We need your support to keep TheyWorkForYou running and make sure people across the UK can continue to hold their elected representatives to account.
Donate to our crowdfunderMatthew Taylor: Before the general election, the Chancellor pursued a policy of getting billions back from the European Union to the UK by repatriating regeneration funds. Since the general election, it seems that the Prime Minister has been pursuing a policy of giving away billions of pounds to the EU by giving up part of our rebate. What is the Treasury view on this apparent U-turn in policy?
Matthew Taylor: With the Government's plans for regional assemblies dead in the water, we are left, as my hon. Friend has said, with the centralisation of services from fire control rooms to secondary education and much else besides, plus a regional tier that is unelected, unaccountable and, frankly, extraordinarily bureaucratic and inefficient. Is it not true that the only way to rescue that is to...
Matthew Taylor: What assessment he has made of the likely impact on civilian air passenger operations at Newquay of stationing the joint strike aircraft there.
Matthew Taylor: The Minister will be aware that military operations at RAF St. Mawgan help to support the civilian service, which is crucial to the economy in Cornwall and whose withdrawal would create a gap in the maintenance of services. I understand that officials have asked the county council and others about the fact that the new aircraft's noise levels, which are double those of existing fighter...
Matthew Taylor: What saving in the typical household bill has resulted from the subsidy to electricity consumers in northern Scotland under the scheme introduced in April.
Matthew Taylor: Will the Minister have a word with his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to explain why a subsidy is provided that saves electricity bill payers in northern Scotland £27 a year, paid for by electricity consumers across the rest of the country and legislated for by this Government, when they rule out help for South West Water customers, who pay double the...
Matthew Taylor: I very much doubt whether we are going to disagree on anything tonight—that is the advantage of making an announcement before the debate. I hope the Minister agrees that, since the end of the millennium fund, the key thing that has fallen through the net is the renewal of the existing infrastructure. The press release appears to suggest that that is intended to be a major component, but I...
Matthew Taylor: I welcome the opportunity to return to an issue that I have debated on a number of occasions, most recently in an Adjournment debate about three years ago, when I made the case for community and village halls that have suffered a funding gap for essential repairs to buildings, many of which were constructed during the first and second world wars and are fundamental to the communities they...
Matthew Taylor: My hon. Friend is right to suggest that there is never a single pot or a single entry point, given the nature of government these days, but one or two counties have experimented with a single front door into the various funds. There has been an organisational pulling together of the opportunities. As development work is ongoing and liaison is taking place with organisations such as...
Matthew Taylor: Pursuing that point, is not the opposite likely to be the case? Is not the process of registration of tens of millions of people built around the same paper process that we already use to identify people and is it not capable of being abused? Could we not be creating an opportunity for thousands or even tens of thousands of false identities to be created at the very process of registration in...
Matthew Taylor: My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point about how widely drawn are the powers of the state, as set out in clause 1. However, we know from the Cabinet Office leak that the Government also foresee that the information will be used by the private sector. Does my hon. Friend agree that a person's identity number and card may be required by a growing number of private-sector organisations, as...
Matthew Taylor: If he will take steps when assessing franchise applications to ensure the future of the Cornwall sleeper service.
Matthew Taylor: Does the Minister agree that, at a time when hundreds of millions of pounds are being invested through the objective 1 process to help business in Cornwall, it would make no sense to cut the vital sleeper service as a result of the process that is isolating that service from the rest of the franchise? The sleeper service provides the only way for businessmen to avoid wasting half a day...
Matthew Taylor: The Minister will be as aware as we are that there will be confidentiality issues. However, the Department for Transport presumably has some notional idea of the service's levels of costs and subsidy. Can he give us any indication of those and of how much of a view the Department has on their acceptability or otherwise?
Matthew Taylor: The Minister may not be aware that there is no representative from the far west on the new body. Given that we in that region are the most reliant on the service, it seems extraordinary that we should now be excluded from the formal process of passenger representation.
Matthew Taylor: My hon. Friend will be aware—I hope that the Minister, too, is aware—that there is also a threat to the Newquay air service. However, if one leaves London in the morning without the overnight sleeper service, the earliest one can arrive in parts of Cornwall is midday. That is so even if one uses the Newquay air service. That would effectively cut us off for business purposes. Certainly...
Matthew Taylor: The Minister will be only too well aware that the Government were heading into great difficulties with their proposals on pension reform for teachers, firefighters, medical staff, civil servants and others before the election, because people felt rushed into changes that had not been properly negotiated. The Government have now either sensibly decided, or been forced by circumstances during...
Matthew Taylor: In the light of the issue of the costs of his employment and office, has the Minister given any thought to how much more time he will be able to put—post possible general election, when he no longer will have his role for the Labour party—into the job of Government and to how much more cost-effective his office may then be?
Matthew Taylor: Given that the Minister opened his comments by outlining the range of meetings he undertakes in his duties as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, could he, in the interests of public accountability, outline and publish the number of hours that he has spent in those meetings in which the subjects of the manifesto or the general election have not come up?
Matthew Taylor: On that point, WaterVoice South West is very keen to meet the Minister to discuss those issues, and south-west MPs would probably like to take part in that discussion. I hope that he, or his colleagues, are willing to agree to that.