Major Incident in Essex
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
I had the pleasure of serving as a firefighter at the old Hogg Lane fire station in Grays. When the firefighters and other emergency crews went on duty last night, never in their wildest dreams would they have expected to witness the sort of trauma they saw when that container was opened. And it will not just be the emergency services; it will be the local authority workers and even the mortuary attendants, who will never have seen such destruction of life. I ask the Home Secretary, not just for now but going forward, that all the post-traumatic stress support is made available to them, because it does not always show straightaway. Sometimes it takes months or years, as I have experienced with my firefighter colleagues.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
The Chancellor will know that one of the Government’s fiscal policies that is fundamentally wrong is the loan charge retrospective taxes on our constituents. Whether it is one death, no deaths or seven deaths, families are being destroyed because of the retrospective charge. Surely we should put a stop to it now.
Mr Speaker
Order. The matter in hand is the effect of fiscal policies on living standards.
No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Speaker
Points of order come later. We look forward to them with eager anticipation from the lips of the right hon. Gentleman.
Political Process in Northern Ireland
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. This is a matter of the utmost importance and I want to accommodate everybody, but I gently point out to the House that there are several hours of debate on subsequent business to follow, so economy is of the essence.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
The Secretary of State mentioned the brave and fantastic work of the PSNI and the prison service, and the risks that their members run. May I remind her that there are also British Army battalions based in Northern Ireland, and that we need to ensure that they are being looked after as well? She also mentioned the five points. If there is agreement on only four of those points, surely we cannot hold out forever and a day to get a guaranteed agreement on all five of them. There must be a backstop. There must be a situation in which those in the negotiations know that if they do not sort this out, there will be direct rule.
Points of Order
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Forty-two years ago, in the early hours of the morning, a brave British soldier from 3 Company 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards was abducted or captured by the IRA. Captain Robert Nairac was my captain. He was a gentleman who, in the boxing ring, broke my nose—the first person to have done so. We still do not know what happened to him. The country owes a debt to our soldiers in Northern Ireland, and particularly to those who have given the utmost for their country. Mr Speaker, is there any way for me to mark 42 years since Captain Robert Nairac gave his life for this country and for the peace of Northern Ireland?
Mr Speaker
I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the point of order, and I am minded to hear that of the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), if it is on a similar subject. I believe it to be.
Arrest of Julian Assange
Debate between Mike Penning and John BercowThursday 11th April 2019
(5 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Legal Tender (Scottish Banknotes) Bill 2017-19 View all Legal Tender (Scottish Banknotes) Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has found his own salvation, and he has done so with very good grace and an admirable sense of humour in relation to what is a serious matter. He is doing his constituency duty as he judges it right.
Look, I completely respect the fact that there are different points of view about the matter. I did express public support for Judy Murray and Park of Keir some considerable time ago, and I reiterated it. The hon. Gentleman has made his own point in his own way, and I recognise immediately that he also speaks for many other people. He has put that on the record in a perfectly proper way, and I think we can both honourably leave it there.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On Monday, you kindly granted an urgent question when medical cannabis was confiscated from a child as she entered the UK from Holland. I can tell the House today that a prescription has been issued for medical cannabis so that young girl can have the medication she needs. Sadly, at the moment there is still a blockage. With the Home Secretary on the Front Bench—I know he is working tirelessly to help us—I wonder whether the lifting of that blockage, to allow the prescription to be honoured, has yet to be done.
Mr Speaker
Well—this is usually used pejoratively, but I say it in a non-pejorative sense—the right hon. Gentleman has opportunistically taken the chance to raise a point of order in the full knowledge of the presence of the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary is not obliged to respond, but he looks as though he wishes to do so.
Mr Speaker
Perhaps I could be forgiven for saying, in the gentlest and most understated of spirits, that having known the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) for a good many years, the sooner that interdepartmental co-operation is brought to a successful conclusion, the better. If that is not the case, I think I can confidently predict that the right hon. Gentleman, quite properly, will go on and on and on about the matter.
Mr Speaker
And on, because he is a persistent terrier of a parliamentarian. That UQ served an important public purpose, and the right hon. Gentleman deserves great credit for bringing it to the House.
Mr Speaker
Yes. [Interruption.] It has been suggested that the right hon. Gentleman is more a persistent Rottweiler than a persistent terrier.
Business of the House
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Speaker
Yes, that is absolutely fair and reasonable. I did not intervene at the time, as the hon. Gentleman will know. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) felt extremely strongly and expressed himself with force, and I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s sincerity and integrity—I make no bones about that; I do—but moderation in the use of language and the importance of trying to keep the temperature down can hardly be overstated. I think the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) has served a useful purpose today, of which we can all take note.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
Mr Speaker, you will be aware that I go on and on about the lack of accountability of NHS trusts in my constituency and around the country, and there are often lots of nods when I raise this. As the Leader of the House knows, I raised this before and she suggested that I get a Westminster Hall debate. I have got that, so I am back now—going on and on. May we have a debate in Government time about the lack of accountability of NHS trusts, which seem to ignore not just politicians and elected representatives, but the people they are supposed to be looking after?
Business of the House
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I thank the Leader of the House very much for what she has said, which does at least explain the chronology of events. However, for the avoidance of doubt, let it be clear that it is utterly discourteous to the House of Commons for an important initiative to be announced outside of this Chamber by means of media interviews. The fact of which the right hon. Lady has helpfully informed us—that the Home Secretary wrote to shadow Ministers—is of interest, but in terms of the priority of a statement in the House, it is frankly neither here nor there. The way in which Ministers are held to account is by interrogation in this Chamber. Simply writing a letter to an opposite number and then beetling off to do a radio or television interview will not do. It is simply not up to the required standard.
I say to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who is one of the least partisan Members of this House and is naturally collaborative by instinct, that if a Minister does not come to this Chamber to announce a policy when he or she should, there are well-established means by which to ensure the presence of a Minister at the first parliamentary opportunity thereafter. If Members seek such an opportunity, it will be provided. Among other things, we will all be interested to know what possible credible explanation for the conduct can be proffered to the House by a Minister. In the absence of a credible explanation, what of course is required is an unqualified apology.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
As colleagues around the House know, I am also not enormously party political, and I completely agree with the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) that the House should have been informed.
There is one issue that is bringing this House into disrepute today, and that is the fact that a Member of this House is in prison and continues to be an MP. My constituents and other constituents around the country do not understand how someone can be convicted and go to prison and yet still be a Member of this House. The police officers who protect us here would lose their pensions and lose everything. Something is seriously wrong, so can we have a debate—in the time that it seems we now have—and change the law to ensure that if someone goes to prison, they will not be in this House, so that the public can believe that what we do is right?
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
It is always difficult to follow someone whose oratory is so difficult to follow, especially as someone who was educated in Tottenham and Essex. Most of my friends probably would not have understood a single word the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said. He is a good friend, however, and I take in good faith his feeling that we should continue to be friends with Europe. Actually, I think that they have learned an awful lot from us, especially about universal suffrage, which we were doing long before we joined the European Union.
You might hear me refer to you, Mr Speaker, as I tell the history of my involvement in this particular subject. I started Conservatives Against a Federal Europe, which damaged my career enormously—it prevented me from coming into this House for many years—because my party was not hugely supportive of people like Sir Teddy Taylor, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) referred to. I vividly remember having to hold a fringe meeting about Europe at the Odeon cinema in Blackpool because we were prevented, profoundly, from holding it in the conference area. I asked Michael Prescott, the then political editor of The Sunday Times, to chair the meeting, and you might remember, Mr Speaker, that some chap called Norman Tebbit appeared on that platform alongside a young upstart called John Bercow. Talking about oratory, John Bercow made Mr Tebbit look a bit left wing—I think I am absolutely right about that. Following that excellent fringe meeting, which was packed to the gunnels—mostly by Government Whips trying to find out what we were up to—I got a phone call from the then said John Bercow, saying, “Could you make sure that I am on your fringe next year?” I remember that very vividly. It is in my diaries—for future publication.
Mr Speaker, I know that you will not take it the wrong way when I say that I have not been on a journey since then and I am still as Eurosceptic. That is because of my mentor and my beliefs—my mentor was Sir Teddy Taylor and he is the reason why I am in this House today. I did get blocked at parliamentary boards, as Mr Speaker knows, because he was actually at a certain weekend parliamentary board—
Sir Mike Penning
No, Mr Speaker. I was blocked by others in my party who thought that, perhaps, I was not from the correct background. We are all on a journey.
Universal Credit
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I do not want to waste the hon. Gentleman too early, so let us save him up for a later point in our proceedings. I am going to hear a point of order from a knight.
Sir Mike Penning
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am leaping to my feet on behalf of colleagues from around the House and their constituents. There is a fine balance between the security of this place—making sure that the staff and everybody who visits this place are safe—and making it as open as possible for visitors so that the public can see this place. With that in mind, the security particularly at the Cromwell Road visitors entrance has been brought to my attention by my constituents and, on investigation, by others. Last night, a constituent of mine waited in the rain for an hour and a half to get into this place for a two-hour event on the Terrace for which they had been charged an awful lot of money, and they only had half an hour at the event. On investigation by myself, I can say this has been happening a lot. It is not just about one night; it is happening a lot.
Mr Speaker, I know that you will say to me, “Investigate with the Serjeant at Arms.” I have done that—I spoke to him at the side of his chair—and I know this needs to be investigated, and he cannot give me an answer now. However, we want this place to be open to the public, and we do not want people to feel that they are being ripped off if they are paying for rooms, which are now very expensive. I seek your advice about how I can raise this issue and have it investigated.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman has raised the issue, and I can understand and empathise with the enormous frustration, not to say irritation, that he and doubtless his constituent feels. His constituent probably feels genuinely let down in this situation, and I will speak to the Parliamentary Security Director about it. As the right hon. Gentleman says, there is a balance, and he speaks with a very considerable personal knowledge and experience of security matters, both from his past career and from his time serving as a Minister. I will discuss it with the Parliamentary Security Director, and I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman as quickly as I can.
On the big picture issue, nobody should have to wait an hour and a half to get into this place, and if that has happened an apology is due, and it should not continue to happen. As colleagues will know, I do not have operational control in this place. I do my best to promote good policy, but I do not have operational control. If this happens, it should not do so: it is not an acceptable state of affairs. I will try to get a satisfactory response for the right hon. Gentleman. I will come back to him when I have further and better particulars, and that will be soon.
Business without Debate
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
We will get on to that debate. I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman has said. It is a very important debate and it will run fully, but I must take points of order if there are such.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to get on to talk about cystic fibrosis, but we will have time and we shall do that. Last week, I raised with you the fact that the underground car park fire exits were shut, but they were still shown as being for use in the event of a fire. You kindly offered to have a stroll round with me to see whether or not they were still shut. This morning, I discovered that they were open and they are safe, but it seems ridiculous that we have to raise points of order in this House to get this place safe for our staff, members of the public and, of course, our colleagues.
Mr Speaker
Conversations were had after the right hon. Gentleman’s point of order, but I accept his point that it should not be necessary for such a matter to be raised in the Chamber in order for appropriate remedial action to be taken. Nevertheless, if the resolution of the matter has brought a smile to the face of the right hon. Gentleman, that is a source of gratification to the House.
Mr Speaker
It is a serious matter, but it is nevertheless better if the right hon. Gentleman is smiling than if he is not.
Mr Speaker
Oh, he is not. If he does not wish to smile, there is nothing I can do about that matter. We will leave that for now. If there are no further points of order, perhaps we can proceed with petitions. The House will be pleased to know that it can have a change of voice in the Chair. Ah, it is very good to see the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron).
Points of Order
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
I am moved to observe that the hon. Gentleman, who is a very dextrous and dedicated parliamentarian, stretched the elastic almost, but perhaps not quite, to snapping point in getting across a particular line of argument or set of observations that he wished to be recorded in the Official Report. However, I want to say two things in response to him. First, I thank him for his typical courtesy in giving me notice that he wished to raise this matter, and indeed for his promptness in correcting the record at the earliest opportunity. Secondly, of course I would accept his correction in any case, and I am sure that the House will, but I speak with some experience of the hon. Gentleman, because for nearly five years we served together on the Select Committee on International Development, and I know both the extent of his knowledge of the matters he has just raised and the absolutely undeniable sincerity with which he pursues what are not merely his concerns, but the concerns of a great many people. So I thank him.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sure you are aware that many Members of this House, and just as importantly the staff of this House, use the underground car park at Members’ entrance. I reported to the Deputy Speaker over a month ago that the emergency exits from the underground car park had been sealed off because of water ingress. This is very dangerous and, as a former firefighter, I thought it important now that I address the fact that yet again when I parked in the car park yesterday morning the underground emergency car park exit was sealed off on all floors, yet the signs saying it was an emergency exit were still illuminated. People would go to that should there be an incident, and they would not be able to get out. That is fundamentally wrong and dangerous.
Mr Speaker
If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to write to the director general of the House of Commons, who has overall managerial responsibility for the parliamentary estate and services delivered thereon, it is open to him to do so. I take very seriously what the right hon. Gentleman has said, but I know he would not expect me to furnish him with a detailed reply now.
Mr Speaker
No further point of order is required. The matter will be looked into and the right hon. Gentleman will receive an answer. Whether it will satisfy his palate is another matter, but we will do our best.
Sir Mike Penning
When you are having a toddle around the Palace looking at entrances and other things, Mr Speaker, perhaps you could toddle down to the underground car park with me and see this for yourself?
Mr Speaker
I am not sure that we wish to conduct a procession on this matter, but I can certainly suggest to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that, if it suits him and he has no violent objection to the idea, our little toddle will include a search of that area. The right hon. Gentleman will know that I myself do not now use that area as my vehicle is parked elsewhere, and therefore I do not have reason, I must readily acknowledge, to go there with any frequency at all, but it would do no harm to do so, and if also—this is a bold expression of hope—it would bring a smile to the face of the right hon. Gentleman to know that his request had been complied with, I require no further incentive.
Points of Order
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
That is a most unworthy thought. The right hon. Gentleman articulates it with his usual brio and panache, but I think he errs on the side of pessimism in his assessment of the character of his colleagues.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday I attempted to raise a point of order, which I do not think was a point of order, so I will try again today. I wonder how I can get on the record how thrilled I am, along with colleagues across the House, that it will no longer be necessary to go to Holland to get the drugs for Alfie Dingley. I was inundated with requests to come with me, but we will now not have to be put behind bars to get Alfie the drugs he needs.
Mr Speaker
That is a very heartwarming point of order by the right hon. Gentleman. I must admit that I had wrongly anticipated him. I did not know that he was going to make the very serious point that he just made, which is appreciated and respected. I thought he was going to use the occasion to make an entirely bogus but amusing point of order about Harry Kane’s two goals last night, which we all celebrate. I do not celebrate it when Harry Kane scores for Tottenham, although I know the right hon. Gentleman does, but I do celebrate it when Harry Kane scores for England.
Sir Mike Penning
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to put on the record how difficult that announcement was for you, as an ardent Arsenal supporter. I am sure that we all, including those from other countries in the United Kingdom, support England when they are playing other countries outside the United Kingdom, and especially when Harry Kane scores two goals.
Mr Speaker
We conclude our points of order today, people will have noticed, in a spirit of amity.
Bill Presented
House of Lords (Abolition and Replacement)
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Frank Field presented a Bill to abolish the House of Lords and make provision for its replacement by a Senate.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on 26 October, and to be printed (Bill 230).
Medicinal Cannabis
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman can try and—I will even be helpful to him, because my generous spirit is getting the better of me—if his point of order relates to the matter with which we have just been dealing, I feel that we can on this occasion indulge him.
Sir Mike Penning
If you do not try, you never know, do you?
During the urgent question, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) asked whether it would be okay if Members went abroad and brought back such a prescribed product, and the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service quite rightly said that we are lawmakers not lawbreakers. However, we are also here to protect our population and our constituents. I say this with an open heart and a genuine understanding of what the Minister is going through, because I tried to deal with this when I was in his position, but if Alfie Dingley does not get his drugs by Wednesday, a delegation from this House will go abroad to get them for him.
Mr Speaker
I am very grateful—or at least I think I am very grateful—to the right hon. Gentleman. Manifestly, that was not even an imitation of or an approximation to a point of order. Nevertheless, I am sure it was extremely important. He has unburdened himself of his opinions, and they are on the record for the people of Hemel Hempstead, the nation and possibly even the world to study.
Before we proceed to the second urgent question, I will take this opportunity to inform the House that Gina Martin, who was herself a victim of the loathsome practice of upskirting and has subsequently led the campaign to outlaw the practice, has joined us in the Gallery today. Gina, we welcome you here and we thank you for coming.
BBC Pay
Debate between Mike Penning and John Bercow(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
May I say to the new Secretary of State that some of us—perhaps across the House and perhaps some here on these Benches—do not share quite as strongly the love for the BBC that he, in his first couple of days in the job, has shown? At the end of the day, we are talking about the top end of pay, but I agree with the shadow Secretary of State that this must be going on across the pay bands in the BBC. The BBC is under a charter from this House; we could change that at any time we wished to make sure that it publishes and shows everything, so that there is equality across the pay bands for contractors as well as those at the top end.
Mr Speaker
There might have been a question there, but if there was it was very heavily disguised.
