After the final Prime Minister’s Questions of this parliament, Member of Parliament Alan Simpson said, “The last exchanges between Cameron and Brown got lost in another bout of “who’s deceiving who.” The sterile exchanges about £6billion of cuts......
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I came into the House 18 years ago frustrated by a Government who had sold the pass on manufacturing in favour of a dangerous flirtation with speculative and deregulated finance. So, a lot has changed in those 18 years. taken
This will be my last newspaper column as a Member of Parliament. It is without nostalgia that I want to look at the mess we’re in and how we get out of it. My parting speech in parliament’s debate on the Budget followed the same theme.....
11/03/10 - "Food for thought"
Sometimes a couple of individuals, who are not in the national spotlight, can highlight political issues more effectively than exchanges taking place in parliament. So it is with John Hughes and Christine Shawcroft. Neither figure in television news coverage.
It was embarrassing to listen to the evasions offered by the world’s Finance Ministers, describing their inability to cap or cancel banker’s bonuses as they continue to stumble to the global economic crisis.
Oh dear. Here we go again. First we have bankers queuing up to say ‘sorry’ for screwing the economy. Next we have political leaders self-flagellating over MP's allowances. What is the connection? It goes deep into the roots of New Labour’s flirtation with neo-liberalism.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies cast a long shadow across Labour’s £1.3 trillion rescue plan for the British economy. Their judgment was that it will saddle every household in Britain with an annual bill of £2,840 for a decade, in debt and interest repayments.
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Given the perilous state of the world economy in which the Budget has had to be presented, I wondered whether the Chancellor would open his Budget statement with reference to words used by someone else.....
Forget the tabloid obsessions with sleaze, sex lives and spin. The period running between the G20 conference in London and the next General Election will come to define Labour’s relevance to 21st century politics.
The G20 summit in London, on April 2nd, looms ahead of the Government. As finance ministers from around the world trail in and out of the UK for ‘preparatory discussions’, the only clear consensus is that something needs to be done. Beyond this, countries....
Well, that’s the banking crisis sorted then. Seated in front of the Treasury Select Committee was £4m of top banking salaries. All trotted out their rehearsed apologies. None had the courage to say where the crisis came from. None were willing to say.....
Dear Gordon, A word of congratulations about the way you have brought the banks into public ownership. In the crisis they have dragged us into, no other lifeline was worth entertaining. Congratulations too in calling for an international conference to rewrite the...
15/10/08 "Greening the crisis"
My granddad used to tell us you should never waste the opportunities provided by a good crisis. The current one
presents us with opportunities in abundance. Those who are serious must begin by explaining the current crisis and its origins. Do this and we can avoid.....
25/07/08 "The dead hand of Sir Humphrey"
Receiving a lifetime achievement award is certainly better than not receiving one. The only trouble is that it has an air of something posthumous about it. You can hear the whispers in your own head… “God bless him, guv’nor… ‘e did his best”.
The local government elections were not “a bad day for Labour”: they were a drubbing. To end up as the third party behind the Liberals, with our worst results since the 1960s sends out messages that can no longer be ignored.
The Secretary of State shall make regulations within one year of the passing of this Act with the purpose of requiring designated energy suppliers to introduce a renewable energy tariff for specified producers of renewable energy.
In these days of strange associations what is the connection between Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, pop star Lily Allen and Bianca Jagger? The answer is that all three have written to Labour MP's urging them to back my amendment......
‘Events, dear boy, events.’ Alistair Darling must be reflecting ruefully upon the comments attributed to the Tory Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, about what was most likely to
blow a Government off course. The Labour Chancellor’s intentionally dull Budget was supposed...
So, finally, Northern Rock has been brought into public ownership. Now the political fun begins. Recriminations are everywhere. I’m reminded of a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon in which Lucy offers consolation to a forlorn Charlie Brown.........
So, finally, Northern Rock has been brought into public ownership. Now the political fun begins. Recriminations are everywhere. I’m reminded of a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon in which Lucy offers consolation to a forlorn Charlie Brown.........
22/01/08 - Energy Bill
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): The Secretary of State will know that the Prime Minister has committed the UK to meeting the EU target of obtaining 20 per cent. of our energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.....
In theory, delivering a secure pension for the 60% of people in Britain who have no pension’s scheme has to be a good idea. In theory, this is what the Government’s Pensions Bill sets out to deliver.
The amendments raise some important points, which I hope that the Minister will tackle. I believe that my concerns fit the
same pattern. They begin from the same question: who, in their right mind, would want to buy someone else’s debt? Why would they want to do that?
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I hope that it does not damage the standing or career of the Secretary of State or the Minister for Pensions Reform if I, too, congratulate them on making tonight’s debate worth having.
I am really pleased to have the opportunity of contributing to the Committee’s enquiry into the role we can play, as individuals and local communities, in tackling climate change. I will try to do so within the sequence of headings set out by the Committee.
In every town and city across the UK the picture was the same. Queues of people snaked their way down the high street. Not since the Tories paid people to queue in their infamous ‘Labour isn’t working’ poster have we seen
anything like it.
Parliament has just held its latest debate about restoring the pension rights stolen from people whose pension schemes had collapsed. Until then I had not realised that all of the key issues would be nautical in character.
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): It is normal on these occasions for me to follow the Chancellor’s Budget statement and fill in the conventional gaps that I feel he has overlooked. I pay tribute to the Chancellor’s specific section........
13/03/07 - "Somewhere beyond soundbites"
My decision to leave parliament at the next election is driven by the same reasoning that took me into parliament 15 years ago. Then, as now, I had no particular interest in a career plan. All I wanted was to change the world. That is
still the plan.
13/03/07 - "Budget press release"
The great tragedy about the Budget, and the Budget debate is that its focus on stability and continuity presupposes that the “business as usual” model of society is still valid. Even a brief look at the world outside the Treasury windows suggests.....
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State reflect on his experience in his previous ministerial post in Northern Ireland, where the orphan funds of banks were subject to the same sort of argument?
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State reflect on his experience in his previous ministerial post in Northern Ireland, where the orphan funds of banks were subject to the same sort of argument?
22/03/06 - Budget Debate Speech 2006
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Budget debates are
often conducted within a strange sense of time. The short term is
about whether the Budget will survive the press headlines and analysis tomorrow.
There is a crisis in social housing that is spiralling out of control. It is easy to point this as a conflict between council tenants and their local council, or as a conflict between Labour MPs and their Labour councils. But the real issue
(and crisis) has to....
With all the benefits that only hindsight from the Eurovision song contest can bring, we can now measure the full disappointment of the Queen’s Speech. What an opportunity
missed. I never expected much at the most serious and structural level.
25/03/05 - Future Energy Markets
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I am extremely grateful to you for choosing this subject for debate this afternoon, Mr. Deputy Speaker, particularly as it follows the Chancellor's announcements in his Budget speech about the
intention......
15/03/05 - Budget Debate 2005
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): At the end of every Budget debate, Members stream out of the Chamber and are greeted by those in the press, who want to know whether or not we thought it a good Budget. Usually.....
We are heading into the General Election campaign and already it needs to be rescued. There is no shortage of towering issues we could address – climate change, air pollution, secure pensions, the future of the NHS, transport needs of the 21 st century.......
This is a time to explore some important contradictions. When I went off to Rome 's anti‐war rally on the anniversary of 9/11, the British press were obsessed with something else. Blair had just appointed Alan Milburn to a Cabinet post that will take charge of Labour's next...
It is Tony Blair's anniversary. Ten years ago he took over as leader of the Labour Party. Shortly afterwards he and I set off on a round Britain tour. He was championing the case for modernising' the Labour Party by abandoning its‘
commitments to common ownership.
This is a difficult, turbulent period for ASLEF, but one it will come through with dignity. As with the Labour Party, the ask will be to re‐build around the strength and principles of
its membership. Central to this is trust, openness and accountability.
How lovely to see my Minister, Keith Hill MP, engaging in a debate about ALMO's through the letters column of the Evening Post (29 May). He and I take quite different views on this and it would be good if he Post invited him to debate......
For once a national newspaper caught the issue perfectly. The right wing think tank “Civitas” were holding a conference on migrant workers in Britain . Reluctantly, they had conceded a case for highly skilled workers being recruited for jobs in the UK.....
Much of the recent ‘paper talk' about Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party has lurched between the surreal and the silly. Would he survive the Loch Fyne conspiracy? Is he more vulnerable to a flour attack from Fathers for Justice.
In the last week the government has given Nottingham a clip round the ear and a poison chalice. The clip round the ear was the announcement that the City was to have its council tax capped. It came as something of a last minute shock.
11/03/04 - "Animal farm"
Osman doesn't think much about how he is connected to cockle pickers or to the issues of EU enlargement that will take place on 1 st May. He is too busy trying to keep warm
and survive. Osman is an asylum seeker in Nottingham, one of the many.....
October 2003 - Budget Debate 2004
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South): I am very pleased to be called to speak on the first day of the Budget debate, and I begin by paying a couple of tributes, the first of which is to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) for.....
October 2003 - "Labour Party Conference"
It says a lot about the state of British politics that just when you get a Labour conference hungry for policy change, the
press become obsessed with leadership change. This is the politics of Pop Idol – adore the winner, abuse the rest....
June 2003 "Labour Party reshuffle"
For a moment Ian Duncan Smith huffed and puffed about the Cabinet reshuffle and the planned demise of the Lord Chancellor's office as though he had found a real political issue. Some Labour members joined in the disquiet about not knowing where.....
03/05/03 "Letter to Tony"
Tony, The council election results weren’t sent to spoil your birthday celebrations, just to change them. There’s no point in sticking candles in a cake that’s past its sell by date, so why waste time on a re‐
branding of New Labour?
May 2003 "The Emporers no clothes"
Behind the scenes, something of enormous importance is happening. ‘The Project' is dying. The Third Way is falling apart. And in it's death throws of credibility, Downing Street is lurching towards ever more reckless commitments to
corporate greed.
February 2003 "NEf peoples pensions"
Where does money come from? Who does it go to? And what does it do when it gets there? These are all key questions for new economics, both on the international stage and at home in Britain. In projects ranging from Jubilee Research’s....
The Chinese word for crisis combines two symbols. One denotes ‘danger', the other ‘opportunity'. At some point the government will decide we are sliding into the middle of a pensions crisis and that ‘something must be done'.
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State reflect on his experience in his previous ministerial post in Northern Ireland, where the orphan funds of banks were subject to the same sort of argument?
'
The euro is living up to the highest expectations of the
economists who advocated it, and Britain is missing out'. I almost cried with laughter when I read these concluding lines in last week's Guardian article by Chris Huhne MEP. This may be the official view.....
