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“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one?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.”
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“I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he accept that the Government’s policy is very illogical in this area? For example, we are spending taxpayers’ money in order to enhance the setting of a world heritage site at Stonehenge, while at the same time using taxpayers’ money for subsidies for offshore wind turbines that are going to wreck the world heritage site on the Jurassic coast?”
“Is not the problem with the Bill highlighted by the autumn statement? GDP is forecast to increase by more than 3%, which means more than £400 million extra will have to be spent on overseas aid next year in order to meet the target. At the same time, the Chancellor is saying that we are still in the age of austerity.”
“I have not signed new clause 7, but its heart seems to be that the Bill will have effect only in years when the UK records a budget surplus. Does my hon. Friend agree that without such a provision the Bill will require the Government to increase borrowing to fund overseas aid?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that, as drafted, the Bill will require a lot of extra expense and work? The figures are already calculated on a financial year basis, so changing the basis to a calendar year will incur additional expense.”
“Is it not worse than that, because the Bill suggests that it should start on 1 June 2015, which is the beginning of neither a calendar year, nor a budgetary year?”
“My hon. Friend’s point about administrative costs is very important. Does he recall that when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she vetoed having the Department responsible for overseas development based in what is now Richmond house in Whitehall? She thought that that would be an ostensible gross waste of money and that money being spent on overseas aid should go to the countries in need rather than being spent on administrative costs.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point. The 2012 British social attitudes survey shows that, when asked what should be the priority for extra Government expenditure, 42% of respondents said health, 30% said education and 0.5% said overseas aid.”
“Will my hon. Friend clarify that he is not saying that there should be no expenditure on overseas aid until we have a budget surplus, but that this rigid formula should not come into effect until such a time?”
“Is my hon. Friend aware that that promise is incorporated in the Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill, which the Government have consistently blocked?”
“Is it not serious that we are proposing to pass legislation that will raise public expectations, which could then be dashed in such a spectacular manner because there is no enforcement mechanism?”
“Unfortunately, this is the first contribution I have been able to make to the debate on this Bill, because I was unable to speak on Second Reading, I did not serve on the Public Bill Committee and I was not able to speak to the amendments I had tabled on Report because the Bill’s promoter moved a closure motion, which was rather undemocratic.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). I used to enjoy listening to him when he was a compassionate Conservative and now he is a compassionate “UKIPer”. He brings a lot of wisdom to this debate. It is important that we realise that what he has just articulated is the view of not just members of the United Kingdom Independence party, but of many members of the Conservative party, including a lot of my hon. Friends who have participated in these debates.”
“I am not sure that it is represented only by a small number of Conservative Members. We saw during these proceedings that the preponderance of people supporting the Bill were on the Opposition Benches and I suspect that a lot of Conservative Members have grave concerns about the Bill—”
“They are not here at the moment, but I cannot answer as to where they are. I do know that the Chair of the Treasury Committee, who was in the same Lobby as me in the first vote earlier today, and his Committee have produced some important work on this subject. That Committee has reached a consensus on a number of issues relating to ring-fencing overseas aid and the way a Bill such as this can distort the public expenditure decision making that should be being done by the Government.”
“The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his own views, but the misunderstanding at the heart of his intervention is that he probably thinks we should equate generosity in spending other people’s money with generosity in spending our own money. Those of us on my side of the argument are keen to encourage people to participate in giving aid for good causes, including causes overseas. We support, and have campaigned strongly for, encouraging tax relief for those sorts of donations. It is easy for people to say, “I want to be generous with somebody else’s money.” As the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood has just said, we are talking about being generous with money—taxpayers’ money—that we do not have but will have to borrow. We should be very careful before we put a burden on future generations.”
“When asked what their highest priority would be for extra Government spending against a list of possible options, 41.9% of people said health, 30% said education and 0.5% said overseas aid. When asked for their next preference, 31.5% said education, 29.5% said health and 0.5% said overseas aid. The problem is that people do not want extra taxpayers’ money to be spent in this area at a time when the increases in public expenditure on health and education are not as great as those on overseas aid.”
“Absolutely. That is one area in which the British people are traditionally incredibly generous. I am talking about humanitarian disasters such as Ebola and the ghastly happenings in Syria at the moment. The British people as individuals are prepared to put their hands in their pockets to get out their own money and to contribute to these causes. Taxpayer support is at its best when it is in the form of matched-funding, because then the taxpayers’ money follows what the people want. We get into problems when we have an administrative Department second-guessing what people think and then saying, “Let’s have a slab of money thrown here and another slab there.” That is when overseas aid falls into disrepute. In an earlier intervention, I quoted from the 2012 British social attitudes survey. I think it is worth re-emphasising what I said.”
“That must be correct. If we have a pot with a declining amount of money, we may be taking out more from that pot for one particular topic—overseas aid. We know now that, as a result of the change in the GDP, we will be spending an extra £400 million next year on overseas aid, raising the total amount to £12.4 billion.”
“I am very much in favour of increasing our expenditure on defence. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood said that this Bill set an important precedent. I agree, and it is that it opens the way for my Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill.”
“I certainly shall not do that, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to put it on record that there is a threat of us falling below the 2% threshold of defence expenditure as a percentage of GDP. That is a bad thing, and we should be legislating against that possibility.”
“As the Treasury Committee has said, it reduces the discipline on spending in the areas subject to it. The rigour of negotiations between the Department and the Treasury on allocations will be weakened since it is known by both sides in advance that the spending is protected. When there is ring-fenced expenditure, a departmental Minister cannot go before a Cabinet Committee and say that they need more money to spend on a programme and, when the Chief Secretary to the Treasury asks where they are going to get the money from, point out where another Department is wasting a lot of money.”
“The smaller non-ring-fenced areas in turn have to bear a higher proportion of any savings in subsequent years. The IFS has shown that non-ring-fenced expenditure may fall from 61.6% in 2010-11 to around 50% in 2018-19 of total Departmental Expenditure Limits.” The Committee cites as a specific example the fact that overseas development expenditure as a percentage of departmental expenditure in 2010-11 was 2.2% but it is expected to have almost doubled to 4% by 2018-19, a far higher percentage increase than in any other area of public expenditure. I do not think that fits in with the priorities of the people and I do not think that has been spelt out clearly enough, if at all, by the promoters of the Bill or by my right hon. Friend the Minister in his all-too-brief remarks on Report. There is another important point about ring-fencing.”
“It seems that this Bill fails to deliver an effective sanction against a failure to fulfil the duty set out in clause 1—whether or not one supports that duty. I fear that this Bill shows that we in this House are out of touch with the wishes of the British people, and it will, in the end, disappoint in practice. As people realise the distorting effect that this measure will have on other spending plans, hostility towards it will increase. In its report on the autumn statement of 2013, the Treasury Committee said: “Ring-fencing, by definition, requires that the balance of public expenditure restraint and cuts be borne in the rest of public expenditure. Each successive year of public expenditure restraint results in an increase in ring-fenced spending as a proportion of the total.”
“They can sue in the courts against the Government for being in breach of a statutory duty. Clauses 2 and 3 negate that possibility. What they say is that notwithstanding the statutory duty set out in clause 1, there is no remedy in law; the only remedy is through a report to Parliament. There is not even a requirement for a debate. The promoters and supporters of the Bill see this as a fantastic breakthrough in law-making. They believe that they now have a new statutory duty to meet a target, but when one looks at the detail of it, one sees that it is a statutory duty without any right or ability to enforce it. When I was a law student, I was told that there was no point in having a command in law without a sanction.”
“As always, there is logic in what my hon. Friend says, but, as Madam Deputy Speaker has said, I will not go down the route of making comparisons between this Bill and any other Bill that may or may not be discussed in due course. Over the coming weeks, I shall try to work out a convincing response to my hon. Friend’s intervention. Cross-party consensus often results in rather woolly legislation. My concern, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), is that this Bill is an exercise in tokenism; it is gesture politics. It is about raising expectations beyond what is actually going to be delivered by the Bill itself. Clause 1 sets down a statutory duty. Normally, a breach of statutory duty is something against which an individual or an organisation can litigate.”
“We have already been spending roughly 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid, as has been said earlier, and very few big countries, if any, are following our example.”
“That takes me back to the debate we had in this House on the climate change legislation, when my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I, along with three other Members, voted against Third Reading. One of the arguments in favour of the Bill was that it would set a global example and everybody would follow us. What has happened is quite the opposite. We have put on our hair shirts and increased the subsidies for electricity, thereby increasing the costs to consumers, whereas the rest of the world has carried on as though nothing much has happened. I do not see any evidence of other precedents that shows that the high-minded idea of setting an example means that everyone will follow us.”
“If the House spent more time discussing how we can improve aid through trade, the world would be a better place.”
“In that respect, it offends against the principles of retrospective legislation and I hope that when it goes to the other place, as it no doubt will in due course, it will be scrutinised in a lot more detail than that with which we have been able to scrutinise it because of the limited time available. Those of us who think the Bill is misguided and a waste of time are not against giving help to those from other countries who are less well off than ourselves. Years ago, when Lord Patten of Barnes was in charge of overseas aid and did a job not as distinguished as that done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), somebody asked how we would stop migrants coming from north Africa. Lord Patten memorably said that we should start buying their tomatoes. Aid through trade is a lot more powerful.”
“It does not have to be a statement to the House, by which I mean one on which questions can be asked and answers given. It merely involves a document being put in the Library. It does not seem to me that that is the sort of accountability the people promoting the Bill are talking about when they engage with their constituents. They are hyping up the Bill as though it will deliver fantastic results when all it will actually do is put unnecessary constraints on the Government. The Bill is proposed to come into force on 1 June 2015, and it will cover the whole of the calendar year for 2015.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good case. This is one reason we need proper evidence-based policy making in this place. The Minister asserted earlier that the Bill would encourage others to do exactly the same and increase the proportion of GDP spent on aid, but where is the evidence of that happening? I do not think there is any evidence, and the evidence that there is seems to point in the opposite direction. If there is evidence, it will be very useful when we come to discuss the issue of the proportion of GDP we spend on defence. I have considerable concerns about the Bill and want to close by referring to the accountability to Parliament covered in clause 3. It does not seem to me that the clause delivers anything more than a bit of hot air. All that it requires is the laying of a statement before Parliament.”
“The Bill is short. It is based on what was published in the Government’s draft Bill, and on what was said in the Joint Committee. This is unfinished business, and the Bill gives us an opportunity to finish it.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. This is an unexpected surprise. I did not expect to be able to introduce the Bill today. Like the Bill that we have just discussed, it is supported by a great many members of the public, and also by a great many Members of Parliament. During the current Parliament, we have debated the issue of whether or not convicted prisoners should be allowed to vote. A draft Bill has been produced and examined by a Joint Committee, and there has been much Back-Bench discussion of the matter. It seems to me that the time has come for us actually to make a decision, and I thought that it would be helpful if I presented, in the form of a Bill, the decision that I think we should make: the decision to ensure that convicted prisoners cannot participate in parliamentary and local elections.”
“That would involve having to go to court, with all the time taken, expense and uncertainty of litigation. Does not the hon. Lady think that it would be much better to have a similar provision that did not require going to court?”
“The hon. Lady raises a serious issue, but surely it is possible for her to refer it to the local authority to deal with under its statutory duties.”
“Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that the Prime Minister’s welcome policy announcements today, when implemented, will deliver net migration in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands?”
“The hon. Lady keeps on referring to unscrupulous landlords, but the Residential Landlords Association, which represents good-quality landlords, hotly disputes the extent of the problem as she describes it.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it not the custom that a Member who has spoken in a debate should be in his place to listen to the Minister’s response?”
“Well, this is only the first time. To take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), does the Minister think that the service of a prohibition notice is sufficient answer to that problem? A significant number of repairs may be needed, and in order to carry out the repairs, the landlord may need vacant possession. Is that not a reasonable position for a landlord to take?”
“But surely that does not cover the situation where the local authority does not reach a decision. An application to a local authority would have the effect of staying proceedings. If the local authority does not then reach a decision, the landlord will be left in a very difficult position.”
“Will my hon. Friend deal with the issue of landlords who find that their tenants not only leave without notice, which is bad enough, but trash the place? I have constituents who say that because of that experience they will never be private landlords again.”
“My hon. Friend is accurate in his recollection of the history. Would he like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the then Member for Bristol West who was the Minister responsible for housing—now the noble Lord Waldegrave. The Department of the Environment at the time, in which I was privileged to serve as a very junior Minister, carried this forward as a really popular piece of legislation.”
“Those drivers could collectively be called “supply-side measures”. Is that not why it has been successful and has created the flexibility in the market for which there was a latent demand?”
“Is it not the case that a fair number of tenants know through the grapevine that they can allow themselves to get into arrears because those cannot be claimed against them if the landlord is able to exercise his section 21 notice?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that what the Select Committee did was to engage in pre-legislative scrutiny, and that it reached a conclusion that was very different from that reached by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather)?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that this is also an issue for landlords who are borrowing, because lenders may be very worried about lending money to landlords if it cannot be guaranteed that those landlords will be able to get the property back should the need arise?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that accommodation that is let to students represents a good example? Students take it for a year and the landlord knows that at the end of the year they will go and he will have to let to a fresh lot of students.”
“The Minister has fallen back on saying that he is relying on anecdotal evidence to justify this Bill. Bearing in mind the impact it will have on the whole of the private rental market, is it not right to look at the exact scale and try to find some evidence to justify the case for this Bill?”
“The process of establishing that will take a significant amount of time, even when the notice has been served prior to the landlord seeking to exercise his section 21 rights.”
“Member for Brent Central, who introduced the Bill, kept on emphasising that it was fair as between landlord and tenant and that there was an opportunity to ensure that if the notice was being challenged on unreasonable grounds, that could be dealt with by the courts. That is where clause 2 comes into play, but I submit that that is not fairly expressed. For example, clause 2(2) states: “Subsection (3) of section 1 does not apply if the court considers that the relevant complaint is totally without merit.” How will it be possible to find out whether a complaint is “totally without merit”? That is obviously a subjective judgment that would have to be made by a court. Assertions would be made by one side and counter-assertions by the other.”