Results 1-20 of 3,808 for (in the 'Commons debates' OR in the 'Westminster Hall debates' OR in the 'Lords debates' OR in the 'Northern Ireland Assembly debates') speaker:Eric Pickles

Small Businesses (HBOS) (2 Jun 2009)

Eric Pickles: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the tremendous lead he has given to colleagues in this matter. Does he agree that in the last point, the gradual sweeping of dirt under the carpet can be heard? The relationship between Mr. Scourfield and Quayside was not healthy. This man was an employee of HBOS. Remnant Media Ltd in my constituency has suffered from the bad decisions and I expect the bank...

Business of the House: Safeguarding Children (20 Nov 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: The Secretary of State is asking Lord Laming to consider three questions. I suggest that the most difficult of them is about how to strike the right balance in applying the process when children are taken into care. I am sure that the Secretary of State does not want to replace one inhumanity with another. A few years ago, I had a heartbreaking case in which there was a forced adoption of a...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Small Business Rate Relief (18 Nov 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: The right hon. Lady was very quick to dismiss the question from my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale). Does she dismiss the concerns of the Government's own Chief Whip, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown), who labelled the charges on empty properties "destructive"? Indeed, 60 colleagues...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Small Business Rate Relief (18 Nov 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: The right hon. Lady should just stop digging. Her right hon. Friend the Chief Whip may have a different view. The Government's policy on retrospective taxation states that backdating should take place only when it is fair, proportionate, necessary to protect revenue and in the public interest. In what way do the Government's backdated business rates on ports meet those criteria? How can it be...

Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) (No. 3) Bill: Local Government (15 Oct 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: The hon. Gentleman is being very gracious in giving way. I understand his position on disclosure because we are in the same position in having a list of roughly 116 councils and we will not release the information until the Government do, for the same reasons. There comes a point, however, when it is better to release than not to release. A number of people who do not understand local...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (14 Oct 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: The right hon. Lady just admitted that no investment advice had been issued to local authorities since 2004, and that the advice on Icelandic banks remained that they were good until almost the end. Perhaps she has inadvertently forgotten that, Arlingclose, the financial advisers, was advising its clients and local authorities to avoid Icelandic investments. Why was no additional advice...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (14 Oct 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: The Secretary of State criticised my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) for relying on newspaper reports for the list, but still the Department has not produced a comprehensive list of the authorities affected. Will she undertake to do that, so that we know what the position is for councils, police authorities and fire authorities? Is she now actively...

Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister: Financial Stability (8 Oct 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: The Chancellor rightly wants to protect hard-working taxpayers, but some of those taxpayers also pay council tax. Is he wholly content, given what he has just said, that local authorities are informed investors, and their investments in Iceland will not be covered by the guarantee? Is he aware that we are not talking about trivial sums, but about hundreds of millions of pounds, and about some...

Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister: Communities in Control (9 Jul 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving me advance sight both of her statement and of this essentially harmless White Paper. Until her statement, I thought I was the one who was advocating "Just say no" to the right hon. Lady, but it appears that her colleagues in the Home Office and the Department of Health have taken the very life out of these proposals, and have found it remarkably...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (1 Jul 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: I wonder whether the Secretary of State has had time to look at the latest survey by the Local Government Association, which has branded 24-hour drinking a failure. The LGA survey warns that violence continues to blight the streets leaving taxpayers with a completely unacceptable £100 million bill. On top of that, local authorities have lost £43 million in licensing costs. Does the...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (1 Jul 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: It is fortunate that the Local Government Association talked to local police and trading standards. The overwhelming majority of health authorities and councils reported pressure on resources. The right hon. Lady cannot kid herself any longer: our towns are nightly turned into vomitoriums, with brawling and bad behaviour. In March 2004, she said that the reforms would create a "continental...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (20 May 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: I was very concerned to read in The Independent on Sunday that the Prime Minister is very critical of the Secretary of State's handling of the bin taxes. I was especially interested to read that a Downing street spokesman had said of the bin taxes that they would be "Brought in over Gordon's dead body." Given the bin taxes' ability to come, zombie-like, back from the grave, that does not...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (20 May 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: Well, I am not sure that that will do for the Prime Minister. May I remind the Secretary of State that the Government have put a pin into the voodoo doll of the bin tax on four previous occasions? They scrapped it on 27 April, 12 September and 24 October last year, and again as recently as 5 May this year. Given that those occasions coincided with deep crises for the Government, may we...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (1 Apr 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: May I thank the Secretary of State for using the Conservative slogan at these elections—safer, cleaner, greener—in urging people to vote? Was she engaged in some kind of elaborate April fools' joke when she suggested that Labour authorities have the lowest council tax, given that not a single academic, serious commentator or statistician agrees with her on that assessment? Is...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (1 Apr 2008) has video

Eric Pickles: If we are using the same slogan, that perhaps explains why there are so few Labour authorities these days, and why the Prime Minister preferred not to have the Secretary of State at the campaign launch. Under Labour, council tax has doubled and the burden on pensioners has become unbearable; no wonder the Under-Secretary of State for Health is in a state of despair. Why did the Government...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Home Information Packs (26 Feb 2008)

Eric Pickles: Who has abandoned the Minister to deal with these matters.

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (26 Feb 2008)

Eric Pickles: On 27 November last year, the Secretary of State told the House that the Government had "no plans for" a "revaluation" of council tax. She will be painfully aware that that statement was at considerable variance with the actuality. Documents released by her Department show that since 2005 the Government have spent at least £6 million on preparing for revaluation. Will she withdraw her...

Oral Answers to Questions — Communities and Local Government: Topical Questions (26 Feb 2008)

Eric Pickles: It was the right hon. Lady's Department's own work; we should be clear that we have this information only because officials failed to obliterate the words beneath blacked-out paragraphs in the released documents. The documents show that many thousands of households are paying more council tax than they should be, and that those errors have been kept secret—in the Government's own...

Points of Order: Local Government Finance (4 Feb 2008)

Eric Pickles: Will the Minister give way?

Regional Spatial Strategy (South-West) (22 Jan 2008)

Eric Pickles: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy). This is the first time that we have spoken together in a debate. I congratulate her on her new appointment. I thought that her speech was passionate and impressive. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) on securing this debate. I have seen him in various ministerial...