European Union (Referendum) Bill

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5 July 2013  12.31 pm
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will be brief.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) for proposing this Bill and I strongly support him. I was interested when he said that he was barely a twinkle in his mother’s eye when the original votes were cast on our relationship with the EU, because I am probably about his mother’s age. We therefore have two generations of voters represented in this House who have never had a say on our relationship with the EU, and it is about time the British people had one.
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Neil Parish: Does my hon. Friend agree that when we had the referendum in 1975, it was about a common market? Now we have a European political union. Brussels has seized power. The last Labour Government gave away our rebate and got nothing for it, so the people should have a say.
Fiona Bruce: Absolutely right. There is a growing frustration on the part of the people, which is borne out of years of them not being adequately communicated with or informed about the implications of what was happening in the EU institutions. That has resulted in our public wanting this say.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South was quite right that the British people want a say, but I believe that they also want an informed say. Many of them feel they have a gut instinct of how they would vote, but they know that this is such a serious issue and such a major constitutional decision that they must have an opportunity to deliberate, debate and discuss the complex issues around it. Those of us who are today putting forward this proposal for a referendum are saying that we trust the British people to discuss such complex issues and then come to the right decision. Anyone who opposes this referendum is saying, “We don’t trust the British public to discuss issues of this complexity and detail.”
Jim Dowd: If letting the people have their say is so important, why is it that of all the Conservative Governments who have ever existed, only one—this one, forced by the Liberals to offer a referendum on the alternative vote—have ever given the people of Britain a referendum on anything? Devolution, regional government, the Mayor of London—all were from a Labour Government. The Tories have never given anybody a referendum on anything; now they are suddenly enthusiasts.
Fiona Bruce: The previous Labour Government had plenty of opportunities to grant a referendum on this issue, but they did not do so.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP): Does the hon. Lady not find it strange that the last Labour Government had 13 years to renegotiate, if they believed in that renegotiation, and present it to the British people, yet did not do so? Labour has constantly, and to this day, denied, the British people a say in their future in Europe.
Fiona Bruce: The hon. Gentleman is right. If passed, the Bill will trigger a debate throughout the nation and give the British public an opportunity to make that informed decision. The debate has already started in this Chamber today. Millions of people across the country will be watching and listening, and will have heard valuable and critical contributions, such as the speech from the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds).
Jim Shannon: On the subject of giving people choice, the fishing industry has felt the brunt of EU legislation and red tape—more so than other sectors. As European bureaucracy continues to strangle and choke the fishing industry, my constituents in Strangford, particularly in the fishing port of Portavogie, will want the chance to say no in a referendum—this is what we want to see.
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Fiona Bruce: As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes a valuable contribution. It is under this Government that we have seen fish discards eliminated.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that the Labour party, which continually complains about uncertainty, should support a referendum, and should be asking for it to be brought even further forward so that that uncertainty can be removed quickly?
Fiona Bruce: Another valid point, but I can also see the merit of the British people having the time, up to 2017, to digest and discuss these issues.
Other hon. Members want to speak, so I will close my remarks. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who is chair of the all-party group for a European referendum. I am a long-standing member, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay has done tremendous and sterling work in this House and beyond in pressing and making the case for an EU referendum, which the British people deserve.

Post-2015 Development Goals

4th July 2013

 

1.50 pm

Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): I am indeed, Mr Havard. Thank you for calling me, and I thank our Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), who referred to cross-party work on the issue, which is exemplified on our Committee.
Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair): I wonder whether the Bruce clan are supporting each other.
Fiona Bruce: My support for my Chairman is purely professional. My right hon. Friend touched on the importance of job creation, which the Committee considered a crucial development challenge. Employment was included in the original MDG framework, but it was perhaps not sufficiently prominent and it failed to capture the public’s imagination in a way that people in the poorest and most vulnerable circumstances in developing countries say that it should have done. For them, it is an absolute priority: once they have food, water and, interestingly enough, roads, they really want jobs. They want roads so that they can get access to market.
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con): I apologise for arriving in the Chamber a bit late. On the subject of roads, does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most important things that the Department for International Development is doing in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo is supporting rural road infrastructure? As we saw in, I think, 2011, a road was built to a place that had been cut off for 20 years. Rather than it taking five days for people to get to market, only 60 km of new road meant that they could do so in two hours, which enabled them to bring their produce in, sell it and enjoy their livelihoods.
Fiona Bruce: That is an excellent example of the importance of roads. Another relates to Ethiopia, which the Committee also visited. Roads have been built into areas that were originally little more than bush, and, as a result, a health centre and a school can then be built. There is a degree of “villagisation”, whereby families who had perhaps been eking out a living separately in the bush can come together, form a community and support one another. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: roads are essential.
Jobs, too, are essential. Africa is a young continent, but one where, unless we focus on job creation, we will face an increasing employment challenge for youngsters aged up to 25, as the generations, which are now often in school, develop from childhood. One challenge is that we have focused so much—quite rightly—on primary education: there are now probably millions of children with some form of primary education, but with very limited opportunities for secondary and, certainly, tertiary education.
As we develop the new goals, we must consider how we can provide high-quality, targeted tertiary education, vocational skills and professional training, so that we can ensure that there are the business leaders, the technical skills and the young people to run with the vision of developing industries in their communities. If we do not get those skills and do not focus on developing them, we will miss a massive opportunity to help the people in those communities—young people with massive aspirations—to help themselves.
We should consider how to transport some of our skills and strategic understanding of how to develop business and build technical skills. We have to harness those things and consider also how we can harness the energies of people who have perhaps not thought of being involved in development work before. I cite my personal experience of doing business training in Rwanda; I hope to do the same this summer in Burundi.
I do not have a medical or teaching background, but I have a business background, so I went to do some business training. That showed me that every individual who is interested in supporting the developing world has something to offer—people might be interested in going out there to help to support countries that are, as our Chairman said, far less well off than ours. In further education and business development, we need to consider how people who might have taken early retirement but want to give something back can have the opportunity to do so.
I digress slightly, but may I mention the global poverty action fund? We need to re-examine whether it is focused correctly. A minimum of £250,000 is a huge amount of
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money—for example, an aspiring group of people in this country seeking to help to build a medical or teaching centre may not need to raise such a sum—so will the Minister look at that again? Furthermore, the fund is open for applications for an extremely limited time, often only several weeks—I believe that the current window closes on 9 July, after only a few weeks—but we want to encourage people who might have run businesses in this country to consider applying to the fund to see how they can share skills.
Returning to jobs as a means to end aid dependency, one thing that we need to do is ensure that local authorities in developing countries can maximise any opportunities for inward investment from countries throughout the world. The BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China—are looking to invest in Africa, and we must ensure that, when new factories and developments are built, the indigenous population and their local authorities have an opportunity to benefit. Local councils should be able to negotiate with contractors, developers and industrialists to ensure that the local community benefits properly. Those are sophisticated skills, but the UK can support them and we need to ensure that the new MDGs are focused on them.
We also need to consider a more holistic approach to job creation, ensuring that there is a suitable environment for business development in those countries. Thus, water is necessary not only for the development of individual, family and village life, but for businesses. Water and sanitation are critical, and unless people have access to sanitation they cannot run a decent business. Land title is essential, as is access to finance and the ability to run a business strategically. There is a huge opportunity for us to examine how local authorities in those countries can work with local business people, so that we in turn can support them and maximise the opportunities for local job creation.
We must look at the issue holistically. We start young people here considering jobs and job opportunities between the ages of 12 and 14, before they start to study for their GCSEs, and we need to do the same for children in Africa and other countries, and consider secondary and early-years education to see what education, skills and training can be invested in those young people to link directly into job opportunities in their countries and local communities. We need an holistic approach to job creation and the reduction of aid dependency through new jobs in the developing world.

Local Government and Faith Communities

2nd July 2013

3.10 pm

Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): The “Faith in the Community” report, which was produced by the Christians in Parliament all-party group in conjunction with the Evangelical Alliance, is important in many ways, not least because it has helped to highlight the sheer extent and value of faith groups’ contribution to local communities throughout the country. Many local authorities acknowledged that they were unaware of the extent of the voluntary work that is often quietly done by people of faith.
As Andrew Taylor, a minister at Union street Baptist church in Crewe, said in a report aptly named “Hidden Treasure in Cheshire East: Faith Action Audit”:

“One of the calls of the Christian faith, as other faiths, is that we should love and serve our neighbours, usually quietly and without expectation of recognition and reward. This does not mean that acknowledgement and appreciation are not welcome.”

That work is often done quietly, so it has often gone unnoticed and unappreciated, and we have not been as supportive as we could be in our local communities or as a wider society, so I hope that the “Faith in the Community” report will go a considerable way towards changing that and helping to build the capacity of faith groups that have a desire to make an even greater contribution to our local communities. I therefore want to use the debate to say thank you to faith groups across the country and to send a message of thanks from the House to those groups for their invaluable contribution in our local communities. I also want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing this important debate.
I want to say thanks to the more traditionally recognised groups in our communities, such as Mums and Tots. I was interested to note the name of one such group in my local area—the Little Nutters. I also want to say thanks to those who care for our elderly, support the homeless and provide youth clubs. In addition, I want to say thanks to those who provide newer, more contemporary help, such as the debt counselling work done by CAP, Sycamore Trust’s restorative justice work in prisons, and the parenting classes run by the Let’s Stick Together project, which is promoted by Care for the Family, for couples who have had their first child. Such help also includes enterprise coaching, the provision of office space, IT training and free legal advice clinics.
The drug rehab centre in my church—the Church @ The Foundry, in Widnes—is acknowledged by the local authority to be the best in the area. In the church
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grounds, there are also more than 20 bungalows that were built many years ago to house and care for elderly people. That remarkable work has been sustained over decades and has been supported by the fellowship in the church.
Faith groups provide organisational skills, mentoring, language classes, bereavement counselling, anger management and emergency disaster relief—the list is endless. We also see franchise-format voluntary work, and we have heard about the street pastors. Best practice is shared among such groups, and there is also good engagement with local authorities.
A small but significant category of respondents to the “Faith in the Community” report said that local authorities have entered into formal contracts for services with faith groups. One example is the library in Grappenhall, in Warrington. I know the library well, because I was a councillor when the cabinet was deciding what to do with it. It was clear the local authority could no longer sustain it, and I have watched with great admiration as local church members have taken over that community facility and maintained it. I pay tribute to Jan and John Ashby for their work.
We have also seen collaborative work between Redeeming Our Communities and the police. The organisation, which works in some of the most troubled areas of our country, also sustains a youth project in a fire station. That and the other projects I have mentioned are excellent examples of partnership working between faith groups and local and statutory authorities.
However, such good engagement does not always happen. How, then, can local and, indeed, national Government better engage with and support faith groups to develop their voluntary work and undertake it in as professional a manner as possible, as the great majority wish to? The “Faith in the Community” report clearly states that the first step is for faith groups and local authorities to talk and to develop closer working relationships to break down barriers, whether perceived or real. Such barriers might relate to the language used, concerns about motives, local authorities’ concerns that faith groups’ beliefs will be expressed in a way they consider inappropriate, or faith groups’ concerns that local authorities will not be interested in them and that resources and support will not be available to them just because they are faith groups.
Let me turn now to the “Hidden Treasure in Cheshire East: Faith Action Audit” report, which was produced by the faith community and the local authority in which my constituency lies. I pay tribute to Carolyn McQuaker, who spearheaded the report. The clue to what it is is in the title: an audit of the voluntary and community work of faith groups. The report is interesting because it takes the overview in the “Faith in the Community” report, which the all-party group on Christians in Parliament and the Evangelical Alliance have just produced, and focuses on just one local authority area.
The audit sent out 246 questionnaires to churches and faith communities, of which 154 were returned. Some 150 were from groups that defined themselves as Christian, while one was from a Baha’i group, one was from a Hindu group and two were from Unitarian groups. It is interesting that although there was a connection between those groups and local authority agencies, such as the council for voluntary service, children’s centres and youth services, only 12.5% of the responding faith
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groups said they had any such active connection with their local authority. Faith groups do valuable work, but how much more could be delivered with just a little more engagement, advice and practical support?
As statistics from the local authority show, the reach of the various faith groups and the impact that they have on tackling challenges in our society are immense, and I hope that hon. Members will bear with me while I quote some of the statistics. Altogether, the 154 faith communities that responded are responsible for running 536 projects—an average of between three and four regular caring projects per group. Incidentally, those projects exclude any that are established and held for the purpose of teaching religion, which were not counted in the report. More than 16,300 people engage in those weekly projects. Some 2,239 toddlers and their carers attend 79 groups each week, while 5,087 children and young people take part in 207 projects run for them across the area. Some 1,700 elderly people join in 81 activities, while 2,365 people take part in 64 projects to develop life skills and to help with physical, mental and material well-being. Nearly 5,000 people take part in other community projects.
In addition to the projects run directly by faith groups, their members also contribute regularly to the life of schools. Some 254 members of faith groups are school governors, and there are an additional 89 school projects. Many church members also give time regularly to the life of local care facilities for the old and the young.
If all that work had to be carried out by statutory services, it would require the equivalent of 281 full-time jobs. If those figures are representative of the faith groups in Cheshire East as a whole, 862 projects are being run for more than 26,000 people every week, at a value of many millions of pounds. Of course, that is probably still vastly understated, because many hours go unrecorded, and the figures do not take into account the voluntary time given to activities such as overseeing groups, supporting and managing volunteers and managing the buildings in which events take place.
The “Hidden Treasure” report contains several constructive, practical suggestions to help faith groups to build on their already remarkable contribution. To build capacity, realise potential and achieve best practice, faith groups themselves should work at communicating with, and representing themselves to, the rest of the voluntary and public sector, such as by engaging more closely with local authorities by sitting on local boards set up by, or in partnership with, local authorities. That could help to make the work of faith groups strategic, and prevent opportunities from being missed to develop or follow through an overall vision for an area or a locality.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab): I was struck by what the hon. Lady said about the proportion of faith groups in her area with pre-existing local authority contacts. Does she think that umbrella faith groups, such as Churches Together or equivalent groups in other faiths, might play a useful role in co-ordinating such links?
Fiona Bruce: I agree. Churches Together provides an excellent way of connecting in many towns. In my constituency, Churches Together in Middlewich has recently launched a good neighbours project, especially
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to support those who may be lonely at home, in conjunction with the town council and housing association.
It is important for local authorities to encourage church groups to engage with them. As we have heard, the language used by local authorities can be a barrier, and staff need to be aware of that. Councils might consider developing a dedicated faith-based support agency to enable them to understand the challenges faced by faith groups, to form a bridge to the wider voluntary community services and statutory sector, and to provide a resource to enable faith groups to understand what support from local authorities is available to them. It is essential that communication is improved.
As we have heard, the statutory sector is often not aware of the level or range of activity in the faith sector. Equally, the faith sector is unaware of the scope and scale of issues and priorities that the statutory sector must address, or its plans of action. The two should work together on a common vision and direction, pooling resources on several levels—geographically, in localities, and thematically, such as across the youth work of an area—with the aim of facilitating networks and more effective joint action.
True partnerships of trust should respect and honour people’s values and beliefs, and I shall come on to that at the end of my speech with reference to the “Faith in the Community” report. People working with faith groups must connect with them in a way that will enhance, rather than detract from, what they are doing, and protect the ownership of the vision and worth that motivates people of faith. Perhaps the statutory sector needs a little training and guidance to help it to work in partnership with groups that have a faith identity, to help them to maintain that, and perhaps to avoid the heavy bureaucracy that can be so off-putting to the groups.
Local authorities can also help faith groups to improve their research. Faith groups are often very good at measuring activity, but less good at assessing their own impact. Councils could help them to improve that while respecting the fact that it is often church members who have the closest contact at grass-roots level with those in most need in the community. When I was a councillor, a report was done on our youth work—it was not good. One of the problems was that the youth workers worked 9 to 5, and it was the church youth leaders out on the streets, doing the detached work night after night, who understood what young people were coping with and were the most effective. More such joint working and interaction is needed.
A further recommendation of the “Hidden Treasure” report concerns training. Local authorities have huge resources and expertise with which to provide quality training, which could radically help to build capacity among faith groups. I am pleased to note that Cheshire East council has strengthened its offer of training to faith groups because of the report, and that should enable more faith groups to sustain projects. Often they have the passion and vision to start a project, but sustaining one perhaps takes a little more training, support and expertise than many faith groups have.
In addition, often relatively small amounts of money, compared with a local authority budget, can have a significant impact on faith groups’ ability to expand their capacity. However, many do not want to engage in the commissioning process, which they find burdensome,
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and nor do they have the capacity to do so. A little more financial support would be appreciated, and it would also be helpful if there was an annual audit and review of the kind of work that faith groups do in every local area so that we may celebrate and highlight the sector’s achievements and ensure that local authorities can fully engage with their plans and actions.
I said that I would touch on the “Faith in the Community” report, and I want to clarify two points. It is important that guidance should be issued

“that expresses a clear understanding that it is legitimate for beliefs to be manifested”

as faith communities go about their work within local communities

“without implying proselytisation.”

It is important not to confuse the two. Finally, local authorities should provide reasonable accommodation of religion and belief whenever possible. The report states:

“An approach should be adopted that allows faith groups to be open about their beliefs and values, and the practices these encourage, rather than emphasise a privatisation of belief”,

and suggests that practical provision should be made

“for substantive freedom of religious expression”

and belief. After all, that is the very thing that motivates people of faith to undertake the remarkable work that they do.