Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Leech and Mark Harper

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, to which I would say two things in reply. First, people who are in work can be referred to the Access to Work mental health support service, to get support delivered to them to enable them to stay in work. Secondly, the NHS now recognises that it has an important part to play here, and for the first time we have set out access requirements for mental health services, which will start this April.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

Why is no help available to get people with mental health problems back on to employment and support allowance, when they have voluntarily come off ESA and gone on to jobseeker’s allowance, wrongly believing that they were fit to work, only to be sanctioned for failing to comply with their jobseeker’s agreement because of their mental illness?

[Mr Harper]

One of the things that our work coaches in the jobcentre are able to do is flex the claimant commitment people make according to the claimant’s health condition. What should happen in such cases is that, if the individual remains on JSA, their work coach can alter the conditions to deal with that. If the hon. Gentleman has specific examples where that has not happened, I would be delighted if he wrote to me so that we can look into those cases.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Leech and Mark Harper

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Of course local government has had to play its part in the savings, but local authorities can make choices. My local authority in Gloucestershire has protected the value of social care because it thinks that protecting older people—[Interruption.] No, my local authority has faced cuts, like all local authorities, but it has chosen to—[Interruption.] If Opposition Members want me to answer their hon. Friend’s question, they should stop yelling. My local authority has prioritised funding for older people and people of working age. Clearly, the hon. Lady’s local authority has made different decisions. If those on her local authority want to ring-fence the money transferred from the ILF, they are absolutely free to do so, so I suggest she take that up with them.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

10. What estimate he made of the potential savings to the public purse that would arise from implementation of the under-occupancy penalty; and what estimate he has made of the amount saved to date by that implementation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Leech and Mark Harper

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am afraid that I cannot satisfy my hon. Friend on that this morning, but it is a very good idea. I will write to him with the information and put a copy in the Library of the House.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

I was going to ask exactly the same question as the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). Will the Minister name and shame all local authorities that are failing to provide discretionary housing benefit for people who are being penalised as a result of their disability?

[Mr Harper]

We do have records of the amount of money that the Government make available to local authorities. In the interests of transparency, I will put in the Library details of the money made available by the Government and the extent to which local authorities take up that generous allocation of funding.

UN Syrian Refugees Programme

Debate between John Leech and Mark Harper

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question as he draws attention not only to the help that we are providing in Syria but to the help that we are able to provide across the world with our international development spending, which, although not universally popular, makes sense from both a humanitarian and a security perspective. He has put his finger on the help we are providing. By being the second largest global donor, it follows that we are almost certainly helping the second largest number of people after the United States of America.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

The sizeable Syrian community in Greater Manchester makes a valuable contribution to that city and the wider area, so places such as Manchester are therefore best equipped to support Syrian children who have faced unmentionable suffering. Surely the Minister needs to think again.

[Mr Harper]

As I said, we are providing help and support to tens of thousands of Syrian children, including some of the most vulnerable, working with our international partners. The work we are doing in the region is more effective than some of the solutions proposed by hon. Members. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not agree, but I think that the Government’s policy is the right one and it is one that we will stick to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Leech and Mark Harper

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

That is not quite what the judgment said. We are considering the judgment very carefully. The judge made it quite clear that the Home Office was perfectly entitled to have an income threshold that applied nationally. The judge said that in certain circumstances he had some concerns. Applications where that is the only issue on which the case would have been rejected are being held and we will make an announcement in due course.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

Does the Minister accept that, unless safeguards are put in place for landlords taking reasonable steps to verify immigration status, there is a real danger of discrimination against foreign nationals from landlords choosing to avoid the risk by simply not renting properties to them?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good question, which we thought about carefully. To reassure him, first, landlords will have to check the documents of everyone to whom they want to rent property—there are similar checks with employers—so they will have to confirm that someone is a British citizen or has leave to be in the country. Secondly, they are bound by the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 not to discriminate against somebody on the grounds of their race or nationality.

Electoral Administration Reform

Debate between John Leech and Mark Harper

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am grateful, Dr McCrea, for my third Westminster Hall debate this week and the second under your chairmanship today. It is, however, slightly less popular than this morning’s debate, when almost 50 Members of Parliament turned up to talk about something completely different.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) for securing the debate, which gives us the opportunity to discuss some important issues, and for her kind and generous words at the beginning. She raises some important issues, and she will know that the issues in her constituency at the close of poll also affected the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, who has taken a close personal interest in the matter. Indeed, we discussed it when he and I met the chair of the Electoral Commission earlier this month. The hon. Lady can therefore rest assured that close attention will be paid to what we need to do as a result of the commission’s recommendations.

It is worth reminding hon. Members of the need to be clear about the role of the Government versus that of returning officers and the Electoral Commission, for a sensible reason. Clearly, the Government have no role in the administration of elections on the ground, which is what independent returning officers are for; we need to remember that there are good reasons for that. The Electoral Commission is also not responsible for running elections on the ground, but as the hon. Lady correctly says, it has a role in providing guidance for the people who run them.

It is worth setting out for clarity what the law says about the end of polling. The law is clear: ballot papers cannot be issued after the close of poll at 10 o’clock. Courts have considered the situation where people have turned up just before the deadline but were not able to cast their vote. It is clear that once someone has been issued with a ballot paper, they are allowed the time to cast it, even after 10 o’clock. After that time, no one should be issued with a ballot paper, even if they are inside the polling station. That is clear; the law has not changed. The guidance was also clear, and apart from a change in the close of poll from 9 pm to 10 pm, the law on when voting ends has not changed since 1949. It is therefore surprising that returning officers were not clear about what to do in those circumstances.

The Electoral Commission has issued an interim report on the matter, and one of its recommendations, which the Government are considering, is to look at whether the law should be changed so that electors in a queue before 10 o’clock should be issued with a ballot paper. That raises a range of issues regarding how the queue is managed and what resources will need to be put in place. There are constituencies, such as my own, where there could be nearly 90 polling stations, so clearly there are some issues with resources if we had to put in place provision for queue management at all the stations. There are a number of concerns, but the Government are considering them carefully, and we will decide whether to include the recommendations in our parliamentary reform Bill, which is scheduled for later this Session.

The hon. Lady mentioned the case of Woodseats library in her constituency. What happened in a range of situations in her constituency, that of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister and elsewhere seemed to have been driven largely by poor planning. Returning officers either had too many voters in one polling district or did not staff the districts properly.

The hon. Lady highlighted an issue of the combination of polls for local and general elections, which seemed to take people by surprise, and where there was a underestimate of the turnout.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

I welcome the Minister to his position on the Government Bench.

The Electoral Commission’s report highlighted one of the causes of the queues, which was that explanations had to be given to a number of people on why they were eligible to vote in the local elections but not in the general election. Early-day motion 1, which stands in my name, suggests a practical step to ensure that queues are kept to an absolute minimum on election day: we can make sure that a general election does not take place on the same day as another election. That would solve many of the problems related to the difficulty of explaining to people who do not realise that they can vote only in one election and not the other.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes half a good point in that he puts his finger on what caused some of the delays, but allowing that to drive whether we have combined elections would be letting the tail wag the dog.

Returning officers would need to consider the problem of combined elections, which happen in many parts of the country perfectly successfully. In my constituency, the two previous general elections coincided with county council elections, and there were no problems. It is necessary for acting returning officers to think about these issues. They know from the register those areas where many voters might be entitled to vote in one set of elections but not the other—perhaps a general election but not local or European elections. It will be for them to consider whether there are many people with different franchises in their area, and to estimate how much time that will take and plan accordingly. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that not taking that into account led to some of the issues highlighted by the Electoral Commission. However, saying that we should not have two elections on the same day is not the solution.

[Mr Leech]

I thank the Minister for giving way a second time. The reality is that in Manchester, Withington the turnout was about 62%. That is still low by some standards, and significantly lower than in the Minister’s constituency. If for some reason the turnout had been as high as 70% or 80%, as it was in some constituencies, literally thousands of people would not have been able to vote. That cannot be allowed. One practical way to prevent it from happening again would be to ensure that the general election was held on its own, as a single election.