Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“[ I naudible . ] —aid budget implies the loss of a third in UNRWA funding, and there are rumours that the Government could be planning to cut twice that. UNRWA is responsible for almost 6 million Palestinian refugees, including the education of 500,000 children, the healthcare of 3 million and emergency food aid for over 1 million. Because of the occupation, Palestinians in Gaza, the west bank and surrounding countries rely on UNRWA for basic public services, so will the Minister give a clear and courageous answer and guarantee at least the current level of funding?”
“The cynical disregard for the lives of our fellow citizens that Grenfell exposed will take years, billions of pounds and the concentrated efforts of the Government and industry to address. Building design, materials, construction, maintenance and inspection are all in the dock. Height is a factor, but so is who the occupants and users are and how they are taught to behave, especially in an emergency. For the Government constantly to adopt a reductive approach to the crisis is irresponsible. This is not just about one or two types of cladding, buildings over 18 metres or residential buildings. Today is an opportunity not to address all those issues, important as they are, but to show a serious intent to act now on the most obvious faults and injustices. The Government should take it by accepting all the amendments before the House.”
“That is the purpose of Lords amendment 2. Although safety is the paramount concern, the treatment of leaseholders and tenants living in unsafe blocks is a wholly new scandal that this Bill will fail to address unless Lords amendment 4 is agreed today. Those tenants should not bear the cost of remedial work to their flats where they did not and could not have known the risks posed by their construction. The Government do not seek to deny that, but instead make a series of partial concessions. That is the wrong approach. We should start, as amendment 4 does, with the presumption that remedial costs attributable to the Bill should not be borne by leaseholders. They should not be borne by tenants or social landlords either, or by the rents of the least well off or the limited funds set aside for the provision and repairing of social homes.”
“It is shameful that this modest Bill is the Government’s legislative response thus far to Grenfell, almost four years after that tragedy took place. We might expect, therefore, that it would at least address the most significant and urgent wrongs that the Grenfell fire brought to the Government’s attention. The purpose of the Bill is to update the fire safety order and better manage and reduce the risk of fire. What better and more straightforward way of achieving that than to implement the recommendations of part 1 of the Grenfell inquiry, which deals with issues such as the inspection and maintenance of lifts and doors, and having proper systems of evacuation in place and communicated to residents? It is impossible to imagine those steps, backed by the moral and legal authority of the inquiry, not becoming law.”
“I have warehouses that are not classified as qualifying for support. I have travel agents who have had to pay back moneys given to them but who are not in a position to claim rates relief themselves. The Government are familiar with these examples. They know what needs to be done. Sadly, the response to my constituents has been slow and inadequate thus far. I ask the Government to, please, at this crucial point, hear the voice of those who will sustain this country’s economy going forward. Do not let us fail when the end may at last be in sight.”
“As a result, many businesses that were viable and are potentially viable will fail before lockdown ends unless Government help is maintained and extended. Some of those businesses have received little or no assistance thus far—I think of the events industry, weddings and hospitality, all over-represented in my constituency, but I also think of the businesses that supply those sectors and the freelancers and self-employed traders who work in them. Above all, I think of the 3 million excluded from relief by the Chancellor despite the overwhelming lobbying from Members from all parties. I mention just a few examples from Hammersmith. I have businesses supplying desserts and linen to the hospitality and catering sector. I have people who run car washes who are not allowed to trade, when garages with car washes are.”
“Controlling the virus, saving lives and protecting vulnerable and at-risk people must be our priority, and the “not before” dates and a more realistic timetable are a step forward, but—there is always a but—the corollary to this approach has to be a greater determination to protect individuals and businesses whose livelihoods are endangered by the virus and our steps to beat it. The fact that this crisis has run for almost a year and that there is now a timetable out of it makes it more, not less, necessary to offer practical financial support. Furlough and other general relief schemes and cuts in VAT and business rates have been essential and must continue, but other steps have not followed.”
“Yesterday, I raised with the Prime Minister the shocking fact that more than a quarter of my constituents over 70 have yet to be vaccinated, and that for some ethnic minority groups the figure is more than half. I raised it with the Health Secretary today. I will go on doing so until there is some sign that the Government have a strategy for dealing with disparities in the roll-out of the vaccine. I made this point in the debate on the economic effects of the pandemic, because health and solvency are two sides of the same coin, and those most at risk from the virus are often those with the least financial security, including those running small businesses. The greater caution and method in the Prime Minister’s road map is to be welcomed. It is a pity we did not see that as we emerged from the first lockdown, or even the second.”
“Five local NHS areas in England, including Hammersmith and Fulham, have vaccinated 73% or less of the over-70s, despite the best efforts of NHS and public health staff and volunteers. This falls to a 60% take-up for the most deprived tenth of residents and below 50% for some ethnic minority groups. As the country moves on to vaccinate younger and less at-risk groups, what comfort can the Prime Minister give to the quarter of my elderly and vulnerable constituents that his Government have left behind?”
“One of my main primary care centres only has enough vaccine supply to open for half the week. Whether this is because vaccines are being directed to other types of centre—like the major centres that we do not yet have—or are bypassing London, or because there are simply not enough vaccines full stop, targets are being missed. Only 70% of over-80s and 55% of all priority groups had been vaccinated by this week. Can the Minister look at supply to Hammersmith and Fulham, and to London generally?”
“This is storing up trouble for the future when we have enough in the present. I am currently helping residents in 14 blocks in Hammersmith with cladding issues. On average, there is a fire in a residential block six storeys or over in the borough every two months. Thankfully, the efforts of the London Fire Brigade mean they are usually extinguished quickly and without injury, but I do not want to visit another Grenfell Tower, as I did the day after that terrible fire. It is the worst experience of my 16 years in Parliament—indeed, of the 35 years I have represented my part of west London. It is time for the buck passing to stop and for the Government to act.”
“Cladding is identified as the primary risk, but it is only one of many that include limited means of escape, weak fire doors and poor compartmentalisation. We are concentrating today, and in the amendments to the Fire Safety Bill, on occupied at-risk buildings where either the design or, as at Grenfell, the modifications make them unsafe. What about those currently seeking planning approval? There is a spate of applications for tall buildings, especially in London. I have blocks from 20 to 45 storeys currently in the pipeline. I ask the developer in each case whether: there is more than one escape route, all materials and combinations are inflammable, and sprinklers are fitted in all areas, not just communal parts. The answer is invariably, “We will comply with current building regulations”.”
“No one should have to live in a home that puts their life and the lives of their family at risk. No one should be trapped in that home because they cannot make it safe or prove it is safe. This is basic stuff. But even if the Government had got that right, there are a whole load of other problems that they are failing to address. Social landlords have done a better job than private landlords in taking remedial action, but unless the Government are prepared to fund the costs of that, either the landlord will pay, thereby cutting off the funding for new affordable homes, or social tenants and leaseholders will pay. Government funds at present are not just insufficient—estimated at less than 10% of what is needed—but unavailable for many categories of at-risk buildings, such as those below 18 metres.”
“Who would have thought that almost four years after the horror of Grenfell there would be hundreds of thousands of people still living in tall buildings at catastrophic risk from fire? Who would have thought that as a consequence of that risk many of the occupants of those buildings would be threatened with bills that will leave them penniless or bankrupt? And who would have thought that those occupants would have their lives put on hold: unable to move, remortgage or, in the case of shared owners, increase their stake in the property? This is a tale of how two Governments abdicated their responsibility for Grenfell. It is shameful that the first ask in today’s motion has to be to establish the extent of the risk, rather than to get on with the work or protect the victims from both harm and costs.”
“The Minister points, as if it were an excuse, to previous backlogs of jury trials. The difference is that in 2010 and 2015, the previous peak, there were 600 to 700 trials happening a week and numbers were falling. Now he is boasting about 230 happening, despite his target back in November being 333. Does he accept that his proposals for clearing the Crown court backlog at the moment are not working and are inadequate?”
“This week, I got an email from Elena Hough, the deputy head of Wendell Park Primary School in my constituency. She says that lack of Government guidance means that her staff will soon be teaching over 100 children in school—10 times the number in the first lockdown. Having a lockdown in name only may suit the Prime Minister. He can feign tackling the virus while tipping the wink to his anti-lockdown Back Benchers and bending the rules himself, but as Miss Hough says, her pupils and staff, who, like those in all Hammersmith schools, are doing a fantastic job under the most difficult of circumstances, deserve better. Why are they being hung out to dry by the Prime Minister and his Education Secretary?”
“May I return to the vaccination of those with terminal illnesses? The wife of one of my constituents, aged 70, who has stage 4 bowel cancer and is receiving palliative care, contacted me at the weekend. If his only priority is being 70 and extremely vulnerable, he is in the fourth cohort for vaccination. The terminally ill should be in the first group. Will the Secretary of State make that change, and will he give a timescale for each of the nine priority groups for receiving the vaccine?”
“Three months ago, the Secretary of State said that he would take control of the repairs to Hammersmith bridge, and he set up a taskforce chaired by the roads Minister. Yesterday, she boasted that the Government would commit £4 million, which is less than 3% of the total cost and a fifth of what Transport for London and Hammersmith and Fulham Council have already spent. The Secretary of State knows that only the Government can fund the reopening of what he calls this “key artery”, and anywhere else in the country they would have already done so. Why not in London?”
“May we have a debate on the duty of care that High Speed 2 has, or should have, to communities the trains will travel through? It is about to cause irreparable damage to Wormwood Scrubs, a unique and precious open space that provides much-needed ecology and recreation in the inner city. Having backed HS2, do the Government not have an obligation to see that it goes ahead without wantonly destroying local communities and community assets?”
“The statement had the air of the Lord Chancellor congratulating himself in case no one else remembered to, but that may be somewhat premature. The criminal courts recovery plan claimed that 266 trials a week would be completed in October, but the actual figure was 160. The Justice Committee was told this week that we will not be getting back to pre-covid backlog figures at any time soon, nor should we be. Does not that sound more like complacency than competence?”
“Is that a way for anybody to live and bring up their children? Another typical example is a young man who was thrown out of home at the age of 16, who has lived in hostels and had to give up his sixth form, was sofa— surfing until he outstayed his welcome, got work but then had to leave work, was ripped off by landlords, has suffered punishing anxiety attacks and for the last year under covid has been sleeping rough. Is that any way to give a young person a start in life?”
“A mother with a five-year-old came to the attention of Hammersmith and Fulham Council five years ago. She was housed in Enfield, which may not sound that far away, but it was away from her support network, and she had to travel to get her kid to school and get to work on time, so she has been late for work and was paying additional fees to after-school clubs. She was taking time off because the conditions in the property were so bad; she was dealing with infestations and sewage leaks and things of that kind. When she was rehoused in the borough, it was in a one-bedroom flat, which means they have to use the living room as a bedroom. She now has two children. Her prospects of being rehoused in adequate temporary, let alone permanent, accommodation, are very low, simply because of the lack of housing.”
“There are 1,200 households in temporary accommodation in Hammersmith and Fulham at the moment, but I would like the Minister to address the long-term issues as well. Shelter, Crisis and other organisations say that we need at least 90,000 social homes to be built a year and the Government are building not even 10% of that. What is the issue? Is it ideological? We have heard Conservative Members say in this debate that we need more social housing in this country. Where is the recipe for providing that, because it is the only long-term solution? I will refer to a couple of cases in my constituency, not because they are exceptional in any way, but because they exemplify the typical problems of temporary accommodation. The fact is that this is not a temporary problem—it is often a lifelong problem for people in these situations.”
“I cannot do justice to this subject in three minutes, so I am more than usually grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for setting out the case so well in her opening remarks. As in other areas of public policy, we do not start from a benign position. The past 10 years of austerity has included the local housing allowance freeze, the benefit cap, a freeze on temporary accommodation subsidy, shared room rates and discretionary housing payments, and all these things have created a crisis in temporary accommodation. Even where work has been done, such as with rough sleeping and the eviction ban, when we come out of the crisis local authorities will need more assistance to cope with what will be an additional wave of homelessness.”
“I am glad the Minister has come on to talk about mass house building programmes, but will she specifically address social housing? There are really good social housing estates in my constituency. Some were built by charities 150 years ago or as “homes fit for heroes”. Others were built as garden estates or through slum clearance. Some were even built by the Labour council in the 1980s and 1990s, which I can take some of the credit for. Where are the new quality estates of hundreds and thousands of units of social housing? What are her plans for that?”
“These issues, whether they affect our individual constituencies or London as a whole, are ones on which we should be able to reach agreement. TfL’s revenue fell by 90% as a consequence of covid, so to go around pretending that it is something to do with this or that decision by the Mayor is, frankly, ridiculous, and makes the public think we are ridiculous. When such points are made in a debate in this place, we have to rebut them, meaning that we then go around in ever-decreasing circles and end up where we are. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman chose to take that position.”
“It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. Five minutes is quite a generous allocation compared with many other occasions, so I thank you very much for that, and I thank the Petitions Committee for facilitating this debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for opening the debate, but I must say that his speech was disappointing. It crudely politicised the issue, and we know why—because there is a mayoral election next year and the Conservative party has a pretty duff candidate. I know as much because he ran against me in Hammersmith in 2010. He is 20% behind in the polls, so there we have it. And now I am making a political speech, but that is what happens.”
“It still needs funding, and unless we have that funding quickly, my constituents and many others across London will continue to suffer not for weeks or months but years without the basic facility that that provides. This is an extraordinary dereliction of duty by the Government, for patently party political reasons. The Secretary of State and the Conservative mayoral candidate announce every five minutes, “Don’t worry. Just vote for us and you can have the money.” I am afraid that does not cut any ice. My constituents and others want the bridge repaired. They do not want silly party political squabbles and game-playing. Let us have a response to that. If we can get it from the Minister today, that would be most helpful.”
“On average, about 85% to 90% of that is paid by central Government, but apparently that does not go for Hammersmith bridge. I hope all London Members will support me in saying that it is about time that the Government set an example on a major piece of London infrastructure, which can be funded only through central Government. TfL, Hammersmith and Fulham Council, and Richmond Council do not have the means to do it. It needs to be funded now. Last week, the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council announced a proposal by Sir John Ritblat and Norman Foster for a very innovative scheme to put a temporary crossing in place that would, in a relatively short period, allow traffic to go over and under the river at that point. That work was done by the local authority, working with the private sector.”
“Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who will be here, if possible. It affects a whole swathe of London and the south-east. I had a debate on that subject in March and I thought that we were making some progress, but it is always groundhog day. TfL and Hammersmith and Fulham Council were making progress in drawing up a full schedule of repairs for the bridge, but the taskforce set up by the Government has brought everything shuddering to a halt, as taskforces so often do. It is a national, if not international, embarrassment that we cannot repair a major river crossing. It will cost a lot of money—more than £150 million—but every day I look at the bridges Minister’s Twitter feed, she announces another £100 million here and there for road and bridge schemes around the country.”
“The Government have targeted TfL’s progressive policies, such as the under-18s travel card, the over-60s travelcard—perhaps I should declare an interest as of about a month ago—and the congestion charge. I remember the huge fuss about the congestion charge extension and the calls to withdraw it, but suddenly the Government want it to be extended to the north and south circular roads— which, by the way, would virtually bring London to a halt. Please can we just have a little bit of common sense? Nowhere is that needed more than on the issue of Hammersmith bridge—a major strategic river crossing. It is a concern not just to me as the Member for Hammersmith, but to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson)—we will hear from her later—and my hon.”
“If we had not had the fares freeze, there would be a bigger gap to fill now, so even basic maths seems to escape Government Members when they talk about these issues. A bail-out was necessary—does any hon. Member present deny that a bail-out was necessary or appropriate? —but we have to have six-month bail-outs. We cannot have a longer-term one to allow better planning, because of course the Government want to keep this story running and have another artificial row, with a 17 minutes to midnight, last-minute piece of blackmail just when the election is coming up. It really is that transparent, and the way in which the Government are dealing with this issue is, frankly, not worthy. I wish they would stop politicking in this obvious way, because the only people who suffer are our constituents.”
“Again, this is where we are going: I hope the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington is now shamefacedly regretting making his opening speech in that way. If I may be indulged, I will speak for a couple of minutes on the general issue and then a couple of minutes on something very dear to my heart and to those of many other hon. Members in south-west London—namely, Hammersmith bridge. The figures show that the current Mayor managed TfL’s finances immeasurably better than his predecessor, and indeed in a very efficient way. The operating deficit was reduced by more than 70%, the cash balance increased by 30%, and the fares freeze was wonderful for London, as opposed to the 42% rise in fares overseen by the previous Mayor.”
“So much for levelling up. It is dispiriting to hear a Government Minister, particularly when addressing a group of London MPs, once again using divide-and-rule tactics, trying to set other parts of the country against London. Will the Minister address the issues that have come up in this debate and Members’ serious concerns about our constituents?”
“My constituent on this flight came to the UK in 1997 aged 26. He married a British citizen in 2004 and has two children aged 21 and 18. He was in prison for two years, and had he not been he would have been able to complete the process of indefinite leave to remain. His life was under threat when he was in Jamaica. It will be under threat if he is returned there. He is on suicide watch at the moment and has an active asylum claim. He was picked up last week and was due to be deported this week. Will the Minister at least agree that this is not a proportionate reaction and that the flight should be delayed at least to give the opportunity for proper legal advice to be taken?”
“The Minister answered a series of questions on this subject yesterday, and all his answers contained the same formulation of words: “to protect leaseholders from unaffordable costs”. Does he realise that that leaves leaseholders in limbo? What he needs to do now is either define what “unaffordable” means-better than “just below the bankruptcy threshold”, as in a previous attempt by one of his colleagues—or recommit to exempting leaseholders from those costs, as well as social landlords, as there are costs not only for leaseholders but for tenants?”
“At the Conservative party conference, the Prime Minister said he would prevent the whole criminal justice system from being hamstrung by what the Home Secretary would doubtlessly like to call lefty human rights lawyers and other do-gooders. On 9 October, the chair of the Bar wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, copied to the Attorney General, asking the Prime Minister to withdraw those comments. Will she at least see that the chair of the Bar gets a reply to that letter sent a month ago? Those comments are leading to attacks—not just verbal, but often physical—on lawyers.”
“Terminally ill people are travelling prematurely and alone to end their lives abroad for a number of reasons, including covid. Another is that they wish to save relatives from the risk of prosecution. Will the Secretary of State liaise with his Home Office colleagues and the police, who themselves find these cases difficult, to ensure that any response is sensitive and proportionate?”
“Does the Leader of the House think it reasonable that named day questions asked of Ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care six weeks ago are not answered even when the Department clearly has the information sought, or that letters written to that Department in May are replied to by civil servants, not Ministers, in October—and in at least one case, after five months, the answer was to refer it to another Department? We know that that Department is under particular stress, but this is an abuse of the rights of Members. Will the Leader of the House interrogate his colleagues and try to get better response rates than that?”
“In Bahrain, unlicensed gatherings of over five people are illegal and public protests are supressed with violence. I ask the Minister, how are our attempts, funded by the British taxpayer, to improve human rights in these countries going? It all seems to be going in the opposite direction. I do not have time to go over the many individual cases, but there are cases of people—such as Ali Al-Hajee, Ali Al-Wazir, Hassan Mushaima and all those on death row—who should be held up as supporting human rights and arguing for better conditions of life, but who are being supressed by entirely oppressive regimes.”
“Prisoners do not get treatment for serious health conditions. Many of these individuals are long-standing human rights campaigners going back decades. They are now quite elderly, but they are locked up. Despite having serious health conditions, they do not receive any health treatment. The situation in Bahrain has gone downhill since the Arab spring, when there was a popular uprising, which was suppressed using Saudi forces. Since then, anyone speaking out on human rights has been dealt with in a summary fashion. Civil liberties in these countries are virtually non-existent now. Things that we would take for granted, such as a free press, the right to assemble and the right of opposition political parties to form—most of them have now been dissolved—do not exist.”
“The answer must be, not very effective. The record on human rights across the board is getting worse year on year in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, which is much larger and more proactive in the region—although, UAE is becoming increasingly so—draws a lot of the attention. We have heard about the 184 executions, quite a number of them by crucifixion and other horrific practices. We know about those protesting for women’s human rights who were locked up and tortured. All of that is happening now under the current Saudi regime. However, we also know that Bahrain lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in 2017, has executed six people and has a further 26 on death row. Those are the headline figures, but the practices and conditions in prisons, which are squalid, lead to epidemic-level outbreaks of illness.”
“We are not able to disclose information related to particular IAF projects in greater detail as we have a duty to maintain the confidence and confidentiality of our partners.” It appears that they do not want us to know what they are doing in the aquaculture field. A couple of months ago, I asked a question that drew attention to the contrast between the funding of Bahrain through the IAF and the two prisoners who had undergone abuses through the Bahraini justice system, Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa, who are still on death row. Again, the reply simply said, “Yes, we object to the death penalty being used in these circumstances, but we are designing to support Bahrain-led reform in areas including human rights.” I return to the question asked by the hon. Member for Worthing West: how effective is that?”
“With all due respect to Alistair Burt, for whom I have a great deal of time, it emerges that about a third of the projects could be euphemistically called “justice projects”: they are related to justice, security, imprisonment and other similar issues. Despite the plethora of FOIs, the Library briefing is almost entirely made up of questions with inadequate answers to them—some from the Minister, who I am sure will give us a far more candid response. We have a whole list of UK Government Departments that are spending the fund’s money, but we do not know how much each is spending or, indeed, on which projects. We do not know which of the Gulf countries are in receipt of the money and how much each of them is given. I notice that a written answer to the noble Lord Scriven said, “All IAF-funded project work undergoes assessment and review.”
“It was like the security services used to be—it did not exist. When it was finally introduced to the public, the distinguished former Minister, Alistair Burt, said: “The IAF provides funding in support of a range of programmes across the Gulf Region. These include, but are not limited to, activities focusing on aquaculture, sport and culture, healthcare and institutional capacity building.” What could sound more benign than that? Aquaculture sounds like a wonderful thing to spend British taxpayers’ money on in Oman. “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is perhaps a sorer point. However, that is not really the full extent of it, is it?”
“Member for Worthing West from this—complaining that the former Department for International Development funding regime wasted money by sending it to countries such as India and China. I wonder whether we will hear the same about money being sent to Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. That in itself deserves some explanation. I thank the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, which has been mentioned, and Reprieve, which has helped with briefings for the debate. It sometimes seems like a thankless task, but they and other human rights organisations labour constantly to bring to light abuses of human rights in Gulf countries. The crux of the issue—I think it has already been said—is to do with secrecy. There have been few statements about the fund. Initially, there was no admission of the fund at all.”
“It is a pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, for the first time. I hope it all goes well—from both sides. Some people might think this is something of a niche debate concerning relatively small sums of public money in the context of overall Government spending. We have heard that it has been about £20 million a year for the past five years, although there were predecessor funds and not all of that was spent. Having said that, we could pay for a lot of free school meals in the holidays with the money that is going to what many people will think is a rather prosperous region of the world. I pay tribute to other sponsors of the debate, the hon. Members for Glasgow East (David Linden) and for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). I remember a lot of Conservative Members—I exonerate the hon.”
“Are they, in fact, making the situation worse? We cannot answer those questions because of the secrecy surrounding this and other funds. It is simply outrageous that the Government continue to use national security or other measures to disguise the use of money that they say is for entirely benign purposes. We look to the Minister for some answers today, but what we would actually like is a proper review of whether this is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money.”
“When I was shadow Justice Minister, I put it to the then Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), in very strong terms, that we were selling prison services—this is a peculiarity of our relationship with Gulf countries: half the time we seem to be giving them money, and half the time we seem to be selling them services—through what was called the Saudi prison contract, when in fact what was going on in those prisons was torture, abuse and appalling conditions. To his credit, he ended the contract that had been started by his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), which was exactly the right thing to do. If mistakes have been made in the past, look at them again. How effective are they? Are they, in fact, giving cover to repressive regimes?”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that obvious point, which I wish I had thought of. Now that it is on the record, perhaps the Minister would like to respond to it. Why are we supporting the organisations that we have heard about today, such as the special investigations unit and other human rights bodies in Bahrain? They all have wonderful names, such as the ombudsman. The problem is not just that these organisations are ineffective, despite the money they receive from the UK, but that they collaborate with the prosecuting authorities. They provide a shield against proper investigation and often turn down investigations on little or no evidence, which puts the individual whose case they are reviewing in a worse position than when they started. Yet those are exactly the organisations that we are supporting.”