07/06/2016 Tuesday in Parliament

Hello and welcome to Tuesday In Parliament,

Hello and welcome to Tuesday In Parliament,

our look at the best of the day in the Commons and the Lords.

On this programme:

The controversial boss of Sports Direct admits his firm

grew too fast for him to control every part of it.

It's like going out one day and you've got a tiny,

little inflatable, and you're in control, and the next,

wake up one morning and you're on an oil tanker.

Entering the referendum fray.

The Archbishop of Canterbury says Ukip leader MP Nigel Farage has

given "legitimisation to racism" for political ends.

That is accentuating fear for political gain

and that is absolutely inexcusable.

And is it the wrong sort of water?

The Defence committee learns of problems facing Type-45

destroyers in the Gulf.

Why should it have come as such a surprise that there would be these

sorts of climatic demands and obstacles to be overcome

by a new design of ship?

But first, for weeks he's refused to come to Westminster.

But when the founder of Sports Direct, Mike Ashley,

finally did appear, to face the questions of MPs,

he provided a candid and plain-speaking performance.

The sporting retailer Sports Direct, whose headquarters are at Shirebrook

in Derbyshire, had faced accusations of a harsh regime,

forcing many of its employees to accept low rates of pay

and work in poor conditions, inside a tough disciplinary system.

The controversial Mr Ashley, who's also the chairman

of Newcastle United Football Club, admitted at the Business Committee

that the firm may have outgrown his ability to manage it.

People always ask me about Sports Direct,

"How can you manage it?

How can you...

Mike, I'm not being funny, it's a lot bigger than you and it's

a lot bigger than your capabilities to manage it," and you say, "Yes,

but it grows, it grows itself, it becomes its own thing."

I didn't build Sports Direct, Sports Direct built me,

you understand?

It's like going out one day, you've got a tiny, little inflatable,

and you are in control, and the next thing,

you wake up one morning, and you're on an oil tanker,

and that oil tanker, you can't be all over that oil tanker,

and if there is a problem on that oil tanker, by the way,

you are still responsible, as ultimately I am always

responsible for Sports Direct.

I am aware of that.

The docking of 15 minutes' pay if you're a little bit late.

Yes.

Who set that up in the first place?

I honestly don't know, is the truth.

I don't know when that started.

It definitely wasn't a policy that I put in,

because I actually don't believe it's fair.

If you ask me, I don't believe it's fair.

Thank you...

I mean, if one of my kids went to work somewhere and they were two

minutes late and were fined 15 minutes' pay, I wouldn't be

very impressed by that.

I think that's unreasonable.

Criticising workers over the tannoy for not working hard enough.

Now, this, I think, is a bit of a myth.

It's not something I was aware of did happen, but if it did happen,

I would like to think it doesn't happen any more.

We heard from a woman who said, and I quote,

this was said to her, and I quote, "If you want to get

a contract, we can talk about it over dinner."

She also said, not just one manager, but several, and she said

so and then broke down in tears.

That is not kind, is it?

No, that's the total opposite of kind.

That's some type of sexual predators that need to be dealt with.

But do you accept that this is happening in your business,

the business you created, that is shaped in your image,

this is happening in your business.

Well, it shouldn't.

If it does, it 100% should not be going on.

I don't know what I'm going to be able to put in place to stop it,

but at least I'm going to try.

You sit there and say those things to me, honestly,

they are repugnant, they're disgusting,

what do you want me to say?

Would you like it if you were me?

Well, the point is, it's not happening in Sainsbury's.

But how do you know?

It's happening in Sports Direct.

Are you certain it's not happening in Sainsbury's?

Are you absolutely sure?

You can sit here and say there's no sexual harassment

happening in Sainsbury's?

The difference here...

I think there probably is.

..the way you avoid people, the management structure you have

-- ..the way you employed people, the management structure you have

in place, the training that you have put in place for the managers,

the fact that you have 200 permanent staff and 2,000 who are temporary

with a high churn rate on very low pay, many of them quite vulnerable

people, some of whom have come from abroad, you know,

this is a culture that is ripe for exploitation.

Yes, we shouldn't have it.

I agree with you.

So are you now committing to a review of the way

you do business?

Guys, I'm coming here today to listen, and one of the reasons

I agreed to come, whether or not I think I ought to or not

is a different subject, is to make a difference.

Do you think your company has outgrown your ability to manage it?

Probably, a long time ago.

And I realise, even though I set up a tiny company in the past,

which has remained tiny, and I'm an MP that no-one's ever

heard of talking to a titan of the business sector,

but is it not time that...

Your analogy is, you woke up one day, and your little

business was an oil tanker.

Well, you know, if you gone from a dinghy to an oil tanker,

shouldn't you get someone who knows how to sail and drive an oil tanker?

Possibly, possibly.

I can accept the criticism.

Some of the things you've said to me today would actually lead me

to believe that it's definitely outgrown me.

He moved on to the employment of casual labour.

With respect, it would be amazingly difficult, naive, impossible,

to have grown as we've grown in the last ten years

and take all the people on directly ourselves.

I'm telling you, we couldn't have done it.

So I'm being honest with you, and I am saying, we

could not have done it.

It would have been physically impossible.

No one could predict that internet growth.

It came out of nowhere.

Literally nowhere.

And it requires ten times the people that retail does.

Lots of organisations have grown and given employees

permanent contracts.

Why is it so difficult for you?

I have given a lot of people permanent contracts.

You're not being fair now.

Now you're not being fair, you're trying to twist what I'm saying,

and that's not fair, and that's why I fear coming

to things like this, because you're trying to put words

in my mouth and you're trying to twist what I'm saying.

I am telling you, it was physically impossible over the last ten years

to have done what we've had to do with that amount of people

unless we went to external agencies who were professionals.

So you have to accept, the internet growth was a phenomenon

that none of us could have allowed for, and you have to accept,

well, I have to accept, not you, sorry, that Sports Direct

have made some mistakes, you have to accept that as well,

so we have to look to the future.

I've offered you guys to come any time you want now, I've even offered

to come back in a year if you really want me to,

and let's do some measures, and I can't get it it all right,

impossible that I can get everything right, I am one human being,

so stop it, please, OK?

Let's keep this positive and let's keep rolling forward.

Well, I'm trying to ask honest and straightforward questions.

And a word about British Home Stores.

Did you want to buy BHS?

Again, I don't think...

It is unfair, I think it's a no comment as it is now.

OK, well, that's fine, Mr Ashley, thank you very much for your time.

I can't resist it, 100%, I wanted to buy BHS.

You wanted to buy BHS?

LAUGHTER.

OK, OK, now I'm going to get told off by everybody.

And why was that stopped?

Ian, please, I'm already...

That's why I'm not City-trained, that's why they say they can't

house-train me, because I just am that person, you ask me something,

I blurt out the answer, you ask me another one

and we'll keep going.

Now, only six parliamentary days to go before the referendum

on EU membership.

Will it be a victory for Remain?

Or a triumph for Leave?

Voting is on June the 23rd.

The final session of Treasury questions in the Commons saw

the Chancellor George Osborne declare that a British exit

from the EU would weaken the Government's plans to boost

the economies of the cities of the North, known

as the Northern Powerhouse.

The Minister for the Northern Powerhouse James Wharton

is supporting the campaign for Britain to Leave the EU.

Recent figures showed a 9.6% drop in the value of new construction

project starts in the so-called Northern Powerhouse

to the end of 2015.

Interestingly, despite the Chancellor's rhetoric

on investment, much of the public capital invested thus far has

actually been delivered by the EU.

Would he therefore disagree with his own minister

for the Northern Powerhouse, who said recently that Brexit

will not affect Greater Manchester's vision and access to funding?

Well, as she well knows, I certainly think Britain

is stronger in the EU and that helps the Northern Powerhouse.

But I would make this observation - investment projects in the North

of England are up over 100% in the last two years

and that is actually in striking contrast to some other...

To give you a sense of scale, for example, investment projects

in London, it is welcome, but they are up 7%

in the last two years.

In the Northern Powerhouse, up 127%.

So we are rebalancing the economic geography of this country.

The Chancellor mentioned transport investment yet his government has

presided over a situation where there is 24 times more

transport investment in London than in the north.

First of all, it is quite right that we invest in major transport

infrastructure in our capital city, which we have done with Crossrail

but that is not to the exclusion of investment elsewhere in our country.

In her part of the north-west, of course, there has been

a massive investment in electrification of the railways.

And I might note that under a Labour government,

only ten miles of the entire railways of the country

were electrified.

We've got HS2, which will help with fast train

journeys to Merseyside as well as to Manchester.

And now with the new Merseyside Mayor agreed,

we can go on pouring more money into the infrastructure

of Merseyside so we support the private businesses

in the Merseyside area to grow and create jobs

in the private sector there.

For the first time, an Archbishop of Canterbury has given evidence

to a Commons Committee.

Justin Welby appeared before MPs on the Home Affairs Committee

to talk about immigration, and he launched a fierce attack

on the leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage.

He began by explaining why people should feel able to talk

openly about immigration.

The reality is that in many communities there is a great deal

of nervousness about immigration.

There is genuine fear.

Will this mean that we can't get our children in schools?

It is stirred up often by comments more widely.

And the answer to fear is not to say it is improper to fear.

Pastorally.

It is a pastoral comment.

But it is to recognise fear and to address the

causes of the fear.

Do you think there is a line between those who genuinely have

concerns about this and those who use the immigration issue

for party political purposes as part of a campaign of fear?

I'm referring to comments from the leader of Ukip,

Nigel Farage, who over the weekend has said that by staying in the EU

this could lead to sexual attacks such as the ones we saw in Cologne.

Those were his exact words.

Now, I would regard those comments as being racist,

and a lot of people would.

What is your take on what he has said?

I would agree with you.

I think that is an inexcusable pandering to people's

worries and prejudices, that's giving legitimisation

to racism, which I've seen in parishes in which I have served,

which has led to attacks on people in those parishes.

And we cannot legitimise that.

As I said, fear is a pastoral issue.

You deal with it by recognising it, by standing alongside and providing

answers to it.

What that is, is accentuating fear for political gain

and that is absolutely inexcusable.

So you would utterly condemn the comments made by Nigel Farage?

Without hesitation, without hesitation.

Do you think it is helpful when the level of debate around

immigration in this country sinks so low that a political leader

in our country gets stuck in a traffic jam and then blames

it on immigrants?

I mean, words fail me.

They failed me too when I heard about it.

I mean, I wasn't aware...

I don't know who you're talking about.

I haven't heard that particular comment.

But it may be that...

Nigel Farage.

Oh, really?

LAUGHTER.

I am shocked, truly shocked.

LAUGHTER.

You look very shocked.

Order, everyone.

You're watching our round-up of the day

in the Commons and the Lords.

Still to come:

Is there a way to end all the frustrations that always

seem to be part of the process to buy a house?

MPs who are conducting an inquiry into sexual harassment and violence

in schools have been told that the Government

is wildly underestimating the scale of the problem.

In some candid exchanges, anti-sexism campaigners told

the Women and Equalities Select Committee that official data

suggesting that sexual bullying was common in only five per cent

of schools did not reflect their own experience.

Feminista supports young people and teachers to take action

against sexism in schools across the country and the message

that we hear time and time again is that sexual harassment

is an everyday experience for many girls and young women

across the country.

But what our work also allows us to observe is the sense

of powerlessness that characterises girls' responses to it.

I think that is a very problematic figure.

It certainly doesn't reflect the reality that we know of and I'd

be concerned if the department were basing their response

on that figure.

But I think sometimes what it is more saying

is that it is to do with the lack of reporting, the lack

of challenging and that staff don't feel confident

to recognise this abuse, to challenge it, and that young

people don't feel confident to disclose it when it is happening.

I think we certainly is an organisation have seen a real

shift in how teachers in schools are talking about this.

So, 13 years ago we were knocking on doors trying to talk

about healthy relationships and violence prevention,

and teachers, particularly headteachers, didn't get it.

But there has been a seismic shift in how they understand

what the problem is now, and so that's very welcome

that they now understand that.

But there is a fear, I think, that if they are reporting

on the kind of sexual violence that is happening, what will that do

to them and their reputation as a school, in terms

of parents and Ofsted?

We have heard from girls who tell us that you don't

leave school as a girl without being called a slut.

That to wear shorts under your skirt to prevent boys revealing your

underwear in the playground is just normal behaviour.

So there is that sense of a sort of normalised culture of sexual

harassment in schools where girls don't feel able to report it,

and instead often change their own behaviour, such as wearing

shorts under their skirts.

We asked a group of students in a school in Hackney recently

what would stop sexual violence in the school and they all said

if the girls could wear trousers.

So it's about behaviour changing amongst girls rather than saying,

"Boys, don't be touching the girls."

In our experience, young people report that their sex education

was nonexistent or very poor and often only taught them things

like how to put a condom on a cucumber and really very

little more than that.

Some parents are going to be sexually abusing their children.

Sometimes that is going to happen in the family unit outside of school

so we need to start talking to the kids as soon as we can

when they are very young to give them the space is to start talking

when they are very young to give them the spaces to start talking

about what they may be experiencing outside of school.

And the other campaigners agreed, sexual relationship education

could not start too early.

A BBC Panorama investigation last month revealed the conditions

in which some puppies heading for the UK are bred.

Undercover footage showed cages filled with hundreds of dogs,

many of which would end up in British households.

According to the programme, each breeding dog can produce ?5,000

worth of puppies in a year.

The issue was taken up at question time in the Lords.

I would hope that he, like many others, was appalled

at the recent Panorama programme, which showed industrial-scale dog

breeding with dogs producing endless litters, trapped in crates

with no natural light.

This market has proven lucrative for some very unsavoury gangs

who are trading so-called pedigree puppies, some bred

in the UK and some illegally imported from abroad.

So does he accept that the Government already has

the powers to clean up this trade if they wanted to,

for example by blocking wholesale puppy imports,

which are abusing the pet travel scheme which was

designed for family pets?

The Government takes these matters very seriously,

and that is why we are reviewing the legislation on dog breeding

and pet shops in England.

Local authorities already investigate welfare concerns

over dog breeding establishments, and can revoke a licence to operate.

Checks on pet dogs are carried out at the UK border,

with commercial imports certified by official veterinarians.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency carry out inland

checks on imported dogs.

They can make millions of pounds a year and yet face only six months

in jail if they cause the deaths of hundreds of dogs

through puppy trading.

Isn't it time the Government acted like Northern Ireland and increased

the maximum sentence for animal welfare offences to five years?

Obviously, I don't want to pre-empt what is going to happen

with the review of the consultation, but I shall certainly

take that point back.

I can't promise that that will be part of the proposals as yet,

but I think it's a very interesting point, and I will reflect upon it.

Will the Minister give the figures for those

dogs which are currently being microchipped, and will

the Government send out the message that no puppy should be sold

where the mother of the dog is not present?

As I say, my lords, it's really important,

and our advice to prospective owners is to see the puppy with its mother,

and never buy a puppy younger than eight weeks.

That is really important, so I think that I would encourage

responsible pet owners to reflect on that advice.

Will the noble Lord Minister look forward to the day

when dogs can choose their owners online?

LAUGHTER.

Well, I'm sure that's the case, but I have always reflected that

dogs very often look like their owners!

LAUGHTER.

It's emerged that the Royal Navy's fleet of Type-45 destroyers

have been breaking down because their engines cannot cope

with the warm waters of the Persian Gulf.

The revelation from Rolls Royce, the company which produced

the Type-45 destroyers' gas turbines, was met with

surprise at a session of the Commons Defence Committee.

It almost comes across as if we can't use this ship

in the Gulf, for example.

You've got a full complement, battle-ready ship in the Gulf,

sitting there as a sitting duck, basically.

From a WR21 point of view, there was a specification for Type-45.

The engine met that specification.

That was the same specification applied across the whole

system, and the system met that specification.

Are the conditions experienced in the Gulf in line

with that specification?

No, they are not.

So the equipment is having to operate in far more arduous

conditions than were initially required by that specification.

What we sought to do was produce a design that would have

graceful degradation beyond those temperatures.

What we have found in the Gulf is that it takes the gas turbine

generator bit into an area which is sub-optimal

for the generator and also we found with the drive units

that the cooling system created condensation within the drive units

which caused faults and that caused electrical failures as well.

When you have a failure of the gas turbine, it has a cascade effect

on the ship and causes total electrical failure.

Had the prime movers been more evenly sized, it would have had

different consequences.

I understand that.

But none of that surely is unpredictable.

You know?

The basic physics, the basic calculations should have taken that

into account, should they not?

This is not a completely exogenous impact.

It's your basic engineering design and physics.

Assumptions were made that the WR21 would be a very reliable

prime mover and therefore the system design was built

around that assumption.

OK.

How many years to you think that the Royal Navy has had a naval

presence in the Gulf?

Would it be measured in decades?

Scores of years?

A century?

Why should it have come as such a surprise there would be these

sorts of climatic demands and obstacles to be overcome

by a new design of ship?

I think the Navy have operated in the Gulf for many,

many years and were aware of that.

I think the operating profile was considered at the time

that there would not be repeated and continuous operations

in the Gulf, so that they would form a part of the operating profile

for the ship, and therefore it wasn't designed explicitly

and uniquely for operations in the Gulf.

An MP has called for a 'root and branch' change to

the house-buying process in England and Wales.

In a Westminster Hall debate, the Conservative Will Quince called

the current conveyancing system antiquated.

He suggested one way to overcome some of the frustrations and delays

might be to put more of the process online.

One in five property transactions fall through each

year, around 200,000.

Around ?270 million is wasted on legal fees and surveys annually

for failed house purchases.

Mr Chairman, as I mentioned, by way of background,

I was a practising solicitor specialising in residential property

work so I worked in this area of law and I have first-hand experience

of the frustration of the conveyancing process

in England and Wales.

Technology may be part of the solution.

People search online for a property and it is reasonable to expect

that they would also like to contract and correspond

online with their conveyancer if it will speed up the process.

If I had a pound for every solicitor that still sends out letter

after letter via post then I would be a very wealthy man.

Unless the Government is willing to fundamentally

change our antiquated conveyancing process, root and branch,

we will not see the improvements which those buying and selling

residential property are so desperate to see.

We should not forget, when looking for the causes

of procedural problems in the system, that the conveyancing

process has to deal with some pretty difficult areas of law

and simplification and modernisation of the substantive underlying

law has a part to play in improving the overall effect

of the conveyancing process.

Dominic Raab.

And that's it for this programme.

Do join me for our next daily round-up.

Until then, from me, Keith Macdougall, goodbye.