Oral Answers to Questions

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

They are perfectly reasonable questions. I am not sure that the Skipton Building Society is holding its breath on how equivalence will work to allow it to carry on marketing complex financial instruments across the European Union. These are matters for negotiation. If we end up with an equivalence regime to allow financial services businesses to continue to trade into the European Union, it will be important that that equivalence regime is based on objective criteria, not political criteria, so that as long as our regulatory regimes are in fact equivalent, we can be confident of continuing to be able to trade.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

3. If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of ring-fencing national insurance revenues for spending on health and social care.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jane Ellison)]

As hon. Members will know, although national insurance contributions are primarily used to fund state pensions, a proportion of NICs is already allocated directly to the NHS, but beyond that, the Government do not have any plans to ring-fence national insurance contributions to fund health and social care.

[Dr Mathias]

I thank the Financial Secretary for that answer, but with a view to the long-term sustainable financing of health and social care, will she look into this as a means of depoliticising the debate and ensuring long-term funding for health and social care not just for today, but for decades to come?

[Jane Ellison]

I understand my hon. Friend’s core point. The Government have taken action to ensure that the NHS has the funding it needs by increasing its annual budget by £10 billion above inflation by 2020-21. We are mindful of the long-term challenges. The issues were recently highlighted by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which laid them out quite starkly in its latest fiscal sustainability report. On depoliticising the debate, I would say that backing the NHS’s own plan for its own future in the way we have done is the best way of doing that.

Christmas Adjournment

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I, too, think that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) makes a big difference in the House, and is a great asset to the Chamber.

I agreed with everything that was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers) about the onerous nature of the quarterly tax returns, and I hope that the Minister will think about her proposals, which I fully support.

I want to speak briefly about assessments by the Department for Work and Pensions. I am pleased to say that we have good employment figures in my constituency, and I am grateful for the fact that since 2010 the unemployment figures have decreased by 34%. I am, however, concerned about the attitude shown in DWP assessments.

Many of us have seen Ken Loach’s film “I, Daniel Blake”, and observed the excellent acting of Dave Johns in that film. It is a very moving film, but what is more troubling for me is the people whom I have met in my surgery who are not actors, but who have lived through the kind of scenes that have been portrayed by Ken Loach. Indeed, I have seen people who have been treated worse than the character in “I, Daniel Blake”.

My concern, which I have mentioned to Ministers in the past, is that people with terminal illnesses or degenerative conditions must not go through an assessment if they have a consultant’s report. I value the assurance from the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), that such people did not need to have repeated assessments, but others who undergo the DWP assessment must be treated with dignity. I have met people—gentlemen older than me—who have been shamed in those assessments, and who have not been given the respect that they deserve. That is shameful.

I believe that, just as we need the police to wear body cameras, we need DWP assessments to be recorded—with, obviously, the agreement of the people undergoing them—so that if it is felt that someone has not been treated with respect, or, worse, has been shamed, the assessors can at least be shown why and how they have given that impression, and training can be provided so that it never, ever happens again. There needs to be recording, and there needs to be more accountability. No one should ever feel shamed when undergoing these assessments.

Having said that, as this is Christmas, I wish Mr Speaker and his Deputies, our excellent staff and all Members a very merry and peaceful break.

Summer Adjournment

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate and to have an opportunity to welcome my colleagues on the Front Bench, who are serving—I think for the first time—as Deputy Leader of the House and duty Whip. I congratulate them on their new responsibilities.

In a summer when a decade seems to have passed in the last month—indeed, so much has happened since the ghastly murder of Jo Cox that it seems a long while ago, although in reality it was a very recent tragedy—and at a time when Brexit and the how, when and in what way we leave the European Union seem to be the dominant theme of so much media focus, I want to concentrate on issues over which we have always had complete control in this country. At this time, the emphasis is on the need for us—Government, Members of Parliament, local government and other agencies—to come up with answers and deliver them, so that life in our country and our constituencies, in my case the ancient city of Gloucester, gets better from year to year.

Let me begin with transport, because that is how we Gloucester residents travel to and from our city, how visitors arrive, and how our investors gain their first impressions. Two improvements could be made at Gloucester railway station—in the frequency of the trains and in the infrastructure. It still seems extraordinary to me that Arriva CrossCountry’s inter-city service between Birmingham and Bristol, which runs 63 trains a day, stops only three times at the city of Gloucester. My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) worked on that problem diligently when she was the trains Minister. I hope that the new Minister will pursue with the same enthusiasm the business of enabling more CrossCountry trains to stop at Gloucester as the Department for Transport completes its programme for a new franchise in the west of England.

As for the infrastructure, Great Western Railway is making good progress with a new station car park, which will open up the southern side of the station for the first time in its 150-odd years of existence. However, there is more work to be done. I hope that the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will look favourably on the bid from the Gloucestershire local enterprise partnership, which includes a significant amount of money for a general station infrastructure project that will undoubtedly be one of the drivers of growth in our city in the future.

Of course, it is also important for our bus, road and cycle infrastructure to be in as good a state as possible. Our new bus station is well under way, and I know that the city and county councils will ensure that it is delivered on time and within budget, but the road situation is more complicated. The so-called missing link on the A417 between the M4 and the M5 is a major blockage to growth, not just in Gloucestershire and in the city of Gloucester but more widely, between the south and the north of the country. I hope that my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for Transport will take the same interest as his predecessor in ensuring that the first spade goes into the ground for that important new project before April 2020.

As a keen cyclist—only marginally put off by a promising black eye, which those with keener vision will spot, resulting from an incident this morning—I hope very much that the county council’s £3.5 million project for a new cycle lane between Gloucester and Cheltenham will receive approval from Highways England in due course. I am also separately pursuing longer-term improvements on the towpath between the city centre and Quedgeley. I can tell colleagues who have never had a chance to visit Gloucester that that is a wonderful cycle journey. They would be excused for not realising at any stage, even before visiting the Pilot Inn at the end of their journey, that they were cycling in the middle of a city rather than in a particularly glorious bit of the English countryside, because that is, in fact, what they would be doing.

Finally, I want to refer to two education projects which, in the longer term, will make a huge difference. First, there is the bid that we are preparing for a new Gloucestershire health university technical college, which will serve the people of our county and, possibly, people from wider afield who could travel by train from Swindon or even from Worcester. It will give 14 to 18-year-olds great opportunities to gain BTEC qualifications in either health or care, and also to gain significant work experience with the three NHS trusts in the county, as well as in the private sector. It is to me quite wrong that we should need 400 new nurses a year and that we are only training about 120 and are having to import them from as far afield as the Philippines. Excellent though our nurses from Portugal, Spain, the Philippines and elsewhere are, we should be training them at home; we should be giving them those opportunities to take up the 12,000 jobs in the health sector in Gloucestershire and training them in our own county. I hope very much that that bid goes ahead and is successful.

The other education bid we are making is for a new RAISE academy, which will be for excluded pupils from our secondary schools. This is also important. Everybody deserves a second chance and the opportunity to get back into learning and get the qualifications and skills they need to get good jobs later on, and I hope very much the Department for Education will look favourably at that.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I note what my hon. Friend says about the great training going on. Does he agree that with over 300 different careers in the NHS, that new training establishment for excluded pupils might do well to see if there is a place for each one of them in our great NHS?

[Richard Graham]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to stress that. She has experience of the NHS herself as a doctor, and it is right to point out that there are huge opportunities both on the technical level and the care side and on the course she took through university.

I should finish my contribution today by drawing attention to two exciting things happening in Gloucester during this great summer period. The first is our summer of music, art and culture, which is already well under way. The world’s longest running and I think longest festival of all, the Three Choirs festival of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester, starts on Saturday. There will be spectacular concerts for the next couple of weeks around that. We will then come to the Gloucester history festival, which I created with many other friends and partners some six years ago, and this year is looking to be even bigger and better than usual. That will be in the first two weeks of September, immediately after Gloucester day, when we celebrate the moment when the city of Gloucester refused to open its gates and surrender to King Charles I, thereby preventing the King from succeeding in his mission in the civil war and ensuring the supremacy of Parliament, which I am sure we all celebrate, as I wish all colleagues a very happy summer recess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for her well-made points. I absolutely believe in keeping Britain tidy and would be happy to join any such movement. I am lucky in my constituency and applaud the Friends of Bushy and Home Parks. Everyone knows that they should always take their litter home when out in the parks over the summer—rubbish is particularly damaging to the parks’ wildlife. I am grateful to those in the community who do regular litter-picking in addition to the good job done by the council. I also welcome the new Deputy Leader of the House to his post.

Like the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), I have concerns about rail services. I absolutely agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes when he said that passengers must come ahead of rail companies. I have had many meetings and have been in communication this week with South West Trains. I note that the franchise is coming up for renewal, and when I met South West Trains and other bidders I made clear what standards are expected at the eight stations in my constituency, including Twickenham, and on the network.

The problems are both chronic and acute. The chronic problems include the lack of regular and frequent trains at all our stations, which is appalling considering that many passengers travel into London to work. That lack has economic consequences. Trains are not frequent enough at any of the stations on Sundays. This is the 21st century and we should be appreciating passengers and the different lifestyles that require regular services every day of the week. Unfortunately, every single station in my constituency suffers from cancellations and delays and from overcrowding. Those are the chronic problems between the temperatures of 5° C and 25° C.

We are in the 21st century and have predictable weather. We were all told about the high temperatures this week—one does not have to be a climatologist—and that leads me to South West Trains’ acute problems. This week, the line has not been functioning properly and conditions have been unhealthy. When the temperature is over 25° C, a code of conduct should apply—I hope the new Rail Minister will take that on board—and adequate supplies of water must be given out free on platforms when there are delays or overcrowding. We can predict temperatures for the next few years—the next generation—and they will persist, so there must be a plan for air-conditioned trains on our suburban network for people who regularly travel into London.

The previous Mayor of London, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), introduced the Oyster card system into my area, which is great for commuters who do not have much time, but there must be a way of refunding to Oyster cards following delays. Like many of my constituents, the service that I experience when getting home is not good enough—sometimes 2 hours instead of a 40-minute journey—but it is impossible to navigate the website to try to get a refund, and it is even harder when using Oyster. Like most people, if I cannot do it within two clicks, I give up. There must be a way of putting the passenger first and making refunds easy.

There must also be a better way of communicating. There was no information this week on the platforms or at station information points about the duration of delays, which is critical for people if they have medical problems, are tired or need water.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

There is also a big problem for people such as me who use their bank card instead of an Oyster card to get on a train, as trying to get a refund on a bank card would be even more difficult.

[Dr Mathias]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point, as more and more people will be getting rid of the Oyster and so we also need a tap-and-refund system there, putting the passenger first.

If Ministers or any of their family are travelling by air over the summer—I will not be, but I know many people will—I ask them to give a thought to the three quarters of a million people suffering from levels of more than 55 dB Leq or to the quarter of a million people suffering from levels of 57 dB Leq. I ask them to give a thought to the fact that if there is expansion of Heathrow, it will particularly affect my constituency; more people under that flightpath will be affected than are affected around the Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Frankfurt and Madrid airports combined. On a medical level, I do not think this Government wish to inflict that on their residents. I hope that Ministers, including Transport Ministers, will be aware, every day during the recess, when the nitrogen dioxide levels are above European Union or World Health Organisation standards—I do not mind which are used, because both show this is unhealthy. We need a better, not a bigger, airport for such a populated area.

Nevertheless, I wish everybody a peaceful and well-deserved recess. I shall be spending it in my constituency, because we have the best parks and the best stretch of the River Thames; people do not need to go away to have a wonderful time.

Financial Conduct Authority

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and there is a lack of clarity on that issue. Only last week the FCA decided to publish on its website the fact that there has been a settlement between the liquidators and Capita. Interestingly, the decision to publish that statement on its website breached the confidentiality agreement. Therefore, the regulator was commenting on a settlement, but the parties to that settlement were not able to offer any advice because there is a confidentiality agreement. The FCA has a track record of being accused of breaching confidentiality, but to publish the fact that it is taking a degree of responsibility for the outcome is utterly unacceptable in view of the fact that the liquidators are stating categorically that they are not associating themselves in any way, shape or form with the statement, that they do not agree with aspects of that statement, and that the only reason they had to force a settlement was that the mediation that the FCA decided to try to arrange was not successful. Indeed, the decision to finish the mediation was made without consultation. For the regulator to make a statement on its website that is then categorically denied by the parties to the agreement is a matter of concern.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that with the Connaught inquiry the FCA has been too slow and not transparent enough for investors?

[Guto Bebb]

Of course I agree, and I will quickly run through my points about Connaught, because there are questions to ask the regulator. Will the settlement result in full compensation and a settlement for investors? Probably not. How is the settlement relevant to the FCA’s ongoing investigation into the operators? We do not know. Is it correct to state that the FCA was involved, or is that simply because the litigators were in a situation where the failure to mediate the decision to hold an investigation took place without any consultation? Is this settlement better than what was almost agreed under the FCA’s mediation process? If it is, why 18 months down the line have investors waited even longer for a settlement?

Oral Answers to Questions

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

As the hon. Lady knows—she has asked me about this before—we have a triple A credit rating with one credit rating agency, and we will let the others make their own decisions.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

T6. Train services from Twickenham are inadequate and need to be faster and more frequent. Will the Chancellor look into what funding he can provide to improve services today, as well as for tomorrow with Crossrail 2?

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)]

I thank my hon. Friend and near neighbour for that question, and Crossrail 2 is also scheduled to go through my constituency. She will know that the Government have already committed money to feasibility studies in this Parliament. The National Infrastructure Commission has been tasked with reviewing further investment in London, and it will report back to the Government before the 2016 Budget.

Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have set out the projections to achieve the surplus that have been forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, and we made a commitment in the Charter for Budget Responsibility that has been set before the House. More broadly, in the five years that I have stood at this Dispatch Box, I do not think that I have heard a single proposal from any Labour MP for a reduction in Government spending. It is not credible to go on saying, “We want to cut the deficit and cut borrowing”—[Interruption.] Labour Members are shaking their heads. Here is a test: every Labour MP who rises to speak should propose a cut in public spending before they propose an increase.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I congratulate the Chancellor on his veritable listening skills on tax credits. When will he decide on airport expansion, and will his excellent listening skills be ready for my constituents when he does so?

[Mr Osborne]

As I said, I was able to listen to concerns that were raised, including by my hon. Friend, and because of the improvement in public finances we can help families move to the lower welfare, higher wage economy that I know people in Twickenham want. On investment in our infrastructure, I have detailed the plans that we have set out for roads and railways. When it comes to airports my hon. Friend must be patient just a little more because, as she knows, the Government are considering the Davies report and will make a decision on that in due course.

Tax Credits

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for securing the debate. I will support the motion and will make a short speech.

I support the motion because of the perspective I gained from having worked and lived abroad and from my experience more locally. I have lived and worked in communities with no welfare system whatsoever and I have also lived and worked in a community where almost everybody has been on some form of welfare or credit assistance. Neither of those are situations that I would wish for my constituents. That is why I am fully supportive of the Chancellor’s vision of a high wage, low tax and low welfare society and I know that in the places where I have worked they would wish for that in their communities if they could achieve it. I am also supportive of what the noble Lord Lawson said in the other place about welfare and tax credits having ballooned, but I also agree with Lord Lawson and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that we must protect those at the lowest end of the income scale.

As an NHS doctor and therapeutic counsellor in this country and in the area local to where I live, I have come across people going through some of the most challenging times of their lives. Contrary to what the right hon. Member for Birkenhead said, those people do not have weak shoulders. Their shoulders are stronger than mine or anybody’s in this place. I have met single parents who have escaped domestic violence bringing up their children in difficult circumstances and going out to work for some hours during the week. They go out to work because they want to and because they want to be a role model for their children. They are doing their best for their families and we must do our best for them. Ultimately, they become role models for our society. I support the Chancellor in looking for mitigation measures and am happy to support the motion today.