Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Kit Malthouse

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

18. What steps she is taking to reduce knife crime.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service (Kit Malthouse)]

We are determined to tackle the scourge of knife crime. We are recruiting 20,000 more police officers, increasing police funding, making it easier for the police to use stop-and-search, and ensuring that more perpetrators go to prison for longer. We have legislated through the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 and knife crime prevention orders to help take more knives off the street. We are also introducing the serious violence Bill, which will put a duty on police, councils and health authorities to prevent and reduce serious violence.

[Mrs Murray]

Last month, a young man tragically lost his life in Liskeard after being stabbed. What action is being taken to get knives off our streets in towns and rural areas?

[Kit Malthouse]

First, I offer my condolences to the bereaved family. It is a terrible event to happen and I know it will have shocked everyone in the town. Happily, I understand that an investigation is ongoing and an arrest has been made, and we await the outcome of that investigation. As my hon. Friend, who has fought hard for resources for her constituency, will know, Devon and Cornwall police will receive more funding next year and will be able to recruit 141 additional officers in the first year, as part of the 20,000 police officer uplift. I hope they will be put to good use to prevent exactly this sort of incident.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Kit Malthouse

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is quite right to point out that we have not hit our one-to-one target. That is correct—it would be foolish to deny it—but at the same time those 66,000 homes that have been sold have satisfied a legitimate aspiration among all those people to own their own home, and we are committed to that. The lifting of the housing revenue account cap was specifically designed to set councils free to build a new generation of council houses, so that in time a further generation of council house occupants can also experience home ownership.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

5. What recent progress his Department has made on the allocation of funding to coastal communities.

Representation of the People (Young People’s Enfranchisement and Education) Bill

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Kit Malthouse

Friday 3rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow soon after the evidence-packed speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). I had come here today to have a serious debate about a complex and difficult issue that we have to examine from time to time, but I was disappointed by the boorish approach of the Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), who sought to create division in the House rather than to be persuasive. Over the past few years, I could possibly have been persuaded on this issue, but I have certainly not been today. I therefore speak in opposition to the Bill, because it kicks off a process about which we should be concerned.

As far as I can see, the Bill confuses the complex issue of capacity—what young people should be able to do, what they are capable of doing and what we should allow them to do. This is a complicated and difficult area that a number of us in public policy have struggled with over the past two decades. The problem with the Bill is that it works against the broad thrust of public policy around young people over the past two decades.

For instance, it is generally accepted that gambling is bad for young people, in recognition of the two stages of brain development in young people: the first prior to six, when 95% of the brain is formed, and the second during adolescence, when enormous changes take place and when we have to take extreme care over how young people develop. The science is with us on this. This is a period when the operation of the brain, people’s practice and habits, are formed. It is important that we look at that. It was decided some years ago that forbidding under-18s to gamble was desirable in order to inculcate and educate and to get their brains functioning in a way that meant they were less likely to do it in older age. The Bill would create the ridiculous situation whereby a young person could vote but not then place a wager on the outcome of the election in which they had just voted, which seems extraordinary.

There are all manner of areas where the same would be the case, which is of concern to those of us who have worked closely with charities in this area such as the Children’s Society, which identifies 16 and 17-year-olds as a particularly vulnerable group who require protection.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

My hon. Friend has used a very good example. Does he agree that another might be the purchase and consumption of alcohol? We have also increased the age at which people can purchase cigarettes. Such important changes have been proved beneficial to people’s health.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point.

NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Bill

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Kit Malthouse

Friday 22nd January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

Yes. I am trying to get to a position where we can have confidence in the governance of charities, and confidence that when things go wrong, there are appropriate mechanisms for someone to step in and deal with things quickly. My point is that in the case of national health service charities—that is what people think of them as—at some point, the Secretary of State will be asked to sort out problems.

We have to remember that there are practicalities involved in this. If the Secretary of State is unable to take control of the board and replace the trustees, he or she cannot get immediate access to the bank account. They cannot get anybody to sign a mandate to allow them to control the money, or even to freeze the account to stop money flowing in or out. When this hospital pass, this UXB or unexploded bomb of a hospital charity that has behaved badly or got into trouble, perhaps through no fault of its own, lands in the lap of a Secretary of State, whoever it may be—it could be one of us here on these Benches in the future, perhaps—the inability to step in and take control will have a significant political, and indeed financial, impact. That might impact on the care that takes place on the ward.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

My hon. Friend has cited one charity as an example, but does he have any recent information about any NHS hospital charities or NHS charitable trusts on which he is basing his assumptions?

[Kit Malthouse]

I do not, and the reason is that the Secretary of State currently has control of the appointment of trustees. That is exactly why. If I were Secretary of State—I assume that the same is true of the current Secretary of State and past Secretaries of State—I would be very careful about who I appointed, so that I was sure that I was handing that fiduciary duty to people whom I trusted and who had an element of accountability to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend makes a mistake. I did not object to the time; my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) objected to time possibly being used on these matters. I am perfectly happy. I think that the Bill is very good and I support its broad thrust.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that, when he said that the Bill relates to a single NHS charity, he was referring to one clause? It would help if he clarified that because I got the impression that he said that the Bill related to one specific NHS charity.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is right. I correct myself. One clause relates to Great Ormond Street and the rest of the Bill clears up some anomalies. The debate is not about Great Ormond Street’s requirements, but about other ancillary bits in the Bill. One wonders whether the rest of the Bill could have been included in the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill, and we could have had a short measure about Great Ormond Street, but that is a matter for the Bill’s promoter and sponsors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

No, I am not being pessimistic. I am, I hope, exhorting a message of confidence and optimism that we as politicians should have some sense of belief in what we do. We take our chances—sadly, only once every five years now, rather than once every random number of years—and have confidence. Like my hon. Friend, I want to be a champion for the power and the outlook of this House, so that we do not have to go out and consult constantly, that we are based in a philosophy of which we are sure, and that people understand why our decisions are made given what they have seen of that philosophy.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

My hon. Friend mentions his experience in previous roles of engaging in unnecessary and lengthy consultation procedures. How much of a financial burden does he feel they have been on the taxpayer?

[Kit Malthouse]

I cannot give my hon. Friend an exact figure, but it is enormous. Many, many hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been spent on consultation where, broadly, minds were made up beforehand. I well remember, back in 2002, the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, consulting on bringing in the congestion charge. He, of course, had already made the decision. In fact, during the consultation the gantries to put the cameras in were already going up. Of course, the response from the public came back overwhelmingly against—nobody wanted it. We could all see the disaster it would be, not least because it was not a congestion charge but a tax on central London. He just shoved it in anyway.

I led the judicial review against the congestion charge in the High Court and sadly failed. The only chink in the armour we could find was the environmental audit, which was useful to me then but is a vehicle that Ministers and other politicians go through to tick the box. We find ourselves, as a country, in this enormous box-ticking exercise. So uncertain are we of what we should and should not do, and so wary are we of the vagaries of public opinion and fashion, that we feel the need to consult constantly.

The wider point is that it communicates to the public an uncertainty about political institutions and therefore undermines respect for them. When people talk about the politicians they respect, they always talk about—even though they did not agree with him—the great Labour Member, Tony Benn. Tony Benn always used to say, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” I do not think Tony Benn ever consulted about anything in his entire life. He had his beliefs pretty much set at an early age and he delivered them. Everybody knew where he stood. Our former great leader, Margaret Thatcher, was exactly the same. A lack of consultation with her party colleagues might have done for her in the end, but consultation on the broad thrust of policy was anathema to her. She displayed and promoted what she believed. On that note, I commend my amendments to the House.