Steve Baker
Main Page: Steve Baker (Conservative - Wycombe)
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). It will come as no surprise to him that there is a lot that divides us politically, but we can absolutely agree that Warwick castle, where I went several times as a child, is a great day out. I look forward to taking my own children there soon.
In the Adjournment debate prior to the February half-term recess, I spoke in detail about a proposal that would devastate my constituency—the Oxford to Cambridge expressway road. I set out the case as to why it would be an environmental and economic disaster that would wipe out people’s homes, farms and businesses, and the beautiful villages of Buckinghamshire. I will not repeat the detail of those arguments today, other than to say that it was very good news that when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor published the Budget in March, the road investment strategy 2, or RIS 2, document that accompanied it moved the expressway project out of the “go ahead” column into the “paused” column.” Better news is that I have had confirmation that Highways England has not progressed work on the project.
It goes without saying that my constituents continue to be nervous and concerned that that project might reappear on the agenda. I ask the Minister to urge colleagues in the Department for Transport to move on and to look at alternative projects, such as improving existing roads and delivering a bypass for the village of Wing, rather than the Oxford to Cambridge expressway.
Moving to the covid-19 crisis, I add my voice to so many others this afternoon in thanking every single key worker who has supported us through the crisis. It has been a pleasure in the crisis for the county of Buckinghamshire as a whole to have come together and worked together. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) is in his place, and all five Buckinghamshire MPs have worked together with Buckinghamshire Council, the NHS trust and Buckinghamshire Business First to ensure that we are connected and working together to support all our residents.
On councils, I have nothing but praise not only for Buckinghamshire Council but, importantly, for all the town and parish councils that serve us. At a very micro and local level, they can do much to improve lives and support people.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I fully agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. It is a delight to welcome him and all my new colleagues to their places—I have never seen the Bucks MPs work more closely together—and I echo his praise for all our key workers and especially our local NHS, who have been staggering in their efficiency and effectiveness.
Greg Smith
I totally concur with my hon. Friend’s comments.
To develop the point that I was making about parish and town councils, clearly the Government have put in unprecedented levels of financial support for the principal councils—in my case, Buckinghamshire Council—but parish and town councils have also spent considerable amounts of money for which they need support.
Earlier today, I talked to the mayor of Princes Risborough Town Council, in the south of my constituency. Throughout the crisis, the council has spent £20,000 on various initiatives. That might not sound a lot in the scheme of things, but to a town council it is an enormous amount of money, and it has lost about £30,000 in income—bear in mind that the total precept is £380,000, and that is an enormous amount. I urge the Government, if at all possible, to ensure that our town and parish councils also receive compensation that they need, so that as they set budgets for next year, services are not squeezed or cut.
I wish to focus on two sectors as we come through the crisis. I am enormously proud to be on the Conservative Benches, and to have supported the Chancellor on the unprecedented package that he has given to support businesses and jobs throughout our economy. As our economy reopens, some sectors still need support, and I agreed with every word of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) about the wedding sector. I have worked with companies such as Bijou Wedding Venues, which operates Notley Abbey near Haddenham in my constituency, and it is important that that sector gets to reopen more fully in a way that it knows it can do safely, if it is to survive.
There are also businesses that continue to be unsure. One of those is the soft play sector and children’s play centres. They are confused at the moment as to why it can be that children can do so many other activities of a similar nature, but they still do not have a date for which they can even plan to open. It is so important for children—I see this in my own three-year-old—to be able to interact and play with other children of their own age, in particular at that tender age when they are developing so much. I urge the Government to look at when, for soft play centres and similar businesses where children come together to play, we can get a date by which they may open.
Lastly, there is our coach industry. I am sure right hon. and hon. Members will have noticed the “Honk for Hope” campaign as it came through Westminster very noisily the other day. I went out to meet representatives of Countrywide Coaches from Princes Risborough and Masons coaches from near Cheddington in my constituency. It is a sector that really is struggling, and it is an important sector for two key reasons. In their own right, such companies bring £7 billion into the UK economy every year, but they are also the enablers that bring people into London to go out, on day trips or on holiday, and to spend their money so that we will get the economy open once more. It is a sector that has had to spend an enormous amount of money—for example, through the public service vehicle accessibility regulations recently, which has left many of them £200,000 or £300,000 in debt. If we can get a support package for our coach industry, it really will be appreciated and support the economy.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
In High Wycombe, joy and celebration abound, because just last Monday, Wycombe Wanderers football club were promoted to the championship. I put on record how proud of them the whole town is. It is a miraculous achievement and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will join me in congratulating them.
The first point I want to make about the Government’s business is that it is time to repeal and replace the Coronavirus Act 2020. I have made my case in a Red Box article in The Times today, and I am very grateful to The Times for carrying it. I am also very grateful to Liberty for its comprehensive and, indeed, abridged briefing, which it provided to Members and which I thoroughly recommend.
What we have seen since I stood over there and made a speech—which I think went fairly viral—in opposition to the range and scope of the Bill, is, as I made very clear, a dramatic expansion of powers being passed in an undesirably swift way. Of course, the Government needed to act in haste in all the circumstances. I do not by any means judge my right hon. and hon. Friends for that. They needed to do it, but they now have the luxury of time over the summer recess and, indeed, new information from what we have learned from the progress of the pandemic. I just say to them that this dramatic edifice of powers and regulations related to coronavirus and public health and their basis in law must now be reviewed comprehensively. Parliament must in future have a chance to scrutinise necessary powers properly, and the public must have confidence that rules are proportionate and have been reasonably made. Conservative Ministers worthy of the name cannot afford to be—and I am sure are not—cavalier about civil liberties. With that in mind, I implore my hon. Friend the Minister to look at repealing the Coronavirus Act and replacing it.
Let me move on to set the record straight for an individual and thereby try to right an injustice. As will become clear, I am the only recourse that this individual has. But I want to start by talking about trade policy, of all things. The UK Government are now embarked on a trade policy that most Members will know about: it will flatten power and make it more accountable to change the structure of power in the world to reinvigorate the global trading system, just at the moment when we need it. The UK is going to catalyse that change, but it is perhaps the biggest politics.
Many of the people associated with the journey of formulating that trade policy, from the days when the Legatum Institute special trade commission was doing that job, and I was working with them, have been exposed to and suffered really vitriolic attacks. Indeed, I would say that I have suffered malevolent attacks. Today, though, I want particularly to defend Christopher Chandler, who is the founder of Legatum and that family of companies.
On 1 May 2018, my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) made a speech, the main object of which was Christopher Chandler. I wish to acknowledge the nobility of my hon. Friend’s intent, because any Member of Parliament presented with such a dossier would face difficult questions about what to do with it. He referred to a call for an Intelligence and Security Committee investigation of Mr Chandler, who does not appear in the recent ISC report.
We might, then, ask what Mr Chandler and others did. Legatum, the company that Mr Chandler founded with three partners and of which he is the chairman, commissioned an extensive forensic investigation into the claims by former members of law enforcement and military intelligence. Richard Walton, the former head of counter-terrorism command at the Metropolitan police performed his own independent review of the findings of that investigation and concluded that the allegations made by MPs in the House were totally false. Mr Walton has today briefed me on the reasons why he has drawn that conclusion, and I am absolutely satisfied that the reason why Mr Chandler has not been called to face charges is because there are no charges that he should face. He is an innocent man and, whatever the noble intent of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, I am afraid that Mr Chandler has been unjustly dealt with.
Legatum told me today: “When given the opportunity to present the truth, Legatum has overwhelmingly prevailed in 13 out of 14 actions in the UK, resulting in a stream of corrections, retractions and apologies.” This is, then, fundamentally a case of justice. As I say, I believe that Mr Chandler has absolutely no case to answer; it is just that under the system we currently have an individual has no recourse to what is said in the House of Commons, other than a Member of Parliament standing up for them. At some point the House is going to have to deal with the issue of a right to reply.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; I was aware of what he was going to say. He makes a really important point and, respectfully, I listen with care. Clearly, a right of reply may strengthen the credibility of privilege, such that we could see it as a questioning event in the public interest rather than an accusatory one. I am in favour of that, because I want the privileges that we have to have credibility. I hear what he says and I respectfully listen to what he says and to what he says about his friends. I would merely say that parliamentarians who care about the relevance of this place wrestle with what the right thing to do and say is, sometimes in complex and difficult circumstances. Does he agree that we all try to act in the best possible way? If there is work to be done on updating privilege, I am very happy to join that.
Mr Baker
I would not expect my hon. Friend to go any further than that today and I am very grateful to him for what he has said. That will have been heard and I am grateful to him.
In the urgent question earlier, I said something about Legatum’s work on Russia, which I think is honourable and noble. It would be strange indeed if Mr Chandler was connected to Russian intelligence, given that he has put so much investment into fighting the effects of Russian wrongdoing. I have already mentioned trade policy; it is rare indeed that one can say that somebody has facilitated so much benefit to so many people.
Let me say a little more, because Mr Chandler is also a believer in private philanthropy. Since its founding in 2012, the END Fund has facilitated the delivery of more than 720 million treatments relating to neglected tropical diseases, in 27 of the world’s poorest countries. His Freedom fund has liberated 24,277 men, women and children. His Luminos fund has, through its Second Chance accelerated-learning programme, seen 132,611 children brought back to school. Mr Chandler is not a man who should have been vilified; he is an inspiration.
Injustice is not always brought down on the heads of the weak. Virtue does not always belong to the poor. On this occasion, I have had to do something, which would have been far better had I not had to do it, and that is to defend a man who is wealthy and strong, but who has been placed in a position without a right to reply, and it has been necessary for me to stand up today and to seek to set the record straight and to defend his honour. I say again that Richard Walton, the former head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, has investigated all of these matters and said, “The allegations made in the House of Commons are totally false.” If you will allow me Mr Deputy Speaker, my last words are from a quote chosen by Mr Chandler himself:
“Truth ultimately prevails where there are pains to bring it to light.”
I have taken those pains today. Let truth prevail.
The Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household (Stuart Andrew)
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I say what a pleasure it is to close this debate, although I think it was slightly easier to wind up last time, given that there were far fewer contributions? That is what makes this debate extremely enjoyable, however.
I would like to join every other Member in saying a big thank you to all members of staff here at the House for all the work they have done. I wish them a very happy and peaceful summer, because I think they really deserve it. I also want to say thank you to our Doorkeepers, who are always looking after us extremely well, and those in the Table Office, the Vote Office and those who have been doing the IT. Sometimes it has felt like we have been watching the Eurovision song contest getting the various constituency votes in, but it has been interesting, and I am glad those working on the IT have been able to do that so well.
I am glad also that Members mentioned caseworkers in our constituency offices. I know we should not, but sometimes we get used to some of the abuse we get. It is pretty awful that it is our caseworkers who sometimes get it, too, and I pay tribute to all of them for the work they have done.
Given I do not get the opportunity to speak very often, I will put on record my thanks to all the workers in the Pudsey constituency for everything they have done, including community groups such as the Farsley, Pudsey and Horsforth Live at Home schemes and Aireborough Voluntary Services to the Elderly. They have been amazing.
It has been a real challenge across the country, and I pay tribute in particular to all those who have lost loved ones. Our thoughts are certainly with them through what has been a difficult time. As we come out of it—we do that one step at a time—we can hopefully start to put this difficult period behind us. I know that this country will come together to try and make sure that we have better days ahead of us.
There have been some highlights. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) was talking about his local football club and their promotion, and I have to say that we have had our own in my city, with Leeds being promoted. Two of my friends who have gone through disappointment after disappointment over the past 17 years—Rob Murphy-Fell and Clare Horrocks—are finally celebrating the promotion of Leeds into the premiership, which is good news.
I have sat here today feeling a bit like Father Christmas, receiving children’s lists of requests. Some children are slightly greedier than others, but I will try my best to respond to each of the points that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) rightly talked about the importance of the aviation industry. I know from my time in Defence the importance of the Tempest programme. I hope that it will help our industry in the UK.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and others quite rightly mentioned the awful way in which Muslims have been treated in China. We take this issue extremely seriously, have raised it on many occasions and will continue to do so. She also talked about domestic abuse during this difficult period. I am glad that she raised that subject. A really good thing that has happened in this period of our Parliament is the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill. There has been real cross-party working on that legislation, which has made the Bill even better—and I thank colleagues for that.
The hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) and for Buckingham (Greg Smith), and others, mentioned the events industry. I know from my own postbag—and from a personal friend who has an events company—how difficult the current situation is for that industry. I will certainly relay the views of the House to the Chancellor and others, and highlight the specific points raised by those Members.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) started off talking about all the local heroes in his constituency and then—like other Members did—tried to convince us all to go to his constituency for our summer holidays. It certainly sounds beautiful, but he had to spoil it by going on about independence for Scotland. If only that once-in-a-generation independence referendum had gone the Scottish National party’s way; it did not and they need to get over it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) rightly paid tribute to one of her councillors, Councillor Longcake, who sadly lost his life during this crisis. My hon. Friend has also already been a fierce campaigner for the steel industry in her constituency, and other Members raised the issue with regard to their constituencies. I am getting a glare from the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), but it was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock). The Government are supporting the sector during this difficult period and we are putting huge investment into infrastructure. We have also introduced steel-specific procurement guidance that requires Government Departments and public bodies to consider social and environmental factors when procuring steel. I certainly hope that that will see more British steel being used in the fantastic investment that we are making across the country.
I wish the hon. Member for City of Durham good luck with her ukulele lessons. I am sure that we would all like to see them. I was glad that she and other hon. Members talked specifically about the use of music in trying to prevent male suicide. Suicide is an issue that we should debate and which unites us all in wanting to do what we can to try to reduce those instances.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury and others talked about weddings. From August, we hope to start phasing in larger celebratory meals or receptions for weddings and civil partnerships. Over time, we will assess whether it is possible to make such gatherings bigger. I fully understand the difficulties that it is causing. Two of my friends, Rob and Michelle, have sadly had to postpone their wedding, and I know that many others have had to do the same.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) said that Mansfield was the centre of levelling up in this country. I am afraid to say to him that, following the general election, we now have many other competitors for that position, as has been seen in this debate. He is a doughty champion for his constituency.
I want to move on to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). She raised the issue of beauticians and said that it was a serious issue. May I say from this Dispatch Box that I fully recognise and understand that? I know that there are many businesses that are worried, and we are looking at everything that we can do to ensure that they have a safe opening. She also talked about the issue of gambling. I know that this is something that she and others feel passionate about. We have been working closely with the Gambling Commission over the past 18 months to introduce a wave of tougher measures, and we hope to be able to report on that soon. Then she came on to the issue of the children’s funeral fund. My previous work in children’s hospices makes me very alive to the difficulty that many families face when they have lost a child. I have seen so many families go through that, and I want to congratulate her on her campaign. I am glad the Government have introduced it, and she is absolutely right that we need to promote it to other families.
There were a load of bids. My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes put in a bid for a free port. My hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) talked about support for his constituency. I will make sure that all the bids are brought to the attention of the relevant Minister. I am afraid that that is as far as I can go. I was a bit disappointed that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) was trying to say that, in terms of levelling up, we were somehow favouring some towns and cities for electoral advantage. The point is that the people of those towns turned to the Conservative party because they were sick and tired of being neglected by their Labour representatives who had been there for so many years.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) rightly raised the issue of racism against the Chinese community. There was an extremely powerful contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley). He rightly said that, yes, we have some uncomfortable periods in our history, but it is only through history that we learn, and it is only then that we can make our country even better. I say to the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown that it is not just the Chinese community that we need to be thinking about, but every community. I hope that, whether it is a statue or whatever it is, we learn the lessons and educate the next generation about where we have come from and be proud of the fact that we have been on a journey. I say that from a very personal perspective. My life was very difficult when I first came out in the 1980s in Wales, but now nobody even bats an eyelid that I live with my partner. That is a wonderful testament to the way this country has developed. There is more work to do, but let us not forget the progress that we have made.
I just want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe. He has received an award—jointly, I understand—for civility in public life.
Stuart Andrew
Oh, politician of the year. Pardon me for getting that so wrong. That is a fantastic achievement and I congratulate my hon. Friend.
I also want to mention a couple of other colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) talked about Bury Football Club. I remember the first day he arrived, he collared me and said, “Who is the Minister for sport?” He immediately went off and raised the issue with him. Clearly, he is not giving up and that makes him a superb MP for his constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) quite rightly raised a very difficult issue of prisoners having access to social media. There is nothing worse than victims feeling like they are being hounded by the people who have perpetrated the crime from prison. I will refer that to the relevant Department.
I will probably have to finish here, because time is running out, although I will say that if my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) backs me in the next leadership bid, I will ensure that china from Stoke is stocked in Chequers.