Matt Hancock
Main Page: Matt Hancock (Conservative - West Suffolk)Department Debates - View all Matt Hancock's debates with the Cabinet Office
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
2. What representations he has received on his Department’s boycott and divestment guidance.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Matthew Hancock)
We have received a wide range of representations about boycotts in public procurement. The Government’s position is very clear: public sector organisations should not use procurement to run their own independent foreign policies.
Deidre Brock
Does the Minister agree that people who stand for election to local authorities and who then serve as councillors perform an important role in communities the length and breadth of these islands, and does he further agree that they should be trusted to make political judgments for themselves? Will the Government abandon the boycott and divestment guidance in favour of supporting local democracy?
Matthew Hancock
Yes, I think councillors do an excellent job at what councils are meant to do, but councils are not meant to set foreign policy, and attempts at local foreign policies that are discriminatory are potentially illegal, and we make that clear at every opportunity.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Was it wrong for my local authority to boycott South African goods in the 1970s?
Matthew Hancock
Where a national boycott is in place and where a national decision has been made, local authorities should of course follow that, but these decisions are rightly for the Foreign Office and not for local authorities; the country cannot be run by having hundreds of different foreign policies.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
I think that, not for the first time, the Government are looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. Rather than try to prevent local authorities from taking ethical and environmental considerations into account when making decisions, surely the Government should, as the Scottish Government do, encourage local authorities to do so—or does the Minister really believe that council tax payers’ money should be used to prop up oppressive regimes and support unlawful activity throughout the world?
Matthew Hancock
I find it surprising that the Scottish National party engages in and supports discrimination of this kind. We should trade with the world, except where a boycott decision has been made at a national level. The idea that we should discriminate against companies with which we otherwise have a good trading relationship is wrong.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
3. What recent assessment he has made of diversity among permanent secretaries in the civil service.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
7. Whether the agreements reached at the anti-corruption summit in May 2016 will be applied to other countries.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Matthew Hancock)
This Government and this Prime Minister have taken a global lead on tackling the scourge of corruption. Each delegation at the anti-corruption summit signed up to the commitments set out in the communiqué. In addition, 42 countries and eight international organisations issued statements setting out further measures that they will take.
Mike Gapes
In April 2014, the Prime Minister said:
“I believe that beneficial ownership and public access to a central register is key to improving the transparency of company ownership and vital to meeting the urgent challenges of illicit finance and tax evasion.”
Will the Minister explain why the Government are no longer calling for public registers of beneficial ownership in the British overseas territories?
Matthew Hancock
We are calling for them. The Prime Minister was absolutely right then, and we are delivering on that now. Later this month we will publish the beneficial ownership register for the UK. All the overseas territories have signed up to beneficial ownership registers, and we urge them to make them public.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
11. In the run-up to the anti-corruption summit, leaders of charities and faith groups around the world were calling on the Prime Minister to insist on the same levels of transparency in our overseas territories and Crown dependencies as we have here in mainland UK. Why did the Prime Minister ignore them? Was he unable or unwilling to stop the facilitation of corruption in our tax havens?
Matthew Hancock
We have made huge progress in ensuring that we have registers of beneficial ownership in the overseas territories. We are also publishing the beneficial ownership register for the UK. The progress that has been made in the overseas territories is the greatest under any Government in history, which perhaps is one reason Transparency International said that the summit had been a good day for anti-corruption.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
The Panama papers have shown how illicit finance robs the very poorest countries of the world. Malawi, for example, loses about $130 million a year through such finance. Will the Minister explain why the Malawian company Press Trust Overseas Ltd cannot have its tax affairs scrutinised because it is in the British Virgin Islands? Should not the summit have come to an agreement to force such overseas jurisdictions to publish central beneficial registers?
Matthew Hancock
If the hon. Gentleman cares so much about the matter, he might have congratulated us on the progress that we made at the summit. He will be delighted to know that the British Virgin Islands has signed up to have a beneficial ownership register and to share that information with the UK Government. We are making progress in tackling the scourge of corruption, about which previous Governments, including the one he supported, did too little.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
8. What progress has been made on implementation of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Matthew Hancock)
The Cabinet Office is responsible for efficiency and reform in government, transparency, civil society, the digital economy and cybersecurity to deliver the Government’s agenda.
Cat Smith
Will the Minister confirm that, whether appropriate in the Government’s view or not, it is still lawful for public bodies to refuse to award contracts to companies for reasons other than nationality, such as human right records, compliance with international law or a connection with trades such as the arms trade or fossil fuels?
Matthew Hancock
As I said earlier, the boycott of, and discrimination against, countries is potentially illegal. The guidance that we set out was designed to make it absolutely clear that these decisions on boycotts against countries need to be taken at a national level, and it is inappropriate for local authorities to try to set their own foreign policies.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
T3. The National Citizen Service has been a wonderful success in Huddersfield and Colne Valley. What more can be done to make sure that even more young people in Yorkshire can find out how to access this transformative experience?
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
T4. This Government have a responsibility to ensure that their citizens are safe online. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on what progress he is making in developing the 2016 national cyber-security strategy?
Matthew Hancock
Cyber-security is incredibly important, especially as we increasingly deliver digital government. The national cyber-security strategy ran up to 2016. The new strategy is underpinned by investment of £1.9 billion—almost double the funding—and we will publish the strategy later this year.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
T5. The backward steps in gender inequality at the top of the civil service are unacceptable. Will the Minister release the gender breakdown of those who were shortlisted for the role of permanent secretary so that we can have further transparency on this important issue?
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Given the surge in voter registration, how can the Minister possibly justify using such woefully inaccurate figures to redraw the electoral map of the United Kingdom?
Matthew Hancock
We just had this question a few minutes ago, and the answer is very clear: the alternative of using figures from 2001 or 2000 is completely unacceptable. We have, in fact, made the process more frequent, not less, and we now update the register for the purposes of writing the boundaries every five years, not every 10.