Investigation of Veterans

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

Yes, yes, and emphatically yes.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The borough of Kettering is blessed with many veterans who served in Northern Ireland, and they are outraged by this process. The previous Labour Government issued letters of comfort to known terrorists, and now a Conservative Government are effectively threatening prosecution of veterans, many of whom have already faced court cases. The Minister says he has received legal advice from the Northern Ireland Office. Will he reassure the House that he is challenging that advice, not simply accepting it? He said that Sinn Féin is not pressing for these cases to be examined—he said he had no knowledge of that. Can he confirm 100% that Sinn Féin is not pressing for these veterans to be prosecuted as a condition of setting up the new Northern Ireland Executive?

[John Penrose]

I am not in that part of those talks, so I would not be able to tell my hon. Friend that one way or another. I can say, however—this returns to my earlier answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford—that rancid deals should have no part in how we treat our veterans in any case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 12th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I would gently point out that this is not an essay exchange competition; this is Question Time. For goodness’ sake, let’s speed up.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Will the Minister remind the House how many brave British service personnel were killed or wounded in Operation Banner, which was the defence by this country against a terrorist onslaught in Northern Ireland?

[John Penrose]

Having been in the job for three and a half weeks, I am afraid that I do not have the precise number, but it was very many and the tragedy was huge.

Overseas Voters Bill

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Friday 26th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

Hedgehogs overseas will not be eligible for registration, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is committed to the issue of overseas voter registration, as I am. He will share my shock, on behalf of our constituents, at the figures that have been revealed to the House today. Will the Minister be kind enough to intervene on me in a moment to give us the total number of electors in this country, so that we can establish the proportion represented by the 6 million potential overseas voters as a percentage of the total UK electorate?

[John Penrose]

I think the figure is roughly 44 million. If I get more precise divine inspiration, I may help my hon. Friend out a little more, but it is that sort of ballpark figure.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful for that intervention, and that is the sort of figure that I had in mind. We are now aware that there are potentially 6 million British voters, in addition to the 44 million who are currently registered, who could take part in UK general elections but who are unable to do so because they are not registered. That is a shockingly large figure, and I am surprised that the Government are not giving the issue more priority. Surely, with our traditions of empire and of spreading good government and democracy around the world, we would at the very least want to encourage those 6 million British citizens who are living abroad to retain their franchise in this country and their ability to participate democratically in the future of what is still their nation. I think the nation would be very surprised by the fact that there are 6 million people living abroad whom most of us would like to take part in UK elections.

Clause 1 of this excellent Bill would enable those 6 million British citizens to take part only in

“United Kingdom Parliamentary elections if they were registered to vote”.

Although the provision is fantastic, I would want to take it further. It seems to me that it is important that British citizens living abroad should be able to take part in local government and mayoral elections if they want to do so. At the moment, an EU citizen living in this country quite rightly cannot take part in UK parliamentary elections, or at least they cannot do so yet—that may change if we decide to remain in the European Union—but they can take part in local government elections. It seems to me that British citizens, whether they live in this country or abroad, should be able to participate in all elections at every level of the democratic franchise. If I had the good fortune to end up on the Public Bill Committee, I would seek to amend clause 1(a) to extend the franchise to local government elections.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I am afraid that I must fall back on the response “in due course”, to use that timeworn parliamentary phrase, rather than give my hon. Friend a firm date. However, I assure him that work is going on right now and that we are not hanging around. I will have to leave it at that, but I hope to be able to provide further clarity—in due course.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am enjoying the Minister’s speech hugely and I am encouraged by what he has said so far. Will he do the House a service by placing the 15-year limit in context? We have not yet heard where it comes from, who imposed it and why. There is growing consensus that it needs to be abolished.

[John Penrose]

As the hon. Member for Wansbeck acknowledged, the 15-year rule is a bit of a hybrid. The limit has been as low as five years and as high as 20 years. Successive Governments have extended it or narrowed it over time. I do not want to be too specific about its history. The point behind the observation of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering is that, because the line has been moved about several times under successive Governments, it is inherently arbitrary to choose a particular length of time that people have been away. The Government made a manifesto commitment to enfranchise all British citizens, no matter how long they have been abroad, because we think that choosing 15 years, as opposed to 14 or 16 years, is inherently like sticking a dart in a dartboard. We need to say that if British citizens maintain British citizenship that brings with it rights, obligations and a connection with this country, and that that should endure.

I am encouraged by the Labour party’s view. I welcome the fact that it is willing to embark on a review of the 15-year rule. I also welcome the hon. Member for Wansbeck’s comments about the need for a cross-party approach to driving up registration among all under-represented groups, regardless of where they live—whether they are resident in the UK or abroad. He is absolutely right to point out that there are a succession of groups who are less represented and less registered than others. His colleague, the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), wrote to me recently about students. They are one of the less well-represented groups. Some black and minority ethnic communities are also less well represented. Ex-patriots are the worst of all in terms of the percentage of rates of registration—down at about 5%, as we have heard from earlier speeches. They are probably the least well represented of all the under-represented groups.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and others made the point that we cannot—we would all, as politicians or democrats, be diminished if we did—proceed purely on the basis of narrow party political advantage. It is far better, as the hon. Member for Wansbeck observed, to proceed on the basis of what is right for democracy. We must proceed on a cross-party basis without working out which particular groups might be more likely to favour his party or mine. If we all drive up registration in all groups on that basis, we will improve our democratic credentials and reduce voter cynicism very dramatically. That cynicism is perhaps one of the more corrosive influences not just in reducing levels of voter registration but levels of voter turnout—people who are registered but choose not to exercise their vote. We are all familiar with that problem, and cynicism about politics, the political process and politicians is a key driver of it.

One thing we are trying to do, in improving both the registration process and the reasons for encouraging people to register, is to make registration more convenient, simpler, easier, cheaper and more efficient—what we call the plumbing of registration. We want to make it less of a hassle to get registered.

[John Penrose]

I am happy to confirm that to my right hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. That has not been part of our democratic tradition in this country. It could, of course, be decided and introduced after debate, but it was not in our party’s manifesto and it is not part of our current plans.

[Mr Hollobone]

On registration, a point I have made many times—it fell on deaf ears in the coalition Government; I hope that will not be the case today—is that those in almost all under-represented groups will have had some contact or multiple contacts with Government agencies of one sort or another, whether in relation to benefits, passports, applications for this or applications for that. Why can we not have a simple cross-governmental rule that every time somebody comes into contact with a Government agency they are asked the question, “Are you on the electoral register?” If the answer is no, they could then be told how to register.

[John Penrose]

My hon. Friend gave a good example with regard to pensions, saying that the Department for Work and Pensions will inevitably have a list of people to whom it is paying pensions. That one cogent example should therefore allow an opportunity to provide the kind of nudge he talks about. I can confirm that we have trialled a series of links on various Government website pages to do what he describes. We are currently investigating whether that can be extended more broadly across more Government services, so that any time anybody living abroad or in a domestic under-represented group comes into contact with the British state we can provide a nudge for them to get registered. We are looking at that extremely carefully, as it seems like it could be a very sensible way of proceeding. It may not be the whole answer—in some cases it may not be a very effective answer and in others it may be highly effective—but it is certainly something we want to pursue.

Short Money and Policy Development Grant

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the policy development grant has a slightly different mechanism. It has to be dealt with through a statutory instrument rather than by resolution of the House. The statutory instrument will be laid as soon as it is ready, whereupon the hon. Gentleman and everybody else will have an opportunity to debate it. The hon. Gentleman is also right to say that the Electoral Commission has been consulting carefully and making recommendations about the revised shares to reflect the results of the last general election. I look forward to hearing his further comments at that point.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

May I make two points on behalf of my constituents? First, I absolutely agree with the shadow Leader of the House that the growth in the number of special advisers has got completely out of hand. If the Government want sensible policy advice, they should speak to their Back Benchers. After all, we are the ones who are in touch with our electorate.

Secondly, there should be some mechanism for measuring the effectiveness of the Opposition, because from where I am sitting it would seem that, pro rata, the Scottish National party offers a far more effective opposition than the present Labour party.

[John Penrose]

The shadow Leader of the House delights in using the standard format, “There is a word for that.” He has used that rhetorical device on several previous occasions, but one of the words he has not used is “shambles”, which is perhaps what my hon. Friend is suggesting about Labour’s performance on at least one or two issues.

I can happily confirm that the cost of Spads has started to fall since the last general election, which is tremendously important. I also heartily endorse my hon. Friend’s point that, in order to remain in touch with both the feelings of the House and those of the electorate, Governments need to listen to Back Benchers as well as to others very carefully indeed.

Hadrian’s Wall

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

I appreciate what my hon. Friend is saying; he gave a capable exposition of his idea. However, the stumbling block for me is simply this: if we consider other destination management organisations—local tourism bodies of one kind or another—he is absolutely right to say that Hadrian’s Wall Heritage Ltd is unusual in that the collection of tourism assets with which it is dealing happen to be stretched out in a long, thin line that cuts through a variety of different villages, towns, steadings and local authorities.

Apart from that geographical oddity, it is entirely normal that Hadrian’s Wall Heritage Ltd has to interact with a breadth and variety of different types of organisation. There are different owners—public, private and in some cases third sector—and people from the National Trust as well. Any destination management organisation must deal with a variety of local tourism companies. We could be talking about destination management organisations in York, in my constituency of Weston-super-Mare or in Bristol—it does not matter where someone is in the country; they could be in the Cotswolds or anywhere else. Such organisations have to deal with everything from local hotels to local restaurants, attraction owners and everything else in between, plus local councillors and so on. They are all faced with that precise mixture of stakeholders and interests to match up.

The interesting thing is that there is no instance of such organisations expecting to own the assets that they are helping to promote and manage. In fact, their role is subtly different. They are not quite a trade association, but they are an organisation that helps to promote a particular area. The attraction owners, whether they are private, public or third sector, are key members of that organisation. They come in a variety of different legal wrappers—partnerships, companies limited by guarantee or whatever—but in each case, the various different stakeholders are key members of that organisation and if it is well run, they are the people who dictate terms and set the agenda for what the organisation is trying to do.

It is therefore crucial that although the organisation does not have to own the assets that it is working with, it must have an extremely close and effective relationship with the people whom it is seeking to represent. I am talking about a different kind of relationship, which is a bit more flexible. I would suggest anyway—my hon. Friend was right to point this out—that going down the route of trying to transfer ownership is not necessary, because many other examples of a membership model are being pursued successfully throughout the rest of the country. He was also right to say that it would be an extremely long and slow process.

In the case of private sector owners—from what I can see, some 90% of the wall is in private ownership of one kind or another—I suspect that, persuasive, effective and passionate as my hon. Friend is, he would have to go some in order to persuade most of them to give over voluntarily property that may have been in their family for generations. They may have purchased it recently, but either way, it is private property. I am a huge fan of the Government’s philanthropy agenda, but I suspect that that would be philanthropy on a different scale and that, if my hon. Friend managed to do it, he would go down in history as one of the greatest philanthropic persuaders this country has ever seen.

I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from and why he is making that suggestion. What I would suggest in return is that I think there is an alternative way, which may be a little quicker and simpler, of achieving the goals that he and I both share, and that is to make sure that we have some kind of membership-related approach, whatever kind of legal wrapper it may come in. If we can get to that position—I understand that that is where Hadrian’s Wall Heritage Ltd is trying to move—the company will be able to do precisely the kinds of things that my hon. Friend is talking about and attempt to market and promote the entire wall from one coast to the other, and put across and sell the huge benefits that he has rightly and passionately outlined in his speech. That is precisely what needs to be done and, I think, what everybody wants to see happen.

The huge advantage that Hadrian’s Wall Heritage Ltd has is that, after many years of trying, it is managing to stitch together an incredibly disparate range of people, simply because of this geographical oddity. The asset, associated companies, attractions and issues that it is trying to deal with stretch from one coast of the country to another. I do not know how many different local authority areas it goes through, but it is a very large number, and it has proven extremely difficult to co-ordinate it in the past. It has started to do it, but as my hon. Friend rightly points out, it has to make this transition.

My hon. Friend has asked about other kinds of funding sources. It will be partly up to local tourism companies and local attraction owners, be they public, private or third sector, to say whether it is in their commercial interest to be part of a collective marketing scheme. I am not suggesting that this should be a piece of corporate philanthropy, but that it should be a natural part of everybody’s corporate marketing plan to say, “If we contribute to a collective marketing plan for Hadrian’s Wall as a whole, it will help my business and my neighbour’s business as well.” This is, therefore, a piece of self-interest as well as collective action, and I think it will be tremendously positive.

It is also worth saying that local authorities may conclude, as is happening in many other parts of the country, that tourism is such an important part of the local economy—my hon. Friend rightly pointed out that it is very important in Carlisle and Cumbria as a whole—that they want to contribute in some way to some of these collective marketing operations through council tax payers’ money. That is happening, as I have said, in many other parts of the country. It depends on the importance of tourism in the local economy, but as my hon. Friend has pointed out, that is a very easy point to make in his part of the world, because it is such a vital part of local job creation. I encourage him to speak to his local council and fellow MPs in the area, to see whether or not they feel that the local authority’s contribution reflects the importance of this crucial part of the economy to local jobs and employment.

I think that we are speaking a similar language in terms of what we want to achieve and that everybody agrees about the importance of Hadrian’s Wall to the nation’s heritage, the world’s heritage and the local tourism industry. I think that we have slightly different recipes for how the issue might be addressed, but a great deal more can be done and I suspect that my hon. Friend and I will look to work with the local authority and local businesses to ensure that that happens.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I congratulate and thank the hon. Members for Carlisle (John Stevenson) and for Hendon (Mr Offord) and the Minister for their participation in a most interesting and informative debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

15. What efficiencies in the administration of his Department he plans to make in the next 12 months.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)]

Our aim is to reduce the Department’s administrative spend by 50% during the life of this Parliament. We have already reduced the pay bill by £3 million from 2010-11 through a voluntary redundancy scheme, and a programme to deliver further savings is in place.

[Mr Hollobone]

What methods are being engaged to expose yet further efficiencies that have not already been identified?

[John Penrose]

We continually keep everything under review, as would be expected. We have identified a number of particular points that I hope will satisfy my hon. Friend, including Ministers not using the Government car service, which will save about £250,000 a year, reducing hospitality expenditure by about £60,000 a year, and cutting spend on travel by about £30,000 a year. We will continue to scrutinise very carefully to find other such examples.

Holiday Accommodation

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I suppose the most reassuring response I can give is that the good news is that the tourism industry, both collectively and individually, is not stupid and understands the importance of common standards. He will understand that all the different existing schemes—I mentioned the AA scheme and the very local example that I saw in the New Forest—take notice of, and in many cases contribute to, a common set of standards, so there is a direct read-across between, for example, the AA scheme and others. That is clearly to the advantage of the entire tourism industry. Handing the English scheme back to the industry is very unlikely to endanger that, because it is clearly to its commercial advantage. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman.

In the couple of minutes I have left, I shall move on to the hon. Gentleman’s point about some of the alternatives. There was a long and impassioned section in the middle of his speech about the evils of TripAdvisor and all the things it gets wrong. For the sake of clarity, I point out that this Department and this Government do not hold a brief for TripAdvisor or anyone else like that at all. It would be entirely wrong of us to pretend that we did, or even to do so. TripAdvisor is the most commonly used such website in this country. It is used by people who are not stupid and who find what it says helpful—although I think many of them take what it says with a pinch of salt, because some of the reviews need to be viewed with a careful eye, for the reasons the hon. Gentleman laid out. However, there are plenty of alternatives, and many of those have very tight—and perhaps in some people’s view, tighter—quality controls on the kinds of postings they allow. For example, many of them allow postings to be made only by people who have genuinely visited and stayed the night in the accommodation in question. Therefore, postings are made only by customers. They cannot be made by the people running the bed and breakfast down the road, who feel like posting something nasty even though they have not stayed in the accommodation. There are different ways of dealing with the quality control angle.

Websites of any kind that provide customer reviews live or die by the trust the British public place in those ratings. If someone visits such a site and thinks it is being spiked or generally misused, they are much less likely to go back to it. Therefore, there is a huge reputational risk for any websites that allow low-quality reviews to become too large a proportion of the total. For example, if, in the hon. Gentleman’s view, TripAdvisor is getting it wrong too often and others are doing a better job, we would logically expect people to transfer their affections very quickly, given the rate at which things move in the digital world, from that website to another one. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that such websites are not perfect, and there are concerns about them, but there is an eminently sensible self-correcting mechanism whereby people can vote with their feet—or, in this case, with their mouse.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

After that five-star debate, we move to a debate on funding for technology innovation in wave power.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Philip Hollobone

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

I think that that last comment was extraordinarily rich, coming from a member of a party that, within living memory, was going on about cool Britannia and that completely failed to fund heritage in the way that it should have been funded over the past 10 or 15 years. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will know that the entire heritage sector feels that it has been undervalued and underfunded for a very long time, in stark contrast to what is now happening under the new Government. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has pointed out, if we take into account the changes in the lottery, we can see that the total cut to heritage funding is minus 4%, and that is all.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

4. If he will discuss with the Chancellor of the Exchequer the merits of extending the listed places of worship grant scheme beyond 2011.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will remember that the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his comprehensive spending review statement last week that the listed places of worship grant scheme is to continue. I am delighted, as I am sure all hon. Members are, that that is the case. We have had to make some small reductions, and it will now go back to its pre-2006 status, but other than that, it will continue. I hope that my hon. Friend and others will join me in praising that decision.

[Mr Hollobone]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on doing his bit to save the scheme, which many of my constituents were worried was going to be cut altogether. Will he expand on what “pre-2006” actually means for those churches applying for funds?

[John Penrose]

I would be delighted to. Basically, it means that local community groups raising money to repair the fabric of their church will continue effectively to be able to claim grants equivalent to the value of the VAT on the works that are done. The only difference will be that some categories of work—primarily, professional fees, bells, organs and the like—will be excluded in the way they were before 2006, but everything else will continue to be claimable.