Dame Meg Hillier
MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have huge respect for the Minister, but she has said that she will not take any interventions. She is a very good Minister, and I trust that she will answer in detail the points that have been raised in the House today; having discussions with her and the Government after the debate is too late…”
“My hon. Friend talks about who makes our laws, and she has talked in articles that she has written about the primacy of this place. If the Bill goes forward, is she willing to accept amendments?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place and thank her for that response, which demonstrates the complications of these schemes. I asked the National Audit Office to look into this, and yesterday the Public Accounts Committee published its report on compensation schemes, suggesting that a central body be established.”
“I am pleased by my right hon. Friend’s answer, but she is in a unique position across Government to ensure that we are protecting not only women, but those who are blind or have visual impairments, who really value this technology.”
“I welcome the Chancellor’s clampdown on speculation and leaks ahead of the Budget; it is certainly an important step he has taken. On the issue of certainty, the National Wealth Fund is a critical investor in crowding in private investment around the UK. I noted that he has changed the remit.”
“Further to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), it is important that we talk here and that we have diplomacy, but what practical actions are the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence taking to ensure that there is a review of physical defence and security, so that we send a clear message to t…”
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“I thank the Minister for giving way. I was recently in conversation with my opposite number, the chair of the public accounts committee in Montserrat. That committee has concerns about some expenditure from the governor general’s office but has been told by the British Government, as have I, that it is not possible for the committee to have sight of it. I recognise that there are challenges in a small jurisdiction, but I would be grateful if I could talk to the relevant Minister about the matter, because I am quite concerned.”
“The number of people who applied for restrictions to be lifted rose—unsurprisingly—from 900 in the first quarter of 2020 to 6,000 to in the second quarter of 2020. Even last year, 3,200 people applied to have those restrictions lifted and 60% of those requests were granted. If the Minister looked at that issue, he could free up a lot of time in the Home Office for the civil service to deal with getting people through the immigration system, rather than having them go through a system that eventually brings benefit, but very slowly.”
“As I have said, saying, “You have to exist without recourse to public funds,” is not a cost-free option. At the moment, the Home Office cannot even tell us how many people need biometric residence permits and that is a big issue in my constituency. I hope that, when Atlas comes forward, it will be a start towards better data, but it would be helpful if the Minister updated us on its progress. Not being able to get data has been a long-standing woe of the Home Office, so I do not lay it all at the Minister’s door, he will be glad to know. I will give him as much support as I can in getting that system running so that we can get data and ensure that people are properly supported. As I have said, this is not cost free. We need to lift the restrictions.”
“I know that the Minister is committed to trying to speed up the backlog on immigration cases. Every 30 months, people have to pay and go through the system again; they are just clogging up the queue. Really, there is not much difference in someone’s life usually, and unless they have committed a horrendous crime or something that will obviously change their case, most people—I would hazard a guess of well over 95%—will just go through the system every 30 months and have to pay a fee. That comes out of their often meagre wages—even on good wages, it is quite challenging—and causes them real problems. My right hon. Friend touched on data. How many people are affected by that? We need to understand and assess the impact and cost on local authorities.”
“As one of the top-six customers of Home Office Ministers on immigration cases over 18 years—so not just in one Government—I have seen the problem of people waiting a long time for resolution of their cases. Even when they have exhausted their appeal rights, sometimes they are still dribbling around the system. We need proper returns preparation support for them to leave. Many of us London MPs will have those conversations with our constituents, telling them that they have reached the end of the line and need support to leave. So it works both ways, but where people are allowed to stay, we can get through that quickly and give them the recourse to public funds that they need. On that point, we should end the 10-year route or, at the very least, reduce the fees.”
“We need to welcome and support them, rather than hindering them at an early stage in their development. I have some quick asks of the Minister—well, not so quick for him to deliver, perhaps, but easy for me to ask. I thank Praxis and the NRPF Network for some of these thoughts—I have worked with Praxis in particular. Could the Home Office conduct a one-off case resolution exercise systematically ensuring that people, particularly those without indefinite leave to remain at this point, are getting regularised support, and that, if they do not qualify to stay, they are being put on the route to leave the country? That would resolve the matter. What we have is a lot of people dribbling around the system.”
“At that point in 2016-17, for which we have reasonably reliable figures, the average time spent supporting cases was nearly two years. A lot of that support is spent on accommodation, for the reasons that I have highlighted. In my borough, you cannot get a family home under the housing benefit cap, which affects everybody, but particularly the group in question and, of course, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and those who require support under the Children Act 1989. That means that it is a big issue. As an estimate, 3,000 children may be in households with no recourse to public funds across London. Other colleagues have made points about the need to support those children, who will not be going to live anywhere else. They will stay in this country and become, hopefully, taxpaying, working adults who contribute to society.”
“They pay the fees every two and a half years. I will get to asks later, but it would be a great help if the Minister were to look at how that worked and reduce the fees and timeframe. Let us look at the issue across London. According to London Council figures, London boroughs spent about £53 million on supporting an estimated 2,881 households with no recourse to public funds in 2016-17—that was some years ago. It is difficult to assess the figures precisely. The estimated average total annual expenditure was nearly £1.7 million per borough, at an estimated average annual cost of nearly £19,000 per household, so it is not cost free. Somewhere in the system, people have to be picked up and that burden is falling on local authorities.”
“My constituent could not qualify for housing benefit and there was no prospect of promotion at work as a hospital porter, yet he was working in our NHS. In many ways, that underlines one of the big problems here: these are people who are working hard, contributing to society and paying their taxes and their national insurance, but getting nothing back in return. It is perhaps sometimes painted that we want to ensure that people are paying their way. Well, those people are paying their way, but in an area as expensive as Hackney, housing is well out of reach because of the way in which housing benefit is structured, and of course, they cannot have access to that anyway. The 10-year route to citizenship is a big issue here as well. It is very expensive for those concerned, who are often in this bracket.”
“I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for helping to secure this debate and for the work his Committee has done on this issue. I will not repeat the important points that he helpfully laid out for the House, but I wanted to turn to some cases in my own constituency. Just after the lockdown, I went out doing a roving surgery and I met a man who worked as a hospital porter in my local hospital, earning £1,400 a month. He was working but had no recourse to public funds. He had been renting two rooms in a private rented property for him and his daughter, at £400 a room. When the landlady—understandably hit by challenges due to the pandemic—put the rent up to £550 a room, he and his then 17-year-old daughter had to share a room because there was no other option.”
“In summary, I believe firmly—I hope that the Minister concurs and will tell us how he will help to achieve this—that people need a safe, secure and long-term home as the foundation for their life and, crucially, the springboard for opportunity.”
“Who would have thought that the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee would be standing here saying, “Give tenants who want to move the money to do so”? Sure, home ownership is understandably a dream for many people, but it should not be a dream that is out of reach. We could free up the housing we have for those who have the wherewithal and ability to move into other homes. We need better rights and stability for private tenants. People live in a home with a year’s tenancy, perhaps, but cannot be sure from year to year whether their children can stay at the same school. It is an upheaval in a family’s life. Now, increasingly, as people are evicted, rents are going through the roof, as many landlords exit the market.”
“We do not have the time to go into all the reasons for that, but we need more social housing that is actually affordable for people on average wages—people who work hard every day but have no prospect of buying a home. Some even find it hard to afford council rent. There are issues there, but we certainly need council rented housing and housing association housing. We need pathways to home ownership, but every time someone buys under right to buy, that is another home lost to the local council or the housing association, and that is not a path that many people can pursue. Many years ago, when I was a councillor in Islington, we would pay people about £16,000 to move from their council property to help them buy a property elsewhere, so they freed it up. That is actually good value for money.”
“The National Audit Office concluded that 13% of privately rented properties—589,000 of them—pose a serious threat to their tenants’ health and safety. The Committee and the National Audit Office estimated the cost of that to the health service to be £340 million per annum, so it really is spend to save. I know it is difficult for any Department to sell that to the Treasury, but I am sure that if the Minister wanted to join forces with us on this issue, we could all work together to persuade the Treasury that spending money, investing in people’s homes and getting them on a stable footing is better for everybody. This is not rocket science. We need more homes to be built, and we need to unblock the logjam that is stopping that.”
“In Hackney, that would be considered cheap housing, compared with what we have to deal with. I pay tribute to the Mayor of Hackney, Philip Glanville, who is doing his utmost to build council housing—affordable, secure homes—but for pretty much every one he builds, he has to have one for sale to cross-subsidise because there is not a Government subsidy, despite the Government’s own figures showing that investment in bricks-and-mortar subsidy is the most cost-effective way of delivering these homes. I am sure the Minister is thoughtful enough to take on board the cost of poor housing to the Exchequer. The Public Accounts Committee looked at the private rented sector. In my constituency, ownership is out of reach for so many people—average house prices are at ridiculous levels—so people are living in the private rented sector.”
“Children are growing up in massively overcrowded conditions. They often live in a single room in accommodation or, if they are lucky, a couple of rooms in a hotel. Sometimes, they are in temporary, rented accommodation elsewhere, but with no certainty and, even if their parents are bidding for properties, no real prospect of getting a home anywhere near any time soon. Homelessness in the borough is increasing rapidly. The number of households seeking support increased by 44% between 2017-18 and 2021-22. Hackney Council anticipates that the number will continue to increase by about 8% a year. That is just one London borough, but I am sure my colleagues across London will say the same. It was interesting to hear that in Coventry the experiences are very similar.”
“I have had so many tragic conversations with constituents in my surgeries or the living rooms of their temporary accommodation. They think that if they hang on, they will get a property in Hackney, where their kids are still at school, but I have to say to them, “You are not going to be in Hackney for some years. You have a five-year tenancy somewhere else so you need to think about moving your children.” They are aghast and upset, but that is the reality. Children are being shuttled around to schools where there are places; they are not going to schools their parents choose. Average waiting times for council and housing association housing for homeless households is now nine years for a three-bedroom property—of course, that is a notional figure—and 12 years for a two-bedroom property. That is a lifetime for a child.”
“I like to read it positively, as saying that the Department is determined to see an increased proportion of social rented housing. I hope the Minister can clarify exactly what the Government mean in that response. It is worth putting the challenge in Hackney in context. I make no apology for repeating these figures. There are currently 3,100 households in temporary accommodation, 51% of which—more than half—are housed outside the borough due to a lack of supply. There are 3,528 children in temporary accommodation. That is enough to fill eight primary schools and is equivalent to 1% of Hackney’s population. We are having to close primary schools because of falling numbers. Many of those families would love to send their children to school in Hackney, but they cannot live there because there are not enough permanent homes.”
“We want to see more homes, but we need social rented housing, and it is no good building homes that people just cannot afford to live in. We have a sore need for such properties, yet the Government rejected the Public Accounts Committee’s recommendation to assess the demand for social rent. Sometimes the Government also respond to reports in a confusing way. A recommendation report notes: “The government will work with delivery agencies to confirm the 2021 programme’s capacity to deliver homes for Social Rent as part of the review” of the delivery of housing, and that they “will confirm the programme’s ability to deliver an increased proportion of homes for social rent to Parliament at the same time as confirming the programme’s overall delivery targets.” I could read that in all sorts of ways.”
“There are other examples, with the excellent head of homelessness at Hackney Council, Jennifer Wynter, saying that this is the worst situation she has known in her long career, and warning all of us not to raise people’s hopes that a home in Hackney will be a real possibility. The Department’s own figures show that homes built for social rent provide higher value for money than those built for ownership. This thoughtful Minister used to be a member of the Public Accounts Committee. If he looked at the figures, I think that he, along with the Secretary of State, could be an advocate in his Department for social renting housing. The problem is that the Government, who are not meeting their targets, are chasing numbers, which means fewer social rented properties for the money.”
“When the private landlady put up the rent from £400 to £550 a month for each room, they could no longer afford to rent two rooms, so he was living with his then 17-year-old daughter—she is now nearly 20—in one private room, because he could not qualify for social housing. As he was not homeless, he would not even get into temporary housing—not that that is a pathway people want to go down. Five years ago, if people had been in temporary housing for six months I would encourage them to hang on in there because a prized council or housing association property would eventually become available. It is now increasingly the case that people spend more than three years in temporary housing. Recently, a family I was dealing with were rehoused from Hackney to Wellingborough.”
“I welcome that for residents, but it does also create a problem for properties in desperate need of investment. There is also, of course, the private rented sector. Although it has been subject to more regulation, there is nothing about the level of rent and it does not have anything like a rent escalator model. That means that tenants can find their rent going up exponentially after spending only a year in their home. We are increasingly seeing that across the piece in my constituency and throughout London. Social housing is critical. There are people in Hackney who work hard in good jobs, such as the hospital porter I visited, who is renting a room in a private home. He was living with his daughter, and they rented a room each in a private home.”
“We have the full ownership market, but we also have affordable home ownership and shared ownership, which poses challenges for many people because they are liable for the whole property but own only part of the equity and pay rent on the rest. The term “affordable” was defined by the previous Mayor of London and former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), as 80% of private rents. Well, good luck with that in Hackney, where it is simply unaffordable for many people. There are various definitions for key worker housing, depending on where the development is—the term is very ill defined in law and regulation. At least social rented housing has a rent escalator model set out in law, so tenants have an idea of what they will be paying. That has, of course, been capped because of inflation rates.”
“I am not someone who wants to get in the way of home ownership, but it is not even a distant dream for those of my constituents for whom renting privately is not an option. They just need somewhere to live, so we need social housing in London. Of course, the impacts of inflation and construction challenges put the figure of 157,000 at even more risk. The Government’s original intention was to build 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s. Some of them were to be affordable homes, but we have not been given a figure, so I want to delve into that. Let us pick up on the issue of definitions. Perhaps the Minister could take away the thought that we are conflating or confusing a multiplicity of markets.”
“Families are experiencing severe overcrowding without any hope of moving out. I will touch on that in a moment. Too many people just cannot afford to rent in the private sector or to buy, given that rates are very high, and the Government have changed the definition of “affordable” repeatedly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) highlighted. Crucially, we are just not building enough housing. The record of the affordable homes programme speaks for itself. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, on whose behalf the Minister is here to answer, set out to deliver 180,000 homes in 2021. It has already downgraded that forecast to 157,000 homes, but half of them will be for ownership, not rent.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this vital debate. He highlighted that the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office have looked into this issue. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare that I am the landlord of a property in the private rented sector. Affordable housing is critical for my constituency. Many of my constituents live in very overcrowded conditions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) highlighted. Every week I am out on doorsteps, doing surgeries and visiting people where they live. There are many examples of four children sharing a bedroom, and of a family living in the living room and another in the bedroom.”
“The Minister said some warm words there about the need for social housing. In response to the Public Accounts Committee report, the Government indicated that local authorities would have more say over the mix of tenure in their area. In areas like mine, where the real need is for social rented housing, that requires more Government grant compared with areas where low-cost home ownership is genuinely an option. In Hackney, with the price as it is, home ownership will be very difficult to achieve. Can he flesh out how local authorities can deliver what they know is needed in their area and how Government grant will follow those decisions?”
“The Minister talks about home ownership increasing, but that incremental increase can hardly be seen as a victory. His is the party that introduced right to buy to increase home ownership. I wonder what the percentage is for anyone under the age of 35. Will he acknowledge that the Government have totally failed that generation in this respect?”
“My constituent had emergency surgery for a brain tumour, but this was after six months of going to the doctor repeatedly with problem headaches. Brain cancer causes 9% of cancer deaths but accounts for only 1% of cases. Sadly, my constituent is terminally ill, but he is in a position to explain his experiences. He has asked me to raise with the Secretary of State the issue of what work is being undertaken on genome sequencing, which could have a major impact on better treatment for brain cancers. It would be helpful if the Secretary of State not only answered this today but wrote to me in more detail on it.”
“It is little comfort for my constituents who are trapped in housing, but we need to ensure the next generation get the homes they deserve.”
“This is the Government that delivered home ownership to the masses through right to buy, which I will not go into today. The Government have totally failed on housing provision for people, whether they are private renters, those who rent socially or many others who are locked out of the home ownership market. On every level, the Government have not acted. I hope the Minister can give us some hope from the legislation that is coming through, as well as some insight into the discussions between the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Treasury over his ambition, as we have read, to provide more social housing and the Treasury’s ambition to trim his spending. It would be helpful to have some sense from the Government as to the direction of travel.”
“Because of a lack of Government funding for social housing, one has to be built for sale to provide one for social rent. We talk about affordability. There are about five or six categories of affordable housing, but let me be clear what I mean by affordable: it needs to be affordable for someone on a reasonable wage to pay. We have people who are working and who can barely afford to pay their council rent, let alone ever being able to afford to rent privately. This gives them no choice and locks them in overcrowded conditions. It is bad for their mental health, it can impact on their ability to work and it has a huge impact on their children. Children grow up in such situations until they are in their 20s, and then they cannot move anywhere—imagine growing up like that. This is the crisis of a generation.”
“Similarly, I have seen adult children in that situation, where three adult children are sharing a room and the parents live in the living room. We have many households where one family live in the living room and another in the bedroom, and we have families staying with someone from their church because that is the only place they can get accommodation. Even if they had recourse to public funds, which can be an issue for some people, that is not the barrier; the barrier is the lack of quality, affordable social housing. I give credit to the Mayor of Hackney, Phil Glanville, for his work in trying to resolve this issue. He is planning to build 1,000 council homes, with 350 near the De Beauvoir estate that are part way through the process. That is great, but it is a drop in the ocean.”
“I will touch on overcrowding in a moment, but the average waiting time for council and housing association housing for homeless households is three years for a one-bedroom property, 12 years for a two-bedroom property, nine years for a three-bedroom property, 13 for a four-bedroom property and a notional 39 years for a five-bedroom property. That is notional because by the time a person gets to 39 years, those are nonsense figures. It is unbelievable that people have got no hope. I have visited families week in, week out on doorsteps, meeting people where they live. I recently met a woman who was living high up in a block with four little girls in two bedrooms, one living area and a tiny kitchen. One child slept with the parents and the three other girls shared bunk beds in one room.”
“That is unsustainable. We need to see properly affordable housing. With a decent home over their head, someone can get a job. They can study. Their mental health improves. It is the key to solving many of society’s crises. It is the key to families establishing themselves and being able to live their lives as they choose. It gives them freedom and independence. I want to touch on rent figures in Hackney. The average two-bed rent for a private sector property is around £2,000 a month, but there are currently fewer private rented properties available due to many issues, which I will not go into today.”
“If someone gets a job they suddenly cannot afford the rent, and the cap on housing benefit means that they cannot pay rent on any family-sized home within my constituency. The number of households in temporary accommodation in Hackney is over 3,100. Over half of those are sadly housed outside the borough due to a lack of supply. I am not talking about a lack of supply of housing overall; that is just a lack of supply of temporary housing, often including hostel spaces. That equates to 3,528 children in temporary accommodation—enough to fill eight primary schools and equivalent to 1% of Hackney’s total population. The number of households seeking support for homelessness has risen by 44% from 2017 to the end of the last financial year. Hackney Council anticipates that the number of approaches will continue to increase at around 8% a year.”
“We need certainty over rent levels. I favour a rent escalator model. Just as we know that social housing rent will go up by the consumer prices index or the retail price index plus 1%, we could at least have a similar model for private rented housing, which would give certainty to both sides of the equation. We also see some properties in very poor repair. According to work done by the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office, 13% of private rented properties nationally in England are posing an actual risk. There is a quality issue. In fact, there is just a crisis in the private rented market generally. Overall, we need a much bigger housebuilding programme and more social housing. We need social housing in Hackney in particular because private rents are so high that they are unaffordable.”
“Finally, I turn to an issue that I raise, sadly, very often at such debates and in the House: housing in my constituency. I have more private renters than homeowners, and around 50% of residents in my constituency are social housing tenants. There is talk about the renters reform Bill coming through. In that Bill, I want to see greater rights for tenants. We are hearing some good noises from the Government, but then we keep hearing some backtracking here and there. Maybe the Minister can even give us some answers today, as we keep being told that legislation is imminent. We need to see longer-term tenancies—homes that people can raise their families in. They should not be worrying every year that the rent will go up so much it will become unaffordable for them to stay there, or that they will be evicted.”
“The Government would want to see that to ensure we can create jobs in this area. The closed protocol that the four main providers insist on is much more insular. Customers can only install components from the same company that provided the overall system due to compatibility issues. That can often be very expensive for the customer as there is a lack of market competition to help drive down costs. It needs to be resolved. I was surprised when I started looking into it; I thought it was going to be about other issues. There was another issue about the availability of semiconductors. However, the main issue is that we should ensure more competition in the market, and that there is not this closed approach. That would make a difference.”
“Independent contractors, who may be more on the spot in Hackney, Harrow, Newport, Reading or Congleton, have issues accessing technical information to maintain the provider’s lifts, and the providers often say that they will nullify the insurance policy on a lift if any other contractor gets stuck in and tries to resolve the problem. Instead of the closed protocol system, I would like to see an open protocol system that offers customers, landlords and developers a greater deal of flexibility, as they could choose from a variety of suppliers. They could also choose from a range of engineers. Virtually any trained engineer can do these repairs, which will ensure that they choose whoever offers the most value for money or expertise. Crucially, it would open up the market.”
“When he came back three hours later, the second lift was out of operation. He had to walk up seven flights of stairs with his oxygen, so this issue is having an absolutely huge impact on people’s lives. If a lift is not working and someone lives high up, they are effectively trapped in their home and cannot go out. I have raised this problem with a number of landlords, and I have picked up that four main lift providers dominate the lift market in the UK: Otis, Schindler, KONE and ThyssenKrupp, also known as TK Elevator. The lift providers want the landlords and developers who buy the lifts to take out maintenance contracts with them, which sounds a bit like a cartel.”
“I could forgo the meeting if the Government write back and say they will agree to address the issue, but I might accept a meeting in the interim. My next issue causes misery for many of my constituents: delays to lift repairs. I sense recognition from around the Chamber. There are often issues with obtaining key electrical parts for lifts, because they are in short supply and difficult to obtain, and there are problems with the supply chain. But having looked into this because I was so concerned—whichever landlord I am dealing with, there are problems with lifts—I have discovered a bigger issue. I should just highlight the impact on people. I have a constituent who lives on the seventh floor of a tower block. One day, he went out to visit a friend when one lift was out of operation.”
“It has been difficult to get information on this issue, because a lot of people would not have declared their sexuality in the first place. They may not even have joined the service in the first place. This issue matters massively, but I do not believe that a large number of civil servants will have lost their pension rights as a result. The Government need to right this wrong by addressing the issue across the board. Tackling it on a piecemeal basis will be a lengthy process for the Government and those involved, and unjust for those who have missed out, and we need a standard approach and recognition across Government that the calumny of the past is righted. I hope that the Minister can secure me a meeting with the relevant Minister to see whether we can make progress.”
“The Government have accepted that the historical policy of banning homosexuality in the armed forces and the secret services was wrong, but they are not reviewing the situation in the secret services, so I believe that the review on the armed forces should be widened to include civil servants who have been affected by the Government’s treatment of LGBTQ+ staff in the past, such as my constituent. If that is not possible because it has gone too far down the line—although there are so many similarities that it would make sense logically and financially, and for expediency, to include such people in the same review—I would call for a similar independent review on the non-military civil servants affected in this way. I imagine that it is a relatively small number.”
“As recently as 2019, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service apologised for the historical treatment of LGBT+ people in the secret services. He has said clearly—I hope we all agree with this—that the security bar on LGBT staff until 1991 had been “wrong, unjust and discriminatory”. An independent review is currently under way to examine the effects that the pre-2000 ban on homosexuality in the UK armed forces has had on LGBTQ+ veterans, so there is precedent for looking at what the impact has been on people who, through no fault of their own, were sacked or had to hide their sexuality and be something that they were not at work.”
“That dismissal, as we all now know, was an injustice, but it was within the rules of the SIS at the time. I have seen correspondence between my constituent and various officials, and I have also raised this through the system. I think there is genuine embarrassment now about the calumny that was visited upon my constituent and others. To be sacked from one’s job simply because of one’s sexual orientation is unacceptable. There have been a number of consequences for my constituent. He had what looked like a potentially glittering career, because he was a very good civil servant and was very good at his job. That ended, so he has not had the opportunity to progress in something that he absolutely loved doing. Crucially, he has also been denied the right to continue to build up his pension.”
“I have a second issue to raise, Mr Vickers—it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, too. I have seen off one Chairman already. This issue, again, is a personal matter for a constituent of mine who worked in the Secret Intelligence Service—the SIS—from 1975 until 1984 with a record of high performance and positive feedback from his superiors. He has since seen his own personnel records, and I have seen notes from those records. In 1984, he was offered a fantastic opportunity to serve at a station abroad. While discussing that opportunity with his personnel officer, my constituent disclosed that he was gay. Very shortly afterwards, his employment was terminated, and it was expressly explained that his sexual orientation was the reason for his dismissal.”
“Where that is accepted by the parent and child, such a measure would allow the school to see, if a child falls over in the playground or has an incident, instantly whether there is a particular need to action a very quick process to call an ambulance, if appropriate, or the relevant authorities. Nothing can bring Rasharn back, but what Lorna Williams needs is a clear hearing from Government. I ask this for her today. We have had that first conversation, but I look to the Minister today to raise this with the Department for Education to see what we can do. We are not after masses of extra bureaucracy for schools, because we know that would be counterproductive; however, we need to see what can be done better and done more consistently so that other children and parents do not go through this situation.”
“When we discussed this idea, the Minister and officials were receptive to it, but we have had little follow-up since. Of course, there have been rather a lot of Ministers since then, which has not helped the situation. One reason I want to raise this issue today is that we cannot forget this matter. Obviously, it matters to Lorna Williams, although for her it is too late, but it also matters for the children following. First, what we would like to see—what Lorna, particularly, would like to see—is clarity on what information schools hold and, as I have said, ensure that it is very accessible. We are also considering whether it is possible to have wristbands or some other clear identifier—where a parent and child agree it, of course, as there are privacy issues; not every child or parent might want that.”
“Lorna remembers sometimes coming back from hospital appointments with updates on Rasharn’s condition and never being quite sure if it was going to be filed in the right place or that it would be passed on to the special educational needs teacher or the classroom teacher. Parents of all children, but especially those with special health problems, need to have the confidence that the school will handle that information consistently and properly. Looking to see if any statutory guidance could be provided, we had a meeting that was very productive, on the face of it, with the then schools Minister, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), and officials in January 2022. We were grateful for that meeting, which was still online because of lockdown restrictions.”