Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As I have said, this whole issue is being looked at by the Cabinet Secretary, and he will produce his report. I would ask people to have a little patience—let the facts be established and the questions answered, and then we can move ahead.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that nearly 40 Government Members have signed an amendment in my name requiring that all offenders convicted of using a knife in a threatening or endangering fashion will receive a custodial sentence, not only those over 18? Will he consider supporting this amendment?

[The Prime Minister]

I shall certainly look closely at what my hon. Friend says. I know that the Justice Secretary is doing this too. We want to move ahead with a mandatory sentence for adults, and we shall look very closely at the arguments that my hon. Friend makes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

There has been a lot of misleading coverage recently about the effects of individual electoral registration, so may I take a minute to explain this? This Government will do everything they can to maintain the completeness of the electoral register. That includes phasing in the move to individual registration over two years, so that people on the register who do not apply under the new system do not lose their vote at the next general election. Every eligible elector will be asked in 2014 to register under the new system. That will include: personal invites to people on the register; inquiries to households where no one is registered or people have moved; reminder letters; and face-to-face doorstep canvassing. We are also testing data matching, to identify people missing from the register, and looking at how we can increase the choices that people have about how to register. I am looking forward to the conclusions of the pre-legislative scrutiny and of the consultation, which closes this Friday, but I do, however, have sympathy with the concerns expressed by the Electoral Commission and others about the opt-out proposal, and I am minded to change these provisions when we bring forward the final legislation.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That is precisely the purpose of individual electoral registration: it seeks to bear down on fraud in the system. Of course, the previous Government were committed to doing this in any event in a few years’ time but, as on so many matters now, they seem to shun any responsibility for their failure to act while they were in government. We are finally here to do the job that they failed to do.

[Nick de Bois]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister consider bringing forward from 2014 to 2013 the mandatory requirement for new applications to join the register to include the national insurance number?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We are bringing it forward in any event. Under the previous Government’s plans it would have been introduced only after the next general election, but we are bringing it forward in this Parliament. Of course, we are trying to get the balance right. We need to proceed with this thoroughly, which is why we are doing it carefully but in a way that means it is fully delivered by the end of this Parliament.

Public Disorder

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. When I was in Wolverhampton yesterday, I heard that the number of police officers was roughly doubling overnight compared with the previous night. I suspect that the same was happening in Walsall, West Bromwich and other parts of the west midlands. One lesson we must learn is that we need the ability to surge the number of police in our communities very rapidly when such problems arise. Let me say again that the police do a difficult and dangerous job on our behalf. They learn from experience. The police in our country are hugely experienced in dealing with difficult situations. They do not always get it right. We must praise them when they do get it right. Here, we must say that some of the tactics need to change, but we should not substitute our own judgment for theirs—that would not be a sensible approach.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

My constituents and I witnessed shocking events in Enfield on Sunday and Monday. What was particularly shocking was the age of a number of the culprits. Will the Prime Minister ask the police authorities to work with the education authorities to identify the many secondary school children who were out committing crimes?

[The Prime Minister]

That is certainly a sensible suggestion. Over and above that, we must recognise that the responsibility for the fact that some of these children—I use the word “children” advisedly—are out on the streets rests with their parents. We need parents to take more responsibility for their children, teach them the difference between right and wrong, and point out that this sort of behaviour is completely unacceptable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Actually, I think that one of the problems in policing, as is widely recognised, has been that there are not enough police officers out on the front line, on the beat, in our communities. By some estimates, only 11% of police officers are out and about in our communities at any one time. Yes, we are having to deal with financial pressures because of the reasons that I explained earlier, but at the same time we must reform policing to minimise the amount of time that police officers allocate to work in the back office, and to ensure that they are free to be out on the streets, which is where we want them, for as much time as possible.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

T7. In a sample of more than 80 immigration cases coming through my constituency, more than 15% of those involved were found to be on the electoral roll when they had no entitlement to be there. Does the Deputy Prime Minister not agree that urgent, immediate steps are needed to introduce positive voter identification?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree that we must introduce measures to tackle electoral fraud. As my hon. Friend may know, we have announced that we will legislate to speed up the introduction of individual electoral registration to before the next general election, in 2014. Under that new scheme each person will have to register individually, whereas the current system is registration by household, and they will be asked to provide personal identifiers, including their national insurance number, to enable registration officers to verify the identity of a person before they are added to the register. That should tackle fraudulent or inaccurate register entries, which my hon. Friend rightly highlights.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The problem with everything that the right hon. Gentleman has said is that all the cuts that we are having to make are because of the complete mess that he made of the economy. That is the background for this whole debate. We now know what they think of the inheritance that they left us, because the shadow Chancellor has said:

“I don’t think we had a structural deficit at all in that period”.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says:

“By the eve of the financial crisis…the UK”

had

“one of the largest structural budget deficits in the developed world.”

May I advise the right hon. Gentleman that the first stage of recovery is to recognise that you have a problem? The truth about the Opposition is that they doubled the debt, let the banks rip and bankrupted the country, and their only message is, “Let us do it all over again.”

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Q2. My constituent, Rifleman Jack Otter, lost both his legs and an arm while serving in Afghanistan more than 15 months ago. I am sure that the Prime Minister and the whole House understand the debt that we owe Jack and others like him who have served our country. With the number of British soldiers losing limbs having increased by 40% from 2009 to 2010, does the Prime Minister agree that it is important that we find access to new resources to ensure that patients and staff at Headley Court can continue their excellent standard of work, which is sadly coming under greater pressure?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point about what is happening in terms of the number of people returning as single, double and sometimes treble amputees, and about what we as a society must do to support them. I have visited Headley Court, and I know that many others have done so. It is an absolutely magnificent facility. A new ward opened in September last year and it now has a capacity of 111 trauma beds. Because of what Help for Heroes has done, there is a 25-metre swimming pool, a Battle of Britain gym with a sprung sports floor and a centre for mental and cognitive health. But we must go on ensuring that that magnificent facility is continually improved and that we do everything for our brave returning soldiers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the electoral register.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the electoral register.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Government have not made such an assessment, but the Electoral Commission found in its March 2010 report “The completeness and accuracy of electoral registers in Great Britain” that

“it is likely that the accuracy of the registers remains broadly similar to past decades”.

It is clear, however, that more can be done to support accuracy. To that end, I have announced that the Government will speed up the implementation of individual voter registration from 2014, which will ensure that only those entitled to vote get on the register, bringing greater protection against electoral fraud.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

One of the things that we will do on individual registration is ensure that people will have to register with a signature and their date of birth and national insurance number details. Those will be checked against Department for Work and Pensions records to ensure that the voting record database is accurate. One of the things that we will be doing when we trial data-matching next year is looking to see what other benefits can be obtained from those public sector databases.

[Nick de Bois]

What plans does the Minister have to require voters to produce proof of their identity at polling stations?

[Mr Harper]

The Government do not have any current plans to do that, but we keep this area under review. In January, the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers will bring out their report on this year’s general election. We will look at their conclusions to see whether there is evidence of fraud taking place and whether we need to take any further steps to deal with it.

Elections and Returning Officers

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Binley]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s important intervention, which supports my point.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Is not part of the problem, as I found during the election, that if someone wishes to challenge a household’s electoral registration there are only 21 days in which the returning officer can do so? In the heat of the work in the run-up to an election, that is effectively impossible.

[Mr Binley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Minister should consider, and I hope that he noted it.

With postal voting we have created a frightening potential for corruption in our election system. If it were not so important, the inability to ensure good and proper elections through the postal vote would be laughable. There was a time when the whole construct of postal voting was carefully created and checked, and its efficacy was understood and known to be absolutely within the prescribed limits. That time has gone because of the machinations of the previous Government, who did not understand what they were doing in that respect. We must all recognise the faults because the issue is more important than party politics. It is about the very basis of our electoral and democratic system—[Interruption.] I am happy to give way if the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) wishes to intervene.

Those two matters are vital, and there are many others. I want to describe from my experience the reasons for the decline. The business of electoral registration officers used to be a profession. People in local government offices did the job for years and years, and they had assistants who followed them and who had learned to do the job properly. We had the money to check whether a registration was valid by visiting the home of people seeking registration. The whole process was efficient, but that efficiency no longer exists because electoral registration has been downgraded dramatically in most council office structures, and the attitude seems to be, “Who will do the register this year, Fred?” It seems to be a last resort, and that is simply not good enough.

What can we do? My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest said that the Electoral Commission must be a more robust policing body. First, we must ring-fence the money that we allocate from national Government for the conduct of elections and registration. Money is being leached, and there is every reason why local authorities should so do. They are in trouble with money, but we must ensure that our money is used for the reasons for which it was designated. That means ring-fencing, and the Electoral Commission must be responsible for monitoring that money and ensuring that it is properly used for the purposes for which it was allocated. Secondly, we must spend money on training electoral registration staff and returning officers because the quality of their work has fallen, largely because the learning thread that goes from one officer to another no longer exists.

We must bring the law to bear much more. We must make criminal actions a higher priority in society. When someone cheats the electoral system, they cheat my vote and me. If we truly believe in a democratic process, we must ensure that the systems to undertake that democratic process are as viable and credible as possible, and they are not at the moment.

We have a good voting system, and I have made that clear in the House. It does not need to be tampered with for any reason, least of all for those that apply at the moment. The voting system is not broken, but the conduct of elections and electoral registration is a total mess, and if the Government had any sense they would recognise that democracy is in danger through those processes and not through the process of our electoral system.

Superannuation Bill

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Tessa Jowell]

No, I am going to make some progress so that Back-Bench Members can get in.

We expect the Government to take seriously the need for proper dialogue and negotiation in circumstances where the individual impact of the changes is so substantial. It is fair to reflect disappointment among the trade unions that the Bill makes no attempt to put in place a long-term solution to the big challenge of the reform of civil service compensation and, as such, no solution is possible given the Government’s failure to engage constructively with their employees and their representatives. That is implicit in the Bill’s final provisions, which are designed to ensure that it is sunsetted, or expires within 12 months, can be repealed at any time and can only be extended for a further six months through recourse to secondary legislation.

The Bill to which the House is being asked to give a Second Reading tonight does not even represent the Government’s settled position. The Minister tells us that his ambition is now a negotiated, sustainable and practical long-term solution, but that ambition merely serves to remind us that the Bill fails to provide such a sustainable solution or one that has been subject to proper dialogue with those affected.

There are questions that the coalition Government and the right hon. Gentleman must answer. The Opposition have made absolutely clear the anticipated level of savings—figures in which there can be confidence—that would have been produced by the February reform package, so I ask the right hon. Gentleman what savings the Government expect to make from the proposals in the Bill. Why do we not have a complete and workable scheme in front of the House as part of the Bill for which a Second Reading is sought? Why are we spending parliamentary time on legislation that simply seeks to provide the right hon. Gentleman with a negotiating tool to use with the civil service unions?

There is, of course, an alternative. It is fair and it is workable. As shown in our reasoned amendment, the February 2010 scheme should form the basis for the reform that we all agree is needed. As the right hon. Gentleman has made clear, it emerged from an eight-month consultation between the Government and civil service staff and would provide a fair resolution to the issue. Now, although five trade unions have agreed and continue to support the proposal, all six have expressed their support for the use of the principles underpinning the scheme as a basis for moving forward. That is an invitation and an offer to the right hon. Gentleman. Such an approach would meet the tests that we have set out for reform and save at least £500 million over the next three years.

Our challenge to the Minister is to put back on the table the February 2010 proposals, which are fair to the lowest-paid, will contribute £500 million to reducing the deficit and will reform the existing scheme. The right hon. Gentleman has already conceded in exchanges with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) that, had all the unions agreed to this, there would have been—as he put it—a pressing case for acceptance. We therefore ask that he accepts the case now and supports the reasoned amendment. I call on the House to reject the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr McCann]

The numbers are okay. Forgive me; I was not trying to suggest that we introduced new legislation in Scotland under which people started work earlier. My point is that the lowest-paid are still paying the biggest price. That is unfair, and I hope that Government Members will take that on board.

A number of people have said in this debate that the private sector does not get the same treatment. I was a full-time negotiator for the Public and Commercial Services Union and its predecessors for many years, and let me tell the House what happened in the public sector. When times were good and we went into negotiations asking, Oliver-style, for more, we got the answer back that we had to set an example. We could not share in the country’s wealth because of that. When times were bad, the argument from the opposite side of the table changed—it became, “We can’t afford it.” That is why the civil service has been a battleground for a number of years.

Sadly, I am old enough to remember the 1980-81 pay disputes. In the late 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, the then Prime Minister, put new arrangements in place. Those were ripped up in September 1992 when we had to pull out of the disastrous exchange rate mechanism. In 1993, the Conservative Government imposed a 1.5% pay limit on the whole public sector to take account of their economic problems. I mention all that to demonstrate the link between Conservative Governments and cuts to the civil service and the fact that the civil service is always the easy scapegoat.

There is always a dilemma between the public and private sectors. We were trying to emulate in some way the private sector’s efficiency—there is an eternal debate about how we can make the public sector more efficient. The conundrum is this: the private sector can make a profit, but the public sector is about service and delivery. The public sector must always be efficient, but low salaries are the price that public servants are prepared to pay in return for better terms and conditions of service. That is the simple fact of the matter.

[Nick de Bois]

My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) highlighted the fact that there is little difference between weekly salaries in the private and public sectors. How does the hon. Gentleman equate that with his argument that a differential has been growing?

[Mr McCann]

The simple fact of the matter is that I can pluck any statistic out of the air that will disprove that. When I was a negotiator, I used the retail prices index, RPIX, the consumer prices index—whichever best backed up my claims on behalf of my members. That is the simple fact of the matter. I respect the fact that the figures come from the Library; I do not doubt them at all, but I could quote other figures that would support my argument, and mine are more accurate.