Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That is a characteristically sour question. I have never sought to hold myself up as some paragon of social mobility. What I care about, and what I suspect everybody in this House cares about, wherever they come from, is that we live in a country where people can live out their dreams regardless of the circumstances of their birth.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

3. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the roll-out of online individual electoral registration; and if he will make a statement.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

4. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the roll-out of online individual electoral registration; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Voter registration is now easier and more convenient than ever before with the launch of online registration. Applying to register now takes as little as two to three minutes. It has been a big success so far. More than 90% of users who have provided feedback on the “Register to Vote” website have said they are satisfied or very satisfied with the service. To date, more than 2.5 million applications have been made under individual electoral registration, with the majority made online.

[Paul Maynard]

I welcome the growth in online registration, but is the Minister satisfied that the procedures for those with a learning disability are sufficiently robust to allow them to participate fully in the online process? Does he have any record of the numbers currently utilising that assistance?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. The Government are taking action to target all those missing from the electoral register, such as students, those in residential care homes or those with learning disabilities. We have learnt lessons from places such as Northern Ireland. We are currently funding not just electoral returning officers but a number of organisations, including Mencap, to ensure that people end up on the register.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The local growth deals, which we announced yesterday—I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister who has been leading on this in Government—are one of the most significant transfers of money, decision-making authority and policy powers from Whitehall to localities around the country. I am delighted that, among the Government’s many other achievements, we have overseen the greatest wave of decentralisation for a generation.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with his ministerial colleagues on the Government's policy on devolution and decentralisation.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)]

I have had fruitful discussions with ministerial colleagues on the devolution of powers and funds to our cities, towns and counties, resulting in 39 growth deals, which I announced yesterday as part of our long-term economic plan. I am delighted that Blackpool features so strongly in the Lancashire growth deal, which takes £233 million from Whitehall and puts it into the hands of the business, civic, university and college leaders of Lancashire.

[Paul Maynard]

I welcome the £233 million that was announced yesterday, and I was pleased to be in Blackpool to do so. Will the Minister confirm that this is the beginning and not the end, not merely because I have a lengthy shopping list for my constituency but because we want all our great northern cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds—and maybe even Sheffield—to form a real economic powerhouse to rival London?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is right, and there is no greater champion of the north-west and Blackpool than he. I can confirm that such has been the success of the growth deals—three and a half times oversubscribed, with projects that bring in a lot of private sector funding—that we will proceed immediately to negotiate further such deals, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will talk to the authorities in Blackpool to further their case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and the local growth deals proposed by Michael Heseltine afford precisely that opportunity. I know, having discussed the matter in Lancashire with Lancashire LEP, that it will have a keen eye on that particular proposal. The revival of the economy along the Fylde coast and in the rest of Lancashire is very much in all our interests and I know that it has my hon. Friend’s strong support.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

One way to support the fish processers of Fleetwood is to address the issue of the A585, which is the main road into Fleetwood going through my constituency. When the Minister negotiates the new city deal for the area, will he bear in mind the critical importance of the A585 to the local economy?

[Greg Clark]

I cannot fail but to bear it in mind, having visited my hon. Friend’s constituency—he brought a stellar delegation of local businesses and civic leaders to make precisely that point. I received it loud and clear and look forward to the negotiations of the growth deal.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

It depends on the case that has been set out and the extent to which international support has been developed—[Interruption.] I say to hon. Members on the Government Benches who are making strange noises that it is right to go about this process in a calm and measured way. If people are asking me today to say, “Yes, now, let us take military action,” I am not going to say that, but neither am I going to rule out military action, because we have to proceed on the basis of evidence and the consensus and support that can be built.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) asked an important question that I feel the right hon. Gentleman did not answer fully. Paragraph (e) of the Opposition amendment refers to “precise and achievable objectives”, which I assume means that he has in mind precise and achievable objectives. Can he please detail what they would be?

[Edward Miliband]

Yes I can, because the amendment goes on to say,

“designed to deter the future use of prohibited chemical weapons in Syria”.

Paragraph (e) also states that

“such action must have regard to the potential consequences in the region”,

so any proposed action to deter the use of chemical weapons must be judged against the consequences that will follow. Further work by the Government is necessary to set out what those consequences would be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point that I would make to the hon. Lady is that, unlike the position under the previous Government, there is now a proper system for declaring the interests of special advisers and Ministers. That used not to be the case: it is now the case.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Q8. My right hon. Friend will have noted that the Government’s proposed benefits cut excludes war widows, the disabled and those claiming working tax credits. Does he not agree that my constituents on the Lancashire wage to which my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) referred deserve to know that they have a Government who are on the side of families who do the right thing and support their local communities?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks very powerfully about this issue, which is why a benefit cap is fair. It is also very important to recognise that we are excluding from that benefit cap those entitled to working tax credit, as well as households with someone receiving disability living allowance. As we have always said, there will be a hardship fund, a grace period and a way of helping those families to cope with the cap, and to make sure, where possible, that we actually get people into work. The real shame is that there are so many millions of children who live in households where nobody works—and indeed, that number doubled under the previous Government.

House of Lords Reform

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I welcome these proposals but lament the fact that they do not go quite far enough. I am one of that die-hard band of Conservatives who believe in a 100% elected upper Chamber. I joined the party not because it was the Conservative party but because I wanted to be a member of a party of change—a party in favour of changing Britain for the better, rather than keeping what was wrong as it was.

I have listened carefully to the debate. Some clear themes have emerged and I found some common ground with my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). I want to draw Members’ attention to two important 18th-century individuals, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who wrote the federalist papers: 85 editions of pure intellectual dynamite that played an important role in the formation of the American constitution. They had great insight into human nature, how to balance competing interests and how to ensure that a constitution worked as a whole. If one mistake is being made today, it is our trying to consider the reform of the House of Lords in isolation from wider constitutional change. Ten years ago, I would have had no truck with the idea of a written constitution, which was anathema to me, but such was the tinkering of the Labour party over the past 13 years, with a bit here and a bit there, that I am afraid we are left with no choice but to go back to the drawing board—to the famous blank sheet of paper that the leader of the Labour party constantly brandishes at us—and start to redraw our constitution.

The other key concern that I have heard today is the importance of maintaining the parity of this House with regard to the other House. I entirely accept that, and there must be no question of our becoming a subsidiary Chamber, but my fear is that the Government’s proposals risk that very thing. My fear about using the single transferable vote to elect Members to the senate, or this other House, is that it will create the very debate about legitimacy and who has the greater mandate that we seek to avoid. However, there is a solution, which might appear perverse to many Members and will not please my Liberal Democrat colleagues. I think that the answer is to find an electoral system that is so manifestly unfair, disproportionate, unrepresentative and idiosyncratic that there could be no question whatever of any dispute about which is the pre-eminent Chamber.

Might I suggest that we go back to the federalist papers of Alexander and James and ask ourselves why it is that tiny Delaware has two Senators in the US Senate while mighty California also has two Senators? May I just fly a kite, as we do all the time in politics and hope not to get shot down, as I might be about to—who knows? Could we return to the counties of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland before the Local Government Act 1972? Perhaps we could have a senate with elections for the historic county of Lancashire, reuniting Barrow and bringing Liverpool and Manchester back in. Perhaps we could also recreate Rutland and have Surrey stretching into the Surrey docks as it once did. The system would be full of illogicalities, but surely that is the point, because to maintain the primacy of this Chamber and defend the principle of first past the post—which I will do to my dying day, I have now decided after that fiasco of a referendum—we have to ensure that we have an electoral system that retains the confidence of the people and starts to tie people more into their legislature. I can think of few things that would do that more than having senators for the historic counties.

I may be an MP, but I try not to have too big an ego, and I can cope somehow with having MEPs, county councillors, borough councillors, district councillors, parish councillors, Uncle Tom Cobleighs and all trampling over my local newspapers, talking about things that I have an interest in. I no doubt do the same to them. We can cope with having multiple elected representatives in the areas that we also represent. I think it is important that we support the Deputy Prime Minister as he re-enters the Chamber. These are bold and important proposals and we must back them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It will be passed; we are determined that it shall be passed. It cannot be right that the Opposition, having failed to make their case in this place, are now using the lowest forms of foot-dragging in the other place to prevent this Government from proceeding with the political reforms that the hon. Lady’s party used to believe in.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

T6. Section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983 means that any Member of this House who is in receipt of long-term mental health care forfeits his seat. We know that, nationwide, one in five people suffers from a mental health condition. No doubt the same figure applies in this House, yet no Member has ever spoken at length about their mental health conditions. What plans does the Deputy Prime Minister have to follow the recommendation of last year’s Speaker’s Conference to repeal section 141 of the 1983 Act?

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Lady talks about broken promises. We remember, “No more boom and bust.” What happened to that promise? We remember, “Prudence with a purpose.” What happened to that one? We remember, “We’ll protect the poorest,” when Labour took away the 10p tax rate. The fact is that the Labour party has got absolutely nothing to say about the biggest problem facing this country, which is the massive budget deficit. It might be adopting Greekonomics, but we are sorting out the problem.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Given the size of the structural deficit that we have inherited, how many apologies has the Prime Minister received from Opposition Members for what they have left behind?

[The Prime Minister]

First, may I welcome my hon. Friend, who, I know, will speak with great passion for his town of Blackpool? We should congratulate it on its footballing success recently. On that note, I am sure that the whole House will want to show its support—[Interruption] yes, including all Members—for the England team this afternoon in their key game.

I have not yet received a single apology for the appalling mess that we have been left, but at some stage, the Labour party will have to wake up and realise what a mess it made of the British economy.