The below Parliamentary question was asked by Craig Mackinlay on 2015-09-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how much was collected from local authorities at all tiers from non-domestic property tax levied on public conveniences in each of the last three years.
Mr Marcus Jones
My Department does not collect that data.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Craig Mackinlay on 2015-09-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will undertake an urgent review into the increased use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on people considered incapacitated without their consent; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a ban on the forced use of ECT.
Alistair Burt
The use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for patients who are detained for treatment under the Mental Health Act 1983 (the Act) and for all patients under 18 years is governed by section 58A of the Act. If a patient lacks the capacity to consent a second opinion appointed doctor (SOAD) must certify that the patient lacks the capacity to consent and that:
– the treatment is appropriate;
– no valid and applicable advance decision has been made by the patient under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) refusing the treatment in question;
– no suitably authorised attorney or deputy objects to the treatment on the patients behalf; and
– the treatment would not conflict with a decision of the Court of Protection which prevents the treatment being given.
The numbers of these second opinions involving ECT have been declining for the past decade though there has been an increase since 2012/13. It is not clear whether this is a change in overall trend.
The requirements of section 58A can only be overridden in emergency if the treatment is necessary to save the patient’s life and to prevent a serious deterioration of the patient’s condition, and the treatment does not have unfavourable physical or psychological consequences which cannot be reversed.
The tribute given by Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP for South Thanet, in the House of Commons on 9 September 2022.
It is a true honour to be here at this time in our nation’s history and to be able to speak about my sorrow and the great grief of my constituents in South Thanet. Yesterday was a day that we all knew would come, but we all hoped that it never would. We were all trusting that the huge longevity of the Queen Mother, who died at 101, would give us more years of the Queen in her place, giving us certainty and calm through her powerful and steady service to our country, her realms overseas and the Commonwealth.
As yesterday developed—it was a day that I will never forget—from mid-afternoon I felt a deep sadness, and as the official announcement came out at about half-past 6, my emotion was overflowing. I asked myself why. Why did I have this emotion, this love, for a 96-year-old whom I had never met and who died peacefully after a life well lived in a home that she loved, surrounded by family? Few in this House would have met her properly, apart from Prime Ministers. Most interactions would have been brief and fleeting—they are moments that everybody cherishes—with that most remarkable lady. I was saddened because she had been ingrained in my life, and in all of our lives. She was that true and reliable person that the country had grown to rely on for all of our lives. We grew up looking every day at banknotes, coins and stamps with that image, which was replicated literally hundreds of billions of times in this country, in her overseas realms and across the Commonwealth. We knew her on a daily basis.
Across those 70 years, this remarkable woman saw new nations form. She saw empires collapse. She saw Governments here and abroad come and go, and she met most of the characters involved. We looked to her at this nation’s times of great crisis and great joy. Consider this: the first Prime Minister whom the Queen called on to form a Government was Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874, and her last Prime Minister—our current Prime Minister—was born in 1975. That spans a period of more than 100 years, which is quite staggering. She was on the throne for close to 30% of the entire time for which the United States has been in existence. The changes that she lived through were staggering, and yet she adapted seamlessly to each and every one.
The Queen was the rock that we thought would stand forever—she was our Head of State, Queen in many other realms and dominions, and Head of the Commonwealth—but she was more than that. I feel she was the true matriarch of the world, and I think we are seeing that in the grief and the tributes from across virtually every country in the world today. There is no part of this United Kingdom and no constituency that she did not touch with either a visit or a patronage, and in my patch of South Thanet people still talk about that visit to Ramsgate in 1993 and Margate in 2011.
It is at times like this that we see our constitution in play. All roads of that continuity—the community, Government, our armed services, our police and justice—led to her, and now we see a smooth transfer of the Crown to her dear son. She managed to keep the magic and mystery of monarchy, while we in this country and everybody around the world took her into our hearts. In our dear Majesty’s words after 9/11:
“Grief is the price we pay for love.”
We grieve now, and we look to a new era under Charles III. Rest in peace, Your Majesty. Thank you for your service, and God save the King.
The speech made by Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP for South Thanet, in the House of Commons on 11 July 2022.
It is always a pleasure to follow many of the Members in this House, and the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) knows I have great regard for him. I am glad that he discussed issues of the here and now—the P&O issue united the House in opposition to the behaviour of that employer, and it certainly meant a lot for the community of my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) —but I was somewhat entertained when he started to go on about indentured labour. I thought we had gone back not to the 1970s, which is part of this debate, but to the 19th century. I found that quite entertaining.
There are two usual ways of getting new staff into businesses, and we are discussing whether they can cross a strike action. Currently, a normal employment business is the one that cannot provide. The other type of employment business—the employment agency model—can. I do not think that I would much know the difference, if I went inside an employment business or an employment agency. At the end of the day, it is the staff that the business wants.
Much has been said about whether this change is being made on the back of the recent strikes. Well, perhaps it is. I have had so many emails from people who could not get to work on that day. We in this House had great inconvenience, which I am afraid was not assisted by possibly the worst London Mayor we have ever seen. I have local residents who have suffered fines because they rarely drive in London; they had to face the ultra low emission zone charge, box junctions everywhere that they could not get out of because of the chaos on the roads, and the local traffic networks that had closed much of London in the first place. We are into fairness. Is that fair on people who are trying to get to work and who usually rely on trains—trains that have had £16 billion of taxpayers’ money over this period, and not one job lost? Is it fair on everybody who is just trying to do the right thing: to run their own business, get to a hospital appointment, get to the doctor, or get to their exams?
I have every regard for the trade unions, but they have intentionally used the cost of living crisis—I do not blame them; best of luck to them—to get more than most people would ever be able to get. Let us not go back to the 1970s wage-price spiral. The hon. Member for Easington said that people’s wages will go backwards. Well, they will go backwards every year if we end up with a wage-price spiral.
Alec Shelbrooke
As I said in my speech, some of the wage demands are inappropriate. To put them into context, given the way in which MPs’ salaries are set with the raise in the average public sector pay, if all these wage demands were to go through, we would get an £8,000 pay rise next year. How does my hon. Friend think the public would react to that?
Craig Mackinlay
I thought about such issues when I was drafting my speech. There would be absolute outrage from the public if we were to get such pay rises. I do not particularly want such a pay rise; I assure hon. Members of that. We must guard against a wage-price spiral. I support these regulations, because it is not unreasonable for people to be able to get to work.
The other industry that was going down this route was British Airways. BA workers have come to a settlement, which is very good. If BA had effectively closed down over this holiday period, what would that have meant for the employment of London? What would have happened to the tourists who spend a lot of money in London and other tourist areas around the country, including in my own coastal town? What would that strike at BA have done?
I am glad that the dispute has been settled, but it seems to me that unions are picking off certain industries in order to cause the maximum upset, with little regard for normal people trying to go about their normal business. I have every respect for what unions are trying to achieve. That is what they are for, and they have done marvellous work in the past. At this time, however, we need to pull together as a nation—I really wish that we could pull together as a nation.
I have heard from those on the Labour Front Bench. I have heard from my friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who raised the spectre of danger. He knows very well that these industries are so regulated and that the staff are so qualified that the reality of agency workers being able to carry out this work is pretty low, so he is raising a spectre of something that does not really exist.
I am supportive of these measures. I hope that they do not need to be used. I hope that we can get common sense, get people back to work and get some of these disputes settled.
The speech made by Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP for South Thanet, in the House of Commons on 27 June 2022.
Everyone in the House this evening should remember what this is all about. It is about protecting the Good Friday agreement of 1998—nothing more and nothing less. As a mere lad born in 1966, I lived through those times on this side of the pond. To have peace on that island after so long was a prize worth having by all.
The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) said that this was about the situation in which Northern Ireland finds itself, of having regulation without any representation at all. The Northern Ireland protocol contains many articles and provisions, and I assume they have an important basis. Article 1 says most clearly:
“This Protocol is without prejudice to the provisions of the 1998 Agreement in respect of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland”.
Article 13.8 could not be clearer:
“Any subsequent agreement between the Union and the United Kingdom shall indicate the parts of this Protocol which it supersedes.”
Article 16 is the safeguarding clause. Let us not forget that only one party has thus far reached for article 16, and that was the European Union to try to stop us having life-saving vaccines. That is who we are dealing with here.
Article 164(5)(d) of the withdrawal agreement says what the Joint Committee can and cannot do. The Joint Committee can agree to change the text of the protocol to address deficiencies or to address situations unforeseen. There are Members of this House who will say, “Well, you signed it. It is international law.” That is fair enough, but the draconian way in which the EU has interpreted its rights under this protocol is disproportionate. How can it be that goods crossing from GB to NI, which is a mere rounding error in the entirety of trade within the European Union, suffer a full 20% of checks? That cannot be proportionate or reasonable.
I will tell Members why we are in this situation. It is because of animosity towards Brexit. This is about punishment because the EU can. We got to this stage because of the legal straitjacket that the Parliament of 2017 to 2019 put us in, when Members of this place did all they could to make sure that the cards were stacked in the hands of the EU and against this place, and we had a very poor game to play. Do not forget that EU officials were quoted as saying that Northern Ireland was the price to pay for Brexit.
Where do we go from here? We have had 300 hours of negotiation by Lord Frost and our Foreign Secretary. What does Maroš Šefčovič say? He says, “I have no mandate.” Well, please, EU, give us somebody who has that mandate. Let us have that negotiation, because this cannot continue.
We have heard much this afternoon about necessity, and I feel that the clause of necessity has most certainly been reached. The usual doctrine of our constitution says that subsequent legislation is more important than or overwrites previous legislation, but we need to ask ourselves something really important. What is the most important legislation? Is it the constitutional Act of Union 1800? Is it the Good Friday agreement, which has brought peace to the island of Ireland? Those things have been set aside—particularly the Act of Union—by the Court of Appeal in Belfast. Or is it more important to somehow save the dear European single market from the threat of an errant pork pie? That is what we are looking at.
The EU should take great comfort from those on the Government Front Bench. I have heard the Foreign Secretary and others say throughout that this Bill will protect the single market, including with powers against those who may seek to undermine it. We will have full legal measures to stop those who want to break the rules. The EU should take every comfort that it needs from that, because this has nothing to do with upsetting the single market.
I believe that there is a little bit of timidity in this Bill, and I would have preferred it to go further. I see some difficulties with the red and green lanes, because if the EU does not trust us now, I find it hard to believe that it is going to trust us in the future. We need mutual enforcement, where we trust it and it trusts us. That is what people do across borders.
We are the Conservative and Unionist party. I look across the Chamber to my Unionist friends and say: I am with you. I will fight for this Union, and this Bill will help.