Backbench Business

Representations: Backbench Business

Tuesday 21 Mar 2017

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 21 Mar 2017.

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Members present: Ian Mearns (Chair); Bob Blackman; Robert Courts; Kevin Foster; Gavin Newlands; Mr Nuttall; Jess Phillips; William Wragg.

Questions 1-15

Witnesses

I: Tim Loughton.

II: Keith Vaz and Mrs Drummond.

Written evidence from witnesses:

– [Add names of witnesses and hyperlink to submissions]

Tim Loughton made representations.

Q1                Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to the Backbench Business Committee—and welcome to our viewer on Parliament TV. We have two applications this afternoon. First up is Mr Tim Loughton, MP, on post office closures.

              Tim Loughton: Thank you, Chair. I am alone, but I do not need to be accompanied by the hordes of people who have put their name to this motion, such is the force of this subject’s importance. The issue of post office closures is familiar to all of us as constituency MPs and has been debated over many of the 20 years that I have been in this House. However, that has reached a new pitch because of what is happening to Crown post offices. Although we have seen the sub-post office network reduced from something like 19,000 to about 11,500, we were always promised that Crown post offices were effectively sacrosanct, yet we are down to some 300 Crown post offices. Last year a franchising/closure programme affected 62 Crown post offices and in recent months, it has been announced that a further 37 are to go the same way. It just so happened that that included both the remaining Crown post offices in my constituency, after our having lost virtually all the sub-post offices.

In my case, we have been promised that they are looking for new premises for a retailer to take it on, but there are real concerns about whether the same level of service will be available, and about the suitability of those premises for people with disabilities and for the security services offered at Crown post offices. There is also serious concern over the employment of existing direct post office workers transferring across. The record to date is something like fewer than 2% of existing post office workers transfer to a new franchisee. On those levels, we are all concerned as constituency MPs.

However, the bigger issue—this is why I think we can have a debate and fill whatever time is allocated, such is the general interest in this—is, does the Post Office have a plan? Everything that we are told about the way the closures and franchises are going suggests that this is about shrinking the Post Office ever further in order to live within the decreasing subsidy from the Government. Yet, in places such as France, where they set up the Le Banque Postale, which is now a highly profitable bank, gaps in the market have been moved into. Those are being repeated over here; we are losing bank branches on the high street at a rate of knots, but we are told all the banking services can be offered at the post office. Why is the Post Office not taking advantage of its presence on all the major high streets to move into those other areas, and taking advantage of technology and the delivery of parcels out of hours?

This debate would scrutinise why the Post Office is going down this route with the Crown post office branches, but also question the Post Office’s long-term strategy and the Government’s strategy as the Post Office owners. Does the Post Office have a future or is it just retrenching until there is just a post office counter in the local convenience store? At least 21 Members from all parts of the country and across all parties put their names to the application. Since then, a number of others have indicated that they will support it, so there is no lack of interest in such a debate.

Q2                Jess Phillips: I declare an interest because my constituency party has received funding from the CWU—I thought I would declare that before I spoke any more. I completely agree with everything that has been said. I notice that you said you would be happy in either the Chamber or Westminster Hall. Do you have a particular preference?  You have quite a lot of speakers for a 90-minute debate. Although others may question the veracity of the people who will turn up, I think lots of people would turn up to this debate. Do you think 90 minutes is enough? Is your preference for Westminster Hall or the Chamber?

Tim Loughton: I would not question the veracity of any of the 21 fine men and women and true who have put their names to it.

Jess Phillips: Fine people, I know.

Tim Loughton: Very fine names. I am entirely at the disposal of the Committee, but absolutely we would prefer to have a full-blown debate in the main Chamber. We will be able to fill that time without any problem, I am sure.

Q3                William Wragg: It is a very worthy debate and application, but we did have a rather embarrassing situation last Thursday in granting a debate in the main Chamber, which had the grand participation of six people as business collapsed early. Can you guarantee all the speakers, who I do not doubt for a moment will turn up and speak?

Tim Loughton: Guaranteeing the presence of colleagues is something of a hit and miss activity. However, every debate in the Chamber that I have applied for in the past has been more than fully subscribed. I am sure that is entirely down to the merit of the subject rather than my whipping abilities. Because this is something that affects just about every Member—this is not a niche subject—and because it is specifically a constituency interest, I think there will be pressure on many MPs to come along and say, “Yes, I am concerned about X High Street post office.”

The CWU, the union behind most of the postal workers, has been exceedingly helpful and has helped to get some of these names as well. It has been working cross-party, certainly in my constituency and I know in others. The CWU spoke very highly of our colleague from Chingford with regard to the campaign it was running with him in his constituency. With its help, and the letter-writing campaign by constituents to urge their MP to go along and signal their support for defending the post office in their area, I think it will be easier than most.

Q4                Bob Blackman: On the timescale, you say in the proposed motion that the announcement was made on 10 January. Is there a time sensitivity about the debate? Is there a deadline coming up or something we should be aware of when we consider allocating time?

Tim Loughton: No, there is not a specific deadline because this has been a rolling programme that was announced last year and then at the beginning of this year. In terms of my post offices, for example, which were announced in the wave of 32, we are going through the advertising and then assessment of the bids. It takes about a year before you actually get a new host site for it, so there is no sense of urgency. Having said that, depending on what dates are available, we are coming up to Easter now, and the first week after Easter might be a bit difficult for me because I am supposed to be on a trip. If there is some flexibility and if there are other more urgent ones ahead, I would not complain if we were later rather than sooner.

Q5                Bob Blackman: The answering Department would presumably be BEIS.

Tim Loughton: Margot James is the Minister.

Q6                Bob Blackman: If you were offered Tuesday 18 April, would that be acceptable?

Chair: That is the day after the Easter recess.

Tim Loughton: Although I am not essential to this, I have been asked to attend a conference in Washington for the first few days of that week, so if it could be after that—

Chair: County Durham is lovely at that time of year.

Tim Loughton: As it is at all times of the year.

Q7                Bob Blackman: There are two potential dates. One would be Thursday 27 April as a possibility. Alternatively, would you be flexible enough to accept at short notice time at the end of the day when business collapses early in the Commons, for example, and perhaps the Government do not fill up the time? You would not necessarily need a huge amount of notice about that?

Tim Loughton: I do not think it is the sort of thing you desperately need a huge amount of notice on, because if we have got a situation in our constituency we are well briefed and aware of it. The 27th would be my preference over the 18th but, as I say, in that first week back, for the first two or three days I have a problem. However, if that is what is on offer, other people can stand in. We have no problem doing that.

Q8                Gavin Newlands: Related to Jess’s point, and forgive me if I have missed something, you have applied for a general debate in either Chamber, but you have a substantive motion. I want to be clear—if you are granted a debate in the main Chamber, obviously the motion is fine, but if we allocate your debate to Westminster Hall, it will just be a “This House has considered…” post office closures, the post office closure programme, or whatever you would want it to be. I just want to make sure that you were clear that the motion would be dropped if the debate was in Westminster Hall.

              Tim Loughton: I remember that when I pitched before, the preference of this Committee was to have a substantive motion that could be voted on, and Mr Bone, when he was a member of this Committee, was a particular advocate of that.

Q9                Bob Blackman: Then that would need to be in the main Chamber.

Tim Loughton: In which case, it needed to be in the main Chamber. The preference is in the main Chamber with a substantive motion, but if that wasn’t a possibility then we can adapt. Certainly, that is the preference.

Gavin Newlands: Okay. That is useful. Thanks.

Q10            Chair: This is entirely hypothetical, Tim, but we have had notice of the potential of up to two hours at the end of the day on Tuesday 28 March, which is next Tuesday, in the main Chamber. If that was to materialise, would you be able to fill that slot?

Tim Loughton: If that were to materialise, I’m sure we could leap into action. I’m certainly around for that.

Q11            Chair: My quid pro quo with that is that I would be saying to the Leader of the House, “Could we guarantee that at least 90 minutes would be protected?”

Tim Loughton: Yes, which is fair enough.

Chair: Okay.

Tim Loughton: It’s a week today?

Chair: Yes. Okay. Thank you very much indeed.

Keith Vax and Mrs Drummond made representations.

Q12            Chair: Next up, we have Mr Keith Vaz and Flick Drummond, please. We have an application here on Yemen—the conflict in Yemen.

              Keith Vaz: Thank you very much, Chairman. I’m giving you a handout about the situation in Yemen.

As you know, the situation in Yemen has reached a critical point. The next few days mark the second anniversary of when the conflict in Yemen began. Flick—Mrs Drummond—and I need to declare our interest: we were both born in Yemen. There are three Yemeni-born Members of the House of Commons. However, it goes beyond that, because so many Members have participated in debates on Yemen that, in a sense, we could possibly debate this subject every single week, but we haven’t. The last time we had a substantive debate on Yemen was in October last year.

The debate in January this year was specifically about arms sales, so that was two Chairs of Committees—the International Development Committee and the Committees on Arms Export Controls—who joined together: Chris White and Stephen Twigg. They initiated that debate and it was over-subscribed.

However, the situation now, as you can see from these photographs, is extraordinarily dire. Only this week, Stephen O’Brien, our UN man and formerly a Member of Parliament, declared that the situation had reached a stage where it could well end up with Yemen being engulfed in a famine. Of the four countries he identified, Yemen was the worst.

In the last two years, 10,000 people have died in Yemen during this conflict; 1,200 of those were children; and 18.8 million people, which is two thirds of the population of Yemen, are currently on the verge of food insecurity. They are literally starving.

I would like to report back to the House on my visit to the region. I was due to go and meet the President in Aden. When I arrived in Oman and had discussions with the Omani Foreign Minister, the plane was ready to take me to Aden, but there was no guarantee that I would come back from Yemen; I know that some Members of the House might quite like that, but I really did want to come back. That was because all electricity had been cut off in that southern part of Yemen, so I couldn’t go and see the President, but I spoke to him for half an hour on the telephone. The desperation in President Hadi’s voice, which has been repeated to other people in the region and in the wider world, was very obvious to me.

Is it urgent? Yes, it is urgent. Can it wait? I would say, “No, it can’t wait”, because these next 10 days are absolutely critical, first, because it’s the anniversary and, secondly, because if we are seen to be debating Yemen, then the rest of the world will take note, because as they say in the Foreign Office we “hold the pen” on Yemen at the United Nations. I was there last October, and it is our ambassador who will draft the resolution that will go before the Security Council. We are pressing the Government to do that as quickly as possible.

We do not want a discussion about Saudi arms, because that is not the issue that the group is concerned about. We are concerned about a ceasefire and a peace plan. Other Members will come in and say what they want, but we have never really had a debate about the Yemen peace plan, and we have never had a debate of substance on how to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

That is why we have come before the Committee. We have 18 people who have signed up to the debate, including Mr Loughton, who has been to Yemen with me. He in fact went AWOL during our visit five years ago. We thought he had been kidnapped by a tribe, but he had gone to take photographs in the old city of Sana’a. I know Mr Blackman is interested in this subject because he has spoken about it before, as are many members of the Scottish National party. Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh has been a leading spokesman.

Lots of people on the Government Back Benches and in the Opposition will speak in the debate. I am quite certain, because of the huge interest, that there is no prospect whatsoever of the debate folding early.

The final point I want to put you is of a YouGov poll conducted recently among the British public to find out how many people knew about the crisis in Yemen. Only half of Britain’s population knew about Yemen, which is why it is called the forgotten war.

Holding a debate will encourage our Government to take a much firmer stance in getting a ceasefire resolution before the UN. It will enable the Yemenis to understand that there is a country that is backing the peace process, as opposed to the Americans who are involved with the coalition—the Saudis and the Emiratis—all of whom are involved in what is going on. That is why we come before you to ask for this debate.

              Mrs Drummond: There was a recent BBC programme on the subject and you could see that the humanitarian crisis was awful. It is as bad, if not worse, than Syria in places. As soon as Syria is sorted, it is going to be the next big focus and, as Keith said, the famine is huge.

We have not had a debate since the change of President in the US and that might have a slant on how the Foreign Office Minister responds, which would very interesting for everybody.

It is always over-subscribed. I have never managed to speak for more than three or four minutes. That is one reason why I would be pleased to lead on it so that I have the chance to make a proper contribution. Andrew Mitchell recently went to see what the Houthis were doing, so it would be another occasion for him to talk about that and put it out in the open. There are all sorts of issues that would be very interesting to the public, plus pushing the Government to make more of an effort to help with the peace process would be helpful.

Q13            Bob Blackman: Obviously, the humanitarian situation is dreadful there. You mentioned the UN Security Council Resolution. What is the timeframe for that? You will appreciate that we have got very limited time; we are coming up to the Easter recess. Although we would love to find time for this debate, I want to ensure that we understand the timeframe and whether we can accommodate what you want.

              Keith Vaz: The UN discusses this every month but, because of Stephen O’Brien’s statement, the urgency is even stronger. I do not think it can wait until after the recess because there will be something happening in Yemen, if not a full-blown famine, as Stephen O’Brien has said, some other event.

I know you have got a huge pressure on time; I cannot imagine what it must be like to be yourselves. I don’t want to steal things from Mr Loughton when he is out of the room, but as he is, you mentioned next Tuesday as a possibility. We would love to have that time, because it just fits into the timeframe. I am not talking behind his back, because he is one of my signatories, but the issue of post office closures is something that is ongoing, whereas the deaths in Yemen and the famine are just overwhelming for us. Yes, it really is urgent.

Q14            Bob Blackman: Can I just come back on one issue? There is time in the Chamber, and clearly you want action taken, but while you have made an application for a general debate, it would be very helpful if we had a divisible motion to debate. Clearly, you want to lead on there being a resolution for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council. A relatively simple motion calling on the Government to do exactly that would be terribly helpful, and I cannot see that there would be any opposition to such a proposal. It would then fit much closer with what we would expect to see.

              Keith Vaz: Absolutely. What Mr Blackman says is absolutely right. We can frame a motion that calls on the House to support a resolution being tabled at the United Nations in order to give effect to a ceasefire, because that is what we are talking about—we want a ceasefire, and we need it before Ramadan. If we wait any longer, it might be too late. We can certainly get a very helpful resolution before the House if you are able to give us time in the Chamber.

              Mrs Drummond: And next Tuesday, most Members of Parliament will still be here. If it is on Thursday, there will be fewer people here if we want to send a strong message.

Q15            Chair: I do not have a direct interest in this, but the Yemeni diaspora is as far flung as South Shields. It certainly extends into my community in Gateshead, so I am aware of the issue. I have regular contact with a few constituents who are very concerned about the situation involving distant relatives in Yemen.

Keith Vaz: Chairman, you are absolutely right. I am going to Sheffield on Friday to meet the Yemeni community there. There is a big community in Birmingham and in South Shields, as we know. There is also a big community in Wales. We would want to get out the message to the whole of the diaspora community that this debate was on. There is no greater expert than Mr Blackman in getting the message out to the diaspora in Harrow and beyond in terms of debates to do with ethnic communities, but the Yemeni diaspora have never really been involved in the political process in our country, and hopefully if we can get a debate, we will engage with them to achieve that.

Chair: Anyone else? In that case, thank you very much for your application. That concludes the formal business of the Backbench Business Committee. We will now go on into closed session.