May Adjournment

Nick Smith Excerpts

Thursday 3rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns]

I entirely concur with my hon. Friend’s comments.

Workers Memorial Day is important, but it comes with a vital message. As we prepare to leave the European Union, when so much power will be handed back to Ministers, the protection of health and safety regulations and law is so much more important now than it has probably been for an awful long time.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I am a former night worker at Brace’s bakery in Oakdale in south Wales, so I congratulate my hon. Friend on the important work he is doing with the bakers’ union.

[Ian Mearns]

I thank my hon. Friend for those kind comments.

In commemorating Workers Memorial Day, we have to do two things. We remember the dead and we fight for the living, and it is so important that that fight continues.

In the last pre-recess debate, I raised the issue of a vexed question that is threatening the provision of a safe environment for adults with learning disabilities. A big problem has occurred because there is a lack of recognition that sleep-in workers who look after people with learning difficulties should be paid the minimum wage. A court case concluded that individuals who look after people with learning difficulties and carry out sleep-in duties should be paid the minimum wage, and that that minimum wage payment should be backdated by about six years. This is making providers—many of which are in the voluntary, not-for-profit and charitable sectors—very worried because the overall bill, which has not been provided for by central Government or through central Government grant by local government, could amount to £400 million.

There is a real danger that some providers will hand back contracts—in fact, this is already happening—and local authorities could end up having to deal with people who are no longer being provided for by the charitable or not-for-profit sectors. This case is really quite worrying. Providers are being told that they will have to pay back the £400 million bill by March next year, but they quite clearly do not have the means to do so. Organisations such as Mencap have expressed severe concern about what will happen to people with learning difficulties should the provision cease.

I also chair the all-party parliamentary group for footballer supporters, which we established because we felt that, although there is a very good all-party parliamentary football group, it mainly looks at the interests of clubs, leagues and football associations across the United Kingdom. The APPG for football supporters has great support from fans around the country and Members of the House. The secretariat is provided by the Football Supporters Federation, which has been campaigning on a number of things with the all-party group. For instance, a couple of years ago we ran a campaign called Twenty’s Plenty, which was about the cost of tickets at away games in the premier league. The premier league came to a deal on that, and the maximum cost is now £30, so the campaign was clearly a success. Having travelled to away games in London against sides like Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur and paid in excess of £50 at some of those grounds, I am glad to say that now, because of the campaign, the maximum that clubs can charge is £30. That is a very welcome change.

A campaign that is coming to prominence at the moment, which has seen 110,000 signatures added to a parliamentary petition, is for safe standing in top-tier football grounds. We all know that after the Hillsborough disaster, the Taylor report brought in all-seater stadiums, and I think we have all welcomed the new safer environment in football grounds because of that. Unfortunately, however—or fortunately for those who like the atmosphere at football grounds—fans regularly stand in all-seater stadiums, particularly in the away end, where there will invariably be people standing in their droves at any championship or premier league ground. We see that week in, week out at over 40 grounds.

Safe standing may well be the solution. Rail seating, for instance, is an engineering-based solution that has been tried and tested north of the border by Celtic in Glasgow. The other night, we had a presentation at the all-party group by the safety officer of Celtic football club, Mr Ronnie Hawthorn. I thank him for coming down from Glasgow to give that presentation, which was really illuminating. The debate in Westminster Hall as a result of the petition is due to happen on 25 June. I hope that the Government take very seriously the suggestions being put forward by football fans up and down the country. You might have seen, Mr Speaker, that the other night I made a brief appearance on “Sky Sports News” talking about this issue. I understand that “Sky Sports News” probably attracts one or two more viewers than Parliament Live TV, so I was happy to get the message out there.

I also chair the all-party parliamentary group on rail in the north. There has been some correspondence between north-east MPs and the Department for Transport following a report produced by the Institute for Public Policy Research about differentials in levels of transport infrastructure investment between London and the regions of England. The report, which looked at forecast expenditure, including the Transport for London budget, shows that up to five times as much is spent on transport for people in London per head of population than it is in places like the north-east of England. That is clearly unfair and unsustainable.

That is also fettering the growth of the economy in places like the north-east of England. I am sad to report that, together with uncertainty around Brexit and some problems in the motor industry, that means unemployment is continuing to rise in my constituency of Gateshead, even though we are constantly told that employment is at an all-time high. Unemployment in my constituency is currently about 6%, and youth unemployment stays stubbornly high. We therefore need those differentials in transport infrastructure investment to be eroded, so that people in the north-east can be held in the same esteem as their counterparts in London in the way in which Government expenditure is handed out for investment purposes.

Lastly, it would be remiss of me not to mention, as we are now in May, the launch of the Great Exhibition of the North on 22 June, which is being hosted in Newcastle and Gateshead. It has an 80-day programme, which will culminate in September with the Great North Run and will show off all that is great and good about the north of England. I am sure the Minister has already said that he is looking forward to coming to Gateshead and Newcastle for that festival. It will be a great festival, celebrating the architecture, culture, industry, innovation and creativity of people all across the three northern regions. So please, from 22 June, get north and come to Newcastle and Gateshead for the Great Exhibition of the North.

I thank you, Mr Speaker, and I wish all staff in the House a very pleasant May day celebration and weekend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My hon. and gallant Friend is right about that. As far as I know, we will not find an accident and emergency department that is privately run in the UK. If there is such a department, we are probably talking about only one or two. It is not possible to do that because of the cost of running A&E departments. Parliamentary colleagues in France will talk about healthcare deserts in parts of rural France, where people cannot get access to the highest quality of healthcare that they want. I am not trying to play us off against France or Germany here; I am just trying to state a few facts, as we tend to run ourselves down sometimes.

I wanted to start by discussing the health service because it is now five years since the Francis report on the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which is in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling). That was a very difficult time for us all in Stafford. I am still very proud of the Stafford people and the Cannock people, who put so much into the work to preserve health services in Stafford and Cannock during that time. I am also proud of the work that has been done since then, and of the people who stood up and pointed out the real problems that were going on at the time, which needed to be corrected. If we consider what has happened since then, we see that patient safety has become an absolute priority for the NHS and for this Government, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for taking that on. If we look at the recommendations in the Francis report, we can see that most of them are now in place. When I talk to colleagues from around the country, they say, “You know, that Francis report made a huge difference for my local hospital”. It made a difference not just for Stafford or Cannock, but for hospitals throughout the country, where patient safety has gone to the top of the agenda.

I pay tribute to the staff of the County Hospital, as Stafford hospital is now known, for what they have done over the past five years. In the past couple of weeks, more than 96% of patients in our A&E have been seen within four hours. That is well above the national target. I am most grateful to the staff for achieving that. Other things must still be done—there are more services that I want to see back in the hospital, or brought to it and the Stafford area for the first time—but I put on record my thanks to everybody who has made that happen over the past five years.

To return to the general point about the health service, it is quite true that they have a different system in Germany and France, and there are merits in that. It is a different system that requires co-payments: people have health insurance, whether it is largely state-funded, as in France, or done through private or co-operative health insurance systems, as in Germany. People still pay often several hundred euros a year on average to access healthcare when they need it. It is a serious issue and a political debate that we need to have. I am not necessarily saying that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough’s points should be disregarded—not at all; they should be considered very seriously—but we have to look into what is sustainable.

[Nick Smith]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the 96% support for the NHS throughout the country is fantastic, but does he agree that the future challenges for the NHS are the modern killers that are out there now, such as obesity and related diabetes, and the conditions related to old age, such as dementia? The NHS now has to bend itself to deal with these new conditions.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, although I should say that that 96% referred to access to high-quality healthcare, rather than support for the NHS. I thought I should make that distinction. It may well be that the NHS has 96% support, but I was talking about access to high-quality healthcare.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that diabetes, cancer and other conditions are clearly the issues. The health service has to adapt; I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough that it can be far too monolithic. Often, we see really good, inspired leadership that makes a real difference in some places—perhaps it even comes from those paid £100,000 a year—but in other places we see some very uninspiring leadership. It is often very much about who is taking on the challenges at the local level and what their motivations are. We clearly have a great deal more to do on that.

Time is short, so I shall move on from the NHS after one final point. I fully agree with the cross-party report published last week by my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and other colleagues from the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats. It contains 10 points on how to have a sustainable health system. I have been talking about most of those 10 points in this place for the past five or six years, so I would agree with them, wouldn’t I? Still, there is an awful lot in there for the Government to look at and perhaps take on. I return to the initial point: if we want high-quality services and a strong defence, along with funding for other issues of great importance to our constituents, we will have to pay a little more. The question is whether we pay that through a national health insurance system—a progressive system—through direct taxation or through contributions. Those questions have to be asked. I am in favour of a fully funded system, which may mean that we have to do it through the proposed national health insurance system.

The second thing I wish to talk about is General Electric, which is the largest private sector employer in my constituency. At the end of last year, it announced several hundred job losses, and the consultation on that is currently ongoing. It is a very serious situation. I praise General Electric and its predecessor, Alstom, for their investment in Stafford. They have built two new, modern, state-of-the-art factories, which will provide security for many people in my constituency.

For those facing the prospect of redundancy, it is vital both for them and their families, and indeed for the country, that we see how we can ensure that their skills—often very high skills—are best employed elsewhere. In that context, I want to raise again the matter of the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, which I and other colleagues have been pushing for. If we are to have a power manufacturing sector in this country, we must be at the forefront of modern technologies, and that is one of them. I urge the Government to come forward with a positive decision on that as soon as possible.

My third point is a local matter. I am very glad to see two of my Staffordshire colleagues—my hon. Friends the Members for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) and for Cannock Chase—on the Front Bench at the moment. I know that they will probably agree with me on most, if not all, of these issues. We have already heard about potholes. Being a rural county, we have the same problems in Staffordshire. Potholes are not just an inconvenience; they are a menace. When cyclists go into potholes that are filled with water, they can suffer very serious injuries, as some of my constituents have. Cars suffers great damage, which brings loss either to the county if there is a claim or to the individual whose car has been damaged. We need to see more money put into that area, both at a local and a national level. After the winter that we have just had, it is a priority. I would like to see the Secretary of State for Transport coming forward with some supplementary funding for potholes for local authorities as soon as possible, because, as we already know, a stitch in time saves nine.

Bus services in rural areas are suffering. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough did not mention this issue, but he has probably been affected by it as well. Clearly, we do not want buses running around empty and wasting a lot of money, but there must be ways of ensuring that our villages and small towns, which are becoming ever less connected with the major centres of population, see a reversal in the situation. We need innovative thinking. Perhaps we should go back to a situation in which councils, as in Nottingham, which runs a very fine public transport service, say, “We will have to step in and fill the gap to ensure that our communities are connected.”

Finally as far as local councils are concerned, I wish to raise the issue of breaks for carers. Carers across the country, and certainly in Staffordshire, perform an absolutely magnificent job. We need to ensure that they can have the breaks that they need, especially those who cannot afford them. They need to be able to get away from time to time. I welcome the fact that Staffordshire has supported such breaks and continues to do so, but the funding is too little. We need to see greater funding in this area and more innovative solutions to ensure that money is wisely spent and available to as many of our carers as need help.

Clearly, on the national scene, the debate is dominated by our leaving the European Union. I will not go into the principles on either side, but I will make points on four areas. Frictionless trade for the manufacturing industry in Stafford and the west midlands is essential. I was recently at the Honda factory in Swindon, and heard very clearly how important it is for us to have seamless trade, in and out, for components. The factory operates, as does almost all manufacturing industry in the automotive sector and others, a just-in-time policy. Such firms cannot have delays at borders.

Another critical area is data, as the Exiting the European Union Committee heard when we took evidence in the City of London. With the EU’s understandable fixation on data protection—we are, of course, putting that into our own law—the City is very concerned that we ensure that data issues are sorted out well in advance of our finally leaving at the end of 2020. It is vital that this is done, because data is at the core of not just financial services but every business.

Financial services companies have a concern about contracts that go beyond the end date of our membership of the European Union. That is a serious issue, because if we do not have the rules on contracts in place, there is a risk that contracts will not be able to be fulfilled and that people will not be paid such things as life assurance or pensions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who made a serious and important contribution.

We are here just before the recess, while our colleagues are across the country for the local elections. In the spirit of us all being here together, I would like to wish them all good luck in those elections. I am pleased to be joining my colleagues slightly earlier than I anticipated here in London before returning to Bristol, where we do not have elections this time round.

As hon. Members have mentioned, today is May day. It is also Workers Day, or Labour Day—indeed, may it be a very good Labour weekend. I draw the House’s attention to the fact that a former Tory-led Government tried to get the day moved to October, but fortunately that was thwarted, and we are hopefully all going to enjoy some sunshine. May Day means one thing for Labour, but it currently means something quite different for the Conservatives, as “mayday” is often a cry for help. In the three weeks since Easter, the Government have managed to have two national scandals and a resignation, so we look forward to a more peaceful time following the recess.

We have perhaps not had the quantity of debate today that we thought we might, but we have certainly had some good quality. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) talked movingly about his constituent, Kim Voogel, from the Netherlands. He highlighted that the issue we have been talking about recently with regard to the Home Office is not confined to the Windrush generation, and I am sure the Government have listened to that. The work that is affecting people now is undertaken by several Departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions, and that is certainly something I have experienced.

My hon. Friend also talked about Workers Memorial Day. It is a very important day and we do not pay enough attention to it. One of my earliest memories as a child is of returning from the Christmas holidays and learning that a family friend had been killed by a collapsing trench on a building site, leaving a very small family and devastating the community. We have moved a long way since those days, largely thanks to the work of the trade union movement, but this is a good day on which to commemorate the people who, sadly, have died on building sites in particular.

The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) talked about criminal barristers. I have a number of friends of middling years or younger who are barristers, and I think he made an extremely important point about what really amounts to a crisis at the criminal Bar. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) intervened to speak about legal aid, and I agree that the legal aid changes have not helped the situation. The legal aid system does a very important job and is much undervalued and under-resourced. I wish him good luck in continuing to raise that issue.

The hon. Member for Beckenham also mentioned “run, hide and tell”. I am a former emergency planner for the NHS—I will come on to my career as a lifelong bureaucrat in a moment—and I am concerned that Members are not always as cognisant as we should be about the role that emergency planning plays in this place or about our duty to ourselves, and our staff and visitors, when it comes to understanding what we should do in a crisis. That is a really important point.

The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) also spoke about Workers Memorial Day, and he mentioned the Taylor review. I highlight the fact that he is quite right to raise the confusion about the public sector pay cap, and the Government really have been dancing on the head of a pin about whether there is a cap any longer. This is about the wages of real people with families to feed, and it is important for them to have clarity about what they are to expect from their employment in the coming years.

The hon. Member for Gainsborough talked about defence and its importance as an insurance policy. He mentioned the 1983 election, which is not one that Labour Members remember very fondly, although it was my first election as an activist. He also made a serious point about learning lessons from the 1930s.

I was not going to speak about my lifelong career as an NHS bureaucrat before entering Parliament—I joined the service in the late 1980s—but I cannot resist doing so. It is a service, not a religion, but I recognise that it has not always performed in the way it should have done. I praise my colleagues, particularly in NHS management, who have actually done an excellent job over many years. We have one of the least managed systems in the world, in proportion to the size of the service, as has been proven in many studies over the years. I am very happy to discuss that with the hon. Gentleman, who I know is a very eminent former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Not everything is always done well, of course, but the NHS has made massive strides in productivity in recent years. We are now concerned about the level of funding, including in relation to safety, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). We have come a long way, and we must now be very careful that we do not go backwards with some of that work. I want formally to praise the marvellous work done by NHS managers across the country.

The hon. Member for Gainsborough may not know this, but there is a new all-party group on clinical leadership and management. I am very proud to be a part of it, along with the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). I do not know whether the hon. Member for Gainsborough is interested, but we are having an interesting meeting with the lead from NHS England after the recess, and if he wants to come along, I am sure he would be most welcome. As I have said, the hon. Member for Stafford reminded us about the importance of the Francis report. Making sure that those changes happened required clinical support, but also very dedicated senior and superior management support.

I very much look forward to coming back after the recess, when, as Members may not have noticed, we will debate the Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill.

[Nick Smith]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, may I congratulate her on her important work as an emergency planner in our national health service? Does she agree that it was our public health workers who supported our military personnel in Salisbury after the recent nerve agent attack?

[Karin Smyth]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, one of the joys of travelling from Bristol each week is that I meet so many of my former colleagues on the train. [Interruption.] Other Members have perhaps had the same experience. Indeed, I met one of my former colleagues who now works for Public Health England, and we discussed the way that it had to respond to that incident. People had just come out of a severe weather crisis in the south-west, and Public Health England is not currently well-resourced. It then had to respond quickly to an unprecedented international attack and deal with the interplay between local and national when managing that serious incident. I think that we will consider that issue in future. Public Health England now has a huge area to cover on the ground, and I know that my hon. Friend takes a particular interest in that. We could be here until 5 o’clock this evening if I were to talk about the NHS more generally, but we have elections to fight, so I will move on.

I have been working on the Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill with colleagues in the Lords and the Minister, including work on trailer registration for light trailers following the tragic death of a young boy, Freddie Hussey, in my constituency in 2014. I look forward to the debates on that important Bill.

We are all looking forward to a couple of days off once we have knocked on those doors. Let me tell anyone who is coming to the west country that there are a number of festivals going on in Bristol, and I understand that a big festival is on in Exeter. I will be trudging down the M5 from Bristol with my family to enjoy a lovely weekend in Cornwall. I wish all hon. Members and staff of the House a happy May Day bank holiday weekend.

Trade Bill (Second sitting)

Nick Smith Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Prisk]

Q On the financial services side, can we look at the issue of remedies? Clearly, in the current set of arrangements that is frankly irrelevant in a strict legal sense to you as a sector but, looking forward, the TRA is clearly not going to disappear in two years’ time or after however long the transition period lasts. Therefore, looking at the longer term, what is the relevance to financial services and what are the critical issues that you will be looking for in an effective remedies regime at that stage? Perhaps you can just give us one or two highlights to give us a sense. We have heard about goods so far, which is very important, but obviously services matter as well.

Stephen Jones: I defer to Mr Bowles on this—given his experience with TTIP and equivalent regimes.

Edward Bowles: Obviously a high degree of dialogue is done regulator to regulator, so we are a supervised entity not merely in the home state where we may have our domicile and headquarters but in all markets where we have operation. In fact, your first point of call would be the nature of the relationship in terms of supervisory co-operation between those two entities, and what it is that you are permitted to do, and where any disputes may arise about what you are doing in those markets. In fact, the TRA is probably much less relevant to a highly regulated and supervised industry like financial services than to some others, in which there are fewer regulator-to-regulator forums that would determine the methods and modes of operation.

Stephen Jones: I would just add that the concept of dumping in financial services is, therefore, not strictly relevant.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Q Mr Bowles, I will ask just a bit more about Standard Chartered and the developing markets in the states and countries where you work. As previously mentioned, your Razia Khan predicts some difficulty in lining up quick deals in Kenya and other places in Africa. What is your view about other countries where your company has long-standing experience, like Vietnam and South Korea? How quickly can those countries respond to these sorts of deals?

Edward Bowles: Thank you for the question. Standard Chartered has been UK-headquartered for the last 155 years, but 85% of our revenues are from Asia, Africa and the middle east. In respect of most of those countries, there are no FTAs, either with the UK or, indeed, with almost any other markets. I was quite involved in my 10 years at Standard Chartered with the negotiations between the EU and Korea, the EU and Singapore and the EU and Vietnam and, most latterly, with those on TTIP, and on India in between times—that has been a slightly less successful product in negotiating terms. The fact is that we have FTAs with some of those markets and some of them are incredibly advanced. Korea and Singapore are incredibly advanced markets. You are dealing with very sophisticated regulators, politicians and others. They completely understand what the UK would be seeking to achieve in any renegotiation post the roll-over of the current FTAs.

There is certainly scope, I think, in some of those FTAs for tweaking, shall we say, and data offshoring would be one of the issues that I am sure the UK would want to look at. The negotiations take a long time. Korea was seven years. Singapore is not yet in force but we have just had a European Court of Justice ruling in relation to one aspect of it that will enable it to come into force soon, but it has been eight years overall. We can cut and paste them, but then the question is, “What are the incentives on each side—which will probably be asymmetric in terms of interests—for tweaking, and what will be the appetite and the timeframe over which you could do it?” My guess is that you would want to do it expeditiously, but the degree of consultation and engagement with other interested industries, politicians, civic sectors and so on, would inevitably build in a longer time.

For other markets that are rather less developed perhaps than Singapore and Korea, it would take longer, because if there is no existing FTA you are looking at a degree of transparency around their regulatory framework and around the concessions they inevitably will be asked to make, and the question is: “What is the quid pro quo for them?” India is a classic example. You have visas, and immigration is one of their core demands. It has always been one of the core issues that has bedevilled the EU-India FTA negotiations and that will be no less the case, I am sure, with the UK than it is with India.

[Judith Cummins]

Q Mr Bain, to accompany the release of your report “The Bilateral Trade Deals that Matter to Consumers”, you note the importance of the Government replicating the trade agreements that the EU currently has with third countries to ensure that consumers do not see a rise in prices as a consequence of imposed tariffs and so on. Your report notes that 6% of retailer imports are covered by all EU bilateral agreements. Could you identify the particular countries that your members are concerned about?

William Bain: Indeed. There is a good quantity of imported fish, from Norway and Iceland, that UK consumers buy. In particular, there is South Africa in terms of products like wine and some citrus, Chile and Peru in terms of soft fruits, and Morocco in terms of fruit, vegetables and some clothing. And there is principally Turkey in terms of clothing. There are many members of the BRC that source clothing in Turkey, which can be given to consumers for sale in this country on good terms. One of the fundamental issues is that, at the moment, that is under a customs union: is there going to be a functioning customs union between the UK and Turkey on 30 March 2019? I think that speaks to some of the process issues that come up in part 1 of the Bill. We know that there will be an interaction between the CRAG process of bringing a concluded treaty before this House, then interacting with the processes that have to be gone through in part 1 of the Bill.

Unless we have things like letters of intent ready to be signed at 11.1 pm on 29 March 2019, and unless we have the EU involved—what seems on the face of it to be bilateral is, in many cases, a trilateral negotiation—we will have a gap. That gap will cause uncertainty for business. Ultimately, it could cause gaps on the shelves and a lack of choice and availability. It is a serious issue for investment and for consumers.

RBS Global Restructuring Group and SMEs

Nick Smith Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is deeply concerned by the treatment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the Global Restructuring Group of the Royal Bank of Scotland; notes that there are wider allegations of malpractice in financial services and related industries; believes that this indicates a systemic failure to effectively protect businesses, which has resulted in financial scandals costing tens of billions of pounds; further believes that a solution requires the collective and collaborative effort of regulators, Parliament and Government; and calls for an independent inquiry into the treatment of SMEs by financial institutions and the protections afforded to them, and the rapid establishment of a tribunal system to deal effectively with financial disputes involving SMEs.

May I echo your comments, Madam Deputy Speaker? As generous a soul as I am when it comes to interventions, I will limit the number I take to two or three, if at all possible, because I understand that Holocaust Memorial Day is also a crucial issue that everyone here would want to see debated fully afterwards. None the less, there are a lot of Members here, on both sides of the House, who want to speak about an issue that has deeply affected many of their constituents and small businesses across the country. I thank hon. Members for their support for this important debate, as well as the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the time, particularly the Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns). He has made it clear to me and others that he was keen for the debate to take place, and here it is.

As the details of the various scandals that have hit our financial services sector trickled out over the last few years, I think we all started by treating the stories we heard with a certain scepticism. They just did not seem to make sense. Indeed, when I read letters from one of my constituents, my first reaction was to think that the story he was telling simply could not be true. “No bank could have dared to behave in such a brazenly outrageous way,” I said to myself. My constituent, Andi Gibbs, was forced by his bank, RBS, to buy an interest rate-hedging product, which should have protected his business against rising interest rates, but in fact drained it of cash. RBS then placed the business into its Global Restructuring Group. He lost his business, his home, his marriage and, I think it is fair to say, almost his sanity. His crime: nothing more than being an entrepreneur who banked with RBS.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the RBS Global Restructuring Group had real cultural problems? When its top tips included the advice,

“Rope: Sometimes you just have to let customers hang themselves”,

there is clearly something very wrong occurring.

[Clive Lewis]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We know that 16,000 small businesses were put into GRG from 2008, and the vast majority were liquidated. That tells us all we need to know. This was meant to be somewhere from which they could try to come back as viable businesses, but far from being an intensive care unit, it was more like an abattoir, where they were stripped and taken apart.

Business of the House

Nick Smith Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

I am always disappointed if Opposition Members are disappointed by my replies. I am keen to make sure that we address the concerns the hon. Lady has expressed. The Prime Minister was clear yesterday that we are bringing forward changes to legislation. I suggest that the hon. Lady urges a degree of patience while we make sure that we get it right. We can then discuss our proposals.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

May I press the Minister to tell us when exactly there is going to be a Government statement on today’s public relations launch by the Prime Minister of the 25-year plan for the environment? When are we going to see it?

[Paul Maynard]

I am sure there will be—

Budget Resolutions

Nick Smith Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann). I will be making just one argument today on behalf of steelworkers in south Wales and across the country, because this is a live issue that needs ministerial action. The pension freedom laws are proving to be a money-spinner for the Government, with the OBR forecasting that the Government will raise over a billion pounds in taxes on withdrawals in this financial year. However, right now in South Wales, a pension problem is developing in the steel industry—one that we cannot ignore in the race to raise funds.

Around 130,000 members of the Tata retirement fund are facing a December deadline for one of the most important decisions of their lives. Their British Steel pension funds, usually worth between £300,000 and £500,000, could soon be transferring to the Pension Protection Fund or the British Steel pension scheme 2, but for members yet to claim their pension, there is a third option. Since April, the fund trustees have received requests for about 11,000 quotes for pension transfers, and 1,700 have actually transferred their benefits. I have constituents not sure what to do with their hard-earned pension pot, and some have complained about unclear guidance and poor administration.

There are concerns that some advisers, knowing that workers can now withdraw their pension pot, are suggesting transferring money to higher-risk or badly performing schemes, all the while raking in hefty administration fees. The situation has been described in the Financial Times as a “feeding frenzy” for unscrupulous advisers. It would be heartbreaking if, facing the pressure to make a decision, workers were pressed into life-altering decisions that destroy their futures—futures in which they wanted to enjoy the fruits of their labour or need help with the costs of care.

I have written to the Financial Conduct Authority, which has already sent supervisors to the region to see what can be done to protect these workers, but I am also asking the Government what they can do to avoid potential disaster for many. I want to ask the Minister some questions.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

He’s not listening.

[Nick Smith]

He isn’t, is he?

Have the Government assessed whether the independent financial adviser provision close to these steelworks has the capacity to deal with the demand? If it has not, can the Pensions Advisory Service help if there is a problem? Now that the FCA has visited Port Talbot, have the Government received evidence of financial sharks at the site, so that action can be taken? Given that these stories have broken so close to the deadline, do the Government think that the deadline is now appropriate and has any consideration been given to its possible delay? These pension law changes look set to provide a Treasury income stream for the years ahead, but there is a duty of care on us to make sure that this freedom of choice is backed up with guidance and support for these workers. Otherwise, I am afraid for the future of poorly advised steelworkers across the UK for the years ahead.

Parking Places (Variation of Charges) Bill

Nick Smith Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 3rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Craig Whittaker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I referred earlier to having spent 30 years in retail, and I know that when there is a proper parking strategy in place, it benefits everybody. I remember that when I was a general manager for Wilkinson home and garden stores in its development store in Bury in Lancashire—I hope that will not be held against me, as I represent Yorkshire—the council put a proper strategy in place at the car park next to Wilkinson’s, and our business increased by 15%, which was a significant uplift. My hon. Friend is right that by getting the strategy right and ensuring that we have a proper open and honest debate about what can benefit all parts of a town, whether the high street or the area around a hospital, we can make a huge and vital difference not just to businesses but to residents and people coming into the town.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is being more than a bit partisan. Is he aware that it is often Conservative-controlled councils that make the most money from parking? I have just looked at The Independent from December 2015, which said that Westminster council had made an astonishing £46.4 million that year.

[Craig Whittaker]

I think I said earlier that it is welcome when councils do things well, but sadly there are far too many that do not. My experience is of a Labour-controlled council in Calderdale, which has openly admitted that it uses parking as a cash cow, as did Barnet Council, which was taken to court. I was not being particularly partisan; I was merely pointing out that Calderdale is a Labour-controlled council that has been open and honest enough to say that it has used parking as a cash cow.

Autumn Statement

Nick Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend can take this as a clear indication that this is a high priority in terms of rail resilience. We are all acutely aware of the vulnerability of the rail system in the south-west as a result of flood risk, and this is the first step to resolving that.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Given the decline in the value of sterling, how much will we have to pay for the F-35 fighters to go on our aircraft carriers? The present going rate is $100 million a time. Has the Chancellor increased his estimate of the cost of these fighters and other defence kit imports for future years?

[Mr Hammond]

It is a fair question, and the answer is that the Ministry of Defence, unusually among Government Departments, has the ability, and does in practice use the ability, to hedge currency risk, because so much of its capital expenditure programme is denominated in US dollars. So it does have a degree of protection over the coming years; that protection will not last forever, and if sterling’s current relative weakness against the US dollar persists, we will have to revisit this. But I would hope and expect that, as the cloud of uncertainty around the British economy disperses in due course, and people are able to see the strong prospects for this economy in the future, we will see sterling gradually finding its feet again.

Surplus Target and Corporation Tax

Nick Smith Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Financial services is our largest private sector employer, and two thirds of its jobs are outside our capital city. It is a vital industry in the many different towns and cities of the United Kingdom. One of our key priorities is ensuring not only that our financial services industry continues to be a real success and that it is able to sell its services into Europe, but that we strengthen our links with other great global financial centres and economies. For example, becoming the offshore trading centre for the renminbi has been one of the real success stories of recent years.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor support investment in projects such as further upgrading the Heads of the Valleys Road and electrifying the south Wales metro? Improving transport links will help to improve employment in the south Wales valleys and boost demand across the UK.

[Mr Osborne]

I am always happy to consider any good proposals to make further investment in our transport infrastructure. We of course support the electrification of railway lines both into south Wales and through the valleys. The Cardiff city deal has just been signed for the wider Cardiff city region, but if the hon. Gentleman has further proposals, I am happy to look at them.

UK Economy

Nick Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The short answer to that is: no I do not. I do not think that it is wrong, in a democracy, to ask the people about very big constitutional issues. In all the years that I have been a Member of Parliament—and, indeed, before that—the question of our relationship with the EU has hung over our political system and our body politic. I am surprised to hear a Scottish nationalist raise doubts about the effectiveness of referendums, but there we are.

We have well thought-through contingency plans and they remain in place in case financial conditions should deteriorate. The market should not doubt our resolve. We are absolutely determined that, unlike eight years ago, Britain’s financial system will help our country to deal with any shocks and dampen them, rather than contributing to those shocks or making them worse. As the shadow Chancellor requested earlier, I shall of course keep the House informed. However, we have to accept that some investment and hiring decisions will continue to be paused as firms adjust to the uncertainty caused by the referendum. There is already survey evidence and anecdotal evidence of this. So the second part of our plan—the first part involves financial stability—has to be to resolve that uncertainty as quickly as is practical in a democratic system.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

European Union funds have helped economic development in my constituency. What measures is the Chancellor going to take to ensure that areas such as south Wales continue to receive support for infrastructure and to help to boost jobs in our valleys?

[Mr Osborne]

We are going to face some big questions about providing support to the institutions, regions and sectors that have been receiving European Union assistance, most notably the regional support that has been provided to areas such as south Wales, the ongoing support that the EU provides for research in our universities and the support for our farming community. We in the House of Commons are going to have to address all those issues in the coming months and possibly beyond. However, at the moment we remain a member of the European Union—I shall talk about the procedure for our departure in a moment—and the European funding and grants will continue to be made. We are looking specifically at areas where questions have been asked about long-term uncertainty in relation to particular projects, and I will keep the House updated. This is a challenging question, which we have to answer, and we are looking at it very intensively now. But at the moment nothing has changed and we remain a member of the European Union.

That brings me back to the question of trying to resolve as quickly as is practical the uncertainty about the new relationship we are seeking with the European Union and our European neighbours. We need a bit of realism and we need to offer reassurance. It is apparent that the uncertainty will be fully resolved only when we as a country have negotiated an agreement with our European partners on the relationship we now want to have with them. We know what the broad options are. The Government spelled them out and set out the different relationship models over the past few months in the Treasury and Cabinet Office papers that were produced in advance of the referendum. We could join the European economic area, like Norway; we could forge a new negotiated bilateral agreement with the EU, like Canada; we could adopt the Swiss model; or we could rely on World Trade Organisation rules.

As the Prime Minister set out at this Dispatch Box, the Government have established a new unit at the heart of Government made up of some of the best civil servants, reporting to the Cabinet, that will help us as we make that decision. I stress, however, that Members of Parliament and other organisations can feed in to the work that is taking place, so that we have the fullest possible information on the decision that we will have to take collectively as a Parliament on our new relationship with Europe.

My view is clear that we should move towards an arrangement that provides us with the closest possible economic ties with our European neighbours. Close to half of our exports go to the EU and millions of jobs are supported by our trade with the EU. Leading industries, such as car manufacturing, farming and our services industry, are reliant on that relationship, and we should be moving towards an arrangement under which—if we reach it and can negotiate it—the trade of both goods and services, including financial services, is as free as possible. In the meantime, returning to a point I made earlier, UK firms continue to have exactly the same status as any other EU firm. Business continues in the City and elsewhere, including for euro-denominated trading in our financial markets.

However, I am a realist—we have to be realistic about this—and we must acknowledge that we cannot have all the benefits of the EU without accepting any of the costs and obligations. It will be for this Parliament to decide what the accommodations and compromises should be.

Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [Lords]

Nick Smith Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. When I realised that I would be able to make this speech, I feared that there would be a lot of interventions along those lines. I will be citing some notable names during my speech, but that is not a matter for politicians to determine.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Edwards]

I will in a minute—we have to hear from Blaenau Gwent. It would be appropriate if there was a conversation among the people of Wales about who they would like on their banknotes.

[Nick Smith]

As part of the list of great men and women whom the Welsh people could consider having on our banknotes in the future, may I suggest Aneurin Bevan, a son of Tredegar and founder of the national health service?

[Jonathan Edwards]

That is certainly one of the names that I would like to see put forward.