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819 Oral Answers 1 DECEMBER 2010 Oral Answers 820 Q14. [27571] Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab): I have just got back from a visit to Israel and the west bank, and I was shocked to witness with my own eyes 13-year-old Palestinian children in leg irons and manacles in Israeli military prisons. That is one of numerous breaches of the UN charter and of article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention. Whether or not the Prime Minister is the legitimate son of Thatcher, I am sure that as a father he would join me in condemning that appalling practice, but what will the British Government do to put pressure on the Israeli Government to comply with their obligations under international law and to relieve the suffering of the Palestinian people in both the west bank and Gaza? The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point. Every country should obey the Geneva convention and the other conventions that it has signed, and Israel should be no exception to that. Ministers in the Government I lead raise those issues with Israeli Ministers, as we should, and that is extremely important. The fact is, what we really need is a long-term settlement of the Palestinian issue, and we want a two-state solution. It is very important that we put pressure on both sides at all times to ensure that we make progress. The lack of progress only plays into the hands of the extremists, and we can see that all the moderates in the middle east who are trying to make progress are being undermined by our failure to do better. Q15. [27572] Priti Patel (Witham) (Con): If the Human Rights Act is “a glaring example of what is going wrong in our country”, when will the Government put the human rights of the law-abiding majority above those of dangerous convicted criminals? The Prime Minister: It is right that we should be replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights. I have personally looked at the matter long and hard and believe that there is no better solution than that. We are committed to starting a process of looking at that to see whether we can remove some of the nonsenses that have grown up over recent years and show that we can have a commitment to proper rights, but they should be written down here in this country. Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab): The Government have announced an injection of £50 million of new money into the interim cancer drugs fund. Can the Prime Minister say whether there will be Barnett consequentials for Scotland, because that is new money? The Prime Minister: We have not made any changes to the Barnett formula, so if that is Barnett-able, as it were, there will be consequentials, and if it is not, there will not be. Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD): Does the Prime Minister think it fair that a war widow has to pay income tax on her war widow’s pension? The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend raises a very good point. We need to look at all those sorts of issues under the work that we are doing on the military covenant—there are very complicated issues of pensions and interaction with taxes. I do not want to give a flip answer from the Dispatch Box; we have a proper process of looking at the military covenant, which is the right way to do things. Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green): Climate finance will be critical at the ongoing climate summit at Cancun. Although I welcome the fact that the Government have pledged £2.9 billion to the global climate fund, will the Prime Minister confirm that any future money pledge will be additional to existing aid budgets, and can he say what further innovative funding mechanisms he plans to employ to deliver the UK’s share of the annual $100 billion pledged at Copenhagen? The Prime Minister: The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that. Although Cancun will not achieve the binding global agreement that we want, it can make important steps towards that, so we can stay on track. On climate finance, first, we will stick to what was set out previously on the limit in the aid budget for money used for climate change purposes, although there are very real connections between climate change and poverty; and secondly, there is a commitment, which we will keep to, of £2.9 billion for climate change finance. Britain is a leader on that, but as she said, we must look at innovative ways of levering in more money from other parts of the world, including—frankly—from some fast-growing areas which, when Kyoto was first thought of, were very underdeveloped and are now fast-developing countries. We need to help them, but the finance should not flow only from us. Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con): Will the Prime Minister have urgent talks with the Leader of the House and the Business Secretary on introducing legislation for a national regulator or ombudsman for supermarkets before more suppliers are decimated by their conduct? The Prime Minister: We have new arrangements in terms of ensuring that supermarkets treat farmers fairly. All of us as constituency MPs have heard stories about supermarkets behaving very aggressively towards farmers, and it is right that there is a proper way of trying to police that independently, so that our farmers get a fair deal for the food that they produce.
821 1 DECEMBER 2010 822 Point of Order 12.32 pm Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I should like to secure advice on an answer that was provided to me yesterday during questions to the Attorney-General. In response to my question—[Interruption.] Mr Speaker: Order. May I appeal to hon. and right hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber to do so quickly and quietly? It would be helpful if I could hear the point of order from the hon. Lady—I might then be in a position to respond to it. Chi Onwurah: I asked the Solicitor-General about the UK’s failure to sign up to the proposed EU directive on preventing and combating the trafficking of human beings. He said that the UK was a signatory, and repeated that in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle). However, that is not the case: the UK has opted out of the proposed directive. Could you advise me, Mr Speaker, on what is the best way for the Solicitor- General to correct his mistake? Mr Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. The short answer to her question is that the best way for a mistake to be corrected is for the Minister, if he has made a mistake, to correct it. We are about to hear from the hon. and learned Solicitor-General. The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier): There was a degree of confusion; the hon. Lady’s question was too general. I answered the question correctly. There are two European directives, one of which is signed, and one of which is not, hence the confusion. The former right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts, now Lord Reid, signed on behalf of the Government the European directive to which I referred in my answer yesterday. The hon. Lady may have referred to a different directive that has not yet been signed, so we were both right and we were both wrong. Mr Speaker: I do not want in any sense to treat this matter with levity, but I hope the Solicitor-General will understand if I say that that absolutely ingenious response is proof of the argument that no reply from a lawyer is ever simple. The Solicitor-General rose— Mr Speaker: Order. We are grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman. The hon. Lady has put her view very fairly and squarely on the record. We will leave it there for today. I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and indeed to the Solicitor-General. Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 (Amendment) Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23) 12.34 pm Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab): I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 to broaden the scope of the general duty of library authorities so as to include a duty to provide related cultural facilities alongside the library service; and for connected purposes. At a time of global economic turmoil, it may seem strange to some to want to talk about culture. However, I would like to quote in favour of doing so one of this country’s finest economists, Maynard Keynes. On the publication of the first annual report of the Arts Council in 1945, he said: “The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied…by our real problems—the problems of life and of human relations, of creation”. He was right about that. The economic problems that we face are real, many and serious; however, culture and its role in our towns and cities is highly important. I want to raise the matter in my ten-minute rule Bill, in order to put on record my concerns about what could happen to culture in some of our towns, cities and counties in Britain. There is real fear out there that there could be not just cuts in the arts sector—everybody appreciates that there will be cuts and that the cultural sector will need to bear its share of efficiencies—but the total withdrawal by some local authorities from providing cultural services. I give the example of Somerset, which recently cut all 160,000 of its direct grants to arts and cultural bodies, while Bedfordshire looks set no longer to fund its music service. I draw on my own experience as a councillor in the London borough of Southwark, where I had to watch the local authority close the only children’s museum in London. That showed me the importance of ensuring that local authorities continue to prioritise culture. Of course local funding choices are important. I would not dream of telling local authorities what to do—by and large. The Government’s role in giving local authorities enough funding will have a massive part to play in determining whether they can provide decent cultural services. Nor do I want to be prescriptive. I am not introducing my Bill in order to tell local authorities that one kind of culture is good for them. Diversity in the cultural services provided by our local authorities is a truly good thing. In my experience, great local authorities lead on culture in places as diverse as Kent, Merseyside—my part of the world—and Leicester. We have some visionary local authorities. I pay tribute to what they do in ensuring that our towns and cities are places we can be proud of, and where there are public spaces that bring people together to share in their history and heritage. The reason for my suggestion is to start a debate. The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 gives the Culture Secretary an important role. It enables the Culture Secretary, if they feel it necessary, to say to a local authority, “You’re in danger of not providing sufficient library services. I want you to stop with those plans.
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