EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you, like many of us, might have seen a front-page splash in The Times last week trumpeting the support for Brexit from Lord Anthony Bamford of JCB, the iconic digger maker based in my county of Staffordshire. I was intrigued by the story, mainly because it smacked a little of desperation. It was, as it is called in the trade, old news, because anyone reading The Sentinel newspaper in Staffordshire would have known that when the good lord came out all of a year ago.

Anthony Bamford is part of just a small smattering of industrialists on the Brexit side that includes a maverick knight of the realm, Sir James Dyson, who makes those costly, complicated hoovers—in Malaysia. In reality, their views are not reflective of the large majority of British businesses, investors or economists. Our membership of the EU has been vital to our attracting much needed investment here. Nissan, Toyota and Honda from Japan made that clear very early on, when they urged the UK to remain, and the likes of BMW, Volkswagen, Bosch and Siemens from Germany have since joined them.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Did my hon. Friend see the story in the Financial Times today pointing out that both Sir James Dyson and Anthony Bamford had been caught breaking competition laws by the European Commission, and suggesting that that was their motivation?

[Paul Farrelly]

I cannot speak for their personal motivation, but I am sure that they are speaking for themselves personally rather than for their own businesses.

German companies here employ 500,000 people. Along with the Japanese, they have made the UK car industry today the most successful in our country’s history—along with Tata of India, of course, with its investment in Jaguar Land Rover. Tata, too, cannot fathom why Britain would want to leave the world’s biggest single market. In this debate, their voices deserve to be heard and listened to, not silenced through intimidation, as was the intention at the beginning of the leave campaign. Then, of course, there are the voices of great British companies—household names such as Rolls-Royce, one of our biggest exporters. My grandad built Spitfire engines at Crewe for Rolls-Royce, and today the company, patriotically, urged its staff to vote remain.

It is not just multinationals that are emphatically in favour of our remaining in the EU. This spring, like other colleagues on the Opposition Benches, I carried out a survey of about 1,000 predominantly small businesses in my constituency, and we had a good response. Some 80% were in favour of remaining. Some wanted reforms, but they firmly believed that we should stay in, to reform from within. The response to our survey reflected the balance within the wider membership of Staffordshire’s chamber of commerce and the views of the British Ceramic Confederation—the industry from which my area of the potteries takes its name. This—particularly for us—vital export-led industry wants us firmly to stay in because it is in its and the country’s interests. It recognises that it is better to have one rule book, rather than 28 different ones for each country in the EU.

Let me take a local example of the new economy. One of our most passionate supporters of the remain campaign is bet365, which is now the world’s biggest online gaming company and the owner of Stoke City football club, which I must of course mention. In little more than 15 years, the Coates family has built that business up into the biggest private sector employer in North Staffordshire, with more than 3,500 highly skilled staff. It is one of the UK’s biggest business success stories of the last decade. Frankly, bet365 can only dream of one rule book, because at the moment it has to contend with not only 28 but far more rules, with each of the German Länder and other different European regions having their own individual regulations. Bet365 is precisely the sort of business that will benefit by staying in and extending the single market to services and e-commerce, which were key topics in the Prime Minister’s renegotiations.

Phone Hacking

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

May I add that Mr Speaker has done a great service to Parliament and the many victims and their families by allowing today’s debate?

Three years have now passed since we who serve on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee started our inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel. We undertook that inquiry because of the treatment the tabloid press meted out to the McCann family, and it took such a long time because we had to reopen the investigation into phone hacking, not for political reasons but for the integrity of this House as it was clear that we had been misled by News International. Last year, we did not believe its follow-up evidence either, and subsequent events have proved us right. As many people have said, the latest events are likely to prove to be the tip of the iceberg of cynicism, double standards, cover-up and law breaking over a long period by a publication that clearly felt itself to be above the law.

[Helen Goodman]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) made the point that the former Director of Public Prosecutions has now been taken on as a silk for News International, and that is indeed the case. He was DPP when Glenn Mulcaire was prosecuted. The Attorney-General said that that was a matter for his professional ethics, but surely this should have gone through the Cabinet Office as he was a senior public servant?

[Paul Farrelly]

I entirely agree. The former DPP should be invited to examine not only his ethics and his conscience, but his record in this, because he is also culpable in the failure to get to the bottom of this affair.

Nothing should surprise us about the News of the World, but what did surprise us during our inquiry was the approach of the Metropolitan police and the evidence it gave to us. Our report was highly critical of the Met, but right up until the start of Operation Weeting in January there seemed to be a determination to limit the inquiry and close it down as quickly as possible. The concerns about that, and about the Metropolitan police’s links to a powerful Sunday tabloid, have long merited this independent inquiry that is going to be allowed today.

We must not lose sight of the fact that, despicable and unlawful as it is, phone hacking is just one clever ruse, and there is a further question any inquiry must address: was there a trade in information in return for payments or favours between the police and the News of the World that was not only unlawful or unethical, but was to the detriment of ordinary people—not just celebrities such as Sienna Miller, or politicians, but ordinary people who might be considered fair game by the News of the World, but whose well-being it is the police’s duty to protect? These questions alone constitute good grounds for an independent public inquiry.

Before the Prime Minister’s statement today, I was pondering whether we could rely on the News of the World, with its new spirit of thorough co-operation, to whistleblow on itself fully. I suggest the record rather suggests not. Indeed, following the publication of our report of February last year, News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks dismissed it, and News International issued a statement saying, with absolutely no hint of irony, that

“the reaction of the Committee to its failure to find any new evidence has been to make claims of ‘collective amnesia’, deliberate obfuscation and concealment of the truth.”

For good measure, it added, again with no irony, that

“certain members of this CMS Committee have repeatedly violated the public trust.”

Editor Colin Myler was more explicit. He singled out me and my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) in a full-page editorial:

“We’ll take no lessons in standards”.

He continued:

“Sadly, the victims here are you, the public”.

That was very prescient of Mr Myler, but clearly not in the way he intended. That scathing, self-serving editorial ran to more than 1,100 words, whereas the eventual apology to victims in April this year ran to just 160 words. That would be comical if it were not so sad.

Much has been said about Rebekah Brooks, and I agree that her position is untenable. As for the editor of the News of the World—I will be charitable—Mr Myler has, by now, had so much wool pulled over his eyes that he clearly cannot find his own self-respect or his resignation; he is staying in post at the News of the World.

Could the Press Complaints Commission be trusted with an inquiry? Sadly, the answer is no. The PCC was lauded in that editorial, but this is how its chair, Baroness Buscombe, returned the compliment yesterday:

“There’s only so much we can do when people are lying to us.”

The PCC accepted none of our recommendations, including our suggestion for a new name—the press complaints and standards commission. The body commands little respect and it has a much-diminished chair. As for the police, Operation Weeting certainly seems to be more thorough, but beforehand there was little competition. It is time for a public inquiry, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has suggested.

Following the latest revelations there has been much talk of a “tipping point” for the press, but we have been at tipping points many times before—for example, with the McCann family—and nothing has changed. Above all, for the better of decent journalism in this country, all newspaper proprietors, not just Rupert Murdoch, must look themselves in the mirror and ask, “Do I like what I see?” and, “Do I care to change it?”

Business of the House (Thursday)

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly]

I hope that it will not take 5% of five hours to persuade the Liberal Democrats to join us in asking for more time tomorrow.

The evidence from the UK needs to be properly considered as well, including the evidence on price sensitivity. And the Government have not explained the evidential base on which their policy is based. We need time to fathom that.

[Helen Goodman]

I would not wish to make a political point, but does my hon. Friend agree that the Leader of the House might have been influenced by the fact that the statistics for applications from UK-domiciled students for undergraduate courses at the colleges of Oxford university show that 10 times as many come from Hampshire as come from County Durham?

[Paul Farrelly]

My hon. Friend has put her point firmly on the record, and I hope she will get the opportunity to expand on it if she is called to speak later in the debate.

There are a great many documents from institutions in the UK that have been looking at the effect of fees on participation, and we really need the opportunity to debate them. One such document, an interim impact assessment on higher education funding, shows that, according to the evidence on price sensitivity, a £1,000 increase in fees reduces participation by about 4.4 percentage points, yet here we are, facing a £6,000 rise, which would imply a reduction in participation by a quarter. We need time to look at all that evidence, which the Government have not been forthcoming in producing to back up their plans.

The Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) has placed great emphasis on social mobility. He has even stated that these proposals will increase social mobility, and we need time to be able to cross-examine that view and to see the evidence for it. We also need time to give an airing to all the views of the young people that have come to us from across the country, e-mail by e-mail. We need more than five hours to do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

Another consideration is the impact on universities of excluding able young people who simply cannot afford to go to the best universities. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is not just bad for the young people but bad for the universities? Will there be time for us to discuss it?

[Paul Farrelly]

I do agree, and I have already said that we will not have time to discuss the ins and outs and the evidence base of the national scholarship fund. We are told that 18,000 to 20,000 students might be helped, but we have not been told where those figures come from.