Business of the House (Thursday)

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

Thank you very much indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was about to respond to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham. Yes, many people in the country have watched the video that the Deputy Prime Minister made in which he uttered the pledge. [Interruption.] It has to do with the time because we need to hear from Liberal Democrats—perhaps we will be lucky and hear from the Deputy Prime Minister in tomorrow’s debate, but who knows?—and we need time for an explanation of what exactly happened between the making of that pledge and the U-turn that he has performed in introducing these proposals tonight.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need more time to get the information about the various proposals that have been trailed through the press this week, which the Government suggest would justify to the House and to the public an increase in fees? Tomorrow’s debate would enable that if there were time. A number of suggestions have been made—for example, on those students who might get financial assistance. Do we not need time to hear the details of that before the House is asked to vote?

[Hilary Benn]

We do indeed. One of the big problems that Members will face tomorrow is that we do not yet have a lot of the information, and a lot of the questions that have been asked have not yet been answered. How on earth is the House meant to make up its mind on a fundamental part of these proposals in the absence of all that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Farrelly]

Just to conclude my response to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), we need that vital time to assess the implications for all those people in those situations.

[Sheila Gilmore]

My hon. Friend appeared to say that separate and additional time would be required to deal with Wales and Scotland. I ask him to consider the fact that once the motion has been passed, if it is passed tomorrow, decisions will have been taken that will have impacted on those areas and that this is a major change from what went before. We therefore need time within the debate before a decision is made on the level of fees.

[Paul Farrelly]

Unfortunately, I am not responsible for scheduling the business of the House, but I think that the Leader of the House should be as generous as possible in allocating time to debate these issues. For instance, we need time to examine the views of young people. Let us think of the Youth Parliament—an institution that we have encouraged. We have invited it here to debate and its members have sent e-mails to Members of Parliament. We need time to debate the views of Ahmed Siddiqui, a 16-year-old who asked us not to give up on helping his generation to become everything they can be.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

As a member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, I am disappointed to find that a measure with cross-party support on the Committee—we all agreed to it—has not been accepted as a good piece of advice on amending a Bill which did not have the pre-legislative scrutiny that might have incorporated such a provision in the first place. Indeed, that is why we have such bodies as Select Committees. They exist to ensure, in an atmosphere that is not adversarial, a greater depth of debate than has been possible even in our debates on the Bill over the past couple of days and today. All Select Committee members felt that, as a safeguard, the amendment was a reasonable way to progress, and, if Ministers have no intention of making unreasonable modifications, they have nothing to lose from accepting such a provision.

The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said that she had no concerns about her Government using such powers. We might think differently, but equally she might think differently if there were a change of Government. From the perspective of our discussions in the Committee, the measure simply represented a safeguard that accounts for the fact that the whole procedure has changed. We know that the provision in the Bill is very similar, so we are not ignoring it, but the amendment was agreed to in the wider context of a debate about how we carry out such boundary changes, and the fact that public inquiries will not take place. We wanted to ensure that things could not be altered at the last minute in an unsatisfactory way that cut across whatever public consultation there had been throughout the process.

With many aspects of the Bill, we have forgotten the underlying reason for wanting to legislate on the constitution. I remember the Deputy Prime Minister, when he introduced this constitutional programme, saying that he wanted to overcome the distrust in politics and the fact that people appeared to have lost faith in politics and politicians, and that he felt that the constitutional changes would improve the situation. Having listened to some of last night’s debate, I think it very important that we bear that test in mind when we consider the provision before us. We should ask ourselves, “Do these various detailed provisions improve that trust or detract from it?” The amendment would be a small and fairly technical provision that went some way to meeting that test. I commend it to the Minister and hope that it might be accepted.

[Mark Durkan]

The amendment would represent a very important reassurance, because the Minister would not be able to make highly arbitrary and subjective judgments on any modifications that were introduced. As my hon. Friends have pointed out, we are being asked to consider a situation in which, in every Parliament, there will be a boundary review in respect of the next Parliament. That means that in each Parliament, and in each Government, the relevant Minister will in effect have his or her hands on a boundary review. That fundamentally changes the political nature of the operation, and it might be abused. I am thinking not only of one party against another; it could be abused within a party. It could become yet another of the Whips’ weapons against recalcitrant Government Members—they could say, “Look, we can redistrict you.” That is what has happened in the United States. We find many former members of Congress who say that they were blatantly redistricted by their own parties because they did not fit or did not particularly toe the line. We have seen that happen in various states.

The arrangements provided in the Bill are pregnant with the possibility of abuse or accusations of abuse. The parliamentary process needs to be protected from that. The House has made a mistake in accepting boundary reviews every five years rather than every 10 years. That means that every Parliament will be affected and infected by the issue and the controversy around it. If Ministers want to be free from that, they should agree to the amendment.

Summer Adjournment

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

As a new Member, I am only just getting my head around some of the traditions of this place, and I am glad that Mr Speaker or the Deputy Speakers have not done to me what was done to a colleague of mine when we were rookie solicitors. She stood up to speak, and the sheriff said, “Miss C, I cannot hear you”—I will not give her name in case she reads Hansard, although I cannot imagine why anyone other than Members would do so. She raised her voice, as one would, and spoke louder, but the sheriff repeated that he could not hear her. Only after her voice had risen in volume considerably did it dawn on her that he meant he could not hear her because she was wearing a trouser suit. Things have moved on now, even in the Scottish courts.

One other delight of the maiden speeches and other speeches today is that they enhanced my geographical knowledge—I realise how little I knew about various parts of England. I was also interested in what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) said about prefabs. I had the dubious delight of dealing with a similar situation in my ward when I was on the city council. We had to tell people that their prefabs had reached the end of their reasonable lives, but people really loved them. That tells us a lot about what people like in housing. When I dealt with housing on the council, I constantly told architects and planners that people like their little houses with their back and front doors that they can call their own. We still have a lot to learn from that.

Many of my constituents have come to see me. Last week, I was visited by a group of civil servants from my constituency who are concerned about the proposals in the Superannuation Bill. We will debate that in September, but in my discussion with my constituents we agreed that one big problem is that there seems to be a concerted campaign in parts of the media and, in my view, the coalition Government, to portray civil servants as fat cats, to ensure that the public do not have sympathy for them. When someone mentions civil servants, many people think of a Sir Humphrey figure—someone who frequents his London clubs, who is waiting for his “K” and who will indeed have a good pension—but the civil servants I met work in fairly ordinary clerical and administrative jobs. One might say that they are pen pushers or, these days, screen watchers, but they are not on high salaries and do not have huge pensions.

Average civil service pay is £22,850, compared with average private sector pay of £24,970. Sixty-three per cent. of civil servants earn less than £25,000, and the average civil service pension, taking out a few very high earners, is £4,200 per annum. I told those civil servants that I would do everything I could—as I hope other hon. Members will—to counter the impression of civil servants that is given in some parts of our media, so that we can acknowledge the important job that they do for other constituents, such as people who are waiting for their benefit payments or who are trying to get jobs by spending time in Jobcentre Plus. That is the other side of the coin. Those civil servants may be administrators and paper shufflers, but we need them very much.

During my election campaign, I said that I would take up the issue of housing benefit, and I have been particularly interested in the debates since the emergency Budget. I fully agree that the spend on housing benefit is too high, but the current proposals penalise the claimant without getting to the root of the problem. We cannot look at housing benefit without looking at the rest of the affordable housing budget. In 2007-08, housing benefit represented 85% of the total support for affordable housing, with only 15% coming from capital investment. In 1990, the balance was 59% to 41%. Every time I raise this subject, coalition Members point out that the Labour Government had 13 years to sort it out, and indeed they did. I said before I was elected that I would take up this issue, whoever won the election. It is an important issue, and I will urge our new leader, whoever it is, to address it seriously.

The temporary accommodation aspect of housing benefit has not received much discussion so far and is not covered by the current proposal, but it is very important. Every year in my city far more people apply as homeless to the council than it has council or housing association vacancies. We have good homelessness legislation in Scotland, under which everybody has a right to temporary accommodation if they need it, and by 2012—which is not that far off—they will have a right not only to temporary accommodation but to stay in that accommodation until a permanent offer is made. Temporary accommodation is becoming overcrowded.

When I was on the council, I was involved in setting up a private sector leasing scheme, which was meant to be a short-term solution until we got more houses. I know that the council is now considering extending that private leasing scheme for another five years, but it is an extremely expensive way of providing housing. In March this year, there were 1,600 private sector leased homes in the city, with an average monthly rent of £880. That is more than £10,000 per year per property, with a total of £16.8 million. Most of those tenants will get housing benefit. If some 70% of that cost is met through housing benefit, that is nearly £12 million. The affordable housing investment programme for Edinburgh in the past five years has amounted to £34 million, and £41 million in the last year, and for that some 500 houses are built every year. If we had the £11.8 million that is being spent on those private sector leased houses, another 150 houses could be built.

I know that we could not make the switch in one year, but if the coalition Government want to be the sort of Government that some people thought we would get out of a hung Parliament—in other words, one who listen to all sides—they would seek to address this, rather than making savings on housing benefit to set against the deficit. The savings could go towards building the homes that people so desperately need. If we planned for that over a 10-year period, we could make a real difference. I hope to be part of that over the next four and a half years.