Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Mark Pawsey

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

We are absolutely focused on supporting NGOs, but above all we are focused on investment in health and education. It is getting the natural capital right, and providing opportunities and hope for the Palestinians, that will lead to security and stability for both sides in the conflict.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Many of the demolitions occur because it is virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits. What legal support can the Department give to those who are contesting the process?

[Rory Stewart]

As I have said, DFID is focusing on health and education, but the Foreign Office has legal support programmes. This issue goes to the heart of the Israeli planning system and involves controversies with the Israeli Attorney General. As my hon. Friend says, it is very difficult to obtain planning permission, which is one of the reasons why settlements are built and demolitions then take place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Mark Pawsey

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

I pay tribute to Scotland for the work it is doing, but I politely point out that recycling rates in Scotland are, unfortunately, lower than they are in England or Wales. However, we very much endorse the desire of the Government of Scotland to improve that recycling rate, particularly in relation to food waste.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Where food waste occurs, it is important to treat it as a resource and put it to good use rather than send it to landfill. One of the best uses for it is in anaerobic digesters to produce electricity. As household food waste is collected by local authorities, what discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to encourage councils to raise the proportion of the food waste that they collect and send to anaerobic digestion?

[Rory Stewart]

There are two elements to that. The first is working with councils in Britain to make sure that they all move towards separate food waste collections. That is absolutely central. The second is making sure that we minimise that food waste, but that when it occurs, it is used either for composting or for the generation of energy. That also involves a long-term plan for infrastructure.

VAT on Air Ambulance Fuel Payments

Debate between Rory Stewart and Mark Pawsey

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey]

I shall support the motion, but I am putting to the House the contrary view, which is about the unique nature of our air ambulance services.

On the basis of the quote I have just read out, we should applaud the sense of public duty displayed by the air ambulance that covers the area I represent.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I warmly applaud the idea that there should be a strong focus on charitable fundraising, but the challenge we in Cumbria face is that the North West Air Ambulance is attempting to fundraise in exactly the same areas as the Great North Air Ambulance. They are both presenting themselves as the sole Cumbrian provider. We therefore have paid fundraisers fighting on the doorsteps, as it were, to get contributions from Cumbria’s very small population of 500,000 people. Does my hon. Friend agree that we will need a more disciplined approach to fundraising if these wonderful institutions are to flourish and survive?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey]

I accept that point of view. There needs to be some control. We do not want one air ambulance to be competing with another for what we all accept are limited funds. That takes us back to my point about co-operation and interoperability. There may be a case for interoperability not only between air ambulances, but between air ambulances and other emergency services.

Those who support the charitable structure are concerned that it is not very many steps from a grant to offset VAT on fuel to the full nationalisation of the service, and the absorption of air ambulances into the ambulance service more generally. There might be some hon. Members in the Chamber for whom that would be a desirable move, but I believe that it would materially change the unique basis on which the service is delivered. It was interesting that it fell to the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) to describe the air ambulance as probably one of the best examples of the big society.

There are other ways besides a VAT exemption in which the air ambulance can effect substantial savings. I argued in the Westminster Hall debate about the need for air ambulances and other emergency services to share assets. Earlier this week, I spoke at a Royal United Services Institute conference on the future operations of blue-light air assets. RUSI has produced research papers drawing attention to the fact that there is no co-ordination of air assets at this stage nationally or across agencies. If we investigate asset sharing we could effect savings that would be significantly in excess of the amount of savings that could be produced by reducing the costs of fuel.

[Rory Stewart]

On that specific point, one challenge we face in Cumbria is that mountain rescue finds it easy to co-ordinate with the police and the RAF, particularly when Sea Kings are involved, but very difficult to co-ordinate with air ambulances. Air ambulances appear to be reluctant to give information to mountain rescue as a standard operating procedure. Interoperability is a challenge, but I would suggest that it is a particular challenge with air ambulances.

[Mark Pawsey]

I certainly accept that point. One of the challenges for us, which is one reason why we have formed the new all-party group, involves trying to make the links that allow such interoperability. There is no point in having unused air ambulance assets dotted around parts of the country when they are badly needed in other areas. The point of an air ambulance is that a helicopter can move quickly between areas and provide such support.

A wide range of figures have been mentioned. The Association of Air Ambulances says that air ambulance charities across the country collectively generate an income of £46 million, with an average spend per helicopter of £843,000 and an average mission cost of £1,229. I accept that all those sums need to be raised through fundraising and that any savings that could be achieved would be welcome, but the cost of VAT on fuel needs to be seen in the context of some of the other significant costs, which put the total amount paid on VAT in perspective.

I fully support the motion’s tribute to our air ambulance services. They are worthy of more praise than they receive and I am glad that we have had the opportunity to pay tribute to them. I hope, however, that I have been able to put the cost of VAT on fuel in perspective and to suggest other, better ways of saving money through more efficient co-ordination of helicopter assets between air ambulance and emergency services. I hope that I have raised the concerns that the granting of a concession such as that asked for in the motion could be the start of a change to the unique method of funding our air ambulance services which involves the enthusiastic and active participation of volunteers up and down our land.

Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Debate between Rory Stewart and Mark Pawsey

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

That was a powerful concluding statement from my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who laid out the complexity of the situation.

The truth is that over the past six decades our policy on market towns and high streets has been an astonishing failure. Government after Government have tried almost everything. They have played around with parking and with rates, and they have changed the planning regulations. The result has been a catastrophic disaster. We have gone from 43,000 butchers in 1950 to 10,000 in 2000. We have gone from 41,000 greengrocers to 10,000. The number of fishmongers is now a fifth of what it used to be and the number of bakers is a quarter of what it used to be.

The question is, what do we do? We first need to be tough and serious in recognising the problem. The problem is not simply that out-of-town retailers are large, muscular bullies. First, their growth reflects the fact that it is more convenient to locate a business out of town. It is, of course, cheaper and easier to set up out of town. A shop can have night time deliveries, the rates are much more transparent and it is easier to develop a retail space that suits the retailer. Secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes said, customers are selecting out-of-town retailers for their shopping. Thirdly, we need to acknowledge that although out-of-town retailers have had a disastrous impact on our high streets and market towns, they have had a very good impact on the products in our shops. When my neighbour first moved to Penrith in 1955 from the United States, the only way in which one could buy olive oil was to go to the chemist and buy it in a bottle of about 25 ml for medicinal purposes.

So what are we going to do? As everybody has said in this debate, we need clearly to define the value of towns and high streets.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in addition to providing a broader range of products, the supermarkets that he refers to have brought the benefit of reducing the cost of living for many people by reducing the price of basic essentials and the general grocery bill?

[Rory Stewart]

I agree absolutely. That is why the argument that we have to make is not an easy one. We have to make it because everybody in this Chamber—indeed, everyone in this country—believes deeply in the value of our high streets and market towns. It is not an easy argument to make because in terms of price, market competition and, fundamentally, choice, it is difficult to continue to defend the high street. In order to do so, we need to reach for more imaginative arguments.

We need to explain, above all, the value of public space. The great thing about any high street or market town is that it offers somewhere that is different from the workplace and the home: a civic space in which one interacts with other people. The point of it is not simply a shopping or retail experience, but those innumerable miniature encounters and exchanges of advice and wisdom that create the warp and weft of a community. That is a huge capital resource that we rely on when we talk about the big society, when we look for voluntary activity or when we fight for our local assets, such as in Penrith where we are fighting to save our cinema. We need that local identity and it is conveyed primarily in our lives through the experience of a town or high street.

Packaging Industry

Debate between Rory Stewart and Mark Pawsey

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the use of recycled materials. We need to be careful about products that come into contact with food. I shall speak later about a recycling project with which I am familiar, but the recycled products are not for food use.

I referred to recent developments in food packaging. The speciality coffee sector is another case; the producers of better-quality coffee are able to distinguish their products by presenting them in board, rather than the less expensive plastic or expanded polystyrene foam. Throughout my time in business, I saw catering disposables and packaging being used as a marketing medium—a device on which to print a name, logo or marketing message to convey the nature of the business. My experience of the catering disposable sector has given me such a knowledge of its products that I often joke with friends that I could speak for more than an hour on the various methods of packing a hamburger, but I shall not inflict that on the House. However, like sandwiches, hamburger packaging represents a good example of development. We moved from the paper bag to wrapping in foil, and then went from expanded polystyrene to the folded and glued board carton with which we are familiar today.

One thing that encouraged me, as a new Member, to apply for this debate was the fact that I have joined the all-party group on the packaging manufacturing industry, and I am pleased to see a number of its members here today. I was encouraged to join the group not only because of my experience in the packaging sector, but because a substantial manufacturer is based in my constituency of Rugby. Ball Packaging manufactures one-piece aluminium drink cans, and I was pleased to visit its highly automated high-tech plant only last summer.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Following his observations on the company in his constituency, does he recognise that the packaging industry is not just important as an industry, but provides a lot of model companies for Britain? For example, Innovia in Wigton is investing a great deal in the local secondary school, the Nelson Thomlinson school; it provides good apprenticeships, spends more than £8 million a year on research and development, and has achieved 92% exports from the far west of Cumbria. Could we please include in this masterful discussion an account of the good company practices of the packaging industry?

[Mark Pawsey]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I shall speak later about concerns that have been raised about the effect of packaging on the environment. However, that pressure has caused industries in the sector to become good neighbours, and to work with their communities and undertake exactly the kind of work to which my hon. Friend refers.

At a meeting—probably my second—of the all-party group, I was concerned to hear what the manufacturing companies had to say. One comment stuck with me for some time. One or two people said that the pressures on the packaging industry were such that people present believed that the industry might not exist in its current form 15 years from now. Given the number of people employed in it and its importance to our economy, that struck me as a significant statement, and one that deserves further attention.