Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I agree entirely with a number of the points the hon. Gentleman has made. This was an utterly despicable act and an attack on the whole community, and should be seen as such. The Chief Constable has made those points about people feeling confident in coming forward. There is an ongoing investigation—it is very live—and we are looking through our approach to confronting paramilitarism to see that people have confidence to come forward to give evidence. That is clearly work that needs to continue.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

10. What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the current security situation in Northern Ireland?

Record Copies of Acts

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gray]

The hon. Lady will have a chance to make her points later. I am interested that she is apparently opposed to the motion.

The difference in cost will be pretty marginal, so let us move on to the substance of the matter. If we were to change to paper, I would be very surprised if the cost was as low as the House of Lords has indicated. The county of Hereford has announced this week that it has just opened a new archive centre at a cost of £11.5 million. Paper, of course, requires all sorts of special care over the years, whereas vellum, as can be demonstrated by a glance at the records in the Victoria Tower, survives for generations—hundreds of years—without any care whatsoever. It can be put in a cupboard and it will be as good as when it went in.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

When I last had a proper job, I worked in local history publishing. We published John Morris’s translation of the Domesday Book and relied heavily on other archives, such as materials in the parish chest, that were written on vellum. I will not ask my hon. Friend to comment on whether I would be much the poorer had those things been written not on vellum but on paper, and it had disintegrated, but does he agree that we would be much poorer as a nation in our understanding of our history had such things been written on paper?

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Were I a nimble enough speaker, I would leap from the place where I am in my speech to the point to which she refers. However, I will talk in a moment about the things we have today because they were made of vellum but which we would not have if they had been made of paper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

It is important that we acknowledge Brian White. Indeed, I will go on to say something about the industry in his constituency that he protected.

It is perhaps because I have a truly magnificent cathedral in my constituency that is over 1,000 years old that I feel strongly that tradition is important and that we should continue to record Acts of Parliament on vellum. The existence of so many beautiful old buildings in Durham has reinforced my belief that we should treasure our heritage and look after it for future generations, something which this country has unfortunately not always been good at. For example, beautiful Victorian terraces have been ripped down, apparently in the name of progress, for new blocks of flats that are demolished just years later because of poor construction and, most critically of all, their not being fit for purpose. We run the risk of doing something similar with vellum.

Our lack of respect for heritage is equally apparent in other areas. For example, we have lost many of our folk songs, dances, music, poetry and other aspects of our culture, because we have not kept them alive by using them. Were it not for champions of their causes, we would have lost many others altogether. We can be a champion for vellum today.

[Rebecca Harris]

Both Houses of Parliament will soon enjoy the ceremony and tradition of the Queen’s Speech. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would not be a favourable idea to save money by getting the Queen to make a webcast from her sitting room?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Lady makes her point extremely well.

When it is proposed that vellum must be discontinued because there is a cheaper alternative, I start from a perspective of great scepticism. Why should we change the practice when it has served us so well for centuries? The issue is close to my heart because of the Lindisfarne Gospels. Everyone here will know their relevance to the north-east and to my Durham constituency. Produced in around 700, the gospels were written and painted on vellum, without which the gospels simply would not be with us today. Not just old relics, they are important living texts for our understanding of the culture and heritage of the north-east and elsewhere. When last on display in Durham a few years ago, over 100,000 people viewed them in just three months, most of them paying to do so.

Vellum is needed in the restoration of our ancient texts and for the recording of a range of important documents not only in the UK, but abroad. I hope that this House and the other place will take steps to protect the industry that supports that restoration, not put its future viability at risk by discontinuing the use of vellum. I pay tribute to the former Member of Parliament for North East Milton Keynes and the current Members of Parliament for Milton Keynes for trying to support and keep the industry alive.

I rarely agree with the Minister for the Cabinet Office, but I did when he told The Daily Telegraph:

“Recording our laws on vellum is a millennium long tradition, and surprisingly cost effective. While the world around us constantly changes, we should safeguard some of our great traditions and not let the use of vellum die out.”

I strongly agree with him on that and I hope that in this House today we can send a strong message to their lordships that they should think again about this decision.

I am not against modernisation—indeed, I think the House of Lords could do with some of it—but we need to get the balance right. Things do have to change, but we also need to preserve what is important about our past. Acts of Parliament fall into that category, and we should continue to use vellum. I hope that we all vote in support of that today.

Youth Employment

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing this debate. She has shown herself to be extremely interested in this issue, both in her constituency and in her work in Parliament. Indeed, she recently became vice-chair of the all-party group on youth unemployment, which I chair.

The hon. Lady emphasised, in her opening remarks, that this debate is titled “Youth Employment”, not “Youth Unemployment”. I share that willingness to be positive and mine will be largely a positive speech, but when I established the all-party group, it was not without thought that I chose to call it the all-party group on youth unemployment, because this is still a huge problem in our country and we need to look at issues around unemployment as well. It is not just a matter of creating jobs, although that is, of course, the most important part. There are significant issues about why our young people are not in work or, indeed, not in education or training. That deserves to be considered—without wanting to be negative, as I said.

As the hon. Lady said, this debate comes before the publication tomorrow by the Office for National Statistics of the monthly unemployment figures. I am sure I speak for everyone in this room in wanting those figures to improve further, particularly for our young people. Although unemployment is coming down generally and for our young people, my reading of the figures is that it is decreasing three times slower for young people compared with the population as a whole.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady welcome the large drop in the claimant count of 18 to 24-year-olds in her constituency?

[Pamela Nash]

Of course I do. Government Members have been constantly making that point to Opposition Members as if we do not welcome that. Of course I welcome any drop in unemployment figures—I am doing what I can in my constituency to make that happen—but I do not want to see any complacency, because we still have a huge number of unemployed people in this country. The figures are coming down, but, particularly for young people, not nearly quickly enough.

Public Sector Funding

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I, too, am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. The issue affects a range of communities, including in my own constituency.

We all appreciate that these are difficult economic times and that it is tough to find savings, but the first message that we should be sending out from the debate, and one that I support my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in articulating, is that local authorities should consider every other available saving before reducing support to our voluntary services. We should be squeezing budgets, sharing services, cutting back-office institutions, generating efficiencies and trying to get maximum value for money in procurement before we even begin to consider reducing funding for voluntary organisations. Warwickshire county council, for example, has cut its youth service budget, yet it has so far made only a 2% reduction in staffing. That is not how it should be. Every local authority should view reducing spending on voluntary organisations as a last resort.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

In my experience, quite a lot of councils have risen to the challenge from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. My local borough council in Castle Point has gone so far as to cut members’ allowances this year to secure the funding for Crossroads, the Association of Voluntary Services and the citizens advice bureau, because it recognises their importance to the local community. Many councils are doing a very good job in that regard.

[Chris White]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is clear that her council is a very good example of best practice.

Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) for producing this excellent Bill and allowing the issues it deals with to be discussed. I am delighted to see so many Members here on a Friday to support the measure. I hope in two weeks’ time to see as many Members supporting my own private Member’s Bill on daylight saving, although I have to confess that there are one or two familiar Friday faces who I hope will stay at home on that occasion.

The Bill has the potential to do a lot of good for communities across the country by strengthening the social fabric. In my constituency there are many public, community and social enterprises that could benefit enormously from the measure, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office knows, having visited Castle Point and met the local Association of Voluntary Services. Implementation of the proposals in the Bill is very necessary in these difficult economic times—it cannot happen soon enough, one might say. I do not share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that the Bill contains measures that are necessarily anti-competitive or anti-business. In fact, it is quite the reverse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington said, the Bill will not discriminate against private businesses in bidding—indeed, it will help the more socially conscious firms.

I have an excellent example in my constituency: Thames Ambulance Service. A substantial local employer, it already delivers significant contracts with the NHS, providing ambulance services and training to Government Departments on health and patient care. It is also a company with a strong social conscience: it does a lot of work in the community on road safety training for young people, particularly motorcyclists, and in schools on first aid; it also takes on young people who are finding it difficult to get into employment or training. The Bill offers the opportunity to encourage those sorts of firms, which we want to see a lot more of in these difficult times.

At the same time, the Bill will help us to ensure that we get maximum value for money in the public sector. Its provisions do not run against the grain of the search for value for money; rather, they strengthen the principle. If we take a more holistic view of commissioning and aim to promote social as well as economic good, we can help to drive down demands on our public services, squeeze every possible benefit from public spending and improve standards in our public services. That can be seen in my local firm, Thames Ambulance Service, which offers an excellent service to the public but at a lower cost than is currently offered in the NHS. I believe that in some parts of the country that is already part of the commissioning process. However, with the very great strains on public finances, we now need to spread it across all our public services as quickly as possible, so that that best practice starts to become the norm. To get more intelligent commissioning, the wider social and environmental effects and people’s well-being must be at the heart of the process and integrated into the structure at a very early stage. That is why the Bill is so welcome.

I am confident that these proposals are practical and have the potential to do a great deal of good, and I am very pleased to support them. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington will also be in the Chamber on 3 December.