Barry Gardiner
MP for Brent West · Labour · United Kingdom
“Sir Desmond, imagine that the top brains in the country’s security and intelligence community produced a report that told you how to save the world. You would want to see it, right? Well, the report we are discussing is not about how to save the world; it is about what happens if we do not.”
“The nuclear threat will rise as clashes between nuclear powers become more frequent. Those are the cold assessments of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The Government were right to think that those assessments might scare people—they scare me—but they were wrong to think that they could hide them from the public.”
“The Minister will know that the grant structure on which UKRI is based gives out grants for a maximum of three to five years. Very few are for five years—most are for three years or under—yet the sort of long-term scientific development that my hon.”
“My hon. Friend is making a superb case for the importance of funding for her deep earth facility. I had the privilege of going to the National Oceanography Centre’s deep oceans facility, and the innovative science there on carbon sequestration is superb.”
“The Prime Minister has spoken powerfully about the devolution of power and giving back control. Will he therefore ensure that the proposals for commonhold and leasehold reform, for which 5 million leaseholders in this country are waiting with bated breath, do give that power and control back to those people, through the right to enfranchi…”
“We know how much land there is in the UK, and we know the extent of our inland waters and seas, so we can know how much we have to do to protect them, as we are required to do by target 3 of the global biodiversity framework.”
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“Sometimes, as a Christian, I think we would do better to cast out the beam from our own eye, and then we might see clearly to cast out the mote from our neighbour’s.”
“Better, in my view, that the law should seek not to treat illegal immigrants on the basis of broad religious categories at all, but to consider each individual case on its merit. However, India is a sovereign country with an established democracy, and I respect its right to enact legislation whether or not I think it clumsy or ill-framed. As people criticise India for legislation that is giving citizenship to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, perhaps we should recall that just in December, a British Home Office Minister complained to the Home Affairs Committee that we had been unable to get the French to agree to a policy of turning back migrant boats in the channel. As India enacts the principle of non-refoulement, we are busy trying to do the opposite.”
“Member for Gainsborough spoke about Ahmadiyya Muslims, and I entirely agree with him. The Indian Government say that the legislation discriminates not against Muslims per se, but only against illegal immigrants who do not have a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin. There is a basic logic to that argument, and I disagree with it. It is clear to me that if someone is an Ahmadiyya Muslim or a gay Muslim, it is perfectly possible—indeed, highly probable—that they have suffered religious persecution in one of those countries. It is also possible that Christians or Parsis have come without actually having a well-founded fear of being persecuted. They may simply be an illegal migrant, rather than a genuine refugee.”
“The Act provided a pathway for illegal migrants to become citizens of India where they had been victims of religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. It established the important legal principle of non-refoulement by offering shelter to refugees who fled those countries due to discrimination based on religion. It gave that right to Christians, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists. The Act was passed in both the Lok Sabha, where the BJP Government hold a majority, and the upper Rajya Sabha, where they do not. It sparked riots and outrage because the pathway was not open to Muslims. The argument applied by the Indian Government is that those are Muslim countries, and therefore Muslims coming to India as migrants could not be persecuted religious minorities. The right hon.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making his points so clearly. Let me try to address them. He spoke of Muslims being stripped of their citizenship rights—no. Actually, they are not stripped of rights that they ever had. They were not citizens; they were classed as illegal migrants into the country. It is very important when talking about India and religious persecution to consider the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019. India is one of the world’s top destinations for illegal migrants. Most are Muslims who come from the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Pew Research Center estimates that they number 3.2 million and 1.1 million from Bangladesh and Pakistan respectively.”
“I do not doubt for a moment that we should be engaged in foreign affairs, and we have the right to debate what we wish in this House. I did not suggest otherwise; what I did say was that we should always do so with a sense of humility and appropriateness, and in this particular case, remembering that we were a colonial power that was engaged in pitting one section of the community against the other for over 200 years.”
“Mr James Canning became our first octogenarian in Brent to receive the vaccine earlier this week. While congratulating him and the Wembley Practice team who delivered it, does the Secretary of State share my concern that care homes in Brent have been advised that the 970 doses that are in the vaccine packs cannot be split because of the licensing conditions, which means that those in our care homes who are over 80 may have to wait until February or for the Oxford vaccine before they can be vaccinated? Is that the case? If so, why? That is hardly the “protective ring” around care homes that he promised.”
“I am delighted by the depth in which the hon. Member is exploring this subject. What he has been saying is fascinating. Does he agree, though, that if it is about the right thing to do, the first thing we must do is to stop the subsidies and tax concessions that currently go to carbon industries domestically, and that it only makes sense as part of a whole package if we do that?”
“Does the Minister recognise that at the moment, £10.5 billion of public money goes from the Treasury as subsidy to fossil fuels in this country? That is more than in any other country in the EU, where the average is about £6.5 billion. Therefore, if we are to go down the route suggested by the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and his colleagues on the Government Benches, it is important that the UK shows good faith and does not punish other countries for what it is doing worse itself. To punish those countries for the carbon encapsulated in their industries while subsidising our own fossil fuel industries more than all the rest would seem rather ridiculous.”
“So will the Minister speak with the Chancellor about how we can reduce the subsidies to fossil fuels in this country—domestically—so that some of the innovative ideas that the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) has put forward this evening might be taken forward with credibility? [ Interruption. ]”
“There are “no clear indications of senior ownership outside Defra and its arms-length bodies for the Plan as a whole…and…no regular, formal arrangements at all for Defra to engage other departments”. I now turn to page 539 of the Climate Assembly report, where it states that 78% of people engaged in the assembly agreed: “There should be a Minister with exclusive responsibility and accountability for ensuring net zero targets are met and government departments are co-ordinated in their efforts and achievements to meet their targets”. The Minister must act and do that.”
“The report goes on to say that “government has yet to set out whether or how it will clarify long-term ambitions for the five environmental goals that it has not designated as priority areas…and…that neither Defra nor HM Treasury yet has a good understanding of the long-term costs involved in delivering the Plan as a whole…Defra is developing governance arrangements to help manage the links between different environmental issues”, and has set up the “two oversight groups”, but: “In July 2020 the Implementation Board started work to assign responsibilities for managing the links between goal areas, although it has not yet agreed what the most important links are.” Furthermore, the report recommends that DEFRA “maps out the most significant interdependencies between the goals in the 25 Year Environment Plan and sets out how decisions about any significant trade-offs will be made, and by who”, and states: “Government’s arrangements for joint working between departments on environmental issues are” simply not good enough.”
“I want to focus on how the report looks at joined-up government. In that respect, I recommend to everyone yet another report, the National Audit Office report on “Achieving government’s long-term environmental goals”. It states that the 25-year environment plan “brings together a number of government’s environmental commitments and aspirations in one place, but it does not provide a clear and coherent set of objectives…and…government has yet to set a clear course for the development of a coherent and complete set of environmental objectives, and for a full set of costed delivery plans”.”
“Some fantastic principles have been used to get there. The report is 552 pages long—it is a big read—but it is underpinned by fundamental principles: education and information, fairness, freedom of choice, protecting nature and restoring our natural environment, strong joined-up leadership from Government and a joined-up approach. That is what makes it different. I will to go straight to recommendation 1: “We want the transition to net zero to be a cross-political party issue, and not a partisan issue”. I take it that everyone in this Chamber is in agreement that we need to achieve that. If anything that I say to the Minister sounds like a criticism, it is not because I want to play party politics. I want to co-operate with the Minister, to work with him and to achieve what we have all set our face to towards achieving.”
“Please do not worry, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is not my speech that I am holding. You and I have seen a lot of reports since we came into the House, and I have here the “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment”, the “UK National Ecosystem Assessment”, the “State of Nature” report, “Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming”, the “Clean Air Strategy 2019”, “Land use: Policies for a Net Zero UK”, “Reducing UK emissions: Progress Report to Parliament” and “How carbon pricing can help Britain achieve net zero by 2050”—just a small selection of what is on my shelf. Do we really need another report? Yes, we do. All those reports are politicians telling the public what needs to be done. This Climate Assembly UK report, “The path to net zero”, is the public telling the politicians what needs to be done. About time too!”
“I am very grateful to the Minister. Speaking of the recommendations, the second most-supported, at 94%, was: “We need much more transparency in the relationship between big energy companies and the government, due to concerns over lobbying and influence”. His Department is responsible for that, so will he take that on board, because transparency is absolutely at the heart of gaining public confidence?”
“My hon. Friend is a student of the Old Testament, and she will know Proverbs 25, verse 19: “Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth”. We are certainly in a time of trouble. It is not for me to call the Prime Minister an unfaithful man—”
“But the lack of support for dentistry and dental technicians has certainly resulted in a few broken teeth. What does my hon. Friend believe is the single most important thing that the Government can do to support dentistry and the oral health of the nation?”
“It is really good to hear the Minister giving a straight response to the questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins). She mentioned dental technicians. Is she as concerned as many of us are that because of the lack of work for them now, people are leaving that employment, and the skills base is being lost in such a way that it will be difficult to cope with the expansion of demand once we move from present circumstances beyond the epidemic?”
“The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government blames the building control inspectors. The building control inspectors blame the construction company. The construction company blames the developer. The developer blames the lack of proper regulation. What is clear is that no one blames the thousands of leaseholders in my constituency who are now trapped in their homes, paying for everyone else’s mistakes. So will the Minister accept that the buck stops with him to get those who are responsible to pay up, if necessary through a windfall tax on the industry, to sort out the regulation and to keep my constituents safe and solvent?”
“The Minister knows, but did not say, that the current CRaG process was put in place when many other layers of democratic scrutiny were applied to international treaties through the EU, but those layers are now gone. Now that his Department has failed to conclude the roll-over agreements, does he accept that democratic scrutiny needs to reflect not just the convenience of Government, but the proper oversight and challenge of Parliament? Or will he only change his view when he finds himself in opposition?”
“The Secretary of State is aware that priests have been unable to administer the sacrament to those dying in care homes and rabbis have been unable to secure a minyan in order to say the Kaddish. How will his Government now try to ensure they recognise that a person’s spiritual needs are critical for their mental health and that this is just as important for people’s physical health?”
“That is between £11 billion and £20 billion of public money wasted, yet the Government baulk at spending another £10 million—million—on our children. This is about priorities and it is about shame. If those are the Minister’s priorities, he should be ashamed.”
“It is not just about extending the voucher scheme, however. Today, five senior children’s charities published an analysis showing that even before coronavirus, local authorities were struggling to fund the need for children’s services. They say: “Those in the most deprived communities have suffered the greatest reductions in spending power. Funding for services for the 20% most deprived Local Authorities has fallen more than twice as fast as for the least”. My borough of Brent has lost £174 million since 2010. A recent National Audit Office report on bounce back loans found that, to support business, the Government underwrote more than £36 billion of loans in the full knowledge and acceptance that between 30% and 60% of that would have to be written off as unrepayable or even fraudulent.”
“We are also aware that parents, carers and families are putting themselves in more debt and that providing for their children has had a large impact on the mental health of our families.” Finally, Raphael Moss, the head of Elsley Primary School, wrote that the “government paying for FSM during holidays should be an absolute minimum. What is really needed is to widen the eligibility for children whose families are in receipt of Universal Credit as Marcus Rashford is campaigning for. At Elsley we had to set up a food bank to support some of our families. I cannot believe that as a Head teacher in London in 2020 I am overseeing a food bank to ensure that our children don’t go hungry. It is truly unbelievable.” Well, it is truly unbelievable, but the Government have the opportunity to put it right.”
“With stress for families trying to feed children greatly reduced, they described the access to FSM as a lifeline.” Mrs Mistry at Sudbury Primary School said that she “strongly believes that FSM should be provided,” but cautioned: “The government needs to implement a scheme that is easily manageable by schools”. Karen Giles, the head at Barham Primary School, made the point: “Many families have had their income cut by two thirds or more and many children are going hungry. Schools need Free School Meals to be directly funded and the criteria for eligibility should be less stringent.” Mr Farrington, the head of the Village School, warned: “There is very limited provision for pupils with disabilities over the holidays and we fear many won’t receive adequate food and support.”
“Rebecca Curtis, principal of ARK Elvin Academy, said: “In Lockdown we had children calling the school explaining they were hungry and asking what we could do—as soon as we were able to issue the FSM vouchers we were flooded with thanks from our children and their parents. The situation with unemployment in Brent is clearly so much worse now so we are really concerned about how we can support our pupils through the half term and the Christmas holidays”. James Simmons, the head of Oliver Goldsmith Primary School, observed: “Families with multiple children were able to purchase food in bigger quantities to take advantage of offers.”
“This debate is about priorities and it is about shame—the shame that, in the fifth richest country in the world, 30% of our children, which is 4.2 million of them, are living in poverty by the Government’s official statistics. Before the summer, Marcus Rashford publicly shamed the Government and won free school meals over the holidays. He spoke from the heart about his experience as a child when he was dependent on food banks. The Prime Minister now says that it is not the role of schools to provide food during the holidays. Child hunger may not be a priority for him, but it is a priority for the headteachers of my schools in Brent who have emailed me in the past 24 hours with their heartfelt experiences. Perhaps they will shame the Prime Minister once again.”
“The world needs to stop the loss of species, and endangered species need the conservation work of zoos, so I applauded when the Government announced their £100 million package to support zoos and the vital conservation work they do, but then I discovered the eligibility criterion that they must have less than 12 weeks’ reserves. The trustees of any zoo with less than 12 weeks’ reserves would already have declared voluntary liquidation, so will the Secretary of State look again at the criterion, replace it with one based on percentage of revenue lost and—”
“May I caution my hon. Friend? The excellence of his speech and the amendments should be an argument that says, “Without these, this Bill cannot be supported.” If he is not careful, his argument will encourage Labour Members to go through the No Lobby and vote against the Bill, should the Government not relent and accept these excellent amendments.”
“The Minister will know that many of us are concerned about new section 29B(5)(b) and (c) in clause 1(5). He has rightly stressed the importance of clarity, but it seems to many of us that the clarity of the words “preventing disorder” and of what constitutes “the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”, such that a criminal conduct authorisation can be given, is very vague indeed. He rightly insists on clarity, so could we have it here, please?”
“The Minister will know that there are more Azeris living in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan—some 50 million of them, who hold great sway and influence. Russia, on the other hand, is firmly committed to supporting Armenia in this conflict, and that could see the Russian and Iranian co-operation in the Syrian war come under severe strain. What concerns does the Minister have about the potential for Iran to become embroiled in the dispute, and what steps is her Department taking to avoid that situation?”
“If someone is at risk of destitution, it is no good saying, “Oh, yes, it is at the bottom of a pile somewhere, and we will get to it in five weeks.” We are talking about children and vulnerable people, so speed is of the essence. I hope that the Minister will at least agree to review that so that those decisions can be taken expeditiously.”
“The Minister needs to explain—not to us, but to the public—how he expects a single parent like my constituent to pay his rent and look after his daughter, alongside having to deal with covid, with no recourse to public funds. He needs explain how people who are now no longer in employment will be able to survive the five weeks for which, in a good situation, his Department comes back and provides. The Minister needs to make the commitment that any change of condition to which the Home Office agrees—when we, as Members of Parliament, apply to the Home Office to change a condition, or when a council does—will be done within 48 hours.”
“I have another piece of correspondence, which relates to a gentleman who had lived here for many years with his European economic area spouse. He had always worked hard as her dependant in the UK. They have a daughter who was born here. His wife has abandoned the family and returned to her home in continental Europe and, as he is originally from Pakistan, he is now trying to establish his right to remain in the country, but he has no recourse to public funds. They first contacted me in January of this year. Without the help and support of Brent Council’s no recourse team, I do not know what would have happened to that man and his seven-year-old daughter. It is incumbent on the Minister to answer a number of questions, some of which were asked by my right hon. Friend.”
“She goes on, “Sadly, my husband drifted away forever while my children and I were watching him on screen and screaming and begging him not to leave us. The whole experience has left us shell shocked.” Her husband was a construction worker who died from covid. They came to this country in 2004. They obtained a visa with limited leave to remain and no recourse to public funds and were on the discretionary 10-year path. She has been working, but has nowhere near enough income to pay the rent for their home. As I say, on 6 May, she wrote in desperation. Within 24 hours, we had acted and appealed to the Home Office to give her recourse to public funds. It did, and for that, I am incredibly grateful, but it took five weeks. For this family, with one child who is a British citizen, that meant five weeks in destitution. That was the good outcome.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. It is a privilege to listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). I thank him for the way in which he has conducted the debate. I almost feel sorry—no, in fact I do feel sorry for the Minister. He is caught between the Scylla of the Prime Minister and the Charybdis of the Home Secretary. In that passage, he has been absolutely smashed on to the rocks by my right hon. Friend. I want to try to give an example that shows the inhumanity of what is happening. On 6 May this year, I received an email from a woman about her husband. She says he was a very healthy man with no underlying medical conditions. He was only 45 and had just celebrated his 45th birthday—she says he was her childhood sweetheart.”
“My hon. Friend is making such an important point. These repeated fee requirements means that families that have three, four or five children find it impossible to earn enough money to pay their rent, feed their children and pay these stupid fees.”
“On 3 July, the Secretary of State said that asymptomatic testing in residential care homes would give staff the confidence to continue their work. Yesterday, the Transport Secretary said that Public Health England now believes that asymptomatic testing might capture only 7% of those infected, leaving 93% of those infected to go about their business. If asymptomatic testing is as confidence-building as the Secretary of State says, and if a care home is a goose and an airport is a gander, why is the sauce of asymptomatic testing not good for both?”
“I disagree with XR’s strategy of targeting the press, but there is an irony in a Government who are renowned for avoiding the scrutiny of the mainstream media, and happy to undermine the impartiality of the BBC and to welcome Fox News to these shores, now posing as the protector of free speech in order to suggest they may change legislation in order to criminalise peaceful disobedience by Extinction Rebellion. Is the Minister not ashamed to bracket in this statement peaceful protesters with murderers on the rampage, and will he, for the record, unequivocally acknowledge that the XR protesters were peaceful?”
“My hon. Friend makes an important point when he talks about the impact that this is having on many families. He may have instances in his constituency, as I do in mine, in which couples have divorced but are unable to separate properly because they cannot sell their flat. The mental strain, illness and stress that that imposes on many residents is absolutely phenomenal.”
“Yesterday, a dear friend of mine died of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It has the lowest survival rate of all common cancers, yet it receives less than 2% of funding for cancer research. Half of all the diagnoses come about only after emergency admissions to hospital, because patients commonly visit their GPs three or four times with symptoms before being referred to a consultant. What will the Secretary of State do to improve early diagnosis of this disease, because it is killing 10,300 people a year, which is 28 people a day?”
“So will he increase housing benefit to cover the real cost of average rents and will he introduce fair rent controls so that the taxpayer is not paying out to chase ever-escalating rents and ever-rising property prices, which are distorting our economy?”
“I dread the autumn. Even before covid, my borough of Brent had the second highest level of evictions in London; a third of households live in poverty and more than 30% of employees earn below the living wage, and many face redundancy. This will mean that after paying their rent, the average family with three children in my constituency will be left with just £38.46 a week to feed and clothe all five people, and pay all their utility bills. The Minister may say that local authorities have been given £50 million to help families in hardship, but that works out at less than £1 million per constituency, and this is not about one-off hardship; it is about structural inequality and poverty.”
“The Minister talks of CRaG as if it is a process under which this Parliament has any power. He knows that it is the Government who enable Parliament to have a debate whereby it could vote against what is tabled under the CRaG process. He must look again at the way in which real scrutiny and accountability can be brought to bear in the way that the hon. Member for Huntingdon suggests.”
“Does my hon. Friend share with me the sense that the Government have told us that they needed the Bill to be able to produce these roll-over agreements? Yet the Minister has stood at the Dispatch Box today and said that we have concluded 20 of these roll-over agreements. In fact, they have managed to do that without this Bill having passed into law. Is not what he is saying absolutely relevant? It is these future agreements that we need legislation for, and it should be proper legislation that sets out the framework under which this Parliament scrutinises what is going on.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a fine speech. Does he agree that it seems a considerable irony that those Government Members who were so determined that this country should not be subject to any supranational court system should hereby, in an ISDS clause, enable our Government to be sued by foreign companies in specialist supranational courts in a way that is not even accessible to our own domestic companies?”
“That is patently false. All the new clause does is to say, “If you want to produce food to export into our market, it must be produced to these standards.” It does not in any way seek to impose legislation in the United States or anywhere else that would govern the way in which they can produce food.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that many people who go to restaurants or to fast-food outlets will have no way of knowing the provenance of the food that they are consuming? It is not simply a matter of labelling in the supermarkets.”
“I have listened to all the contributions to the debate with great interest. Earlier, the situation in the overseas territories was adverted to. For the UK, 95% of our biodiversity is in the overseas territories, yet 95% of the funding we give for biodiversity goes domestically, within this country. The Foreign Office has always maintained a good relationship with the authorities in the overseas territories, but they have said that although it is their responsibility to act, they do not have the funding. Will the Minister look at that relationship of responsibility and funding? Ultimately, the responsibility under the convention on biological diversity is the UK’s, even though we try to work closely with the governing authorities in the overseas territories.”