Andrew Jones MP Archives - Page 9 of 11

Andrew Jones MP defends supporting crime bill

Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones has defended a crime bill that gives police new powers to deal with protests after it was criticised as a “fundamental attack” on freedom of speech.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill covers major government proposals on crime and justice, including changes to protests.

The bill passed its first hurdle this week after an overwhelming vote in favour by Conservative MPs.

All three Conservative MPs whose constituencies include the Harrogate district — Jones, Skipton and Ripon MP Julian Smith and Selby and Ainsty MP Nigel Adams — supported it.

The protest measures drawn up by ministers and police chiefs will mean more conditions are imposed on static demonstrations, including start and finish times, noise limits and penalties for activists causing “serious annoyance”.

At a meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s Harrogate and Knaresborough Area Committee today, Liberal Democrat councillor David Goode described the bill as a “a fundamental attack on our democratic rights”.

He said it would “significantly restrict” people’s rights to hold peaceful protests and asked Mr Jones why he voted for it.

Mr Jones responded:

“The underlying principle of freedom of speech and freedom to protest is absolutely unchanged.

“This is about making sure we can protest in a way which doesn’t stop people getting to work or a hospital appointment.

“It is possible to protest without impacting others so what we need to strike therefore is that balance and that is what the bill does.”

The bill’s second reading was passed by 359 votes to 263 on Tuesday. It also contains dozens of new measures to increase sentences for child killers and other violent criminals, as well as tougher penalties for attacks on police officers and changes to sexual offences legislation.

The most controversial part, however, are the reforms on protests, which garnered extra interest after scenes of police officers restraining women attending a vigil in memory of Sarah Everard in London on Saturday.

At present, police need to prove protesters knew they had been told to move on before they can be said to have broken the law.

The bill proposes an offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”, which is designed to stop people occupying public spaces to make themselves both seen and heard.

The new laws would also give Home Secretary Priti Patel the authority to define “serious disruption to the life of the community” and “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation” — a concept opponents argue is not clear enough.

Speaking at a debate in the House of Commons this week, the Home Secretary defended the proposed changes to peaceful protests which she said are a “cornerstone of democracy”.

She said:

“This bill will give police the powers to take a more proactive approach in tackling dangerous and disruptive protests. The threshold at which the police can impose conditions on the use of noise at a protest is rightfully high.

“The majority of protesters will be able to continue to act, make noise as they do so now without police intervention.

“But we are changing it to allow the police to put conditions on noisy protests that cause significant disruption to those in the vicinity. As with all our proposals, the police response will still need to be proportionate.”

Harrogate Conservative Association criticised for £10,000 business grant

The Liberal Democrats have said it was “inappropriate” for the Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative Association to accept a £10,000 grant aimed at small businesses struggling during the pandemic.

The conservative group insisted the grant was necessary because the pandemic made it unable to generate income through its usual “activities”.

But the chair of the Harrogate and Knaresborough Liberal Democrats said he struggled to see the similarities between the small, local businesses unable to open and a political group.

Michael Newby, said:

“I thought it was inappropriate to take advantage of the money for businesses who are struggling. I struggle to understand how their income has been impacted the same as small businesses.

“We are all struggling, we, as a party, have lost out because we can’t have our fundraising events but we aren’t depending on customers or clients and that’s where I see the difference.”

The conservative’s grant came to light after an investigation by journalist Alexandra Rogers at Yorkshire Live, who found that Harrogate and Knaresborough was one of only four associations in the whole of Yorkshire to receive one.

The grant was introduced by the government for companies with a rateable value of £15,000 and received business rates relief. The local association met these requirements.

Cllr Graham Swift, Harrogate Borough Council’s deputy leader is quoted in the Yorkshire Live article and said the grant was used to cover staff costs and rent:

“Our association, like most businesses, was unable to carry out our regular income generating activities.

“The government’s specific support to all these businesses has prevented us from closure, prevented us from laying off staff and ensured that our landlord is fairly compensated for their service.”

The Stray Ferret asked Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative Association for a comment but had no response at the time of publication.

Other Conservative associations in Wakefield, Selby and Ainsty and Shipley also accepted the grant. Their decisions have also been met with criticism.

Earlier this evening we showed a picture of the Harrogate Conservative Club, this was an error and we would like to clarify the club has no connection to the Conservative Association.

King James’s School spending £7,000 a week on covid

King James’s School in Knaresborough is spending an extra £7,000 a week tackling covid, Parliament was told yesterday.

Covid has imposed additional costs on all schools, such as paying for supply teachers to cover teachers who are isolating.

But the scale of the problem at one local school was laid bare during a Commons education debate.

Andrew Jones, the Conservative MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, asked if the government would take into account variable infection rates when planning education budgets for tomorrow’s Spending Review.

Mr Jones said:

“The highest levels of infection lead to the highest levels of people having to isolate, including teachers, so there are increased budgetary costs from having to backfill teaching staff.

“King James’s School in Knaresborough, a secondary school in my constituency, briefed me that this is running at £7,000 a week, so schools are facing a significant challenge.”

Paul McIntosh, acting headteacher of King James’s School, urged ministers to help. He told the Stray Ferret:

“In the present climate, it is unsustainable to keep spending the extra money on resources like additional cleaning and supply teachers in order simply to maintain the school functioning in a relatively normal capacity.

“We would greatly appreciate the government giving serious consideration to providing schools with additional funding in order to support us through these difficult winter months.”

Gillian Keegan, the skills minister, told the Commons debate the government had provided £75,000 additional funding for “unavoidable costs that could not be met from their existing budgets”.

She added:

“There will be a further opportunity later in the year for schools to claim for eligible costs that fell between March and July.”

20 Harrogate district charities awarded £415,000

Twenty voluntary organisations in the Harrogate district have shared £415,000 from the government’s Coronavirus Community Support Fund.

The fund enables small and medium sized not-for-profit organisations to help vulnerable groups during the pandemic.

A total of 8,250 organisations shared £200 million nationally.

The largest local beneficiaries were Community Catalysts, a social enterprise in Harrogate that helps people run community businesses, which received £69,000 and the Knaresborough community arts charity Orb, which was awarded £65,000.

Other major beneficiaries included Yorkshire Yoga & Therapy Centre in Knaresborough and Harrogate’s Wesley Centre, which received £48,990 and £37,500 respectively.

In a statement on his website, Andrew Jones, the Conservative MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, said:

“Over the last decade since I became the MP for our area I have seen first-hand the valuable work many of the organisations do.

“I am delighted that they are benefiting from the support fund and continuing the fantastic work they do.”

The successful applicants were:

Community Catalysts £69,000
Orb £65,000
Yorkshire Yoga and Therapy Centre £48,990
Wesley Centre £37,500
Harrogate Mind £24,700
Open Country £24,212
Harrogate and District Community Action £23,346
Disability Action Yorkshire £21,893
Artizan International £19,465
Claro Enterprises £10,000
Resurrected Bites £10,000
Cliff House Community Support Services £10,000
Saint Michael’s Hospice £9,107
Boroughbridge and District Community Care £9,000
Autism Angels £8,500
Harrogate Samaritans £8,000
Vision Support Harrogate District £7,056
New Beginnings peer support group £4,332
Happy Wanderers Ambulance Association £3,200
Harrogate and Knaresborough Toy Library £1,307

Strayside Sunday: Conservative MPs paying a high price for loyalty

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party.

A Russian, an Englishman and an American. No, not the first line of a bad joke but rather friends with whom I have discussed our current predicaments during the last 7 days.

The Russian reminded me of a saying of which her family in the Urals are fond. “The cow that moo’s loudest”, they say, “bares no milk.” This in the midst of a discussion about the merits of political leadership here at home and across the pond. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump being the most vocal bovines in their respective cow stalls.

Boris has always had a lot to say, and of course he says it with an almost unmatched elan and a vocabulary matched only in its breadth by its intermittent obscurity. For some though, Boris is no more than a highbinder, an empleomaniac, a fustilarian snollygoster, in short, a bit of cockalorum. Or at least that’s how we talk about him, round our way. The thing is, what we actually need now is sensible political leadership and prosaic policy. Less show; more go. A steady hand on the tiller from which we can all draw confidence and succour.

And confidence, it seems, is a commodity in short supply in the parliamentary Conservative Party at the moment. For months now the government has been unable to get out ahead of the exigencies created by Covid-19. It has lurched from one panic policy announcement to the next, led by the science, which is itself modelling the unknowable. For Conservative MP’s not in government, they must follow the party whip into the voting lobbies and are then left to explain their flip-floppery to angry, frustrated and frightened constituents. Collective responsibility breaks down when contradictory changes of direction happen too often and expose those bound by it to the charge of hypocrisy.

So for once I find myself in sympathy with Harrogate MP Andrew Jones, who this week voted with the government to support a national lockdown, having declared at the end of October, again in support of the government, that local measures were now needed and that a national lockdown would be “wrong.” The discomfort Mr. Jones may feel at his public change of mind is the price he pays for his loyalty to party, an unfashionable virtue in modern politics, especially in a tribe noted, at the best of times, for behaving like ‘ferrets in a sack’.

Is a second national lockdown actually the right thing to do? Steve Russell, the Chief Executive of Harrogate Hospital believes so. In an interview in these pages this week Mr Russell pointed out that the existing (local tiered) lockdowns were not “slowing the pressure enough” under which Covid-19 infections are placing our hospitals. Indeed, the one consistent part of government policy and communication throughout the crisis has been its protection of the NHS and its bed capacity. NHS staff face the coming months with real anxiety, aware as they are of the dangers of what policy makers call “winter pressures.” The only way for us to help is to do our bit and comply with the inconveniences of lockdown.

Is there any other way? Perhaps, but it would involve targeting specific groups – the clinically vulnerable and those over the age of 65 – and imposing differential measures upon them. There is precedent. During the Second World War 1.5m children were separated from their families and evacuated, for their safety and the national good, from our major cities. An Englishman I know, a highly successful septuagenarian, undeniably an establishment figure, is of the opinion that he and his peers should be locked down to enable the rest of the economy to function freely and give young people a better chance of getting employment. Is that feasible? I’d be interested to know what you think.

Notwithstanding the current maelstrom at home, I thank my lucky stars and stripes that I live in Britain, rather than the United States. This week I have been exchanging transatlantic emails with my distraught American university roommate, a Delaware native and lifelong follower and booster of Sleepy Joe. John was four years old when Mr. Biden was first elected to the Senate from his home state, so he grew up watching him closely, voting for him early and often and, like Joe, he believes passionately in consensus, moderation, dialogue and tolerance.

As legal firearms and ammunition flew off the shelves during the last weeks of the US election campaign, and the sitting President, through force of personality from the bully pulpit was advocating the uniquely American proclivity for litigation to undo the same democratic process through which he was elected four short years ago, my friend and I communed in angst. We worry that the world is becoming ungovernable, that our challenges are so acute and our divisions are so deep rooted that reason and compromise are falling out of reach, and that we are seeing a world in which to say something untrue frequently enough and with sufficient gusto will transform the lie to factual truth.

For my part I believe now is the time to double down on the collectivist spirit and to cherish community. Division needs no excuse to take root in difference, from whichever land you hail. We really are all in this together and that is never more true on this day, above all others, when we remember the fallen and their act of sacrifice for all of us.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Smaller scale for Harrogate Remembrance service at Stonefall

A Remembrance service will be held at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Harrogate next month, but with just a handful of people taking part.

Usually attended by dozens of dignitaries and organisations, the Stonefall event will this year be on a much smaller scaled because of covid restrictions.

Harrogate Brigantes Rotary Club said a few of its members will lay wreaths on behalf of the Royal British Legion, politicians and local service groups. They will also lay a special wreath on behalf of the New Zealand city of Christchurch to remember those that came from across the world to serve.

Reverend David Hoskins will still give a blessing at the closed event on November 8 at 1pm. A few members of the club will lay wreaths on behalf of the Royal British Legion, politicians and local service groups.

After the wreath laying, the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery will be open to the public for quiet contemplation around the stone of remembrance.

The Brigantes Rotary Club has asked the Harrogate community to “remember in your hearts and say a silent thank you to those who gave their lives for the freedoms we enjoy today.”

Meanwhile, the church service and parade through Knaresborough will also not go ahead. The Knaresborough branch of the Royal British Legion has asked residents to hold their own two-minute silences at home instead.

Harrogate’s town centre parade and service has also been called off.

Andrew Jones urges PM to give support package to conference sector

Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones today urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to commit to a support package for the conference and exhibition industry.

Speaking at Prime Minster’s Questions, Jones said Johnson had recognised the difficulties facing the industry last month when he revealed ministers were working urgently on a support package for sports clubs that rely on paying spectators.

Jones said the the exhibition industry was “really important in Harrogate and Knaresborough”, adding:

“Could he tell the House when that package will be coming forward, and will it include the conference and exhibition industry?”

Johnson said the conference and exhibition industry was worth about £90 billion to this country and of “massive importance” but did not commit to any firm support.

He added:

“It was a very difficult decision to take to pause conferences and exhibitions. We want to get them open as fast as possible.

“Of course, they have had a lot of support, as I indicated earlier—the £190 billion package is there to help businesses of all kinds—but the best way forward is to get the kind of testing systems that will enable not just conferences and businesses of that kind but all types and even theatres to reopen and get back to normality. That is what we are aiming for.”

Care home visits in district may be allowed after October

North Yorkshire County Council may allow visits to care homes after this month following a backlash from upset relatives.

Richard Webb, director of health and adult services at the council, wrote to care homes this week advising them to halt routine visits throughout October.

This prompted some members of the public, as well as Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones, to say visits should be allowed to go ahead.

At a press briefing yesterday, Mr Webb said the council would set up a working group with relatives and care home providers to investigate ways that allowed people to visit homes after this month.

One possible solution, he said, would be to allow a nominated person to visit.

But Mr Webb added he “could not make any promises”.

One Harrogate resident, whose 99-year-old mother has dementia and is in a local home, contacted the Stray Ferret to say care home residents deserved better. She said:

“It is sheer cruelty and tragic to not address this problem and leave our loved ones to live out their last days alone and severely depressed, as is happening now.

“What we desperately need is adequate testing, which would enable one key visitor, who should be tested and treated in the same way as staff, to be allocated with unlimited access to each resident.’

The resident was critical of Mr Jones’ suggestion to Parliament that visits could take place behind glass screens or windows.

She said it would add to the confusion and frustration felt by residents with dementia, adding:

“It would most likely seriously distress them and add to the cruelty of this situation.”

Harrogate district MPs vote as Brexit bill clears Commons

Two Harrogate district MPs voted in favour of the government’s Internal Market Bill yesterday, helping to take it to the next legislative stage.

Andrew Jones, Harrogate and Knaresborough MP, and Nigel Adams, Selby and Ainsty MP, voted in line with the government but Julian Smith, Skipton and Ripon MP, abstained.

The legislation paves the way for the UK to override parts of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. MPs voted it through at the third reading last night by 340 to 256.

The Bill sparked controversy after Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, said it would break international law in a “specific and limited way”.

The Stray Ferret contacted Mr Jones, Mr Adams and Mr Smith asking why they voted the way they did. None had replied by the time of publication.

The Bill will now undergo further scrutiny in the House of Lords.

What is the Internal Market Bill?

After the UK left the EU on January 31 it signed the Withdrawal Agreement.

The agreement included a Northern Ireland Protocol, which was designed to prevent a hard border returning to the island of Ireland.

The Internal Market Bill attempts to override parts of the agreement. It would allow the UK to modify or reinterpret state aid rules if the two sides do not strike a future trade deal.

Strayside Sunday: Covid testing should be devolved to local authorities

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party.

Life, it has been said, is just the correct apportionment of blame.

It certainly seems that way in politics and the media coverage of it. I’m as guilty as the rest, often writing negative opinion in this column and raging against the machine in conversation. Time for some perspective I feel.

Last Sunday I wrote about the dilemma faced by former Northern Ireland Secretary and Ripon MP Julian Smith in whether or not to support a new trade bill that would break international law and ignore the Northern Ireland protocol he signed when in office. When the moment of truth came Mr. Smith found enough moral fibre and courage to abstain, thereby preserving his principle, avoiding conflict with his own party leadership, safe in the knowledge that his vote would not put too much of a dent in the government’s whopping majority in parliament. He made a mature political decision to do the right thing both by the people of Northern Ireland and by the party he represents. For this he is to be applauded.

Contrast this with the position of Harrogate’s Andrew Jones MP. A remainer, Mr. Jones waved through the bill, voting with my old boss Iain Duncan Smith, Jacob Reese-Mogg, Steve Baker and the rest of the European Reform Group ultras, for a law that breaks previous agreements with the European Union and breaks international law.

There may well be good reasons for this (although preserving his odour with the Conservative Chief Whip is not one them), but, as ever, Harrogate’s MP is reticent, some might say invisible, when it comes to explaining the reasons behind his actions to the people he purports to represent. Try as they might, I understand the journalistic staff of The Stray Ferret can’t extract comment or explanation from Mr. Jones, nor his office. At worst this pattern of behaviour is undemocratic, at best it is disrespectful, regardless it is cowardly.

But governing is always difficult; it is the consideration of competing claims and countervailing arguments. Done well and, in normal times, government should arrive at negotiated settlements, grounded in their own cogent and transparent philosophy, or “political bottom” as I call it, with enough marrow to satisfy the appetites of all interested parties, voters prime amongst them.

But as we teeter on the brink of another national lockdown; likely a 2-week “circuit break,” it does begin to feel as though the government’s response to Covid is out of control, lurching from one entirely reactive policy to the next. ‘Whack-a-mole;’ knocking local outbreaks on the head, was tried and failed, bubbling was given a go and hasn’t worked, and the ‘Rule of Six’ has lasted less than two weeks. The Government is at sea, but, let’s remember, by definition there is no playbook for handling this pandemic, unprecedented in its scale and effect. This is as true in Harrogate and North Yorkshire as it is nationally.

Our “world class” Test and Trace programme is a disaster. The national testing system is the latest in a long line of national ‘top-down’ IT programmes that are not fit for purpose. Stories of people finding it difficult to book a test online are myriad, delays are common and tests have been offered that require 200-mile or more round trips. Quietly, significant rates of false positives and false negatives confuse the picture. Consequently, as Covid rates rise again, local authority leaders are holding back testing capacity to ensure tests are available for their own key workers. Cases go unchecked, frustration mounts and decisions are made in fear.

I would imagine that this fear (of a rise in Covid infection rates) is at least in part behind Harrogate council’s decision to give a week’s notice that it will not extend permission for outdoor drinking and dining to continue on Stray land outside the The Blues Bar. Hot on the heels of the mess made of the Stray by the World Cycling Championships the council worries publicly that, as Autumn sets in, slippery conditions underfoot will endanger the local public and leave it with a turf repair bill. Sod it, I say. The more than 3000 people who have signed a petition against the council’s plan seem to agree.

I understand that government has to find a way to act in our best interest while reassuring us that all will be well. But fobbing us off with jobsworth “elf and safety” justifications for actions taken to protect us from the coming second wave will not wash.

Local authority leaders are also exasperated with Westminster’s efforts to recruit a national workforce of Trace Agents. Beyond the fact that few of these people possess the established local, third sector and civil society networks which enable effective communication with local people, they also lack detailed knowledge of the key societal variables driving both Covid behavioural compliance and outbreaks; such as the nature of local housing stock, family living patterns, travel habits, culture and language. This is, in fact, what local authorities are in business to do. We need to let them get on with it.

Tracing efforts were initially outsourced to national private providers such as Serco (offering a one size fits all approach) when, instead, local authorities would much rather use their own staff, equipped both with specialist epidemiological training (asking the right questions in the right order) and a detailed understanding of their own patch. This is how it works round here and all that. Our MP’s, Messrs Adams, Jones and Smith, ought to be advocating loudly and publicly for this approach, rather than following blindly the party line that all is well in Test and Trace land. They must know that this is beyond politics; it’s a matter of life and death.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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What is the Internal Market Bill?

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