Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and David Burrowes

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

Yes, not that young in some cases.

I also take issue with the comments of the hon. Member for Rhondda—who is not in his place at the moment but who is a gifted historian whose book on the history of Parliament I have read—that a party caucus chooses a Member of Parliament, not the electorate. That is a very arrogant and disdainful attitude. An election is like a jigsaw puzzle, and every single piece is a part of that puzzle, and when it all comes together that is the beauty of democracy. That is not for party caucuses.

Bad’uns have always existed in politics, whether it is Sir Charles Dilke, Horatio Bottomley or many other Members of Parliament. Bad’uns get elected as well as get thrown out. We only have to think of someone such as Oswald Mosley in the 1930s. Essentially, I believe in the wisdom of crowds. I believe in the sanctity of that bond between the electors at the general election. That is the recall process: an election where there is perfect competition and perfect knowledge by the voters to understand the record, vision, policies and principles of a prospective Member of Parliament.

[Mr Burrowes]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s wisdom and understanding of political history, but, on history, may I take him back to February 2008, when he joined me and 26 other hon. Friends, part of the 2010 intake, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph? The letter stated that recall

“would increase MPs’ accountability, address some of the frustration felt by a disenchanted public and help restore trust in our democratic institutions.”

If that was right in 2008 and right in our 2010 manifesto, why is it not right now?

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend is such a decent and generous gentleman that he did give me notice yesterday that he would ambush me in this way, and I thank him and have an enormous amount of respect for him, but I have changed my mind, as I have changed my mind on many things over the years. I have changed my mind on House of Lords reform, for instance. I think it ludicrous that we have an upper Chamber that is the largest unelected body outside the people’s congress of China, and believe that should be reformed, even though I am a Conservative, of course. So I have changed my mind on that.

I have looked at the details of the Government’s Bill and I accept that it does make that distinction between moral conscience issues and policy issues and real issues of misdemeanours and criminal conduct.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and David Burrowes

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Just before Christmas, I was one of only four Government Members to vote against the Government in a deferred Division on this issue. Unfortunately, although I have great sympathy with many of the points made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), I cannot support the Labour motion. I will not rehearse the reasons for that, but the motion is cynical, opportunistic and, not least, confused. The Leader of the Opposition launched a campaign in the summer about stakes and problem gambling. It was about the generic issue—it was not just about use class orders and planning, which is what the hon. Member for Eltham is telling the House today. I have been partly reassured by the Minister’s approach.

[Mr Burrowes]

I have been similarly reassured by the Minister’s response. My hon. Friend shares my concern—I am sure he will discuss clustering in Peterborough, which is similar to the clustering of betting shops in Green Lanes in my constituency—that there should be greater local powers. My local area wants to set up a neighbourhood plan that involves the high street. Does he think that in the review and the response the promise to leave no stone unturned should include greater powers in relation to planning and licensing?

[Mr Jackson]

Absolutely. That is an integral part of any remedial powers that the Government take to deal with the serious and legitimate concerns of many of my constituents. There are 22 betting shops in central Peterborough, with 81 FOBTs generating about £3.2 million. I am disappointed, because this could have been a genuine cross-party debate on information and research provided by bodies such as the Methodist Church, which has not always supported my party, and the Salvation Army. I declare an interest as a member of the good neighbours board of the Peterborough citadel of the Salvation Army.

Unfortunately, from the Labour party’s point of view, the debate has been rather confused. Undoubtedly, there is a problem. The precautionary principle is not that there should be unambiguous, completely definable evidence of a causal link between critical problem gambling and FOBTs. It is about the risk of problem gambling. One of my worries, which has been partly ameliorated today, is about the precautionary principle on the maximum stake. I was concerned that the research on the impact of those £100- spin games on the most vulnerable people in our constituencies should be undertaken by independent individuals. The hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) has defended the Responsible Gambling Trust, and he is right to do so. I do not distrust the RGT, but there are serious concerns.

Transferable Tax Allowances

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and David Burrowes

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Turner, to speak under your chairmanship for the first time, and it is a great honour to have the opportunity to put these important issues before the Chamber.

One of the key policy focuses in the run-up to the general election, and one of our key election manifesto commitments, was the introduction of a transferable allowance to recognise marriage in the tax system. The commitment to introduce the necessary legislation was included in the coalition agreement—for the avoidance of doubt it was on page 30—with provision also made for the Liberal Democrats to abstain.

The transferable allowance proposal was the main headline-grabbing recommendation among many other recommendations arising from the Conservative party’s social justice policy group and its two reports “Breakdown” and “Breakdown Britain”. Both reports highlighted the centrality of family breakdown to many of the social problems facing Britain today, which are a real issue, as I see in my constituency and as my hon. Friends will see in theirs. The reports recognised that the lack of policy support for marriage—the relationship at the heart of a stable family life—was not helping.

Britain is unusual in having a tax system that does not include any spousal allowance or credit. The group was very clear that addressing that shortcoming and recognising marriage in the tax system through a transferable tax allowance would help to bring us back into line with international best practice, and define the best way forward.

Before going into a more detailed presentation of the rationale for the transferable allowance policy, it is important to be clear from the outset about its importance to my party, as is reflected by the Prime Minister’s frequent references to it. When speaking as the Leader of the Opposition in response to the publication of “Broken Britain” in 2007, he said:

“I welcome this report’s emphasis on the family, and on marriage, as the basis for the social progress we all want to see…Britain is almost the only country in Europe that doesn’t recognise marriage in the tax system”.

He continued:

“Our support for families and for marriage puts us on the side of the mainstream majority, on the side of a progressive politics, on the side of change that says we can stop social decline, we can fix our broken society, we can and will make this a better place to live for everyone.”

In July 2008, in Glasgow, the Prime Minister continued to affirm that stance by saying that

“when it comes to perhaps the most important area of all, families, we will take action not just to support marriage and family stability”.

He told parents:

“your responsibility and your commitment matters, so we will give a tax break for marriage and end the couple penalty.”

Furthermore, in 2010, during the run-up to the general election, during a speech in Doncaster, my right hon. Friend seemed to become even more vociferous in his support for marriage, saying:

“I absolutely feel at my very core that recognising that relationships matter, that commitment matters and, yes, that marriage matters is something we should not say quietly but something we should say loudly and proudly.”

He continued:

“What is so backward looking in a country where we have social breakdown and social problems of saying that committed relationships, encouraging people to come together and stay together is a bad thing? Of course it isn’t, it’s not outdated”—

I hope that the Deputy Prime Minister is listening—

“if you look around the European Union, if you look around the OECD, we’re almost alone in not recognising marriage in the tax system. And why do we…think that with our appalling record of family breakdown that somehow we are in the right position and everyone else is in the wrong position; we’re not, they’ve got it right and we have got it wrong.”

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

The Conservative party is standing up for marriage in the House. With the exception of the representative from the Democratic Unionist party, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), 14 Conservative Members account for all the Back Benchers in the Chamber, so we are clearly showing that the only party on the side of marriage is the Conservative party.

[Mr Jackson]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It will be noted that family policy is low on the agenda for Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

The Prime Minister has said during Prime Minister’s questions:

“I believe that we should bring forward proposals to recognise marriage in the tax system. Those in our happy coalition will have the right to abstain on them, I am happy to say, but I support marriage. We support so many other things in the tax system, including Christmas parties and parking bicycles at work, so why do we not recognise marriage?”—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 428.]

That was a seasonal reference. I could go on, but I hope that I have made the point that delivering transferable allowances, about which we have talked so much, is now of central importance if we are to be deemed to be reliable and trustworthy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The sad thing is that we are heading for divorce. [Laughter.]

[Mr Burrowes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is a time-limited contract, unlike other marriages, but the issue is that there are also good fiscal reasons why this partnership, or relationship, should seek to have as a priority the implementation of this promise, despite the differing views in the coalition.

We need to tackle the Deputy Prime Minister’s argument; he freely expressed his views in one way, so we are free to express our views in another. As has already been mentioned, he said in December 2011:

“we should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, breadwinning dad and aproned, homemaking mother, and try and preserve it in aspic.”

It is important for us to make the point very clearly and to emphasise, as hon. Friends do, that the Deputy Prime Minister and others, such as the Opposition, are wrong about the two-parent family and wrong about the motives of others. Indeed, their arguments are old and very much out of touch with the British public, and they are themselves increasingly preserved in aspic. We are not harking back to the outdated 1950s model, and it is very condescending to caricature not only our views in that way but the married people up and down the country and those who want very much to support marriage. Marriage is a popular institution—increasingly so—and it is one that the public welcome.

We simply believe that marriage is best for children and for society, and the evidence supports us. A review by the Institute for Fiscal Studies of the research in this area, which has already been mentioned, shows unequivocally that

“children raised by two happily and continuously married parents have the best chance of developing into competent and successful adults.”

The evidence provides clear support for implementing policies that encourage couples to stay together, and shows that married couples with children are far more likely to stay together than their unmarried counterparts.

It has already been quoted, but it is important to keep repeating the evidence of the “Breakthrough Britain” report, which was published by the Centre for Social Justice. It demonstrated that children born to unmarried parents have a nearly one in two chance of seeing their parents split up by the age of five, whereas for children whose parents are married the figure is only one in 12. That is a huge difference that the state cannot ignore; indeed, the state needs to recognise it properly.

We all recognise that stability clearly matters. Most single parents undoubtedly do a fantastic job raising their children in difficult circumstances. We are not here to judge or to make moral judgments on people’s relationships, but the evidence is very clear that on every significant measure children who are brought up in married families do better on average than those brought up in other relationships.

Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and David Burrowes

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

Not at the moment; I may do so later. If a reasonable person from any other European country stumbled into the Chamber tonight, they would wonder why we were debating the issue. It is an existential issue of what we believe as public servants—as politicians—about the institution of marriage. That is not to traduce or do down the massive contribution that those who are, for a variety of reasons, single parents make to their family. They love their children and care about their family, and they are a part of the community. However, it is incumbent on us to say what we think is right. I commend the courage and dedication of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who is willing to be unfashionable sometimes and speak out on what he believes is right.

This is a totemic issue, because my party put it in its election manifesto. It recapitulated that point in the coalition agreement and has argued for this specific policy, so it is not one that we can lightly cast aside as irrelevant now that we are in a coalition in which there must be give and take. Many of us have always believed that it is vital to take poorer working people out of tax. We heard about a cornucopia of so-called Tory errors, going back to the minimum wage. Let me remind Opposition Members that the gap between the richest and poorest 10% widened under the Labour Government. A former very senior Government member professed that he was

“intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”;

that is a fact. No one has a monopoly on care and compassion for people.

It cannot be wrong to look at examples in other European countries, see that their fiscal policy decisions work, and decide to look at a similar policy. I like, respect and trust the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury; he is a decent man of his word. He will have heard the strength of views and the passion on the Conservative Benches. He will also have heard the filibustering by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), which reached a nadir when he effectively said in his final remarks that people were essentially too thick to fill in their tax forms. I know that filibustering is an art form, and he has perfected it, but that is gilding the lily and taking things to a ludicrous length. This is not a subject for knockabout politics; it is about real changes to support people.

[Mr Burrowes]

My hon. Friend makes a good and important case. Many people quite properly raise concerns about the gap between the rich and the poor growing over the years, but why do the same people not also raise concerns about the position of one-earner married couples on an average wage with two children? Their tax burden has increased over the years, too. Why are people not rising up and expressing concern about that discrimination, which will lead to real child poverty if we do not deal with it?