Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I do, and that is a very important point. Lobbying is a perfectly reputable industry for making sure that the voices of charities and businesses are heard, but it should be transparent so that people know who is talking to those in Parliament. That is what the Government intend to do—mainly to clean up the dreadful behaviour that we saw last year, which has resulted in some former Members having their passes removed.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The purpose of lobbying is to give further advantages to the already advantaged. Is the Minister not concerned that already lobbying has taken place between his Department and BSkyB which might have the most damaging consequences for the people of this country? Should not these reforms be brought in quickly by the Tory-Lib Dem junta?

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation that all lobbying is to benefit the advantaged. Members are lobbied all the time by charitable organisations, charities and, as I found in my previous role in opposition, those who campaign on behalf of disabled people, for example. It is important, however, that such lobbying is transparent and that people know who is talking to Members of Parliament and members of the Government. That is exactly what our statutory register will achieve.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy]

That is a valid point, which many Members have raised in the debate. On days when we have to deal with IPSA issues, we tend to find ourselves spending much more time on those than on constituents’ problems or on preparing for debates in the Chamber of the House of Commons.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Recently, there was an application for a job in my office from a candidate who described herself as “IPSA literate”. The system is so arcane, irrational and impenetrable that to be IPSA literate is equivalent to having about two honours degrees. Many of us have taken the line that to impose the job of dealing with IPSA on an employee would be regarded by any tribunal as cruel and inhuman treatment. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that if a commercial organisation—an internet bank, for example—ran a system such as IPSA’s, it would now be out of business because its system was so client-unfriendly?

[Paul Murphy]

Yes, indeed—my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Given that some years ago the then Prime Minister appointed me as Minister for digital inclusion, I thought that I had some knowledge of how to use computers, but I was defeated in having to deal with these issues. Most Members have to deal with this problem with a highly trained member of staff. I am not surprised that my hon. Friend was looking for someone who had those particular qualifications, although of course he is extremely good with computers and has been for many years.

I want to make two other points. First, the artificial distinction between core expenditure and other expenditure has to go, because it does not take into account the geographical variations from constituency to constituency in office rent, in particular, and other factors too. I hope that IPSA will look into that.

My final point relates to our staff. Not many Members have mentioned the men and women who work for us, either here in the House of Commons directly or, particularly, in our constituencies. They have been seriously disadvantaged over the past number of months, not least by the dramatic change in the pension position. It is now taken directly out of our allowances and not paid from the Commons itself. There is a very strong case that the trade unions and staff associations that represent the staff of Members of Parliament should be properly recognised and should have proper means of negotiating directly with IPSA to ensure that their conditions of service are not disadvantaged. This would not happen in the private sector or in the public sector outside this place, and it should not happen in the House of Commons.

The system must be transparent, accountable and independent, but it must also be cost-effective. Most importantly, it must be a system that allows us to represent our constituents effectively.

Departmental Business Plans

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

In brief, no: we are not attempting to do what the hon. Gentleman describes. We believe that by placing the power of commissioning in the hands of general practitioners, by giving GPs and patients genuine choice over where patients go, and by making hospitals accountable on those choices by transforming them into foundation trusts, we can achieve the efficiencies that are needed in our health service through the medium of competition, which leads to the excellence that can be generated when professionals are able to run their own show. We are moving in exactly the opposite direction from that which the hon. Gentleman describes.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

As the only time in nature when horizons actually shift is when a tsunami is on the way, can the House and the country expect to be inundated—the Minister gave an example today—with more bureaucracy, more gobbledegook and more management-speak?

[Mr Letwin]

I respect the hon. Gentleman for his long work in areas such as drugs, but if he reads the plans he will find that they include serious efforts to change things for the better, such as through a payment by results-based drugs rehabilitation programme, for which, I think, he has long argued. That is not gobbledegook, bureaucracy or micro-management. It says to providers, “You know how to provide and we will pay you if you get people off drugs and back into the mainstream,” and nothing could be more important to the people of our country than that.

G8 and G20 Summits

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. We are trying to put in place a system whereby banks have to ask themselves whether they have enough capital to withstand the sort of shock they suffered in 2008 and 2009. That is what needs to take place, and it is being put in place relatively quickly, but the rules need to be drawn up and agreed, and there may then be a pause before they are actually introduced, because at the moment the great risk is shrinkage of the monetary base—a shrinkage of bank lending—at this very sensitive time in our recovery.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

How can the Prime Minister retain his optimism after 11 British deaths in 10 days? How can a stable Afghanistan be built on the crumbling foundations of an election-rigging president and his criminal family, on an Afghan army that is mercenary and drug-addicted and on a police force that is depraved and entirely corrupt? We are in the end game position, as Canada and the Netherlands have explained. At the end of the Vietnam war a question was asked that should haunt us all now: who will be the last soldier ordered into battle to die for a politician’s mistake?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman has long taken that view, but even though he makes that case he wildly overstates it. If we talk to British soldiers who serve with the Afghan national army they say that those soldiers are brave, they work hard and they are committed. Yes, of course we need to improve recruitment from all parts of the country, but I do not think it is fair to characterise the army as he does. There have been problems with the Afghan police force, but when we go to Afghanistan we see police trainers from European and American countries doing good work. I do not accept that all is as bleak as the hon. Gentleman puts it. We have had a number of casualties, which are heartbreaking in every individual case and it is heartbreaking that there are so many, but we have to remember what we are doing in Afghanistan. It is not creating the perfect society; it is training up the Afghans so that they can take care of their own security and we face fewer attacks from terrorist groups trained in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but the fact is that today the number of threats coming from that area is reduced, because of what we have done in Afghanistan and because of what the Pakistan Government are doing in Pakistan. Of course we should not be blind to people’s concerns, but we should try to take people with us on the success there has been in reducing those threats.