Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Martin Whitfield and Simon Hoare

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to pinpoint the cost of living. Opposition spokesmen sometimes dispute this, but it is more expensive to live in a rural area. It is more expensive to heat one’s home. Travel costs are higher, usually in the absence of public transport, meaning that the running of a car is not a luxury but a necessity if one is to access even the most basic of public or retail services.

[Martin Whitfield]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Simon Hoare]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not, because I want to refer to the speech by the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). I hope that he will not think it is untoward for me to say this, but the passion with which he delivered his speech was powerful and incredibly compelling. He struck on a point that I was going to make and on which I had jotted down a note or two, and it is a point I have been making in recent speeches around the place. I often admire the Labour party—

[Simon Hoare]

There is always a “but”, though. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury says that my career has definitely gone now. I did not even know that I had a career, so that is going to be interesting.

There is usually no embarrassment on the Labour side at talking with passion about the burning injustices that we see in all our constituencies and having a clear determination to do something about them. There is no inhibition at all on the Labour side. On my side—I say this as somebody who has been a member of our party since 1985—I occasionally find that we get slightly inhibited about talking from the heart. Other Members have referred to this. We can bandy the statistics about—relative or absolute, percentage this versus percentage that, up, down, more in this, fewer than the other—but it does not matter, because if someone is poor, the statistics do not affect them: they are poor. They want to know that their elected representatives, locally, in this place and those in Whitehall are doing their damnedest to make their life just a little better.

I make this plea to my colleagues on the Treasury Bench: we on the Conservative Benches do not talk enough about the whys of politics. We talk a lot about the whats, but we do not say why. We find homelessness gut-wrenchingly upsetting. We find the closing down of hope, aspiration and life expectancy intensely moving, and we burn with the desire to help. It certainly motivates me every morning to get out of bed and to do my best for my constituents in whatever way I can by supporting policies that I fundamentally believe have the power to make our local economy, and therefore my constituents’ lives, better. If anybody in this House is not motivated by that fundamental political passion to stir up the soul to go and do something about it, I say to them with the greatest of respect that they should not be here. That, I think, must be our principal function. Members from both sides of the House want to arrive at a place where aspiration, hope and opportunity are available for as great a number of our citizens as we can possibly facilitate.

We also want to make sure that the economy is buoyant. Why? Because warm words butter no parsnips. The emotional speeches may salve our consciences, but we need the economic policies that deliver the taxes and pay for the safety net below which, I am determined, none of my constituents should, or will, ever fall on my watch. We need to be ever vigilant to make sure that our economic policies are delivering that growth.

[Martin Whitfield]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I say with the greatest respect that he is making a very good speech for the two new clauses. The knowledge gained from reviewing policy implementation feeds into the decisions that go forward, so, at this stage, I invite him to support the two new clauses.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman is—what’s the phrase?—pushing his luck on that. I think that the divide here will be on the theoretical and the practical. I am always conscious that we can go to any Minister’s office, or any Department, or any local council, and find gathering dust, spiders and dead flies on many a window sill reports, reviews and assessments of this, that and the other, and they have a pretty short shelf life. I would much prefer to spend Government time focusing on delivering those policies of hope and growth.

Agriculture Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Martin Whitfield and Simon Hoare

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Simon Hoare]

There was an audible exhalation of breath there.

I suggest to the Minister, however, that this issue is likely to come back as an amendment in the other place and that we are likely to debate it on Report. I therefore make this point gently to my hon. Friend: the environment—not in the green sense of the term, but the political environment—and the circumstances in 1947 were very different from now with respect to the understanding of the importance and the appreciation of the need to have a vibrant agricultural sector. One can attribute all sorts of reasons for that, but it happens to be a fairly basic statement of fact.

I hear what the Minister says about the historical precedent, but I am not certain that changing “may” to “must” fundamentally weakens or alters the Bill. I think it would strengthen his elbow. Unfortunately, he will have successors in due course, as will the Secretary of State. He and the Secretary of State both have a very clear commitment to a strong agricultural cycle; I think that is beyond debate.

[Martin Whitfield]

Is there not more certainty in amending “may” to “must” than perhaps we would find in manifestos past, present and possibly future?

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me down a path of debate that, without pre-judging your intervention Mr Wilson, I am pretty certain is likely to be ruled out of order. The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not venture down the tantalising sylvan glade of a debate about the language used in manifestos.

The point I want to make is that the commitment to UK agriculture of the current DEFRA team is beyond peradventure, but that is not a safeguard that we can bank forever and a day. I do not say this as a party point, because I think Labour Members would agree that currently the Labour party is a more urban party than the Conservative party, but that could easily change. One could easily see a debate turning round, saying, “Hang on a moment—that lot did not give a huge amount of support to coal or steel or any other heavy industry. Why should we, as an urban party, support something that is predominantly rural and possibly Tory-voting?” The amendment would take away the temptation for more urbancentric politicians to turn their face against agriculture.

The amendment also might strengthen future DEFRA teams in debates with the Treasury, because the agricultural sector and population are smaller than the urban ones. They are possibly less powerful in a lobby of the body politic. In a difficult spending round when money is tight, as it will be in future years, to be able to say to the Treasury, “This is not an add-on or a nice-to-have. It is an imperative enshrined in statute law and I, as the Secretary of State, must have policies to deliver the things set out in section 1 of a future Act”, will—at a stroke—shoot the fox of a hawkish future Treasury Minister, who is trying to clamp down on public expenditure.