Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alun Cairns and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We want the greatest flexibility in the NHS work force across the whole United Kingdom. The regulatory burden and bureaucracy involved is unacceptable, and the Department of Health and Welsh Government are working together with the support of the Wales Office to put that right.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Many health services for my constituents are delivered from England by specialist hospitals. Why do the Secretary of State and the Minister want to take away the voice of MPs from Wales to speak up on behalf of their constituents and look after their interests?

[Alun Cairns]

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s premise. Welsh MPs will still be here fighting for their constituents and ensuring the best care for them, be it on the Welsh or English side of the border. That is what we will be elected for.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alun Cairns and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the significant infrastructure investment being made across the whole of the UK, but of course it is important that north Wales links into the rest of the UK. The fact that Crewe is the HS2 hub is important, and I look forward to hosting a transport summit in the next week or so to discuss how we best link north Wales with the rest of the UK.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

13. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Transport on investment in rail in north Wales. Will the Minister confirm that the UK Government have diverted funding previously allocated for the phase 1 and phase 2 modular rail signalling upgrade in north Wales to support investment in rail projects in south Wales?

[Alun Cairns]

I can categorically reject that. The UK Government are making significant investment in north Wales, at the Halton curve, and in south Wales, in the electrification of the main line right through to Swansea and in the valley lines and Vale of Glamorgan line services. I am proud of our record of electrifying railways in Wales. The previous Administration left us as one of the three nations across Europe without any electrified rail; Wales, sadly, was left with Albania and Moldova, and this Government are changing that.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Alun Cairns and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lucas]

The fundamental mistake was the demutualisation of organisations such as Northern Rock by the Conservative Government in 1986 and the years thereafter. The hon. Gentleman should be arguing against such decisions, so that we can start creating institutions like local building societies again.

Our current banking system is not the only model of banking. In Germany, the Sparkassen model was affected much less than most economies by the 2007 recession. Local banks known as Sparkassen operate within geographically restricted areas and provide both retail and business banking there. Notwithstanding the existence of ordinary multinational banks, over 20% of ordinary local residents choose to invest in their local Sparkassen.

I welcome what the Chancellor said today about ISAs, but I believe that people would invest in local banks and institutions that supported the local economy and created jobs for young people. We want to see that happening, which is why we support the development of regional banks. Ever since the Conservative Government started to demutualise in the 1980s, destroying institutions such as Northern Rock, the Leeds Permanent building society and the Halifax building society, the move has been ever more towards centralising investment by the banks in this country. Local economies have suffered as a result.

Business investment has not recovered since 2007, and the City still dominates the economy. The growth that we are seeing in the UK is growth of the kind that led to the problem in the first place. We can all see the train coming down the track. We know what kind of a recovery this is, and we need to do something about it. The people I represent are not benefiting from the recovery at all. Women in my constituency are still earning less than they were in 2010, and men there have also seen a reduction in their incomes since that time.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Lucas]

I must make some progress; I have a particular point that I want to make.

This Government are not even addressing those issues. They do not seem to understand that they exist. Nothing that the Chancellor said today will help the people I represent. They are fed up with inequality in this country, and with the massive support that is given to those in the City and those who earn millions of pounds a year, who are so remote from the lives of my constituents that they can have no understanding of how the rest of the country works.

Believe it or not, there was a time when the Prime Minister supported a move towards greater equality. He quoted “The Spirit Level” in 2009, before he was elected, when he was trying to present a positive face for the Conservative party for the election. Those days are long gone.

We need to take responsibility ourselves. Inequality is the issue of the time. I am a member of the Nationwide building society.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Lucas]

I will not give way; I have a particular point to make.

The chief executive of the Nationwide building society was paid £2.3 million last year. I have written to him asking him to support a motion within the society that his salary should be no more than 75 times the rate of the lowest paid employee in the organisation. This is a mutual society that we should all support. He has refused, and I as a member, acting as an individual, intend to present a resolution to the annual conference of the Nationwide building society. A mutual organisation should respect the principles of mutuality and should accept that it is not appropriate for investors’ money to be used for that level of executive pay. If people want executives paid at that level, they can go and bank with Barclays. When I shifted my account to the Nationwide building society, I did so because I believed in mutuals. I want my chief executive’s pay, like that of the chief executive of the John Lewis Partnership, who operates precisely on those terms and has been in his position for many years, to be linked to that of other employees in the organisation.

I am looking for support. Members in all parts of the House can join my campaign. I need 500 signatures by 4 April, and I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will consider joining it, if he is a member of the Nationwide building society. We need to ensure that the people we represent know that we understand that this country faces a cost of living crisis and that individuals are worse off now, and that we will not put up with increased executive pay of millions of pounds for people who are not supporting the local economies in our constituencies.

Future of the BBC

Debate between Alun Cairns and Ian C. Lucas

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for championing the cause of local journalists and local broadcasters. Very often, when decisions are taken by that officer class of executive, local broadcasters and local journalists are the ones who pay the price.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alun Cairns]

I am conscious of the time, but I will give way briefly.

[Ian Lucas]

Does not the hon. Gentleman deeply regret, with me, that we have no BBC local radio in Wales? Unfortunately, my area of Wales suffers profoundly from not having the type of support and investigative journalism that is available, for example, from BBC Radio Shropshire?

[Alun Cairns]

I agree, and I underline the point.

I hope the BBC can pursue—

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Debate between Alun Cairns and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Justice must not only be done, but must manifestly be seen to be done—Lord Justice Hewart’s pronouncement is fundamental. It applies to our courts, and it should apply to Ministers acting in a quasi-judicial capacity. The integrity of a Minister’s decision-making process depends substantially on that process being accepted by those who observe it. That is especially so when the decision is one with a high public profile, and few processes have a higher public profile than this process has had.

Out there, people are saying to me that the Secretary of State has no credibility considering the integrity of the process that he followed. We know that he was in favour of the News International bid, and that from the outset he made proposals supporting its acquiring BSkyB. We have heard today, and he has confirmed from the Dispatch Box, that he was making representations to the Prime Minister to meet the Business Secretary. Will he intervene on me to say that he did not make such a representation? The reason he is not coming to the Dispatch Box to intervene is that he knows that he made that representation—a memo to the Prime Minister asking to meet the Business Secretary, which he should not have done. That was his evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Lucas]

I will not give way at this point.

We know what the Secretary of State’s views were at the outset, and we know that the facts disclose that he is not an impartial Culture Secretary. We also know that he does not support the people who worked with him in carrying out his ministerial role. We know that he nominated Adam Smith to manage the relationship with News International. He did not, on the other hand, appoint anyone to manage the relationship with people opposed to the proposal, and the level of contact with opponents of the proposal was in no measure anywhere near that with News International.

Rural Broadband and Mobile Coverage

Debate between Alun Cairns and Ian C. Lucas

Thursday 19th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lucas]

Absolutely. The Minister is always very polite in his answers to parliamentary questions, but he is also very good at drafting uninformative replies, something that I worked very hard to achieve when I was a Minister. I was not quite as good at it as he is.

The provision of universal broadband services is also very important to the public sector. Online services are a massive opportunity for government at all levels to provide better services more quickly and more efficiently. However, the Government can move in that direction only if they provide those services to everyone across the country. For example, I understand that the Government intend to move to the compulsory online registration of new companies. As the former responsible Minister, I understand the reasons—costs and efficiency—for this decision, but one can justify such a move only if there is universal broadband provision across the UK. A company with no access to the internet cannot be required by the Government to use it.

If we are to have universal broadband by 2015, what will it cost? Through parliamentary questions, I have established—I did get some information—that the cost of providing universal fibre-to-the-premises provision would be £29 billion, and that more realistically universal fibre-to-the-cabinet provision would cost £5 billion. We agree that there is a market failure and that the Government have sought to address it by setting aside the £530 million by 2015 mentioned several times today. However, we all accept that that is not enough, so we must look to the private sector for the necessary investment to bridge that investment gap.

On definitions, the Government are not just committing themselves to universal broadband; they are committing themselves to the best high-speed broadband in Europe by 2015. It will be helpful if the Minister tells us today what speed he regards as high speed for these purposes. If we are to work together for the benefit of our constituents to achieve that target, we must know what it means.

We know that insufficient public money is available to achieve the Government’s goals by 2015, so let us consider the position for private investment. How is that going? Here, I regret to say, there is a problem that was referred to by a couple of Government Members, including the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). On 1 April the Minister received correspondence—no coincidence perhaps—in which senior executives of leading communications companies, including Fujitsu, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Geo and Vtesse Networks, wrote that “urgent intervention” was needed to require BT to revise the pricing for the use of its infrastructure. The companies also stated that without such intervention the Broadband Delivery UK process risked a lack of vigorous competition, and as a result would fail to deliver the investment, quality, speed of roll-out, innovation and value for money that the industry was capable of delivering, and which taxpayers deserved. That is a major problem for the necessary private investment.

The communications network under Labour was extremely competitive. For example, in the past three years, competition has seen the cost of mobile broadband fall from £50 per gigabyte to less than £10 per gigabyte.

[Alun Cairns]

If the network was so competitive under the former Administration, why are we ranked only 26th in the world for average broadband speed?

[Ian Lucas]

The previous Government made massive advances in the provision of broadband services and internet services over a very long period. I am proud of our record. Had the Government stuck to the same targets, we would have achieved much more progress than has been achieved to date. I now hear from providers, and the Minister has been told in correspondence from them that without urgent intervention there will be a lack of vigorous competition in the marketplace, so what action is he taking in response to these representations?

I wish to raise one more concern with the Minister. It is now clear that responsibility for the delivery of broadband services in particular geographical areas in England is to be the responsibility of local authorities, which might create a patchwork of provision across England. Different local authorities will attach different priorities to the advancement of the network. We heard from the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) about the issues affecting Lancashire. I was pleased to hear that the tendering process in the North Yorkshire pilot area seems to have begun, even though the pilots were announced as long ago as last October. There are particular issues when it comes to the provision of services and tender documents by local authorities. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that each local authority makes the progress needed to achieve the targets he has outlined?

I was interested to hear that Somerset and Devon are working together on their pilot project in the south-west. One of the drivers for that is the superior provision in Cornwall, which has been assisted by European funding that is unavailable in Devon. Hon. Members from Wales may be interested to know that the provision of broadband in Wales and Scotland has de facto—if not de jure—been assigned to the Welsh Assembly Government and the Scottish Government respectively. Responsibility for delivering services in Wales and Scotland will essentially be dealt with at the Assembly or Scottish Parliament level. A patchwork is already developing across the UK. It is important not to lose sight of the need for a national network. We do not need a lot of small “railways” running in individual areas without their being linked together. Although having small, big society projects set up networks is appealing, there is a danger of the networks not working effectively together. There are tensions between the small and larger projects. It is important that we maintain a competitive network.

I am sorry that I have not been able to deal with the numerous contributions made today. However, I am sure that the Minister has heard the strength of feeling from Government and Opposition Members, and that he will use the video in his negotiations with the Treasury, because there will come a time when some of the bids being made now will be turned down, and that is when government starts to get difficult. Saying yes is easy; saying no is always more challenging.