Overseas Electors Bill: Money

Debate between Susan Elan Jones and Chloe Smith

Money resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

That is absolutely correct. I am happy to confirm that the intention is to maintain the way in which we currently represent voters who live overseas: they will accrue to the constituency in which they most recently lived.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I have a related question. Can the Minister confirm that there would be absolutely no way in which such a person could then migrate to another UK constituency?

[Chloe Smith]

That is correct. The application to register to vote would be tied to the constituency in which the person was last registered or resident. It should not be possible for any individual to say, “Right, I pick that one.”

I have told the House how much it costs to process overseas voters’ applications to register. There are also additional costs, comparatively speaking, associated with overseas electors taking part in polls, and that again is due to things like international postage, where the average cost is again a little higher than it is for domestic voters.

Pub Companies

Debate between Susan Elan Jones and Chloe Smith

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), whom I know has a long track record of campaigning on this issue.

I am sorry that the playwright Samuel Beckett is no longer with us, because there is more than a shade of an existential play to this one: in act one, we all eventually come to some sort of conclusion, but in act two, it all replays, only in this case there are more than two acts and nothing changes, and on and on we seem to have gone.

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Lady should come to the Sewell Barn theatre in Norwich. It is currently playing much better works than those.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I fear I might also have to go to a Welsh pub to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) teach us folk singing, but I would be delighted to come to the hon. Lady’s constituency as well.

We were last here debating this matter on 9 January last year, when many of us genuinely felt reassured by the Government’s promises to introduce a statutory code and independent adjudicator, which we all concluded were needed, and I am extremely heartened that today, having doggedly pursued this issue, my hon. Friend the shadow Minister has offered the possibility of a proper cross-party agreement in order to get the Bill on the statute book. The Secretary of State said earlier that it all depended on the legislative timetable, but we know the paucity of business on that timetable. It would be easy for the Bill to pass, and I hope it does.

It was clear that an industry regulator was needed when we debated this last year and that the Government had to take action, and so they still do. We are not waiting for Godot; we are waiting for Government. One year on, and a good deal longer since the House first spoke out, many of us are disappointed that no progress or change has been made. Of course, any regulator must be created carefully, but the Government’s sluggish action is nothing short of a tragedy in many communities. As Members will know, the Government’s response to their own consultation on pub company reform is now four months overdue.

Society changes fast, and it is more than 20 years since the former Prime Minister John Major evoked those oh so quintessentially British images that not even UKIP councillors could complain about: of cricket, warm beer, and spinsters cycling—preferably having kept to soft drinks before doing so. The pub has been in decline for many different reasons, not least the revolting practice of what I believe is called pre-loading, which was mentioned earlier, but it is not about which Government did what. Figures from organisations such as the Campaign for Real Ale demonstrate the scale and pace of the decline, in a situation where we could effect positive change. With 26 pubs closing every week, a few hundred must have closed in the four months in which we have been waiting for the consultation on pub company reform. That is deeply concerning.

I am concerned about why the Government have failed to act. As Members will know, if a Bill is to be introduced before the general election, the Government must put it in this Queen’s Speech. With every month of stalling, it becomes less and less likely that a Bill will be passed this Parliament. We are losing hundreds of pubs a year, which adds up to hundreds of businesses and job losses. With hard-working families already struggling to makes ends meet, that will only add to the melting pot being created within our local communities. By the Government’s own admission this time last year, our local pubs are struggling. We know that. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was correct when he said that these small businesses were under a great deal of pressure.

In my own constituency, I am delighted to have seen creditable examples of communities coming together to fight for change, but often that has happened in opposition to the tied system, not because of it. I have been hugely impressed by a group from the village of Minera. Faced with a pub that had closed, local people came together, raised the money and reopened a much-loved pub that is now a welcoming hub within that beautiful mountainous community. Tyn y Capel pub is an excellent example of a truly community-owned and run pub. Local people have bought shares and are managing the enterprise, but financially, for all their success in the community, it is touch and go. It is not possible to run the pub full time; still less is it possible to have full-time paid staff—much of the time, it is staffed by volunteers, with only a temporary residue of paid staff.

We need more Tyn y Capels, but we need an environment in which pubs can survive. Thousands of pubs have closed in the last four years, and hundreds more are being sold every year, and with each closure, a family, an individual or a community lose their business, livelihood or a vital connection to their community.

Small Charitable Donations Bill

Debate between Susan Elan Jones and Chloe Smith

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

We hope that this scheme will be well used, and I have already set out that aspiration. I have set out the aspiration, too, that the scheme will get £100 million to charities. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the numbers set out in the impact assessment, which has certainly been made available to him. The key point is that the scheme needs to be open and, as we have said, worth while for charities to access, which I think it will be. Equally, we need to be able to keep track of the possible costs of the scheme, which I am coming on to deal with. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that a pool of around 100,000 charities have claimed gift aid in the past four years. It might be possible to take that number as an estimate of the number of charities that could be eligible to apply to the scheme. We hope that take-up will be high, but by its nature, it is somewhat hard to predict at this point, but I am not suggesting that all those 100,000 charities will put in claims.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that if organisations such as the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the Charity Finance Group, the Charities Aid Foundation and, I believe, the Institute of Fundraisers have problems with the practicalities of what she has suggested, she should at least consider the details again? I am sure we all agree on the general principles, but this is about getting it right for predominantly small community and voluntary groups.

[Miss Smith]

It is indeed about getting it right for those groups that we all care about. I can reassure the hon. Lady that I have already made changes to the Bill on a number of points, in comparison with what was originally outlined. If I can make a little progress, I will come on to explain them. I further reassure her that the whole point of having a public scrutiny stage for the Bill is exactly to hear those points. I have made it my priority to work with those representative bodies and, indeed, to work directly with charities as much as possible, reassuring them about the benefits of the scheme and explaining why I designed it carefully in order to protect its aims.