Business of the House

Mike Freer Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The Government have given that very clear undertaking. There was a plan in place that the courts deemed to be inadequate, and the Government will respond to that court judgment by July. The right occasion for Parliament to consider the issue in greater detail will be when the plan is available.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

As the economy continues to thrive, the claimant rate in my constituency is just 1.9%, but the local economy is quite dependent on European workers. Can we have a debate in Government time on how we can have a sensible work permit system for those valuable workers post-Brexit?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and reminds us that, when debating immigration policy, we should not get trapped into criticising people who come here from European countries and elsewhere to play an important part in our economy by working hard, paying taxes and contributing to our society. As he knows, the Government are committed to trying to agree a reciprocal deal on the status of EU nationals here and British nationals in the 27 other EU countries at the earliest possible stage of the negotiations. Although we will need a system of immigration controls subsequent to our exit from the European Union, we are alive to the need to be sensitive to British industry’s continuing need to staff posts.

Business of the House

Mike Freer Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

This is not a new policy. I do not want to pre-empt the statement, but a decision was made by the previous Government and it was put on hold by the Prime Minister, so that, quite reasonably, she could re-examine the evidence in detail before deciding whether to commit the United Kingdom to such a major project. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will set out in detail the Government’s decision and the reasoning behind it, and the right hon. Gentleman will have ample opportunity to put his case to the Secretary of State then.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

One of my constituents, Naba Pandey, has been battling for many months for the return of money he invested in StratX Markets. StratX Markets—I want to stress the firm’s name—has refused to engage with my constituent or me, and the money has not been returned. Binary options trading remains an unregulated, almost cowboy market, and the Treasury remains impotent. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a debate about regulation of the market?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot comment in detail on that constituency case, but binary option operators that hold remote gambling equipment in Great Britain are regulated by the Gambling Commission. Such operators must hold a licence to sell binary options lawfully to consumers. To do so without a licence is an offence. The Gambling Commission can and does take action against unlicensed operators. I advise my hon. Friend to take the case to the Gambling Commission. If his constituent believes that fraudulent activity has happened, he should take the case to Action Fraud.

Easter Adjournment

Mike Freer Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

Absolutely.

We are on the cusp of the hospital’s redevelopment. We require the trust development authority to sign off the business case, and work will start on the orthopaedic hospital immediately, with the demolition of existing buildings, the building of a brand-new hospital, with a private hospital alongside it, and the creation of 300 new homes, which are desperately needed in Harrow. This is clearly being held up by NHS bureaucracy. The Chancellor granted the money back in 2010, yet we still await the start of the project.

On housing, my Harrow constituency has seen some 400 new starts, while there have been 560 new home completions in the last year alone, bringing new homes for my constituents. I am delighted that in the autumn spending review, the amount of money spent on housing is being more than doubled, which is something we should applaud.

Locally, we have heard some good news about schools. Park High School, St Bernadette’s, Canons High School and the Krishna Avanti school will all receive additional funding for massive improvements—almost complete rebuilding in some cases. There is also the Aylward school, which is in desperate need of new facilities. We have also had the go-ahead, thanks to this Government’s enlightened view, of Hujjat Primary School, which will be the first Muslim state-aided school, certainly in my constituency, and I strongly support it. Avanti House School will be the first state-aided Hindu school for secondary-aged children in the country. This is something of which we can be proud. It is being delivered in our multicultural society, and we are providing parents with the choice of education that they want for their children.

There is bad news, however. Harrow council has introduced the garden tax as part of its savings proposals. It is charging the princely sum of £75 for the service of collecting garden waste, and collecting it only once every three weeks. That is the highest charge in London. It is a scandal, because it is a monopoly service. So far, virtually no one has registered to use the service, but it is due to start on 1 April. What an appropriate date on which to launch such a foolish scheme. At the same time, fly-tipping and littering is a disaster. In Harrow, we are seeing fly-tipping all over the place.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Shocking.

[Bob Blackman]

It is indeed shocking. The council should get its act together and clean up Harrow for the benefit of everyone—although its failure to do so would make it even easier for the incoming Conservative administration of 2018 to deliver.

There is, however, some further good news, which concerns Bentley Priory Museum. Bentley Priory is the site from which RAF Fighter Command delivered victory in the second world war, at the Battle of Britain. The Chancellor has given us £1 million for an education centre on the site, so that children and young people—and those who are not so young—can come and see for themselves what happened during the Battle of Britain, and how close we came to defeat. The fact that the few delivered victory for us is a tremendous thing, and we must ensure that people, young and old, understand and remember how close it was.

An issue that I have raised in the House on numerous occasions is the plight of the disabled when it comes to securing blue badges for parking in Harrow. Every day I learn that someone who is clearly disabled, and unable to walk any reasonable distance, has been prevented from obtaining a disabled parking permit. That strikes me as outrageous, and as a problem that we must overcome.

I want to make just one or two more points before I sit down and give the floor to others.

[Mike Freer]

Hear, hear.

[Bob Blackman]

I am more used to barracking from the other side. However, my hon. Friend is the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary.

During the Budget debate, I raised the plight of the Equitable Life policyholders. It is to the eternal credit of the Chancellor and his team that we honoured our election promise in 2010, and delivered a scheme to compensate the victims of that scandal. However, there are still some very vulnerable people—the pre-1992 trapped annuitants—who have received only a small fraction of the money that is due to them in comparison with the loss that they suffered. I believe that we owe a debt of honour to those people, and that we should honour that debt by delivering 100% compensation to them.

Moreover, nearly a million people in other categories have not received full compensation, and I believe that they are also owed a debt of honour. We need to ensure that more money is provided so that those people can lead a proper life in retirement, because they had saved for their retirement and, through no fault of their own but as a result of a scandal, were then deprived of a reasonable income. The all-party parliamentary group for justice for equitable life policyholders now has more than 200 members, and we will continue to battle until such time as the Chancellor sees fit to let us have some more money for those people who are due compensation.

Another all-party parliamentary group of which I am a member, the all-party parliamentary group on primary care and public health, recently released a key report about the signposting of people in the NHS. Far too often, people who are ill arrive in accident and emergency departments when they should be seeing someone in the primary care sector, such as a GP or a nurse. We must do more to ensure that that happens.

I want to raise another health-related matter, namely stopping smoking. I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s decision to continue to increase the tobacco tax by 2% above inflation, with a 3% increase in the rate for hand-rolling tobacco. That is a good move, and it should continue. However, I think we should go further. Given that the Chancellor has now talked about a sugar tax to drive behaviour, let us have a tobacco tax to do the same. By increasing the tax on tobacco by just 1p per cigarette, we would deliver £500 million a year that could be invested in smoking cessation services.

This year, I had the honour of paying my first visit to India. My visit to Jammu and Kashmir cemented my view that that country, and above all the people of Jammu and Kashmir, should be reunited as part of India. They should have the right to be integrated, and the Pakistani forces should leave Pakistani-occupied Kashmir. I also had the opportunity to visit the world cultural festival. We talk about the brilliant work that was done at the Olympics, but I saw at first hand the festival’s 165,000 participants dancing and performing. Nearly 2.5 million people attended. We talk about the grand schemes that we organise, but just imagine what it would be like to put a festival like that together.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Freer Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

4. What progress he has made on his programme to achieve savings from greater efficiency in and reform of central Government.

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

On 10 June, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I announced savings through efficiency reform of central Government of £14.3 billion for the last financial year, measured against a 2009-10 baseline. These savings include both recurring and non-recurring items, and include £5.4 billion from procurement and commercial savings, £3.3 billion in project savings and £4.7 billion from work force reform and pension savings.

[Mike Freer]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. Is he able to quantify the specific savings to the taxpayer from Government Departments and agencies now being required to share buildings, rather than having their own stand-alone premises?

[Mr Maude]

We have got out of a huge number of properties. We have reduced our office estate by the equivalent of 26 times the size of Buckingham palace, raising £1.4 billion in capital receipts and saving £625 million in running costs. Our One Public Estate programme, which is working very closely with a number of local authorities, is saving even more money and releasing property for the private sector to create jobs and growth by local government, central Government and indeed the wider public sector co-locating, which both saves money and is more convenient for the public.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Mike Freer Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Thomas]

If my hon. Friend, who is an expert on these questions, will bear with me, I will come later to some of the issues relating to the House of Lords and the extent to which the Bill affects the performance of its Members.

I accept that it was probably not the intention of the Leader of the House that Members of Parliament should be affected in the way that I and other Members who have intervened have described and that that was a result of the Bill being so badly rushed. Had Members on both sides of the House not raised concerns, these sensible amendments would not have been put forward by the Government.

As I indicated, I want to ask a couple of questions about the impact of the Government’s amendments and whether any lessons have been learnt from the process by which the offending paragraphs ended up in the Bill. As several Members made clear on Second Reading, and as the standards committee spelled out, there was a series of concerns about the inclusion of paragraphs 1 and 2 to schedule 1 and their impact on parliamentary privilege. The Committee’s helpful report noted the evidence that had been received by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in March this year. The evidence from Lord Judge underlined the risk of including specific exemptions for MPs in this, or indeed any, Bill. It also underlined the concern that future legislation relating to Members without such an exemption might inadvertently affect parliamentary privilege.

Did the Leader of the House consider that report from the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, and if not, why not? Did he take any advice on the inclusion of those paragraphs before signing them off and presenting the Bill to Parliament? Does he now accept that pre-legislative scrutiny, and perhaps a further period of public consultation with the industry and its stakeholders, might have prevented such a considerable error?

A further concern the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege highlighted relates to the inclusion of a definition of who is resident in an MP’s constituency using the 1983 Act’s description of who can and cannot vote.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

At least eight or nine major charities are headquartered in my constituency. Does he believe that I would be prevented from representing their interests because they, as corporate bodies, are not resident? How does he see that affecting my ability to represent those charitable interests?

[Mr Thomas]

I think that I did the hon. Gentleman an enormous service back in the 2005 general election, but I am happy to try to be of service to him now. He has rightly raised a concern about whether he would have been able to do the job he wants to do on behalf of those charities had the Government not finally brought forward their amendments.