Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

I certainly congratulate the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), who laid a wreath at Islandbridge. Islandbridge is a very fitting memorial, designed by Lutyens, which the Queen also visited recently.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

5. What recent discussions she has had with political parties in Northern Ireland on dealing with the past.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

I hold regular discussions with representatives of the Northern Ireland political parties on a range of issues, including dealing with Northern Ireland’s past. I continue to encourage party leaders to work towards an agreement on the past which is balanced and can command public support.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for her reply. Does she think it has become harder to reach a deal on the past as a result of the on-the-runs issue, which was effectively an agreement on partial immunity for people who might be required to tell the truth about various incidents?

[Mrs Villiers]

The concern caused by the on-the-runs issue, and the fact that the scheme was not dealt with transparently, have set back the progress on dealing with the past. However, the proposals set out in the Haass No. 7 document provide a good basis for further discussions and I welcome the fact that many of the parties have said that they can support that kind of architecture, despite the fact that further issues need to be resolved before an agreement is found.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

The key issues then were, as I dare say they are now, the maintenance of choice, achieving value for money and, above all, maintaining professional standards of representation in court. I note that the Lord Chancellor has already indicated that he is going to keep a choice of solicitors, and he is also keeping advocacy fees separate. Those things are in response to the current consultation, and I have no doubt that, building on that, there will be further possibilities to have a very important debate so that we can reach a conclusion where we have a viable system of criminal legal aid that can be maintained in the long term.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

9. What recent assessment he has made of how effectively appeal cases have been handled by the Crown Prosecution Service.

[The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)]

The CPS is providing a first-class service to the senior appellate courts.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful for that answer. Will the Solicitor-General please explain to the House how he can satisfy himself that the CPS is indeed conducting those cases effectively? Does it compile and analyse any data on how it is performing?

[The Solicitor-General]

Yes, the detailed schedule of cases comes to the Attorney-General each month, and we have discovered that more cases are being dismissed without leave to appeal being granted, which suggests good CPS presentation; up to 57% of cases are now dismissed without leave.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I cannot hide my opinions about reform of the House of Lords. It has been debated for well over 100 years. We have been perfectly open about this. We have published a White Paper, which was generated in part by discussions involving input from all major parties in the House. We have left a number of options open in that White Paper, including whether we should have 100% or 80% directly elected and the precise method of election. I hope the Joint Committee will be able to shed some light on those issues when it reports at the end of March next year.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister on a full range of—[Laughter.]

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I was saying, I support the Prime Minister on a full range of Government policies and initiatives, and within Government I take special responsibility for this Government’s programme of political and constitutional reform.

[Nigel Mills]

Over the years, we have introduced more than 1,000 tax reliefs, ranging from the vital to the obscure. Why is the Deputy Prime Minister so opposed to tax relief that supports marriage?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My own view is reflected in the coalition agreement, where this issue is among a number of others on which the coalition parties make an explicit agreement to disagree. That is because of a philosophical difference. I believe the state should be cautious about seeking to use the tax system to encourage people to take what, at the end of the day, are very private and emotional decisions about whether or not they should get married.

United Kingdom Statistics Authority

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), although I am not sure how I am going to follow some of the details that he mentioned. It will be a challenge for Mr Dilnot to find a statistical measure for happiness; I am not sure that he will find reliable data for that.

I start by welcoming Mr Dilnot’s appointment. I pay tribute to the Chair of the Public Administration Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). The process has shown that pre-appointment hearings should not always be simply to ratify the Government’s appointment. There should be a possibility that the proposal will be rejected and that the process will have to restart, and the occasional rejection should be seen in the context of the advantages that the process offers us.

Any politician will know how important statistics are. Soon after I was selected as a candidate, around the time of the change in the law, in early 2008, we used some crime figures in a leaflet. A couple of months later, I was phoned up by someone from the local newspaper, who said that the police authority was challenging the data that we were using. It cited some very different figures and had no idea where the figures that I had used came from. It turned out that my figures were from the most recent British crime survey and the authority was using police data. What was slightly unfortunate was that it used crime data for the year that ended two days previously—I could not possibly have used that in my leaflet, which had been printed two months before, and not even in the same year.

In retrospect, I was grateful as I got a front-page headline and a decent amount of publicity. The vast majority of correspondence said, “You’re right—we don’t believe a single figure that they tell us anyway, so we’ll happily go with the ones that you cited.” That sums up the public mood about official statistics—they just do not believe them, probably because all politicians tend to manipulate them, get them wrong or selectively use some that suit the argument and omit those that might go the other way.

It is a real job to make public the data used and make it clear when they are abused by politicians. We should all base government and policies on actual evidence, rather than on what we would like the evidence to be; we should make the policy fit the data, not the data the policy. It is ironic that, in a debate about the probity of the data we use, we have had comments about child poverty data. That is one of those footballs that we can kick back and forward. What data do we want to use? Do we compare 2005 to 2010? Some of the numbers show child poverty going up by 300,000 and some by 100,000, or we can say that it has gone up since the election. The hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) wandered into that argument. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) gave a far more balanced view: we have to be careful that we use realistic, accurate data that present a meaningful picture, rather than the one that we want.

I agree with the Minister that the person who heads this authority needs to be credible, senior, and, most of all, independent. If we are to have a Parliament that can effectively hold Government to account, we need reliable, honest, accurate data to be available to all of us so that we can do that job properly. I truly hope that Mr Dilnot can take that process forward. I, too, cannot see much justification for the Government’s having 24-hour advance access. I hope that the Public Administration Committee can make some further recommendations when it looks at that, because probably one of the last great abuses is our being able to see stories appearing in the press that rely on statistics that we have not seen.

Industrial Action

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The Scottish Government have benefited from the results of the reforms, and if they choose not to implement them they will have to make savings from elsewhere. That just follows. It comes with devolution.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Can the Minister tell my constituents who work hard and have no chance of achieving a £20,000 index-linked guaranteed pension what level of contributions they would have to pay to their own scheme to get that level of pension?

[Mr Maude]

As has been said, to achieve the same pension as many public sector workers will continue to enjoy after these reforms are put in place, many people working in the private sector would end up having to pay no less than a third of their salary in pension contributions. These are good pension schemes. They will continue to be good pension schemes. We want them to be so.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman. I do not want to give an answer that is not accurate.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

After a decade of spin, I welcome the Prime Minister’s attempt to sort out the relationship between politicians and the media for the long term, not just to manage the news cycle. Will he recommend that Government Departments, local councils and quangos start dispensing with all their own spin doctors so that we can be truly rid of that spin culture?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. An enormous amount of money is still spent by local authorities on their own free local newspapers. That is injurious to the newspaper industry. There is a strong case for recognising the importance of a strong regional and local newspaper industry.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak in today’s debate, and I congratulate the other Members who have made their maiden speeches as they have raised the bar. I also thank the people of Amber Valley for electing me as their Member of Parliament. It is a tremendous honour and privilege to serve them, and I will do my utmost to live up to the trust they have placed in me.

The seat of Amber Valley was created in 1983 and was previously represented by Phillip Oppenheim, whom I am sure some Members will remember, and since 1997 by Judy Mallaber. I would like to take this opportunity to thank her for her work on behalf of the people of Amber Valley. She can be rightly proud of what she achieved, especially on the introduction of the minimum wage, on which she worked before entering the House as well as while she was here. It is a tribute that something that was originally a political controversy has become accepted on both sides of the House. I wish her well in her future endeavours.

Whatever our differences on political issues, we have been in agreement on the need to address the support for the British National party in Amber Valley; it had two councillors elected in 2008. I am sure the whole House will share my relief that we are not joined in this place by any members of that party. I suspect that that concern is part of the reason for the conversion of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) to thinking the European list system we currently use is a bad idea.

It is, however, incumbent upon all politicians of the mainstream to address constructively the issues that have been taken up the BNP. Immigration was the issue most often raised in my seat, and I am pleased that the Gracious Speech includes our pledge to introduce the annual cap on immigration from outside the EU—and I am a little surprised that, as today’s Opposition amendment highlights, they are still concerned about that measure, which, as I have said, had widespread support in my seat.

My predecessor referred in her maiden speech to the importance of putting Amber Valley on the map. I think I can best describe that as a work in progress. This may be the only case that data protection rules allow me to take on from her. The seat is in Derbyshire—not in Wales, as some appear to think—running from the Nottinghamshire border to the edge of the Peak district, and includes the towns of Alfreton, Heanor and Ripley, and many surrounding villages. It is a former mining area, which has developed diverse industries since the closure of the pits in the 1960s.

The seat shares its name with a borough council, although that borough council of about 100,000 electors now has three MPs. Perhaps certain measures in the Gracious Speech will reduce some of that confusion, although I will take care in saying that, as part of the council area is also represented by my Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Mr McLoughlin), and I would hate to be seen to be trying to steal part of his seat.

While some Members might not have been able to place Amber Valley on a map, I am sure they are familiar with some of its businesses. These include Denby pottery—and I disagree with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) in that I claim it as the producer of by far the best pottery in the country, and I am disappointed that I have not as yet found any of its products in use in the House. They also include Matthew Walker Christmas puddings and Thorntons chocolates. If I indulge in too many of their products I can avail myself of the services of another local business, Slimming World.

Of great concern in my constituency is the need to provide good-quality jobs for local people. A recent sadness has been the final closure of the Butterley plant, in Ripley. My two predecessors referred to the great steel work made there that forms the roof of St Pancras railway station; at least they had the pleasure of the business still being around at the time. Part of the Butterley site has already been replaced by houses, much against the wishes of the local council. I therefore welcome our proposal to change the planning system to allow local people to have far more of a say not only in protecting brownfield sites on which we would like to keep manufacturing businesses, but in preventing houses from being built all over our green belt.

I turn to the issue that prompted me to speak in today’s debate. While the tragic events in Cumbria were unfolding last Wednesday, there was also a tragic event in the peaceful village of Holbrook, in my constituency, where a young woman and her two-year-old child were stabbed to death by her estranged partner. My thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims at this difficult time. This case is made more difficult by the fact that the alleged perpetrator of these offences had been arrested twice by the police the week before, following accusations of domestic violence, and had also been receiving treatment for mental illness. I therefore welcome Derbyshire police’s calling in the Independent Police Complaints Commission to review their actions. I in no way wish to pre-judge the outcome of that review—it is easy to do so with the benefit of hindsight—but I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will closely follow the progress of this case. If any lessons need to be learned, I hope they can be learned to ensure that the risk of such tragic events happening again is as low as possible.

It is at times like these that we come to appreciate the difficulty of the job carried out by our police, and I would like to pay tribute to the courage of the officers who broke into the house to try to stop those tragic events. I wish them all the best as they come to terms with the awful situation that they found.

We know that the size of the budget deficit run up by the previous Government means that difficult decisions need to be taken, and Derbyshire police will have to take their share of that pain. I note that the amendment that bears the name of the right hon. Member for Blackburn contains a request that the cuts do not damage the number of police officers. I point out to the Minister that the police funding review carried out some six years ago noted that Derbyshire police needed a significant increase in funding, of approximately £5 million a year. However, that funding has still not been provided to this day, due to the damping mechanism. I urge the Government to have a full review of the allocation of funds for police forces, to ensure that Derbyshire police—who are currently being deprived of the 100 officers whom those funds could be used to provide—get the fair funding they are entitled to for the level of crime in Derbyshire. Only by ensuring a fair allocation of funding can we make sure that we have police services that are both effective and efficient.