Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Clegg and Alun Michael(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury will be giving a statement on this matter immediately after Question Time. I am very pleased that a heads of agreement has been reached between the Government and trade unions under all four schemes, not only because it ensures the Government’s objective of putting public sector pensions on to a financially sustainable footing, but, much more importantly, because it means that millions of people working in the public services, whether in our schools, in our hospitals or in local government, will now be assured, at a time of great uncertainty, that they will have among the very best pensions in this country for years and years to come.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
T6. I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister about his new year’s resolutions. The Leader of the House has reminded all Ministers of the following:“When Parliament is in session the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, to Parliament.”—[Official Report, 5 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 73.]Given that, and given that the Deputy Prime Minister is one of the worst offenders, will he make it his new year’s resolution to behave himself in future?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I do not need a new year’s resolution to be reminded that it is important to behave oneself at all times.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Clegg and Alun Michael(12 years, 11 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
That is one of the many questions that we are now considering in advance of making an announcement about the establishment of the commission to look into the West Lothian question, which we will do during the course of this year.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
T12. The Deputy Prime Minister has just said that he is in favour of the public having more people to vote for. Has he read the Hansard proceedings of last week’s debate in Westminster Hall, in which Conservative, Labour and Plaid Cymru MPs criticised the fact that the relationship between Wales and Westminster was being put at risk by the cut in representation from 40 MPs to 30? Only Liberal Democrats seem willing to defend that policy. Is he ready to repent, or has he given up on Wales?
The Deputy Prime Minister
What I have not given up on is having a system of election that is fair. I do not think it is right or fair to have some Members of the House representing far, far fewer constituents than colleagues in other constituencies. The principle that all of us should represent roughly the same number of people seems to me a basic one.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Clegg and Alun Michael(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
T1. If he will make a statement on his ministerial responsibilities.
The Deputy Prime Minister
As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister in the oversight of the full range of Government policy and initiatives. I have taken particular responsibilities for co-ordinating the Government’s domestic policies through my chairmanship of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on home affairs. Within the Government, I am responsible for our ambitious programme of political and constitutional reform, supported in this House by my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper).
Alun Michael
In view of the Deputy Prime Minister’s reference to a supporting role, may I quote him directly? He has said:
“We need to invest in the kind of things… which create jobs for our young people”
and
“help manufacturing”.
Do not last week’s cuts in support for young people and for Sheffield Forgemasters demonstrate that the Deputy Prime Minister is powerless within Government?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As a Sheffield MP, I suspect that I know Sheffield Forgemasters a lot better than the right hon. Gentleman does, and I will be meeting the chairman and chief executive again this Friday in Sheffield. [Interruption.] Let us be clear: this is an outstanding company—it is a great company. [Interruption.] No, the new owners have been quite open about why they sought a Government loan—because, as they have publicly stated, they felt the terms they were receiving from banks were not good enough and because they did not want to dilute their own shareholdings in the company. Do I think it is the role of Government to help out owners of companies who do not want to dilute their own shareholdings? No, I do not. Every Member of this House could identify companies that are struggling more than Sheffield Forgemasters and that would also like to receive a Government loan. To support manufacturing, we must support skills, we must invest in infrastructure and we must get the banks lending. That is what we will do; that is what Labour failed to do.
Constitution and Home Affairs
Debate between Nick Clegg and Alun Michael(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
That is a problem, and that is exactly why the acceleration of the individual voter registration system must be done in a way that successfully addresses that problem, rather than exacerbates it.
The right hon. Gentleman and all his colleagues basically have a choice about the issue of a referendum on the alternative vote and the linked issue of a boundary review. Either he tries to see the issue—slightly neurotically—through the prism of pure party interest, whereby all he wants to do is to adopt a defensive position to protect his own party’s arithmetical standing in this House, or he and his colleagues should in my view be prepared to engage with the serious issue at hand, which is that constituencies are unequal, the weight of people’s votes is unequal and that that is simply not an acceptable position at a time when we have this great opportunity to renew our democracy from top to toe. That is a choice that he should make.
On everything from this matter to the 55% threshold, I would say two things. First, it is a political choice for Labour Members as to whether they want to leap straight from government, having failed to move on all these things, to outright oppositionism driven by the slightly paranoid sense that everything is targeted at them and no one else, or engage seriously in what I believe is a promising moment in our political history to reform things, and reform things for good.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will take one more intervention, and then make some progress.
Alun Michael
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the basic democratic right is the right to vote and that nobody can exercise that right without being registered to vote? Therefore, dealing with the 3.5 million or so individuals who are not registered to vote is not just something that comes after the sort of changes that he is seeking—it needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Urgency? The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues had 13 years to do this. How often are they going constantly to ask us to do things urgently when we have had only three weeks and they had 13 years? Of course we need to find the 3.5 million people who are not on the register, alongside the progress towards individual voter registration, but I say this to him: please do not sit there all high and mighty and pretend that we are somehow responsible for a problem that he and his colleagues in government created over the past decade.