Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Skidmore and Jonathan Reynolds

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

Online piracy of any content is a key concern for the Government. We are aware of the specific issues with beoutQ and raised the matter with the Saudi Arabian Government. We will continue to make representations about its alleged infringement of UK creative content and support efforts to tackle piracy, wherever it occurs. However, the White Paper is to have a targeted approach that focuses on harms to individuals; it is not about economic harm to businesses.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is not just in intellectual property where we need better legal protections. My constituent Mr Michael McGrory of Stalybridge recently took his employer to an employment tribunal for unauthorised deduction of wages, for breach of contract and for disability discrimination. He won his case but, rather than pay up, the company went into liquidation. The same directors set up the same business in the same premises under a different company registration and name. As a result, Mr McGrory cannot get his award enforced. Does the Minister agree that that is wrong? If so, how might we change the company formation process to stop that happening?

[Chris Skidmore]

I have great sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. Obviously, we provide funding for the police intellectual property crime unit, which has seen 94 investigations and arrested or voluntarily interviewed 106 individuals recently. The maximum criminal penalties for copyright infringement have increased since 2017 from two years to 10 years. We are determined to do more, which is why we have a conference with the World Intellectual Property Organisation in London on 18 and 19 June, because we need an international response. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale): this is an international issue, and we need to ensure that we take action.

Proportional Representation

Debate between Chris Skidmore and Jonathan Reynolds

Monday 30th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Reynolds]

We will come to that issue when I go through some of the commonly raised points that my right hon. Friend and I have discussed for some time.

The crucial point I want to make is that the additional member system used in Germany, Scotland and Wales avoids the vast electoral deserts where people in a part of a country, whether a county or a region, get no plurality of representation despite casting votes for a range of political parties. Front Benchers are called to respond to debates in Westminster Hall. I remember responding to a debate on travel in the south-west of England when I was shadow rail Minister. There were 20 Conservative MPs on the Government Benches and just me on the Opposition Benches to respond. Members would get up and say, “Only the Opposition Front Bencher is here,” but if we look at the election results, we see that even in the south-west more people voted against the Conservative party than for it. Clearly it was the biggest party, but the system delivered 100% representation for a party that was not even getting a majority of the vote in the region. That cannot be right.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Skidmore)]

It is an excellent system.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It is excellent if we view this simply as a partisan issue where the only thing that matters is our side winning, but as democrats we have to look at this from the point of view of what the public put forward, and we have to respond to that public demand. If we are not doing that, we have to ask ourselves what the purpose of elections is to begin with. It cannot just be about maximising individual party advantage and finding a system that gets us to that point. That is not good enough, and it is not what democratic systems are based on.

I will conclude, because we have such a strong turnout in the Chamber. I just want to go through some of the commonly held views, such as those shown in the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) and the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay. It is true that lists are suboptimal—there is no doubt about that—but what I find hypocritical is the fact that many of the people who cite lists as an example of undue party advantage know full well that first past the post is open to manipulation. It has always been the case in every party represented here that favoured sons and daughters have been parachuted into constituencies or selection processes have been manipulated. It is simply not true that that can be transferred to any system that has a list involved.

With regard to minority parties, I think that we should teach better history in schools. As the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay was speaking, I thought, “Well, right now things are dependent on the DUP.” We had the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition before that. John Major was dependent on the Ulster Unionists. We had the Callaghan Government’s Lib-Lab pact. We had minority Governments and coalitions before the war. We had the situation with the Irish nationalists. The history of this country is not one of first past the post delivering clear results. In fact, we have had a situation quite recently in which a proportional system has delivered a majority Government in Scotland while first past the post has delivered a hung Parliament in the United Kingdom, so we need to look more closely at the evidence.