GWR and Network Performance

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Stephen Doughty

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Doughty]

Indeed; I have experienced that, particularly with services departing from Paddington, which should be one of the easiest places to have train crews available, as well as relief train crews if there is a problem.

As a result of all that, GWR has had the third largest increase in complaints rates in the country—behind Northern and Grand Central—with complaints rising in the last quarter. Like Grand Central, a reason for the increased volume of complaints is the quality of the train, as well as delays and cancellations.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has not yet mentioned the problems faced by people with disabilities and mobility issues when travelling on trains. I was at a recent meeting with a group people who were mostly wheelchair users or had other mobility issues, and they have problems with ramps not arriving, the wheelchair space being blocked, and not being able to get through the train because it is so packed. Does he share those concerns?

Ending Exploitation in Supermarket Supply Chains

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Stephen Doughty

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. I have been talking to Nautilus International, the seafarers’ union, which has highlighted cases where people working on those ships are exploited. That is an issue in the oil sector, for example.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is detailing some horrific abuse. Unfortunately, I have seen examples of modern-day slavery in the agricultural sector in my constituency. Will she join me in praising the work of the Co-operative party, and particularly its charter on modern-day slavery? The charter raises issues of responsible procurement in food supply chains and the need to ask difficult questions about, for example, abnormally low tenders being given to ensure that modern-day slavery is not being used in those food supply chains.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I chaired a joint event last night between the APPG on human trafficking and modern slavery and the APPG on agriculture and food for development. One point made powerfully was that while we want the Government and the supermarkets to act—I will come to that in a moment—we must also look at procurement. The Government could be incredibly powerful if their procurement policies made it clear that they would not source from companies that could not give absolute assurance that there was not slavery in their supply chain.

I mentioned the Thai fishing sector. The Foreign Office should be doing more to support human rights defenders such as Andy Hall, whom I have been in contact with for many years. He has exposed some of the worst practices in food producing there, starting with the pineapple sector, and I think he is now writing about the chicken sector. He has been threatened, harassed and pursued through the courts as a result, and I do not think the Foreign Office is doing enough to support him.

The examples that I have given are clearly abhorrent and illegal, but it is also unacceptable that small-scale farmers and workers producing Indian tea and Kenyan green beans—common items in our supermarkets—are earning less than half of what is needed to ensure a basic but decent standard of living. When women working on grape farms in South Africa were surveyed, 90% reported not having enough to eat in the previous month. These are things that we take for granted; a grape is, to an extent, a luxury item, yet the women producing them cannot feed themselves or their families. If buyers were prepared to pay just three cents more per melon to a producer in Honduras and less than two cents on a banana in Guatemala, that would give those workers a living wage.

A big part of the problem is the supermarket model itself. It provides us with unparalleled choice. We can buy products from all over the world, all year round, at low prices and at our convenience. Retailers are increasingly operating in challenging circumstances, under threat from the discounters and online competition, and this is leading to over-consolidation. Tesco and Carrefour have teamed up to buy products. The planned merger between Sainsbury’s and Asda would see them control more than 30% of the UK groceries retail market. They have promised that, if the merger goes ahead, they will cut shelf prices on key items by 10%, which will cause yet more downward pressure on prices for suppliers. Supermarkets now keep an increasing amount of the money their customers spend—as much as 50% in some cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

One point is that there is just so little transparency. A limited range of goods is covered by Fairtrade certification. It tends to cover commodities such as coffee, cocoa, bananas and so on. We need far greater transparency. During the horsemeat scandal, there were stories about lasagne selling for £1 that had traversed about 13 or 14 EU countries, with dozens of small products going into making this probably highly unappetising meal. It is so difficult to trace that, but we do need to make a start.

[Stephen Doughty]

I am one of the vice-chairs of the all-party group on Fairtrade. Further to the points made by my colleagues, is my hon. Friend aware that in the Sainsbury’s case, it was actively attempting—in my view—to deceive consumers by labelling its tea as “Fairly Traded”, when it was not in fact certified as Fairtrade tea by the Fairtrade Foundation. In fact, Sainsbury’s was severely criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority, and I think one of its adverts was banned. I, my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and others raised this with the ASA. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is totally unhelpful for supermarkets and others to be doing that and actively trying to deceive consumers?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I absolutely agree. I also think that big companies can have a Fairtrade brand that might account for 5% of its sales, but the rest of their coffee or tea does not carry that certification, so what does that say about the conditions under which that share of the market is produced?

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Stephen Doughty

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. I, too, know many people in self-employment in the types of jobs she is talking about, including among my family and friends back home in Wales. She mentions insurance. Is it not the case that people find it difficult to get insurance against loss of earnings, as well as insurance for high-priced items such as tools? The Government have not dealt with all those additional costs that come with self-employment in this Budget.

[Kerry McCarthy]

As I said, we have to acknowledge that the self-employed are in a very different situation from people who have an employer who takes care of all their needs. The Chancellor has singularly failed to recognise that. He seems to be blaming the self-employed for not reading the non-existent small print in the Conservative manifesto. He cannot get away with saying that this is not a broken promise, given what the Conservatives said in 2015.

Arts and Creative Industries

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Stephen Doughty

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

This has been an interesting and varied debate, ranging from libraries to museums and to more contemporary issues. It has been a pleasure to sit through it all.

We have heard how many jobs there are in the creative industries, the contribution they make to GDP and how they account for around £1 in every £10 of the UK’s exports. The sector is one of the fastest growing in the economy, and is forecast to grow by 31% by 2020. The arts budget is tiny, but brings big returns. The current investment is 14p per person per week, which is equal to approximately 0.05% of total Government spending. I was told that the former Culture Secretary, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt) described the budget as equivalent to

“a rounding error at the Department of Health”,

his new Department. That is why it would be entirely counter-productive to cut arts funding at this time. Cutting investment makes no sense when we need to kick-start the economy. We have seen this in Bristol, where cultural investment is helping to attract visitors and drive regeneration.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is, like me, a strong supporter of the cultural hub developing between Bristol and Cardiff in the south-west of England and south Wales. Is she aware that 60% of the funding for the Welsh National Opera, which is based in my constituency, comes from the Arts Council England, because it does 60% of its work in England? Damaging the arts and creative industries in England could have a negative impact on Wales. We need a strong and thriving industry on both sides of the border.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think in Bristol we have not yet quite forgiven Wales for stealing “Casualty” from us, but I appreciate what my hon. Friend says about the links between cultural institutions and the important work that Cardiff does elsewhere.

It is impossible to talk about Bristol without mentioning the Oscar-winning Aardman and the amazing output of the BBC’s natural history unit, which is a real money-spinner for the BBC and funds its other work. It is estimated that the Banksy exhibition in 2009 brought £10 million into the city and doubled the turnover of local businesses during the height of the recession.

Back in 1975, the Arnolfini centre for contemporary arts was an important part of the regeneration of the Bristol harbour site. In 2002, Andrew Kelly, the director of the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership described it as

“one of the first examples in the United Kingdom of the arts used for encouraging inward investment and economic regeneration leading…to a likely total investment in the site of £600 million and the creation of over 3,500 jobs”.

Now, we are creating an enterprise zone in the Bristol Temple quarter with a focus on the creative and digital sector, and Arts Council funding has been approved for artworks at the historic Bristol Temple Meads station, which will act as a gateway to the quarter. There are also plans for a long-awaited and much-needed arena. When Sir Peter Bazalgette, the chair of Arts Council England, visited Bristol earlier this year, he said that it was a city that had “got things right”, highlighting strong partnership working in particular.

It is important that funding for the arts in Bristol should continue. Bristol Old Vic and the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, which was praised by the Arts Council chair as an example of a “great regional arts alliance”, have both already received significant cuts. Funding cuts are disproportionately affecting educational programmes such as the Acta community theatre in Bristol, which last year worked with 1,000 people of all ages and backgrounds, over 80% of whom had never been to a theatre.

In Bristol, it is not just the highbrow, publicly funded, mainstream creative scene that is thriving; the city is also renowned for its counter-culture scene. Banksy is obviously the most notable example of that. A 2010 PRS for Music survey showed Bristol as the UK’s most musical city, with more songwriters per capita originating from the city than from any other place. Bristol is probably best known for the groundbreaking group of musicians that emerged in the 1990s and included Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead and Roni Size. I have talked to DJ Krust, who was involved in that scene, about its DIY ethos. Those involved started by putting on events in empty warehouses and no one turned up. Eventually, however, they started selling tickets and created an incredibly innovative scene that influences people to this day. It emerged in a similar way to the punk scene that sprang from squats in London and elsewhere in the 1970s.

DJ Krust told me that those involved did not need or want public funding. That raises interesting questions about how we can ensure that such creativity thrives without the stultifying effect of trying to get funding, assessing outcomes and all the bureaucracy that goes with that. We need to support it, perhaps simply by not repressing it. The Minister once confessed to me that he was an ardent fan of the Redskins, and he will understand the point that I am making. As well as the Adeles and Coldplays of this world, we need acts that are innovative and edgy and that have something important to say.