Outcome of the EU Referendum

Paula Sherriff Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Doubly splendid.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

Like many others across the House, I have been saddened and deeply distressed to hear of some terrible racist and xenophobic incidents recently. In fact, during the course of this debate, I have been sent a message to say that a young lady in my constituency has been told to go “home”. This is her home, and she is very welcome here. Will the Prime Minister agree to convene an urgent meeting of a cross-party commission to look into race hate crimes and how we can eradicate this cancer from our society?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady’s point is absolutely right, and as for the organisation that she mentions, I shall look into it.

European Council

Paula Sherriff Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for what he said. It does require collective action, because the scale of the challenge is so great that it needs the Greek border to be harder and more efficiently run, which requires assistance from other countries. In my view, it also requires the presence of military assets, including NATO assets in the eastern Mediterranean and other assets in the central Mediterranean, to help the civilian authorities with the work they do. Where Britain can bring a lot of experience and heft to this is as Europe’s leading military power and as a great expert in how to deal with asylum applications and processes and all the complicated legalities. We are well placed to help on every front.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

I would like to thank the Prime Minister for what he said about the so-called tampon tax. This is a great victory for all who have campaigned on this issue, and I am sure that the whole House will congratulate Laura Coryton, whose petition did so much to raise awareness. Will the Prime Minister confirm that he will accept our cross-party amendment tomorrow to provide for a zero rate of VAT in this year’s Finance Bill, and that the Bill will pass through this House before the referendum in June? Will he pledge that this vital funding for women’s services that was provided from the receipts of this VAT will continue? I hope that today is the day on which we can consign the vagina-added tax to history.

[The Prime Minister]

May I once again pay tribute to the hon. Lady, not least for that new epithet? I think that that one will live on in Hansard for many years to come. I should also like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) for the work that she has done. We will be accepting the amendment, and I am sure that the timing will be discussed further. For my part, all I can say is that getting over the language barriers to explain the arguments on sanitary products in a 28-person European Council is something that will stay with me for a while.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paula Sherriff Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

May I put right an inadvertent omission from a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday? I omitted to welcome the hon. Lady to her new position and I would like to do that now. She is absolutely right to say that the Electoral Commission made that recommendation. However, it is not impossible to disagree with its reasoning. Indeed, others including the Association of Electoral Administrators—the people who actually run the elections in our democracy—believe that this is the right thing to do.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

2. What steps his Department has taken to improve transparency in government.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Matthew Hancock)]

Over the past five years, we have opened up 20,000 Government data sets to the public and made expenditure data covering more than £188 billion of Government spending available for scrutiny. Through our leading role in the international Open Government Partnership, we will continue to be one of the most open and transparent Governments in the world.

[Paula Sherriff]

The Minister has admitted to me in a written answer that his so-called freedom of information commission is not itself subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Now he has reported that it will not commit to publishing evidence or minutes and that it may meet in private, ban journalists from naming its press spokesperson and even refuse to consider enforcing the Act on privatised services. Is it not time to end this farce and start again?

[Matthew Hancock]

No, the commission that is looking into how the Act has operated over the past 10 years is, rightly, independent, so it deals with the question of how it operates. Private organisations have not been subject to the Act, because it is about government information, so it is entirely appropriate for them to make the decisions.