to the UK and settled in Wales, where he moved, settling in the village of Llanwnnen in my constituency. By 2008 he had met his future wife Sîan, and they set up home together in Aberarth, also in the Ceredigion constituency.

The troubles arose when the couple decided to get married. As Michael had entered the UK from Tanzania as a minor, he held no official paperwork himself. He recalled a birth certificate and a Tanzanian passport, but while living in Kettering, many years before the move to Wales, a fire at his flat had destroyed any paperwork, including his passport. Sîan and Michael were unable to get married without proof of his nationality, and that is where I first became involved in his case.

We struggled to find any information from anywhere—any official documentation about Michael’s life. We made inquiries of Nottinghamshire social services to find out whether anything had been done, or not done, about citizenship under their care. We spoke to the Tanzanian embassy to inquire about his passport. We used various freedom of information requests, but kept hitting brick wall after brick wall. There is little, if any, information about Michael. There was an account of his being taken into care in Northamptonshire, but no information as to the date or where he was sent. That lack of information was subsequently acknowledged by the Home Office.

It seemed as if the couple’s aspiration for marriage would not be realised, but rules did mercifully change, with an EU ruling that made it against one’s human rights to be denied a marriage, so in October 2011 the couple were married. All seemed well. Life settled down in the village of Aberarth; the couple bought a home. Michael became heavily involved in our community—a very much valued member of the community, now an elected community councillor. Indeed he is, I would suggest, the identikit community activist.

Michael pursued a change of career and became manager of the British Red Cross shop, first in Cardigan, then in Aberaeron and then Carmarthen. At that point problems emerged as, not unreasonably, he started to get requests from the human resources department to prove his eligibility to work within the UK—something he had not come across in all the previous years. As a non-British citizen, he requires a biometric residency card. He contacted the Home Office and was told that he needed proof that he had resided in the UK with no lengthy times away. Of course, he had not been away because he had no passport, although for someone who was unaware of that stipulation it was very difficult to prove. However, we had some successes in finding some information from the health board in Northamptonshire and my local health board, the Hywel Dda health board, in Ceredigion, and Michael had been assiduous in keeping records—P45s and P60s.

Michael then set about the process of application for a no time limit application. The couple paid to go to a premium service centre, the nearest one being in Cardiff, on 5 November 2014, having spent £104 on the form and a further £400 for the privilege of a priority centre meeting. The couple really thought they were on the cusp of securing British citizenship for Michael. Despite the gathering of what documentation they had, including at long last a notice of care proceedings when he had been removed from his biological mother’s care, they were told that because he himself had no proof of entering the country, he was in fact an illegal immigrant. Mercifully, subsequent events meant that that accusation was retracted. Despite the fact that he had resided in the UK for more than 30 years, had paid his taxes and national insurance contributions and was a valued member of the community and was married to a British national, he faced that allegation.

The couple met with some sympathy from the UK Border Agency when they showed the UKBA copies of letters that I wrote on their behalf in 2009 on their wish to be married—proof that the couple had sought to resolve the issue. They were offered an alternative to the full naturalisation process: Michael would have to reapply for leave to remain every two and a half years—the next occasion being in 2017—at a cost of £500 each time, until he had 10 years’ worth of visas. After 10 years, in 2024, he might be entitled to apply for British citizenship. However, he would be unable to have any recourse to public funds, which was confirmed to me in a letter from the Minister for Immigration in July 2015.

This man has paid national insurance contributions and tax for 30 years. He has been entitled to jobseeker’s allowance in the past. He is now denied an automatic right to benefit unless special circumstances emerge. I have to say that Mr Affonso feels incredibly let down by this state of affairs and it has taken a serious toll on his health, compounded by the fact that despite being seriously ill and so unable to work, his biometric residency card states that he has no automatic recourse to public funds. The Home Office to date has been reluctant to look into this matter in great depth and seems intent on sticking by its original decision that Mr Affonso may have to wait until 2024 to achieve full citizenship.

Much of the debate on immigration these days is, not unreasonably, about people needing to come to this country. We have all worked on many such cases in our constituencies, but this case is different. It is about an injustice that has been perpetrated against someone who is already here and who, through no fault of his own, has faced many challenges. He came here as a minor, and the various agencies that were charged with his care did not address the issue of citizenship. He is a highly valued member of the community and now in adulthood he is trying to right a wrong, and aspires to do the right thing, but has faced a real problem in trying to trace his own identity.

The letter I had from the Immigration Minister last year said:

“I am sure you will understand that it is not possible”

to agree to indefinite leave to remain for somebody who does not hold the necessary documentation. The Minister refused to meet me to discuss the matter further. I understand what the Minister said and I think it represents a great injustice.

In this case the lack of documentation has not been the responsibility of my constituent, the aggrieved individual. I implore the Deputy Leader of the House, on my behalf and on behalf of Mr Affonso, to pursue this matter with the Home Office and to ask it to look again at this case, not just at the issue of the recourse to public funds in the case of illness, but at Mr Affonso’s right to remain in the United Kingdom.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Lady needs to remember the huge disparities that still exist in funding per head. Targeting northern towns and cities such as Hull where there are bigger social challenges is important. As a Government, even a Conservative Government with a substantial number of Members representing constituencies in the south with a lower grant per head, we continue to believe that it is important to provide support to those towns and cities.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

The Government’s mobile infrastructure project identified 600 potentially new mobile mast sites, yet by December last year, only 15 had been built. May we have a full debate on the failure of the Government’s mobile infrastructure project, which is due to end in March, and on why so many communities that were promised mobile connectivity still lack it?

[Chris Grayling]

We are making real progress in spreading both mobile coverage and high-speed broadband coverage. We have a way to go. Of course such things are not always the responsibility of Government. It is the operators, not the Government, who build masts. None the less, I continue to believe that we are doing as well as almost all of our major international competitors in ensuring that we have modern communications.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Treasury questions are coming up shortly, which will be an opportunity to question the Chancellor about matters in China. It is right and proper that we maintain close ties with China. After all, it is shaping up to be the world’s biggest economy for this century.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May we have a debate on the excellent work done during the past 38 years by the charity Motability in providing disability-compliant vehicles and, critically, on the outcome of assessments for the personal independence payment? In such circumstances, many of my constituents have lost vehicles—only to have them restored at a later date, following an appeal—which causes huge distress and, in my area, a very real sense of isolation.

[Chris Grayling]

Motability is of course an important scheme—indeed, the welfare support we provide to people facing disability challenges is very important—but it is right and proper to have gateways in place. One of the reasons why we moved from the disability living allowance to PIP was that a very large number of people receiving DLA and accessing the support provided to people with disabilities had self-referred or self-diagnosed and, in the end, we had no certainty that those people genuinely needed such support.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend makes his point with customary eloquence. I would always hope and expect that constitutional change in a Commonwealth country would involve giving its people the opportunity to express a view. I commend my hon. Friend on the work that he does on Commonwealth matters. We derive enormous strength from our ties with the Commonwealth, which provide a real opportunity not only for cultural exchange but for economic development and working together.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May we have a debate on the UK Border Agency in the new year? This affects one of my constituents in particular, community councillor Michael Affonso. He has lived in the UK for 31 years and is married to a British national, but he is still struggling to achieve permanent residency and the Home Office seems reluctant to engage with his case. Also, Mr Speaker, from west Wales, may I wish you and everyone else nadolig llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda?

[Chris Grayling]

We will see whether the Speaker can respond in kind. I don’t think I would be able to! The hon. Gentleman is clearly pursuing his constituency case assiduously. It is difficult for me in this position to comment on the specifics, but I will make sure that his concerns are passed on to the Home Secretary.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The issue of diesel is absolutely shocking. For those of us who defend and believe in free enterprise, our case is not helped by extraordinary corporate malpractice of the kind we have seen at Volkswagen and in the diesel sector. I hope that those issues can be resolved as quickly as possible; and clearly if individuals lose out financially as a result, they should be compensated. The automotive industry has a duty to be open and honest, and when something like this happens, it damages confidence in corporations and their products, and it makes the life of the public much more difficult. It should never have happened. It is shocking.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

Four towns in my constituency—Tregaron, Llandysul, Aberaeron and New Quay—have lost banks from their high streets. May we have a debate specifically on the retreat of the high street banks from rural areas? Many of those areas have inadequate broadband and cannot access internet banking.

[Chris Grayling]

Several hon. Members have raised this issue in the last couple of weeks, and I believe that the Backbench Business Committee is considering it for debate. Of course, banks are caught by the fact that more and more of us are banking online and that cashless systems are increasingly available, whether on our phones or through the cards in our wallets. Banks are finding it more and more difficult to sustain banking networks, but we do not want to lose key services in rural areas, so I suggest the hon. Gentleman adds his weight to those asking for a debate to bring a Minister to the House to discuss the matter.

Summer Adjournment

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a privilege to have an opportunity to raise an important constituency case in this debate. I would first like to echo the tributes to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for her excellent maiden speech. Not only did she talk appropriately about her high regard for her constituents—and evidently her constituents’ high regard for her—but I was particularly touched by her reference to Prayers, when we are reminded daily that, whatever our political standpoint and whatever manifesto we were elected on, our first priority is always to our constituents. Having listened to her speech, I know the dedication she has shown already to her constituents. I wish her well in the months and years ahead.

I want to talk about an issue that I have spoken about in the Chamber on four occasions over the past three or four years: namely, the mis-selling of interest rate swap products by the commercial banks and the effect that has had on some of the small and medium-sized enterprises in my constituency. I will focus, in particular, on fixed-rate loans, tailored business loans, sold to constituents of mine by the Clydesdale and Yorkshire bank, whose motto is, “We care about here.” Over a period of time, these loans were peddled by overzealous relationship managers, who managed to cause havoc to a large number of SMEs in Aberystwyth, the largest town in my constituency. The asset-rich farms, hostelries and shops of my agriculture and tourism-dependent constituency were deliberately targeted by greedy salesmen.

In that context, I want to talk today about one constituent in particular, Mr Mansel Beechey, who I believe to be a victim of mis-selling by Clydesdale and Yorkshire bank, and the difficulties he has had in seeking redress from the authorities. Aberystwyth’s Hen Llew Du public house is a long-established and successful local family business. Mr Beechey has owned it for 30 years, and his family have worked hard to create a popular, lively and iconic Welsh social hub that welcomes locals and students alike.

In 2008 Mr Beechey decided to expand the business by buying another pub with a restaurant for his daughter to run. Having identified suitable premises in his home village of Llangrannog in the south of Ceredigion, he was offered what was talked up as a straightforward loan by his relationship manager, a local man known well to Mansel for many years. The Beechey family borrowed money from the bank on a variable rate basis to purchase their new business. The loan was to be partly secured by their pub in Aberystwyth. However, unbeknown to Mr Beechey, approval for the tailored business loan was granted based on an incorrect interpretation of his accounts. None the less, on or around 28 January 2008, Mr Beechey signed a variable rate loan agreement with Clydesdale bank to borrow £700,000. His facility letter stated:

“The Borrower may at any time prepay all or any part of the Loan.”

There was no mention of any form of fee, cost or penalty for early pre-payment or repayment of the amount of the loan, nor was there any reference to any of the following terms that might indicate a possible cost for early repayment.

Mr Beechey drew down the bulk of the loan in early February to complete the purchase of the second business and immediately began extensive refurbishment work. Once the project was under way and the Beecheys began repaying capital on the loan, it became clear that there would be issues of affordability. At that point, Mr Beechey discovered that the friendly and trusted bank manager had submitted figures that showed a far larger net income from the Yr Hen Lew Du pub in Aberystwyth than was actually the case.

Then there was a second bombshell. The Beecheys were told that National Australia bank, of which Clydesdale is a part, was withdrawing from the UK hospitality sector, and owing to a stated technical breach of the loan, which the Beechey family disputed, the bank was demanding that they came up with a strategy to repay the entire loan within just a few weeks. Against a difficult economic background, with falling property prices, the Beecheys realised that the rapid sale of the new pub and restaurant that they had only just bought was unlikely to raise enough money to repay the entire loan, so their suggested strategy was to sell the new business and restructure any remaining debt. However, Clydesdale told them that if they repaid even part of their loan before the end of a 15-year term, they would incur a “breakage fee” of some £200,000—a not insubstantial amount for a small family-run business—even though it was the bank itself that was forcing early repayment. I repeat term 3.1 of the facility letter that the family received:

“The Borrower may at any time prepay all or any part of the Loan”.

The Beechey family were never warned about the potential scale of any early repayment charges. They have since discovered that instead of the simple fixed-rate loan that they thought they had, their tailored business loan had an embedded, or hidden, interest rate hedging arrangement, or swap—a complex derivative product that would protect the bank against interest rate fluctuations during the term of the loan. They now know that this would have been established during the phone call to fix the interest rate with the bank manager’s “colleague”, who was almost certainly a registered derivatives trader—not that that was known to the Beechey family.

Mr Beechey first came to my office in December 2012 about this problem. He had already, in April, made a complaint to the bank through his solicitor about the mis-sale of the TBL—an unregulated product. Appallingly, it took Clydesdale and Yorkshire bank over six months to respond to that formal complaint. We are talking about a business operating on the margins it needs to survive. This cloud should not last; it needs to be dealt with. Having taken six months to respond to the initial written complaint, to this day the bank has still not fully addressed it, despite my office facilitating meetings with its most senior personnel.

Mansel Beechey had always made it clear to his relationship manager that he wanted a loan that was flexible, sustainable and affordable. He is an experienced businessman, and he was shrewd enough to know that if things did not go to plan in the new venture, he would need a loan that he could repay or pre-pay at any time. Indeed, that is exactly what was said in one part of what turned out to be a complicated agreement. Yet three weeks after taking out the loan, over the course of three days and three telephone calls with what turned out to be bank treasury officials, the seemingly straightforward loan had morphed into the now infamous Clydesdale and Yorkshire tailored business loan—the fixed-rate loan with hidden swap. Two years into the loan, the Beechey family found themselves in an impossible position. They could not afford to pay the increased interest charges and so could not service the debt, and nor were they able to sell the business and repay the loan because of the huge break charges that they were initially unaware of.

The name “tailored business loan” was given by National Australia bank to a new type of loan designed to look like a traditional fixed-rate loan but with traditional penalty charges for breaking the loan replaced with an open-ended break cost. Of course, Clydesdale and Yorkshire was not the only bank to provide such loans. It issued, on its own admission, 8,300 of them. The Financial Conduct Authority has disclosed that 69,738 were issued across a range of banks. There has been at least a suspicion that the Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank manufactured these loans to avoid regulation.

I was very interested in the Treasury Committee’s inquiry into these matters at the end of the last Parliament. It took evidence from David Thorburn, the chief executive officer of the Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank, and Debbie Crosbie, who bears the rather promising title of executive director for customer trust and confidence. Their impression of what needs to happen and what the bank will do to put matters right when a customer is mis-sold one of their products is very different from the reality experienced by constituent.

When Ms Crosbie appeared before the Treasury Committee last summer, she said of fixed-rate TBLs that

“the customer gets a fixed payment for a fixed period of time and that payment will never change as long as the customer does not want to terminate the agreement early.”

Yet the Beecheys’ payments were increased more than once, since the bank was simply able to vary the margin that they paid on top of the fixed rate. Mr Beechey never envisaged that that might happen. He understood that a fixed-rate loan meant what Debbie Crosbie had described. Indeed, her boss, the chief executive, David Thorburn said:

“This is a product which does what it says on the tin.”

I remind the House of the evidence that Ms Crosbie gave to the Treasury Committee last June. To his credit, the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), the Treasury spokesman for the SNP, asked the fundamental question about the sales process:

“If a customer is able to identify that that process did not happen, that that warning was not explicit, that would count as a mis-sell would it…?”

Ms Crosbie confirmed:

“We believe that once you examine that process, and find that it had not been carried out in accordance with what we had agreed is appropriate, we would absolutely redress a customer and we have done so on a number of occasions.”

I do not doubt that Clydesdale has addressed these matters on a number of occasions, but not in the 8,300 cases; and the other banks have certainly not addressed all 69,000 cases. The few offers made to people such as my constituents are derisory and have been made only under acute pressure. Only a portion of the overcharged interest is offered to be refunded, and no consequential losses are considered at all.

Over the past two or three years, we in this House have travelled a great distance in seeking justice for SMEs that have been mis-sold interest rate swap products. We have moved some way, but we are nowhere near where we should be. The public and the businesses I am dealing with find it confusing and frustrating given that evidence to the Treasury Committee last year shows that the banks all too often wittingly knew what they were about when they sold these products. They were delaying responses to complainants, denying the existence of the problem and diluting the seriousness of the complaint by not voluntarily offering full disclosure of information.

I am mindful of your stipulation about the time, Madam Deputy Speaker, but let me cover this quickly. Mr Andy Keats of the Serious Banking Complaints Bureau has commented that

“the largest complaint by far is that there is no access to bank held documentation… The bank relies on concealment of your central file, committee meeting reports and minutes, internal and external valuations of your property”.

That has been my constituent’s experience.

In the past six months, during which my constituent has put in simultaneous requests to both the Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank and the Financial Ombudsman Service, I have seen transcripts of conversations between my constituent and officials that are quite different from those initially provided in response to the first subject access request made to the bank. I have seen three different credit reports and three different sets of credit figures, and, worryingly, none of the figures was correct. Things seem to have been changed at the stroke of a pen. That is a serious but deeply concerning allegation. The Treasury Committee has exposed great misconduct, yet we cannot move forward unless we have complete transparency in the process.

I believe that the process of redress is not working as well as it needs to. The issue has been approached in a far more positive way in New Zealand. An arrangement has been made between the New Zealand Commerce Commission and a New Zealand bank, ANZ, under which the bank paid compensation of 18.5 million New Zealand dollars. Those funds will be distributed to affected customers who complained to the regulator. That has been done in New Zealand and it needs to be done here.

Above all, my plea is for the Minister to look mindfully at the suggestion that she will hear from the all-party group on interest rate mis-selling—the Bully Banks group —which is ably chaired by the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), to push for a new, fair banking Bill that will regulate all products and services for commercial enterprises. I hope that we can push for fruition soon so as to benefit my constituent, Mr Beechey and, I believe, many others across the country.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I know that this is a matter of great concern to a number of colleagues. It was debated in Westminster Hall last week. There will be an opportunity to question Ministers in the House next Thursday. It is clearly the expectation of the Government and the country that BT and the other organisations involved will make rapid progress towards ensuring that we have a state of the art 21st century network, without gaps that leave parts of our country behind.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May we have a debate on broadcasting and, in particular, Welsh language broadcasting and the future of S4C? There are concerns across Wales that funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the BBC may be cut over the next two years.

[Chris Grayling]

Of course, it is important to ensure that the Welsh language and Welsh language broadcasting are able to continue effectively. There will be an opportunity at DCMS questions next week for the hon. Gentleman to seek confirmation from Ministers that they will make sure that happens.

Business of the House

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I have every sympathy with my hon. Friend. I represent the county next door, where there are also significant demographic pressures—we are going through a baby boom. These are tough times for the public finances, but I encourage him to talk directly to the Secretary of State, who has proved very thoughtful and very receptive to discussing these issues with colleagues.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

First, Mr Speaker, I thank you for affording us the opportunity yesterday to pay tributes to the much-missed Charles Kennedy.

As we move towards the summer, may we have a debate on the case for reducing VAT on tourism? It is a policy pursued by all but three countries in the EU; it was endorsed by two Select Committees of this House in the last Parliament; and many regional and national economies of the United Kingdom would benefit immeasurably from it.

[Chris Grayling]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that there will be an opportunity for such a debate. As the Chancellor has already indicated, between now and the summer there will be an additional Budget statement, and the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to raise this issue at that time.