Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. People who live in suburban areas are particularly reliant on vehicles. Public transport will get them to certain appointments, but households and businesses need to use cars. This is causing huge anxiety and stress at a time when people can least afford to absorb those additional costs, so I understand why it is such a concern both to households and to businesses. I know that that concern is shared by many in the House—certainly on the Conservative side—and that if he applied for a debate, it would be well attended.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

I would be grateful if we could have a statement from Ministers to explain a recent change in DWP practice, whereby it will no longer accept consent authorisations sent in by email from third-party advice and advocacy organisations. For urgent matters, posting the documents adds a delay, so I think we could benefit from that change being reversed so that emails are accepted.

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and a very helpful suggestion. I will certainly write to the Department for Work and Pensions to inquire about that change. Many people, including MPs, rely on third parties to make their case for them and to deal with some pretty complex issues, so I will follow that up and ensure that all colleagues know what the situation is.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

These local services are obviously very important. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will know how much they mean to his constituents. He can raise his concerns directly with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 11 July, but one thing that the Secretary of State is doing is ensuring that we have additional data on the performance of the hon. Gentleman’s integrated care board so that he can benchmark it against others across the country. Having medical centres that people can access and that are in their local community is vital for good patient outcomes, and that is a big step forward that the Secretary of State has made.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

I am concerned about the desperate condition of the sons of my constituent, Mr Omar, who were unable to collect their visas and passports from the embassy in Sudan owing to the war in April, since when they have managed to travel to Ethiopia. After a very long and difficult journey, they are malnourished, out of money, in need of medical treatment and have been waiting for two weeks for a visa vignette. I have been told repeatedly that there is no timescale for the issuing of that. Will the Leader of the House please ask the Home Secretary to make an urgent intervention in this case and make a statement to give us a timescale for future such cases?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am very sorry to hear about the case that the hon. Gentleman raises. He will know that we have Home Office questions on Monday. However, following this session, I shall make sure that he has the contact details of the Home Office official who is overseeing these bespoke surgeries for Members. I encourage him to set up such a meeting today.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

May I point out that the Mallard was actually built in Doncaster?

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

This month, the imprisoned human rights activist Dr al-Singace marked one year of his hunger strike from solid foods to demand the return of his confiscated research in Bahrain. In 2012, the Government expressed deep dismay at Dr al-Singace’s torture-tainted and internationally condemned conviction. Could we have a statement from the Government calling on Bahrain to return Dr al-Singace’s research and release him and other political opposition leaders immediately and unconditionally?

[Mark Spencer]

I join the hon. Gentleman in that call and I hope that the Government of Bahrain are listening. There are Foreign Office questions the first week back and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be in his place to draw the House’s attention again to the plight of Dr al-Singace.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new role and thank his predecessor, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), for his assistance in pursuing the Business Secretary after I raised in November the issue of best available techniques, which set the conditions for environmental permits for key industries. Unfortunately, we are no further forward. The Government response to the April 2021 consultation has not yet been published, and we are only weeks away from the arrangements taking effect. There also seems to be uncertainty as to which Department is responsible. Can we therefore have a statement from the appropriate Minister, and will the Leader of the House allow time for Members to debate this issue?

[Mark Spencer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for recognising the efforts of my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. First, let us try to identify the Department that is responsible. I will try to assist him in doing that, and then we can together pursue that Department to get the answers that he desires.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

What was achieved at the beginning of the pandemic was to make sure that people who needed money got it, whether they were on the furlough scheme or universal credit. The numbers of people the universal credit system was dealing with on a daily basis were multiples of what was ever expected. It was so important to make sure that people in potentially desperate situations got money. Of course, that increased the risk of fraud—everybody knew that at the time and they knew it was a risk with the furlough scheme as well—but what were we supposed to do? Were we supposed to sit idly by and let people have no money? Were we supposed to sit idly by and let people worry that their jobs were not going to exist? It was a fundamental urgency.

Everybody knows that with any accounting mechanism speed and detail do not go hand in hand, but the urgency was fundamental. I therefore defend what was done by the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Treasury in dealing with a very urgent situation. Just imagine, Mr Speaker—cast your mind back for a moment—what the noise would be from those on the Opposition Benches had the situation been the reverse and we had said that we could not hand out money to people who had no money because we had to go through some massive bureaucratic system. They would have rightly howled us down.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

EU documents that define the best available techniques under the industrial emissions directive published since the beginning of this year no longer have direct legal effect. Can we have a statement from the Government to give certainty to businesses in my constituency that are concerned that the timescales and the requirements needed to meet the mechanisms for complying with the new regulations that will come in force remain unknown despite having been anticipated from early autumn?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

One of the joys of our current situation is that we have left the European Union and therefore what the European Union says about regulations is no longer binding upon us. We have our own effective parliamentary system to ensure that things happen. We have just passed the Environment Act 2021, which sets up relevant systems. We should have confidence in our ability to do things for ourselves, because we will do it better.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about this. The guidance is clear that if people need to go into work, they are allowed to go into work. If employers think that they need their employees to come into work, they are entitled to ask them to come into work. Even within the civil service, managers are advised to accommodate requests to work in the office when home working is not suitable for wellbeing reasons. These can be a whole variety of reasons—it could be loneliness, or it could be the unsuitability of the accommodation, in that particularly younger people who are part of the workforce do not necessarily have an excess of space in their flats in which to work.

It is really important that we get back to normal. We want to have vibrant towns and cities, we want people coming back into work, and we want commuting systems—trains, buses and so on—that are financially viable, and that means people coming back to work. The sooner we get back to normal the better, but in the meantime, anyone who wants to go into work should have a conversation with his or her employer and say, “I want to come back into work”, and employers should facilitate that.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]]

I am increasingly concerned at the exploitation of vulnerable customers through energy suppliers and providers’ pricing strategies, such as the exclusion of existing customers from the cheapest available energy tariff on offer. Could we have a statement from Government or a debate about including exclusive tariffs in Ofgem’s cheapest tariff messaging rules? This is a scandalous loophole that we need to address.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this point, and I think it goes wider than electricity tariffs. I do not tend to tell personal anecdotes, but when my car insurance with Churchill came in at £2,800 earlier this year, I managed to get it from LV=, the people who sponsor the cricket, I am glad to say, for under £600. It is quite extraordinary how existing customers are taken for a ride. I would encourage hon. Members and all our constituents to shop around, but I am also glad to say that the Financial Conduct Authority has introduced rules on this recently that will help protect people from this type of rip-off. My example, I do feel, shows that just a little bit of going online to shop around can save a very significant amount of money.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I don’t think we should scratch anybody.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]]

The Chemical Industries Association has described UK manufacturing businesses paying twice as much for energy as those in other European countries do, as an “ongoing blocker of opportunity”. Can we therefore have a debate in Government time on providing UK industry with a level playing field on energy prices? This is needed to give chemical companies in my constituency certainty to secure future investment, an essential driver to transition to net zero, and ensure low-carbon UK businesses and their goods are able to compete for market share around the world.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman makes the fundamentally important point that energy costs are an essential part of how competitive a nation can be. The Government’s energy strategy, with a huge increase in wind energy, will over the longer term ensure that we have both secure energy supplies and ones that are economic. May I point him in the direction of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy questions? Actually BEIS questions were earlier this week, but if he were to take it up with the BEIS Secretary, I think that would be the right way to go.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am always a bit nervous about these military analogies, though the distinguished Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee will know a great deal more about this than I do, because some cavalry charges are more successful than others. It depends whether we are talking about Omdurman or—[Interruption.] Balaclava, indeed. Thank you for that helpful prompt, Mr Speaker. None the less, my right hon. Friend makes a very important point. The delivery of a safe and effective vaccine is the best way to protect the most vulnerable and save thousands of lives, and great strides are being made in protecting the population. There remains a long and difficult road ahead and there will be a considerable time lag until we can expect these vaccinations to help ease pressure on the NHS, bearing in mind that it takes a fortnight from vaccination for the vaccine to begin to take its effect. If we succeed, we will be protecting huge numbers of people from the virus. Eventually, that will allow us to remove many of the restrictions that we have endured for so long. It is wonderful that the Prime Minister is in Scotland today visiting Valneva, so we are rolling out more vaccines potentially and this has had great support from Her Majesty’s Government.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]]

The Ministry of Defence recently disclosed to me that Saudi armed forces were trained with £2.4 million of taxpayers’ money from the secretive integrated activity fund. Can we therefore have a debate in Government time on British security support to Gulf countries with abysmal human rights records, such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, that continue to wage a disastrous war in Yemen while imprisoning hundreds of peaceful political prisoners, such as Hasan Mushaima, who should be immediately freed?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Government have very strict rules, both on arms sales and on our relationships with countries around the world in terms of military development. These matters are regularly debated in the House. We work with our allies to help them in their military, and it is right and proper that we should do so, but we also maintain the highest standards of human rights.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Well recovered.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]]

While foster care is a devolved matter, employment law is not. Foster carers do not set their own working hours or rates of pay, cannot subcontract their work and are highly supervised, with regular performance reviews and training, and they are limited to working exclusively for one local authority or an agency at a time. It is clearly employment in all bar name. May we have a debate in Government time to address their lack of employment status?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman raises a point that has been considered and debated, and I think has even been taken to a tribunal. It is obviously a matter that he feels strongly about, and I think in the first instance a letter to you, Mr Speaker, asking for an Adjournment debate may well be in order.

Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

First, I thank my right hon. Friend for all the work that she did to improve and change the culture, because she really drove this forward with considerable energy to the benefit of Parliament. I think that we are all agreed that we need a new culture and that there is no place for bullying, harassment or sexual harassment in Parliament. We should be a place of excellence where people feel safe and secure in their employment and where people are treated properly. As regards the 18-month review, there is a paper in front of both the Lords and Commons Commissions to be considered to try to get this review done and done speedily. There have inevitably been some delays because of the coronavirus, but I entirely agree with her on the issue of speediness when people make a complaint. It is unfair both on the complainant and on the person accused if inquiries drag out indefinitely. She is right to raise that and I hope that it will be part of the inquiry—the 18-month review—though obviously that is not for me to decide because it will be independent.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]]

The statutory requirement for the House to debate fuel poverty annually has not been met since 2018. Will the Leader of the House kindly inform us when Ministers plan to rectify this situation with a debate in Government time?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, there are enormous pressures on Government time, but there are many ways of raising things in debate and bringing them forward. Parliament allocates its time in accordance with its Standing Orders and the requirements of the law, and any statutory requirements that there are to have debates will be upheld.