Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have to say that I was not aware of that. Perhaps I can look into the route that the Olympic torch will take—and if it is possible to divert it via Sunderland, I will certainly do my best.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Q14. An increasing number of European Court of Human Rights and European Court of Justice judgments are deeply unpopular in our country, and intrude on what should be the preserve of member states. Will the Prime Minister assure my constituents that he will use every ounce of his considerable personal authority to support efforts to push back those overbearing institutions?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We are leading the process of trying to reform the ECHR so that it pays more attention to the decisions of national Parliaments and, crucially, national courts. As for the ECJ, one thing that we must do is stop the transfer of further powers from Westminster to Brussels. That is why we are putting in place the referendum lock.

Libya/European Council

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think that the hon. Lady will find that it was in 2004 that the previous Government extended EU competition legislation to cover all aspects in the UK, and that has now been progressively extended to health as well. That is my understanding, but if I have got it wrong in any way, I will certainly write to her.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I applaud the Prime Minister’s progress on deregulation within the EU, but may I draw his attention to the European Chemicals Agency’s rewriting of the guidelines on the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals, which will add considerable cost to chemical intermediates manufacturers in my constituency? I urge him to support the efforts of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in pushing back on those costly proposals.

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look into the case my hon. Friend mentions. I have received similar representations from companies in my constituency that are concerned, because they had just about worked out how to comply with one set of rules before seeing another set coming down the track, so I will make sure that BIS is doing as she says.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to make Government procurement simpler for small and medium-sized enterprises.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

12. What steps he is taking to make Government procurement simpler for small and medium-sized enterprises.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) is right to ask this question. We attach a huge amount—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Letwin]

Again, that is an enormously important question. One of the purposes behind our move to spread contracting to SMEs is precisely to ensure that we do not get such an unbalanced economy. We want to reach out to firms that have the best propositions—often, small and medium-sized firms—in parts of the country where there are not major contractors who do much business with Government. We believe that that is a good way of helping to build the economies, and enterprise and innovation, in those areas of our country.

[Margot James]

Government procurement officers have been very risk-averse in the past and associate large companies with security. Does my right hon. Friend agree that a change in culture is required, as well as these excellent new policies?

Big Society

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this valuable debate.

Let me start by looking at the origins of the Prime Minister’s conviction, which is driving the big society forward. It goes back to shortly after he was elected Leader of the Opposition six years ago. At that time, his commitment was very much informed by the work of the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and his founding of the Centre for Social Justice. In 2007, the Prime Minister stated clearly that the task of the next Government would be to reverse decades of social decline and that that crisis of social decline was every bit as great as the economic crisis that confronted the new Conservative Government in 1979. It is completely disingenuous of certain sectors of the media and of certain interests to suppose that the big society concept is some sort of cynical cover for spending cuts, and I am glad that some Opposition Members have acknowledged that that is not the case.

The difference between now and 1979 is that this Government confront both a social crisis and an economic crisis, which the Prime Minister probably did not foresee back in 2007. Those two crises are two sides of one coin, and one will not be solved without the other. This country has been living beyond its means for some considerable time—at least a decade. Throughout the boom years, we spent vast and increasing amounts of money on social problems that still persist, such as the 2 million or so people on out-of-work benefits, while new jobs were created but mostly filled by newly arrived immigrants. More and more money was spent on schools every year, but that did not reverse the relative educational decline of Britain compared with other countries.

Why do we have so many problems and what will the big society do to address them? I acknowledge the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), which was in many ways excellent, and I agree that the state and civil society are inextricably linked. However, I argue that things have got out of kilter and that over the past 10 years there has increasingly been a dominance of the state and a “Government know best” mentality. Let me give a few examples of the adverse effect that that has had. The Criminal Records Bureau is a laudable organisation, but it has become quite extreme in its intervention, affecting people who want to volunteer to drive one another’s children around. I am on my third CRB check, and I am just a school governor and a volunteer with an FE college.

Health and safety has got out of control, and I am delighted that the Government are going to tackle the excessive approach that prevents teachers from taking schoolchildren on much-valued trips. The risk of finding oneself on the wrong side of the law for intervening in a street situation is a problem, as is the fact that families are prevented from hiring carers or agency nurses to support their elderly relatives in hospital—I have argued with my hospital in Dudley about that. We have heard the reports about the treatment of older people in our hospitals, and if people want to hire additional support, they should be allowed to do so.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case against health and safety legislation, which many of us know to be extremely onerous. Does she agree that another issue is the no win, no fee legal environment—the compensation culture—in which we operate, which puts an undue cost burden on voluntary organisations seeking to help in their local communities?

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention; I certainly agree. The compensation culture has grown up over many years—to a certain extent, we have imported it from the United States. I hope our Government will address that significant problem.

The bureaucracy of the grant and contracting process at local authority level has put off a number of smaller organisations, which, every year, have to make their case afresh for the same grant or contract for the same service. They cannot get any core funding. We are committed to changing that, and change is long overdue.

Some charities have become overly dependent on the state, particularly at a local level, so that too much of their money comes from local authorities. They almost cease to exist as voluntary bodies, which takes away a great deal from their esprit de corps and the motive that drove their passion in the first place. In many ways, the tail starts wagging the dog. Small voluntary groups are tailoring what they do to meet the criteria of the next grant body that they approach.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some good points, including the one about the proportion of income that charities are getting from statutory governmental sources. Should the Government consider stripping the charitable status from organisations that achieve 80% of their funding from the state?

[Margot James]

I would like to consider that suggestion more fully. It is a laudable one, which would address the problem of over-dependence, although I fear that too great a bureaucracy would be required to oversee such an idea, resulting in two steps forward and one step back.

[Liz Kendall]

What other sources of income should the voluntary sector turn to, if the hon. Lady believes that it is too reliant on council and central Government funding?

[Margot James]

There are many voluntary and charitable organisations that derive no income whatever from the state, such as the air ambulance, which one of my hon. Friends mentioned earlier. It raises £48 million a year through a lottery and fundraising volunteers. A dear aunt of mine aged 88 has a standing order for the air ambulance, which is how such organisations get their money. The hospice movement is another case in point. My local hospice, Mary Stevens hospice in Stourbridge, receives only 18% of its funding from the primary care trust and raises the rest of its money itself. I am very much in favour of grants from local authorities. When I was a local councillor, I served on the board of a charity that received virtually all its income from the primary care trust and the local authority, which was detrimental.

[Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

rose—

[Margot James]

I shall make progress, if my hon. Friend does not mind, because I do not think that I will get any more credit on the clock.

Let me make a few points in conclusion. It is the Government’s and the public sector’s attitude to risk that bedevils many of their good intentions. There is an attitude that risk can be and should be eliminated, and we must get away from that mentality. We have to manage risk, of course, but no Government, private organisation or charitable organisation can eliminate risk completely, and we lose a great deal by trying to do so.

The monopolistic provision of public services will be challenged by the big society. I am delighted to see so many of the Government’s proposals coming out now in concrete form. Several hon. Members have mentioned the big society bank. Other proposals include transitional funding for charities facing hardship following a sudden drop in a grant, the training of 20,000 community organisers and the national citizenship scheme for young people, which is a fabulous idea. We have some corporate funding for that, so it does not rely on taxpayers. Leadership and a culture change are needed to encourage more philanthropy.

We must leverage the good will of business. Many large and small businesses have a sense of corporate responsibility, which should be tapped. I am pleased to see that the Secretary of State for Justice is looking at what business can do to rehabilitate and train people in our prison system. There is so much that business can do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) has pointed out, and we must not forget that individuals, communities and corporations can all contribute to the big society. I congratulate the Government on getting as far as they have done already with this initiative.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech to the House, and I am delighted to be the first to congratulate the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) on her maiden speech.

I wish to start by paying tribute to my predecessor, Lynda Waltho, who was a conscientious constituency MP and a powerful advocate for our area’s many voluntary and charitable organisations, more of which later. She was a teacher by profession and she used her knowledge of that profession, and of children, to champion the causes of education and the needs of children, particularly those from our most deprived communities. She also served as a member of the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families.

My constituency lies on the border of north Worcestershire and the old industrial black country. For many years, people have argued about where exactly the black country lies, and I am pleased that, thanks to our local Black Country chamber of commerce and others, we finally have the black country delineated on the Ordnance Survey map. I am very proud to represent the old black country towns of Lye, Quarry Bank and Cradley, as well as the townships that make up modern-day Stourbridge.

Lye, Quarry Bank and Cradley have a very proud industrial past of forging, nail-making and chain-making, but it is really the glass industry for which Stourbridge is best known. I was delighted to be invited to 10 Downing street a few weeks ago for drinks. It was my first visit and I was proud to see all the glass, candelabra and chandeliers on display, many of which would have been made in Stourbridge. I gather that there is also some fine work on display in Buckingham palace and the Mansion House that was made by the famous Stourbridge firms, Stourbridge Glass, Webb Corbett and Stuart Crystal.

The people of Stourbridge are proud not just of our wealth creation, but our long tradition of philanthropy. I would like to pick out one individual who inspired me as a relative newcomer to Stourbridge. He is buried in the church of St Mary’s in Old Swinford, near where I like to walk my dog. Ernest Stevens died in the year I was born, aged 100. He was the son of a miner, and tragedy struck him when he lost his young wife in childbirth. He created a vast fortune through hard work and ingenuity in the manufacture of pots, pans, baths and kettles. He responded to his wife’s death by acting in the interests of the town, donating vast sums of money, land and civic buildings. We have our Mary Stevens hospice and many parks and areas of natural beauty thanks to him and that philanthropy. The strength of our voluntary and charitable sector is a testimony to that philanthropy, and we have many such organisations. I should like to speak up for Age Concern in Stourbridge, where many thousands of older people go, 364 days a year. It is absolutely remarkable what that organisation achieves.

Social change has been paramount in Stourbridge. The Muslim community arrived from Pakistan in the 1950s. I have done much work with that community and others, and I am very proud to represent the community in Lye with all that it represents to us.

We are very proud, in Stourbridge, of our industrial history, and there is sometimes a tinge of regret at what many see as its passing, but of course it has not all passed. Many firms and manufacturing and engineering companies are still doing wonderful work in our constituency, but many people have suffered in the transition, and there are now families in which no one works and generations of people live on state benefits. That cannot go on. There is a rising sense of injustice among people who work—many for low pay—and those who have worked their whole lives and are now on state pensions. The Prime Minister is saying today that there is much pain on the way. I feel very strongly that the people of Stourbridge will face up to the very difficult decisions that the Government and local authorities are going to have to take in coming years. The people of the black country and Stourbridge hold on to certain basic truths that are not just old-fashioned notions that can simply be cast aside—for example, that one should never borrow what one cannot pay back, that we should not foster a culture in which people are led to expect something for nothing, and that, in the more elegant prose of Abraham Lincoln:

“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

Finally, as a Christian country, and indeed a country of many faiths, we should always look after those who cannot look after themselves. During my time of service in the House, I will work to reflect those enduring values for my constituents in Stourbridge. I am so proud to represent Stourbridge, and I am deeply grateful to my constituents for giving me this opportunity.