Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)]

My principal focus is to ensure the continued resilience of the UK economy and public finances at this time of uncertainty. Thanks to the hard work of the British people, our national debt is now falling sustainably for the first time in a generation, but it is still too high and it is vital that the Government continue to get debt down to ensure that the economy is resilient against future shocks, to prevent the wasting of billions of pounds more on debt interest payments, and to avoid burdening the next generation.

[Mary Glindon]

Since 2013 this Government have given tax handouts worth £4.1 billion to the big alcohol corporations at a time when the NHS is short of 40,000 nurses. Would it not be a sensible choice to invest in the nurses, doctors and police officers who have to deal with the problems caused by cheap alcohol?

[Mr Hammond]

We have done so: by 2023-24 we will be spending an extra £34 billion a year on the national health service. That is a record cash injection to our national health service, which represents this Government’s commitment to it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I understand my hon. Friend’s wish to ensure the vibrancy of the high street, which is going through a very difficult period. Owing to the way in which the business rate system works, relieving the burden on any part of the system means imposing it somewhere else, so we would have to look carefully at that, but I will take my hon. Friend’s representation as a serious proposal and consider it.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

T4. Out- sourced low-paid workers in both the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are on strike because their employers, Interserve, ISS and Aramark, are refusing to pay the London living wage, and in some cases have not paid staff wages for weeks. Will the Chancellor stand up for those employees, and do whatever he can to help Departments bring outsourced contracts back in-house?

[Mr Hammond]

That is a matter for the Departments concerned. As the hon. Lady knows, there is a legal obligation to pay the national living wage, and we have put additional resources into ensuring that that obligation is enforced. We encourage employers to pay higher rates than the national living wage when they are able to, and we will continue to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hammond]

The Prime Minister negotiated a deal with the European Union which gave us many of the benefits of being in a customs union, while preserving our ability to conduct an independent trade policy. We put that deal to the House effectively three times and it was defeated three times, so we have to pursue other options.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

T7. Cuts in alcohol duty have cost the Treasury £4 billion over the last five years. What assessment has the Chancellor made of the impact of those cuts on public health and alcohol-related deaths?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman, Mr Speaker. I do not have the number immediately to hand.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

What message will the Chancellor be sending to the thousands of public and civil servants who will be at the march organised by the TUC on 12 May asking for a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise?

[Mr Hammond]

The Government have been clear that the cap on public sector pay has been abolished and that it is for individual Departments and bodies to talk to their workforces about how pay can be increased in a self-funding way through productivity enhancements. We have seen that being done in the NHS with the “Agenda for Change” deal, which is now with the unions and staff for voting. It is a very good pay deal, but it will be supported by significant improvements in productivity. If we can do it there, we can do it across the piece.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

T3. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)]

My principal responsibility is to ensure the stability and prosperity of the economy. In the current circumstances, I judge that that requires a combination of near-term measures to ensure resilience and longer-term measures to manage the structural adjustment, as the UK transitions out of the EU, and to address the UK’s long-term productivity challenge. The package announced in the autumn statement last week delivered on both requirements.

[Mary Glindon]

So far the Chancellor has disregarded Members’ requests to give justice to the WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—women. Will he now listen to bodies such as North Tyneside Council, which, under our elected mayor, Norma Redfearn, has written to the Government to ask for a fair transition of the state pension right for all these women?

[Mr Hammond]

I understand the concerns, but this issue was debated extensively during the passage of the Pensions Act 2011, when the Government made concessions to this group of individuals worth £1.1 billion.

Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s gentle scepticism, shall I call it? Many figures within the newly announced Government are not new faces. However, the programme set out by Dr al-Abadi does represent, on the face of it, an approach that is far more inclusive and far more willing to recognise the aspirations of the separate communities within Iraq than that of the previous Iraqi Government. Of course, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We will be looking at this very closely and providing every support we can. We and other allies will be applying all pressure that we can on the Iraqi Government to pursue diligently the course that they have set out in that programme, and we very much hope they will deliver on those commitments.

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

rose—

[Mr Hammond]

I must make some progress now because we have a wide range of issues to cover.

While we have been facing an ideological challenge to our fundamental system of values from ISIL in Iraq and Syria, we have also faced a fundamental challenge to the post-cold war system of international relations in Europe.

For more than two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the west has opened a door to Russia and sought to draw her into the international rules-based system, offering partnership, trade, investment and openness. By its illegal annexation of Crimea and its aggressive destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, the Russian leadership has slammed that door shut. It has chosen the role of pariah rather than partner, and in doing so it has undermined the long-term security architecture of Europe.

The tactics that President Putin has adopted—from covert disruption to the first deployment of deniable irregulars and unbadged Russian military personnel to capture sites in Crimea, through to the transfer of heavy weapons and equipment to Ukrainian separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk, and now, more recently, the deployment of formed Russian military units on to Ukrainian soil—reflect a pattern that we have seen elsewhere. However much it is denied, Russia’s direct responsibility for the situation in eastern Ukraine is undeniable.

On 17 July, the irresponsibility of Russia’s behaviour reached its terrible apotheosis, with the shooting down, from separatist-controlled territory with a Russian ground-to-air missile, of flight MH17, with the loss of 298 totally innocent lives. Their blood is on the hands of Russia’s leaders.

The Government, together with our international partners, have been clear from the start: whatever the provocation, there can be no purely military solution to this crisis. The solution must be political, based on negotiations between Moscow and Kiev but upholding the fundamental principles of respect for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and of the right of the Ukrainian people to decide their own future. There can be no Russian veto on democracy in Ukraine.

The international community has a clear role to play by exerting the greatest possible pressure on Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukrainian soil, cease its support for the separatists and enable the restoration of security along the Ukraine-Russia border with effective international monitoring.

Russia has used asymmetric warfare to further its ends, exploiting the relative advantages of its ability to act quickly, decisively and without transparency. We must respond to that by using our relative advantages, most notably the enormously greater strength and resilience of our economies compared with Russia’s, with its terrible demography and its structural over-dependence on oil and gas exports.

The UK has been at the forefront of efforts to leverage that economic strength through the imposing of far-reaching economic sanctions. As the Prime Minister announced to the House on Monday, the latest European Union sanctions, building on the previous measures, will make it harder for Russian banks and energy and defence companies to borrow money; prohibit the provision of services for the exploration of shale, deep water and Arctic oil; and widen the ban on dual-use goods such as machinery and computer equipment. Additionally, a new list of individuals to be included on sanctions lists has been agreed, including the new separatist leadership in Donbass, the Government of Crimea and key Russian decision makers and oligarchs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

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

What message does the Secretary of State have for the 10,000 north-easterners who have signed a petition, that is now with Downing street, seeking to save 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I say to the hon. Lady that we have had to make some very difficult decisions in relation to the structure of the Army as we draw down its size to match our ambitions to our budgets. In doing that we have had to make sure we maximise the military capability. That means structuring the Army to deliver most efficiently the military capability that we need. I know that has meant painful decisions in a number of cases, but I am afraid we have to put the priority on delivering military effect.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

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

17. What recent progress he has made on balancing the defence budget.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

I announced to the House last May that we had eliminated the black hole in the finances of the Ministry of Defence that we inherited from the Labour party, and had brought the Defence budget into balance. Since then, on the one hand, we have been required to make further budget reductions in 2013-14 and 2014-15 of £1.2 billion in total as a result of the Chancellor’s announcements at autumn statement 2012 and Budget 2013; on the other hand, we have made further savings through efficiency and renegotiation of contracts and have been granted exceptional levels of end-year flexibility by the Treasury to carry forward 100% of our 2012-13 underspend, including unneeded contingency provisions, into 2013-14 and 2014-15. In consequence, we are confident that we can absorb the budget reductions announced without any significant impact on core defence output in those years.

[Mr Hammond]

The Government have announced that there will be a spending review—spending review ’13 —which will set the budgets for non-ring-fenced Departments, including Defence, for 2015-16. There has been an announcement confirming that the equipment programme will be protected in the defence budget, with a real-terms increase of 1% per annum between 2015-16 and 2020-21.

[Mrs Glindon]

Ministers have pledged an annual real-terms 1% increase in defence equipment spending post 2015, but in what year, under current plans, does the Secretary of State forecast the whole defence budget rising in real terms?

[Mr Hammond]

I am not going to pre-empt the outcome of SR 13; nor am I going to conduct the spending review in public. My Department is engaged in analysis with the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, in search of genuine efficiency savings. Where we can find such savings, for example in the equipment support programme, the Ministry of Defence will willingly do its bit to contribute to fiscal consolidation. I will, as you would expect, Mr Speaker, argue vigorously for the resources that Defence needs to deliver Future Force 2020 in accordance with the strategic defence and security review 2010.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

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

11. What plans he has for the non-equipment defence budget.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

The defence budget was set for this Parliament in the spending review conducted in 2010. As I have set out, the budget for financial year 2015-16 will be set in the current spending round, which is expected to conclude in the summer. The MOD’s planning assumption is that the non-equipment element of the budget, about 55% to 60% of the total, will grow in line with inflation—that is, will remain flat in real terms—over the 10-year planning horizon that the Department uses for budgeting purposes.

[Mr Hammond]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we have right-sized the Army to the budgets we have available, and having taken tough decisions we are in the process of drawing the Army down to its future size of 82,000. That size will allow us to equip and protect properly our service men and women when we ask them to go out and do a very dangerous job on our behalf, and we believe that is the right approach.

[Mrs Glindon]

Given that the National Audit Office did not confirm the affordability of the equipment plan, will the Secretary of State commit to publishing a more detailed summary of the plan with individual funding lines for individual programmes?

[Mr Hammond]

I remind the hon. Lady that the question is about the non-equipment defence budget. For the equipment budget we have published a plan that is more detailed than anything published previously, and certainly more detailed than any equipment plan published during the 13 years of the Labour Government. We have gone as far as we believe we can without compromising either national security or taxpayers’ commercial interests in negotiating with defence contractors, and I am afraid I cannot offer her any more detail than that already published without compromising those things.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Monday 11th June 2012 Commons Chamber

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

T8. When Sir John Holmes reports on his review of the medals system, is the Prime Minister likely to keep his pre-election promise so that after 67 years the surviving Arctic convoy veterans at last receive a British medal in acknowledgement of their brave service?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

Perhaps I should be clear that the remit of the medals review is to look at the process and at the factors that are taken into account when making such decisions. So the review will look at the framework and the basis on which decisions are taken, and it will then be for individual decisions to be reviewed within any new framework that is put in place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

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

When members of the armed forces are facing a two-year pay freeze and 20,000 are losing their jobs, how can the Secretary of State justify bonuses, some of five figures, to senior officers in the MOD civil service?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I think we have covered this one already. The arrangements for performance-related pay were put in place by the previous Government and were a decision taken by them with which I concurred entirely. It is the right way to incentivise senior civil servants. By paying non-consolidated performance-related pay, we reduce the total cost to the Department. The scheme was introduced in lieu of pay increases.

Transport (Investment)

Debate between Mary Glindon and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

If the fundamentals of the scheme justify its promotion to the development pool, it will be so promoted.

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

I thank the Minister for agreeing to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn) and me, and I welcome the upgrade of the Tyne and Wear metro, but people need jobs to travel to. The A19 corridor is crucial to the north-east’s economic development. Given the importance of the tunnel opening in 2011 and the two junctions on either side being improved, will the Minister increase the size of the meeting to include some business people and councillors who will also be able to make that case ably?

[Mr Hammond]

I am always happy to hear from the business lobby and the most convincing arguments often come from members of the business community. The hon. Lady makes the case that investment in transport infrastructure is good for economic development, job creation and inward investment. We know all that; the problem is that we have to prioritise the capital funding that we have available. The only fair way to do that is to look at the value for money that different schemes return for taxpayers’ funding and ensure that we prioritise them accordingly.