Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Rob Marris and Lord Mann

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[John Mann]

This is a most excellent new clause, which I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East and I will be able to use against those who may be doing illegal money lending in sports in the Leeds area. It prompts an interesting question, because the powers on claims handlers—the other side of consumer protection—are not vested in the Treasury. We would not expect them to be. They are vested in the Ministry of Justice, but here we see a power grab by the Treasury. We have the Chancellor versus the Justice Secretary, with the two battling for power. I appreciate that that may cause some concern and divided loyalty. It is essential, in supporting this new clause, that I give my wholehearted support to the Chancellor in his power grab. The Treasury, not the Ministry of Justice, is the best place for powers such as this to be vested in.

Should the Bill become law, I hope that the Minister will go back to the Treasury team and look at other powers that have been grabbed by the Ministry of Justice under previous Governments and used appallingly badly in protecting the people, from my experience—the coalminers’ compensation claim scandal being the prime, but certainly not the only, example. Let us have the Treasury take on those who fleece our constituents out of money, with the full might of the Chancellor, strongly supported by his party’s Back Benches—he is even more strongly supported on some matters these days by the Labour Benches. On this occasion, he has my entire endorsement in his battle against the Justice Secretary.

[Rob Marris]

What a pleasure it is to follow my hon. Friend. It is an historic moment when he is fully backing the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

My hon. Friend talks about power grabs, but I must say that I do not think it is just the Ministry of Justice involved in this area; it is the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as well, with which this overlaps. The fact that this is a cross-cutting area is perhaps another reason why it would be logical for the Treasury to have these powers.

Labour Members welcome the stability of funding. I am grateful to John Ludlow, who works in the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), for giving me some background information, of which I was not fully aware, on the lack of stable funding for the inelegantly named illegal money lending teams. There is one such team based just down the road from me in Birmingham. They work in England and Wales and have a relationship with trading standards, as has been mentioned—hence my reference to the DCLG. I understand that since 2004, when the teams were established, more than 26,000 victims of illegal money lending have been helped, with £62 million of illegal debt written off and 300 loan sharks prosecuted.

I say indirectly to the Ministry of Justice and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that some of this stuff is rather simpler than is made out, in terms of the relationship with trading standards. Under section 21 of the Theft Act 1968, blackmail is a common-law criminal offence when someone makes “unwarranted demand” for money “with menaces”. The Minister quite properly referred to illegal moneylenders as loan sharks; that is the vernacular, which we all understand. As a description, “loan shark” highlights rather better what almost always goes on: behind illegal money lending is a pattern of people saying, “If you don’t pay up, you’ll suffer a physical injury.” Those are the menaces.

The 1968 Act is an elegantly worded piece of legislation. Section 16 of that Act, which is sadly now gone, is on obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception. Section 1 of the Act, which still obtains, has a wonderful definition of theft. It was a great piece of legislation in terms of its wording. New clause 1 is not quite so elegant. It refers in proposed new section 333T(1) to

“the amount of the Treasury’s illegal money lending costs.”

That is a bit inelegant, because what it means is the amount of the Treasury’s anti-illegal money lending costs. The Treasury has costs associated with illegal money lending, but I hope it does not have any illegal money lending costs. The new clause is inelegantly worded but, to be fair, we know what it means and we have had a helpful explanation from the Minister.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Rob Marris and Lord Mann

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), my co-chair of the all-party mountaineering group in the previous Parliament. Every member of the group, in all parts of the House, was re-elected. We heard a stunning speech by the new hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), who beat a Liberal, so he will be particularly welcome to come and join the group. In the past we have had good contacts with the Mountaineering Council of Scotland in his constituency, which would be a fine place for us to consider visiting at some stage for our non-parliamentary pastimes. I congratulate his colleagues, who have bothered to turn up here. I am always a little astonished when people seem to spend half their lives fighting selection battles to become parliamentary candidates and fighting elections, and then, when they get here, do not turn up.

That lot over there on the Government Benches have won and there are hardly any of them here. Having seen what their legislative programme actually is, that does not surprise me. The main part of this dismal programme is a Bill that says what we are not going to do. Is that how good it gets when you have been out of power for 23 years and then get back in? I know that the Front Benchers present at the moment are hugely embarrassed. I hope that a few Government Members with a bit of ingenuity will come up with some ideas, and if they are good ones we will be able to back them on a cross-party basis.

But what about my own party? We have just been knackered in an election. We have got some new MPs, and our Whips cannot be bothered to get them in on the first day to listen to the debate. I will tell you what—

[Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

I’m here.

[John Mann]

You’re a retread. There are a few here and great credit to them and others who have been in, but our Whips need to learn a lesson. This lot beat us in Scotland. One of the reasons they beat us, in my view, is that they were better organised. They thought through how to win elections, and they are thinking through how to get in and use this place. If we are going to do anything as an Opposition, we are going to have to get off our knees and start fighting, and that means having Labour Members—I hope some are watching on the telly at the moment—in here arguing the case, asking questions and challenging these useless Tories and their invisible programme of nothingness. I do not know why SNP Members are wearing the Yorkshire rose. It is like the Geoffrey Boycott fan club, all on the way to the test match at Headingley to support England who are taking on New Zealand on Friday. I will be happy to welcome them there.

What should be in the programme? Two things should be there. Everyone seems to be saying—London is joining in now—it is all ours: we want this, we want that. Hon. Members should hope that Bassetlaw does not do that, because we have the coal power stations, and if we tax coal for the coal power stations, everyone would be paying a lot of money because we keep this country heated. But we are generous. We see this as a socialist country. Therefore, we are happy to share the energy that pollutes our lungs as we are making it. We are not asking for extra things.

I tell you what we do want though: we want to see power localised. The stupidest thing that the Tory party has not done—it would have been hugely popular among their voters, our voters, the SNP’s voters, everyone’s voters—would have been to say, with planning powers on housing, wind farms and fracking, “We’re going to give the power back to local communities. We’re not going to have the man from the Ministry, the Department for Communities and Local Government, overruling local communities on what they want.”

When people talk about housing—every party seems to want to have hundreds of thousands of houses—let me say that my constituency dun’t need any more new houses. We have got new housing plans in every field going. Everyone wants to put them there because we have got the land, but we have not got the people to go in the houses. The houses should be in the cities, such as in London, where there is a shortage; not more in my area. We will have a few—we have got plenty planned—but we do not need more and more. London needs them, Birmingham needs them, loads of cities need them. That is what localism should be about, and the Tories have abandoned localism for some reason—more fool the Tory party. We need to get our act together on that.

Localism ain’t just about saying, “Here you are, let’s give the NHS to a bunch of councillors. We were bad as MPs running it. Let councillors run it.” I would not put my councillors in charge of the national health service, any more than I want politicians in charge. The Government have got some more meddling stuff with schools and the NHS. Well, get your hands off it! That’s what I’m trying to say. Get your mitts off the health service and education.

We want a vision in the Labour party. I have got a good vision. How about we let those in education run education, and we let those in the health service run the health service, so that local communities have a proper say? I do not want this Government trying to shut my ambulance stations like they did last time, or trying to shut my accident and emergency, and trying to shut my maternity department. I did not want it, my community did not want it, and we fought back. We stopped it, and the cuts went somewhere else, because somewhere else did not do the job and fight it hard enough. In Tory Newark, they do not have a hospital any more. In Tory Grantham, it is 80 miles to the nearest maternity unit. That is what happens if you do not have localism—it is not a good idea.

There is one other issue that new Members need to be aware of, because it is going to haunt this Parliament. Yesterday on Sky television, Esther outlined it bravely. I have been in touch with her today. She has gone to the police with the name of an MP who she and others allege abused her as a child, but I am expecting other people with other names to come forward from other parts of the country in the near future. Others have already gone to the police. The scandal of historical child abuse in this country will be one of the defining issues of the next five years. It is going to corrode everything during this Parliament because it is so huge and involves so many people. Just in my area, I have had people come to me. One man was kept as a slave, forced to work in a foundry, aged 11 to 16, and that is nice compared to what happened to the rest of his family. I have 26 victims of child abuse just in my constituency who have been to see me—and who am I for them to come to? That is how big this scandal across the country is.

The last Government were right to set up the Goddard inquiry. I have tabled an early-day motion—for those who do not know, an early-day motion is usually a bit of nonsense we sign so we can send letters to people telling them how good we are—calling on the Government to lift the restrictions of the Official Secrets Act, because a lot of people, including former members of special branch, want to speak out to answer the basic question I pose to anyone who wants to know: why was Cyril Smith allowed to get away with prolific child abuse for so many years? But it was not just Smith. There were far more, and what was revealed in Staffordshire yesterday was just one other aspect.

My constituency is no worse than anywhere else in the country. This is nationwide and touches every aspect of society. The number of people, on top of the 26, who have been to see me who do not want the police involved, never want to go public and never actually want to say anything is phenomenal. That is how they have dealt with that childhood trauma—and it is their right to do so. A man flew back from Canada, having not visited my constituency in 30 years because of what happened to him, to spend 20 minutes in the library of my surgery, just to tell me about it, knowing nothing could be done, before flying back again. That is the impact of historical child abuse, and this Parliament is going to have to deal with it.