Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I rise to seek your guidance, because the Minister is making, in effect, a statement on a series of Government policies related not to clause 1 or amendment 1 but to policy areas where amendments have not yet been tabled. Is that in order? Should this not have been done in the proper way—making a statement and allowing the House to ask questions in the normal way?

[Mr Speaker]

The Minister may wish to reply, because it is important to be clear about the context in which the observations he is making are made. That is central to this matter, and it is difficult to rule on it unless there is some clarity on the subject. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order and let us hear what the Minister has to say.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Richard Graham. Not here.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

May I congratulate the Chancellor on his U-turn on capital allowances for manufacturing industry? When did he realise that his previous stance of dismissing them as complex reliefs was wrong and at total variance with the Government’s stated aim of supporting manufacturing? When did his conversion to supporting these allowances take place, as long called for by Labour Members and the Engineering Employers Federation?

Public Disorder

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for coming to Wolverhampton yesterday and meeting retailers who were affected by what happened, including Mr Sham Sharma, whose computer shop was ransacked and looted. What we have seen in recent days is what happens when order breaks down. When order breaks down there is no liberty; there is fear. The Prime Minister is right to say that those who did this are responsible, but Governments also have responsibilities. Will he reconsider his Government’s plans to make CCTV harder for our communities to use instead of easier, and will he also look again at police numbers? The idea that the budgets cuts he is making will not affect numbers may look good as a line to take, but it will not convince the public—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman.

Higher Education Fees

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I tried to intervene on the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) as I wanted to correct some of his figures before he started scaremongering. The university of Cambridge takes 15% of students from ethnic minority backgrounds as compared with 10% across the country. He spoke about the one British black Caribbean student out of the 35 applying who gained admission to Oxford university, but failed to mention the 23 black Africans, the three other black students, the seven white and black Caribbean students, the seven white and black Africans, the 35 others of mixed descent and the nine others or, indeed, those directly from the Caribbean—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Interventions must be a lot briefer from now onwards. That is very unfair to other Members.

[Mr McFadden]

We are probably all agreed that the top universities can and should do more to attract ethnic minority students.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, there are some good points in the Browne report. Browne was right to maintain the position whereby fees are not paid up front by students, but by graduates and only after they start earning. This has been portrayed as a new change in the system, but it is not; it has been there since the 2004 changes, although it is still widely misunderstood. Browne is also right to increase the repayment threshold and to include part-time students in the system. Let us be clear, given that the point about part-time students has been portrayed as some great gift from the Government, that the Labour Government explicitly built that into the terms of reference for the Browne review.

It is also right to place a greater emphasis on providing more and better information for students about the quality of courses and teaching. If students are being asked to pay more, they deserve more power within the system, even if that is sometimes uncomfortable for academics or institutions.

Points of Order

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday at Prime Minister’s questions, the Deputy Prime Minister, when trying to justify the recent decision by the Government to refuse the proposed loan of £80 million to Sheffield Forgemasters said that the decision taken by the last Government had been made knowing the funds were not available. He said:

“Lord Mandelson was writing out cheques to companies like Forgemasters, which he knew would bounce”. —[Official Report, 21 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 343.]

But I am in possession of a letter sent to me a few days ago by the permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills commenting on the financial controls in place during the time that the decision to approve the loan was taken. That letter says that

“when a new project or policy is considered the Department provides thorough advice to Ministers, including on the following aspects: value for money, legal implications, delivery of policy objectives, stakeholder and media reaction and available sources of funding. When funding cannot be identified from within existing departmental budgets it is agreed with HM Treasury.

I confirm that the process above was in place while you were a Minister here”.

In other words, the permanent secretary, an official for whom I have the highest regard, is clear that it was not the case that the previous Secretary of State approved financial decisions for which funds were not available. The Deputy Prime Minister has already got his facts wrong on the directors’ shareholdings. We also have the news that a major Tory donor wrote to the Government specifically on this point and appealing for the loan not to be granted. Now the permanent secretary’s letter shows that the Deputy Prime Minister has got his facts wrong again, this time on the issue of financial approval of the loan itself.

I ask you, Mr Speaker, how can we ensure that when the Deputy Prime Minister next speaks at the Dispatch box, he does not simply spray around unfounded accusations but gets his facts right on this crucial issue?

[Mr Speaker]

The straightforward answer to that point of order is that—if memory serves me correctly—there will be an opportunity to question the Deputy Prime Minister on Tuesday next week. If hon. Members wish to put questions to the Deputy Prime Minister on the matter to which the right hon. Gentleman has just referred, they will have an opportunity—not least in topical questions—to do so.

So far as the wider comments the right hon. Gentleman made are concerned, I can only reiterate what I have already said about the correction of errors and underline the importance of Members using their own devices to pursue those matters. I cannot be drawn into the debate. The right hon. Gentleman has stated his position and I have indicated what opportunities there are for the pursuit of the matter.

Points of Order

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for giving me advance notice of it.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I shall come to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment.

I have not been informed that a Minister wishes to make a statement in the House today on this subject. However, on the wider issues, there is an opportunity later today—this point was flagged up by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—in the Back-Bench business debate for the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) and others to express their concerns about the matter. I have a feeling that some of them might be tempted to take that opportunity.

[Mr McFadden]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you give us your guidance on the appropriate procedures for a Minister to come to the House and correct factually inaccurate statements made in the Chamber? On 22 June, the Deputy Prime Minister told the House that the reason the Sheffield Forgemasters loan was not approved was that the company’s owners

“did not want to dilute their own shareholdings in the company”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 148.]

On 1 July, the Prime Minister repeated the point, saying that

“there was opportunity for them…to get more equity into the business if they wanted to…dilute their own shareholding”.

Yet this morning’s newspapers reveal that, in a letter to the company’s chief executive on 2 July, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“You explained to me the composition of equity holdings in the company including your own stake and made clear your own willingness to dilute your equity share”.

Mr Speaker, this letter clearly contradicts statements made by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister to the House, and I am sure that you will agree with me that it cannot be right for factually inaccurate statements to be made publicly in the House and then corrected purely by means of a private letter. Given that today the company has announced that it is suspending work on the 15,000 tonne project for which the loan was proposed, what is your advice on when it would be appropriate for the Deputy Prime Minister to come to the House and admit publicly that the Government’s justification for this decision has been admitted by him to be wrong?

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. As he knows, and as others will be conscious, I am not responsible for the content—including the accuracy—of statements by Ministers. That said, if a Minister makes a factual error in a statement to the House, it is preferable, as far as I am concerned, that he or she should correct that error in the House. The right hon. Gentleman has taken the opportunity very forcefully to register his point on the record, and it will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench. I do hope that if such instances arise again, the general guidance that I have just offered will be followed, for the simple reason that it makes sense and is fair.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The answer to the right hon. Gentleman is that points of order follow statements. [Interruption.] Order. Somebody chuntered from a sedentary position that there was a point of order earlier. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is a considerable authority on these matters and knows perfectly well—it is helpful for me to explain this to the House—that one circumstance in which a point of order can come before a statement is when, in respect of a particular question, a Member is so dissatisfied with the answer that he or she signals an intention to raise the matter on the Adjournment. I explain that both for the benefit of the House and for those outside who are unaware of such matters.

Industry (Government Support)

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr McFadden]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. So that I do not interrupt the flow of the right hon. Gentleman, I should say now that there have been a number of interventions whose eloquence—this is the fairest that can be said of them—has been matched only by their length. Interventions do need to be a bit shorter.

[Mr McFadden]

The hon. Gentleman sums up the problem with the attitude of the Liberal Democrats. They are determined to say that we are no longer a strong manufacturing country, but I have news for him: we are the sixth biggest manufacturing economy in the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Pat McFadden and John Bercow

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State and his ministerial team to their post and wish them well. The Secretary of State and I have something in common: we both used to work for the late John Smith in times past, but that of course was before the Secretary of State fell in with the wrong crowd—and now he has fallen in with an even worse crowd.

The Secretary of State has said several times in recent weeks that his Department will be the Department for growth. I am not going to begin these exchanges by denying that whoever won the election, there would have been difficult decisions to take on deficit reduction, but does he accept that the £300 million of cuts to RDA budgets this year are not efficiency savings? They will mean real cuts in real business support, with less private investment leveraged in and cuts to important regeneration projects. Is it not the case that the specific feature of these cuts and his plans for replacing RDAs is that they will impact on our capacity to secure the very growth that is necessary to make deficit reduction a success?

[Mr Speaker]

There were two questions there. One brief answer will suffice.