Oral Answers to Questions

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I wholly understand the hon. Lady’s point. People are giving in new ways, harnessing the power of new technology. One of the challenges we face is how we can help to make giving easy and compelling in the modern age. She will be aware that we work very hard with our colleagues at the Treasury to try to modernise Gift Aid, such as by making it easier to claim Gift Aid on small donations, and she will be aware that there is an active consultation on how we modernise Gift Aid in the digital world, including how we can harness it to support text-giving.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

4. What his policy is on the inclusion of people with different political points of view on public bodies.

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

Ministerial appointments to public bodies are made on merit.

[Mr Brown]

The Minister will recall that when in the 1980s the then Conservative Government abolished the metropolitan county authorities, the Government were scrupulous in making arrangements for the successor joint boards to recognise the rights of minority groups on the local authorities as well as the majority groups. Such arrangements do not pertain to the new combined authorities that I see from today’s Order Paper we are bringing in. Why is that?

[Mr Maude]

I will look at the point that the right hon. Gentleman raises. The truth is that in the last year for which the commissioner for public appointments has published figures on public appointments, actually slightly more appointees declared a Labour party affiliation than a Conservative party affiliation, but for appointments generally we seek people with some commercial experience of running large organisations who can bring to bear the same desire for efficiency and eradicating waste as we are showing in central Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. What we heard at Labour’s conference is that Labour will put up taxes on some of Britain’s biggest and most successful businesses. Labour’s message to business is, “Don’t invest here, don’t bring the jobs here, don’t expand here—go somewhere else. We want to fight some petty socialist campaign against successful big business.” That is absolutely wrong for our economy.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

Q8. When he plans to give a substantive reply to the letter from the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East, sent on 3 July 2013.

[The Prime Minister]

Local growth is a priority across Government. The regional growth fund is helping to create some 66,000 jobs with specific investment in the north-east of £330 million. We do not want to go back to the previous Administration’s system, but obviously the Local Growth Committee in the Cabinet brings together the Secretaries of State from all the key Departments.

[Mr Brown]

Is the Prime Minister aware that the Department of Health is now consulting on changing the funding formula for health care in the north-east and Cumbria? That will have the effect of taking some £230 million out of the health care budget for the region. Who in his Government stands up for the north of England?

[The Prime Minister]

The whole Government stand up for the north-east of England. If the right hon. Gentleman wants some news about the north-east of England, you have Hitachi building the new train plant, Nissan expanding in Sunderland and the new Tyne tunnel. There is plenty of good news in the north-east.

Let me answer the right hon. Gentleman’s specific question about NHS funding. This year’s funding for the north-east clinical commissioning group is going up by £170 million, a 2.3% increase. That is what is happening under this Government. Of course, under Labour’s plans health spending would be cut. The shadow Health Secretary, the man who they have decided—inexplicably—to keep in the shadow Cabinet has said that increasing health spending is “irresponsible.” That is the Labour view. We do not agree with that and that is why we are spending more money, including in the north-east.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

On this issue, I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman and think that he speaks for a lot of Britain. We should be working out what we can do through the Portas review and in other ways to back our town centres. We should be looking at how the rates system works for our town centres. We should also be looking at the planning system, as we are, and how we can use change of use to back our town centres. We should work with local authorities that want to see their town centres succeed. This is a vital issue for towns up and down our country, and it has my full backing.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

Q7. When he plans to visit the north-east of England.

[The Prime Minister]

I very much enjoyed my recent visit to the Nissan factory in Sunderland for the launch of the first mass-market electric vehicle to be fully produced in the UK. That will support more than 500 jobs at the plant and 2,000 jobs across Britain’s car industry. I look forward to visiting the north-east again soon.

[Mr Brown]

When the Prime Minister next visits, he will see again for himself that the key issue facing the region is unemployment. There are more than 20 applicants for every advertised vacancy. His policy of local enterprise partnerships and enterprise zones is not having the same effective impact on the region’s economy as the development agency had. Will he consider the appointment of a Minister to work with the local enterprise partnerships and Members of Parliament from the region to push forward the private sector employment agenda?

EU Council

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. If we look at the different rates of youth unemployment throughout Europe, we find that we are certainly not one of the best, but certainly not one of the worst. We can look at countries such as Germany and Holland, which have very low rates of youth unemployment, different approaches to welfare from ours and different approaches to training, and we have a lot to learn from them, but overall what my hon. Friend says about opening up the single market—deregulating—is one of the key answers to getting young people back to work.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

Can the Prime Minister explain to the House why existing anti-fraud legislation does not work in the case of the LIBOR rate-setting scandal?

[The Prime Minister]

As I have said, today we have asked the Serious Fraud Office to look specifically at the issue and to see whether there are criminal acts that it can address. It has the resources that it needs, and if it needs more resources it will be provided with them, but we have a Serious Fraud Office, which is the authority for both investigation and prosecution, to deal with just that question.

EU Council

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for that question. I always find this slightly surprising. Before going to Brussels I set out exactly what I was going to do and what I would do if I could not get the safeguards. I did exactly what I said I was going to do, but apparently in politics these days that is very surprising.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

Will the Basel III regulatory regime for financial services apply in the United Kingdom?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that I missed the beginning of the right hon. Gentleman’s question.

[Mr Speaker]

Does the right hon. Gentleman wish to repeat his question?

[Mr Nicholas Brown]

Will the Basel III regulatory regime for financial services apply in the United Kingdom?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is absolutely the crucial question and the one that I personally spent the most time on. In many ways, the politically easy answer would be to keep Harriers in service and thereby pretend that there would be no real carrier-strike gap between the carriers we have now and those we will have in future, but militarily, that would be the wrong thing to do. Our greatest priority today is making sure that we have what we need in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the Harrier did great work, but the Tornado is more capable and carries a bigger payload, which is vital. Retiring the Harrier and keeping the Tornado is the right decision.

On our ability to project power around the world, as I said in answer to the Leader of the Opposition, we have air-to-air refuelling, the friendly bases, our allies and overfly rights. It is not easy to see in the short term the need for that sort of carrier strike, but we cannot rule it out for the longer term. I think that a good decision plus a carrier strike gap is better than a bad decision with what we might pretend is no gap. Actually, there is a big difference between our current carriers with the Harriers on board and the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers that we will have in future, with the joint strike fighter, which has a far larger range.

It is difficult, but, having heard all the arguments, I am convinced. I came at the problem as a politician quite tempted by the easy political answer, but the right military answer is the right thing to do for our country.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister will know that the country’s only remaining factory for the manufacture of battle tanks and heavy fighting vehicles is located in Newcastle upon Tyne. Is the factory of strategic importance to the United Kingdom—being the only one we have—and will he say what implications today’s announcement has for the factory?

[The Prime Minister]

Clearly—and everyone will accept this—we need to get away from the sort of cold war tactics of having massed tank regiments in Germany, as we have had in the past. The statement as a whole is extremely positive for Britain’s industrial base, in terms of things such as the joint strike fighter, in which we have a huge participation; the A400M, which we will be building; and the shipbuilding that will continue on the Clyde. Obviously, we need to retain key sovereign capabilities and we have to ask in each case what is strictly necessary. Clearly, we will retain a number of tanks and we need them to be properly serviced and workable, because we cannot predict all future conflicts—and it would be a mistake for a document such as this to try to do so.