European Council

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We believe in dealing with tax fraud and tax evasion. That is vital. On the jobs effect of completing the energy and digital services single markets, I have given the GDP figures for how much it would add to the EU, but if the right hon. Gentleman would like, I could perhaps look at how many jobs that could convert into. It is worth noting, however, that the Commission’s forecast for growth this year is that Britain will grow faster than France, the EU and the euro area. Furthermore, according to International Monetary Fund figures, we will grow faster than France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the EU and the euro area this year and next year.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The conclusions from the summit were clear:

“Innovation and research are at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy.”

They are also vital for growth at home. The conclusions also referred to intellectual property, research and development, and patent protection. Can the Prime Minister give us an assurance that concrete progress was made towards a unitary patent protection scheme, as agreed by the Competitiveness Ministers last June, and also update us on the parallel process for the unified patent court?

[The Prime Minister]

There has been quite a breakthrough on the unified patent process, because the EU has been discussing this for, I think, around three decades. There is now an agreement among those countries that want to go ahead and have a unified patent process, so that is a success. There is not yet agreement about where the court should be. We strongly believe it ought to be in London, because London is the centre of international litigation and finance, but the French believe it should be in Paris and the Germans believe it should be in Munich, and there is what is known as a negotiation under way.

Informal European Council

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What last night’s meeting proved is that there is a very strong and growing consensus for action around the European Council table on issues of competitiveness. British Ministers—and, to be fair to Labour, British Ministers for the last 20 years—have been going to Europe arguing for completing the single market, deregulation, lifting the burdens on business and all those issues, and we have always had strong supporters in the northern liberal countries, as it were, but we have come unstuck when it comes to other countries. I think we now see—partly because the centre right is in power in so much of Europe—really strong support for that sort of agenda, and we can certainly drive it forward.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The Joint Ministerial Committee memorandum of understanding on EU policy says that Ministers and officials from all the devolved Administrations should be involved in discussion with the UK Government on the formulation of UK policy. What discussions did the Prime Minister or his officials have with Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast before the European Council meeting?

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are arrangements for these things. Actually, the Government have been very generous in ensuring that the Scottish Administration have been fully involved in, for instance, fishing quota negotiations. However, I thought that the hon. Gentleman wanted to leave the UK altogether. If that is the case, he will have to seek access to the European Union, and seek access to joining the euro as well. I think that he ought to read the treaty and work out whether he wants to sign it. Perhaps when he has made up his mind he will be able to tell the Labour leader what to do.

EU Council

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question, but I am not as pessimistic as he is that there is no prospect of rebalancing powers within the European Union. There are possibilities and opportunities. We did that in terms of the bail-out fund and I think there will be opportunities in future.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The concordat on the co-ordination of European Union policy is very clear—it requires the UK Government to engage with the devolved Governments in the formulation of UK policy, but that clearly did not happen on this occasion. How will the Prime Minister now explain to Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh that adopting an isolationist policy and abdicating all leadership is anything other than damaging and dangerous?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not accept that. In the final analysis, our relations with the European Union are a reserved issue for the UK Parliament and the UK Government. To be fair to this Government, we have gone further than any previous Government on the issues that really matter to people in Scotland—about the single market, fisheries and decisions taken within the European Union—to work very constructively with the other Administrations.

G20

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am not entirely sure what would have happened if we had turned up at the G20 having voted down the deal from the London G20 on increasing the IMF resources. First of all, we would have declined to implement one of the key findings of the last G20, and then we would have turned up and said that we were not prepared to see any increase in IMF funding for anything else. Britain would have been completely isolated and left out. The reason why the Opposition are talking about this is that it is all about the politics and nothing to do with the economics, and they know it.

[Stewart Hosie]

(Dundee East) (SNP): The Prime Minister said that the UK would not fund the EFSF, but it remains one of the eurozone’s most powerful tools, and there are two new powers proposed for it—to insure newly issued sovereign debt, and to spin out investment trusts to buy that debt. Do the Prime Minister and his Government believe that those powers will be enough to leverage the EFSF up to the €1 trillion or so required to give it the firepower that it needs?

[The Prime Minister]

There are still real difficulties with that. The EFSF and the idea of a special purpose vehicle were set out at the eurozone meeting 10 days ago, but the problem is that since then we have not seen enough detail on how exactly those funds would work and how they would be levered up. You need—I have used “bazooka” before—a bazooka big enough to convince people that you will not have to use it, and that is what the eurozone needs to do, but it has not yet completed that work.

Counter-terrorism

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and for early sight of it. The conclusion was that what Libya demonstrated, as Egypt and Tunisia did before it, is that people are completely rejecting everything that bin Laden stood for. My hon. Friends and I fervently hope that that is true. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the concrete steps being taken to foster democracy and respect for human rights in north Africa and throughout the middle east?

[The Prime Minister]

I think there are bilateral actions that Britain, as an old and successful democracy, should take and links that we should make, such as updating the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, as we have discussed in this House before. However, the biggest step would be for the European Union radically to overhaul its programme of help and assistance to north African and middle eastern neighbours and countries. Frankly, its programme up to now has been quite expensive—there is no shortage of money being spent—but it has not been successful in putting in place those building blocks of democracy. That is what we should be working on.

Big Society

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

The central point I am making is that people who want to take charge and responsibility feel put off from doing so by the concern that they will somehow be held liable. The law on rescuers used to be very clear: if a person attempted a rescue but completely messed it up, they would not be held liable. That position has changed in recent years. There is a fear that if one clears the snow on the pavement, one will be sued by someone who slips up because one has done it ineffectively. The balance needs to change so that the individual who takes responsibility, acts and steps up to the plate for the wider social good is encouraged and given the maximum possible latitude to do their best. That is at the heart of my point about individuals.

I will move on and warm to my theme of decentralisation. Something is slightly overlooked in discussing decentralisation. It is often seen as just being, “Oh, let’s get rid of big government.” That point is important because if things are too top-down, they tend to squash the vitality of communities. The benefits from decentralisation and from enabling communities to take more responsibility are not simply social. It is not simply about making people feel that it is worth looking out for their neighbour, or about giving them a sense of belonging and a sense of enthusiasm that they can change things around them in their lives. It is not simply about giving people more of a sense of responsibility and well-being. Decentralisation is also important in the growth agenda because of its economic effects.

If we allow greater decentralisation, allow communities a greater sense of confidence and allow communities to take charge of their direction, they will develop. That has economic benefits. As all Members know, the more confidence, energy and buzz a community has, the greater the economic effects. That is not only true of the private sector. There is evidence from the European Central Bank that the countries with the most efficient public sectors are much less centralised than the UK. The United States, Australia, Japan and Switzerland enjoy an average efficiency lead over the UK of some 20%. To put that in context, if Britain could match those efficiency levels, spending would be cut by £140 billion with no diminution in the standard of public services. That is not un-equidistant with the size of our budget deficit today. We should consider carefully whether decentralisation can be captured in order to produce positive effects on the economy and the public sector.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about a lack of confidence, but in my constituency we have all the volunteering that one would expect. There are community councils, traders associations, crime prevention panels, neighbourhood watch schemes and all the very things that he wants to see. There is no lack of confidence. In Scotland that is normal—it is simply civic society. If the big society is anything other than simply cover for the cuts, why the rebranding of what already happens the length and breadth of the country?

[Charlie Elphicke]

It is in no way, shape or form cover for cuts. It is a vision that the Prime Minister set out well before the crisis that engulfed the public finances and made necessary the tough decisions that the Government are taking. I do not want to focus on the deficit and the current difficulties in reining in the size of the state, because the big society is about much more than that, and it is more important than that. It is about giving people and communities a sense of responsibility.

I shall take the example of Dover, my constituency, which I advance as a case study of the difference that can be made. Before the election, the previous Government were planning to sell off the port of Dover. That proposal was in the operational efficiency report, the so-called car boot sale. There was to be an allegedly voluntary privatisation, but it was pretty clear that there was a desire for the port to be sold. My constituents understood that it would almost certainly go to a buyer overseas, and there was a sense of frustration about that.

That sense of frustration in relation to the port has existed for many years, because the directors have always been appointed by Whitehall and have had very little to do with the local community in their direction or in community engagement. That connection with the community has not been in place. The port is not simply an economic and transportation facility, it is also a social facility, as anyone with a port in their constituency will know. The interconnection between a town and the port in it is deep, and there is a symbiosis between the two. That is very much the case in Dover. With a whole load of directors having been appointed in Whitehall, hundreds of miles away, the people of Dover have been unable to effect positive engagement.

If the port were sold off overseas, we would simply be swapping one remote interest for another, and the community would not be engaged with it. Part of the difficulty in that situation would be that the community would think that the port’s management did nothing for the town and did not engage positively with it. Sadly, the port has gone to war with the ferry companies, which are the key port users for both berthing charges and general relations. There has been a breakdown of the relationship in the heartland of Dover’s local economy. The town and the community are not happy, and the key businesses are not happy. The port is on the block, threatened with being sold off overseas.

What can the community do? Under the traditional model, the solution would be about either the big state or big business. We say that it is time to try something new and different—giving the community a chance to take charge of its future and its destiny. We have been asking why, instead of the port being sold off overseas, the community cannot buy it as a community mutual and run it in partnership with those who use the port, the ferry companies that effectively account for all the port’s money. Many people will ask, “How can you possibly do that? How can these stupid yokels know what they are doing? Either you need big Government running it or big foreign business doing it, but you cannot possibly expect a community to have the intelligence or wherewithal to run an important facility like that.”

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

No, no, no, the hon. Lady is wrong. She has a much easier way to solve all this—she can vote with us tonight. She only has to do so twice, first to ensure that the 2015 election is brought forward to 2014 and then to ensure that elections are every four years, not every five. She has to do both, she cannot just do one, because otherwise we would still end up with elections happening at the same time every 20 years.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I wonder whether we can get down to the brass tacks of this. In 2007, some 140,000 ballots in Scotland were void, nullified and not counted. People were disfranchised because there were two elections of different sorts on the same day. This matter is not ethereal, it is about practical politics and the enfranchisement of people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When that point was made earlier in the debate some people said it was all about how the ballot papers were presented, and undoubtedly that was part of the problem. However, the point is that in Wales, an Assembly election feels like a general election. It will feel like a general election next May. Elections to the Scottish Parliament feel like a general election in Scotland, and I am sure the situation is somewhat similar in Northern Ireland. If they coincide with the UK elections every 20 years, it will be a bit of a muddle and voters will be confused. This is not about our convenience, it is about the convenience of voters and the clarity of the mandate that is provided. Without a clear mandate, we end up without good politics and with people distrusting the political system.

I say in passing that another element of the Bill is that the Government intend to stick to a short election campaign, both in any early general election that might be held and in the specific 2015 election. That will not be the same campaign as for the local elections or for the Welsh or Scottish elections. That will provide another level of uncertainty, particularly for treasurers of local election campaigns. They may be the treasurer for their local constituency association or their local party, and they are already given a pretty tough job to do with stringent legal provisions. Often they are nervous about what that might mean for them and whether they will end up in prison. We should not make the situation even more complicated by firing the starting gun for expenses for the various elections on different days. In addition to that, by choosing May we will always hit the problem of Easter. In 2015, polling day will be on 7 May and, because it is a relatively early Easter, Dissolution will be on Monday 13 April. In 2020, unless we change the legislation, polling day will be on 7 May, which will mean that Dissolution will be on Maundy Thursday 9 April, as both 10 and 13 April will not be working days.

Maundy Thursday used to be a day on which one did not have elections. It used to be provided as a bank holiday, but legislation in 1995 removed it from the list. None the less, it would be inappropriate to dissolve Parliament on Maundy Thursday in 2020. The bigger point is that we will constantly have the problem with the start date of the electoral campaign because Easter moves.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary will be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. Clearly, RAF Kinloss will not be required by the RAF following the decisions that we have taken, but we are not announcing base closures today because more armed service personnel will come home from Germany than will lose their positions following my announcements. There is therefore an opportunity to use RAF bases for other military purposes. I hate to make too much of a political point, but one wonders how many bases and how much capability there would be if there were an independent Scotland.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

That is outrageous!

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say to the hon. Gentleman that he must calm himself, however strongly he feels. I want to hear the Chair of the Defence Select Committee.

Superannuation Bill

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

In my statement to the House in July and again on Second Reading in September, I made it clear the Government’s intention is to make the civil service compensation scheme affordable, and I set out our intention to legislate to underpin the negotiations to achieve that. However, I have made it clear at all stages—and I make it clear again today—that our principal aim has been to reach a negotiated settlement with all six civil service unions to introduce a new successor scheme that would provide, in particular, better protection for lower-paid civil servants.

The current civil service compensation scheme is unaffordable and completely out of kilter with practice in the rest of the public sector, let alone in the private sector, and it actually makes more likely redundancies among the lowest paid and shortest-tenured civil servants. The previous Government recognised that and engaged in protracted negotiations over many months—indeed, over several years—with the Council of Civil Service Unions to try to reach agreement on a successor scheme. I pay tribute today, as I did on the previous occasion, to the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) and her predecessors, who persisted in trying to get full agreement from all members of the Council of Civil Service Unions.

Despite those months of negotiations, the previous Government were unable to achieve full agreement. I understand that it looked as though an agreement was there, but at the last minute the PCS—the Public and Commercial Services Union, the largest of the civil service unions—pulled out, leaving a proposed new scheme in place that had been agreed by five unions, but not by the sixth.

Given the extensive consultations and negotiations that took place, which gained agreement from five out of the six unions, the previous Government felt and concluded—I said at the time that I agreed—that it was only right that one union should not hold the right of veto on any change. So in April the previous Government imposed a new compensation scheme that reflected the agreement with the five unions. But for the action of the PCS, that might have been where the story ended, but the subsequent actions of the PCS have led us to where we are today.

The PCS challenged in the High Court the right of the Government to impose a settlement in such circumstances and the Court subsequently quashed the February scheme. So almost literally on my first day in office after the election, I was confronted with a situation in which the previous civil service compensation scheme was still in force and had not been reformed at all. That scheme, as I have said, is completely unaffordable, inherently unfair and in urgent need of reform. It was striking that on Second Reading, when this issue was extensively and thoroughly debated in a constructive and open spirit with no element of partisanship creeping in, every Member who spoke agreed that the current scheme was unsustainable and needed reform. There was complete consensus across the House.

The current compensation scheme is extremely generous compared with the rest of the public sector, let alone private sector, equivalents. A comparison with the statutory redundancy scheme shows that payouts, particularly for lower-paid workers in the private sector, are capped at 32 weeks’ pay at a maximum weekly pay that is still, I think, capped at £380. The maximum that can be paid out to anyone under that scheme is less than £12,000. By contrast, the maximum value under the civil service scheme is the equivalent of six years and eight months’ salary. Typical schemes in the private sector—particularly the statutory scheme—pay one week’s salary for each year worked. The civil service scheme pays at least four times that amount—a month’s salary for each year worked, and in some cases up to three months’ salary for each year of service.

The previous Government spent £1.8 billion on civil service redundancy payouts in the last three years, including a number of spectacular six-figure settlements for individuals. The result of the scheme’s being so generous and unaffordable is that Departments cannot afford to make civil servants redundant, even if they are willing to go voluntarily, if they are highly paid and of long tenure. If Departments need to save money—as they had to under the previous Government and as they will have to under the coalition Government—through redundancies, they simply cannot afford to choose those individuals on high pay and long tenure. In order to make the same savings in salary terms, they need to make many more lower-paid and shorter-tenured staff redundant. The unjust effect of the current scheme’s being so badly structured and unsustainable is that if it were allowed to remain in place, more civil servants would lose their jobs and more civil servants on lower pay would lose their jobs. The coalition Government are not willing to see that happen.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I understand the logic of the Minister’s argument, but I have a constituent who has a business case for her to take early retirement under the voluntary scheme—I have seen the business case, which will save a great deal of money over the next few years. She is not being allowed to go now because of the uncertainty surrounding this process. Do we not have a little disconnect at the moment in that this process and this Bill are stopping people leaving early when it suits them and would save money right now for that Department?

[Mr Maude]

Depending on what the House decides today, some of that uncertainty should be removed. I want Parliament to be able to move quickly to enable the new scheme to be put in place, because it will provide certainty. I absolutely understand the uncertainty that exists for many dedicated, hard-working public servants who know that there might not be a future for them because of the situation—because, frankly, of the previous Government’s legacy of the fiscal deficit—and it is really unfair to leave people in limbo and with that kind of uncertainty. I want us to achieve the greatest certainty at the earliest time so that people know where they stand and so that Departments and agencies that have to make redundancies can go ahead with them and enable people to make the break and start the next phase of their lives.

The caps contained in the Bill are, as I said on Second Reading, a blunt instrument that will immediately limit the amount that can be paid to any individual. Those caps were never intended to be a long-term solution. It is and has always been our absolute priority to create a scheme that is affordable but that provides protection for the lower-paid. However, those protections are complicated to engineer and we felt—I do not resile from this at all—that it is incredibly important to consult thoroughly and to discuss properly how those protections should be configured. The discussions with the unions have been very productive and have led to the scheme, which I shall describe, being configured.

Superannuation Bill

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I was pleased when, a few moments ago, the Minister suggested that he did not want to impose this change unilaterally. Of course, that ties in with Mr Justice Sales’s comments that that might not be possible without agreement anyway. How confident is the Minister that agreement will be reached, perhaps before this legislation completes its passage?

[Mr Maude]

All I can say is that it would be rash to make predictions. I can express the hope and aspiration that agreement will be reached. I stand ready to meet the Council of Civil Service Unions at any time, and my officials are engaged in genuine and sustained negotiations and discussions with the unions, which are continuing on an almost daily basis. I have to say that I was discouraged this morning when Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of PCS—a man for whom I have considerable respect—said, when asked whether he would challenge the result in the courts again, that he would do so. That does not bode well for a consensual outcome, and the fact is that five of the six unions had agreed the previous scheme, but the rug was pulled by one union, to the disbenefit of everyone concerned.

I have made it clear that I do not see this Bill as the last word. It remains our desire to reform the scheme by negotiated agreement, so there have been significant and continuing discussions. There are two key goals in the negotiations. The first is to deliver additional protection for lower-paid civil servants, and that has to be done by negotiation—