Sir Christopher Chope
MP for Christchurch · Conservative · United Kingdom
“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one? I was looking at my calendar of business, otherwise known as the Order Paper, and it says that “The selection of the matters to be debated will be made by the Leader of the Opposition (Standing Order No.”
“The Climate Change Committee has condemned the Government for failing and falling short of adapting to climate change and accepting the reality as it is, which is that by the end of this century, global temperatures will have increased to between 3.5° and 4.5° above pre-industrial levels.”
“The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early-day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon.”
“The landmark 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence by the United States takes place in the week commencing 29 June. I have applied for an Adjournment debate, but will the Leader of the House enable more Members to be able to participate in marking that historic event?”
“That is exactly what I did on behalf of my constituent Paul Kenchington: I wrote to the Secretary of State about the specialist steel that he uses, and I have not had a reply.”
“Next week, can the Leader of the House produce a Government statement in response to the Hallett review on covid-19 vaccines? Lady Hallett recommended major reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,444 lines we hold for Sir Christopher Chope, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 22 of 109.
“On this basis, while no final decision has been taken at this time, the government will keep the issue of decriminalisation under active consideration as part of the roadmap of reform of the BBC discussed below.” I am delighted to see the Secretary of State on the Front Bench, but I hope that the Government are indeed “actively” dealing with this issue.”
“Paragraph 70 of the report from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport states: “After considering the consultation responses, the government remains concerned that criminal prosecution is, as a matter of principle, an unfair and disproportionate approach to enforcement of TV licence evasion in a modern public service broadcasting system.” So there we have it, Madam Deputy Speaker. Paragraph 76 states: “Against this background, the government therefore intends to continue assessing these potential impacts of an alternative sanction on licence fee payers.”
“What an enormous volume of activity that involved—activity that I think we should be able to dispense with, and we would be able to dispense with it if we dispensed with the BBC licence fee, but we could take a staging point halfway if we prevented the BBC from being able to prosecute these normally hapless people. In February 2020, the Government launched a consultation on the issue of decriminalisation. It took about a year for the results to be published. In their response, the Government were pretty damning about the criminalisation of those who do not pay the licence fee.”
“I agree. That is why I hope the Ministry of Justice, which is concerned about delays in the magistrates courts, will be saying, “How ridiculous that our magistrates courts should be taken up with cases of BBC licence fee non-payment.” We talk about bureaucracy and the shortage of people in this country to engage in productive employment. The BBC has said that it wishes to return to the pre-pandemic level of visits to people’s homes in relation to the licence fee. In 2020-21, licensing officers from the BBC visited 671,500 homes, and 62,000 residents were found to have been using the BBC not in accordance with the rules.”
“Putting it all in context, and as a party in favour of supporting hard-working families, I would have thought we would be taking action to commit ourselves to doing away with the television tax and, in the meantime, doing away with the criminalisation of those who do not pay the television tax.”
“We are told that the licence fee will remain at £159 until the beginning of April 2024. That means that if there were to be a general election after that, in 2024, people would be asking, “Why has the BBC licence fee just increased?” I am not sure it is very good timing, but that is the plan. The BBC is expected to receive £3.7 billion in licence fee funding this year. Why are people not more exercised about this? It is a television tax, and it is more than twice the cost of reducing the top rate of tax from 45p in the pound, about which there was a big argument at the Conservative party conference.”
“I am so sorry. In that case, the hon. Gentleman is even more welcome to his position. It is hard to keep up with some of the changes that are taking place on the Front Bench at the moment. This issue needs to be addressed, and it is good to know that the Government are still considering it, but another year has passed and there is not much indication—not much that I have received, anyway—that the “active consideration” of the issue of decriminalisation is reaching any conclusion. In the meantime, as I have said, people are being prosecuted up and down the country, and people aged over 75 who thought they were going to have a free television licence are particularly vulnerable to such activity. This is an important issue. Apparently a mid-term review of the BBC charter is taking place this year.”
“The right hon. Gentleman and I agree on a lot of things. I am not sure I would put it exactly like that, but the substance of what he says is correct. We used to have free television licences for the over-75s, and then, with a bit of smoke and mirrors, we suddenly found the system no longer applied. It was done under a Conservative Government, and he refers to George Osborne, who I am sure is prepared to take responsibility.”
“So it was the BBC’s fault. My reading of it is that there was an attempt to cast responsibility on to the BBC, but ultimately it was the Government who enabled the BBC to put back in place a television licence fee—”
“Okay, so what happened? Did the BBC go back on the deal? If so, what was the sanction against the BBC? Why are we continuing to indulge the BBC as we are, by enforcing the £3.7 billion television tax paid to the BBC? We have also given the BBC additional powers to raise the borrowing limits for its commercial activities, which are a great success. The BBC is selling a lot of important stuff overseas. Why do we need to subsidise that with taxpayers’ money? Why do we not let the BBC run its commercial arm with freedom, and without imposing additional costs on the hard-pressed taxpayer? I have made a short point and, unfortunately, there is not time for the Minister to respond. We will have to continue the Second Reading of this important Bill on another occasion, when I hope the Minister will be able to respond in extenso.”
“Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 9 December, and to be printed (Bill 164) .”
“It was then extended to cover almost everybody with a sedentary occupation in any of those industries and in the early 2000s it was extended to cover doctors as well. The working time directive is in itself responsible for an enormous lack of productivity and potential among our workforce in this country, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to try to goad our Government into action on this point. In the meantime I put on record my strong opposition to everything contained in the Bill. Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to. Ordered, That Peter Dowd, Kim Johnson, Yasmin Qureshi, Ms Marie Rimmer, Judith Cummins, Mike Amesbury, Tony Lloyd, Ian Byrne, Dan Carden, Sir George Howarth and Mick Whitley present the Bill. Peter Dowd accordingly presented the Bill.”
“It would undermine the right of people to be able to work hard to look after their families and to spend their money as they wish. It would be an impoverishing exercise for so much of our economy and so many of the people engaged in it. It is also important in a debate such as this that we remind colleagues on our own Front Bench that there is a lot more to be done to deregulate the labour market. The working time directive is now completely surplus to our requirements, and I would like to see a Bill brought forward to repeal the working time regulations and all that flows from them. They have been developed insidiously over the years since 1998. Originally it was said that the directive should deal only with matters such as drivers’ hours, for example, and with the mobile people employed in the transport industry.”
“I am sure that if his Bill were to be put to a vote today, he would receive overwhelming support from his parliamentary colleagues, but it would not receive any support at all from our side. I am not going to divide the House on this because I am a believer that everybody should have the right to bring in whatever Bill they want to, and I have exercised that right on many occasions. However, it is important to put on record that, were such a Bill to be drafted and brought forward for debate by the hon. Gentleman, it would be hotly opposed by everybody on this side, although we would enjoy the spectacle of seeing many on his own side having to eat their words. They talk the talk on high growth but obviously a compulsory measure such as this applying to all employers up and down the country would be damaging to growth.”
“It is a legitimate issue in relation to employers and employees, and it is certainly an important issue in relation to productivity. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in saying that some of the organisations that have reduced the length of time that their workers work have benefited from more productivity from the workforce, but there is no evidence that making this compulsory would result in higher productivity. All it would do is result in much higher and unbearable costs for employers in the private sector and, significantly, in the public sector. Once again I say that this is a timely intervention by the hon. Gentleman and his allies on the Labour Benches.”
“My basis for saying this is that in the period between 1993 and 1997, when the working time directive and the implications flowing from it were being discussed in this country, I was a member of the Health and Safety Commission. The commission produced a series of papers in which it was made quite clear that the working time directive had nothing whatsoever to do with health and safety and that it was all to do with employment protection on the continent of Europe. It was a specious justification of the introduction of these regulations to label them as health and safety regulations merely so that they could be imposed on this country under the qualified majority voting that applied at the time. So the working time directive has nothing whatsoever to do with health and safety.”
“It will not help it at all; in fact, it will undermine its effectiveness. However, the hon. Gentleman has done us a great service because he has reminded us that the working time directive upon which the 1998 regulations were based emanated from the European Union and that it was implemented in this country under duress because the EU interpreted the working time directive as being a health and safety measure for which there was no veto and it could therefore be proceeded with under qualified majority voting. The present Government are quite rightly committed to supply-side reforms and removing unnecessary regulations upon our workforce, and this is a timely reminder that they could, and in my view should, get to grips with the issue of the working time directive and the working time regulations.”
“If ever one could think of a hand grenade being thrown into the economy, preventing people from being able to work longer hours and forcing them to reduce their hours at a time when we have very high levels of employment and very low levels of unemployment is probably a good example. When someone is forced to be able to work only four days a week, who is going to fill the gap? Who is going to work during the time in which that person is not working? We are told that there is a crisis in the health service relating to the number of people working in it. If the Bill were passed, the junior doctors to whom the working time regulations were applied in, I think, 2004 would not be allowed to work for more than 32 hours a week. How will that help the national health service?”
“Gentleman recognised—for employers, or other individuals, to work four days a week to limit their working time to 32 hours. Unfortunately, however, that is not what his Bill says. It is described as a “Bill to amend the Working Time Regulations 1998 to reduce the maximum working week from 48 hours…to 32 hours per week” —in other words, to prevent people from being able to work for more than 32 hours a week— “and to provide for overtime pay; and for connected purposes.” Effectively, what the hon. Gentleman is saying is that everyone who is currently working more than 32 hours a week will be prevented from so doing in the future under the provisions of his Bill.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) for presenting a measure that should single-handedly unite all on these Benches in their belief that there is a real, continuing threat from the prospect of a Labour Government who will be intent on destroying our economy. The hon. Gentleman has articulated one way in which that would happen, and I am delighted to see that he has the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) here to support him this afternoon. The hon. Member for Bootle himself, of course, is a former shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In his speech, the hon. Gentleman suggested that there were virtues, or could be virtues, in a four-day working week. I do not think anyone disputes that, and there is already a freedom—which the hon.”
“So also do I remember the occasion when Her late Majesty attended the 80th birthday party of Margaret Thatcher. The way she showed her support and encouragement to Margaret Thatcher on that occasion was really moving, because she was not in the best of health. That is an example of the way in which Her late Majesty rose to the occasion. She was not doing something party political—I think Tony Blair was there as well—but her compassion showed through to all of us who had the privilege to be present. The Queen encapsulated and exemplified all those qualities that make our nation the envy of the world, and make us so proud to be British. The second Elizabethan age, which has drawn to a close this week, will be revered for centuries to come. Weren’t we lucky to be part of it?”
“I have been lucky enough to meet Her late Majesty on several occasions, first at an investiture in 1982 and last at an investiture in 2018, but the meeting to which I shall allude took place when I was asked by the Secretary of State for Transport to host the occasion when Her Majesty opened the Queen Elizabeth II bridge across the Thames, linking the two parts of the M25. As a junior Minister, I was tremendously nervous, but Her Majesty put me at my ease. We had a long private conversation about the bridge, its construction and its funding, and I remember assuring her that the tolls would be lifted as soon as the bridge was paid for. I am pleased to say that Her Majesty kept her counsel on that, as today the tolls are still there even though the bridge has been paid for several times over. I remember that occasion distinctly.”
“My constituents and I thank His Majesty the King for his words of comfort and reassurance following today’s proclamation of accession as sovereign. We send His Majesty and the whole royal family our deepest condolences on the death of Her Majesty. The second Elizabethan age has received many references in the last day and a half of debate. Christchurch probably has more people than any other constituency who can remember the beginning of the second Elizabethan age, in 1952, and I am among those privileged to have lived throughout the late Queen’s 70-year reign. I first saw her at her coronation in 1953, when my parents were invited to watch it on a friend’s black-and-white television—I think it was the first time I had ever seen a television.”
“Will my right hon. Friend explain why the Government seem to be creating a lot of unnecessary anxiety? Is not the key issue that we should adapt to our climate as we have in the past? Is not there a real problem now that too many buildings are being built without natural ventilation—for example, many buildings on this estate? Why do we not go back to having natural ventilation, so that we do not have to rely so much on air conditioning?”
“Will my right hon. Friend explain how people who live in park homes are going to be able to benefit from the £400 donation from the energy price cap?”
“In thanking my right hon. Friend for that answer, may I say that his answer to my earlier question will have been of little comfort to more than 100,000 households living in park homes? The Government are apparently still working on how to deal with this issue, but meanwhile those households fear they will miss out while those with second homes benefit more than twice, so can he guarantee that each of those households will get £400 in cash, as an energy bill rebate, whether it be in the form of a voucher, a direct payment or whatever? They need to know now that they will get the £400.”
“I thank the Prime Minister for his great service to our nation and to the people of Ukraine. I think people will rue the day he was forced to resign. Is there not a lot to be said for having a smaller Cabinet, fewer Ministers and hardly any parliamentary private secretaries? Can we have a pilot to show how successful that will be?”
“My hon. Friend talks about implementing the Bellamy review, but that recommended a 15% rise immediately. As I understand it, the Government are saying there will only be a 15% rise from September, and that will only be in respect of new cases. Why do the Government not commit themselves to implementing the Bellamy review, thereby ensuring that our courts are not blocked as they have been?”
“May I thank my right hon. Friend on behalf of all those who work for REIDsteel, which is the largest private sector employer in Christchurch, manufacturing and supplying steel structures across the world? However, what will happen in two years’ time? Can she guarantee that REIDsteel will be able to get supplies of clean British steel in two years’ time? If not, will she not need to abandon this net zero doctrine? What is more important than actually being able to supply homegrown steel so that people in Christchurch can manufacture and export their products?”
“I commend my hon. Friend for her emphasis on local facts. This morning, I was talking to Suzanne Llewellyn, the chief Crown prosecutor for Wessex, who told me that currently 12 people are being prosecuted for rape in Dorset, which is twice as many as in the same period of 2016, and that in three of the past four quarters the rape conviction rate in Dorset has been 100%, which obviously compares very favourably with the national average of 68%. So there is good news at the local level, and we need to do more to bring that to the public’s attention.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, but as California is the fifth largest economy in the world, will she redouble her efforts and, in particular, give us a timescale for securing a memorandum of understanding with the state of California similar to that which she successfully negotiated with Indiana?”
“When a group of us from the British-American Parliamentary Group visited California last month, we were much impressed by the work of our trade teams in Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, those teams would be able to be even more effective if they had more flexibility to employ local staff, in line with prevailing labour market rates, as filling vacancies is a problem. What will the Government do to enable them to do that?”
“May I ask my right hon. and learned Friend a practical question? We understand that the Prime Minister asked his special adviser Lord Geidt to give him advice on a particular issue. That advice has not yet been given and the person who was asked for that advice has now resigned without even giving any notice or extending his terms so that he could answer that question. Who will answer the burning question that was put to Lord Geidt by the Prime Minister a few days ago?”
“Does the hon. Member realise that there is nothing to stop those wealth owners who support a wealth tax making voluntary contributions to the Exchequer?”
“Because their house happens to be worth more than a house somewhere in the north of England, they are deemed to be in a position to be able to pay more tax to the local exchequer than somebody in the north of England who might be very much better off.”
“They face council tax imposed by Dorset Council in the order of, say, £4,000 a year, which is a heck of a lot more than 10% of their annual disposable income. It is a real pressure point at the moment. Council tax is not a fair tax, because the taxes are not related to the use that individuals make of public services—it is a proxy wealth tax—but it sounded like a good idea at the time, as a reaction to the problems over the community charge. It is the law of unintended consequences that in Dorset, large numbers of my constituents are paying disproportionate amounts of money in council tax because of the system that is in place.”
“It is very easy to campaign and say, “That is a really expensive house. When you buy that house, you should pay a substantial amount of tax on it,” but the consequences are—the unintended consequences, as so often arise with such measures—that we have actually succeeded in suppressing the housing market and individual choice. The other issue, which is a big one in my constituency, is the proxy wealth tax, otherwise known as council tax, which is higher for those people who have more valuable properties. There will be some people who argue that it should be even higher for those with even more valuable properties. In my constituency, I have a large number of people who are, for want of a better expression, in council tax poverty.”
“California had a surplus last year of $100 billion, which was largely on the basis of taxing the very high earners and the wealthiest people in California. However, we heard a cautionary tale. There is a worry that California’s whole network of public services is now highly dependent on the income of such a small group of people and that, with the recession—when those people may lose a lot of their wealth—the income of California will drop dramatically. I want to mention a couple of examples of wealth taxes that are already in operation. One is in the context of stamp duty. The consequence of arbitrary levels of stamp duty is people being deterred from selling their houses—they choose not to incur the tax and stay in the house they are in. We need supply-side reform there to eliminate the problems caused by high levels of stamp duty.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. It is important to put the other side of the argument in this debate, albeit very briefly. It is fascinating to hear Members on the left of the Labour party campaign for even higher taxes when we already have the highest taxes this country has experienced during my lifetime. Like most Conservatives, I am in support of lower taxes, which is why I voted against the increases in national insurance. I agree with those who say that it was the wrong solution. I want to encourage an entrepreneurial society. I want to have the wealth contributors active in our society. I have just come back from a parliamentary visit to California, where there is an enormous amount of wealth.”
“and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), will draw our attention to the fact that the number of voluntary contributions made to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is rather modest compared with what it could be on the basis of what those supposed billionaires want to do. Let us keep the wealth creators in our country. Let us praise the work they do, the jobs they create and the contribution they make to our overall wealth as a nation. Let us not deter them and drive them away elsewhere. I am very much against a wealth tax and I hope the Minister will make it clear that it is in no way on the Government’s agenda.”
“As I said in my intervention, there is nothing to stop all those socialist millionaires who have a bit of a conscience and who are arguing that everybody else other than themselves should pay more tax making their own contribution. There is nothing to stop the hon. Gentleman setting up a trust fund into which they could pay, so they could then contribute more than they are able to contribute at the moment. Why not do that? If people want to pay more towards the costs of the state and are in a position so to do, there is a voluntary system out there. I am sure the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon.”
“It is a tax related to the wealth of the property in which someone lives. If there is only one person living in that property, there is a 25% discount, but there is no discount otherwise. It is solely related to the capital value of the property, and that is why, in a sense, it is a wealth tax. I know that this is an inconvenient argument for those who are campaigning for a wealth tax, but let us be under no illusions: the council tax system is essentially an embryonic wealth tax, although the levels are much lower than the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) referred to in his introduction to the debate. I do not know anybody who would be subject to the tax that the hon. Member for Leeds East suggests. He mentioned people who say they would love to be able to pay more tax.”
“May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement, and on provoking the Labour party into disclosing its true colours as the strikers’ friend?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He has described the current situation. Will he accept that some people, through no fault of their own, have been suffering as a result of the chaos? Will he apologise to those people unreservedly?”
“But what is my right hon. Friend doing about the internal fraud within the Government, caused by low productivity and bloated and dysfunctional public services?”
“There is a lot of talk about integrity, but what could be more important than the integrity of the United Kingdom? Why has this Bill not yet been published? When will it be published? Can he prevent the Government from bickering in public on this issue and just get on with it?”
“It is absolutely an outrage that people have to wait so long. My staff are having to wait ages on the phone or in the queue in Portcullis House, and so on. It is intolerable.”
“I wish you a very happy birthday for tomorrow, Mr Speaker. As a number of us in this House reflect on having been elected on this day 39 years ago, will my right hon. Friend make time for a debate on how the role of Members of Parliament has changed in the intervening period? That would enable us to reflect on the fact that, in those days, we Members of Parliament did not spend all our time trying to chase incompetent government, because we had a competent Government with a smaller and more efficient civil service. That meant that we in this House could concentrate on issues of policy, rather than administration. I am disappointed that my right hon. Friend seems so complacent about the chaos that is affecting our constituents in relation to so many public services that are currently beyond inefficient.”
“I have a constituent who has written to me today saying that they have spent 25 hours of their life on hold trying to get through to the Passport Office. They wish to get a passport to enable them to go to a family funeral overseas. The only reason they need a new passport is that their old one was cancelled by the Passport Office in error because it incorrectly transposed information from somebody saying they wished to cancel their passport and the information of my constituent, so unfortunately the other applicant’s passport was not cancelled but my constituent’s was. This is intolerable—what can be done about it?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last Thursday the Minister responsible—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove)—assured us that the Passport Office service would be set up in Portcullis House so that Members of Parliament and their staff could get quick and easy access to deal with urgent passport cases. That service has been set up, but I wish to raise the issue of the number of people staffing that service. Today, there was a very long queue of people waiting to access the service, and some people were having to wait for over two hours before they could get their questions dealt with by the officials there. The issue is compounded by the fact that the Passport Office nationally is still failing to deal with telephone inquiries in a timely fashion.”