Public Service Pensions Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Chris Leslie

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Quite a few of those employees already retire before the normal retirement age because of issues of physicality—the sheer effort involved in undertaking such physical tasks. It is entirely unreasonable and unfair that there is such a discrepancy between public service workers who carry out the same job. They are all called on to put their lives on the line. The burden of justifying the anomaly now rests with the Government, but other than some rather unconvincing arguments, which the Minister barely touched on, they have failed to discharge their burden and to illustrate why MOD firefighters and police are so different. The Minister took interventions from many colleagues and on a number of occasions he said, “Oh well, I’ll come to it in my speech,” but amazingly he never did.

[Simon Hughes]

Given that neither the Labour Government nor Lord Hutton spotted the issue, and it has now been raised with this Government, does the hon. Gentleman not think that a reasonable way forward is what the Minister suggested at the end of his speech? We should allow the MOD and the unions to see if they can negotiate a proposal that could be implemented under the broad remit of the Bill. That must be the reasonable, sensible, grown-up way forward.

[Chris Leslie]

At this eleventh hour, no, because the issue has been familiar to the Government for many months. The Minister said that there was not even a proposal on the table. We are able to judge, as Lord Hutton was able to judge, as suggested by the quotes from the House of Lords debate, the definitions of firefighter, police officer and armed forces, for whom the Bill categorically specifies the normal pension age as 60. The right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that some sort of negotiation is needed about whether those individuals are indeed firefighters or police officers of the same class. I disagree with him, if he is naive enough to think that the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence do not need to be pushed on the issue. Today is the opportunity to vote on it. I know he will listen to the debate and I hope he will vote in the right way and not try to find some excuse for kicking the issue into the long grass, hoping that people will forget about it yet again. We have the opportunity to deal with it now. Let us have a bit of gumption and deal with it in the way that we can do.

[Simon Hughes]

May I tell the hon. Gentleman respectfully why I disagree with that? This is not just about age. It is about a whole package of benefits, some of which are much more advantageous to people in the civil service than they would be to someone in a parallel position in local government. I am not in a position, and even those on the Labour Benches who represent unions are not in a position, to do a deal here on their behalf. If Government are committed to a deal being done, it must be right to remit the issue to the employer and the unions to negotiate an outcome.

[Chris Leslie]

I am very sorry that the right hon. Gentleman’s true colours have come through in that way. He is clearly not going to support the move to reduce the retirement age to 60. He should, and I will tell him why. The key question was put by Lord Eatwell in the other place, who asked about the different treatment and whether the Government could justify it. He asked:

“In what way is it less onerous, when they”—

that is, the MOD firefighters—

“have to work on military establishments”—

as the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) said—

“dealing on occasion with extremely dangerous materials, and occasionally also in war zones? How is their job less onerous?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 February 2013; Vol. 743, c. 568.]

Unfortunately, my noble Friend did not receive a satisfactory answer to the question, so I repeat it now to the Minister: what reason is there for that different treatment? Do not Ministry of Defence police officers have to stay fit, remain physically alert and intervene in events of great physical danger? Do not Ministry of Defence firefighters have to be ready to run the gauntlet, endure the exertions of search and rescue in extreme circumstances, take intense risks, prove their stamina and make sure that they can rise to the most testing of circumstances? The arguments that justify excluding the police and fire and rescue workers from the link between state pension age and normal pension age apply equally to the MOD police and the MOD firefighters. Just because they are a tiny number of workers should not mean that Ministers can just turn a blind eye and ignore the issue. We cannot allow it to be swept under the carpet. There is no reason for the difference, and the Government have no justification for opposing the amendments.

Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Chris Leslie

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

That is indeed the approach taken in some of the underwriting provisions. Of course there can be circumstances in which that makes sense, perhaps to tip a project that is viable and in the national interest from something that might not happen to something that moves ahead in a way that benefits everyone.

The amendment does not even say that every contract should have a clawback provision: we are simply saying that the Treasury should be under a statutory obligation to give reasonable consideration to the insertion of clawback clauses in the contracts. That is the be all and end all of amendment 7 and I hope that the arguments are fairly straightforward. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s view.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I wish to speak briefly to amendment 12 and new clause 3, which are both in my name. Both relate to the reports that the Government propose in clause 3 should be annually produced, and to the transparency of the companies involved in this support for infrastructure, which I welcome.

Both the amendment and the new clause follow discussions that I have had with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, who is now in his place on the Front Bench with his new ministerial colleague, whom I also welcome. The amendment and new clause are prompted by the fact that we often do not know the identities of the beneficial owners of the companies with which the Government do business. Companies often have shares owned by trusts or other companies based in countries that do not require disclosure of ownership, and I shall give a few examples.

The M6 toll road is owned by Midland Expressway Ltd, which is owned in turn by the Macquarie Motorways Group Ltd, which is in turn owned by Macquarie Atlas Roads International Ltd of Bermuda. It is controlled by Macquarie Infrastructure Group, but the identity of its investors and therefore of the owners of MEL remains unknown and undisclosed. In 2006, however, they paid themselves a £392 million exceptional dividend, and over six years made a return on their investment of more than 150% a year. This sort of profit at the public’s expense by we know not whom is not an acceptable arrangement, and I want the Government to be warned against it and to ensure that all owners are in the public domain.

Arqiva, as a private sector monopoly, is regulated by Ofcom. It runs all the transmission services for all UK terrestrial television broadcasters and for BBC Radio and most commercial radio services, owns two of the four digital multiplexes, supplies the Government with mobile and wireless communications and supplies three quarters of all police forces. It receives annual revenues of about £1 billion and makes annual losses of about £250 million. The ultimate owners of the company appear to be based in Bermuda, although we do not know who they are, and Arqiva has paid no corporation tax for four years.

Thames Water, the UK’s largest water supplier and a monopoly private sector company providing a public service with which the public therefore has no option but to deal was bought by Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund in 2006. The long-term debt held by the company was £3.4 billion and is now £7.7 billion. When the company was bought, Thames Water took on all the debt taken out by its owners to buy the company, which was more than £3 billion. To do that, it set up a company in the Cayman islands, Thames Water Utilities Cayman Finance Ltd, which is registered at an address at which are registered 18,000 other companies.

Over the past four years, Thames Water has made profits after tax of £314 million, £331 million, £225 million and £247 million, and has paid dividends of £398 million, £291 million, £271 million and £480 million, but in the last tax year paid no tax. In the previous year, it paid £500,000 in tax, and the year before that £16 million, yet it has a stable operating profit of about £600 million a year. I could go on. There are health care companies, and the company currently negotiating with the London fire brigade over the water to buy the old fire brigade headquarters looks as if it is based in the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Man.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Leslie]

We did not have time to discuss some of our amendments. We wanted far more information about the nature of the loans, underwriting and even grants being given to the private sector. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) tabled some important amendments that we did not get the chance to discuss in any great detail.

My amendment 5 simply talked about making sure that the public can know to whom the financial assistance is being given—a pretty basic tenet of transparency and accountability for public resources. The Minister could not say that that information would be in the public domain. We are not even necessarily allowed to know to whom the financial assistance is being given.

The Minister says that due diligence will be thorough as far as the Treasury is concerned, but what about the rest of us? Our constituents send us here to keep an eye on what the Executive are doing with public money. Without that basic information, how are we to judge the success of the legislation?

[Simon Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I share his frustration that we did not have more time to look at the issues in Committee. I suggest that that is not the Government’s fault. I remember many occasions when we had exactly the same problem under the Labour Government. Rather than blaming the Government, will he and his colleagues work with us to make sure that we have a system across Parliament—just a change in the rules that gives injury time if urgent questions or statements take up time for principal legislation? That is a way of solving the problem, and we would all be much happier as a result.

[Chris Leslie]

Of course we can have arrangements. There are perfectly available arrangements for making sure that there is time for legislation, but the Opposition do not control the timetabling of debates. I do not want to bang on about the procedure, but suffice it to say that it was inadequate.

We did not get a chance to debate the reporting mechanisms for what happens in terms of the financial assistance given to unknown persons. The hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) asked what measure we would have of the Bill’s success. I think that there should be reports not every 12 months, but every six months. If the issue is so urgent and there is a national emergency—if it is a case of, “Let’s get infrastructure going and press ahead with capital investment”—let us have far more frequent reports.

We do not know how much taxpayers’ money is on the line, how much is being committed per project, what form the financial assistance will commonly take, what type of companies will receive the financial assistance and even what type of infrastructure projects will receive such assistance. There are a lot of unknown unknowns in the legislation.

I hoped that we would have the chance to cover other key points. For example, I am particularly concerned about the availability of social housing. I mentioned earlier that in my city of Nottingham, not a single extra affordable social house was built in the last financial year. That is unacceptable.

Perhaps the situation will be made worse by the fact that the housing stock of certain local authorities has been transferred to housing associations, but quite a number of authorities either retain their council housing stock or have arm’s length management organisations —ALMOs—doing that. As I read the legislation, if someone’s local authority has not moved to housing associations, they will not be able to benefit from the underwriting as much as people whose local authorities have, because ALMOs and local authority-retained stock areas cannot be underwritten because of the borrowing constraints. There is a perfectly legitimate question—not a partisan question—about how we ensure fairness from one city to another and one area to another, but we did not get an opportunity to debate those issues.