Contingencies Fund (No. 2) Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con) [V]]

Accounts mean accountability. Every set of accounts needs contingency lines—sometimes quite annoyingly, in my experience—but this crisis has shown the importance of having a contingency fund.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Minister: the Government have acted swiftly, decisively and with a great deal of flexibility in respect of the schemes they have rolled out. Almost every businessperson I speak to in my constituency is supportive of what the Government have done in this regard. It is not just the Government who have acted swiftly and decisively; bodies such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have done a tremendous job in getting some of the grant aid out to businesses, and we should be grateful for those efforts.

When I listened to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray)—who I do not think is even in his place at the moment—all I got was a deep suspicion of the private sector. It was quite astounding. It was reminiscent of that great Churchill quote:

“Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.”

I just do not understand why the private sector is still anathema to Labour, even though it has been responsible for so many things in this crisis, not least the development of the vaccine, the first of which, the Pfizer vaccine, was rolled out without any public support whatsoever.

Things such as bounce back loans and coronavirus business interruption loans have all been delivered by the private sector, through the banks. As I am sure you recognise, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not shy of criticising the banks, but this year they have done a tremendous job in getting the money out to businesses, yet we see no recognition from those on the Opposition Front Bench of what the private sector has done throughout this crisis.

All the money that flows through the contingencies fund will of course be accounted for and the Government will be held to account for the related spending. It is important that the Opposition should also be held to account for their spending. I find it quite astounding that the shadow Minister talks about value for money; I have sat through so many debates over the past five years in which Labour has called time and again for more spending via pensions, social security, health services and social care—whatever—despite our spending challenges and without any assessment of value for money. Labour just wants that money to be spent without any consequence or accountability. That cannot be right and the shadow Minister’s claim about value for money was quite laughable. Every bit of spending has to have somebody to pay for it, and that is, of course, the taxpayer, which is why we have to be careful and judicious with Government or public money. It comes from the taxpayer.

Most recently, Labour has been calling for a greater increase than 1% for nurses. Who is not sympathetic to that? But I do not hear Labour saying what pay rise it would give or how it would pay for it. It is surely a responsibility of any responsible party that wants to be in government to say how it would pay for things.

Finally, I think the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) was quite disgraceful in some of her comments. I may be wrong, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I thought she described Ministers as corrupt. I think that is something you might look at, because it is entirely inappropriate and entirely inaccurate. I am very much looking forward to talking more in Committee about procurement and why the Opposition are wrong again.

Contingencies Fund (No. 2) Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee of the whole House
Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne]

I agree, and I welcome the points that the hon. Lady makes. I did say in my speech on Second Reading that I welcome the fact that the Labour party have this new-found interest in value for money, because I absolutely believe that taxpayers’ money is not the Government’s money. It is taxpayers’ money and it should be treated as such. As I said earlier, we have sufficient mechanisms for accountability and transparency. We do not need this new clause, and I will not support it.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con) [V]]

I would like to speak to new clause 1. First, I am grateful to the Financial Secretary for putting the record straight. It was a reflection of the fact that there was no Opposition Minister on duty. It is suboptimal to have an Opposition Minister speaking by video link: Members have no opportunity to challenge some of his statements, many of which I thought were absolutely out of order. You are obviously the judge of that, Chair, but to call Ministers corrupt, as other Members have in this debate, or to accuse them of cronyism, is basically bringing this House into disrepute.

Yet again, we have the Opposition’s obsession that everything public sector is good and everything private sector is bad. It is simply outrageous. It goes back to that sturdy horse analogy. It is pulling the whole wagon, whether it be vaccine companies or indeed our GPs. Our GPs have done a wonderful job disseminating the vaccine to so many people, and it is heart-warming to go to those centres and see that. GPs are private practices. The health service has never been totally public sector, and we should recognise that. We should recognise the benefits that the private sector brings, just as the public sector clearly brings huge benefits, too.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) that this new clause would simply bring an unnecessary added layer of bureaucracy. I absolutely support the need for accountability and the proper assessment of where taxpayers’ money is spent—we absolutely must be responsible about that—but I do not know where it would end under the new clause, because much of the money that we have provided to deal with the coronavirus crisis has been provided through the private sector, not least the loans through the banks. The hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) seemed to think that there were no checks on that process, which is clearly not the case. Banks go through a lot of checks, even when the Government are guaranteeing loans, so that is simply not correct.