Jesse Norman

Treasury Committee: Questions to Sir Mervyn King about Bank of England Accountability, 17 January 2012

Q29 Jesse Norman: Governor, when did you first learn our recommendations about the changes to Court?

Sir Mervyn King: When your Committee report was published. 

Q30 Jesse Norman: And when was that?

Sir Mervyn King: It was before Christmas.

Q31 Jesse Norman: It was 9 November. So why have we had to wait until this point, with one sitting day of Parliament, before we see a very substantive response from you and from Court on this rather delicate and important issue?

Ten Minute Rule Bill: Speech on Taxpayer Funding of Trade Unions, 11 January 2011

1.38 pm

Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide that pay for hours worked on behalf of trade unions by trade union officials during hours when they are paid by an employer should be refunded to the employer by the trade union; and for connected purposes.

The Bill addresses an issue that has recently attracted great public attention: the funding by the taxpayer of public sector employees who in fact work not as nurses, teachers, social workers, local government officers or civil servants but as trade union representatives.

Telegraph op-ed: Why are taxpayers still funding the unions?

Say the word Pilgrim, and the mind conjures up images of devotion: the pilgrim fathers landing at Plymouth Rock; the pilgrims that flock to pray at Lourdes; the muslims who make their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimages to Mecca.

Last year, however, the word “pilgrim” took on a new and less devotional meaning: that of a union representative in the public services who spends all their working time on union activities, yet is funded by the taxpayer. The term was coined in honour of Ms Jane Pilgrim, a nurse-turned-union rep at St George’s Hospital, Tooting. She told the press that Andrew Lansley had lied about cuts to the NHS on a visit to the hospital, in a meeting she had never attended.