John Hemming: It is a question of buyers and sellers. Normally, selling something is a bit harder than buying it. People will sell things quite happily, but it is one thing to sell to Germans in German and another to buy them in English. There is some difficulty with the idea that our exports would simply be taken as read. I do not accept that people so want to purchase our exports that they would do...
John Hemming: Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland are members of the EEA but not of the EU. If we look at the pattern of different memberships, we find that some countries are members of the Council of Europe, but others are not. It is quite complex. The Vatican, for example, is a member of nothing, yet it can print euros. [Interruption.] Strange, isn’t it? But for whatever reason, Norway happens to be a...
John Hemming: This is my record of voting on the issue of referendums concerning the European Union. I rebelled in the vote on the Lisbon treaty: I voted for a referendum on that. I voted against the hon. Gentleman’s motion. I voted for the amendment to the Queen’s Speech calling for a referendum. I voted for the private Member’s Bill that was presented during the last Session, and I shall be voting...
John Hemming: Yes. That is the whole point. The Bill—which I am going to support, just as I supported the last Bill—says that there should be a referendum by a certain date, which puts pressure on the system to deliver change. The reason I voted against the hon. Gentleman’s motion is that I think we need to negotiate for change, because the system needs to change. I do not take the view of the hon....
John Hemming: rose—
John Hemming: I just make the point that I have been very consistent on this issue.
John Hemming: Will my hon. Friend give way, on that point?
John Hemming: Although, as my hon. Friend will recognise, I did back the earlier Bill—[Interruption]—I must admit that I have not been present on every single occasion, and my hon. Friend should not necessarily read into my colleagues’ absence the nature of their views. Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that the 1688 Bill of Rights, our fundamental constitutional law, was established by popular...
John Hemming: Yardleys school in my constituency has been closed for three weeks as a result of asbestos contamination from the site next door, where there was a fire in a warehouse. It is an academy school on a private finance initiative site with the local authority as a partner and it is unclear who is responsible for declaring and ensuring that the site is safe. May we have a debate on patterns of...
John Hemming: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to the Answer of 17 March 2014 to Question 191665, if his Department will respond in writing to the final report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism dated 28 February 2014 by the Human Rights Council expert meeting on 22 September 2014 concerning the use of armed drones.
John Hemming: A systemic lacuna in the Government’s proposals relates to the lack of monitoring of lower-risk travellers. Will the Secretary of State consider having daily contacts with such travellers on the basis that identifying erroneous risk assessments at the first stage is the key to bringing things under control in the interests of the travellers as well?
John Hemming: In respect of the debate in the Chamber, my hon. Friend should note that occasions such as this are part of the reason for having a Backbench Business Committee that allows Back Benchers to drive what is debated by Parliament. This debate was not allocated in Government time.
John Hemming: I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that one of the difficulties with long-standing conflicts is that the temperature is raised by human rights abuses and that a focus on dealing with human rights abuse is not only good in itself, but assists in resolving the political problems in the long term?
John Hemming: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on taking up this issue in Parliament and the campaigners on raising the petition. Constituents have come to me to explain their concerns about pancreatic cancer. Does he agree that it is important that the campaign continues to do excellent work in raising awareness of the difficulties with pancreatic cancer?
John Hemming: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people were imprisoned for contempt of court before each division of the legal system in each month since May 2013.
John Hemming: On the question whether this is about extra money being spent, there was a court case this year, number EWCA Civ 13, in which the Secretary of State, when challenged on the lawfulness of the discriminatory elements in the regulations relating to disabled people, said that he would continue to closely monitor and adjust the implementation of the policy “to ensure that the needs of these...
John Hemming: The Minister made it very clear that this is not about the elements relating to spare rooms but an argument that is contested in respect of non-dependant deductions.
John Hemming: Does my hon. Friend not accept that the debate today is not about the principle of the spare room subsidy, spare room rent subsidy, bedroom tax or whatever we wish to call it, but about whether the exceptions set out in guidance—in effect, there are legitimate expectations about those exceptions, subject to judicial review—should be transferred into legislation to give people greater...
John Hemming: rose—