Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and Charlie Elphicke

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

Border Checks Summer 2011

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

That is a fair point. There are several important ongoing inquiries into what happened, and they are the right thing to do. It is right that the new boss of UKBA should have the licence and ability to supervise his staff—and that includes Brodie Clark. If the new boss takes that view, and the Home Secretary endorses it, that will be the right execution of the chain of command. The House should respect that, and it should respect the need to let the inquires go through and be conducted properly. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) may not agree, and may want all the papers published on the internet immediately, but the proper processes should be followed and dealt with. We should ensure that we have the most secure borders possible, because our constituents are deeply concerned about what has gone on.

I talk to people on the doorsteps of Dover who tell me, “I am really unhappy about the fact that we have had so many people come into this country,” and it is a matter of public record that about 2.2 million have done so. European Union citizens have in broad terms a free right of entry to come and go, but that does not apply to people outside the area.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Without trying to be too opportunistic, I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees that when the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) told the House that concerns over immigration, border controls and asylum were just “nonsense” and apparently “huff and puff” in many of the tabloid newspapers, he showed that he has no credibility on the subject—and neither do the Labour party.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, and he is right. The hon. Gentleman discussed the matter in a question on the EU constitution, and in fairness I should read out his entire remarks. He said to the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett):

“The Home Secretary may well have heard over recent days much huff and puff in many of the tabloid newspapers about the draft constitutional treaty and what it will do to border controls and asylum and immigration in Europe. Will he ignore all that nonsense”?—[Official Report, 16 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 15.]

The then Home Secretary replied: “Yes, I agree entirely.” One gets a perspective from that, but I do not want to labour what is a partisan point. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be able to read out more of what he said—he did go on; indeed, he does go on—when he gets his own chance to make some remarks.

I shall close with the concerns of my constituents. We need more controls for people from outside the European Union. The figures reported by the labour market survey show a total increase of 966,000 in employment between quarter 1 of 2004 and quarter 3 of 2010—that is, 966,000 people not born in the UK. UK-born employment fell by 334,000, while foreign-born UK employment rose by 1.297 million. Of those, 530,000 were born in the EU8 countries. The essential point is that the majority—800,000—were born outside those countries. We see immigration as somehow an EU problem, but there is a bigger problem with people born outside those areas—people for whom we can take controls. I hope that in time we will not only do that, but do more to make the Home Office fit for purpose, after the mess of the past 13 years.

Fuel Prices and the Cost of Living

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

rose—

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Ms Eagle]

It is clear that the policy can be introduced only at the risk of injecting huge and dangerous uncertainty into the public finances. I give way to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen).

Local Government Finance

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

I meant no discourtesy, Mr Speaker.

Moving quickly to my own history, when I was elected in 1994 we had a hung council. We had a mess to sort out. All three parties worked positively together to do that and, frankly, to look at how to un-bankrupt a council that by then had £1 billion of debt. Difficult decisions were made. The emphasis was very much on ensuring better front-line services. My experience was that although we made difficult rebalancing decisions, we were able not only to protect front-line services but to improve them quite dramatically. People on the doorstep were saying that they were now getting front-line services, as opposed to excessive bureaucracy and—I regret to say in the case of Lambeth in those times—in some cases corruption, so positive changes can be made when difficult decisions are taken and things are reworked.

One thing that I particularly welcome is the council tax position. Council tax has been increased in the last decade or so—I believe that it has doubled—to the current level of £1,439. That is an awful lot of money and a massive increase. We know that, because of the deficit, it is not possible to increase local government spending on the grant settlement side of things. We also know that people have been flayed alive for over a decade, given the amount of council tax that they have been asked to pay. I therefore particularly welcome the Government’s decision to work positively with local authorities to freeze council tax. That is important to constituents such as mine who live in deprived circumstances. Many of them are elderly, and many are poor. Stopping council tax rises benefits them massively, particularly those on fixed incomes. Therefore, on the one hand, we have a set of tough decisions aimed at ensuring that we make those efficiencies, and on the other, we have managed to stop council tax rising, which is important.

I totally agree with the Secretary of State when he says that we need smarter procurement. We are doing that in Kent, with the Kent Buying Consortium. He has said that we need better asset management, too. Many people are more than aware of the position in Newham, where there is a new, flashy building that has cost an awful lot of money. We have to be much more cute about using asset management. We have the streamlining and merging of operations, and in Dover and Shepway we increasingly have shared services, so that there will be a shared chief executive and shared back office. That agenda has been embraced in Kent, which is important. It is also important to consider how best to deliver services. Suffolk county council has at times been a bit over the top with its chief officers, but it has led the way on how services can be run, with care homes operating as social enterprises. In my constituency, I am promoting the case for a care home in Deal to be transferred to a community interest company when the local authority feels unable to continue running it.

That is the right way forward. I do not think that this is a debate in which we should necessarily be partisan or throw rocks at each other, because we know the financial position. I could quote the figures showing that Labour was going to cut the budget by £5 billion—that was in Labour’s pre-Budget report—and all the rest of it, but would that help matters? No, because we know the position of the nation’s finances.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that my local council in North West Leicestershire is facing budget cuts of 10% somewhat undermines the complaints made by the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), about Liverpool’s budget being cut by 9%? Does that not prove that we are indeed all in this together? We all know who put us in it, and we should not let them forget it for one moment.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. Just as when all parties in Lambeth worked together positively in the local authority’s interest, it would be best if we all worked together in the national interest to ensure that all councillors, from all parties, did not try to score political points, which we have seen far too much of lately, but instead worked positively, thinking not about advancement, aggrandisement or the headlines that they might be able to get, but about their constituents. At the end of the day, we were all sent here by our constituents—whether in Liverpool, which is seeking a bit of attention, or anywhere else, it does not matter. All local authority leaders have a responsibility to give their constituents the best possible services and assistance in these extraordinarily difficult conditions.

Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and Charlie Elphicke

Friday 22nd October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. What does substantial compliance mean? I am not sure. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington really should have drafted the Bill properly to include a proper definition of substantial compliance. That might at least have earned Labour party support, if not necessarily Conservative support. If before laying the Bill without any discussion he had worked with the Government, it might have been less controversial. He could have worked with his own party to produce something that could achieve the kind of consensus that there should be for private Members’ Bills.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The salient point is on substantial compliance. Imagine if in canvassing our constituents we were to “substantially comply” with a ballot by delivering papers only to the 80% of people we thought likely to vote in the direction we wanted. Would that be substantial compliance or democracy?