Empty Properties in Dover

The rise in empty homes and properties over recent years has been a scandal when the national housing shortage is considered. I know from my surgeries how many people are waiting to be re-housed, so I urged the Government to take steps to help.

Although the number of homes empty for six months in the Dover district has fallen sharply, to 872, do Ministers agree that a lot more work is needed to undo the damage of the past in Dover? In 2005, there were 674 empty homes. I urge the fastest possible action. During the same time, the social housing waiting list has grown by 14%.

Andrew Stunell:

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that it is an urgent task to get empty homes back into use, particularly affordable use. Often, the waiting lists facing many local authorities could be shortened if those authorities tackled empty homes vigorously. That is why we have provided the new homes bonus as a reward and are investing £100 million to switch empty homes to affordable homes.

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EU Criminal Policy

Today's debate was about the EU commission's push for Euro crimes

I questioned the Justice Minister about the implications this would have

To make it absolutely clear, will the Minister confirm that the EU criminal policy outlined in the document would not apply to the UK in any way, shape or form unless or until the UK chose to opt in?

Crispin Blunt:

Yes, I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that that is the position.

In my speech I used the Minister's reassurance to argue that if this is the case, the Government should be looking to opt out on these measures, for the reasons explained below.

My concern is about this kind of extension of the whole European project. We see it creeping on further, out of taxation and all the other measures with which we are familiar, into the criminal sphere. I find this policy document highly objectionable in many areas. First, I find objectionable the statement that "EU Criminal Policy should have as overall goal to foster citizens' confidence in the fact that they live in a Europe of freedom, security and justice". That is not the point of European criminal policy. Rather, it should be the criminal policy of each individual member state. The EU, by trying to say that its policy is somehow about these principles and that citizens look to it for the execution of those principles, is overstretching and overselling. It is also misreading the situation, given that it is so far removed from people and has done so little to instil confidence.

It is not for the European Union to start defining crimes; it is for individual nation states to do so. There are areas where we should consider opting in. For example, I intervened on the Minister and talked about the issue of drugs. Let us look at the measures in the list provided by the Home Secretary. On one side, it talks about co-operation between customs authorities and business organisations on combating drug trafficking. Good. That is what we should have—cross-border co-operation. As the representative of Dover, I know that that is really important and makes a difference. Another 1996 justice and home affairs measure that was proposed, concerns "the exchange of information on the chemical profiling of drugs to facilitate improved cooperation between Member States in combating illicit drug trafficking." Good. Yes, we should do that.

However, the dividing line for me is the 1996 JHA measure No. 750, which concerns "the approximation of the laws and practices of the Member States of the European Union to combat drug addiction and to prevent and combat illegal drug trafficking." When one considers the approximation of laws and the issue of codification and requiring member states to treat everything the same way, one is rapidly moving into the area of a common criminal law—Eurojust, the European arrest warrant, the Euro-investigator, Europol and Euro-crimes. If we are to take that route, my point is simply that we should engage the country as a whole and have a proper, open discussion about what is going on, not try to spin it.

There are some cases where a common criminal law may be appropriate, particularly in the cross-border context; in others, we might conclude that it is not the right way to proceed. But to draw up a cynical list of everything that everyone would agree are the most heinous crimes known to mankind, in order to get the principle and then to extend it later, is something that we have seen with the European Union time and again. It is the fundamentally wrong thing to do, and it would be the wrong thing for us to do in terms of the opt-in or opt-out debate. I believe that when we have that opt-in/opt-out debate over the next two years, we should ensure that we include the country as a whole and have a proper, national discussion.

Following this, I organised a letter to the Telegraph to underline the concern so many of us have about the whole EU criminal justice agenda. See the letter here.

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How Tax Changes Will Help Families

Charlie Elphicke:

Will the Minister tell the House how families can have a greater option of part-time working under the taxation changes, and whether they will have more encouragement to work with the introduction of the benefits cap?

David Gauke:

With the work that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has undertaken, the Government are determined to ensure that work will always pay and that we do not have people trapped on benefits.

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Fairness and the Benefit Cap

In today's Treasury questions I asked Ministers how the Treasury is using the tax system to help families who work, and how the benefits cap will help;

Will the Minister tell the House how families can have a greater option of part-time working under the taxation changes, and whether they will have more encouragement to work with the introduction of the benefits cap?

David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury:

With the work that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has undertaken, the Government are determined to ensure that work will always pay and that we do not have people trapped on benefits.

The benefits cap will ensure that there is a limit on benefits equivalent to a £35,000 salary. Not many people in Dover and Deal have that large a salary, so how can it be fair for a life on benefits to pay so well?

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Youth Unemployment

It was interesting to see that after 18 months opposing the Government's economic policy, the Shadow Chancellor recently told the Today programme that Labour would have to do the same.

In the debate on unemployment today I had heard enough opposition MPs berating the coalition so intervened to ask:

Will the hon. Gentleman explain whether he agrees with the Shadow Chancellor, who said the other day, "we are going to have keep all these cuts"?

Labour MP Geraint Davies replied:

I am not opposing having to make savings and cuts.

It is good to know where the opposition stand.

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European Infrastructure Funds

Today I spoke about Euro infrastructure money. I made the case for this money to be used to improve our local roads and transport connections;

My principal concern is that for many years there has been under-investment in those networks. We have the M20, which is a kind of concrete motorway, and the A2, which has been waiting to be upgraded. On the continent, likewise, the road network, as anyone who has travelled there knows, could be better. A key area for cross-border co-operation could be for the UK Government to consider how those networks could be improved along with the French, the Belgians and the Dunkirk port. A map of Europe shows the so-called golden banana stretching from south-east England towards lower Bavaria, at the heart of which is the Dover strait and the Dover-Calais crossing. Indeed, the Dover-Dunkirk crossing is an important part of the communication and trading links that are so important to our nation's prosperity and to that of Europe.

If the fund is to be extended as suggested, it should not be invested in rail networks in Romania, as my hon. Friend Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested it might be, but in upgrading international transport links between the UK and other countries in the so-called golden banana to help Europe to grow. It is important that we have more growth in Europe and that we support first the area that can provide the value added and recovery generation to drive our European economy forward. My plea to the Financial Secretary and to the Minister of State is to meet me to discuss what we can do in Kent to make the case to France and our friends in Belgium to ensure that we at least get a fair part of the fund to see whether we can improve the transport networks in Kent and take forward the lower Thames crossing.

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NHS and Private Sectors

Allowing local health chiefs to run local hospitals could be a good step for the NHS, and would benefit the local community.

During today's debate on the NHS I intervened on Andy Burnham a couple of times to ask why Labour would oppose initiatives that would hand control to local doctors and help maintain community healthcare:

In Dover, our hospital was run down over the 13 years until 2010 and is now a shell. Why should the GPs not be able to commission another provider if the foundation trust will not fulfil its long-standing pledge to build a hospital and provide proper services for my constituents?

Andy Burnham

If those decisions are to be made, the people who make them should be accountable to the hon. Gentleman and the House, whereas the Bill that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is introducing proposes to push those things away. There will be an independent commissioning board that GPs and clinical commissioning groups will not be able to overturn; it will make the decisions. That is a completely unacceptable state of affairs.

Before the last election, we proposed a modest loosening of the private patient cap in response to pressure in another place when we were debating the Health Act 2009, but compared with our modest reforms, the Government's plans are off the scale. Instead of private sector activity at the margins, the Health and Social Care Bill places market forces at the heart of the system. The private sector will not support the NHS, but will replace large chunks of the service in commissioning and provision.

It's quite clear - Labour still won't help us with our Hospital!!

To illustrate the positive difference the reforms can bring I also mentioned Whizz Kids;

My right hon. Friend mentioned the provision of wheelchair services, which is a matter we have been looking at in Kent when considering how commissioning can be taken forward offers really great and radical ideas. Is it not the case that the Labour party would have condemned disabled people to the same standard-issue NHS wheelchairs rather than allowing them real choice across the spectrum?

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley:

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is precisely why on that basis, using the any qualified provider approach, the chief executive of the NHS can set out the ambition that a child who needs a wheelchair should get it in a day. In the past they would have to wait and then would not necessarily get the wheelchair they wanted, or in any reasonable time scale. This is about driving improvement and quality. That used to be what the Labour party believed in, which I suppose was why its last manifesto, written when the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State, stated:

"Patients requiring elective care will have the right, in law, to choose from any provider who meets NHS standards of quality at NHS costs."

That is a complete description of what we are setting out to do. It is a description of the any qualified provider policy and something that he has now completely abandoned, and he has abandoned patients in the process. It is absurd.

The objective of the Bill and of the Government is simple: continuously to improve care for patients and the health and well-being of people in this country, and that includes improving the health of the poorest fastest, and to ensure that everyone, regardless of who or where they are, enjoys health outcomes that are as good as the very best in the world. That is what we are setting out to do.

The motion states that the private sector already plays an important role in providing that care. Indeed, once upon a time the Labour party was in favour of it. The right hon. Gentleman said in May 2007:

"Now the private sector puts its capacity into the NHS for the benefit of NHS patients, which I think most people in this country would celebrate."

Whether the hospital or community provider is operated by the NHS, a charity, a private company or a social enterprise is not the issue from the patient's point of view. From our point of view, we should not make that the issue. The reason it will not matter is that, whoever is the provider of care, the values of the NHS—universal health care, paid for through general taxation, free and based on need, not ability to pay—will remain unchanged. No NHS patient pays for their care today; no patient will pay for their care in future under this Government. On that basis, I can absolutely restate what the Prime Minister said: under this Government and on our watch the NHS will not be privatised.

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The Economy - helping those most in need

I want to make a few remarks about economic impacts on the households and families that find it the hardest to make ends meet. Some call them the strivers; some call them hard-pressed families; I have even heard them talked about as alarm-clock Britons. Many families with children find it very hard to make ends meet, so it is worth underlining the strong action that the Government have taken to help people in that position.

First and most important of all is keeping interest rates low. I noted with interest the intervention of the shadow Chancellor on the Chancellor to point out, "Well, there is a liquidity trap; interest rates are too low; it is a bad sign; we need higher interest rates." I think that that will ring very poorly with Britain as a whole. For people who are striving and finding it hard to make ends meet, having to pay higher mortgage interest is not in their interest. The shadow Chancellor and the Labour party are wrong if they are entertaining a policy that is about raising interest rates. That was my understanding of the drift of the shadow Chancellor's speech. I regret it; I do not think it is the right thing to do. Let us bear in mind that a 1% hike in interest rates would mean £10 billion more in interest payments—about £1,000 extra on the average mortgage. People are finding it hard to make ends meet because of rising global commodity prices and the current difficult situation. Higher mortgage interest rates would be a massively retrograde step. One of this Government's most important achievements has been to keep interest rates low by providing stability, clarity and a positive deficit reduction plan to get our finances in order. That is helping millions of families up and down the country and millions of businesses with lower interest rates are far better off than they would be otherwise.

The other really important thing is the help the Government are providing with child care. For a long time it has been difficult, particularly in deprived communities like parts of Dover and Deal in my constituency, for joint working parents to juggle child care. The announcement to help those deprived areas with extra help for child care places was one of the most important in the autumn statement.

You can see the full debate and speech here – and for those interested in my dialogue with the Shadow Chancellor, there are some good examples here – I always enjoy sparring with him in the Chamber.

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Financial Transaction Tax

I do not agree with the calls for a financial transactions tax, and believe it will impact negatively on our economy at a time when it needs help – this would be only a hindrance. Today I pressed the Chancellor to make sure he will not agree to this.

While I congratulate the Government on holding to this spending and maintaining this commitment, is the Chancellor aware that France, Germany and other European nations have not done so well in adhering to their commitments and are therefore pledged to, or desire, a financial transaction tax? Will he be trenchant in making sure that this does not happen, as it will damage our economy and our growth?

George Osborne:

There are arguments for, and very much against, a financial transaction tax, but a real red herring is the idea that a financial transaction tax could be used to meet the aid commitments that countries have entered into alongside Britain but have not delivered on. The financial transaction tax which is proposed in Europe, and which we will not accept, has been spent about four times over on domestic programmes, on the EU budget, on climate change measures, and on aid. A far better thing for the countries of the European Union to do is to live up to the commitments they made on international development and deliver them out of their domestic budgets.

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Living Standards

I believe the Government's course of action, coupled with the policies they have announced over the last 18 months, are the right way to help raise living standards in our country, and help all those in Dover and Deal who are struggling to get by.

During the debate on Living Standards today I said:

I want to talk particularly about the importance of getting the country going in order to raise living standards. I pressed Mr Byrne on what Labour's growth plan was and how much it would cost. I will happily accept any intervention from Opposition Members on this, but it seems to me that it would cost billions. How would it be funded? It is clear that it would be funded by debt––more borrowing.

We have narrowly avoided suffering from the debt storm throughout Europe, but were we to give way on the fiscal rectitude that we have shown and to go to the markets and borrow to fund Labour's extravagant growth plan, we would be at risk of higher interest rates. Let us bear in mind that every one percentage point increase in interest rates means another £1,000 on the average mortgage.

Painful though the programme to cut overspending has been for so many people throughout the country, the most important achievement—the most important tax cut, if we like—has been the reduction in the cost of borrowing. It has helped so many hard-pressed families, including those in my constituency, to muddle through the recession as best they can, in a situation in which global inflation from imported goods, such as petrol and so on, has been higher and has put pressure on living standards, as every constituency MP understands all too well.

These are very difficult times not just for my constituents in Dover and Deal, but for everyone in the country who finds themselves without a large pay rise at work and facing rising global food prices. It has been a very difficult year, as the OBR makes clear. This year, average inflation has been 4.5%, yet average earnings have not kept pace. It has been difficult, and it has been a squeeze, but world prices, including in commodities and food, are something over which no Government have any great control. I, like my hon. Friend Mr Syms, have not heard from the Opposition any clear plan for what they would do differently to deal with the situation, but it does get better next year as those things work their way through the system.

See the rest of my speech and interventions here.

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