Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Q11. A young couple in my constituency—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order—on both sides of the Chamber. It is a gross discourtesy to the hon. Gentleman and to his constituents. The hon. Gentleman’s question will be heard.
Michael Connarty
A young couple in my constituency were persuaded by Mr Steven Macsporran of the Advice Centre for Mortgages to put a legacy they had into a flat to rent in Turkey. He was an agent for ROPUK. They got no flat and lost £47,000. The Financial Ombudsman Service said that it could not give any advice because it was unregulated advice. Does the Prime Minister agree that that company, and companies like it, should not be allowed to advertise themselves as being regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority if they give such advice, and is it not time we dealt with this rip-off Britain problem?
The Prime Minister
First, I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who is standing down at the election. He has been a Member of Parliament for—[Interruption.] He is not?
The Prime Minister
I am sorry. Let me rephrase that. [Interruption.] I want to defend my team, because this is my 146th appearance at the Dispatch Box for Prime Minister’s questions, and they normally get these things right. Let me pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman anyway and wish him luck in the current battle he has in his constituency.
We have all heard such cases in our constituency surgeries, from people who put their money into timeshare schemes with companies that subsequently turned out to be disreputable. We have all then had the challenge of getting those companies properly uncovered and regulated. I will look into the specific case and write to him, either in his capacity as an MP or whatever it is after the election.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Maude
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has raised this point about supporting businesses in the Isle of Wight; he has been a huge and doughty champion of businesses in his constituency. We have made public procurement more transparent and accessible. We have published tenders and contracts through the contracts finder website—and we shall be launching a much-improved version of that very soon. We have simplified how procurement takes place to take away some of the bureaucracy that looked like it was designed to stop small businesses competing for, and winning, business. There is much more we can and will do.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
12. Reading through the UK Statistics Authority booklet, I am struck by the number of times that the Government have been rebuked for giving false information in their statements. The Prime Minister is twice rebuked for giving the wrong facts about the debt, saying that it is falling when it has in fact been rising. Could the Cabinet Office get together with the UK Statistics Authority and agree to deal with facts, rather than fiction, in Government statements for the next three months?
Mr Speaker
Order. The question is about Government procurement, small businesses and the voluntary sector.
The Prime Minister
I am very glad that my hon. Friend sees a manufacturing revival taking place in Britain. We have seen manufacturing investment and manufacturing output increase. That is happening in all the regions of our country, which is worth while. We will be playing our part by investing £10 million in the development of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in south Yorkshire. These and other catapults can make a real difference by backing the revival of manufacturing in our country.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
As I remarked earlier, I have been reading the report of the Statistics Authority. The fact is that the Labour Government prosecuted more companies for corporate tax evasion than this Government have done. It is a major scandal in this country that many, many people who make money from our consumers do not pay their tax in this country. What is the Prime Minister doing to plug these gaps?
The Prime Minister
When we chaired the G8, we put at the head of the agenda the issue of tax transparency, tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, and we now have 90 countries automatically sharing their tax information, including Switzerland, so the events that we are discussing—events and allegations of crimes—all took place when Labour was in power. Were this to happen again, we would not have this situation, because we have the automatic transparent exchange of tax information, something that this Government put on the agenda. Labour started talking about it only after we did that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Carmichael
I share the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of what devolution is actually about. I say to him, however, that in Scotland we have debated our constitutional future over decades. Change can be achieved only by building the broadest possible consensus from the lowest possible level up, taking in parties outside the political process. The people of England will need to do that if they are to have a better constitutional future.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
13. Does the Secretary of State accept that the issue of fracking and exploring for minerals in Scotland is one legitimately looked at by the Smith commission? If it recommends that that goes to Scotland, it will stop the clock on using reserve powers and will let Scotland decide about fracking.
Mr Carmichael
Like everybody else, the hon. Gentleman will have to wait to see what recommendations come from the Smith commission. The Government were responsible for setting it up and we will deliver on the heads of agreement when they are published, but it would not be appropriate for me, standing at this Dispatch Box now, to second-guess what Lord Smith is going to say.
Recall of MPs Bill
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Zac Goldsmith
I believe that, under the Government’s Bill, the cost of the petition and the by-election would be borne centrally. My right hon. Friends on the Front Bench are welcome to intervene if I am wrong. The same would be true in the alternative that I am proposing. I have checked with Electoral Reform Services, which routinely conducts referendums, and I have been told that the cost would be £35,000 for a recall referendum. That works out at about 40p per person. If that is the price people have to pay for decent representation, I suspect that most people would regard it as a price worth paying.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman knows that on certain matters I admire his commitment. My problem is that the Bill has been advertised, particularly those using the 38 Degrees website, as a serious amendment to get rid of bad apples. The 38 Degrees document in fact says that people can have a recall for no reason: they do not have to state a reason. Will he clarify the confusion in the public mind? He plays fast and loose with the statement that anyone who opposes this is against democracy. Will he be quite clear that he does not support the idea of having a purposeless petition, or one in which the purpose is not stated, against a Member? We now have a situation in which the will of the Scottish people is quite clearly to stay in the Union, but we are being threatened—thank goodness, we can take it up at the general election—and under recall, his rule could be used to try to overturn the will of the people and to be anti-democratic.
Zac Goldsmith
This is a point of difference. I do not believe that voters will attempt to recall—and they certainly would not succeed in recalling—anyone who is not a bad apple. I do not believe that voters will remove people over a policy difference. I made that point earlier. The question comes down to whether or not the hon. Gentleman trusts the voters. It is as simple as that. I cannot guarantee that frivolous attempts will not be made—of course I cannot—any more than I can guarantee what will happen in his seat or anyone else’s at the next election. Democracy is unpredictable, but ultimately I have confidence that voters will make the right decision.
Zac Goldsmith
I have allowed too many interventions and I want to come to an end to allow other people to take part.
Regardless of their views on recall, I hope that Members will at least acknowledge that something has gone wrong with our politics. The question is what we should do to fix it. Surely the Government Bill—this desperate pretence at reform—is not the answer. Its every clause betrays a lack of confidence in voters, with or without the feeble Government amendments—the last-minute tweaks of the last couple of days. If we as a Parliament are so untrusting of our fellow citizens that we refuse to allow them even the remotest opportunity to hold us to account, other than twice a decade, we will merely confirm their low opinion of us. We should think the best of our voters, demonstrate our confidence in their moderation and good sense, and enact a true recall Bill.
Thomas Docherty
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his second speech so early on. I do not disagree that there is a particular issue—I, too, apologise to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—in relation to parliamentary protest. I am not saying for a second that this relates to the hon. Lady, but the Opposition have been struggling with the question of when knocking off a policeman’s helmet is an act of civil disobedience and when it is an act of assault. That is why we are not getting in the way in trying to subdivide an act. As the hon. Gentleman says, the decision is for any Member’s constituents to make.
As the impact assessment states, even under the Government’s system, which as we have already stated is relatively modest, the cost to the taxpayer of both the recall petition and the by-election would be £300,000. I am slightly perplexed about where the Electoral Reform Society got its figure of £35,000. A sum of £300,000 is to most of us real money and there is a real danger that, without any control over the grounds of recall, not only would the system be open to abuse by well-funded special interest groups that dislike how an MP has voted in the House, but the cost to the taxpayer would be astronomical.
Michael Connarty
I asked the hon. Member for Richmond Park about definition, but he did not come back to me. I notice that in new clause 1, which he has tabled, there is no need to define the purpose of a recall petition at all—a petition can be called for no reason. He has tried to rescue himself by seconding new clause 2, which asks for a clear definition. The confusion is that he is mixing up populist politics with good jurisdiction. It is clear he is playing to a crowd that is basically following the 38 Degrees argument, which is that a recall can be called without stating any reason. Of course, that undermines the whole purpose of jurisdiction and having a recall Act.
Thomas Docherty
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Richmond Park has been struggling for four years to come up with a workable definition. The reality is that a failure to do so does not give us a pass to proceed without a definition. We are deeply concerned that these provisions would be open to vexatious challenges.
European Council
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Of course, the only way that people will have that vote is by having a Conservative Government after the next election, when they will get the choice. The other point I would make is that the bill is lower because we have cut the EU budget, and taken that step that will constrain EU spending all the way out to 2020. The real debate that then has to be held is about whether the money we are putting into the European Union, and what we get out of our membership, makes it worth it. My view is that if we can reform the European Union there will be a strong case for staying in. I say that simply because I put one simple test on these things: what will make Britain stronger and more influential in the world? What will enable us to act on the things that we care about? That is the test that we should put and argue about.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The Prime Minister and the Government told the European Scrutiny Committee that they were going to have a blocking minority to stop the port services regulation by which the European Union would take over regulatory services in all the ports. That is opposed by every employer association around the ports, and by all employment organisations and trade unions. The Prime Minister failed to get that blocking minority. Is that not an example of what is happening? He does not have the confidence of other people in Europe to stand up to the European Union.
The Prime Minister
That is simply not true. What we have done in case after case is build alliances in order to get the outcomes that we need within the single market. Of course, that has been made more difficult by the fact that the Government he supported gave away veto after veto after veto, but we are effective in building minorities and getting what we need.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
2. What assessment he has made of the implications for Government policy of the outcome of the referendum on independence for Scotland.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
3. What assessment he has made of the implications for Government policy of the outcome of the referendum on independence for Scotland.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
7. What assessment he has made of the implications for Government policy of the outcome of the referendum on independence for Scotland.
Mr Alistair Carmichael
This matter was dealt with at length yesterday in the House. I have always been of the view that completing the job of devolution will unlock the door to further constitutional reform across the United Kingdom. I caution the hon. Gentleman, however, that in seeking to devolve within Parliament without devolving within the Executive, we could be replacing one messy system with another.
Michael Connarty
I call on the Government to stop the clock on decisions on fracking for ethane in Scotland under the present reserved powers for the UK. It is quite clear that the matter should now lie with the Scottish people in the Scottish Parliament. I am calling for that to be devolved as a policy response to the referendum decision.
Mr Carmichael
I look forward to reading the hon. Gentleman’s full submission, making that case, to Lord Smith’s commission. The hon. Gentleman will be mindful, however, that significant powers have already been given to the Scottish Parliament and Government through control of planning law, which would have a significant effect on the issue that he raises.
European Council
Michael Connarty Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. and learned Friend is right to raise this. We set out in the Council conclusions a clear set of steps that need to be taken, including transferring border posts that have been taken by so-called rebels back to the Ukrainian Government and the release of hostages. President Poroshenko extended his ceasefire for a further 72 hours, which runs out this evening, and the European Union, working with the Americans—we have been hand in glove all the way—will have to see what changes have been made and whether additional sanctions need to be put in place. At the meeting in July we can look at the so-called tier 3 sanctions and potentially go much further, if further progress has not been made.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
May I first join the Prime Minister in marking the need for a memorial? This year, in my own village of Maddiston, the community has built and dedicated a memorial to the fallen that was never there before. Passing on to the meat of the things the Prime Minister mentioned, apart from his own diplomatic triumph, he talked about building stronger economies. When the European Scrutiny Committee went to the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees of Parliaments of the European Union, COSAC, we heard many countries complaining that the fiscal compact in fact meant rule by Brussels over their economies, resulting in poverty for them. We appear to have poverty for some and selfishness for others, and to boast that we do not give any money to the solidarity fund for those countries shames the UK. What will he do to get those people out of poverty when he talks about building economies?
Tributes to Tony Benn
Michael Connarty Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I am very glad to be called to pay personal tribute to Tony Benn and to pass on the thanks of many of my constituents who were inspired by meeting him during the miners’ strike and before that.
I have to say that I did have a cat and he was called Tony Benn, and he was just as feisty as the person he was named after, whom I did admire greatly. If we went on holiday and put him in a cattery for two weeks, he would then disappear for about two weeks just to get his own back, causing my wife a great deal of distress. Tony could also trouble people. Some people never recovered from being challenged by him, because they did not have the logic to stand against him.
I will tell one story. It has been said that Tony was great with technology. I am an honorary member of the Free Colliers, an organisation in my constituency set up after the 1799 Act that freed colliers from bondage in Scotland. The Act provided that if they were found meeting other colliers to discuss terms and conditions of employment they would be returned to the colliery from which they were freed. The Free Colliers march every year to commemorate setting up this secret society, which was a precursor of the National Federation of Coal, Iron and Lime Miners, which became the National Union of Mineworkers. Tony always said that he wanted to come and I gave him some material on it for him to read. One day we met at the ATM in this building and he started to discuss it with me. Having got some money out of the machine, he did not take it and for some reason it swallowed his money. He was totally perplexed—he could not understand where his money had gone. Although he knew about technology, even he was befuddled by that. I hope he got his money back. He was always willing to enter into a debate on important topics, sometimes in the strangest places.
The Free Colliers were very sad that Tony Benn never went to speak to them. They said that they had always wanted him to go and address them, because they held him in high regard. He was held in high regard outside the House: that is the point about Tony Benn. He was held in high regard here, by us who view things through the prism of Parliament, but people outside took a much wider view, and his heritage will last a great deal longer outside, affecting and influencing politics in the outside world. I thank him for his clarity of analysis and his support for democratic solutions. He always looked for the benefit of all in everything, even if that meant that he had to challenge the compromises of the establishment.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) mentioned Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. In 1971, I was the president of Stirling university students association. There is a BBC video—I have a copy; I hope that it is the master copy—showing me in my office with long hair and a Karl Marx poster behind me, calling for the students to organise buses so that people could go and stand by those who were “working in” to save their jobs. That was the first occasion on which I met Tony Benn. I did not get to know him, but I met him, and found him a great inspiration.
When I was the leader of Stirling council, we changed the standing orders—which had to be approved by the national executive committee—to bind councillors to the manifestos on which they stood. There is a unique idea! Imagine making people carry out the manifestos on which they stand! Tony persuaded the national executive committee to approve our standing orders, and they became the standing orders of our council, which meant that we had to deliver on the manifestos on which we had been elected. Unfortunately, being Tony Benn, he decided that this was the solution for all councils, and tried to introduce the same standing orders for every council in Britain. Of course, that frightened the horses and it never happened, but at least those in my council, during the 10 years for which I was leader, were bound by the manifestos on which we were elected, and that was approved by the national executive committee of the Labour party. Would it not be wonderful for every aspect of politics if everyone stood for election on that basis?
I became the Scottish secretary of the Labour co-ordinating committee, which had been set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton at a meeting in Glasgow—on his son’s birthday, if I remember rightly. He had to rush back home after launching it. It was a bulwark against Militant, the ultra-left of the party. It was not an attack on the establishment, although some people saw it as such; it was an antidote to the anti-democratic, out-of-touch elite that ran the Labour party. For instance, I was nominated by my constituency’s branch of the GMB, which sent the form down to the national office. When it came back, my name had been not taken out but scored out, and someone else’s name had been inserted and signed by the national secretary of the union. That was a total denial of the democracy of the people in Scotland who had chosen me as a candidate. I won anyway, and I am here as a consequence, but Tony Benn was against what had happened in that instance as well.
Some people later tried to distance themselves from the distorted “bogey man” image of Tony Benn by saying that they were not Bennites, but belonged to some other kind of “left”. If I had been asked, I would have said that I was of the Bennite left, because that Bennite left was not militant, it was not Trotskyist, and it was not a compromising position in the Labour party. I hope I still stand by those principles today in the things I do, including wanting Trident to be banned. Tony wanted that, although his intelligence and logic had led him to support nuclear power. The anti-Trotskyite movement in Scotland saved the Labour party in Scotland in the 1980s, and was the driver for the devolved Parliament that we have today. All that was a part of the philosophies that Tony Benn understood. He understood Scotland in a way many politicians down here did not.
I was speaking to Tony Benn’s son Stephen last night in Portcullis House, and I now want to say a few words about the other part of the Bennite heritage. My wife Margaret Doran and I—
Mr Speaker
Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to be very brief. We should be grateful for a very few words on that point, because others wish to make contributions, and we need to move on.
Michael Connarty
I am conscious of that, Mr Speaker, but I am talking about a long life and a long friendship.
My wife Margaret Doran and I also knew and dearly admired Tony Benn’s wife Caroline. She was a great inspiration and support, and was a vibrant, lucid and deeply compassionate educationist. She was president of the Socialist Educational Association, and my wife and I have both been, at different times, presidents of the Scottish SEA. We often talked to her at length when we came to London for SEA meetings. I was with Tony and Caroline on the Terrace shortly before her passing. I agree with what was said earlier: a light went out of his life when Caroline died. But what was amazing was that he went on. Many of us would have been destroyed by losing such a life partner but he was inexorable, and that was a tribute to what they both stood for together and what their family stand for and what will be carried on.
When he left Parliament he spoke from outside this House. People have said he left politics. He did not leave politics. His thoughts reflect where the people are. Most of the people in this country are not with us in this House: they do not regard us highly; they think we are often irrelevant to their lives. They go day to day trying to make ends meet and they look to the words of Tony Benn and people like him to give them hope. If we could learn something from him and reconnect with those people we might actually carry forward something that would be beneficial to this House. That is what Tony Benn has given people: hope, and we are not giving people hope at this moment. Maybe in the future it is his words that will give them hope, and not ours.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend rightly says that I and my party are not persuaded at all of the case for Heathrow expansion, but equally we should not seek, and no party on either side of the House should seek, to tie the hands of the independent commission looking at this issue in the round. We will await with interest, as I guess everybody will, the results of the interim report of Howard Davies’s commission and its final report after the next general election.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
T13. Given the Deputy Prime Minister’s feeble response to the question from the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, in which he gave no safeguards that people, including people from abroad, will not be able to buy second homes with the mortgage subsidy, can he deal with two other problems? First, all the analysts say that this measure will create a housing bubble and inflate house prices. Secondly, it will trap many people who would not otherwise get on to the housing market in sub-prime mortgages that they cannot afford in the long run.
The Deputy Prime Minister
One would have thought that a party that crashed the economy, sucked up to the banks and let them get away with blue murder, and presided over a massive housing boom and bust would have a hint, a note of contrition in its questions about the housing market. Why does the hon. Gentleman want to deprive his constituents of the ability to get their feet on the first rung of the property ladder? Why does he want to deprive young families who want to have a home they can call their own of the ability to do so? Instead of constantly carping about our attempts to fix the mess he and his colleagues left behind, perhaps for once he should come up with some ideas of his own.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
It will not surprise my hon. Friend that I totally agree with him. I am delighted that through the social action fund we have invested more than £1 million to help the Cinnamon Network and Tearfund support church-led community projects around the country. Through him, I congratulate Salisbury city church and wish it every success.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree with the Federation of Small Businesses and the Forum of Private Business that the three problems for small businesses are the set-up costs for tendering, the difficulty of getting on to lists, and the fact that they do not get their payments in time, which means that they have great problems with cash flow?
Mr Hurd
I recognise that there are all kinds of challenges for small organisations and, in particular, for small voluntary groups and charities in competing for public service contracts. We are opening up many more opportunities for them than there were under the previous Administration. We are working actively through things like the commissioning academy and new master classes around the country to tool up small organisations so that they can compete more effectively for such contracts.