Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Maynard and Kerry McCarthy

Monday 5th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

The UK Government continue to uprate state pensions when there is a legal requirement for that to be done, and have no plans to change their long-standing policy or enter into new reciprocal social security agreements.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

15. If he will take steps to simplify the benefits claims process for cancer patients.

Flybe

Debate between Paul Maynard and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend is right to observe, as I did earlier, the importance of these services to the oil and gas sector in particular. The Department and the CAA as a whole are examining the economic impact of any changes that may occur across all our regional airports, but our focus is on working hard to ensure that we get the right result.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I entirely accept the importance of regional airports to jobs—Bristol airport is on my doorstep and I was a director of London Luton airport in my days as a councillor in Luton—but the fact that the Minister can come to the House to answer an urgent question about domestic flights without mentioning decarbonisation and climate change once just shows—[Interruption.] He has mentioned them in response to questions but did not mention them in his initial response. He has been prompted to do that. It is not enough to kick it into the long grass and say, “This is something we’re going to deal with in the future.” Decarbonisation and climate change need to be factored into the Minister’s response to the Flybe emergency and APD now.

[Paul Maynard]

I have mentioned decarbonisation at least three times. I tried to obey Mr Speaker’s instruction to keep my opening statement brief. I entirely recognise the importance of decarbonisation, and a significant amount of work is occurring in the Department, between two Ministers. I ask the hon. Lady to wait to see the documents when they are produced.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Maynard and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

I am sorry to hear of the delays that are being experienced by my hon. Friend’s constituents. Clearly we have had a period of very hot weather, which does impact on rail reliability, and speed restrictions do help to protect overhead line equipment. I met the industry forums just this week to discuss what lessons can be learned about repeated periods of hot weather and how we can best protect critical infrastructure, and I hope the decisions they now move on to take can start to improve reliability.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

When the Chancellor came to Bristol in May, he refused to confirm whether electrification of the Great Western line into the city centre would go ahead. Will the Transport Secretary confirm whether it has been deferred, as we were told last year, or has it really been ditched?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Maynard and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

I am not familiar with the exact details for that station, but I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady to discover what is occurring there.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

8. What progress is being made on ensuring that trains and stations are fully accessible to disabled people.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)]

We are committed to improving accessibility on the rail network. Roughly 70% of train fleets operating passenger services currently meet modern accessibility standards, with work on the remaining vehicles due to be completed by 2020.

[Kerry McCarthy]

A moment ago, I was engrossed in the answer to the question asked by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), as that issue also affects my constituency. I very much hope that we make progress on the Lawrence Hill and Stapleton Road stations.

On accessibility on trains, the Minister will be aware of the recent case of the Team GB Paralympian, Anne Wafula Strike. It was very brave of her to come forward and speak about what must have been a humiliating experience when no disabled-access toilet was available on the train. What is the Minister doing to ensure that situations like that do not occur and that disabled people are treated with respect?

[Paul Maynard]

I am glad that the hon. Lady brings up that case. I am sure she shared the same sentiments that I am sure every Member felt on reading that story: it was simply unacceptable. We have made it clear to CrossCountry, through officials, that it was not good enough, and I will reiterate that when I next speak to the company. More importantly, I want to ensure that we meet our target of every rail carriage, including the toilets, being fully accessible by 2020. In situations in which the accessible toilet is out of order, for whatever reason, either that carriage must be taken out of service or, if that would have unacceptable service consequences, any individual on the train who might need the accessible toilet must be made aware of the situation before boarding and thereby have the chance to make alternative arrangements.

Food Waste

Debate between Paul Maynard and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 11th June 2015 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope; I am glad to be back in this place and contributing again. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) on securing the debate, on her long and distinguished campaigning on the issue and on her achievements so far. I am delighted that she is back to continue with it for the next five years.

I do not want to detain colleagues for too long—famous last words, but I will try not to. We often debate food poverty in this place, but too often do not consider how food waste interacts with that. There are numerous aspects to consider. I welcome much of what the Government are doing; the WRAP programme really makes a difference. It is worth reminding the Minister of what Lord de Mauley said in the other place about the importance of funding WRAP: that market failure in the private sector in the matter of reducing food waste justified continued Government funding for WRAP. I hope that the Minister will bear that in mind as we approach the spending review.

Much of the debate on food waste focuses on what happens when food reaches the consumer, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) pointed out, there also is much that the packaging industry can do to reduce food waste. The hon. Member for Bristol East spoke about meals left uneaten in the fridge; I have a difficult bag of cheese in my fridge at the moment, which is at risk of going off. I need to clear it out by next Monday when I get back to London. However, there are more innovative ways than that to address food waste, and I want to highlight one that has potential.

Once upon a time, I was at the cutting edge in talking about the community shop idea. Sadly, my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) has stolen my thunder by visiting the most recent opening in South Norwood earlier this month. With his Mayor of London hat on, he has given £300,000 to try to spread the development of community shops across London. It was the second one to open, after a trial example in Goldthorpe in South Yorkshire. The concept is an offshoot of Company Shop.

High quality, wholesome food from leading supermarkets is sold at a substantial discount in the community shop. In addition, customers are offered what one might call a personal development course: literacy, numeracy and ensuring that people are job-ready. There are strict qualifying criteria for membership. The people in question need to live in an area of recognised deprivation according to the Government’s deprivation figures. They need to be on particular qualifying benefits. In return they are given a six-month membership card and access to the courses. I think that the idea is superb. In the Goldthorpe trial, 20% of those who had access to the community shop during its period of operation found paid work at the end of the personal development course. That is a good outcome as a first step.

It should be noted that the food in the shop is edible, within date and wholesome. It is such food as we would see on supermarket shelves anywhere in the country. It might have packaging that is the wrong colour, or even the wrong shade. The product might be seasonal, or there might have been a forecasting problem on the part of the supermarket. There are many reasons why food can end up in the community shop at a substantially reduced price. The shops tackle one of the problems that the food bank movement faces—certainly in my constituency—of trying to source fresh fruit and vegetables from suppliers. That is an obstacle: the movement wants to provide a wholesome package of emergency food aid, but often can rely only on what is not perishable. I struggled on behalf of the food bank to secure good fruit and veg supplies. The community shop may be a way around that.

It is worth mulling over the arguments about what we do with misshapen fruit and vegetables. In the past I got myself into hot political water by advocating that funny-shaped fruit should be sold or be made available through food banks. It was a “Marie Antoinette: let them eat U-shaped cucumbers” moment. I am pleased that Jamie Oliver is now trumpeting the cause, because if he can do it then I can lower my head behind the parapet, and not attract such opprobrium as I did.

It is also worth noting the extent to which community shops and supermarkets are reliant on the charities mentioned by the hon. Member for Bristol East, such as FareShare and Foodshare. I, too, have seen figures about France. I seriously examined her Bill and was interested to note the figure of 1.7% of food being wasted at the retail stage here, compared with 11% in France. I noted also that in France the amount donated to charities is 20 times what we donate in the UK. I was trying to square those figures, and cannot quite get my head around them. My only hypothesis at this stage is that we have achieved, by voluntary co-operation and a degree of encouragement from the hon. Lady for the possibility of legislative change, something that the French have not been able to do without passing what is, I think, known as the “loi Macron”, which I think is proving popular.

[Kerry McCarthy]

To an extent, I share the hon. Gentleman’s confusion. There could be an issue, I think, to do with how we record the back-of-store food waste, but I think the figures suggest that the UK is more efficient further down the supply chain, in terms of ordering, so that it does not create as much waste, and that France is not as efficient at that, but is more efficient at passing food on for donation. However, I also suspect that it is a question of data not being recorded very accurately.

[Paul Maynard]

That is a helpful intervention. The matter remains worth further investigation. The reference to the French model is important. The Epicerie Solidaire network is massive in France; there is a network of some 500 of those social supermarkets. However, perhaps the best place to go to learn about the issue is Austria. In Vienna, Sozialmärkt are numerous. There are far more, per capita, even than in France. That seems to stem from strong work by local Catholic charities in Vienna.

Food poverty really speaks to the Catholic social action movement in ways that I heartily approve of, and there is a lot that we can learn from the work of groups such as the Vinzenz Foundation in Vienna, which works to allow access to social supermarkets not just by those on benefits, but also by those who are below Austria’s minimum income guarantee or the citizens’ income level. The opportunity is much broader.

All that might be of help in tackling one of the Goldthorpe findings, which was that it was necessary to have a screen across the front of the community shop, because of the stigma that was attached—just as there is with food banks, unfortunately, although there should not be. Like the hon. Lady, I do not want food banks to have to exist, but sadly I recognise that they do. I do not want any stigma to be attached to the idea of people seeking help in their community. Yet in Vienna, and perhaps in France, the wider remit of the social supermarket removed the element of stigma that might have deterred some people from seeking what can be life-transforming help.

The hon. Lady spoke quite a lot about the obligations that should be imposed on supermarkets with respect to the disposal of surplus food that is not sold. They talk a lot about corporate social responsibility and I am sure that she has heard that more than I have, but I have one example from an area of my constituency called Grange Park. It is a large council estate on the periphery of Blackpool. One might call that area a food desert: it is very remote from the basic supermarkets. It does have one branch of One Stop, which is referred to locally as Harrods because of the price of its food, which is far beyond what one would expect to spend if one went 2 or 3 miles down the road to one of the larger supermarkets.

One Stop is owned by the same chain as Tesco—it has the same parent company—and it has always struck me as a strange application of corporate social responsibility that in its smaller outlets, in the more deprived parts of Britain, it artificially increases its prices. Okay, there may be higher overheads because the shops are smaller. None the less, the prices are higher and people are paying that poverty premium that they should not have to pay. That also speaks to the food waste issue. Because the cost of the food is higher, it is more likely to go unsold, and it is those smaller outlets that might find it most challenging to ensure that their unsold food goes back into the system and is in some way reused. I therefore say to the supermarkets, if they are paying attention to this debate, that if they are truly committed to corporate social responsibility, why not ensure that they charge in their smaller outlets what they charge in their larger outlets, particularly in areas of deprivation?

I have gone on long enough, so I shall conclude by suggesting that the community shop idea need not be the sole preserve of one body, one organisation, but should be seen as part of an escalator between reliance on food banks for emergency food aid when the unexpected strikes and the full independence, autonomy and resilience of the average consumer in society. What I am talking about is an important step out of poverty for many people. I would like far more of those shops to spread out across the country, because they are a very good idea.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Debate between Paul Maynard and Kerry McCarthy

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

Sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. I assumed that they had all been grouped together.

Let me make a general point that links back to amendment 3 and the need to retain the grant. This is not just a matter of putting the £190 into people’s pockets so that they can spend it either on improving their diet during pregnancy or on items that they might need when the child is born. We need to bring people in so that they access professional health advice at the 25th week of pregnancy or, as we have debated, earlier in pregnancy. That is really important and there is nothing to replace it. The Government seem to have no suggestion on how to bring people in through the door and ensure that we increase the number of women who access such advice if the health in pregnancy grant is not used as a trigger mechanism. If the Government will not accept amendment 3 or any of the other amendments that call for more time and a review of how the grant works, will the Minister at least tell us how we can ensure that more women access professional advice on their health and the health of their unborn child during pregnancy? The grant was designed to tackle a serious issue and it is being abolished in its early stages. It is a shame to abandon the project at this stage.

[Paul Maynard]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak about the health in pregnancy grant, which of the three items covered by the Bill caused the most consternation in Committee and on the Opposition Benches. It certainly appeared to cause confusion in the Opposition’s arguments.

I have noted even today that there has been a slow, gradual erosion in the totalitarian position taken early on by the Opposition that the health in pregnancy grant was the most wonderful thing imaginable and could not possibly be trampled on. There has been a gradual slip back and quite a few Opposition Members have claimed that the grant was somehow misnamed and that, had they only called it something different, it would have all been all right. I must take them back to what the previous Prime Minister said when the grant was introduced. He said that he had received “powerful representations” about the

“importance of a healthy diet in the final weeks of pregnancy”.

He was very specific. He said the “final weeks of pregnancy”—not early in pregnancy, halfway through, in the 12th week, in the first week, or in the 25th week. The grant was well named, because it did precisely what the previous Prime Minister intended it to do.

The debate is not about the benefits of maternal nutrition, either. Everybody in the House agrees about the importance of proper maternal nutrition, but, clearly, we are divided on how that is best achieved. The Government do not believe that the health in pregnancy grant is the way to do it.

The debate is certainly not about timing. We have a range of alternatives: the Healthy Start vouchers, the maternity grant, and the Sure Start facilities. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) focused in particular on access to health care advice. I entirely agree with her about that, but she cannot avoid the fact that the Healthy Start vouchers are linked to attendance with a midwife.

Furthermore, the idea of the health in pregnancy grant was to provide access to health visitors, but one of the previous Government’s innovations that I wholeheartedly approve and wish to build on is the family nurse partnership schemes that operate in about 50 different councils. They specifically offer the access to advice for the most vulnerable that the hon. Lady was talking about. I simply do not understand her obsession with the health in pregnancy grant as the sole mechanism through which we can access advice. There are already multiple pathways to that advice—pathways that are more successful. I even think that there is a family nurse partnership in Bristol. Such schemes target the most vulnerable in society from the moment of conception until well past birth. This is far more expensive, I accept, but that is because it is a targeted intervention.

I do not accept the hon. Lady’s argument that we need to retain the health in pregnancy grant because it gives access to health advice. It is not the sole pathway for that.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the family intervention project, and he is right that it does some valuable work—including some valuable work in Bristol. Does he have any idea how many families receive that advice and how many have been brought within the scheme compared with how many people would have received advice through the health in pregnancy grant?

[Paul Maynard]

It is actually called the family nurse partnership, but I assume that we are talking about the same thing. I know that in Blackpool it has worked with about 200 families in the past year. The numbers are clearly far fewer than those who could access the health in pregnancy grant, but once again the hon. Lady is returning to the debate that we have had over and over again about the universal versus the targeted.