Protecting Children Online

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Claire Perry

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

I came to this agenda as a mother, a feminist and someone who is deeply concerned about the long-term social experiment we are conducting with our young children. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said it was good that we had an atheist leftie on the panel as that helped balance out some of the others, and it truly was a coalition of many minds coming together—I hope that will not be depicted in Hansard as an accurate description.

Another recommendation of the cross-party inquiry was for internet service providers to introduce account filters that protect all devices in the home with one click. Only four out of 10 parents in the country have installed device-level protection of any sort on their home computers. That is completely unacceptable, but the situation is complicated. We all have multiple internet-enabled devices and it is simply not good enough to say that consumers are stupid. We called on internet service providers to introduce one-click filtering on the home network, but as the Minister said, we were told by more than one ISP that that was technically impossible. Guess what? They are all going to implement it by the end of the year—a testament to the ongoing campaigning of this House.

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

Is the real problem with the motion a conflation between the legal and the illegal, and is my hon. Friend worried that those on the Opposition Front Benches are getting this completely wrong? The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) tweeted that we should introduce filters for child abuse, but surely child abuse should be dealt with by the law. Paedophiles should be taken to prison and targeted by the police, working with internet service providers. My hon. Friend is doing the right thing by looking at the issue carefully and in real detail.

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have two separate buckets. Some imagery is unequivocally illegal, but we would find other imagery exceptionally unpalatable and not want our young people to see it. Given that 88% of mainstream porn involves violence against women, we need to improve the filters to try to stop that coming into the home.

Another recommendation of the cross-party inquiry was that public wi-fi should be filtered. There is no need to see adult content on public wi-fi. That has been implemented in the majority of cases and we are looking for universal clean public wi-fi to be implemented later this year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Claire Perry

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

1. What progress clinical commissioning groups have made in improving care for patients.

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

17. What progress clinical commissioning groups have made in improving care for patients.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Claire Perry

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) on his excellent maiden speech. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) on his elevation. He is a triumph of quality over quantity tonight. It is either that or he needs to change his Lynx body spray.

I am pleased to speak in support of the Bill, an agglomeration of 31 yawn-inducing technical tax measures to some, but to me another item crossed off the most important “to do list” of this Parliament, tackling the crippling millstone of public debt inherited from the last Labour Government. I would like to do three things: to address some specific clauses; to review the need for presenting the Bill in this slightly unusual form; and to provide some context for the measure.

There are 33 clauses to be put on the statute book. In—I think—all cases, those measures were inherited from the previous Labour Government; there are almost no changes from our side of the House. All are worthy of review, but three are particularly relevant. The first is on the level of support provided to carers. Almost every week in surgeries around my constituency I hear about carers and the particular burdens put on adult carers. We heard just this morning that 25% of women in their 50s—not so far off for some of us Members—will be carers while also facing the challenges of continuing to be supportive parents for their teenage children. It is imperative that the measures that we put in place to relieve carers of unnecessary tax are carried through handsomely.

I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) about the importance of the first-year allowances for zero-emission goods vehicles—100% of first-year allowances will be deductible from April, continuing until April 2015. That demonstrates our Government’s commitment to supporting incredibly valuable legislation that helps us in the overall attempt to “green up” the British economy.

The Bill’s measures, alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), on supporting enterprise and venture capital investment are critical to our plans to open Britain for business, although as part of that process we must continue to ensure that the banks actually lend. That matter is not for debate tonight, but we must return to it again and again as we proceed through the Parliament.

I turn to the odd split of Finance Bills, for which the Government have come under mild criticism. We had Finance Bill No. 1, which enacted a series of emergency Budget measures and now we have No. 2, which has been described as the mopping up of technical tax measures. May I review what was happening at the time of the election, and the need for emergency Budget measures? Our triple A credit rating was under threat, 10-year interest rates were spiking up at over 4% and starting to approach the interest rates of Italy, which has, I believe, had 62 Governments since the second world war. The credit default swap rating—I know that this all sounds like bankers’ speak but it materially impacts on the level at which we can borrow—which is the measure of potential British default on our debts, was getting up to 90 basis points, up there with Portugal and Spain, which could not even dream of a triple A credit rating. A fire was burning in the heart of the British economy and the Labour Government had no plans to put it out. We did. The emergency Budget on 22 June, introduced within the 50-day limit that we set ourselves, restored confidence both internationally and domestically in the British economy.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that, because of that emergency Budget, we are still able, although we are dealing with a massive deficit and borrowing £500 million a day, to borrow at half the rate of Ireland?

[Claire Perry]

As always, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point based on his substantial experience in the business world. During that process, we showed a clear commitment to doing the right thing for the British economy. We did not do things to maximise political headlines, of which the previous Government were guilty on an almost weekly basis.

What is the result of taking those bold actions? Let us talk numbers. The risk premium on the British economy has dropped by 30% since the election. Long-term interest rates—the 10-year interest rates—have dropped by more than 1%, meaning a 25% reduction in the cost of borrowing. These are not arcane measures thought up by a load of greedy bankers; they materially flow through to the borrowing costs of our constituents, both for mortgage and small business borrowers. The measures mean real growth for the British economy.

Why did we not consider tax measures in the first Finance Bill of this Parliament? The point made earlier on transparency and consultation is a valuable one. We said that we will be a Government who are far more transparent and that we will allow time for consultation.

Industry (Government Support)

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Claire Perry

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your tutorial on how to be a good parliamentarian. I fear that many of us will let you down before we have learned to do our jobs properly.

I came into this debate to listen, not to speak, but I have found myself compelled to get up and speak on what I think is an incredibly important matter. I apologise for being in and out of the Chamber. I have had a huge visit from the 3rd Regiment Royal Military Police, who I then took for tea. They were marking the maiden speeches out of 10. I am not going to say who did well, but they were quite impressed by some speeches on both sides of the House.

I felt compelled to speak because I have a business background. I went to that bastion of capitalism, Harvard business school, but that was 20 years ago and I have been somewhat cleansed since then. I have had many years of working in consultancy, finance and running my own small business. Then I lived in the countryside and raised my children. On my campaign, I had a reputation for speaking from notes on the back of a fag packet. As this is a no-smoking zone, I have had an upgrade and am speaking from scribbles on the back of some very nice House of Commons paper.

I want to make a couple of specific points and to say why I felt compelled to get up and speak. I am really worried, because I do not think that Opposition Members understand the fundamental reason why we are here today or how Government should support business. We hear lots about micro-interventions and RDAs. Everybody knows that if one visits one’s RDA one will find that they have wonderful and often overlapping agendas with many other parts of the public and private sectors, but they are not lean, honed, efficient and joined-up mechanisms. In many cases, they are the worst bastions of the unaccountable and unelected public sector. They might, in many cases, be doing good work, and that is why they might well have a role to play in many places, as the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) suggested, but they are not the best way in which to spend precious pounds of taxpayers’ money. However, the Opposition appear to think that that is the right thing to do.

The Opposition also think that micromanaging the economy is the right thing to do. Let me just reference a couple of the myriad schemes that were put in place to support business during the recession. The £10 billion working capital guarantee scheme was designed to underwrite portfolios of loans held by banks, which is such an important part of unlocking the crunched credit system, but it made only £2 billion-worth of guarantees in the time that it was operational. It lent only 20% of its capacity, which suggests that it was not doing what business needed.

Then we had the £75 million capital for enterprise fund, which was designed to do what we would all like to do—get high-tech, high-grade start-ups off the ground—but it lent only half of that money in the time that it was operational. That again suggests that there was a disconnect between what the then Government wanted to do and what business really needed.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the real problem with these quangos is accountability? A very good local charity in my constituency was the beneficiary of some money from Advantage West Midlands, and it was very grateful for that money. When it asked, “How would you like us to report on our achievement?” the RDA said, “Oh, just write a report; it doesn’t really matter.” So there is no real accountability. Will she expand on that point and on how the coalition’s policy will bring to local people the accountability that will make the difference in terms of efficiency of delivery?

[Claire Perry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. The whole issue of accountability and transparency in the public sector is key. One phrase that I love to say is that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that can be applied to the spending of central Government, local authorities or these unelected, unaccountable quangos, which in many cases are not even consolidated into departmental accounts. It is very easy to pay for junkets to the south of France if one knows that nobody is looking at the books. He raises an incredibly important point on an issue that we have pledged to improve with a far more rigorous and accessible system of transparency in public spending, which I wholeheartedly support.

Let me return briefly to the other schemes that were meant to make such a difference. Do hon. Members remember the £2.3 billion automotive assistance programme—the former Government’s flagship scheme that was going to support the entire vehicle manufacturing system and supply chain? It made only three offers of loan guarantee schemes and only two companies decided to go ahead with them.

Then we had the other enormous underpinning of the British export industry—the £5 billion trade credit insurance scheme, which sought to underwrite firms doing the incredibly valuable job of earning pounds by exporting. Well, it underwrote 109 policies. That sounds reasonable, but they were worth £18.5 million. That sort of micro-meddling and initiative-itis bedevilled the former Government, and as a business person, I feel they do not get what British business needs. But we do.

British business needs three things. First, it needs transport and broadband infrastructure. If my memory serves me right, Labour Members only recently started to get to grips with the concept of high-speed rail, which will do so much to rebalance economic growth across the regions.

As for broadband infrastructure, in rural Britain we are extremely deficient in what will give us a living and working countryside. Instead of grinding through additional taxes, more changes and a digital switchover fee, the Government have a plan to get the broadband network in place. That is incredibly important.

Secondly, British business needs a decent low-taxation environment. On corporate competitiveness, we have gone from 10th in the world to 26th over the last 10 years. We can all give examples from our constituencies of companies that have left the country to move to more benign taxation environments. I am talking just about the headline rate, not the taxation complexity to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) referred earlier. Have Members seen the size of our tax code list? The list reaches my waist and I am 6 feet 1 inch. It is a lot of paper and we have developed a whole industry employing lots of people to interpret tax codes for small businesses. The Conservatives’ aspiration is to have the lowest tax rate in the G20 and that is what British business needs.

Thirdly, we need to get regulation out of the way. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) described the health and safety madness that bedevils businesses of all sizes. Indeed, we have gone from fourth in the world for business regulation benignness to 86th over the last 10 years. We have become a country where people have to wade through acres of red tape to do what they need to do every day.

Over the last 13 years, Labour Members did not get, and still do not get, what British business needs. We are the party that will deliver our promises, which is why I am pleased to speak in support of the amendment for which I shall vote tonight.