Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

The measure was in the Queen’s Speech for this Session. I can inform my hon. Friend that we are in detailed discussions on the substance of the policy and I hope to make concrete proposals shortly.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Matthew Hancock)]

The Cabinet Office is responsible for efficiency, reforming government, transparency, civil society, digital technology and cyber-security and for delivering the Prime Minister’s agenda.

[Mark Menzies]

My constituency faces the issue of shale gas extraction—the issue runs across many Departments. What steps are being taken by the Cabinet Office to co-ordinate efficiency across the Government on this important matter?

[Matthew Hancock]

There are many occasions when multiple Government Departments are involved in different parts of a single issue. I well remember visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency to discuss shale gas, and I would be delighted to meet him further to take these issues forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

4. When he expects the Smith commission to publish its report; and what steps are planned to implement its findings.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

6. When he expects the Smith commission to publish its report; and what steps are planned to implement its findings.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alistair Carmichael)]

Lord Smith is expected to publish his heads of agreement soon. In accordance with the timetable, this Government will produce draft clauses by 25 January. I shall, of course, with your assistance, Mr Speaker, endeavour to keep the House informed of all developments.

[Mr Carmichael]

I could not agree more. The commitment was made in all good faith and solemnity by the party leaders during the referendum campaign. It will be kept according to the timetable previously outlined.

[Mark Menzies]

Is the Secretary of State confident that the Scottish Government will support the proposals, or will they begrudge what is offered to them?

[Mr Carmichael]

The Scottish Government—or at least the Scottish National party—are taking part in the Smith process. I believe that John Swinney, their nomination as one of their commissioners, is an honourable man who would not do that in anything other than good faith. I very much hope he and his party will not prove me wrong on that.

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[The Prime Minister]

It is very important that when these contracts have gone wrong—the hon. Gentleman is right that in some cases they have gone wrong—it is properly looked at and investigated and lessons are learned. On occasion, we have made sure that serious amounts of money have been recovered from the companies concerned. What we should not do is use one or two bad contracts to fulfil the trade unions’ dream of ending all contracts altogether.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

Q12. I thank the Prime Minister for his Government having designated Warton in my constituency as an enterprise zone, but may I ask what steps they are taking to ensure that Warton is the most attractive zone for advanced manufacturing inward investment?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he says about Warton. The enterprise zones are now all up and running, and they are all working well. They have created over 12,500 jobs, and 434 different businesses are coming into the enterprise zones. Making sure that they succeed means that we have to market them even better, using UK Trade & Investment and its resources both here and around the world. In terms of advanced manufacturing, if we promote to companies the tax rates we have, the patent box and the catapult institutes up and down the country to support advanced manufacturing, and bring all those things together, it is absolutely clear to me that there is no better place to invest in Europe right now than coming to invest in Britain.

Local Growth Deals

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words—it might strike a different tone if he took his place on the Front Bench. There will be a cheque for £63 million of the funding for Greater Birmingham and Solihull at the beginning of the next financial year, but all the rest will be committed. I am sure he would be delighted to come to the contract signing ceremony; it will be written down, just in case people do not trust us.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

This afternoon, I was with the Secretary of State for Transport in Fylde, where we announced the Lytham St Annes to M55 link road. Will the Minister assure the people of Fylde, who are very excited about this announcement, that this shovel-ready project will indeed get under way in 2015-16, as planned?

[Greg Clark]

It will, indeed.

European Council and Nuclear Security Summit

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has set out the role that shale gas can play in UK and European energy security, but can he assure me and my constituents that we will not develop shale gas unless we are sure that it is safe, with safety enshrined in a robust regulatory framework?

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I am convinced that we can develop shale gas in a way that is safe, and in a way that provides useful supplies of gas and can benefit local communities. I think we should look carefully at what has happened in the United States. The overwhelming lesson from the United States is that this can be done, and it can be a real bonus for local communities and for our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. That is precisely the benefit of bringing the legal advisers from different Departments into one organisation. There is now a single board that groups those people together in the Treasury Solicitor’s Department, and I am confident it can deliver savings, lower charging costs for Departments—we have already seen that—and greater efficiency and expertise in-house.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

3. What steps the Government are taking to ensure the repatriation of stolen assets to emerging democracies in the middle east and north Africa.

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

In September 2012, the Prime Minister established a taskforce to speed up our efforts to return stolen assets to the people of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The Metropolitan Police Service is currently investigating a number of specific cases alongside its Egyptian counterparts. At international level, we used our G8 presidency last year to promote that agenda. That included co-hosting an international conference in Marrakesh on asset recovery last October, which I attended.

[Mark Menzies]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that this Government have been at the forefront of helping with the issue, particularly with regard to returning stolen assets to Egypt, and that that was key at the Arab Forum on asset recovery?

[The Attorney-General]

Yes, I can confirm that we have been at the forefront of asset recovery efforts. A number of priority cases have been identified with the Egyptian authorities. UK investigators have opened domestic money laundering investigations into individuals with significant assets in the UK and they are in daily contact with their Egyptian counterparts. I hope that that will improve with some secondments to Egypt shortly.

The Arab Forum on asset recovery allowed us an opportunity to have an overall discussion about the issue. One of the difficulties is a lack of understanding in some countries about the due process of law that has to be gone through in order for recovery to take place. I hope, therefore, that the conference facilitated a greater understanding of that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to improve commercial skills in the civil service.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to improve commercial skills in the civil service.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to improve commercial skills in the civil service.

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[Mr Maude]

I recently attended the one-year-on event of the new Commissioning Academy, which we set up a year ago. It has achieved a good deal. During the next 18 months, we want 1,500 senior public sector commissioners to have participated in the academy. It is part of a wider programme to improve commercial skills not only in Whitehall but right across the public sector.

[Mark Menzies]

What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the work of the Crown representatives in driving value for money for taxpayers through procurement reform?

[Mr Maude]

Our Crown representatives, who come predominantly from the private sector with a huge amount of commercial experience, have helped us to generate significant efficiencies. We buy better if we act as a single customer in Government, to maximise our buying power and improve our performance as a customer. We are renegotiating contracts with a number of suppliers, and by centrally renegotiating we have saved the taxpayer £800 million in each of the financial years during this Parliament.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

I will keep my remarks short as many other hon. Members wish to contribute. I should like to focus on one specific policy that affected my life. Having listened to my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), I know that my story is not unique.

My mother was widowed at an early age and forced to raise me on her own. She was a Labour voter. She worked in a factory and she was a trade union member. She often had to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning to catch the bus, determined that she could give me the best possible chance in life. A good education and stability were important to my mum. Balancing working shifts and doing her own child care was always a huge challenge. One of Margaret Thatcher’s key policies provided my mother with a huge lifeline. I refer, of course, to the assisted places scheme, for this policy had a huge benefit in my life. People from my background in Scotland did not go to private school, nor did they go to university, and the scheme gave me and others that opportunity. It not only allowed private boarding school education to become affordable to someone like my mum but succeeded in broadening my horizons at an early age.

While private education is not necessarily the best option for everyone—indeed, Lady Thatcher herself showed what can be achieved through the grammar school system—I know how fortunate I was to receive a place on the scheme. It certainly gave me confidence and a jump-start in life that would never have been possible without Lady Thatcher’s hard work and belief in the power of education. I almost certainly would not be in the Chamber today without that push. As I say, my story is not unique. Some 800,000 children were ultimately supported by the assisted places scheme between 1981 and its abolition in 1997, with an average of £10,000 in total spent on their schooling—just a few thousand pounds per year.

Like many in this Chamber, I was privileged to meet Lady Thatcher on a number of occasions, but none sticks out in my memory as much as the first time I met her, when I was a teenager. I was nervous, and she was prime ministerial, but she took time to talk to me, and she made me feel like the only person in the room. One thing I never did was to say thank you for the assisted places scheme, so may I, Mr Deputy Speaker, correct that mistake now? Through the auspices of the Chair and through this tribute debate, I say thank you, Margaret Thatcher, for the assisted places scheme and for giving children such as me an opportunity that we would never otherwise have had.

Algeria

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that it is very difficult to do that. I do not have the final numbers on the number of hostage takers who were captured by the Algerian authorities; obviously, that will be a responsibility for them. I also think that figures and facts will emerge about the different make-up of the hostage takers, who included a number of foreign nationals. We do not yet have information that any are British nationals, but I expect that figures will be released at some stage showing that a number of nationals from other countries were involved in the atrocity.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

I join others in congratulating the Prime Minister on the level-headed way in which he has handled this. Algeria is a proud country that wants to strengthen its relations with the United Kingdom. Can the Prime Minister assure me that everything will be done to strengthen and deepen that relationship at a time when Algeria needs us most?

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. Relations are good—they were already good—but this tragedy does give us the opportunity to look again at what more we can do in co-operation with the Algerians.

G20 Summit

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he says and make the simple point that tax evasion is illegal and should be pursued properly. Of course there are things that people do to minimise their tax bill, whether it be investing in a pension or an ISA, but as the Chancellor has said, and I totally agree, there are some aggressive tax avoidance schemes that should be roundly condemned, and that is exactly what the Government are doing.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has put support for British exports at the heart of Britain’s economic recovery. What comfort can industries in my constituency that export globally take from the Prime Minister’s work at the G20?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much enjoyed the visit that I made to my hon. Friend’s constituency and to BAE Systems where his constituents are doing excellent work in building the Typhoon aircraft, and we go on supporting the sales of that aircraft. There are a number of important contests at the moment, and the Government are absolutely behind BAE Systems in all of those.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

That is probably true, but I am thinking about the relationship that Members of Parliament would have with their overseas constituents. If they are electors, they are in a sense also constituents. I question how the relationship would work in relation to overseas voters, especially if there were a large number of them compared with the local electors who have a more traditional relationship with their Member of Parliament.

The other point that occurred to me is that, given the importance of encouraging all candidates at every election to engage with the people in their voter base, it is much harder to do that if those voters are overseas. We cannot go and knock on their doors, and we sometimes do not even know where they are. We need to resolve that issue if this proposal is to be introduced. We will need information to tell all the candidates seeking election exactly where those electors are. That does not always happen at the moment.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

Perhaps we could learn something from Australia, which operates a constituency-based system. I believe that Australia House in London is the largest single Australian polling station, and anyone who goes along there on polling day will see a plethora of candidate information being given out.

[Dan Rogerson]

I would argue that, in an election campaign, one would hope to have more engagement with the voters before polling day. If we are to have a more meaningful discussion with the electorate, the candidates will need to know where their electors are, so that they can send them literature or perhaps telephone them.

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[Mr Harper]

Yes, that will make a difference. My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) gave some statistics. In the December 2010 register, which followed the most recent general election, 32,000 electors were registered to vote overseas—which, admittedly, is not a huge number in comparison with the 4.3 million cited by my hon. Friend—but by the following year, the figure had fallen to 23,000. It appears that the incentive of the general election is a spur to registration, as it is for domestically residing voters. I think that knowing when an election will take place will help both registration officers and people living overseas.

My hon. Friend referred to the attestation requirements involved in the registration process. I know that they can pose difficulties, especially in countries where there are not many other British citizens. We are trying to establish whether there is anything that we could do. If we need to alter the requirements, we can do so by changing secondary legislation. We are also considering a trial of online registration, which I think could help not just voters living in the United Kingdom, but those living overseas.

That brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall about communication. The Government are currently trialling—without universal approbation from Members on both sides of the House—a website featuring statements from all the candidates for the police and crime commissioner elections, which will then be promoted by the Electoral Commission and in the material that goes to voters. We may consider a similar procedure for a general election, with an eye on overseas voters.

I should also say to my hon. Friend that overseas voters can vote only in parliamentary elections. That makes their relationship with their local councillors slightly less consequential, but it also means that their votes are not just about who their Member of Parliament will be but about what flows from that, namely who will govern their country—and they are, of course interested in that.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds made the important point that most British citizens overseas are working there, winning orders for Britain and working for British companies that bring wealth into this country. It is important for them to have an opportunity to contribute to the decision on who will govern the country.

[Mark Menzies]

The Minister is absolutely right. I have several hundred BAE Systems constituents who are out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and I want to ensure that they are not disfranchised.

[Mr Harper]

That is a good point. One of the ways in which we can grow our economy is to win orders abroad. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke of those who work hard for many of our companies overseas. That means basing British citizens abroad, sometimes temporarily but often permanently, so that they can work with companies to win orders and install and support equipment, and it is very important for them not to be disfranchised.