Debates, Speeches and Parliamentary Questions

• 27th July 2010 - Written Answers — Education: Sixth Form Education: Public Expenditure
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for Education whether capital expenditure by sixth form colleges will be included within the remit of his recently announced review to advise on capital expenditure.

  
  
  
• 21st July 2010 - Written Answers — Home Department: Illegal Immigrants
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what her policy is on steps to counter illegal immigration.

  
  
  
• 15th July 2010 - Written Answers — Business, Innovation and Skills: Sixth Form Colleges: Capital Investment
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills whether the 293 colleges he expects to receive capital grant support in 2010-11 will include sixth form colleges.

  
  
  
• 15th July 2010 - Written Answers — Business, Innovation and Skills: Sixth Form Colleges: Capital Investment
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills whether the £50 million funding announced by his Department for colleges that have yet to receive significant funding from capital programmes will be available to all sixth form colleges which have not recently received such funding.

  
  
  
• 14th July 2010 - Written Answers — Home Department: Immigration
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were given leave to enter the UK under the Post-Study Route of Tier One of the points-based immigration system in each month since its introduction.

  
  
  
• 13th July 2010 - Written Answers — Home Department: Entry Clearances
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to the answer of 12 January 2010, Official Report, columns 850-2W, on entry clearance, what the equivalent figures are for (a) November and (b) December 2009.

  
  
  
• 12th July 2010 - Written Answers — Communities and Local Government: Housing
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate he has made of the average annual projected change in the number of households in England between 2006 and 2031 on the basis of (a) the principal population and (b) a zero net migration projection.

  
  
  
• 28th June 2010 - CCTV: Limits on Non-EU Economic Migration
  

  Does the Home Secretary accept that her statement will be widely welcomed throughout most of our constituencies, but that during the election voters expressed another worry, which was that we are growing our population through immigration? At what stage will she consider the last Labour Government's proposal to break the link between coming here to work and gaining citizenship? If we are to prevent our population from passing 70 million, we need to control both the number of people coming in and the number who can permanently settle here.

  
  
  
• 22nd June 2010 - Written Answers — Health: Hospices: Children
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children in (a) Wirral, (b) Liverpool, (c) Knowsley, (d) Warrington, (e) Halton and St Helens, (f) Western Cheshire, (g) Central and Eastern Cheshire, (h) Sefton and (i) Central Lancashire Primary Care Trust were in receipt of children's hospice services at the latest date for which figures are available.

  
  
  
• 16th June 2010 - Written Answers — Home Department: Immigration Controls
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many annual allocations of certificates of sponsorship were requested by employers for the second year of the points-based system in respect of (a) Tier Two general and (b) Tier Two ICT.

  
  
  
• 16th June 2010 - Written Answers — Home Department: Immigration Controls
  

  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were granted permission (a) in-country and (b) overseas to work in the UK under each category of Tier One and Tier Two of the points-based system in 2009; and how many associated dependants there were of people in each category.

  
  
  
• 14th June 2010 - Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions: Youth Unemployment
  

  Does the Minister accept that the future jobs fund offered real opportunities for the young people who were drowning in the prospects of employers' refusal to give them work while at the same time it provided the Government with their only genuine test of whether somebody really wanted to work? Why, therefore, is it being cut when no other Government programme will achieve both those objectives?

  
  
  
• 10th June 2010 - Tackling Poverty in the UK
  

  I am pleased that you were in the Chair when I rose to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker, even though you are about to leave the Chamber, because I can add my congratulations to those of others. It is a particular pleasure to see someone from the north-west in the Chair.

  As the debate is rightly dominated by maiden speeches, I wanted to comment on how I felt more than three decades ago when I made my maiden speech, but from what I have experienced in this debate, my recollections will be irrelevant. For days, my insides were chewed up with nerves because I was worrying about making that maiden speech. The good news that I thought I would be bringing to Members making their maiden speech today is that it does not get any better. However, I can see from their performance that their confidence and the quality of their contributions far exceeds that of the intake of 1979.

  I am grateful for the chance to contribute to this wide-ranging debate on poverty. I hope the House will forgive me if I focus narrowly on part of the canvas rather than addressing some of the wider aspects that Members have already touched on. A starting point for me is our debate on the Child Poverty Bill before the last election, when I expressed both admiration for what the Government had done and a sense of worry about where we would go from that position of relative success.

  If we cast our mind back to the then Prime Minister's objective to abolish child poverty by 2020, we can only exclaim that it was one of the most audacious targets set by any Government. I happened to be a Work and Pensions Minister at the time, and I learned about the target for the first time when I went into my room at the Department and saw Sky News on the television. That is when I learned that the Government's objective was to abolish child poverty by 2020, even though I was a Minister with some responsibility for it. Others will have shared my sense of awe about how decisions came down to us-lesser Members-from Mount Sinai.

  Had I been consulted beforehand, I hope I would have advised the then Prime Minister that although we should commit ourselves to the objective, the formula was one that no other country in the free world had achieved. We should not set targets for people, nations or Governments to fail; we should set targets they can achieve. It was thus immensely important before we fought the general election that we not only set out attempts to broaden our understanding of how we might measure poverty but put them in an Act of Parliament. That process is being developed and possibly taken a stage further in the review that the Prime Minister has asked me to undertake.

  It gives me considerable pleasure that I have been asked to carry out the review, but it would have given me even more pleasure had my own side asked me to undertake that activity. The terms of reference took some time to agree-about seven times as long as the coalition agreement. They are public-they are certainly on my website-and I shall set out what I hope the review will achieve by Christmas.

  In interviews, I have cited just one study, although there are many others that we could cite from our constituencies. The study relates to the work of the Prince's charities in Burnley. It is a wonderful project, where volunteer mothers make sure that children are up in time for school. The children are taken to school. If need be, they are washed at school, fed breakfast and made ready, with all the other children, to start their day's activities and endeavours.

  My plea to the House is that if anyone thinks that those projects will be made irrelevant simply because we increase household incomes, however necessary basic income is, they are doing a disservice to poorer families and to the poor generally. Indeed, one of the great purposes of the review, if it fulfils its ambitions, is not only to run alongside the monetary definitions of poverty considerations of what non-financial aspects push children into poverty but, more importantly, to move the debate on. Until now, it has been obsessed with inputs-what we put in, and how much money is at stake, crucial though that is-and we need to consider outcomes. Therefore, part of the review will consider how we can together construct an index of what determines children's life chances, how we can extend those life chances and, more importantly, how we can measure that, so that we can report back to our constituents on whether we have been successful during each Parliament.

  
  
  
• 10th June 2010 - Tackling Poverty in the UK
  

  I am happy to give assurances to my hon. Friend. The law is quite clear about the objectives. I have no idea what the report will contain, but those objectives that we have are ones that we should achieve. The primary definition that we used before the 2010 Act was not only difficult to achieve mathematically, but has not been achieved in any country in the free world-hence we asked in the document that we published whether we should use an average of those countries that do best in achieving that definition in setting our target.

  Time is scarce, and I obviously do not want to be delayed by a narrowly focused, technical debate on definitions-I hope there will be plenty of time for that-but my hon. Friend says that other aspects of the 2010 Act that are used to define poverty are important. Of course they are important, but I want to focus much more clearly on pathways out of poverty and on increasing life chances. I hope that those Members of Parliament who have views-they clearly have, given today's maiden speeches-that will add to that side of the review, as well as to the debate on the technical definition of poverty, will contribute to the review.

  
  
  
• 10th June 2010 - Tackling Poverty in the UK
  

  If my hon. Friend had really good sight, he would be able to see that No. 3 on my extensive notes is the jobs fund.

  There will be two tasks for Opposition Members as the Government begin the necessary task of reducing public spending towards the level of what people in this country are prepared to pay in taxes. We will no doubt have a rigorous debate, but even when the details are decided, I hope that stage 2 will be to argue whether any cuts are being made in the right areas. My plea to Ministers is that they look most carefully at their choice of making initial cuts to the new deal jobs fund programme. When I sat on the other side of the House, I was clear in my criticisms of the new deal. One has only to look at the outcomes regarding levels of unemployment, levels of NEETs-those not in education, employment or training-and levels of retreads to conclude that that huge area of expenditure clearly needs to be examined.

  The one thing that I hoped we would do in our first year in office-we got round to it only towards the end of our time-was to ensure that we could give some job guarantees to our constituents, including our younger constituents. That is important for two main reasons, the first of which is that, as we all know from our constituencies, many people try desperately hard to get jobs yet fail to do so, and the cumulative effect of that failure has an enormously crushing effect on them. The jobs fund was beginning to offer concrete jobs for people to go to, and that was a lifeline that had never been offered by any amount of new deal, any amount of retreading the new deal, or any amount of rhetoric from our side. The fund was one of the most precious things with which the previous Government were involved.

  The second reason why the scheme was valuable was because we all have individuals in our constituencies, especially young lads, with no intention of working, although this is not the time for us to delve deeper into why that is so. If we are telling people that their benefits will be time-limited, cut or ended, we will carry the electorate with us only if we can definitely offer someone a job. Those young lads who have worked out how to fiddle the new deal and know that, if they turn up in a certain state, no employer in their right mind would ever give them the job on offer will know that it is decision time for them if, through the jobs fund, we can guarantee to offer them jobs irrespective of how they turn up. As I said, the fund was one of the most precious initiatives that the Labour Government introduced, so although I am not arguing with Ministers against their cuts, I ask them to think differently about how the cuts are distributed among people on benefits whom we would hope would be seeking work.

  I am grateful for being called to speak, and I am even more grateful for the interventions because they have given me a bit of extra time. I look forward to hon. Members' contributions to both this debate and the review.

  
  
  
• 10th June 2010 - Tackling Poverty in the UK
  

  Has my hon. Friend had the same experience as I have in my constituency, where the Financial Services Authority is regulating credit unions in the way we wish it had regulated the big banks, thereby putting their future at stake? As my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said, credit unions play a vital role in giving poorer people an alternative way of getting cheap credit.

  
  
  
• 10th June 2010 - Tackling Poverty in the UK
  

  Will my hon. Friend give way?

  
  
  
• 10th June 2010 - Tackling Poverty in the UK
  

  I am disappointed that my hon. Friend does not know the Labour Government's record better. If she examines the last publication that we produced, she will see that we said there was a choice of four definitions of poverty. I shall go into them more if I catch your eye later, Mr Deputy Speaker, but that document asked for views on the balance among the four and whether we should add others. By all means let us have a go at each other about this on a personal level, but let us also be clear where the Labour Government left the debate.

  
  
  
• 9th June 2010 - Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (Fraud)
  

  May I, through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, thank Mr Speaker for allowing me this evening's debate. It is pleasure to see you in the Chair on what I think is your first day. I believe that this is the first time that I have addressed the Minister from the Opposition Benches, and I am very pleased to do so. I assure him that it will not be the last time that we will be engaged in these conversations.

  From this Adjournment debate on alleged fraud in the Wirral hospital trust, I am looking for three things. First, I am sure that I am not exceptional in the number of constituent cases about alleged fraud that I refer to the relevant authority. In every case I have passed on, whether it be to the Department for Work and Pensions or to the Department of Health, I have never had a satisfactory reply that I could then refer to my constituent. I would not disclose the information, but if I had such a reply, I could say that I had been able to read the papers and assure constituents that they were mistaken in alleging fraud. I could say that a proper investigation had been carried out and we could leave the case there. As I say, however, that has never occurred. One thing I am looking for this evening, then, is for the Government to consider the particular role in which elected representatives sometimes find themselves in handing to the Government alleged cases of fraud, yet never being able satisfactorily to report back to their constituents.

  Secondly, I have tried to use the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in order to gain the information that Wirral hospital trust denied me. I was refused on the basis that disclosure of the information would provide me with sensitive personal information such as the name of the person against whom the allegations of fraud were made. However, given that everybody involved in the case knows the name of the doctor, although I have never used it in public, it seems somewhat farcical to use the Freedom of Information Act in this way to prevent my gaining access to reports that have been commissioned.

  Thirdly, this saga has been going on for a long time, and I have no intention of letting go of it, so I hope that the Minister might be able to advise me on the next best steps to take to resolve the issue. Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to remind the House of what happened.

  All too long ago, one of my constituents was sitting in the surgery at their doctor's. The doctor was engaged in a telephone conversation with one of his patients, who turned out to be a private patient. During the conversation, for reasons that I cannot possibly explain, the doctor assured the person that they had been treated as an NHS patient although they were being charged as a private patient.

  I started to look into the case. I asked both the primary care trust and the hospital trust-Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust-to investigate. I had a meeting with the hospital trust at which the chairman and the senior directors were present, as well as the locally based official who was in charge of countering fraud in the health service. At that stage the doctor admitted that, as a result of an error, he had put through as NHS patients about 180 patients whom he was charging as private patients, but who were being given tests as NHS patients.

  
  
  
• 9th June 2010 - Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (Fraud)
  

  I will give way in a moment to my good and hon. Friend from a neighbouring constituency.

  The doctor admitted that that had been an error in all cases, and repaid money. I asked, through its chairman, whether the trust-on the basis of the core of cases of private patients being fed through the NHS-would examine other procedures in the hospital to establish whether any of those 180-odd patients had had scans or X-rays, and whether the doctor had again forgotten to declare that they were private patients when ticking the forms assuring the NHS that they were, in fact, NHS patients.

  
  
  

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