Charging for Access to Parliament

Debate between Robert Halfon and Kevin Brennan

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend, as always, makes a very good point. I will talk about those issues later.

The history books tell us that the bells of the Great Clock of Westminster rang across London for the first time on 31 May 1859, and Parliament had a special sitting to decide on a suitable name for the great hour bell. Many suggestions were made during the course of the debate. It is alleged that the Chief Lord of the Woods and Forests, Sir Benjamin Hall—a large and ponderous man known affectionately in the House as Big Ben—rose and gave an impressively long speech on the subject. A wag in the Chamber shouted out, “Why not call him Big Ben and have done with it?” The House erupted in laughter, and Big Ben had been named. There are many other stories about why Big Ben is called Big Ben, but I use that as an illustration of its importance: when the bell was brought to Parliament, there was a parliamentary debate to show how central it is to our parliamentary democracy.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

If I may disagree gently with the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), this place is not a museum but a democratic institution and Members should be able to arrange for their constituents to visit every part of it free of charge. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on the debate. He is right that this could set a precedent. If we start hiring this place out to corporate bodies, massive banks and so on, there is a danger that we will lose the essence of this democratic House.

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head. In my conclusion, I will repeat some of the things that he said. He points to a very great danger as regards what our Parliament may become.

Procedure Committee Reports

Debate between Robert Halfon and Kevin Brennan

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

I stand corrected, Mr Deputy Speaker. As ever, what you said was very wise indeed.

Returning to the point about the hon. Member for Cambridge, my point of order related to his use of Twitter in the Chamber during a debate when he was disputing something that was being said from the Dispatch Box by another Member. I think that some very reasonable concerns have been raised by opponents of the motion on how it could impact on the quality of debate. I have always thought that if one has a point of dispute or question about what is being said by someone who has the Floor of the House or other Chamber, one should attempt to intervene before one starts putting out messages disputing what they are saying on Twitter. I think that is the kind of courtesy and common sense that the Chairman and his Committee are calling for in their recommendations.

Yesterday, I met a delegation from the central committee school of the Communist party of China, who were very interested in what I had to say about communications and Twitter and the way that MPs use them. If I tell the House that the delegation was somewhat sceptical about my advocating the use of Twitter, hon. Members might understand that I think it is a force for good, for democracy, for free speech and for communication with our constituents, and not a source for bad. I understand the concerns held by many hon. Members on the Government side but I think they might find themselves embracing this means of communication in the near future as a good way of getting their messages about politics and their views out there and of engaging in interactive discussion with their constituents and others.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said. Does he agree that social media such as Twitter and Facebook give MPs the chance to broadcast to their constituents without relying on broadcasters?

[Kevin Brennan]

I do. Further than that, it can also lead to opportunities to broadcast through the more conventional media. For example, as some hon. Members will know, yesterday in Welsh questions I asked the Welsh Secretary to ask the Prime Minister, when he was sitting next to her, to make sure that the Welsh flag was flying over No. 10 Downing street this weekend, just as the flag of St George flew last year during the World cup, to acknowledge the achievements of the Welsh rugby team. After Prime Minister’s questions I was invited on to a phone-in on Radio Wales on which there was a very lively discussion about this proposition. By five o’clock in the evening the Prime Minister had quite rightly agreed that the flag could be flying, and I give him credit for that. So, very quickly, Twitter, conventional media and the use of this Chamber altogether were involved in getting a result for constituents. I think that is a good example of how this technology can be beneficial.

Building a High-Skilled Economy

Debate between Robert Halfon and Kevin Brennan

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

May I start by apologising to the House for the fact that I will not be able to be present for the wind-ups? I have already informed the Minister and you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I genuinely welcome the Minister to his post as skills Minister on his first outing since the formation of the new Government. Given his flowery rhetoric, it was kind of him to provide a visual aid in his lapel, which we all appreciated. He was somewhat ungenerous in his opening remarks, but that was slightly uncharacteristic. I know that he is a lover of poetry, and I hope that the speech that we have just heard will not be typical of his ministerial speeches, given that it contained no poetry. I am also a lover of poetry, so perhaps I may cite a line from Yeats:

“Those that I fight I do not hate”.

That is certainly true of the hon. Gentleman, but as he might know the rest of the poem, I should emphasise that I do love my own side.

When we were in government, we said that the manufacturing of items constructed out of composite materials probably represented part of the future for Britain, but few of us anticipated that it would be possible to meld the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to manufacture a composite Government. We can only begin to speculate about how quickly the already visible fissures in that composite construction will form into cracks, and then progressively and inevitably lead to critical failure.

The Minister is extremely fortunate to inherit his portfolio, because he has the opportunity to build on the Labour Government’s tremendous record of achieving so much when we were in power, provided that his Department does not continue to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s whipping boy in the frenzied search for cuts far beyond those necessary to bring down the deficit at a sustainable rate.

Let me briefly outline why the Minister is fortunate to inherit our record on skills. The performance of further education colleges and other providers has improved dramatically over the past decade. The satisfaction rates of employers and learners have risen. Since 2001, about 3 million adults have improved their basic skills and achieved a national qualification. Since 1997, more than 2 million people have started apprenticeships, which represents a massive increase in apprenticeship starts since the Conservative party was previously in power. Completion rates for apprenticeships have also more than doubled.

Despite the Minister’s trashing of the Train to Gain programme—although I note that he has not completely axed it—employers and workers report strong satisfaction with the scheme. More than 1 million people have been able to start learning programmes at work that lead to a qualification. That has reduced staff turnover, improved productivity and engaged more than 140,000 employers in training. Earlier this year, I was proud to be able to meet Chris Scott, a process operator at William Blythe Ltd, a chemical manufacturer in Accrington, who, by completing his level 2 NVQ—yes, level 2—in business improvement techniques, became the one millionth learner from the Train to Gain programme to gain a qualification. I should also mention the record number of students in higher education, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) will say more about that later.

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the importance of Train to Gain, so why did the previous Government cut £1.3 million from the Train to Gain budget for Harlow college?

[Kevin Brennan]

It would be remiss of me if I did not welcome the hon. Gentleman to the House. I also pay tribute to his predecessor—a former skills Minister. I shall talk about the priorities for skills spending later. However, I note that although the current Minister has tried to cut the Train to Gain budget and to trash the programme comprehensively, he has not yet completely abolished it.

I am especially proud of the work that we did in government with the trade unions. Despite Conservative hostility, as even the Minister might admit, we introduced the union learning fund, which is now worth £21.5 million a year. As a result, there are now more than 23,000 union learning reps. They get to the parts of the workplace that other trainers and providers sometimes do not reach, and they helped nearly 250,000 workers into learning last year. Latterly—I give this Minister and the Minister for Universities and Science credit for this—that even won praise from the Minister for Universities and Science for its effectiveness and efficiency. One day, the skills Minister might be able to mention the union learning fund and the trade unions in a speech and get the odd “Hear, hear!” from the Back Benchers behind him, rather than the blank looks that he got when he talked about them today.

The highly successful transformation fund for informal adult learning has also brought about a sea change in people’s perceptions of themselves, and has helped to generate a marked increase in participation, particularly among those in the lower D and E socio-economic groups, and that is a legacy of the previous Government’s of which I am proud.

There was huge investment of over £2 billion in building the colleges of the future, although the hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned the problems with the programme. That programme transformed the places in which people learn. He will have the pleasure, as Minister, of visiting many of those colleges and seeing the transformational impact of the capital investment in our further education colleges that took place under the Labour Government. He may also remind himself that not a single penny was spent on further education capital for colleges in the final year of his party’s last term in office. So there is a substantial platform on which to build, and a clear strategy for the future was set out in the skills White Paper last November.