Free TV Licences: Over-75s

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

What I can say to the hon. Lady is that when the BBC decided to take on this responsibility, one would have thought that the bare minimum of what it expected to have to outlay would have been what it is currently intending to outlay, so it should have made any calculation about how affordable that might be in 2015—and I am sure it did. She and I will both continue to expect the BBC to provide a good service, employing excellent people in her constituency and elsewhere to offer the best possible television product to the nation.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

About 4,400 pensioners in the Scunthorpe area will lose their free TV licences based on this announcement today. Is the Secretary of State saying that the Government are happy to break the election promise that those people voted on in 2017?

[Jeremy Wright]

I do not think it is possible to say I am happy. I think my disappointment has been made very clear, but it is, I am afraid, now for the Government to work with the BBC to see what more can be done. I hope that if the hon. Gentleman’s party continues to say that this responsibility should be taken back by the taxpayer, we will at some stage get a little detail about how that might be paid for.

Leaving the EU: Mobile Roaming Charges

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Again, I should set out what I think the position is. Were we to say to mobile network operators in this country, “You may not impose roaming charges on your customers who travel to the European Union,” that could not prevent European mobile network operating companies from charging UK mobile network operating companies money, and that money would have to be paid by somebody. If we say to the mobile network operators in this country that they may not pass that charge on to their roaming customers, they will undoubtedly pass it on to all their other customers instead. The problem is that, when we are outside the European Union, as we will be, we are no longer beneficiaries of the European Union regulation. We are taking as many elements of the regulation as we can and transferring them into domestic law. That is sensible planning and I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will support it.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State just said that we are no longer beneficiaries of EU regulation. It was not until the EU acted that the mobile companies got rid of the dreaded mobile roaming charges. How many mobile companies have come to the Secretary of State and said that they will voluntarily not put these charges on to consumers?

[Jeremy Wright]

On the hon. Gentleman’s last point, I said that 85% of consumers are covered by mobile network operators that have said they have no intention of reintroducing charges. What he says is undoubtedly and self-evidently true: if a country is not a member of the European Union, it does not benefit from provisions that cover members of the European Union. The hon. Gentleman will recall that there was a debate in 2016 that took us some time, and these arguments were deployed on both sides. The UK electorate made a decision and we are enacting that decision. In the process, if there are consumer protections that we can and should continue, that is what we intend to do. That is what the measure is about.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I have huge respect for my hon. Friend’s passion on this subject, and for the approach that she takes to issues such as this. I hope she will accept that there is no lack of enthusiasm on my part for countering the harms that she has described. The reason that we are making this decision is not because we believe it is important to pacify the betting lobby. Had that been the case, we would not have made this change at all. We have made this change because we believe that it is necessary to make it, but it is also necessary to make this decision in the most rational way that we can and to balance out a number of factors that we have no choice but to properly consider in order to achieve the objective that she and I share.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

What will the Secretary of State say to those families who further suffer as a result of this delay?

[Jeremy Wright]

I will not repeat what I have said on delay, but perhaps I should say this. Before we have too many more contributions from the Labour Benches arguing that this Government are bringing about misery that could be avoided, may I gently remind the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues that these machines were conceived when the Labour party was in government? That Government passed legislation in 2005 to allow for £100 stake levels, and in the last three years of the Labour Government, the numbers of these machines increased by 37%. The Labour party in government did not do anything about any of that, so before we have very much more of this conversation, I think it would be appropriate to accept that that was wrong—as, to be fair, the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for West Bromwich East has had the grace to do—and that the mistake we are now correcting was a mistake made by the Labour Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, and the two points she makes are entirely right. First, people are coming to expect good-quality broadband connections, and they have a right to expect them, because many areas of activity now need to be carried out online.

Secondly, it is important that we do not build new houses without decent-quality broadband connections, or the capacity to make those connections. The right hon. Lady will understand that I want to look carefully at what measures the Government might be able to take, up to and including legislative measures if necessary.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The people of Cleatham, Manton and Greetwell keep being promised superfast broadband by North Lincolnshire Council and BT Openreach, and the date keeps moving away. What can be done to make sure these things are delivered, rather than continuing to go further and further away?

[Jeremy Wright]

It seems there are a number of different ways of approaching the broadband challenge. The Government support a number of different programmes, perhaps not all of which are known about in every corner of the country. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with further details of those programmes to make sure they are all canvassed in his area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

Will the Attorney General list which of the convention rights currently enshrined in the Human Rights Act he plans to repeal?

[The Attorney General]

I have no plans to repeal any of them. As the hon. Gentleman may have heard me say in this place before, I do not think any of us has any serious argument with the content of the European convention on human rights, which is an admirable document. The difficulty we have is with the interpretation of that document by the European Court of Human Rights. This is not a matter of repealing rights; it is a matter of bringing some common sense back into the ambit of human rights law, and the Government are committed to doing that.