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Tag: Richard Burgon

  • Richard Burgon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Richard Burgon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burgon on 2016-03-23.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what criteria he plans to use to ensure sales of Government shares in Royal Bank of Scotland maximise value for the public purse.

    Harriett Baldwin

    The first sale of Government shares in RBS was conducted in August 2015 and raised £2.1 billion for the taxpayer. This was an important first step in returning the bank to private ownership, which is the right thing to do for the taxpayer and for British businesses: it will promote financial stability, lead to a more competitive banking sector, and support the interests of the wider economy.

    The government will conduct further sales of RBS shares subject to market conditions, and in doing so will maximise value for the taxpayer. The returns on the government’s interventions in RBS will be determined by the success of the whole of the selling programme, rather than the terms achieved on the first few disposals.

  • Richard Burgon – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Richard Burgon – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burgon on 2015-12-11.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his Written Statement of 2 June 2015, HCWS10, on the trading plan for government shares in Lloyds Banking Group, whether he set a target for the (a) number of shares to be sold and (b) price per share for Lloyds Banking Group at the time of that Statement.

    Harriett Baldwin

    In December 2014 the Chancellor launched a trading plan to sell the Government’s stake in Lloyds Banking Group, which has since been extended twice; in June and December 2015. The number of shares sold over the course of the trading plan is subject to an overall volume limit of up to but no more than 15% of the aggregate total trading volume in the LBG over the duration of the trading plan.

    The final amount sold will depend on market conditions, among other factors. Shares will not be sold below the average price the previous government paid for them, which was 73.6p.

    As outlined to the House at the time of the trading plan’s launch, a statement with further details will be laid before Parliament when the plan concludes.

  • Richard Burgon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Richard Burgon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burgon on 2016-03-22.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many full-time equivalent GPs were employed in general practices in Leeds East constituency in (a) 2009-10, (b) 2010-11, (c) 2011-12, (d) 2012-13 and (e) 2013-14.

    Alistair Burt

    This data is not collected at constituency level. Such data as is available can be found in the table below.

    Total general practitioners (GPs) in selected area: full time equivalents 2009-14

    2009

    2010

    2011

    2012

    2013

    2014

    Leeds Primary Care Trust1

    502

    506

    514

    516

    .

    .

    NHS Leeds South and East Clinical Commissioning Group1

    .

    .

    .

    .

    164

    169

    Notes:

    Data as at 30 September for each year

    1 GP workforce figures are not available by constituency. Leeds East constituency is contained within and serviced by NHS Leeds South and East CCG and prior to the formation of CCGs, Leeds East was contained within Leeds PCT. These two National Health Service organisations are not geographically co-terminus and therefore 2009-12 figures are not comparable to 2013-14 figures.

    ‘.’ denotes not available

    Data Quality:

    The Health and Social Care Information Centre seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data but responsibility for data accuracy lies with the organisations providing the data. Methods are continually being updated to improve data quality where changes impact on figures already published. This is assessed but unless it is significant at national level figures are not changed. Impact at detailed or local level is footnoted in relevant analyses.

    Source:

    The Health and Social Care Information Centre General and Personal Medical Services Statistics

  • Richard Burgon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Richard Burgon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burgon on 2016-03-23.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 29 February 2016 to Question 27454, on banks, what the (a) date of, (b) details of who attended and (c) organisations represented were at each meeting.

    Harriett Baldwin

    Details of ministerial and permanent secretary meetings with external organisations on departmental business are published on a quarterly basis and are available at:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmt-ministers-meetings-hospitality-gifts-and-overseas-travel

  • Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Food

    Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Food

    The speech made by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 14 December 2022.

    I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) on his work on the right to food. He certainly stands in the traditions of the greatest MPs from the great city of Liverpool, second only to Leeds of course—[Interruption].

    Controversy apart, in this, the fifth richest country on earth, not a single person—adult or child—should need to be fed by a charity. I congratulate all those wonderful people who donate to charities, whether it be money or food, and who work in food banks. In this, one of the richest countries on earth, that simply should not be necessary. It is a political choice, as my hon. Friend and others have said, and the campaign for the right to food is so important. We need immediate action. I think that, in this historic cost of living crisis, we need price caps on food and other essential items. The state should intervene for the benefit of everyone in our society, particularly the most vulnerable. I believe that we need a tax on supermarket super-profits, to create a fund to tackle hunger. And we should certainly back the campaign by the National Education Union and others for free school meals and support for families over the school holidays.

    What should a right to food mean? Every single person in this country should have a right to a decent home, a right to good-quality and healthy food, and a right to free healthcare and education. The right to food should include free school meals for every single child in compulsory education. Let us have a universalist approach and end the stigma of means-testing. There should be a framework of legal duties on national and local government to provide community kitchens. As we have heard, the Secretary of State should be required to consider the cost of food when calculating the minimum wage and benefits.

    This is an emergency—a food emergency, a nutrition emergency and a health emergency. Food insecurity levels have doubled since the start of 2022, affecting an estimated 10 million adults and 4 million children in September 2022. Everyone should have the right to food. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby, for securing the debate, and every Member of Parliament, across the parties, who has committed to supporting the right to food.

  • Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules

    Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules

    The speech made by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, in the House of Commons on 12 December 2022.

    I have listened carefully to all the contributions in the debate. I congratulate in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on the assiduous way in which he has approach this matter as Chair of the Committee.

    I will address the Committee’s third recommendation, on the matter of an outright ban on MPs providing paid parliamentary advice, consultancy or strategy services. I welcome that report as a genuine advance. I was given the opportunity to provide oral evidence to the Committee about a Bill that I drafted and introduced last year, which would have banned MPs’ second jobs, with a few exceptions, for example, for those working on the frontline in public services. [Hon. Members: “Why?”] It is interesting that Conservative Members shout out, “Why?” when I talk about the proposal to ban second jobs for MPs, with an exception for, for example, nurses, firefighters, people in the armed forces and doctors. I do not understand why that proposal was met with such incredulity and such a loud chant of, “Why?” from Conservative Members.

    When we debated the issue previously, I almost lost count of the Conservative Members who said, “What about nurses? What about doctors?” Yet when those exceptions are mentioned now, they ask why. When Conservative Members said, “What about nurses? What about doctors? You can’t ban second jobs for MPs”, I felt that they were using exceptions as a way of keeping the rotten status quo.

    The public do not object to MPs spending their spare time working on an A&E ward as a nurse or a doctor, working as firefighter, or being in the Territorial Army. They rightly object if a Member is paid £1,500 an hour to advise a US investment bank. [Hon. Members: “Why?”] Again, there is a call of, “Why?” That is good evidence for why people outside all too often think that this place and MPs are out of touch with them.

    Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)

    I do not want to be too partisan about this, but were I a writer like Michael Foot, could I go on writing and get my royalties? Were I a farmer like Jim Callaghan, could I keep my farm? Should we say to people like my former colleague, Peter Thurnham, who built up an engineering business, “Don’t come into Parliament. You’ll have to give away your business while you’re here”?

    Richard Burgon

    I did not expect the Chamber to come to life, but when it comes to attempting to ban MPs’ second jobs, everybody gets energetic. I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I did not want to speak about my Bill at such length, but it deals with his point. Members who write books, for example, could continue to do that, but could not keep the proceeds. That may seem unfair to many, and some people would perhaps be treated harshly under my proposal, but that is because people have found ways of exploiting loopholes. One could imagine a situation whereby, if one could keep the profits from writing, an MP would write a book about the oil industry, get paid a lot of money for it and work for an oil company for free on the side. However, I digress. I understand that MPs are annoyed at any suggestion that second jobs should be banned, but they are out of touch with the public when they get so angry about it.

    I welcome the advances that have been made on an outright ban on MPs providing paid parliamentary advice, consultancy or strategy services. I also welcome the advance in requiring MPs to have a written contract. That is a step in the right direction. However, the House must recognise that the public are rightly angry because when MPs chase corporate cash, they short-change the public. The public are also outraged because, a year after the Owen Paterson scandal, MPs are making more money from second jobs than they were a year ago—£5.3 million, the highest figure ever. That is the problem: this place and MPs end up being out of step with what the public want. The public rightly believe that we get paid enough and that being a Member of Parliament is a full-time job.

    I am not surprised that my contribution has annoyed Conservative Members so much, but I will support the motion and the amendments. They are certainly a step in the right direction. On second jobs, we need to go further in future. They should be banned with a small number of exceptions. I introduced a Bill on that and the Government repeatedly blocked it. It is still there if the Government want to do the right thing and take it forward. I am glad that Labour Front Benchers support a ban on second jobs for MPs with a small number of exceptions. I hope that we get in at the next election, introduce that proposal, and help to clean up our politics and restore public trust.

  • Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on Voter ID at Elections

    Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on Voter ID at Elections

    The speech made by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, in the House of Commons on 12 December 2022.

    I have listened with great interest to the Minister’s assurances to the House and the country, but it will not surprise Conservative Members to learn that I am not assured, nor will my constituents be assured.

    Tony Benn talked of the importance of the vote. He talked very movingly of the way in which universal suffrage had helped to transfer power from the marketplace to the ballot box, giving our citizens the right to obtain through voting what they could not obtain through their wallets, whether it be free healthcare, free education, or a say in our country’s laws. That right is under threat from these regulations, which are littered with discriminatory inconsistencies. They are not, in fact, a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but, in my view, a deliberate voter suppression strategy—a strategy not to suppress just any voters, but to suppress certain groups of voters in particular.

    These regulations are straight out of the right-wing United States Republican playbook. Over there, they try to find ways of stopping people being able to vote. How else can we explain the way in which young people are discriminated against in the regulations? I believe they are a deliberate voter suppression strategy against working-class communities in particular, and, in particular, black and ethnic minority working-class communities and young working-class people, because the Conservatives have taken the view that those are the people who are less likely to vote for them.

    The regulations also have a broader context that should disturb all of us who are concerned about hard-won British democratic freedoms. In our society, there are three main ways for people to fight back against unpopular policies or express discontent with a Government they do not like, or an employer they do not like. There is the right to protest peacefully, the right to take industrial action and withdraw labour, and, of course, the right to vote. These regulations on voter ID need to be seen within the context of an authoritarian drift on the part of a Government who have in their sights the right to protest peacefully, the right to take strike action, and the right to vote with ease. That is profoundly disturbing. The Members on the other side of the debate are probably split between those who believe that this is necessary and desirable and those who do not really believe that it is necessary and desirable, but are going along with it because they are going along with that authoritarian drift.

    Even if we were to accept the introduction of voter ID, which I and others certainly do not, when we look at the inconsistencies in the regulations with regard to which voter ID is acceptable and which is not, we see that it is a real dog’s dinner—a real anti-democratic dog’s dinner. These regulations should send a shiver down the spines of all those who believe in civil and democratic liberties in our society. They should send a shiver down the spines of people, regardless of their political views, who believe that the right of every citizen to vote, the right of every worker to withdraw labour and the right of every citizen to engage in peaceful protest are rights that were hard won and should be cherished and defended. It is because we defend those hard-won civil liberties and principles that we oppose these regulations, and oppose this Government’s disgraceful authoritarian drift.

  • Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    Just two years ago, in the middle of the greatest public health crisis in decades, millions of people came out to clap for the nurses, doctors and other NHS workers who were putting their lives on the line to save the lives of others. As people will remember, Conservative Members were only too happy to be seen joining in the applause. How times have changed.

    We now have Tory Ministers wheeled out on the media to attack those same NHS workers with sick claims that their planned action for fair pay is aiding Putin’s abhorrent war on Ukraine. Those disgraceful remarks appear to be the opening salvo in a Tory propaganda war that seeks to blame NHS workers for the deep crisis in our health service. The Tories will attack nurses, as they do every other worker forced to defend their pay and conditions. But nurses did not create the NHS staffing crisis. Nurses did not create record NHS waiting lists. Nurses did not underfund our NHS. Nurses did not hand tens of billions of pounds that should have gone to the NHS over to the private sector, including in corrupt contracts. Whoever the Tories try to blame, the simple truth is this: it is 12 years of Conservative party rule that has created the crisis in our NHS.

    At its core is a crisis in the NHS workforce, with workforce shortages at an unprecedented level across the NHS. The statistics are eye-watering, with 133,000 NHS vacancies in England alone and a record high of 47,000 nursing vacancies. This Tory-created staffing crisis is why patients are struggling to get a GP appointment, why heart attack patients face ambulance waiting times of more than an hour and why many are not getting the life-changing operations they urgently need.

    Today we will vote on an important policy to scrap the non-dom tax status that is exploited by the super-rich to avoid £3.2 billion in taxes every year. Scrapping that, as Labour advocates, could fund a long-term plan to train enough NHS staff. For example, it could double the number of medical training places and deliver 10,000 more nursing placements.

    The Tories should back that plan to put the NHS before non-doms and invest in our NHS instead of lining the pockets of the super-rich. It is a plan that would help bring about a long-term solution to this crisis. For the next two years that they are in government—that is all it will be—they should take the action needed to address the workforce crisis in the immediate term, and we cannot solve that unless we resolve the NHS pay crisis.

    A third of public sector workers are actively considering leaving their jobs, and pay is a key factor in that. Key workers in our NHS still earn thousands of pounds a year less in real terms than in 2010. For example, nurses’ real pay is down by £5,200 compared with 2010, while hospital porters’ real pay is down by £2,500. Now the Government expect it to fall even further.

    Staff, however much they love their jobs, simply cannot afford to stay in them. Their pay is not covering their essentials. Hospitals are even having to open up food banks for staff. That falling pay is why, over the coming weeks, nursing staff and—it was announced today—ambulance staff will be taking industrial action. Nursing staff do not want to take action, but they feel they have been left with no choice because Government Ministers will not even meet them to discuss pay.

    Nurses hope that the Government will listen and open up the pay talks so that they do not have to go out on strike, but if they do strike, they will have public support and I will go and support them. It is not too late for the Government to avoid strikes. They have chosen strikes over negotiations, but they can stop this at any point. The Government need to open up the talks and they need to pay NHS workers properly. They need to give NHS workers the pay rise they deserve.

  • Richard Burgon – 2022 Parliamentary Question on the Principles of Public Procurement

    Richard Burgon – 2022 Parliamentary Question on the Principles of Public Procurement

    The parliamentary question asked by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, in the House of Commons on 8 December 2022.

    Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)

    What progress the Government have made on enshrining in law the public good, value for money, transparency, integrity, fair treatment of suppliers and non-discrimination as principles of public procurement.

    The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)

    The Procurement Bill, which will be debated on Third Reading in the other place on 13 December, enacts the principles set out in the “Transforming public procurement” Green Paper. Through the combination of objectives set out in clause 12 and specific rules, we will provide clarity to contracting authorities and suppliers about how they should implement the principles.

    Richard Burgon

    I thank the Minister for his answer. Billions of pounds in covid contracts were handed to those with links to top Tories through the so-called VIP lanes, and much of it was for equipment that was simply unusable, yet the Government’s new Procurement Bill is so full of loopholes that all this could happen again. To help clamp down on this, will the Minister now back putting a new clawback clause in the Bill, so that in future we can get the money back from those who rip off the public?

    Alex Burghart

    I very much look forward to debating that Bill when it comes to this place, including with the hon. Gentleman. I remind the House that the Bill gives this country the opportunity to rewrite procurement in this country, which we could not have done while we were in the European Union, making it more advantageous to our public services and our businesses, and better for the public.

    Mr Speaker

    I call the shadow Minister.

    Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)

    We have seen in eye-watering detail this week the price the taxpayer pays when the Government lose control of procurement during a crisis and panic: billions spent on unusable personal protective equipment written off; millions spent on storing that PPE; and millions pocketed by greedy shell companies that failed to deliver. The Government have a responsibility to uphold basic standards and, especially in an emergency, to restore normal controls as soon as possible, so can the Minister explain why the Procurement Bill hands Ministers more power over direct awards than ever before?

    Alex Burghart

    The Bill sets out a new paradigm for public services to procure in this country. It will move us away from “most economically advantageous” tender to “most advantageous” tender. That means we will be able to take account of things such as transparency, social responsibility and fairness in a way that was not possible under EU legislation.

  • Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on Public Ownership of Energy Companies

    Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on Public Ownership of Energy Companies

    The speech made by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, in Westminster Hall on 31 October 2022.

    It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Murray, and a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), who always makes such a compelling case for public ownership. I was pleased that she mentioned the escalating privatisation of the national health service, which she has worked hard to expose. It seems to me, and to many others, that the Government have an ideological opposition to public ownership: no matter the evidence, reality or public opinion, the Government will resist it.

    Let us take a look at the petition that secured today’s debate: 109,000 people signed it, showing the strength of support for bringing energy into public ownership. A Survation poll this year showed that not a bare majority of the public, but 66%, believe that energy should be in public ownership. That includes a majority of Conservative party voters, and maybe even members too. The energy sector is being used as a cash cow for shareholders. We have an energy system that is privatised at every single stage—generation, transmission, distribution and supply. That means that at every opportunity, profits are extracted so there are higher bills for ordinary people, and so there is less investment and a worse service, resulting in a failure to make the green transition work.

    Let us take the big six energy suppliers. Common Wealth shows that £47 billion-worth of dividends and share buy-backs have occurred since 2010. That money should have been in a public system, but it goes much deeper than that. Even the National Grid is paying out billions each year in dividends. It is lose-lose for everyone, apart from those who own our system. Who does own energy? Other states have bought our system, as is the case with EDF, for example. So have billionaires. Northern Powergrid is owned by the US billionaire Warren Buffett. UK Power Networks is owned by the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.

    The high prices are not just about the global crisis. Of course, we are in a global crisis, but privatisation makes it much worse. In many other countries, energy bills have not increased as they have here. Their Governments are using public ownership as a tool to help people. In France, for example, publicly owned EDF kept energy bill rises to just 4% in April 2022, while our prices soared and soared. Norway has been paying 80% of people’s bills above a capped price.

    Even before the current energy crisis began, domestic energy bills steadily increased by 50% in real terms—inflation-adjusted—from 1996 to 2018. We see and people out there feel what privatisation means in practice. In practice, privatisation of our energy system means higher bills than needed. Research shows that prices are 20% to 30% lower in systems with public ownership. Privatisation means, in practice, wasting vital funds on lining the pockets of shareholders. Privatisation means, in practice, failing to invest enough in connecting renewable energy to the grid, with the needs of the current fossil fuel firms put first.

    What is the way forward? This petition, signed by well over 100,000 people, shows the way forward: nationalise the big five energy supply retail companies, most of which are just owned by bigger companies anyway. I welcome the plan from the TUC setting out how a publicly owned energy retail system could deliver a social pricing structure that lets everyone afford the energy they need to cook, clean and stay warm all year round, while the wealthiest with extravagant energy use pay more per unit. The way forward is also to bring the privatised monopolies of the National Grid and regional distribution into public ownership to help us prepare for the energy transition that we need. The way forward must include introducing permanent—and high—windfall taxes on North sea oil and gas companies that use the revenues to cut people’s bills, invest in renewable energy and pay for further nationalisation policies that will benefit the country.

    We must create a new state-owned renewable energy company to ensure that the errors of privatisation are not repeated. It is useful to reflect on the fact that nine out of 10 countries leading on green transition have a state-owned company leading the way on renewables. We cannot become fixated on continuing and defending privatisation because of ideological dogma and the hero worship of the Thatcher period. As someone once said, “What matters is what works.” Public ownership works; privatisation has failed. Let us have an energy system that puts people and planet before profit. If we do, that is a good way to set about helping to get people through this cost of living crisis and making way for a better, greener, fairer and more decent future.