Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Because of the changes we have made, petrol and diesel are 10p less a litre than they otherwise would have been if we had kept the tax increases that were put in place by the Opposition. That is the effect of this Government and we want to go on making that progress.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Q6. I thank my right hon. Friend for visiting Buckfastleigh with me yesterday, a town in my constituency severely affected by flooding. What the people of Buckfastleigh wish to know is how they are now going to get flooding insurance at affordable rates, particularly given that many homes have been blighted. Will he join me in pressing the Association of British Insurers to stop grandstanding in its negotiations with the Government, to get down to the table and thrash out a deal so that my constituents can get the insurance they need?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I very much enjoyed visiting his constituency with him yesterday, seeing at first hand the appalling damage done by the floods and speaking with local people, the emergency services and the Environment Agency about all the work that is being done to protect more houses in future. We need to address the insurance issue and negotiations are under way. The Minister for Government Policy, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) is leading for the Government. I want us to get a resolution so that insurance companies provide what they are meant to provide, which is insurance for people living in their homes who want proper protection.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

There is no plan to change the basic rules of accountability, in the sense that there is a permanent, politically impartial civil service. However, there is a view, which I believe is shared right across the House, particularly by those who were Ministers in the previous Government, that responsiveness and effectiveness need to increase. That view is shared by the leadership of the civil service. One thing we are trying to do, through the civil service reform plan, is to respond to some of the frustrations expressed by civil servants themselves. They get very frustrated with the bureaucracy and the hierarchical nature of the service, as it is currently run.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

13. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his bold and imaginative reforms of the civil service, particularly the mutualisation of the civil service pension scheme. May I press him to look at other areas of the civil service where that successful approach may be adopted?

[Mr Maude]

The movement towards mutualisation of public services is very powerful and is being looked at by other Governments, as well as our own. It is powerful because it enables entrepreneurial leaders in the public sector, of whom there are many, to take control of the services, innovate, do things differently and drive out cost. It is a powerful means of driving efficiency, for the taxpayer and for the user.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing is making sure that we target help on the poorest families in our country, which is what we have done through the tax credit system. At the same time, we should praise all the voluntary and big society efforts to help the poorest families in our country.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Q4. Will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the 23 million people in our country who work with such commitment in the private sector—the sector that generates the wealth that this country so desperately needs? Will he also welcome, as I do, the fact that under this Government we now have more people employed in the private sector than at any time in our history?

[The Prime Minister]

The point my hon. Friend makes is very important. If you look at the figures and include all of the financial sector, you will see that there are more people employed in the private sector today in Britain than at any time in our history. [Interruption.] Oh, the shadow Chancellor says that that is because we are in recession. It is because companies are choosing to employ people and the private sector is getting larger, which is good news. Employment is up 201,000 this quarter; unemployment is down 46,000 this quarter; the claimant count has fallen; the rate of unemployment is down; youth unemployment is down—I would have thought that the whole House would welcome those figures.

G20 Summit

Mel Stride Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is a perfectly fair question. My judgment was that having done the G8 and NATO summits, then the G20 and an important bilateral visit to Mexico—we should be linking up with the fastest-growing economies in the world—it was better to ask the Deputy Prime Minister to attend the Rio summit, which I believe made some important progress. This Government believe that, as well as GDP, we should be thinking about other measures of sustainability and well-being, and we are measuring those things for the first time in this country, which is giving something of a lead to others.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s support for free trade at the G20, and like him I believe that the free movement of peoples is important to free trade, but does he agree that it was a great dereliction of responsibility by the previous Government not to introduce transition arrangements in relation to those states that joined the EU in 2004?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It was the Conservative Opposition who warned that it was a bad decision to allow unencumbered access to British labour markets from countries such as Poland. We well remember being told, “You can’t talk about these things”, that it is somehow racist to discuss immigration, and all the rest of it. Year after year we had to put up with that nonsense, and to get a half-baked apology now is simply not good enough.

Regional Pay

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck]

Indeed; I shall touch on that point briefly later.

More than 18,000 people in Plymouth work in the public sector. In my constituency, a massive 25% of the working population do so—one in four people—and to dampen pay rates could be devastating. The Government’s suggestion that it is easy to compare private sector and public sector jobs is absolute nonsense. In the south-west, large swathes of people work in the hospitality and agriculture sectors, earning very low wages. There is no simple read-across, and I would ask the Government to consider that fact carefully.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Seabeck]

No, I am afraid that I cannot. Perhaps one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues will allow him to intervene on them later.

In his autumn statement, the Chancellor talked about private sector pay being set in accordance with local labour markets. That is not true. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) has just pointed out, some of the most successful companies in the country, including large retailers, banks and telecoms companies, use similar national pay structures.

There is genuine concern among businesses in my constituency that any decision to cap or lower public sector pay will lead to problems for them, in that there will be less demand for their goods and services as families pull in their horns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Margaret Curran]

I do not have time.

As has been pointed out in the debate, the Government have not produced a shred of evidence that a pay bargaining free-for-all would increase the number of private sector jobs, deliver more vibrant local economies or open up access to jobs or opportunities. In fact, the chief economist of the Welsh Government recently demonstrated that age and gender can be as significant factors as local geography, and that if we were to address regional pay differences, we would need to introduce disproportionate changes and reduce the pay of low-paid women. So much for the Tories embracing gender equality!

Perhaps we can hope that the Government will listen to the sensible calls that have been made on this, so that the U-turn on regional pay that has been hinted at becomes a reality. Perhaps the absence of the two Lib Dem Cabinet Ministers augurs well in that regard. The last thing we need in these very difficult times is to drive down wages even further based on the age-old fallacy that the public and private sectors are always to be in competition with each other.

The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) implied that public sector workers do not have real jobs. That tells us all we need to know about Tory attitudes to police officers and teachers. I call on the Minister to dissociate herself from those comments.

The Opposition motion should be supported by all Members who do not want to exacerbate the north-south divide, who want to ensure that we maintain fairness in public sector pay, and who want to stand up for the interests of working people from Cardiff to Newcastle to Dundee. They should challenge this Government and support the Opposition motion.

Debate on the Address

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wright]

I use the phrase “getting into bed with the Tories” not because it is of my own making, but after speaking to my constituents and people elsewhere who were thinking about voting Liberal Democrat, who might have fallen out of love with Labour following the 2005 general election and who wanted to consider something else in 2010, but who now feel let down and betrayed. That is the scale of the challenge that the hon. Gentleman’s party faces with regard to reinvigorating the trust of the people.

Almost the first words that Her Majesty said in her speech today were:

“My Ministers’ first priority will be to reduce the deficit and restore economic stability.”

Those words were almost identical to the ones that the Queen uttered in the first Session of this Parliament, two years ago, when she stated:

“The first priority is to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth.”

In the intervening two years, the Government have done little that they set themselves on both counts. They have had to borrow about £150 billion more than they originally forecast back in 2010, and they have failed to deal effectively with the deficit and to restore economic growth, because they have focused exclusively—some might say almost obsessively—on the former, reducing the deficit, instead of giving sufficient priority to the latter, economic growth. It should not be an either/or game. Tax revenues are lower because of weak demand and reduced consumer spending, while expenditure is rising because of the need to pay out more in unemployment benefits. The British economy is now in a more perilous state than when the Government took office two years ago.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor will trot out the excuse of the difficulties experienced in the eurozone, and there is some truth in that, but they cannot escape the fact that the retreat into recession has been caused almost directly by their actions and policies. We are experiencing this country’s longest downturn since the 1920s. Britain is emerging from the deep global recession of 2008-09 more slowly than from previous recessions and, crucially, more slowly than our main economic competitors, meaning that our rivals in the global marketplace are stealing a march on us. The actions of this Government today are compromising our competitiveness in the global economy of tomorrow.

The US economy grew by 3% in the last quarter of 2011 and by 2.2% in the first quarter of this year. Alongside Greece and Italy, Spain is generally—almost universally—acknowledged to be one of the economic basket cases of the eurozone, but even the Spanish economy grew more in 2011 than Britain’s. Today’s publication of UK retail figures, which show a 3.3% fall year on year—the largest fall in more than a year—demonstrates the general weakness of the economy, the lack of demand and the fragility of consumer confidence.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman congratulate the Government on maintaining our triple A credit rating status and acknowledge the fact that we have among the lowest long-term interest rates in the world at the moment? That is a major achievement.

[Mr Wright]

We do have those things, but we have no growth. I fear that the rehashing of phrases in the Gracious Speech today—often word-for-word repeats of what was said in 2010—will mean that the Government will continue to insist on economic policies that consign the country to a decade of stagnation, anaemic growth, mass unemployment and rising social division.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wright]

What I am suggesting is that if the Government were serious about economic growth and promoting the conditions for competitiveness and enterprise, they would be doing a lot more to stimulate growth and job creation. For example, they could have announced a British investment bank Bill, which would have provided a clear and welcome acknowledgement that active partnership between Government and productive businesses will allow the state to ensure that growth capital is provided to the small and medium-sized businesses that need it, for which the market has failed.

Active partnership between Government and businesses can work. Successful modern economies such as Singapore and Germany do it, and their economies will see long-term, sustainable business success and economic growth as a result. Even the US, supposedly the most free market economy on earth, does it; we saw the likes of fast-growing young companies such as Apple and Intel receive growth funding through the US Government’s small business investment company programme. On the subject of active government in the US, why did not the Gracious Speech include the British equivalent of President Obama’s Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which is designed to increase the number of jobs and to kick-start initial public offerings for companies and ensure that they have access to finance for growth? We should be doing the same here.

[Mel Stride]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that according to Companies House there were more new business start-ups in the last quarter than at any time since this Government came to office?

[Mr Wright]

You will never hear from me, Mr Deputy Speaker, any criticism of trying to get as many start-ups as possible. I would welcome a culture of enterprise and allowing businesses to grow, but firms that are starting up are being penalised by not being given access to finance and capital to allow them to do so.

The Gracious Speech referred to the introduction of

“legislation to reform competition law to promote enterprise and fair markets.”

I hope that the Government will confirm that that Bill will contain measures to curb excessive executive remuneration and encourage increased shareholder activism, as that was not specifically mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. I also hope that they will legislate to implement all—I emphasise all—the sensible and widely accepted recommendations of the High Pay Commission earlier this year on matters such as simplification of executive remuneration, standardisation of reporting to ensure that meaningful comparisons can take place, and, importantly, the inclusion of employee representation on remuneration committees. Recent events at the likes of UBS, Trinity Mirror, Barclays, AstraZeneca and Aviva have shown that there is shareholder appetite for ensuring that poor performance is not rewarded through excessive pay. I hope that the High Pay Commission’s recommendations will be implemented in full.

I hope that the reference in the Queen’s Speech to “repealing unnecessary legislation” will not mean stripping away workers’ rights. Making it easier to fire people does not create jobs, employment or economic growth; instead, such an environment creates a Victorian-mill-owner culture of bad bosses being accepted and enshrined in legislation. It will do nothing to stimulate consumer confidence or growth in demand, which are so very vital. It is also wrong to suggest that the level of employment protection and rises in unemployment are closely correlated, as David Blanchflower points out in his article in The Independent today. He argues that Germany and the Netherlands have much higher levels of employment protection than the UK but experienced a much smaller rise in unemployment during the recession and its aftermath.

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Mel Stride Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point I made is that my right hon. Friend dealt with that in the statement that he made on Wednesday, because his answer was subsequently given to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) to explain the situation, as is absolutely correct.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister confirm that a civil service-led inquiry would have absolutely no power to summon a Minister under oath and that nor would it be held in public? Does he therefore agree that at this stage following the Leveson route is the best way of giving the Secretary of State his opportunity to clear the record and to find the truth?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. I do not want in any way to belittle what the Cabinet Secretary, a former civil servant or Sir Alex Allan are capable of in terms of proper inquiries, because this has happened in the past; it happened with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox). It so happens that the process that we are currently engaged in—the Leveson inquiry—is many times more robust in getting to the facts of the case. Once we have the facts, and if they throw up any extra information, the situation in terms of the ministerial code has not changed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

3. What recent discussions she has had with her ministerial colleagues and others on job creation in the private sector in Wales.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

4. What recent discussions she has had with her ministerial colleagues and others on job creation in the private sector in Wales.

[The Secretary of State for Wales (Mrs Cheryl Gillan)]

I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues and other interested parties on ways in which we can stimulate job creation in the private sector in Wales. We must create an environment in which the private sector can grow and prosper in order for businesses to create much-needed jobs in Wales, and we will continue to work with the Welsh Government to achieve that aim.

[Mrs Gillan]

I think my hon. Friend knows that we have looked at this, and we do not intend to review the Severn tidal power situation before 2015—but it would be irresponsible to rule out such an important source of renewable energy for ever, as circumstances are likely to change down the line. As I have said before, to the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, if private funding for this project comes forward, we will consider it particularly seriously.

[Mel Stride]

As my right hon. Friend will know, under the previous Government there was far too much onerous employment legislation, much of which served simply as a brake on the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises both in Wales and throughout the United Kingdom. Does she therefore welcome, as I do, the fact that the Government will be doubling the period to qualify to go to an unfair dismissal tribunal, and that fees will also be charged thereafter to stop—

[Mr Speaker]

We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There are far too many private conversations taking place in the Chamber. The House must come to order and hear Mr Mel Stride.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

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

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

As Minister for the Cabinet Office, I am responsible for the public sector Efficiency and Reform Group, civil service issues, industrial relations, strategy in the public sector, Government transparency, civil contingencies, the civil society and cyber-security.

[Mel Stride]

Okehampton, in my constituency, has recently seen unemployment treble virtually overnight, although the figure has now decreased dramatically due to local action. It is holding a very important event this week, “Okehampton Works”, bringing together public, private and voluntary organisations to focus on employment, which is an important step towards the big society locally. Will my right hon. Friend join me in visiting Okehampton to meet, and learn from, those who have pioneered that important initiative?

[Mr Maude]

I should be delighted for either myself or the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), to join my hon. Friend in Okehampton to discuss those very issues. There is a huge amount that can be done.

House of Lords Reform

Mel Stride Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I will respond to that point of order, however. The issue of cost is, of course, directly related to the number of Members serving in the House of Lords; the larger it is, the more expensive it will be. Under our reform proposals, the size of the House of Lords will be cut to 300, less than half the size of this Chamber.

The Prime Minister and I are committed to reform, but the reform will go with the grain of the evolution that we have already witnessed in the Lords; it will be steady, ordered and careful; and it will be built on the widest possible consensus. That is why our proposals build on the work of countless others from both sides of this House as well as the other place over recent decades. The Wakeham commission, the Straw committee and the Cunningham report have all made hugely important contributions, and I pay tribute to the work of reformers on all sides of the argument. Without them, the case for change would already have been lost.

I also thank the cross-party Committee established to consider this matter last year. We reached agreement on most elements of the proposed package and in the end there were only two issues relating to the content of the reforms on which we did not reach final agreement. On both, we have left our options open in the White Paper.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Let me return my right hon. Friend to the cost of these reforms. He will be aware, no doubt, of Lord Lipsey’s estimate that 300 or so new Members of the upper House would cost about £430 million in the 2015 to 2020 Parliament, which is enough to employ some 21,000 nurses. Does my right hon. Friend believe that the British people would rather have 21,000 additional nurses or some 300 fully expensed and fully paid identikit politicians?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

With the greatest of respect to Lord Lipsey, I think that his figure was a guesstimate rather than an analysis. There are all sorts of unknown quantities involved, such as what the final size of the House of Lords will be, how many Members will be elected, the time scale and the transitional arrangements for those elected and for those who depart. Until those things have been decided, which I hope will happen in the coming months, it is impossible to come up with an accurate figure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a great privilege to have the opportunity to speak in favour of the long overdue reform of the second Chamber. I welcome the publication of the draft Bill and the appointment of the Joint Committee. I am sure that its members, given their background, will do an excellent job of scrutinising the proposed legislation.

Although the draft Bill may not be the direct product of the joint discussions that have taken place so far, it reflects broad areas of agreement. I hope that, more importantly, there will be an opportunity for thorough pre-legislative scrutiny, to which hon. Members of all parties will contribute in order to make it successful. It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband), who reminded us that progressive forces operate on both sides of the Chamber.

As the draft Bill makes clear, those of us who are reformists do not want the new second Chamber to compete with this House, but to retain its role as a revising Chamber. However, it is important—and a fundamental principle for many of us—that Members of that House have legitimacy through an election. That is only way in which they can have legitimacy.

Perhaps the House of Lords has become marginally more legitimate with the abolition of the hereditary principle. The right hon. Gentleman rightly alluded to the fact that that was an evolutionary process. Attempts were made to remove all the hereditary peers in one go, but that could not be achieved and 92 remained.

Liberal Democrats passionately believe in a 100% elected Chamber, but we appreciate the opportunity for evolutionary change: 80%, with 20% appointed, must not be squandered—it is a huge step in the right direction. However, we must emphasise that this House retains primacy. As well as Members being elected for the single 15-year terms, we will have a different electoral system, which will ensure that power remains in this place.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend makes the important point, as several others have done, that we must not upset the balance of power between the other place and us. Does he agree with the comments that Lord Ashdown made last Tuesday? He said:

“The fact that we do not have democratic legitimacy undermines our capacity to act as a check and balance on the excessive power of the Executive backed by an excessive majority in the House of Commons.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2011; Vol. 728, c. 1190.]

[Mr Williams]

I do not understand what the hon. Gentleman means. I have great sympathy with my noble Friend’s comments.

The Government’s critics have mentioned a lack of pre-legislative scrutiny of other Bills, but that is precisely why we have set up the Joint Committee, which is about to undertake such work, and why it is important to have a robust House of Lords, which will continue its function in scrutinising legislation. As someone who worked in the other place many years ago, I understand the sort of detailed scrutiny that was undertaken.

The expertise in the other place has been mentioned. I must say that that debate is 20 years out of date. When I was there 20 years ago, I had the privilege of sharing an office with a former lecturer at the London School of Economics, a former chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, a former chairman of the National Coal Board and a former Minister for the arts. The composition of that House is very different now. It is dominated by people who have served in this place. Without being rude to those people, they spend a short time on the red Benches and go native.