Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I agree with my hon. Friend to a degree. We are seeing that right across the whole railway sector, and I am very proud of it: such revolutionary performance has been brought about by franchising and the imagination of franchising. It is rather disappointing that a party that used franchising for 13 years now condemns it.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

10. What the outcome was of the recent European negotiations on port regulation.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

The Government recognised the detrimental effect that the proposed port services regulation in its original form would have had on the UK ports industry. At the Transport Council in October, we succeeded in our main negotiating aim of ensuring that the Council text was amended to protect our ports industry by limiting its application and by taking better account of the interests of already competitive ports such as ours.

[Mrs Glindon]

What work has the Minister carried out with European partners through the process to ensure that trade union recognition and collective bargaining are explicitly protected, while still respecting the autonomy of social partners?

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady may know that I am a trade unionist. My father was a shop steward, and my grandfather was chairman of his union branch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hague]

Opposition Members cannot have it both ways. Well, they can try to have it both ways—we have heard both arguments from those on the Opposition Back Benches. That perhaps shows that everything relating to the autumn statement was presented in the correct way. As someone who served as Leader of the Opposition when Alastair Campbell was advising the Government of Tony Blair, I do not need any lectures from anybody about announcements being made in the press rather than elsewhere.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

4. What guidance he has given to his ministerial colleagues about providing substantive answers to written questions.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

The Office of the Leader of the House of Commons provides guidance to all Departments on the practice of answering parliamentary questions. The guidance advises Departments that Members should receive a substantive response to their named day question on the date specified and should endeavour to answer ordinary written questions within a working week of being tabled.

[Mrs Glindon]

The Government’s official guidance on written questions requires answers to be both accurate and truthful, and not highly politicised. Yet written answers recently received from a number of Ministers, most notably a Minister of State from the Cabinet Office, have been of a party political character. Will the Leader of the House ensure that his ministerial colleagues are aware of the proper processes to be followed when answering questions?

[Tom Brake]

If the hon. Lady has issues about the speed with which questions are being answered or their content, that is clearly a matter she can raise with the Procedure Committee. It is best that she provides the background information, but if she wants to provide me with the examples she has mentioned, I would be happy to follow them up with the relevant Secretaries of the State.