Charging for Access to Parliament

Debate between Robert Halfon and Thomas Docherty

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Surely Her Majesty the Queen is the most recognisable icon in the world.

[Robert Halfon]

I am delighted to see that Labour Members have suddenly become monarchists after all these years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful for that point of clarification. I thought the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) had referred to the Administration Committee, so I apologise to him for that. The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden will also be most relieved that that has been cleared up.

The coalition Government said that 17% should be the average saving across public spending. That is why the Commission—rightly or wrongly—set that target. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, know that my view is that it is wrong, but if we are to meet that target, some difficult decisions have to be made.

Let us also be clear that the proposals are not about profiteering. This is not about making money, but simply about recouping the costs of running the tours.

[Robert Halfon]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that roughly 60 of my constituents have come on Big Ben tours? Tomorrow, 15 people from the Prince’s Trust are coming and I will meet them all. How can we justify telling those people that they have to pay £15 a head to come and see Big Ben?

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there is a difficult choice, but the reality is that we must make cost savings. He knows that there are difficult decisions to make. I see the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), chuntering away next to him. He knows more than anybody that the real-terms cuts—they have been made in his Department—are difficult, yet he does not say that we should not make them. [Interruption.] Real-terms cuts have been made.

We are not all in this together. Members on both sides of the House do not recognise that the House needs to show fiscal responsibility.

Draft Financial Services Bill (Joint Committee)

Debate between Robert Halfon and Thomas Docherty

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

Obviously, Mr Speaker, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) led me down a very tempting path, and I will do my best not to be drawn down it again.

The draft Bill is a phenomenally large document. I am sure that on your evenings off, Mr Speaker, when you are drinking a glass of mulled wine, you will have had a chance to flick through its contents. It is a wide-ranging Bill that seeks, rightly, radically to overhaul our financial services industry. It is therefore right that the individuals from both Houses who are tasked with providing the legislative scrutiny are properly scrutinised themselves, because we are placing a huge amount of trust in their hands. I suspect, Mr Speaker, that if I were to go too far into the issue of trust you would rightly pull me up for it.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Members of both parties were implicated in various expenses issues. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that members of his own party who were so implicated should not serve on any Committee either?

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman asks a valid question. As a new Member who unseated a former Member who had to pay back thousands of pounds, I am very much alive to these issues. I absolutely believe that if someone is forced to pay back £56,000 to which they were not entitled because they had knowingly misled the taxpayer—the Fees Office—they should be excluded from being a member of a committee that oversees the new financial services regulation. That goes to the heart of the issue. If the hon. Gentleman does not agree with me, I respect that, but I hope that he will indicate that that is his view. I do not see him indicating dissent, so I assume that he agrees.