Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Munn Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

I know; that was my point. If the hon. Lady wishes to write to me or directly to the FA, I will see what we can do to help.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Women and girl’s football is a growing sport and is one of the fastest growing sports among girls. As I am sure the Minister is aware, it is enormously important to have women in coaching and being trained as coaches. What is being done to get more women into coaching?

[Hugh Robertson]

I am glad to say that there is a very simple answer to that question: the development of St George’s Park, the FA’s new centre of excellence in the midlands. Its specific remit is to drive up the number of coaches, both male and female, across the community game. Many football writers, who have been urging this for a long time, think that it will be the single biggest seminal change to English football over the next decade. I hope that it will make a huge contribution to sorting out this situation.

Business of the House (Thursday)

Meg Munn Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

There are many U-turns fighting to get into that top-10 list, but my hon. Friend makes a good point. Had the roles been reversed, the Deputy Leader of the House would have been fulminating from the Dispatch Box about how outrageous it was. He could have the opportunity to do so now, but I see that he simply wants to remain in his place.

I should like to make a suggestion about how we could guarantee even the inadequate amount of time given so far. We have just had very helpful guidance from the Speaker about making manuscript amendments, and the Leader of the House could amend his own motion to ensure that there would be injury time if an urgent question were to be granted or if extensive time were taken up with points of order. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is not a fan of injury time and I suspect that is because the coalition Government are not terribly keen on having a full and open debate on the matter in hand.

There is another reason why more time is required. The measures we are being asked to vote on tomorrow cannot be described as the original proposals of Lord Browne. That is why my earlier quotation was relevant. When Lord Browne produced his report, he said that his proposals had to be considered together, but we now know that the Government’s plans differ from those of Lord Browne. That is very pertinent to the argument about why more time is required, especially when one bears in mind that the Government have had no debate in their own time on Lord Browne’s proposals.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) made, would not a greater amount of time and a longer process allow Back Benchers on both sides and the official Opposition to make alternative proposals so that at the end of the process there would be much greater consensus, as there was in 2004?

[Hilary Benn]

That is indeed the case. Hon. Members are being denied that opportunity because the Government have chosen to put the cart before the horse.

Business of the House

Meg Munn Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

If my hon. Friend is referring to the Chilcot inquiry, I think it would make sense to await the outcome of that before the House holds a debate on the issue that he has outlined.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Department for International Development’s statement on the development of St Helena airport, as I have long argued that that makes sense in terms of value for money. Can we have a debate so that we can hear from DFID about the process that it went through to determine that making that investment now will save money in the long term? The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills might learn something from that in relation to issues such as Forgemasters.

[Sir George Young]

I commend the ingenuity of the hon. Lady’s question. She will have seen the written ministerial statement setting out the reasons behind the provisional conclusion, which concerned whether an acceptable contract price was achieved and whether the risk of cost and time overruns were addressed. That is the right way to go and it represents the best value for money for the British taxpayer. Of course, that conclusion could not have been reached without the assent of the Treasury.

Information for Backbenchers on Statements

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful for the helpful intervention from my right hon. Friend, the distinguished Chairman of the Procedure Committee. There are many benefits of 24-hour news coverage, although accuracy is not necessarily one of them—nor is undue pressure on Ministers to release information before the House is told. But that is no excuse for Ministers to fail to resist the temptation to get their message out before telling the House. I agree that it is an additional pressure, but it should not be an excuse.

The early release of information is not confined to the broadcast media age. In fact, we can go back to the infamous incident on 13 November 1947, when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, resigned a few hours after what he described as “a grave indiscretion” on his part. Some Members might not be familiar with this infamous case, so perhaps I can indulge the House for a moment by reminding them. There was the following exchange on the Floor of the Chamber: Mr Raikes raised a private notice question, which was the procedure in those days, and

“asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has considered the accurate forecast of the Budget proposals in a newspaper on sale at 3.45 p.m. yesterday, a copy of which has been sent to him, and if he will institute an inquiry into the source of the information.”

Very humbly, Mr Dalton, the Chancellor at the time, told the House:

“I very much regret to tell the House that the publication to which the hon. Member refers arose out of an incident which occurred as I was entering the Chamber to make my speech yesterday. In reply to questions put to me by the Lobby correspondent of the “Star” newspaper, I indicated to him the subject matter contained in the publication in question. I appreciate that this was a grave indiscretion on my part, for which I offer my deep apologies to the House.”—[Official Report, 13 November 1947; Vol. 444, c. 551.]

A few hours later, The Times reported Hugh Dalton’s resignation letter to the Prime Minister, in which Hugh Dalton wrote:

“In view of the incident which was raised to-day in the House, I think my duty to offer you my resignation”.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

That is a very interesting historical episode, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for telling us about it, but on that basis, has he worked out how many current Ministers would have had to resign?

[Mr Hollobone]

That is an extremely good point, and the answer is: all of them—and most of the previous Government as well. The basic point of my speech is that standards have been going downhill since 13 November 1947. Mr Dalton was clearly in the wrong, and he paid the ultimate political price, but what has been happening since is that Ministers of the Crown, under Conservative, Labour and coalition Governments, have been getting away with it. The purpose of today’s motion, in praising the Speaker for the steps he has taken, is to give the House the opportunity to say, “Enough is enough. We are going to do things differently in the future.”

Business of the House

Meg Munn Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. As he knows, the Mayor of London is taking action to clear the square, and I understand that the decision of the Court of Appeal will be announced tomorrow. Any enforcement action will then be down to the enforcement officers of the court. We have to strike a balance between the right to protest and the imperative to maintain what I think is one of the key heritage sites in the whole world, namely Parliament square, with the Houses of Parliament, Westminster abbey, Whitehall and the Supreme Court around it. My own view is that the square is defiled by a shanty town and we should try to restore it to the green that used to be there.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Three weeks ago, in response to a question, the Leader of the House spoke about meetings between the Deputy Prime Minister and Sheffield Forgemasters. I have received a letter from the Deputy Prime Minister, who is keen to get rid of any confusion. Has he also contacted the Leader of the House to enable him to correct the record? When does the Leader of the House expect the Deputy Prime Minister to correct what he said about meeting the chief executive of Sheffield Forgemasters?

[Sir George Young]

I understand that there has been a meeting between the two. Next week there is an Adjournment debate on Sheffield Forgemasters, which would be the appropriate time to raise the concern that the hon. Lady has just uttered.