Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

It will not surprise the hon. Gentleman to know that in my view his question is better directed towards Labour Members, who voted for the Bill on Second Reading and made it clear that this House was supportive of the principle of reform of the House of Lords, and then failed to vote to give it the time to be debated.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

May we have a debate on dementia? There are nearly 700,000 dementia sufferers in England, but sadly only half of them are diagnosed, and awareness of the condition is shockingly low. The Prime Minister has made this a personal priority and has today announced the dementia friends initiative whereby we will look to recruit 1 million people and train them to spot the signs of dementia early, as well as putting £10 million towards dementia research and £50 million towards making wards more comfortable for dementia sufferers. May we have a debate on this ailment, which is very serious for the nation?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising an issue of concern to all Members across this House. Back in March, when the Prime Minister launched the Prime Minister’s challenge, we set a number of very ambitious objectives for ourselves. It is great to see some of those coming through and further, very important measures being put in place. In the west midlands, some of the best work that I have seen is being done in making hospitals understand dementia, identify where patients have dementia, and then provide more appropriate care to look after them. Today’s initiative relating to 1 million volunteers across the country can be a tremendous boost in providing what are known as dementia-friendly communities that people with dementia find accessible and understanding, enabling them to derive the best possible quality of life from a very sad condition.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I will, if I may, make an announcement on that in business questions at a later date.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

May we have a debate about donations to political parties and their influence? I and many colleagues are concerned about the unions that are calling for co-ordinated action to bring the country to its knees and the amount of money that they donate to the Opposition.

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, of course. As Leader of the House, I do not engage in any partisan activity, but it is important that all parties recognise on whose behalf we make representations to the House—we make them on behalf of our constituents. We should not do so, whether as individual Members or as parties, on the basis of outside vested interests, and that applies to the Labour party with regard to the trade unions.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

This issue was debated substantially when the appropriate Bill went through the House. My understanding was that Labour supports a cap on benefits in principle. In response to the hon. Gentleman—I hope that this will be helpful—a substantial amount of money is available in a transitional fund designed precisely to stop families having to move house at short notice. I hope that his local authority, Tower Hamlets, can apply to the Department for Communities and Local Government for the relevant funds in order to avoid any unnecessary hardship such as that which he has implied.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The car manufacturing industry is delivering some outstanding results. On top of Bentley, Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover announcing 3,500 jobs, Aston Martin in Gaydon has announced 150 jobs in bringing back a model to be manufactured in the UK. May we have a debate about how we can support that industry and the supply chain around it?

[Sir George Young]

I am sure that all Members of the House will have heard with sadness of the death of my hon. Friend’s predecessor as Member for Stratford, John Maples, who died over the weekend. We send our condolences to Jane and his children. I hope that the contribution that he made to politics encouraged my party to encourage a broader range of candidates to come forward for selection. I am sure that that helped enormously at the last election.

My hon. Friend may have seen some figures that came out this morning indicating a very substantial increase in car manufacturing output, which is one of our success stories. I was delighted to hear of the investment and jobs in the area that he represents. Car manufacturing in the UK grew by 5.8% in 2011. We are clearly very competitive in world markets.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I will raise the issue with the Secretary of State for Defence to see whether there has been any irregularity, and ask him to write to the hon. Gentleman.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

May we have a debate on trade? For 13 years under the previous Government, the automotive sector was in a trade deficit. In just two years, that has become a trade surplus. Given the good news today of Vauxhall Motors’ further investment in UK manufacturing, it is important that the House holds such a debate so that it understands how we are rebalancing the economy.

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I notice that the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) did not mention the good news at Ellesmere Port, which has secured 2,100 jobs and paves the way for another 700 as the plant moves from two shifts to three. My hon. Friend makes a good point that emphasises our success in rebalancing the economy away from an over-reliance on financial services, back to manufacturing. He makes the point that a number of major motor manufacturers are investing in this country. Crucially, some of the components suppliers are also moving back to the UK, so we are getting the benefit of the whole supply chain.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

Again, there was an opportunity on Monday to raise the matter during education questions. However, I give the hon. Gentleman the same reply that I gave to the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham): I will make inquiries about the progress of the capital programme for schools and find out when a decision will be made, referring to schools in his constituency.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Today the Government sold £2.75 billion of 10-year Government debt at just over 2% and that is good news for borrowers and business, but it is a complex issue. The Government have a strategy for credit easing so may we have a debate in this Chamber on why it is so important for Government policy to continue to bear down on the interest that we pay? Opposition Members have been making very different statements to the media and there is real confusion in the country.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement.

Every time that I have raised the question of the Health and Social Care Bill, the right hon. Gentleman has claimed that he supports it, and I was beginning to worry that he might actually be a true believer in it. So I was delighted to read that Downing street sources had fingered him as one of the Cabinet’s heroic three who had briefed Conservative Home about their opposition to the Bill. May I welcome him to a just cause? He joins the company of patients, doctors, nurses, midwives, royal colleges and health managers—in fact, he joins just about anyone who has anything to do with the NHS. These are all the people who were locked out of No. 10 when the Prime Minister held his self-styled “summit” on Monday, which was just another public relations stunt from a Prime Minister who thinks that that is what his job is about. A year ago, the Prime Minister said he had to listen to those in the NHS, but now he shuts the door on them if they dare to disagree with him.

Yesterday, the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), explaining all this away, said that we should ignore the views of the royal college because general practitioners had been opposed to Labour’s 1948 Bill founding the NHS. That was not the best argument for a Conservative MP to advance, because if Labour had listened to the Conservatives then, there would be no NHS today. The Conservative party was wrong then and it is wrong now, so will the Government see sense, listen to even the Leader of the House and drop the Health and Social Care Bill.

Fifteen Liberal Democrats signed early-day motion 2659, which states:

[That this House expects the Government to respect the ruling by the Information Commissioner and to publish the risk register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill reforms in advance of Report Stage in the House of Lords in order to ensure that it informs that debate.]

Yesterday, there was an almost identically worded motion on the Order Paper, but astonishingly only four Liberal Democrats joined us to vote for it—the rest abandoned their principles and shamefully scurried through the Government Lobby or sat on their hands. This week, Russian scientists announced they had grown an extinct plant from seeds frozen in the permafrost for the past 30,000 years. Liberal Democrats have clearly decided to put their principles into a similar deep freeze. Let me tell them that they are kidding themselves if they think they can store them away until the next election.

There are rumours going around that the Deputy Prime Minister, who astonishingly did not turn up to vote last night, is encouraging Liberal Democrats in the Lords to wreck the Health and Social Care Bill. So will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on coalition unity, to give Liberal Democrats a chance to make up their minds on whether they are in the Government or not? They cannot be a bit of both.

The House was grateful to the Leader of the House for announcing the forthcoming parliamentary calendar. The Government are planning for the House to rise on Tuesday 27 March, Tuesday 17 July, Tuesday 18 September and Tuesday 13 November. In total, two thirds of the days on which the House has risen since the election have been Tuesdays. Will the Leader of the House now find time for a debate on why the Government are so keen for the House to rise on Tuesdays? The Prime Minister operates a lock-out policy at No. 10 for his health critics, he cannot stand criticism, he gets rattled at the Dispatch Box and now it looks very much like he is running away from Prime Minister’s questions at every opportunity.

Today, Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that its losses doubled last year. There have been 3,500 job cuts and front-line bank staff have been offered a 1% pay rise. With ordinary families struggling, can it be acceptable that RBS is planning to pay £400 million in bonuses to top bankers—from a state-owned bank? Is that the Government’s definition of “We’re all in this together”?

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Anti-business, that’s what you are.

[Ms Eagle]

I am pro-fairness, not anti-business.

The House was conveniently in recess when last week’s appalling unemployment figures came out, and when the next figures are due the Prime Minister is out of the country. The Prime Minister runs away from engaging with health critics, he cannot face talking about the economy and he has no solution to the unemployment crisis. So will the Leader of the House now find time for a debate on the economy so the Government can explain their failing economic policies?

This is a Government led by a Prime Minister who dodges Prime Minister’s questions and a Deputy Prime Minister who spends most of his time attacking the Government of which he is a member. Their disastrous economic policy has resulted in unemployment at its highest level for a generation and their health policy is opposed by just about everyone who works in or cares about the NHS. No wonder recesses cannot come fast enough for the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir George Young]

I would deny that Government policies are making the situation worse. I believe that the retention of low interest rates is in the best interests of creating jobs in the hon. Gentleman’s area. Unemployment is too high, but if he looks at the latest figures, he will see that an extra 60,000 people are in work in the last quarter, the number of those in long-term unemployment has fallen, and the number of vacancies has begun to increase. I am not sure that the picture is quite as dismal as he painted it.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Last Friday, I was privileged to attend the inaugural Pride of Stratford awards, which bring businesses, charities and citizens together to celebrate their work for the economy and for the community. Considering that business nationally invested £119 billion last year—£3 billion more than the previous year—may we have a debate about business working with the community so that at least Government Members can send out the message that we are pro-business and not anti-capitalism?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and interested to hear about the Pride of Stratford initiative, which I am sure should be replicated throughout the country. He is right to point to the good news in many parts of the country, with people responding to the initiatives that the Government have taken through the national loans guarantee, the enterprise zones and the regional growth fund. I welcome any debate, perhaps in the context of the Budget, so that we can take this agenda forward.

Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation Bid for BSkyB

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Brown]

I will give way after I have set out my evidence.

Those policies were clearly in News International’s interests, but were plainly not in the British people’s interests.

The truth is there in Government records for everyone to see. I am happy to volunteer to come before any inquiry, because nothing was given: there were no private deals, no tacit understandings, no behind-the-scenes arrangements and no post-dated promises. I doubt whether anyone in this House will be surprised to hear that the relationship between News International and the Labour Administration whom I led was, in all its years from start to finish, neither cosy nor comfortable.

I think that if people reflected on events as early as the summer of 2007, with the portrayal of me in The Sun as the betrayer of Britain, they would see them as somewhat absurd proof of an over-close and over-friendly relationship. Headlines such as “Brown killed my son”, which made me out to be the murderer of soldiers who were actually killed by our enemy, the Taliban, could hardly be a reflection of a deep warmth from News International towards me. The front-page portrayal of me as “Dr Evil” the day after the generally accepted success of the G20 was hardly confirmation of The Sun’s friendship and support as the world battled with the threat of a great depression.

It has been said that the relationship between News International and the Government of the day changed only because in 2009 News International suddenly decided to oppose Labour formally. I say that the relationship with News International was always difficult because Labour had opposed its self-interested agenda.

I have compiled for my own benefit a note of all the big policy matters affecting the media that arose in my time as Prime Minister. That note also demonstrates in detail the strange coincidence of how News International and the then Conservative Opposition came to share almost exactly the same media policy. It was so close that it was often expressed in almost exactly the same words. On the future of the licence fee, on BBC online, on the right of the public to see free of charge the maximum possible number of national sporting events, on the future of the BBC’s commercial arm, and on the integrity of Ofcom, we stood up for what we believed to be the public interest, but that was made difficult when the Opposition invariably reclassified the public interest as the News International interest. It is for the commission of inquiry to examine not just the promises of the then Opposition, but the many early decisions of this Government on these matters.

During the last year of our Government, information became public to suggest that the hacking of phones, and indeed of computers, went far beyond one rogue reporter and one rogue newspaper. In February 2010, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee reported that the number of victims was more than the handful that had been claimed. It said it was inconceivable that no one else at News International other than those convicted was in the know. News International, it said, was guilty of “deliberate obfuscation”. But already, in August 2009, Assistant Commissioner Yates of Scotland Yard had taken only eight hours—less time, I may say, than he spent dining with the people he should have been investigating—to reject pre-emptively a further police inquiry. Even the proposal that an outside police force take over the Scotland Yard inquiry had been rejected.

Having seen the Select Committee report, I immediately asked the head of the civil service to agree that we set up a judicial inquiry. Far from the so-called cosy relationship alleged with News International, which would have meant doing nothing, my answer to what appeared to be News International’s abuse of press freedom was a full judge-led inquiry to meet growing public concern.

Let me summarise the formal advice contained in a memorandum to me rejecting such an inquiry: that, while there were some new facts and there was a media culture permissive of unlawful activities and deliberate obfuscation by News International, the Select Committee did not believe that the practices were still continuing, and thus they did not meet the test of urgent public concern; that time had elapsed and evidence may have been destroyed; that the News of the World and individuals had already been punished by their resignations and jail terms; that there was no evidence of systemic failure in the police, and anyway all their decisions had been checked with the Crown Prosecution Service; and that targeting the News of the World could be deemed to be politically motivated, because it was too close to the general election and would inevitably raise questions over the motivation and urgency of an inquiry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is nice to see him in the Chamber, Mr Speaker. I have listened carefully to him—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must be heard.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have listened carefully to the right hon. Gentleman as he has so eloquently outlined for us his bravery in standing up to Murdoch. Does he regret that the previous Government held a slumber party for Elisabeth Murdoch and Rebekah Wade, as she was known then, at Chequers?

[Mr Brown]

The hon. Gentleman started by implying that I have not been in the House much. I have come to a debate on the future of the media on an issue in which the Prime Minister of this country is implicated and has questions to answer. [Hon. Members: “Where is he?] I repeat to the House that had I, as Prime Minister, not attended a debate on a problem that was partly my responsibility, Conservative Members would have been up in arms.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

As my hon. Friend knows, Sir Christopher Kelly and the Committee on Standards in Public Life are looking at the important issue of party funding. My own view is that it is unhealthy that one political party is dependent for about 87% of its funding on the trade unions.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

May we have a debate on the reform of the laws relating to industrial action? The nation is clearly opposed to the teachers’ unions going out on strike when only one third of their members voted.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend reminds us that less than 20% of the overall PCS membership voted for strikes, which is less than 10% of the civil service. Only two teaching unions have a mandate for strike action and the turnout in both ballots was low. As I said in response to an earlier question, we have no current plans to legislate, but we are keeping the matter under review.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. He will know that the Government make regular statements on the position in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and we will continue to do so. When we make those statements, he will have an opportunity to share his concern about the prisoners who escaped and their possible impact on the soldiers who have lost their lives. I cannot promise a debate about the issue, but perhaps Foreign Office questions would be a good opportunity for him to press Ministers on it.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

May we have a debate about economic growth and confidence? I was surprised to see, in assessing macro-economic policy, the views of a very small, left-wing bunch of economists being given so much weight, when I know that credible economists back the Government.

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful and supportive point, and he makes it in the week when the IMF said:

“Aided by the implementation of a wide-ranging policy program, the post-crisis repair of the UK economy is underway.”

That view is endorsed by the European Commission, the CBI and many others, and most people will accept their interpretation of what is happening, rather than that of the outgoing Labour Administration, who got us into this mess.

Business of the House

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I think that “Jerusalem” should be sung on every possible occasion.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

How do you follow that?

May we have a statement about the future of the NHS Blood and Transplant service in view of the campaign to suggest that the Government are looking to privatise it? As I suspect that this is yet another myth that is being pushed out about the NHS, it would be helpful to have a statement to put it firmly back in its box.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is right. This is a myth, as there are no plans to privatise the NHS Blood and Transplant service, which will remain in the public sector.