Tuesday, 31 January 2012 12:42
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): Thank you, Mr Crausby, for chairing the debate so well. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who never misses an opportunity to speak up for the Royal Navy and for Gosport. I am delighted that she is serving as chairman of the sub-committee of the all-party group on the armed forces, of which I am chairman. In that capacity, she is looking after the Royal Navy and doing a very good job, too. I thank her for that.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): I, too, welcome the fact that the Backbench Business Committee has found time for this debate, but does my right hon. Friend not agree that defence should be a matter not for that Committee but for Her Majesty’s Government? This issue should be debated in Government time, not in Backbench Business Committee time.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend. This is the first occasion on which I have debated the Bill, and I am puzzled on two counts. First, if the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) is right that there is a means of reducing the burden on local authorities, presumably, at the expense of businesses, why should that be the case? Secondly—and forgive me for mentioning this, Madam Deputy Speaker—why should such a measure apply in London when there is no such provision in the rest of the UK? The legislation cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) covers every other metropolis in England, so why should London receive special treatment?
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): Will the hon. Lady express some degree of regret, because bank bonuses under this Government are 40% lower than they were under the previous one? She must tell the House who it was who gave Sir Fred Goodwin his knighthood.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): What estimate the Church Commissioners have made of the number of churches from which lead has been stolen in the last 12 months.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): I shall be brief because a large number of hon. Members are trying to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, and because I suspect that a great many of them, including the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), want to say the same kind of thing and are generally in agreement with the excellent Mary Portas report, to which I shall not refer further except to say that I broadly support most of its 28 proposals.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): How many special schools have converted to academies in (a) North Wiltshire constituency, (b) the south-west and (c) England since May 2010.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman clarified one small point that is missing from the motion: namely, that he is referring to large pub companies that own large numbers of pubs and that family-owned brewing companies that own fewer than 500 pubs, such as Wadworth and Arkells in my constituency, are specifically excluded from the statutory regulation for which he is calling.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): The McNulty report identified some 30% savings in real costs across the piece. If that is to be achieved by the closure of ticket offices or in other ways, what will the Minister do to ensure that that money will be passed on not to the rail companies but to the users? The line from Chippenham—the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames)—to London is among the most expensive in the world: more, mile for mile, than the cost of Concorde. We need to cut those rates, and we can do that by saving money on the infrastructure.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who has done fantastic work on the prevention of suicide. It is not the Department of Health’s job to regulate the worldwide web, but what work has the Department done on examining the link between the watching of violent websites—and, indeed, looking at websites that promote or facilitate suicide—and the actual carrying out of suicide?
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Conservative): No one would disagree that there should be no place in this building for improper access or influence; that is obviously the case. Does the Minister agree, however, that there is a problem of definition? Perfectly legitimate charities and other organisations are lobbyists, even though they are not paid to lobby and do so on their own behalf. Will he therefore be careful about defining precisely what a lobbyist is, and take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater?
