European Council
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am very grateful for my hon. Friend’s suggestion. I have spoken to President Putin, I think, four times since the crisis began, and one of the points that I always make is that Britain understands—and I think many in the European Union understand—that Russia has a very close interest in what happens in Ukraine, and wants to have a strong relationship with it in the future. The point that I make—and tried to make in my statement—is that this should not be a tug of war between Russia and Europe, but should be a chance for the Ukrainian people to decide their own future. They could easily choose a future in which they act as something of a bridge between Europe and Russia, and we should be actively encouraging that. We should be saying to the Russians, “Of course we want a Ukraine where Russian speakers and minorities are properly treated, and a Ukraine which has a proper relationship with both Russia and the European Union.”
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Can the Prime Minister comment on whether his party is still sitting in the same political grouping as President Putin’s United Russia in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe? If it is—and it may well not be—what is he going to do about it?
The Prime Minister
I can satisfy the hon. Gentleman by saying that that is no longer the case.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman speaks for a party that is hoovering up all the available Short money from taxpayers, and his question was probably written for him by Len McCluskey. For heaven’s sake, talk about blurring the boundaries between politics and non-party interests. Was the question written for him by a trade union—yes or no?
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
4. What steps he has taken to prevent a reduction in those registered to vote as a result of the introduction of individual electoral registration.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
6. What steps he has taken to prevent a reduction in those registered to vote as a result of the introduction of individual electoral registration.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
The Government are safeguarding the completeness of the electoral register by using data-matching to confirm the majority of existing electors to ensure that they are all automatically enrolled during the transition to individual electoral registration. We are also phasing in the transition over two years to allow those not individually registered to vote in the 2015 election. We are making registration simpler and more convenient by enabling online registration for the first time. In addition, resources have been provided to maximise voter registration ahead of individual electoral registration.
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman should know that the tests that have been done and the safeguards that are in place, including carrying over the existing register to the 2015 election, mean that there is every prospect that the number of people able to vote in that election will increase. That is what has led the chair of the Electoral Commission to say:
“We have independently assessed how ready the plans are for this change to the registration system and have concluded that it can proceed”.
Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lyn Brown
I am afraid that my hon. Friend is encouraging me to sit down, but I will continue.
REDS10 is a National Apprenticeship Service-approved apprenticeship training agency—isn’t that a mouthful? It is contracted to work with prime and subcontractors to broker apprenticeships and job opportunities for local people in the Olympic park transformation programme. REDS10 takes on the apprentices, pays their wages, provides their training and then places them with the subcontractors, allowing them to complete their training across different projects and under the guidance of multiple firms. Therefore, we do not need to disadvantage firms in a supply chain that are unable to provide a full-scale apprenticeship. Instead, they can contract their part of an apprenticeship scheme from REDS10 and make a contribution, which is agreed in the contract with LLDC. Smaller firms are then enabled to participate in the supply chain. Is that not a great idea? Yes.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
It is a great idea, and it is being replicated across the country. Humberside Engineering Training Association, which I visited this time last week with my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) to meet apprentices, is doing exactly the same thing in Scunthorpe, in Tata and elsewhere.
Lyn Brown
By not excluding small firms from supply chains, we can set up vehicles that enable them to compete in the same way as larger firms. The apprenticeships requirement that the Bill would enable authorities to deliver will not preclude smaller firms from participating.
The ATA model has allowed the creation and delivery of apprenticeship opportunities that would not otherwise have been created. To date, it has seen a peak of 60 apprenticeships on site, the highest number on a single site in London in 2013. I am sure that we all congratulate them. The project has now moved into its follow-on phase, with the LLDC and REDS10 working closely with prime and subcontractors that have recently commenced work on site to secure opportunities for existing apprentices who are completing initial placements with contractors. By September 2013, 15 apprentices had been successfully moved to new placements and five had been moved into permanent employment. That is something we all want to see.
To deliver on its public commitments and support contractors, the LLDC set up a transformation job and apprenticeship brokerage project. The project is overseen by a construction operations group, chaired by the LLDC and with representation from key employment and skills service providers in east London. Since October 2012 the project has supported contractors, who in many cases exceeded their contractual commitments, because they see the benefit of training people not only in the skills they want them to have, but in the company ethos.
Once employers get engaged in such an organisation and become more au fait with having apprentices and the support of bigger organisations to enable the admin and those bits of the apprenticeship programme that they cannot deliver, they see that there is a genuine benefit for themselves. In order to reach that stage, however, employers need to be convinced that this place has legislated to enable the overall authority to provide such a programme. That is why the Bill is so relevant.
Diana Johnson
Absolutely. My hon. Friend has been a champion of ensuring that youngsters have those opportunities and that businesses provide the apprenticeships that they should provide.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
My hon. Friend makes a hugely important point. The social mix is fundamental to the value of NCS, because it is about giving young people opportunities to meet and spend time together that they would not otherwise have, and they value that enormously. We pay by results when it comes to providers delivering that, and we monitor it obsessively.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
10. What recent assessment he has made of implementation of the Government’s procurement reforms.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)
As a result of the Government’s procurement reforms, we have made the way we do business more competitive, more transparent, better value and far simpler than ever before.
Miss Smith
The hon. Gentleman will find that the contracts he might be alluding to were all let by the previous Government, and I have already informed the House of the progress we are making in shifting Government business to SMEs.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) on how he presented his Bill on a referendum in the European Union. There was unanimous support on this side of the House from the Conservative party. What was noticeable is that although there was a 19-page briefing from the Labour party—like every other bit of paper nowadays, we find it lying around the House of Commons—Labour Members could not make up their mind which way to vote.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister agree with a former Conservative treasurer that the money received from Asil Nadir is tainted and that the Conservatives have a moral duty to give it back? When will he return that money?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman should start with the fact that his party has taken £1.6 million—not a £5,000 cap—from Mr Mills and advised him how to dodge the tax.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 12 months ago)
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Miss Smith
My hon. Friend and I have exchanged views on this subject a number of times, and I look forward to doing so again. As to what we are discussing today, Mr Speaker, you and he will know that there was a draft Bill. We continue to work through its detail and I look forward to bringing forward the further details in due course.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
11. Given that MPs across the parties, and particularly those of us elected in 2010, have been calling for action on lobbyists since we were first elected, why has it taken three years, and still no action? When will we actually have a register in place?
Miss Smith
There are two points: one, we are doing it; and two, the Opposition did not do it 13 years.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
We will make an announcement on that component of the constitutional and political reform programme in the coalition agreement in due course. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, it was slightly in abeyance as long as the debate about the boundary changes was still a live issue. As that has now been settled for the time being—if not satisfactorily in everyone’s opinion—we will of course return to the issue of all-postal primaries and make our views clear.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
4. How many new members of the House of Lords the Government plan to create.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)
As stated in the programme for government, appointments will be made to the House of Lords with the objective of creating a second Chamber that reflects the share of the vote secured by the political parties at the last general election.
Miss Smith
What I see is an avoidance of the reality of what happened after 2010, which was that the list of appointments contained the picks of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and Labour became the largest party in the Lords despite having lost the general election.
The Deputy Prime Minister
We do not presently have any plans to do what my hon. Friend recommends, and which he has recommended consistently over a long period. I hope that he acknowledges, however, that we have already launched eight city deals to give new powers to the eight largest cities outside London and the south-east. That will be followed this year by 20 further city deals, which are still to be concluded, and a massive devolution of financial power to local councils so that they retain business rates, starting next month.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
T8. It is not only unfair but poor value for money for disabled people in specially adapted homes to be hit by the pernicious bedroom tax. Will the Deputy Prime Minister commit the Government to look again at making it mandatory to exempt disabled people from that disgraceful tax?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the spare room subsidy is not available to thousands upon thousands of families who receive housing benefit in the private rented sector but it is available to families who receive the benefit in the social sector. Therefore, we are trying to ensure that the two systems are fair. A total of 1.8 million households are on the social housing waiting list, yet taxpayers are subsidising 1 million bedrooms that are not being used. That is what we are trying to sort out, but I accept what he says: there will be difficult cases that we need to be able to address adequately. That is why we have provided millions of pounds extra to the discretionary housing payment pot, which now totals £150 million, and made a number of other changes. During the implementation of the policy, we will look at those cases and take further measures where we think they are justified.
Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)
Nic Dakin Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend speaks with great knowledge about the NHS, with her long years of experience as a GP. On health care assistants, the Government have said that Robert Francis’s idea of proper training standards needs to be looked at. I tend to agree with that. The issue of registration is more complicated and potentially more bureaucratic. We will certainly look at it, but I think that needs some close examination.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Hospitals do not exist in isolation. Will Professor Sir Bruce Keogh’s immediate investigation into the care in hospitals with the highest mortality rates look at the role of primary, adult and community care in relation to those mortality rates, and the relationship between them?
The Prime Minister
Yes, I am sure he will do that. These things do not exist in isolation, but I hope we can do such investigations in a more frank way, because we do not want to fall into the culture of complacency or, as Francis says, into seeing the responsibility for quality as lying somewhere else.
Voting Age
Nic Dakin Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Stephen Williams
I will leave matters relating to Scotland to other contributors. If you permit it, Mr Speaker, we will hear from that corner of the United Kingdom later.
The case for lowering the voting age is usually made—the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has alluded to this—on the grounds of other rights and responsibilities that young people already have at 16 and 17. I will come to those later, but I would prefer to justify lowering the franchise age to 16 on the principal grounds that I believe that 16 and 17-year-olds have sufficient maturity and knowledge to cast a vote, if they want to do so. We do not have compulsory voting in this country, so we would simply be affording 16 and 17-year-olds the opportunity to vote if they wished to do so.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is setting out his case very well. I spent my whole life working with 16 to 19-year-olds until I came to this place, and my experience suggests that they are as good at making decisions on voting as the people who are assembled here.
Votes for 16 and 17-year-olds
Nic Dakin Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Julie Elliott
I could not agree more. If having enough knowledge to understand what one is voting about were a prerequisite, it would rule out many people.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a clear case. As somebody who has spent pretty much all my working life with 16 and 17-year-olds, and who has worked for the past two years with Members of Parliament, I must say that 16 and 17-year-olds have as much to say and as much stake in things as we do.
Julie Elliott
Absolutely, and they often say it with much more passion and punch than we do. Young people of 16 and 17 know and understand the principles of democracy. We hope that lowering the voting age would further increase their interest in politics. Election turnouts among young people are already low. We would raise participation.
Many countries have already granted their young people the right to vote, albeit with some conditions, including the Isle of Man, Austria, Brazil, Germany and Norway. The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly has also urged the Committee of Ministers to encourage member states to reconsider the age-related restrictions placed on voting rights, to encourage young people’s participation in political life.
It seems to me that there is a strong case for giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote. I will therefore discuss briefly what I would like to see happen to progress the issue. I believe that the Government should consider improving citizenship education for young people, to be followed by a free vote in Parliament on reducing the voting age to 16. Indeed, the Labour party pledged to do so in our 2010 manifesto.
I entirely support citizenship classes, but I believe that they could be improved yet further. I would like to see the Government commission a report on how best to improve and expand citizenship education to raise standards, with the intention of making parliamentary time available to debate it. I would then like to see a commitment to providing a free vote in Parliament on lowering the voting age to 16.
I recently tabled some parliamentary questions to the Deputy Prime Minister about what representations had been received on the issue and what research had been commissioned recently. I was disappointed to be informed in the answer from the Cabinet Office that no recent research has been undertaken or commissioned and that there is no consensus within the Government for lowering the voting age to 16.
I remind the Minister that the Liberal Democrats made a commitment in their 2010 manifesto to introduce voting rights from the age of 16. I hope that she will consider my arguments for lowering the voting age and for commissioning research into the matter.
Miss Smith
Mr Chope, if I had more time than you might allow me, the direct answer would be that that is because the following things do not apply when a person is 16: holding a licence to drive any vehicle, except certain heavy ones, engaging in street trading, holding an air rifle, etc. I do not wish simply to read out the other half of the list. The point is that, as I have said, a range of activities signal majority from 16 through to 18. Indeed, there are eight of them, on certain counts.
Miss Smith
I welcome that debate and welcome everything that has gone into this debate. Again, I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central on securing the debate. I welcome the interest that is regularly shown in this debate by those whom we seek to represent and work with. I welcome that not only as a younger person in politics, but as a person who seeks to have other young people involved in politics, as I seek to take the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill through its remaining parliamentary stages. It is vital that registration and turnout increase in this country. We all seek to achieve that.
I cannot give the hon. Member for Caerphilly an emphatic yes, a tick in the box or franchise on a plate, because I do not think that there is consensus in the country for it. That is not reflected in what our constituents ask us to do. There are divergent views. Accordingly, there is no consensus within the Government on this issue. I shall not hide that fact. It was not included in the coalition agreement for Government, so there are no plans for a change in this Parliament.
I thank the hon. Lady for her constructive suggestions about citizenship education, which I will be sure to pass on to my colleagues in the relevant Departments. I look forward very much to continuing this debate and to all of us doing everything that we can to encourage young people to play the fullest possible part in civic and democratic life.