Housing Benefit
Debate between Anne Main and Sheila Gilmore(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Main
No, I will not give way. The hon. Lady can make her own remarks.
It appears that in trying to garner support for the incoherent policy that tried to level the playing field with the private rented sector—I thought that was a good idea as a Labour party policy—Labour started the process that should have been continued by ensuring that people paid for the accommodation that they were using. I have not heard from Opposition Members—perhaps they can illuminate the House and the public on this point during their speeches—what, if they choose to get rid of the inequality of a bedroom tax, which obviously does not exist, but let us go with the fantasy for a moment, they will do when they are in power. Will they allow the anomaly, or will they pledge, at goodness knows what expense, to reverse the proposals that they introduced in 2008?
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Anne Main and Sheila Gilmore(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Main
The hon. Lady makes a valuable point. The House is where we raise such concerns. I am sure that those things will be taken into account in Committee, and in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee report. The debate is not about playing ping-pong with blame; it is about drawing such matters into the public domain. Perhaps that area will be tightened up. I am hopeful that it will be.
Mrs Main
I will not give way to the hon. Lady. I have read only about a paragraph of my speech. Many Opposition Members wish to speak, so I am sure she will have an opportunity to intervene.
Hon. Members are the voices of their constituencies. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) made exactly that point when he said that we are the strongest lobbyists. If something is not right in our constituencies, we speak up for our constituents. It is up to us to ferret behind the scenes and find out what is going on. We need to be aware of how lobbyists play and by whose rules, and the extent of their schmoozing.
I want to point out a worrying grey area that is not covered in the Bill but that could be captured as we work on the Bill in the next few days. I have been trying to track the influence of lobbyists on a major project in St Albans. I have made no bones about the fact that I am completely and implacably opposed, as is my council at every level, to a strategic rail freight interchange on 300 acres of green-belt land. I am concerned that lobbying behind the scenes may have led to a shift in the decision-making process, and have made every effort to try to find out how hon. Members, as representatives of our constituents, can find out who or what has gained the ear of influential people. I fully accept that that does not always mean the Minister—it could be someone in the Minister’s office. Members need to have a clearly defined route to find out what has gone on. Our constituents do not have that opportunity.
The project has been led by Helioslough. One of its key lobbyists is Mr Simon Hoare, who operates under various guises—it is therefore pertinent that we have a full register. We have been fighting the proposal since 2006. It has been turned down twice—once by the previous Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and once by the current one. There have been two refusals, but now there is a minded-to-approve decision, which has set off my radar. What has altered? The plans are the same, so has pressure been applied behind the scenes?
The last refusal was quashed by the High Court in 2011, and the process has become murky and opaque—it is very much the sort of thing that I believe the public want hon. Members to clamp down on. In this world, personal connections and relationships can come in very handy. I have dug very deep to try to get to the bottom of how much access the developer of the rail freight proposal has gained via his lobbyists. The proposal has implications for planning and transport, and for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Not only one Department is involved, but many.
Like many colleagues who have concerns about the undue effects of lobbying, I asked a series of parliamentary questions—that is one route, albeit a tortuous one, open to hon. Members—and, ultimately, made freedom of information requests. I discovered in a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers), the then Transport Minister, admitted to having had a private luncheon meeting with the lead lobbyist for Helioslough, the developer, just after the refusal—[Interruption.] I would be grateful if Opposition Members listened to what I have to say. I am making the point that the Bill will not capture those private, personal connections over lunch, where things are discussed.
I found out that the matter was discussed over lunch in a private, personal capacity with the Minister. Since then, I have been chasing those private comments to see what they have led to. My right hon. Friend has also admitted that, since that meeting, her Department received an e-mail from Simon Hoare entitled “Radlett SRFI—The economic benefits”. Simon Hoare was tirelessly making his case behind the scenes, despite the fact that the process was closed to me and my constituents.
I submitted freedom of information requests, because the role of all Back-Bench MPs is to speak up and defend our constituents against what I would describe as inappropriate lobbying. I have the contents of the e-mails and an attached document. I also have the Department for Transport letter to Mr Hoare informing him that the e-mails were about to be disclosed. When Mr Hoare received notice that his e-mails and private correspondence were about to be disclosed, he sent an attachment, saying:
“I would prefer for my email not to be sent to the MPs”.
I am sure he would prefer that. Unfortunately for him, the Department disclosed his e-mail, which makes for disturbing reading. Among a lot of other things, it states:
“I am aware the DfT is a strong supporter of the development of rail freight”
and
“will also doubtless be aware”
of
“a number of schemes…In the last 10 years my client has incurred costs over £12 million”
on that planning application. The letter goes on:
“I do not believe that DCLG has a clue as to the costs of the planning process…While appreciating that DCLG is a quasi judicial role vis à vis the Public Inquiry, anything your department can do to press the case for a speedy and supportive decision would be a real shot in the arm…As a courtesy, I ought to advise you that we are also in contact with HMT…and…BIS.”
I would not have known that without a freedom of information request. It goes on to say a lot more, but my time is constrained.
This is what we have to clamp down on. I am sure that this is sounding very unhelpful, but at least this Government are tackling it—[Interruption] They have an opportunity to tackle it through the Bill. Sadly, such private meetings will not be covered by the current proposed legislation—that is the point I am making. I am sure that the Minister would like to know that I have asked the Library about this matter. It has confirmed that this is still a grey area, even with the introduction of the Bill: it will be up to Ministers to decide whether they feel that they have been influenced over lunch and a good glass of wine.
I give the Department for Transport some credit for letting me see the information trail. So far, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has not let me see anything, saying that it did receive documents and correspondence but that letting me know all about it would involve a disproportionate cost. Well, one Department can let me know and I do not like what I read—it stinks. Something has changed a decision affecting my constituency. Somebody beat up somebody in some Department somewhere and said, “Make this thing happen, please”. I know we have an economic imperative to get Britain moving, but not by building an inappropriately located rail freight interchange.
I have asked parliamentary questions and I am dissatisfied with the level of response. My freedom of information requests have been rather more fruitful, but at what cost? The paper trail involved in trying to get to the evidence is not without cost to the taxpayer. I have gone to the Information Commissioner for adjudication on the rather opaque way that this matter has been dealt with. As the duly elected representative of my entire constituency, I represent everybody, as we all do in our constituencies, not just Conservatives. If this decision is imposed on them, they have a right to know that any lobbying has been transparent. I am not anti-lobbying—I lobby like crazy on behalf of my constituents—but I want to know who has had cosy lunches and I want to know if quiet conversations behind closed doors have effected changes of mind. I want to know, on behalf of my constituents, whether lobbying is helping to change decision-making processes.
In the end that is surely what we should all be agreed on, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North said. We should all want fairness from the Bill. Given that the Library has admitted that this is a grey area and that at the moment the Bill does not capture this—it perhaps captures a few other things—I desperately hope that we can come up with guidance on the Floor of the House. If not, those cosy conversations will increase, and paper trails will be quietly hidden away—nobody can track down a quiet conversation over lunch.
I thank my right hon. Friend the. Member for Chipping Barnet, who admitted that the application was discussed. I gave her the courtesy of letting her know that I would refer to her correspondence. She admitted that additional information was later sent to the three Departments—I have the proof of that. The trail has gone somewhat dead and I am disappointed about that. I am still hopeful that there is time to see sense and overturn the decision, but what has come out of this situation is the unedifying spectacle whereby I can go through many weeks of appeals with my constituents in the public domain where everyone can hear everything and then, unbeknownst to us, when the process is stalled, the developer can have private lunches at which, because there happens to be a university connection, old friendships have been called in. That is not acceptable; that is not democracy. I am sure that the Bill will now appropriately consider this grey area.
Welfare Reform Bill
Debate between Anne Main and Sheila Gilmore(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Sheila Gilmore
I hope that those figures for Scotland are not like the figures for the whole United Kingdom, which, according to the Sunday newspaper that I read this week, included students. That was in the small print, but the fact remains that the wrong figure is constantly given.
I am not defending circumstances in which people are unable to work. However, we should examine the whole notion of the mini-job much more carefully than we have been able to do so far. We need to be clear about exactly what it will deliver. We already know that many people who have been able to start work over the past 10 or 15 years as a result of measures introduced by the previous Government, including families with children, are still living in poverty.
The mini-jobs, or micro-jobs, that we are discussing may indeed enable people to work, and being able to work for six, eight or 10 hours may be seen as some great moral advantage. I fear, however, that the jobs will be of such poor quality and so poorly paid that those people will remain in poverty, and the path out of that poverty does not appear to be very well mapped. I think that we should have given the proposal much more consideration before using it as a reason to remove child care provision from other people.
Mrs Main
The hon. Lady seems to be digging herself into a hole. She has admitted that the measures taken by the last Government did not work, and that people were left in poverty. Surely she should welcome an innovative approach from the present Government, and surely she should stop trying to filibuster their proposal into the long grass by demanding so much blessed detail that nothing will ever get done. We owe our families more than that after the Labour Government’s failure to get people into work and out of poverty.
Sheila Gilmore
I cannot accept the hon. Lady’s premise. People were able to work as a result of the measures introduced by the Labour Government, such as the minimum wage, but we did not manage to take all families out of poverty because of the type of jobs that many of those people were doing and the levels of income that they received. It is wrong to suggest that a system allowing people to work for fewer hours will in itself deliver them from poverty.